Marpagna

The Volusian city-state of Marpagna is located on an island formed from an ancient volcano in the Adelantean Sea, with the city's harbor consisting of the volcano's former caldera. Nestled within the crescent of the island's rim, the protected waters of the harbor create an ideal port -- so long as one avoids the choppy and occasionally bubbling waters of The Froth at the center. The island's interior slopes gently down to the sea, with the city arranged in a semicircle over a series of descending hills and small plateaus set against the starker backdrop of the old volcano's craggy rim. On the outer rim the terrain drops away more steeply and the land is rugged and broken, but much of it has been carefully shaped into intricate bands of terraces and irrigation channels that allow for extensive cultivation of the land available.

While Fortalesi and many of its other neighbors have been absorbed in regional politics and the struggle for internal dominance, Marpagna has been quietly building itself up as a grand trade emporium dealing in goods drawn from around the Adelantean and beyond. It has forged extensive shipping networks and cultivated strong relations with the Ensorian port of St. Loomis, drawing from that town's superior skill in seafaring and shipbuilding. Although still considered an upstart by the other city-states, Marpagna has begun to grow into one of the Adelantean's premiere entrepots of commerce, and the city itself has been subject to an extensive -- and, some might say, erratic and tasteless -- renovation program that has given it many grand new public buildings and architectural features.

Despite the more recent development of urban life, the Marpagni are also ingenious agriculturalists who have not forgotten their roots as practical-minded peasants once looked down on by the neighboring provinces in the Ruveran Empire. The island's extensive system of terracing and irrigation allows its residents to make the most of their steep terrain while collecting and channeling sporadic rainfall. While desiring to be taken seriously for their urban culture and given to grand displays of bombast and ostentation, Marpagna remains proud of its agricultural tradition and prides itself on its ability to grow nearly as much grain and produce as Fortalesi through skilled cultivation of its much smaller landmass.

Marpagna's flag is a golden wheat bushel with coins in place of kernels of grain, centered on a quartered field of maroon and white.