De Maddenville sprawls across a sixth of the island of Banhoesea, and was built when the De Madden Company was young, around a bay that provided a handy deepwater port for traders.
De Maddenville sprawls across a sixth of the island of Banhoesea, and was built when the De Madden Company was young, around a bay that provided a handy deepwater port for traders. The harbour is packed with seagoing craft, from the fishing smacks to the ten masters with a great variety in between. All around the city is a great wall to withstand the worst that the sea can throw at it.
Space is limited so most of the houses only have three or four rooms, and they are tall flats.Unable to expand outward any further, the city has expanded upwards.There are strict building regulations as the buildings have to be strong enough to withstand a direct tusnami strike or an attack by the giant G'Thrann.
There is a great warren of tunnels, sealed off from the heat of the dry season and the rain of the wet season with slabs of stone supported by mutiple pillars,with gaps to let a few rays of daylight in.By night people often carry torches to light their way.At most times of the day and night the tunnels are packed with people, going to and from their jobs, their ships, their schools and the shops.
Interesting parts of the city include the marble Company House, where the city is run from, with it's ornatly carved gargoyles in the shapes of Sea Spiders and Sirens,and the tall Tower of the Dead, where smoke billows out day and night from the cremation pyres, and the sounds of weeping and wailing is heard from the relatives of the dead.
At the tallest part of the city is one of the few quiet places, the fenced off Noble's Graveyard,where the bodies of the richest nobles and one or two commoners who preformed a truely splendid deed in life lie in tombs of green jade, with golden coins upon their eyes.In a place where sea burial is greatly feared and land burial is almost impossible, a grave for one's dead body is the greatest honour that can be given after death...it means that even in death you are seen as very important.
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- City Image MoonHunter
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cool but I guess I am missing some of this one.
I like some of the visuals here, the jade tombs are interesting, and I think you should do a sub on the Ten-Masters that ply Acqua's seas. Also like the cremation tower and the wailing of the bereaved.
Nice. I have to wonder about a coastal city under a Tsunami threat, that still hosts a mass of well-frequented tunnels. Wouldn't they be concerned about flooding? Do any of the tunnels fill up during high tide? Or are the tunnels simply the safest, driest places to be? I wonder if there are emergency escape routes down there.
Whichever way that goes, it gives us a clue about where and how prisoners would be kept. Perhaps a form of execution would be to block the worst offenders off in some of the leaky tunnels, giving them mere hours to live before the high tides come up. The prison itself could simply be a set of these tunnels that don't flood completely (except during the worst storms). Inmates would only be dry for half of the day, then submerged up to the waist or even chest for the other half.