The locals call the city <span class="mu-i">Shuǐmén</span>. In the commontongue of the Northwest, it is better known as <span class="mu-s">River’s Mouth</span>.
It is called one of the so-called Three Sacred Treasures of the Goldenriver Men of the Far East; of them, it is perhaps the most renowned. Its spice, silk, porcelain, and especially their alchemical medicine is so world-renowned that the merest scent of them can lure Man, Dwarf, and Elf from across the desert-dry and bandit-besieged expanses of the Goblin Wastes, or through the warring beastman chiefdoms of the cold rim of the world. It is said that the great alchemical philosophers of the Goldenriver Race, whom they call ‘cultivators’ in their commontongue, can turn water to wine, lead to gold, and rejuvenate the elderly so that they may be young again.
<span class="mu-s">You</span> came seeking one such man who went even further than that.
His name was Ziwei Bo, the enigmatic and outwardly-unimpressive proprietor of the Emporium of Wonders. To a layman, his shop was just one more overstuffed bargain bin of magical and alchemical curiosities. Neither shop nor shopkeeper was as they seemed, though, as the most learned hedgemages and occultists of the East alone knew. Ziwei Bo was a lich, and his emporium a demiplane where even Death Himself, the Lord of Endings, could not find and claim the undead cultivator’s soul.
At least, not until <span class="mu-s">you</span> showed him the way.
