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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Branding Opportunity" data-source="post: 2283183" data-attributes="member: 31812">On horseback you quickly cover the miles to Istivin, passing through large stretches of tilled land.  Even though it is just past dawn, farm workers are already busy in the field, working behind a team of oxen, or planting a new season of crops in Sterich’s molasses-dark soil.Past the fields you travel through the outskirts of the town, small buildings constructed since the war, housing Istivin’s tanneries and other less desirable industries.Behind them, in the distance on Brink’s Hill you can see the estates of Istivin’s upper classes, surrounded by carefully manicured gardens, and constantly patrolled by all manner of guards.Finally the dark basalt barbican of Javan Gate loom before you.  Its three 60-foot-tall towers flank two gated entrances, currently blocked with all manner of people trying to get into the city.  At the base of the gate, four statues of baying wolves the size of draft horses seem to snarl a defiant warning to Istivin’s enemies.  Local legend holds that the wolves predate the city itself, and that their incorporation into the city’s primary defensive post hearkens to even older traditions now lost to all but the most fastidious scholar of Allitur.The way in is currently blocked by over a dozen halberd-carrying town guardsmen, who seem to be asking each person of every class a rather lengthy series of questions before allowing them entrance into Istivin.  This must be something new, as you do not remember it from your last visit here.  Reluctantly you join the queue.</blockquote>

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