The City of Lankhmar. The City and Its Reach Though outsiders speak of Lankhmar as a single city, the truth is far less tidy. Within her weathered gray walls lies only the Heart of Lankhmar—a maze of alleys, arcades, and towers so tightly bound together that even sunlight must wedge its way through the smoke. The Overlord’s decree calls this the City Proper, yet all who trade, steal, or worship within her orbit know that Lankhmar’s reach stretches far beyond her crumbling ramparts. Within the Walls Inside those ancient walls live some fifty thousand souls, pressed into buildings that climb like weeds toward the sky. The oldest stone foundations date back to the city’s founding; the newest timberwork is already leaning. Most houses stand three to seven stories high, though in the denser wards—Temple, Crafts, and Mercantile—some rise eight or even nine stories, stacked room upon room until they creak in the sea wind like ships at anchor. Ground floors serve as workshops and taverns, glowing through their shutter slats at all hours. Above them live the families, apprentices, and tenants who crowd the narrow stairwells. Attics are rented by the night; basements are carved two, sometimes four levels deep, where cool air and secrecy are valuable commodities. Between these vertical warrens, bridges and balconies connect rooftops, forming a second city suspended in the haze. The streets below never sleep. Fishmongers bicker with drovers, hawkers sing above the din, and every window spills a different scent—tar, bread, incense, sweat. It is a crush of humanity and hope, and the city thrives because of it. The tighter Lankhmar squeezes, the more gold she wrings from her people. Beyond the Walls South of the Marsh Gate sprawls what the citizens call Southern Lankhmar, though no charter claims it and no Watchman will patrol it. Here, along both sides of the King’s Road, the city unravels into a chaos of workshops, huts, and half-built houses that stretch for several miles into the lowland mist. The road itself is the only thing resembling order—its rutted spine lined with stalls, wayhouses, and cheap inns serving travelers bound for the southern provinces. Off the road, the paths twist and multiply into a maze of dirt lanes and footworn tracks, where three-storied timber homes lean beside canvas-roofed market tents. Rain turns the ground to mud; in summer, the dust clings like smoke. Here, fifty thousand souls live and work—dockhands who couldn’t afford the city rents, freed slaves, wandering laborers, pilgrims too poor for temple lodging, and guildsmen fallen out of favor. The buildings vary wildly: sturdy stone workshops built by old guild carpenters stand beside wagon-houses patched with sailcloth and tin. Shanty towns bloom and vanish with the seasons, some so transient they are known only by the color of their tents. Yet even here, life thrives. Tinkers and smiths ply their trade; children run between wagons; and at dusk, the air fills with the scent of cooking fires and the low hum of song drifting up the King’s Road toward the gates. To most citizens, Southern Lankhmar is an eyesore—an ungoverned sprawl that feeds the city’s labor and filth alike. But to those who live here, it is freedom: a place without curfew, tax, or decree, where one can vanish or begin again. When night falls and the lights of the inner city burn faint on the horizon, the people of the south look upon those walls not with envy, but with pity. For they say the walls keep more than danger out—they keep the dreams in. The Breathing City Thus Lankhmar breathes. Each dawn, thousands surge through her gates to bargain, to beg, or to steal. Each dusk, the tide flows back to the ropewalks and marsh huts beyond. The city is one body with two souls—the walled and the unwalled, the lawful and the lawless, forever feeding one another. Those within the walls boast that they are true citizens. Those without say the walls are a prison, and freedom begins where the paving stones give way to mud. Both speak truth, for this is Lankhmar: ancient, perilous, and alive—a city that has not grown an inch in stone for five hundred years, yet rises ever higher toward the heavens. Meta-Note: On the Sewer Network layer, all Marker groups don't quite align with the buildings they mark on the base layer map due to a slight shift in scanning. Because of this, it is recommended to uncheck all marker groups when viewing Lankhmar on the Sewer Network Level, or to at least note that there's a slight shift.
