Harbour Ward

No where is the contrast of Yosthaven more evident than within the Harbour Ward. Resting alongside the opaque waters of the Sea of Mir, the Harbour Ward has seen more incursions of Kryat military expeditions and Cursecraft than any other district in the city. Whole blocks are smoking ruins, dark miasmas within which nothing can live. Horrors sometimes emerge from within these ruined places, twisted weapons somehow laying dormant for years before seizing the **Meluc** needed to animate themselves. Yet despite the history of death, disease, and war that has ravaged the District, it remains the most populous Ward in all of Yosthave. Most of the docks have been rebuilt, and from these come a constant stream of ships from all of Tar.

Most of the district is a slum, densely packed apartments and other tenements resting on the second or third floor over inns, taverns, and shops. Massive warehouses hold the bounty of other lands, patrolled by stern faced **Housebound** of the Lesser Houses. The Greater Houses have interests here as well, employing the Lesser as proxies and fronts to disguise the true extent of their wealth and influence. People of a dozen different nations and a hundred different tongues fill the streets, though they are sure to give the Craftwarped neighborhoods a wide berth.

## Aspects

### Fleeting

* A Mirror Hides No Secrets (Northern Harbour Ward)
* Panic in the Dark (Northern Harbour Ward)

## Neighborhoods

### **Northern Harbour Ward**

* *Controlled by: House Shem*

The Northern Harbour Ward is North of the Merilang and beneath the Swester's Way. The Northern portion is principally a residential district, home to the Captains and Officers of the ships who call Yosthaven home. It is still a sailor's district, but one with deeper pockets and more Meluc to spend than the average deckhand might see in a year. Several mercantile firms have their headquarters there, as well as the estates of their senior members. The Southern half of the neighborhood, the part sidled up against the Merry Murk, is full of warehouses that serve the ferries and rafts that come down the river from the farmlands. The grain, pork, and smoked fish that fills these warehouses is due not for holds of ships, but for the hungry mouths of the citizenry of Yosthaven.

**Points of Interest**

* The Spindle
* The *Silver Fisc*

### **The Docks**

* *Contested by: House Reileta*
* *Contested by: House Huurin*

The Docks are the lifeblood of Yosthaven, as they so often are for any port city. Ships from all over the world put to anchor there, seeking to empty their holds in exchange for the vast wealth of Melucrum the  Great and Lesser Houses are able to procure. The district is full of fisheries, shipwrights, warehouses, lumberyards, and Craft Firms that deal only in shipping contracts. Taverns, inns, and comfort houses cater to the needs of sailors from a hundred different lands, as a hundred different tongues can be heard just by walking down a single dock. The linga franca is Tradespeak, of course, that pidgin mix of Holdan, Nurav, Amenni, Kurimi, Palgan, and Talish that dominates the oceans of the world.

### **Southward**

Outside the protections of Pirika's Wall, the Southward is the home of the sailors, dockworkers, loaders, and other manual laborers who ply their trade in the Docks. Not that there aren't docks in Southward, but they aren't for trade ships. They instead are the homes of the fleets of much smaller sailing vessels that feed the unending hungry mouths of Yosthaven. While Yosthaven has no navy, it possesses the Melucrum to hire armadas of mercenary privateers should its trade routes ever be threatened, and those bound by Pledgecraft to the defense of the city's territorial waters and merchant fleets frequently weigh anchor here.

A large district, the hills of Southward hold countless residential neighborhoods, mostly two or three story apartments filled to the brim with the teeming mess of humanity. It is a dangerous place to be alone in at night, home to countless gangs and minor factions, with a constantly shifting balance of turf and territory between them. Crews stick together though, and even the toughest street gangs know well the dangers of harassing even the most drunken looking sailor.