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Government | Exploring Senesse | Other Established Taverns

A city with a long and tumultuous history, the city of Senesse has, against all odds, become a bustling port town and one of the great trading hubs of the Kingdom of Axtya in recent years.
It's mild seaside climate and abundant natural resources attracted the first settlers of the area long before anyone thought to make a fuss about founding towns. It was just a place to live. Such was the logic behind prehistory. Survival mattered. History was an afterthought.

It's still just a place to live. Just a place to live for many, many, many people. Native Senessians are mostly human, mostly pale, mostly humble and hardworking people with good earthy senses of humor- and increasingly in the minority.

Some say it's something in the water, or a vortex, or magnetic fields, or some strange artifact of the last great battle of mages visited upon the earth; but no matter the cause, it's abundantly clear that Senesse attracts a special breed of individuals. These settlers, who have come not in waves but a steady trickle over the years, defy generalization. No one country or continent has contributed a majority, and so many skin colours and languages are represented. Some seem to be entirely human, others entirely not, and many live out their lives hiding (or, alternatively, flaunting) whatever vestiges of nonhuman heritage they possess. This mix of foreign and native, this jumble of races and creeds, has formed a community that has stood the test of time despite uprisings of hate mongers, organized crime, piracy, and the complete obliteration of some sections of the town through means magical and mundane.

You might say that it's an interesting place to live, really.

Government

Liberated by grant of the King from the servitude of serfdom under the dubious rule of the nobility nearly 100 years ago, residents of Senesse have enjoyed the benefits of the old adage "Free Air Makes Free Men". That is, after spending a certain amount of time in Senesse, most slave owners and leigelords will simply stop looking for their human chattel. It's simply too dangerous to go poking your nose in Senessian business if you're not welcome there; and few people are given a colder welcome than those who threaten to limit freedoms.

This is not to say that the King doesn't keep a firm thumb on the area, however.
Following a year and a half of temporary but highly active Governors that completely changed the political landscape of the city, each in their own way, a permanent government was finally instituted under the rule of the King's Emissary, Naldesh.

While the city breathed a sigh of relief in it's respite from the unrest and rioting, the new administration's tendency towards extremely harsh and expedient handling of criminal activity within the town; and it's tendency towards dark skin, strange languages, and fashion that leans heavily towards turbans and flowing robes, has created some resentment and suspicion among the populous.

Exploring Senesse

For a general layout of the city, and visual tour of Senesse and surrounding area, visit the maps section.

Old Senesse

The oldest area of the city offers little to most visitors. Crowded with a strange mix of grand old houses and squashed little commercially-oriented streets that serve the surrounding neighborhood, it has largely become a slightly freakish bedroom community for other, more vivacious, areas of the city.

Wharf

Few seaside towns exist which don't host a thriving community of fishermen and dockworkers, and the wharf is where these occupations thrive. This is the place to go to purchase fresh fish, to take strolls on the small beaches and boardwalks that are scattered along the shore, and to make or break wholesale deals in the hot markets of import and export.

Marketplace

The undisputed center of town, this is a large courtyard where stalls are assembled and disassembled as needed by salesmen to sell goods that are made locally as well as retail sales of imported goods; hence, the Marketplace. The array of goods available are dizzying; spices, cloth by the yard or by the bolt, clothes both new and secondhand, blades of every size and description, potions, craft goods, produce, ethnic specialty foods, sticky hot food that is sold on a stick under dubious health standards, dry goods and, of course, all of the deadly sins and vices that one can expect from a town of Senesse's size.

Surrounding the Marketplace are buildings that enjoy the prime real estate of the city center. The Red Dragon Inn sits prominently, as does the building originally intended as a library which has yet to contain a single book for check-out but hosts the entire Administration of Naldesh, and a large city block of ornate temples and other grandiose religious buildings that form a rather complex shape on the skyline rather like a spider's wedding cake, criss-crossed with flying buttresses and onion-shaped domes and bell towers that clang at hours that suit the clergy but are almost entirely useless for telling the time.

New Senesse

Largely egalitarian and tidy, New Senesse is what the majority of residents call 'home'. It's the part of the city that looks most like the rest of the continent-- mostly human, mostly middle-class, and mostly made up of unassuming houses crowded edge-to-edge with porches and gardens spilling out the fronts and backs. It's a place that enjoys the relative quiet and stability that comes with being merely where the city's residents go to sleep at night.

The Slums

Every city has one, and Senesse is no exception. It's where the criminal element live alongside the poor folk whose only crime is poverty and disease. Low rent and a chaotic atmosphere has attracted the majority of the less common races to this area. Elves, halflings, and dwarves might be far and few in between, but it's overflowing with trolls, goblins, halfbreeds, and individuals with family trees so muddled that they defy identification. Most of them are trying to carve out an honest life for themselves despite economic and social oppression, but there's always the one or two that make the slums such a dangerous place to be after dark.

The Hinterlands

On the island shores surrounding the city and the mainland proper are the farmlands that feed and clothe this bustling urban area. Some enjoy the freedoms afforded by the grant of the King, others still toil under the ownership of the lingering nobility of the city. It offers a picturesque and soothing backdrop to the city's chaos during most of the year, and is a good place to find temporary employment for the able-bodied come harvest time.

The Forest

Senesse's forest is a creature of many moods. In some areas, close to the edge of by the lake, it's a pleasant place to take a walk and clear one's mind with little fear of danger. Deeper within, where only the brave and the stupid dare go, trees walk and speak under the command of a mysterious Lady of the Wood, and the wolves grow as big as ponies and have an intelligent glint to their yellow eyes.

Some residents come and go freely, fearless and deeply connected to the darkest heart of the wood. This isn't recommended for the uninitiated. It tends to result in loss of life and limb.

Other Established Taverns

Any urbanite knows that the bar at which you drink largely defines where you fall in society, where your sympathies lie, who you rub shoulders with. The Red Dragon sufficed when Senesse was nothing more than a two-shack outpost, but as the city grew, so did the need for bars that cater to a different sort. 

The Wandering Eyeball

The largest of the dives, the hive of scum and villainy, the bar that the Assassin's Guild* have claimed as their own. It is located in the slums amidst the thickly packed boardinghouses and modest shared homes that comprise the wasp's nest of Senesse's criminal undercurrent. What does it look like? Oh, you know the drill: More dark corners than any normal room can afford, beer like piss and food that you could use to re-shingle your roof with, every face hidden and every back turned. Asking for directions from decent citizens will be met with a blank questioning stare, and wandering around to find it on your own means entering the Innocent Bystander Lottery with a winning ticket. You will not like the prize.

*The Assassin's Guild is nearby, and customers are asked to file through the guild rather than find a member on their own. It keeps things fair and civilized.

The Devil and Dragon

Located on the cusp of the Slums and the Warf where the minority population** have been cubby holed and largely done wrong by society, The Devil and Dragon is the child of political discontent and a necessary haven for those who have been marginalized. Newer than most of the other establishments in town, it follows the tradition of the oldest of pubs: It really is no more than an enterprising alewife's sittingroom and kitchen with a few extra tables and chairs. It is packed with trolls and dwarves, ogres and orcs, the occasional unidentifiable hominid. They sit around drinking beer you could mistake for soup, watching and waiting. No underhanded deals, no robberies, no murder-- just honest hardworking folk who will throttle you if you're part of 'the problem'.

**The real minorities. Elves, halflings, drow? These are all thoroughly urbanized races who don't long for the honest and simple lives they left behind. Why the dwarves, then? Well, it just seems like they'd rather rub shoulders with trolls than with elves. The alewife appears to be half-dwarvish, so this probably explains a lot.
 

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