☞This is unofficial material based on the Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign setting. It's stuff I made up around the details given in the campaign setting book. It's also a rough draft.
Here are some basic descriptions of neighborhoods in Bet Kalamar, for a hackmaster campaign. More areas can be revealed/written as the party explores the city.
Half a million people live in Bet Kalamar, including thousands of orcs, gnomes, dwarves, and elves. It is a port city in a tropical "long pine" forest, and straddles the Badato river. The humans who live there are "Kalamarans", which is a centuries-old mix of hundreds of cultures. There is a wall to keep out threats, and multiple communities that are on the outside of the wall. The streets are all narrow, badly-maintained, and full of sewage, trash, and chickens. There is no traffic control system. There are no street lights.
There is a harbor for traffic from the ocean and a harbor for traffic from the river. Both are for collecting taxes from merchants on commodities, collecting storage fees, collecting docking fees, collecting taxes on laborers, collecting taxes on weapons, and so on. The two harbors have separate harbormasters and separate providers of warehouses, workshops, and dry docks.
Bet Kalamar has four "neighborhoods" of docks that are on the river.
There are packed-in shops and houses, half of which are under bridges and boardwalks. Most stores sell necessities for fishers, such as clothing and tackle.
Mainly taverns and liquor stores. Beggars band up in groups of twenty to follow drunk people around on the boardwalks.
This is a dropoff point for ships which carry ores, stone, and other ludicrously heavy cargo. Some minerals are loaded into wagons, and some are emptied into rudimentary mine carts, which get pulled by mules to the client shops that ordered them.
A dock for peddlers to sell directly off small boats without disembarking. People board the boats to shop.
There are two isles in the middle of the river: Golden Isle and The Eelpot. Both have to be visited to cross the river from one bank to the other, unless you have a canoe or want to take a sewery swim.
An island of swanky, important buildings. Tax collectors and other city officials have offices here. There are also high-end taverns, and playhouses for idle rich people. There are temples of the Valiant and the Landlord on Golden Isle.
A small island with plenty of buskers and hawkers of charms and cheap food. A lot of merchants have tents here, selling baubles and odd parts to things.
Several schools close to the colliseum that train gladiators, bodyguards, and soldiers, generally in exchange for money.
There is a great deal of competent weaponsmiths in this neighborhood, and an equal amount of sloppy smiths.
Shops that use a furnace. Makers of ceramics, glassware, metalwork. Finesmiths and blacksmiths and armorers.
The typical arrangement is to wheelbarrow charcoal from across town, and cart in ores from barges.
Businesses and lower class houses near "The Spruce Field", which is a colossal garbage dump. Includes rat catchers, dog catchers, and butchers. Ragpickers can find permanent employment here.
Cramped lines of stalls and small shops selling produce, drugs, and spices. There are caners on some streets who sell baskets.
A nasty neighborhood for gambling addicts, with moneylenders and seedy taverns. Home to a whorey bowling alley where knife fights often break out. Mobs of killers and slavers.
A commercial area characterized by long airy warehouses, where chickens are made into meat and glue. Pickled eggs are periodically scalped from here, causing an enormous variance in price.
Brick homes and laboratories of alchemists, charcoal burners, and pharmacists.
Slaughterhouses, butchers, tanners, smokehouses, sausage artists, and dairies.
Textile makers, weavers, and tailors. Artisans who work with linen, wool, and silk.
A neighborhood built around a racetrack & casino. Holds a used horse lot, farriers, and feed shops. There are also places to get trained work dogs and other animals.
Stores for accountants and traders. Merchants here sell maps, abacuses, stationary, and scales. There are some offices of scribes, engineers, and other services. Furthermore, couriers and teamsters can be hired here.
A plaza of different types of woodshops. Diverse carpentry trades are represented, and offer rafters, wagons, wooden hardware, turned wood, and woodworking tools.
An area of granaries, breweries, and mills for processing rice.
The palace has a curtain wall and lower walls. The courtyard has a cramped-together section of small brick buildings. There is an open training ground separate from them, and a laboratory within the walls, some distance away from the other buildings.
The miscellaneous separate buildings in the bailey include a townhouse, playhouse, prison, barracks, and stables.
The townhouse has several bedrooms, drawing rooms, ball rooms, a picture gallery, a library, and a labyrinth of cellars.
The palace holds a few novel and experimental machines, including a rudimentary computer powered by water, and an impractical central air conditioner.
Within 7 miles of Bet Kalamar are a few towns where 200+ people live.
| Town name | Summary | Goods and services |
| Satolagh | Hobgoblin smelting town | Exports ingots, charcoal, quicklime, and sea-fire |
| Ergis | Logging town | Exports logs, pitch, syrups, tannins, turpentine |
| Kabakin | Town on the river | Residents pull barges and run a sawmill. Additionally exports flours, powders, and dyes. |
| Banar | Town in the bayou by the ocean. | Residents run fishing boats |
| Rufik | Pottery/smelting town that was razed for missing its taxes | |
| Tath | Logging town that was abandoned. | |
Outside of these, are a few dozen farms, ranches and hamlets (towns of < 20) on the outskirts. Here is a couple.
| Pinello Farm | pigs |
| Caulri Farm | chickens | Hefoki Ranch | horses |
| Calai Ranch | cows |
| Serekaba | hamlet with a brewer and a saddle maker |
| the castle of Earl Gafu (northish) | |
| the castle of Dame Maluri (eastish) | |
Tolis is a big island in the ocean south of Bet Kalamar a little bit.
Tolis island's native mini-biomes were a dry, loamy pine forest on the west half, a swamp in the east, and a large hill in the center.
A lot of migrant workers and debtors have to live here as fishers and farmers. They live in vast arrays of regularly-spaced huts. Their different fishing seasons take them to the swamp, shoals, ocean, and Badato river. The workers also maintain, harvest, and process a gigantic sugarcane farm.
The island is swarming with both overt and undercover guards, who are assigned to this island when they are not well-liked.