Eldershore
| Eldershore | |
|---|---|
 The bay at night from the Elder Quarter.
| |
| CLT name | Eldwara |
| Strength | Line |
| Position | A great natural bay on the southern landmass; the finest harbor in the world; tropical, with wet and dry seasons |
| Founded | Years 0–80, as Eldwara — the oldest settlement in the world |
| Population | 300,000–350,000 |
| Walls | Dark laterite; the cleared margin is farmed, and in places the inner face is planted to suppress the outer |
| Government | Elder council and lineage halls |
| Coin | See Money |
| Makes and trades | Aruna and Zhael above all; Ireich and Aruvei, fine Paem, Feiruna and fruit wines, Ireis, records and Animei, Dorath and Vaelith, Ombari and Tekwara timber, Nyvlaem cultures |
| Stance on slavery | The most complicated: the oldest traditions of slavery and manumission, and among the most protective of slaves |
| Founding cohort (not in-world) | West and East African — see Meta:Cultural References |
Eldershore (Eldwara) is the oldest, largest, and most cosmopolitan city in the Known World, on the finest natural harbor anywhere. Its lineages predate every other city's founding; its recording houses press most of the world's records; its harbor takes a share of everything that moves by sea.
Geography and population
The bay is deep enough for the largest vessels, sheltered enough that storms rarely close it, and positioned where the southern sea routes converge. The ground behind it rises gently, enough for the upper districts to look over the water. Tropical growth surrounds it on every landward side, dense and aggressive, which makes the carnivorous-plant problem here the worst of any city simply because the conditions are so good for it. The climate is warm year-round with distinct wet and dry seasons. Between 300,000 and 350,000 people live here, drawn from everywhere, and most of them stay.
The walls
Built of the warm red-brown iron-rich laterite the region produces in quantity, thick and heat-holding, smooth-faced outside. The cleared margin is farmed rather than merely kept clear: constant human presence does the suppression a bare strip does elsewhere, and feeds people. In some sections the inner face has been planted with cultivated species that out-compete the carnivorous ones on the outer — the only place in the world where a wall margin is managed by growing something. The gates are the most elaborately decorated of any city: carved dark hardwood and brass, ancestral imagery, geometric brass inlay, and clockwork as ceremonial as it is functional.
Layout
The most organically grown of the great cities: distinct neighborhoods, each with its own character, joined by wide thoroughfares and narrower local streets. Warm golden stone and carved dark hardwood; geometric patterning in brass and tile on facades, gate surrounds, market columns, and civic spaces; gold and bronze metalwork. Clockwork is integrated everywhere and in the most eclectic way of any city, because every innovation from anywhere arrives here eventually.
Districts
- The Harbor District
- The largest and most sophisticated harbor works in the world: deep-water docks, coastal berths, naval moorings, dry docks. The most cosmopolitan square mile anywhere, every accent of the Spraecha at once. The harbormaster's complex handles vessel traffic, cargo registration, trade mediation, and diplomacy. Slyva groups work the water between hulls and quays.
- The Trading Quarter
- The most commercially active district in the world, and the only place outside their home cities where the banking houses of Shining Reach, Forgegate, Clearhold, and Stormharbor all operate at once. The market halls are the largest and most diverse anywhere — carved dark columns, brass, tile, and natural ventilation designed in against the heat.
- The Elder Quarter
- The Elder Council Hall is a great circular building of carved wood and laterite; its shape reflects the consensus tradition in which no single direction of authority dominates. The lineage halls of the senior families line the streets, each at once a home, an ancestral shrine, a governance office, and a social space — Eldershore does not find the distinction meaningful. The ancestral keepers' facilities combine archive, ritual space, and consultation in a building type found nowhere else.
- The Arts and Entertainment District
- The most vibrant in the world: the greatest concentration of cinema houses anywhere, recording studios producing the most diverse recording culture in the world, performance spaces for ancient and new forms, and constant street performance. The cinema tradition is the most hybrid and international anywhere.
- The Spiritual District
- Ancestral veneration shrines and the sacred spaces of every religion that ever passed through the harbor. The oldest ancestral keepers' facilities are here, ancient beyond the recorded history of the other cities. Sacred groves of Zhorai and other ancestral trees stand inside the city, which was built around them; the streets still bend to them.
Dress
Eldershore dresses individually. Lineage decides where a person lives, what they inherit, and what is expected of them; dress is one of the few things entirely theirs, and the result is the most varied dress in the world and the least legible to outsiders. The base is tropical and draped — cloth wound and wrapped rather than tailored, in weights light enough for the heat, carrying the geometric patterning that is on every wall in the city.
Then the assembly. Layers from several sources worn in combinations nobody planned — a wrapped cloth over a northern coat over a tunic, cut down and re-cut. Edges slashed and frayed on purpose; tears held with rows of brass pins rather than sewn; mending worked as decoration in contrasting thread. Studded belts crossed at the hip, spiked brass cuffs, chain from belt to chest, brass rings through cloth for no reason. Asymmetry is normal. Everything is worn until it is worn out and then worn further; new cloth is common and looking new is not admired. Women's head wraps carry real information — lineage, district, mood, whether the wearer wants to be spoken to — and hair is the most elaborate in the world, hours of braiding, threading, and shaping that says lineage when the wearer wants it to and nothing when she does not. Heavy inherited gold is worn beside scrap brass, which is the whole statement: real standing next to deliberate junk, by someone who has both.
Slaves wear the same forms in plain cloth — undyed or single-color, one garment worn as it was cut, no layers, hardware, or repair-work. In a city where every free person's dress is a composition, wearing something simply put on says everything, and reads more than a collar would. A companion in a lineage hall wears fine patterned cloth, gold, and very little of it, clean, matched, and unaltered — and everybody in the room can tell the difference between a person dressed by themselves and a person dressed by somebody else.
Music
Drums and voice, and always has been: layered percussion running several rhythms at once, a caller and a crowd answering, an audience expected to participate. Under the drummers there is usually a machine — a clockwork rhythm engine holding a short figure at an exact tempo no human could hold that long — and the players work over and against it. A player who drifts is heard at once; the best push as far from the machine as they can and land back on it exactly, and a hall that hears it done well makes a noise. Over that comes the caller, fast, half sung and half spoken, and the lyrics name people: in a city where lineage decides much and reputation the rest, a form built on asserting who you are matters enormously, and a performer naming their line is doing what a Skald does at four times the speed. Rivalries are public, in verse, and closely followed. The city made all of this a trade: it presses most of the records in the world and records everyone's traditions and a great deal that is nobody's.
Infrastructure and agriculture
The wet season fills the most sophisticated cistern system of any city, and steam pumps manage the dry-season reserve. Waste is the hardest problem anywhere, because heat accelerates everything; the underground channels are the most extensive in the world and are combined with biological treatment. The lighting is the most atmospheric anywhere — Kyvlaem reflected on calm tropical water, vessel lights strung across the bay. Clockwork is the most diverse of any city: harbor cranes, vessel guidance, tide and weather monitoring, difference engines for multi-currency trade, and the cinema and recording equipment nothing else matches. The agricultural zone is the most productive by a wide margin, growing year-round four or five miles out, managed through lineage-affiliated farming communities; the Ireis fields are worked by Wallach, which nothing else can do; Oelwy grows most abundantly here; medicinal plants in greater variety than anywhere.
What it makes and trades
Aruna, and Zhael above all — the most valuable thing grown anywhere by weight, cut from groves held by families through their lineages and sold in sealed brass tubes bearing the grove's mark. Ireich and the Aruvei distilled from it, which reaches every port in the world. Fine Paem, the finest fiber anywhere. Feiruna beyond counting and the fruit wines made from them. Ireis in enormous quantity. Records and Animei, a real and growing export. Dorath and Vaelith from the oldest breeding lines in the world. Ombari and Tekwara timber. Nyvlaem cultures. And the harbor itself.
Character
Ancient, warm, alive. Red-brown laterite and carved hardwood, geometric brass and colored tile, gold and bronze, and living groves inside the city. The harbor is always present; the smell of salt, tropical growth, and cooking is one nobody forgets. After dark the harbor glows and the entertainment district makes Eldershore the most brilliantly atmospheric city in the world. Its strength is line: what persists is proven. It signed the Pact as the oldest settlement in the world, its elders to hold the memory of the signing for generations.