The Barony of Liddington

A place of commerce and trade. A marketplace, a meeting place, where all are welcome so long as your money holds out. Laissez-faire economics operate to the extreme, where libertarian morals meet anarcho-capitalist economics. Trade unions, artisan guilds, and mercantile combines vie for supremacy with proprietors, corporations, and salespeople. Gambling, thievery, racketeering, extortion, organized crime, and prostitution are all to be found, but in general, it's still not a bad place to live and work.

Liddington would otherwise be a marshy corner of Tottenham, if it weren't for two aspects. One, it's marshland, barely arable and not at all desirable by the agrarian denizens of Tottenham, and two, it's right across the river from Caer Leon, and in prime location to be a commercial hub as it sits at the confluence of the two major rivers in Caledonia. Over the years, the original wharf city of Marshford (so called because it sits between two natural fording locations across the river, and, well, it's surrounded by marshland) has expanded, filling in the wetlands as it went, and become a fortified metropolis that encompasses fully 40% of the land area of Liddington. The city is crisscrossed by a radiating network of canals that provide nearly all of the city with access to the Grand Canal and, in turn, the Cetina River. These canals are fed by the same high water table that forms the marshes, and so flow out to the river, rather than the other way around. Roads leading out of the city through the massive fortress wall head to bridges to Corbenic, Glamorgan, and mainland Falkirk.

Marshford houses several large banks, the Royal Mint, the Stock Exchange, the Mercantile Exchange, four establishment brothels, the Office of the Exchequer, and numerous piers for loading and offloading merchant ships of every commodity imaginable. The Grand Central Market is the largest single site of commerce in the known world.

There are still some people who live outside of Marshford, Liddians who stubbornly refuse to give in to the urban lifstyle. Subsistence farming is their predominant way of life, though some do make do on a living of leathercrafts and moonshine. However, these mud-hut dwelling folk, who actually call themselves "Liddites," are a small minority, and the city of Marshford has become somewhat synonymous with the land of Liddington. The largest settlement outside of the city is Pont, in the south, near the massive bridge that connects Liddington with Falkirk. The road that comes across the river meets with the road coming downstream from Tottenham, and continues on to Marshford.

Wildlife in Liddington, outside of the city, consists mostly of small mammals and amphibians. Water snakes are common enough to be a traveling hazard. Birds include waterfowl and some smaller raptors, though most of these are scavengers like buzzards rather than eagles or hawks. Falcons can be found both inside and outside the city. Also, insects such as mosquitoes and dragonflies are hard to miss throughout the land, though the fresh-flowing nature of the canals in Marshford helps keep down their population in the city.

The Liddites tell tale of smallish human-like folk, barely two to three feet tall, who supposedly inhabit the marshes and steal the life-breath of newborns. While the infant mortality rate in the marshes is much higher than that in Marshford, or even Pont, no hard evidence has ever been found of these gnomish creatures. It is said that they hoard anything shiny, and can be baited with nearly any bright, reflective objects. But, as not one has yet been captured, dead or alive, the authorities in Marshford chalk the reports up to superstition and blame-passing.