The alleyway ended in a steep, irregular stair which dumped into the riverwalk. Pocket took a moment to look at the waterway. It seemed to be smaller and slower moving, so he guessed it was the Poddle. The wider Hot Foot was filled with boats and bridges. The deep, brackish pond that formed where the two rivers met gave the city its name. No matter where you stood in the city, the Tower of Vellaunus could be seen standing vigilant over all. It rose from the center of the pool atop an island of cut stones, crooked and leaning from long centuries and the weight of the atrocities committed within its looming walls. It was said to have been erected in a single night by the foul crafts of the Goblin King Vellaunus the Cackler, for which the tower was named. Long abandoned and reachable only by skiff, the Tower was avoided by the inhabitants of Black Pool as a cursed placed that tempted the mad, calling for them to jump from its uppermost chamber and break their bodies on the fortified island far below.

Pocket had learned that and a great deal more about the city since their arrival. Some from Sir Corc and more from Old Lochlann, the bent-backed old man who served as steward to the house kept in the city by the Order. The wrinkled villein, like many of Black Pool’s human residents, was of Middangearder stock, descended from the original raiders that took over the harbor after the Rebellion left the city vulnerable. Before that, Black Pool was the seat of the Goblin Kings and had seen many dark periods of oppression, neglect, siege and civil war. At one point, the city was contested by two powerful human sorcerers both laying claim to the Goblin throne. Black Pool was divided not only by loyalty but by construction when the two contenders built a massive wall across the city, scheming on their respective sides against the other. King Sweyn the Third and his upstart rival Hogulent the First and Only spent years enacting bloody violence and murderous plots trying to unseat the other and were eventually both brought low by the woman known to history as the Goblin Queen. The wall no longer existed but the division remained, with half the city known as Sweynside and the other, poorer half dubbed simply Hogulent after its former despot.