Lore:Wayrest, Jewel of the Bay

is one of the most glorious cities of western  : sparkling in her contemporary beauty, lustrous by her past. She is prized above all cities in   -- no other city has contributed, and continues to contribute so much to the culture of the  s. The spirits of her genius children continue to haunt the streets; you can see them in the gabled roofs, grand boulevards, aromatic marketplaces. The people of Wayrest have an   appreciation of their past, but are not obsessed by it, as the people of   seem to be. One feels that one is in a modern city when one visits Wayrest, but there is a magic in the air that could only come from thirty-two centuries of civilization.

It is difficult for historians to declare a certain date for the foundation of Wayrest. A settlement of some variety had been existence where the   feeds the   possibly since the  th year of the First Era. The traders and fishermen of Wayrest were surrounded by hostile parties: the   capitol   had grown like a poison weed to the north, and the   pirates and raiders crowded the islands to the west. There is no mystery to Wayrest's name. After the fighting most travellers had to endure passing through the eastern end of the Iliac Bay, the little fishing village on the Bjoulsae was a welcome rest.

Nowhere in the much vaunted censuses of the   Occupation is Wayrest mentioned. In the  ,  's letter to   of the   contains the following reference: "The orcs have been much plaguing the Wayresters and impeding traffic to the heart of the land." The date given for the letter was  .

Wayrest only truly bloomed after the   in  . The hard-working traders and merchants were instrumental in forming the   and thus reducing the pirate activity on the Bay. At this time, Wayrest occupied both banks of the Bjoulsae. A successful mercantile family, the Gardners, built a walled palace on the High Rock side of the river and, over time, allowed banks and other businesses within its walls. It was a Gardner,  , who was proclaimed king when Wayrest accepted ambassadors from the  , and was granted the right to call itself a   in the  th year of the 1st Era.

Although Wayrest became a kingdom under the command of one family, the merchants continued to wield incredible power. Many economists have alleged that Wayrest's eternal wealth, despite all her hardships, comes from this rare relationship between the merchants and the crown. The   fell, followed by the  , which was followed by the  , and finally, in the Third Era, the  . No citizen of another kingdom of comparable age can, with one hand, name all the families who have ever ruled. Never has a king of Wayrest been deposed by revolution or assassination. Except for those of the Septim family, every king of Wayrest can trace his line back to a merchant prince of Wayrest. The merchants and king respect one another, and this relationship strengthens both.

One need only walk down the great boulevard of Wayrest to see physical proof of this unique alliance. Going north to south,   suddenly divides, one half going west and the other going east. Both halfs end in identical squares: one at  , the original palace of  , and the other at  , where the oldest and wealthiest marketplace in Wayrest. The message here is clear: the king and the merchants are joined and equal.

Wayrest has survived blights, droughts, plagues, piracy, invasions, and war with good humor and practicality. In  , the entire population of the city was forced to move into the walled estate of the Gardners as protection against the pirates, Akaviri raiders, and  . A less resourceful community would have withered, but the Wayresters have survived to enrich Tamriel generation after generation.