Amberabad, ‘City of Ambergris’

Amberabad has perhaps the highest concentration of peri’s in existence, though the majority of its population are other races of fey (primarily fey related to animals and plants).

It is likely the most cosmopolitan city in Faerie and is the most common route for the fey of Ladinion to take time to become familiar with the outside Cosmos. Its population is fairly transient; few residents live in the city for extended periods of time. Visitors include notable numbers of humanoids, giants, and dragons.

Amberabad is built around natural portals to the Land of Dreams and Sea of Thought and also has portals to several mortal worlds, other planes, and a few fey realms including Shadukam. Buyers come through for a wide assortment of things.

Its reputation as the biggest exporter of perfume on the planes has earned it the nickname ‘City of Ambergris’. The exquisite work of fey craftsmen often sell here for vast sums. Services are also sold here; musicians and courtesans do well, sages offer valuable information, and even Seelie healers and Unseelie assassins work for the highest bidders in the Old City.

The Old City, said to have been built by fallen angels called the Voyeurs, has an infrastructure composed mostly of creeping trees and mangroves clinging to massive skeletons. The titanic plants draw minerals from the bone to produce tubes large enough to serve as aquaducts and support balcony-like, rock-hard leaves. The bones are said to be the remnants of a pod of astral whales that fell into the Badlands through the rift from the Sea of Thought.

At the opposite end of Amberabad is the Dream Ward, built around the rift to the Land of Dreams. Its walls and spires hang with countless dreamcatchers kept by dream brokers, who trade in harvested sensations. Between the Old City and the Dream Ward is the central oasis, which blooms with exotic and aromatic plants used for making perfumes.

Among them are chronolilies, Dreamnative plants used for scrying across time which attract soothsayers and mystics from far and wide. Some fey, especially agents for smaller faerie courts, work here as recruiters for mortal adventurers, whom they send on quests the court needs fulfilled outside Faerie. However, Amberabad is cautious about whom it admits; only traders who are not considered dangerous after close scrutiny may do business here. It has had problems in the past with githyanki raids, which have been at least reduced thanks to the influence of a powerful red dragon who has recently taken up residence and threatens peri dominance of the incense trade.