TRADE AND COMMERCE
Trade with the Break Ridge:
Along the rivers 2 types of coal: “hearth-stone”, a cheap coal used to heat buildings, and “dragon-stone” a more expensive coal used for iron and steel forging, are brought to the city. Additionally, tin and iron ore are mined from there.
Trade with the Jorak Mountains
High grade metal work is imported to the city from the Crimson Dwarves of Gormling. Dragon-stone coal and food stuffs are exported to Gormling. This trade takes place by caravan along the south road.
Trade with Shadar
Spices, exotic herbals, incense, copper ore, Essence of Krangor, and a desert product called “growth sand”( which is a potent fertilizer) are all taken by caravan from Shadar to Polychronopolos. Wine, cloth, books, olive oil, jewelry, tin and iron ingots are exported from Polychronopolis to Shadar by caravan.
Trade Through Portburg
The city ships books, cloth, iron, tin and coal plus anything they buy from Shadar and Jorak down the river and out across the sea to many foreign ports.
From the Other regions
The farming zones send great amounts of grain, flax, wine and olive oil into the city. Most of the wine and oil is exported, most of the grain is consumed locally, but a significant fraction is baked into the famous Polychron Biscuit. The herding zones provide a good amount of meat for local consumption and many hides for leather and parchment manufacture, but more importantly, large amount of wool is sent to the city to fuel its myriad looms.
Manufacture in the City
The tin and iron ore brought by barge from the Break Ridge is smelted into ingots for export and local manufacture. Hides from all across the region are tanned into leather and parchment in an extensive series of tanneries. There are multitudes of small cloth-making operations, and a gigantic mill called the Great Loomatorion which produces huge amounts of middle-grade wool cloth, but seemingly has no work force. Grain that is not consumed locally is made into Polychron Biscuit, a form of hard-tack, ideal for transport, but it also is much more palatable than other hard-tacks. Polychronopolis has also become a world-hub of book manufacture. The city is also famous for its highly-skilled jewelers (both Gnomes and humans) who fuel a brisk export trade.
Gold:
While most of the region’s gold mines are played out, so much of it was mined, coined and made into jewelry over the last millennia, that ruins can be crammed with it and jealous monsters collect it for its mysterious power to sustain their magic. The Jewelers of the city, especially are keen to have treasure hunters dig the stuff up, since more of it in circulation lowers their raw material costs.