Upper Wards

"When you think of Sharn, you think of the Upper Wards. The rest of us think of Sharn too — we just don't think of it as a compliment." — Overheard at the Bazaar of Dura

The Upper Wards are Sharn's high city: the neighborhoods above the smog line, above the constant noise, and above most practical inconvenience. They occupy the upper reaches of the great towers and the best-connected spans between them, where the air is cleaner, the streets are wider, and the city's systems work the way they are advertised. From here, Sharn looks orderly. That is part of the point.

These districts are built for comfort and control. Buildings are maintained to a standard rather than patched to survive. Lighting is planned. Access is managed through private security, keyed lifts, guarded skybridges, and doormen who recognize faces. Public space exists, but it is curated — parks, promenades, galleries, and clubs designed to be used by people who belong there and to discourage those who don't, without needing to say so out loud. Skysedge Park in Upper Central maintains three sprawling rooftop gardens tended by immigrants from the Eldeen Reaches; on most mornings, only those with the right addresses or the right invitations use them.

The city's Syranian manifest zone — the same planar influence that lets Sharn's towers reach impossible heights and keeps skycoaches aloft — is felt more purely at elevation. Down in the lower wards and the Cogs, that energy is buried under decades of industry, smoke, and structural compromise. Up here, the magic breathes more freely, and the towers stand taller for it. Whether that observation carries metaphorical weight is left to the resident's discretion.

Power and Access

Wealth in the Upper Wards is not only money; it is access. House services are close and reliable. Medical care arrives quickly. Messages move faster. Permits, licenses, and inspections are flexible for the right names. The Watch presence is steady and visible, but it functions more as reassurance and boundary-setting than active policing. When crime happens, it is handled quietly — through private investigators, hired pressure, sealed settlements, and paperwork that never reaches a public docket.

The Sharn Watch's commanders are candid among themselves about what this means: Upper Central receives priority response as a matter of standing policy. Guards here are already well compensated by the powerful noble families and criminal organizations who maintain informal arrangements with the Watch's leadership. They work efficiently in the service of these forces, and they define "the peace" accordingly. A common saying in the lower wards holds that in the upper wards, the Watch works for the wealthy; in the middle wards, it works for the Boromar Clan; and in the lower wards, it doesn't work at all. This assessment is close enough to the truth.

Private security firms fill the gaps where the Watch is merely decorative. In Korran-Thiven — the financial district whose very name means "Korran's Blade" in Dwarven — armed guards in house livery stand near every storefront and on every balcony. In Mithral Tower, the residential district that anchors downtown Upper Central, households supplement Watch patrols with magical wards and contracted sentinels. Upper Tavick's Landing went further still: during the Last War its leadership petitioned the city council for extraordinary measures, and today a full hundred Deneith Blademark soldiers maintain checkpoints at every entrance to the ward, their authority equal to that of the Watch itself. The cost is levied as a tax on district residents, and they pay it without complaint.

The Institutions That Matter

The Upper Wards are also where Sharn's institutions keep their faces. Noble families host dinners and raise funds. Dragonmarked Houses maintain showrooms and enclaves. The Highest Towers civic district — seat of city government, home to the Lord Mayor's offices and the municipal archives, and the point of arrival and departure for Lyrandar airships — occupies the pinnacle of Upper Central and manages to be both the most official address in Sharn and one of the least exciting. Real decisions are made elsewhere, at dinner tables and in the back rooms of auction houses.

Platinum Heights is the finest commercial district in the city, with fewer shops than the Bazaar of Dura but no comparable in terms of quality or price. The Aurora Gallery maintains the most prestigious magic item auction house in Sharn; items worth as much as 130,000 gold have changed hands there, with buyers paying anywhere from eighty to a hundred and forty percent of market value depending on how badly they want what is on the block. Sannid's Restaurant — a third-generation family establishment near the Tower of Gold — is known throughout Khorvaire for its wine cellars, its spiced Brelish fare, and for the fact that a reservation is itself a social credential.

The financial core of Upper Central is split between two districts. Korranath, named for the great temple of Kol Korran that dominates it, is where wealth is acquired: moneychangers, the Kundarak Bank of Sharn, and the Vaults — House Kundarak's ostensibly impenetrable storage facility beneath the bank. Korran-Thiven, its harder-edged twin, is where wealth is protected. Kalphan Riak, whose mansion crowns Andith Tower on the edge of Mithral Tower and who holds controlling interests in six of Sharn's ten banks, operates from both districts; he is one of the Upper Wards' most powerful residents and one of its least reputable, a wartime arms dealer turned Aurum member whose fortune and connections make him effectively unaccountable.

Reputation as Currency

Reputation is currency in the Upper Wards, and most conflicts are managed through social leverage before they become public problems. The clearest expression of this is the Tain Gala — the monthly gathering hosted by Lady Celyria ir'Tain at Tain Manor in Skyway, which defines the social order of the city. The ir'Tains are Sharn's oldest money: the first towers were raised with their gold, an ir'Tain served as the city's first Lord Mayor, and the family owns vast sections of the towers below in the form of tenements and apartment complexes that most residents of those tenements have never connected to a name. The Sixty Families — those with standing invitations to the Gala — are the acknowledged ruling class of Sharn's social world. Noble families, dragonmarked heirs, and a handful of wealthy gentry whose money has made them peers regardless of bloodline all hold places on the list. A standing invitation can be revoked; the ir'Moros family lost theirs to make room for Saiden Boromar, a move that caused considerable private commentary about the direction of the city's social order.

The Aurum operates behind this social architecture with a harder agenda. Where the Sixty are a social club whose members are often bitter rivals, the Aurum is a coordinated conspiracy of wealthy individuals — including Kalphan Riak and the Councillor Haras Kant of Upper Northedge — pursuing maximum profitability through carefully orchestrated influence over commerce, politics, and civic institutions. Many members of the Aurum are also members of the Sixty, and the distinction between the two organizations is not always visible from the outside.

Districts at a Glance

The Upper Wards are not a single place but a collection of distinct neighborhoods scattered across Sharn's quarters, each with its own character within the broader register of wealth and control.

Upper Central is the densest concentration of institutional power in the city: the civic district of Highest Towers, the twin financial districts of Korranath and Korran-Thiven, the residential prestige of Mithral Tower, the commercial apex of Platinum Heights, and the manicured rooftop gardens of Skysedge Park. More wealth flows through this ward than many cities ever see.

Upper Northedge is wealthy but quiet, chosen by those who want distance from the bustle of Central without sacrificing comfort. Shae Lias — the elf neighborhood — is known throughout the city as a shopping destination for fine woodwork, furniture, and Aerenal craftwork. Its statues of long-dead elves stand throughout the plazas and orchard balconies, and the Gates of Passage at its center serves simultaneously as crypt, temple, and embassy for citizens of Aerenal who die in Sharn.

Upper Menthis anchors the intellectual and entertainment elite. Morgrave University sits at its center, drawing scholars, buyers of Xen'drik artifacts, and patrons of the arts. Seventh Tower provides fine shops; Den'iyas is home to Sharn's gnome community, many connected to House Sivis or the university's networks.

Upper Dura is the exception that proves the rule. Economically it functions more like a middle ward — Dura is a poor quarter, and its upper reaches are merely comfortable rather than genuinely wealthy. Clifftop, its most notable district, is an adventurer's quarter with a different relationship to risk and social convention than the city's other upper neighborhoods.

Upper Tavick's Landing is a self-contained district for the wealthy, complete with luxury shopping, fine residences, servant quarters, and the extraordinary ward laws described above. It has constructed its isolation deliberately and defends it with legal and military force.

Skyway sits above all of them, floating on solidified cloud above both Central Plateau and Menthis. No bridges or lifts connect it to the rest of the city; one arrives by skycoach or flying mount. The ir'Tain manor anchors its social life. The Dragon's Hoard, the Celestial Vista, and the Cloud Dragon restaurant compete for the same guests. The Azure Gateway — a newer hotel and restaurant whose owner remains studiously anonymous — has attracted interest precisely because of that mystery. Skyway is Sharn at its most extreme: the place where the wealthiest people in Khorvaire have arranged never to need to touch the ground.

A Qualified Safety

This is not a paradise. The Upper Wards still depend on what happens below, and they are not immune to scandal, violence, or desperate people who have found a way in. Corruption reaches into every Watch garrison and every council chamber. The Aurum conspires from manor houses. Blackmail, quiet assassination, and reputation destruction all occur here, with the same regularity as anywhere in the city — they simply tend to leave less mess, and to resolve in ways that never reach a public docket.