Allarian Cities

Despite Allaria’s great power and prominence in Valerna, it doesn’t have that many cities. Most of the Realm’s territory is either untamed wilderness or dangerous fey wood, and only a handful of large settlements, with some roads and military outposts between them, mark the long dominion of civilization over the Westerlands. However, each of Allaria’s few cities is an inexpugnable citadel; well protected by dreamshaping magic, mighty walls and a host of qirin riders.

Allaria City
This is the Realm’s capital, and both its largest and its most important urban center. It is the Royal Seat of government, having housed the ruling dynasty and the Senate Council since the times of Zai Qan. Allaria City is also the site of the Realm’s Royal Library, containing the collected knowledge of humans and elves since the dawn of history, and of the greatest magic school of Allaria, the Royal Dreamshaper Academy.

The city itself is an architectural wonder, making vast use of dreamlith to erect buildings that seem to stand on thin air, and the city’s signature Crowned Stones - gardens that rise atop tall dreamlith columns, hundreds of meters above ground. The inner city, traditionally reserved to Allai families despite Elyse’s reforms, and separated from the larger common city by River Saeli and the Waterfall Gates, seems from afar to be a garden, alternating shrubbery and stone at various heights, channels and bridges, and crowned by the Royal Palace, a five-level structure the size of a small city itself, which dwarfs any other building made by mortals since the fall of the Altanesi.

Citizens of Allaria are refined and cultured, and known for their traditional dynastic caps. The Allarian cap has been associated with Allaria City since the founding of the Realm, and its people are called ‘caps’ both as an abbreviation of ‘capital dwellers’ and as a reference to their typical dress. They often call themselves simply ‘Allarians’ or ‘True Allarians’, but other citizens of the Realm insist that ‘Allaria is the whole kingdom’.

Allaria City is under the protection of seven qirin rider divisions—the Seven Golden Strands, the most honored warden regiment of Allaria, with a tradition of protecting the Realm that goes back to their heroic performance during the First Null War.

Elliana
A small port city on the Realm’s Northern Coast. The city is the North’s grocery stalls, bringing in foodstuffs, furs and wood from Ysval and Sikaria, and a sizable population of melancholic sailors and romantic wanderers with them.

The city has been an ellari community since before Allaria existed. For centuries it was little more than occupied territory, with Allai governors taking charge of imports and exploiting the ellari workers; but the Queen recently declared Elliana a Free Port, and silver elves from all the Realm have poured into it, giving the city an artistic, cultural and arcane scene that doesn’t resemble anything else in the Realm.

In the last decade, Elliana has become a meeting point for poets, exiles, refugees, sailors, adventurers, rangers, gentry of fortune and smugglers from all over the North. These immigrants have created a whole culture of their own, which is not quite elvish and not quite Allarian, but something else entirely, with elements of Ellari art, Godao haggling, Tyverian carousing, Sikarian philosophy, Ysvalian whaling, Nwoda posturing, halfling storytelling and Allarian crusading.

Fort Wailing
A walled city on the Northern bank of the Silver River, right on Fey territory. Fort Wailing has been maintained, at great cost to the Dragon Kings, through centuries of Fey incursions, including talon raids, Fell espionage and uprisings from the rebellious forest Ellari. The city’s Fox Rangers, the local Fai Hunting regiment, are the best woodsmen and Fey-slayers of the Realm.

People from Fort Wailing are hardened and attuned to the Fai; many of the first voidwakings at the onset of the Scarred Era happened within its walls. The city is also one of the most gloomy and superstitious in the Realm, and the occasional stoning or burning of alleged witches or changelings is still carried out to this day, although officially forbidden by the Queen.

Hazalis
The ancient city of Hazalis was founded by human adventurers in Ellari lands at some point between the Dreambleed and the establishing of the Dragon Dynasty. Although it is now fully part of Allaria, it retains human architecture, a long history and a strong cultural identity. Hazalis is mostly known for its luxury trade, particularly in Tyverian spices, and for its many trade contacts with Tyveria and the City of Crimson Spires. It is also famous for its Dun Dai sauce, made with Kara Gilpan peppers, and well-loved throughout the Dragon Kingdom.

Hazalis has one of the largest human populations in Allaria, although its humans are somewhat shorter and more slender than others of their kind, mostly thanks to the old elven blood in their lineages. There are many Tyverian immigrants, but they live in their own neighborhoods, or ‘Tyvertowns’, where they retain their language, traditions and most of their customs apart from Allarian society.

Hazalians are famous for their haggling ability and good eye for quality, Jokes abound about their penny-pinching ways, but they are proud of being ‘hard-working and well-bred’, as their city motto says.

Hydra Gate
Also known as the Iron Citadel, Hydra Gate is a fortress in the narrow pass between the eastern Fey Woods, the Western Bucentauri plains and the Skyhorn mountains at the center of the Realm. The Hydra is the only safe path between Allaria City and the perilous Southern Border, and the single most important strategic point of Allaria.

The city houses the famous Gate Guard, an elite phalanx of human commoners that have stood up to bucentauri hordes, Fell invasions and Nahuac incursions. It is an honor to be accepted in the Gate Guard, and also a near-certain death sentence.

The people of the Hydra are known for their arrogance and stoicism, as they are proud of the centuries of wars and incursions their city has endured, and look down on the ‘pampered’ citizens of the rest of the realm. Hydra Gate also has the largest bucentauri population in Allaria, and the ox-folk are often seen wandering the streets, or managing smithies or food stalls.

Kakkara
Mighty Kakkara is the last and strongest bastion of a free Bucentaur nation in Allaria. Although the Dragon Kingdom claims its population and territory, Kakkara maintains its independence, often violently, and no Allarian watchtower or troop has been allowed within 100 miles of its walls for the last five centuries.

Kakkara is under the rule of Mahesh Menkaar, the supreme chieftain of the free Bucentaur tribes in the Wilderlands, and last of a long line of Bucentaur warlords going back before even the Ellari Kingdoms. Like his every predecessor, and despite the dwindling of independent Bucentaur territory over the millennia, Menkaar refuses to yield to Allaria in either the military or political arenas, and proudly rules and defends the cause of Bucentauri from his Leather Throne in the Palace of Kakkara.

Although very few Allarians have visited it, Kakkara welcomes trade and visitors from everywhere, as long as they acknowledge the authority and jurisdiction of the Mahesh, and the right of Bucentauri to live by their own law. Smaller and less fortified than the average Allarian city, Kakkara remains a bustling, active urban center, with busy markets and noisy streets. Its buildings are low and wide, mostly built of stucco, with wood and leather doors. Even the Mahesh’s palace is a single-story house, and it seems unguarded, unless one suddenly notices that every one of the nearby ox-people are fully armed and battle-ready.

Kakkaran people are gruff and taciturn, but prone to bursts of screaming laughter and celebration when they succeed at anything. They look down on the ‘tamed’—their nickname for Bucentauri that accepted Allarian rule—but respect anyone that lives and lets live.

Lasting
One of the most isolated cities in Allaria, Fort Lasting, or Lasting for short, started as a mostly unneeded military outpost in the vast, empty grassland near the Kingdom’s Western coast. Other than a few loyalist Bucentauri tribes, the territory around Lasting is all but uninhabited, and the army fort gradually grew into a peaceful, prosperous community.

Today, Lasting remains a place of solace and quiet, despite its ever-growing population—mainly humans, Bucentauri and Shivs—, which lived in relative harmony even before Elyse’s social reforms, and are now more peaceful than ever.

Lasting subsists on fish and crops, which it trades mostly to Bucentauri lands. Nearly all locals are fishers or farmers, and their seafood dishes are justly famed in the central regions. Lasters like to stay out of trouble, but are devious and resourceful; they also retain much of their military ancestry, with many young Lasters setting out as oathguards, mercenaries, or Undercurrent adventurers.

Longrange
The small city of Longrange is placed in what many believe to be the most dangerous region of Allaria—the middle of the Bucentauri Wilderlands, where many independent tribes still exist and resist Allarian rule. Longrange itself is a mostly human and Allai city, but it has managed to survive in the Wilderlands by respecting the Bucentauri and not messing with their lifestyle. It remains somewhat wilder and more rustic than the rest of the Kingdom, its walls more wooden than stone, its buildings more watchtowers than palaces.

Longrange conducts extensive trade with the Bucentauri, regardless of their allegiance, and has some of the best hunters, scouts and trappers in the Kingdom. While they live mostly at peace with the ox-folk, it’s not uncommon to hear of border skirmishes or raids on an Allai farm or a Bucentauri village.

Longrangers have a reputation for violence and bad manners, which is not helped by the fact that the Jade Claws—the bloodthirsty criminal militia of the Wilderlands—seem to operate in the city. But Longrangers remain loyal to whoever does right by them, be it the Kingdom, the Bucentauri or criminal gangs, and follow their own interpretation of The Eliadu, with a high sense of honor and duty applied to their rough frontier context.

Riverglint
An important trade hub in Southern Allaria, and the center of the Realm’s imports and exports, particularly regarding products from Nahuac and beyond. It is often said that the only reason the truce with Nahuac holds is because Riverglint asked for it, as the city—and to some, the Kingdom—would certainly collapse without Nahuac trade.

Riverglint houses the Southern Chapter of the Grand Guild, also known as the Left Hand—while the guild’s HQ at Allaria City would be the Right Hand—and it manages at least half the trade from the Realm’s port cities to the North.

The influx of Náhuinn, Nwoda and other immigrants has made the city a cultural melting pot, but also a boiling cauldron of tribal resentment and bad blood. Ethnic infighting is common, and the city guard often has its hands full.

Silver Channel
A huge port city, perhaps larger than the capital and nearly as important. It traverses the land gap between the Dreamsea to the North and the Sea of Nahuac to the South, which gives it control of most of the trade channels in North Valerna.

Glorious and powerful, Silver Channel is also the Realm’s main stop for travelers, known for its diverse population—most of them just passing, but many staying for the city’s bustling trade and cosmopolitan ambience.

The city is also famous for its active Undercurrent, as vampyr families from Tyveria, shiv press gangs from the Crimson Crow and dog-kin clans from Nahuac clash for control of the city’s extensive black market, and even the local Grand Guild steals from itself to keep pace with the rampant smuggling and racketeering.

Windwend
A large trade center at the Ganglygold Fork in West Allaria, Windwend is a well-defended and cosmopolitan city, with dozens of farms, six trading companies, three Dreamshaping schools, an adventurers’ guild and four highly prestigious Warden regiments.

Windwenders display every aspect of Allarian society, from haughty nobles to honest farmers, from rough Bucentauri rebels to pious Eliadu philosophers, from polite merchants to dangerous Undercurrent duelists. The Windwend magistrate, the dragonbonded Lu Maladion, was an adventurer himself before settling as city ruler, and his rule gives the city an unusual degree of contact with the Dragonbonded covenant, who sometimes send their delegates—mortals and dragons—in official or social visits.

While not as large or prosperous as Silver Channel, due mostly to the Great Guild’s reticence to establish a chapter so near the Wilderlands, Windwend is among the most important and populous cities in the Kingdom. Its people have ‘sophistication to match the capital, bravery to match the Border Forts, and magic to equal the Fai Woods’, as they say. The city is also rumored to be built on ancient Altanesi ruins, but if the Dragonbonded know something of this, they have kept it quiet.