The harbor of Voolnishart spreads like a living mosaic across the glittering crescent bay, cradled by sweeping headlands and watchful towers wrought from blackstone and coral-white marble. The air thrums with the sound of gulls and foreign tongues, the scent of salt and spice, fish guts and perfume.
The ships bobbing in the sapphire waters are as varied as the people who crew them. Sleek elven sloops with hulls like wind-sculpted bone lie moored beside hulking orcish trawlers, all muscle and ironwood. Goblin paddle-skiffs, jury-rigged with bizarre smokestacks and teetering cabins, cut tight circles near Kobold salvage barges, their decks crawling with scaled tinkerers shouting over one another in squeaky, indignant tones. Merchant galleons from the south fly sails painted with jungle beasts, while narrow Vistari cutters with high prow-beaks glide in with spices and silks. Warships without cannon but bristling with ballistae and arbalests fly the standards of Mithein’s many clans.
And towering at the far end of the harbor—moored at a berth of black iron and reinforced stone—rests The Hag. A terrible silhouette against the dawn, her armored hull like the shell of some primeval leviathan. Her carriage cannons loom from fire-blackened ports, and her prow bears a vast, angular wedge of black metal—an armored ramming blade forged for sheer brutality. Not decorative, not symbolic—this is a weapon, an unholy iron wedge capable of cleaving through hulls and tearing through stone like bone.
The docks themselves are a raucous marvel. Cobblestones from half a dozen quarries patchwork the streets, while buildings crowd one another with joyful defiance of uniformity. There are goblin bazaars built like termite mounds, narrow spires of stacked stalls with tarps flapping in every hue. Minotaur forges squat low and reek of soot and molten bronze. Elegant elven terraces, all pale glass and vine-covered balconies, rise nearby in serene contrast.
Between them strolls a people unmatched in diversity—dwarves with etched steel breastplates and merchant ledgers, orc dock-workers in wide leather belts carrying crates like kindling, kobold guides with speaking rods shouting directions, and humans of every shade and language hawking wares or negotiating cargo fees.
At one end, Momma Toki’s Menagerie rattles and howls—an infamous collection of cages and pens stacked three stories high, home to venomous reptiles, manticores in chains, and stranger beasts too awful to name. At the other, beneath the carved stone arch of a Veyari elder-elf jeweler, gemstones from the earth’s marrow sparkle like captive stars.
Here in Voolnishart, the old world ends and the new is always arriving—by sail, oar, or the dread thunder of The Hag.
Shermans fantasy world 