TEXT: SYSTEM 
  NEUTRAL
  FROG GOD GAMES ADVENTURES
   Cat
  Cat’s Cradle
  s Cradle
   Cat
  Cat’s Cradle
  s Cradle
  TOWN SOURCEBOOK
  TOWN SOURCEBOOK
  TOWN SOURCEBOOK
  TOWN SOURCEBOOK
  
  ISBN: 978-1-943067-84-8
  Authors:
  Authors: Rhiannon Louve, Anthony Pryor, Matt Finch
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  Developer: Matt Finch 
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  Editor: Jeff Harkness
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  Layout and Graphic Design: Charles A. Wright
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  Interior Art: Bill Blakely, Colin Chan, Adrian Landeros,  
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  Fantasy Grounds Conversion:
  Fantasy Grounds Conversion: Michael G. Potter
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  Adventures 
  Worth  
  Winning
   Cat’s 
  Cat’s 
  Cradle
  Cradle
   Cat’s 
  Cat’s 
  Cradle
  Cradle
  Cradle
  Cradle
  
  2|Cat’s Cradle
  2|Cat’s Cradle
  Overview ...........................................................................................................................3
  Alchemist’s Alley .............................................................................................................6
  Bricktown ..........................................................................................................................9
  Cat’s Keep.........................................................................................................................14
  Dockside District ...........................................................................................................17
  The Gold District (aka “Coin City”) ........................................................................20
  The Jade District ............................................................................................................24
  The Old City .................................................................................................................29
  The Panhandle ................................................................................................................33
  Surrounding Region .......................................................................................................36
  Table of ConTenTs
  Table of ConTenTs
  
  Overview
  Overview|3
  |3
  InTroduCTIon
  InTroduCTIon
  Cat’s Cradle is a small city with a population of approximately 5,100 
  — small enough that it is often referred to as a town. In the world of the 
  Lost Lands, it is located in the Duchy of Saxe, at the intersection of the Gap 
  Road and the Hyon River, but it can be placed anywhere that a caravan route 
  intersects with a river trade-route.
  The most salient features of Cat’s Cradle are the mines of the Salchamp 
  to the north (where various magically infused minerals used in alchemy 
  are mined), the Quicksilver (a small stream that carries strange runoff from 
  the Salchamp), and the town’s main industry: alchemical supplies and 
  products. Given the town’s location on both river and land trade routes, these 
  characteristics should supply you with a place that offers adventure hooks for 
  as long as the adventurers choose to base their operations here.
  It is also worthy of note that people in Cat’s Cradle almost never seem to get 
  sick from ordinary diseases, and that a large part of the city is in disrepair due 
  to the use of “ripplestone” as a building material, a material that turned out to 
  be alchemically unstable over time.
  HIsTory of THe Town
  HIsTory of THe Town
  seven CenTurIes ago
  seven CenTurIes ago
  Cat’s Cradle began long ago as a simple keep — still standing and inhabited 
  today — near the center of the city (though much-remodeled from its original 
  form). Orshal, its founder and the first baron, and Volemar Assaro, his best 
  friend, are local folk heroes, though little accurate history is known from their 
  time. Over the next several centuries, Cat’s Cradle grew ever larger, in part 
  because the Quicksilver had carved out such a perfect docking area for traffic 
  on the main river (the Hyon). 
  fIve CenTurIes ago
  fIve CenTurIes ago
  The little city prospered, eventually incorporating a small rival village 
  on the other side of the Quicksilver. Remnants of this rival village can be 
  found now incorporated into Cat’s Cradle’s Jade District. Sometime later, now 
  centuries ago, a strange greenish runoff coming down the Quicksilver alarmed 
  residents and led to the discovery of the ripplestone quarry and the Salchamp. 
  The Salchamp’s discovery forever altered the course of Cat’s Cradle’s 
  history, as the alchemical salts in these strange mines — more often referred 
  to as the Salt Skeleton — transformed a small, sleepy town into a hub of 
  alchemical advancement and trade. It is believed, though uncertain, that the 
  inability of long-term Cat’s Cradle residents to become ill stems from the 
  discovery of the Salchamp as well. 
  one CenTury ago
  one CenTury ago
  The ripplestone discovery was less beneficial, as the decorative, marble-like 
  stone eventually proved to not be particularly marble-like after all. In the time 
  of Baron Scolren, the current baron’s great-grandfather, it was discovered that 
  the wealthiest area of Cat’s Cradle, located between the keep and the docks, 
  was crumbling dangerously due to extensive use of a poor building material. 
  Baron Scolren’s tenure was marked primarily by the Ripplestone Exodus, 
  during which most of Cat’s Cradle’s wealthy residents relocated across the 
  Quicksilver to rebuild — with another newly discovered marble-like stone 
  — to form the Jade District. Jade-marble, unlike ripplestone, was tested 
  by alchemists before being put to use, so most believe that a repeat of the 
  Ripplestone Exodus will not occur. 
  sevenTy-fIve years ago
  sevenTy-fIve years ago
  While the Jade District was still being built, however, Cat’s Cradle’s 
  docks were hit by a devastating alchemical fire, which caused another major 
  overvIew
  overvIew
  
  4|Cat’s Cradle
  4|Cat’s Cradle
  
  Overview
  Overview|5
  |5
  blow to local trade. The Panhandle District was built after this crisis, and 
  laws were passed to allow alchemical mixing only in the Baronial Corridor 
  along the Quicksilver. 
  fIfTy or so years ago
  fIfTy or so years ago
  Baroness Escaulla’s tenure came next, and was mostly about rebuilding, as 
  well as the growing of other industries in Cat’s Cradle, including brickmaking 
  and glass-blowing. Though her efforts to restore the city from the disasters 
  of her father’s time were largely successful, Escaulla died unpopular, both 
  because of a perceived disconnection from the common folk of the region and 
  because of the growing bandit army that attempted, in her old age, to wrest the 
  Salt Skeleton from Cat’s Cradle’s control. 
  TwenTy years ago
  TwenTy years ago
  Baroness Escaulla’s son was Baron Escallel (Baron Scale’s father). By the 
  time he took stewardship of the city, Cat’s Cradle’s outer wall was complete, 
  and its defenses were bolstered by forces from his liege. He ran a long but 
  strategically excellent campaign against the bandits (the Salt War), destroying 
  their leadership and scattering their forces. However, in an attempt to restore 
  the people’s faith in their baron, he insisted on leading from the front and 
  actually battling the bandits in person. He died in battle with great honors, 
  defending the Salchamp and succeeding handily in restoring his family’s 
  popularity. He was only 46. 
  year before lasT 
  year before lasT 
  Baron Scale is a charming and ambitious young aristocrat, the son of Baron 
  Escallel. He has been baron for only two years. He has a wife, Baroness Liera, 
  and two small children. Though an excellent leader in his own right, Scale humbly 
  credits most of his success to his wife and his still-living mother, Lady Resla. 
  Baron Scale’s brief tenure has seen major economic and population growth 
  for Cat’s Cradle, almost entirely due to the baron’s excellent administration. 
  Scale is working toward the restoration of the crumbling, ripplestone-riddled 
  (crime-infested) Old City and toward an ambitious bridge project — among 
  other things — in the nearby village of Gambit.
  law enforCemenT
  law enforCemenT
  Crime and law enforcement are often the major theme of city-based 
  adventures, that is when cities are not used just as the basic setting for buying 
  unusual equipment or for making contact with patrons. Cat’s Cradle has 
  multiple law-enforcement agencies, which allows you to create adventures 
  where the law might end up on both sides of a complicated situation.
  Law enforcement locations include:
  A-7. Baronial Disaster Brigade
  B-14. Barretti’s Rooms (a private investigator)
  C-4. The City Courthouse
  C-10. The Watch House
  D-1. Baronial Constabulary
  D-3. Cat’s Cradle Port Authority
  D-11. Eastview Tower
  G-3. The Baronial Arts Ministry
  J-3. The Baronial Mansion
  J-9. The Jade District Watch House
  J-20. The Westside Courthouse
  P-11. Customs House
  CrImInal organIzaTIons
  CrImInal organIzaTIons
  The counterpart to law-enforcement adventures is, of course, criminals. 
  Organized crime in a town like Cat’s Cradle can drive many adventures, 
  whether the characters are on the side of good and justice, or are themselves 
  criminals. Criminal-related locations include:
  G-10. The Greens (neighborhood)
  G-13. The Arcanum (contacts)
  G-19. The Warrens (neighborhood and gang)
  J-15. The Officers’ Club (informal semi-criminal organization)
  O-2. The Dogs (point of contact)
  O-5. Kennock’s Place (major organization)
  O-7. Niftin’s Knick Knacks (fence)
  O-10. Ox’s Labor (major figure)
  O-17. The Thieves’ Guild (major organization)
  O-19. The Upper Crust Inn (point of contact)
  O-20. Abandoned Tenement (point of contact)
  P-6. Dexer’s Rooming House (point of contact)
  radICal PolITICs
  radICal PolITICs
  Given the current popularity of Baron Scale, radical movements in the town 
  have become less popular and therefore more desperate. A broad variety of radical 
  movements from history can be drawn upon: movements toward democracy, away 
  from democracy, toward or away from religious doctrines of varying kinds, and in 
  favor of rights for groups such as apprentices, students, laborers, or the status of 
  individual professions. The revolt of the Ciompi in Florence and the Gunpowder 
  Plot of 1605 are good examples of this kind of movement.
  There is no specific description of any radical movement in the town, but 
  this theme is listed in numerous adventure hooks.
  Adventure Hooks: A-9, B-9, C-1, G-3, J-9.
  Taverns and Inns
  Taverns and Inns
  Since the location of a place to stay is often the first question adventurers 
  ask when entering a new city, the following list may save time:
  B-1. The Merry Bricklayer
  B-14. Barretti’s Rooms
  D-4. The Sailor’s Tavern
  G-2. Calibos Inn
  G-5. Salt Ale Corner
  O-18. Treesa’s Pub
  O-19. The Upper Crust Inn
  P-3. The Calico Cat
  P-6. Dexer’s Rooming House
  magICal resourCes  
  magICal resourCes  
  and equIPmenT
  and equIPmenT
  Cat’s Cradle is a major center for alchemy and also contains some 
  spellcasters who might be inclined to buy or sell the odd magic item. Since 
  this is one of the reasons characters tend to gravitate to a city, the following 
  locations can be used as a quick reference if they ask around. 
  A-3. Ofrenn Vallos Laboratories (alchemical research, not retail)
  A-4. Blackstone’s Workshop (alchemical research, not retail)
  A-5. Guild Lab Facility (point of contact)
  A-6. Osenshahle’s Lab (alchemical research, not retail)
  A-10. Alchemists’ Guild House (point of contact)
  A-13. Babbson Goold’s Laboratory and Alchemical Bazaar (retail)
  B-11. Perfumer (specific retail)
  G-12. Academy Sales (alchemical)
  G-13. The Arcanum (items and supplies)
  G-18. Avar’s Alchemicals (retail)
  J-1. The Alchemists College (point of contact)
  J-19. Uiregard’s Enchantments (wizard for hire)
  J-21. Wythys and Daughter (apothecary)
  O-7. Niftin’s Knick Knacks (possibly)
  O-15. Shevekka’s (wizard for hire)
  P-8. Alchemical Bazaar (major retail area)
  
  6|Cat’s Cradle
  6|Cat’s Cradle
  This pleasant strip of greenery lies along the banks of the narrow Quicksilver 
  River and is officially called the Baronial Corridor. It is most commonly referred to 
  by the general populace as Alchemists’ Alley, however, and its location and relative 
  isolation is as much for general safety as any other reason. In the past, alchemical 
  experimentation and manufacture was allowed throughout the city, but a series 
  of minor disasters built to a great catastrophe when a massive explosion and fire 
  destroyed much of the Dockside District a century ago. After this event, alchemical 
  manufacture was limited to the Baronial Corridor, and the river walls were reinforced 
  to protect the rest of the city. Sales of alchemical substances and products remained 
  legal within the city, but the actual creation of alchemicals remains limited to this part 
  of the city, where baronial inspectors can keep a close watch on procedures and issue 
  fines or sanctions if necessary. The entire strip of land is officially baronial territory, 
  and those who work here must lease their space from the barony and agree to abide 
  by strict rules regarding the handling and use of potentially hazardous substances.
  a-1. Hyon rIver InleT
  a-1. Hyon rIver InleT
  As in the Dockside District, the baron’s strict safety regulations have 
  not prevented significant alchemical runoff from poisoning nearby waters, 
  turning the Quicksilver River into something of a toxic stew, black and often 
  redolent of bizarre pollutants. Periodic attempts to clean up the mess occur 
  when alchemists and assistants venture into the inlet with various chemicals 
  intended to neutralize the more toxic elements in the water. These efforts are 
  often inadequate, but at least keep the toxicity to a minimum. 
  Such work is necessary, especially after several incidents in which local fish 
  were adversely affected by the pollution and transformed into savage mutants, 
  some of which waded ashore, killing and causing extensive damage. Some 
  even go so far as to claim that some of the more troublesome river monsters 
  are a result of alchemical mutation from either Dockside or the Quicksilver, a 
  suggestion that most alchemists dispute ferociously.
  Adventure Hook: The characters might be hired to hunt river monsters 
  here, chase one down that appears in the Hyon River itself, or even defend the 
  city streets against one that emerges onto the shore.
  a-2. souTH brIdge
  a-2. souTH brIdge
  The two bridges that arch over the Quicksilver River are sturdy, extensively 
  reinforced, and regularly inspected as they carry traffic between the two parts 
  of the city and pass through the potentially dangerous territory of the Baronial 
  Corridor. Loss of either bridge would represent a significant challenge to the 
  city, so both must remain standing and in good repair. South Bridge is built 
  in the style of the old Gold District, with white stone facing and green slate 
  decorations. It is a relatively plain span, but many feel that it is quite beautiful 
  in its simplicity.
  Adventure Hook: Who might use alchemy to blow up a bridge? Bad guys, 
  that’s who. Trying to prevent such a plot is an excellent beginning point for 
  an adventure. The Baronial Disaster Brigade, in particular, might be seeking 
  help to uncover such a plot … or infiltrators in the brigade might be the ones 
  behind it. Or both.
  a-3. ofrenn vallos laboraTorIes
  a-3. ofrenn vallos laboraTorIes
  Ofrenn Vallos is a relatively young alchemist noted for his wildly 
  experimental and innovative procedures — procedures that sometimes backfire 
  with dangerous results. Though he has been sanctioned and fined by the barony 
  several times, Vallos continues to pursue various wild avenues of alchemical 
  research in the hope of revolutionizing the entire trade. Realizing that some of 
  his procedures might be troublesome, Vallos has worked with engineers and 
  artisans to isolate his lab space, reinforcing its walls heavily and isolating it from 
  his adjoining living quarters. Vallos also paid premium prices for the installation 
  of an elaborate ventilation and filtration system used in many dwarven forges 
  and designed to keep fresh air circulating and toxic gases to a minimum, thus 
  making his workspace a modern marvel of efficiency.
  Despite his brilliance and the sleek modernity of his lab facilities, Vallos 
  has a number of character flaws that prevent him from attaining the fame and 
  notoriety he feels he deserves. Impulsive and often absentminded, Vallos has 
  alCHemIsT’s alley
  alCHemIsT’s alley
  
  alChemist's alley
  alChemist's alley|7
  |7
  been quite lucky in discovering several new formulae, whose sale has kept him 
  solvent. On the other hand, he is indiscriminate in his experimentation, often 
  wasting valuable components on hypothetical formulae that prove to be utter 
  dead-ends. He is also prone to believe rumors and wild stories, and often sends 
  well-paid adventurers on wild goose chases to seek out nonexistent substances 
  or items with exaggerated powers that prove disappointing. 
  As a consequence, Vallos has grown increasingly desperate for an infusion 
  of funds, though so far he has not taken practical steps to rein in his excessive 
  spending. Instead, he has redoubled his efforts at research and spends late 
  nights at the guild library and elsewhere seeking out information on ancient 
  alchemical secrets and substances, ever searching for forgotten lore that he 
  can use to get himself out of debt. He has so far found some promising leads, 
  but nothing definitive, and is considering using the last of his funds to finance 
  expeditions to seek out rare materials in the hope that they will rescue his 
  slowly sinking business.
  Adventure Hook: The characters might be working for Vallos to find 
  ingredients, but a more interesting possibility is that he offers them a share 
  of the profits in a particular idea if they handle the details of putting it into 
  operation. This might include persuading a supplier, negotiating with (or 
  intimidating) criminal elements who are trying to take a cut, or protecting the 
  shipping of a valuable commodity on the river or along a caravan route.
  a-4. blaCksTone’s worksHoP
  a-4. blaCksTone’s worksHoP
  The premiere gnomish alchemist in Cat’s Cradle, Andreanna Blackstone 
  maintains living quarters in both the Jade and Gold districts, as well as having 
  an estate outside of town. Her facilities here are thought by many to be utterly 
  chaotic, though Blackstone herself has absolutely no difficulties in navigating 
  the tangle of tubes, glassware, tables, shelves, books, scrolls, bins, jars, and 
  similar objects. To her intensely gnomish mind, the lab is perfectly organized 
  with everything exactly where it needs to be — in fact, she loudly protests 
  any and all attempts to “tidy up” or otherwise alter her work environment by 
  servants, relatives, or well-meaning visitors.
  Adventure Hook: An alchemist this rich and prominent is a prime target 
  for kidnapping. The characters might be hired to protect her after her relatives 
  learn of a threat, while a less-morally inclined party might be hired to effect 
  the kidnapping.
  a-5. guIld lab faCIlITy
  a-5. guIld lab faCIlITy
  Not all aspiring alchemists can afford their own manufacturing or 
  experimental facilities, so members of the Alchemists’ Guild can rent 
  workspace in this large, dark, brick structure. The main floor is devoted to 
  large rooms with long tables, with glassware, crucibles, ceramics and basic 
  supplies available to all. These larger rooms are communally used by several 
  alchemists at a time who work creating non-volatile compounds. Beneath the 
  main floor are fortified individual work rooms designed to contain any spills 
  or fires. The second floor is devoted to meeting space, a library, and offices 
  for some Alchemical College professors who maintain separate offices here.
  Adventure Hook: One of the alchemists renting space in the laboratory is 
  working on a project far more innovative than the normal daily grind, and a 
  rival alchemist has realized it. The only physical copy of the recipe is kept in a 
  lockbox in the lab, and the rival wants the characters to steal it for him.
  a-6. osensHaHle’s lab
  a-6. osensHaHle’s lab
  This disorderly building serves as the research and manufacturing facility 
  for the increasingly unstable Osenshahle Warne, a once-brilliant alchemist 
  whose obsessive personality brought her to the verge of mental collapse. 
  Though she sometimes conducts illegal experiments at her home in Coin 
  City and has let the proud manse degenerate into a ramshackle health hazard, 
  Osenshahle increasingly calls this lab her home. She sleeps on a cot surrounded 
  by bottles and half-eaten food, shambles to her experimental facilities to work, 
  concocts strange alchemicals, and mumbles to herself. She drove off all of her 
  apprentices and servants, and keeping the place in any kind of order proved 
  too much for her easily distracted mind. Other guild alchemists have grown 
  concerned at the lab’s safety and cleanliness but so far Osenshahle’s influence 
  has kept the barony and inspectors at bay. Some believe it is only a matter of 
  time before the unfortunate alchemist loses touch with reality altogether and 
  causes a terrible catastrophe.
  Adventure Hook: The catastrophe takes place, requiring the characters to 
  deal with a situation a bit like a fire spreading into the city, but magical in origin. 
  This might involve rescuing people from buildings, fighting maddened animals, 
  or whatever type of weird catastrophe you care to invent. In this hook, the 
  Baronial Disaster Brigade (Location A-7) is a good resource for you to involve.
  
  8|Cat’s Cradle
  8|Cat’s Cradle
  a-7. baronIal dIsasTer brIgade
  a-7. baronIal dIsasTer brIgade
  Among the measures introduced by the barony in the wake of the Dockside 
  catastrophe a century ago was the creation of a permanent group of disaster 
  specialists who were stationed in the Baronial Corridor, ready to respond to 
  alchemical disasters at a moment’s notice. The Baronial Disaster Brigade — 
  or BDB — is an elite group of 12 alchemists, spellcasters, and firefighters 
  equipped with various spells, equipment, and neutralizing agents intended to 
  stop alchemical fires or explosions from spreading or causing further damage. 
  The brigade operates in squads of six, each occupying this squat stone fortress 
  for three-day shifts. The remainder of the brigade, as well as a score of associated 
  volunteers, can be summoned at a few minutes’ notice should disaster strike. 
  The brigade is under the command of Captain Hanrik Kalmester, a veteran 
  militia officer chosen for his leadership and organizational skills. 
  Adventure Hook: This is a good group for middle-level characters to join 
  on an ad-hoc basis for an adventure or two, whether it be a catastrophe like the 
  adventure hook in A-6 or a law enforcement type of plot like the adventure 
  hook in A-2. Members of the brigade might be sent to respond to disasters 
  in places other than Cat’s Cradle, too, if you want the characters to have the 
  option of traveling a bit.
  a-8. raInbow grove
  a-8. raInbow grove
  This stand of trees is different from the other greenery in the corridor, 
  as it contains trees and plants that were the subject of various alchemical 
  experiments over the years, and continues to be the site of test growths and 
  treatments. Alders cluster near the riverbank, while oak and chestnut grow 
  farther inland. Though many of these trees look entirely natural, a large number 
  have been affected by the various alchemical substances in the soil and now 
  sprout leaves in a myriad of colors, lending the grove its name. Testing by 
  the barony and the alchemists themselves has so far shown that the soil and 
  the trees are relatively harmless, and the grove is a popular destination for 
  picnickers, sightseers, and those who need some isolation from the daily bustle 
  on the streets of Cat’s Cradle.
  a-9. THe quICksIlver
  a-9. THe quICksIlver
  The Quicksilver River is so narrow that it barely merits the name. With 
  effort, alchemists and groundskeepers have kept the corridor itself relatively 
  pleasant and verdant, but the degree of toxicity in the river itself grows greater 
  as it approaches the inlet, where the majority of the pollutants are deposited. 
  Recently, the level of pollution came to the baron’s attention as several small 
  fires actually broke out on the river’s surface near where it meets the inlet. 
  Alarmed, the baron decreed that alchemists must reduce the amount of waste 
  emptied into the river through recycling or other forms of disposal lest the 
  trouble spread and cause another massive catastrophe. So far, the decree has 
  met with considerable pushback as alchemists refuse to cooperate, claiming 
  that they are already doing all they can to keep the river safe.
  Adventure Hook: Guarding several wagons of toxic waste might seem 
  like an easy task, but certain individuals might have a use for it and attack 
  those wagons. Lower-level characters could be hired as guards and end up in 
  the middle of the city’s political network if, for example, the people planning 
  to hijack the wagon are terrorists (or criminals unknowingly working for 
  terrorists). See Radical Politics in the Introduction.
  a-10. alCHemIsTs’ guIld House
  a-10. alCHemIsTs’ guIld House
  The alchemists of Cat’s Cradle are a secretive lot, reluctant to share their 
  private formulae and sources. On the other hand, alchemists have few qualms 
  about sharing common techniques and educating students to serve as assistants 
  or bring alchemical procedures to other regions. Both of these tendencies are well 
  displayed by the Alchemists’ Guild, a trade organization which all practitioners 
  in Cat’s Cradle are required to join in order to do business in the city.
  The Guild House is a sturdy, thick-walled villa with numerous meeting rooms, 
  salons, and galleries, as well as an extensive library of common alchemistry 
  knowledge and guest rooms for visiting dignitaries or lecturers. Regular 
  meetings take place at which members set prices, negotiate trade contracts, 
  consult with merchants, and establish general rules for business within the city. 
  Adventure Hook: The ordinary security force that guards the Guild House 
  suddenly has a rash of a debilitating illness, which is highly uncommon in 
  Cat’s Cradle. The characters might be hired to protect the place (because 
  obviously there is something very suspicious going on) or this might even 
  lead them to investigate whether someone is in control of who falls sick and 
  who doesn’t.
  a-11. degra esTaTe
  a-11. degra esTaTe
  The current master of the Alchemist Guild lives and works in this structure, 
  an older building whose rough fieldstone structure belies its comfortable 
  interior. Walled grounds contain several outbuildings and storage sheds 
  where Norda Degra (a half-elven master alchemist) performs experiments 
  and formulates extremely potent alchemicals. She specializes in rare and 
  expensive substances that are sold in very small quantities in exclusive sites 
  throughout Cat’s Cradle. These substances include poison antidotes, healing 
  salves, substances that enhance Intelligence, Charisma, and other abilities, 
  rejuvenation tinctures, substances that improve spellcasting abilities, and the 
  like. A skilled and experienced practitioner, Degra is also a highly law-abiding 
  and loyal citizen who favors working with non-volatile and less harmful 
  substances, and always makes certain to dispose of alchemical waste safely 
  as per baronial decree. As a prosperous, successful, and lawful alchemist, she 
  was a natural choice to lead the guild and has held the position through yearly 
  elections for nearly a decade.
  Degra works alone and has no immediate family but is aided by a number 
  of students and servants. Her reputation remains spotless, and she has always 
  made it clear that she does not create harmful or destructive substances such 
  as poisons or explosives. 
  Adventure Hook: Degra remains above suspicion, but unfortunately a 
  carefully concealed past has finally returned to haunt her, and she has been 
  drawn against her will into a dark conspiracy that could shake Cat’s Cradle to 
  its foundations (see Cat’s Cradle: Fortune Hunters for more details). 
  a-12. CounT musTaf brIdge
  a-12. CounT musTaf brIdge
  The northernmost bridge across the Hyon River is on the site of the oldest 
  bridge in Cat’s Cradle. Originally a wooden span intended to connect both 
  sides of the growing settlement, the bridge was replaced by a fine gray stone 
  structure funded by the civic-minded Count Mustaf more than 100 years ago. 
  Mustaf hired well-known artisans and dwarven engineers for the project, and 
  they succeeded spectacularly, creating an enduring structure that has survived 
  decades of heavy use and traffic. So well-constructed is the bridge that no 
  seams can be detected between stones, and the decorative carvings — the 
  blazons of the city of Cat’s Cradle, Count Mustaf, and the barony itself — are 
  as sharp and clear as they were the day they were carved.
  a-13. babbson goold’s laboraTory 
  a-13. babbson goold’s laboraTory 
  and alCHemICal bazaar
  and alCHemICal bazaar
  Owing to its convenient location close to the Mustaf Bridge, Goold’s 
  alchemical store is the best-known and most-visited such location in the city. 
  Babbson Goold himself is a portly, companionable man with a ready laugh 
  and a charming manner, but at the same time he is a skilled businessman who 
  knows how to turn a profit. His unerring instincts tell him when to negotiate, 
  when to stand firm, and exactly what prices the market will bear, characteristics 
  that have been variously described as “uncanny,” “supernatural,” and “kind of 
  creepy, really.”
  The bazaar is considered to be quite an exciting place to shop, as the shelves 
  are crowded with alchemicals of all description, and Goold’s “secret bargains” 
  are hidden throughout the establishment, awaiting discovery by careful 
  shoppers. All of the shelves are locked and secured behind alchemically 
  enhanced glass, accessible only by Goold’s army of halfling and gnome 
  assistants, who are all friendly and well-informed, with a seemingly bottomless 
  store of knowledge about the bazaar and its wares.
  Adventure Hook: Goold hires the characters to investigate and provide 
  security for the purchase of a large quantity of alchemical supplies shipped in 
  from outside the town. This is highly suspicious, as Cat’s Cradle is by far the 
  best source of such materials and exports rather than imports them.
  a-14. wesTrIver wall
  a-14. wesTrIver wall
  Flanking the Hyon, the Westriver Wall is twin to its eastside cousin, 
  similarly white and carefully tended, with extra stone cladding added to help 
  protect the luxurious buildings of the Jade District from any potential hazard 
  originating in Alchemists’ Alley. As it stands guard over the city’s wealthiest 
  neighborhood, it is regularly patrolled and its towers are well garrisoned by the 
  watch, despite the fact that the entire area is virtually crime-free. 
  
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  Bricktown is the city’s main non-alchemical industrial district.
  Most of the buildings here are constructed from the dark red brick for which 
  Cat’s Cradle is famous. The widespread use of bricks in the district spared it 
  from much of the devastation wrecked by the mass erosion of ripplestone a 
  hundred years ago, and the subsequent expansion gave the district its common 
  name. Today, brick ovens, glass furnaces, and forges found throughout the 
  neighborhood contribute to the area’s famed heat, which makes some streets 
  all but uninhabitable in summer, but which also provide enough warmth in 
  winter to draw the homeless and the poor from all across Cat’s Cradle. 
  The ready availability of forges, ovens, and furnaces makes the area a 
  potent draw for artisans as well, though competition for space is intense and 
  only the most successful or influential of artists can afford to live or work 
  here. Younger and less prominent artisans must make their way in the Old City 
  where housing and work space come less dearly.
  b-1. THe merry brICklayer
  b-1. THe merry brICklayer
  The premiere tavern of Bricktown region, the Merry Bricklayer is operated 
  by the graying innkeeper Davril Haegeson and his family. The tavern comes 
  by its name honestly, for Davril is indeed a retired bricklayer and -maker who 
  carefully husbanded his fees and salary over decades to realize his dream of 
  owning his very own tavern. For over a decade now, Davril has run a warm, 
  comfortable, and popular business, surviving various economic ups and 
  downs as well as the tragic death of his wife three years ago, but his health is 
  beginning to fail and even his seemingly endless optimism and good nature 
  has begun to flag. Several enterprising individuals have expressed interest in 
  buying the tavern, the most prominent of which is Gellor Trendar, owner of 
  Mystic Stone, who has made an extremely generous offer. Trendar hopes to 
  open a series of Merry Bricklayer taverns across Cat’s Cradle and beyond, 
  under his ownership but managed by his employees. So far, Davril has resisted 
  efforts to purchase the tavern, proclaiming that he would rather die behind the 
  bar. His six children have responded to this in a variety of ways. Daughters 
  Hildra and Edyth love their father with all their hearts and support him, while 
  eldest son Sorvan and eldest daughter Sylea both profess affection for Davril 
  and urge him to retire in comfort on the proceeds of the sale, but have allowed 
  that he has a right to choose his own future. Davril’s youngest sons Thravan 
  and Kendro claim to go along with their older siblings in allowing their father 
  to make his own choices, but in reality they desperately lust after the fortune in 
  gold offered by Gellor, which they will share in should their father agree. They 
  have both undertaken an intense campaign to persuade Sorvan and Sylea, or at 
  least one of them, as the eldest siblings will eventually inherit the tavern, and 
  can sell out after their father is conveniently out of the way. 
  Adventure Hook: Thravan and Kendro are not terribly patient about the 
  situation, however, for both have been living fairly lavish lifestyles and are 
  badly in debt. Should Sorvan and Sylea agree to sell the tavern if they inherit, 
  the younger brothers may take matters into their own hands and hasten their 
  father’s demise.
  b-2. bellsInger goldsmITH
  b-2. bellsInger goldsmITH
  Gnomish goldsmith Studi Bellsinger operates a small, spotless, and exquisitely 
  organized shop. Here she creates jewelry in many styles, using casting and 
  handcrafting techniques. Her more expensive pieces are magically enhanced by 
  Studi’s cousin, the illusionist Agno who provides improvements ranging from 
  aesthetic alterations to protective magic. Studi herself is as professional buttoned-
  down as her shop, with a spotless reputation for honesty and skill.
  Studi’s best qualities — her talent and organization — actually make her a 
  target for the most cunning of criminals. In order to remain on schedule and 
  provide her clients’ jewelry promptly, Studi keeps a fortune in gems, magical 
  components, gold, silver, and other precious metals close at hand, secured in 
  a vault located in the back of her shop, adjacent to her small but efficient 
  workshop. Needless to say, this attracts the attention of would-be thieves from 
  all across Cat’s Cradle and beyond. The professional criminals of the Kennock 
  Syndicate and the Thieves’ Guild have taken a special interest in Studi’s shop 
  and facilities and dispatched several of their most talented operatives to break 
  in and make off with the contents of her vault.
  Unfortunately, Studi proved every bit as devious as her opponents, and 
  so far, none has succeeded in their endeavors. Despite its rather mundane 
  appearance, her shop is a nightmarish labyrinth of locks, traps and pitfalls 
  that she activates during hours that the shop is closed, and that she can also 
  call upon should anyone attempt a daylight robbery (so far no one has, but 
  she is prepared nonetheless). Studi, Agno, and other members of the gnomish 
  community designed these traps, and they are deadly, difficult to locate, and 
  all but impossible to disarm. Even if intruders miraculously manage to avoid 
  the various spiked pits, swinging guillotines, hidden spears, poison darts, 
  falling blocks, and other obstacles, they will still be confronted by a series of 
  locks and vaults to reach Studi’s storage, each one more difficult and elaborate 
  than the last. As noted, no thieves have every been able to circumvent Studi’s 
  traps and locks, leading the Kennock Syndicate to contemplate other ways 
  of reaching their goal, including bribing Studi’s staff or even attempting to 
  magically control Studi so that she herself disables all of the vault’s defenses. 
  Like their other schemes, these have all led to utter failure, but the Syndicate 
  feels that the subtle approach may hold more promise than a direct assault.
  Adventure Hook: Studi is incapacitated by an accident, which suddenly 
  renders the entire shop completely inaccessible. A patron who legitimately 
  and legally needs something from the shop hires the characters to do the 
  impossible: break in.
  b-3. dwarven brICkworks
  b-3. dwarven brICkworks
  Despite its name, Dwarven Brickworks is actually controlled by a coalition 
  of dwarves and gnomes who pool their resources — dwarven craftsmanship 
  and gnomish innovation — to construct a fully mechanical factory where 
  bricks and decorative stonework are created without the need for manual labor 
  beyond maintenance of machines.
  The Brickworks are housed in a squat, ugly building that constantly belches 
  steam and smoke, emits loud clanking mechanical noises, and hosts a constant 
  stream of wagons and dray animals. Inside is a labyrinth of gears, hydraulics, 
  pistons, conveyor belts, bins, vats, ovens, and other gear, some of which 
  simply defies description or understanding. 
  The dwarves of Clan Forgefire control the dwarven side of the business, 
  which involves the crafting of the various machines, their construction 
  and maintenance, while gnomes from a variety of different families and 
  backgrounds take care of the design and creative side, constantly concocting 
  new devices and manufacturing processes, designing new brick shapes, glazes 
  and appearances, and experimenting with various formulations seeking to 
  improve on their old designs. 
  Some of the time, of course, this unrestricted experimentation and chaos results 
  in spectacular failure — explosions, fires, noxious gases, and malfunctioning 
  brICkTown
  brICkTown
  Brickmaking
  Brickmaking
  While obviously volumes could be (and have been) devoted to the 
  history and manufacture of bricks, knowing the basics helps understand 
  Bricktown and its primary industry. Though it plays a subordinate role to 
  Cat’s Cradle’s more glamorous and profitable industries — alchemical 
  salts and their associated endeavors — brickmaking is an important 
  cornerstone of the city’s economy, one which is not dependent upon the 
  vagaries of magic and the dangers of alchemical manufacture. 
  Bricks are composed primarily of clay and sand or shale, with 
  various other materials added to provide coloration and durability. 
  Each of Cat’s Cradle’s major brick manufacturers has its own closely 
  guarded special formula, and the bricks have their own unique qualities. 
  The sand and clay mixture is packed into wooden molds by hand, then 
  dried for several days and fired in a specially designed kiln, first at 
  low heat to remove remaining moisture, then at higher temperatures 
  to fire and strengthen the brick. Finished bricks are stored either in 
  attached warehouses or at the Brickfield, a large facility maintained by 
  the barony, where local manufacturers can store their bricks for a fee 
  prior to transportation.
  Cat’s Cradle’s location along the shores of a major lake provide 
  brickmakers with distinct advantages — clay, shale, and sand are 
  readily available and can be quickly transported to the city’s various 
  brickyards. Bricks originating in Cat’s Cradle have been used across 
  the continent and have a reputation for beauty and quality, which leads 
  to fierce competition among manufacturers, and in some cases outright 
  industrial sabotage.
  
  10|Cat’s Cradle
  10|Cat’s Cradle
  
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  machinery are all part of daily life at Dwarven Brickworks. A recent attempt to simulate handcrafted 
  quality through the use of clockwork laborers resulted in the devices running wild and damaging 
  several neighboring structures along Sticks-and-Bricks Avenue and costing Clan Forgefire several 
  thousand gold pieces in fines. In another incident, much of the structure was flooded with soft 
  mud when an extrusion device malfunctioned. Such events are taken in stride by the pragmatic 
  dwarves and basically ignored by the gnomes, who continue to dream up wild and often utterly 
  impractical inventions.
  Stonelord Uli Forgefire is the senior dwarf in attendance, managing his side of the 
  business with considerable acumen and all the wisdom of his 120 years. His gnomish 
  opposite number is the wild-haired Nika “Gadget” Gemdelver, a spellcaster who oversees 
  the gnomes primarily because she has the most elaborate and impractical ideas of all her 
  people. Bright and friendly, Nika nevertheless never met an invention she didn’t love and 
  must rely on Uli’s more pragmatic and sensible leadership to keep her from utterly 
  bankrupting the business.
  The Dwarven Brickworks maintains good or at least neutral relations 
  with the other brick manufacturers, conducting business cordially while 
  dealing firmly with attempts at industrial espionage. In general, they 
  are left out of major conflicts between businesses since their purely 
  mechanical process is considered either utterly mad or prohibitively 
  expensive. All the same, grim Forgefire dwarves guard the facility 
  and keep out unwanted visitors, while the gnomes happily 
  conduct official tours of the facilities for the curious.
  Like many locations in Bricktown, the 
  vicinity of Dwarven Brickworks is hot 
  and often humid due to the moisture 
  extracted from drying bricks. The 
  dwarves and gnomes are sturdy 
  and tolerate these conditions 
  without much difficulty, but 
  humans and elves often find 
  it uncomfortable, especially in 
  the heat of summer. Also like 
  other businesses in Bricktown, 
  Dwarven Brickworks attracts 
  crowds of homeless cityfolk 
  during the coldest days of winter. 
  Despite a gruff character, Uli tolerates 
  these transients and often provides 
  them with food and clothing. 
  Adventure Hook: A building site in 
  the town keeps getting sabotaged. Uli 
  and Nika only happen to know about 
  it because they are the suppliers for the 
  construction team, but they can refer the 
  characters to a building contractor who is 
  at his wits’ end trying to find out what is 
  happening to the job and why.
  b-4. THe brICkfIeld
  b-4. THe brICkfIeld
  Officially baronial territory, the Brickfield is 
  a vast warehouse where finished bricks can be 
  stored prior to transportation. Storage is in short 
  supply, but the warehouse has grown more vital 
  as production increases. Space must be reserved 
  weeks or even months in advance, and though 
  fees for the service are relatively low, they 
  must all be fully paid to the barony in advance. 
  Should misfortune delay a shipment, 
  penalties of up to 100% of 
  the advance fees may be 
  imposed. Worse still, should 
  a customer fail to remove 
  their bricks on schedule — 
  thus delaying the space’s 
  next occupants — the 
  baron reserves the right 
  to confiscate and sell the 
  offending bricks. In such 
  cases, the customers usually 
  move the bricks out of the 
  warehouse with great urgency.
  Due to its importance to the 
  city and the barony, the Brickfield 
  is built like a fortress with thick 
  
  12|Cat’s Cradle
  12|Cat’s Cradle
  walls (of Cat’s Cradle brick, naturally), secure gates, and narrow windows. 
  A single set of large gates is kept barred save for when shipments are coming 
  in or going out. Well-trained and well-paid guards maintain security, often 
  supplemented by spellcasters. Those trusted with this task are invariably 
  above suspicion and considered all but uncorruptible. Despite this, intrigue 
  and sabotage sometimes occur, with bricks stolen and damaged or buyers 
  paid off to cancel their shipments at the last minute to guarantee forfeiture. 
  The Brickfield’s overseer is the tough and no-nonsense veteran Colonel Grif 
  Nishon, who tolerates neither slacking, dishonesty, nor disobedience, and is 
  unflaggingly loyal to the baron.
  b-5. blaCk bull Ironworks
  b-5. blaCk bull Ironworks
  Urthan “The Bull” Viturri is a human barbarian from a distant land (he 
  has never confided exactly which one) who is a master blacksmith and has 
  gained sufficient success and influence to obtain a small but well-equipped 
  smithy in the heart of Bricktown. There he makes mundane objects such as 
  pots, kettles, and utensils, but also crafts especially fine weapons and armor 
  for special clients. These items are often intended for enchantment and a future 
  as magic items, and so are created with the highest standards of quality and 
  beauty. Urthan is assisted by his two wives, Shan and Khur, who are every bit 
  as tough and skilled as he is, and his four children. The family lives in a suite 
  of apartments above the smithy. 
  Quiet, morose, and often downright surly, Urthan nonetheless commands 
  high prices for his work, and many of his wares decorate noble mansions or 
  are worn and carried into battle by wealthy warriors. Despite his success, 
  some dark rumors have continued to persist about Urthan, many of which 
  surround his reasons for leaving his homeland. Perhaps this is simply due 
  to his reluctance to discuss it, but wild stories circulate nonetheless — some 
  claim that he came to Cat’s Cradle after committing a terrible crime, that he 
  was once a powerful warlord toppled from his throne by rebellion and that the 
  rebels are still seeking him, that he secretly worships foreign gods and makes 
  sacrifice to them while using his victims’ blood to make his various wares — 
  these and even more bizarre stories have been whispered about Urthan. The 
  Bull himself doesn’t deign to respond to these rumors, and most are far too 
  scared of what he might do to actually bring up any of them directly. In some 
  ways, the rumors have enhanced Urthan’s reputation and business, for more 
  people have begun to stop by simply to see him in the flesh.
  Adventure Hook: Someone has learned a secret from Urthan’s past and is 
  trying to blackmail him. Urthan realizes he doesn’t have the social cunning 
  required to trap such a villain and enlists the characters to help.
  b-6. wHITesHadow CeramICs
  b-6. wHITesHadow CeramICs
  Deera Whiteshadow is from a family of halfling craftsfolk and has taken 
  to her clan’s mastery of stoneware and porcelain. When her brothers and 
  sisters chose to remain in their family’s home territory, she set out on her 
  own, venturing to Cat’s Cradle, where she bought a bankrupt brickworks 
  and converted it to the production of ceramics. Using similar techniques to 
  brickmaking, Deera was able to piggyback on Cat’s Cradle’s supply chain, 
  importing the clays and glazes she needed to create and improve upon her 
  family’s traditional wares. Today, her facilities are staffed primarily by 
  halflings and gnomes and are entirely self-contained, including storage, 
  workshops, kilns, and warehouse space. Whiteshadow stoneware is durable 
  and inexpensive and is balanced by Whiteshadow porcelain, which is prized 
  for its beauty, texture, and fine glazes. Patterns incorporate traditional halfling 
  designs integrated with symbology from other cultures such as elves, humans, 
  and dwarves.
  Deera has employed a number of relatives as well. She has never married 
  and has no children of her own and treats the cousins, nieces, and nephews 
  in her employ with near-maternal concern and care. Though she claims to 
  love them all equally, it is clear that her favorite is her nephew, the young 
  Nardo Brooks, a young and brash halfling who plays his aunt’s affections for 
  all they’re worth. Gambling, carousing, indiscriminately pursuing romantic 
  assignations, brawling, and sampling as many exotic substances as possible, 
  Nardo is anything but the paragon of halfling virtue that Deera thinks he is. For 
  her part, Deera refuses to hear anything negative about her nephew, assuming 
  that others are simply jealous, and bails him out with no questions asked 
  whenever his excesses get him locked up. Her warm relations with powerful 
  businesses and city officials are usually enough to get major charges dismissed 
  or to get young Nardo out with a slap on the wrist. It is rumored that Nardo 
  is deeply in debt to the Kennock Syndicate, who are attempting to blackmail 
  him into embezzling from Deera or into skimming off the top of Whiteshadow 
  porcelain shipments. Time will tell whether he finally betrays his aunt, though 
  even then she may find a way to forgive him.
  Adventure Hook: Deera hires the characters to investigate Nardo’s 
  activities and keep him out of trouble.
  b-7. manTICore brICks
  b-7. manTICore brICks
  One of the three leading brick manufacturers in Cat’s Cradle, Manticore 
  takes pride in its “all natural” production methods, which the current owner 
  Mikelos Creal insists is made with no mechanical or magical enhancement 
  whatsoever. Manticore’s success lies in its variety, as its bricks are valued for 
  their many colors, shapes, styles, and levels of quality and aesthetic value, 
  ranging from common bricks used for basic construction to elaborate, fanciful 
  bricks with delicate embossing or patterns and brightly colored glazed stones 
  that are greatly prized and incorporated into many famed structures and 
  luxurious homes in distant regions.
  As might be expected, other manufacturers offer significant rewards for 
  the various formulae and processes that Manticore uses, particularly the 
  arcanists at Mystic Stone (Location B-9), who are baffled by Manticore’s 
  success and their rejection of magical enhancement. Crea and his partners are 
  aware of Mystic’s activities and hired their own spellcasters (at significant 
  expense) to protect Manticore’s operation. This has led to occasional outright 
  confrontations, and even a full-scale spell battle in the facility when magically 
  concealed rogues and their sorcerer supervisor were discovered sneaking into 
  the Manticore facility. Rumor has it that Manticore’s owners are furious about 
  the intrusion and have been planning some form of retaliation.
  Much to the frustration of Mystic Stone and many other local manufacturers, 
  Manticore has been awarded an official baronial contract to produce bricks in 
  a planned urban renewal project, replacing the unstable ripplestone structures 
  of the Old City with sturdy, locally produced brickwork. The plan is still in 
  its infancy and years from completion, but Mikelos and his associates have 
  already begun planning for the ambitious endeavor.
  Adventure Hook: The owners of Mystic Stone (Location B-9) hire — or 
  attempt to hire — the characters to steal the formula from Mikelos. If the 
  characters choose not to engage in such nefarious behavior, the scenario can 
  turn around. If informed of the plot, Mikelos hires them to protect the formula 
  from whomever Mystic Stone hires next. The same hook could be used for 
  attempted sabotage of the baronial contract.
  b-8. mIlleTon glassworks
  b-8. mIlleTon glassworks
  One of the various businesses not directly related to brick manufacture, 
  the Glassworks also features massive furnaces where a mixture of sand and 
  ash are melted together, sometimes with chemicals to provide color, blown 
  and flattened into panels that grace nobles’ homes or temple windows. Glass 
  requires significantly higher temperatures than bricks, so these furnaces are 
  especially hot, making much of the building’s interior quite uncomfortable 
  and forcing workers to take short shifts working the furnaces, spending the 
  remainder of their time in other portions of the complex where they pack, 
  organize, and prepare glass for shipment.
  From time to time, Milleton employs spellcasters to aid in the glassmaking 
  process by providing magical flames that temporarily increase the efficiency of 
  the glass furnaces, enchanting finished glass objects, or otherwise enhancing 
  the final product. 
  The Milleton family has run the glassworks for more than 60 years under 
  the control of matriarch Landra Milleton who is now 95 years old and (at 
  least in the view of her potential heirs) stubbornly refuses to die. The Milleton 
  Estate (Location S-7) is currently a den of intrigue, backstabbing, and 
  competition for the aging family elder’s favor by her relatives, children, and 
  even grandchildren.
  Adventure Hook: One of the Milleton family factions enlists the characters 
  to strengthen their status. This might happen before Landra dies, or it might be 
  the result of an all-out power struggle just after she dies.
  b-9. mysTIC sTone
  b-9. mysTIC sTone
  Asea Rohlind (Location G-15) is a half-elven sorceress rejected by her 
  elven family due to her mixed heritage. Bitter but determined, she made her 
  way in human society, discovering her sorcerous gifts along the way and 
  eventually marrying the hard-nosed but entirely nonmagical human merchant 
  Gellor Trendar who owned a small brick and ceramics business and had just 
  begun to export his wares outside Cat’s Cradle. In time, the two developed new 
  alchemical formulae and adapted techniques normally used in the creation of 
  magical items to strengthen, enhance, and beautify Gellor’s products. They 
  also took full advantage of their location, adding some of Cat’s Cradle’s unique 
  alchemic salts to their mixtures. Soon their bricks gained a stellar reputation 
  and became something of a prestige item for building. Today, Asea and her 
  
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  staff of influential and well-compensated spellcasters continue the tradition, 
  applying their skills to produce bricks of exceptional durability and beauty.
  Mystic Stone is the most famous and influential of Cat’s Cradle’s many 
  brickmakers, but due to the high cost and elaborate procedures needed to make 
  their product, they are not the most prosperous — this honor goes to Mystic 
  Stone’s rival, Manticore Bricks, a situation that vexes Asea and Gellor to no 
  end. Their elven wizards and human warlock staff are a generally haughty and 
  arrogant lot in the best of times, and the notion that a mere human business that 
  does not even use magic might be outcompeting them has placed a huge chip 
  on the spellcasters’ shoulders. Intrigue against Manticore has been increasing 
  of late, as Asea, Gellor, and their employees seek to learn more about the rival 
  business’ secret formulae and procedures.
  In addition to the business’s two owners, Mystic Stone’s senior staff 
  includes four elven wizards — whose versatile spellcasting allows them to 
  experiment with more and different arcane procedures — and two human 
  warlocks. Staff is mostly human with several dwarf laborers. The building has 
  been extensively converted and beautified with brick facing that puts many 
  of the enterprise’s most colorful bricks on display, as well as some of their 
  more exotic types, such as bricks that emit light, change shape and color, and 
  other intriguing effects. The interior does not look like a typical brickyard, 
  for the various spellcasters have their own private workspaces, and the actual 
  manufacturing facilities are equipped with magically fueled ovens. Basic 
  labor is performed by unseen servants, and various familiars such as imps and 
  homunculi dart here and there. Bound elementals and even more bizarre and 
  exotic sights are common.
  Unlike the tough but kindhearted Uli Forgefire (Location B-3), Asea, 
  Gellor, and their spellcasters have little tolerance for loiterers and the poor 
  who venture to Bricktown in the winter to seek out the warmth of the furnaces 
  and kilns. Being the type that sees poverty as a sign of moral weakness and 
  laziness, Mystic Stone’s owners employ local toughs to beat and drive off 
  anyone foolish enough to camp or linger too long in the area or anyone who 
  looks shiftless or poverty-stricken. 
  Adventure Hook: See Location B-7. A lower-level adventure hook might 
  be defending some squatters from the thugs employed here, possibly at the 
  urging of a cleric or as part of a radical politics type of campaign.
  b-10. salamarIs’ sTudIo
  b-10. salamarIs’ sTudIo
  Eris Salamaris is a human artist who crafts delicate works in ceramic, 
  glass, clay, and metal. His success with the wealthy folk of Cat’s Cradle 
  allowed him to renovate a small factory, installing resources for firing 
  ceramics and smelting glass as well as living quarters. Here, Salamaris creates 
  wild and increasingly elaborate works that many feel resemble organically 
  grown objects or bizarre sea life. His works are popular with the elite of Cat’s 
  Cradle, and the baron himself recently commissioned a large sculpture that 
  will grace one of the feast halls in Cat’s Keep. Salamaris has taken on the 
  project with enthusiasm to the point of obsession, neglecting other projects 
  and commissions in his zeal.
  Salamaris’ obsession is fed by his dreams, in which he envisions the final 
  shape of his sculpture, which evolves and grows even more elaborate with each 
  dream. Always somewhat unstable, Salamaris has grown more so recently as 
  his consumption of hallucinogens (fairly high to begin with) has increased 
  significantly, providing him with even greater inspiration and the madness that 
  accompanies it. He has driven away most of his assistants, and his studio has 
  gone from pristine good order to utter chaos. Salamaris’ wife Azrati has also 
  moved out and is now living in a small apartment. She has sought help for 
  her unfortunate husband and suspects there is more to his malady than simple 
  artistic obsession.
  Adventure Hook: There is indeed something unusual about Eris’ obsession, 
  which could involve a night hag, demonic possession of some kind, or contact 
  with an elder being. Azrati hires the characters to investigate the situation and 
  resolve it.
  b-11. Perfumer
  b-11. Perfumer
  A mysterious immigrant to Cat’s Cradle who is rumored to have significant 
  magical powers, the elf Ellea Macaethan owns and operates this shop where 
  she sells perfumes, candles, and essential oils of all varieties, including some 
  that actually have arcane qualities. While most of these effects are minor, 
  benign, and temporary — relaxation, pleasant hallucinations, the enhancement 
  of the senses or feelings of love and pleasure — she also offers more potent 
  items that have effects similar to some magical potions, incenses, and salves. 
  Her manufacturing process is not known — Ellea’s shop contains only finished 
  products and modest living quarters, leading most to assume that she has a 
  workspace somewhere outside of Cat’s Cradle, possibly in the countryside 
  somewhere or, as some more exotic theories suggest, on a convenient parallel 
  plane or pocket dimension.
  Adventure Hook: Ellea has access to a pocket plane she inherited, which 
  she uses as her workroom. However, it has become unstable on the inside for 
  unknown reasons. Ellea isn’t an expert in this area, but she knows enough to 
  hire them in situations like this. The characters would need to enter the small 
  plane of existence and explore it to find out where things have gone wrong … 
  and why.
  b-12. THe danCer’s door
  b-12. THe danCer’s door
  Originally known as the Eastern Gate, this entrance to Cat’s Cradle sees a 
  constant flow of traffic along Sundry Road, bearing raw materials to Bricktown 
  or carrying loads of finished brick out. As the industry grew in income and 
  importance, the significance of the gate grew until it was decorated with 
  dancing statues and faced with bricks from a variety of manufacturers, making 
  its surface a chaotic mix of bricks in a wide range of shades and colors.
  b-13. sTurT’s aPoTHeCary
  b-13. sTurT’s aPoTHeCary
  Sturt is a jumpy, talkative, and easily distracted shopkeeper, but his 
  wares — healing herbs, salves, medicinal ointments, and related items — 
  are considered top-quality and are especially popular with adventurers. Sturt 
  himself is an expatriate goblin who came to Cat’s Cradle along with several 
  of his fellow goblins and a trove of herbalism and formulae stolen from his 
  tribe’s shamans. Armed with their pilfered knowledge, Sturt and his friends 
  started selling in the Alchemical Bazaar in the Panhandle, then used their 
  profits to renovate a rundown apothecary in Bricktown where their business 
  has continued to grow.
  Adventure Hook: Though Sturt is outwardly a chaotic and unfocused 
  individual, he has proven quite the skilled craftsman, and is a surprisingly 
  cunning and thoughtful individual. He knows, for example, that his tribal 
  shamans do not view his crimes lightly, and may one day seek him out to 
  avenge themselves and eliminate the threat that he represents to their power. 
  Accordingly, he is always on the lookout for suspicious individuals — goblins 
  or otherwise — and is not above soliciting some of his adventurer customers 
  to act as his agents or bodyguards.
  b-14. barreTTI’s rooms
  b-14. barreTTI’s rooms
  A typical Bricktown tenement located close by the Old City, Barretti’s is 
  constructed of unstable ripplestone that has been patched over the years with cheap 
  local bricks. Rooms are cheap, and there is always the danger of collapse due to 
  its outdated building materials. The building’s most notable tenant is the private 
  detective Valdrin Hoff (see Fortune Hunters), who maintains a home-office on 
  the ground floor. Here, he meets with clients, researches his various cases, and 
  even consults in great secrecy with various members of the constabulary.
  
  14|Cat’s Cradle
  14|Cat’s Cradle
  Deep in the heart of Cat’s Cradle stand the high walls of the baronial keep. 
  Centuries old, the keep is by far the oldest, still-standing structure in the 
  region, predating the discovery of all the more unique aspects of Cat’s Cradle 
  and its surrounding environs. 
  The walls and the keep itself are of simple construction in an ancient style, 
  though the inner castle has been expanded over the centuries in the name 
  of comfort. As was traditional for the region in those ancient days, all local 
  grain was stored inside the keep for safety and fair distribution, so most of the 
  outbuildings between the little castle and the keep wall are warehouses and 
  silos for storage of common-use dry goods. 
  By tradition, the keep is also home to a large population of domestic and 
  semi-feral cats. These are fed out of the baronial budget and serve as guardians 
  of the grain stores against pests. 
  C-1. THe baronIal CasTle
  C-1. THe baronIal CasTle
  The largest and oldest of the keep’s inner buildings is the Baronial 
  Castle. Simpler and more down to earth than the extravagant homes of 
  the Jade District, this castle is one reason Baron Scale is well-regarded by 
  his people. He is the first baron in three generations to live full time in the 
  castle, instead of showing up at the keep only for major events while living 
  in the Jade District. 
  By tradition, petitions from the common people are heard once a week 
  in the castle’s front audience chamber, which is well-appointed but far from 
  ostentatious. Baron Scale, Baroness Liera, and their two small children are all 
  said to be gracious hosts, able to make anyone, from the highest noble to the 
  lowliest commoner, feel comfortable in their home. The baron’s mother, Lady 
  Resla, has a more forbidding reputation, and her quarters in the castle are said 
  to be far more reminiscent of the last few generations’ opulence. 
  Adventure Hook: This area will likely be used if the baron or one of the 
  nobility hires the characters for an adventure, but the possibility of problems at 
  the weekly audience can be a good independent hook since the baron himself 
  is usually present. This is most likely a radical political sort of plot that could 
  range from something as minor as a protest to something as serious as an 
  assassination attempt.
  C-2. THe baronIal sTables
  C-2. THe baronIal sTables
  The baronial stables stand at the back of the keep, far from the gate, and — 
  secured as they are behind the keep’s high walls — are considered some of 
  the best-protected stables in the land. These were built centuries ago by one of 
  the baron’s ancestors and are of little interest to Baron Scale. He keeps only 
  a few horses for himself and his family, of quality but hardly theft-worthy 
  stock — especially considering how many easier places there are from which 
  to steal horses. 
  That said, other wealthy and important people do sometimes want a secure 
  location to house a valuable horse, and the baronial stables are a highly 
  sought-after space for the keeping of prime grade mounts. As many as 10 to 
  15 expensive horses can be found housed alongside those of the baron, enough 
  to have inspired several attempts on the place, but thus far, no would-be horse 
  thieves have succeeded at stealing from the baronial stables. 
  Adventure Hook: A character’s horse is stolen and ends up at the baronial 
  stables. Obviously the most sensible way to deal with this is to steal it back, right?
  C-3. THe baronIal TemPle
  C-3. THe baronIal TemPle
  The oldest still-standing temple in the Cat’s Cradle region is the baronial 
  temple inside the walls of Cat’s Keep. Small and simple in structure, the 
  temple is dedicated to two deities. By her statue’s symbolism, one is clearly 
  identifiable as Sefagreth, the god of trade who is revered throughout the city, 
  but the other statue, known only as the “Bearded God,” is unidentifiable and a 
  mystery. Every few generations, the bearded god takes on a different identity 
  and significance for the common people of Cat’s Cradle, who are permitted to 
  visit the baronial temple a few times a year on major holidays. 
  It is said, however, that the baron’s family knows the true identity of the 
  bearded god, and that they worship him in secret rites to keep Cat’s Cradle safe 
  and the baronial family in power from generation to generation. The baronial 
  family and the temple priest have always insisted that all worship taking place 
  at the baronial temple is perfectly normal, and they never argue with the public 
  as to the bearded god’s currently accepted identity. 
  Despite the simplicity of this ancient temple and its central statues, 
  everything else in the temple is dripping with gold, gems, and silk, and as such, 
  is heavily guarded. Offerings at this temple are all in coin by tradition, and as 
  temple expenses are paid by the baron, said offerings are distributed among the 
  poor once a year at the winter festival. 
  C-4. THe CITy CourTHouse
  C-4. THe CITy CourTHouse
  Opposite the watch house, just inside the keep gate, stands the Cat’s Cradle 
  Courthouse. Here, the baron’s appointed judges weigh all legal matters from 
  atop a rather intimidating dais. The courthouse is not large, but most of it is a 
  single, echoing hall with a high ceiling and very few furnishings. 
  Accusers and accused, criminals and watch members stand below the dais 
  to make their cases, only rarely represented by legal advocates or accompanied 
  by supporters or corroborators. Court guards, not members of the watch, 
  maintain safety and order when plaintiffs or defendants are unruly. A small 
  number of benches allow for an audience, but most cases are observed only by 
  one of the baron’s secretaries who keeps verbatim notes of each case. There 
  is no place for anything remotely like a jury in this courthouse. Everything is 
  up to the judge. 
  While some difficult or high-profile cases are referred directly to the 
  baron, and while it is technically possible to appeal to the baron for reversal 
  of judgments in any legal matter, the majority of legal and criminal matters 
  are decided here (and most petitions for appeal are rejected, as the baron is 
  kept very busy running the city and surrounding countryside). Fortunately, 
  the baron’s three appointed judges are all known to be wise, even-tempered, 
  shrewd, and compassionate individuals. 
  Senna Tyhrese is an old elf woman who has lived in these lands for hundreds 
  of years. Tonsren Weckam is a human elder and lifelong philanthropist. 
  Kyrissa Dess is a yshkat woman who formerly worked as a mediator at the 
  docks, solving disputes between merchants and captains. All three are experts 
  in local and kingdom law, and though all are very minor aristocrats, all seem 
  sympathetic to the plight of common folk. Obviously, they cannot try cases 
  for citizens who outrank them (the rank of a baron-appointed judge in Cat’s 
  Cradle being considered equal to that of baronet), and residents and visitors who 
  outrank a baron must take their cases before their own or the baron’s liege.
  Adventure Hook: The characters are called upon to gather evidence in a 
  case where nothing seems well established. If they are unwittingly on the trail 
  of someone powerful, they might rapidly become the victims of a second crime.
  C-5. THe groundskeePer’s sHed
  C-5. THe groundskeePer’s sHed
  Located just behind the castle and entirely dwarfed by it stands a 
  groundskeeper’s shed as large as some families’ entire homes. While it does 
  contain the tools one would expect for gardeners to maintain the flowerbeds 
  inside Cat’s Keep, it has long been tradition for the groundskeepers to also care 
  for Cat’s Keep’s army of cats. As such, more than half the shed is dedicated 
  to veterinary care and other necessary tools for the sanitary accommodation 
  of so many felines. 
  The Cat’s Keep grounds are kept very clean but still tend to smell a bit like 
  cat, especially on hot days. 
  C-6. THe guesT House
  C-6. THe guesT House
  Built centuries ago by a previous baroness, the structure now known as the 
  Guest House was originally for her second husband and his art projects, while 
  the first husband lived in the castle as her official consort. Later, this “Second 
  House” came to be used for important guests to Cat’s Cradle whenever there 
  wasn’t room in the castle. In recent generations, after Baron Scolren moved 
  his family to the Jade District, the guest house was shut up and went unused 
  for decades. 
  Since Baron Scale returned to Cat’s Keep, however, the Guest House has 
  been renovated and is said to be very fine, perhaps more comfortable than the 
  castle itself. 
  Adventure Hook: Unexpected and important guests are arriving with 
  virtually no notice. The characters are employed to augment the normal 
  security that would be employed in this case, possibly because there are 
  suspicions that corrupt elements in the city watch have been paid to let their 
  attention lapse at a key moment.
  CaT’s keeP
  CaT’s keeP
  
  Cat's keep
  Cat's keep|15
  |15
  C-7. THe Inner gaTes
  C-7. THe Inner gaTes
  Also known as the Old Gates, these are the gates to Cat’s Keep. Something 
  truly terrible and unexpected would have to happen in Cat’s Cradle for the 
  Keep Gates to be of any practical use, so these days they are left open night 
  and day, closed only briefly as part of seasonal holiday traditions, such as 
  preceding all observances surrounding the Main Silo (Location C-8). That 
  said, the gates are guarded by the watch, as they are right beside the central 
  watch house and courthouse. And since they are used ceremonially a few times 
  a year, they are kept in reasonably good repair, especially the hinges and the 
  portcullis chain. 
  Though the portcullis is sturdy steel and the gates themselves quite stout and 
  steel-reinforced, it is unknown whether they could still withstand an assault 
  by an enemy force, since their construction predates several advancements 
  in siege weaponry. They do look imposing, however. The gates would almost 
  certainly be able to keep out rioting peasants at the very least, though Baron 
  Scale and his family are quite popular, and riots in Cat’s Cradle seem unlikely 
  for now.
  C-8. THe maIn sIlo
  C-8. THe maIn sIlo
  Most of the buildings inside Cat’s Keep are used to store grain and other 
  long-term food supplies. It’s just the Cat’s Cradle tradition, and no one has ever 
  seen fit to change it. Obviously, many merchants handle their own storage, but 
  small-time farmers can rarely find a better deal than to sell their surplus to the 
  baron for distribution, especially with a baron like Scale, who pays a fair price 
  even to commoners. In addition, Cat’s Cradle still allows the payment of taxes 
  in kind, so most small-time farmers (which describes most of those who work 
  the baron’s lands) find it easiest to pay the baron in the fruits of their labors. As 
  such, the so-called “Main Silo” is actually among the smallest of Cat’s Keep’s 
  food storage structures. 
  However, the Main Silo is the oldest of these, and of great cultural 
  importance. Decorated top to bottom with carvings depicting the city’s history, 
  the Cat’s Keep Main Silo is the most prominent feature of the keep’s front 
  courtyard. Every year at harvest time, a ritual is made of mixing together 
  wheat from everyone’s harvests to symbolize the unity of the Cat’s Cradle 
  community. On the winter’s shortest day, bags of wheat from the Main Silo 
  are ritually distributed to those in need. If any is left over come spring, farmers 
  who work the baron’s lands are given sacks of wheat at a planting ritual as a 
  symbol of the cycle of giving and receiving in a community. 
  If harm were to come to the Cat’s Keep Main Silo, it would not be a 
  particular financial loss to anyone, and in most years no one would likely go 
  hungry either. However, the loss of the Main Silo’s grain would strike a deep 
  blow to community morale. Of course, the Main Silo stands directly between 
  the castle and the central watch house, in plain view of anyone passing by, so 
  it would be all but impossible to tamper with it without getting caught. 
  C-9. THe Tower
  C-9. THe Tower
  Cat’s Cradle may be a wealthy city, but it is still only a barony, and as such 
  has no authority to imprison anyone provably ranked baron or higher without 
  orders from the capital. However, on occasion, a person of great wealth or 
  renown, or who might be nobility but is waiting for proof to arrive, needs to be 
  arrested for criminal behavior. In such a case, it is considered inappropriate to 
  house such a person with common prisoners unless absolutely no alternative 
  is available. 
  In Cat’s Cradle, so long as a high-status prisoner is not deemed a personal 
  threat to the baron, his family, or the security of the city as a whole, said 
  prisoner is held in a facility within Cat’s Keep known as the Tower. This tall, 
  
  16|Cat’s Cradle
  16|Cat’s Cradle
  narrow structure is situated just far enough from the keep wall to make a jump 
  impossible even for the best athlete. The next closest building to the Tower is 
  the vast central watch house. The Tower is four stories tall and is mostly stairs, 
  with a single excellently appointed suite at the top, complete with physically 
  fit servants that are able to run up and down the tall tower all day. 
  The Tower is guarded, but prisoners are primarily on their honor to behave as 
  their status requires, and it is well known that several common spells for levitation 
  and similar could easily free any Tower prisoner. Since Tower prisoners are 
  never truly dangerous sorts, when they have escaped in the past, they often 
  become the talk of Cat’s Cradle for years, romantic folk heroes or villains, 
  depending on their crimes. Most Tower prisoners are too concerned 
  with appearances, dignity, and honor to escape, however. They more 
  often hire teams of advocates to get them freed by legal means. 
  Adventure Hook: One of the prisoners in the Tower has 
  important information to give, but for some reason (possibly 
  a family or old business relationship) they divulge the 
  information only to one of the characters, and the information 
  turns out to be very valuable … and very dangerous to know.
  C-10. THe waTCH House
  C-10. THe waTCH House
  Several old defensive structures from before 
  the raising of Cat’s Cradle’s outer walls are built 
  into the keep’s inner wall. The largest of these 
  — stretching from just beside the keep gate to 
  cover nearly a third of its inner wall — has long 
  since become the central headquarters, barracks, 
  and short-term jail of the city watch. All watch captains 
  for all districts, at least in theory, report here to Watch 
  Commander Reese Gavel, with the sole exception of 
  the Baronial Constabulary, whose leadership report 
  directly to the baron. 
  Reese Gavel is an iron-haired half-elf of 
  stiff posture and little imagination. She 
  is good with a blade and better with 
  organizational administration, taking a 
  no-nonsense policy toward criminal 
  behavior at all levels of society. She 
  keeps a clean but spartan watch 
  house and has done a serviceable 
  job at maintaining order in all 
  parts of Cat’s Cradle, other than 
  the Old City, where her every 
  plan seems to fail, time and 
  again, to her terse and stony 
  frustration. She is also known 
  to be on poor terms with 
  Captain Leesis Estromyl of 
  the Jade District Watch, but 
  she is unable to dismiss him for 
  reasons not openly discussed.   
  Adventure Hook: This is 
  the jail. Breaking a prisoner 
  out of jail is a classic adventure 
  hook, and never, ever goes as 
  planned.
  
  dOCkside distriCt
  dOCkside distriCt|17
  |17
  The bustling waterfront is at the heart of Cat’s Cradle, and though its 
  importance has been somewhat eclipsed by the newer facilities in the 
  Panhandle, Dockside remains a critical element of the city’s economic and 
  social life. Much of the current dock facility is less than a century old, dating 
  back to the period in which all cargo, including alchemicals and supplies, was 
  shipped through the main dock district, with some alchemical labs built there 
  for convenience as well. With very little oversight, these labs grew in size 
  and safety procedures became increasingly lax. Mishandling of alchemical 
  runoff and an error in titration led to a massive explosion that raged through 
  the docks, burning much of the district to the waterline. In the catastrophe’s 
  aftermath, the barony took direct control of the docks, began rebuilding, and 
  declared that all alchemical products and supplies would be shipped through 
  facilities in the Panhandle. Today, the rebuilt Dockside facilities are visited by 
  a constant flow of lake vessels along with rowdy crews and the crime and vice 
  that normally plagues the waterfronts of larger cities.
  d-1. baronIal ConsTabulary
  d-1. baronIal ConsTabulary
  This ancient, four-story building serves as headquarters for the Baronial 
  Constabulary, a branch of city law enforcement that is distinct from the 
  city watch and other authorities. Overworked, understaffed, underpaid, and 
  underfunded, the constabulary nonetheless exists as an independent entity 
  devoted to investigating crimes that threaten the barony or the city as a whole. 
  In practice, this means that the constabulary serves as a major crimes unit with 
  the authority to look into offenses such as treason, smuggling, murder, arson, 
  and similar illegalities. While theoretically superior to all other legal entities in 
  the city, constabulary operatives frequently encounter resistance and pushback 
  from members of the watch and private security groups, such as those hired to 
  keep order in Old City. The constabulary is often viewed by these groups as 
  a meddling, officious bunch of do-gooders with little regard for the realities 
  of Cat’s Cradle society. The animosity goes both ways, for many constables 
  believe the watch to be corrupt or full of ineffectual time-servers. Though 
  the constabulary operated with the full support of the baron, its members are 
  usually on the verge of being overwhelmed by a tide of crime and graft.
  Nevertheless, the constables carry on under the eccentric leadership of 
  Lady Genera, a wizened and seemingly frail old woman whose unassuming 
  appearance conceals a cunning mind and an unyielding, steely spirit. Lady 
  Genera never raises her voice, is ceaselessly polite and deferential, and spends 
  much of her time reading, sipping tea, and knitting or tatting, producing 
  countless shawls and doilies which she gives as gifts to successful constables. 
  Her dedication to the constabulary is unbreakable, however, and once she has 
  undertaken an investigation, she stops at nothing to see it to its conclusion. 
  Criminals who underestimate Lady Genera never make the same mistake 
  twice. No one is entirely certain where she came from or how she got the job, 
  but those who know her have no doubt about her dedication, intelligence, or 
  ruthless efficiency.
  Genera’s second-in-command is the gruff Commander Francovis Mageran, 
  a former watch officer who led an investigation into corruption and exposed a 
  conspiracy to smuggle stolen alchemical salts out of Cat’s Cradle. Resulting 
  arrests and convictions resulted in watch officers turning against Mageran and 
  branding him a traitor, but also earned him command of the constabulary. He 
  remains a villain to most watch members, who still believe that he betrayed his 
  colleagues, despite their provable wrongdoing. Mageran and Lady Genera’s 
  other senior investigators vet each new recruit to the constabulary, carefully 
  researching their backgrounds and abilities to make certain that they will serve 
  the barony loyally.
  The constabulary is also a relatively small group of professional 
  investigators, with 16 regular constables who carry silver badges in the shape 
  of a snarling cat’s head. They are commanded by five senior constables called 
  investigators who bear gold badges. Uniforms are generally not worn while on 
  duty, and even badges are not required, especially if constables are working 
  undercover. All constables are authorized to enter any dwelling, seize any 
  required evidence, and interrogate any appropriate individuals, and though 
  they themselves cannot arrest suspects, constables are empowered to direct the 
  watch to do so. The major exception to this rule is in the Old City, where the 
  watch’s conspicuous absence allows the constabulary to actually make arrests 
  and file charges.
  Members of the constabulary are a tough, uncompromising lot, well used 
  to the grit and corruption of the city at large and always ready to defend their 
  authority. Often expected to work alone, constables of all ranks are skilled 
  fighters, often with roguish or magical skills as well. Specialist investigators 
  provide magical, druidic, or divine assistance. Once a constable is on a case, 
  only death or specific orders from superiors stops the investigation before it 
  is complete.
  Adventure Hook: The characters are deputized to serve as constables 
  after several of the regular constables are removed from service (sick, killed, 
  kidnapped, or whatever might be related to a sinister plot). The first order of 
  business is to find out what has happened and why.
  d-2. veyloura merCanTIle enTerPrIses
  d-2. veyloura merCanTIle enTerPrIses
  Managed by a partnership of two humans — Barlund Halstead and Feona 
  Indrik — and the dwarf Nurjal Hurgin, Veyloura Mercantile Enterprises 
  controls a fleet of five river-ships, countless barges, and finances regular 
  caravans to and from the city. The partnership is known to be a troubled one, 
  with coldly polite relations between its members even at the best of times. 
  Conflicts over business plans and investments sometimes boil over into angry 
  arguments, and in some cases, even blows have been exchanged. Nevertheless, 
  the business continues to thrive and has made the tumultuous partners quite 
  wealthy, leading them to stay together despite their struggles.
  Unfortunately, the personality conflicts between three very assertive 
  individuals cannot be papered over forever. Barlund, the oldest partner, has 
  the most experience in business and has grown increasingly cautious over 
  the years, averse to risks and focused primarily on protecting his existing 
  investments and passing on a legacy of wealth to his three children. The 
  business is named for Barlund’s late sister, who died when he was a child. 
  Nurjal is a brash, middle-aged dwarf from a wealthy and accomplished clan 
  who turned his back on his family’s assets, insisting that he could become rich 
  on his own. He succeeded admirably in this task, but in the process developed 
  an independent streak that has recently cause further estrangement from his 
  human partners. Finally, Feona is the youngest and most daring of the trio, 
  spending considerable funds on dead-end investments and wild schemes, 
  some of which actually succeeded, further encouraging her incautious 
  practices. Tensions between the three have escalated as each has gone their 
  own way, placing relatives and cronies in important positions, further straining 
  interpersonal relations.
  The cold war power struggle to control Veyloura Enterprises may grow hot 
  as Barlund and his children seek to contain the increasingly erratic behavior 
  of Feona and her younger sister, and the thoughtless activities of Nurjal and 
  his clansfolk, who have recently been acting independently and keeping excess 
  profits from their specific enterprises for themselves, while Feona and Nurjal are 
  developing their own plans to take sole control of Veyloura. When legitimate 
  means fail, those close to the family believe that the entire situation may descend 
  into all-out civil war, a situation which could engulf much of Dockside.
  Adventure Hook: Other than the characters getting involved in the cold 
  war among the partners of Veyloura Enterprises, the company is also a 
  good source of any kind of adventure where characters are hired to rescue a 
  mercantile operation. This could include fighting pirates, rescuing a stranded 
  ship, guarding a caravan, etc.
  d-3. CaT’s Cradle PorT auTHorITy
  d-3. CaT’s Cradle PorT auTHorITy
  As baronial income from the Panhandle docks is limited, most tariffs and 
  taxes are levied on the main docks, where baronial assessors check each 
  incoming vessel’s cargo and assess fees, which must be collected before ships 
  can offload. Chief Assessor Elovan Avezila leads a staff of assessors and 
  their assistants who work in shifts around the clock. The port authority has a 
  number of facilities, including a vault that contains collected income, which 
  are transported to Cat’s Keep in a well-guarded procession each week, and a 
  small warehouse that houses confiscated contraband or cargo seized due to 
  non-payment of fees. As might be expected, this warehouse is heavily guarded 
  and a frequent target of burglary attempts. Though Avezila is considered to 
  be an honest and hardworking individual, he has proved largely ineffectual in 
  counteracting graft and bribery among his subordinates.
  Fees and tariffs are assessed using a complex set of guidelines in which 
  essential items such as basic foodstuffs, brickmaking supplies, and alchemical 
  equipment are relatively lightly taxed, and items such as alcohol, textiles, 
  livestock, artworks, and the like are assessed on a sliding scale. Fees are due 
  immediately and most captains come prepared having already calculated and 
  budgeted for them, but there are exceptions. Those who do not have sufficient 
  doCksIde dIsTrICT
  doCksIde dIsTrICT
  
  18|Cat’s Cradle
  18|Cat’s Cradle
  gold to pay their fees are subject to boarding and the impoundment of cargo 
  equal to the value of the owed fees, and it is something of an open secret that 
  confiscated cargos sometimes “mysteriously” disappear in the night, to be sold 
  in Cat’s Cradle by shady entrepreneurs or representatives of criminal families. 
  Adventure Hook: Though they represent an important aspect of Cat’s 
  Cradle’s economic well-being, assessors are not incorruptible, and corruption 
  tends to creep into the job despite the baron’s continuing attempts to stamp 
  it out. Though most assessors are honest men and women, some are open to 
  bribery, usually accepting small handouts in exchange for looking the other 
  way and going a little light on fees or tariffs. Such minor violations may lead 
  to larger crimes as assessors are blackmailed or enticed with greater payoffs. 
  In the end, some assessors have been culpable in outright smuggling, theft, and 
  the sale of contraband from the port authority’s warehouse. Find them.
  d-4. THe saIlor’s Tavern
  d-4. THe saIlor’s Tavern
  Run by bona fide old salt sailor Tersa Skollet, the Sailor’s Tavern offers 
  exactly what’s on the package, providing those who crew lake vessels with 
  accommodation, victuals, and entertainment. Those who suggest that river 
  sailors are less boisterous and hard-living than their seagoing brethren are 
  advised to spend some time at establishments like the Sailor’s Tavern to 
  see the error of their ways. Tersa’s place is in constant tumult, with ships’ 
  crews and stevedores freely mixing, carousing, and fighting. In addition to 
  fights (at least one is guaranteed each night), Tersa also offers gambling of all 
  sorts, potables from the grittiest cheap ale to high-end elven liquors, food of 
  all grades, and social or intimate companionship for those who can afford it. 
  Accommodations are available as well, on the same type of sliding scale, with 
  single hammocks going for 1 cp per night, on up to the tavern’s luxury suite 
  for 5 gp, with a variety of rooms in between.
  The tavern’s most popular pursuits are its somewhat extralegal ones, 
  specifically the fighting pit that Tersa maintains in her sub-cellar. This 
  cylindrical pit mimics the larger gladiatorial rings of big cities, with seating and 
  standing room around its lip, high above the sandy floor. Here, combats take 
  place between humanoid participants, wild animals, or single warriors against 
  monstrous opponents. Drunken sailors bellow encouragement, ale is spilled, 
  bets are laid, gold changes hands, brawls break out, and grudges are settled in 
  the pit. Fights are rarely to the death, though this has been known to happen, 
  especially when monsters are involved, and magic is forbidden, but otherwise 
  Tersa’s sub-cellar is probably the premiere private fight club in Cat’s Cradle.
  While theoretically the Sailor’s Tavern is open to all, non-sailors are generally 
  frowned upon and may find themselves ignored, insulted, or even challenged to 
  a brawl in the fighting pit. Those who can hold their own against the aggressive 
  regulars may earn themselves a place at the tavern, but so far few have bothered 
  to even try, leaving Tersa’s establishment to its familiar crowd. 
  d-5. THe gIlded barge
  d-5. THe gIlded barge
  Though Cat’s Cradle is a relatively small city, its waterfront is every bit 
  as wild as those of larger settlements, and like most other port regions, Cat’s 
  Cradle boasts its share of brothels. The Gilded Barge is probably the city’s 
  best known such establishment, owned and operated by the gangsters of the 
  Kennock Syndicate. Manager Orloff Murgin was recruited from a distant 
  metropolis and was brought here to organize and oversee the business. Over 
  the past five years, he has transformed the Barge into a successful moneymaker 
  with a combination of mercantile acumen and ruthless suppression of the 
  competition. Orloff is not a kind or merciful manager, but he is an efficient 
  one, which keeps his employers happy.
  Adventure Hook: Located in the rough-and-tumble docks, most would 
  expect the Gilded Barge to cater mostly to sailors and waterfront workers, but 
  Orloff’s efforts have paid off in many ways, including by attracting a steady 
  stream of nobles and wealthy clients from the Jade and Gold districts who 
  venture here in groups, usually escorted by well-paid guards to keep trouble at 
  bay. The characters might be hired as guards or hired to waylay one of these 
  groups for various reasons.
  
  dOCkside distriCt
  dOCkside distriCt|19
  |19
  d-6. wareHouse number sIx
  d-6. wareHouse number sIx
  One of a number of warehouses on the docks where cargo is stored before 
  and after loading, this particular warehouse is owned by Geldrin Thalkus, 
  one of the most successful of Cat’s Cradle’s merchants. It is cavernous and 
  capable of holding cargo from several ships at once and is rented out to other 
  merchants when space is available. Warehouse Number Six is therefore 
  popular with smaller enterprises, more so because Thalkus is careful to keep 
  the place secure and well-guarded.
  Adventure Hook: Thalkus is a good patron for any kind of business-related 
  adventure such as investigating thefts, recovering stolen goods, or stopping 
  sabotage. In this case, if he hires the characters to investigate a theft from the 
  warehouse, he will not want the theft to become common knowledge, since 
  the place is supposed to be secure. The investigation will need to be delicate 
  and completely secret.
  d-7. THe doleful wayfarer
  d-7. THe doleful wayfarer
  This trim and brightly colored vessel serves as the floating headquarters for 
  Sargash Uthark (see Fortune Hunters), an orcish mariner who spent years 
  of carefully saved income from dozens of successful voyages and invested in a 
  small fleet of ships for lake commerce. He currently owns controlling interest 
  in five ships, all of which carry produce, sand, clay, and alchemical components 
  into Cat’s Cradle, and bear bricks, glassware, finished alchemicals, and other 
  exports to other towns and cities in the region. His crews consist mostly of 
  veterans that Sargash met during his days at sea, plus promising newcomers, 
  and all are highly capable, braving the dangers of the lake as they efficiently 
  sail from port to port.
  The Doleful Wanderer is the pride of Sargash’s fleet, a two-masted schooner 
  crewed by 20 of his best sailors. Sargash runs his entire business out of his 
  small cabin, where he maintains his books and records, leaving only minimal 
  space for his own comfort. Despite its value as Sargash’s headquarters, the 
  Wanderer also plies the lake trade, though her limited cargo space makes speed 
  and efficiency vital. Due to the hazards of lake travel, the vessel sports two 
  ballistae that can be set up in a matter of minutes, and all of the crew are skilled 
  fighters trained in techniques for dealing with the lake’s more dangerous 
  denizens. Sargash is reluctant to take the ship on especially hazardous 
  missions, for its loss would be devastating to his business, and would place 
  him and his most trusted crew in peril. For the most part, when not secure at 
  the Cat’s Cradle docks, the Doleful Wanderer sticks to safe, relatively easy 
  coastal routes, well away from the deeper portions of the lake, making quick 
  runs to and from various nearby ports.
  d-8. PIerfronT fIsH markeT
  d-8. PIerfronT fIsH markeT
  Though the yield of fish from nearby waters has declined recently due to 
  the effects of alchemical runoff and pollution, fisherfolk are accustomed to 
  sailing beyond this area and eagerly bring their supposedly untainted catch 
  to Cat’s Cradle for market day each week. On the market’s off days, the 
  booths and ground cloths of the market are still occupied by people selling dry 
  goods, fruits and vegetables, utensils, and other gear, but the weekly market 
  day draws throngs of folk from within the city and beyond. Lake fish of all 
  sorts are available at the market — perch, trout, pickerel, even the occasional 
  sturgeon — as well as crayfish, freshwater mussels, and other items. 
  A local species called the river tiger is a predatory fish like a large 
  freshwater pike, but striped black and green — these constitute a rare catch 
  but are considered a special delicacy and larger individuals draw considerable 
  attention. Big lake tigers are much sought-after by trendy nobles and merchants, 
  and some have been known to trigger bidding wars, with ownership of the fish 
  considered a significant social coup. 
  Adventure Hook: Once bought, lake tigers are prepared by the finest chefs 
  available and are served at exclusive gatherings, bringing significant notoriety 
  to the hosts. Stories are told about nobles who compete for the ownership of 
  a single river tiger to the point of espionage, brawls, and even duels, some 
  of which spread to the fish market itself. The characters are hired to foil the 
  success of a rival’s banquet by sabotaging the fish course.
  d-9. HIrIng Hall
  d-9. HIrIng Hall
  Sailing, dockwork, and fishing are seasonal positions, and turnover is high 
  as business ebbs and flows. This old and outwardly dilapidated building is 
  where captains, business owners, fishermen, sailors, barge tenders, stevedores, 
  and others visit when hiring or looking for work. The hall is always crowded 
  during the busy seasons of spring and summer, as there are plenty of fishing 
  and lake transportation jobs. Employers occupy booths or desks inside the 
  cavernous main hall, with signs or barkers to announce their pay rates and 
  needs. Interviews with prospective hires are short and to the point, with 
  contracts signed and advances paid on the spot. This is necessary in most 
  cases, as vessels usually ship out as soon as they have full crews.
  The hiring hall is sometimes the scene of chicanery as competing enterprises 
  try to steal desirable crew from each other by loudly offering higher pay, 
  interrupting interviews, and even stealing rivals’ pay chests. As a result, guards 
  are often employed to keep mayhem to a minimum, but even so, the hall is a 
  place of shouting, noise, and crowds in the busy season. During the fall and 
  winter, of course, hiring trails off, finally leaving the hall empty and echoing 
  forlornly by midwinter.
  Adventure Hook: The characters get caught up in a good old-fashioned 
  brawl.
  d-10. THe doCksIde wall
  d-10. THe doCksIde wall
  These days, this battlemented wall serves more as a demarcation line 
  between the Docks and Old City than any sort of defensive measure. Damage 
  from the Dockside fire a century ago was never repaired, and most of the 
  remainder has not been maintained over the decades, leaving some sections 
  on the verge of collapse. Its wall walk is no longer safe and is not patrolled, 
  nor with the exception of Eastwatch Tower, is it garrisoned in any way. The 
  entire wall has degenerated from protection to threat over generations, and 
  buildings in its shadow are extremely cheap to live in or purchase due to the 
  imminent possibility of disaster. Enterprising locals have shored up the wall in 
  some places in a variety of ways, some more effectively than others, but not a 
  week goes by without at least one incident of a loose stone injuring or killing 
  an incautious pedestrian or damaging one of the buildings below.
  d-11. easTvIew Tower
  d-11. easTvIew Tower
  The only portion of the Dockside Wall that remains in semi-decent repair, 
  Eastview Tower serves as headquarters for the Dockside city watch, housing 
  50 patrol members and their commander, Captain Cyrus Alvi, a rather morally 
  ambiguous individual who values order over law and is willing to let petty 
  crimes and corruption slide so long as overall peace and quiet is maintained. 
  Despite the tower’s central location between two major districts, Alvi’s 
  patrols focus almost exclusively on the Docks, leaving Old City to its own 
  devices. Barracks occupy the bottom two levels of the tower, while Captain 
  Alvi’s quarters and the unit’s extensive armory fill the third. The roof has 
  been extensively rebuilt and reinforced and features a watch post and ballista, 
  though the weapon is primarily there for show and to demonstrate that the 
  watch is there.
  Adventure Hook: Petty crooks (or at higher levels, the Thieves’ Guild) 
  hire the characters to “encourage” several of the patrol members to overlook 
  a small crime. This is supposed to be just a payoff, but things go very wrong 
  at the handoff of cash when a rival to the characters’ employer either calls in 
  the constabulary or tries to steal the money, leading to a potential scandal and 
  also some missing money.
  d-12. saIlors’ TemPle
  d-12. saIlors’ TemPle
  Space is at a premium on the waterfront, so the various priesthoods who 
  represent the lake sailors and fisherfolk have been forced to share space in 
  this ornate structure, which is centrally located on the docks and open at all 
  hours. The deity with the largest congregation is Kamien, goddess of rivers, 
  lakes, springs and other bodies of fresh water. She is quite popular with the 
  people who work on the lake, especially given that she provides protection 
  from dangers such as storms, floods, and monsters. Priestess Amnera Pasean 
  and her four acolytes see to the lake workers’ spiritual needs, lead services, 
  bless boats, provide healing and comfort, and even give aid and support to 
  the jobless, bereaved, and the poor among the Docks’ denizens. Some locals 
  also revere Quell, who is normally a god of the sea but is believed by many 
  to watch over all sailors and other folk who make their livings on the water. 
  Quell’s priest Singlo Parzion and his assistant provide their god’s blessing 
  to his worshippers, who often revere Kamien as well. A few other gods also 
  maintain facilities at the temple, including Thyr, Freya, and Belon the Wise, 
  though their priests work here part-time, giving the remainder of their attention 
  to other temples elsewhere in the city.
  Adventure Hook: This temple can be used for any religious quest sort of 
  hook or as a good jumping off point for an assignment to fight pirates, always 
  a good standby.
  
  20|Cat’s Cradle
  20|Cat’s Cradle
  The Gold District, commonly called “Coin City,” is not as wealthy as the 
  luxurious Jade region, but it is where the most money changes hands, as it is 
  home to many shops, businesses, and mercantile enterprises, leading to its 
  popular nickname. At its height, the district was a truly beautiful one, with 
  white stone buildings and green slate roofs predominating. While Cat’s Cradle’s 
  prosperity has continued since those days, the concentration of wealth among 
  the city’s upper classes has meant that some parts of Coin City have begun to 
  fall into disrepair, and while the beautiful homes of the rich remain prominent, 
  some neighborhoods are in decline, with poverty and want gaining an expanding 
  toehold. Unlike the Old City, which has been largely left to its own devices by 
  the city watch, the Gold District is still patrolled in most areas, and rampant 
  crime is confined to its poorer sections such as the Warrens (Location G-19). 
  g-1. THe HaunTed gaTe  
  g-1. THe HaunTed gaTe  
  (aka gold gaTe)
  (aka gold gaTe)
  This ornate archway is nearly 300 years old and features carvings of a number 
  of unknown gods or heroes, and inscriptions in a variety of languages, some of 
  which are so worn as to be illegible. Given its location, the gate naturally sees 
  heavy traffic in and out of Alchemists’ Alley and the wealthy enclaves of the 
  Jade District. Nevertheless, the gate is treated with superstitious reverence by 
  many of Cat’s Cradle’s folk, who believe it to be haunted or otherwise subject 
  to supernatural phenomena.
  There is some reason for this, as on certain nights, especially in the fall, 
  some of the gate’s inscriptions fluoresce with eerie pink light, and spectral 
  figures have been sighted on walls near the gate, only to disappear when 
  investigated. Other unconfirmed stories speak of whispered voices that can be 
  heard by certain people while passing through the gate, or of strange dreams 
  in which the Haunted Gate itself stands shimmering in strange landscapes. 
  Officially, the baron personally discourages these stories, suggesting that 
  they are wild rumors or the figments of people’s imaginations, but some believe 
  otherwise. A few have taken it upon themselves to make independent arcane 
  investigations of the gate, leading to a variety of theories, some more plausible 
  than others. Some believe that ancient stones imbued with primal magic were 
  used in the gate’s construction and that the stones’ latent energies produce strange 
  but harmless effects. Others formulate more ominous theories, suggesting that the 
  gate was once the site of demon worship and blood sacrifice and that it continues 
  to leech the life energies of those who pass through it. Most alarmingly, some 
  theorists believe that the gate itself is still active and once it gains enough power, 
  it will show its true nature, opening up to some hellish or abyssal realm and 
  unleashing terrors onto Cat’s Cradle. This last suggestion is considered by most to 
  be alarmist nonsense, though it has a small but dedicated circle of believers.
  g-2. CalIbos Inn
  g-2. CalIbos Inn
  Ceil Carveth owns this inn, which is a popular destination for visitors to the 
  Gold District. The building is quite old, dating from the founding of Cat’s Cradle, 
  when it was one of the first stone structures in the area. While renovating the old 
  building a decade ago, Ceil found numerous artifacts from the old city, many of 
  which he keeps on display at the inn’s main dining hall. These include fragments of 
  old statuary, clothing, banners, holy symbols, tools, and even weapons, all reflecting 
  the structure’s varied uses over the years, from a residence to a temple to the home of 
  a mercenary adventuring band. The inn’s name comes from the leader of this group 
  of adventurers who perished 22 years ago at the hands of an angry demon.
  Most of Ceil’s collection are items of historical interest but of little real value, 
  but there are a few exceptions that he keeps safely locked away and shows only to 
  select visitors. These include a fine sword that somehow survived the passing years 
  untouched by rust or corrosion and a similarly untouched round shield emblazoned 
  with a northern-style black dragon on a red enameled field. Ceil suspects that the 
  items are magical and of deep historical importance, but for reasons he cannot 
  quite fully explain, he has chosen not to investigate their provenance or to have 
  them properly identified, preferring instead to keep them safe in a locked chest in 
  his quarters. His desire to protect the items has grown greater, to the point that he 
  has had a poison needle trap installed on the chest to ward off would-be thieves.
  Aside from his growing obsession with these two treasures, Ceil and his 
  brother Danelos run a tidy and pleasant inn, serving good food at good prices 
  and providing overviews of the city, its history, and its culture to those who 
  might be visiting from distant lands. Rooms are available at standard rates and 
  are comfortable but not excessively luxurious, further enhancing the Calibos 
  Inn’s reputation as a pleasant and economical destination.
  Adventure Hook: Collectors like Ceil are always good for a “find it and 
  bring it to me” sort of adventure; in this case, it’s probably something once 
  owned by the adventurer Calibos, a shoe or perhaps his helmet. Alternatively, 
  one of the items in Ceil’s collection may have gone missing and require the 
  characters to track it down.
  g-3. THe baronIal arTs mInIsTry
  g-3. THe baronIal arTs mInIsTry
  This sturdy, utilitarian, and somewhat bland-looking three-story structure 
  houses the offices of the Baronial Arts Ministry, a small group of nobles and 
  civil officials who oversee performances and events at the plaza and elsewhere. 
  The uppermost floor contains miscellaneous items needed for performances 
  and presentations, as well as props, banners, instruments, and other items from 
  previous events. These are kept here and taken out as needed. The second 
  floor houses the offices of the ministry. Lord Minister Norris Prebble 
  painstakingly oversees the organization, carefully scheduling and monitoring 
  events in a manner that generally drives their participants to madness. Rumor 
  has it that Lord Prebble, husband of the wealthy and politically powerful Lady 
  Marta Prebble, was given this assignment by a frustrated Baron Scale who 
  tired of Norris’ constant presence and meddling in affairs of state. 
  The ground floor contains offices and ready rooms and is generally used by the 
  staff who prepare and present the various events. A small watch post is located on 
  the ground floor and is home to six watch members who patrol the area.
  Adventure Hook: Prevent a riot or other disturbance at one of the plaza 
  performances (see Location G-4). This might be something planned by a 
  radical political element.
  g-4. THe baronIal Plaza
  g-4. THe baronIal Plaza
  Six columns of fine, imported, white-veined pink marble flank the smooth 
  and near-seamless paving stones of the Baronial Plaza. Constructed 60 years 
  ago by one of Baron Scale’s predecessors, the plaza stands at the heart of the 
  Gold District and is a gathering-place for all the folk of Cat’s Cradle. It is used 
  for a wide range of activities, from addresses by the baron himself, to open-air 
  markets, processions, festivals, concerts, and plays. The plaza ends in a white 
  marble arch that encloses a curved acoustical shell that allows even the most 
  distant listener to hear words spoken on the raised stage.
  g-5. salT ale Corner
  g-5. salT ale Corner
  Stephan Kadhrossa owns this prime piece of property located conveniently 
  near the colorful events of the Baronial Plaza, from which he sells ales and 
  beers from local brewers. Kadhrossa sells by the barrel to taverns, and during 
  plaza events to the general public by the mug. Regular customers even bring 
  their own drinking vessels so that they can fill up at Salt Ale Corner and carry 
  their potables to the nearby event. Kadhrossa’s wares are far superior to the 
  watered-down drinks served by plaza vendors.
  The establishment’s name comes from Kadhrossa’s signature salt ale, which 
  is brewed at his estate outside Cat’s Cradle, where certain alchemical salts 
  are incorporated into the process. The exact salts and their proportions are 
  understandably a closely guarded secret, and all Kadhrossa says is that if 
  anyone ever tried to copy it, and their formulae were off even by a fraction, it 
  would result in widespread sickness and even death. This of course begs the 
  question of how the formula was discovered in the first place, but Kadhrossa, 
  his family, and employees maintain a wall of silence regarding the topic.
  Adventure Hook: A secret meeting is to be held here between two river-
  captain pirates. The characters might be hired to protect one or both of the 
  captains or to capture one or both of them. The patron for this adventure might 
  be law enforcement or it might be a third-party rival to both captains.
  THe gold dIsTrICT  
  THe gold dIsTrICT  
  (aka “CoIn CITy”)
  (aka “CoIn CITy”)
  
  the GOld distriCt (aka "COin City")
  the GOld distriCt (aka "COin City")|21
  |21
  g-6. THe CelesTIal THeaTer
  g-6. THe CelesTIal THeaTer
  Officially owned and operated by the barony, the Celestial is a grand 
  theater open to all, and scene of plays, concerts, operas, and many other 
  varied performances. A round stage in the center of the main auditorium is 
  viewable by the audience from all angles. The stage is surrounded by the 
  standing-room only area known popularly as “The Pit,” which is invariably 
  crowded with boisterous patrons who paid 1 cp or less to attend and who 
  have few qualms about drinking, brawling, or shouting encouragement to 
  those on the stage. Above the Pit are the plain benches of the Gallery, where 
  most ordinary Cat’s Cradlers sit — while they too can freely eat and drink, 
  their reactions to events on stage are usually less vehement than those from 
  the Pit. Above the Gallery are the Luxury seats: roomy, padded, and tended 
  by obsequious theater staff. 
  The most exclusive seats in the theater are the private boxes, which are 
  usually reserved for nobles or especially generous “friends” of the theater. 
  Prices vary greatly, with some performances demanding unbelievably high 
  rates — up to 500 gp per person for a private box during an especially popular 
  or in-demand performance. Other prices are less outrageous — luxury seats 
  range from 1–10 gp, while the gallery costs 1 sp, and the Pit is usually 1 cp, 
  though in some cases attendance in the Pit is entirely free. Food and drink are 
  available with quality and prices commensurate with their seating area.
  Stage manager Chaffin Kyle is a veteran actor whose long and storied career 
  was highlighted by some of the most ferociously bad reviews in kingdom 
  history, and whose vainglorious personality continues to attract comment. 
  Despite his bombastic and overwhelming conduct, Kyle is nonetheless a 
  decent manager who efficiently oversees productions and has managed to 
  obtain the services of a number of talented performers. Recently, the grand 
  opera Macobert the Conqueror opened to rave reviews, with packed houses 
  each night, attended twice by Baron Scale and his family. 
  Though the opera continues to be a smash hit, rumors have begun to circulate 
  that the opera company has somehow been cursed, as minor accidents have 
  plagued the show, and in several cases, important crew members have been 
  injured. When lead singer Abrosus Wegnor — a famous tenor who is said to 
  have risen to prominence from the teeming slums of Castorhage — fell ill and 
  was unable to sing, his part went to understudy Bram Philomath, a relative 
  newcomer who nonetheless received glowing reviews for his performance. 
  Once he had recovered his voice, Abrosus demanded to be put back in the lead 
  role, but he was tragically killed in a fall from the risers. Though none of this 
  could be directly attributed to any outside cause, material or supernatural, the 
  tragedy stoked the rumors even further and, coincidentally, kept the houses 
  full every night, with wealthy attendees going to far as to sit in the Gallery or, 
  in a few cases, the Pit, in the hopes of witnessing drama both on and off stage.
  Adventure Hook: Bram has a secret: A guardian spirit is trying to protect 
  him despite his own wishes, and it is this spirit that is responsible for the 
  problems. The nature of the spirit could be anything from an imp to a demon, 
  depending on the level of the characters.
  g-7. easTrIver wall
  g-7. easTrIver wall
  Dividing the western parts of Cat’s Cradle from the verdant but hazardous 
  strip of Alchemists’ Alley, Eastriver Wall is constantly kept in good repair, 
  regularly patrolled and, with its opposite number on the other side of the 
  Quicksilver River, serves as something of an icon, symbolizing Cat’s Cradle’s 
  strength and prosperity. Originally a grim gray stone fortification, the wall has 
  been faced with white granite like many of the homes in the Gold District, and 
  its towers house well-equipped squads of city watch who regularly patrol the 
  less poor sections of Coin City. The walls facing Alchemists’ Alley have been 
  extensively reinforced to guard against the dangers of fires or explosions.
  
  22|Cat’s Cradle
  22|Cat’s Cradle
  g-8. Pearl aParTmenTs
  g-8. Pearl aParTmenTs
  Typical of high-rent rooming houses in Coin City, the Pearl boasts everything 
  from single-room apartments to multi-room suites on the upper floors, all at 
  premium rates. Smaller accommodations cost about 100 gp per month, while 
  luxury suites may cost 10 times as much. Apartments at the Pearl are almost always 
  available due to their high cost, but the management, a consortium of local nobles 
  and entrepreneurs led by senior partner Khelias Eversol, insists that tenants pass 
  a careful background check to weed out frauds or troublemakers. Adventurers are 
  especially discouraged from staying here, as the owners are unapologetic in their 
  dislike for what Khelias herself refers to as “wastrels” and “hobos.”
  Khelias, her associates, and manager Sir Anteo Macarvid — a retired 
  knight given the position largely due to the prestige his name attracts — 
  are determined to maintain the Pearl’s reputation whatever the cost, but 
  their efforts were severely complicated when Osuras Kelmar, the wealthy 
  inhabitant of the Pearl’s top floor, was stabbed to death in a brutal and thus 
  far unsolved murder. Wary of publicity, Khelias and Anteo have avoided 
  conventional procedures, asking their friends in the watch to quietly look into 
  the matter, though few have real experience in detailed criminal investigation 
  skills. So far, they have kept the crime secret from the constabulary, who 
  at this point are the most appropriate investigators, but whose no-nonsense 
  procedures might disrupt the Pearl’s daily life or bring unwanted attention 
  from the public. Should the constables discover that they have been left out of 
  the loop, however, they are certain to respond aggressively.
  Adventure Hook: The situation has grown even more untenable with a second 
  murder, that of a young up-and-coming alchemist named Milo Bren, who like 
  Osuras Kelmar was stabbed to death in his own apartment, and almost no evidence 
  — physical, arcane, or otherwise — was left behind. Desperate, Khelias has 
  turned for help to a group that she despises — freelance adventurers — to help her 
  solve the mystery and catch the culprit before the constabulary catches wind of the 
  incident and shuts her precious Pearl down for the investigation.
  g-9. sColren’s gaTe
  g-9. sColren’s gaTe
  Named for the baron who extensively renovated and strengthened the gate 
  years ago, this portal is crafted of pink granite and carved with the faces and 
  names of various old gods and heroes.
  g-10. THe greens
  g-10. THe greens
  This neighborhood is named for the large number of old, decaying green slate 
  roofs that remain here, a legacy of its past wealth and influence. The Greens is 
  typical of the poor and rundown sections of the otherwise prosperous Coin District 
  and is a place of narrow streets — many bereft of paving stones and left to decay 
  into mucky, rutted pathways — badly repaired and patched walls, fallen roofs, 
  and tottering lost grandeur. The Greens contains homes mostly for laborers who 
  work elsewhere in the district, as well as a few disreputable taverns and gambling 
  houses. Assault, robbery, and other crimes of violence are common here, where 
  the watch patrols only sporadically. Those watch members who do deign to come 
  here are susceptible to bribery and all too happy to look the other way if it saves 
  them from the excessive labor of arrest and actual law enforcement.
  Adventure Hook: A small group of street vendors and merchants from the 
  neighborhood approach the characters and offer to pay them if they can bring 
  order to the area.
  g-11. College dormITory
  g-11. College dormITory
  In contrast to luxury residences like the Pearl, this featureless brick three-
  story structure contains accommodations for students at the Alchemists College 
  (Location J-1). Rooms are spare, shared by two students, and include a pair of 
  cots or bunks, small chests for belongings, miniscule desks, and bookshelves, 
  with two common baths and toilet facilities shared by all occupants of each floor.
  The Dormitory (it has no real official name) is a wild and tumultuous 
  place, as many students are boisterous and outspoken, given to excessive 
  consumption of alcohol and other youthful folly, including frequent bed-
  hopping and sampling of questionable alchemical concoctions. The occasional 
  spectacular fire or poisoning is dealt with by the squad of college trustees who 
  occupy the main floor and deal with major incidents, though for the most part 
  they turn a blind eye to minor infractions and youthful exuberance.
  g-12. aCademy sales
  g-12. aCademy sales
  The Achemical College in Jade District trains numerous students in 
  the basic procedures of alchemy and allied crafts. Throughout the learning 
  process, students create their own alchemicals, and those that serve a useful 
  consumer purpose are sold at this old building, where they can be obtained at 
  bargain rates. The faculty of the school naturally tests all items for potency and 
  potential hazard, and of course does not sell anything that could be dangerous, 
  limiting themselves to various low-level potions, cleaning supplies, crafting 
  compounds, and generally useful products. Students and instructors work the 
  establishment, maintaining stocks, performing inventory, and selling products, 
  the proceeds of which are split between the academy and the students who 
  made them. Thus, students make a bit of extra income, while the academy 
  draws a steady income.
  While most of the items sold here are, as noted, relatively minor goods 
  with limited use, college representatives may make arrangements to sell more 
  advanced or powerful alchemicals that have been crafted by advanced students. 
  In such cases, potential buyers must directly contact the Alchemists’ Guild and 
  the college staff with specific needs to determine whether such products can 
  be safely created and to verify the buyer’s intentions and reputation. In such 
  cases, the purchase takes place at Academy Sales under the watchful eye of 
  college instructors. 
  Adventure Hook: A quantity of explosive stone essence that could be 
  disguised as ordinary rocks or carved stone objects was recently delivered 
  to Academy Sales for a supposedly respectable buyer, only to be stolen en 
  route in a well-planned and well-executed operation. After this, the buyer 
  mysteriously vanished and further investigation by the constabulary revealed 
  that his identity, as a distinguished mage from a large city in the kingdom, was 
  entirely falsified. The embarrassment to the college was matched only by the 
  alarm of baronial authorities, who realized how dangerous the stolen substance 
  could be. The overworked constabulary added the theft to its ever-growing list 
  of open investigations and continues to pursue leads without success.
  g-13. THe arCanum
  g-13. THe arCanum
  The wizardly partners Azoggo Afriedus and Salvatore of the Flame 
  operate this extensive and prestigious magic shop where they sell material 
  components, wands, rings, potions, and other items to wealthy patrons and 
  adventurers with gold burning holes in their pockets. However, Azoggo and 
  Salvatore carefully avoid selling anything that might compete with the city’s 
  alchemists — potions fall into a gray area, but most are willing to leave those 
  out of the discussion — as they want to avoid any business conflicts that might 
  interfere with their income.
  The shop is something of a wonder, its shelves packed with magic items 
  of all kinds. Magical lighting and effects help direct customers to the items 
  they seek, while imps and unseen servants aid the owners in obtaining 
  goods and in collecting payments. As a rule, the partners offer what could 
  be called “consumer-grade” magical items, usually of the more common 
  variety, enhanced with low-level spells or providing only lesser effects. More 
  prestigious or wealthy clients can talk to the pair about items of greater power, 
  or even commission magical devices. Of course, such items are not kept on 
  display but rather in illustrated catalogs available at the shop. 
  Adventure Hook: In addition to commissions and custom work, Azoggo 
  and Salvatore do a thriving business with adventurers, sending them off to 
  obtain saleable items, some of which are quite powerful and dangerous in 
  the wrong hands. Naturally, they deal only with the most honest and well-
  established adventuring groups, for they know how easy it would be for their 
  hired help to simply keep the items or sell them to the highest bidder. Should 
  anyone contemplate cheating the partners, they find themselves ruthlessly 
  hunted down, as Azoggo and Salvatore also have many contacts among the 
  communities of bounty hunters, assassins, and spies.
  g-14. voles gaTe
  g-14. voles gaTe
  This gate is quite old and weathered, though thanks to its original design 
  and builders, it remains quite sturdy and unbowed despite centuries of weather 
  and traffic. Voles Gate forms the northern entrance to Cat’s Cradle and is 
  consequently busy at all hours, with throngs of travelers, farmers, merchants, 
  and alchemists, on foot or mounted, alone or with caravans of carts and wagons. 
  The gate is guarded, and goods entering and leaving are subject to inspection, 
  though the sheer volume of traffic makes most inspections cursory at best. The 
  gate is named for Voles, the next town on the caravan route in this direction.
  g-15. swallowTaIl manor
  g-15. swallowTaIl manor
  While they are nouveau riche and haven’t earned their place in Cat’s Cradle’s 
  highest levels of society, Asea Rohlind and Gellor Trendar (see Location 
  B-9) are the proprietors of the trendy and expensive up-and-coming Mystic 
  Stone brickworks. Swallowtail Manor was a faded glory of the neighborhood, 
  
  the GOld distriCt (aka "COin City")
  the GOld distriCt (aka "COin City")|23
  |23
  long neglected and fallen into disrepair when Gellor and Asea purchased it 
  six years ago. They have since restored the place to a semblance of its former 
  glory, though some neighbors have taken issue with their design choices and 
  consider the new Swallowtail Manor to be a tribute to garish excess rather than 
  the subtle beauties of the past. Swallowtail Manor boasts small but well-tended 
  grounds with magical lighting and topiary enhanced by gnomish illusionists.
  Originally, the manor was a prime example of local architecture with a 
  main house crafted from sturdy stone and faced with white granite, and roofed 
  with the green slate typical of the neighborhood. Since their arrival, Asea and 
  Gellor have kept the home’s clean white facing, but have replaced the battered 
  slate tiles with their own brickwork, incorporating magical fluorescence that 
  illuminates the area at night with a pale blue glow. Complaints from neighbors 
  have been uniformly ignored, or complainers have been bought off with gifts 
  and invitations to Asea and Gellor’s lavish parties.
  Adventure Hook: See Locations B-7 and B-9.
  g-16. TemPle of sefagreTH
  g-16. TemPle of sefagreTH
  The great god of commerce is quite popular in Coin City, where would-be 
  merchant princes seek their fortunes and businesses seek new customers and 
  increased wealth. High Priest Father Kel Aderock is himself a successful 
  merchant and importer who makes his permanent home in the Jade District, 
  but spends much of his time pressing the flesh and making friends with the 
  people of the local area. His sermons proclaiming the sanctity of wealth and 
  (somewhat less vehemently) the need for charity are legendary, as are his 
  “grand services” at the lavish temple which are little more than well-disguised 
  parties for wealthy donors. As cities’ founders’ days are particularly sacred 
  to Sefagreth’s followers, Kel’s services and celebrations on Cat’s Cradle’s 
  traditional founding day are particularly lavish and well-attended.
  Father Kel revels in his popularity and spends lavishly on the temple, his 
  home, and himself, often making little distinction between his own income 
  and temple funds. His natural charisma has also attracted considerable 
  attention from the women in his congregation, who fill the front pews during 
  his sermons, hanging on his every word. His romantic escapades with his more 
  adoring followers are considered a bit unethical by church officials, but there 
  are no specific rules against it, so Kel has become quite the ladies’ man. Such 
  is Kel’s ego that he has begun to think of himself as irresistible and now he 
  puts very little effort into keeping his amorous adventures secret, leaving a 
  trail of broken hearts and angry partners in his wake. 
  The eventual outcome of Kel’s activities remains to be seen, but it is also 
  known that his superiors have begun to notice his misuse of church funds and are 
  contemplating sending an inspector or senior cleric to provide oversight and, if 
  necessary, official discipline. Such an event would be quite devastating to Kel and 
  the church in general, so it will probably be done with great discretion and could 
  end in the spendthrift Father Kel being transferred to a far less prestigious temple, 
  perhaps on a distant and windswept island for a few years. This is assuming, of 
  course, that a jilted lover or an angry spouse does not get to him first.
  Adventure Hook: Sefagreth is a neutrally aligned god of trade, so any 
  commerce-based adventure hook could begin here. As an example, the 
  merchant Torgos Paite has had three of his last caravans attacked by a thief 
  wearing a green scarf wrapped over his face. In each case, only a small 
  amount of money was taken before the thief escaped, but Torgos wants the 
  thief apprehended. 
  g-17. quICksIlver House
  g-17. quICksIlver House
  Senior alchemist Osenshahle Warne maintains a home here, though she 
  increasingly spends her time at her lab in Alchemists’ Alley. When she is at 
  her lavish estate, she spends more and more time in study and research, even 
  going so far as to engage in alchemical experimentation in the main house, an 
  activity strictly forbidden by baronial edict. Warne’s continued obsession with 
  her experiments has led her to neglect her health and hygiene.
  Exactly what Warne is looking for isn’t known, even to her most intimate 
  friends (of which she seems to have fewer and fewer), and of late she has 
  grown even more secretive and hostile toward anyone who questions her. Of 
  the handful of acquaintances and fellow alchemists with whom Warne still 
  talks, several have expressed increasing concern for her life and sanity. They 
  speculate that her research has taken her into unexplored territory, such as the 
  search for immortality, the secrets of alchemically transmuting base metals 
  to gold, the permanent artificial enhancement of her consciousness, or other 
  obscure research, and that her obsession is affecting her mental health. Some 
  even go so far as to suggest that Warne is using drugs or arcane means to allow 
  her to work without rest, and that this is the source of her strange behavior.
  Regardless, the once-magnificent Quicksilver House has grown chaotic 
  and filthy, with piles of books, boxes of reagents, endless platters of uneaten 
  food, and other detritus blocking doorways and jamming halls, filling some 
  chambers from floor to ceiling. Warne keeps her workspace relatively clear, 
  but even this area is cluttered and almost unlivable. Most of her servants have 
  quit and those that remain despair of ever making any headway against the 
  growing mountains of filth and clutter. Rats and other vermin have begun to 
  spread from the estate and into neighboring structures, leading to calls for the 
  barony to intervene and do something to help Warne, or at least to stem the 
  tide somewhat. So far, these calls have gone unheeded, and Quicksilver house 
  has continued to deteriorate.
  Adventure Hook: Warne has indeed discovered something important, an 
  alchemical formula that assists in opening planar gates. The problem is that one 
  has opened on the premises, and dream-creatures are bleeding in through it.
  g-18. avar’s alCHemICals
  g-18. avar’s alCHemICals
  Avar Sul is not an alchemist, but he is a skilled broker and salesman who 
  maintains the Gold District’s most prestigious retail alchemical business in this 
  three-story building. Sul caters to clients from across Cat’s Cradle, even those 
  from the more prestigious sections of the Jade District, as his product carries a 
  significant cachet among the wealthy and influential. His main floor consists of 
  sales space for inexpensive and benign alchemical supplies and products such 
  as bismuth, sulfur, calamine, gypsum, charcoal, glass, and various harmless 
  salts, as well as minor potions, salves, and tinctures. The second floor is home 
  to more valuable substances such as silver, gems, gold, rare oils, and resins, 
  and hazardous substances such as fulminates, arsenic, aqua fortis, caustic 
  sodas, vitriols, corrosive sublimates, and the like. Valuable items are kept in 
  locked chests behind cages or bars, while explosive, poisonous or corrosive 
  items are carefully handled by Sul’s well-qualified staff. Most of his employees 
  are gnomes from well-known families with a reputation for alchemical and 
  potion-making skills, and have a well-developed sense of caution and safety. 
  Avar’s third floor is the most secure and important aspect of his business, as it 
  contains items of extreme value or hazard, including many completed alchemical 
  substances, ultra-rare reagents and reactants, valuable gems, and items of magical, 
  extradimensional, or extremely hazardous natures. Only the most trusted of 
  Avar’s employees are allowed on this floor, and it is constantly guarded by a pair 
  of alchemically enhanced iron golems who deal mercilessly with unauthorized 
  visitors. Cognizant of past disasters, Avar is careful to keep the third floor totally 
  secure and safe and is scrupulous in obeying baronial law, which decrees that 
  no alchemical experimentation or manufacture can occur outside the Baronial 
  Corridor. Every single item in the building is logged and carefully measured, 
  with all changes noted and confirmed. Avar’s collection of logbooks has grown so 
  extensive that many are now stored in a warehouse in the Panhandle.
  Adventure Hook: As Avar’s reputation is of vital importance to him and 
  his business, he is quick to deal with any irregularities. Recently, a number 
  of important reagents turned up missing, and Avar’s investigation revealed 
  that his precious logbooks have been falsified. He has discreetly contacted 
  the constabulary, noting that the culprit or culprits do not yet know that their 
  deception has been revealed, and that a quiet investigation is called for. So 
  far, Commander Mageran has cooperated, assigning senior operatives to the 
  case and telling them to keep a very low profile. Senior Investigator Mattea 
  Theasean (See Fortune Hunters), a veteran, highly capable detective, is 
  currently in charge of the investigation and has begun to have dark suspicions. 
  Though on the surface the incident seems like nothing more than employee 
  pilferage, Theasean believes the importance of the stolen substances and 
  the secrecy surrounding the crime suggest a deeper and far more troubling 
  conspiracy at work. The characters are brought in through Mattea or are hired 
  by the actual conspirators to impede the investigation.
  g-19. THe warrens
  g-19. THe warrens
  The Warrens is a neighborhood of the Gold District completely unlike the 
  rest of the area, for it is as deep a slum as the Old City. The Warrens are roughly 
  bounded by Crosswise Road to the north, the Dockside wall to the south, and 
  Scamper’s Run to the east, although the delineation between the Warrens and 
  Old City across Scamper’s Run is more of a boundary between gang territories 
  than quality of the neighborhoods, for the Gold District’s ordinary flavor is 
  much declined here. The shops of Scamper’s Run are controlled by a gang 
  called the Scampers, a violent crew that extorts money from the shopkeepers 
  and vendors of the street. The Scampers do not venture into the Warrens 
  themselves, which are loosely controlled by a gang called the Warreners. The 
  Warreners are more tightly affiliated with the Thieves’ Guild (see Location 
  O-17) and with Old Kennock, although they are one of the independent 
  organizations that make up the informal, outer parts of the Thieves’ Guild.
  Adventure Hook: The characters are recruited to assist either the Scampers 
  or the Warreners in a battle for control of the other gang’s territory.
  
  24|Cat’s Cradle
  24|Cat’s Cradle
  The most recently completed section of the city, the Jade District first came 
  into being as the Cat’s Cradle’s wealthiest began to flee the crumbling Old 
  City just over a century ago. A large vein of a jade-colored marble-like stone 
  was discovered near the Salchamp at around the same time, so much of the 
  new wealthy district was constructed from this beautiful new stone (after 
  consulting local alchemists and masons very thoroughly first). 
  Grand and imposing, with wide, clean streets and pompously lovely 
  architecture, the Jade District is Cat’s Cradle’s wealthiest area, and everyone 
  who is anyone lives there, with the notable exception of Baron Scale and his 
  family, as described in the Cat’s Keep section. 
  In addition to excessively large and fancy homes, the Jade District contains 
  several elite guild houses, a few schools for the wealthy, surprisingly few 
  taverns and public houses (though one expensive inn), and the sorts of shops 
  and craftspeople that cater to a loftier clientele than those in the Gold District 
  to the east. 
  J-1. THe alCHemIsTs College
  J-1. THe alCHemIsTs College
  In the northeastern quarter of the Jade District, along the Baronial Corridor 
  wall, stands a newer jade-marble structure, recently built relative to the 
  surrounding buildings. This is a local college for alchemists, conceived in an 
  attempt to increase local respect among the elite for the often smelly and even 
  explosive field of alchemy. 
  Despite the brooding grandeur of the college’s exterior, its acceptance as an 
  elite institution has not yet fully occurred. Most of the teachers and students 
  do not hail from wealthy backgrounds, and those who do are in some cases 
  in disgrace with their families. Nevertheless, lectures are crowded, and the 
  school seems well-funded, if mostly by nouveau riche investors. 
  Within the main college edifice, all classes are book- and lecture-based, 
  with little practical learning, as alchemical mixing is forbidden outside 
  designated areas of the city. The college grounds, however, boast a private 
  door into Alchemists’ Alley, where more practical learning takes place. 
  Adventure Hook: Students at the college have a long tradition of very minor 
  practical jokes using their skills, but these have recently taken a dark twist, 
  becoming more dangerous. The faculty tends to ignore this, but the president 
  of the college, Maurmab Doane, believes 
  that an external force is influencing the 
  students, possibly even controlling 
  some of them.
  J-2. all your PromIses
  J-2. all your PromIses
  One of several shops along the Market of Promises to play its name off the 
  market itself, All Your Promises is the storefront of locally celebrated jeweler 
  Celesa Tolban. Known for her particular skill with gem-cutting and intricate 
  silver working, Tolban has even received commissions for her work from 
  nobles in the distant capital. 
  The jewelry available at All Your Promises is crafted by Tolban’s army 
  of apprentices, with Tolban herself working these days only on the highest-
  paying commissions or on art pieces of her own design. However, even the 
  apprentices’ baubles are never on display for the common rabble to wander in 
  and view. Rather, the interior of All Your Promises’ showroom features plush 
  chaises, marble-topped tea-tables, fine art on the walls, and a few potted plants. 
  Customers who look as if they can afford fine jewels are offered refreshments 
  and permitted to gaze upon the merchandise one velvet tray at a time. Anyone 
  who does not look sufficiently moneyed is likely to be asked to leave by 
  Drevon, a well-dressed, well-spoken, well-mannered, and exceedingly well-
  muscled half-orc who serves as the shop’s primary greeter. 
  Adventure Hook: A unique stone given to the store for setting into a 
  necklace has apparently been stolen, and Celesa needs to get it back or tell 
  the customer of the theft. The last person who was near the bauble was a 
  nondescript individual with a streak of white in his hair who was carrying a 
  cage in which something appeared to be slithering around.
  J-3. THe baronIal mansIon
  J-3. THe baronIal mansIon
  Northwest of Pike Square and northeast of the Temple of Prosperity stands 
  a gorgeous jade-marble structure known as the Baronial Mansion. When the 
  elite of Cat’s Cradle began fleeing the Old City for the Jade District, Scolren 
  (great-grandfather to Baron Scale), the baron of the day, decided that Cat’s 
  Keep was insufficiently stylish for his tastes and began construction on this 
  mansion. It is similar in size to the old keep, but more elegantly laid-out, and 
  far less drafty. It is also, unlike Cat’s Keep, constructed of the finest and most 
  expensive materials available. 
  Second only to the Temple of Prosperity as one of Cat’s Cradle’s most 
  ostentatious buildings, the baronial mansion is currently used only to house 
  aristocratic visitors to the city, as Baron Scale has returned his family to the 
  old keep. The baronial mansion’s interior is filled with grandiose art from all 
  over the world, much of it gifts the baronial family has received from other 
  aristocrats and elites over time, and the rest commissioned by Baron Scolren 
  or by Scale’s grandmother, Baroness Escaulla. Only the portrait of the 
  tragically short-tenured Baron Escallel, Scale’s father, was commissioned 
  more recently. 
  Because of the need to safeguard so many fine art pieces, the baronial 
  mansion remains fully staffed at all times, including by a number of armed 
  guards. Mistress Fulchen Lakefell, the captain of these guards as well as the 
  head servant, went to school with Baron Scale’s beloved father at Coldwater. 
  Adventure Hook: One of the pieces of fine art is a mimic that releases 
  spores causing other art pieces to turn slowly into mimics. The mimic-spores 
  might or might not have been introduced into the building deliberately.
  J-4. THe branlITH ConservaTory
  J-4. THe branlITH ConservaTory
  This prestigious music school occupies the single largest building on Jade 
  Square and is known for several things. First and foremost, the best music 
  teachers that can be enticed to Cat’s Cradle are paid impressive salaries to 
  offer their talents and wisdom to the conservatory’s students, with often quite 
  pleasing results. Second, while particular musical geniuses might receive 
  scholarships to master their instruments here, the school’s unspoken primary 
  purpose has, over the years, become a place where the wealthy send young 
  children to learn a bit of music and stage decorum before they are old enough 
  to attend Coldwater Finishing School (Location J-5). 
  Third, the Branlith Conservatory serves as a concert venue for students and 
  teachers at the conservatory, and for wealthy patrons to host concerts outside 
  their own homes. For this reason, it is quite common for members of the public 
  to be found wandering the school halls, often lost, as the conservatory’s layout 
  is complex and anything but intuitive. 
  Finally, in the construction of his conservatory, old Baronet Branlith (long 
  deceased) had many of the walls enchanted to allow no sound to pass through 
  them. His intention, probably innocent by all accounts, was to make certain 
  that music students could practice confidently, even while still sounding 
  terrible, and also to make certain that concerts would never be disturbed by 
  loud sounds from outside, and could run late into the night without disrupting 
  students’ or neighborhood residents’ sleep. 
  It has been noted, however, that the enchantments on the conservatory 
  walls stop shouts, screams, and cries for help just as readily as strains of 
  music. While no great scandal has ever yet touched the halls of the Branlith 
  Conservatory, many believe that this is only a matter of time. Or perhaps the 
  scandals have happened, but have all been covered up.
  Adventure Hook: Forneo Ganuune, a famous poet from a distant city, is 
  being held here for ransom by a group of lesser nobles who are down on their 
  luck and saw the opportunity to raise some money with a bit of kidnapping.
  THe Jade dIsTrICT
  THe Jade dIsTrICT
  
  the Jade distriCt
  the Jade distriCt|25
  |25
  
  26|Cat’s Cradle
  26|Cat’s Cradle
  J-5. ColdwaTer fInIsHIng sCHool
  J-5. ColdwaTer fInIsHIng sCHool
  This stoic, gray structure near the southern edge of the Jade District is 
  believed to be the district’s oldest construction, long predating Cat’s Cradle’s 
  western outer walls. The oldest parts of the building were once a rival fortress 
  built by a disgruntled branch of the baronial family in a failed attempt to found 
  a competing town across the Quicksilver. The two family branches reconciled 
  generations ago, and the redundant fort came to be used as a fencing school 
  for wealthy children instead. 
  Since then, the structure has been built up over time to its current size 
  and granted by the baron to the illustrious Coldwater family. Though the 
  Coldwaters are not, themselves, aristocrats, they are known to train fine 
  personal servants and military officers and to provide schooling sufficient for 
  even nobility. All the wealthiest families in Cat’s Cradle send their adolescent 
  children to the Coldwater Finishing School to learn etiquette, fencing, riding, 
  ballroom dancing, and other elegant pursuits. The baron himself was schooled 
  at Coldwater, though it is rumored that he does not plan to send his own 
  children there. As the baron’s children are currently too young to attend, this 
  is, as yet, no more than a rumor.
  Adventure Hook: Harsinn Coldwater, the head of school, received a note 
  one of his teachers intercepted as it was being passed between two students. 
  Upon reading it, he realized that one of the children overheard certain details 
  about a plot to assassinate Lady Genera, the head of the Baronial Constabulary 
  (see Location D-1).
  J-6. drello’s fIne garmenTs
  J-6. drello’s fIne garmenTs
  Everyone who is anyone in Cat’s Cradle wears Drello’s designs (or those 
  of his apprentices). Drello has a storefront off the Market of Promises, and 
  the younger apprentices tailor anything purchased there to fit a customer (if 
  possible). However, far more prestige is reserved for those who wait for an 
  appointment to meet with Drello face to face to have something personally 
  designed on commission. 
  It can take up to six months to get a meeting with Drello, and up to three 
  even to meet with his most advanced apprentices, so wearing a Drello creation 
  to a local event takes considerable planning, even on top of the wild expense 
  of his garments. That said, Drello does know how to make people look good 
  in clothes, with a fine eye for how fabric hangs on any figure and what colors 
  look best with what complexions (not just for human tones!). He is said to 
  enjoy a challenge and dresses anyone who can pay.
  J-7. feTHen bank and InvesTmenT
  J-7. feTHen bank and InvesTmenT
  A glowering gray structure off Pike’s Square, Fethen Bank and Investment 
  offers two services. First, the Fethen Vault is considered to be the safest and 
  most magically impregnable storage facility in the region. The Fethen family 
  has a stellar reputation for honesty and organization, and are easily wealthy 
  enough to hire the best guards and wizards to protect their interests (and those 
  of their clients). Renting space in the Fethen Vault is expensive, but considered 
  to be well worth the price. 
  The Fethen family’s other business, besides meticulous guarding and 
  maintenance of their vault, is in investing. If Matriarch Fethen or her husband, 
  or one of their four children, believes that a shipping venture, business, or 
  other endeavor is likely to turn a profit, they loan or even grant money to said 
  enterprise. They do not charge interest on their loans, but rather make their 
  money back by contracting for percentages of an enterprise’s profits. 
  All six of the family’s decision-makers are shrewd and clever, unlikely to 
  be tricked or to lend to a profitless venture, but their reputation is also for 
  honesty, and for working with their clients to make certain that everyone 
  makes money, not just the Fethens. That said, they are rarely interested in 
  financing the enterprises of the poor or in giving money to people who really 
  need it. The Fethens may be honest and may treat their clients well, but they 
  are not precisely “nice.” 
  Adventure Hook: The Fethens are useful for any commercial-type 
  adventure. Most recently, two ships they invested in were sunk by a monstrous 
  river-fish. One of the younger Fethens has become obsessed with the idea 
  that the river-fish is somehow being deliberately sent to attack ships in which 
  the Fethen family has an interest. The others disagree but are willing to hire 
  adventurers to at least look into it.
  J-8. HorIzon’s PromIse
  J-8. HorIzon’s PromIse
  This elite (and elitist) art gallery is one of the more recently opened shops 
  along the Market of Promises, but it has already become quite a wealthy 
  establishment under the management of its part-owner Fazalia Fane. 
  Horizon’s Promise shows art and sculpture imported from all over the world, 
  as well as from the kingdom’s distant capital city (and notably very little from 
  local artists). These pieces are sold at private auctions after their brief showing 
  periods, for purportedly astronomical prices. 
  After a recent break-in and attempted theft of a risqué marble deity of love, 
  security at Horizon’s Promise has tightened considerably, and even entry to 
  the gallery showroom is now permissible by invitation only. It is said that the 
  Kennock Syndicate would give a tidy sum for such an invitation.
  Adventure Hook: A series of six statues are scheduled to arrive at Dockside 
  in two days, and Fazalia received an anonymous tip from someone that the 
  statues are to be stolen by the Kennock Syndicate on their way to the gallery. 
  Naturally, she is concerned, partly because the existence of the statues was 
  believed to be secret in the first place.
  J-9. THe Jade dIsTrICT waTCH House
  J-9. THe Jade dIsTrICT waTCH House
  The Jade District Watch House, just down the street from the Market of 
  Promises, is one of the larger gray buildings in the southern Jade District. 
  Originally constructed before the Jade District existed, this fortress-like 
  facility was intended to be the watch house for the entire west side of Cat’s 
  Cradle, early in the town’s expansion across the river. After the exodus of the 
  wealthy from the Old City, however, and the springing up of the Jade District, 
  this watch house was ultimately assigned to the Jade District only and later 
  even walled off from the Panhandle District.  
  Run by Captain Leesis Estromyl, an elf, the Jade District Watch has 
  several somewhat conflicting reputations. Among most residents of the Jade 
  District, their neighborhood’s watch are upstanding, proper citizens, heroes of 
  justice, and generally about as excellent of people as commoners can possibly 
  hope to be. Some even come from well-to-do families. Among the poor of 
  Cat’s Cradle, by contrast, the Jade District Watch has a reputation for heavy-
  handedness, brutal bias against the poor, no interest in justice whatsoever, and 
  general snobbery. 
  Finally, among the watch in other parts of Cat’s Cradle, the reputation of 
  the Jade District branch is that of lazy louts who let private security do most 
  of their work for them and then take credit for their district’s “clean, safe” 
  streets in order to lord it over other watch houses. There are also rumors of 
  corruption and bribe-taking among “the greens,” as is their nickname among 
  non-Jade District watch members. Even Baron Scale has expressed concern 
  over Captain Estromyl’s membership and participation in the Officers’ Club 
  (Location J-15), but Estromyl has repeatedly asserted that he would never let 
  anything come between him and his duty to uphold the law in Cat’s Cradle.
  Adventure Hook: A radical political group is tired of the way the security 
  forces hired in the Jade District are running roughshod over poor people. They 
  want to hire some likeminded characters to deliver a kick in the teeth to one 
  of these gangs of supposed law enforcers,” in particular one known as the 
  “Night-Street Watchers” that operates essentially like a criminal gang. J-10. 
  Jade Square
  Often considered the moral heart of the Jade District, Jade Square is known 
  for establishments dedicated to dignity, grace, and general propriety. Lady 
  Gwynlinn’s Reading Room and the Officers’ Club are located here, near the 
  illustrious Neville Mansion and the Branlith Conservatory. On the opposite 
  end of the Jade Square neighborhood, halfway between the square and the 
  Coldwater Finishing School, stand several decorous boarding houses for 
  unmarried servants and commoner attendees at Coldwater. These are dedicated 
  to ensuring boarders’ virtue and a lack of embarrassing scandals. 
  Rumors fly fast in the Jade Square neighborhood, and everyone pays minute 
  attention to everyone else’s every flaw. Of course, the richer one is, the more 
  of a blind eye even Jade Square gossips might be willing to turn, but gods help 
  any ordinary citizen accused of impropriety while living near Jade Square.
  J-11. lady gwynlInn’s readIng room
  J-11. lady gwynlInn’s readIng room
  Lady Gwynlinn’s Reading Room is an exclusive library with a high 
  membership fee. Each member may bring one guest at a time, but the Reading 
  Room properties are not permitted to leave the premises. No children or pets 
  are permitted, as they might damage the books or furniture. 
  The Reading Room is cleverly designed to be especially quiet inside and is 
  full of private-seeming nooks, plush furnishings, and a wide selection of books 
  from all over the world. Many are illuminated manuscripts or otherwise works 
  of art in themselves. There is a strong emphasis on poetry and philosophy, but 
  the odd example of a work from any subject can be found here. 
  Lady Gwynlinn is herself present in the mornings and afternoons on about 
  half of all days (at random) and is quite knowledgeable about her collection. 
  Her servants, Essa and Bren, are similarly knowledgeable, and make tea and 
  
  the Jade distriCt
  the Jade distriCt|27
  |27
  serve light snacks for members and their guests if desired. Either Essa or 
  Bren is always present if the Reading Room is open, which it usually is every 
  morning and afternoon. 
  In the evenings, Lady Gwynlinn sometimes uses her Reading Room for 
  private discussion groups on various topics, and these are known to sometimes 
  become quite political, advocating for such radical notions as voting for civic 
  offices and parliamentary representation for commoners. The comportment of 
  Lady Gwynlinn and her friends has thus far been sufficiently decorous as to not 
  warrant any reprimand from their baron, despite their potentially seditious ideas.
  Adventure Hook: Someone connected with the Reading Room puts the 
  characters into contact with the town’s radical political underground (see 
  Radical Politics in the introduction).
  J-12. THe markeT of PromIses
  J-12. THe markeT of PromIses
  Located near the Panhandle District as well as one of the two public bridges 
  across the Quicksilver, the Market of Promises is the place where the general 
  public is grudgingly permitted to do business in the Jade District. All manner 
  of shops and boutiques are located here and cater to the wealthy Jade District 
  residents, but are willing to show off to the city’s other citizens (and sometimes 
  even deign to accept their money). 
  The most currently famous shops in the Promises neighborhood are Drello’s 
  Fine Garments, the All Your Promises jeweler, and the recently established 
  Horizon’s Promise art gallery. All three are especially difficult to access for 
  the average customer however, and other jewelers, clothiers, art- and trinket-
  dealers, and so forth, are much more welcoming to the general public. 
  Many Market of Promises’ shops have adopted a tradition (started by the 
  All Your Promises owner, Celesa Tolban) of using the word “promise” in their 
  names, though the Market of Promises gained its moniker long before this 
  fad took hold, as it was known as a place that promised glorious finery, while 
  charging through the nose for its goods, as well as a place where one purchased 
  the means to make one’s shallow promises more believable. (There is, after all, 
  nothing like a well-set gemstone to make a romantic lie seem sincere.) 
  J-13. THe mason’s guIld
  J-13. THe mason’s guIld
  Near the heart of the Jade District stands a wedge-shaped structure of 
  particular elegance. This is the new Mason’s Guild house, built during the 
  first scramble of Cat’s Cradle’s elite to abandon the crumbling Old City. The 
  guild history, preserved in busts of the current and previous guildmasters, is 
  oddly short for so old and masonry-influenced a city as Cat’s Cradle. The guild 
  library is similarly uncontaminated by records of the masonry families most 
  associated with the “ripplestone” era of Cat’s Cradle’s history.  
  Though the conspicuous absence of records makes it difficult to determine 
  exactly how this was accomplished, the Cat’s Cradle Mason’s Guild appears 
  to have lost little to no face over the ripplestone debacle that still scars the 
  city’s streets. Local mason families tend to be wealthy and respected, with as 
  many apprentices as they can wish for, and the Mason’s Guild building is well-
  appointed and always busy. Charma Stonesmen, the current guildmaster, is 
  said to be especially influential, a personal friend of both the baron’s mother 
  and Lady Neville, the socialite’s socialite. Adventure Hook: An inventor 
  named Thesper Janticleer recently approached the masons with a machine 
  that measures seismic movements, proposing that it could be used to avoid 
  minor foundation damage to buildings. The masons agreed to experiment with 
  it and have been taking readings from various spots in the city. However, the 
  readings have been consistently building up, and the masons realized that 
  something is building up to create an artificial earthquake in the city. Time 
  might be very short to discover the source.
  J-14. THe nevIlle mansIon
  J-14. THe nevIlle mansIon
  Located near Jade Square, the Neville Mansion is neither the largest nor the 
  loveliest of the city’s private homes, but it is inarguably the best-designed for 
  throwing balls. All the grandest private parties in Cat’s Cradle take place in the 
  Neville family home, whose current matriarch, Lady Neville, is widely seen as 
  the most elegant and wittiest socialite the city has ever seen. 
  Though minor, landless aristocrats, the Neville family matriarch or patriarch 
  is granted the right to inherit the title of lord or lady from generation to 
  generation, so long as the local baron does not choose to withdraw their status. 
  The Nevilles have invested wisely over the centuries and are quite wealthy, so 
  it is understood that barons of Cat’s Cradle tend to need the Nevilles’ goodwill 
  in order to effectively govern, thus securing the family’s landless title through 
  the decades. 
  The current Lady Neville is unmarried and childless and is said to have 
  refused thousands of marriage proposals in her life. She remains quite beautiful 
  for her 60 years, and is as charming and sharp of wit as ever. Her current heir 
  is her nephew, Grenten Neville, a bookish young man of dashing good looks 
  who is known for his satirical poetry. He and his aunt are alike and different 
  in just the right ways to make them detest one another, but she has taken no 
  action to impede his legal status as her heir, though they notably avoid one 
  another at her parties. 
  Adventure Hook: Neville Mansion parties are among the best places 
  to gather information among Cat’s Cradle’s wealthy, especially as they are 
  known for free-flowing wine and just slightly loose morals. The characters are 
  offered invitations to a party — they are forgeries, but very good ones — and 
  the forger is selling them for a very low price.
  J-15. THe offICers’ Club
  J-15. THe offICers’ Club
  The Officers’ Club is a comfortable meeting house for anyone both invited 
  to join and able to afford membership. Its interior is well-appointed and well-
  staffed, always stocked with delicious food, and offers fine sets of a number 
  of games of chance and skill, so long as one can play them in a quiet and 
  dignified manner. Private rooms are also available, and no questions are asked 
  or answered about what goes on inside them. 
  A member may bring one guest at a time, but only upper military officers, 
  captains of ships above a certain crew size, and persons of aristocratic 
  bloodlines are ever invited to become members themselves. Anyone may join, 
  so long as they are of sufficient “quality.” 
  Despite many overt similarities of purpose shared between the Officers’ 
  Club and Lady Gwynlinn’s Reading Room, the two organizations’ reputations 
  are not similar at all. While both are snobby and understood to be out of 
  touch with the needs of ordinary folk, the Officers’ Club is seen as the far 
  more sinister of the two, always swirling with rumors of conspiracies to 
  disenfranchise poorer businesspeople, or even worse crimes. One persistent 
  rumor is that dead bodies are removed by the servants’ entrance as often as 
  two or three times a year. 
  While the Baronial Constabulary (see Location D-1) is said to have an eye 
  on the place, thus far no specific charges have been brought to the baron. It 
  is speculated that Officers’ Club members are too influential to be touched by 
  the law.
  Adventure Hook: A minor priest at the Temple of Sefagreth (Location 
  G-16) has just received absolute proof that a shopkeeper was murdered in 
  order to get his small business out of the way of one of his competitors. The 
  trail leads to some kind of deal made at the Officers’ Club, and the body might 
  even be in the basement there.
  J-16. PIke square
  J-16. PIke square
  Named for its central jade-marble statue of General Pike, a minor aristocrat 
  from Cat’s Cradle who achieved a certain degree of fame in a far-off military 
  conflict generations ago, the Pike Square neighborhood of Cat’s Cradle’s Jade 
  District is known for such stuffy “rich people” enterprises as Fethen Bank 
  and Investment, other investors’ offices, several expensive barristers, and the 
  offices of the city’s two wealthiest shipping families (though both also have 
  less-fancy offices near their berths on the docks).
  Quiet and heavily guarded, mostly by Fethen family private security, Pike 
  Square is sometimes described as the single dullest neighborhood in all of 
  Cat’s Cradle, and also the safest. Naturally, only the best and subtlest of 
  pickpockets dare to work the Pike Square streets. 
  J-17. THe TemPle of ProsPerITy
  J-17. THe TemPle of ProsPerITy
  Constructed primarily of the local jade-marble, this grandiose, colonaded 
  structure is elegant and gaudy, graceful and excessive at once. Rich with gilded 
  flourishes and pompous sculpture, the Temple of Prosperity is arguably the 
  most beautiful (or most embarrassing) edifice in Cat’s Cradle. It is dedicated 
  to various popular deities of agriculture, commerce, and local industries like 
  masonry, brick-making, fishing, and alchemy, and is the largest building in the 
  Jade District.
  Catering to the city’s wealthy, more than to public piety, the Temple of 
  Prosperity doubles as a theater for the entertainment of the city’s elite, even 
  charging admission to some of its grander pageants (so as to keep the rabble 
  away). At night, this is a gathering place for local and visiting bigwigs, ever 
  drenched in such glamour as can be procured in so isolated a city. Priests 
  of this temple are known more for their wealth and influence than for such 
  priestly behavior as caring for the populace or building community. 
  During daylight hours, clerical spells can be purchased here at great 
  expense and with few questions asked, though petitioners must be dressed 
  “respectfully” (in other words, must not look too poor) to be allowed into 
  
  28|Cat’s Cradle
  28|Cat’s Cradle
  the inner sanctuaries where such transactions take place. There, the most 
  experienced priests take turns putting on a show of keeping beautiful candles 
  lit, incenses burning, and of anointing sacred statues with expensive oils in 
  highly choreographed rituals.    
  J-18. TulIxIa’s
  J-18. TulIxIa’s
  The finest public bath in Cat’s Cradle, Tulixia’s bathing pools are always 
  clean, always hot, and never smoky, with a well-designed and efficient heating 
  system. Business deals of all kinds are negotiated here.
  J-19. uIregard’s enCHanTmenTs
  J-19. uIregard’s enCHanTmenTs
  In the northern Jade District, just off Oddwater Way, stands a plain door 
  with a fine but simple sign reading Uiregard’s Enchantments. This is the 
  storefront of a wizard for hire. He charges exorbitant prices for his work, 
  but he is honest, charming, quite normal as wizards go, and has an excellent 
  professional reputation. In the Jade District, people generally feel that one gets 
  what one pays for, and that Uiregard’s work is worth the extra cost. 
  A well-dressed and handsome man in his 50s, Uiregard is courteous, 
  soft-spoken, and easy to communicate with. He prefers to deal in items and 
  potions, which he makes in his workshop in the back, but he is also sometimes 
  willing to offer other sorts of spellcasting, by appointment only, in other parts 
  of the city (with additional fees for his travel time). Uiregard’s spellbook is 
  quite extensive, and he allows other wizards to copy spells from it for similarly 
  exorbitant rates. 
  Uiregard keeps a very ordinary secretary to do his bookkeeping and keep 
  track of his appointments. He is often booked several weeks in advance. He 
  does not take apprentices. 
  J-20. THe wesTsIde CourTHouse
  J-20. THe wesTsIde CourTHouse
  The Westside Courthouse is located in Pike Square across from Fethen 
  Bank and Investment and behind the Baronial Mansion. After moving his 
  family from Cat’s Keep to the Jade District, old Baron Scolren decided he 
  wanted to govern from the Jade District as well and began construction on the 
  Westside Courthouse. It was not completed in his lifetime, but his daughter, 
  Baroness Escaulla, and her son, Baron Escallel (Baron Scale’s father), both 
  used this grand (and rather impractically laid-out) edifice as their primary seat 
  of governance, outside certain traditional annual events. 
  Baron Scale, however, prefers to make himself more accessible to the 
  common people and has thus restored his courthouse to the old, drafty audience 
  hall inside the walls of Cat’s Keep, far more centrally located for all of Cat’s 
  Cradle’s citizenry. Since this move on his part, the Westside Courthouse has 
  continued operation, but only for routine legal matters such as recordkeeping, 
  witnessing of contracts, and such minor disputes as do not require the baron’s 
  personal attention. 
  The wealthy of the Jade District are generally displeased by this change 
  of policy, but in truth their courthouse continues to provide them with much 
  greater legal convenience than is enjoyed by any other part of the city, as 
  contracts, new businesses, wills, and other paperwork is processed far more 
  quickly for Jade District residents than any other neighborhood.
  Adventure Hook: One of the clerks at the courthouse was recently called 
  upon to witness and record a contract. He realized only afterward that he had 
  been looking at an agreement to commit murder, but when he pulled the file 
  the contract had disappeared. He and his superiors are now concerned, but 
  all they have to work with is the description of the two men who signed the 
  contract … and one of them looked a great deal like the dead Baron Escallel.
  J-21. wyTHys and daugHTer
  J-21. wyTHys and daugHTer
  The best-regarded apothecary in the Jade District is the shop of Wythys and 
  Daughter, located in the Pouch of Coins neighborhood. Run out of their small 
  but posh home, the enterprise is — like most shops in the Jade District — 
  expensive and rather exclusive, catering to wealthy, regular customers. Sara 
  and Dala Wythys are excellent apothecaries, in their way, dealing in high-
  quality herbs, poultices, and medicinal alchemy, as well as similar products. 
  With the help of a few servants, the mother and daughter proprietors grow 
  their own herbs wherever possible for the climate and import quality dried 
  ingredients where necessary. They are also skilled alchemists, though neither 
  is well-traveled, and both prefer to work in herbs and medicines. 
  Though sweet of disposition and probably well-intentioned, the Wythys’ are 
  not above a bit of con-artistry in meeting their customers’ needs. They brew 
  no harmful medicines, but some of their expensive concoctions have no effect 
  whatsoever and are useful only as placebos. Others are mildly intoxicating.         
  
  the Old City
  the Old City|29
  |29
  Once the domain of Cat’s Cradle’s elite, the Old City, stretching downward 
  from the southeastern walls of the keep almost to the Docks neighborhood, was 
  formerly the pride of Cat’s Cradle. Though not really older than parts of the 
  Gold District or Bricktown, the Old City does contain most of Cat’s Cradle’s 
  oldest mansions, temples, and other grand structures. These are constructed, 
  almost exclusively, of a beautiful marbled-brown stone, unique to this region, 
  known as ripplestone. In appearance, it resembles something between petrified 
  wood and a marbled steak, and visitors often remark upon its loveliness and 
  upon the skillful architecture of the neighborhood as a whole. 
  Unfortunately, ripplestone is not a stable building material and begins to 
  crumble and dissolve in the elements after only a century or so of exposure 
  to the mild local weather — wearing out faster than well-cared-for wood and 
  being significantly more difficult to repair. Local alchemists love to pontificate 
  about how alchemical testing before construction could have prevented the 
  Old City’s tragedy, but Cat’s Cradle’s alchemy boom had not yet begun at the 
  time. The oldest of Cat’s Cradle’s mason families was deeply disgraced by the 
  ripplestone debacle (and have been erased from the Masons Guild records), 
  but the damage was already done.
  Thus, grand though they once were, many buildings in the Old City are 
  crumbling and unusable, dangerous even to enter. Others are propped up with 
  mismatched repairs in brick or wood. For safety reasons (and to reclaim useful 
  acreage), the barons of Cat’s Cradle regularly budget city funds for tearing 
  down some beautiful ruin or other, to be replaced with simpler construction, but 
  teardown projects tend to be expensive and dangerous given how unpredictable 
  ripplestone’s disintegration can be. As such, many dangerous old structures still 
  stand, and some are even occupied by those with nowhere else to go. 
  Everyone who can leave the Old City to move to the Jade or Gold districts 
  has done so long ago, and despite the bedraggled grandeur of the remaining 
  architecture — and even the occasional sculpture garden — this has become a very 
  poor district, home to criminal operations, social outcasts, and very little industry. 
  o-1. THe CenTaur
  o-1. THe CenTaur
  At the end of the street now known as Ingrate’s Walk stands a pedestaled 
  ripplestone statue, one of the two most prominent of such slowly melting 
  monuments in the Old City. This particular larger-than-life statue was originally 
  a horse and rider, and students of the city’s history can even explain how this 
  same “rider” was also the unwitting source of the name of Ingrate’s Walk. 
  These days, however, the average Old City resident knows the dilapidated 
  monument only as “The Centaur.” Once a man leaning forward on a horse, 
  the horse’s head broke off ages ago, as did the man’s raised sword arm. The 
  decapitated horse head is now a mostly shapeless boulder lying a few yards 
  away from the statue, which has itself lost most of its shape. It does vaguely 
  resemble a child’s clumsy clay rendition of a centaur, though it is believed that 
  soon the rest of the rider will break off from the top of the statue, and the remains 
  of the horse will become an indistinguishable lump atop the bronze pedestal.
  The Centaur is known as a place to avoid in the Old City, especially after 
  dark, as it is said to be one of the several regular meeting places of the Cat’s 
  Cradle Thieves’ Guild.
  o-2. THe dogs
  o-2. THe dogs
  A partial ruin known as the Dogs stands just southwest of the Old Temple 
  and right at the wall between the Old City and the Docks. Once the fortress-like 
  mansion of a retired knight, the Dogs was only partially built of ripplestone 
  and has been shored up in a shabby and precarious-looking manner with 
  mismatched scrap wood and other cheaply acquired materials. The end result 
  is a rambling 12-foot-high outer wall encompassing an oddly shaped and only 
  partially roofed interior. 
  Inside, the Dogs is filthy, not particularly furnished, and smells like the 
  majority of its inhabitants: dozens of stray dogs. They may originally have 
  been strays, but the Dogs’ dogs are surprisingly well-trained in the services of 
  a strange woman named Dru. Dru’s dogs appear to obey her every command, 
  and gods help anyone attempting to enter her domain without her permission. 
  Dru takes in and cares for any stray dogs she finds and is rumored to even 
  possess some healing ability (which she uses exclusively on her dogs, it seems). 
  She is rude and monosyllabic with anyone who isn’t a canine, and all manner of 
  rumors circulate as to where she gets the meat to feed her four-pawed army. She is 
  known to work with several information brokers of varying reputations and seems 
  somehow to maintain a working relationship with the Kennocks and the watch.
  Adventure Hook: A wizard visiting the town has a bottled manticore that 
  needs to be let out at night to feed. It is trained not to attack people unless the 
  wizard tells it to do so, and ordinarily it preys on dogs. It discovered Dru’s dogs 
  and killed several of them. Dru wants the characters to find the monster killing 
  her dogs and slay it. She has some interesting information about developments 
  in the city that she can offer them in payment.
  o-3. THe HaunTed lady
  o-3. THe HaunTed lady
  The Haunted Lady is the second most prominent of the two slowly melting 
  ripplestone statues in the Old City. Originally sculpted with a hair-veil and 
  flowing robe of marble, such that only her face and limbs were made of 
  ripplestone, the Haunted Lady has crumbled in a remarkable way. 
  Her robe and veil remain beautiful, but the space under her semi-revealing 
  raiment, where her legs once showed, is now an open hollow. Her arms, once 
  clasped at her heart, are now a half-dissolved mess, dripping down over her 
  marble breast. Eeriest of all, the signature brown ripples of the ripplestone, 
  once said to have given her a sweet, sorrowful expression, have dissolved to 
  make her face now resemble a skull.
  Located only a few blocks south of Saint Kada’s, the Haunted Lady has 
  become an object of strange and fearful worship by Old City orphans and 
  street children. Her pedestal is often covered in humble offerings, and the tiny 
  hollow beneath her marble skirts is often filled by a homeless child’s camp, as 
  Saint Kada’s beds are often far too full.
  o-4. Hollam’s 
  o-4. Hollam’s 
  No one gets sick in Cat’s Cradle, but people still become injured or sometimes 
  poisoned, and the poor of the Old City can’t always afford to visit a temple 
  for healing. For these, there is Hollam’s. Hollam Westtrel is an old man with a 
  mysterious past who lives in the Old City for reasons he does not disclose. Some 
  decades ago, word got out that he could treat poisons and injuries, and he has 
  taken up the role of a doctor ever since, treating anyone who comes to him as 
  best he can, and charging no more than his patients can afford. 
  Hollam knows little magic and does not speak of religion, but he does seem 
  to be a cleric of some kind, if not a very good one. He is, however, far more 
  skilled at nonmagical healing, with a gentle and patient manner, with a gift 
  for minimizing scars with his stitches. He can be found in a small stone hut 
  (formerly a private stables) not far north of the Old Temple.
  Hollam helps anyone who needs him, no questions asked, even Kennock’s 
  crew. He charges so little that he himself lives hand-to-mouth, but the people 
  of the Old City bring him food and supplies on a regular basis, and he never 
  asks where such gifts come from — merely accepts them and puts them to use 
  in healing those in need. It is said that anyone who harms Hollam Westtrel 
  faces swift retribution from any number of Old City residents. 
  Adventure Hook: Hollam’s past has caught up with him, and a small band 
  of mercenaries he ran with in times gone by has kidnapped him. Unbeknownst 
  to the kidnappers, they raised a hornets’ nest. The Thieves’ Guild and other 
  groups post a substantial reward for Hollam’s safe return.
  o-5. kennoCk’s PlaCe
  o-5. kennoCk’s PlaCe
  The Kennock family have lived in the Cat’s Cradle region since time 
  immemorial and were wealthy landowners for most of that span. At around 
  the time of the ripplestone exodus, however, it so happened that the Kennock 
  family was in disgrace, with its patriarch imprisoned in the keep’s tower and 
  its titles and most of its ancestral holdings stripped away. 
  The Kennock family was permitted to retain its rights to its Old City 
  mansion, which as luck would have it, was constructed without ripplestone. 
  The ruined minor aristocrats chose not to spend the last of their fortune on 
  following the rest of Cat’s Cradle’s elite to the Jade District and instead 
  remained in the Old City to see how they could take advantage of the power 
  vacuum left behind. 
  In the generations since, the Kennock name has sunk ever further into the 
  city’s worst muck, but the Kennock family has nevertheless become, in its own 
  way, more powerful than ever. Not many understand the complex political 
  and financial intrigues that conspire to make the current “Old Kennock” 
  untouchable by the law, but she lives in her ancestral mansion like a tyrant 
  of old, and is treated by most in her district as if her word might carry more 
  weight than even that of the baron. 
  THe old CITy
  THe old CITy
  
  30|Cat’s Cradle
  30|Cat’s Cradle
  No illegal activity takes place at or near the Kennock household, and Old 
  Kennock, though in height and breadth she resembles a cross between a 
  bear and a barbarian queen, maintains a dignified demeanor and impeccable 
  wardrobe, just as if her family were still aristocrats. Everyone knows that the 
  Kennock Syndicate criminal organization answers to her personally, but one 
  would never know it from the upright and proper state of her home. 
  Her vast army of younger siblings, children, nieces, nephews, cousins, and 
  a few “retired” aunts and uncles maintain similar decorum when “at home,” 
  but range throughout the Old City in their activities and “business concerns.” 
  Elsewhere, they are not always, as it were, on their best behavior.
  o-6. madame olella’s
  o-6. madame olella’s
  Out at the western edge of the Old City stands a strangely lovely example 
  of mismatched repairs on a ripplestone structure. Something about the way the 
  walls crumbled, combined with the granite, brick, and wood used to shore up the 
  damage makes for a beautiful chimera of a rambling mansion. This is Madame 
  Olella’s, the best-known brothel in Cat’s Cradle. Complex agreements between 
  the Kennocks, the Gold District watch, and various key power players in the city 
  ensure that Madame Olella’s is a basically legal establishment.
  Madame Olella is believed to have strong ties to the Thieves’ Guild, but to 
  nevertheless be a force for stability and nonviolence in the Old City district. 
  That said, those who mistreat Madame Olella or her staff tend to face severe 
  repercussions from Olella’s allies.
  o-7. nIfTIn’s knICk knaCks
  o-7. nIfTIn’s knICk knaCks
  Located near the Rat Market and often considered to be an extension of it 
  is a rickety wooden shack of a shop, built inside the fallen ruins of a larger, 
  mostly missing ripplestone structure. This is Niftin’s Knick Knacks. Inside can 
  be found fake magic items, cheap brass jewelry with paste gemstones being 
  sold at just under real gem prices, “foreign treasures” of suspicious veracity, 
  various pawned trinkets, badly carved ripplestone figurines (Niftin’s own 
  work), and occasionally stolen goods. 
  Niftin himself is a compulsive liar of surprising charm, though he tends to 
  resemble a cross between a yshkat and a bag of filthy rags. He seems to take great 
  pleasure in cheating his customers and is known to overcharge or underpay for 
  goods at every opportunity, yet he does so in such an entertaining manner, full of 
  wild tales and cunning humor, that most customers leave surprisingly satisfied. His 
  shop is a cluttered mess full of dust, cobwebs, and scruffy feral cats.
  All that said, however, Niftin sometimes comes into possession of something 
  worth a great deal more than he realizes, and it is not unheard of for real magic 
  items (or cursed ones) to be found among his piles of interesting trash. 
  Adventure Hook: Niftin comes into possession of a powerful magic item and 
  finds himself in the middle of three different factions that want to steal it — even 
  if they have to kill Niftin in the process. Niftin, more interested than they are in his 
  survival, hires the adventurers to keep him safe and to resolve the issue, possibly 
  by staging their own theft of the object so Niftin is no longer at risk.
  o-8. THe old HosPITal
  o-8. THe old HosPITal
  A wedge-shaped building in the heart of the Old City, just where Ingrate’s Walk 
  meets the Centaur’s square, was once a grand public hospital, open even to the 
  poor. Built back when disease could still happen in Cat’s Cradle, it was part of a 
  philanthropic vogue that washed through Cat’s Cradle’s elite a few centuries ago.  
  The hospital is, as such, possibly the oldest building in the Old City 
  neighborhood, predating the discovery of the now-abandoned ripplestone 
  quarry. As such, its foundations are strong, and its outer walls still quite stable. 
  Nevertheless, it stands emptier than even some of the more dangerous ruins 
  around it and has for most of its existence. City records show that every few 
  generations someone decides to do something new with the old hospital. It has 
  been an inn, a school, an upscale brothel, a con artist’s house of wonders, and 
  more, but none of these enterprises has ever lasted more than a few years, and 
  all have ended in apparently unrelated disaster and tragedy (including but not 
  limited to fire, flood, freak accidents, and murder). 
  It is believed that the Thieves’ Guild is currently making some secret use of 
  the Old Hospital, but sane and reasonable people avoid the place. 
  
  the Old City
  the Old City|31
  |31
  Adventure Hook: The baron has offered a reward to any who can discover 
  what ails this perfectly repairable and usable old building, but all attempts thus 
  far have turned out to be chicanery and nonsense (or, at least, have failed to 
  convince Baron Scale of their veracity). The true source of the Old Hospital’s 
  apparent curse remains a mystery.
  o-9. THe old TemPle
  o-9. THe old TemPle
  About halfway between the Plaza and the Haunted Lady stands one of the 
  largest ruins in the Old City. This is the Old Temple, once the religious heart 
  of Cat’s Cradle. Built entirely of ripplestone in an intricate and lovely design, 
  the Old Temple’s disintegration with the passage of time has been a particular 
  mess. More than most structures, the Old Temple was constructed in a way 
  that is difficult to shore up due to its design and its great size. It is also difficult 
  to dismantle due to the complexity of its many advanced structural techniques. 
  Short of hiring teams of wizards to take the place down by levitation (an 
  expense beyond even the baron’s coffers), it is difficult to organize a safe 
  means of removing this perilous ruin from the Old City streets. 
  Taking into account that, even as it crumbles, the Old Temple remains 
  terribly beautiful, with a sorrowful majesty to its slowly dissolving stonework 
  — and also that this was once a place of worship and serenity remembered for 
  uplifting song and for far more piety than the fancy new Temple of Prosperity 
  in the Jade District — and the residents of Cat’s Cradle have found there to 
  be little will to dismantle the Old Temple, no matter how dangerous its failing 
  grandeur may have become. 
  Indeed, it seems increasingly likely that some terrible accident will have 
  to occur before action is taken. In the meantime, the Old Temple is a place, 
  however precarious it may be, where those who have nowhere else to go 
  are known to take shelter. By mute local agreement, no violence takes place 
  there, and everyone understands that those humble offerings still left to the 
  crumbling statues of the gods are fair game to any destitute enough to take up 
  residence in so teetering an abode. 
  o-10. ox’s labor
  o-10. ox’s labor
  Due south of the Rat Market, on the edge of the Docks neighborhood, 
  stands a recent, dull brick construction proclaiming itself to be Ox’s Labor. 
  Ox was a stevedore who stumbled into some money and was able to acquire a 
  ruin-strewn lot for cheap, building upon it an office and barracks-like dorm for 
  what he hoped would be the perfect way to revitalize the Old City. 
  His intention was a place where solid workers down on their luck could 
  enjoy a bed to sleep in and the benefits of Ox’s networking services. Ox 
  himself would then act as a go between for supplying workers to places that 
  needed them, taking only a small cut for his efforts. He intended this to be a 
  win for everyone: workers, employers, and himself all at once. 
  Unfortunately, Ox died in a construction accident after only a few years in 
  business. Since his death, Ox’s Labor has gone in a radically different direction 
  than its founder intended. It is still a place where people with nowhere else to turn 
  can go looking for work and a bed, but pay and conditions are universally terrible 
  for those workers now known colloquially as “the oxen.” According to rumor, 
  many workers disappear from Ox’s every year, some say to slave barges or worse. 
  The current proprietor, an “old friend” of Ox’s named Tral Zesser, is believed 
  to be a major figure in the Thieves’ Guild and possibly a rival of the Kennocks. 
  Adventure Hook: The Kennock Syndicate (or one of its factions) 
  approaches the characters about removing Tral from his position and making 
  him disappear somewhere.
  o-11. THe Plaza
  o-11. THe Plaza
  Deep in the southern Old City stands a monument to the first baron and 
  founder of Cat’s Keep. With a pedestal and roof of granite, the ripplestone 
  statue within remains in excellent condition and depicts a stout-shouldered 
  and bearded human in fanciful “historical” garb and armaments. The figure is 
  bending down from its rocky perch to help up a fellow human, a yshkat, and a 
  dwarven child, symbolizing the legend that the first baron brought peace and 
  prosperity to the former residents of the region. The area around this statue has 
  been called the Plaza for many generations and is one of the few places in the 
  Old City to retain its former name since the ripplestone exodus. 
  There is constant talk of moving this statue away from the crime-ridden Old 
  City, but many Old City residents are quite attached to it, and the first baron 
  (Baron Orshal) has become a folk hero and almost saint to many. Offerings of 
  wildflowers, pretty stones, and humble little craft objects constantly decorate 
  the base of the statue, and the neighborhood immediately around the Plaza is 
  among the cleanest and safest in the Old City. Perhaps for this reason, no baron 
  has yet approved a project to dismantle and relocate the founder’s statue. 
  o-12. queeves’ CHICkens
  o-12. queeves’ CHICkens
  Queeves, a mononymous personage of indeterminate species and 
  androgynous countenance (male-identified), keeps chickens. Lots of chickens. 
  Occupying a large, fenced-off lot on the Plaza (which Queeves has somehow 
  come to legally own, apparently), Queeves’ Chickens includes a crumbled 
  ruin, a small wooden hut, and a spacious and fancy brick chicken coop. There 
  is also a wide yard guarded by a pair of well-trained mastiff mongrels, and 
  otherwise full of happy, fat chickens. 
  Queeves himself is found at home with his chickens only during early 
  morning and late evening feedings, as he spends most of his time hiking up 
  and down the city with a cart full of today’s fresh eggs. He delivers eggs to 
  most locations in the Old City and in addition sells discounted chicken meat, 
  though the latter is usually from an elderly bird and runs toward the tough and 
  stringy. Queeves prefers to sell his meat to customers willing to hear out the 
  names and life stories of the departed chickens they purchase. He appears to 
  love and cherish each chicken individually. 
  In addition to his other quirks, Queeves seems to somehow know everyone 
  in the Old City and everything that happens there. He will let some information 
  slip in the course of conversation with anyone willing to listen to him ramble 
  on about his chickens, but he is smart enough to charge money for any really 
  useful or juicy facts.
  o-13. THe raT markeT
  o-13. THe raT markeT
  This open square to the south of Cat’s Keep was once a lovely little public 
  garden called Cat’s Corner. After the Old City fell into disrepair, however, 
  the groundskeepers were assigned elsewhere, and the garden became an 
  overgrown tangle. Only a few years later, Cat’s Cradle’s poorer districts 
  became infested by a large and vicious breed of rats carried to the region on 
  some barge or other (the precise source was never determined, only that it hit 
  the docks first, and then the Old City). 
  Full as the district was with so many abandoned buildings, the rats grew truly 
  out of control in the Old City, until eventually the town militia was mustered to 
  clear out all untended vegetation to give the rats fewer food sources and places 
  to hide. That was the end of Cat’s Corner, and indeed, a vast swarm of rats was 
  evicted from the destroyed garden. The ugly, dead remnants of the place came 
  to be known as Rat’s Corner instead. 
  Now that the Rat’s Corner lot was clear of overgrown foliage, an enterprising 
  few of the neighborhood’s newer, poorer residents began setting up little shops 
  in the open space, on blankets or in simple booths, selling trinkets, cheap or used 
  goods, and similar. The Rat’s Corner Market became a tradition, now shortened 
  to just the Rat Market. These days, the Rat Market is quietly understood to be 
  under the domain of the Kennock Syndicate and to be crawling with pickpockets. 
  Some of the booths and blankets sell items of quite questionable origin. 
  The town sewers are easily accessible from grates at the edges of the Rat 
  Market and run down to the river from here. Upriver (or “upsewer,” more 
  technically) the sewer tunnels branch out and can be used by the brave or 
  desperate to reach other parts of the city. These grates are occasionally used 
  for disposal of bodies and can be used as a good jumping-off point for any 
  adventure based in a town’s sewers.
  Adventure Hook: Five rat-men of some kind were recently observed 
  climbing down into the sewers with what appeared to be a body wrapped in a 
  blanket. The blanket was making muffled shouting sounds, so presumably a 
  captive is somewhere down in the sewers.
  o-14. saInT kada’s orPHanage
  o-14. saInT kada’s orPHanage
  Behind the Old Temple, out on the eastern edge of the Old City, where 
  crumbling ripplestone meets the stout, simple brick of Bricktown, stands an 
  ugly mishmash of a structure known as Saint Kada’s Orphanage. Originally a 
  school of fine art and sculpture, it was abandoned with the rest of the Old City 
  and stood mostly empty for some time. 
  A few decades back, however, residents noticed that repairs were being 
  made to the old building, with solid brick shoring up the most vital weak 
  points and weather-sealed wood roofing or siding being added to protect the 
  ripplestone beneath from further damage by sun and rain. When the watch 
  looked into this unauthorized construction, it was discovered that a group 
  of orphans had been stealing the means to rebuild their home from various 
  brickyards, lumber barges, and other businesses throughout the city. 
  The orphans were led by a bright young woman named Kada, herself the 
  orphaned daughter of a pair of trained architects. Kada insisted on taking full 
  responsibility for all the crimes involved, to spare the other orphans. During her 
  trial, several businesses retroactively “donated” their products to the rebuilding 
  efforts, and the baron officially designated the now-ugly-but-sound building as 
  an orphanage. However, some businessowners remained enraged by the theft, 
  and Kada was ultimately sent to prison to work off the debt of all she’d stolen. 
  
  32|Cat’s Cradle
  32|Cat’s Cradle
  Between her own years of hard prison labor and a number of anonymous 
  donations, her debt was paid nine years ago, and Kada is now free to once 
  more manage her orphanage herself. Despite her hard treatment by the law, 
  Kada remains a kind and stubborn woman, and most who meet her understand 
  why “Saint Kada” has become her nickname. 
  Adventure Hook: A cleric in the party keeps having visions of the 
  orphanage, and when it is finally located, Saint Kada considers their 
  appearance to be tremendously lucky, for five of her children disappeared last 
  night (long after the cleric’s visions began). She believes that the children saw 
  or overheard some kind of discussion they shouldn’t have, and that they might 
  be in terrible danger from the Kennock Syndicate or some other criminal 
  group … or possibly even corrupt members of the city watch.
  o-15. sHevekka’s
  o-15. sHevekka’s
  Shevekka looks human, though rumor makes her out to be almost anything else. 
  She looks to be of attractive middle age, though rumor would make her centuries 
  old and possibly undead. What appearance and rumor agree upon, however, is that 
  Shevekka is a wizard for hire who keeps offices in the Old City district of Cat’s 
  Cradle, in what was once the gardener’s shed for a now long-demolished mansion. 
  Why a capable wizard would maintain so small and humble an abode is 
  unknown, but as she also does not advertise her services, nor even mark her 
  place of business with a sign on the door, some have suggested that when she 
  relocated to Cat’s Cradle some decades ago, she was going into hiding to avoid 
  an enemy or the consequences of some crime.
  But few know much for certain about Shevekka the wizard. She is said to be 
  willing to do anything for money (or sufficiently valuable trade), no questions 
  asked. She is said to have no moral compass and to be quite dangerous to approach 
  without proper courtesy. While the Baronial Constabulary do keep an eye on her, 
  however, she has yet to be convicted of a crime by any Cat’s Cradle official. 
  Adventure Hook: Shevekka has received a dangerous commission to produce 
  a magic item for an unknown patron willing to pay well. However, she needs 
  materials — very specific ones — from the Salchamp mines north of the city.
  o-16. syl’s odd Jobs
  o-16. syl’s odd Jobs
  Not far from the Rat Market stand the dull and simple offices of Syl’s Odd 
  Jobs. Syl is an elf, although he avoids mention of his family and ancestry. 
  He has lived in Cat’s Cradle his whole life (well over a century), and for the 
  last several decades has made a somewhat lazy excuse for a modest living by 
  performing odd jobs for anyone willing to hire him. 
  Syl seems to be skilled in almost every vocation, or is at least able to fake 
  it well, and he also maintains a network of skilled friends to call upon when 
  his own abilities are not up to a task. He and his eclectic companions present 
  a somewhat bored and selfish appearance to the world, but rumor makes them 
  out to be much, much more. Not only do some say that Syl’s Odd Jobs will 
  work for free if the cause is good (passionately denied by Syl), but the deeper 
  rumor is that Syl and his friends are secretly city-based adventurers and more 
  useful than the watch when trouble threatens Cat’s Cradle’s Old City. 
  o-17. THe THIeves’ guIld
  o-17. THe THIeves’ guIld
  There is no physical location in Cat’s Cradle called a Thieves’ Guild, but 
  the presence of the Thieves’ Guild is felt throughout the Old City and is 
  considered by many residents to be the most important authority in the district. 
  Some believe the Thieves’ Guild to be simply another term for the Kennock 
  Syndicate, but most assume “the Guild” to be a districtwide conspiracy of 
  extra-legal “authority” figures coordinating activities to their mutual benefit. 
  Other than Old Kennock, who is variously assumed to be either the leader 
  or the muscle of the organization, Guild leaders are believed to include Tral 
  Zesser of Ox’s Labor, Jondret Boon of the Upper Crust Inn, possibly Madame 
  Olella, probably some unknown corrupt watch officer, and other sometimes 
  fanciful postulations such as Shevekka the wizard, various unpopular rich 
  people from other parts of the city, a secret cadre of trained spy-assassins, and 
  of course any number of literal fiends, and even the mysterious lake monster. 
  Whatever its membership, the Thieves’ Guild is understood to meet in 
  secret every few weeks at rotating locations (mostly — but not exclusively 
  — within the Old City), to determine the upcoming course of criminal activity 
  throughout Cat’s Cradle. It is also understood that one does not set up shop 
  in the western Old City without Thieves’ Guild permission (usually obtained 
  through the Kennock Syndicate). Individual criminals caught and interrogated 
  by the Baronial Constabulary only know their immediate bosses, but all claim 
  to believe that said bosses, even Kennock, answer to the Guild, about which 
  captured criminals have always known little. 
  Those who have angered the Thieves’ Guild have, on occasion, told tales of 
  being kidnapped with sacks over their heads, dragged to an unknown location, 
  interrogated by a circle of distorted voices, and set free after agreeing to 
  whatever the Guild demanded. It is assumed that those who fail to agree to the 
  Guild’s terms do not return from such an adventure.   
  o-18. Treesa’s Pub
  o-18. Treesa’s Pub
  Hailed by its regulars as the best pub in the Old City, Treesa’s is a homey 
  little establishment recently and sturdily constructed near the Plaza. Treesa is 
  a human who grew up in Cat’s Cradle’s Old City, achieved humble success 
  as a soldier and adventurer in the wide world, and decided a life of violence 
  wasn’t for her. She brought her modest wealth home with her and used it to 
  start her small pub, in a desire to be part of the rebuilding of the Old City. 
  While Treesa’s own combat prowess is sufficient to deal with run-of-the-mill 
  disturbances in her pub, she prefers to keep a low profile in order to avoid trouble 
  with the Kennocks or the Thieves’ Guild. As such, her premises are small and 
  simple, and occasionally crowded. Treesa’s beer and food are good, though hardly 
  haute cuisine, and she keeps no expensive spirits or goods on hand. She is known 
  to be a sympathetic bartender, good with advice and even mediation of disputes.
  o-19. THe uPPer CrusT Inn
  o-19. THe uPPer CrusT Inn
  Jondret Boon, the self-proclaimed “best innkeeper in Cat’s Cradle,” runs a seedy 
  establishment whose door signage euphemistically names it, “The Upper Crust 
  Inn.” This flea-bitten, rat-infested inn offers tiny rooms whose straw mattresses 
  are never changed as often as any customers would like. Room rates are low, but 
  guests’ reports of the inn’s quality are even lower, describing such amenities as sour, 
  watered-down beer, unidentifiable meats, and stale or even moldy bread. 
  Though Boon claims otherwise, the Upper Crust’s back room, available for 
  private reservation, is also rumored to be one of the meeting places of the Cat’s 
  Cradle Thieves’ Guild. Indeed, Boon himself is rumored to be a member. It is 
  certainly true that his regulars in the inn’s front common room do come across 
  as a gang of dangerous goons. These are also treated to better ale and spirits 
  than newer customers are typically served.     
  o-20. abandoned TenemenT
  o-20. abandoned TenemenT
  This is a three-story building that — on first inspection — appears to 
  be structurally unsound, and dangerously so. A rough wooden sign reads, 
  “Condemned by order of the Baron. Do not enter.” The building is actually 
  in much better shape than it appears, and it is rented out by its owner, Oyad 
  Thern, to anyone who needs a large and inconspicuous place to work for a 
  month or two. Needless to say, most of those who rent the building are using 
  it for illegal purposes such as fencing operations, illegal magical or alchemical 
  research, and other such activities. The building is referenced in the adventure 
  module The Eye of Itral, but if you aren’t running that adventure, the occupants 
  from The Eye of Itral will have moved on (or not arrived yet) and you can 
  use it either as an “abandoned” building or as a place the characters could rent 
  if they make contact with Oyad Thern via any of the town’s various illegal 
  organizations. Oyad himself is not associated with any of these groups — he 
  works with anyone for the right price, which happens to be 500 gp per month.
  Adventure Hook: Oyad has agreed to rent the building to an anonymous 
  tenant, as per usual, but he has become convinced that whoever the tenant 
  is, they plan to kill him soon as a way of making sure no one can trace their 
  activities back to them. He wants the characters to find out the tenant’s identity 
  and protect him from any kind of assassination attempt.
  o-21. TemPle of Ceres
  o-21. TemPle of Ceres
  The goddess Ceres is the Goddess of the Home and Midwives, Goddess of 
  Healing, Mercy, and Patience. This three-story temple houses a chapel on the 
  ground floor and contains the quarters of the priestesses on the upper floors.
  The chapel’s main feature is a large millstone in the center of the room (the 
  millstone being the main symbol of the goddess). The chapel has been located 
  here since before the decline of the Old City, and was not — probably due to 
  divine intervention — affected by the physical deterioration of the buildings 
  in this part of the town. The priestesses perform their mission throughout the 
  town rather than just in the Old City, so the temple can easily be used for 
  adventure hooks directed at adventurers of higher moral persuasion.
  o-22. THe ragged man’s wareHouse
  o-22. THe ragged man’s wareHouse
  This warehouse is generally used as a storage place for street vendors and 
  smaller merchants of the Old City and Dancer’s Road. It is operated by an 
  individual known as the Ragged Man, who dresses in ostentatiously rich — 
  but old and threadbare — garments. The warehouse is well guarded, and 
  the guards have a pack of three dogs. They check around the outside of the 
  building on an hourly basis during the night.
  
  the panhandle
  the panhandle|33
  |33
  This newest portion of the city was laid out a century ago after fire 
  destroyed the Docks and baronial decree limited alchemical shipments to 
  predesignated areas. Newer and better-protected docks were built in this area 
  south of the Jade District, designed to receive and handle alchemical supplies 
  and hazardous materials. Today, the Panhandle is almost its own city, separate 
  from the rest of Cat’s Cradle and home to its own governor, administration, 
  and civic structure.
  P-1. Jade gaTe
  P-1. Jade gaTe
  The portal to and from the city’s wealthiest district, the Jade Gate is made 
  of granite faced with locally quarried jade marble. A vital pathway between 
  the two important districts, the gate is constantly guarded by impeccably 
  uniformed city watch members who make a great show of carefully inspecting 
  cargo passing through. In reality, the guards usually only make cursory 
  examinations and usually simply wave through cargoes from well-known 
  individuals or businesses.
  P-2. baronIal reCords  
  P-2. baronIal reCords  
  and legal offICes
  and legal offICes
  This sprawling structure sandwiched between the city wall and the Shipping 
  Warehouse serves the barony as a repository for the ever-growing mass of 
  law books, receipts, manifests, bills of lading, certifications, licenses and 
  other bureaucratic records, and is managed by baronial chief documentarian 
  Isalk Dar and several assistants. Records are stored on tall, tottering shelves 
  organized more-or-less chronologically, with older records bound into binders 
  or leather books and buried increasingly deeper in the archive. Isalk and 
  his clerks are intimately familiar with the maze of shelves and papers and 
  are known for their ability to locate records from almost any point in Cat’s 
  Cradle’s history
  The huge building serves a secondary purpose as containing offices of 
  a number of legal solicitors who specialize in local law regarding trade, 
  manufacture, taxes and transportation. This location, conveniently close to the 
  records office, is ideal for those legal workers who need to constantly refer to 
  documents for precedent and past transactions. These attorneys are generally 
  oriented toward business matters such as settling disputes between merchants, 
  helping to deal with fees and criminal charges from the barony, etc., but 
  many are open to taking on other cases if the price is right, including criminal 
  defense and representation of adventurers in their various disputes. Most of the 
  solicitors here are familiar sights at the City Courthouse in Cat’s Keep.
  Adventure Hook: One of the attorneys needs to get the testimony of 
  someone who is located in a dangerous place (Old City or the Warrens at 
  Location G-19). The person has disappeared, whether due to foul play or out 
  of fear, and the attorney wants the characters to find them.
  P-3. THe CalICo CaT
  P-3. THe CalICo CaT
  A popular Panhandle tavern, the Calico Cat occupies a central location in 
  the district and hosts a diverse crowd from all across the district, as well as 
  tourists and visitors from elsewhere in the city who want to soak up a little 
  local color. Innkeeper Gustov Mellarian makes certain that his customers 
  represent the district well and always provide an entertaining sight to other 
  patrons, and to this end he goes so far as to offer discounts to Alchemists’ Guild 
  members, nobles, and prominent adventurers, using them as celebrity draws to 
  attract sightseers. The inn is also popular with less prominent individuals, as 
  local merchants, alchemists, and brokers favor the Cat’s pleasant and private 
  meeting rooms for conducting private business.
  As an inn, the Calico Cat is average at best, with basic but well-prepared 
  fare and clean but ordinary rooms, though prices are somewhat higher than the 
  Cat’s counterparts in other sections of the city. 
  P-4. alCHemICal sHIPPIng wareHouse
  P-4. alCHemICal sHIPPIng wareHouse
  This large and imposing structure serves dual purposes — as a warehouse 
  for alchemical components and products awaiting outshipment, and as a 
  protected dock facility for the offloading of hazardous materials. The lake-
  facing side of the structure opens onto a series of covered slips large enough 
  to accommodate most local vessels, and each slip is reinforced and protected 
  from the others by heavy stone walls. Vessels carrying volatile, explosive, 
  corrosive, or flammable substances arrive and depart from these protected 
  docks, overseen by representatives of the Alchemists’ Guild and Cat’s Cradle 
  customs officers.
  Elsewhere, alchemical goods are stored in long, sky-lit structures marked 
  with seals and documents identifying their owners. The building’s wide aisles 
  are flanked by high shelves where packages and shipments of every size, 
  shape, and description are kept, while light shines down through unbreakable 
  alchemical ironglass skylights while human watch members, dwarven private 
  security operatives, and a tireless squad of iron golems watch over them.  
  Adventure Hook: An open brawl in an area filled with explosives and iron 
  golems is an opportunity not to be missed. Open mayhem is a rare opportunity 
  for higher-level characters, and the Shipping Warehouse offers just that.
  P-5. PanHandle sTables
  P-5. PanHandle sTables
  Horses, wagons, and dray animals are in constant demand in Cat’s Cradle, 
  where they are employed to transport all forms of alchemical substances and to 
  move cargo to and from warehouses and storage facilities. Dageera Tashkheli 
  is a former nomad who transformed her skill with horse trading and breeding 
  into a successful business here in the heart of the Panhandle. Mounts available 
  through Tashkheli range from fine riding horses to powerful workhorses 
  capable of towing enormous loads. Tashkheli supplements her business by 
  selling carts and wagons as well, which she purchases from suppliers in the 
  countryside.
  P-6. dexer’s roomIng House
  P-6. dexer’s roomIng House
  Dexer Harreaz manages this large tenement that he and several investors 
  converted from a neglected multiple-use structure a decade or so ago. Rooms 
  range from small and inexpensive to larger and more luxurious, and are 
  occupied by various Panhandle working folk and more prosperous types who 
  don’t want or can’t find a more permanent abode in the crowded district. 
  Though Dexer makes a decent living from the building — good enough at 
  least to maintain a luxury flat for himself, his wife, and his son — further 
  digging into his carefully concealed finances might reveal stakes in Cat’s 
  Cradle gambling establishments and homes maintained for several mistresses, 
  as well as connections to the Kennock Syndicate. All this sketchy high-living 
  is financed by the rooming house’s second, secret function — that of a secret 
  alchemical lab where those with enough gold can concoct illicit substances 
  safe from the prying eyes of the city watch or — worse — the constabulary.
  The illicit labs are well hidden within the walls of the rooming house, and 
  in several secret sub-cellars, accessible only through magically enhanced 
  portals with passwords or arcane keys. Workspace varies from cramped to 
  relatively roomy depending upon payments, and although the hidden rooms 
  are reinforced and safe procedures are demanded from users, there is always 
  a danger of spills, fires, and other accidents that might endanger other tenants. 
  So far, all such accidents have been successfully contained or covered up, but 
  future similar problems continue to worry Dexer.
  Users are sworn to secrecy, and Dexer’s contacts with the Kennock 
  Syndicate have come in handy when he needs to dispose of tenants whom he 
  considers to be “bad risks.” So arrogant has he become, that one of his several 
  mistresses was recently found murdered and floating down the River Hyon to 
  the city watch’s confusion and a decree of “accidental death” by investigators.
  P-7. naTTwICk’s CloTHIers
  P-7. naTTwICk’s CloTHIers
  Halfling proprietor Harthil Nattwick and a staff of skilled tailors design 
  and sell clothing of all sorts from his shop, but he specializes in protective 
  gear and garments designed for use by alchemists, dockworkers, and others 
  who handle hazardous materials. Nattwick’s specialized garments incorporate 
  various fabrics infused with chemical and alchemical substances that retard 
  flames, reduce the effects of other elemental substances such as concentrated 
  acids and bases, and can also provide some protection from cold, lightning, 
  and even some arcane energies. Nattwick charges premium prices for these 
  garments and though his customers are primarily alchemists and their 
  employees, he also has a small but steady stream of adventurers among his 
  clients, especially spellcasters who use his garments to protect them from 
  hostile magic and elemental attack.
  THe PanHandle
  THe PanHandle
  
  34|Cat’s Cradle
  34|Cat’s Cradle
  
  the panhandle
  the panhandle|35
  |35
  P-8. alCHemICal bazaar
  P-8. alCHemICal bazaar
  While several permanent alchemical businesses are located throughout Cat’s 
  Cradle, this large open plaza offers the opportunity for individual alchemists, 
  smaller enterprises, and other less influential sellers to provide their wares to the 
  general public, and conversely provides shoppers with the chance to find bargains 
  and obtain unusual alchemical products that may not be available elsewhere. The 
  bazaar consists mostly of a broad paved plaza with booths and small wooden 
  structures around the outer edge, and is located conveniently close to the Panhandle 
  Docks so that cargo can be brought here directly from incoming vessels.
  Each day, the bazaar fills with sellers who either occupy rented booths and 
  structures or spread their wares out on the pavement for sale. In the latter case, 
  selling space is first come, first served, and canny sellers show up before dawn 
  with their goods, groundcloths, assistants and money chests, ready to grab 
  prime real estate at the bazaar.
  At sunup, a city watch member strikes a large bell located near the bazaar’s 
  entrance, triggering an influx of eager customers. During the bright days 
  of spring and summer, the bazaar is a noisy, colorful riot as sellers loudly 
  proclaim the quality of their wares, buyers shout questions and negotiators 
  bargain, expressing mock anger at prices set too high or offers that are seen 
  as too low. Money and goods change hands, buyers of all social levels thread 
  their way through the crowds while loaded with purchases, sellers argue with 
  customers and with each other, and of course pickpockets run wild, using 
  the press of the crowd to avoid overworked watch members, most of whom 
  consider the bazaar to be little more than punishment duty.
  The bazaar closes at midnight, or at least when the weary city watch decides 
  to ring the bell again to signal that it is time for the plaza’s remaining occupants 
  to complete transactions, pack up, and go home. Early in the morning, once 
  the plaza is empty, it is swept and cleaned by a crew hired by the watch from 
  among Cat’s Cradle’s poorer citizens, work which needs to be completed by 
  the ringing of the first bell of the following dawn.
  P-9. PanHandle doCks
  P-9. PanHandle doCks
  These durable stone docks were built by dwarven engineers almost a 
  century ago in the wake of the Dockside Fire, in which an alchemical accident 
  destroyed much of Cat’s Cradle’s waterfront. While mundane cargo and 
  nonvolatile alchemy components are ordinarily shipped through the main 
  docks, the Panhandle Docks are reserved for dangerous, unstable, rare, or 
  valuable cargoes, carefully offloaded by professional dockworkers licensed 
  and certified by the barony, both by hand labor and with sturdy cranes.
  Incoming cargoes are carefully inspected and matched against cargo 
  manifests, fees are levied, and official seals affixed before they can be 
  transported to their purchasers or taken to the warehouse for storage. The 
  entire neighborhood has become vital to Cat’s Cradle’s continued economic 
  survival and so has come under the separate administration of its own noble 
  manager, Count Arzend (see Location P-13), who is answerable only to his 
  ally and friend the baron.
  P-10. PanHandle gaTe
  P-10. PanHandle gaTe
  This portal is generally kept open at all hours and is well guarded, as it is 
  the only city gate through which volatile or dangerous alchemical substances 
  can be shipped. Inspectors are stationed here, ready to check out any cargoes, 
  levy fees, and provide certification that the incoming items are safely packed 
  and bound for the proper recipient.
  P-11. CusToms House
  P-11. CusToms House
  An extensive bureaucracy has grown up around the need to manage, 
  document and apply appropriate taxes and fees to the substances that come 
  in and out of the city. Under Customs Minister Charlerat Hussan, the 
  organization has grown to more than 50 employees, the largest it has ever 
  been. Hussan is a humorless bureaucrat with no apparent family or interests 
  outside his job. He’s intensely disliked by the other customs employees, but as 
  the baron has frequently noted, he gets results and income from tariffs, fees, 
  and taxes on cargoes has been flowing into the barony’s coffers in greater 
  quantities under his administration.
  Customs inspectors are expected to be honest, dependable, and loyal, and 
  have access to all cargoes at the Panhandle and the main Lake Docks. They 
  are expected to oversee all cargoes, check manifests and levy fees, and collect 
  them on the spot and transport them back to the Customs House, where they 
  are kept in the cellar vault before being taken to Cat’s Cradle. 
  P-12. waTerfronT wareHouse
  P-12. waTerfronT wareHouse
  A group of alchemists own this structure and use it to store inert, safe, or 
  mundane cargo from the nearby docks. While the main Alchemical Shipping 
  Warehouse is the more expensive alternative for valuable or dangerous items, 
  this facility provides cheaper and less heavily secured storage, and space is 
  available for rent by other customers.
  Adventure Hook: A cargo brought to the warehouse was contaminated 
  with monstrous eggs of some kind, and the brood has hatched. This could 
  range from giant spiders for lower-level adventurers to something far worse 
  for higher-level adventurers.
  P-13. CounT arzend’s resIdenCe
  P-13. CounT arzend’s resIdenCe
  The Panhandle is the only Cat’s Cradle district to boast its own governor, 
  and Count Arzend, a personal friend and powerful ally of Baron Scale, takes 
  the job with all seriousness. Arzend, his wife Cassia, and their two children 
  have made their home in his assigned district. Their home is a converted 
  government ministry building that allows for comfortable daily life as well 
  as providing extensive space for business and governmental administration. 
  The residence sees a continual stream of traffic in and out as officials, guild 
  members, alchemists, merchants, nobles, and others visit to meet with each 
  other and with the count himself.
  While the combined quarters are efficient, the situation has begun to take 
  a toll on Arzend’s family. The house is highly secure with constant shifts 
  of guards and an extensive password-based pass system. Arzend and his 
  family are extremely valuable individuals and are never allowed to leave 
  the residence without escort. Countess Cassia has grown bored and weary of 
  her surroundings and the tedium of life as a virtual prisoner, while their twin 
  children Magdra and Jacq, age eight, feel similarly cooped up and frustrated, 
  wishing to have friends their own age and a more normal life than that of a 
  powerful nobleman. 
  Adventure Hook: Count Arzend is willing to use private agents when 
  he feels that his ordinary resources might not be independent or resourceful 
  enough to handle the task he has in mind. In general, any type of hook 
  involving ships or cargo would be appropriate to use here.
  alchemy and  
  alchemy and  
  alchemical Products
  alchemical Products
  Alchemy and arcane magic overlap in many important ways, and 
  commonly known magical potions can be created using alchemical 
  procedures. These are all available at alchemy businesses in Cat’s 
  Cradle, at prices as listed in the 5e core rules. Other non-arcane 
  substances are available too, most notably antidotes and poisons, 
  though the unlicensed sale of harmful or poisonous substances is 
  strictly forbidden, and those vendors who do sell such items carefully 
  investigate buyers and keep extensive records of all sales.
  Various items include (see Fortune Hunters for details):
  Candle of invocation, dust of disappearance, dust of dryness, dust 
  of sneezing and choking, oil of etherealness, oil of sharpness, oil of 
  slipperiness, philter of love, potion of animal friendship, potion of 
  clairvoyance, potion of climbing, potion of diminution, potion of 
  flying, potion of gaseous form, potion of hill giant strength, potion of 
  frost giant strength, potion of stone giant strength, potion of fire giant 
  strength, potion of cloud giant strength, potion of storm giant strength, 
  potion of growth, potion of healing, potion of greater healing, potion 
  of superior healing, potion of supreme healing, potion of heroism, 
  potion of invisibility, potion of mind reading, potion of poison, potion 
  of resistance, potion of speed, potion of water breathing, restorative 
  ointment, sovereign glue, universal solvent.
  
  36|Cat’s Cradle
  36|Cat’s Cradle
  The region surrounding Cat’s Cradle is unique, though it does not look at 
  all special on most maps. Particularities of the area are outlined below, but 
  the strangest feature of the surrounding land is its total lack of all disease, 
  including plagues, blights, and any illness that affects living plants or animals. 
  Pest infestations can still occur, but these do not carry disease. Even magical 
  diseases are prevented unless they are caused by a curse. Visitors to the area 
  do not benefit from this blessing, but long-term residents all eventually do.
  Some believe that Cat’s Cradle and its surrounding wilderness will one day 
  pay a terrible price for this immunity, but most would prefer to accept the gift 
  and live their lives in illness-free ignorance of its source. 
  s-1. THe baronIal farms
  s-1. THe baronIal farms
  The barons of Cat’s Cradle are deeded a wide swath of land, larger than 
  some counties, though sparsely populated. Nearly all land near Cat’s Cradle 
  that isn’t forest, mine, or quarry, therefore, is designated as baronial farmland. 
  As is always the case with hereditary leadership, the tenant farmers on 
  baronial land have had many different lots in life over the centuries, depending 
  on the whims of the current baron or baron’s liege, the wisdom of current land 
  management, and the vagaries of seasonal weather conditions. Current baronial 
  tenants are enjoying quite a surge in prosperity due to a series of abundant years 
  in a row, intelligent agricultural planning on the part of current leadership, and 
  extremely fair and reasonable taxation on the part of Baron Scale. 
  The current baron is very popular in the countryside, perhaps even more 
  so than in the city proper, though those northern farms closest to the Forest of 
  Cantricle are beginning to grow nervous about the rumors of banditry therein. 
  Petitions to the baron for stronger protection near the forest are beginning to 
  pour in since last winter. 
  s-2. THe Caravan rouTes
  s-2. THe Caravan rouTes
  Most of Cat’s Cradle’s commerce travels along the Great Hyon River. 
  However, there are also regular caravans to surrounding towns, including the 
  rival town of Five-and-Copper to the east, and a town called Sundry to the 
  west. A second caravan route runs north through the Forest of Cantricle to the 
  town of Voles, and south to the town of Dancers.
  In order to avoid disrupting river traffic, no bridges have been built across 
  the Great Hyon in the Cat’s Cradle region, and the north-south caravan instead 
  uses a ferry east of the city (past the lake) to cross the river. A massive bridge, 
  tall enough to allow the largest rivercraft, is planned to be constructed in the 
  nearby village of Gambit in future, as Gambit’s geography lends itself better 
  to such an undertaking, but for now, the eastern ferry functions well enough, 
  save in the worst weather. 
  s-3. THe CoTTage
  s-3. THe CoTTage
  The Cottage is an old baronial hunting lodge that hasn’t been used by the 
  family in generations. By tradition, the baron occasionally sends out a work crew 
  to at least make certain that the place is not a security hazard to forest travelers, 
  but in recent years such crews have faced repeated misfortunes, accidents, and 
  other difficulties, such that the Cottage is now reputed to be cursed.
  Of course, a more rational explanation might be that the forest bandits are 
  using the Cottage as a hideout and taking pains to make certain that the baron’s 
  servants don’t find them there, but if so, no direct evidence of this has yet been 
  made public, so the rumors of a curse are left to grow more outlandish with 
  each passing tale. 
  s-4. deeP lake
  s-4. deeP lake
  A very deep portion of the Hyon River just outside the docks of Cat’s Cradle 
  is part of the reason the harbor remains calm even during foul weather. Residents 
  of Cat’s Cradle have been calling this area “Deep Lake” for centuries. 
  Deep Lake is known for several things. First, it is unnaturally deep for a lake 
  that is barely more than a wide patch of a river. Second, the deepest parts of Deep 
  Lake are perilous in the extreme. Much mystery and superstition surrounds Deep 
  Lake, as the nature of its peril is not well understood, but all merchants and river 
  captains who travel the region know that you never sail or row small vessels 
  through the center of the lake, nor even along its southern shore if possible. 
  As for what happens to vessels that break the rules and enter the deeper lake, 
  no coherent witness accounts have been recorded. Observers from the safer 
  parts of the lake have seen only a great splashing, followed by the destruction 
  of the vessel in question. There have never been survivors, even from military 
  expeditions. Remains of the crafts themselves usually wash up on the southern 
  lake shore eventually, but remains of people or livestock (or fish) aboard are 
  never found, leading most to believe that these are being eaten by a monster. 
  The late Dessa Showe, an expert on the Salchamp who reportedly went mad 
  before her disappearance on Deep Lake, was known to believe that the lake 
  was formed in the same ancient conflict that created the Salt Skeleton. She 
  wrote that some titanic blow must have sundered the ground beside the Great 
  Hyon, resulting in the lake’s strange topography. Showe never wrote about 
  her beliefs surrounding the “lake monster,” but considering her otherwise 
  inexplicable choice to row out over the lake all alone, many believe that her 
  final year of research — of which no documentation remains — was all about 
  the lake monster and its connection to the Salt Skeleton and other quirks of the 
  Cat’s Cradle region. 
  s-5. foresT of CanTrICle
  s-5. foresT of CanTrICle
  To the north of Cat’s Cradle stands the southern edge of the Forest of 
  Cantricle. The caravan route between Cat’s Cradle and the town of Voles, to the 
  north, lies through this forest. It is, for the most part, an ordinary and friendly 
  forest, cleared long ago of large, magical predators or other supernatural 
  dangers by the army of a previous queen. 
  However, since the end of the Salt War, the remains of the bandit army that 
  attempted to wrest control of the Salchamp from Cat’s Cradle are known to have 
  hidden in the forest to lick their wounds. The late Baron Escallel gave his life 
  in the final battle that slew the bandit lord and broke the back of the invaders. 
  It was a crushing victory for Cat’s Cradle, but in the end, not all the key bandit 
  leaders were slain or taken captive. It is believed that their numbers are growing 
  once more within the forest (perhaps in response to unrest in other parts of the 
  kingdom), and caravans heading north are hiring more security than they have 
  in decades in response to rumors of disappearances and assaults in the forest. 
  Adventure Hook: It is said that Baron Scale is consulting with surrounding 
  lords to form a long-term strategy for ousting the bandits from the forest. The 
  characters might be recruited into this effort at any level of expertise.
  s-6. THe Jade-marble quarry
  s-6. THe Jade-marble quarry
  First discovered some 150 years ago by Salchamp miners, the jade-marble 
  quarry takes up parts of what has come to be known as Cat’s Hill, wherever the 
  Salchamp is played out. Behind and beneath the alchemical salts, there seems 
  to always be a long, mostly straight vein of this jade green marble-like stone. 
  As such, the jade-marble quarry looks more like a mine than a typical quarry, 
  but the name has stuck. 
  Jade-marble has been run through a long battery of alchemical tests and 
  has shown signs over the course of its use in Cat’s Cradle of being even more 
  durable than ordinary marble, or than similar-looking green stone from other 
  parts of the world. It seems clear that the difficulties associated with ripplestone 
  will never recur with jade-marble. That said, the jade-marble supply near Cat’s 
  Cradle seems already to be running thin, and is currently valued more highly 
  than its weight in gold. Jade-marble quarriers are looking for work in other 
  related trades, but many hope that a new jade-marble vein will be discovered 
  when the current Salchamp begins to play out, as has happened in the past. 
  According to Dessa Showe’s maps, however, it seems likely that jade-
  marble is a quite limited resource and that, however plentiful it may have 
  seemed while the Jade District was being built, there may not be much of it 
  left to find — not near Cat’s Cradle at any rate.
  s-7. THe mIlleTon esTaTe
  s-7. THe mIlleTon esTaTe
  Though primarily known in recent generations for their glassworks in 
  Bricktown district, the Milleton family have also been land tenants of the Cat’s 
  Cradle barons for many generations. Their farm is a prosperous one, and the 
  Milletons were wealthy even before founding their glassworks — so wealthy 
  as to dwarf the fortunes of many minor aristocrats in the region. 
  Wealth and success notwithstanding, however, the Milleton family has entered 
  an unfortunate period in its history. Large and sprawling, with literally hundreds 
  of members, the Milletons work their lands and glassworks themselves, only 
  rarely hiring help from outside. This increases their profits, as no wages need to 
  be paid to workers, but it has also created a cold and businesslike culture within 
  surroundIng regIon
  surroundIng regIon
  
  surrOundinG reGiOn
  surrOundinG reGiOn|37
  |37
  
  38|Cat’s Cradle
  38|Cat’s Cradle
  the family, including a strict hierarchy of privilege and authority, depending 
  upon one’s relationship to the matriarch, Landra Milleton. 
  Landra is shrewd and sharp-witted, even at 95 years of age (human), and 
  has built up the Milleton fortunes dramatically. She maintains close ties with 
  many Jade District bigwigs and other wealthy allies, and seems to see every 
  plot against her coming from leagues away. She is also, however, known to 
  force her relatives into whatever roles the family needs, regardless of their 
  own inclinations, to maintain tight control over the family purse. She doles 
  out rewards only where it suits her plans to do so and keeps her relatives 
  dependent upon her for their very livelihoods. 
  Milletons who take family matters to the watch or the baron are, of course, 
  cut off without a copper. The Milleton intrigues stay within the family and, as 
  such, it has been difficult for Cat’s Cradle authorities to intervene. 
  Adventure Hook: The Milletons wait with bated breath for their fierce 
  matriarch to finally die and leave the family leadership to a new generation (though, 
  of course, Landra’s eldest children are in their 70s, so “new” is a relative term). It 
  seems to suit Grandmother Landra’s purposes (or perhaps her underlying sadistic 
  nature) to watch her relatives squabble amongst themselves, and so the Milleton 
  estate has spiraled ever further into a nightmare realm of power-jockeying, plot 
  and counter-plot, blackmail, framing, kidnappings, and even murders. 
  s-8. THe old quarry
  s-8. THe old quarry
  Out near the Salchamp stands the hollow and near-abandoned ditches of the 
  old ripplestone quarry. Due to the associated shame of the great ripplestone 
  debacle, few are willing to go near the place, though in truth, ripplestone remains 
  a serviceable, decorative stone for small indoor art pieces, figurines, and the like. 
  Officially speaking, the poorly maintained and slowly dissolving ripplestone 
  quarry is too dangerous to work, and by baronial order is to be left to return 
  to nature. In reality, however, it is not uncommon to see or hear workers with 
  their picks and hammers, late at night, still harvesting stones from the more 
  sheltered sections of the quarry. The baronial constabulary occasionally “puts 
  a stop” to such activities, but they always seem to crop up again within a few 
  months, and rumor has it that the Thieves’ Guild — and particularly the goons 
  working for Ox’s Labor — don’t take kindly to those who rat out ripplestone 
  quarry operations. 
  s-9. orfell’s smITHy
  s-9. orfell’s smITHy
  To the immediate east of Cat’s Cradle stands a small, walled facility known 
  as Orfell’s Smithy. Begun generations ago by a local folk hero named Orfell 
  the Smith, this is the largest and best known ironworks in the Cat’s Cradle 
  region. Leadership of the smithy and training of its apprentices are appointed 
  by the baron, rather than inherited within a family, and the current smithy 
  administration is considered shrewd and skilled. 
  Orfell’s Smithy is only famous on a local level, with its steel being considered 
  of good but hardly legendary quality elsewhere. Cat’s Cradle is known for 
  stone and alchemical salts, not iron, so it has been many generations since the 
  smithy has turned a truly impressive profit for the baron. Nevertheless, it does 
  well enough, and due to its weapons production capabilities is considered an 
  important military asset for Cat’s Cradle’s defense. As such, the smithy walls 
  are high, thick, and in good repair, and the smithy is always well-stocked and 
  well-defended. 
  Some believe that an old escape tunnel leads from Cat’s Keep to Orfell’s 
  Smithy, but no known maps depict such a route if it exists. 
  s-10. THe salCHamP
  s-10. THe salCHamP
  Discovered not long after the first ripplestone vein, the Salchamp has since 
  become Cat’s Cradle’s most important source of income. Its presence in the 
  region is also the reason Cat’s Cradle has become so important a hub for 
  alchemical research. 
  The salts mined from the Salchamp are not truly salts in any mineral sense 
  of the term. Rather, they are alchemical salts with varying complex properties 
  that can be brought to full potential by alchemical processes and combinations. 
  The salts come in all colors, but green is the most common. 
  Some decades ago, after mapping the known salt veins through the hillsides 
  surrounding Cat’s Cradle, an alchemist by the name of Dessa Showe put forth 
  the theory that an ancient titan or god, while wounded, somehow fused with the 
  earth in this place and left behind a large chunk of its own flesh upon departure. 
  Fused with the earth as it was, this flesh did not decompose normally, but was 
  transformed into stone and “salts” and eventually was covered over by ordinary 
  soil, only to be rediscovered and mined by Cat’s Cradle centuries later. 
  According to this theory, both ripplestone and Cat’s Cradle’s jade-marble 
  quarries are related to this same phenomenon, though both lack the mystical 
  properties of the alchemical salts. According to Showe, the ripplestone might 
  be part of the departed titan’s raiment or perhaps fur, the jade-marble its bones, 
  and the salts its flesh, blood, and organs. 
  Ordinary miners tend to reject this theory as absurd, and often bristle when 
  they hear the Salchamp’s other common name: the Salt Skeleton. Instead, the 
  word among salt-miners is that these are just special rocks and minerals to be 
  mined like any other. But it is undeniable that the maps of the various “veins” 
  and deposits do seem unusually organic in their shape, not unlike a giant chunk 
  of petrified flesh and bone. 
  Showe also believed that the presence of the Salchamp so near Cat’s Cradle 
  was the reason that disease had become so rare in the town. She cautioned, 
  however, that this immunity would one day come with a dire consequence 
  upon which she never elaborated. At the age of 56, after a year of particularly 
  immersive research, Dessa Showe is said to have abruptly lost her mind, rowed 
  herself out to the middle of Deep Lake (Location S-4), and disappeared. She 
  left no notes of her final year of research.  
  s-11. THe wITCH’s HuT
  s-11. THe wITCH’s HuT
  A humble stone hut entirely covered in verdant greenery stands near the 
  southern edge of the Forest of Cantricle. This place is known as the Witch’s Hut 
  and is given a wide berth by local travelers. In reality, this hut is occupied by 
  an old elven druid, with land rights officially granted by the baron, but she does 
  tend to be an antisocial sort and has a tendency to deliberately scare away visitors 
  whenever possible or to make herself impossible to find. She pays her taxes to 
  the lord of the land, however, and — if approached with cautious courtesy — is 
  willing to come to Cat’s Cradle’s defense as needed, so long as Cat’s Cradle’s 
  leadership continues to treat the forest and surrounding wilderness with respect. 
  She has been framed for crimes against representatives of the baron in the 
  past, but no wrongdoing on her part has ever been proven. Those in the know 
  understand her to have been instrumental in Cat’s Cradle’s victory against the 
  bandits in the Salt War. Nevertheless, the rumor persists that she is a dangerous 
  witch, and Baron Scale seems unable to convince her that she should not 
  continue to play into such tales with her antisocial behavior. 
  s-12. mIners’ sHanTIes
  s-12. mIners’ sHanTIes
  The southern edge of the Cantricle Forest is home to a small town of miners’ 
  shanties. Most of these are temporary structures, and the area resembles a 
  camp more than a permanent settlement. The shanties are not policed by town 
  authorities, which makes for a very lawless area.
  Adventure Hook: One or more miners have had their shanties robbed by 
  bandits in the Cantricle. They need someone to track down the thieves — 
  probably local bandits — and recover their stolen hoards of alchemical salt.
  
  FROG GOD
  GAMES
  FROG GOD GAMES ADVENTURES
  Cat’s Cradle stands at the intersection of a caravan and river route, 
  which brings in mysterious travelers, unscrupulous grifters, and -- 
  quite often -- dangerous villains. 
  A Place of Dangers and Opportunities
  A walled town of roughly 4000 citizens, Cat’s Cradle is a modular 
  resource that can be used any time you need a town at the intersec-
  tion of trade routes. This book describes the important locations in 
  the town and its immediate surroundings, such as the “salt” mines 
  formed by the ancient intersection of some massive interplanar 
  beast with the material plane. The otherworldly mineral deposits 
  left behind are used in Cat’s Cradle’s thriving alchemy-related busi-
  nesses.
   Cat
  Cat’s Cradle
  s Cradle
   Cat
  Cat’s Cradle
  s Cradle
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Swords & Wizardry/SW Adventures & Settings/Lost Lands (SW)/Lost Lands Cat's Cradle (SW)/Cat's Cradle.pdf