Kalstrand

A city of 19,000 people, Kalstrand is prodigiously defensively constructed. In the past, hostile men and dwarves from the Glorioles, not to mention monsters, were a threat to the burgeoning city. After the construction of double city walls and an excavated moat defense (Kalstrand has a good river harbor, aiding trade), and the installation of key magical defenses, the city found itself attracting more and more people. Its population has doubled in the past 40 years, and a new city section is being built northward with an extension of the city walls being currently completed.

Kalstrand is rich. The cost multiplier for goods is 140%. This applies especially to staple goods; luxuries are only 100-120% of normal cost. The city has very few slums or areas of poor people; city laborers and menials generally walk the two or three miles from a number of villages around Kalstrand to work in the city itself.

There is much to wonder at. The Merchants' Guild is proud of the majestic buildings it has paid for, and the great columned guildhall is only one of the great sights. Others include the spectacular Hovering Gardens (levitation magic keeping these terraced, exotically vegetated, bowers in place over the northern city) and the Museum of Antiquities. The museum has a remarkable number of old Baklunish and Suel relics and items as well as Oeridian ones, but the priests of Boccob who administer it are both unhelpful and pompous and delight in being difficult. The city is dominated by Prince Xavener, both by virtue of his regal mansion complex with its fountains, gardens, marbled towers, trussed roofs, and gilded wind-braces and also by his personality. Xavener is an urbanite, and Kalstrand reflects that. He is also a consummate politician, and Kalstrand reflects that, too. An outsider never can be quite certain what anyone here truly thinks of him. This is a city of half-truths, silences, concealments, and polite smiles masking all manner of backstabbings and cruel treacheries. The cathedral of Zilchus is huge, and its icons must be worth more than the building itself, which cost 200,000 gp to construct. The head of Zilchus's church in Aerdy, Larissen, is almost a house prisoner here. Xavener rescued him from threats in Rauxes but now insists the priest cannot leave, and Patriarch Cherench of Kalstrand agrees with the Prince, having a genuine concern for Larissen's safety. Larissen is unhappy, because here he is too closely identified with the Prince whose hospitality it would be churlish not to acknowledge. This restricts his freedom for political maneuvers, as he is well aware. The major population of visitors here is Ahlissan, since Darmen nobles own land there and trade is conducted between Kalstrand and Ahlissa. Kalstrand offers the best opportunity for gaining advance knowledge of Ahlissa before entering it; and, like everything in this city, the information is available to the curious—for the right price