City of Curses: The Grand Bazaar, In Depth

Here is another long piece on Crux.  The Grand Bazaar, where everything has a price.  I plan to finish a map piece for it too.  But here are the words, at least.

The Grand Bazaar 
Aspect: Everything Has a Price

Connected To: Old Crux (to the North), Port of Crux (to the West), Rose Quarter (to the East), Palace Hill (to the South)
Most Significant Icon: The Publisher
Well Known For?  Markets, Trade, Goods and Services
Notable Sites and Locales: The Arcade Maze, Artifice Alley, Tyranus Avenue, Zyan's Tower, Davizi Square, Catburg, Avard's Spring

Exiting Harun's Gate leads out of Old Crux and the Wolf Quarter.  Here there is a valley.  Once a ravine that cut across, the Tomasi Roads have long since become the arteries of the city.  This is the open, vibrant mixing pot of the city.

And it is crowded here.  I try to avoid the traffic.  Hundreds of carriages, horses, and other beasts of burden rush through.  This is the Grand Bazaar.  

This is the heart of trade in the Maru Sea.  If it could be sold, traded or bought, it can be found here.  Even though slavery has long been made illegal here, corrupt city watch look the other way.  Magic items and artifice of all kinds are moved here.

It is a dangerous, yet exciting place.  Anyone, anything can be found here, in the Grand Bazaar.  The smells are magnificent, as Maliphi spices, Ainesian perfumes and Othebean incense fill the air.  This is a menagerie of experiences, just waiting to be visited- or survived.

History
Avard's Spring has long served as a water source for caravans and travel into and out of the City of Curses.  After all, a clean source of constant drinking water only helps life grow.  The Bazaar, a place for trade and meetings, never was a permanent place.  Not even during the Tomasi Empire.

In dark places through the valley that would become the Grand Bazaar, many temples had been built throughout the years.  All of these were abandoned at one point or another, none lasted to even the building of the New Wall.  Like Gruudl, these left the places under the Grand Bazaar a maze of temples and forgotten sacred places.

It had been scattered homes and streets.  As the age of Bloodfire came, though, the city grew past the walls the Tomasi had erected.  Like a leaking vessel, Crux over flowed the new wall.  Palace Hill, first taken from the Ursyklon to be a retreat for the Imperial Family, soon over looked a valley full of new streets.

As the vampyres and other forces took power for themselves in the new dark age, the Grand Bazaar built a new name for itself throughout the Maru Sea.  Patrizo and the other vampyres took control of it for centuries.  Only when the Othebean Crusade came, did the Vampyres lose control over the rich markets of the Grand Bazaar.

Othebea took control, and the Grand Bazaar only grew more profitable.  When Ith started the Revolution Wars and Ainesia followed, the Grand Bazaar made even more profit.  When Ith formed a new Sorcerous Republic, well, the Grand Bazaar, of course, make even more of a profit.  

That is the way of things.  Things happen, and the markets of the Grand Bazaar only make more profit.  The Davizi family settled in the Grand Bazaar.  Their publishing and printing house would grow into a empire.  Built atop an ancient ruin of a temple, dedicated to a old god of chaos and war.

The Publisher reconsecrated those altars.  The Revolution and its faith sleep in the streets of the Grand Bazaar.  The urge for change- the drive to topple the wealthy, to make the powerful kneel. Even change has its price.

Locales
Avard's Spring: Underneath the streets of the Grand Bazaar flow the crystal clear waters of this ancient fresh water spring.  Although now strangled and controlled through pipes and magic redirection, the spring still flows.  Ponds, fountains and waterworks throughout the Grand Bazaar.

Catburg: Each rooftop throughout the Grand Bazaar has its own tale.  But on one particular height and rotten one, feyborn cats have made their own village.  Unlike the other many feyborn animals that live in the Wolf Quarter, the awakened felines prefer the buzz of the Grand Bazaar.

Nicknamed Catburg, the cats conduct their own myriad of services in the Grand Bazaar.  They know the rooftops.  They steal and resell goods, as some of the best fencers in the city.  The feyborn cats also continue to breed with the feral, unawakened cats in the streets and alleys of the Grand Bazaar, slowly spreading the Feyborn more than ever before.

Davizi Square: The ten-story tower called Davizi Square serves as the nerve center for the Publisher.  Here the journalists and editorial staff for the major newspapers work.  Bringing them all to the same location, that is a recent innovation of the Publisher's own devising.

Underneath Davizi Square the half-collapsed ruins of an ancient temple.  Now reconsecrated to the Revolution, it is a semi-secret kept by the Publisher and his Revolution clergy.

The Arcade Maze: Between the shops and businesses throughout the Grand Bazaar, there is a maze of arcades.  These open marble buildings serve as the main markets of Crux herself.  But their labyrinthine structure is easy to get lost in.  The Arcade Maze ascends and descends as well.

The crowds and shops here cater to a hundreds of small merchants.  This is often the area most think of when they think of the Grand Bazaar.  The Arcade Maze hides so many different things to be found or experienced, that one could spend a lifetime exploring all its nooks and crannies.

Zyan's Tower: The Lich Zyan erected this tower long before the Grand Bazaar had come truly into being.  His last great project had been to create a tower to store what he had accumulated.  Ever the most isolated member of the Esoterium Machina, Zyan has always been a loyal servant of the Prince.  His tower remains a isolated bastion in the Grand Bazaar, even though no one has seen or heard from the lich for a century.

Zyan's rages were legendary, even into undeath.  One temperous rage led to him openly betraying the Prince to prove his point.  The Lich and the Prince did mend their relationship, or at least appeared to.  Zyan, perhaps, is one of the few beings in the City of Curses who might've met the Prince in person.  Of course, that could just be a story...