(Pop: 12,500) Mombasa is a small city located on the shores of the Eloysian Sea. It is infamous for its horrific slave markets.
Mombasa is often called the "Yellow City" because of the yellow sails of the slavers’ ships that berth here. Slavery is Mombasa ’s trade and life’s blood, which still pumps, despite the harassment of the Navy of Kendar,which has long sought to drive a lance through its heart. Mombasa has oft been likened to scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, its maze-like alleyways and haphazardly constructed districts seemingly jumbled around each other without any thought. Surrounded by mountains, the City is nestled in a narrow inlet on the Eloysian Sea, its towers rising above the south shores of Kukri Island. Roiling mists often to hide its tortuous streets and mask its harbor, giving the city an eerie, haunted look.
LOCAL HISTORY
The breathtaking waterfalls that tumble from the Stonespire Mountains were the reason pirates first used Yellow Harbor as their anchorage. Many coves and natural hidden inlets across the bay also served as excellent cover for visiting slaver vessels. Both the abundant fresh water supply and the many hiding places for their ship cause the slaver settlement to grow rapidly. However, it wasn’t until 400 years ago that the lawless settlement attained its first unified ruler. Captain Ilyrio Mombasa proclaimed himself lord of the port and offered protection to those who came to the settlement which eventually bore his name. Mombasa was a charismatic, highly-intelligent leader who ruled the port for decades before he was overthrown and murdered by a consortium of powerful slaving Guilds called the Slave Lords.
For the next few centuries, the port of Mombasa thrived, steadily growing despite the constant infighting among its leadership. About 80 years ago, Mombasa experienced the first major resistance to its trade when an armada of Kendari ships attacked slaver galleys sailing between Mombasa and the Seven Cities of Bronze. To defend against the Kendari attacks, a pirate slaver named Natif Neguli took control of the city and ruthlessly sank any ship to enter the port without declaring allegiance to him. The months-long conflict became known as the Year of Broken Sails, after which Neguli maintained loose control of Mombasa through the newly established Pirate Guild.
In the last several decades, Mombasa has remained unified, its raiding carefully targeted and its allies carefully assessed. The present ruler of Mombasa, the pragmatic and completely unscrupulous Caliph Morio Jaziri, has learned well from his predecessors. He uses his intellect rather than brute force to enforce the few laws Mombasa has. Lord Jaziri has many allies throughout the city; his eyes and ears slink around every corner, lean against bars telling tall tales, and lurk at the shoulder of strangers.
GEOGRAPHY
Huddled beneath the imposing Stonespire Mountains, Mombasa has no walls or fortifications. None could be as strong as its defenses: intrigue, bribery, and espionage. The large natural harbor that forms at the foothills of the mountains offers calm anchorage even during the worst monsoons. The bay is roughly 700 yards across and deep enough to allow even the mightiest warships. A vast district of ashen stone rises out of the waters. Carved seemingly from a single piece of bedrock, Stonytown is the thriving heart of the city, where mundane markets bustle and where most of the commonfolk—artisans and merchants—live and trade.
Beyond and above, the lords and ladies dwell in lofty Bowsprit. The notorious High Road, which leads toward the upper mountains, is patrolled by guards eager to keep the nearby fields of grain and the mountain tracks leading to various secret Slave-lord secret strongholds secure. This district is better maintained and has broader streets than the rest of Mombasa, and while visitors are welcome at the Black Circus and the lower streets of this district, anyone venturing higher is subject to close scrutiny. The rest of Mombasa is a slippery mass of alleyways and streets, a confusing maze of sunless dead-ends and corners where cutthroats happily welcome those with bulging pockets.
However, all roads lead to the great fleshfairs, the seemingly endless auctions where slaves are bought and sold. The greatest of these, the Old Fleshfair, lurks within the city’s windings, and hundreds of thousands of lives have passed this way. There are scores of lesser fleshfairs in the rambling district that shares their name. In truth, all one needs is a pit with a viewing area and a supply of slaves to begin trade. Unfortunately, such trade is fickle, and owners and fairs come and go on an almost daily basis. The Laughing Fleshfair houses the majority of the city's native gnoll population, and many of the slavers have townhouses with hidden courtyards—sometimes of enormous size—lurking behind their magnificently carved doorways.
The oldest part of the city, the Harbor District, features two distinct areas: Yellow Harbor (the original slave dock) and New Dock. Between the two harbors, the Harbor District grips the rocky shoreline, which is smothered by buildings offering entertainment to visitors. This strip of land—in places barely 60 yards wide—occupies the flat land at the shore’s edge. The strip is at its narrowest as it passes over the Shipyards, where it rises above the docks on a series of boardwalks The entertainments offered here are brutal, expensive, and dangerous. Rogues find a happy hunting ground in the Shipyards, but are careful to avoid the grinning Gnolls who make up a large minority in the city. The Gnoll population of Mombasa is generally smarter than their kin, but are always eager for violence. The portion of the city known as the Ships’ Graveyard is built primarily from parts of shipwrecks, stolen sections of vessels, and other flotsam and jetsam. In its more extreme sections, it resembles a ship on land, in others a seaside township. The district, one of rougher trades, industry, and alchemy, draws away from a focal point just behind the harbor district at the haphazard plaza known as "the Shipwreck."
