Coatl's Nest

A most welcoming site for weary traveller’s and wagon train drivers after the long journey through Keyed Pass, the enormous flags are the first heralds of civilization. Barely visible as the trail begins the descent from the Cascades of Jutten to the Rolling Plains of Artor, the vibrant banners streak across the sky like the tangled tails of the city’s namesake. The city goes by the many names it has collected through the ages, but if you say the Coatl’s Nest, everyone knows what you mean.

This city has changed hands more often than a platinum coin in Kingsmount. No one knows how the city started, but a clue can be found in the disproportionately well-appointed brothels at the Eastern edge of the city. Those brothels—and the city proper—are filled with wandering souls from all over the continent. As the journey’s end, Coatl’s Nest has always felt like a constant party at the end of the world. As the people here are fond of saying in response to most anything: always has, always will.

At the heart of the city is a disorganized, chaotic bazaar where merchants exchange goods flowing through the pass, supplies for travelers, and the stock fare required to support permanent denizens. The carnival-like bazaar, constructed of tents and shacks among the few furnished structures, spirals out from a great cottonwood tree festooned like a circus big top. Legend has it the tree was planted by Fharlanghn when he toured the continent and walked among mortals.

The urban area built around this pandemonium is criss crossed by cobblestone roads built by a Dwarven king lost to time, the names of which harken back to the gems and stones of Haganhold. The grand boulevard, Amethyst Way,  leads up to a small, ancient keep built adjacent to the bazaar built by an ancient Elven empire. Beyond that, the other various scattered permanent structures, including the wagon depot, stables, and other monied houses, reflect the building styles of a dozen regions and ages. Most notable of these are the houses for the sherpa guides, each peaked with a representative flag. These flags are the pride of the houses; they reflect the wealth, status, and effectiveness of the sherpa’s residing within.

Currently, this town is run by Sherpas, who have held tentative power in town for a hundred years. There is subterfuge amongst rising and falling houses in town. There is sabotage and skirmishes in the pass. But in the town, an unstable peace reigns. However, tensions have reached a boiling point in recent years. One house, the leather leaves, have absorbed multiple houses through mysterious means, now maintaining an iron grip on most of the merchant class and civic machinery. They have also cornered the safest route through the pass by hiring a small but prohibitively expensive shifter mercenary force from the forest of A’Lun. The rest of the sherpa houses, the Bundled Houses, have slowly began collectivizing, though there is constant in-fighting and no true leader amongst them. Both of these forces must work through the stables and the wagon depot, who have traditionally remained independent and protected due to their immense importance to the city’s trade. Further complicating the divided political situation is the ever present prospect of invasion from the savage orc and ogre war-bands from the Rock Wastes of Mezlin or the three thors to the West.

Despite this pressure, the party goes on in the Coatl’s Nest. Always has, always will.

## other potential details:

how do sherpas honour their dead

who makes the flags

how are the flags decorated, if at all.

work in some magic elements?