Hochsilvar
What players would know
Illustration
![[images/hochsilvar.png]]
![[images/hochsilvar-gates.png]]
![[images/hochsilvar-night.png]]
![[images/hochsilvar-map.png]]
Hochsilvar is the imperial capital: high stone, old privilege, and bureaucracy thick enough to choke a street. It is a place where guild power is rising, court power is defensive, and “authority” changes meaning depending on which door you knock on.
The city is full of people selling certainty—priests, clerks, bankers, nobles—while the ground truth remains simple: someone has to move goods, pay wages, keep water flowing, and stop riots. That’s where the real leverage hides.
Description
Hochsilvar is a city of concentric walls that climbs toward a guarded heart. From a distance, the eye goes first to the cathedral’s golden spike, a sun-bright point at the city’s center, and then to the Imperial City above it: a “city within the city,” walled in high stone and crowned by the Royal Palace.
Below that inner ring, the real capital spreads outward in terraces and tight streets: guildhalls, countinghouses, markets, workshops, tenements—commerce and necessity packed into the space between walls. The outer ring is its own barrier of stone and gates, where the City Watch controls entry and turns travelers into paperwork.
Beyond the gates, the city’s shadow continues: roadside camps, rough shacks, and improvised neighborhoods where people who couldn’t afford a room inside shelter close enough to beg, work, or disappear into the crowd.
Common rumors
- The Banking Guild is turning paper into law.
- The undercity has its own rules and its own roads.