Strasbourg

The Civic Centre and Pfalz

The Pfalz anchors municipal government. Petitions, contracts, tax disputes, diplomatic visitors and questions of civic privilege eventually lead into this part of Strasbourg.

The surrounding streets are busier by day than by night: clerks, messengers, merchants, petitioners and people waiting for somebody more important than themselves.

The Cathedral Precinct

The great spire dominates the city and is useful as a landmark from almost anywhere inside the walls.

The surrounding streets contain craftsmen, merchants, scribes, visitors and substantial houses. The fifteenth-century inn Zur alten Pfalz stands nearby.

Krutenau

Krutenau occupies the southeastern side of medieval Strasbourg, closest to the strategic approaches toward the Rhine. The city extended its walls around this area during its final great medieval expansion.

It is a mixed landscape of houses, gardens, workshops, waterways and traffic heading toward the eastern approaches.

Finkwiller

Finkwiller lies toward the southern and southwestern working parts of the city. Gardens, craftsmen, labouring households and water-linked activity give it a different rhythm from the formal civic centre.

It is useful for inexpensive lodging, local labour, cartage, storage and information that has not yet reached the council chambers.

The Hospital Quarter

Strasbourg’s civic hospital complex already belongs to the medieval city. The institution cares for the sick and injured, maintains stores and possesses its own working infrastructure.

Badly injured strangers may be taken here, unusual wounds become rumours, and healers sometimes notice that an apparently ordinary death is not ordinary at all.

The Tanners’ and Millers’ Waterways

The western channels are a world of moving water, hides, workshops, mills, drying lofts, narrow bridges and strong smells. The picturesque name Petite France belongs to a later age; the working quarter itself is already very real.

The waterways provide discreet movement and several exits from meetings that respectable citizens might prefer not to admit attending.

The Fish Market and Butchers’ Streets

Fishmongers, butchers, carriers, cooks, tavern servants and customers create a crowded commercial zone where food arrives early and gossip travels quickly.

If a company wants to know which caravan came in before dawn or who bought enough meat to feed twenty armed men, this is often better than the Magistrate.

The Old Customs House

The Ancienne Douane sits at the centre of valuable river commerce.

Manifests, customs seals, missing cargo, bribed porters and disputed ownership make it one of Strasbourg’s most useful adventure locations.

The Boatmen’s Quays

Boatmasters, bargemen, dock workers, carters and travelling merchants fill the quays.

Information moves with cargo. A boatman may know that a merchant left yesterday, where he went and who quietly joined his vessel without appearing on any manifest.

The Guild Houses

Guild halls combine business, politics, feasting, discipline, information and mutual obligation.

An adventurer who earns guild support acquires more than employment: witnesses become easier to find and reputable citizens may be willing to vouch for the company.

The Studium and Learned Schools

Strasbourg possesses a serious scholarly life long before its later university. Masters and advanced pupils study logic, languages, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, law, natural philosophy and the observable workings of magic.

There is no single “school of wizardry.” Magical theory sits beside medicine, alchemy, astronomy and philosophy because magic is part of the natural and supernatural world scholars are trying to understand.

The Gates and Walls

Gates are places of inspection, toll disputes, waiting wagons, armed guards, messengers and rumours from outside.

A gate sergeant may know about a dangerous road hours before anybody at the Pfalz receives a formal report.

Mentelin’s Public Workshop

Johannes Mentelin is publicly an accomplished citizen, calligrapher, notary and craftsman.

His respectable premises are exactly why his clandestine printing operation should not simply sit behind an obvious secret door in the same room.

Zur alten Pfalz — At the Old Palace

A fifteenth-century Strasbourg inn near the cathedral.

Its position makes it a natural meeting place for merchants, clerks, craftsmen, travellers and people conducting business near the centre of the city.

It is respectable enough that a newly arrived adventuring company can lodge there if it can pay, but obvious violence, unpaid debts or loudly discussed criminal plans will not be tolerated.

Good for: first lodging, political conversation, merchant patrons, respectable work and being noticed by people who matter.

Zum Horn — At the Horn

An old Strasbourg hostelry known generations before the campaign age.

It works best as an established inn familiar to carters, wine merchants and regional travellers rather than as an adventurers’ tavern filled with mysterious quest-givers.

Good for: road news, caravan work, rural contacts, transport and learning which routes are currently avoided.

The Old River Hostelry

A hostelry has occupied the riverside site later famous as the Cour du Corbeau since the early fourteenth century.

The later name Zum Raben is not treated as securely fixed in 1454. Its clientele includes merchants, boat crews, messengers and people arriving too late to push deeper into the city.

Good for: river rumours, discreet arrivals, missing travellers, smuggling stories and people who know which boats actually went where.

Guild Hospitality

A visiting craftsman with the correct affiliations may find better lodging through professional contacts than through a public inn.

The same is true for dwarven smiths, merchant factors, journeymen and specialists whose reputation travels ahead of them.

Good for: introductions, employment, technical information and discovering how differently two strangers can be treated.

Dwarves

Dwarves form the strongest established non-human presence. Vosges mining connections bring ore merchants, assayers, metalworkers, armourers and engineers into Strasbourg.

Some families are long-established citizens or guild-connected residents. Others arrive from mines, holds and itinerant family networks.

A master smith may be highly respected while a newly arrived mountain dwarf is still watched until somebody knows his name.

Halflings

Halflings are found among boat families, carriers, gardeners, innkeepers, market traders and travelling households.

Settled families can be thoroughly local. Itinerant groups are more often treated as outsiders and blamed quickly when goods vanish or customs officers suspect smuggling.

Gnomes

Gnomes are fewer but valued among precision craftsmen, metalworkers, alchemists, instrument makers and experimenters.

Printing gives technically skilled gnomes obvious opportunities in casting, engraving and repeatable mechanical work.

Elves

Elves are uncommon visitors rather than a native Strasbourg population.

Merchants, scholars, envoys and travellers from northern and western lands occasionally pass through the Rhine network. Their rarity attracts both curiosity and suspicion.

Goblins and Kobolds

Individual goblins and kobolds may enter Strasbourg as traders, servants, guides or specialists, but established communities are more plausible around forests, ruins, caves and mines beyond the walls.

Gate officials are much less likely to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Rare Travellers

Long-distance trade occasionally brings stranger visitors.

Rarity matters. An unusual traveller ought to be noticed rather than proving that every entry in the World Bestiary has somehow become a Strasbourg citizen.

The Studium and Learned Schools

Advanced pupils study logic, language, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, law and natural philosophy.

Magical theory enters the same intellectual world: spell notation, alchemy, supernatural anatomy, planar phenomena, magical plants, enchanted minerals, curses and the repeatable behaviour of spells can all be subjects of serious inquiry.

Not every master who understands magical theory can cast spells. A scholar may recognise exactly what an enchantment is doing without possessing the training or power required to reproduce it.

Private Masters

Practical wizardry is often learned through a master, household, professional circle or individual scholar rather than through a single institution.

A prospective wizard may study mathematics with one teacher, magical notation with another and spend years copying formulae before being trusted with difficult workings.

Guild and Workshop Training

Some magical knowledge belongs to craft rather than scholarship. Alchemists, apothecaries, smiths, engravers, jewellers, instrument makers and specialist artisans preserve techniques through apprenticeship and professional secrecy.

A gnome engraver or dwarven metallurgist may understand a practical magical problem better than a celebrated philosopher.

Imperial Universities

A scholar seeking a larger formal university establishment can travel deeper into the Empire. Heidelberg is already a major centre of higher learning.

Books, letters and scholars move between cities, so Strasbourg’s learned world is connected to a much wider Imperial conversation.

Apothecaries

Apothecaries sell medicinal preparations, antidotes, alchemical substances, rare herbs, mineral reagents and spell components.

Common potions can be bought or commissioned through reputable practitioners. Dangerous poisons and unusual substances attract civic regulation and may require the seller to know who is asking.

Scribes, Booksellers and Copyists

Parchment, prepared inks, blank spellbooks, diagrams, translations, copying and specialist writing materials are part of a literate city.

Some scrolls circulate commercially, but rare spells are usually found through introductions. A bookseller may not possess the spell a wizard wants, but may know which scholar does.

Guild Craftsmen

Arcane foci, engraved components, ritual implements, specialist locks, magical instruments and commissioned enchantments begin with skilled craft.

A warrior seeking an enchanted blade is more likely to begin with a master smith than with a merchant displaying swords already labelled by bonus.

Brokers of Rare Goods

Permanent enchanted items, recovered relics, unusual manuscripts and valuable monster materials move through private brokers, merchant houses, collectors and estates.

The best goods are rarely displayed publicly. Knowing that an object exists is often easier than persuading its owner to sell it.

Arcane Magic

Wizardry is the form most comfortable to Strasbourg’s learned culture. It can be written, taught, argued over, repeated and refined through study.

Wizards appear as scholars, tutors, physicians, alchemists, advisers, engineers and magical craftsmen. Their methods are understandable to institutions even when particular wizards are not trusted.

Divine and Clerical Magic

Clerical power rests upon relationship with a deity, divine principle or sacred authority rather than technical knowledge alone.

A scholar can observe a divine effect, measure it and compare it with other magic. That does not mean the scholar can reproduce it without the relationship or authority that made the effect possible.

Clerics therefore possess a kind of legitimacy that can be powerful but also politically complicated when divine obligations conflict with civic ones.

Witch Magic

Witchcraft occupies an uncomfortable middle ground. It can include learned arcane technique, inherited ritual, coven practice, charms, spirits and power granted through a Patron.

Some witches are trusted healers, herbalists or diviners. Others are treated cautiously because outsiders cannot easily determine what their Patron wants or where their obligations lie.

The tradition itself is not evidence of evil. Reputation, Patron, practice and behaviour matter.

Druidic and Primal Magic

Druids draw power through living systems, natural cycles, places and relationships that urban scholars can study but do not necessarily control.

They are uncommon in Strasbourg itself but valued when the problem concerns forests, animals, water, strange weather, fey or the Vosges.

Sorcery

Sorcerous power is innate. It may arise through bloodline, supernatural inheritance, transformation or another internal source.

That fascinates scholars because the sorcerer can perform feats another person might require years of formal training to reproduce.

A disciplined sorcerer from a respected household may enjoy considerable status. Someone whose uncontrolled magic has just destroyed a room is first treated as a danger.

How the Traditions Regard One Another

They are rivals, collaborators and subjects of one another’s study rather than separate worlds.

A wizard may think a witch fails to control her variables. The witch may reply that some of the variables are living beings. A cleric may agree with a wizard’s description of an effect while rejecting the claim that understanding it grants the authority to call it forth.

When a supernatural crisis threatens Strasbourg, practical people care less about philosophical differences and more about who can actually solve it.

Ink Without a Printer

A violent proclamation appears in several taverns using phrases associated with Mentelin’s circle.

Escalation: copies reach neighbouring authorities and are offered as proof that Strasbourg sponsors revolt.

The Unlawful Toll

Armed collectors occupy a road used by Strasbourg merchants. One carter refused payment and has disappeared.

Escalation: traffic begins rerouting and prices rise.

The Broken Seal

A customs porter opened a suspicious crate and disappeared before reporting what he saw.

Escalation: the real owner sends people to recover the consignment.

The Missing Courier

A trusted carrier travelling between Strasbourg and Sélestat fails to arrive.

Escalation: the courier carried information capable of exposing several members of Mentelin’s network.

Under the Merchant’s House

Workmen discover Roman stone behind a cellar wall. One squeezes through the opening, returns frightened and refuses to explain what he saw.

Escalation: somebody else enters the sealed space first.

Johannes Mentelin

Citizen, calligrapher, notary and clandestine printer.

Mentelin understands that printed words can travel farther than an armed company and create consequences long after the printer has disappeared.

Use in play: patron, information broker, endangered conspirator or apparent source of something he never printed.

Johannes Gutenberg

Blacksmith, goldsmith, inventor, printer and publisher.

Gutenberg is one of the most formidable technical minds associated with Strasbourg’s printing story.

His relationship with Mentelin may be cooperative, competitive or both.

Use in play: master craftsman, technical expert and authority on suspicious type, presses and metalwork.

Sebastian Brant

Humanist, legal scholar and satirist.

Brant can turn elite political arguments into language people repeat in workshops and taverns.

Use in play: legal mind, public critic, writer whose work has been altered or victim of deliberate misattribution.

Joachim Meyer

Fencer, cutler and martial teacher.

His school attracts craftsmen, guards, mercenaries and ambitious citizens, which makes it both a place to learn and a useful source of information about professional fighters.

Use in play: trainer, weapons expert and neutral arbiter in martial disputes.

Bishop Wilhelm von Hohnstein

Bishop and major political figure.

Strasbourg’s civic independence does not eliminate episcopal and territorial interests surrounding the city.

Wilhelm may be rival, mediator, employer or temporary ally depending upon the issue.

Professor Johann Tetzel

Lecturer and controversial public orator.

Tetzel understands crowds, persuasion and the speed with which public certainty can become public disorder.

Use in play: speaker, political catalyst or unwilling centre of a pamphlet war.

The First Layer

Cellars, wells, storage rooms, drains and medieval foundations.

The Second Layer

Reused Roman masonry, buried foundations, old channels and blocked passages forgotten as the city changed above them.

The Third Layer

Rare spaces that somebody deliberately closed, avoided or built over.

Sélestat

South through Alsace lies Sélestat , one of the Decapolis cities and a major connection in Mentelin’s correspondence network.

Go there for: couriers, political correspondence and missing shipments.

Obernai

Obernai provides a nearby route into Decapolis politics.

Go there for: road disputes and civic alliances.

Haguenau

Haguenau connects Strasbourg to northern Imperial Alsace.

Go there for: administration, merchants and northern routes.

Colmar

Colmar extends the sandbox farther south.

Go there for: commerce and Imperial-city politics.

Turckheim

Turckheim connects the city toward western Alsace.

Go there for: regional defence and routes toward the uplands.

The Vosges

Westward roads lead into forests, mines, isolated settlements, old castles and territories where Strasbourg’s civic authority quickly becomes theoretical.

Go there for: dwarven mining networks, kobold workings, werewolves and the Giants of Nideck.

The Rhine Corridor

River routes connect Strasbourg to trade, smuggling and distant parts of the Empire.

Go there for: barges, customs disputes, escorts, vanished cargo and dangerous water spirits.

The Boundary Stone

An ancient stone between human logging ground and giant country has moved.

Nobody knows which side moved it—or whether somebody wants both sides to blame each other.

The Giant’s Child

A young giant carries something belonging to a human settlement home as an interesting curiosity.

The valley below interprets the event rather less calmly.

The False Giant

A large humanoid is attacking isolated farms and witnesses blame Nideck.

Tracks and behaviour instead suggest an ogre or somebody deliberately exploiting fear of the giants.

The Mine

A promising mineral working expands toward land the giants claim. Human investors, dwarven miners and the Nideck household all believe their rights are obvious.

The Silent Barge

A halfling family’s cargo boat drifts into Strasbourg empty. Food remains on the table and its mooring ropes have been cleanly cut.

Boatmen mention a Wassernixe at an upstream crossing.

The Assayer’s Ore

A dwarven assayer insists that ore supposedly brought from a familiar Vosges mine cannot possibly have come from that mine.

The Closed Working

Miners reopen an abandoned gallery and encounter kobold traps beyond a boundary neither side remembers establishing.

Wolf Road

Travellers vanish on the same forest road. Suspicion falls on an itinerant group camped nearby, but the evidence points farther into the woods.

A werewolf may be relying on local suspicion to hide its own hunting.

The Nideck Demand

A Mountain Giant leaves an enormous broken tool beside a road close to human settlement.

Nobody knows whether it is a demand, request for repair or warning.

The Wrong Monster

Witnesses swear that a giant destroyed a toll post. Officials immediately look toward Nideck.

The evidence instead suggests an ogre .

Friends of the Guilds

Workshops share information, apprentices carry messages and masters become willing to vouch for the company.

Trusted by the Magistrate

Officials offer discreet work and controlled access to records, while political enemies increasingly regard the characters as city agents.

Mentelin’s People

The company gains access to a clandestine information network and inherits the dangers attached to it.

Known Smugglers

The river underworld becomes easier to navigate while officials and respectable merchants become less cooperative.

People the Watch Remembers

Gate guards recognise faces and future mistakes attract attention much faster.

Known to Keep Their Word

Merchants, guilds, boat families, dwarven networks, halfling travellers and even communities outside normal civic authority begin to repeat the same thing: these people honour an agreement.