No track selected
The Cursed Blue Rose
Hard-leaved thorn scrub covers the country on three sides of Mazarka, stony and aromatic and burnt brown by midsummer, while open lake fills the fourth. The whole commercial logic of the city lies in that contrast. Caravans crossing the chaparral come in dry and unload where the water opens; boats carry back what the scrub will never grow. From the first wave of expansion onward Mazarka has lived on the exchange rather than on any one product, and it grew great doing so, with warehouses along the shore, weighing yards and beast pens set back from the water, and roads leaving inland toward the grass country.
Its people are Ashanar traders to the marrow, patient in a bargain and unforgiving about terms. The mining and garrison towns of the surrounding grassland send their allegiance here, and it is from Mazarka that their ore and their soldiery are directed. The city itself stands within the wider bloc that carries the name of Kerevoz, so that what is decided in Mazarka is decided under another town's name, an inheritance its traders long ago stopped disputing.