The Port of Tollen

• A port in the Free City of Tollen, the Western Green Sea

The Port of Tollen, properly the Ports of Tollen, describes the extensive harbors, quays, and docks that support Tollen’s maritime and river trade. The Port of Tollen is divided by the arches of the Tollen Bridge, which form a hard barrier to navigation, preventing tall-masted oceanic ships from sailing beyond it.

Downriver of the bridge lies the sea-port, where tall-masted ships from across the Green Sea moor at the deep quays of Skepwalk, Fiskurth, and Aesganstrad on the north bank, and at Southbridge and Battery on the south. Skepwalk is the busiest deepwater harbor, with long stone quays and warehouses. Fiskurth is the warren of low docks and fish markets, crowded with day-boats and inshore trawlers that bring in the city’s daily catch at dawn. On the south bank, Battery holds the naval yards, ship-slips, and the smellier bulk works of whaling and fish processing.

Upriver of the bridge is the river-port, where shallow-draft barges from the Volta’s hinterlands tie up at Riversgate and the riverfront of Brooklawn Inner, where hides, timber, grain, and other raw goods pass almost straight into tanneries, dye-works, and warehouses. Some barge traffic continues down to the small quays of Bridgeward to trade more directly with sea-going captains below the bridge, and a constant swarm of ferries and lighters plies between the north-bank and south-bank landings, knitting the sea-port and river-port together into a single, perpetually crowded harbor.