Emon

The City of Fellowship

Emon stands defiantly against all who would threaten Tal’Dorei and its people. It is the cultural and political heart of the Republic of Tal’Dorei, as well as a nexus of commerce, entertainment, travel, education, and adventure.
Emon is accessible only through its heavily patrolled gates and by skyship. The denizens of the city are generally well protected from outside attackers and sieges.

Government

Emon is the seat of the Tal'Dorei Council, the nation’s highest governing body. Though the council originally served under the Sovereign of Tal’Dorei, the nation’s final sovereign was killed when the Elemental Scions attacked Emon. Following the death of the Scion of Magma and the rest of the Scions, Emon was rebuilt and the council reformed as the backbone of the new Republic of Tal’Dorei.
One unintended consequence of relying on magic to rapidly rebuild Emon is that the mages of Tal’Dorei now hold incredible influence over the fledgling council. Some fear that without a sovereign, the council will be unable to keep the arcanists in line, and Tal’Dorei will dissolve into magocracy.

Society

While in antiquity Emon was the heart of a human empire, the city has grown to encompass people from all over Tal’Dorei, and all over the world. Its citizens include people of nearly all known races from Exandria’s many nations, thriving on the new innovations and ideas of its citizenry. It has been this way since the sovereignty of Zan Tal'Dorei, when the alliances she formed invited dozens of displaced elves, dwarves, orcs, and goliaths into her city. Since then, Emon has developed into a city whose people valued innovation and collaboration, especially in small, cohesive groups—virtues that some historians within the Alabaster Lyceum believe have given rise to the prominence of the modern adventuring party.

Rebirth

Emon has mostly recovered from its destruction at the hands of the Elemental Scions and the Scion of Magma’s subsequent occupation. A number of Tal’Dorei’s most significant factions played a role in Emon’s rebirth, and their members enjoy positions of prominence throughout the city. Emon was rapidly rebuilt to its former glory, due to the expensive but effective intervention of the League of Miracles and their impressive adranachs. Thanks also to The Clasp’s underground networks and established hierarchies, Emonian society and culture was able to bounce back more swiftly than any other major settlement in Tal’Dorei.
And the Tal’Dorei Council, formerly an advisory council to the sovereign, is now the ruling council of the land. Folk heroes and career politicians alike sit on the council. Over the past two decades, the council has, with many missteps, enacted the will of the people—allowing Tal’Dorei to transition from a monarchical power to a republic without war or insurrection.
However, the swiftness of Emon’s rebirth has put the Tal’Dorei Council in a precarious position. Not only are they socially indebted to a criminal faction—one whose members now command immense celebrity among the common folk—the council now owes vast amounts of gold to the arcanomancers of the League of Miracles. Kraghammer's mines provided thousands of tons of stone and steel, enabling the arcanomancers to rebuild everything from taverns to townhouses and sewers to stately manors as quickly as a hundred laborers. The recovered wealth of Emon has dwindled to nothing, repaying the league, and they have done the same in cities across the land. Some members of the council have already caved to pressure from factions within the Clasp and the League of Miracles, and subsequently turn a blind eye to the crime and magical abuse that run rampant throughout the city. Barely a single human generation old, the young republic is already struggling under the weight of ruling in a just and noble manner.

Defenses

The Republic of Tal’Dorei has no standing army, and doesn’t elect a Master of War—a military commander-in-chief—to its council outside of wartime. In peacetime, the Master of Defense is responsible for the acquisition of mercenaries and adventurers for tasks which require the use of force. They also have the ability to conscript existing militias and town guards into military service and call them to Emon’s defense at any time, though typically only while the Master of War is being elected.
The only standing forces pledged exclusively to the defense of the realm are the elite forces of Fort Daxio. Mobilizing the armies of Fort Daxio to Emon’s aid generally requires the city to withstand a week-long siege. However, in case of internal strife, there are stables positioned every fifteen miles along the Othen Trail, allowing Daxio’s legendary outriders to arrive at Emon in a mere two days’ time by switching out their exhausted steeds.
Emon is encircled by 60-foot-high stone walls that stretch from the eastern fields to the western shore— though a number of discussions in the Tal’Dorei Council have revolved around the strategic irrelevance of great stone walls. They didn’t protect Emon against the Elemental Scions over twenty years ago, and the growing accessibility to wizard training means the “Fly” spell is no longer as rare as it once was. As skyships grow more popular and affordable around the world, even the council’s Master of Defense is considering demolishing the city’s walls—making the strange case that such fortifications are prized more for their historic and cultural value than for their strategic importance.
These walls are patrolled by lightly armed and armored members of the Arms of Emon, the city’s official watch and constabulary. They are divided unofficially into the Arms upon the Wall and the Arms on the Streets, the latter of which are assigned to patrol the city streets to dissuade petty criminals and respond to violent crime.

Crime

Hundreds of miles of tunnels of varied provenance run beneath Emon. Most are the forgotten remnants of paved-over neighborhoods and secret passageways made by thieves’ guilds during the reign of Drassig. Others are the lairs of tunneling monsters. The origins of others still are lost forever, for they have already long since been turned into sewer passages to whisk away the refuse of Emon’s citizens.
The vast majority of the tunnels closer to the surface are known to the Clasp and used to rapidly move about the city unseen. Somewhere deep in this network of unlabeled roads is the Clasp’s secret headquarters, where all manner of thieves, cutthroats, fences, and spies gather beneath their banner. Though the Clasp operates in major cities across Tal’Dorei, Emon has always been their home, and saving their neighbors from the Scion of Magma’s reign of terror gave the Clasp the dubious benefit of a heroic reputation.
However, The Myriad crime syndicate from Wildemount has spent over two decades relentlessly clawing their way into the Clasp’s territory across Tal’Dorei—dismantling their networks, poaching their clients, and assassinating their informants. The Myriad hasn’t managed to completely eliminate the Clasp’s hold in any of the cities they’ve targeted, but that hasn’t stopped them from bringing the ongoing power struggle to the Clasp’s doorstep. Myriad agents bargain in shadowed alleys, gamble in upscale taverns, and lurk in the very tunnels that the Clasp relies on, waiting for their chance to unseat the Clasp once and for all.

Geography and Climate

Emon is not a tourist destination for its climate—the city is known for sudden, pounding rainstorms just as much as for its beautiful, sunny days. The city is blessed with cool summers and warm winters, thanks to its proximity to the cool Ozmit Sea. Though snow rarely falls on the city itself, it relies on springtime snowmelt from the Cliffkeep Mountains to fill its reservoirs throughout the year.
Emon is made up of the following districts:
Abdar’s Promenade. The Promenade is an open marketplace district and massive bazaar that dominates eastern Emon, named for the legendary spicemonger from Marquet who helped fund the construction of Emon. To this day, the name of Abdar is synonymous with both generosity and business savvy. Nearly everything a person could want can be found within the tents, carts, warehouses, and shops of the promenade. Its intertwining roads stretch for miles, and it has dozens of tiny neighborhoods, each with their own distinct cultures and identities. The promenade is heavily patrolled by the Arms of Emon, for its sunny reputation is shrouded by an equally significant reputation for literal back-alley criminal deals.
Central District. This is the largest residential district within Emon’s walls. It houses most of the city’s merchant class, including traveling traders, ship captains, and guild journeymen. The Central District is a patchwork of thousands of personal homes, tenements, and guildhalls of all shapes and sizes, peppered with small taverns and inns on nearly every street corner.
These neighborhoods lay clustered together among tightly set streets, occasionally broken up by park grasses or the Ozmit Waterways that snake through the region between the promenade and the port. Visitors to the Central District are advised not to go out at night; the wide disparity of wealth from home to home here has seen a recent rise in crime, and the city watch seems reluctant to find a constructive solution. Residents who know the lay of the land have an easier time at night and can help visitors avoid the most dangerous streets.
Cloudtop District. Out of all of Emon’s districts, the Cloudtop has, in some ways, changed the most over the decades. In Drassig’s time, a monstrous fortress loomed over the manors of his sycophants. In the age of Zan Tal’Dorei’s descendants, countless mages transfigured that decadent citadel into a sleek, elegant palace. By the time the Elemental Scions came, decadence had once more crept up on Emon, and though the Palace of the Sovereign remained much the same, the Cloudtop District was once again a nest of luxury and the throne of the social elite. The latest additions in that era were skyship platforms, so that the wealthiest and most connected in Tal’Dorei could travel in exclusive luxury—soaring through the skies rather than enduring arduous journeys over land or sea.
All of that was reduced to slag by the advent of the Scion of Magma. The elemental prince made the Cloudtop District his home, and the palace itself his throne. His very presence caused magma to surge from the caverns beneath Emon, where previously no fires burned. The Scion of Magma ruled there for only a matter of months, but those few months were enough to annihilate unknown millions of gold pieces’ worth of art and creations of untold value.
Today, the Cloudtop District is rebuilt. A new castle called Cloudwatch Palace has been built atop the city of Emon, and it contains the chambers of the Tal’Dorei Council, as well as grand dining halls and guest quarters for visiting dignitaries. Much of the castle is a museum, displaying what regalia and objets d’art survived the wrath of the Scions. The private chambers of the palace also contain a number of teleportation circles that leading council members ca use to return to their homes at night—particularly if they live in far-off cities such as Whitestone.
Temple District. Some say that this northern district contains more temples than in the rest of Tal’Dorei’s cities combined. This is a flagrant exaggeration, but at first glance, most people believe it. Emon is a city of many people, from many different places, with many different faiths. Even folk who worship the same gods worship them differently, and have built their own temples. Legend has it that shrines and temples used to be built all across Emon (and there are still some small sanctuaries elsewhere in the city), but a cleric of The Dawnfather declared her temple the greatest in all Emon. Her boast was met with scorn from a nearby church of The Stormlord. Their clerics, always eager to rise to a challenge, built an even greater temple across the street, and soon, people of all faiths were building the most magnificent structures they could, all in one tiny corner of Emon.
Today, cathedrals to The Lawbearer and The Platinum Dragon stand at apex among smaller temples to the Dawnfather, the Stormlord, The Wildmother, and The Matron of Ravens. All Prime Deities have at least a moderately sized house of worship here, and even some of the Betrayer Gods are worshiped in secrecy.
Anyone who seeks shelter here, be they rich or poor, can find sanctuary in the Temple District. Even the faithful of gods of strength, such as the Stormlord and the Platinum Dragon, have mercy for those who need the aid of others to help them stand on their own.
Travelers and sailors come to leave tokens and gifts at shrines to bless their journeys, while people of all walks of life seek the graces of The Changebringer before undertaking risky endeavors. The meek search for wisdom in the great halls of The Knowing Mentor, as the artists and wistful folk give praise to The Arch Heart. However, not all folk are drawn toward religion, nor trusting of it, and temples past have been exposed as frauds—or worse, cults who venerate power.
Recently, an off-kilter faith to a lesser idol called the Traveler has found purchase in the Temple Ward—primarily in the form of puerile graffiti in back alleys. Other quasi-religious spiritual entities have small cult followings in the Temple Ward. They are generally allowed to flourish to whatever degree they can, so long as their beliefs don’t advocate for any behavior that would break the laws of Emon.
Erudite Quarter. This district is home to members of the educated upper-middle class and destitute academics alike. Several institutions of higher learning have their stately campuses here, ranging from well-to-do boarding schools to Tal’Dorei’s most premiere academic and arcane institutions.
Beautiful towers in ancient Syngornian style stretch to the sky across a cityscape of centuries-old halls of learning and student boardinghouses. Here, the finest schools and colleges draw the wealthy, the gifted, and the brilliant—and none more so than the Alabaster Lyceum, often lauded as the largest and most accomplished institute of arcane study on the continent. Though the district’s walls were shattered and its libraries crushed during the invasion of the Elemental Scions, the Erudite Quarter has thankfully been mostly reconstructed, thanks to the efforts of the Lyceum’s staff and students.
Members of the Lyceum, under the direction of Headmaster Thurmond Adlam, performed the reconstruction themselves not simply because they sought to project an image of good work ethic and self-sufficiency, but because the heads of their colleges distrust the League of Miracles. Their motives and sources of funding are, in the eyes of the Lyceum, too opaque to be trusted. Their suspicion has often been derided either as elitism over the less prestigious arcanomancers of the League, or as sour grapes over losing out on countless lucrative reconstruction contracts.
Military District. Since Emon has no standing army, the Military District is one of the city’s smallest wards. Nevertheless, it has the capacity to house and train a vast number of soldiers if an army needs to be levied from the people of Tal’Dorei. The Military District is mostly filled with several prisons and jails, including the infamous Black Bastille, as well as tightly locked barracks and instructional facilities for the Arms of Emon.
Cemetery District. This smaller section of the city is filled with graveyards and small religious sanctuaries so that people with means to purchase a gravesite or a mausoleum can bury their dead in whatever luxury they can afford. Countless gravestones line the rolling hills of the district. They are sectioned off from the roads by tall iron fences, with mausoleums of more affluent families dotting the grassy hillsides. As surface space grew limited in centuries past, the city excavated a network of catacombs called the Undervaults. Upkeep, expansion, and general safeguarding of the sites are all overseen by the Gravewatchers, a guild of gravekeepers that have held political and social hegemony over the district for generations.
Port of Emon. Emon is bordered on the west by the Ozmit Sea and is generally sheltered from the worst of its storms. The vast Port of Emon allows hundreds of thousands of gold pieces’ worth of goods to flow through the city every single day. Well over a hundred ships fill this port at any given time, and the dock crews are ever working, carrying crates and goods away to Abdar’s Promenade, or to empty vessels for exportation. The northern sector of the Port is mostly allocated to the Everline, a powerful fisherfolk’s guild. They frequently feud with the Onyx Banner, Emon’s most powerful shipping guild, over which docks they are permitted to use. Both guilds keep their hands clean, but it’s an open secret that both hire adventurers and mercenaries to trash the other’s ships and warehouses to intimidate them. Adventurers in need of fast cash who don’t mind dodging the Arms of Emon can find good work as muscle for either of these two guilds.
Outwall. During the reign of Drassig, a massive city of tents and hovels grew outside of Emon, filled with those too poor to pay Drassig’s extortative taxes. By the end of the Scattered War, the slum had grown to a third of the city’s size, and nearly half its population. Even during the reign of Zan Tal’Dorei, these slums continued to grow, as refugees of the Scattered War tried to earn enough money to find stability within Emon’s walls.
Though their conditions were still meager when the magnanimous Zan Tal’Dorei ended Drassig’s iron rule, the city’s denizens chose to remain, having created a community with its own culture of inexpensive living and brotherhood in poverty, away from the bustle of the city’s inner streets. A microcosm of Emonian society now exists within the city of Outwall, including its own trade square, shrines for worship, and makeshift farms on the outskirts.
As early as two decades ago, Outwall was called the Upper Slums—a derogatory name given to it by Emon’s Cloudtop elite. People within Outwall tried to transform the term “Upper Slums” into a symbol of civic pride, but it never stuck. The name Outwall eventually emerged after community leaders demanded an audience with the Tal’Dorei Council in an event that came to be called the Outer Wall Debates—for they demanded the council convene in the slums’ own town square.
These days, Outwall is becoming a trendy place to live, thanks to its vibrant culture and relatively inexpensive housing. Its locals are fighting hard to keep young people with money to burn from the Central District from gentrifying their home. It hasn’t come to violence yet, but the angrier members of the Outwall community clandestinely meet with adventurers to burn down the stylish houses and mansions that are driving out local residents and businesses.
Southgate Farms. Inspired by the civic action of the people of Outwall, the farmers of Southgate were able to break from the ugly name of “slum” in the past decade. This community of farmers and ranchers, formerly known as the Lower Slum, exists outside Emon’s southern gates. It first formed when a large refugee band from Othanzia was barred entry into the city in the midst of the Scattered War. Instead of dispersing, they decided to lay down roots while Drassig’s armies were out fighting a losing battle against Zan Tal’Dorei. These squatters eventually formed a community of farmers who petitioned Zan Tal’Dorei for land in exchange for providing produce and grown goods to the people of the city.
Thanks to the aid of the First Sovereign, the descendants of those Othanzian refugees have become one of the most significant sources of fresh food for the people of Emon. Frustrated by being saddled with the name of “slum,” and inspired by the Outer Wall Debates, the leading families of the Lower Slums demanded recognition by the Tal’Dorei Council as well. They were met with little debate, and these humble farmers are now a respectable part of Emonian society—even if they live outside the city’s defensive walls.
Shoreline Farms. Less respectable than the Southgate Farms are the communities along a stretch of murky shore north of Emon. These people of Outwall have tried for decades to turn terrible, salty land into effective farmland, to mixed results. They have successfully cultivated the few vegetables that grow in saltwater-soaked soil. However, the farms’ distance from the city gives them little protection from dangers that city folk think little of. Adventurers are always wanted to protect the farms from petty criminals and wandering monsters, but the farmers have little to pay. Generally, only utterly novice adventurers find their start in a place like the Shoreline Farms—but all heroes have to start somewhere.
The Grotto. This sprawling series of underground chambers composes the Clasp’s headquarters beneath the city of Emon. It’s rumored that over a dozen entrances to the Grotto are concealed amidst the labyrinthine tunnels, which are both naturally occurring and a part of Emon’s sewers. That doesn’t even begin to get into the hundreds of other entrances and access shafts abandoned and filled in for fear of discovery. The very nature of the Clasp’s business is to keep shifting out of sight, and as such, the actual core of the organization moves from base to base between multiple subterranean structures, ever building further underground, or repurposing a long-abandoned hideout whenever necessary.

Demographics

63% humans, 8% dwarves, 7% elves, 22% other races

Population

365,026

Location under

Republic of Tal'Dorei

Owning Organization

Tal'Dorei Council