Katzpütch
Originally a meeting point for the great cattle herds of the Rheuthen Basin as they were driven east toward the Eldorian Sea, the town has become an permanent encampment for misfits, merchants, and malcontents. Its Great Market is a dizzying menagerie of colored tents, strange scents, and competing cries as hawkers show off goods from all across Tarien. Without a formal government or even police force, the only law is that of the gold coin or the sharp knife.
Structure
There is no formal government in Katzpütch. There are, of course, conmen, cutpurses, and other lest savory criminals that make their living among the tents and alleys. While they of course prey on the unwary, most people keep their eyes to themselves, closely watch their own purses, and one rest one hand on the hilt of their blade to discourage trouble. Those with something of any value to protect hire their own bodyguards and strongmen to their lives, goods, and coin safe. Given that it’s generally safer and more profitable to avoid trouble, this keeps the City of Shifting streets from devolving into complete bedlam.
Beyond the detente brought about by strength of arms and a healthy sense of self-preservation, the Freelancers exert a notable influence over the city. Katzpütch is, after all, a city where nearly anything can be purchased for the right price. Any of those transactions come about as a result of Brotherhood activity of some sort or another, be it the robbery of a caravan on the outskirts of the city, the sale of goods stolen in another Inner Seas city, or the classic exchange of gold for protection services. Every transaction occurring in the shadows is subject to oversight by the Freelancers, layering a their own rules and regulations over what otherwise might be anarchy. Freelancers take a dim view of those operating without a Brotherhood license and the justice they dispense is dirty and often brutal.
Culture
With people arriving in Katzpütch from all over Tarien, its culture could define the term melting pot. Few make the city their home for more than a few seasons and fewer still spend their formative years in the city unless they grow upon as orphans, eking out a living until they can either escape the city by virtue of a strong arm or quick wit. Without a native population, as such, there are few traditions, little art, and no system of formal education.
With no true buildings, beyond the city’s three Inns and a blacksmith shop, it has no cuisine of its own.
The city instead offered scent of foods from across the Inner Seas and beyond rising from street vendors of all backgrounds. A Dharjan kebab cart might park next to a Khadric ale stand and a Soulmeliti noodle tent. Food is generally served hot - often cooked on the spot - with meat and flatbreads of all origins and flavors the most prevalent.
Fashion ranges from loose fitting and cool in the summer to practical and warm. Few display their wealth ostentatiously as it is simply an invitation for trouble. Those with means might establish larger tents, perhaps with wooden platforms or thick carpets, but even they know the ephemeral nature of Katzpütch, seeking only to make their fortunes and retire to lands more civilized.
Communities of individuals with shared backgrounds sometimes form. A cluster of tents for a contingent of Prydithen merchants or a camp for cowboys driving cattle from Grennig is not uncommon. These to ebb and flow with seasons and one is just as likely to find Mennithite pilgrims or out-of-work Orkish caravan guards in those same spots a denary later.
History
Like much of the rest of Human along the northern shores of the Inner Seas, the history of Katzpütch begins with a simple gathering of people. Unlike the great port cities of the region, however, the trade here was in livestock. Herders from the Rheuthen Basin, the Lawless Steppes, and the Menter Plain - all before such places even had such names - gathered trade the cattle and sheep and goats and horses that they raised on the endless grasslands. It was simply a central location where men and women could exchange wool for leather or sell horses for iron tools lugged down from the Kingdom of Galencia. By the middle of the first century, the event gained enough size to gain a name - the Katsfair.
A century later an enterprising smith named Dalhron set up an anvil and a forge only to make a fortune shoeing horses that passed through the what was now a year round market. He paid a small fortune to an entrepreneurial Khadric construction company who erected a stone building around the smithy. Now that the market had a permanent structure, locals began to call it a Pütch, after the Khadric word for "permanent" and Katzpütch was born.
The rest, as they say, is history. The city grew in size over the years, gaining a three additional permanent structures - all inns of varying quality. It has seen little in the way of foreign intervention. The Grand Duchy of His Lord Mennith has, on occasion, sent units across the grasslands, seeking to perhaps annex the city, convert its heathens, and acquire its wealth. Alas, these armies invariably have found no one willing fight when they arrive, the citizens of The City of Shifting Streets simply going about their business as normal. While a few heretics might have hung in such occupations, the outlandish costs of feeding an occupying force, especially when balanced against the shrewd herders who kept their flocks just over the next rise and steadily increased their prices, doomed such expeditions to failure. Today Mennith, like most other nation-states, prefers to leave the city alone. "If there must be a place with such a free market", one economist noted, "It might as well be the demon-lord we know."
As such, with the exception of troubles at the end of the Fifth Centruy that led to the Second Elynthi War, the rest of Tarien has generally left Katzpütch alone, the history made here consigned to the shadows.
Demography and Population
Few other places on Tarien are the melting pot of the City of Shifting Streets. Few other cities would welcome a Goblin or see an Elynthi drinking a glass of wine a few stools away from a Soulmelit but in Katzpütch even these eccentricities are possible. While transient nature of much of its population makes counting heads nearly impossible, it expresses a broad range of the various sentient species. The vast majority of inhabitants are, of course, Human. Dharja, Orks, Soulmeliti, Nerrid, Flind, Khadra, Elynthi, and even Kari-Zaro have smaller numbers but are still generally present in groups sizable enough to be called communities.
Other species, including Tzecheni'korak, Goblin, Kyushu, Kenku , and even the occasional Wemic can be found perusing the various markets of the city. While cross species tensions still exist, those individuals willing to travel to such a chaotic city are generally, by their nature more tolerant - or at least willing to turn a blind eye - to differences with others.
Evening Shoppers in Katzpütch
Territories
Katzpütch extends only out as far as last tent of the city. One might want to stretch its limits out the edge of the herds that ebb and flow around the city with the season, but a herd of cattle or horses cannot be a city, can it? Even if one were so generous the nation-state would remain one of the smallest on Tarien. City-states like, Rathgar, and Mon Finn all claim some surrounding farmland and wilderness. Only tiny Dalencroft , just or east along the Trans-Rheuthengage Highway, could be considered smaller.
Military
On one hand, Katzpütch has no army to speak of. In order to have an army, a nation-state must have things like a government and taxes, after all. On the other hand, just about everyone in the City of Shifting Streets is either armed our had purchased some sort of armed protection. So that while the city cannot claim a single soldier, it is certainly not defenseless. This proliferation of blades seems to have little effect on public safety - there is just as much violence in the city as in Phelandria or Karradone. Of course the population of Katzpütch is a fraction of the size of those mighty Eldorian metropolises.
Religion
Katzpütch may not boast any great temples but scattered throughout the city are shrines and alteration almost every deity imaginable. Anderi and Jendredi have the largest and most permanent. The Lord of Light’s altar may be found in a wood planked clearing that has been free of tents for nearly a century. The Lady of Many Moods hosts four large shrines, one on to each of the cardinal directions on the outskirts of the city where her priests accept donations in exchange for for prayers to keep the storms of the Lawless Steppes at bay.
Other deities have shrines, wandering heralds, and unsolicited preachers throughout the city. Chetria's faithful, for example, often travel between the great herds that gather around the city, blessing livestock and herders alike. While not the most prominent the most noticeable are often the Mennithite preachers that proselytize to crowds great and small, often before being run out of town by gangs of out-of-work Orks.
Foreign Relations
As there is no centralized government on the Lawless Steppes, other nation-states don’t generally have any formal relations with Katzpütch. A few of its neighbors, such as Sarya’s Republic and the Kingdom of Galencia might recognize the importance of it as a trading hub, but as long as trade continues, see no reason to intervene in the current state of affairs. Even the Trans-Rheuthengage Highway does not dip quite down to the city, meaning that the Imperial Legion has no real presence. Those Legionnaires that do venture off the road into the city do so of their own accord on leave and at their own peril.
One the Grand Duchy of Mennith has any real political connection and that is one of historical aggression, having invited the city in the past in what turned out to be a failed occupation. With the even so far in the past, however, and the population so transient, the residents of the city hold little in the way of a grudge for this past misdeed. Even Mennithites, after all, are tolerated in Katzpütch.
Agriculture & Industry
Little in terms of agriculture exists in and around the City of Shifting Streets beyond the tall grasses that grow up each season only to find themselves mowed and trampled down by the great herds driven to marked from the west. This hardly leaves any space for those residents that make their living off the traders of livestock and other commodities to have much more than a small garden patch for their own subsistence. In the inner parts of the city even this space is few and far between. As the rents thin, however, a surprising number of these small gardens fill the spaces between tents with some ingeniously tiered in wooden terraces to provide more growing space. A fair local industry in produce has even developed as generations of Katzpütchians have grown turnips, tomatoes, and beans with ever shortening maturity cycles.
Wheat however is in short supply. It all must be imported from the city’s neighbors as any great fields swim close to the city are trampled by domesticated herds while any further away suffer the same fate from wild ones. The lack of bread has lent itself to Dharjan cuisine - where meat and vegetables are often cooked and served on a metal skewer. It is not uncommon for locals to carry their own set of these thin bladed instruments and most vendors offer a discount to customers that provide their own as even wooden skewers can be difficult to find amidst the sea of grass that surrounds the city.
Trade & Transport
While trade in the great herds that arrive in Katzpütch, it does not mean the city is constantly surrounded by such animals. Sheep from Galencia arrive in the spring, horses in high summer, and cattle in the fall, meaning that the tenor - and odor - of the city changes with the seasons. Most herders attempt to sell their stock as quickly as possible in order to minimize their stay and maximize their profits, so for much of the year there is a steady stream of livestock flowing into and out of Katzpütch.
While this trade causes large sums of gold to change hands, it pales at the unimaginable sums that come from other goods. As a crossroads, the city has become famous as the place to sell anything coming the Underground Kingdom, the Flietch-ta Empire or the Soulmeliti Forests - generally from large well-armed caravans to smaller, specialized merchants. These smaller operations then take specific goods to their various markets across the Inner Seas. The same is true of Human manufactured goods bound for points east, though there is always more gold spent on eastern goods than on Human ones.
With such a large volume of goods and scarcity of laws in the City of Shifting Streets, it also has perhaps the largest black market in Tarien. Be they goods filched in one Inner Seas city that need to be sold safely before being transported to another one or goods of a more nefarious nature, it is widely rumored that anything can be purchased in Katzpütch. This rumors hold more truth than fiction; after all, even the holy artifact known as Veracous was sold in the city’s Great Market.
Dyianr'ri Speaking in the Katzpütch
Katzpütch has developed into nothing more than filthy den of miscreants and malcontents with respect for anything but size of your purse and sharpness of your blade. I find it to be the sanest place on Tarien.
The Outskirts of Katzpütch
Maps
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Katzputch
Founding Date
128 AC
Type
Geopolitical, Settlement
Alternative Names
The City of Shifting Streets
Demonym
Katzpütchian
Government System
Anarchy
Economic System
Market economy
Location
Controlled Territories
Neighboring Nations
Magic in Katzpütch
Katzpütch may be one of the few places in the Inner Seas where magic is not official banned. There is, of course, a healthy mistrust of the arcane and the occasional sorcerer falls victim - rightly or wrongly - to a lynch mob convinced that they are enacting justice for some wrongly charmed maiden or beguiled merchant. With its limits, however, on can certain finds options and charms for sale openly. Enchanted blades and ensorcelled shields can be found in some of the more shadowy tents and even wands that throw fire and other items of otherworldly power are said to trade hands in the darkest shadows of the city. A few - such as the proprietors of the Stumbling Traveler with its magical billboard or the Silver Lantern with its arcane cleaning staff flaunt the general prohibition that most sane people feel against magic. But who ever claimed the Nerrid or Soulmeliti were sane?
Shadows and Intrigue
With so much coin flowing through the City of Shifting Streets one might think that a foreign nation or warlord or anyone with an army might take the city. As it produces nothing of value itself, however, most politicians have historically left the city alone. That does not mean that politics are absent. The constant influx and outflux of caravans from across Tarien makes it the perfect location for clandestine meetings. Agents from a dozen nation-states call the city home and another dozen routinely travel to trade rumors, information, and favors. At least three nations have had their successions altered by political maneuvering hundred of leagues from their capitals in past century, the furthest rumored to have been the far flung Kingdom of Drakkar.
A fine place to conduct business. I’ve traded Zennonaize stallions for Soulmeliti silks and Dharjan rugs for Khadric gemstones; each transaction padding my margins for when I returned to the markets in Yaty.