Editing In The Shadow of the Spire:Main Page (section)

=Districts of the City=
===The Docks===
Far below street level, the Docks rest on a narrow strip of land at the bottom of the city’s eastern cliffs. This is a particularly rough area of the city, thanks to the influx of sailors and its isolation from other districts. A single winding road provides access up a steep incline to the city proper. The Docks area is full of warehouses, shipyards, hostels, and taverns, all catering to sailors and merchants.

===Guildsman District===
Ptolus teems with guilds. Every type of artisan, smith, or other professional belongs to a guild of similarly trained and employed individuals. These guilds enjoy a strong voice in the City Council.
This district in the south end of the city holds many tanneries, smithies, foundries, textile houses, grain mills, paper mills, brickmakers, bookmakers, woodworkers, and other production facilities, as well as warehouses, granaries, coalhouses, stockyards, and similar storage sites.

===Midtown===
As the central area of the city, Midtown is both a commercial and a residential hub. It is also where one finds many local entertainment offerings, in the form of pubs and taverns as well as theaters, dance halls, gambling dens, and more. Visitors looking for a place to stay usually find themselves directed here, as most of the city’s temporary lodgings are in Midtown.

===The Necropolis===
The vast
Necropolis in the city’s northeastern corner sits on a few rolling hills, now completely covered with mausoleums, crypts, and graves. The entire Necropolis is surrounded by a wall, with guards posted at each of its four gates.

===Nobles' Quarter===
Technically outside the city’s walls, the Nobles’ Quarter, with its row upon row of manors and estates, climbs the city’s western cliffs abutting the Spire itself. Travelers can enter the area only via a single avenue that runs up from Oldtown through the fortress of Dalenguard before reaching the Nobles’ Quarter. The largest estates in this section of town belong to the ten noble families that have held
power in the area —— to one degree or another —— for centuries.

===North Market===
Well-worn cobblestone streets are packed with vendors occupying wooden booths, pushing carts, or simply hawking wares they tote in massive baskets on their backs. Fresh foods of all kinds—fish and shellfish from the sea, fruit from the orchards to the north, and local breads and pastries being favorites—are available in any quantity. Other goods are for sale in small shops, tents, or from the backs of wagons.

===Oldtown===
The stone and marble buildings of Oldtown reflect a grander, earlier age. Graceful columns, majestic entrances, tall stone towers, and buildings of three or even four stories are common sights here. Yet all bear the signs of age and wear. Today many of these buildings house the bureaucracy the Empire forces upon the city.

===Rivergate District===
Strictly a residential area, the Rivergate District is as close to a “middle class” neighborhood as Ptolus gets.

===South Market===
Unlike its counterpart, the South Market is not an open-air marketplace. It has fewer vendors dealing out of carts and more established shops and places of business. Goods usually cost more in the South Market, but a buyer is far more likely to find trustworthy and reliable salespeople here. The South Market is newer than the North Market and has more artisans and industry than its counterpart.

===Temple District===
Temples, churches, shrines, and small monasteries fill this district in the north central part of town, with the Street of a Million Gods (a bit of an exaggeration) running through it from north to south. Even the Blessed Bridge across the King’s River here has small shrines built upon and into it.

===The Warrens===
The Warrens in the eastern part of town is a terrible slum sick with poverty and crime. The streets here have no names, and most of the buildings aren’t marked —— the place is not friendly to outsiders. Some visitors may have experienced a little theft or crime in the city, but it’s nothing compared to what goes on in this district.

===The Undercity Market===
Although not actually a district of Ptolus, the Undercity Market, accessed by a wide staircase in the middle of Delver’s Square, is the place to go for most adventuring gear. Also located here is the Delver’s Guild, an association that provides assistance in the form of maps, reference material, and equipment to explorers of the ancient dwarven city, Dwarvenhearth, and other areas below the streets of Ptolus.