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[RichGreen]

Here's some notes on the Maker's Ward, adapted from the excellent FR accessory, Calimport:

The Maker's Ward contains many of the skilled trade guilds and some of the newest khanduqs in the city. While not a socially prestigious address, Maker's Ward is home to many tradesmen on the rise, and their close proximity to the Caravans Ward aids them in their businesses. Sadly, the various businesses do not work together to improve their community; rather, they work against each other in near-constant vendettas and street brawls (if not full guild wars) in order for one guild or family to dominate particular trades, costers, or business deals.

Many of the these fights are carried out in the taverns and coffee houses of the tavern district in the northern half of the ward. This area is renowned for the White Palm, a large, elaborate tavern with a minaret and beautiful shady courtyard. This tavern was the original home of the very successful Desert Sands brewery. From here, the business grew as it became the most popular light beer in the Old Quarter, then Parsantium, and then in the inns and taverns of the Caliphate of Akhran and beyond. Once they outgrew the facilities, the Desert Sands company moved the brewery itself but retained this site as a tavern. It is still owned directly by company head Talib al-Effid; these days his son-in-law Kaham al-Vizhon is its proprietor and barkeep.
• Secret: Kaham is cheating on his wife, Fatima, with a handsome young male actor named Beatus (a friend of Iancu Petronas). Not only that, he has showered Beatus with expensive jewellery that he can ill afford and has been borrowing from the tavern's reserves to do so. If Talib finds out, his vengeance will be swift and terrible.

Within the ward's guildhall district are three distinct neighbourhoods, known as sabbans (an Akhrani term):

Builder's Sabban
In the SW corner of the ward, this sabban encompasses much of the dirty, noisy, and thoroughly necessary builder's trades of carpentry, masonry, and the like. Tucked away against the walls of the Poor Ward and the Faiths Ward, the Builder's Sabban always seems full of work and activity, providing fresh building materials for the city that never seems to run out of demand for them.

Weaver's Sabban
The bulk of the businesses in this central neighbourhood produce rugs, carpets, clothing and tapestries but there are also places that deal in luxuries, amenities to soften life, and rare items to indulge anything, from a taste for sweets, to a passion for antiquities.

Aymara's Sabban
With many artists operating and competing within this sabban, named for the Goddess of the Arts, courtyards become impromptu sculpting competitions, walls become inadvertent canvasses of the latest masterpiece (designed only to outdo a rival, less so for art's sake), and around it all wander the romantics, the poets, and the lovers of Parsantium. Located in the northeastern comer of the ward, near the parks of the Garden Ward, many temperamental artists, creators, and bards flock to this neighborhood looking for and often finding kindred souls and old friends.

Any comments?


Richard