>"Ayup. That's where I'm from, yeah. But anyhow, this garden's supposedly got every sort of flower you could think of, and maybe a few you couldn't, and they're all in bloom year-round. Even the ones that don't bloom for a while, like ones that only bloom once every so many years. It's that latter sort of flower I'm lookin' to find."
>"Only trick is, it's supposed to be hidden. But I'm thinking I might be able to pick up a clue from a map. Or at least narrow it down a bit."
>"And where was this garden supposed to be?" she asks, running her finger along the drawers of a nearby map cabinet.
>Let's see about memorizing as much of the map as we can. Bein' a seeker means we gotta be handy with these things after all.
>You set to examining the map and committing as much of it to memory as you can. This is not the first time you've looked at a map of Val Razua - it had long been your goal to reach the city, after all - though it's been a while since you studied one closely and they were never a detailed as this. The draftsmanship of the map before you is extremely controlled and precise and the shear size of the parchment on which it is written allows for minute detail; a fairly staggering number of buildings are indicated by individualized contours of their footprints rather than perfunctory rectangles. There is little decorative embellishment, but as a functional aid, it is top-class.
>You quickly find the location of the Grand Academy and the airship docks and trace the route you must have taken to get from there to here. Reassuringly, things seem to line up more or less like you'd visualized them in your head. You also note several other points of interest: the local chapter of the Seeker's Guild, the Grand Concourse and Sovereign Hall at the city's center, passenger docks for the riverboats south, central holdings of the major houses, roads out of town, and even Prestor Row where you visited that herbalist a little while ago. There's frankly an awful lot of information to take in, and even with all your experience at navigation you'll probably have to limit yourself to a few specific routes and points of interest unless you intend to spend dedicated time in the library memorizing more comprehensively.
>Take note of gardens, greenhouses and nurseries.
>Certain public gardens and parks of sufficient size are marked on the map, though it most certainly does not have a comprehensive labeling of commercial enterprises throughout the city; there's simply not enough room to mark them all, no matter the physical size of this map. You do, however, note the course of the river flowing to the southwest, where Professor Bosqueverde said many of the nurseries were located, and the sequence of streets which presents the most direct route there. The footprint and arrangement of several clusters of buildings are suggestive of greenhouses, even if they're not explicitly labelled as such. You keep them in mind.
>The librarian lays another map out beside the one you're currently examining. The relative sparseness of its features allows you to quickly identify Isir's Cross and the meeting of roads from which it derives its name. The detailing of this map is much coarser than the first, even given the difference in scale; a first appraisal shows little sign of notable features to the west of it, though this is hardly unexpected.
>"We have other maps of the city and surrounding area, of course," the librarian adds. "Political and topographic, or detail maps of specific districts, depending on what you're looking for."
