The Merchant's Quarter

Easily the physically largest of the city’s districts, the Merchant’s Quarter is also the most heavily popular but not nearly so packed and overcrowded as the Fisherman’s Quarter. It is just as lively as that region of the city but with a very different tone to its activities. The smells that waft here are far more pleasant, though the scent of human sweat and labor always runs as an undercurrent with the perfumes of the nobility. The sounds of musicians ring in the ears of passers-by and merchants openly hawk their wares, promising life, health, wealth, well-being, or the Fortunes’ favor to whoever comes within earshot of them. This part of the city is constantly alive and buzzing with activity at all hours of the day, though it dies off quickly in the evening. It is populated by tradesmen and merchants, heimin and samurai alike, and exhibits a perpetual state of semi-organized chaos. The Merchant’s Quarter is dominated by its wharves. While the residential and mercantile areas are split into neighborhoods called Two-Gates, Downhill, and the Fields of Gold, it is the three great wharves that dominate the affairs of the district. The Iron, Grand, and Northeast Wharves handle all the heavy shipping into the city, and are considerably larger than their sisters in the Fisherman’s Quarter across the river. They can handle any vessel capable of navigating the River of Gold, and every day sees shipments brought in, taxes levied, and business conducted with an efficiency that would make the sternest Yasuki taskmasters proud. Heimin here jump to their tasks with zeal, knowing there is always someone waiting to take their place if they do not meet the standards of their demanding patrons. Failure could easily reduce them to working in the Fisherman’s Quarter, a fate some heimin might consider worse than death or imprisonment. Mercantile matters are discussed in this part of the city with far more gusto than in many other places in the Empire. Coin flows like water as business is transacted with rapid-fire speed. Even samurai here sometimes find it easier to simply conduct their business themselves, rather than endure the delays and inefficiency of working through heimin intermediaries… just another example of how samurai find life in this city disturbing and unsettling compared to other cities of the Empire. It would be easy to lose sight of the more notable locations within the Merchant Quarter simply because they all seem to change with each passing generation. Very few shops are held for multiple generations, for fortunes change constantly in Ryoko Owari.