Charter city

Moran is a creation of mine, a massive, albeit fictitious, city that functions as a dump of my imagination. Anything I write that doesn't find a place elsewhere finds itself chamfered to fit within its walls. There's science fiction, too, hidden beneath layers and layers of magic - which I tend to desist and instead reconfigure as something scientific. The following is only an archive of the most basic ideas surrounding the city. If you think you could make a story out of something, feel free. It's an OpenSource city.

Creation

The walls of Moran descended almost the length of a league before quickly plunging into the dark-brown soil of the Peruhn marshlands. Its once-white walls now sported stains of ochre that rivulets of dirt and grime carried down daily from the lifeless ramparts. Of course, that was only to the north, wherefrom assaults in the city's recent history had been all but absent, while the other three quadrants remained heavily and persistently manned hour after hour, a clear signal to the hardy settlement's neighbours about its attitude.

The city itself began a hundred yards from the superstructure, the concentric proclivity of its roads emerging as one moved centripetally. Not surprisingly, they also designated the formal contours of wealth accumulated by those living in the quarters flanking them, as if emanating from the quatral mines at the heart of the city. The metal itself was precious simply because it weighed almost nothing but could resist damage for periods much longer than a blade of steel.

Administration

Halfway between the innermost ring and the outermost row of soldiers' lodgings toward the southwest, the sprawling ministerial conclave housed the Moranian senate, called the Padun, and the council's meeting chambers. A short but rather bloody 700-year old history had ensured that power within Moran didn't rest in the hands of one man or woman, but a group that was somehow always skilled enough to disrupt daily life but conduct wars with clinical precision.

At this juncture, it becomes necessary to understand the city's design for what it is: with the slaves working at the mines at the center of the city, the necessity for them to pass into the more affluent areas becomes eliminated, in effect making Moran a huge prison populated by hundreds of thousands. At the same time, before condemnation is heaped upon the ministers, it must also be noted that Moran was, overall, a traders' establishment. If not for the quatral, there was no reason for such numbers of people to settle down next to a marshland.

Now, the members of the council, known collectively in common parlance as Dryjhna, "the veiled ones", were sixteen men, women and eunuchs, in no fixed numbers, who presided over the goings-on of the city. Although all of them effectively represented the merchants, the blacksmiths, and the marketeers of the city, the relevance of a ruling council as such became significant only in the face of pestilence and/or war. The first priority was to regulate the export and price of the quatral, and quick to follow was the sustenance of an ambition to forge an empire around the only quatral mines on the entire continent.

Politics

Moranians had rivals everywhere. The harbor on the southern tip of the city serviced a bay that banked the smaller Borean tribe and a colony of the much-more formidable Tarthenal, a race of barbaric warriors who had settled down on the continent more than two millennia past, the building of Moral thus only serving to spurn them. Even though trade flourished between the three, diplomatic relations were cold with no solution in sight. The Tarthenal wanted the Moranians to go; the Moranians wanted the Tarthenal to leave them alone.

Toward the east and the northeast, the Me'avulo Empire laid claim to all the lands, including the Karp mountain range that rent the kingdom in two. Ruled by the Lord Kulpath, the kingdom was passive in every way and, consequently, relations with the Moranians were peaceful. However, despite the monarchic polity, Lord Kulpath ruled in the name of the deity called Nuhe, notorious on the continent itself for the rumored cannibalistic rituals and other ritualistic excesses surrounding its worship, Nuhevin. Of course, these were all practices keenly guarded.

On the northern front of the landmass were the remains of the Shattered Dwellings, a mysterious stretch of rubble and hubris that seemed to all have been blasted to the ground by unimaginable forces, for the pillars that still stood seemed of immense girth and even greater resilience. Swathing an area of almost 2,000 leagues to a side, the vast rectangle reeked of godliness and immortal conflict. However, a more important cause for concern presented itself in the form of the Dwellings' destruction: who? And how?

More soon to follow...