Scornubel
== SPOTLIGHT ON SCORNUBEL ==
Looking for a ''Star Wars'' Cantina spot in the Realms? Where all races, including monsters, cross paths in a largely lawless setting to trade? A rough-and-ready city where you can buy anything (and pretty much “anyone,” too)? === Welcome to Scornubel. === The Caravan City, it’s called—and it is THE major caravan rendezvous, mustering, transhipping (to barges, for travel mainly down the River Chionthar to Elturgard and Baldur’s Gate, but also to Berdusk and up the River Reaching to Hill’s Edge) and warehousing center in the Sword Coast. Waterdeep and Baldur’s Gate are busier, but lack the space for cheap wagon repairs and longterm storage, and caravans often make runs to them, offload, then “run on, empty” well out into the countryside to avoid thievery, vandalism, and high fees, to await local small wagon runs out to them, to fill their wagons and move on. Scornubel, by contrast, has always been spacious (and muddy), with visitors sleeping in their wagons and tolerance for parking and camping anywhere that doesn’t block a thoroughfare or access to a local business. And the caravans bring a ''lot'' of visitors (“wayfarers”) in spring, summer, and fall, the city’s winter population (in the 1490s DR) of about 22,000 swelling as much as eightfold (a “base” of threefold is a usual summer norm). Scornubel is where thievery is rampant, and cabals and cults flourish, and (amid the monsters citizens are used to seeing, thanks to the city’s traditional staged-monster-battles entertainments) Red Wizards, Zhentarim, orcs, lamia, and even drow, illithids, and yuan-ti stride or slither the streets openly—because there’s no local constabulary to stop them. There ARE hired adventuring bands, some of them hardened and capable, who keep the peace by dealing with murderers, arsonists, and street brawls, on behalf of the Highlord or Lady Highlord. While they’re on such duty, Scornubel calls them “the Hounds,” no matter what their company or other adventuring band name is, a corruption of the formal term “the Highlord’s Hands.” Right now, the Highlord of Scornubel is Lady Highlord Rhauvva [“RAW-vah”] Qavarshield [“Kah-VAR-sheeuld”], a LN female half-orc Wiz7, INT 18 WIS 16 who stands a muscular, buxom nine feet tall, is strikingly beautiful, and is customarily demure and quiet (with a low, husky alto voice) but can bellow like a foghorn when she feels the need. She succeeded Highlord Maeraxh [“MARE-ax”] Hammilar [“HAM-il-lar”], who was murdered in the street by two merchants he’d swindled; these two tried to seize rule of Scornubel, dubbing themselves “the Merchant Princes,” but were dead by nightfall, after the mercenary band they’d hired as bodyguards defected to Rhauvva Qavarshield. Hammilar (Highlord from 1453 DR to 1479 DR, and chiefly remembered as the Highlord who “broke us free of Elturgard,” repudiating the annexation into that realm that befell in the city’s lean times, with trade dwindling at the height of the Spellplague and the city’s first Highlord desperate for taxes to personally live on; he’s widely—and correctly—believed to have been bribed by Elturel to join Elturgard) was widely believed to have murdered the previous Highlord, Oabran [“OH-brann”] Marhee [“MAR-he”], a perpetually smirking half-elf bard who’d earned the loathing of every Scornubrian over his long and corrupt tenure (1404 to 1453 DR)—and he’s widely thought to have seduced the previous “Lord” of the city, the elderly Lady Rhessajan Ambermantle, and strangled her when they were abed together, ere proclaiming himself the city’s first “Highlord” (in 1404 DR). If this swift summary makes it seem to you that “might makes right” in Scornubel, and that holding open ruling power is both an invitation to corruption and a dangerous occupation, you’ve grasped what life in Scornubel is like. Moreover, the Caravan City has always had problems with doppelgangers slaying and impersonating citizens and wayfarers alike. === So why come to Scornubel, to court such daily danger? === Well, there’s the freedom. And then there’s all the money you can have access to, as unscrupulous—and recklessly risk-taking—sponsors abound. And of course, you can get almost anything in Scornubel, and even if you’re after poisons or their antidotes, or magic items, or spell scrolls, or complex and formidable automatons to use as guards, there’ll be local competition, not just one guild or crime boss whose price and terms you’ll have to meet. (Contrary to what tavern-talk may have you believe, magic items are not for sale in shops on every third or fourth street corner in Faerûn.) If you’re after something more mundane and safer to handle than magic items (or blessed-of-Gond devices that explode or pulverize or roast), Scornubel is ''the'' place on the Sword Coast where at any one time you can buy more bulk barley, “raw” or milled, or any other grain, loose or in sacks, from one seller. Again, Baldur’s Gate, Waterdeep, and even Athkatla likely hold more of a grain in various granary warehouses, but that’s just it: they’re the “various” warehouses of many sellers, and in all of those places, either guilds set prices (high), or once word spreads—faster than you can run, as it’s spread by street youths who can ''really'' scamper—that someone is buying, say, cornmeal, everyone will raise their prices, so by the time you find the last granary to buy from, you’ll be paying as much as twice what you emptied the first granary for. If you’re a wagon merchant, or want to hire on as a caravan guard, there are always more than a dozen—usually closer to a score—of trading costers with paddocks and warehouses in the city, and they’re always in need of “new hands.” Scornubel is the refuge for disgraced adventurers who’ve swiftly departed a Sword Coast city after too well-publicized an atrocity or making too formidable a foe (or three), so swords and spells for hire are always plentiful. And increasingly, the Caravan City is a home for smiths and crafters of all sorts and levels of skill, from master glassblowers and lockmakers to jewelers who can craft fine counterfeits with astonishing speed, and all manner of “menders.” It’s always been known as a place to buy new wagons, or wagonwheels, or axles, or get your current weary conveyance repaired—and Scornubel has been around for almost two thousand years (albeit under different names; all of it south of the Chionthar was the rival city of Zirta until the War of the Lords). These days, it can boast competing local shipyards on both banks of the Chionthar that are very good with barges, narrowboats (“houseboats” if covered, but most of them are used for fast cargo shipments whereas the barges are more for slow bulk carrying (and are the only way to move livestock), and skiffs (small, fast, and mainly used for ferrying people with their personal belongings). A shrine to almost every known deity—even beholder cults—can be found behind closed doors in the city, if one asks discreetly, though there are open temples to Lathander (The Healing House of Lathander; look for its new rose-brick obelisk), and Waukeen (The House of Fair Fortune, built to look like a gem-coffer), both on major streets in northbank Scornubel. Those temples (and Scornubel Hall, eastfront Trade Way, both the home of the Lady Highlord and where she governs from—though city gossip insists she keeps a modest “hidehold” residence in the northeast northbank, for enjoying an endless succession of one-night lovers she chooses from among wayfarers whose faces she doesn’t know) are the only really architecturally distinctive buildings in the city, unless one counts the difference between “shack” and “solid potential warehouse.” Scornubel has more solidly-built, large, multi-purpose buildings than anywhere else in known Faerûn, with much use made of stone, mud-sealed cob, and daub-sealed log construction—massive buildings with large rooms inside, usually with board or tile roofs. So although many of these buildings have been subdivided into labyrinths of small rooms and winding passages inside to offer rental rooms or offices, most of them look like warehouses from the outside. Most of them ''are'' warehouses, and this abundance of secure space, coupled with visiting wayfarers saving coin by sleeping in their own wagons, keeps rents relatively low. It also means that inside this or that weathered, bland-looking sprawling warehouse, there could be a full-on temple to Asmodeus, or a necromancer’s zombies and skeletons for sale “factory,” or an armory of rental or sale matching weapons for the well-equipped army. Or the Scornubrian equivalent of that Star Wars cantina: a tavern, sometimes with bawdy or raucous entertainment, but more often not (locals will tell you “where the bards and minstrels wail” and where you can hire a warm embrace for a night). Fortunes rise and fall with trade, so buildings in the city change hands rapidly and renters depart and new ones move in, so permanent landmarks are few; the ‘hot’ club or tavern of one season may be gone entirely the next. With that said, as the Realms knocks on the door of 1500 DR, Mirt tells me the foremost festhall in Scornubel is still Mother Minx’s, though younger and edgier patrons prefer the Jester’s Bells (which is also the city’s only public bathhouse The foremost gambling club and rental feasting-hall is The Nightshade nightclub; the best clean, orderly, and “high class” tavern in the heart of the city is Varambrur’s Jack; with The Thirsty Thunder Beast (now relocated to new premises on the northeastern edge of the city) its fiercest competitor; the most notorious brawling “dive” of a tavern is the Smiling Siren on the northbank docks; and the best large, middling-coin, ‘family’ eateries are the Brazen Basilisk in the former Zirta; and Mhaerigo’s Board on the western edge of northbank Scornubel. As far as inns go, the old, established Far Anchor, The Traveler’s Rest, and The Raging Lion (now just an inn; the taproom was closed after the fourth major brawl and fire gutted it, and rebuilt as rental suites) are considered the best in the city, largely because they are firmly policed and so quiet, and because every rental room has its own “room to lie and soak” bathing facilities. It should be noted that the Traveler’s Rest no longer displays the nailed-up, withering severed hands of unfortunates caught thieving on its premises. And that’s Scornubel, a “seething cauldron of thieves,” as Open Lord Piergeiron of Waterdeep once described it. “A place well-suited to adventurers,” is current Open Lord Laeral’s politer description. I’ll leave the final word on the Caravan City to Elminster, who termed it, “If ye’re starved for entertainment, ’tis a nice place to visit—in wraithform.” == PART 2: == Ivan: So Ed, I am curious. Say there were a group of uninitiated adventurers coming in to Scornubel for the first time. I'm wondering what might be there to greet them. What are some of the first things that they would see and experience be? And after they make, you know, some time in Scornubel what are some of the quest or adventures that they might be presented with that would be exclusive to Scornubel? Ed: Hmm. Okay. Well, the first thing they'd see is wagons rumbling everybody everywhere and nobody paying slightest bit of attention to them unless they are in the way. Okay. They would see a lot of mud and dust, a lot fewer cobbles than most large cities because that isn't Scornubel. Scornubel is basically a glorified caravan camp and what they'd probably be hired on pretty hired out to be pretty early is somebody needs guards toughs to stand by doors and make somebody look impressive because if they're just off the off the boat or just ridden into town and and the guy who might hire them doesn't know them, he's not going to hire them to guard precious Ed: cargo or the person of somebody, the personage of somebody important because he doesn't know these guys. You know, they could be anybody. They could be kidnapers, in effect, he could be borrowing trouble. So he's not going to hire them to do what you and I would call competent, delicate, sensitive, important stuff. He's going to hire them to be hired thugs to look impressive, like, hey, we need you to join that procession there. Ed: We need some muscle. So look tough, look, look menacing without actually saying anything to anybody because we don't want any trouble because you say the wrong thing to the wrong person in this town, there will be trouble. So don't actually start in any trouble. But we want you to, like, look menacing. You can manage that, right? And the pay will be commensurate with that pretty low. Ed: But then if they stick around for a bit, somebody will reach what I like to call the desperate stage. They will run out of people to hire because they're a schmuck or they double cross or they don't provide enough support and don't hire enough. So the people they hire are always placed in untenable, dangerous situations where they're vastly outnumbered and then that desperate person will hit upon the new kids in town and say, You look like a competent bunch. Ed: You look like you can command a battlefield to command a situation so it doesn't become a battlefield. Well, I like the look of it. I like the cut of your jib. And then then they'll get hired to do more important things, more dangerous things, more. Oh, what have we gotten ourselves into? Things. And that will be how they get introduced to Scornubel. Ivan: I feel like that's something that isn't talked about much in D&D, though, it's everyone's trying to exploit labor, right? They're all trying to get the best deal possible. So if you go into a place that's already a little bit shady, like people are going to try and take advantage of the fresh blood and get you to do the stuff that nobody else wants to do. Ed: There you go. That's exactly it. It's like, Oh, idiots. Um, I mean, if, if, if you've been to a real world cattle call where, you know, we need extras to be in the next big movie by so and so you may rapidly discover that everybody answers the cattle call and there are people there who don't have a hope Ed: in heck you know. Yeah, sure, there will be people who show up who just are not what is being looked for. And that happens in Scornubel like anywhere else. But the other thing is there is always work to be had, if you don't mind traveling, because everybody needs caravan guards, escorts, outriders and caravans are arriving and leaving all the time. Ed: So if you don't mind being hired in a in a way that will take you away from Scornubel, there's always work and you can get work right away. Now, if you're on the run from somebody, but you need a legitimate reason to be where you wouldn't want to, you know, like, sure, let's go to Suzail. That's halfway across. Ed: I've heard good things about Suzail. Yeah, but we can't just walk into Suzail. We have to have a job and money in our pockets, and we have to have a reason for being there. Because I hear that that's a law and order place. They're going to ask us questions. Okay, here's your job. You have a job as a caravan guard. Ed: And it's understood that when you get to Suzail, your employment ends and there will be other people looking for caravan guards and that could be you and so therefore, it is really good for that and it's really good for a dungeon master putting an adventure in that is wrapped around the long trip from the sword coast to inland or from inland to the Sword Coast. Ed: And it means instead of it just being a long thing where he rolls for wandering monsters, India becomes an in-game adventure where you learn things about trading costers and Priakos and the other caravan companies. And that, of course, is what dominate Scornubel. This is a community built over time. It just sort of grew. I don't mean it was deliberately built, it just sort of grew by caravan companies. Ivan: You did say that Scornubel has been around for over 2000 years, which is quite a long time. I am curious what Scornubel might have looked like in its earliest stages, and I'm kind of wondering what forces might have influenced Scornubel over the years to lead it to become the kind of place that it is now? Ed: Sure. Okay. So at the very beginning Scornubel was a ferry in a across the Chionthar and then it at well okay that it was the place where Chionthar was wide enough and shallow enough and slow moving enough that with the aid of a rope to guide your barge so it didn't get swept downstream by the flow of the Chionthar you could get a barge across so you could get livestock across on a large enough barge. Ed: So if you were a drover taking tons and tons of head of livestock to where they could be sold for food like Waterdeep, you needed to cross the Chionthar. There was the trade way of the the the trade road was was crossing the Chianthar at this point. So what you basically had was at the beginning ferries competing ferries and then very quickly you had paddocks where you could camp for the night and wait for daylight to try and make your crossing. Ed: And there was a fence and railings so you had something to guard so people just couldn't come in and slaughter your animals or raid them in the middle of the night without you knowing because you could patrol this perimeter. And then there was like an inn or a shelter and set up latrines and so on, because it's like, okay, people are going to be here. Ed: So they need these basic facilities. So it's growing from that. And then you have a wait a minute, it's raining cats and dogs. I don't want to try and cut across the swollen river at this time. We need a warehouse or something else where we can store this stuff undercover, under away from the weather for a little bit. Ed: So then warehouses start appearing. So that's how Scornubel is growing over the years. It's like that. And wow. Ivan: So yeah, I mean, it sounds pretty parallel actually to western towns, right in like the gold rush or the migration, the west, you know, the back of the wagon trails and everything like that. It's sounds like actually pretty similar to to to U.S. history in that way. Ed: Yeah. And there is one this gets missed a lot but if if people read the last Shandril novel, the of the trilogy Hand of Fire a bit of it is they join a caravan and they come to Scornubel you know so you do get to see a little bit in fiction of what it feels like to be in the city and walk the muddy streets and so on. Ed: So there's a little bit there. Yeah, it's it's Scronubel is is an interesting lawless place, but it's it's it's got its own rough and ready law as in people who don't want to be hassled too much higher these adventuring bans to say like you know don't go around molesting the horses. Sure we'll stop you you know. Ed: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ivan: I am actually curious now that you mention that. So say that I would like to play in a place like Sccornubel but my party isn't necessarily in that geographic region. Are there other, I guess, locations in Faerunthat that echo, that same kind of vibe, that Star Wars cantina kind of vibe? Ed: Oh, sure. But they, they tend to all be slightly different, as in Westgate is much larger knock than Scornubel and because it had a king Veroven way back and it has pretensions to being more civilized in which you which are just that pretensions but you can also have a Star Wars cantina they're very much so and that's the key You look along the heartland's trade routes Tezir, Elversult, Priapurl, Berdusk, Ed: You just move along the Iriaebor Okay. All of these places can have Star Wars cantina spots within them because it's where people from all walks of life at all different lands rub shoulders and they're tired and they've been traveling and they they need a place to drink and they meet with each other. They make deals with each other. Ed: And if somebody cuts up, fresh violence occurs. And it's rough, you know? I mean, yeah, the rolls was all around long before Star Wars. So, I mean, I'm but I'm just using that as a way of shorthand for people who aren't familiar with the realms. This is what I mean. It's it's like that scene. It's where you'll find people like that and that sort of situation where if you have a weapon under the table, nobody's surprised. Ed: You know, I'm sure. Ivan: In my Storm King's Thunder game, I very much treated Yartar that way in a lot of the with because of the gambling and stuff like that that goes on there I treated it much the same and it my mistake in doesn't Eric Boyd always end up in Yartar he's a big fan of Yartar. Ed: Yeah yeah yeah and any place that is a transshipment point for goods yeah yeah. Is going to end up with some sort of Star Wars cantina or similar flavor because they're you people who are rough and ready travelers are stopping for the night or longer than the night. There are warehouses or storage paddocks. There are going to be opportunistic thieves. Ed: How do I, you know? Yeah, yeah. There's no way to sugarcoat that. And there's going to be opportunities for adventure. Yeah. Ivan: And actually talking about Star Wars Cantina is that that does lead to my next question, which is I mean obviously you've been writing the realm since the mid sixties. You've told me offline that Scornubel was very early on in as far as creations of yours. And I'm curious what may be the early inspiration for Scornubel might have looked like What kind of narrative holes, if any, that that was filling for you as you're writing these things in the sixties? Ed: Well, that particular very early Realms story, One Comes Uneralded to Zirta, has been published several times, including in the a book. I don't come up with these titles. I cringe at this immodest title, The Best of the Realms Volume two stories of EB Greenwood, which is a, you know, a short story collection of my stuff. And it was the very first Realm story, except it wasn't. Ed: And what I mean by that is it's a cobbled together story that took the very earliest story and some little vignettes and put them together on the first self-contained written at one sitting where Mirt stories, but Once Comes Unheralded to Zirta is a story where a lot of powerful people Elminster included. Some of the seven certain rulers all get together in one room around a table to drink, bite by largely by chance, but not entirely by chance. Ed: So as a result, you get to see a lot of them. And therefore it was one that I dragged out and showed to Jeff Grubb when he said, Yeah, we need you to show us the realms. That's also, by the way, why Spellfire was written. He was Show US the Realm, Ed So we need we need to see the sweep of this big world you've created. Ed: And that was one of the prime ways of doing it. That story, you know, it's sort of like a Who's Who Rogues gallery. Everybody gets together of important people, so you got to see a lot of them together in one very short vignette. So that's why I resurrected it. And yeah, it was... Zirta is the southern half of Scornubel before the war The Lords what it's still it's an independent city and of course it was just the South Bank of the Jones or the Chionthar runs from east to west at this point geographically. Ed: So Scornubel, original Scornubel was on the North Bank and Zirta was on the South Bank and eventually one swallowed the other. And that's where we are today. Cool. Ivan: So for my last question, what I did want to ask was if there have been any, I guess, Faerun-shaping or realms shaping events that Scornubel might have been the center of. And I know that some big names have passed through there. We already talked about, you know, Mirt and a lot of other big players in the realms, but I'm curious kind of as far as its significance goes for things that have had lasting impact that people still might be seeing in their campaigns if they're up on the lore. Ed: It's had a lot of impact, but not well publicized impact. And what I mean by that is it is the place for a lot of turf battles between trading. Companies have been fought and maybe not openly, maybe not swords in the streets, maybe just in back rooms or so. And so ends up owning so and so. So there's been a lot of that. Scornubel has been the cradle of a lot of that. Ed: And it's also in the place during the time of troubles, during the Gods war, during the Avatar trilogy. And there were a lot of avatars of deities, a lot of avatars of those who passed through Scornubel What they didn't do is make a big trumpeting song and dance about it because they'd all been forced down into mortal forms in a world they never made know that they've been forced down. Ed: They realized they'd been largely stripped of their abilities because they couldn't get back to their divine homes. They suddenly tried to do things and were blocked from doing things. And they were fearful and they were aware, sort of half aware of what was going on and what they had to do. So the last thing they wanted to do for most of them, not all of them, but most of them, the last thing they wanted to do was say, Hi, I'm God. Ed: So and so because they didn't feel ready to handle what attacks may come their way. So when they were in scorn or they were being pretty quiet about who they were and they were trying to get other places. Scornubel was the Crossroads caravan trading city. So whether you were on foot or joining a caravan or you were just going to hire and buy a nag and take off on your own, this was where you. Ed: Oh, okay. All roads go that way. So that road goes to water deep. That road goes okay, right? I know where I am now. Let's go. So that a lot of them found their way to this place. And we may not have known about it at the time, but it was very important to the wider realms. Later on. Ed: We just didn't hear about it then. Ivan: Yeah, I was going to say, it seems like the kind of place that even if you are kind of a bigwig muckityy muck, you probably don't want it to be super public that you're going through Scornubel Or spending any significant time there. Yeah, I imagine a lot of stuff has kind of gone on, you know, behind the curtain and Scronubel that we might not eve n be aware of, but that opens up like a ton of possibility for, for Dungeon Masters and Game Masters to take that and say, okay, cool, I need a location to make somethinЕсли вы хотите что то добавить или присоединится к команде редакторов - пишите комментарии
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Large town
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