Durbai

Durbai is a town on the border of the Barony of Atlan and the Barony of Mabon. It is on the Eastern Imperial Highway about a week from Atlan and two weeks from Eastpoint Castle. Durbai is also the gateway between the Baronies of Atlan and Mabon and the main road to the capital Fulton. Durbai is a large walled city nestled in a rich valley. The hillsides around it, as far as one can see on a clear day, are terraced for agriculture, and city itself seems to gleam in the sun slanting down into the valley through the breaking clouds. The valley seems impossibly densely populated in comparison to the wilderness many travelers have been in; orderly hamlets and estates dot the hillsides all the Highway, and every spare inch of earth seems to have been converted to agricultural land. Everywhere one would look, they will see busy peasants toiling behind plows or at hoes. Durbai hums with activity; mountain peasants walk through its streets slack-jawed; buskers play and chant the folk-songs of the hills on every corner; the smoke of a thousand chimneys’ wood fires clogs the sky. Palaces and temples dot the hills and the local Duke’s fortress commands a rocky crag at the center of the city. Long banners snap in the wind from its many towers and a steady stream of people and pack animals come and go through its giant gates. Fultonian soldiers are seemingly everywhere in their red cloaks and gleaming banded armor, though, like Atlan, the garrison here has shrunk away to almost nothing compared to its size at the height of the Sua Hill war. The temple of Hantithenus here is the regional center.