Lookshy

General Overview

Lookshy is a sprawling, heavily fortified city of porous blue granite built on a jade-infused masonry foundation at the mouth of the Yanaze River. It is the seat of the Seventh Legion—part city-state, part standing army—and it combines Shogunate-era discipline with pockets of First Age salvage and engineering. The city is orderly by Scavenger Lands standards: planned streets, standardized housing, strict checkpoints, and defenses embedded into the urban layout itself.

Brief History

Lookshy’s culture and identity are bound to Deheleshen’s legacy and the survival ethos forged during the Great Contagion. In the wake of that catastrophe and the wars that followed, the city’s military leadership shaped Lookshy into a permanent redoubt: a place designed to endure siege, coordinate distant forces, and keep its arsenals intact long after other Shogunate-era powers collapsed. Its civic life remains inseparable from the Seventh Legion’s priorities—security, logistics, and readiness.

Districts and Notable Sites

The City’s Ring Structure

Lookshy is organized in “rings,” each with distinct rules, populations, and security expectations. Movement between rings is controlled by passes and checkpoints, and the city’s physical growth is constrained by law to preserve defensive plans.

The Fourth Ring — “The Foreign Quarter”

• The Foreign Quarter: The primary legal home of most metics (foreign residents). It is packed with metic-run businesses and warehouses, guild houses, markets, apartments, temples, and salons. Metics are generally restricted to this ring and the Lower City unless they carry a pass.
• Battle Towers and Outer Wall: Fourteen battle towers reinforce the outer wall. These towers are continuously manned by Seventh Legion troops and support stationary First Age missile weaponry alongside heavy melee arms. The main gate into the District of Trade is normally kept open, closing only in crises.
• Security Reality: Regular justicar and mercenary patrols keep main routes reasonably safe, but back streets attract thieves, spies, and worse.
• District of Agriculture: A broad patchwork of meticulously maintained fields, granaries, and warehouses, meant both to supplement hinterland food and to serve as emergency siege provisions.
• District of Trade: Lookshy’s great land-market—bustling, loud, and nearly sleepless—centered on four large open squares where anyone can rent space for a fee. Shops line the streets, while apartments, taverns, burlesque theaters, and brothels fill upper floors. The Guild maintains a satellite office, trade hall, and auction house here, but it is not the dominant power in Lookshy commerce.
• District of Blades: Weaponsmiths, armorers, martial instructors, salons, and training halls cluster here. Patrols are intense—mercenary scales and justicars keep a constant presence due to the obvious risk profile of a neighborhood full of weapons and fighters.
• The Hexagon: A district dominated by the fortified compound of Pel Kan’s Ordinaries, a famed mercenary company allied with Lookshy. Their contract with the Justice Directive includes peacekeeping patrols for the Hexagon and the District of Blades; other trusted mercenary groups may hold similar contracts when the Ordinaries are deployed.
• District of Craftsmen: Workshops and firms producing non-martial goods (leather, clothing, furniture, vehicles, building materials, farming equipment). Rare freelance sorcerer-engineers with First Age expertise can sometimes be found here, though they tend to keep a low profile.

The Third Ring — “The Savant Quarter”

The third ring is Lookshy’s intellectual and inventive heart: schools, libraries, amphitheaters, dormitories, teahouses, game-lodges, and smoke-hookahs feed a constant churn of students, philosophers, artists, epic-peddlers, and temperamental sorcerer-engineers.

• The Green Hunt: A deliberately wild district within the walls—trails, game fields, feast pits, tree-lodges, and zoos. Roughly half is left undeveloped and technically off-limits, meant to give youth controlled wilderness to explore. It also serves as a memorial landscape: victory-plates, triumphal arches, and half-forgotten commemorations to the war-dead.
• The Vined Xavatet: The estate of the Green Hunt’s examiner inferior, a restored hunting lodge once used by the O-Daimyo.

City Landmarks and Infrastructure

• The Eastern Gate: Guarded by colossal statues of Nefvarin Gilshalos and Tien Yu, an unmistakable declaration that Lookshy is both fortress and civic monument.
• Flood Embankments: Massive works protecting western coastal districts, reinforcing the city’s preference for engineered survival over organic growth.
• Urban Character: Standardized housing designs, flat roofs, and a cultural preference for plain outward façades (flaunting wealth is considered uncouth). Public buildings split between restored First Age splendor and newer structures in Deheleshen-homage styles.

Government and Law

Lookshy is governed as a military state. The Seventh Legion’s leadership sets policy, controls security, and treats civil administration as an extension of operational readiness. Law and civic planning exist primarily to support defense, logistics, and internal stability.

• The General Staff: The central authority for city planning and defense.
• Directorates and Enforcement: Multiple directorates handle security, justice, and external affairs.
• Transit Pass System: Visitors and metics normally have access only to the Fourth Ring and the Lower City.
• Contracted Peacekeeping: The state sometimes relies on allied mercenary companies.

People of Import

The following are all named individuals and explicitly named organizations or institutional roles highlighted in the Lookshy chapter and its immediate supporting context.

Major Powers, Patrons, and Divine Figures

• Tien Yu
• Tu Yu
• Sunipa

Historical / Symbolic Figures and Civic Icons

• Nefvarin Gilshalos

Seventh Legion and Government Figures

• Vondy Beulen
• Nefvarin Shou-Yu
• Maheka Varil
• Taroketo Stonefist
• Bukane Winter Rose
• Admiral Sirel Sogrun
• The O-Daimyo

Local Officials, Notables, and Influencers

• Yushoto Cudgel-Arm
• Pel Kan

Organizations and Institutions

• The Seventh Legion
• The General Staff
• The Security Directorate
• The Liaison Directorate
• The Operations Directorate
• The Adjutant General’s Directorate
• The Manse Guard
• The Justice Directive
• Justicars
• Pel Kan’s Ordinaries
• The Guild
• The Chiang Savi Array

Culture and Life in the City

Lookshy’s daily life is defined by discipline, controlled movement, and civic pride that reads as “military professionalism” rather than pomp.

Relationships with Other Cities

Lookshy sits in a politically volatile region and behaves accordingly: it treats diplomacy as another theater of war, trades cautiously, and maintains strict controls over foreigners within its walls.