Orred

Lacking any single powerful ruler such as Montand or Strychan, the southern Naelax lands are a hodge-podge of small landholdings and feuding minor nobility. Armies may charge high fees for allowing anyone to cross the lands of their petty lord. So trade has declined sharply away from the Flamni in particular where the militias and well-trained river excisemen of Carnifand and Roqborough protect merchants from over-zealous private militias. However, while there is no central focus of power, there is no shortage of intriguing places and people.

Orred is a town of major strategic importance. It is a natural trading-place, lying at the fork of the Flanmi Imeda river system, and it has extensive wharves and warehouses. Orred lies on the Windmarch, with a traditional grand fair during the second week of Goodmonth. Its normal population of 5,500 usually triples during that time.

Orred has a garrison of 400 infantry and 100 cavalry in the service of Prince Lugrand of Naelax, who also owns the farmlands between the rivers for some eight miles northward. Lugrand is a cowardly, inept ruler who grovels to the overking's tax gatherers, but who has managed to prevent too many townspeople being conscripted into armies.

Orred has a bad reputation as a town beset by disease, plague, flooding and general infirmity, but this is actually just a feint on Lugrand's part to keep his people in the town. He doesn't care about them as people of course, he just wants to keep the tax and tithe revenues rolling into his own coffers. Nonetheless, the townsfolk think well of him because of his cunning.

Orred has a powerful thieves' guild and a deserved reputation for lax law enforcement. Life is cheap in the dock quarter of town, and even with the reduced volume of trade flowing through it now, men fight and murder to take their share of black market trade, contraband goods brought down from Smuggler's Walk or from Pardue and the south. Almost anything can be bought here if one has the money.

Orred has one special architectural feature of note. In the declining years of the House of Rax, local nobles created statues of themselves for a competition held every five years, judged by the overking. To win the competi tion was deemed important, because it was thought to be an indication not that the statue was necessarily much good but, rather, that one was in the overking's favor. Over the decades, nobles began to make statues which came more and more to resemble a hybrid between themselves and an idealized image of the overking, hoping to curry favor.

Along Statuary Row, there are more than a hundred of these statues (mostly weathered bronze), growing more and more affected and postured as one moves along. A young mage placed magic mouths on some of them, generally inviting youthful maidens to remove personal garments as they pass by.

Statuary Row is, however, an important public meeting-place for making contacts with merchants, river men, and thieves for black market dealings over a mug of the fine local ale, seated in the shade of the trees which line the broad boulevard.