For three days you pass through farmland, fields of grain and other crops dotted with small orchards of fruit trees. Small towns dot the way, built around packed inns and stables on the trade route. The road is heavy with traffic, people walking on foot and merchant carts trundling past. Some of the travelers on foot are hitch-hiking and riding with a merchant's cart. Something you might get to do yourself for a couple of copper or the offer of good conversation.<br/><br/>For the final day, you can see the massive walls and spire of Dalbaeth approaching, built in the ancient empire the walls are a wonder, hundreds of feet high built from the blue-streaked white marble common to the ancient constructions. The spire is equally famous, built in the modern day to be higher than the walls surrounding the town, to show that modern craftsmanship can equal the works of the ancient empire.<br/><br/>As you get closer, you approach one of the tow massive stone double doors of the city, either in the north or south. The gateway into the town is a hundred feet wide, leading into the equally sized main road that runs to a bustling merchant green an eighth of a mile in, then to the foot of the spire.<br/><br/>The spire is a massive tower, reaching over a thousand feet into the sky. At the base, the sheer quantity of stone makes it resemble a mountain, yet towards the top as it rises past the wall the brute stone gives way to an elegant tower and wide flat topped platform carved like an unfolding flower from modern, conventional marble in imitation of the architecture of the ancient empire.<br/><br/>The town architecture, both modern and ancient, takes on a gothic aspect. High windows, pillar and buttresses make the walls into elegant works of art. Gargoyles, both whole bodies and faces are carved everywhere.<br/><br/>In the southwest an inner wall, smaller by far than the gargantuan outer walls but still several stories high walls off nearly a quarter of the town from the rest. Beyond the walls are tightly packed twisting corridors of wooden buildings, crowded with activity and people. This is the only part of the city where wood replaces stone buildings.<br/><br/>Around the spire, in the centre of the city, clusters of manors and mansions are built out of marble in imitation of the ancient architecture. Here and there a few buildings actually appear to be from the ancient empire, carefully maintained and preserved.<br/><br/>In the west a massive cathedral stands as a piece of soaring gothic architecture. Behind it is a vast graveyard filled with eleaborate monuments and mausoleums. It is clearly not a graveyard for the average man, but the final resting place of the wealthy and powerful.<br/><br/>The eastern wals are clustered with the workings of industry. Plumes of smoke push up against the wall but even smoke struggles to rise over the wall, so soot and ash mix in that district to create a perpetual haze. You hear many people walking from that section with horrible coughing fits and black stains clinging to their clothing.