Nightwell

Nightwell is located in the northern mountainous parts of the continent Vallaheim. The city is most known for its famous mages guild: The Arcane Alliance. The city was formed after its academy building up slowly overtime to keep up with the economy of the expanding school. The city’s economy is based upon the underground which is rich in valuable metals such as copper, silver, gold, and mithril. This means that the mine employs and attracts a lot of miners, mostly dwarves with humans being few and far in between. Mining takes up most of the underground level. The city’s ground level is mostly for living quarters, the barracks, basic shops, and taverns/inns, the top-level however is a more wealthy part of town with hotels for aristocrats and diplomats with magical shops as well as scribes, jewelers and alchemists. This is also where the city council operates from with help from an office of scholars from Nightwell.

Cuisine

In addition to the settlement's magical nature the cuisine has been influenced aswell and throughout it there exists a bunch of higher end aswell as lower end cookeries. For the lower end pastries and such there is a very popular alcoholic cherry drink is said to cure coughes, both mild and strong. This has made it a very popular drink among the dwarven miners. Along with this there a multide of others that are too many to count, examples are the braveing ale(makes you more brave), blinkberry(a berry that you consume and then dissapear before appearing in a random space within 10 feet away), delicacy pills(flavor enhancing drug that makes good food taste even better and bad food worse).
The more exotic variants are going to be more expensive, some examples are firebrandy(potion of firebreathing), enchanted cinamon roll(potion of healing), caramel popcorn(expeditious retreat), dragon fruit(different shades for resistance to a type of damage that the color of dragon would've been), cool lemonade(resist warm temperatures).

Demographics

The permanent population of Nightwell comes primarily from two groups, dwarvish miners that came for work and the talented scholars that are a member of Nightwell's mage guild: The Arcane Alliance. It is the most powerful mage guild on the continent and possibly in all of the material plane. While the miners consist of mostly dwarves the mage guild is mixed with elves, humans, dwarves, gnomes and halflings.

Composition:

• Dwarves: 43%
• Humans: 23%
• Elves: 22%
• Halflings: 5%
• Gmomes: 2%
• Others: 4%

Government

The metropolis is ruled by The Arcane Alliance. Since most of the citizens are work with the alliance in some way or form. The dwarves weren't very fond of this however. This is something the Alliance tries to keep secret(especially from visistors). Thus, they've been pushing the dwarves to lower layers. This is also means that a lot of the councils decision aren't made with the dwarves in mind. Things are getting better, a lot of the city's young don't think that it is right that the dwarves, the majority of the citizens should be ignored.

Defences

Through ages and through the many years of war that started the third age Nightwell stood as an uninpenetrable fortress. The walls and the mythal has protected the city through countless attacks. Ofcourse it helps to be the headquarters of the most powerful organization to ever exist. This means that they have taken in countless refugees, especially during the dragon & giant campaigns that ravaged the civilized north during the mid 300s TA.
Guarding the great entrances are 2 collosal stone statues on each side at each of the gates that with a secret command word only known by the keeper of the towers can transform into live golems, standing over 50 feet in hight and wielding garguantan blades of mithril. They have never been used outside of testing purposes but were constructed after the battle of Nightwell.

Industry & Trade

The city get most of their gold from the great dwarven mining network that lies below. On the first level of the mine you can even find a forge.

Infrastructure

Thanks to the fact that this city is built upon and with magic it requires very few if any people that work with the handling of garbage etc. It is also among the cleanest cities on vallaheim thanks to their magical cleaning. Under the city lies a great magical core that powers the mythals aswell as a large amount of experiences for unknown reasons

Show spoiler

adventure idea(add it to The Arcane Alliance perhaps).

Assets

Notable Buildings and Complexes:

The Dragon's Den(Inn) This is one of the largest inn's in the north and stands proud as a building with 5 levels. The inn has only existed sinc 770 TA so it's a very new building. Famous for it's vibrant tavern and excellent room service it has been a popular choice for travelelers of most financial situations.
Nightwell Academy
The Melted Flame The Melted Flame is a mighty forge and blacksmith located in the lowest layer where most dwarves live. This forge is one of the few places on the entire continent that can melt metals such as mithril or adamantine. The forge itself is a complex where over 100 individual blacksmiths have acces to furnace. These smiths are extremely specialized to the point where some of them specialize in only one type of weapon in order to stay competive among countless others.
The Great Temple The temple has been there as long as anyone can remember. It has been used to pray for all kinds of deitiies.
The Scribed Spell Magic Shop that sells books about the history of magic aswell as scrolls, tomes and magic items.

History

Built upon the location of what was once a great settlement of the first Val'aar empire the Nightwell would be the centre of the very first district.

The Battle Of Nightwell

It was a harsh, cold night. During the winter solstace a legion from The Prothian Empire pushed through The Arcane Alliance's territories. They pillaged all through the villages in the vacinity of the Nightwell. The city stands strong but during this one individual rose to the ocatsion, Egon Stormwalker, the high archmage of evocation. The guard tried to stop it but the army had taken with them a beast of war, an enslaved dragon. When all hope was lost he was able to channel the power and used one of the most powerful spells casts since the end of The Val'aar High Kingdom , Avatar Of True Storm. He flew up into the sky conjuring the most powerful of thunderstorms that strook down the land army. After that he continued to battle with the dragon Balaur, The Beast of War. Sparks flew and spells were flung but after hours of fighting the dragon fell.

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"The History of Nightwell, the 300s and beyond", Silvyr Thewynn

This feat is actually according to most historians the biggest reason that Egon was chosen to be next guardian. During this he was already the most powerful mage in existance but as votings for guardian aren't held very often.

Geography

The north of the cities leans towards a mighty mountain and the city is built to the top in this day and age. Most people would describe Nightwell as the most beautiful city in the entirety of Vallaheim. The marble halls and spruce houses have provided shelter for residents and refugees alike for hundreds of years since its founding.
The city gets its freshwater from a large source that is connected directly to the nightwell in some way, what way noone knows.

Natural Resources

The Mines

The Mines of Nightwell is one of their greatest exports, both as raw ore aswell as in crafted form such as siege equipment, armour and weapons aswell as non-combat equipment such as bells, tools and kitchenware. The first level of the mine had high concentrations of irons but as the old city grew it transformed into more of a forge and now it hosts the melted flame and one of if not the biggest forgery market and crafting place.
The second level of the mine is where the mineral contents diversify and this level used to have rich veins containing copper, silver, iron aswell as smaller quantities of gold. This was mined during the early years of the third age but now it is nothing but a group of tunnels.
The third level is the last of what is considered the old mine. This is also the level of the mine where mithril was first found.

Type

Metropolis

Population

345 000

Location under

Vallaheim

Included Locations

• The Shining Lily

Owning Organization

The Arcane Alliance

Characters in Location

• Egon Stormwalker

Related Plots

• Echoes of Past Glory
• The Battlefield Of Dragons