The City of Ur-Zahalbielam (or just Ur)

[William_Oak]

Hello folks,

I'm gonna start putting up some of my map work for a future tabletop RPG game I'm going to run soon. It's my second attempt at making a large city. I've already determined most of the stats of the city I'm building, and am slowly creating it borough by borough.

-City Age: 548 years
-City population: 1.5 million, about 1 million citizens
-Tech level: Early Bronze Age, with high magic (magic is considered pathfinder standard) (about 30% of city population can cast spells)
-Goverment type: Council-based Oligarchical Magocracy

To start i'll be uploading the boroughs I've made. For the moment I've just got pngs, as I cant seem to upload PDFs (they're so much lighter).


Stylus_Borough.png
I do find it important to note that despite the various districts being named for a specific purpose, the districts are named for their "majority population" if it's relevant.

Stylus borough
I'll be starting with the Stylus Borough. The stylus is the primary tool used to write on clay tablets, and the stylus borough is where most of the citie's scribes live and work. The scribe's guild is centered here, as well as the main temple of the god of knowledge & writing, Thot. This part of the city is mostly low/middle class, though a number of more successful scribes live in compounds on the side of the river. The main temple of Thot, also known as the great library, is found on an island in the river and is said to contain copies of all that has ever been written in the city.

Old Town
Old town is one of the older sections of the city, and was once it's administrative heart. With the construction of the tower moving most of the bureaucracy to a more central location, much of the land was sold to various groups. The Defthands branch of the Sindicate purchased several of the riverside compounds owned by the wealthy. Much of the land was covered in low-class tenements by the city goverment, in the hope of providing cheap, reliable housing for the city's working poor. Much of the north-east side of the city was bought by middle-class craftsmen and merchants, who vitalised the area. Some signs of the past still stand however. Many powerful casters did not wish to move to the hills district when it became fashionable, and their towers still stand, in the hands of their students or (in one particular case) the original owner. The old courthouse was converted into an archive, though the grand obelisk of law, marked with the first complete law system of Ur, stands as a stalwart reminder of it's former power.

Slaughterhouse District
Located in the south of the city (so the dominant south-east winds would blow away the stench), the slaughterhouse district is focused on the production and products of meat. Thousands of head of cattle pass through each day, providing the city with most of it's meat. Alongside those, a great many business focus on treating and preserving the meat, transforming it, and on the production of transformed food products in general. The west of the borough, bordering the school of alchemists, is filled with rendering plants, turning the bevy of leftover animal products into soap, candles, oils and much more.

Weaverhome
The center of the weaver's guild, weaverhome is a small but poor district. It's dominant features are the grand loom, main factory and center of the weaver's guild, and the temple to Baal-Zebul, the destroyer, and one of the two great gods of the city.