Highbridge

Humanity's great city in the Vale — a true city, terraced up the south bank above the Vellen gorge where the imperial span carries every road east. The latecomers' free crossing: a human-run market and guild hub the old Houses tax but no longer hold, the Vale's de facto capital, where every great power and every guild keeps a hall.

Three arches outlived the empire that raised them, and a town grew on their backs collecting the toll until it outgrew both the toll and the House that once claimed it. Today Highbridge is the Vale's one true human city — the busiest market between Valenfeld and the sea, a stepped sprawl of timber and grey stone climbing the south bank, raised and run by the rootless settler-folk who came up the trade-roads chasing the dead empire's silver. House Vandahl, pulled back to its keeps at Castle Sered and Vandahl Keep, keeps only a sergeant and a grudge here; the guild quarter facing the span belongs to the company-soldiers (the Marrowhall), the sorcerer-scholars (the Listening-Post) and the relic-thieves (the Quiet Door); the Silt Hands keep a quieter arrangement under the third arch; and the Hollow Writ watches the barrow road. It is the natural first hub for an outlander, and the loudest engine of the Old Work trade — every road, and every relic, passes through. Far over the Rampart, the sky-Vyr of Aelvyrenn look down on it as a nest of grave-robbers. Since the Houses pulled back to their keeps, Highbridge has become the Vale's capital in every way that counts: the Hollow Writ stamps its tolls at the Writ-House, the Mourners keep the burial rolls at the Hush-House, the Sealed Choir feeds the crossing from the Span Chantry, the Gaunt Ledger prices the traffic on the Counting-Floor under the first arch, and the Resonants keep their locked High Room over the Listening Post — while the guild quarter's doors (the Marrowhall, the Listening Post, the Quiet Door, the Wake-Lodge at the east gate, the Still Room by the well-court) take in every stripe of newcomer. Above it all, on the noble terrace, the Highbridge Arena — the Marrowring, folk call it — sells the one thing the Lean Years never run short of: somebody willing to prove themselves.