Westruun

The city of Westruun is the center of Tal'Dorei, a crossroads of culture along the Silvercut Roadway that welcomes adventurers, traders, and vagabonds of all kinds. Despite its name, Westruun is more east than west, and was in fact named after Palest Westruun, the trader and philosopher who founded the city. Westruun suffered under the rule of the goliath tyrant Kevdak's Herd of Storms. Worse, its outlying towns and great stone buildings were ravaged by the acidic breath of Umbrasyl the Hope Devourer, an ancient black dragon of the Chroma Conclave who exacted tribute from his lair in the eerie mountain of Gatshadow. Despite the damage inflicted by its evil rulers, Westruun was one of the first cities in Tal'Dorei to recover from the Conclave. Though its government is deeply in debt to both the League of Miracles and a number of adventuring parties, the city has long since reclaimed its place of importance as an economic, academic, and political power within Tal'Dorei.

Demographics

61% humans, 10% gnomes, 7% tieflings, 5% orcs, 4% goliaths, 1% gnolls, 12% other races

Government

Westruun underwent a political revolution in the wake of the Chroma Conclave's defeat. The former margrave, Brandon Zimmerset, was a tyrant who claimed absolute power for himself following Kevdak's defeat at the hands of Vox Machina. The title of margrave is a holdover from the authoritarian rule of Warren Drassig centuries ago, and those who hold that office are appointed for life by the council. A group of local idealists called the Retrievers banded with adventurers and mercenaries to overthrow Zimmerset a decade after he took power, and instated their leader as the lord mayor instead. Elections for the position of Lord Mayor of Westruun are held every five years, with no term limits. All adult citizens of the city who have lived there for at least five years have a vote, though only a fraction of the people actually use it.
The Retrievers continue to be a political force in Westruun, and several of Westruun's delegates to the Tal'Dorei Council are members of this faction. They are campaigning to abolish the office of margrave from all settlements in Tal'Dorei. Though they have broad support in teh council, the council doesn't have the authority to unilaterally demand its constituent city-states to change their system of government. The revolution-minded Retrievers are somewhat stifled by the need to compromise with other cities.
Lord Mayor Lysandra Kallos is a middle-aged goliath and former leader of the Retrievers. She has never lost a vote for reelection, and holds executive pwoer over the city's defenses, along with the ability to dissolve any business or guild and to exile any person or group of up to ten people from the city at her discretion. She rules Westruun with the aid of a council of ten advisors.

Defences

The lord mayor commands a city guard of about 1,200 trained soldiers known as the Shields of the Plain, though most folk just call them the Shields. Westruun's soldiery is spread thin across the walls of the city itself, stationed at the gates of the dozens of outlying settlements and conducting raids  against small cells of Ravagers across the plains.
Many people in town would like to gather their forces and put an end to the Ravagers' death cult once and for all, but the Shields are spread too thin to mount an effective offense. Even in their current state, dozens—if not hundreds—of mercenaries, bounty hunters, and adventurers pass through Westruun every year in search of bloody work that the Shields are too beleaguered to handle themselves.

Debt

Before he was ousted, Margrave Brandon Zimmerset authorized hundreds of reconstruction bounties—offers of gold to anyone who could rebuild the immense damage the city suffered during Umbrasyl's attack and the Herd of Storms' occupation of the city. Bounties were placed on the city's siege-breaking stone walls, its majestic towers and parapets, and even its iconic post-and-beam houses, many of which were razed completely during the attack.
The margrave expected these bounties to be slowly completed over decades, but they were all snapped up and completed in a few short years by mercenary mages serving a group called the League of Miracles. The margrave was saddled with a crushing debt, one that he was both unwilling and unable to pay before being ousted by the Retrievers. As his successor, Lord Mayor Lysandra Kallos inherited Zimmerset's immense debt to the league, and is constantly seeking ways to alleviate their pressure—especially as the league continues to use the debt as leverage to buy the allegiance of her advisory council.

Crime

The Clasp has become a major and public force in Westruun since the criminal organization's dubiously virtuous makeover following the Cinder King's defeat in Emon. Many Clasp agents enjoy the reputation of folk heroes across the Dividing Plains, and make public appearances in taverns and town squares throughout Westruun.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that the Clasp is still a criminal organization. They have controlled and efficiently run their shadowy trades for decades right under the Shields' noses. Their network of fences runs from coast to coast, Stilben to Emon. Their hideout changes every few years when the Shields manage to track them down. Their current hideout is rumored to be secreted away behind a local tavern owned and operated by Clasp agents.
Folk in search of real folk heroes often seek the covert agents of the Golden Grin, who tend to wait and watch in local taverns. The Grin sometimes gets a bad reputation in Westruun, since people need help every day, but the Grinners prefer to wait for just the right moment to reveal themselves and strike against evil.

Geography

Miles of farmland and fields surround Westruun's towering stone walls—except to the west, where the city is bordered by the Bramblewood and dwarfed by the mist-shrouded peak of Gatshadow. Nearly two dozen villages and towns surround the city's walls.
The city's interior is divided into six wards:

The Scholar Ward

Westruun's northwestern ward is home to the Cobalt Reserve, Tal'Dorei's largest library and private archive. It's also home to a number of other erudite institutions that instruct knowledge-seekers from across the Dividing Plains. Westhall Academy is the most renowned of them all, but in the shadow of these revered institutions is the College of the Savvy, a school for the arts founded by the storied bard and champion of intuition referred to only as the White Duke.

The Temple Ward

The city's a small southern ward is replete with major temples to the Prime Deities and homes for their clergy. The most important gods of the Dividing Plains are the Lawbearer, the Wildmother, and the Platinum Dragon, and it's made obvious by their huge, resplendent sanctuaries in the Temple Ward. The greatest temples here are the First Bastion, the Wild Arbor, and the Platinum Dragon's Rest, and the smallest temple is the Ruiner's Empty Socket, maintained by the handful of orcs in Westruun.

The Opal Ward

Westruun's central district is also its municipal heart. The ward has no residential housing, but is home to the Lord Mayor's Residence, the Hall of Reason, and the public square.

The Residential Ward

The northeastern section of Westruun is the city's most densely populated ward, housing over two-thirds of its population. There are no major landmarksin this ward, though every neighborhood in the ward has its own unique culture. Even though tourists might not visit the landmarks here, there are countless local bakeries, shops, and pubs beloved by its residents.
This ward is rife with crime. Westruun's poorest citizens are pressed together in tight quarters, sometimes as little as single city block away from the city's wealthiest manor houses. The Clasp and the Myriad prey upon the poor and affluent alike, often stoking the tensions affecting the city's downtrodden to create chaos that masks their crimes. The Shields are stretched too thin to properly deal with these agitators. Unlike in the Temple Ward,  free expression of religion is not a guaranteed right here, even within the privacy of one's own home. Though the Lawbearer, the Wildmother, and the Platinum Dragon are all benevolent deities, many of their Westruunian followers are not particularly tolerant of other faiths.

The Market Ward

Westruun's southwestern ward contains the majority of the city's businesses, trade stands, and production warehouses. Some of these businesses are historic fixtures of the city, rebuilt by the League of Miracles in years past, but many sell overpriced wares to cater to tourists, adventurers, and the city's wealthy elite.
It is currently in fashion for store owners to live in a second story above their shops, though less scrupulous businessfolk have turned their residences into gambling dens, black markets, and illegal brothels. The most significant building in this ward is the Exandrian Exchange, a marble-walled auction house where hundreds of vendors hawk rare and unusual items from across Tal'Dorei. A satellite location of Gilmore's Glorious Goods, a famed magic item shop in Emon, is a beloved attraction of this district.

The Underwalk Ward

The city's newest ward is underground. It's an extension of the residential sprawl built from repurposed sections of the sewers, underground military bunkers, and the wine cellars of mansions annihilated by Umbrasyl and the Herd of Storms.
The Underwalk was frantically excavatedt during the invasion of the Chroma Conclave in hopes of keeping the populace hidden. It has been largely abandoned for the past twenty-four years, save for those too poor to return even to the Residential Ward, but an effort has been made in the past two years to create a unique and vibrant ecosystem in the Underwalk. The optimistic entrepreneurs trying to popularize Underwalk housing hire adventurers in great quantities, for every day, new and unsettling rumors of many-headed monstrosities prowling the Underwalk's shadowed roads spread to the surface.
The best-known entrance to this tangle of tunnels is teh Underwalk Gates, a forty-foot-wide staircase in the Residential Ward that descends into a gaping opening lit only by torchlight. Another entrance known mostly to the Clasp is a single inauspicious manhole in the Opal Ward, topped with a metal cover emblazoned with the crest of Westruun.

Points of Interest

Cobalt Reserve

This vast repository looks more like a house of worship than a library. Nevertheless, this landmark of the Scholar Ward is Tal'Dorei's largest house of knowledge, and it is maintained and fiercely defended by the monks of the Library of the Cobalt Soul.

Westhall Academy

No university in Tal'Dorei can hope to compete with the prestige of Emon's Alabaster Lyceum, but the Westhall Academy does its best. Its sand-colored stone walls and copper-patina dome are an unmistakable landmark of the Scholar Ward. They imply a stately and refined institution with an unpretentious, workaday attitude. Most of the Westhall Academy's students come from humble backgrounds, and the Lord Mayor does her level best to ensure that the academy is funded enough to let anyone from the plains who shows great promise attend, free of cost. Mages, architects, poets, artists, agriculturalists, and people of all disciplines can find an education at Westhall.

Yuminor Observatory

Westruun is a fairly flat city, and one tower on the edge of the Scholar Ward looms high above the nearby Westhall Academy. It looks forever skyward, the arcanists inside constantly charting the movements of the heavens. A quasi-religious order of diviners and astromancers named the Scions of Yuminor study here, supported by the academy's headmistress, Estella Ladimar, who is herself a blood descendant of the heroic wizard Atz Yuminor. The observatory is open to all, and the diviner's here will gladly give a star reading for 10 gp, once per day. Receiving this reading is said to grant its recipient a bit of foresight into things to come. Roll 1d20. Note the result; you can exchange it for any d20 roll made by a creature you can see. This divination fades after 24 hours. Despite the Scions of Yuminor's affability, something seems odd about them, like they have stared into the stars just a bit too long and seen something they wish they could forget.

First Bastion

The most magnificent of the temples within Westruun's Temple Ward is the First Bastion. Dedicated to the Lawbearer, this opulent sanctuary is a common attraction for visiting folk of all faiths. Its magnificent, even decadent, gold-and-marble exterior is a sight most people can't imagine exists upon the Material Plane—it seems like nothing less than a  building from the realm of the gods themselves. The First Bastion was a secret home for refugees during Kevdak's occupation, and many Westruun survivors have turned to the faith of the Lawbearer after being protected by her grace.

Lord Mayor's Residence

The Lord Mayor's Residence is a squat manor in the Opal Ward. It was originally named the Margrave's Keep, and as such, it is a defensible and highly fortified compound buttressed against military barracks. The interior has been livened up significantly by the lord mayor, but the exterior is still a spare, military edifice.

Hall of Reason

This beautiful courthouse in the Opal Ward is constructed in sweeping Lyrengornian style and bears a marble statue of the Platinum Dragon above its steps. The square before the courtroom steps is a forum for public gatherings and bears a fountain depicting Palest Westruun, the founder of the city, atop an onyx horse.

The Black King

Palest Westruun was not a king, but his new statue in the Opal Ward is often called the Black King, a subtle jab at the city's previous "Black King", the tyrannical dragon Umbrasyl. The high priest of the First Bastion blessed both the Black King and Westruun itself when the statue was unveiled on the anniversary of Westruun's reclamation, saying, "May the Lawbearer grant us all strength of spirit when chaos next threatens our peaceful civilization. When that time comes, may the Black King unsheathe his sword to rally our people and lead Westruun to victory."
When the safety of all of Westruun is threatened, the Black King will animate and defend its people, becoming a stone golem with a mounted movement speed of 60 feet and Charisma and Intelligence scores of 18 (+4).

The Survivors' Legacy

The names of all those in Westruun who survived the reign of Kevdak and Umbrasyl are carved on a wall in the first chamber of the Underwalk. Legend has it that the memorial was created by Percival de Rolo when the people of Westruun first hid here from the wrath of the Chroma Conclave after Umbrasyl's death, but it has been expanded in the years since, now including the names of all who perished in the struggle, as well.
The Survivors' Legacy is a symbol of hope, warding away the sorrow and evil of the Underwalk beneath, and to this day common folk make trips here to honor their lost loved ones. Some of the more generous folk give aid to the homeless living here as well, and some more adventurous travelers make prayers to the Dawnfather and the Matron of Ravens here before delving into the Underwalk's deeper reaches.
Once per week, a character related to one of the people named on the Survivor's Legacy can pray there and gain advantage on death saving throws for the next 24 hours.

Type

Large city

Population

51,980

Inhabitant Demonym

Westruunian

Location under

Dividing Plains

Owning Organization

Republic of Tal'Dorei