City Image - Sand City
It is strange to have a city between two towns, especially when the two towns were there first and are 'famous', but such is the way of Sand City.
It is strange to have a city between two towns, especially when the two towns were there first and are 'famous' (i.e. known in the annuals and on maps), but such is the way of Sand City.
Sand City is nestled between the two principal towns in The Blue Bay: Carlita and Mozana. Carlita is a mixed Elventi - Imperial settlement. Here graceful hacienda styled homes (with rich families), flowing hometrees, and an old (is there any other kind) Imperial fort coexist in harmony. Mozana is a fishing village just becoming a town on its own. It is a working town that took its cues from the adobe haciendas and their garden boxes of Carlita on a more realistic scale. Here, among the sea marsh, the Sea Clans claimed the land. No one who was not a sea clanner could live here.
Carlita and Mozana, though smaller, are the only settlements on any map of the area.
In between the two was Sand Town. Here the poor that worked the nearby farms (owned by hacienda families), at the haciendas as servants/ workers, and did scut work for the sea clans at the cannery, lived. The massive sand dunes stand between Sand Town and the Sea. The wind was constantly blowing sand inland and into the buildings here. The buildings of Sand Town started as shacks, but the weather destroyed everything that was not adobe (clay brick) and plaster construction. The style of buildings here could be called more huts or cottages rather than hacienda style. This has not changed over the near century of habitation here.
Over the years, more and more people moved to Sand Town. For the last seventy years, there has been more people living here than in Carlita and Mozana (and Mozana is not that small) combined. More businesses were centered in Sand Town (each one marked with a garish sign). With more businesses came all the structures of a town and city (Guild Councils, neighborhood rings, etc). Sand Town soon became Sand City just because of its size and complexity.
The ground here is a mix of sandy soil and slightly dry marshland. The streets here are boards imbedded in the ground, with raised wooden sidewalks lining the streets and linking houses to streets. The wood has a worn driftwood look because of the wind and sea. All the buildings here still have that 'slapped up hovel look'. Artistic concerns are for Carlita and Mozana; real People live in Sand City. Given the constant abrasion of the sand and sea, everything has a worn and rounded look. Any artistic touches would soon be lost, so nobody does them. All the doorways have bristles on their bottoms and on their transoms. This sweeps the sand out and gives someone walking in the ability to clean their feat. The windows are all covered in waxed paper and the occasional piece of glass. Even with the constant activity of sweeping, which is the main pastime of the local women and girls, sand gets everywhere here. You can tell a female from sand city, as she always has a broom of some size.
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? Responses (6)
Okay I like this one a great deal. There are a number of nice touches. The Broom. The constants sweeping of sand. The terrain and how people adapted to it. The magic of the city, as it popped up because 'other towns' didn't want them. Now the irony that the towns are minor and Sand City is major.
I like this one too-great for a Western type game.
I don't know. This is an interesting idea but why did everyone start booming to Sand City? What caused the influx of people? There seems to me that something would have caused them to move to a seemingly god forsaken place like Sand City. There seems to be to much hardship in a town that is underlying in a blanket of sand.
Now it this has increased due to an influx of criminals wanting to do business outside of the usual towns and cities that would make a little bit of a better reason why the move. I ramble...
Mostly, the city was initially comprised of servants and working people from Carlita and the non clan people of Manzita. These people used to live in the corners and outskirts of the two other cities. Or, in the case of Carlita workers, they had to trudge all the way to Manzita to live (It is an hour to hour and a half walk).
When people began to live and build in Sand Town (eventually to be called Sand City), it was a chance for those on the lower end of the respective social spectrum to own property (or not as commute as far) and not to be 'under the thumb' of the respectable people (rich people/ clan people/ established people). They could make their own rules and their own spaces.
The space had its own appeal to others, including new immigrants to the area. Now there were a number criminal types here originally, as they tend to be poorer and less clan related. They left their mark on the place to increase its 'wildness' or its 'disrespect for the established order'. However, there were few thievish types in the area anyways (the clan always deep sixed its criminals and thieves in Carlita stood out). The population in Sand City has boomed because servants, skilled workers, and non clan folk have all but totally moved out from Carlita and Mozana, because they have had families over the last 100 years or so, and those who come to the region for the fishing and opportunities who are not 'rich' or clan folk find themselves comfortable here.