Eastgate
The city of Eastgate is Bard’s Gate’s avenue to the sea and effectively a distant annex of Bard’s Gate itself. It is a major market and clearinghouse for upriver and downriver traffic to and from Bard’s Gate, being the place where outgoing cargo is taken from riverboat to ship, where goods from Telar Brindel are loaded onto riverboats or sold to intermediaries, and where ship cargos from distant ports are sold or consigned to merchants planning to make the extended journey to Bard’s Gate.
The city is managed on behalf of Bard’s Gate by an administrative commissary appointed by the high burgess of Bard’s Gate, and is responsible for overseeing the logistics and scheduling of shipments on barges upriver, overland caravans, and the veritable fleet of coasters and galleons that trades here during the spring, summer, and autumn.
During these months, Eastgate’s walls are packed with merchants, rivermen, ship captains, and traders of every conceivable kind of commodity. Bills of lading for goods held in warehouses are traded back and forth in shouted auctions, wagons piled high with vegetables creak their way in from the countryside to collide in vast entanglements in the streets, and the city’s year-round citizens drive themselves to exhaustion looking after the needs of all these arrivals, making money hand-over-fist in the process.
In the winter, when the river sometimes ices over and the tidal waters of the estuary become violent, the population drops to a fifth of its summertime high, deprived of most of its waterborne trade in both directions. The only mercantile activity in the winter city is the overland caravan trade going east and west.
Despite the distance separating the two settlements, Eastgate feels more like an exurb of Bard’s Gate than a community in its own right. The laws of Bard’s Gate apply here as if Eastgate were merely a distant part of Bard’s Gate itself. Many of the city’s traditions, institutions, and religions closely mirror those found in Bard’s Gate. The Temple of Sefagreth is the largest religious structure in the city, and the most widely worshipped deity, though shrines dedicated to other gods and faiths from Bard’s Gate can also be found in other quarters of the city. The guilds who dominate commerce in the large metropolis to the northwest also ply their trades in Eastgate’s markets, docks, warehouses, and factories. The powerful Wheelwrights’ Guild from Bard’s Gate and the Friendly Men, the homegrown regional criminal organization, operate different rackets within Eastgate, thus avoiding any conflicts of interest between the competing entities. On those rare occasions when they cross paths, they adhere to strict professional courtesies to avoid escalating a minor disagreement into a major gang war.
As part of the Suzerainty of Bard’s Gate, Eastgate’s defense falls upon a small cavalry unit from the Waymarch and the impressive stone walls surrounding its districts. In a pinch, the city can summon reinforcements from Amrin Ferry to bolster its mobile-yet-undersized military. A small volunteer militia drills outside the city gates once a week, and a permanent “Towerguard” of soldiers keeps watch from the towers of the city walls and guard the gates.
Sheriffs and constables handle actual law enforcement within the city, organized the same as their counterparts in Bard’s Gate. The “sheriff of Eastgate” is also considered an “undersheriff of Bard’s Gate,” and the “Eastgate chief of constables” is technically a “deputy chief of constables of Bard’s Gate.” Of course, these are fine distinctions when seen from the perspective of an accused criminal facing prison, but vital for arranging a banquet table by social rank. The sheriffs are responsible for making arrests under warrant, and for maintaining jails and prisons, but they do not investigate crimes; essentially, they work as instruments of the courts rather than being ordinary police. The constables are a true police force; they make arrests in the course of their duties, and without a sheriff’s warrant. The constables are responsible for the investigation of crimes, being the law-enforcement arm of the city’s government rather than of the courts.
The installation of Meliandor Gane as the chief of constables has significantly decreased crime, presumably because of his tremendous talents in the arts of divination and deductive reasoning. Chief Constable Gane is unorthodox in his methods and enjoys the intellectual challenge of hunting down criminals. The constabulary holds him in a certain degree of awe, and so do many of the city’s current prisoners. Many believe his presence alone has caused spies and criminals from rival Endhome to hastily pack their bags and return to their city, while simultaneously forcing the Friendly Men and the Wheelwrights’ Guild to deliberately maintain a low profile. Rumblings in the underworld suggest one or both entities may be contemplating violently ending the chief of constables’ tenure in Eastgate if his investigations significantly impact their operations in the city.
Settlement
Eastgate, City of
Type
City
Owning Organization
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