Sida spends several minutes gawking at the magnificent stonework before gathering her wits about her.

"Right. We need to... find a place to stay and park the wagon, feed and water the oxen, and then I suppose look for leads before nightfall. Or, our completely arbitrary underground bedtime, I suppose."

Dyva gawks for a bit as well, but gets distracted by some interesting moss after only a minute or so of gawking. 

"Well, we've still got to get up the locks, that'll be a few hours at least. And are we going to be spending winter here or on the other side of the mountains? Or I guess in one of the cities in the middle somewhere, we could do that too." 

"I am imagining that we keep following the road north, stopping for various adventures along the way, and it will be spring by the time we get to the other side of the mountains. I expect I could spend at least a month in Azgazan, and something tells me we'll be exploring the forests of Jurgich for a while too."

"Yeah, that sounds fun! But does mean we'll be spending a lot of money at inns, I guess? To store the wagon at least, while we go on expeditions. If we were going to spend a season in one city, we could probably rent a house for the duration?" 

"And if we try to select a single city you and I are going to have a long argument about which one and I'd much rather just spend some extra money."

"I can think of no way to prevent or settle said argument without arbitrarily picking a side myself, which seems like a poor way to settle intraparty disputes."

"... yeah, okay, that's fair. Travel through various cities it is." 

With the itinerary thus planned, the party enters Gol-Viorum, properly. While the locks are well-maintained, the same cannot be said for the great land-gate next to the canal that allows boats lifted by the locks into the mountains. The land-gate is made of the same white stone as the rest of the city and it's infrastructure, but it hangs open, it's mechanism long-failed and the gate itself far to large to be practically moved any other way. Instead, a smaller fortification and a wooden gate has been built across the open space in the mountain-face that the gate leaves, and it is through that lesser wooden gate that the party fares. They are charged an adventurer's tariff for entering the city with a wagonload of unappraised goods and possessions, steep but not beyond their means. 

The entrance-hall of Gol-Viorum is a busy docklands in nature, though made a little absurd simply for being half-way up a mountain. Boats are unloaded, wagons repaired, and goods are ported into warehouses build into the mountainside. The hall are alight with magical flames in glittering red and blue, kept firmly within iron cages throughout the building. From here, as travellers and not merchants, the party continues up the way to the grand bazaar, where the majority of the actual bargaining and trade takes place. Vendors sell carved stone, steaming dumplings and copper wrought into every manner of tool and appliance, but the finest stalls sell gems. Jewellers flanked by heavily armed guards compete against each other to sell wonders cut from ruby and sapphire in every manner of cut and sculpture, with the finest pieces using cascading masses of fine gems or single whole gems the size of a fist, each worth as much as a peasant might make in a lifetime. Not all is well with the city, though; the cavern in which the bazaar is located is a bowl-shape, with buildings creeping up the sides in every direction, but the arcane light that illuminates every main road and well-maintained house is first patchy, and then totally absent from the edges of the cavern, where the buildings appear in the gloom to be in equally poor repair. 

The party cannot spend forever in the bazaar, unfortunately, travel-weary as they are, and find themselves moving to an inn in a side-cavern. In this cavern, the decay is even more visible; the main roads are well-lit and busy enough, but for every inhabited block, there's another behind it, dark, silent, and presumably abandoned. The inn is modest and affordable, compared to those located more centrally, and compared to the huts of rural villagers, it seems like a paradise, with it's downright tolerable mushroom ale and heavy-stacked plates of oily mushroom preserves and mystery-meat dumplings doused in strong vinegar. 

Here, the party can rest for a while, before getting ready to seek out their next adventure! 

Sida makes a face when it comes time to pay taxes, but says nothing. Once they reach the inn, she tries some mystery meat dumplings—passably tasty—and mushroom ale, the flavor of which is better left undescribed.

"I have a good feeling about this city. The place is falling apart. I think we won't need to look very hard to find something to fight."

"That is not actually a desirable trait, Sida."

"Oh I don't know, fights are often profitable, and if they can't get locals to do useful work then they're more likely to want to hire us instead. It's not like we're looking to settle down here, we just need to find profitable things to do for a few weeks, so the city can be as much of a decrepit wreck as it cares to be and it's not really our problem." 

"What I meant is that, it being easy for us to find things to fight also implies it being easy for those things to find us. There seems to be danger here, but it may not be the right kind of danger, and we may not find it at a convenient time or place."

Being a risk-averse adventurer, despite its oxymoronic quality, makes a lot of sense. To much sense to argue with, really. But it sure is fucking tedious. Sida chews on a dumpling and ponders this, and related topics.

"Oh it'll be fine, we can take an ambush or two, that's what Ossa is for." 

"Sure, that sounds plausible and reassuring. Let's go for a walk in the dark and see if there are any abandoned houses we can explore!"

"Oh, I thought the plan was to find paying work and then get whatever loot comes up in the course of that, rather than just looking for it directly." 

"What I am proposing is not an advancement strategy. It is a fun strategy."

"Maybe 'strategy' is too strong a word."

"I feel like there are better hobbies out there, like shopping. Or reading. Or gardening." 

"There were hardly any abandoned buildings where I grew up, so I never got to stomp around inside one, and now that I can it feels like a good idea. If you guys don't want to, oh well. Wandering out alone seems a bit too foolhardy for me, so it will just have to wait."

"I overheard mention of a temple to Civilization in one of the adjacent caverns. Perhaps we could inquire there about jobs or bounties?"

"As good a place as any!" 

Sida quickly finishes the rest of her food, takes a swig from her canteen, and stands up.

"Sure, that's a decent idea. Let's go."

It's easy enough to find direction to the temple of the god of legions, roads, healers, and prosperity-through-obedience; it has a side-cavern to itself, where the temple, all fine columns and white stone, stands surrounded by a small underground vineyard beneath a cavern ceiling studded with arcane lights like red and blue stars above, keeping the entire place well-lit enough for the grapes, if barely. Acolytes in white robes hurry about, tending to the matters of the temple both mundane and divine.