Kingston
Kingston is a high-walled city with a strangely lopsided appearance, for its foundations shifted slightly during the Fiend Rains. The citadel, in particular, leans visibly, and has come to be known as the Tilting Citadel. As far as anyone can tell, the walls are still strong and stable, but entering the city with its crooked houses and uneven streets gives some travelers a distinct sense of vertigo.
Kingston is the capital of Keston Province and the seat of the lord-governor, currently Baron Miltrin Cormien. It is governed by a council of 10 citizens known as the Council of Listeners. Each of the four dukes of the realm appoints one listener, the citizens of Kingston elect two, the city guilds elect two, and the lord-governor appoints two.
Kingston boasts a sizable temple to Mithras, with the entrance made up of a massive stone bull’s head, with the mouth forming the gateway. But many in the city and the surrounding countryside worship Dre’uain the Lame, who has become a symbol of recovery of the once-settled areas emptied during the Wilderness Clan War.
The largest open-air market in the city is the Sliding Scales, a circular plaza filled with tents and vendors’ booths from dawn until noon each day. The plaza developed a distinct slope when the Fiend Rains damaged the city’s foundations. A ball could roll down the entire length of the market from west to east if not for the uneven cobblestones. A few permanent shops surround the plaza, and the council hall of the listeners stands at the western end of the market. Kingston houses a number of semi-professional theater companies of widely varying quality. An odd, sinister building in Kingston’s poor quarter is the headquarters of the Academy of Inquisitors, a guild of torturers and interrogators operating across many of the realms in the Borderland Provinces. Graduates of the Red Academy are hired by various governors, dukes, barons, and others who maintain dismal prisons, often traveling great distances to lucrative postings. The origin and history of the academy are cloaked in a good bit of mystery and are not spoken of by the Red Inquisitors.
It is said that the Grey Rooks, a criminal brotherhood based in Durbenford, have a presence in Kingston.
Capital
Kingston, City of (Capital)
Type
Capital
Owning Organization
Comments