In many other cities there are areas where criminal enterprises operate. But no where do they operate blatantly like they do in Nexus. Unlike in other countries, there are no laws against such businesses so all manner of immoral enterprises can operate free of interference from the law. Gambling houses, whore houses and drug dens all exist in the open and advertise themselves freely.
Whole streets are devoted to exploiting the vices of the city's inhabitants.
The city was founded at the centre of a network of burgeoning trade routes making it the place for merchants to buy and sell their wares. Rather than travel all the way to their destination they could simply sell in the new market town and trade for whatever commodity people back home desired. As a result of the shorter trade routes, trade in the area boomed. Soon people started turning up and setting up markets for any new and exotic commodity they could think of, looking for a buyer. It had grown from being a place where people could drop off their goods to where they went looking to start a new market.
In many other parts of the world (or rather all of them) many of the business in Nexus would be considered criminal enterprises and outlawed. In Nexus however anybody can set up a business to supply anything.
Far from being disreputable, 'hostile takeovers' are the usual method of getting ahead and most of the city's leading merchants acquired their power (and maintain it) by eliminating their rivals. Not only re businesses illicit but so are the ways they are run. Management is what would be described elsewhere as gang warfare. Violence in the street is just as much a part of life in the city as the vices it caters to.
Nexus isn't a city in the formal sense, the product of a state with it's own laws and culture.
It's a city that grew from a huge market site where people lived. The docks are the most historic feature of Nexus, the first part of the city to be established by traders who met from three different directions of the River Province. Behind the docks is the vast market that is the beating heart of the city.
