Shabbis
The Green City of Jasper, as Shabbis is poetically named, lies in the Gulf of Shabbis on the coast of the Boiling Sea, north of Cinnabar Bay. Three Rivers converge at the city. The Laisong River runs along the north side of the city, and aqueducts from it provide water for most of the Upper Districts. To the south, the Chuba and the Jeikhan Rivers merge and spread into a mire of slow streams and muddy hummocks before they eventually ooze into the Gulf of Shabbis. Lower parts of the city are prone to flooding during the rainy season, or even at high tides.
This city of a thousand wonders is literally built of jasper, at least in part. Centuries ago, an earthquake exposed an amazing deposit of the material commonly known as Khemitian jasper in the Scythirian Mountains near the headwaters of the Chuba River. City engineers were able to quarry it like marble, and most of the palaces and civic buildings located on a hill in the center of the city are made of the lustrous green stone. Other important buildings or wealthy residences are at least faced with the material. In addition, the walls are another type of green stone and have been polished by hundreds of years of convicts and slaves, so they also gleam in the sun.
The walled holdings of the merchant lords who dominate the city are at the highest reach of land between the rivers. The government center of the city is slightly lower, with the Merchants’ Hall claiming the most prominent place. Beneath that are the districts of merchants and markets, then the craftspeople, and then the warehouses and crowded tenements of laborers. Near the docks and outside the walls, along the rivers, are slums that teem with people trying to get along in any way they can. Each merchant lord controls a district of the city; some districts are also oddly shaped as a result of negotiations for control and profit. Merchant lords are almost sovereign in their own districts, as long as they do nothing to hurt trade.
Along with its “thousand wonders,” the Green City is also known as the source of a thousand plagues. Its swampy lowlands and dismal slums are infested by swarms of rats and insects known to carry many types of diseases, which range from the common threat of malaria to the unusually virulent Shabbisian Plague. The rats are impossible to keep off the ships in the harbor, so most countries of Libynos refuse to do business in Shabbis or allow Shabbisian ships into their ports for fear of spreading the plague. Ships from distant Akados still call here, though; the governments of their distant countries have not heard about the disease threats, and the traders themselves choose to take risks for the sake of profit.
Originally started by settlers from the Jaati region, the citizens of Shabbis now claim ancestry from dozens of countries and many types of people, including some whose forebears were not even humanoid. Languages abound, although Meeruwhan is most commonly spoken, and much bargaining in the markets is done by gestures. Of course, with the din of people in the market districts, sellers and buyers are unlikely to be able to hear each other anyway. (The Upper Districts are slightly quieter.)
Religion in the Green City is a jumble of beliefs, calling on deities and powers from Jaati in the north to Bhanakhiri in the far south to the remote City-State of Castorhage in the distant west. Aside from a large temple to the combined Ghotran gods located in the city center, temples and shrines are crowded in wherever they can fit and may not match the average worshipper’s expectations. Lacking the space for freestanding buildings, deities might have a shrine in an alcove of a workroom or tavern, or a temple in part of an upper floor of a mercantile building.
Settlement
Shabbis, Great City of
Type
City
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