Athas on Foot: My Stop in Tyr

Part III — Tradesmen, Slums, and Things Best Not Lingered On

I spent today moving through the parts of Tyr most people actually live in. The tradesmen districts stretch across the city, home to most of the citizens who aren’t slaves but aren’t truly free either. Tradesmen belong to noble houses and specific crafts, with only minor rights to property and protection. Each street seems devoted to a single trade or a single noble’s workforce. There’s little to steal here and even less worth buying—these districts feel like the city’s monetary badlands.

It’s impossible to avoid the warrens for long. Tyr’s slum quarter lives up to its reputation: a sprawling ruin of poverty, desperation, and survival. Many people here leave each morning to look for day labor on the plantations. Others sell themselves at the slave market near the dust-choked wadi. Some turn to theft or murder for hire. Those who can’t manage even that beg door to door. However they do it, people here scrape together enough food and water to last another day. Life in the warrens is brutal and unforgiving.

The darkest part of the warrens is the elven quarter, pressed uncomfortably close to the base of the ziggurat. Elves are treated as near-criminal outcasts elsewhere in Tyr, and here they live mostly ignored by nobles and templars alike, considered little more than vermin. Runaways, rebels, and murderers all find shelter in its narrow streets. When templars do enter, they come heavily armed, half-giant guards close behind.

The elven quarter is infamous for a reason. You can buy or sell nearly anything there—if you have the coin or the nerve. Elven merchants brag they’ll one day sell even your grandmother’s bones, and they might already have. They bring rare items back from ruins in the wilderness, things nobles are eager to acquire. Still, deals here are never safe. Thieves, muggers, renegade wizards, and swindlers are everywhere, and a lower price means little if you don’t survive the transaction.

After only a few hours on the streets, I realized how much of what you learn in Tyr comes through rumor rather than fact. These are some of the things I kept hearing, over and over:

  • “King Kalak is planning a great arena spectacle soon. The most famous gladiators will fight. The whole city will shut down.”
  • “If you need spell components, go to the blue-and-white striped tent at the back of the elven market.”
  • “A lot of people have disappeared lately. Don’t know why, but I don’t like it.”
  • “Kalak’s palace doors are solid iron. They say he filled an entire room of the Golden Tower with smelted iron.”
  • “Stay clear of Doreen’s templars. She’s become a shrieking tembo over this ziggurat business.”
  • “If you’re looking for… special supplies, try the Inn of the Bleached Inix.”
  • “Slaves broke into something underground while digging a cistern for Senator Minval. The templars sealed it, tore the villa down, and sent every slave to the ziggurat.”
  • “The arena’s always looking for new gladiators.”
  • “Kank honey’s going to be rationed soon. Someone’s going to make a killing.”

That’s enough Tyr for me for now. The city feels tighter the longer you stay, and not in a way I care for. I’m heading out while I still can.
To anyone staying behind: good luck.

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