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Upper City

"A walled city within the city, its great towers reaching for the sky, its gigantic crossbeams shadowing the streets. Being the heart of the city, it drains all the riches without any consideration for its underprivileged counterpart."

The aristocratic half of Cadwallon — an enclosed citadel built atop the ruins of the Cynwäll city, around and between the feet of the colossal Dyrsin Tower. Where the Lower City sprawls outward at ground level, the Upper City climbs: towers, suspended bridges, crossbeams that throw the streets below into permanent shadow. This is where the wealth pools, the embassies sit, and the intrigues turn.

What It Is

  • An enclosed citadel — walled, defensible, physically elevated above the lower city. The walls are pre-Cadwë Cynwäll work, reinforced over generations.
  • Built among the Cynwäll pillars — the great spires that support Dyrsin's Tower. Mansions and towers cling to and bridge between them.
  • The seat of the three upper fiefs — Drakaër, Var-Nokkt, and the ducal enclave. (The other eight fiefs are lower-city.)
  • A maze of bridges — countless spans link the feet of the Tower. Many are too narrow for wagons; mounts are discouraged for safety. Getting around is "mainly a question of hiring the proper guide."

Who Lives Here

The aristocracy, the wealthy guild masters, the embassy staff, and the servants who keep them all running. Entry from the lower city is restricted — only during the ducal jubilee procession are lower-city citizens permitted up in organized, militia-supervised groups.

There is a fierce, subtle elitism. Being merely rich is not enough; lineage matters. The oldest noble families trace seven or eight "degrees" of Cadwë ancestry, and aristocratic receptions are partly structured around how many degrees each guest holds.

The Embassies & Diplomacy

The Upper City constantly hosts the plenipotentiaries of all origins. Four official embassies sit here:

Plus the unofficial fifth: the Cynwäll ambassador Dyrsin, who lives alone in the Tower and rarely descends.

Diplomacy here always travels with "a little spying and a hint of treason." The odd towers become the stage of discreet pursuits; conflicts are settled in formal duels on the Field of Honor or quietly in the alcoves. The Goldsmiths (the Gilded Tower) and Ferrymen (the Lakeside Manor) host foreign delegations the embassies can't officially acknowledge.

The Texture

  • Crossbeams and shadow — the great structural beams that hold the upper city together cast the streets into gloom even at midday
  • Hot-air balloons — aristocrats use them for short hops between towers; strong coastal winds limit their range
  • Dragon traffic — Lanever dragons glide overhead to visit their titanic kin in Dyrsin's Tower
  • Crowding — despite the wealth, many districts are as congested as the lower city; ducal works haven't solved it
  • Trade everywhere — even here, a dwarven engineer demonstrates domestic automatons on one corner while a master tailor presents avian hats on the next

What sits underneath

The Upper City is built directly on the Cynwäll ruins, which are built on the Sphinx city, which sits atop Desire's prison. The aristocracy lives closest to the Tower and farthest from the catacrypts — but the litioc walls and [[Labyrinth]] corridors bleed upward. The micro-subsidence the Architects have detected is worst beneath the upper city. The people with the most to lose are, quite literally, standing on the thinnest crust.

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