Geography of Fane
Geography of Fane
The city of Fane sits in the northeast corner of the Reist continent, on the shore of a vast sea of silt, and is surrounded by a great iron wall over 50 miles long, with a height measuring anywhere from 50 feet to over 100 feet in some places. The city is massive, claiming an enclosed space of over 400 square miles, and the population within is measured in the millions.
Fane itself is a defiant remnant of civilization, a gauntleted challenge to the inevitability of entropy, struggling to hold out against the forces of a world turned hostile to it. Fane is cut off from any other civilizations (assuming there are any) by its geography:
- To the north of Fane is a vast, impenetrable mountain range called the Ceu Dorsal.
- To the east of Fane is the great silt sea.
- To the south of Fane is the Black Stair, a huge staircase of black obsidian that leads down into a huge smoke-filled canyon called the Burning Mire.
- To the west of Fane is the Rot, an endless wasteland of pestilence, hostile wildlife and raiders called Wildlings, driven insane by the Rot's diseases.
Weather
In the summer, a high deck of thin white clouds covers the world from edge to edge, allowing enough of the binary star sunlight to penetrate that Fane is constantly sweltering at over 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the day, while allowing enough heat to escape that Fane dips down to around 40 degrees Fahrenheit at night. Rain is extremely uncommon; perhaps as much as 10 inches of rain per year fall in the area, usually in the form of about 4 brief rainstorms per year, each of which is a deluge that begins and ends with little warning.
Very little wind blows within the city, both because the air is fairly still in this region, and because the city's walls block what little wind there is.
Fane's winters are the poorly-named 'dry season,' when no storms occur. The temperatures during the day still get above 80 degrees F, and nights get down to about 20 degrees F. The high layer of thin white clouds remains, but occasionally breaks up or recedes altogether for weeks at a time. On clear nights, a single small moon (either further away or smaller than Earth's moon) softly illuminates the city, while a single river of stars which bisects the sky with a billion pinpricks of light flows to the east as the night progresses.
Foliage
Inside the city, foliage is hard to find. Naturally growing trees and plants have all long-since been harvested by opportunists looking for food, and only the wealthiest of Fane's citizens keep plants or trees in their yards or houses, as most breeds of foliage must be constantly tended to, and given a great deal of water, to survive Fane's climate.
A great deal of greenery can be found in the northern buroughs where the farming is done. These plants are hardy vegetables and grains, all bred over centuries of agriculture to prosper in bad soil with little water. Despite that, the farmlands are heavily protected against trespassers, as the water they are supplied is extremely precious.
Once consequence of the paucity of greenery in Fane is that wood is a rare and precious commodity. Only the elite of Fane can afford wooden furniture, and most would only waste the material on such a mundane use if they were deliberately trying to provoke their peers into feeling inadequate. Wood, as a construction material, is usually reserved for use in the most precious of a nobleman's treasures, such as personal magic items or business ledger books.
Water
Water is in very limited supply in Fane, not because it is absent, but because it is carefully controlled. The Water Dukes hold a monopoly on Fane's water resources and guard them jealously, meting out enough water to ensure the populace survives, but at the cost of individual liberty.
There are no open sources of water in Fane, no rivers, streams, ponds or (working) fountains. There are no public services for drinking, and even ale is not served in public places without demonstrating one's fealty to a Water Duke. Agriculture is given a great deal of water to work with, but this resource is guarded as though it were wagonloads of gold, with trespassers and even onlookers aggressively repelled.
The citizens of Fane must request their daily allotments of water from the House to whom they have sworn fealty, proving their allegiance each day in exchange for another day's survival.
The Spire
The dominant feature of the city, even moreso than the great wall, is the Spire. The Spire is a massive spike of iron which stretches upward beyond sight, taller than the high cirrus clouds which frequent the upper atmosphere. Attempts to excavate around the base of the Spire have been similarly unable to determine how deeply it penetrates the earth. The Spire is not smooth, but is scaled and segmented, like a human hair seen under a microscope, as though a thin sheet of iron was curled upon itself in a tight spiral, to form a long cylinder. The Spire appears to be solid iron to its core, and no purpose to the structure has been determined. It simply is.
The Spire, while ramrod straight, is not perpendicular to the ground. It leans about 5 degrees southwest of a perpendicular axis, its vast shadow drawing a black line over the great wall and into the wasteland beyond the city.
The Mad Palace of the Gris Varon
Clinging to the walls of the great Spire, at a height of over 100 yards off the ground, is a shifting, ramshackle treehouse of iron which makes up the mad palace of the Gris Varon. This warren of massive rooms, forgotten hallways and tunnels uses the Spire as a central support. Taken altogether, the environs of this palace are massive, over a hundred-thousand square feet of living space, spread across a mad maze of meaningless staircases, empty rooms and dizzying catwalks.
Most surprising is the complete lack of any means of getting into or out of the palace from the ground. No stairs, ladders or handholds exist between the ground and the palace a hundred yards above.
A central room, the size of an amphitheater, resides somewhere in the palace, and contains thousands, perhaps millions, of mirrors, each showing what a different Gardener is seeing at any given moment. The Gris Varon uses these mirrors to watch everything that happens in Fane, prying into the secrets of the powerful and the powerless alike.
Architectural Stylings
The buildings of Fane, while nearly all constructed of iron, are apparently exact replacements of buildings which once stood in that space. A huge variety of buildings is present, ranging from small, single-story shacks to huge 12-story high-rises. The old buildings that once stood were clearly made of many different materials, from dressed stone to brick to marble, and these materials are reflected in the texture of the iron which has replaced them. Formerly brick walls still appear to be textured like brick, with smooth mortar and abrasive bricks all made from shiny grey iron.
Even the great wall which surrounds the city, stretching nearly 50 miles in length, shows its once-stone nature through its iron manufacture. The seams from the dressed stone, and the nearly-10-foot thickness of the wall's former materials have all been replaced with a solid mass of iron.
The iron of Fane is, in most places, untarnished by rust, as the Gardeners keep the buildings in pristine condition, replacing oxidized metal with fresh iron when the need arises.
Another common architectural feature of Fane is the prevalence of chains and grated walkways. An observer will quickly realize that, despite the complete absence of water in Fane, the city was clearly built to service an aquatic culture. The grated walkways allows water to run off easily into the subterranean waterways (now empty or silt-filled), while the chains allows cargo and boats to be maneuvered between channels or into loading areas and warehouses, or ship-works.
Lower Fane
Beneath many of the iron grated streets of Fane, seen through the square holes of the grating, there exists an undercity. Lower Fane varies in design from silt-filled caverns to multi-storied subterranean cities, complete with the original stone, brick, glass and marble building materials. From within Upper Fane, sunlight illuminates only the top-most levels of Lower Fane, and only the most foolhardy of folks would ever venture into it, as the whole place is overrun with ghouls. See the Ghouls of Fane, for details.
The Boroughs
The 19 districts of Fane are called Boroughs, and are separated from each other with deep canals of silt. These canals appear to have once permitted people to travel about the city on small boats instead of by foot, though the water has long since gone dry. The canals seem sealed off from Lower Fane, as though the waterways were prevented from spilling into those developed areas which were built below ground level.
A number of areas in each borough offer stairways which lead down to what were presumably once embarkation areas, and small docks, where these small boats could accept or debark passengers. The canals are only lit during the middle hours of the day, and grow dark early in the afternoon, remaining so until late morning the following day. As a result, these deep canyons of the city are usually avoided by common folk, despite being a less-crowded means of moving around the outer edges of the boroughs.
Spanning the canals at numerous places are dozens of bridges of various size, shape and construction. Nearly all of these bridges have towers on either bank, with excellent vantage for archers and crossbowmen to volley attacks against those who would cross. Some of the larger or longer bridges, such as the Great Span, have additional towers on the bridge itself, as well as gates to halt traffic altogether. Each tower is outfitted with between 2 and 4 alchemical signaling fires on their tops, allowing fast communications between the towers to their immediate sides along the canal. If Fane had a unified constabulary, it would be a simple matter for the boroughs to be sealed off from eachother, presumably to quell unrest, isolate a threat, or quarantine a plague. Of course, the Water Dukes each have their own forces of 'police', derisively called 'Fetterers' by the common folk, who each operate under the orders of their respective Water Duke and his officers. As a result, such large-scale coordination is rarely as efficient as it might otherwise be.
Farms
Inside the city's walls, in the foothills of the Ceu Dorsal mountains, farms are tended. The natural soil runoff from the mountains has left these foothills more fertile than the surrounding areas, and farmers have tended the lands carefully for generations. Leafy green vegetables, reedy grains and various livestock are all raised for the consumption of the people of Fane.
The farms have spread out to cover more than half of the enclosed space of Fane, over 200 square miles, and still the food is only minimally adequate to feed the population of the city. Unlike water, which is given to citizens for the low-low cost of their dignity and independence, food must be purchased, and many people in Fane lack any income other than scavenging for bartering materials. Jobs are rare and often dangerous or degrading, as slavery is fairly common and most of the 'good' jobs go to slaves.
Farmers themselves are a lower class of nobility in Fane, regarded in high esteem and always treated with the utmost politeness. While a noble would never get in trouble for mistreating a farmer, he might find his larders more difficult to fill with actually tasty food, once word got around of his impudence. Of course, if a commoner were to insult a farmer, the farmer would be fully justified in killing him for the insult.
Farmers tend to stick together in public, though centuries-long feuds over land boundaries or livestock ownership lead to constant bickering in private. While the actual land is all owned by the Water Dukes, the apportionment of each farm is rather arbitrarily handed out by those Water Dukes, which leads to confusion, frustration and bitter rivalries. Of course, the rivalries are all to the Water Dukes' benefit, which is probably why their gifts of land are so arbitrary to begin with.
The Harbor District
A huge ship-works along the shore of the Great Silt Sea, the Harbor District is now a meaningless iron statue to human endeavor. The skeletal hulls of several great ships are still drydocked in various states of completion, their once-wooden double-hulls having long since been replaced with iron. The infrastructure of the harbor includes numerous cranes, catwalks, vast nets (once hempen rope, now iron), and a freight area, where even today, large sealed containers of iron await a customs inspection that will never come.
With the absence of waterways, the Harbor District's original purpose is lost, but its inhabitants have found some utility in its remains. A few thousand people call the Harbor District home, having scavenged living spaces within the overlooked infrastructure of the District. Additionally, a number of pubs and bars make a business here, offering gathering places for those who find the Chandlery unfit for their tastes. These bars are, to a building, all lower-class affairs, and can get fairly rowdy at times. It seems that, even without visiting sailors, the Harbor District's bars seem willing to play the part they've always held.
The Great Span
The Great Span is a huge bridge, 30-feet wide and over 1500 feet long, made of polished white stone. It is unusual in that it remains a stone bridge, and that it is one of the few bridges of Fane large enough to include twelve gatehouses along its length. At each end of the bridge, a pair of gatehouses straddle a massive iron portcullis, normally open to traffic. Each guardhouse is three stories of 15' x 15' rooms, featuring a narrow stair and slitted windows on all sides. The pair of gatehouses feature only a single door on the south tower, only accessible from the bridge-side of the portcullis. The single door allows access to the south tower, and the north tower can only be accessed via a bridge between the two towers, 30 feet above the portcullis.
The ground floor of both towers is without furniture and intended to allow guards with polearms to maneuver and fend off attackers from any direction through the slitted windows on each wall. The windows are barely wide enough to fit an arm through, and too narrow for any size-medium creatures to squeeze through (even a size-small creature would have to struggle). The door is solid iron, and is easily barred from the inside. The second story offers a crowded set of bunks for sleeping, but a walkway along the walls is kept clear for archers and crossbowmen to rain arrows and bolts on attackers. The third floor has a couple of tables, a larder and a small kitchen area. This floor offers only two walls with arrow-slits, east and west, facing the bridge and facing the shore. Finally, the roof offers crenellations to hide behind, and the walkway to the northern gatehouse, which is a mirror of the southern gatehouse, except that there is no door on the ground floor. The controls for the portcullis are operable from the ground floor of either tower, but the controls in the north tower always override any contradictory signals from the south tower.
Along the span of the bridge, four additional pairs of gatehouses, each set up like the gatehouses on the shores of the bridge offer additional layers of defense against any unwanted crossers. These gatehouses have solid stone foundations which reach all the way to the bottom of the canal, serving as massive foundations for the bridge's weight. The walls of the gatehouse are 5-foot thick solid white stone (making each gatehouse a 25' x 25' building) and the portcullis between the gates is 10 feet wide. The whole affair of two gatehouses and the portcullis is a total of 60-feet in width, much wider than the bridge itself. Only 10 feet of the gatehouses (5 of which is the stone wall) are actually on the bridge itself. The other half of each gatehouse is beyond the edge of the bridge's span.
The bridge's span is 20 feet wide, without railings, and somewhat slippery underfoot. However, since it almost never rains, this poses little risk for those crossing the bridge. Anyone unlucky enough to be knocked off the main span will fall 10 feet to a 5-foot catwalk which allows repairs to be performed on the bridge's sides if necessary. These catwalks are not easily visible from the bridge's span, and end at each gatehouse (they do not go around the gatehouses, or offer useful access to the gatehouses). The catwalks offer a railing made of chain to prevent anyone from falling the 200 feet to the bottom of the canal. At each end of the catwalk, a 10-foot tall ladder is provided to allow an easy climb back to the bridge's main span.
Magesteria Arcana
The Magesteria Arcana is a university which occupies a whole island borough all to itself. Only members of the Magesteria are permitted access to the island, and its students and staff can only see outsiders by leaving the island themselves. No one is altogether sure what goes on in the vast complex of gardens and low buildings, but the university is protected by a wall and armed guards at each bridge. 15 buildings, each no taller than four stories, grace the grounds of the university.
The alchemical street lights and many of the more complex locks and mechanical devices used by the city's elite are manufactured in the Magesteria.
Another oddity of the Magesteria is that they owe no fealty to any of the great Houses of Fane, instead taking delivery of water from each of the Houses. Those Water Dukes who have tried to abstain from this apparent tax have found themselves harried by malfunctioning security mechanisms, unlit streets in their districts, and general nuisances which made it much easier for the Water Duke's many enemies to capitalize on the chaos and create larger nuisances. Such obstinacy rarely lasts long.
The Avenue of the Revered
This wide avenue of iron cobblestones features the ruins of five once-mighty temples and a sixth temple, the temple of Thallengrym, still intact. Oddly enough, the temples have each been converted to iron like much of the rest of the city, but the ruined temples have been converted to ruined iron.
The temple of Thallengrym is a beautifully sculpted building which was clearly once made of stone. The temple is four stories tall, and features gothic arches and buttresses. The farmers of Fane always give a tithe of food to the temple, and this food is given to the needy and devout. The doors of the temple are enormous oak doors, banded in steel, and are probably too heavy for one person to move or open. Of course, the temple clerics take no issue with people combining their efforts to move the doors, since there is strength in numbers.
Of the other temples, little remains to suggest much of their former glory:
- The temple of Yllisond is the smallest of the ruins and its rubble is twisted and bent in a way that suggests the original building was also iron.
- The temple of Tressa is a mixture of many textures, suggesting stone, wood and various metals were used to construct it (though it's all iron now, of course).
- The temple of Ur'graxt has a once-brick chimney which appears to have survived the calamity which destroyed the temple itself, and the wreckage seems to indicate it might once have included at least one working smithy in its main hall.
- The ruins of the temple of Seshasa show a wave and maritime motif among its crumbled ruins. Seemingly out of place is a small plant growing out of the center of the pile of wreckage. Few dare to even look at this plant, much less harvest it for food. While some blasphemy occurred to destroy the temples on the Avenue, apparently, harming this plant is a heresy too great to attempt.
- The ruined temple of Graxt is unique in that its iron remains display a texture suggesting the building was once a great tent made of stretched leather with bone struts and supports. The iron shows stitching in the leather, suggesting it came from many sources rather than one, and the iron bones range in size from clearly humanoid to colossal beasts unheard of. These ruins crawl with insects and vermin at all times of the day, though it is difficult to imagine what foodstuffs they find to survive in there.
The Avenue of the Revered clearly never offered space for temples to the remaining gods: Liore and Haqq.
Chandlery
The Chandlery is a borough dedicated to mercantilism, street vendors, buyers, traders and a wide array of services ranging from practical to carnal. From edge to edge, the borough features shops, bars, restaurants, inns, brothels, alchemy shops, armories, and magic shops. On the streets during the day, hundreds of independent street vendors set up small carts or tents to hawk their wares, created or found, or sell baked treats, cooked meats or rare nuts or berries. Every sort of purse-lightening enticement can be found in the Chandlery.
Chandlery is also home to a great deal of the petty thievery in Fane, but if you think about it, that's just another form of purse-lightening.
Fallow's Watch
Just south of the Harbor District is the district of Fallow's Watch. This section of town was clearly the neighborhood of the poorest of Fane's residents, even before it was transformed to iron. The buildings here are small, huddled affairs of poor construction and even poorer ventilation. The district lies directly downwind of the Harbor, and must once have smelled like a fishery. Even now, the residents enjoy few amenities, such as a useful sewage system or even much direct sunlight. The ramshackle iron buildings all lean against each other, even those with multiple stories, causing all the streets to be alley-like and shadowed in most places, even during the day. The portion of Lower Fane which lies beneath Fallow's Watch is filled in or absent altogether, precluding the city's most convenient means of waste disposal for the people living here. As a result, sickness abounds.
The neighboring districts keep guards posted at every bridge leaving Fallow's Watch, to monitor for signs of plague. Plagues seem a nearly annual occurrence in Fallow's Watch, and the other Boroughs have become quite aggressive about enforcing quarantines when they're warranted (and sometimes when they're not). Fallowfolk who try to leave the borough under a quarantine are assured a crossbow bolt or worse for their efforts.
Despite this obvious hazard of living here, Fallow's Watch has a huge population of several million people. The community is strongly bonded together, and the folks seem to thrive somehow despite their destitute environs.
Beyond the Wall
The Yard
In the immediate shadow of the Spire, just beyond the city wall is a vast scrapyard of iron and rust called the Yard.