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Starting Cities
September 16, 2026 at 03:07 PM
Added harbour city, market colonnade and underground dock images
A new character in Monsters & Memories begins in one of four cities. Two are on the surface and two are underground, and the underground pair are not merely dungeons with vendors: they are full cities in the Deep with their own populations and their own economies.
Which city a character starts in is decided by the combination of race, faith and class, not by race alone. That is the single most important thing to understand about the system, and it is why most races have no fixed starting city at all. The official material names an explicit start for only two of the twelve races.
City | Where | What it is | Who may start there |
|---|---|---|---|
Night Harbor | Szuur, on the western coast of Aêthoril | The Crown Jewel of the West, a massive port city. See Zones. | Good and neutral race, faith and class combinations. |
The Underdocks | The Deep, far below Night Harbor | A seedy underground port district and a conduit for trade and transport, connecting the surface to the Deep regions. See Descent into the Deep. | Some neutral and evil combinations. |
Faelindral | Calafrey, in the Evershade Weald | The City in the Trees. | Wood elves and halflings. |
Ail'vorith | The Deep, far below eastern Calafrey | The dark capital of the deep elves, and the great capital city of the underworld. | Various evil combinations. |
Only two statements in the official material tie a named race to a named city, and both are worth quoting in shape because everything else is inference.
Wood elves and halflings have the option of starting in Faelindral, the City in the Trees. The word option is in the original, so it is not necessarily their only start.
Ail'vorith is the dark capital of the deep elves, and various evil race, faith and class combinations will be able to start there.
Everything else is a disposition rule rather than a race rule. Good and neutral combinations may begin in Night Harbor, some neutral and evil combinations in The Underdocks, and various evil combinations in Ail'vorith. Those describe the character's faith and alignment as much as the race, which is why a single race can plausibly start in more than one place.
The developers have stated in writing that some starting locations for different race, faith and class combinations will be updated before Early Access launch. That is an explicit warning that the mapping above is provisional. As of September 2026 no revised assignment list has been published, and any per-race starting city chart beyond the two confirmed statements should be treated as unofficial.
Night Harbor and The Underdocks are the same location from two sides. One is a port city on the western coast; the other is the port district beneath it, described as the conduit that connects the surface world to the Deep regions of the continent. A character starting in one is a short vertical distance from the other, which makes the pairing the setting's cleanest illustration of what the Deep actually is.
Faelindral and Ail'vorith have no such relationship. Faelindral sits in the forests of Calafrey; Ail'vorith lies far below Calafrey's eastern lands, in the ruins of a city the high elves once drove the deep elves out of. They are the same region at two depths and two opposite dispositions.
As of September 2026 the official material does not publish a district list, a vendor list, a quest list, or a class trainer location for any of the four cities. Guard keywords name a handful of districts and locations in passing, including a Necropolis, a Sageside, a Concourse of Souls, a Night Market and a Western Gate, but no published statement says which city any of those belongs to. See Quests and Interface and Commands.
No fifth starting city has been announced. The Heap, the goblin home, and the Galdri Range, the dwarven homeland, are both named in the lore and neither is a city a character can start in.
