Ashalam

The city of Ashalam is Dragon Quest III's stand-in for the Middle East as a whole, and while there are no major quests there, it's one of my favorite locations in the game for just how evocative it is. Even before you get there, you're told that it's a great trade center, and indeed, there are more shops here than anywhere else in the game. Some of the merchants are more unscrupulous than others and dramatically overcharge you for their wares, insisting that they need to do that or they won't make enough money to feed their family, you see, and you don't want their family to starve, do you? You can play a simple haggling minigame to try and lower the prices, but even then, the lowest they'll ask for is still more than what you could get the same items for in other places.

Unlike many towns in the game, where NPCs retire to their beds at night, Ashalam is busy night and day, with different encounters you can find at different times. There's a tavern where dancing girls are performing at night, and a woman who propositions you for a "massage" - which turns out to be a scam and a waste of money if you take her up on her offer. Ashalam is noted as being famous for its dancers, and one of them can be found as far away as Alefgard.

This already sounds like the kind of city Conan would brawl and wench his way through, and I would play this up for The Saga of the Ortegids, running Ashalam as something akin to Shadizar or Port Blacksand - a hotbed of thievery, crime, and charlatanism, where all the authorities are corrupt and you can never take anyone at face value. A city where gold and silver flow in the streets, but where fortunes are gambled away as soon as they're won. A city where all manner of vices are indulged in openly, where a cheer can be heard from every tavern and the scent of black lotus hangs on the air (Isisian, the best! Would I sell haga to a slayer such as you?). Turn the wrong corner and you'll be shaken down - or worse.

Ashalam could serve as an excellent home base for a more roguish party; as a regional trade center, there would surely be rumors heard from all over, and plenty of patrons in need of someone willing to work under the table. If one wanted to emphasize the danger of the city, it could even be run akin to a dungeon - it certainly has enough potential for chaos to unfold, and one could find plenty of adventure within the walls.

Art by Vitor Ishimura

Like Kazave or Noaniels, Ashalam has no authority figures, but it's located quite far from Romaly, so it's hard for me to justify it being a part of the same empire. I would instead run it as a free city-state, likely established as a stopover point for caravans, and run by a few powerful merchant dynasties - probably with several rivalries among them, to make for higher-level intrigue and faction play. Most likely, there would be other mercantile city-states in the region of similar character, though I'd be inclined to make Ashalam the most notorious of the lot.

Interestingly, while the ground in the city itself is sandy, the overworld doesn't have any major deserts in the vicinity - those are all over by Isis. Instead, Ashalam is surrounded by forests and grasslands, inhabited by carnivorous apes and wild dogs. Perhaps, geographically, the region would be more akin to the savannahs of the Sudan, or maybe the Iranian plateau. There are still deserts nearby, but it's not the endless sea of sand you'd expect from most settings of the sort.