A low-cost visitor's guide to Cadence, from Starfall Quay and the Lantern Market to the archive heights, census terraces, tide-flats, and the root of the Starfall Lift.
Cadence fills the basin around the root of the Starfall Lift. Look up from almost any open street and you will see the cable disappear into Refrain's rain. When the cloud breaks, cracked Glassmoon hangs above the city. On a clear deep night, the Elyran Scatter crosses the sky like a bright broken arc.
Most visitors arrive wet. Buy a hood before buying a keepsake.
Starfall Quay
The working port surrounds the lower freight approaches. Expect slick metal decks, customs queues, cargo walkers, food smoke, ferry notices, repair crews, and shrine alcoves built wherever a dry corner remained dry long enough.
Dock bread costs one quay scrip. Blue oil sweets cost two. Prices rise near a delayed departure, so walk one row away from the main queue before eating. Keep your ticket inside your clothing. Rain turns bad ink into no ticket at all.
Lantern Market
Blue lamps mark rooms, meals, maps, legal weapons, false papers, debts, guides, and people willing to tell you which of those you actually need. Ask the price before sitting down. Ask whether the price is coin or favor. If someone says the first help is free, they have probably begun a ledger you have not seen.
The market is also the easiest place to replace ordinary travel gear and the worst place to announce that you do not know its value.
Archive Heights
White stone, white wood, silver fittings, ritual tea, and more stairs than any history requires. The Archive Steps lead toward the Elyran Index Hall and the Evernuun Mourning Salon. An ordinary archive reading pass costs twelve aurels before copying or translation.
Know your question before paying. “My grandmother passed through Cadence” is a start. Her name, date, ship, trade, or destination will make the pass more useful.
Census Terraces
Black glass and stamped paper dominate the terraces around the Veyr Census Spire and Grailwarden Judgment Hall. This is where names are entered, corrected, compared, and occasionally made more complicated by an attempt to simplify them.
Bring every document you have and copies of anything you cannot afford to lose. Ask which office stamped a refusal and where it may be appealed. A queue that appears to serve one purpose may separate into six purposes at the window.
Contract Yards
The Thornefall yards handle guards, escorts, recovery crews, weapons, and contracts whose price increases with the number of armed people required. Read what happens if the work ends early. “Recovery” may refer to a person, property, debt, or body, and the contract should make clear which one is being discussed.
Vaelorin Tide-Flats
Clinics, bathhouses, wet courtyards, clean towels, warm food, adoption offices, and sanctuary advocates fill the lower flats. A public bath hour costs six aurels. A shrine healing draught commonly costs ten.
Care is generous, but read any paper attached to it. Charity and custody should not use the same door.
Nhal-Serat Dry Terraces
Mirror instruments, observatory rooms, forecast sellers, shaded tea stalls, and odds boards occupy the driest part of the basin. A forecast should state its evidence and uncertainty. Do not pay extra for certainty; certainty is not available.
The Root Galleries
Below the public streets, older galleries spread around the Lift's anchor root. Maintenance routes, service homes, storage, kitchens, and unofficial passages share the levels. Public maps become less reliable as they descend. Do not follow chalk marks unless you know who invited you to follow them.
Time and sleep
Refrain's twenty-six-hour day holds two work shifts and the grace hour. During grace, shrines open and debts cannot be served. The hour delays collection; it does not erase the debt.
A cramped dock bunk costs about six aurels. Check whether the price covers one local night or one work shift. They are not the same thing.
Cadence is wet, crowded, expensive, generous, officious, and awake whenever your own body insists it should be asleep. Keep your papers dry, your prices written down, and one quay scrip for bread.
