Sandstone Harbor

Overview

Sandstone is the antithesis of Highport. Where Highport was cosmopolitan, exciting, and dangerous, Sandstone is plain, slow, and self-sufficient. Almost everyone here fishes in one way or another. The sea is plentiful and the people know it — there is a particular pride in this town, the fisherman's pride of those who have never needed to be impressive to survive.

Laws in Sandstone are semi-optional. The real structure is familial and tribal, with land being the primary source of conflict between citizens. The hillier terrain north of the harbor sprawls with farmhouses and fields — dense but residential in nature, not commercial. It is not a city that wants to be anything other than what it is.

Shape and Character

The harbor itself is functional rather than grand. Fishing vessels outnumber trading ships by a wide margin. The docks are practical, weathered, and productive. The streets north of the waterfront climb into residential neighborhoods where family plots have been contested and divided and contested again across generations. Property disputes here are older than the usurper empire and will outlast it.

There is no high district and no low district in the Highport sense — wealth in Sandstone is measured in land and boats, not in palatial architecture or exotic goods. The wealthiest families have the largest plots and the most boats. Their opinion of Theodor Crane ranges from grudging tolerance to quiet resentment.

Crane in Sandstone

Theodor Crane is a grain man in a fishing town. He arrived with money from southern agricultural supply chains and had to pay through the nose for every ounce of influence he has here. The larger fisher families were not impressed by wealth that smelled of grain rather than salt, and some of them still are not. Crane holds his position in Sandstone through dependency management — controlling enough of the supply network that opposing him has a cost — but he has never fully become part of the place.

The Church of the Keymaster in Sandstone, which he coerced into crowning him in 4701 AR, remains the institutional foundation of his legitimacy. The relationship is not warm.

Current State (4724–4725)

Stable. The city produces, the boats go out, the families maintain their disputes over land and succession. Crane's administration taxes and conscripts efficiently. Citizens are not particularly free but they are fed.

The dark orc threat staging through Lighthouse Island — a short distance south — is not a subject anyone in Sandstone's government has a coherent response to.

Connections

• The South
• Theodor Crane — rules from here
• Prince Eltram Landing — to the east; not yet conquered
• Lighthouse Island — nearby to the south; dark orc staging ground (4724–4725)
• The Keymaster — Sandstone branch, coerced into the 4701 AR coronation