Brinegate

Brinegate is not a city that was planned. It grew, over several generations, around the intersection of two things that were planned: the gate complex that controls passage between the Middle and Outer Tiers, and the Wall itself. Everything else — the neighborhoods, the markets, the particular density of inns and money-changers and people who know which guards prefer information to coin — accumulated the way things accumulate around any chokepoint of significant traffic.

The city’s population is in constant flux. The wet season brings an influx of traders, adventurers, and refugees from the Outer Tier who would rather not be exposed when the Leviathans rise. The dry season empties it again, partly. Some people come to Brinegate intending to pass through and find, after a few months, that they have simply stopped leaving.

The Wall District

The Wall cuts through the eastern side of the city, its lower sections visible from most neighborhoods. The stone is old — older than the current empire’s records — and the Leviathan-bled soil that has accumulated in its shadow produces vegetation that grows wrong: too fast, too dense, with a quality of intention that makes experienced botanists uncomfortable.

Wall maintenance is handled by a garrison based in the eastern quarter. Civilians are not permitted on the Wall’s face or in the immediate access corridors. This prohibition is widely understood and moderately observed.

The Last Sound Inn

One of the older establishments in the middle district, the Last Sound is named for a story that most Brinegate residents know in three different versions. The most common: a musician played his final performance there, on the night before the first wet season in living memory, and the sound of it was so complete that the room remembers it still. The inn keeps this reputation carefully. The wine is adequate. The soup is better.