Errezo
Errezo is a large city built atop among a growth of giant amethyst crystals. Amethyst increases alertness and combats sleep - which is why charms made of it are so popular for guards and the like - and within the city, nobody needs (or is able) to sleep. Industry continues around the clock, making the city a destination for young artisans looking to learn and carry out their trade as much as possible. The town has relatively little space for habitation and a paucity of beds, with many working, relaxing at a tavern, brothel or gaming house, then returning straight to work. These people keep their possessions about their person or in secure lockup facilities.
The town is dominated by the Mercantile Board, which operates as both bank and business regulator - and, increasingly, manages all aspects of citizen's lives. Their headquarters is built into a large amethyst geode that underlies the city. The board members have grown unimaginably wealthy off of this, and now seek to spread their influence further afield and dominate the entire Isthmus and beyond.
Indentured servitude is common in Errezo.
The mercantile board seek to emulate the cultural stylings, and thus the prestige, of the Caracaran supplicancy, even going so far as to paint themselves as the legitimate successors. Indeed, Errezo is a Framca word. They also have started minting new Ulls, Frams and Motes for the first time in centuries.
With drink and drug ineffectual in the city, the main vice is gambling and the associated fighting and racing. In such a workmanlike city, even the killers and gamblers are professional.
questions:
- what is raising kids like in a city where neither you nor it sleep? does that mess up the kids development?
Defences
Errezo never used to have a wall, but a large bastion has been raised around large sections of the town, in some places formidable - but in others, little more than a mud wall.
self-defence is the justification the Mercantile Board is using to assemble its army, though it understands that true self-defence, security, and prosperity can only come about through land ownership. with that in mind, it has effectively annexed virtually all of the Ozcan Wilds and looks to expand beyond, treating the wilds as a vast buffer zone.
Industry & Trade
Errezo is a centre of innovation and productivity in every imaginable industry. The strange magic of the amethyst removes the need to sleep, meaning the ambitious and driven come to Errezo to learn and practice their trades around the clock. Though it has few natural resources, Errezo turns out finely made goods at a great rate.
Infrastructure
Though food is brought into the city from the surrounding fields, and water is carried by subterranean aqueduct from distant lakes, for a large amount of food and other basic supplies Errezo is still reliant on imports.
History
Errezo was founded in 605LF.
Architecture
the typical architecture of Errezo is built around timber-framed houses, using logged sections from the surrounding jungle of enormous roses. roofs are often shingled with the giant thorns of the same roses, either straight or curved, which in finer buildings are laid in geometric patterns. Clay from a few pits near the city are also used to make tiles and bricks, or to slather on top of wood to form wattle-and-daub like walls. more expensive materials are imported from elsewhere to build marble palaces, chitinous offices, and the like.
though the core of the city is chaotic and cramped, with , further out the city becomes more organised as large chunks of land are owned or leased by Mercantile Board members, and so are "zoned" to particular business types or created wholesale as model-village-like industrial communities. these areas are then often sublet to particular entrepreneurs or workers, who inject some more individuality to their tenement blocks or identikit houses.
Geography
the jutting crystal outcroppings break out of the mass of buildings that make up the city. fields lie around the city for about a mile, after which the thick jungle of the Ozcan Wilds resumes.
Specific locations:
- the Board Headquarters: inside a giant underground geode.
Natural Resources
- Amethyst
Alternative Name(s)
The Wakeful City
Type
City
Population
110,000
Inhabitant Demonym
Errezite
Location under
Owning Organization
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