The air moves languidly, hot, and humid upon the grasslands of central Llaigis, where the city of Gathis rises, just a little higher than the other scattered hills that it surveys. It is the late afternoon, and the sun beats down in the face of any traveller who treads the dusty once-paved road that approaches it from the northeast. Scattered camps surround the old, rough-hewn stone walls, with their round tents and staked horses.
	Towers dot the city, here and there, with different shapes to suit their different purposes. In the centre, north of the great road that runs through the city there rises a lone hill, taller than its peers, with a second wall about it.
	The northeastern gate stands wide open, manned by seven men in chain shirts over maroon tunics, and an eighth in scale armour, with a maroon cloak over his left arm. Men-at-arms come and go freely, and merchants are seldom stopped. Off to the side, there is a lone permanent building outside the walls.
	Inside the city, the smell of sweat and blood is everywhere. Men and animals move this way and that, to important things and to frivolous things. In the near distance, a man can be seen carried on a palanquin, north. To either side of what was once the Emed-Dar Road, there are inn-houses, courtyard-taverns, petty temples, and guild-halls. Beyond them is a maze of streets and alleyways, some paved, and some unpaved, and all filled with activity, with the exchange of goods and of flesh and of steel.