Pashkhara

Pashkhar is a large city in the Shimmering Shore, near its southernmost extent, which rules a small city-state of tropical forests and farmlands in its immediate surround. Known locally as the City of Rains and abroad as the City of A Million Tastes, Pashkhar's rich environs have made it famous in trade with other powers in both fruits (often preserved) and spices. Pashkar is one of the ancient cities that made up the now-lost Petrenean Republic, though it is no longer beholden to Petrenea. Before the Great Collapse, it was famous for its soldiers, who were disproportionately given to the Bardic arts.

Once an open city, protected by its relative proximity to Petrenea and by the ferocity of its armies, Pashkhar has recently become walled. The city has been flooded with refugees of some unknown crisis across the Southern Sea and is therefore home to a great many Ratfolk and even a few Tengu, along with other more exotic races.

Geography

Occupying a plain near the Southern Sea, Pashkhara is reliant on its dikes to have turned the salt marshes that surround it into fertile land, a bit of engineering so old that much of that same land has become wild again and given over to forest, which is just as well for the trade in spices, fruits, and exotic game thus provided. If need be, and as has happened in the past, the dykes can be breached and the area flooded, restricting access to the city to wading through the re-swamped marshes or approaching along its two main roads - one east to Petrenea or one north into the wilds.

The city's harbourside is known for its enormous open-air markets, inns, and lately for its brothels and violence. The inner quarters of the city are more regularly patrolled by the town guard and by religious zealots from the Temple of Kheron, the city's patron diety, and therefore more peaceful and orderly.

Economy

Pashkhara is, perhaps, the richest city in the Shimmering Shore; if not, then it is a very close second. The city trades heavily in all manner of foods and especially in spices and incenses, both mundane and those which are reagents in many arcane or divine feats of craftsmanship. This trade radiates outward along the coasts to both its east and west, and spices originating in Pashkhara can be had (for the right price) in markets as far afield as Oversea or Bayside.

This richness is not universal. While the best merchants are fabulously wealthy, individual farmers, market merchants, sailors, and tradespeople are often not, to say nothing of the refugees that crowd into harbourside slums outside the propers of the city walls, often without legitimate sources of income at all.

Politics

Pashkhara is ruled in the open by a syndicate known as the Trade Princes - heirs to the fortunes of generational wealth of the families which have dominated trade in the city for centuries. The Trade Princes rarely go out of their way to do much more than enrich themselves, especially now that the republic is fallen, and it's only the threat posed by the creatures that wander the Shimmering Shore since the great collapse that has kept them unified enough to not have torn the city apart warring amongst themselves.

Which is not to say that they do not war amongst themselves, in post-circus brawls or through the subterfuges of canterella and knives. Just that they know exactly how far they can push each other before they need make war on those outside their walls.