Nexus

Nexus, also known as the City between the River Harlot’s Legs and a hundred other, less complimentary names, is the largest city in the Scavenger Lands, and possibly in Creation. It is known for being the centre for trade and commerce in Creation, and for being a haven for free trade, and the headquarters of the Guild. Nexus sits at the confluence of the Yanaze River, the Gray River, and the Yellow River, some six hundred miles east of Lookshy.

While the Imperial City may well be wealthier, that wealth is concentrated within the hands of the Scarlet Dynasty, while in Nexus, millions of talents of jade and silver change hands every single day. It is a chaotic and confusing place, a city with many rules but few laws, where an ignoble death lurks around every corner.

Districts of Nexus

Bastion

The well-to-do and well-connected of Nexus reside within; any others would do better to stay out. The place where the rich and powerful of Nexus come to live and play, Bastion is a district of large mansions, open parks, clean streets and frequent patrols by well-paid mercenaries. High enough above the river that it doesn’t get flooded, and far enough away from the centre that the smells don’t carry in, even the servants who live here do so in conditions that would make many in other parts of Nexus green with envy.

• Bastion Road: A mercantile street with a large number of very high priced boutiques and expensive shops.
• Brindel Way: A dead-end street with more than 100 houses, no one seems to know anyone who lives there, however.
• Embassy Row: Many of the Confederation and Hundred Kingdom nations have established embassies here.
• Great Forks Gate Bazaar: Like Bastion Road, Great Forks Gate Road is a mercantile street with a large number of very high priced boutiques and expensive shops. In addition, however, the bazaar grounds just inside the Great Forks Gate also serves as a market for specialty labor: all manner of craftsmen and skilled workers set up small shops here, offering their services to the great houses of the district.
• School of Philosophy: The most expensive and elite of the universities in Nexus, the School of Philosophy has some of the wealthiest students and most adept instructors in the city.

Cinnabar District

The cultural and military centre of the city, Cinnabar lines the river and floods regularly. A riverside district, Cinnabar is home to art galleries, public ballrooms, festhalls, theaters, small stadiums, parks, schools, monasteries, libraries, shopping areas, temples, restaurants, teahouses, and cafés of highly variable quality, as well as being the site of annual and severe flooding. It also houses most of the mercenary companies who call Nexus their home, each one generally based within a fortified compound, with walls higher than the worst floodwaters. The residential areas here tend to be rowhouses and small-scale estates modeled on those in Bastion for the slightly better-off.

• Nexus Library: Perhaps the only free thing in the city, the library is open free of charge to any citizen of Nexus (although proving one's citizenship can be difficult without money for bureaucratic paperwork). The city's bureaucratic archives are kept here, and are off-limits to those without a permit from the District Assayers.
• Parko Llana: The city's largest park, it is divided into formal gardens, concert lawns, a botanical garden and athletic fields. The houses in the immediate vicinity are highly prized and very expensive. The western end is a neighborhood of artisans, poets, sculptors and others of high art, while the eastern area is home to the moderately-wealthy and the mistresses of the very wealthy.
• The Player's Menagerie: A large theater and acting school. They perform a wide variety of classical and modern plays, operettas and musicals, tending toward the more ribald and the risque over the dignified.
• Plaza of Rebirth: The city's largest public assembly hall, it features smaller halls that see use as reception halls for weddings and coming of age parties, while the main hall is used for large public parties, dances and performances, as well as a dueling ground, gladiatorial arena and a venue for athletic competitions.
• The House of a Thousand Gems: One of the Courtesan Houses of Cinnabar, the House of a Thousand Gems is known for the artistic integrity of its courtesans. Each of them is not only a work of art herself - she is capable of either performing or creating some of the finest art to be found in Nexus.

Firewander

The epitome of urban nightmare, the Wyld zone at its heart still spits out horrors to plague the city. An urban hell of rickety buildings, makeshift stalls, gang warfare, Wyld-spawned monsters and worse, Firewander is generally inhabited only by those who have no choice in the matter, either through poverty or violence. Scant trade occurs here, and most of that would be illegal anywhere else in the Scavenger Lands and is frowned upon by the “upright” citizenry of Nexus itself, but the denizens make do with what they have.

• Brookside: A small section of affluent houses set apart from the rest of Nexus by waterways that aren't accessible by foot, Brookside isn't on the way to anything and hard to reach, so most people simply never think to visit the place. Which is just the way its citizens like it.
• Filth: A loose collection of drug dens, whorehouses and pleasure stores, with a reputation as a place where anything goes.
• Old Provincial Capitol: Only a golden dome can be seen above the twisting Wyld energies that manifest as flame, smoke and lightning.
• Tellnaught: A beacon of decency in Firewander, Tellnaught's citizens - all hardworking honest folk - collected money among themselves to build a small wall separating their neighborhood from the rest of Firewander's squalid debauchery. Now, they all contribute to a mutual defense fund to hire mercenaries to patrol the walls and keep the filth out.

Nexus District

The commercial and entepreneurial centre of Nexus, more silver pieces change hands here in a day than there are stars in the sky. Home to the Big and Little Markets, the Nexus district is where the real business of the city gets done. Home to the headquarters of the Guild and innumerable other trading companies, merchant organisations and caravan masters, if Bastion is where the rich and powerful rest, then the Nexus district is where they work. Nexus also has a reputation as the place where nightlife can be found.

• Big Market: The massive market where huge amounts of goods are bought and sold, generally by business owners and caravaneers, who then break the lots up into smaller parcels for sale.
• Brood Market: The market where animals of all kinds are sold.
• Coffleblock Market: The city's massive slave market.
• Council Building: The building where the Emissary makes his pronouncements. A heliograph on its roof is often used to transmit messages to the Council Tower on Sentinel's Hill.
• Diamond: A small, well-guarded street of jewelers and gemcutters.
• Dyer Square: Originally an area of town for dyers, it has now become a major mercantile row.
• Gongfang Row: A street made up primarily of insurance agents.
• The Harlotry: An expensive red-light district filled with pleasures for nearly every palate.
• Imperium: The market where Realm merchants set up their wares.
• Little Market: The tremendously-size bazaar filled with all the products in Creation, it seems, and thousands upon thousands of people. It is easy to become lost here.
• Nexus Pool: The protected dock system that bustles with shipping activity.
• Night Market: The market, which is only open at night, where the things the Council has forbidden to be sold during the daylight hours are sold.
• Paper Lane: A street where paper and book merchants and craftsmen predominate.
• Sawdust Square: Area with a high concentration of wood-workers and carpenters.
• Yinhang Square: The massive square in the center of which rises the Guild headquarters, towering over the city around it.

Nighthammer District

The noise of forges, smithies and other manufacturing processes resound night and day throughout the streets of Nighthammer. Industry rules in Nighthammer, a place where three or four times a day thousands of workers travel to and from their places of work within the forges, smithies, looms and others factories that produce the thousands of tonnes of goods that pour out of the city and into Creation on a daily basis. The air here is thick with smog and the rivers are heavily polluted by toxic effluents, both by-products of the production that brings so much wealth into Nexus.

• The Arsenal: The site of the city's main weapon manufactories. Nearby is the Iron League's parade grounds.
• Fishmarket: Right beside the Nighthammer Pool, the Fishmarket is the largest place for purchasing fish and other foods, from both river and ocean.
• Lookshy-Town: A small community of Lookshyan citizens built up around the Seventh Legon's embassy and purchasing agents offices. It also boasts a small landing areas for skyships.
• Nighthammer Pool: Larger than the Nexus Pool, Nighthammer is also shallower. Most of the ships here carry ore in and iron goods out.
• Nightside: Beside the Nighthammer Pool, Nightside is a tenement ghetto that sees frequent flooding and the filth from the nearby smelters and forges.
• Riverlaine: A low-rent area of town adjacent to the River Park. Most of the lower-levels of the buildings here are abandoned and rotting thanks to the frequent floods.
• River Park: The least-patrolled park in Nexus, it is also very vibrant and wild, thanks to the frequent flooding that happens here.
• Sijantown: A small community of Sijanese, the dead of Nexus are usually brought to Sijantown in preparation for transport to Sijan proper. A small branch of the Mortician's Guild of Sijan operates out of this area.
• "University of Nexus": A failed attempt to establish a place of learning and perhaps clean up the area around the Nighthammer Pool, these buildings are now all but abandoned in any official capacity. Out-of-work scholars and students with little money do meet here daily, however, willing to teach those who come to them in exchange for other teaching or survival goods.

Sentinel's Hill

A crossroads of most of the city of Nexus, Sentinel's Hill acts as a buffer between Firewander and most of the rest of the city. Once a No Man's Land, it has slowly become filled in with tenement buildings, apartments and townhouses. Many of the streets are just wide enough for foot traffic.

• Forkstown: A small ghetto for citizens from Great Forks.
• Calintown: A small neighborhood of Calinti.
• Maruktown: A small but prosperous neighborhood, with a large horse market at its center.

The Undercity

The Undercity of Nexus is a series of caves and tunnels under Cinnabar and Sentinel's Hills. The black fog of poor man's breath clots and taints the air underground. The poor and those who are just scraping by live and work down here. Small, toarchlit markets thrive in the sunless enclave. Three main routes make get around underground strait-forward.

Government

Nexus is rules by the Council of Entities, a group shrouded in mystery. Theirs is the power to add and modify the Civilities of the Incunabulum. Their edicts are enforced by the mercenaries of the city and the mysterious Emissary.

• Brueghel, the Evening Master; member of the Council of Entities in charge of secret and public business as well as the city archives, libraries and the licensing of teachers
• Ephiselle, Midnight Queen; member of the Council of Entities in charge of spies and informants
• Hayle, the Midday Husband; member of the Council of Entities in charge of public entertainment and the city's overall good health
• Kratz, the Astrologer; member of the Council of Entities with curiously undefined responsibilities
• Master Gen, Minister of Ways; member of the Council of Entities in charge of the district Assayers
• Pellicia, Dawn Sergeant; member of the Council of Entities in charge of the city's defense
• Thalevar, August Councilor of the Eclipse; member of the Council of Entities in charge of docks and waterways
• Udelph, the Doctor; member of the Council of Entities that represents the common people of Nexus
• The Emissary, Mysterious enforcer of the Council's will

The Incunabulum

The body of rules that passes for law within the bounds of Nexus, the Incunabulum consists of thousands upon thousands of pages, all carefully indexed, as each new edict by a member of the Council of Entities must be checked against every previous entry, and any previous edicts that it contradicts are removed. It comprises the Dogma, the six unchanging rules of Nexus; its capital crimes, enforced by the Emissary; and the Civilities, the chaotic and ever-changing body of rules, great and small.

The Dogma

• No taxes shall be raised, save by the council.
• None shall obstruct trade.
• None shall bring an army into Nexus.
• No-one shall commit wanton violence.
• None may falsely claim the council's name or sanction.
• None shall harbour a fugitive from the council's wrath.

Organizations and Factions

The House of a Thousand Gems

One of the premier Courtesan Houses of Cinnabar, the House of a Thousand Gems is run by a woman who is called the Jewel-Matron and always has a personal name of a gemstone of some kind; currently, it is run by Jewel-Matron Opal. There are six Arts within the House, each one named for a gem. These Arts involve years of study and mastery, with those studying them adding the name of the gem to their own names (usually performance names, rather than altering their personal names). These Arts are:

• The Sapphire Arts: Among the most prestigious and grueling of the Arts, Sapphire performers are also the most sought-after. These courtesans are best known as dancers and performers, drawing the eye and evoking passions through music. They are also known as skilled conversationalists - in many ways, their art is not a singular thing, but the art of entertainment as a whole, whether personal or for an audience. Though the vulgar often assume that the Sapphire courtesans are prostitutes, that is not the case - no patron may command their intimacy, though they have been known to grant it to those patrons whose company they genuinely enjoy.
• The Emerald Arts: The Emerald courtesans are preeminent poets and authors, studying the arts of not simply composing with the written word, but of crafting that word in beautiful form. They are also the finest calligraphers and illuminatrices in the House of a Thousand Gems, and it has been in vogue for at least a generation now to have wills and other public proclamations read by one of the Emeralds.
• The Diamond Arts: Diamond courtesans specialize in pleasing the ears not of mortals, but of the gods. They are well-known for their efficacious prayers and hymns, and many temples in Nexus hire choruses of Diamond courtesans to perform the prayers of their gods on festival days. They also are impressive religious historians, and many of them demonstrate a talent for writing new prayers.
• The Ruby Arts: Passionate and brash are the Ruby courtesans, most of whom are actresses in the Nexus operas. These operas almost always tell tales of great deeds, stirring heroics and epic warfare, so the Ruby courtesans are known for their acrobatic arts that mimic flashy fighting arts. Their fight scenes, generally performed with the help of rope-rigs and other on-stage trickery, are always impressive and stirring to watch. Outside of the opera, Ruby courtesans are well-known for their fire-spinning, fire-dancing and theatric battle scenes played out for audiences, as well as complex acrobatic shows.
• The Amethyst Arts: The Amethyst courtesans have a well-deserved reputation as mourners and memorialists, hired to make extravagant shows of grief at funerals, to sing dirges in praise of the dead and to write heartfeld homilies and memorials for them. It is almost unheard of for the funereal of a well-off individual in Nexus to not have one of the Amethyst courtesans, elaborately veiled, to see them onto the Black Barges.
• The Onyx Arts: Fear and pain are the specialties of the Onyx courtesans, who specialize in elaborate domination and torture performance art and play. They are not prostitutes any more than their Sapphire sisters, though their services are in much demand by those who find sexual excitement in such. The Onyx Arts specialize in intimidation and the creation of an atmosphere of fear - some government and Guild officials have found that hiring an Onyx courtesan to terrorize and question a victim is at least as useful as hiring a professional torturer.

Martial Arts

• Dedicates of the Ovanda Sutra: Originating in Great Forks, the Dedicates study the scriptures of the sex goddess Ovanda, who teaches that extreme indulgence is just as spiritually demanding as asceticism. All her monks study the Orgiastic Fugitive Style of martial arts. Her worship has proven popular, given the holy lovemaking techniques her Dedicates share with everyone at the holy brothel-temples established in her name in Nexus, Great Forks and along the Grey River.
• Fight Clubs of Nexus: The rough streets of Nexus boast more than a few impromptu organizations meant to do one thing: hone the street fighting skills of its members. Sometimes the fights are for money, but only one thing is important - developing skill. These clubs are an excellent place to contact martial artists of a variety of different styles, among them Even Blade Style, Five Dragon Style, Jade Mountain Style and Seafaring Hero Style. But the style most commonly found - even more than all the others put together - is First Pulse Style, which was developed in Nexus.