On the approach to the docklands in Sarvos the visitor comes across an imposing gatehouse, built in white stone. The wooden gate, a good five yards high, is carved with the emblem of the Carta Bellamarina, the Pelican. There is a postern gate set into the rump of the bird (the gate's designer, centuries dead, had a sense of humour).

On entering the gate one is met with a vista of open river water, mixed with broken spars jutting from the river. Of course, the Carta Bellamarina's holdings included part of Caricomare - extensive flooding decades ago caused the guild to lose many of its offices and warehouses, which were swept away during the devastating storm which changed the course of a river. Looking down, one finds a set of wooden steps leeding to a pontoon, and alongside it is moored a skiff: this almost looks to have been liberated from one of the more expensive opera sets, as it has a prow in the shape of a longnecked waterbird. perhaps it was once a swan, but it has been remodelled as a pelican.

The ferryman is a Merrow, and once aboard he starts winding a handle set into a drum, attached by some compliicated mechanism to a chain. The chain ferry takes a route which passes warehouses and offices. Some are still in use, but connected by a network of pontoons and walkways, and cobbled together to support eachother like drunken friends. Many more have been sheared in half, their empty shells exposed to the world like the back of an abandoned theatre set. Skiffs and barges are moored alongside these empty buildings, and seem to have taken up much of the original building's functions. These vessels are offices, accommodation, and much needed warehouse.

After a short while one approaches a large building, set over the water, supported on pillars sunk deep into the mud. This is the Guild Headquarters, the Caricomare Palace. A former Carta Bellamarina Merchant Prince, as a vanity project, attempted to build upon the ruins of the Carta Bellamarina's dockland holdings (they still, of course, hold the charter for the ground, no matter how much water now lies above it). The structure is a pleasure palace to rival the sumptuous accommodation that once lay behind the white stone gatehouse. The rest of the holdings of the Carta Bellamarina today consist of a ragtag collection of joined-together buildings and tethered boats - it is in a state of constant development and repair, and shows no sign of ever being likely to be finished.

Servants were required to staff this palace and to secure it from those with unsavoury intentions.   More humble accommodation was built around the back, away from reception jetties and near to the waterline, in the damp unpleasant smelling parts of buildings that were unsuitable for high class accommodation.  Sometimes boats would be tethered to the buildings and used as homes, or even as drinking dens for the servant classes.  Several more disreputable organisations such as brothels and gambling houses are known to operate from boats in the waters near the palace, perhaps because it is harder to tax an organisation that moves.  Bellamarina officially denies any involvement in these activities.

The Caricomare Palace today thus consists of a ragtag collection of joined-together buildings and tethered boats - it is in a state of constant development, and shows no sign of ever being likely to be finished.  There has also been some building of apartments for guild members within it - the attitude is that Carta Bellamarina does not permit mere geography to limit its ambition.  Generally, the further from the water level one lives, the more affluent and important one is within the guild.

The main commercial and port areas controlled by Bellamarina today are of course, land-based, and there is residential property further inland. But those seeking the company of society, or baser pleasures such as paid companionship or gambling would head to the palace, which forms the hub for social activity within the carta and the area under its control.