Westreach (city)

Westreach is one of the wealthiest cities in The Empire and one of the large cities of the province of Westreach. After Marble City, it has the largest population of any imperial settlement.¹

Under the mountain

The western side of the city leans against a massive mountain that rises over it like a tower shield and casts parts of it into shadow. Some neighbourhoods in that shadow never receive direct sunlight, and it is there that the poorest people of the city live.¹

Industry and learning

Rich mining deposits to the north give the city cheap and easily reached raw materials. The Imperial Engineering Institute, the Royal Engineering School, great foundries and workshops are all found here.¹ Gunpowder, whose making demands a perfect union of magic and science, is produced by wizards of the Archon Academy who specialise in metallurgy and magical alloys, working with alchemists of the imperial engineering facilities, most of them in the city of Westreach. Making it is expensive, risky and slow.²

Westreach is one of the few cities with printing machines, and its literacy is well above the imperial average.¹ It is also one of the major cities with an Imperial College,³ and one of only two places in the Empire with a clock tower, the other being Marble City.⁴

Nobility

The most elite noble families of the city carry the prefix Von in their surnames.¹

The dwarves of Drake's End

The dwarven soldiers of the Grimbolt Cripplers founded their company in the city of Westreach and built their fort and headquarters there, The Drake’s End. A dwarven presence in the city was thought strange at first, but within a few years the Cripplers had more contracts than they had soldiers to take them.⁵