Arlton

The Town Betwixt the Lakes, or Betwixt Town

Arlton is called the Town Betwixt the Lakes, or just Betwixt Town. It has a population of 16,000, and it has been occupied since prehistory, and gained its charter of rights in 1101. Arlton’s crest is a spiked mace bend sinister and hyppalectryon sinister azure base and chief wavy or on a field of argent.

This town is a river and lake port on the Lower Yssr Waters and the Shurm River, and it is surrounded on the landward side by rich agricultural land. Politically, Arlton Town is found in the Barony of Oxmore, the County of Nevorre, the Palatine Duchy of Hexton, in the High Kingdom of Rhonce.

Arlton is double walled and gated, because the town exceeded its borders and thus required an additional round of protection. (Legend holds that hundreds of victims were immured in the city walls and their ghosts are cursed to guard the city.) Its buildings are built in attractive half brick/half timbered construction.

The port and fish market follow the shoreline, and that bisects with the larger longitudinal Market Street with its burgage plots reaching inland. This settlement’s major streets are cobbled, but not its side streets. The town’s largest church is St. Erturs, and the same Erter the Smith is Arlton’s patron saint.

Arlton is connected to Lidby Town to the south by Never Street. It is tied to Dhasmyr Town to the northwest by a secondary road. The Shurm River connects Arlton to Ellid-on-the-Shurm Town in a northerly direction, to Lidby Town to the south, and to Maldum City to the southwest.

The local population proudly claims to be part Karmithian, part Aorlisian, and all Hextonian. Their holiday celebrations often include the Feast of Fools in which the established social order is turned upside down, and King Goat, where a goat is crowned king for three days and “rules” from his elevated cage.

This town is a center where Hextonian Ghost Smiths ply their necromantic, metallurgical trade, but it is better known by consumers as a source of beautiful decorative tiles for floors and walls, called Arlton Tiles, and Arlton Ceramic Roof Tiles. This is also the town where Darius Panloon invented oil paints in 1077, and this popular medium even now is overtaking egg tempera.

Shadow People, ghosts, and hauntings are common in town, but this doesn’t concern the locals much.