Ephesos

The City of Bounty

Created By Gerrmann

Common Rumors

Rumors that are so prevelant that the character doesn't have to ask, they've just heard them.

Demographics

The population is largely gnome (37%), with smaller numbers of humans (20%), halflings (18%), elves (10%), dwarves (7%), Tieflings (5%) and Centaur (3%).

Government

Governorship. The Governor runs the city on a theocracy, using the tennants of the god of the order domain for the gnomes as the basis of legislative morality.
The city is divided into thirty districts that are banded together into 10 "burroughs" that have representation in the court of the governor.

1. The Narrows
2. The Castille
3. The Docks
4. The Scholar's Assembly
5. TThe Rubyfane Burrough
6. TThe Mastiff's Ward
7. TThe Bell District
8. TThe Artist's Farthing
9. TThe Northern Docks
10. TThe Southern Docks

Defences

There is a large wall surrounding the city, as well as a companion sea wall to protect the harbor from pirates and rival nations. There are towers every 30m along the wall, as well as a fully staffed city guard that patrols the streets as well as the walls.

Industry & Trade

Ephesos is known for it's use as a trade hub, which makes it's second largest export paid bounties. The bounty trade is so fruitful that the government actually runs contract options, accepting bounties from individuals, and having a large auction house that allows hunters to purchase contracts from the government for the collected bounty. The government keeps one third of the bounty as a tax, but the rates are usually low enough to make sure the fufillment of the contract is well paid, if nothing else than to get back the money that had been spent purchasing the contract.

Infrastructure

The largest docking infrastructure in the south east of Kokintras, as well as a defensive sea wall, cobble roads, sewers, blast furnaces, bridges, and shipyards.

Guilds and Factions

The Bronzemane

The Bounty Hunter's Guild

The hunter's guild is a bounty outpost in the Castille, where an unnervingly large and rotund gnome named Potitus Caesius Pleminius resides in a form of court, served by aides, and never without a large goblet of ale. Potitus runs the bounty hunter trade in Ephesos and offers contracts out to adventurers and any others willing to swear an oath of fealty and become deputized for affairs of state.

Order of Leodinus

Cartographer's Guild

The Cartographers of Loricanium are a venerated class of craftsmen and adventurers, often taking to the high seas around the continent in order to map the coastlines and trade routes throughout the continent. A surprising amount of Loricanian Cartographers have the obvious lineage of the Lotus Clan of Dai Tektoku Kaisui and are an oddity to Ephesos due to an early migration during the formation of the city, these distinguished families continuing the ancient cartographic and calligraphic arts of their homeland in the port city.

The Longshoremen

The Guild of the Dockhands

History

The city of Ephesos started as a small haven for humanoids, looking and fleeing from the Iron Horde to the southwest. They began to use large, fossilized trunks of timber, driven deep into the marshy earth until they hit a solid layer of earth, and from these closely positioned stands, began to build foundations for the city.

Humble Beginnings

The City Center was the first section created, and the district that holds the powerful centralized local government, The original settlers of the area were refugees from the south, fleeing the horsemen of the Iron Horde. With the salt marshes being a natural obstacle to the centaurs advantage of speed, the humanoids there began to build, safe from the threat of raids, allowing them to grow and remain prosperous and well defended against their most dangerous local foe.
Driving large trunks of Larch into the salty marshy earth, and embedding them against the firm rock below, they managed to start the foundations of what would one day turn into the largest trading hub in Loricanium. Though at this point they were simply known as Ephesos, a budding city-state with their own kingdoms and feudal system unattached to the budding Loricanian Empire to their west.

Alternative Name(s)

City of Bounty

Type

Large city

Population

11400

Inhabitant Demonym

Ephesians

Location under

Loricanium

Owner/Ruler

Tomek Mischovich Feydorov

Characters in Location

• Haarkon Valoteränen