Midtown
The largest district in the city, Midtown is bounded by the King’s River on the north. But where the river dips south (at Carver Lane), the border veers north to Golden Elm Way to run along the Necropolis wall. Farther east, Midtown continues right up to the Cliffs of Lost Wishes and the Warrens, and to the south the district ends at Iron Street. The boundary between Midtown and the South Market is rather vague—it amounts to a diagonal line drawn between the north end of Carriage Row and the ramp up to Oldtown.
The western border then runs north up along Dalen’s Cliffs. Midtown is actually twice as big as any other district of Ptolus. Frequent motions have come before the City Council to subdivide it into two separate districts. Holding up the motion’s passage, however, is the furious debate among merchants, business owners, and city administrators as to exactly where the new border should go. If the parties ever manage to settle this issue, this division likely will happen.
Perhaps most significantly, Midtown is where the delvers and adventurers live, congregate, make their plans, and return with their treasures.
The Flavor of Midtown
Midtown may be the most purely “Ptolus” section of town. This is where adventurers come, where a lot of nonhumans live—in essence, this is the hub of the city. “Everything passes through Midtown,” the saying goes. The streets are about ten feet wide—fifteen feet wide in a few places, and Center Street, which traverses the entire district on a diagonal, is a full twenty feet wide. Regardless of their width, the streets are almost always crowded with locals going about their business and others just passing through to get to one of the Market wards, the Temple District, the Guildsman District, or Oldtown.
The smell of cooked meals mixes with the odor of garbage and sewage at times, but often the rainwater clears away the nastier refuse. A dog tethered to a hook in the door of a house barks at passersby. Children kick a ball around in front of the adjacent house. Across the street, a vendor with a wooden cart full of apples and pears sells her wares for a few coppers. The streets are full of people carrying things: their washing, freshly bought bread, a child or two, their trash to dump into the river, or a stack of newly printed broadsheets for distribution. And that’s just for starters.
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