Sidewind

Sidewind is a medium sized town in Sealance, the second biggest settlement after Bridgetown.
Sidewing is a very industrial town: its location between the steppe and the Sealance Desolation makes the soil not very fertile, with few cultivated crops and only for local consumption, but the stone canyons to the south make it a great location for mining and related activities. To the south of the city many villages exists purely to house miners and process the ores extracted, which are mostly copper, iron, silver and gemstones (emeralds especially). These ores are refined in these local villages and then sent to Sidewind, where they are either further processed, like gemstones in the various artisans of the city, or sent elsewhere via trade.
Because of its location towards the southern side of Sealance, its lack of a closeby port, and the lack of other towns towards the south easy to reach from land (Dustyplain is easier to reach from its river and lake), very few goods come in town with trade (not on a major trade route).
A relatively recent city (founded roughly 300 years ago, c.a 1050 AK), Sidewind used to lack a clear noble class and has always been subjected to the independent rule of the Duke of Sealance first, and to the King of Enverdoon after the Enverdoon conquest. In more recent years (c.a 100 years ago), some minor noble houses were created by the most successful entrepreneurs of the region, who bought their way into the noble class.

Most building in town are made of pale-yellow stone as foundation and ground floors and wood, from maritime pines and other trees growing near the eastern coast, in the higher floors. Older and fancier buildings have stone elements to them, with cheaper, newer houses being mostly made of wood. Roads are mostly small and are just areas of compressed ground, and a simple wooden palisade encircles the town. Instead of gates, the palisade has breaches, which are areas where the palisade was not connected but slighlty overlapped, creating openings for people to enter the town. This was done to save on the materials to build the gates and since there are no real threats to the town in the region, but it ended up creating canals for the wind to channel in the city (see winds section). Because of the lack a river or lake, and because the coast is still half-a-day away to the east, the air in town is always very dry, and the climate has very hot summers and cold and dry winters, with rain coming only irregularly in the winter months.
The entire city is littered with wells of different shapes and sizes, with fancier neighborhoods having more elaborate wells in high quality stone and poorer areas having brick or hardwood wells. The city streets are very organized, 90 degree from each other, but the ever-growing outskirts are chaotic, with ramshacked houses being built on the outside of the palisade by people coming to get a job in one of the surrounding mines.
The town has three districts: the Dust District, the Stone District, and the Silver District.

Demographics

Sidewind is incredibly varied in its demographics. The fruitful and relatively new minerary industry attracts lots of poor people from all over the world, including many running from their past, whether out of fear or guilty.
Members of pretty much all races can be spotted, and truly nobody really cares or will pay attention to who you are.

Government

There is a governor, Kale Meris, who answers directly to and is appointed by the Duke of Sealance and is responsible for managing the settlement. She resides in the apartments above the city hall and spends her day filling paperwork and working for the Duke, hearing citizen requests (unofficially filtered by the guards outside the city hall) in the afternoon.
There is a local city guard, helmed by Daniel and Bonaria, and a High Priest of Terelok, Rose, that tends to the chapel, administers the treasury together with the governor and is in charge of sending tributes to Sealance.

Districts

Dust District

The Dust District incudes the area next to the palisade, the ramshackle huts outside, and the area near the street market that extends from the southern breach. The tavern Miner's Respite is located here, as well as the street market, that extends from the southern breach. Buildings are often corroded by the occasional southern sandy wind, exposing and drying the wood or grinding off the few stone corners.
The street market
The street market is an area on the main south-north road that fills with carts and stalls every morning, with vendors selling food (hunt and small farmers with hard crops) and trinkets and tools made with local ores. There is no proper smithy for weapons nor an armorer, and the few ironworks produce horseshoes, iron fittings for construction and other non-battle related things.
One particular stall is worthy of note, and is that of "Helga the Hag", who sells herbaceous remedies and potions. Her stall is covered in plant material, and she sits in a rocking chair, always grinding her mortar and pestle, which she sometimes forgets to fill. She is an expert in curses but not much of a potionmaker, outside the very basic ones she sells at the populace. She lives in a hut one hour towards the eastern sea.
Another stall, the biggest by far, is that of Zenkrak Lowprice, who sells general goods and trinkets, as well as useful small items for the population. His double-size stall made of three tables arranged around him houses all sorts of trinkets and other sometimes useful things, like simple clothes, dishes, pots etc. His stall is the only one open throughout the whole day, and he owns a small but nice house in the Stone District.
Luciera’s temple is also in the dust district, near the north-western palisade, in the outermost road.
It has a conical shape with a square base, with two-story tall walls of the same yellow stone as the rest of Sidewind, angled off the ground at circa 60 degree. The top of the cone is closed by a glass roof, not big, but large enough for light to shine in the main room. On the back of the building the rectangular shaped hospital area extends up to the city palisade.
Inside it resembles most Luciera's temples, with a central altar carrying the pyramidal symbol of the goddess and simple wooden benches pointing towards it. The pyramidal shrie is made of tiny well assembled bricks, and at close inspection one can see a small plaque with the earthiara symbol under it, as it was a donation from the family after the older symbol broke. A door on the opposite side to the entrance leads to the rectangular hospital room, with beds, tables and chairs where the wounded and sick are cared for. From here, a staircase leads up to the clerics' rooms or down in the basement, a half cold storage, half work bench for the making of healing elements.
This temple is kept by Fraga and Persica, two halfling sisters now in their 30s, who dedicated their life to Luciera and moved here recently when the previous cleric, Khazim, died of old age. The two clerics are aided by 4 other acolytes.
Stables of Sidewind
Gelsomina keeps them, she is a 50s human, friendly and generally helpful, short bowl-cut brown-reddish hair. Widow. The stables are a rectangular low wooden building, with a sturdy gate to close it at night, and house several horses. Attached to it is a two story house where Gelsomina lives, with one of the walls common between the stables and the house itself allowing direct access from one building to another. She does not lend horses but only sells them. She also sells carts, provided to her by the few wooden manufacturers in town.
In the southern area of the Dust District, two more small shrines can be seen.
One is the Shrine to the Elements, a small chapel by the roadside in a secondary road from the south-north thoroughfare. A one story square structure of terracotta bricks from the City of Elements, topped by a roof of white shingles. Four alcoves open on the four corners, each with a representation of the two aspects of the element represented in small frescos.
The other one, shortly south of the eastern gate, is the Shrine to Airakrad. Positioned at the edge of a small square, with thin palm-like trees on both sides of the entrance. The building is a simple wooden one story with square base, slighlty raised from the ground by foundations of the local pale stone. The temple carries a large dome that peaks above nearby roofs, not perfectly circular but pointy at the end, and topped by a bronze weather vane shaped like a half crescent moon.
Inside, several dark blue carpets cover the floor, clearly of different tones and probably brought by different people. A central rough chandelier lights the room, reflecting on a myriad small speckles of metal embedded in the walls. A the opposite end of the entrance a semicircular apse, raised from the ground, holds a raised stone platform on which a wooden structure carries the humanoid depiction of Airakrad, an androgynous human with ebony black skin and white freckles covering their entire body, dressed here with a simple cloth covering their hips. On their left hand "hovers" a circular silver disk, one of the symbols of this deity.
The cleric of Airakrad is Cerisha, a half-elven woman in her human 60s, who came here from the eastern kingdom roughly 110 years ago.

Stone District

The Stone District is the oldest part of town and takes its name from the fact that buildings here are almost entirely made of stone, both on first and second floors, with the exception of the roof and of renovated buildings. Most buildings are lower than in other areas, at most two floor. There is a "Moundoworker street", with jewelers as well as other industry-related workshops centered there (stonemasons, stonecutters, etc.), and slightly separated, an area where merchants that export goods related to this industry reside. Some merchants have shops at the ground floor, but these are mostly empty as these goods are mostly exported rather than sold locally. Notable buildings here are the city hall and the chapel of Terelok.

The city hall is a wood and stone building where governor Kale Meris works and resides. It is a rectangular, two story stone building, slightly higher than ground level and fronted by a more recent wooden porch, where two members of the city watch stand guard. Inside it has wooden floor and wall panels, with imported and kind-of-fancy furniture. On the ground floor there is a large rectangular room with a rounded rectangular glass table, made in the City of Elements, where the governor meets with other people, both from inside and outside the city. On the top floor there is a library and document storage room as well as the governor's rooms.
Adjacent to the back of the hall, forming a T shape with it, is a bulky, almost brutalist stone building: the guard quarters, a big rectangular base building with a flat walkable roof and three stories. On the left short side coming from the city hall a tower stands two stories taller than the roof below, which easily makes it the tallest building in the city. A staircase carved in the yellow stone on the longer side of the rectangle leads to the entrance room, where attendances stop people and hear complaints. Inside, the room has dark wooden flooring and simple sturdy furniture. There is a small armory, with simple weaponry and armors the guards use. The tower holds the quarters of the captain of the guards, Daniel, and the vice-captain Bonaria Aledrinker, at highest and second highest floors respectively. Their rooms are simple but definitely more comfortable, and Daniel has a nice carved desk of dwarven style.
The chapel of Terelok is located in a round square in the main road in front of the city hall, next to the entrance to the Silver District. It is of the same pale-yellow stone like the rest of the town and is entirely made of stone, except the wooden roof. It has an hexagonal base and is as tall as a two story building, while only having ground floor. Inside there is a very small (15-20 people max) wooden prayer chamber, a half hexagonal room with a stone altar on the straight side with a humanoid statue of Terelok, without face details and with a balance in its left and a clock in its right hand. Three rows of benches look at the altar, and a door on the side leads to the rather modest quarters of the high cleric, who has no servant and is the only one living in the building. The chapel is decorated with kind of fancy furniture, made of a combination of the pale local wood and imported ebony. Bronze and copper are the only metals seen here, no gems or gold except the holy symbol of the high priest.Attached to their chambers there is the treasury of the town and the office of the priest. The building has one entrance even if it is in the center of a square, and is guarded by several soldiers of the city watch. Rose is the high priestess of Sidewind.

Along the eastern main road there is a temple to Eldoneed, very similar in shape and material to Luciera’s temple but made of two slightly smaller pyramidal structures, connected by a rectangular chamber with the long side standing on the road. Inside there are two chambers of prayers built in the two truncated pyramids, in the western one there is a crafter Eldoneed statue and in the eastern one a shepherd statue, with a couple lambs with him. In the eastern chamber, flowers and other material offerings somehow linked to the earth element can be found (cheese, vegetablesm fruit, etc.) At the first and last floor there is a small library and the chambers of the clerics of Eldoneed. The temple and the library are kept by a dozen acolytes and the local cleric of Eldoneed, an earth genasi called Obsido.

Silver District

The Silver District is made of just the the two houses of the new nobility of Sidewind, namely house Silverhand and house Earthiara, both rising to noblehood in the last 100 years. Even with it basically only being made of two houses, the silver district is separated from the rest of the town by an archway-gate guarded by two guards.
House Silverhand is a three story mansion which used to be their silver workshop and merchant house. The stone ground floor, its pale yellow internal and external walls always well maintained (noticable especially by the well preserved external corners) used to be the workshop in which silver jewellery was made, in the back, and exposed and sold, in the front. Nowadays, only the most exquisite products of Silverhand manufactory is exposed here, and generally not for sale. The upper floors of the house have finely made wooden furniture often with silver decorations. On the first floor there are the rooms of the servants, and on the third floor the rooms where Joseph resides. The house boasts many trinkets and jewellery made to honor the Silverhand, and has a large dining room, with a huge rectangular oak table with room enough for some 20 people, and on the wall framed the declaration of Silverhand as a noble house in Sealance. Some of the top rooms are empty, as Joseph is the sole member of his House. House Silverhand is inhabited by Joseph Silverhand and his servants.

House Earthiara, both family and house more recent than Silverhand, is the one reason some people deem this area worth of being a separate district. The L shaped family house is made of terracotta-colored bricks imported from the City of Elements, and has big multicolored windows at the second floor, also imported from the Genasi city. In the middle of the L shaped structure, there is a garden with an artificial puddle and some coconut palms.

Guilds and Factions

Noble families of Sidewind

House Silverhand was founded in 1285 AK (otT) by Daniel Silverhand, who paid the then Duke of Sealance for this investiture thanks to the money earned in his newly discovered silver mines. The family, now helmed by Joseph Silverhand, made its fortune with the silver mines, as well as with jewellery and silver item production and trade. They have a three story manor in the Silver District. Their symbol is a silver gloved hand
House Earthiara is a more recent noble house, created in 1302 AK by Granitio and Qurtza Earthiara, an earth genasi couple arrived from the City of Elements. The family is now helmed by Rogro and his human husband Brian. They have an adopted son, Marc, and a daughter, Kelestra, both humans. They are relaxed people that like the area and care about Sidewind, less so about their status as nobles. Their house is the most sophisticated in town, made with the characteristic terracotta-colored bricks and colored glass produced in (and imported from) the City of Elements. The family made its fortune with and still owns various mining operations in the southern area of the region, and are known to often donating money to the town when money is needed. Their symbol is a mountain broken down in the middle by a zig zag break.

There is no actual guild in this town, as basically every single jeweler and craftman, as well as the miners working in the south, are employed by either of the noble families, which also employ merchants to sell their raw and refined products mainly in Bridgetown.

NPCs of Sidewind

Rose, the high priestess of Terelok, is a rather short half-elf, in her human mid 30s, with short blonde hair and light blue, almost grey eyes.
She is kind and willing to help anyone that might need her help, differently from many priests of Terelok that consider themselves above such matters.
She is an expert in breaking curses and in divine magic, especially of the compelling kind.

Obsido, cleric of Eldoneed, is an earth genasi in his 30s with very dark, almost black skin, bald and with amber-colored lightly almond-shaped eyes. He has a rumbling deep voice.
He is a rather quiet and helpful person and enjoys reading his books in the small library in the temple. His faith in Eldoneed differs from that of locals: as a member of the City of Elements, he thinks that the two opposite gods of the earth, Eldoneed and Murshna, are just aspects of the same deity. For this reason, he will sometimes keep flowers in the chamber to the point of rotting.
He has been keeping the temple for almost 6 years now, and was a miner before that. He and his acolytes tend to the flowers and other offerings brought by supplicants and other believers.
He knows earth magic rather well but not as much nature magic.

Fraga and Persica, two halfling sisters now in their 30s, dedicated their life to Luciera and moved here recently when the previous cleric, Khazim, died of old age. Both typical halflings (small stature, plump compared to humans), Fraga has short red hair and Persica has long chestnut hair carried in three braids.
Fraga is sweeter and friendlier and keeps the whole temple running, while Persica is a bit more reserved and dedicated mostly to the healing of the sick. The two clerics are aided by 4 other acolytes.
Both good in healing magic, Persica made it her mission to learn as much healing magic as she can.

Cerisha is an half-elven woman cleric of Airakrad, in her human 60s, with tanned skin, a rather broad nose, dark green eyes and short buzz cut grey hair. She is on the gaunt side, with high cheeckbones and very elven features, except for the nose.
She has come over from the eastern kingdoms 110 years ago, keeps the temple clean and waters the two plants outside.
Not an expert of the arcane, she specializes in treating homesickness, uses hypnosis and brews teas from the plants in her small balcony. She lives in a small but nice house on the same square as the temple.

Kale Meris is the governor of Sidewind, a female halfling in her 60s, with short, curly hazelnut hair. She is short even for a halfling, and dresses comfortable more than elegant, with beige and brown tones, except for a wide and tall leather hat with three dark green kale-like feathers.
She is easily irritated and always in a rush, but also practical and pragmatic, and good with priority management.

Daniel is the captain of the guards, a 1.70m human-looking male in his mid 80s, bald, with clumpy black muttonchops ending in a large Nietzsche-like mustache. Completely full of wrinkles, he was muscular once, and has kept a lean body in old age, even if he is now hunched. He wears comfortable and simple colors, likes comfy shoes and has his old armor of the guard, a simple metallic breastplate trimmed with copper, and his longsword, both in his office.
Daniel is actually a changeling, but this is known only to his family and to Bonaria.
He hates the idea of retirement and wants to keep working for the guards of Sidewind, but is now relegated to office work, which for him consists in half-doing paperwork and napping.
He is kinda the mascot of the guard, but everyone knows the organization is actually run by Bonaria.

Bonaria Aledrinker is the vice-captain of the guards, and the person actually running it. She is a 53 years old halfling around 1m tall. She is very muscular and bulky, with bulging biceps and a relatively large neck, with an octopus tattooed in the front. She has a military cut, blonde hair and a wide potato nose. Her skin is bronze and she dressed with very plain colored comfortable clothes, often directly covered with the breastplate of the guard with its copper decorations.
She is blunt and easy-to-action, sometimes she feels almost rushed in it, but she is honest and just too.
She got the octopus tattooed because it reminds it of her (according to herself): fast, great hunter and fighter, expert to hide, basically the perfect guard. She suggested to Daniel to make it a mandatory thing for sidewind guard but pretty much everyone protested loudly to it. She comes from the coast east of Sidewind.

Helga the Hag is a Feline Shifter very old woman of unknown age that sells healing items at the western market and enchants gems, if interested. She has grey matted hair up to half her back and always rocks in her rocking chair behind her stall. She is dressed in clothes once colorful but now clearly faded and has long bony hands with curling nails.
She rarely answers to others, and only if she finds what they say interesting, and with a surpisingly deep and not too wizened voice.

Zenkrak Lowprice is the mountain goblin that owns the general goods stall at the street market, and who runs it throughout the whole day. In his human 40s, he has dark green skin, large elfin shaped ears, big yellow eyes, and is kinda chubby. Dresses ostentatiously, with a silken red robe puffy at the arms and comfortable-looking mustard-colored pants. He often has a deep purple mantel and a mouth-cloth of the same color. He has short curly salt-and-pepper hair, and a stubby beard of the same color.
He is friendly and likes his job, and hates the time he spent in the Green Gorge.
Actually has lower prices than the average, but hates haggling (and has ADV on it, and +5).

Joseph Silverhand is the head of the Silverhand family.

Rogro and Brian helm the Earthiara noble family. They are an earth genasi and human couple, both between 40 and 50 years old. Rogro has khaki colored skin and is 1.70m, stocky and with broad shoulders, short black hair and perfectly shaved, with wide jawline. He seems to lose grains of sand when turning his head quickly. Brian is more slender, of olive skin and taller, bald and with a thick black mustache. They have an adopted son, Marc (14, short red hair, freckles, fair skin), and daughter, Kelestra (19, short jet black hair, olive skin), both humans.
They are relaxed people that like the area and care about Sidewind, less so about their status as nobles. They own various mining operations in the southern area of the region, and are known to often donating money to the town when money is needed, for example for the maintainance of Luciera's temple.

Founding Date

1050 AK

Location under

Sealance

Included Locations

• Miner's Respite

Owning Organization

Duchy of Sealance