Portaupearl is the port district of Friedport, and serves as its capital with most of the Horizan Guild Association’s business being located there. It is famously surrounded by a wall that was once used to separate the rowdy Landcrab of the city from the business oriented guildsmen and travellers just arriving in Horiza - but it has since stopped being used and maintained.
Portaupearl makes up a part of Friedport that was founded on the ruins of Horizan Precursors. It is possible this location was important to the precursors due to its position relative to Leylines. Evidence to this is the fact that Portaupearl remains the best discovered place to send magical messages between Horiza and the Iduria (see World Fleece).
Places in Portaupearl
The Round
‘The Round’ makes up an artificial harbour, a shipbuilding industry and the former offices of the Mariners. Its sailors and craftsmen are quite superstitious, having on at least one occassion faced an actual ghost ship that ported on its own there.
Market Quarters
A series of streets and an abandoned drydock has become a market hub, mostly for foodstuffs. Some amount of illegal trading happens here, with certain goods smuggled inside other items.
Crimsonred Plaza
An important centre of Portaupearl is the Crimsonred Plaza, which many believe was nicknamed so for the fountain spouting red wine at its centre. However, this wine function was only established after people kept adding red dyes and blood oranges to it, in memory of the Viceroy Incident and in protest of the HGA. The red wine, expensive and distasteful as it is, was switched to to make this imperceptible.1
Crimsonred is a large open plaza that is sometimes used for public gatherings such as speeches by the governor, open council meetings and public executions (the last one being that of Hallan Aerf). The Patrollers of Friedport have their office facing the plaza, with a jail in the back.
Merrick Auver Julian’s Merry Clove sits on the plaza, attracting a number of customers that wish to drink, eat, and stay the night.
Friedport Floods
Not long after the Landcrab Plot and Friedport Reforms, long periods of harsh weather ensued and multiple violent floods damaged the city. Portaupearl, the harbour district, took the brunt of this damage. Apparently built on unstable grounds, much of the district and its buildings fell into the sea. The damage and its consequences are still being assessed.
Footnotes
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It originates from a room in the Portaupearl Crypts and is pumped (and supposedly cleaned) with the help of Arcane Magic. ↩