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From Sebastian Drake's book Travels on the two continents.
This city is on the northen edge of southern civilization and as such most need to stop here being it is the end of the line. The cities wealth comes from the surrounding farming hamlets.
The University runs the city....
The University is said to house some secret beneath it. Originally an Elven structure, it was given over to the humans centuries ago. No one is sure what the secret is but many old nobles spend months in the university only to come out with their sanity wrecked but with insights that their families would find invaulable. Whatever it is it’s Very well guarded, no outsider is left alone in the university and sneaking in will most often cost your life or your sanity.
From Roaming Millerson's The Vagrant's way
The city of Vlarden is located at the base of the Yolknar Mountain Range it is at one end of the north-western trade road at the other is Moloch (One of the Lake's three cities) .The bulk of the city is the University that took over Vlarden castle in 3982yoa. Vlarden is the first true city, or the last. North from here one will only encounter small farming hamlets until Five or the Twin Cities.
Much of the city was decimated in the 4664yoa war. When the city was attacked the wealthy fled to Mayhew castle or their country estates to stay safe while the poor where slaughtered. Only the university put up any resistance and it killed with it's magic as indiscriminately as the orcs. The University, the town square and the occasional building are the only remanants of the original city. The new Vlarden is mosty wooden structures painted a quaint white and brown. The wealthier residences being of stone and marble. The ever expanding university is awe inspiring, slightly inhuman even, having new buildings break free of the walls to the north and east the "New wall" of the university nearly doubles it's size while the differing building styles give a strange miss mash look to the layout as if it grew rather than was planned and built.
The University is a city onto itself, it's ancient traditions and customs can cause visitors much aggravation but it is the southern content's largest university in philosophy, history, natural sciences, logic, medicine, law and of course magic. A curious item of note is the number of Lake's Wizards who retire to Don positions in the university but how little magic they teach there, the wizards taking up more mundane studies.
The city is governed by the University who supposedly answers to the Wizards at the Lake's but in reality they care little for the Lake's fear of demons and rogue mages, prefering to take things of magic at face value. Vlarden is a town that is more likely to have accurate road signs than an effective militia.
The city has a great respect for magic, most of the peolpes clean water coming from the university ponds, created in 3984yoa. Elves and other races are welcome in the city, the people still remembering the charter the elves signed to allow them the city. It also lays out some of the best wines and meals in the south.
Most technologies will be treated with caution with the lower members of society have been know to lynch outsiders with gadgets as simple as a wrist watch. The most advanced machines commonly found within the city are flintlock pistol carried by the nobles and rich, the cannons that sit on the new outer wall, and the few clocks found in private residence or, more often, in public houses. Other safe items to posses are matches, pocket watches, basic surgical supplies, and other small simple devices.