Aerelios the Gazetteer

[Mr. R]

I want to describe the city in greater detail.  So what are some of the points I need to elaborate on?

 

Government: Elected Consensus Council and Mayor with elections every 8 years

 

Districts: 

Docks (it is a port)

----Ship builders

Merchant quarter

Crafters lane

City Guard

Mage Schools

Various temples (should they be in their own district, or spread around the city?)

Low class housing

Mid class housing

High class housing

Sewer System

Smugglers Lairs

 

 

City Guard:

Three levels

1- Basic guard (the Hawks)

2- Investigators (the Owls)

3- Special Branch (catch all for strike teams to assassins [hey they might be good, but not stupid] called the Eagles)

 

Any other ideas you can think of?

 

[Lawnmower Boy]

So pardon me for taking so long to respond. I'm on vacation and trying to break out of that whole "there's so many things I could do that I think I'll do nothing" thing. 

 

I understand that Aerelios is a metropole in a situation vaguely similar to Yellowknife, except that instead of being located on a tributary of the Great Slave equivalent, it is on the distributary.

 

So unless the region is tropical, there's going to be a spring freshet proportional to the drainage basin. So the river will flood like nobody's business. For a premodern city, that means an elevated location. No ifs, ands or buts. The hidden advantage of this is that the city is like Vicksburg, Belgrade or Volgograd --a  natural point at which to reach and cross the river without mucking through the swampy bottomlands. I'm attaching an illustration of the 1688 siege of Belgrade to get some sense of the layout of the old town, with the  major  part of the urban area on the bluff, and castles --heavily built up masonry structures-- at the foot of the hill facing the Danube and Sava. In peacetime these structures would be the point at which travellers caught ferry boats to cross the rivers, perhaps ascending or descending a considerable distance to find an appropriate landing point on the far side. structures built to withstand a Mackenzie-scale flood would be . . . impressive. One can readily imagine an arsenal to support the river fleet (and a permanent floating bridge, if one exists), and also mills. If the city has enough industry, mills on the bottomland would be paired with windmills on the bluffs, with water being pumped up to reservoirs in the city and then released to run mills on the slopes. 

 

The town proper would probably have a large marchfield, since farmers would be eager to move their flocks up to the heights during the flooding, and extensive granaries, for the same reason. So the town would have impressive walls on the landward side, both for defensive purposes and to keep the livestock out (and tax it if it is brought to market within the walls). The skyline of the city would be impressive; probably with impressive masonry structures --granaries, mills-- vying with temples/cathedrials to dominate the skyline. At the other extreme, shantytowns would likely form along the river banks during the dry season.

Given the extensive, seasonally-flooded lowlands,  pastoral agriculture would be a huge part of the town's economy. Cowboys would be a big part of its culture, and the low town would have tanneries, fulling mills, probably industrial-scale soap manufacturies. This would contribute to a truly glorious funk, especially in the summer.   In the dry season, charcoal burners would be all over the flats, especially rises where the standing water lasts long enough to get alkaline. Swamp hay would be brought in in quantity. I can easily see flax or hemp being an important part of the local rural economy, with fields and retting ponds concentrated in areas where the rise slopes down into the flooding lands. The town's crafts might include leather dying (and therefore dyemaking), lacemaking, tapestry weaving, shoemaking, canvas spinning, ropemaking. The livestock-centric agriculture would also make tallow available in abundance, so maybe candlemaking? 

 

[Mr. R]

Thank you!