Vista City

**Vista City** is the Hygardian capital citadel, constructed off of the Telosian channel in the Third Regal Age by Queen Clarita Vistal. The city is home to a number of the nation's oldest prime institutions, including Oldcastle Palace, Highdawn Cathedral, Parliament Hall, and the Royal Museum of Material Cultures. Hygard's most eminent figures reside here, including heads of state and industry as well as numerous public figures. Some notable inhabitants include:

**Political Figures**

* Queen Agnes I
* Prime Minister Harold Sower
* Mayor Knox Knightly
* (TBC)

**Business Figures**

* Patrick Quinn, Founder and Head of Quinn Transit
* Penelope Dayton-Shaw, Head of the Dayton-Snell Garmentry Firm
* Jack North, Chairman of North Enterprises
* (TBC)

### **Boroughs**

The city is broken up into a number boroughs of varying sizes, populations, and civic functions. Growing out from Oldcastle Palace and the adjoining Beholder Gardens, this sprawling metropolis is a hub of commerce, industry, politics, religion, entertainment, and a number of residential sectors.

#### **The Spoils**

The old, regal, and austere plazas that flank the royal palace are filled with monuments to the valor of ages past. The Spoils holds the record of centuries of war, lining its wide streets with museums, fountains, chapels, and gravestones. Old stories stir here, whispered by the ghosts that drift silently across the misty cobblestone squares, and watched silently from on high by the gargoyles of the granite spires. Every great quest in the empire's long history has found its way onto the engravings and stained glass of this neighborhood's buildings, and over the centuries, crafty architects have left behind signs and secrets of great work yet unfinished.

#### **Northbank**

Facing out over the Telosian channel, with a life-giving breeze blowing up from the coast, a stylish and sweet-smelling neighborhood of grand cafes, glittering penthouses, and tree-lined boulevards. One of the older and more established neighborhoods in the city, Northbank has benefited from a long history of careful attention from the city's elite, who have blessed the district with quaint parks, elevated bridges, and of course, well-maintained transportation; the lifeblood of the Crown Central Transit Terminal. Of course, the arcane streetlights glow extra brightly at night... even the nicest of neighborhoods have their dark sides.

#### **Southbank**

The salt of the channel kicks up in thick clumps on the docks of Southbank, the city's putrid up-and-coming dock district. This is where the ships from all around the plane do their comings and goings to and from Vista City, and the ramshackle taverns and sailor houses that line the boardwalk do their best to sustain the transient business of the harbor. Seafarers who have no interest in getting their land legs back post up in boathouses along the dock, and interested parties can come here to watch the the passing ships traveling downriver.

#### **Dogwall**

Shunted aside on the south of the river is a twisted block of shanties and tenaments. Home to the old-style marketplaces that haven't yet been dominated by magnates, Dogwall is a nest to the unique and cast aside parts of the city. In place of industrial tycoons, Dogwall is largely controlled by gang rule, constantly thrust between the hands of the Hellions, Unseelie, Volshebniks, and Longtusks. Between this constant turf war, several old city curses, and severe neglect by the city authorities, life for the residents of Dogwall is gritty, fraught, and often brief.

#### **Industry Bend**

In recent decades, new kinds of buildings have begun to crop up on the crook of the river. Innovators and those with an entrepreneurial spirit have laid claim to Industry Bend, an elevated quarter with quiet, well-paved roads, perfect for housing offices and high-end storefronts. Quickly on the rise at the city's new heart of commerce, this area is the worksite of business strategists, economists, and bureaumancers. From this convenient vantage point, these opportunists survey the Smogs and the Bustle, where their complex schemes and economic war games play out in real time.

#### **The Bustle**

When people imagine the blinding lights and deafening sounds of the world's greatest metropolis, they picture Vista City's home for big business, The Bustle. Here, sightseers are whisked into an unending storm of shopping strips, playhouses, magic markets, hotels, screeching elemental carriages, glaring billboards, thundering bells, and every manner of busywork. Anything that needs to be bought or sold on the day-to-day can be finessed in The Bustle at any time of day or night, for the magic of business never sleeps.

#### **The Smogs**

Nearly invisible through a thick blanket of noxious gas that passes for air is a sprawling mess of titanic factories that has swallowed up the old trade districts of Vista City. Those who don proper respiratory gear can venture into The Smogs, which house the city's many empires of mass production. With Hygard's limited regulation on industrial labor, people of *all* ages and backgrounds find grueling daylong jobs in the dens of machinery that produce this neighborhood's sulfurous namesake. And at night, those who glimpse the dark deals conducted and shipments of secret cargo delivered undercover can consider breathing the least of their troubles.

#### **Gladwhark**

Out past the reaches of loud city life, this most rural quarter of the capital remains rather provincial, with dirt-paved roads and houses with wide yards. Once a rather unpopulated waste, Gladwhark has seen an uptick in population and commerce with the rise of industry in the city, with poor farming and gardening families from all parts of the empire making the pilgrimage to the urban region in hopes of new opportunities. Home to open-air markets, parks, and the secluded grounds of the Visor Sanatorium, life in Gladwhark promises a minor escape from the frenzy of city living.

#### **Sylvan Quarter**

Fairly isolated from the busy metropolis sectors, many of the Elves in town prefer a slower pace of life, and have created a lush evergreen paradise that recalls the Illyrian homeland. Well-maintained garden paths, duck ponds, and ivy-laden villas fill the Sylvan Quarter, which while part of the city, functions very much on its own internal clock. Thanks to a massive illusory dome, days and night pass slower in the quarter, allowing its inhabitants to breathe easy as they stroll, contemplate, stare dreamily into the middle distance, and play classical music.

#### **Thimblerow**

Amid the larger-than-life powers at play, the smallest people in the city rejoice in having a place to pick on someone their own size. Thimblerow is home to a city's-worth of pixies, sprites, talking mice and birds, and other tiny folk. Even as the gears of giant machinations turn around them, the people of Thimblerow are busy with their own plans, having carved out a minisclue slice of the pie for themselves in a dog-eat-dog world. But as anyone here will tell you, size is no indicator of ambition, and inside beautiful architecture that incorporates lost silverware, pipes, and refuse, little people hatch big schemes.

#### **Underton**

Any capital city is bound to have its shady nooks and crannies, but the underbelly of Vista City is anything but cramped. Hidden through shadowy passages and grimy tunnelways and hanging upside down over a sea of inky blackness is Vista City's dark reflection, the gravity-defying metropolis of Underton. Dating back almost to the city's initial founding, Underton has experienced an influx of population in recent years as the overland city's police force cracks down on its criminal networks. People seeking a dark corner to hide away need look no further, provided they can find a ticket.