"Heaven for the living."

The motto isn’t for nothing; Pristana’s canals are a glittering wonderland. It sits on a small peninsula just south of Vinyot, overlooking the most picturesque stretch of the Long Sea. Many sailors who have docked in Pristana Harbor dream of retiring to a life of leisure and pleasure in some canalside apartment, between someone rich and someone famous. 

City of Canals

Thirteen canals connect either side of Pristana’s peninsula, with a web of over two hundred narrower inlets throughout the city. Docks, overhead bridges, and other means of traversing the stonewalled inlets cover their criss-crossing pattern. Streets are only one way to get around—passenger taxi-boats and privately owned craft fill the waters below. These are mostly small rowboats, but the main canals also see larger ships dock within inner harbors to supply businesses directly from short voyages to the mainland. 

Architecture in Pristana 

Four-story rowhouses face both sides of the water in most districts. These stacked apartments have exits out to canalside lanes, with wrought iron rails along the water’s edge. Many also have lower-level doors onto docks where a resident can use the waterways as transit without walking to a larger public dock. 

Buildings on the inner streets can be even taller; six-story complexes are not uncommon. Pristana’s popularity and confined space have driven up the average height of a building, and the uneven silhouette of the city has become one of its signatures. It’s common for one’s bedroom window to look out over a roof next door. 

Where the Money is

The district on either side of the 7th Canal has the tallest, most grandiose buildings in the city. Out-of-town shipping magnates and trade lords meet with foreign dignitaries, draconic contacts, and others demanding the very best wherever they go. 7th Canal is open to the public, but unsavory sorts—and the underdressed—soon find themselves escorted back to more suitable stomping grounds. 

Tall gates surround the docks of the 7th Canal. Their sentient locks keep apprised of visitors allowed to pass, and can sense when a boat is allowed to pass through. Some are centuries old and know more dirty secrets than anyone. Spies looking to glean knowledge about the trade lords’ movements sometimes lurk in the shadows of the canal after dark. 

Sinful Sides

The 1st and 13th Canals are Pristana’s farthest east and west districts. The edges are where Pristana’s thrill-seeking guests roam, and is where the city earns its reputation as a “pleasure island.” Where the outer harbors lie, it’s nothing but long beaches of fine sand and fine people. The tropical sun brings out the city’s beautiful people to swim with gorgeous leisure craft sailing further out. 

When the sun hides, all those people flock to the casinos, brothels, and high-end liquor lounges in the edge canals. These two districts alone have more gambling dens than any other Vinyotian city. Flashy magical lamps whose flame is colored by alchemical powders decorate the canals themselves. On every street corner, barkers for each den of sin spit fire and perform magic for anyone passing by. 

What to See in Pristana

The Fifth Market 

The longest rowhouse is a half-mile stretch along the 5th Canal. Their uppermost floor is one long attic, known as the Fifth Market. This stuffy tunnel of low rowhouse ceilings is a fence’s dream come true. Counterfeits, forgeries, and contraband flow freely across blankets laid on the floor. One can also find the services of assassins, smugglers, and other dastards of the Beast World. 

The presence of the Fifth Market irritates Pristana’s authorities and the Dramphinians. Unfortunately for them, the market has an efficient way to disappear and cover its tracks. Visitors can only enter from the top of a staircase at either end. If the spies surrounding the rowhouse get wind of a paladin coming to make trouble, they send word to the Market’s bouncers. Market sellers scoop their wares up into the blanket they’re sitting on and disappear down trapdoors leading into the lower hallways. These one-way hatches let sellers slip into one of a dozen or more apartments in each building. The Fifth Market remains as a concession by the Dramphinians, who are grateful that the ugly side of the city is at least concentrated in one place. 

Winner’s Square 

To reach Winner’s Square, make an eastward turn onto a wide water lane about halfway up the 1st Canal. Climb the semi-circle of marble stairs to find the most fun way to lose a fortune in the Beast World. 

In the casinos of Winner’s Square, delvers with new wealth slam their hard-won coins onto the table, hoping to turn “retirement” money into “empire” money. Virtually all of them leave disappointed, but the blow is softened by cheap drinks, flashy shows, and water elementals paid to dance in the fountains. Be sure to feed the fish in The Astral Diamond’s front pool the next morning! (If you can afford it, that is.) 

The Pillar of Golden Luck 

Varasta, the fox god of chaos, often visits Pristana to gamble and carouse. About a century ago, he was stumbling through a run-down section of the 11th Canal when a young woman stopped him to ask his name. She laughed in his face when he told her. “The real Varasta is much more handsome,” she replied. Eager to prove himself and certainly not compensating for anything, he responded by pulling a twenty-foot pillar of solid gold from the ground in the middle of an intersection. Whether this impressed the woman depends on who’s telling the story, but the pillar is still there today. 

Looters are disappointed to learn that the pillar is unbreakable, but it has a useful quirk. When someone kisses the Pillar of Golden Luck, Varasta curses or blesses them according to his whim. Naturally, street merchants swarm the entire block around the pillar, each selling their own pamphlet of insight into how to ensure good luck. To see what happens, Varasta occasionally makes it so that a pamphlet’s advice is true for a few days, blessing every person who follows its instructions. 

Then again, sometimes he does the opposite. 

Center Street Bank 

Center Street on the 7th Canal is the richest part of the richest part of the richest city in the world. Every beast and brethren here is the kind of rich that stops thinking of money in numerical terms altogether. They walk the pristine street in black clothing and gray cloaks, on their way from one earth-shaking lunch meeting to the next. 

The gilded marble building standing at the apex of all this is the Center Street Bank. The trade lords meet in its gilded offices to transact Vinyot’s big business. The lower levels house the common fund of the Trade League, as well as the excess gold held by the Pirhouan church. However, both of these fortunes are dwarfed by the hoard of the bank’s governor, the gold dragon Minoda. The mild-mannered wyrm has overseen its operations since 739. 

Draconic Holographs 

Chapel of the Faithful

The best casino to win money is at the 12th Canal's glitziest lane! A persistent illusion depicting the Dice Fox Varasta alternates between two frames: one is of him flashing a winning hand to the viewer with a wink, and the other is of him tossing three dice toward them. The name of the place blazes underneath: Chapel of the Faithful. 

The Crystalfox Hotel

Winner of the Pristana’s Finest Hotel award for the last two years, a night in the Crystalfox is a night in paradise. Your spacious suite will have a double stack of plush cotton mattresses covered in snow-white linens. Why not take a step out to the private balcony overlooking Pristana Beach to watch the sun set over the Long Sea? 

When you have needs, we have needs. With a ring of a bell, our staff is at your beck and call twenty-four hours a day. Have a drink at the bar on our ground floor. Head over to our restaurant to enjoy Vinyot’s finest cuisine, while our house entertainers put on a show that will leave your belly full and your face smiling. At the Crystalfox, we are comfort and so much more. 

Some Major Players

Church of Varasta 

Someone dead-set on taking a big risk is often called “one of Varasta’s faithful.” In Pristana, the term takes on a more literal meaning. His church is a huge presence in the city, congregating in water well gardens. 

A Varastan water well garden is a vacant lot anywhere in Pristana, transformed by dedication and druidic magic into a pocket of serene nature filled with flowers and foliage. A statue of Varasta sits in the middle of each, usually wearing an expression daring one to move closer. Water pours from the statue’s outstretched hands into a deep stone well. 

While most druids would never set foot in any city, this circle makes a special exception for Pristana. They know of Varasta’s love of nature, calling themselves the Circle of the Wild Card. These sanctuaries are tributes to the wandering god. They occasionally sit in the garden to coax him closer, seeking some spiritual fulfillment in watching him. While they wait, they read visitors’ fortunes and teach the lessons of nature and its chaotic ways. 

The Order of Weights and Measures 

Dramphinian paladins see Vinyot’s love for gambling as inevitable. As long as Varasta takes his reckless stroll through the Beast World, fools will dedicate themselves to rolling his dice. The Moon Wolf’s faithful have set themselves to making sure that the games are fair, at least. 

A small contingent of this Order of Weights and Measures operates in Pristana. They walk the streets of the city, ensuring the law is followed and the wheels are balanced. Ironically (and much to their own annoyance), their duties require these paladins to have the nimblest hands of all Dramphinians. Some criminal organizations spend piles of platinum trying to woo a Weights and Measures pal into doing some under-the-table work. What a waste. They would make such good pickpockets… 

Treasurers of Sanguine Fiat 

Every so often, spotty and unreliable evidence of the Treasurers’ existence surfaces. It’s usually an unexplained murder leaving behind a corpse drained of blood. Whenever it happens, the rumors start a new cycle around card tables and the yellower rat newsletters. If anyone were seriously chasing after the Treasurers of Sanguine Fiat, they’d surely be starving for a shred of proof. 

The urban legend changes with every telling, but it usually involves a coterie of vampires whose lair is one of the 7th Canal’s towers. At night, they use demon magic to disguise themselves and roam the streets of Pristana, spinning their dark charms around those they fancy a drink from. They usually lure the victims back to their homes, but sometimes that proves too risky, or if the vampire feels like living a demonic life on the edge. 

These baseless rumors have circled for a long, long time. 

Spada Company 

The Spada Company is the Trade League’s largest Sellsword contract, a private army whose sole mission is to keep Pristana at peace. Their forces are also responsible for clearing the surrounding waters of pirates and monsters. A foreign lord’s death would be a supreme embarrassment for the Trade League, who promise that Pristana is the safest destination in Vinyot. 

Crime is virtually nonexistent in the Spada Company’s main jurisdiction, the 7th Canal district. Every individual walking the streets is identified and accounted for, and the mercenaries even sweep the streets clear of debris every night. As for the rest of the canals? Spada Company is under orders to keep the city attractive to its clientele. The work of keeping the waters clear and the 7th pristine is enough for them. They take plenty of shortcuts elsewhere, often at the expense of the commoners.