Louvain

The road to Louvain climbs the stark cliff of a peninsula overlooking Allemance. The city stands at the cliff’s edge, and at the world’s center. People of every species live and work on its crowded streets, plying their craft in stylish boutiques and open-air bazaars. At the precipice, Louvain Palace is a towering symbol of the monarchy’s enduring legacy. 

What to See in Louvain 

The city of Louvain is the epicenter of chic fashion and design. Upscale neighborhoods surrounding the palace glitter with celerine-run boutiques and studios. They display this season’s daring new look in their front windows. Electric colors and otherworldly patterns characterize the Louvain look, inspired by garments worn by the brethren when they appeared from the Broken World. Even in the lower-class outer districts, people make a living designing affordable outfits that sport these aesthetics. 

Fascination with the Dungeon and its delvers has inspired some of the latest looks. These days, any Louvain fashion show features an ostentatious take on a practical adventurer’s outfit. More experimental designs even evoke the anatomy and movement of the monsters below. 

Library of the Gate 

A complex of glass and stone wraps around the hill beneath the palace. Inside the building and in its surrounding terrace gardens is the Library of the Gate, an archive and art gallery of epic size and scope. This institution is a major part of public Louvain life, and several small universities of history, art, and magic teach within its walls. 

One could get lost for weeks between the library’s shelves; enthusiastic young scholars venture to Louvain to do just that. Some upper levels stretch around the city, over roads and between structures beneath it. Private tutors hold classes in open areas of the library, surrounded by greenery and bathed in sunlight from the skylights in the stone ceiling. 

The underground levels are a cool, dry grid of stone tunnels. Closed-off sections contain secret tomes watched over by a special regiment of the Crown Guard known as the Rooks of Scrolls. Crews have made themselves friends of the crown by lending aid when the Dungeon has meddled with the lower archives. The luckiest are even allowed to peruse treasured volumes that expand the mind and body just by reading them. 

Night District 

When the Bull’s Eye spins out of the sky and the Pale Lantern rises, the Night District of Louvain saunters out to dance in moonlight. Every traveler has their own story about carousing in the dance halls and lounges of Allemance’s capital. The heart of the district blazes with the light of Soda Lamps, an alchemical marvel invented in a subterranean Louvain laboratory. 

The Night District is happy to meet the needs of delver caravans (particularly the “fat-pursed hunks” who ride in them, as they’re called by the dancing girls of the Two Pillows Inn). Unique attractions and shady delights abound in the gaudy, bawdy parlors of the Night District. Its back alley swap shops offer illegal goods and the services of organized crime, if a crew can pay the price. 

Questionable morals and fake smiles aren’t everything in the Night District. Bards who aspire to fame get their start here. One might stumble into a third-floor bar expecting a watered-down beer and a con man fast-talking in their face, and instead find a musician performing a one-night show pouring out their soul in a life-changing performance. 

Louvain Palace 

The Palace of the Lupine Throne is a monument to the Allemagnian monarchy that overlooks the domain from the peninsula. The Crown Guard patrols the outer ramparts to keep the nobility sheltered from threats. Fruit trees blossom in its outer grove, which the Queen offers freely to her subjects every summer. Newlyweds from the farthest reaches of Her Majesty’s domain visit the gardens surrounding the grove; a kiss shared within brings good fortune and lasting love. 

The Queen’s keep is past the gate, where the Alley nobility sets policy and decides the course of the kingdom. Tall stained-glass windows depict past monarchs with eyes trained down on subjects walking the halls. 

On the third Saturday of each month, Queen Sophia holds open court in the Moonpool Sanctum. Her throne sits high in this open-air garden, and petitioners wait in a gallery along the wall. When called, they cross a stone footbridge to a tiny island in the center of a pond to make their petition to the monarch Herself. 

Veteran Union 

Eavesdroppers in Louvain inevitably hear the Veteran Union mentioned in conversation. The Thieves’ Army operates more openly in Louvain than in most other cities. Any member of the public can find them by walking straight into the Veteran Union building. The Thieves’ Army claims to serve the city’s people, but one might wonder if petitioners end up serving them, instead.