The majority of Magnimar’s working population lives along the Shore. Comprising more than just the coast and dockside portions of the city, the Shore extends from the base of the Seacleft out to Kyver’s Islet and Ordellia, south of the Yondabakari River.
The Bazaar of Sails

A destination for traders the world over, the Bazaar of Sails is the largest free market in Varisia. Anyone with merchandise to sell is welcome to set up a tent, booth, or wagon among the hundreds of other ever-changing shops that fill the dockside plaza. Crops from local farmers, Varisian artifacts, Osirian spices, Chelish fineries, Andoran quartos, and more exotic goods from a hundred foreign ports fill the market, with the offerings of any day varying with the season, trade winds, and tides.
As merchants eagerly trade, competitions, rivalries, and all manner of criminal temptations arise. Although the market welcomes all comers, the ever-changing crowd, shouts of exotic traders, and generally raucous bustle make the place a nightmare for the local watch to patrol and mete out justice. Fortunately, the Princess of the Market, Sabriyya Kalmeralm (female human), takes care of policing her own. The daughter of the first Prince of the Market, Nazir Kalmeralm, who disappeared nearly 28 years ago, Sabriyya is well-loved by most of the bazaar’s regular traders and her “court” — a sizable gang of toughs and money collectors. A passionate woman in her late forties, her quick wit, aristocratic bearing, and silver tongue are as famed as her fiery temper and unforgiving memory. While many in the city still see her as little more than an exceedingly public gang lord, those who frequent the chaotic maze of stalls and shops know the service she provides.
Dockway
The shouts and bustle of countless traders, fishermen, and foreign travelers stir the choppy waters of Outcast’s Cove through all hours of the day and night. Along the seaside district of Dockway, salt-blasted storefronts and cramped businesses cater to the typically rough seafolk, while exotic inns and taverns serve as familiar welcomes to visitors from afar. The best known of these seaside sanctuaries is the Old Fang, a taproom and cheap inn built right on the docks and covered in barnacles and peeling white paint. Ol’ Mam Grottle (female human), a burly, no-nonsense matron, runs this favorite local watering hole, decorated with the nautical trophies of her late husband.
Lowcleft
At the bottom of the Seacleft lies one of Magnimar’s most vibrant districts. Numerous small playhouses, pubs, brothels, hookah bars, dance halls, and a wide variety of other entertainments make Lowcleft — or “the Rubble,” as locals typically call it — a home to the city’s artistic and avant-garde community. Among the best known of the district’s nightspots is the Gilded Cage, a garish nightclub built into the face of the Seacleft and run by Jayleen “Morning Dove” Mordove (female human), a former prima donna of the Triodea who retains her connections to the city’s artistic elite.
Keystone
Seerspring Garden, a park boasting a spring of crisp, clear water, marks the center of the Shore’s central district. While impressive and intimidating buildings line the four avenues radiating out from the area’s heart, behind them lie the townhouses and close streets of Magnimar’s common people. The fortress-like temple of Iomedae — under the offices of Chaplain Tira Ronnova (female human) — stands here, sounding the daily call to glory and preaching of honor, sacrifice, and spiritual rewards to the layman.
To the south of Seerspring Garden stands Magnimar’s most esteemed school of wizardry, the Stone of the Seers. The spring that still bubbles at the heart of Keystone is said to have once been home to an oracular water spirit who departed decades ago but promised to one day return. In the tradition of that strange sibyl, Master Leis Nivlandis (male elf) began a school of the arcane with a focus on abjuration and divination magics.
The Marches
The entrance to Magnimar for many traders and travelers, the Marches’s Castlegate is where those locals who would bring their wares to the city must first pass. Many simple and largely contented folk live in this sizable district, but despite its size and population, the Marches receive little extra in the way of city funding to maintain the area and protect its people. While this has caused a rise in Sczarni theft and cons, the churches of Abadar, Erastil, and Iomedae all maintain presences to aid the city and perhaps win a few converts.
Beacon’s Point
Comprising the western rim of Outcast’s Cove and ending at the statue-studded point called the Wyrmwatch — a lighthouse said to overlook the spot Alcaydian Indros battled the Vydrarch — Beacon Point is a raucous home to traders, sailors, and hardworking, hard-living families of all sorts. Numerous warehouses, shipping concerns, and other businesses fill the area, as do numerous simple but boisterous festhalls and taverns.
Rag’s End
Only the poorest and most deprived of the city’s working class make their homes in the cramped, maze-like knot of alleys called Rag’s End. Temporary laborers, crippled dockhands, drunks, and the sorely out-of-luck scrape by on coin earned from begging, performing odd and often demeaning jobs, and the charity of the city’s sympathetic religions. Much of Rag’s End is owned by Slumlord Rassimeri Jaijarko (male human), a greasy half-Varisian drug dealer with ties to the Sczarni gang the Gallowed.
Silver Shore
The wealthiest district below the summit, Silver Shore is home to several well-to-do business owners, council members, and nobles who seek to live close to their work, the people, or the beauty of the river. At the northernmost part of the district stands a spherical building of metal and glass shaped something like a diving helmet, a curious diversion called the Aquaretum. The proprietor, Nireed Wadincoast (male gnome), opens this home and personal collection of large aquariums, captured fish, embalmed sea creatures, and sunken discoveries to any with a silver piece and the time to tour. Although an expert on life beneath the water, his tales of whole cities lying at the bottom of the Varisian Gulf are largely discounted as “typical gnome enthusiasm.”
Kyver’s Islet
This small island at the mouth of the Yondabakari river is given over almost completely to lumbermills, shipwrights, and noisy workshops best situated away from homes and quieter businesses. From the northernmost point of the islet rises the Floodfire, a small lighthouse that warns ships away from the shallow waters and half-submerged sandbars of the river.
Ordellia
Long a hotbed of dissension and governmental criticism, Ordellia perhaps best embodies the untenable spirit of freedom and leaderless rule Magnimar was founded upon. Many in the district consider themselves a town apart from Magnimar, taking pride in organizing their own small community militia and council apart from the city’s. The unofficial “capitol” of Ordellia is the Rose and Rake theater, an open-air, circular playhouse known for its scathing social satires and ribald political commentaries.
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