Three Towns

There are three towns that exist in close proximity, each dependent on the others and close enough to get to in two or three days' ride or a week's travel on foot. The lands between are dotted with curiosities, small inns, farmstead with dark secrets.

The first is a port town. The town trades in the goods from the other towns, but also has a district of warehouses cut directly into the rocky hillsides. These warehouses are packed with spices, magical goods, fine liquors, exotic woods, etc.

Near the dockside is a place called Fortune-Tellers' Row, a long street dense with little shops and foyers and absolutely packed with fortune-tellers. While this isn't quite the principal occupation of the town it brings in more money through a special kind of tax than one might expect. Almost every sailor that comes through town stops by the row to get their next voyage's fortune told. The fortune-tellers come in all kinds and at all prices. Some use cards, some dice or bones or tea or birds or entrails or the bodies of the dead or astrology and numerology and books like the i-ching.

The town also plays host to an academy of the fine arts. Most of the students learn history, religious studies, mathematics, martial leadership and fighting skills. Many take courses on navigation and sailing, as well as naval combat. For a very select few, usually identified in their first or second year, the invitation is extended to begin studying the arcane. For those that show an inclination to the mystic arts the normal schooling continues, but the bulk of their time is given over to arcana.

The second town is a religious village. The leadership is clergy, the guards are paladins and zealots, the law is religious law, crimes are not just criminal but sinful, etc. Everyone in the town goes to religious ceremonies as a requirement for living there - anyone who were to shun the practice would soon be run out of town. The town makes its money from mining and stonework. There's logging and farming in the countryside, and ranching too, but the greatest value of the town is in the quarries. Huge chunks of stone are cut, pulverized, carved, and etc. The town itself is positively decked out in statuary and beautiful stonework.

The third town is, who knows, maybe martial in the extreme. A fortress built on the edges of a mountainous forest where goblins and orcs and stranger things dwell. The population there is accustomed to living indoors, nobody goes out except with an escort of riders and archers. The village itself is built into hillsides and stone bulwarks. Rooms and houses are built side-by-side with each other on steep stair-stepped streets. Space is at a premium, because every square foot has to be defensible and defended at need. Construction is such that if one house is burnt the walls will collapse, spilling sand onto the fire and likely putting it out. Some walls are constructed to fall with a push by a strong horse (or a team of three or four men), so that they can block the intrusion of an army.

The village is difficult to support, normally, but is right between two streams plentiful with fish, and the forest has been cut back a few miles in every direction from it. Subsistence farming is common, and beyond that they churn out fine finished products from raw materials. They're especially well respected for their arms and armor, of course. However, they produce carved wooden goods, blacksmith's puzzles, horseshoes (and also warhorses to wear them), all manner of stuff. The rest of their income is in the form of taxes drawn from the surrounding countryside to keep the roads clear of bandits and the orcish hordes hidden in the woods.