An Ending & A Beginning, part III½

...from The Vitmar Chronicles, Volume I

Part III½: Harvest 2^nd, 232; 3^rd Era

The sun was gazing at the Bloodravens from its slowly lowering position in the sky as the cog pulled into Port Cross. The northernmost archipelago of Merchants’ Crossing was renowned for being one of Ilynika’s oldest and most interesting cities. It originated as an Eldren shipyard that was built into a jagged smattering of high-walled islands, called Por’tskade, or Stone Garden. The historical consensus as to why they would use such a hostile land mass was that ships could dock right next to the cliffside without risk of damage from below. The Eldren then connected the islands with great stone bridges and turned what was thought to be nothing more than a cluster of jagged ridges into a functional transport hub, though there was a great deal of speculation as to how many may have perished over the turns from falling off the walkways during storms.

During the second era, after the Extinction War had wiped out both the Eldren and the Kadrakkis, Port Cross had been rebuilt into a spectacular sea fortress. However, like many other major cities in Ilynika, it had also been the site of a battle during the War of Doors and had thus been rearranged into the natural environment when the fabric of the world began to unravel. What was left behind was an untidy mound of walls, chambers, and cliff faces that sat lower and wider on the horizon than it had before.

With uninhabitable islands, Eldren ruins, and a broken sea fortress as its foundation, the people of the third era had built an elaborate city of interconnected walkways on top of the ruins, held aloft by great wooden beams. The largest docks in the harbor had been rebuilt onto four broken fortress walls that conveniently extended out horizontally into the waters in the compass directions, thus giving the city its new name of Port Cross. Though the Fortress Point harbors were the most well-known, smaller ports could be found all around the city’s circumference.

In the present day, for ships on a tight schedule, Port Cross was likely to be their only stop in Ilynika’s main trading port. And, if your ship happened to be looking to unload a large haul of stolen goods, Port Cross would be the best place to do it.