As usual, we'll start off the week with a rough map of the city with the location of this week's neighborhood marked:

(No changes to the map since last week except of course for the movement of the X. No, I still haven't named that dratted river.)

This week we'll be taking a look at the Docks, the western corner of L¨m where ships dock to bring goods in and out of the city (and occasionally passengers, though of course nowadays long-distance travel is more often done by air than by sea). The Docks are located in the Old City where the river meets the ocean, and are penetrated by artificial inlets that give more space for berths.

Much of the Docks is taken up by warehouses, but there are a substantial number of people who live in the neighborhood—some of them stevedores and other dockworkers, but also some who simply can't afford to live elsewhere. Despite the importance of the sea trade to Lüm's economy, the residential part of the Docks is among one of the poorest and most ill-kept areas of Lüm, and is rife with crime and squalor. The owners of the warehouses have security guards posted to keep their contents safe, and guards patrol the main roads, but venture off of them into the warren of residential streets and alleys and if you look too well-off and too defenseless you may be taking your life into your hands.

At any given moment, there are typically about a dozen large cargo ships or cruise ships at berth in the Docks, plus a hundred or so smaller boats of various varieties. The waterfront is busy at all hours of the day and night—albeit slightly less at night—with workers and summons loading and unloading cargo, repairing the ships, and making other preparations. Carts are constantly running to and from the warehouses, shipmasters and recruiters soliciting and interviewing new crew members, ship's crew taking advantage of their time in port to indulge themselves in various vices... the Docks is a perpetual hotbed of activity.

Despite its overall level of misease, the Docks are home to one of Lüm's most famous and lavish tourist attractions. Sixty years ago, an entrepreneur named Hagartha Lali purchased an ancient ship that had been left at their berths for some time for historical value, connected them together, and turned them into a sort of theme park, with a variety of attractions inside. In the years since Lali's successors expanded the park, bringing more old ships aside the original and putting differsive enchantments on parts of the interior. Today, the Ship of Dreams, as the park is called, brings in millions of visitors a year—and makes large quantities of money. [I wanted to say "millions of [monetary unit]s of money", but I still haven't decided on Djarvin's monetary system; that's another thing I probably ought to iron out soon.] Of course, the park's management has to spend some of their income in security to keep their guests safe from the seedy surroundings, but they are quite successful in doing so, and with the subway and the well-patrolled roads great numbers of guests make their way to the park without ever having to experience the danger and sordor of other parts of the Docks.