Alanor

Located just north of the Lasair River, Alanor is the center of of legal thought and contract negotiation of the City-States region. The economy of the city revolves around the fees charged by the Sealers' Guild to verify and approve contracts. This has led to the city being colloquially referred to as "Contract City" or sometimes simply "Contract".

Contract City

As the largest city between the Aratosa mines and the river, Alanor was the last stop on the earliest iron caravan routes before traders had to decide where they would take their loads. Due to this strategic position, buyers from the coast and the south would travel to Alanor to negotiate purchases with the traveling suppliers. With so many business deals being formed, the possibility for disagreements was quite high, and the city responded to this need by supporting the creation of the Sealers' Guild. The guild was formed by those specialized in creating tightly worded documents specifying the responsibilities of each side in a business deal; forming the guild allowed these experts to elevate their fees and to standardize the processes that must be followed for a contract to be valid. After a few centuries, the guild had essentially become the entire economy in the city, as people would travel there from all over the City-States to have their contract embossed with the Sealers' mark, thus ensuring that their contract would be accepted in any city in the region.
This official story makes it sound a little clean and above-board, but that isn't quite the entire truth. While a solid contract might be valuable in the business world, it is worth even more in the criminal world. While Alanor is famous for validating deals between miners and ore buyers, or between ship captains and their crews, it is wealthy from contracts for bounties, smugglers' deals, even assassinations. The Sealers do not judge a contract on its morality: they may charge a little more for such work, but they will not turn it down.

Layout

The city has become literally build around contracts. The center of the city is dominated by a stone tower carved from the mountain behind the city. Offices surround the base of the tower, which are subsequently surrounded by a low wall of grey stone. Outside of this wall is a ring of densely packed buildings, each no larger than two stories but showing signs of conspicuously subtle wealth. This ring of the city is also surrounded by a wall, but this one is much larger and patrolled by heavily armed guards. Outside of this final wall are hundreds of fairly run-down buildings as the city begins to spread out and disperse into the countryside.