Setting Notes - Eleder

Eleder

LN small city
Corruption +1; Crime +0; Economy +3; Law +3; Lore +2,
Society +1
Qualities insular, prosperous, racially intolerant (Mwangi), strategic location
Danger +5


Demographics
Government autocracy
Population 8,900 (8,000 humans [3,000 colonials, 5,000
Mwangi], 500 halflings, 200 dwarves, 100 elves, 100 others)


Notable NPCs
Baron Utilinus, Grand Custodian of Sargava (LN male human cleric of Iomedae 10)
General Septimia Arodatus, Grand Praetor of Sargava, commander of the Sargavan Guard (N female half-elf fighter 11)
Commander Ezio Egorius, Praetor of Eleder (LG male human paladin of Iomedae 8)
Lady Madrona Daugustana, matriarch of Eleder (LE female human aristocrat 12)
Briga, owner of the Sargava Club (CG female half-orc barbarian 6)

Marketplace
Base Value 5,600 gp; Purchase Limit 37,500 gp; Spellcasting 6th
Minor Items 4d4; Medium Items 3d4; Major Items 1d6

ELEDER HARBOR
Eleder Harbor is a masterwork of oldstyle Chelish design and engineering. When the colony was first settled, the harbor’s calm, shallow waters were only accessible by small crafts such as oarboats and dories. Larger ocean-faring vessels would moor or anchor in the deeper waters of Desperation Bay. While the bay remained relatively safe from storms and rough waters, these ships quickly became easy prey for pirates and other such maritime scavengers. To protect their investments, wealthy merchants and other influential city folk commissioned the dredging of a new harbor—one able to accommodate the docking requirements of larger ships and safeguard them against attacks.

Jetties at the harbor’s mouth serve as a barricade against hostile ships and control and limit the number of ships entering the port. The jetties run between low watchtowers, which overlook waterways running into and out of the main harbor. Beyond, a curved and sandy shoal divides the harbor into two main sections, separating the Portside docks and the granite piers of New Haliad from the Grallus Locks—a large, dredged channel currently owned by the Nine Forts Collective.

Enveloping the colonial settlements surrounding Eleder Harbor is nearly a mile of tightly packed, crude, muddaub huts and dusty, rat-infested streets, known to locals as Outerwall, or the Zenj Slums. While Outerwall’s population dwarfs that of the rest of the city, many of its community members lack even the most basic necessities. Crime, begging, vagrancy, hunger, and disease (malaria in particular) are endemic. Those able to find employment must often walk miles and stay away for weeks, even months, to work long hours in the salt and gold mines of wealthy Sargavans, or earn even lower wages breaking their backs in the pineapple fields. Those lucky enough to learn a trade may attempt to ply it in Lower Harbor or can apply to serve in the city militia as career soldiers.

Eleder gouges itself into the craggy coast of Sargava’s western shore. Chelish troops founded the port under the imperialistic expansion efforts of mad Prince Haliad I at the place of their first landing in Desperation Bay. In the beginning, Eleder was no more than a small coastal settlement of fewer than 200 colonists eager to build a new life in the southern continent. The small harbor rested between the Laughing Jungle and the Bandu Hills, impractically located leagues north of Sargava’s only major inland water routes. Nonetheless, the excitement of a new settlement brought settlers by the thousands. From across the north they came, eager to strike it rich. Miners sought to harvest salt, diamonds, and gold in the Bandu Hills, while foresters arrived to log the exotic hardwoods to the south. By 4138 ar, Eleder was granted official status as a Chelish colony.

Eleder prospered swiftly, fed from the coffers of trading companies and the colonial aristocracy, both operating on sizable stipends from the Chelish government, with additional funds arriving from ever-increasing, likely crooked tax policies. Expansionists paid great sums to acquire official charters to explore inland, where they hoped to claim the riches of the pristine land. After the discovery of the city of Kalabuto, these same individuals pushed to establish overland routes traveling east. Kalabuto’s distance from the coast served as a powerful lure to those seeking autonomy and financial stability. Yet the intrusions of foreign colonists caused extreme tensions with numerous Zenj tribes. These tribes deemed the colonists exploitative, both in their ruthless trade and abusive labor practices. Conf licts arose, with several tribes openly declaring war against the foreigners. This
unrest made travel unsafe and further expansion difficult. The overland route between the two cities broke down completely when most of Kalabuto’s trading companies began shipping goods down the Korir River. Kalabuto no longer needed to rely on Eleder for trade, and thus continued to prosper while Eleder’s growth stagnated.

At present, Sargava’s capital has only three-fourths as many inhabitants as Kalabuto. Despite its smaller population, however, it remains a stronghold for the nation’s political structure. The bulk of Eleder’s economy is divided between its shipping industry and the trafficking and processing of gemstones, gold, silver, and salt brought in from mines in the Bandu Hills. Eleder’s harbor is huge, perhaps one of the biggest along the southern coast. Enhanced by dredging, it can handle the deep drafts of massive merchant vessels and similar ships too large to travel up the Korir. At the harbor mouth, jetties slow currents and tempestuous waters. They also provide the harbormaster a modicum of power over ships entering and leaving port. Within the harbor, a sprawling array of granite block piers provides docking for ships of almost every size from a dozen different countries. Vessels docked there run the gamut from huge merchant galleys to tiny fishing boats belonging to tribesmen.

Eleder’s architecture readily displays its Chelish roots, though it has evolved to accommodate Sargava’s far warmer clime. Rooftops are designed to collect rainwater, rather than brush away wind and snow, while open courtyards pull in cooling drafts. Trading company warehouses and shipyards offset the homes of early settlers with their plain, but practical, construction. A large wall of weathered stone encircles properties around the harbor, isolating them from the remainder of the city. Beyond the wall, a noticeable shift in construction style occurs, as Chelish colonial-style buildings give way to thousands of crudely constructed mud-daub huts. These house Eleder’s impoverished Zenj, who live off meager wages earned working as day laborers or menial labor for various trading companies, picking pineapples, fishing, or mining. This ruthless class division is the source of much tension between Eleder’s wealthier colonials and its indigenous peoples.

PORTSIDE
Portside serves as the lifeblood of Eleder’s economy, housing most of the city’s merchant and middle classes. While not as urbane as New Haliad, its property-owning population consists entirely of colonials, largely of Chelish descent. In addition to residential homes, the harbor front is dotted with warehouses, shipyards, storefronts, and trading company offices.

Would-be adventurers who arrive in Eleder quickly discover the underlying resentment colonials bear toward their profession. Such sentiment is particularly strong in the district of New Haliad. The Lady Madrona Daugustana actively campaigns against adventurers, damning them as “thrill-seeking addlepates” and “would-be liberators come to rile up the natives.” Beyond the nuisance of their carousing and debauchery, adventurers have an uncanny knack for angering indigenous tribesfolk, who cannot
tell the difference between a cultured colonial noble and a sword-swinging Pathfinder. Eleder’s militia has swift orders to approach any who stink of adventuring and give them a few hard-and-fast warnings about how to behave in their city, as well as threaten them with steep fines and a shackled visit to a putrid bilge of a holding cell in Grallus Lock should they prove unable to abide by the laws of decent society.

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
Eleder suffers from extreme racial and class division, with colonials dominating the far larger Zenj population. The Zenj supply the bulk of the port’s menial labor for paltry weekly wages. Colonial law provides them few if any rights, and is geared toward trade, goods, properties, and the taxation thereof, as based on the charters of Eleder’s founding trading companies. Civil law falls to the responsibility of the Sargavan government. Sargavan law is overly complex, severe, and distinctly Chelish. It is designed with hundreds of loopholes that favor the upper class, and a good barrister can reduce almost any crime’s punishment to a simple fine.

OUTERWALL
Enveloping the colonial settlements surrounding Eleder Harbor is nearly a mile of tightly packed, crude, muddaub huts and dusty, rat-infested streets, known to locals as Outerwall, or the Zenj Slums. While Outerwall’s population dwarfs that of the rest of the city, many of its community members lack even the most basic necessities. Crime, begging, vagrancy, hunger, and disease (malaria in particular) are endemic. Those able to find employment must often walk miles and stay away for weeks, even months, to work long hours in the salt and gold mines of wealthy Sargavans, or earn even lower wages breaking their backs in the pineapple fields. Those lucky enough to learn a trade may attempt to ply it in Lower Harbor or can apply to serve in the city militia as career soldiers.