Harrowgate

Harrowgate is a coastal city that survived plague by sealing itself in layers of rules, bells, and ward boundaries. Its docks still move fish, salt, and cloth, but whole streets lie half abandoned behind quarantine marks. The sewers are said to run with the refuse of the dead, and at night something undead clatters below the cobbles. The city endures because no one can agree who owns the pieces left behind.

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City

Harrowgate

A harbor city that survives by sealing its own wounds, even when the dead keep finding new ways to open them.

TypeCity

PopulationAbout 18,000 within the walls, though that number shifts with plague returns, sealed wards, and the people who no longer answer the census.

WealthUneven. The guilds and shipping houses still have coin, while most neighborhoods survive on wages, favors, and debt tallies in silver and copper.

GovernmentHarbor charter ruled by a plague council and enforced by ward seals

ReadinessUneven but dangerous. The watch is short on pay and long on suspicion, yet the city can still close its gates, flood its lower channels, and seal three wards before an enemy fully understands the layout. Their real weakness is manpower, not stone.

“Salt, ash, and sour disinfectant hang over streets that should be busy and are not. Nets dry on leaning racks, plague braziers smoke at every corner, and the lower drains groan after dark. The city keeps working because it must, not because anyone believes it is healthy. People speak in low voices, wash their hands too often, and avoid the sewer grates as if they were cracked graves.”

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Connections

Geography

RegionA sheltered bay on a broken coastline, protected by reefs and a long stone quay.

ClimateCool maritime weather, wet winters, salt fogs, and summer winds that carry rot from the low drains.

TerrainHarbor cliffs, tidal flats, lower wards built on pilings, and a maze of culverts beneath the old city.

Travel Links

Stone causeway to inland farmsHarbor road to the western lighthousesFerry crossing to the marsh villagesDrain tunnels beneath the old market and chapel quarter

Culture

Duty outranks pride, and survival outranks honesty until the bill comes due. Most residents will help a stranger if they believe the stranger is useful, sick, or both. The plague taught the city that charity can be measured in clean water, bandages, and silence. Those who keep records or keys are treated with more respect than those who swing swords.

Races

HumansDwarvesHalflingsElves

Religions

St. Marn the MercifulThe Lady of TidesThe Forge FatherThe Quiet One

Arts & Entertainment

Music survives in tavern corners and funeral wakes. Ballads are short, practical things about lost kin, bad harbors, and clever healers. The theater district has mostly closed, but puppet shows still draw children because they can be watched from the street. People prefer stories where a city endures by stubbornness, not heroism.

History

Harrowgate's official history says the plague was mastered by discipline and sacrifice. The people living here know that discipline also became a weapon for taking property, punishing rivals, and hiding mistakes. The city's current shape was built as much by fear of the dead as by love of order.

Eleven years agoThe Black SummerA plague swept the harbor districts after a ship from the south unloaded grain and funeral cloth in the same week. The city buried quickly, then began sealing streets as the dead count rose beyond what any chapel could manage.

Nine years agoThe Bell CharterOfficially, the Quarantine Bell was installed to protect trade. Unofficially, it became the fastest way to strip a ward of guards, records, and rights. Several families lost their houses without ever leaving them.

Three years agoThe Drain DiscoveryWorkers clearing a storm drain found bone piles dressed in burial linen from different chapels. The city blamed grave robbers and paid for tighter grates. The official story never mentioned that the linen matched plague burials ordered by the council itself.

Government

LeaderBell-Master Aldren Vale, who is brave in a crisis but lazy with routine, and always assumes a problem will settle itself if he delays long enough.

Harbor charter ruled by a plague council and enforced by ward seals

Key Laws

No ward may be entered after it is bell-sealed without a permit.The dead must be registered within a day or forfeit their property.Anyone who tampers with a quarantine bell is subject to hanging or exile.Sale of burial rights requires witness marks from both a clerk and a priest.

Problems

The city's legal borders are unstable, and everyone with a claim is waiting for Aldren to choose sides.

The bell records for several sealed wards do not match the burial ledgers. Aldren knows the mismatch means property disputes, but he keeps postponing a public audit because it would expose how much land changed hands during the plague.

Aldren must choose between public safety and keeping the city's working districts open.

Undead are moving through the sewers from the lower flood channels, and the watch can contain them only by sealing more streets. Every new seal creates more resentment and more abandoned ground for the dead to use.

Economy

Industries

Dock laborFishingCuring and saltingMedicinal apothecariesGuild accounting

Scarcity

Clean water, fresh grain, and trustworthy labor are all in short supply. Many shops have stock, but not enough hands to move it or enough faith to extend credit.

Wealth LevelUneven. The guilds and shipping houses still have coin, while most neighborhoods survive on wages, favors, and debt tallies in silver and copper.

Exports

Salt fishHardened ropeTanned hidesPreserved herbs

Imports

GrainLamp oilTimberMedicines

Defenses

Fortifications

Sea wall repaired with mismatched stoneIron grates over major storm drainsWatch towers at the harbor gatesQuarantine barricades stored in municipal sheds

The Harbor Watch(About 180 sworn and hired hands)

A compact harbor watch reinforced by bell wardens, drain-cutters, and a few veteran spears hired from guild money. They know the alleys and sluices better than any invading army, but they are exhausted and politically split.

Law & Order

crime Level: High in the lower wards, moderate in the market streets, and near impossible to measure in the sealed districts.
enforcement: The Harbor Watch, ward clerks, and hired guild toughs enforce the law unevenly. Bribes are common, but so are examples made in public.
typical Punishment: Fines, lashings, loss of trade rights, or being assigned to drain work. Repeat offenders can be sealed into a ward under quarantine orders.

Rurik Hobb

NPC

Dock captain

A scarred dock captain with a permanent cough and a neat beard. He can smell rot in a cargo hold before the hatch is lifted.

Sister Ysolde

NPC

Temple archivist

A severe woman in clean gray robes with a linen mask hung at her throat. She speaks like every sentence is a verdict.

Captain Jorren Pike

NPC

Watch captain

A one-eyed watch sergeant with a truncheon scar and a habit of chewing fennel seeds during funerals.

Wick and Cable

Shop

Chandlery

A practical chandlery with tar, rope, lamps, and hooks hung in neat rows. The owner pretends to care only about shipping gear, but he is really buying time to evacuate a family trapped in a sealed ward.

Moth and Mortar

Shop

Apothecary

A cluttered shop of herbs, tinctures, salts, and damp-smelling reagents. Tamsin Reed knows the plague signs by sight and keeps a narrow ledger of who she has saved, and who she could not.

The Cooper's Rest

Tavern

Dockworkers, petty smugglers, and people who need to disappear for an evening.

A sagging tavern with patched shutters, a sour barrel line, and a taproom that always smells faintly of wet wool. The place survives on cheap food, old favors, and the promise that nobody asks for a surname unless things are going badly.

The Merchants' Compact

Faction

Merchant alliance

A coalition of shipping houses, clerks, and a few wealthy healers. They keep the ledgers, buy the grain, and argue that the city must reopen or starve.

The Quarantine Wardens

Faction

Civic authority

Bell ringers, gate clerks, and hard-faced wardens who control the quarantine ropes. They decide which streets are live, which are sealed, and which can be stripped for salvage.

The Ashen Veil

Faction

Secret relief cult

A hidden brotherhood of plague survivors, corpse burners, and sewer runners. Some call them saints, others smugglers. They know where the dead gather below the streets.

The Dockside Guilds

Faction

Labor guild network

Carters, muckers, stevedores, and drain workers who keep the city moving when everyone else looks away. They want contracts, not sermons, and know exactly which parts of the city are already lost.

The Sea Wall

Point of Interest

A long, wind-scoured barrier where repaired stone meets older black masonry. Fishermen leave offerings here to keep the tide from carrying the plague back in.

The Gray Ward

Point of Interest

A maze of alleys, rope bridges, and sealed doors where former plague houses still bear chalk marks. Many windows are boarded from the inside.

The Lower Culverts

Point of Interest

A grating-lined underpass beneath the old market where the smell turns metallic and the drains run warm after midnight.

The Lantern Court

Point of Interest

A square of cracked stone where the city reads the names of the dead. Vendors sell candles, masks, and vinegar here on ceremony days.

Calendar of Events

The First Low Tide of Spring

Tide Clearing

The bell wardens open the floodgates and crews haul silt from the lower docks. Households that lost someone to the plague set bowls of vinegar on their thresholds.

Bodies sometimes surface from the drains with fresh rope marks, as if someone is still using the sewers for disposal.

Seventh Night After the Full Moon

Reading of the Lost

The city records the dead by lantern light at St. Marn's chapel, then the names are read aloud at the harbor wall.

Several families now pay dock clerks to omit names, afraid that listed dead cannot inherit or be ransomed.

When the Quarantine Bell Rings Twice in One Day

Seal Court

Guild heads and ward captains gather in the Old Counting House to decide which district is sealed and which is opened for trade.

A ward can be declared dead without a siege if no one is willing to staff the bell ropes.

Secrets

The plague dead were not all buried. Many were dumped into a hidden outflow line that still feeds the sewers, which is why the undead know the city's layout. If the players learn this, the city's sanitation problem becomes an active necromantic wound, not just a hazard.

CitywideFollow the brine smell from the chapel crypts down to the oldest drain grates and compare the burial records with the sea wall repairs.

Several ward seals were used to force legal death on healthy residents so their properties could be reassigned. If exposed, whole neighborhoods become contestable, and the current balance of power in Harrowgate can collapse overnight.

Council and guildsAsk for the oldest quarantine seals and trace who signed them during the second plague wave.

The Cooper's Rest hides a route used to smuggle survivors, but also to move corpses and messages below the watch. If the players uncover it, they gain a secret passage into the lower city and a way to negotiate with the people everyone else has written off.

Local, hidden refuge networkSearch Brannic Holt's cellar wall and listen for the hollow stair behind it.

Rumors

The plague never truly left the city. It moved into the sewers and learned the shape of the drains.

Someone on the council has been buying burial plots under false names.

The dead in the lower culverts respond to bell tones like trained dogs.

Brannic Holt's cellar wall was built over a sealed stair that no surveyor recorded.

Sister Ysolde keeps a ledger that could topple half the ward council.

Plot Hooks

The Bell in the Dead Ward

A sealed ward's bell has started ringing on its own every third night, and the watch wants someone to silence it before panic spreads.

InvestigationCaptain Jorren Pike50 gp and official salvage rights in one abandoned street

Names for the Unburied

Sister Ysolde asks the party to recover bodies taken from the undercrypts before they can be burned by a rival faction. The task sounds holy, but the route runs straight through a sewer nest that has learned to avoid light.

RecoverySister YsoldeHealing supplies, chapel shelter, and 25 gp each

The Back Stair Refuge

Brannic Holt offers a room and free meals if the party escorts three fever survivors out of the city through a smugglers' drain. He does not mention that one of them is already legally dead.

EscortBrannic HoltSafe lodging, 40 gp, and a hidden route into the lower docks

False Manifests

Rurik Hobb wants the party to inspect a cargo hold filled with plague-wrapped corpses that arrived after the manifest was signed by people who should be dead. Someone is using the harbor papers to move forbidden goods, and the ship may be carrying more than bodies.

SmugglingRurik HobbA share of salvage and access to dockside contacts

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