Turnwell
Turnwell
Religion
Traditions
-15% Center of Trade Upgrade Cost
-10% Diplomatic Technology Cost
The Turnwell LeagueThe Butter Baronesses of Butterburn and the Bull Barons of Cowskeep, tired of the recurring squabbles of their overlords in Pearview and Appleton respectively, formed an alliance. Not wishing to give one side more power than the other, Butterburn ceded the rapidly-growing city of Turnwell as an independent capital for the newly-founded partnership. Appropriately named the Turnwell League, the city’s position at the confluence of the Portroy and Burroy Rivers allowed the League to manipulate trade between the Small Country and Dragon Coast. Rather than limiting power to the Bluefoot oligarchs of its partners, Turnwell was notable for letting the local Redfoot Halflings ascend to the city leadership. Its diverse populace and welcoming atmosphere has even led to the occasional Iochander, Reverian, and Creek Gnome holding a seat.
+1 Max Promoted Cultures
+10% Trade Efficiency
The RoundaboutThe most striking feature of Turnwell is the Roundabout, a wide, circular road that crosses all three banks of the Portroy-Burroy confluence. Built in the days of the Gnomish Hierarchy and paved with slabs of white stone, Turnwell’s arterial thoroughfare provides smooth travels and easy navigation through the city, its other streets branching off of it like the spokes of a wheel. Thanks to the volume of traffic flowing through the Roundabout, almost all of Turnwell’s businesses have established their shops along its path, hoping to entice travelers and caravans with their wares and services.
+20% Trade Steering
Cream Well-ChurnedTurnwellians for a time struggled to find their culinary identity, flooded as they were with Cowskeep’s premium beef and Butterburn’s exquisite cheeses and butters. In adapting the Redfoot custom for extravagant hospitality, however, they quickly found their niche: cream. With a touch of Gnomish artificery to develop new kitchen utensils, Turnwellian chefs competed to outdo one another in increasingly inventive applications of the ingredient in desserts: rich custard puddings, dainty trifles of whipped cream and sponge cake, and later clotted cream to be served with scones and Newshire tea. This all culminated in the presentation of a vanilla bean ice cream—slow-churned for a dense yet smooth texture—to celebrate Turnwell’s admission into the Small Country at the rebuilt Rainbow Hall, further elevating the city’s status in culinary circles. After all, it is how the popular Turnwellian saying goes: "Ideas are like cream—good ones rise to the top."
-10% Idea Cost
Tallfolk TurnpikeDespite its origins as a gnomish and halfling city, Turnwell is no stranger to humans, usually of Iochander or Reverian descent, traveling through the city or even settling down. The rapid urbanization of the 1600s, however, resulted in far more tallfolk than the Roundabout could safely handle, leading to increasing incidents of human-driven carts accidentally trampling one of the smallfolk and the deterioration of Turnwell’s most beloved street. Then-Mayor Gelman Turner thus implemented the Turnpike, delineating the innermost lane of the Roundabout for tallfolk on mounts or carts while smallfolk and pedestrians kept to the sides. While merchants grumbled about the mandatory toll placed on its usage, residents appreciated the security of the Roundabout and knowing that all the coin made on the turnpike went back into maintaining and improving all of their streets.
+15% Movement Speed
Portroy Reaver PrivateersIn its heyday, plentiful food and coin flowed into Turnwell, garnering the attention of some desperate Reverian mercenary companies. They were first employed as security guards for Turnwell League barges making their way downriver to sea, where they might face other Reverians engaging in piracy. These companies quickly grew in size—numerically and physically—thanks to the generous pay of Turnwellian merchants in gold, beef, and dairy. Soon, their jobs turned from simple protection to harassing rival merchant ships along the Portroy, a move that drove almost all merchants to make Turnwell the preferred city of departure when using the river. While this would eventually backfire on the city by inciting Iochand’s conquest of it, Reverians still remember Turnwell as a city of plenty.
+25% Mercenary Manpower
Well-Made TwillWool imported from the Dragonhills and Reveria makes its way to Turnwell, where weavers warp and weft yarn into a sturdy twill weave cloth. Turnwell twill, distinguished from cloth made elsewhere from their insistence on using local natural dyes rather than the artificially bright hues of Viswall’s pigments, found common use in outdoor wear within the Small Country and Dragon Coast. Coats made in Turnwell eventually became fashionable among the upper and middle classes of the Small Country, woven with striking houndstooth and herringbone patterns. Even with the onset of industrial textile mills, Turnwell continued to create twill cloth, the durability and cheapness of which made the fabric an ideal material for military fatigues in the late 1700s.
+10% Morale of Armies
The Reckoning"Country Reckoning" was an archaic method of timekeeping stemming from the early days of the Small Province, a surprisingly complex lunisolar calendar that, while generally keeping to 12 months, has many peculiarities: varying leap months, standalone holidays, and a multi-year cycle, to name a few. With halflings’ adoption of Common and the Castanorian calendar following the War of Falling Stars, "Country Reckoning" fell into disuse and was relegated to a term for "folksy timekeeping". The surviving remnants of a clear Reckoning calendar that could be gathered from its scattered legacy—localized idioms, half-remembered folktales, and vibrant petty feuds between villages over the correct date to hold certain holidays—was a mess for historians to decipher.\n\nThen in 1763, road workers in Turnwell uncovered an unusual find: a circular stone sundial, its face engraved with faded patterns of the cosmos and depictions of nature. Along its border was writing, some recognized as very archaic Gnomish adjacent to scribbles that archaeologists were just beginning to recognize as the Old Halfling script. Despite conspiracy theories claiming the sundial held the date for the world’s end, further analysis revealed the stone slab to be the only surviving calendar written in Country Reckoning, finally allowing historians to better discern actual dates from Halfling folktales.
-1% Prestige Decay
Ambition
+15% Reform Progress Growth
History
TBD
Strategy
TBD