Lakeside

The lake-facing waterfront, divided between the mainland and an island holding a lighthouse. The mainland buildings are squat, with stone pilings at the corners. Their walls are made of logs with the bark still on the exterior sides and blackened with pitch in an attempt to keep them from rotting. The waterfront holds all the docks, warehouses, lodgings, and vice that the name implies. On windy nights, streetlighting is the darkest in the city; as the streetlamps blow out, the only light comes from the beacon and lantern buoys. Beaconside is wealthier. The island rises steeply from the water, and the houses on the leeward side are narrow frontages of stone with distinctive lanterns hanging from their gables.

Waterfront

• Shipwright Row runs between the drydocks and a well-patrolled grid of warehouses. The Empire’s rudimentary naval administration, the Riverwatch, makes its headquarters in a fort at the end of the road.
• North Dockside Street is the bustling thoroughfare along the main harbor. The streets are jammed with carts all the daylight hours, and unaware pedestrians are in real danger of being crushed.
• Fishwife Square stands mere steps from the wharves where local fishing boats put in. The namesake shopkeepers cry their fresh fish here. The wealthier hold cleaned fillets on beds of jarneis as a form of refrigeration. By city ordinance, the square is scrubbed top to bottom with soapy water before each dawn; to this end, the building facades facing the square are of smooth gray stone.
• Lantern Lane is the city’s main red light district. Prostitutes are forbidden from advertising their services on the street, so they put lanterns in their windows instead. Crime families site their drug houses and plush gambling dens here to double up on their business.
• Wharf Street is the rough part of town: not terribly impoverished, but full of short-tempered sailors, teamsters, and other itinerant laborers. Gangs come and go with the seasons, with few criminal organizations establishing permanent footholds. The back alleys are riddled with cheap untaxed bars, low dice tables, fighting pits, and so on.
• Franz Circuit is a block of warehouses near North Dockside Street and suffers from the same depredations, but here they are more likely to take the form of lone robbers preying on passersby. The warehouses themselves are well-protected by the merchant houses’ private guards.

Beaconside

• Junius Arcade runs from Shipwright Row to Beaconside on the island. Lined with buildings, it has two levels: the ceiling of the shopping arcade is a middle-class residential street above. The arches of the bridge are thickly built to act as a wall against ships. Scaffolding reaches down from the bridge to support repairs on the pylons; it crawls from one end of the bridge to the other as the years pass, whereupon it is time to start over at the other end again.
• Beacon Place is a newly-rebuilt plaza. Noctaneth’s Beacon stands on a high promontory, but its lowest foundations reach to the east edge of the plaza. The square holds its market days, but the pace is slow; Beaconside is a small, quiet community.
• Waterfront Way runs along the rocky shore of the island. Stately townhouses stand on the shore or half on pilings into the lake. Each has a small dock for a pleasure vessel, a family fishing boat, or perhaps a small courier ship.

Mentullius

A middle-class neighborhood with canals on all sides. The city cemetery is here, in hopes that the running water will keep any loose spirits contained. The greatest university, and the second-greatest magical academy, in the Empire is also here, for the same reason. Neither dissuades merchants from bringing their wares via the canals to two large open-air markets. The buildings here rise from sloped cobblestone ground floors to upper stories all in dark wood. The top floors have sharp-peaked roofs and dramatic dormers, giving the district a distinctive jagged skyline.

• University Place. This road and nearby blocks are studded with student tenements, cheap pubs, and provisioners of scholarly supplies. At the end, the road forks into many paths serving the different buildings of the University.
• Broad Street sweeps between the necropolis and the canal. It is shaded by tree boughs that overhang the necropolis wall. Several fountains along its length draw mendicant or anchorite priests who clamor to offer final blessings to funeral parties. A few temples serve the necropolis.
• Mortuary Street is near the necropolis. In addition to embalmers, it holds shrines where bodies can lie in state, hostels for visiting mourners, florists, and coffinmongers. The Serene Crematory stands in a garden, offering a newfangled lower-risk alternative to burial.
• Anderson Avenue is a higher-class neighborhood convenient to the University. Burghers, tenured professors, and some cottage mages make their homes here, the latter in three-to-four-story towers with peaked roofs.
• Textile Square is one of two large marketplaces sited in Mentullius for ease of cargo transport. The stalls here sell not only cloth from all over the Empire but also furs, finished garments, and (thanks to an obscure historical precedent) jewelry with metal chains that was produced outside the city. The square is lined with cobblers’ and tailors’ shops.
• Himilco Square holds the city’s outdoor spice market. The cones of brightly-colored powders stand under glass arcades and awnings, as Dastrux City is much wetter than the caravan cities of the desert. The square also holds round tents where one can buy and then immediately enjoy the freshest intoxicants, including tobacco, hashish, and potently distilled liquors.

Oldmarket

The core of the old town, centered on the spring where Godobald refounded the city. The market square that sprang up here is still in use, though widened and paved; the district is the city’s second-wealthiest and attracts successful merchants and artisans. The buildings are small and the streets are cramped due to accumulated construction. The houses have real glass in every window and a distinctive porch on the second floor, where the main entrance stands next to a central bay window. The stairs up to the porch can be raised in times of war. The streets are clean and the buildings are continually renewed. At night, the streets are brightly lit by rows of oil streetlights; large, sculptural tangles of lamps stand in the middle of every square.

• Bankhouse Plaza is dominated by the marble edifice, unusual in the city, of Declan Bank. The neighborhood holds tall brick buildings where clerks, lawyers, and so on make their offices.
• Hydra Boulevard is a massive water-garden-cum-shopping-square built around the city’s main spring. Water is pumped up to rooftop fountains and then cascades down ornate channels to pools verdant with water plants. Those who like downtown living consider Hydra Boulevard the most desirable address in the city.
• Healers’ Way is a quiet street of clinics, hospitals, and barbers. It draws clean water from Hydra Boulevard, and censers burn in every portico to sterilize the air. Each building bears a distinctive series of domes, the legacy of a health fad that once believed low ceilings to cause disease.
• General Antonio Street is a typical example of a merchants’ residential street. The dwellings are a bit taller here, and many of the buildings have businesses in their ground floors. This street boasts a quiet pub, a dry goods store, a locksmith, a barber-surgeon, and a small theater.
• Goldsmith Court holds the homes and businesses of artisans who deal in precious materials. The street is patrolled by a well-furnished community watch, and a castle-like compound protects warehouses at the end of the street.
• Courthouse Plaza houses the city courthouse. The plaza itself is quiet and orderly. A scaffold in the center holds the Implements of Punishment: the scaffold, the stump, and the brazier. A brass chain around the scaffold holds the cheering crowds back during executions.
• Glyndan Park holds a rotation of gilded market stalls. As Hydra Boulevard filled up with permanent storefronts, the temporary stalls moved to a green instead. The green is now webbed with carefully manicured gravel paths, and plots are systematically rented out.
• Oriphiel Square holds the main temple of the Planetary and Chthonic Gods, and several other temples besides, including those to Nicodemus the Stargazer, St. Walker of the Long Road, and Cyrus the Lion. The square bustles with pilgrims, priests, and sellers of genuine and counterfeit relics.
• Ash Place is the name given to a stretch of charred shells of buildings that burned in a fire ten years ago. Redevelopment has ground to a complete halt because of property disputes: many of the landmarks that used to mark property boundaries did not survive the fire. The area is known to be haunted, and the Sisters of Sacred Charity have planted a hedge of “wild” (that is, untended) rosebushes around the perimeter.

Riverside

A middle-class neighborhood on the southwest edge of the city. It contains rising merchants, artisans, and the more respectable kind of laborer. Some friction has arisen in the past years with increasing numbers of dwarf refugees. The buildings are all regular, clean two-to-four stories with a stone first floor and overhanging the street, except in Dwarftown, where the buildings are all stone and streets are roofed and gated to produce a reasonable facsimile of an underground city. At night, the streetlights hold dim clusters of candles, and linkboys wander the streets offering their torches for hire.

• River Street is a quiet street of merchant residences. It runs through the middle of the district, and the carts of food vendors line it.
• Orchard Greenway winds through the Eleazar Gardens, a flowered park sponsored by the legacy of an old artisan family. Traveling merchants sometimes set their carts here, away from the bustle of the main squares.
• Tilley Lane holds the shops of mercers and haberdashers. Tall windows hold mannequins that display the work of local tailors. All the storefronts are brightly illuminated to display their fabrics to best effect.
• Paperers’ Lane holds the shops of papermakers, their pulp cauldrons boiling in the courtyard behind the buildings. A few bookbinders and the city’s only printing-houses also stand here.
• Glaziers’ Street holds not only the forgers of window-panes but also glassblowers and tile-makers. Due to a trick of the topography, it retains the hot air from the fires.
• Bakery Row is so named for the scent of baking bread that rises from its many wood-fired chimneys. Their fellows in yeast cultivation, the brewers, are also here and get nearly as much business.
• Dwarftown is the name given to all the branches of the forked, looping road in the neighborhood. If the dwarves don’t offer a guide, it is nearly impossible for an outsider to find a specific address.