Wheloon City

Perched where the Wyvernflow River meets the Way of the Manticore (with the Hullack Trail spilling in from the east), Wheloon grew from a ferry‐thorp into a humming small city whose green-slated rooftops earned it the sobriquet “Jade Towers.” For centuries it was a maker’s town—boatwrights and basket-weavers, sailmakers, clay-potters, and wagonwrights—its quays thronged with barges and its streets alive with the clatter of carts and haggling of shopkeepers. In later years, that same river-crossing fate twisted: Wheloon was sealed and repurposed as a prison city, its bustling lanes surrendered to gangs and grim survival. Both lives—the industrious mart and the walled oubliette—are written in its stones.

Names, people, and place

Demonym. Residents and goods are Whelunian.

Setting. Southeastern Cormyr, straddling the Wyvernflow. The older, wealthier west bank held the civic core; the east bank swelled during refugee surges. With no natural escarpments or walls, Wheloon sprawled in every direction, its meandering, hilly lanes laid by whim and necessity rather than plan. Night streets are lamp-lit, though mud and patched cobbles are part of its charm.

The “Jade Towers.” The nickname comes from bright green slate roofing quarried north of town near Masark’s Grove. Fresh-cut slabs darken to emerald on the rooftops, lending the skyline a distinctive, glittering hue.

A brief history

Before the town. An ancient duskwood grove east of the site served as Silvanus’s God’s Grove; to the north, an early bluff-built citadel fell to ruin long before the city rose (its foundations later became… troublesome).
Fords of Wheloon (900 DR). King Galaghard III drove the Witch Lords and their undead from the Wheloon fords before breaking them in the Vast Swamp—an early taste of how often armies would tramp these banks.
Lost King’s sweep (1352 DR). Gondegal briefly seized Wheloon amid his eight-day “kingdom,” only to be ejected by the Purple Dragons.
Shadowed visitors (1358 DR). Notorious travelers passed through during an autumn of upheaval, leaving behind intrigue, a framed murder, and a wild horse-back flight from the Wheloon Watch and royal soldiers.
Goblin War influx (1370–1374 DR). When Arabel emptied, refugees poured into Wheloon, building out the east bank and vaulting the town’s population from a modest ferry community to a true small city.
The false temple (1374 DR). Naedaenya Arthas convinced aging Lord Sarp Redbeard to sponsor a grand temple of Mystra atop the old citadel’s footings, promising trade in lore and magical wares. Construction sped ahead with thaumic aid—until Tunaster Dranik and hired adventurers uncovered a Sharran front abducting the gifted to tear at the Weave. Purple Dragons sealed the site; the trail ran into the Vast Swamp, and the plot was broken. Trade with the nearby Sharptooth lizardfolk grew from the aftermath.
Sealed beyond recall (1473–1479 DR). After years of Sharran agitation and Shadovar meddling, the Crown walled Wheloon, laced it with wards, and declared it a prison city for life, tipping suspects and offenders alike “over the wall.” By 1479 DR it was a hard, gang-ruled warren; petitions to reopen it argued the innocent and the post-sealing children deserved a chance beyond the stones.

People and numbers

Wheloon’s population swung wildly with fortune:

c. 1367 DR: ~1,500
c. 1369–1374 DR: ~3,700 → 6,692 (refugee surge)
c. 1479 DR: ~3,000 (after the sealing)

The traditional mix skewed human (≈82%), with halflings (6%), dwarves (4%), gnomes (4%), smaller numbers of half-elves, elves, and half-orcs. After the wall rose, the ledger became guesswork; record-keeping had always been shaky under Redbeard’s genial neglect, and inside the prison city, headcounts depended on who controlled a street that tenday.

Rule, writ, and records

Lord Sarp Redbeard held Wheloon for the Crown in the late 14th century—popular, headstrong, and famously fixated on Wheloon’s good first. He curbed overreach by the Purple Dragons, favored local farmers in disputes, and was notorious for sloppy tallies that made royal tax-collecting an art of patience. The Heralds maintained a local office; Elaerue Estspirit served both court and record.

A magistrate circuit judged disputes in town and outlying hamlets like Ghars. After the sealing, civic posts were meaningless beyond the wall; order devolved to whoever could muster muscle and bread.

Defenses and forces

Before the wall, defense was ad hoc:

Wheloon Watch. A volunteer militia of shopkeepers and craftfolk—leather jerkins, maces, short swords, crossbows—quartered at the Watch House.
Purple Dragons. ~150 soldiers under Constal Maximanus Tholl (by 1374 DR); a typical road patrol was fourteen mounted fighters in chain with lance and blade. Their barracks and armory stood near the Watch.

Once Wheloon was walled, the defenses turned inward: stone, iron, and spell lattice to keep people in, not enemies out.

Work, wagons, and wealth

Wheloon thrived because it sat on the cheapest, fastest interchange between Sembia’s caravans and Wyvernwater/Sea of Fallen Stars river traffic. The Wyvern Ferry Route knit both banks and kept fares at a copper with round-the-clock service. By the late 1360s DR it had become the budget alternative to Suzail and Marsember’s crowded ports.

Craft guilds (never as ossified as true guilds elsewhere) pooled coin into ventures—cut-rate cargo services, new yards, improved rigs—then hired guards when established costers hired bandits to snuff them out. Agriculture fed the river trade: apples, grapes, melons, peaches, berries, pumpkins, wheat. Whelunians logged Hermit’s Wood for lumber, bred bluebirds and ferrets as fashionable pets, and imported rosecork from Prespur (its trees later thriving along the Wyvernflow’s southern forks).

The sealing killed the hub at a stroke; barges stopped, cranes stilled, and the economy inside the wall turned to barter, theft, and tribute.

Life and temper

Old Wheloon was industrious but not dour: makers proud of meticulous work, modestly comfortable, quick to improve a home even if its kitchen doubled as workshop. The same eye for detail birthed a class of thieves—patient, methodical lock-picks who took longer but failed less.

Most dead were buried in the Green, a communal field southwest of town, though some families kept tiny private plots. Rathool’s Pond in the northwest, once a ceremonial sinking-place for armored war dead, stained orange by rust, later became the town’s swimming hole; the priests of Chauntea opposed “cleaning” it for fear of angering lingering spirits.

Prison-city Wheloon hardened everyone. Survival meant gangs—loyal inward, hostile outward. Tattoos (both prisoner marks and gang sigils) told grim biographies and branded escapees beyond the wall. Whelunians learned to resist charms, spot cons, and trust few. The phrase “escape from Wheloon” entered speech as shorthand for any nearly impossible task.

Streets, sights, and landmarks

Wyvernflow River. The town’s lifeline and divider; ferries run day and night. On opposite banks stand the Wyvern Watch Inn (west) and Lantern Inn & Boathouse (east).
Civic corner (west bank). At Way of the Manticore × Wheloon Way: the Watch House, Purple Dragon barracks, Wheloon Jail, and armory cluster. North along Wheloon Way rise Oldstone Hall (the lord’s manor) and the Moothouse—unfortunately across from Haldos’s Fine Butchery.
The Green. Communal grazing and burial ground, ring-fenced by shared timber.
Rathool’s Pond. Rust-tinted pool of old renown, now avoided for drinking and fish despite its popularity with children in summer.
Westbank March. A farm road running from the northern heights down the Wyvernflow toward the coast; Impil Street hosts warehouses used by the Cormyrean Coins Coster.
Temples. Harvest Hall (Chauntea) served farmers and millers; the God’s Grove (Silvanus) stands older than the town itself. The “temple of Mystra” rose grandly and fell in infamy when unmasked as a Sharran ruse.

Faith and festivals

Wheloon’s piety is practical: Chauntea for harvests and Silvanus for groves and waters. Processions blessing seed and tools, boat launch rites on the Wyvernflow, and modest saint-days for craft patrons once punctuated the year. Even during its worst days, secret thank-offerings and quiet river blessings persisted behind shuttered doors.

Getting out (or in)

Before the wall, Wheloon’s ferry and roads made it one of the easiest towns in Cormyr to enter… or leave. Afterward, stone and warding made it one of the hardest. Smugglers speak of silted culverts, bribed ward-keepers, and two-stage exfiltrations that disguise tattoos and move escapees far beyond Suzail’s reach. Few succeed; fewer boast about it.

Wheloon endures. Whether as merchant hinge or sealed crucible, it has always been a place of making: of boats and baskets, schemes and second lives. The jade roofs still gleam in memory; the river still hums. And Whelunians—free or walled—remain what the river made them: stubborn, skilled, and hard to turn.