subplotkudzu | Emirikol Itself

After spending so much time discussing how people fight, here's a little bit about how, and where, they live.

The action occurs on the northern coast of Samaria, the landmass that is home to the Empire of the Empty Throne (now a republic after the ascension of the last emperor to godhood). For a visual feel of the weather and coastline, think Scotland - preferably Scotland during the storm season.

The action will start at the end of that storm season, in a place where the winter storms are mean enough that the ritual of Storm Peace - people taking shelter from a storm together cannot honorably take up arms against one another until it calms down - is still in force. The biggest city on this coastline is Emirikol the Chaotic - so named not just because the area used to be the last redoubt of the human-animal fusions that made up the armies of chaos, but because the city was formed itself by the fusion of four separate barony/towns at the mouth of the Rheel river. Those towns are:

* Scornbul, which lies on the eastern mouth of the river and holds the docks, a place where commoners fear to travel alone at night and sometimes even nobles are accosted by petty thieves and sell swords, but where money and goods from larger ships first touch land. Wood from upriver has given Scornbul walls and homes that abut with one another, making the area off the docks a maze of buildings that confound the newcomer.

* Ferrantino, directly to Scornbul's east, off the river and in the more rocky lands, where canals and aqueducts still route water from the river. Home of engineers, scholars and Ferrantno college, where the Loremasters compile the sciences of the empire. Where Scornbul is wood, Ferrantino is stone, with tunnels into the rock and an undercity bazaar carved by indentured Dwarvish craftsmen.

* Serin, to the south, the only quarter to straddle the Rheel, it has Scornbul to its north on one side and the swamps to the north on the other. Heavily mercantile, the skyline is dominated by a quintet of wizards towers, and its night life is dominated by landless nobles who dwell in its many boarding houses - at least, until they strike it rich, run out of money or fall in a duel.

* Orchid, or the gardens, which is the largest geographically and the most sparsely populated, home to walled in farms and opulent mansions of the local wealthy. The Orchid quarter is known for its lush greenery, the rocky soil having been long since cleared and fed by the canals and the aqueduct. Ferrantino is to its north, Serin its west.

The Rheel river has a waterfall that makes the aqueduct possible a days ride inland from the sea, and the merchants of Serin make a small fortune on portage fees. The harborage at Scornbul is the last good one heading west before the swamplands, and the area to the east grows increasingly rocky. In this distant North, Emirikol the Chaotic is a vibrant city, more alive than the rarefied airs of the southern duchies and Greensward. If any nobleman really seeks to make his mark, either as a soldier, tradesman, fencing master or statesman, Emirikol is where they begin.