Eastgate
Eastgate is a large, walled city built at the mouth of the Great Amrin River. The flag of Westden flies atop the citadel along with the city’s own banner, a gold ship on a field of deep blue.
The city of Eastgate is Westden's avenue to the sea, and effectively a distant annex of Westden itself. It is a major market and clearinghouse for upriver and downriver traffic to and from Westden, 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 Westden.
Defences
The city’s main defensive garrison is a small force of cavalry that can be reinforced, if necessary, by the second garrison at Amrin Ferry. 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 Westden. The “Sheriff of Eastgate” is also considered an “Undersheriff of Westden,” and the “Eastgate Chief of Constables” is technically a “Deputy Chief of Constables of Westden.” 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. Preferably, adventurers will encounter Eastgate’s justiciary officials in the latter context, but, regrettably, it is too often the former.
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.
Crime in Eastgate has fallen rather significantly since the installation of Meliador Gane, a skilled master of the arts of divination, as the Chief of Constables. 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.
The laws of Westden apply here as if Eastgate were merely a distant part of Westden itself, and most guilds of the larger city have representatives present, at least during the peak months when the river is navigable.
Industry & Trade
The city is managed on behalf of Westden by an administrative Commissary appointed by the High Burgess of Westden, 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.
Type
City
Population
18,900
Inhabitant Demonym
Eastgater
Location under
Owning Organization
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