The Processional

  This grand avenue of the Free City is at once the center of it's commerce, the heart of it's culture and the thread that binds it's citizens together.  It begins at the Highway Gate at the terminus of the Old City and runs more or less straight north past many of the city's grandest buildings, to it's final end at the gate house of the Grand Citadel.

  The Processional is not paved but it's surface of hard packed sand might almost be paving stone for all its durability and weather resistance.  The roadway is sightly mounded in the center of it's 120 foot width, insuring the heaviest of downpours runs quickly into the gutters.  The Processional itself seems immune to mud and ruts, and unusual feature here, where the smaller avenues routinely soak up rainwater and become mud-clogged morasses.

  During it's course, the Processional passes through the Black Gate and the Garden Gate.  It runs through the heart of the Low Marketplace and forms one side of the High Marketplace.  The roadway splits around the vast roanwood tree in the city, once used for hanging criminals and ever afterward called the Hanging Tree.  The tree serves simply to provide shade and greenery now.  Beyond the tree the road curves slightly to cross a wide wooden bridge over the Millstream.

  From there it climbs gently almost imperceptibly to the slope below the Citadel.  For it's final stretch the roadway climbs a man-made embankment, carrying it gently up to the gate house of the Citadel.

  During the daytime it teems with carts and wagons, pedestrians and riders, even the occasional shepherd or herdsman driving some of his stock before him.  The patrols of the City Watch are common here, for this is the thoroughfare used by those patrols as they march to the far corners of the city and back..  Preceding and following the changing of the guard patrols the Processional sometimes has the look of a military parade ground as more and more patrols come together on their way back to the Citadel.

  Indeed the Processional might have been designed with parades in mind.

Gates of Greyhawk