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The Portal Ward is the central hub of the city, where most of the people live and work. When visitors come to the city, this is where they always go first. Built around the Grand Portal itself, wherever you are in this ward, you can see this strangely shaped spire. The cobblestone streets wind up and around the hill from which the tower rises, creating an almost spiral path amid shops and homes built in an older time, when the city was not divided into wards. The buildings are mostly made of gray stone and are old enough that most of the woodwork involved, particularly the wood shingle roofs, have been replaced several times. You won’t find many abandoned or run-down buildings here in the hub of the city. Although old, the buildings are well kept. Statuary in the Portal Ward tends toward the classical, the figures appearing hale and hardy—in the peak
CHAPTER 2:
THE PORTAL WARD
of health and vigor. The nicely maintained cobblestone streets—almost always filled with throngs of people—are kept free of trash or waste by well-paid city workers. Visitors here can find all manner of shops, not to mention the largest concentration of inns and taverns in the city. Since Manifest is a city with a large transient population, these range from fine hostelries to cheap flophouses (although even the flophouses are relatively clean and stylish in the Portal Ward). The Portal Ward is the largest section of the city, and its warder is the most influential member of the Council of Warders. Currently, the warder is Jaesicha Millicen (female human Com10), a tall, elegant woman with a natural charisma but no special training. She is a devout follower of Aluvan and finds herself at odds with the Guild of Morticians (whose concerns deal mostly with corpses) and the Yisa-khardomas (whose concerns often favor ghosts over the living). Jaesicha is the foremost advocate for the living in Manifest and attempts to concern herself with the common people who live and work in the city in order to keep it functioning—beyond the people who work in industries or in organizations that deal specifically with Manifest’s unique nature.
THE CITY OF MANIFEST
living and the dead. Here the Veil is at its thinnest, ghosts walk the street among the living, and the dead come back to life with surprising ease. Despite these goings-on, Manifest is also a functioning city, with all the resources and requirements that suggests. Each ward has an atmosphere all its own, but some things are true throughout the city. Wherever you go in Manifest, you are likely to find dozens upon dozens of statues seemingly staring at you. There are statues on pedestals wherever traffic will allow, busts placed on all the cornices, and reliefs carved into the façades, molding, framework, and foundations of every building. Manifest has a resident population of about 22,000 people, about one-third of whom are ghosts. Add to that another 10,000 nonresidents occupying the city at any given time, here to bring corpses from other corners of the world, meet with the ghosts of dead friends or family (or occasionally enemies), or just earn some gold working as merchants or other transient occupations (like being adventurers), and you have a goodsized city. Racially, Manifest is more cosmopolitan than many cities, with significant numbers of humans, elves, gnomes, halflings, and dwarves among the population. There are even a surprising number of orcs and other wild humanoids who come here for the same reason that the other races do. They tend to lay low and keep to themselves rather than draw attention to their presence. It’s not uncommon at all to find a gnoll wrapped tightly in a hooded cloak, seeking his tribe’s dead chieftain with one final message, or a lizardfolk shaman bringing his own dead to the Grand Portal under the protection of an alter self spell. The city is divided into five wards, each managed and governed by a warder. The Council of Warders meets weekly to discuss city issues and, more or less, rules the city. Theirs is a very limited power, however, for they can make no decision regarding the city that violates the Manifest Accord or any of the treaties and agreements made with the Arboreal Guardians (see City Government and Laws, below).
Locations within the Portal Ward
The following entries detail locations of interest in the Portal Ward: P1. The Grand Portal: This huge, dwarf-built tower lies at the center of the ward and of the entire city. City streets spiral out from this strangely built tower, the doorway of which marks the start of the final leg of the trek known as the Ghostwalk—the path from the land of the living to the land of the dead. The Grand Portal is two hundred feet high, made of black basalt, and decorated with silver gilt. Like all the other buildings, it is covered with statuary. Vague shapes seem to rise up and out of the dark tower, but the details seem to be different to every eye. Some people see gargoyles, others angels, demons, or simply people—it is considered a very good omen to see the image of someone you love among the shapes on the Grand Portal. Most of the building is a single open room entered immediately upon crossing its threshold. (The interior walls are similar in construction and appearance to the tower’s exterior.) A huge spiral stair leads down into the earth in the center of this large chamber, guarded by 10 elite Deathwarden dwarves. This is the beginning of the path to the Veil of Souls (see The Undercity, below). The only portions of the tower separate from this single chamber are a few small rooms in the rear where 10 more Deathwarden dwarf guards rest and store extra weapons. P2. Temple to Aluvan: The two main temples in the city (this one dedicated to Aluvan and the other to Dracanish) are located in this ward, near the Grand Portal itself. Each is a vast complex staffed by hundreds of
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