Mivon
Mivon began as a refuge for Aldori swordlords fleeing Rostland during the era of Choral the Conqueror. Today, Mivon is home to a thriving industry in eels and fish harvested from the marshy ponds all around the city. It is said that the eels of Mivon often feed on the flesh of men. Certainly, the swordlord Raston Selline, who rules the city under a guise of gentility but with a network of informers second to none, is sometimes seen walking out into the marshes with some petty miscreant or annoying adventurer and returning accompanied only by his faithful guards. “A walk to the fishponds” has a very particular meaning in Mivon.
The largest city in the kingdom, Mivon is the seat of government for the area. It’s a walled city built at the confluence of two major rivers: one reaching to Restov and the other to New Stetven. The stone walls of Mivon have seen a number of sieges, and their foundations constantly sink into the marsh that surrounds the city. Still, the walls offer some protection, and they bristle with crossbowmen, as do the wharves and jetties lining the river that f lows through the city. The great Council Hall (formerly the palace) sits in the central plaza of the town, and is itself surrounded by stronger walls. The square outside is the market square, f illed with as much bustle as a kingdom the size of a barony can assemble. The structures inside the city are largely wooden, mostly one- and two-story buildings, though a few have expanded. The walls also contain granaries and livestock pens, to which the populace can drive any herds they might own in case of a raid. The greatest part of the Mivoni population lives here.
The ramshackle huts of the lower quarter, where most visitors stay if they’re just passing through, line squalid, muddy streets. Half the houses here are places of ill repute: brothels, gambling dens, drug parlors, and worse. No fewer than three different gangs—the Fast Fallen, the River’s Edge Cutters, and the Half-Deads (said to be servants of a vampire)—vie for control over the quarter, and their nightly battles always leave a few corpses in the street. Even the Aldori militia doesn’t come down here in groups of less than four.
The nine great Aldori Houses and their holdings, along with a patchwork of smaller walled villages and communal farms surrounding those, create a wide ring around the city. Each of the larger families has constructed its own keep of stone or wood on the hills, to which their tenants can f lee during raids, and from which the Houses can conduct raids of their own. Permanent communities here are walled and gated, with guards, mercenaries, and soldiers protecting them from the depredations of the bandits and opportunists that ply the rivers