Opulence

Opulence is a city of contrasts, where silks and gold shimmer in the Inner Circle while the Warrens are smothered in filth and soot. It is home to over a hundred-thousand souls, drawn from every corner of Everwealth and beyond. Humans make up the majority, though Dwarfish, Elfese, Smallfolk and Orcish alike hold deep roots within its infrastructure, dominating fields of finance, metallurgy, and academia. Orcs and Goblins, often seen as lesser 'greenbacks' by the common folk, carve out livelihoods in the underbelly of industry, working the docks, forges, as hired muscle or walking the smuggling routes that keep the city running. The wealth divide is a canyon, the nobility and merchant princes of the Inner Circle live in opulent manors with personal guards, rare imported wines, and three layers of walls that keep the city’s ugliness at bay. The Merchant’s Quarter thrives in controlled chaos, where craftsmen, traders, and scholars barter knowledge and goods alike with folk from every corner of the map. Beyond the second wall, the Outer Ring labors under the weight of existence, where thieves, struggling artisans, and soldiers’ widows outnumber those who still have hope of ever progressing successfully into the heart of The Great Muse. Beyond the walls altogether lie the Warrens, a practically lawless sprawl of desperation, ruled by gangs, rogue priests, and warlords who answer to no one, right outside the king's direct sphere of influence.

Opulence is ruled by King Duncan Valmore, though his throne is little more than a gilded cage. Power in Opulence does not belong to a single man, it belongs to politics, an assembly of noble houses, merchant lords, and arcane regulators who dictate policy from behind closed doors. The king decrees, but politics decides, ensuring that wealth, influence, and stability remain in the hands of those who understand the game. The Prime Minister, Saxon Casodes, serves as the liaison between the throne and the city’s governing bodies, overseeing taxation, trade policies, and diplomatic negotiations. Governor Dixon Butts is the iron hand of the city, commanding the Ivory Guard, city watch, and contracted mercenary companies to maintain order. Corruption is not whispered of in dark corners, it is an open, accepted practice, with bribes, favors, and political alliances shaping law as much as any decree. For all its laws and grand institutions, Opulence is held together by force, wealth, and the illusion of order, and should any of these falter, the city’s gilded streets will run red.

Opulence is protected by three colossal walls, each an impenetrable barrier of stone, steel, and watchtowers. The Ivory Guard, an elite force of the Arcane Coalition’s finest, ensures that the Inner Circle remains untouched by the chaos beyond its gates. The city watch patrols the Merchant’s Quarter and Outer Ring, though their loyalty is often for sale. The naval fleet at the Golden Crescent serves as both a defense force and an enforcer of the Coalition’s will, ensuring that Opulence’s wealth flows uninterrupted. Despite its defenses, the greatest threats to the city do not come from without, but from within.

The economy of Opulence flourishes in abundance, the country's primary hub of global trade, finances, magick and technology, the epicenter of arguably the most prosperous of the Three Lands. Opulence, even defaced by numerous cataclysms, has maintained a market of practically every service imaginable by both relation to the Throne and the sheer scale of the Capital's near-hundred mile stretch. Though, quantity, even as desperate for resources as many of the country's citizens are, may not be the blessing as it seems; Such a large variety of businesses to suit your needs, the quality of some services may be... less... than others. Enforcement of safety regulations being difficult enough on such a widespread scale before the present time of war, many guards that once inspected wares as part of their patrol are now shipped in Platoons at a time to the front, leaving lackadaisical health standards and a proportionately increasing necessity to pay "protection money" to avoid losing their groceries on the journey home. If one is not careful, they could find themselves in the establishment of a murderous organ smuggler, or ingesting a lethal healing potion bought at a bargain from a street Alchemist who "forgot" his License. Beneath the glitter of the Inner Circle and the clamoring wealth of the Merchant’s Quarter, Opulence has grown fat on a quieter trade, the buying and selling of lives. The capital is the epicenter of Everwealth’s slave economy, not simply because it is rich, but because it hungers for spectacle. The great amphitheatres of the Merchant’s Quarter thrive on pit-fights, where Orcs, Goblins, and Beast-kin are paraded before torchlit crowds, their blood a currency as real as Capras. Noble houses commission duels to the death, wagering fortunes on who will fall, while merchants and pit-masters scour the Outer Ring for “cheap stock” to feed the games. The Gilded Hand oversees much of this trade, laundering slaves through smuggler tunnels and the shipyards of the Golden Crescent, where bribes turn chained caravans into “indentured servants” on parchment. Even the Warrens, wretched as they are, teem with slavers’ dens and auction halls disguised as taverns, where desperate folk vanish for debts they cannot pay. The ivory spires may gleam, but every stone is underpinned by this commerce in flesh. In Opulence, slavery is not hidden, it is a shadow cast long and deep across the capital’s brilliance, normalized by law, profit, and bloodlust. Those who prosper here, whether nobles in the Inner Circle or criminals in the Warrens, know the same truth: Opulence rewards ambition, no matter how many backs must be broken to uphold it.

The sprawling heart of Everwealth, Opulence is built upon centuries of wealth and war, its foundations layered with the ruins of fallen empires. Polished stone roads stretch through the Inner Circle, where gold-trimmed lamplights and towering marble statues exude majesty. The aqueducts and reservoirs, remnants of an age long past, still supply clean water to the elite, while the outer districts rely on wells, rain collection, and water-sellers who charge more than most can afford. The Golden Crescent, Opulence’s lifeline to the world, is a marvel of engineering, where iron-clad cranes haul exotic goods, where warships lie in wait to deter smugglers and raiders alike. The city’s sewer system is vast but treacherous, its tunnels clogged with debris, vermin, and the secrets of those who wish to remain unseen. The farther one moves from the Inner Circle, the more crumbling facades, rotting beams, and neglected streets reveal the city's true cost of excess. Opulence does not lack resources, it simply chooses where to place them.

The city is divided into three concentric rings, each separated by monolithic walls, a clear hierarchy of wealth and influence.

• At the city’s core is the Inner Circle, where the Ivory Tower looms over noble estates, grand libraries, and the kingdom’s most prestigious institutions. Here, every stone is immaculate, every street lined with merchants selling rare luxuries, and every whisper could shape the fate of a kingdom.

• Beyond the second great wall, the Outer Ring houses the working class, struggling artisans, and those who live and die by the city’s tides. The streets here are loud, unpolished, and desperate, where gangs, mercenaries, and overworked city watchmen ensure that the weak do not rise above their station.

• Beyond the final wall lies the Warrens, a district the city refuses to acknowledge. Here, the law is an illusion, and those who survive do so by wit, blade, or blind luck.

Opulence thrives on commerce, cruelty, and control. Its wealth is not measured in coin alone, but in obedience, spectacle, and silence. At the city’s heart, the Golden Exchange governs Everwealth’s economy like a living deity, deals inked in candlelight can collapse dynasties before dawn. Ledgers spill more blood than blades, and a single miscalculated debt can doom a noble house as surely as any war. The Scholar’s Guild Archives serve as the city’s mind, hoarding forbidden tomes, censored histories, and heretical magickal treatises. Knowledge is traded like gold, edited, erased, or embellished to please the throne. Beneath them lie the sealed Arcane Vaults, where relics too potent to destroy slumber beneath the watch of the Arcane Coalition, humming softly with malice through their wards. Industry is the city’s flesh. The Foundries belch smoke and miracles alike, brewing elixirs that heal, enslave, or kill by design; The last living relics of The Lost Ages. The master forges of the Outer Ring craft weapons of uncanny sharpness and whispered enchantment, tools of artistry and atrocity both. In the Grand Theatre of Opulence, bloodsport is the crown’s most beloved diversion, slaves, debtors, and beasts alike forced to fight for noble wagers beneath roaring crowds. It is not forbidden; it is celebrated, a civic ritual where cruelty wears the mask of culture. At the city’s edge, Lough Lord, feeding the lifeblood of trade. The Golden Crescent Shipyards raise war galleys and merchant hulks alike, their cranes never sleeping. Beneath, the Smuggler’s Vein pulses with illicit commerce, where gold buys silence and contraband magicks move unseen. Opulence’s greatest asset, however, is dominion itself, the ability to shape history, to decide what may exist and what must vanish. Here, wealth is worship, mercy a myth, and every triumph paid for in blood.

Power belongs not to the throne, but to those who control the city’s wealth and knowledge. The Scholar's Guild hoards the wisdom of ages, deciding which knowledge is shared and which is buried. The Merchant's Consortium governs trade, ensuring that gold flows only where it is meant to. The Arcane Coalition, both revered and feared, regulates magick, distributing Licenses to Practice Magick sparingly, lest another tragedy caused by it fuel the world’s fear of the arcane arts any further. Beneath them, the Gilded Hand thrives in the shadows, running the city’s black market, espionage rings, and criminal enterprises with ruthless efficiency.

Opulence’s origins stretch far beyond the established rule of Everwealth, its foundations laid upon the ambitions of those who sought fortune, power, and dominion over the untamed lands of old. Before it became a city, it was a dragon-hunter’s encampment, a fortified settlement built by those who once roamed the land in pursuit of great beasts, carving wealth from their bones, hoards, and hides. These early hunters, hardened by danger, erected the first crude fortifications where the Ivory Tower now stands, unknowingly sowing the seeds of what would become the beating heart of a kingdom. As time passed, the encampment evolved into a trading post, attracting merchants, artisans, and opportunists who saw profit in supplying the dragon-hunters. The wealth extracted from beastbone, dragon-hide, and rare alchemical components fueled the first markets, drawing the attention of powerful factions. Lords and warlords fought to claim the growing stronghold, spilling blood over the promise of control. The fort became a merchant capital, its walls expanding to accommodate the ever-growing sprawl of commerce and Elfese ambition. During the Great Schism, Opulence became a warzone, a city torn between factions vying for dominion over the shattered remnants of the world before. Nobles, merchants, and scholars banded together to preserve what wealth and knowledge they could, striking bargains with warriors and magi alike to ensure their survival. By the war’s end, when the dust settled and power had been consolidated, Opulence emerged as the seat of the new kingdom, a throne forged in war and coin alike. For nearly two thousand years, the city has thrived, endured, and reinvented itself, surviving invasions, assassinations, plagues, and economic collapse. It has outlasted kings who sought to rule it, rebellions that sought to burn it, and countless enemies who sought to seize it. Today, Opulence remains a monument to ambition, a city where fortunes are made and lost in the span of a whisper, and where history is written not by the victors, but by those who know how to play the game.

Nobles and scholars flock to the Ivory Tower, the Golden Exchange, and the Grand Theatres, where art, politics, and scandal intertwine. The Moonlit Baths, an elite retreat, is whispered to be a place where alliances are forged in secret and rivalries are settled in the steam-laden air.

Much like the name the capital bares, the buildings which fill the ringed walls of Opulence are lavishly decorated, elegance and striking presence prioritized over simple functionality typical of Everwealth's cities. The architecture here consists of elaborately designed buildings of imposing scale and complex, asymmetrical designs, each brightly colored estate more akin to an artistic expression of the builder than a home or business. Grand spires, textured walls, and steep, multi-faceted roofs adorned with decorative finials are a common sight amid the decorative iron fences surrounding it's finely sculpted structures looming overhead sometimes over a dozen stories tall. But as the Aaracokra saying goes, "shimmer does not silver make", for said focus on extravagant ornamentation often leads to confusing housing layouts atop expensive repairs of their unique, ornate furnishings and unfortunately cramped spaces.

A consequence of the continent essentially folding in on-itself like a half-open book when the impact of the meteor-like great dragon shattered Gaiatia during The Fall; Opulence sits atop an endless ocean of hills, crags, massive jutting cliffs and rocks protruding from the ground like spears in the hand of a valiant warrior.

A warm-to-mild climate with semi-frequent rainfall and very frequent fog drifting from Lough Lord's expanse.

Opulence is a city built upon wealth and acquisition, yet its true riches lie in the resources it controls rather than those it possesses. Though the city itself lacks raw materials, its dominion over trade routes, industry, and the waters of Lough Lord, fed by the Snaketongue River, allows it to dictate the flow of resources across Everwealth with calculated restraint. Lough Lord serves as both trade hub and larder, its fisheries supplying rare aquatic delicacies unseen elsewhere. The mineral-rich silt from its bed nourishes nearby farms, though heavy tariffs ensure no resource moves without profit. The Snaketongue River delivers timber, stone, and harvests from the fertile inland plains, as well as iron, copper, and coal from the northern mines, fuel for the city’s forges and alchemical foundries. Through these same routes flow reagents both rare and mundane, feeding Opulence’s potion industry. The nearby Ashwood provides fireproof timber and petrified wood, though logging is perilous amid its tainted beasts and lingering magicks. To the northwest, the Bog of Lies offers poisonous herbs and fungi sought by alchemists and assassins alike. Beneath the city, half-collapsed quarries yield limestone, slate, and silver, though deeper shafts are abandoned, haunted by rumor and worse. Most valuable of all is Opulence’s monopoly over magick-infused materials: processed Hexsteel, enchanted alloys, and rare alchemical essences, all strictly controlled by the Arcane Coalition. Magick may be feared, but its profit is law. Opulence does not live by its soil, it thrives by command. Every vein of trade runs through its coffers, every resource chained to its price.