Wardsea

"It may look a sight and smell like old fish, but I wouldn't have it any other way." -Unknown

Wardsea is a city of tides and tempers, rising and falling like the waves that batter its timber bones. For centuries, it was Everwealth’s only gateway to the sea, a place where fortunes were made and lost before a man could finish his drink. It was never meant to last, not in the way it has, what began as a desperate foothold on foreign shores has since grown into a choking sprawl of wharves and warrens, held together by frayed ropes, rusted nails, and the stubborn will of those who have nowhere else to go. The city stretches beyond its own foundations, its docks creeping ever further into the water like skeletal fingers grasping for more. They say the oldest piers were built by hands that have long since turned to dust, their planks soaked through with centuries of toil, salt, and spilled blood. Some of these makeshift expansions lasted decades, others mere months before a rogue wave or a storm’s wrath pulled them into the deep, dragging entire livelihoods down with them. Wardsea is a place where men build fast and pray faster, and where the sea is not a boundary, but a patient enemy.

Demographics

Wardsea is a city of survivors, of sailors, smugglers, shipwrights, and scoundrels. No one comes here expecting an easy life, and few ever leave with more than they arrived. The population is a volatile mix of native Everwealthy like common Humans or Dwarfish folk and long-settled Elfese descendants; But Wardsea's economic and industry sees itinerant traders from every far corner of the world nestled here between them, Aquian from the depths of The Laughing Sea, Orcish from the southern reaches, a rainbow of races come and go from the ships and fisheries every day. At Wardsea's core are the dockworkers and fishermen, hardened by wind and brine, their backs bent beneath years of toil. Behind them are the shipwrights and artisans, crafting vessels sturdy enough to withstand both the waves and the cutthroats who lurk in every alley. Crime thrives in Wardsea like barnacles on a ship’s hull. Privateers turned pirates, pirates turned merchants, and merchants turned thieves, here, the lines blur, and everyone is just one bad voyage away from being something else entirely. The wealthiest live atop the cliffs in weather-worn estates, feasting on imported luxuries and hiring mercenaries to keep the city’s filth from climbing too high. Below them, the desperate cling to whatever they can: faith, vice, or the sharp edge of a blade.

Government

Wardsea belongs to the crown, though the crown would rather it didn’t. It is ruled by a Governor, appointed by Opulence but rarely in full control, a man meant to oversee a city that no one truly governs. The current Governor, Lord Veylen Harbrook, is a bureaucrat sent to bring order where there is none, tasked with taming the untamable and taxing what cannot be counted. He holds power in name, but it is the Harbormaster and the Fleet Captains who dictate the city’s true movements, where ships dock, who gets safe passage, and whose debts come due. Beneath the official law lies the law of coin and cruelty. The Wardens of the Black Hook serve as the city’s closest thing to peacekeepers, a loose network of enforcers and informants more interested in keeping the trade flowing than ensuring justice. Bribes are as much a part of daily life as tides, and justice is a matter of who can afford it.

Defences

Wardsea has never needed high walls. Its true defenses are its ships and its reputation, a fleet of hardened warships docked at the King's Wharf, ready to sail at the first sign of trouble. The city’s naval garrison ensures that Wardsea remains Everwealth’s strongest maritime stronghold, though the loyalty of its privateers is often as fickle as the wind. The Battlement Cliffs serve as an unyielding natural barrier on the landward side, a wall of jagged rock that has kept countless would-be invaders at bay. Siege engines and artillery line the clifftops, capable of turning enemy fleets into kindling before they reach the harbor. However, the real threat has never been from without, but within, pirates who know the city's secrets, spies who buy their way into its halls, and sailors who can switch allegiance faster than a wind changes course. The humid late-spring onset brings more than just sea fog and swollen tides. It heralds the Tideback Surge, the short but infamous breeding migration of the Ship-Snap Turtles, during which large portions of the lower docks are cordoned off to avoid deadly run-ins. Though the turtles rarely linger beyond the season’s end, their presence marks a tense period when Wardsea’s tempers run short and blood runs quicker than wine.

Industry & Trade

Wardsea is Everwealth’s lifeline to the world beyond, a city that runs on salt, sweat, and stolen goods.

• Shipbuilding is its backbone, with war galleons and merchant sloops alike crafted in the city’s endless dockyards.

• The Slanted Market is flooded with goods from across the known world, spices, silks, iron, and illicit contraband, much of it never declared for taxation.

• Fishing sustains the populace, with entire districts built on stilts over the shallows where men cast nets and dredge the depths.

• Smuggling is second nature here, a trade so ingrained that even the city watch takes their cut rather than attempt to stop it.

The Tideback Surge also presents a strange opportunity. Hunters, alchemists, and beast tamers descend on the city hoping to cull a turtle or collect Ship-Snap hatchlings, coveted for their shells, meat, and potential as trained beasts. Wardsea’s merchants have commodified the season into a grim festival of risk and reward, with temporary stalls springing up near the Saltblood Arena and underdeck alleyways advertising “marrow-soft hatchling stew” and exotic leather goods.

Infrastructure

Wardsea is built for function, not beauty. The city is a maze of boardwalks, bridges, and brine-slicked streets, with buildings leaning at angles they have no business standing at. The oldest sections are half-drowned, their foundations long since swallowed by the tides, while newer expansions are built atop the bones of those that came before. At the city's heart lies The Grand Dockyards, where ships are birthed and buried in equal measure. Further inland, the Iron Piers stretch into the bay, remnants of a failed effort to create a permanent trading hub, a dream abandoned after half the construction was claimed by the sea. The Underwharf serves as the city’s black market, a labyrinth of half-sunken warehouses and hidden tunnels where debts are settled in blood and goods change hands with no questions asked.

Districts

Wardsea is a city divided by wealth, law, and the ever-present hunger of the sea. The land-bound cliffs house the powerful, while the lower quarters cling to the edge of oblivion, drowning in rot, crime, and salt. The highest point in the city is Fleet Lord’s Rest, the only district with anything resembling structure. Built atop the cliffs overlooking the harbor, it is home to the ruling elite, naval commanders, shipwright lords, and the few merchants wealthy enough to keep their affairs clean. The streets here are paved, the homes fortified against both the wind and the desperate souls who might try to climb the cliffs in search of fortune.

• Beneath it lies The Sway, a district precariously balanced between wealth and ruin. Here, successful traders, smugglers, and mercenary captains carve out their own empires, their fortunes as shifting as the tides. It is a place where deals are made over fine wine one day and settled with steel the next, where gambling dens and auction houses thrive, and where power is measured not by noble birth, but by how many debts a man can collect before someone collects his own.

• To the west, Driftrow sprawls across the water itself, a floating district of moored ships, makeshift platforms, and half-sunken shanties lashed together with rope and desperation. It is a lawless place, home to exiles, fugitives, and those too dangerous or too poor to live anywhere else. Here, disputes are settled with blades, and a man can disappear into the waves as quickly as he arrived.
• The docks and trade are controlled from The Barnacle Ring, a labyrinthine district of wharves, market stalls, and waterfront warehouses, where ships unload cargo and the city’s true rulers, the merchants and shipmasters, conduct business both legitimate and otherwise. The Barnacle Ring never sleeps, its streets filled with the ceaseless hammering of shipwrights, the cries of fishmongers, and the ever-present stink of sweat, salt, and ambition. During the turtle season, parts of the Barnacle Ring become restricted or evacuated altogether, the docks groaning under the weight of nesting turtles whose jagged shells have sheared through stone moorings. Locals often gamble on how many ships will be lost this year, and mercenary groups post bounties for adolescent turtles or protective Lanternwing sightings, the latter known to prey on turtle eggs in aerial dives from the cliffs.

• And then there is The Churn, the lowest district, both in geography and in status. Nestled at the bottom of the cliffs where the runoff from the city pools into a festering mire, it is home to the discarded, crippled sailors, beggars, and criminals who have outlived their usefulness. Here, the buildings are rotting, the streets are ankle-deep in filth, and the air is thick with the scent of sickness and death. It is a place where only the truly desperate remain, clinging to the last dregs of life in a city that has already forgotten them.

Each district of Wardsea tells the same story: survival, struggle, and the knowledge that one storm, one war, or one bad tide could wash it all away.

Assets

Wardsea’s wealth is not measured in coin but in control of trade, of movement, of the lives passing through its decaying docks. It is a city that takes, hoards, and exploits, and what it lacks in grandeur, it more than makes up for in raw, brutal necessity. At its core is The Seawall Bastion, a towering fortress built into the cliffside, both a naval command center and a last-ditch refuge in the event of an invasion. Though its exterior is battered by centuries of storms, its walls have never been breached, serving as a reminder that while the sea may erode stone, it has not yet swallowed Wardsea whole. Below, carved deep into the rock, lie the Saltvaults, a network of subterranean storehouses where the city’s most vital resources, grain, whale oil, and preserved fish, are hoarded against times of famine or siege. The Drowned Quay serves as the city’s nerve center for trade, a vast and ever-expanding web of wooden piers, warehouse decks, and tide-washed tunnels where goods move faster than the ledgers tracking them. The city’s most ruthless merchants hold dominion here, ensuring that Wardsea remains Everwealth’s gatekeeper, no matter what changes elsewhere. Beyond the docks, the Tidecaller’s Beacon looms, a monolithic lighthouse of blackened stone, reinforced with iron and alchemical treatments to withstand the relentless elements. Its fire has guided countless vessels through the treacherous waters, but just as often, it has failed, leaving ships to shatter upon the hidden reefs that encircle the city like jagged teeth. For all its decay, Wardsea has one asset no other city in Everwealth can claim: the Hullgrave, a sprawling ship-breaking district where wrecked vessels are salvaged for timber, metal, and whatever cargo the sea has not yet claimed. Many of Wardsea’s newer structures owe their existence to the bones of older ships, their hulls repurposed into tavern walls, dock planks, and the very homes people live in. The city is built upon its dead, and in Wardsea, nothing stays at the bottom of the sea for long.

Guilds and Factions

Few cities are as shaped by their factions as Wardsea. Power here belongs to those who can seize it, and rival forces vie for control of the docks, the trade, and the law itself. Among the most notorious:

• The Harbormaster’s Irregulars - An official-sounding name for an unofficial empire, controlling the piers, shipping rights, and who sails freely.

• The Black Hook Wardens - Ostensibly the city’s peacekeepers, though their justice is for sale and their allegiance ever shifting.

• The Red Menace - A pirate fleet that claims no allegiance, striking at ships leaving Wardsea until recently, now brought to heel, though for how long remains uncertain.

History

Wardsea was not built. It was taken. In the year 6 CA, when the fires of the Schism still smoldered, Everwealth’s forces descended upon the Elfese coast like a storm of steel and fire. The land that would become Wardsea was not a city then, merely a cluster of coastal settlements, bound together by trade and a shared ancestry stretching back to the dawn of the Civil Age. But none of that mattered. What mattered was that the land was valuable, and Everwealth needed a port. The conquest was swift and brutal. The Elfese defenders, unprepared for an enemy that had already torn through their homeland, fought desperately but futilely. When the last of their resistance was broken, the surviving inhabitants were given a choice: swear fealty, flee, or die. Most fled. Some swore. And those who resisted met the fate of so many others in that bloody time, hung from the battlements or cast into the sea, their bodies left to drift as warnings to any who would dare reclaim what was lost. For the next century, Wardsea grew not by careful planning, but by necessity. It was a military outpost before it was a city, a war camp before it had homes. Every ship that passed through these waters fed the war effort, every coin collected went to the armies marching inland. The docks stretched further into the sea, built on the backs of forced labor and desperate men seeking a future that would never come. Entire districts were constructed in haste, some holding fast, others collapsing into the depths with the first great storm.
By the time the war had settled into something resembling peace, Wardsea had become too valuable to abandon. It had taken on a life of its own, a creature of timber and iron that could not be tamed. The soldiers stayed. The traders followed. And soon, where there had once been a conquered land, there was now something new: a city that belonged not to kings or rulers, but to the sea itself.
For centuries, Wardsea remained Everwealth’s only connection to the wider world. The kingdom poured its wealth and blood into its docks, reinforcing its harbors, fortifying its cliffs. The city became both a gateway and a bottleneck, controlling every ship that sought passage, growing fat on tariffs and trade while the rest of the kingdom turned its gaze inland. But with power came corruption. The city’s governors changed hands countless times, some ruling with an iron fist, others letting Wardsea govern itself so long as the gold continued to flow. Smuggling became as common as honest trade, and piracy flourished, as captains realized they could make more preying on merchant ships than sailing them. For nearly five centuries, Wardsea stood alone. Then came Gullsperch. The founding of a second port in Everwealth’s dominion changed everything. For the first time, Wardsea was not the only path to the sea. Merchants had another choice. The kingdom had another dock. And the grip Wardsea had held for so long began to loosen. But if Wardsea knows one thing, it is survival. Though its monopoly is broken, its ships still sail. Its docks still stand. And the men who built their lives upon its sinking streets still hold fast, waiting for the tide to turn once more. Wardsea is not a city that was built to last. It was a city that refused to die. And so long as there is gold to be made, ships to be sailed, and men willing to gamble their lives against the waves, Wardsea will remain, not as a place of peace, but as a city waiting for its next opportunity to take everything from those foolish enough to pass through its gates.

Points of interest

• The King’s Wharf - The seat of official power, a heavily fortified district where the Governor’s offices stand alongside Everwealth’s naval headquarters.

• The Slanted Market - A sprawling bazaar where anything can be bought, sold, or stolen.
• The Iron Piers - A decaying, half-collapsed stretch of docks once meant to rival Opulence’s harbors but now home only to wreckage and regret.

• The Underwharf - A place where debts are collected and disappearances go unquestioned.

• The Shallow Water Graves - The city’s "cemetery," a collection of broken ships used as floating crypts for those who die without coin for proper burial.
• The Tidewatch Posts - Hastily erected every spring, these reinforced scaffolds are bolted into the docks above high-tide lines to serve as lookout and evacuation points during the Tideback Surge. Sailors claim the posts are cursed to rot early, as if the turtles know precisely what they’re for.

Tourism

Wardsea is no place for idle visitors, but there are those who seek its promise of riches or ruin. The Saltblood Arena hosts bloodsport for the desperate, where men fight for coin, freedom, or sheer survival. The Leviathan’s Maw is a gambling hall that claims more souls than the sea itself. For the desperate, there is always work, on a ship, in a forge, or in the shadows. In Wardsea, fortunes are made by those willing to do what others won’t. And for those who fail, well, there’s always room in the Hollow Graves.

Architecture

Wardsea is a city built in defiance of nature, a sprawling, waterlogged monument to necessity and desperation. Its buildings lean against each other like drunken sailors, warped by salt and time, their timber frames reinforced with whatever materials could be salvaged—driftwood, shipwrecked hulls, scavenged stone from ruins long forgotten. The oldest sections of the city, closest to the sea, are a patchwork of collapsed piers and half-sunken structures, swallowed by the waves as the city continues to stretch outward in an endless, futile attempt to resist the encroaching tide. The docks are the heart of Wardsea, a chaotic tangle of wooden walkways, stone piers, and ramshackle buildings built on stilts, rising just high enough to avoid being claimed by the sea, though many still succumb after a few seasons. Some of these structures have stood for centuries, their foundations reinforced with blackened stone from the Battlement Cliffs, while others are makeshift constructions, thrown together in a matter of days and destined to be swept away by the next great storm. The wealthier districts sit higher on the cliffs, where sturdier homes of stone and slate cling to the rock face, safe from the tides but never from the winds that scream through the narrow alleyways.
The streets are an afterthought, carved by foot traffic rather than design, winding unpredictably through the city like veins. Many are nothing more than uneven cobbled paths, while others are raised wooden walkways, rotted through in places, creaking beneath the weight of those who tread them. In the lower districts, where the tide sometimes claims entire streets, boats are just as common a means of travel as walking. Taverns and inns, the lifeblood of Wardsea’s restless populace, are built like fortresses, thick wooden beams, iron-reinforced doors, and barred windows to keep out both the storm and the desperate. The naval quarter, where the city’s fleet is maintained, is more structured, its shipyards and barracks built with military precision, a stark contrast to the lawless sprawl of the merchant and dockside districts. The most ambitious structures are those that extend past the natural shoreline, precarious extensions of the city built over the water itself. Some of these expansions, reinforced with steel and ingenuity, have survived for generations, while others have collapsed in spectacular fashion, taking entire warehouses and trading posts down into the depths. Even now, Wardsea continues to build outward, despite knowing full well that the sea always wins in the end.

Geography

Perched at the edge of the Battlement Cliffs, Wardsea is battered by relentless winds and cruel, unforgiving seas. Storms are frequent, summers are short, and winters bring biting gales that turn the city’s wharves into frozen deathtraps. Here, the sea is a master, and no man, no king, can ever truly tame it. Once a year, Wardsea’s docks brace for a migratory disruption known as the Tideback Surge, when massive Ship-Snap Turtles return to the nearby coastlines and marsh-touched estuaries to nest. Though primarily sea-dwelling, these territorial leviathans willingly wade into Wardsea’s outer shallows, claiming entire sections of the harbor as breeding ground. The city’s proximity to both the Hungering Marsh and the sea makes it a prime convergence point during this unpredictable ritual.

Climate

Wardsea is a city where the weather is as relentless as the men who carve their lives from its salt-crusted streets. The sea governs all, and it is a cruel master. The air is thick with brine, damp even in the height of summer, clinging to skin and corroding steel faster than rust can take hold. Rain is near constant, drumming against rooftops, filling the gutters, and pooling in the uneven streets. When the downpours relent, fog slithers in, swallowing entire districts, making it easy for a man to slip into the mist and never be seen again. Summers are brief but punishing, the air turning thick and stagnant, making the docks reek of fish guts and rot, the stench clinging to the lower districts. The humid late-spring onset brings more than just sea fog and swollen tides. It heralds the Tideback Surge, the short but infamous breeding migration of the Ship-Snap Turtles, during which large portions of the lower docks are cordoned off to avoid deadly run-ins. Though the turtles rarely linger beyond the season’s end, their presence marks a tense period when Wardsea’s tempers run short and blood runs quicker than wine. Defenses

Natural Resources

The land around Wardsea is as unkind as the city itself. Unlike the inland settlements of Everwealth, with their rolling fields and deep mines, Wardsea has always relied on the sea to sustain itself. What little farmland exists is rocky and salt-choked, only suitable for hardier crops like barley and root vegetables. The surrounding cliffs offer iron and granite, but mining in such treacherous conditions is slow and costly. The real wealth comes from the water. Wardsea’s fishing industry feeds not only its own people but much of the kingdom, with salted fish and whale oil among its chief exports. The Snaketongue River, winding its way from the highlands, provides fresh water and a vital inland trade route, though much of its flow is tainted by runoff from the forges and slaughter docks. Beyond the city, the Ashwood lies to the west, a blighted expanse of cursed trees and twisted wildlife, untouched by axes or plows. The few who dare to harvest its lumber find it stronger than steel, resistant to fire, and riddled with unnatural whispers. The bravest, or most desperate, gather rare alchemical reagents from the Ashwood’s depths, selling them at the risk of their sanity, or their souls. But the greatest resource Wardsea commands is its position. Trade, war, travel, everything that moves by water in Everwealth must pass through these docks, and the city takes its cut, one way or another.

Founding Date

6 CA

Alternative Name(s)

'Buccaneer Bastion', 'Sailorstown',

Population

64.000

Inhabitant Demonym

"Wards', 'Portmen'.

Owning Organization

The Monarchy