Sanctuary Docks

The economic heart of any sea port is the waterfront, and Sanctuary is no exception. The Docks is the starch of wharves that caters to most of the ocean-going vessels that ply their trades between Ranke and either the baronies and Destiny to the West, or the Five Sisters, Arabie and other exotic locations in the far south and east. As the first deep-water port of the Baronies proper, Sanctuary has always held the lion’s share of southern trade. Its relaxed attitude towards oft-restricted foreign goods such as slaves, drugs, and religions, has also helped its popularity.

Rare and unusual goods from the Lunar Empire, the Five Sisters, Arabie, Azuria, Bretannia, Raniterre, and the Far East are often shipped through Sanctuary. Seagate is fractionally closer, but has far greater risks for a merchant. Also, a number of the trade goods are illegal in other ports. Opium, krrf, hashish, black lotus, and other addictive or harmful substances are bought and sold without any of those cultural misunderstandings that foreign ship captains wish to avoid.

The docks is a vibrant, rough, multi-lingual area, full of sailors just arriving or leaving for foreign lands. While Common is the most frequently heard tongue, a range of others may be heard, including Espanol, Bret, Lunar, Raniterran, and Arabiq. Disagreements are usually settled by violence, but fatal injuries are rare. Most buildings in the Docks that aren’t warehouses, ship’s chandlers, taverns or brothels are gaming houses, doss-houses or drug dens. Sanctuary also has some ship-building and repair facilities, with its shipwrights skilled in repairing everything from junks to galleasses.

Places

• Tired Whore – a tavern whose bar staff don’t put out. It has a range of fine liquors, and imported beers.

People of Note

• Tyro – Ship’s Chandler who can procure anything at a moment’s notice.
• Phillipe Glusmann, the corpulent but very knowledgable harbour-master.
• Any ship captains in port at the time.

Law

The Docks, rich in so much else, suffers from a paucity of law enforcers. The Pilf have nominal control of the territory, and many of the local businesses are run by Ilsigi, but the ship crews tend to travel in number, rendering small patrols useless or inflammatory.

Map

This is an artistic rendition of the Docks by Braun and Hogenberg.