New arrivals get off the boat and think they understand the place within the first hour. They don’t. Khorinis has two faces. The upper city is clean streets, wealthy merchants and the town hall where the Paladins have set up shop. The lower city is where everyone else lives, works and argues. The harbour district below that is where people go when they want to be left alone. Shipwrights, taverns, rooms rented by the night. The city has layers, and not all of them are visible from the street.
The Paladins arrived unannounced and haven’t left. The harbour is closed. Bandit gangs out of the Valley of Mines have the supply roads sewn up, the market runs thin and the mood runs thinner. Nobody knows exactly what the Paladins are preparing for. The smart ones in the lower city have their theories. They keep them to themselves.