With the Queen's coronation, the city has exploded with colour, bright green and blue paper lanterns bouncing on hanging ropes from every corner of the city and pennets flying from every steeple and tower to flutter like the wings of cheerful birds. Hazed by distance, the haggard old walled Citadel, a blocky, militaristic relic of a more troubled age, has been draped with so many clusters of wildflowers, real or fabricated with ingenious loops of cloth and paper, that it looks encrusted by colourful barnacles.
This is a city brimming with both joyous celebration and a strange sense of unease none can quite place. Glutted with the region's famous wine and food of every description, the revelry around the coronation seems to have only just begun....
The City of Tourelle is a major trade center situated on the shores of Lake Vivaine. It is controlled by a number of mercantile guilds, trade consortiums and noble houses, all vying for status amid the hustle and bustle of goods coming into and out of the city via the Sungate Highway and the lake itself. Though a walled city still administrated from the old military citadel overlooking it, its warlike era is long past. It now thrives on the pulsating veins of trade and economics, both legal and illegal.
A bustling Lake-port city in the Central Provinces of Valderia, Tourelle is the capital of its region, an important trade hub on the shores of Lake Vivaine.
Located as it is between the capital of Corvalionne, the city of Sunderflow and the highway to Estegarde, it is a merry, sprawling cluster of gleaming white, yellow and pink walls criss-crossed by heavy dark wooden beams with peaked, tiled roofs in the classic Valderian style. Cobbled streets make rattle the wheels of coaches and wagons and bells toll from the fluted spires of temples and the hands of criers going about the streets shouting their announcements alike.
Human 62%
Elven 18%
Dwarven 10%
Halfling 7%
Gnomish 2%
Chancellor of the City
Tourelle and District City Council
The old Citadel, City Walls and gates are still in place and maintained, but have not withstood siege in more than two centuries. Much of the defensive infrastructure within the Citadel has been abandoned or repurposed for municipal administrative offices, meeting rooms and storehouses. The City watch or Townsguard, nonetheless, maintain a full barracks and active presence within the city to keep the peace under the municipal council's watchful eye.
Textile fabrics, spices, wine, fruits, fish, and arcane learning.
The city of Tourelle is quite old, built on top of the ruins of pre-Calamity settlements dating back as far as
Glorium Hominium. Some structures remain from this era, in particular an ancient drainage system composed of sewers, sluice gates and canals beneath the city proper, leading out into
Lake Vivaine. Some of these have become the lairs of smugglers, thieves' guilds and other individuals who might have business thought better unseen by the eyes of the city above.
Outside of the walls of Tourelle, the verdant Valderian fields ashore of the lake are prime agricultural land, spread with numerous farms and vineyards and orchards like merry picnic-blankets. A constant stream of farmers, merchants and tradesfolk come and go from Tourelle's city gates, which connect the city to the Sungate Highroad, which heads east into Estegarde and down along the coast, and the Royal Crest Highroad, which connects Tourelle in a westerly direction to the Capital.
The cornucopia of the Central Provinces' breadbasket flows into Tourelle's market districts, primarily the Fruitmarket square where such fresh goods are sold and distributed.
Lake-fishing is not only a pastime for many Tourelliennes but a vital source of bounty for the city. Fishmarket square is, naturally, the hub for buying and selling the harvest of the lake. The lake, opening to the sea as it does, also provides a considerable amount of Tourelle's trade and travel, its unusual depth allowing for even larger-keeled vessels to make berth and trade ashore at the docks of Tourelle.
Jewelry is a major product of the Dwarven quarter, where the city's dwarvish population congregate and also the home of many workshops and craft industries.
The Arcane Enclave in the heart of the city is one of Tourelle's proudest boasts, a district of magical learning surrounding the wizard school known as the
Tower of Beltharius. Despite the prosperity and prestige the Enclave has brought to the city, however, few Tourelliennes ever pass its walls, which are restricted only to students and faculty of the Tower itself.
Numerous guilds make the city home, including numerous Adventurer's Guilds such as the Knock Men, Steel Wolves and Striking Gull. Mercantile guilds, however, in close allegiance with powerful noble Houses such as DeLis, Tremme, Caravielle and Boulva are the real power here. In addition, Tourelle is the major inland base of operations for the South Wind Trading Company.
Below the surface, numerous thieves' guilds and other criminal organisations have activities in Tourelle, primarily the smuggling, fencing and general procurement of various goods and services skimmed from the legitimate practices of the city's legal businesses. Criminality is both bane and blessing to the rich trade of the city, depending on one's circumstances and perspective - and how much one stands to lose or to profit from it...
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