Umbraval
Umbraval stands among black cliffs on Odraka’s coast facing Merria. Its people read the colour of a lighthouse at dawn, the tideline at noon, and, after nightfall, whether the shadow at their door is still their own.
City identity
Function: northern sea passage, deep-water pilotage, contract courts, and shadow-labour registry. Population: 380–560k permanent residents, approaching 700k in war, campaign, and court seasons. Peoples: a human plurality; Water Genasi, Sea Elves, and Tiefling families are prominent, alongside Tortle, Halfling, Dragonborn, and diaspora quarters. Government: the Quay Council; the Shadow Union holds separate registry and contract authority.
City logic
A narrow harbour mouth cuts the open sea’s force, while terraces climb from the safe water into the cliffs. Lighthouses, divers’ houses, tide markets, and contract courts share the same slope. The Union’s offices are visible; its body depots are not.
Present fracture
The shadow rights of prisoners from the Merria route have reached court. The city cannot defend its harbour neutrality while denying the Rotten Apple Depots.
The city’s quarters
Tide Steps hold fish markets, pilot households, and everyday shore life. Four Word Courts hear debt, wreck, inheritance, and foreign-trade cases; their demand for written record and open witness is the city’s strongest legal challenge to the Union’s sealed registry. Pale Lanterns contain contract houses, translators, and embassy inns. Shoreless Court is the first refuge for people displaced by war, debt, and storm.
The Rotten Apple Depots
The body of a leased shadow must remain alive, so the Union uses closed offshore facilities called the Rotten Apple Depots. Their name is a bitter public euphemism. Gardeners provide enough food, medicine, and care to keep bodies alive; whether that makes them healers or jailers is a question the city refuses to settle.