Editing Exalted Chiaroscuro (section)

==Campaign Setting==

Chiaroscuro is a city of wide paved streets and market stalls with red- blue-striped awnings. The city is, and always will be, dominated by the shattered remains of the First Age city in which it sits, but in the central city, the present inhabitants have layered their own buildings and culture right over the top. The dominant culture is that of the Tri-Khan's Delzhan nomads, which I'm imagining have a strong Arabic flavor, in the Hollywood sense - men in flowing white robes and turbans with impressive mustaches, women in colorful silks and diaphanous scarves. Thanks to the cultural dominance of the Delzhan, most folks interested in upward mobility in Chiaroscuro adopt their style of dress to some degree or another, and even some of the long-term Terrestrial expats eschew the dress of the Realm for local fashion.

The central city and port is where the action is, both politically and in terms of money-making. Several of the great houses of the Realm have trading houses here, as does the Guild, and the Tri-Khan purposefully plays them off each other to keep any one from gaining too much power. Still, he respects the sensibilities of the Dragon-Bloods, and Celestial Exalts aren't welcome in the city. Not openly, anyway. There is a small temple to the Immaculate Faith a ways from the city center, and a much smaller temple to the Unconquered Sun near the outskirts.

The central area also has the largest number of intact First Age buildings, although half or more are destroyed, and nothing higher than five or six stories stands. The farther you get from the city center, the worse the conditions of the original buildings gets, and the more jury-rigged Age of Sorrows buildings you see. Eventually, after passing through the shantytowns of the hopeful and the unlucky, you hit the Salt Line. This is a continuous one-inch channel, painstakingly dug around in an unbroken line around the inhabited areas of the city and kept carefully filled with salt. Beyond it stretches miles and miles of shattered glass, safe enough during the day but dominated by roving packs of Hungry Ghosts at night. Even out here, there is little glass rubble in the open streets, where scavengers sort through and load up wagons by day, but no habitation, and absolutely no activity at night. The only safe way in or out of the city by night is by sea.