>Nod slowly.
>"As you wish."
>With nothing further said on the matter, Neu gives you directions to some clothing shops southwest of the city's canal district; no pen and paper is handy to write them down this time, but you think you can trust your memory to keep them straight.
>The Maiden continues its course down the cloistered passage, turning right and then left again as it navigates the space between the two sheer cliffs. The passage forks at several points, with great walls of angular rock giving way to open space as you pass beyond their edge. Signs etched into the rock and the colorful banners flanking them suggest many of these passages lead to private docks aligned with specific noble houses; these effectively amount to naval bases, so Neu says, given the lack of centralization in Val Razua's military, though some also use them for pleasure craft or the ocassional surreptitious cargo delivery. Quite a few of the branches in the passage are practically invisible until you're nearly upon them, so it is almost without warning that the Maiden turns another bend and the whole of Val Razua is laid out before you.
>It... Well, you knew it was big, but it's...
big! The land ahead of you sweeps down into a large shallow valley that extends nearly as far as you can see, and so very much of it is filled with city - building upon building in all shapes and sizes, clustered tightly together in places and spread expansively in others, punctuated by bands of dark blue and manicured green. It's still too far away to make out many individual details, but the sheer scale takes a few moments to absorb. Even at a glance you can pick out buildings both taller and wider than anything in Braston - stone monuments and expansive mansions and spires that pierce the sky like ornamented spears. Broad roads in fine stone fan out from a central rise and spread in all directions, tightly uniform at first, then increasingly meandering. This seems to be a general pattern, you note, with the largest and most ostentatious buildings dominating the heart of the city and then growing steadily more modest as you approach the outskirts - give or take a few exceptions. A broad canal cuts an orderly arc across the western third of the city before giving way to an ambling river that flows beyond the city's edge and out of sight to the south.
>The sky above the city is alive with tiny figures darting to and fro, their wings merely suggestions at this distance. Ordinarily, the sheer number of them would be worthy of note, but at the moment their diminuative size serves only to reinforce the scale of the city around them. Even at this distance, the detailing of its architecture shines with artistic flourish. Quite literally in some cases, with sunlight gleaming brightly off polished metal in regal golds and warms bronzes. There is money here. So very much money. The contrast with the city you left behind is stark and unmistakable - nothing about these buildings was designed with utility foremost in mind. They were designed to impress. And wrly, you suppose they did a pretty good job at that - no one could take a look at this vista and retain a single doubt about the wealth and prosperity of Val Razua. Not a one.
>Far closer at hand, and actually somewhat removed from the bulk of the city itself, is the harbor. Built up all along the sides of the skyway are moorages and the infrastructure to service them, both more orderly and more picturesque than Braston's, though not nearly to the same degree as the city beyond. The layout makes it tricky to compare its capacity to Braston's at a glance, and you suspect the confines of the passage it's built in make maneuvering bulk transports trickier, too, but it clearly wasn't designed for them alone. There are airships of all kinds here, from the heavy cargo transports you're used to seeing to highly ornamented passenger liners and small pleasure craft - some of them quite expensive looking. Activity dockside looks comfortingly familiar, but is arguable even busier; far fewer oni, though. Actually, it's a bit strange to see so few of them around such a busy harbor.
>Signals are exchanged and orders shouted, and the Maiden starts to pull into one of the cargo moorages along the right edge of the passage. This is it. This is really it. You're here.
