Aerie Point is a small city in Brightmarch, built around and on top of a large sea arch of the same name that reaches into the Gulf of Aserdus. Most of the town's inhabitants live off the sea, whether as fishers, pearl divers, or farmers tending to fish as well as to crops of seaweed, kelp, and other plants.
City
Description
Nearly all buildings in Aerie Point are constructed of stone gathered from the shore or, less commonly, cut from the cliffs. For stone structures they are unusually open, commonly designed to pull the sea breeze through the building to keep its occupants cool. The city covers nearly the entire buildable surface area of the arch, edge to edge and cliff to sea, and as a result some buildings are instead located along the rocky beach at the base of the arch.
Society
Aerie Point regularly trades with the many nomadic groups that live nearby. In particular, one tribe of the Idrimi often camps nearby. Pearls, sharkskin, and decorative shells are the city's largest trade goods, which are exchanged for fine hardwood and other materials from the interior. The people of Aerie Point have a reputation as being far more comfortable with the sea than with the grasslands and forests away from the coast, and though not isolationist they rarely travel too far from their homes.
History
Aerie Point has been inhabited since the arrival of elves from Eita in the third millennium. The kingdom maintained a small outpost at the site for centuries, but the settlement never grew to more inhabitants than would be found in a typical village, as the elves generally saw the rocky and rugged coastline as an undesirable place to live compared to the bounty that could be found in the interior of Brightmarch. When Eita eventually contracted many thousands of years later, the elves who lived there remained as many of their kin returned to the Cradle or made their way to Hinthial.
Gradually the elves were joined by humans from inland Brightmarch, whose arrival began to grow the city. A lack of buildable space has kept Aerie Point from growing much larger than its present size, the rough coastline, cliffs, and seastacks poorly suited to urbanization.
Arch
The arch around which Aerie Point is located, often known by the same name as the city itself, is one of many along its stretch of coastline. Apart from its immense size - over 100 ft tall, 80 feet wide, and extending almost 500 feet into the sea - it is also unique for the many petroglyphs carved into the underside of the arch. These drawings etched into the rock depict massive, stylistically exaggerated humanoid forms as well as those of sea creatures, including both mundane ones like fish, whales, and sharks as well as luscas, krakens, and oddly linnorms, which are not found in such tropical latitudes. Though ancient, each petroglyph is carved deep enough into the stone that even the coastal winds and waves have not been enough to erode them away.
None are quite sure who created the petroglyphs. They bear a striking resemblance to the art of the Tidelords, giants that live along a stretch of Brightmarch's southwestern coast, but no Tidelords are known to have lived in the area. The petroglyphs were present when Eita made its first footsteps out of the Cradle and into Brightmarch, making them at least over 7000 years old - there are scant clues to date them more specifically, however.