(from the Field Guide to the Lowlands)
From overhead the City sits perched on an outcrop of rock, thrust into the Valek and shorn from the Lowlands by the wetlands between them. The broken bridge says it all, and from above looks like a finger pointed toward land. The city is a sea of whitewashed stone, dotted with colorful doors and shutters and the tiles and slates of the rooftops.
Below, the red tiled rooftops litter the city, great peaks and gables, and the frequent flat-topped roof of Westport and Khitown. The whole thing ringed by the vast city walls, the walls that held during the endless days of the Siege some five hundred years back. Out at sea there are seven spikes of rock rising from the water, carved in the shape of the Fathers, patriarchs of the original seven Borudun tribes.
When it's not misting or fogged-in, the light bounces off the glaze of the rooftop tiles and sparkles like the sea. And that's when you see the birds, the seagulls and sparrows of the Guild, the hawks of the Boradun Throng, the farm-town pigeons and the thousand other eyes in the skies of the City of Pearl. Below, decorating the gutters of the ancient stone buildings, are gargoyles, as well as roaming cats, ferrets and the occasional macaque, most of them with a purpose and pointed role in the complex network of politics, trade and enterprise that makes the city tick.