Otter Beach

Otter Beach is an oceanside community on the east edge of Magnar's Landing.

Closed Community
Members of the nobility and merchant classes maintain residence in the city in order to remain close to the hub of political and commercial activity, but it can be a filthy place. City life is also awash with very strong smells, some pleasant and some noxious:  seaweed, fish, river churn, horse manure, forges, bakeries, ammonia from 80,000 people emptying their chamber pots into the street.

The very wealthy maintain homes on the edge of the city to provide for the occasional reprieve from all that. The elite community of Otter Beach started with a few large estates owned by the nobility and the Gullstein merchant family. They built huge, multi-story mansions on the bluffs overlooking the tranquil beach. More mansions were erected there as years passed, and now most of the top families in the city own a brick or limestone home overlooking the ocean.

Description
Named for the flotillas of sea otters that live there, Otter Beach runs north to south and stretches for miles. It’s a gently sloping part of the coast, so the waters are warm and shallow—perfect for swimming. A constant breeze off the ocean keeps smells from the city away. City law enforcement guards the area to make sure marine wildlife doesn’t get too close to children playing in the surf, and to keep riff raff from the city off the beach.

Construction Ban
When it was first established, Otter Beach was well beyond the farthest reaches of Magnar’s Landing, but the city keeps expanding. Now the edges of the Whirl are only a few miles away. In response to the encroaching urban sprawl, the residents of Otter Beach erected walls around their estates. They also instituted a law that forbids any new construction within two miles of the beach without a majority vote of approval from the existing inhabitants. Now, owning land on Otter Beach has become a signal that your family has “made it.”