Sodius is The White City, known for its White Gold - Salt.
Sodius is The White City, known for its White Gold - Salt. Its tall white walls and buildings jut up from the small rocky cliff which serves as the city's foundation and out on the small peninsula on the coast. All around the city are shallows which are blocked from the sea. There the water evaporates leaving the salts. (The city and the flats are protected from the force of the Ocean Proper by a raised rocky bar). It is the largest city on the coast without a good port.
Given its (minor) altitude above the water and the fact there is nothing else around it, Sodius stands like a glistening white beacon in the sunlight and an oddly glowing spot in the sparse seaside fog when viewed from the sea or a good distance. Sodius is enclosed in a triangle shaped wall, point of the longer end of the triangle faces the sea. The buildings are plaster and adobe so common to the region. Many reach three stories. Given the odd shape of the city proper, many are triangular or trapezoidal in shape. The original walls enclosed an area vastly larger than needed, and the city has slowly grown to mostly fill it. Despite the trade and the wealth, there is only so much population this city can support with its lack of immediate farming/ fishing. So while the city is filled with white gold, it is not filled with people.
The White City grew up from a small camp where locals would come, scrape salt, and go home. With the influx of people along the coast, a few wise men (now rich men) built a fort that would become a city here. Knowing their wealth was based on salt, they made the walls and buildings here reflect that. All the plaster on the outside of the buildings is white, usually with small bits of salt added to make everything sparkle. The fairly flat roof lines of the adobe buildings are tiled in brown clay indigenous to the region. The only things breaking up the square and flat skyline of the city is the windmills.
There are several salt mills in the town proper, as salt scraping are brought up to the town from the fields by workers with carts. The Mills are powered by the winds, which thanks to the sea is ever present.
There is always a number of caravans and the occasional small merchant ship in town. The inns and taverns are very full and very lively. The flow of salt out of the city and wealth/ goods into the city is constant. Everyone needs salt, so even the lowly salt bearers are well paid in comparison to other bearers. The salt trade flows along the coastal roads to both the people and the better harbours there. It also flows to the large coastal valley to the north, where the Beef produced there is dried with it.
I always think of this as a coastal city against the mountains that border The Marches.
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Again another one that does not make as much sense until you read the last paragraph. That gives more context.
This would do with more description of the setting and such, but that moves beyond the scope of the City Image rules. So would their be a setting attached to this?
Sodius - that name really makes the post for me. It's unique for a fantasy setting, but it fits in with real-world resources and economics as well. A little short, but when you make 30 city images, that can be forgiven.
Some cities, given the restrictions on City Images, are really hard to describe or even make long posts.
I thought it was near 45 City Images, I will have to check.
I've been thinking of making a city like this.This is a city with a good reason for existing.
On a side note, I recently learned that salt is used in making bricks, it is a prime ingredient in making a glaze for fired clay bricks that weather-proofs them. This way the interior bricks can be single fired clay which would last about 30 years before degrading, and the outer layers can be this salt glazed twice fired brick that lasts three to four times as long.
A far more pleasant play on the salt mines, with their slaves dying of thist, crusted with a fortune worth of salt on their emaciated bodies.
I only vaguely remember salt being a brick ingredient. There are so many 'recipies' that it or may not be an ingredient.
Rather than a tiresome salt mine, this is a city of salt farms... evaporation pools. If the air is warm enough (Mid Iberian or Mediterranian or San Francisco and points south) these work well.
A good solid location. You could use it in just about any campaign.