City-States Brief Character Summary

This is a document summarizing the theme/character of the cities in the City-States Region. It's not "canon" or whatever, but instead is a guide for writing about the city as we go forward with them!
Generally written north-south.

• Guildhall - A military encampment, home of the Mercenary Guild. Serves as the org's HQ, lots of training and marching, consists of a small fort, some long barracks, a mess hall, blacksmiths, etc. Also a small collection of outlying buildings for housing those delivering material or other visitors who aren't in the Guild.
• Aratosa - Mining town of the north. Covered in smoke (though not at ground level, thanks to magic), lots of forges and smithies. People in the city are largely heads-down, lots of hoods under a sky that is grey from the smoke. One big central road full of carts. Mines are mostly up in the mountains to the west.
• Alanor - "City of Contracts", Alanor is a low-lying city surrounding a large stone tower that was carved out of the southern tip of a mountain. The town has an "inner" city, full of wealthy residences of lawyer-types and merchant reps, inside of an old wall. Outside of that is a swath of cheaper residences, mostly service workers. Outside of that is a large public house with a roof that looks like a wooden dragon. The city itself is conservative in fashion (in the rich portion at least), and very very business-like. Alanor is all about finalizing deals.
• Magear - "Mage City", Magear is the staging area for supplies being delivered to the Mage Islands. Several large warehouses stand near the cliffs of at the edge of the city, near the entrance to the Mage Bridge. The town has a large square full of merchant stalls, mostly populated with vendors selling low-level magical items (potions, single-use wands, minor pieces of artifice). The city is split in character between no-nonsense teamsters delivering goods, desperate people looking to get help from mages, "Seasonal homes" belonging to wealthy from other cities who will sometimes visit to attempt to deal in influence with Mages, and locals who are kind of fed up with everything.
• Altor - a shipbuilders' city. The city is dominated by several building docks as well as several docks for shipping. Water-based trade is not huge in the region but a fair amount is moved up and down the coast. Would have the character of a Victorian-era shipbuilding town (though not the technology). Lots of specialist craftspeople, will definitely have a very strong shipbuilding and sailors' guild-driven character. The Mercenary Guild also maintains a couple of docks for military use. Lots of warehouses, lots of traffic in and out, almost entirely moving goods.
• Kolar-Malara - the Twin Cities across the Lasair Canal , effectively the capital cities of the region. Very much a split character city. The north side (Kolar) is wealthy, lots of money moving around. The south side (Malara) is industrial and working, lots of goods moving around. Many bridges across the cities.
• Mytos - at the bottom of the lifts that move crates up and down between the City-States and The Great Plateau. Lots of people who work in moving those goods into/out of warehouses and onto barges in the Lasair Canal. Very very busy people, pretty much everybody here either works to move goods, to service/operate the lifts, or to supervise/manage movements of goods.
• Britor - at the halfway point along the Lasair Canal, Britor is a very wealthy city due to lots of travelers stopping here up and down the canal, having a lot of shipping interests located here, and from being the primary location that produces barges for canal travel. A lot of money passes in and out of this city, and it has become a sort of "cultural capital" for the City-States region due to its central location. The wealthy in the city play into this cultural center status by being huge patrons of the arts - they sponsor artists of all kinds, playwrights, composers, etc. and will frequently have favorite actors and musicians as well. Patronage of these arts also creates a vibrant social circuit, with families putting on lavish parties to present artists' latest works, to see and to be seen. This sort of family competition sometimes gets fierce and spiteful, with plays and such occasionally being commissioned to either glorify or denigrate those playing the "Great Game" as they call it. This sometimes even spills over into violence - more than one writer or actor has been found dead after the performance of a particularly pointed piece.
• Suranor - I have no idea, will add here, probably a southern mining city, similar to Aratosa but with different resources. It's next to a big dam and reservoir, so that can probably factor into it as well
• Surtor - also not sure. It's a southern shipping port, largely for moving stone from The Sink up to Kolar-Malara , not sure of its overall character yet. ADDED: Humans mentions that there is some farming/harvesting of coffee/chocolate from aroung the Shifting Jungle that ends up making its way to Surtor for shipping north. Go with that!