6th District: Capital Cross
The Beating Heart of Nostridan
The beating heart of Grand Nostridanian politics and the staging ground for the Bluecoats military, Capital Cross is the closest thing to a downtown that a 500-mile-wide city can have. Defined by its towering skyscrapers, dense automobile traffic, long white parade routes, and tree-lined government buildings and gardens. Each district in Grand Nostridan has its own ruling body, but presiding over them all is the Lerin. When she is unavailable, decisions requiring consensus among the districts are brought to a vote and debated in the great halls of Capital Cross. Increasingly, this is how Grand Nostridan is governed, as its leader grows more reclusive with each passing year.
Battlemaps set in this location
The Corner Pocket
Tucked in the elbow of walls made by the structure of the neighboring district Gouldel, this small wedge of land is home to a pool hall where government employees like to hang out between shifts or after long senate sessions. The local government workers joke that the real legislature is won over a pint and between games. If someone was looking for an important politician or senate worker and wanted to speak to them off the record to make a side deal, it's a public secret that the Corner Pocket is the place to go.
Elxiem Court House
Those who would attempt to conquer the world become at once the enemies of the chains of Elxiem. Seeking cults and dark mages the world over, trying to bring all life to its knees. These armored private soldiers know no border or boundary and go above and beyond the claims of any king. Though they are seen by most as occupying armies, they do not particularly care how they are perceived. As long as their job is done, they will do whatever they believe must be done, and they will do it in the most direct way possible.
Some few targets of the chains survive. Generally, the militia arrives and the doomsday cult they are after fights to the last, but not always. More nefarious ones will be brought here, Grand Nostridan, for trial, where they will prove to the world what exactly that person’s intent was and allow the people to decide what justice must be done.
The chains were intended as an apolitical faction, but their standing as an army without a king who can target anyone they deem a danger to the world has made them a feared power, one some claim is oppressive.
Falls industrial Zone
A tight network of hydrologically powered factories and pipes that descends the northeastern walls of the bowl, hissing and rattling in a terraced complex of machine and nature. Pouring in a seemingly endless volume from the higher reaches of the Darkspring Castle of the Gouldel District.
Capital Senate
The Capital Senate is a vast silver structure with a huge domed central building. Brilliant marble statues line its parapets, of famous and historical figures from the city's past. Above them, around the outside of the dome, six statues each represent a personified version of Grand Nostridan’s districts, each holding a different magical foci in one hand and a winged key pointed up to the sky.
The Capital Senate, within this most important governmental structure in the city, is made up of each district's leaders, their advisors, and three elected officials from each regional district of the city. The Capital Senate makes governmental decisions in absence of the Lerin, and with her recent shying away from public life, they have organized nearly all of the most critical jobs for the last ten to twenty years. No one is absolutely sure what happened
to the Lerin or why she seems disinterested or resentful of her position of power over the ever-growing city. But the people are beginning to demand her return, with more and more controversial and Syndicate-pressured decrees coming from the Senate. Protests outside have become a common daily occurrence, and the crowds continue to grow each time a new dragonican bill is passed.
Henrietta Grans Plaza
The immense, vast open marble plaza and parade route where the largest and most important gatherings and events are held in the city. Looking at the plaza, it would be hard to imagine it filled with people; from one end, it’s almost impossible to see the other. However, a city like Grand Nostridan has more citizens than it can reasonably count, and when they turn out for something important, what would seem like a vast plaza can quickly turn into a sea of bodies. The plaza itself is a clean white marble lined with tall old oaks, perfectly trimmed down its entire length. Named for Henrietta Grans, the High Speaker of the Council of Wit in Meldwyn.
Sanroko Grand Station East
The origin location of the Sanroko, first stop of the world-train as it connects the nations of the plains of Avarice. It has since been usurped as the primary construction yard for repairs and refittings between world crossings by the train, which is done in a city in and of itself that has sprung up around the culture of the train.
Grand Nostridinian Census Bureau
A large building filled with countless desks and bureaucrats tasked with the thankless and near-impossible task of cataloging all who live in the country. A dense, 500-mile-long city filled with billions of people. Census workers are sent house to house, expected to gather information on what powers are hidden among the population in hopes of knowing exactly what the country could mobilize if it ever came to all-out war.
Powder and Tonic Headquarters
The corporate headquarters to the provisions and general goods mega-corporation that runs a billion-dollar shipping industry supplying stores for adventurers and explorers on the frontiers and inner plains areas. Founded by the adventurers Tarmign and Urner, it has since become a common and widely trusted brand used by expeditions venturing out of the human-controlled inner Crudilexian areas into the outer planes. The headquarters building is a group of three skyscrapers that ascend high above even the others of their kind around, eventually merging together at their higher floors. The breezeways between the three towers are busy with airship traffic flying through the gaps and landing on their series of platforms. This lavish corporate infrastructure directly conflicts with the grounded, salt-of-the-earth branding that Powder and Tonic sells.