Elorta

Elorta is a Zeruan city like any other, nestled at a river mouth along the Northern coast in the Vice-Kingdom of Mikena. It is large (though no great megalopolis), bustling, profitable, and diverse. The air is warm and humid half the year, but crisp and cool the other half. The water locks slam open and shut all day long, adding regular loud clangs to the usual urban din. Windweavers push out pollutants and cycle the air, shaping the sky above the city into a neat ring. 
No city is generic, though - and Elorta has its share of odd occultism, intense civic corruption, and flourishing party culture to go around.

Demographics

60,000 humanoids live in Elorta.

Government

In theory, a single leader - the Archduke - should exist to have absolute power over Elorta, but for most of the last century that title has also been held by the Princes of Mikena (as Archdukes have challenged royal authority in the past). 
Instead, the City Council rules Elorta - and nominates a Mayor from among themselves (who is confirmed by the Prince) as the ultimate executive. The city council is an oligarchy of about twenty to thirty: government ministers, the garrison commander, major business owners. The Mayor and Council work together to decide who qualifies for a seat. By structure, this all creates a very insular and interconnected clique of merchants, bureaucrats, nobles, priests, and business owners.
Beneath the Council are a mix of imperial bureaucrats, princely bureaucrats, and local officials - many of whom are the same people in multiple parallel offices. 

The Mayor

Mayor Idaba Zumenziri, a tall and commanding prism noblewoman, is the current formal leader of the city. Idaba is not from here (not uncommon for Mayors of Elorta), but is actually quite enamored with the city and its people (extremely rare as Elorta mayors go). For many years before being appointed mayor, Idaba patronized many here in the city as she dabbled in fringe religious movements here - even leading her own occult organization for elites, the Red Thunder Coven. Her interest in the city has also taken the form of investment, and she is well integrated into the city's business elite.
Mayor Idaba is great at intrigue and has great connections, but is a temperamental figure prone to scandal. It is no secret that alternate spirituality was only one of several attractions of Lady Zumenziri to the post - she has also been drawn to embezzlement schemes and other illegal business opportunities. The more dignified members of the landlord class despise her, as they see her corruption as foreign and criminal (as opposed to theirs, which is the 'culture of business'). And where her business doesn't outrage, her personality has a way of ruffling feathers. So Mayor Idaba has a way of dealing with everyone - noble, bureaucrat, criminal, or cult - while also having enemies in every camp. A controversial woman, a "Crime Queen" to some and a "New Hope" for others. 

Council Players 

There are other power players on the City Council who compete and cooperate with Mayor Zumzenziri in governing the city:

• Lady Izakari, master of the City Guard and often called "Captain" as a nickname. Military liason and interested in recruitment, though many say she is more interested in promoting her sisters' business interests in the city. Willing to play dirty and work with organized crime, if it means clean streets and ample coin. On bad terms with Minister Mamakzir, who dislikes the army and guards. Notoriously afraid of disease, particularly Gem Plague.
• Minister Nafia Mamakzir, Elortas's Minister of Agriculture for the Emperor and Prince and manager of granaries and mills. Highly involved in local lending and debt, Lady Nafia is a pangolin with an eye for paperwork and office intrigue. She is not-so-secretly aligned with Orchid of Blue, and generally opposes the use of open violence wherever subtle force can be used. An idealist, but a bribable and rude one.
• Arbiter Dozrin, Elorta's head of the Kamadan priesthood. Dozrin is a Kineticist scholar, a monk with a strong body and a learned mind - he is a great priest, but an alright administrator with very little popularity or connection among the commonfolk. Indeed, his brewmaster family is far more industrialist-merchant than common artisan, and he has little love for the mystics and cultists of the streets. Personally ascetic, but more than willing to fudge policy for family. One of the most likable and friendly of the council members, though notoriously passive and prone to over-caution 

Defences

Tall walls protect the city from foreign invasion and hurricane debris - and serve to contain the city neatly.

Industry & Trade

Elorta has a rich and thriving local economy, with large workshops taking advantage of the measured canals and reliable flow of rural imports. Textiles, bleach making, soap making, pearl farming, tanning, dye making, and brewing are all major local industries. Rice, maize, cotton, bamboo, cranberries, and gourds from the countryside flood into the city for export and use.

Districts

The Outermost City: The city generally bans out-of-city districts and overly-close suburbs, but there are some districts outside of the walls that are accepted.

• Seaport: The main port of the city, where ships dock, sailors drink, and visitors to the city generally enter. The wildest part of the city, though the gates to the main city are heavily policed.
• Iziri's Hall: The fisher's district, an area predating the main city. Very popular with the warlocks of the city, who have many Leviathan shrines and cult meeting halls here.
• The Crags: A space for people who don't have anywhere else to go. People trying to move into the city, the recently un-homed, outcasts.
• The Crowngate: The one accepted commercial suburb, also a space for travelers and entertainment. Oriented towards land travelers heading to and from the Zeruan heartlands. Known for its grand restaurants and party-halls.
• The Irongate: A sprawling area of warehouses, an illegal commercial district that has been able to leverage enough political power to legitimize itself. All shops and market spaces - none but innkeeps are supposed to live here.
• Olzari Isle: The shellfish and pearl farming area, essentially a large commercial embassy with the undersea world. Also a place where many wealthy people and corporations have estates and nice boats.

North City: North city, with its vulnerability to storms and flooding, is not a place for the wealthy to live. It is fairly commercial though, as it is close to the seaport.

• Northmarket: Connecting to the Seaport, Northmarket isn't actually a bad area; it is bustling, commercial, and artisan-oriented. Hardly rich and certainly notorious for pickpockets, but likely the most prosperous of the North City.
• Lobsterport: The interior riverport, a place where small boatmen go out to trade, raise Giant Lobsters, and trade with the nearby Aquatic outpost. A common place for the lowest of the peddler class - though not an outright slum.
• Stormside: Once a storm-battered slum, but more recent construction efforts (improved sewers and stone buildings) have bolstered Stormside and turned it into an established residential and religious center. Both Kamadan religion and warlock cults are big here.
• Cheapside: A commercial-residential space of large workshops, small house-shops, and little market spaces. Remarkably productive and safe - both merchant mercenaries and Circle muscle keep Cheapside 'clean' on the surface.
• Blackwater: The lowest point in the city, a depression that remains marshy despite water control efforts. A buggy slum containing the cheapest housing in the city. Sits on the main sewage/waste water line - smelly and polluted.

West City: The Southwestern part of the city is oriented towards work and production. This area has the finest water control through its neat series of canals and water locks, built to keep countless water wheels turning.

• The Black Canal: The 'dirty industries' reliant on water use are confined here: leatherworking, dye-ing, butchers, charcoal-burners, smelters, and the like. A stigmatized place to work and live, but a reasonably profitable one. Very working-class.
• The Locks: A series of waterlocked canals, the main water-wheel industrial complex of the city. Small reservoirs and canals push water wheels and service grand warehouses. Also, common laundry tends to be done here in special washers canals
• Ambertown: The nicest part of the Western canal line, with first dibs on the water diverted from the river. Largely reserved for entertainment and brewing, as well as more refined laundry work. Theaters, museums, and entertainment venues tend to congregate here.
• The Center District: Mass commoner housing, with a mix of some small artisans, gardens, and shops. Also contains a notable plaza for festivals.
• The Prince's Gate: A semi-agricultural district of gardens, small fields, and low-income housing. Ironically named, as the district was originally planned as semi-elite. The grand West-facing gate remains a testament to that, as do the abandoned gardens and ministry houses. In reality, rather worse off than the Center District.
• The Fringe: Built and planned as slums to provide cheap labor for the neighboring nicer districts; tenament housing, cramped conditions, the works.
• Brightwater: A part of town where construction workers, artisans, and windweavers live - a place dominated by public works and government ministries. Poor but not destitute. 

South City: The Southeastern part of the city is elevated and generally more secure from flooding

• The Green Line: The worst part of South city, all agriculture, farming markets, servant's housing, and slums. Numerous canals run through the district rationing extra river water for in-city farms. 
• South Bridge: Guildmasters, clerks, lower merchants, and successful peddlers all live here, in the city's clerking and printing center. Generally quite nice, but not elite.
• The Old City: The elite district, insulated from flooding, storms, and all other chronic Elortan ailments. Old, well-built, sturdy stone buildings. 

Guilds and Factions

Urban Gentry: The class of landowners, business-owners, merchants, priests, and upper-bureaucrats who rule the city. The greatest of these are ennobled, while a number of lesser gentry exist informally. Some of the urban gentry is entirely absent from local politics, operating through petty middle managers from afar. Those who have a real presence in the city tend to exist in chains of patronage going up to the City Council. 
The Guilds: Laborers, small businesses, peddlers, and artisans all tend to congregate into voluntary guild associations. These are not the legally-empowered guilds one might imagine - only some industries need licenses, and no guild has a monopoly on license-issuing here. However, guilds in Elorta do have an unusual culture of intense hierarchy. In this city, guild seniors and employer-masters wield incredible social power. Even common small-shop owners who are well established are above reproach from their workers - though they also tend to be expected to give back to their communities more than usual guild masters. The guilds also tend to work together more than anything; they lack the central power or structure to enforce a uniform political will, but might be seen as networks of competing and cooperating business patriarchs. 
The Elorta Eketari Circle: The Circles are Zeruan organized crime - and the crime here in Elorta is as organized as they come. Recently, a single crime family brought all of the city under a single criminal banner: that of the Eagle, symbol of the Eketari Circles. Godmother Nadwa Eketari now rules the city's underworld. She is an ambitious woman, innovative and perhaps even 'quirky' (though unquestionably brutal). Some say she would like to rule politics more directly as well, and has been bickering with Mayor Idaba in a series of bids for power. Some small criminal bands resist the Godmother, but no large-scale organized criminal resistance exists.
The Witch Cults: Warlocks are common and popular here, as is fringe spirituality and occultism. Ghost summoners, cursemongers, and diviners are all common here, especially in the Northern fringe of the city. One warlock, Mibora of the Scarred One's Gaze, has recently risen as the number one cultist warlock of the city; the Mayor has even empowered her to suppress cults that might contain anti-government or anti-social ideologies. Mibora is an egomaniac, but a very self-contained one more focused on controlling her followers than imposing her will more grandly.

History

Ancient Pre-Elorta

Elorta's ancient history is one of many failed, forgotten experiments - all of which have been obscured by dramatic landscape changes. The elevated part of the city, now called 'Old Town', was once an island of stable land amidst a great floodplain of marshes and verdant streams. Fish farms, floating gardens, and mass shellfish cultivation all sustained a series of settlement on this elevated portion, which linked together with many small orbital settlements across the estuary. Regimes in this region were known for being politically unusual, ranging from democratic takeovers to harsh dictatorships. These only sometimes configured themselves in a way we would call a "city" - sometimes the population was mostly dispersed on other islands, or on the edge of the estuary. Big cultural shifts, like the Stormlords or the Zeruan Empire, still deeply influenced and ruled the region, but Elorta persisted in its unusual character and government. 
The 935 CE eruption led to a devastating series of floods and tsunamis that essentially ended this ancient era of Elortan pseudo-urbanization. People still lived here, but the area became more agricultural and fragmented. Old local fish-farming palaces economies were entirely wiped away, remembered only by the rebellious "Storm Witches" who troubled the countryside. Mikenan princes and Zeruan governments also preferred a homogenous system of fields and villages, and encouraged the degredation of the old ways by coin and sword. Sometimes, imperial governors blatantly destroyed reminders of the past by flooding "haunted" ruins or by cannibalizing them for the construction of forts or tax houses. Those bits of old city too cursed or difficult to exploit to reuse sank into the swamp, and bits of them actually serve as foundations for other parts of the city. The raw size of these ruins buried in the murk and muck, nearly twenty centuries of urban experiments worth, cannot be understated. But now that the soil has dried, they are little more than buried archeology in much of the city.

Elortan History (1600 - 1950)

Many centuries of local towns, storms, floods, politics, cash crop booms and plagues could all go between 950 and what we now call Elorta. But for a city in the Zeruan style to exist, everything came down to one great battle: the battle to fully control and regulate the Uzubili river. Countless dams tried to control hundreds of miles of river, and monsoon downpours regularly knocked these dams down like dominoes. Without a stabilizing system of levees, a cycle of "dams built, found town, town grows, dams break, town floods" ruled. The Uzubili river and monsoon storm system seemed determined to test Zeruan engineering abilities; local warlords who dominated the upper river also provded troublesome in imposing a unified water system. But, finally, Vice-Princess Malefi the Bald brought the river under a unified system of power in the mid 1600s. The valley was partially drained and the river was brought into a more useful channel (rather than a wide alluvial plain). 
Elorta was founded not long after the canal-levee system was completed, and quickly rose in population. The opening of the empire in 1690 caused the city to explode in wealth and population, though this stagnated in the mid-late 1700s. Plague and issues with water control seemed to destabilize the city, particularly its lower districts. These flooding or drought crises tended to dovetail with horrific local corruption, as Elorta's lands were almost entirely held by a few small families of outside elites. The periodic crises only solidied this trend, as disasters washed away local small businesses and leaders and disaster responses channelled imperial aid through the small landholder cliques. Further infrastructure projects in the late 1800s and mid 1900s finally saw the river channelled into a series of tight canals, where it could be made agriculturally or industrially useful. Corruption remained an issue nonetheless, with noble and crime families siphoning as much profit as possible (including much of the city's non-infrastructure subsidies during the Mikenan economic depression of 1900 - 1940). 

Modern Elorta

Since the 1940s, Elorta has done well for itself. The city's infamous corruption has held the city back, yet its location and resources have kept it relevant and reasonably prosperous. Large agricultural regions surround the city, bountiful bay waters, and useful controlled waterlock canals for water wheels are common. And yet the city has suffered under centuries of bad leadership; the mayors of the city have been given their positions as nepotistic gifts from Vice-Princes, and money has flowed to absentee landlords more than local residents. The city nonetheless boasted an immense population in the 1970s - leading to civil discontent. The mayors of the 1970s through 1990s have sought to solve this problem through debt contracts and conscription drives, shoving as many poor Elortans into employment in the countryside or the military. Additionally, urban building outside of the city walls has been banned (with hefty fines), forcing out-of-wall businesses and residents away from the walls into more distant suburbs. This restriction of the city's size has been seen as a way to keep it "orderly" and efficient; like with water, the elites have fetishized their control over the movement of people. 
Elites may see Elorta as a finely tuned machine of social control on paper, but they miss much of the city's true face. The city has many vibrant local communities, who work closely together to keep what they have. Art, both popular and commercial, thrives in the city; as does food, particularly the city's booze and brewing scene. There has been a vibrant popular culture that has sought to give agency to the poor. Sometimes this is through community generosity, art, and a reimagined "traditional" identity of acceptance and sharing; sometimes this is through the The Circles, through total submission to guild elders, and through participation in religious movements that can be "cult-ish" in a modern sense. Warlocks abound, teaching others the secrets of "Storm witchery" - repurposing half-remembered folk stories. Street theater and large new stage theaters are in constant conversation. A robust local party scene crosses class boundaries. And an Eketari-branch Circle family runs much of the city from the shadows, rubbing shoulders with workshop owners and commonfolk alike. 

Geography

Elorta is located at the end of the Uzubili river. The entire area used to be a sprawling estuary, one of many swampy points where the Uzubili reached the sea. Relentless damming of the river and efforts to control the waters define much of the city, as rigid water locks and canal systems dictate much of the city's layout. Nonetheless, the North-center of the city (Lobsterport, Blackwater, and to a certain extent Brightwater) remain quite swampy. 
The rich ex-estuary soil of the region makes it extremely agriculturally productive, yet also comes with a variety of problems. The swampier parts of the city are prone to flooding and can often be hopelessly burdened with pests and disease. The cudzu vines of the area relentlessly climb the walls of most buildings, and must be fought back regularly. And the city itself is vulnerable to mass flooding should the dam system fall down - a fact that city administrators try to ignore and work to keep out of public kinowledge.

Climate

Elorta is warm and humid subtropical forest, veering towards temperate during cold and dry winter months.

Founding Date

1670

Type

City

Population

60,000

Inhabitant Demonym

Elortan

Location under

West Zeruan Floodplain

Owning Organization

Vice-Kingdom of Mikena

Characters in Location

• Ezia Mahabatu
• Imora
• Topin