Goodharbour

Goodharbour is a major port city of the River Province, located on the northern shore where the Yanaze River flows out into the Inner Sea. It is the richest and most populous city of the Calin Shogunate, though political and military power are concentrated in the capital at Port Calin.

The harbour at Goodharbour is what gives the city its current name, and is the reason the place has been settled since early in the First Age. Despite offering excellent shelter, the harbor is large and deep, the currents making a gentle entrance and circle of the harbor before leaving again. Many of the piers and quays now in use have foundations from times lost to history, and it is said that ancient ziggurats once dotted the landscape, before they were broken down for the stones that now serve as foundation of the city walls. There are also darker tales, that during the reign of the Anathema some terrible sorcerous accident had befouled the lands… certainly during the Shogunate Era it was left abandoned, one of many Scavenger Lands ruins into which foolhardy adventurers delved, while commerce instead flowed through Port Calin to the north and Deheleshen just to the south.

It was only during the devastation of the Great Contagion that refugees flowed into the ruins, fear of what lay within exceeded by terror for the storm of death without. It is said that the Fair Folk pursued those fleeing into the city, and when the Scarlet Empress cast the Fair Folk from Creation the towers and ruins of the city crumbled atop them and rendered them into Iron… for the refugees hiding within the ziggurats, this was a final devastation.

Yet, as the new year dawned, the people who had come to the ruins set about rebuilding, raising a city to take advantage of the commerce returning to the region’s rivers and the Inner Sea. The city-state of Goodharbour felt its relations aligned economically with upriver Nexus and while there was rivalry with nearby Lookshy, resistance to Realm domination was the more powerful, feelings only strengthened by being amongst the first cities occupied in each Realm Invasion of the Scavenger Lands. However, despite membership in the League of Many Rivers, after being conquered by House Iselsi and Port Calin in the Calibration War Goodharbour was left in Calinti hands when that city-state betrayed its Scarlet Dynasty ally, its population too shaken by wartime fears of plague to resist and its few surviving nobility soon swept up in Calin’s Great Game. The development of the port, undertaken by both the preceding government and the Iselsi, was eagerly taken up once more by Calin’s Shogun.

The Good Harbour

Today, the port at Goodharbour is one of the major harbours of the Inner Sea, home to a constant busting trade as ships from the rivers of the Scavenger Lands bring cargoes downstream to meet those ships plying the currents of the Inner Sea. Much of the city is given over to warehouses and facilities to support ships, their crews, and the traders bartering over their cargoes.

Goodharbour considers itself a Free Port, permitting nearly all ships to dock. Of particular note in Goodharbour are the so-called Piers of the Scarlet Stream and the Ship Market. Also notable is the ‘’lack’’ of prominence for the Colossal Fleet, which maintains only a small station in the harbour and bases most activity out of ports further north, and The Guild, which keeps warehouses and trading posts in the city but under the aegis of their Border Station in nearby Centak, to which their most valuable cargoes are shipped directly.

Piers of the Scarlet Stream

The Piers of the Scarlet Stream are an extraterritorial zone where the commercial vessels of the Realm are assured unrestricted docking rights, a privilege granted in negotiations to end the Third Realm Invasion of the Scavenger Lands and re-affirmed in the wake of the Trade War, despite the enmity between Scarlet Empire and Confederation of Rivers. The Scarlet Piers had long been under care of House Ledaal, who had employed it to control the trade route to Arjuf and their dominance of the Scavenger Economy, until RY618 when oversight was granted to House Cynis which has focused more on trade with Great Forks and cooperation with the House Nellens-led development of trade from Greyfalls. The Piers are valuable for ships traveling between the Blessed Isle and that distant satrapy, who can take on fresh crews and supplies before passing the closed or unreliable ports of the Confederation, though there are restrictions: unsurprisingly, vessels of the Imperial Navy cannot enter the harbor. Also the grant does not give any landward facilities, which has meant the Realm maintains several large vessels berthed with stores of food and water, and beds for crews.

The Scarlet Piers are under constant and careful watch by Calinti officers, and no one doubts that clandestine observation is carried out by agents of Lookshy, The Guild, and other Confederation powers.

Ship Market

A great deal of commerce passes through the port at Goodharbour, but while its own shipyard facilities are more for refit and repair than new construction it is this port which many in the River Province consider to be the destination for trade in ships.

A large section of the harbor is given over to this purpose. While shipbuilding is normally arranged directly by commission, Goodharbour’s Ship Market serves as a gallery of sorts, where prospective sellers dock their ships and prospective buyers may walk the piers to peruse the various vessels for sale.

Almost all of the vessels for sale at the Market are used, with a steady supply of ships left over from the trade in goods down the Yanaze River. These ships are constructed cheaply, meant to carry luxuries from Greyfalls and the East on a single journey, but the Scavenger Lands are filled with ambitious would-be merchant princes who hold they can keep this first vessel together for a few years while the build enough capital to afford a more permanent vessel. Such ships are also bought by states seeking to hire mercenaries from the markets in Nexus and ship them upriver to the Hundred Kingdoms or regions where borders are in dispute… traditionally, abandoning such vessels once the journey is done serves as a way to keep hired mercenaries from having an easy withdrawal once a contract comes up for negotiation.