Port Quaybay

Port/military town in Varia where the campaign began (1396) — the staging ground
where troops and travelers ship out to Orathos (lodging is free for
Orathos-bound travelers). Sessions 1–5 took place here; the party sailed at the end
of Session 5.

Known features:

• Scrawbles' Manor — uphill residential district; ~55×55 ft, pillars for an
  unbuilt second floor, basement cold storage (Scrawbles)
• The Mayor's House — giant horn out front (Ledge)
• Firebrand Church chapter — site of the branding festival
• Inns: the Big Barrel (north; three giant rotating ceiling barrels with
  dangling self-serve taps — free for expedition members; two floors of barracks
  bunks with other people's sweat outlines) and the Tiny Keg (south, cozy)
• The sewers — hiding The Urina; sewage outflow pauses when the tide comes in
• Highside / the Noble District — uphill, monthly-cleaned cobblestones; the elven
  master-armorer (with sauna waiting area), the brass-working forge, the lizard-man
  hat shop, and the land registry
• The docks plaza — Argath's shack (government-paid soldier feeding), supply
  officer Hackett's free-gear station, the expedition sign-up desk

Transcripts render it "Port Keeby" — canonically Port Quaybay (per the GM's
Game Description).

A Brief History of Quaybay

From the town's own history, a written Varian source.

The spelling is a trap and the town knows it: Quaybay is pronounced "Key-Bee," and the history opens by conceding it is "often mispronounced due to its misleading spelling" — which retroactively vindicates every transcript that wrote it "Port Keeby." It is one of Varia's westernmost port towns, with a population of over 35,000.

Its landmarks, as the town lists them:

• A teal checkerboard plaza by the ocean
• Historic belltowers
• A short walk out of town, one of the oldest lighthouses anywhere — housing the oldest lightkeeper in Varia

The boom is the war. The history's own addendum states that Quaybay "has seen remarkable and sudden growth as a result of the reclamation pact signed by Varia" (1395, see The Coalition). It is the primary supply line for ships setting sail for Orathos — and for ships coming back to find refuge from it. That is the whole explanation for the free lodging, the free gear and the militarised docks the party found in 1396: a mid-sized western port that a treaty turned into a war terminus in a single year.

Closest port to Orathos — and still months away. The town claims to be the nearest harbour to Orathos on the map, "yet sailing there still takes several months." (This sits badly against the party's own crossing, which the ship's officers put at 21 days nominal and which actually took 25 — see The Expedition Ship. Flagged as a conflict rather than resolved.)

Session 5

• Last ~4 hours before departure: free-gear runs, faction errands, and the discovery
  that the town's entire adventuring economy "switched off" the day the ship left —
  grist for the party's quest-conspiracy theory.
• The mayor's giant horn sounded the final call, answered by the ship's foghorn.
  A Lurch doppelganger is apparently still loose in town scamming people of gold.