The city has two ports; one at the north side of the city and the other at the south, where merchants may dock and unload cargo destined for the marketplace. In the west lies the city's main gate, which is surrounded by three-tiered walls and watched over by numerous towers and gatehouses. Finally, the easternmost section of the city is dedicated to the palace and garden complex, where the Ressengian king holds court.
Evergrace's wealth is evident in the construction of its many buildings: Where wood is commonly used as a building material in most Pretheyan settlements owing to its ready availability and low cost, here all of the city's buildings have been constructed out of stone. The vast majority of the city's buildings are built with white stone walls, formed either of cobblestone or hewn stone bricks, and then topped with red tiled roofs. Trees are a frequent sight throughout the city, with small patches of land in-between houses being left empty to serve as plots for them. Government buildings are frequently decorated with ornately chiselled pillars, and in some case feature murals or bas-relief carvings of events and figures from Rukhmarite mythology. Many statues are scattered throughout the city of
Rukhmar the Firebird, often being placed in locations such as public squares or at the base of steps to guild halls and other important buildings.
Culture
Evergrace is home to a wide variety of different cultures; significantly moreso than most cities in Pretheya. It is one of very few destinations frequented by travellers from outside of the continent, though this is exceptionally rare seeing as most such individuals sell their cargo to another merchant at an earlier stop in the trade route. Far more common are
Thousandforms from one of the many
Asutoan republics, or in some cases Intersedra itself; come from east to trade in exotic goods such as feathers, spices, and handcrafted jewellery or cosmetics.
This wide breadth of diversity has lead Evergrace - for economic reasons as much as egalitarian - to choose to implement particularly tolerant rules concerning individuals of non-Rukhmarite religions. While Ressengia itself is already unusually tolerant of the
Ormr Tradition by the standards of most Rukhmarite countries, the city of Evergrace places particularly few restrictions on the activities of its followers; going so far as to allow public religious celebrations on certain days of the year, in specific parts of the city. Evergrace is also the only city in Ressengia to have an Estrellan church, where Thousandforms congregate to offer up prayers to their deity, the
Rainbow Serpent.
The centrepiece of culture within Evergrace is its chariot races, held in the hippodrome in the east of the city. There, two teams - the blues and the greens - compete against each other in weekly contests attended by over 100,000 people. These serve as the main source of public entertainment in the city, and also, which team an individual supports is a pivotal matter in one's social life. Supporters of one team often quarrel with those of the other, and depending on the results of matches, brawls often break out; and can sometimes even transform into riots. The king of Ressengia is known to support the blues, which has in the past lead to support for the greens being used as an indicator of anti-royal sentiment.
The Docks
The port-town area of Ressengia is the closest thing the city has to an underworld. Where the rest of the city is stone, here the buildings are wooden, and it is in this part of Evergrace where the city's poor reside; drawn there by abundant work as dockhands for the city's innumerable merchants. Wretched, downtrodden, and perhaps worst of all, thick with the pungent smell of fish and other aromatic goods; most reputable folk avoid it like the plague. Nonetheless, it is far from lawless, as guards patrol up and down the streets and piers with a frequency unmatched elsewhere within the city.
Though well-manned by the city watch, the docks have developed a bad reputation among members of the guard, owing to its reputation for violence, and the uncharacteristically high danger to one's own life relative to other parts of the city. As a result of this, it is considered one of the worst places to work for guards, who would much prefer a cushy position in the inner city where they only have to deal with criminals perhaps once or twice a week, instead of once or twice a day. Danger, miserable conditions, and low pay have combined to result in the majority of guards taking bribes from one or more of the wealthy traders in the area; and this corruption has grown so endemic that now all but a scant few of the watchmen are on someone or the other's payroll.
The Merchants
Evergrace's docks are the realm of the merchants. Hundreds of them make their homes in the waterfront, overseeing the transfer and sale of cargo and the coming-and-going of ships, ever hungry for a new way to turn a profit. Though many are Ressengian-born, an equal amount if not more are foreign-born folk who have made their way to the Heart of the World in search of wealth and opportunity, and it is common to see individuals from Asutoa, Heralya, Belyria, Summerlen, and in some cases even far-off Intersedra. These enterprising traders are the lifeblood of the docks, and it is their machinations that create work for the thousands of dockworkers, cargo haulers, food vendors and other peddlers that reside within the area.
In order to secure the greatest possible share of profit for themselves, many have turned to attempting to disrupt or flat out displace their competitors. Merchants will hire gangs of thugs to intimidate their rivals until they pack up and leave, ambushing deliveries and stealing supplies; in some cases going so far as to sink ships destined for the harbour. Though direct violence is rare and murder even more-so, neither are unheard-of. Ironically, the constant threat that merchants now force each other to live under has lead to the creation of a thriving defence industry, which high-profile traders must set aside a not-insignificant portion of their earnings to hire bodyguards from.
Though the wealthiest merchants do not reside in the docks themselves, their towering estates can still be seen in the distance; jutting out above the skyline as an omnipresent reminder of their influence. Three names are known throughout the entirety of the docks and carry with them the weight of power and promise in equal measure: Fidinda Komerco; a company with its origins in the salt wastes of Zemet that holds closer ties to the Vestaltir than any merchant organisation ought to; The Silver Scales, the only commercial organisation in the city of Evergrace to be given an official charter of operations by the Ressengian bureaucracy, and last but not least; The East Pretheyan Trading Company, a trading behemoth with its headquarters in far-off Asutoa. These three giants battle for supremacy with the docks as their playground, while the other, lesser merchants scuttle around their feet and try to avoid being crushed.
Layout
The city of Evergrace is divided roughly into three sections; a western third which consists primarily of farmland, most of which is dedicated to growing fruit and other highly valuable crops, along with small patches of trees and other wild land for public use; the eastern quarter where the king's palace lies, which is also home to a sprawling complex of gardens and green areas, and finally; the centre of the city, where the majority of citizen housing and businesses are located.
