Goudberg

Known locations and landmarks:

• Den Euwe mansion

Goudberg is one of the wealthiest districts of Marienburg, along with Guilderveld and Oudgeldwijk. Unlike Guilderveld, the pace here is more sedate and genteel, while lacking the backward looking lassitude of the old nobility in Oudgeldwijk. The people who live in Goudberg, the rich and the filthy rich, can afford to live apart from their businesses, leaving their scores of flunkies to do the real work.

Elegance is a byword in Goudberg, and the buildings in the ward reflect that. Though small by the standards of Old World nobility, the mansions of the rich are heavily decorated in whatever style was the fashion when they were built. Tilean fluted columns and Nulner statues of Winged Victory mingle
with gargoyles and faux-battlements from the time of the War of Independence. The interiors are lavish, and many a rural Imperial noble has felt like a bumpkin after paying a call. Everyone in Goudberg has servants, even if it's just one or two to do the cleaning and cooking. The mansions of the Ten are staffed to the rafters with liveried servants, many drawn from the Cathayan, Nipponese, Indic and Kislevite ghettos under Goudberg’s jurisdiction.

Businesses in Goudberg tend toward luxury, service and the arts. The playwright Willibrord Mengelberg manages the highly regarded Aardbol Theatre, partly famous because it puts on farces lampooning the elite of Marienburg while receiving subsidies from the government. In a house donated by Jaan van de Kuypers, the renowned scholar Timotheus Kogeveen tutors the children of the elite in the finest private Lyceum in the city. In Goudberg the pavement artists, streetwalkers and
cutpurses of mundane Marienburg are replaced with sculptors, courtesans and dashing, debonair cat burglars.

During the day, the ward streets and canals are filled mostlywith servants and functionaries dashing hither and yon on their masters' affairs. Tradesmen make deliveries or perform services, while lesser merchants and brokers cut deals over lunch at elegant cafes. Beggars are forcefully discouraged.

At night, the streets and canals grow quieter as Goudbergers begin their nightly rounds of social calls. Small parties travel in lantern-lit canal boats from one mansion to another in a whirl of dinner parties and less formal affairs. Younger sons of the wellto-do sally forth in small groups of rakes, cutting dashing figures with their cloaks and rapiers, hopping from one drinking-club to
the next.