An Introduction to the Cities of Gathran

Honas Graigh, Breiamhbéo, old, grand, some say eternal. Well, the elves of Gathran abandoned Honas Graigh. After a history that spans tens of thousands of years, they left the cities of Gathran. Not so eternal after all. We don’t know how long the sunargh city states on Taogh existed before they were butchered and banished by our ancestors, but if we look at our existence, we can guess how long the skinners were around before the gods seeded us into the world. Still, nothing lasts forever.

Shining Breiamhbéo will eventually also flicker and die, or be conquered. Who knows? The gods are fickle; maybe they’ll cease blessing our city one of these days. Who knows?

Many of the cities our ancestors knew have vanished. Carried away by lazy builders, reusing pillars, bricks, even friezes. When Gathran floated into oblivion, her provinces kept some of the splendor but discarded the rest. Tribes rid themselves of Gathrani traditions, reclaiming their own. This also meant abandoning the towns and cities the Empire had founded along its many roads at strategic positions. Many of these positions didn’t correspond with the tribal settlements before Gathran, and so, when the Empire contracted, these places died a slow death.

Much of Gathran’s heartland is now overrun by humans, and their settlements are pathetically short-lived, in comparison. I won’t even mention the majority of those, as they don’t last an (elven ~R) generation.

Honas Graigh, while abandoned, is, in a way, the blueprint after which even Breiamhbéo is modeled. For millennia, Gathran’s Leghans dominated Taogh, and the lands beyond the Bridge. A Leghan’s field camp differs very little from a Leghan’s fortification, at least in design. Each camp was laid out in the same way, and since the majority of cities founded by Gathran were, in the beginning, fortifications, what grew around them was just as structured.

But Honas Graigh didn’t grow out of a Leghan’s camp or fortification. The tribe of the Gathrani was no better or worse off than any of its neighbors. As such, when they began to consolidate their society, their initial settlement was at the foot of the solitary mountain range which now lies east of Honas Graigh. Of that settlement, Gathran as they supposedly called it, very little remains. Why the Gathrani decided to move their town away from the mountain range is lost to history. It may have suited a chieftain to erect a domicile away from the bustle of town, or maybe Cingrib was in a mood, and gave a chieftain a prophetic dream. This was before a kingdom, and eons before Empire.

Back then, Gathran Forest covered a much greater area than today, the next tribes to north, east, west and south, were beyond that forest. Or if there were neighboring tribes in the Woods of Gathran, no history mentions those. The Gathrani moved their hometown away from the shadow of the mountainside, and if those peaks had ever been named, the names are lost to the mists of history. As they had already cut down many of the trees there, they maintained a farming colony there.

Honas Graigh, as they called their new settlement, was still no different from any town still found in the world. Roads were of dirt, streets were unheard of, and for a while the refuse was buried in the depths of the forest. Population grew, and eventually satellite settlements were founded. Eventually the initial town spread out far beyond its own limits, merging with its satellites.

The Gathrani weren’t more warlike than their neighbors. If surviving Kalduuhni records are to be believed it was steeloak, or rather the art of shaping this wood, which caused the first war with Gathran. Of all the places in the world, steeloak only grows in Gathran, and can only flourish in the original borders of the forest. (There have been stories of single steeloaks growing unmolested in places like Dunthiochagh because humans lack the skill to even mar the tree’s bark. ~R) When word spread that the people of Honas Graigh had learned how to not only cut the trees but to shape wood and bark, jealousy reared its ugly head. Maybe it was one of the gods initiating this bout of aggression. (Not that elves need an outside influence to war upon each other. ~R)

Kalduuhni began a war with Gathran, and lost. The elves of the Gathrani had always regarded trials a splendid entertainment – or rather the punishment meted out. Convicted criminals were sent to the arenas to fight against trained warriors. The judiciary gladiators were heroes, role models, and many a child wanted to emulate them. Gladiatorial Art schools became the rage on the hills rising above the filth that had become the forest floor level of Honas Graigh.

This fashion became the Kalduuhni’s problem, as did the morass of filth which had grown around the town. (A shitty situation if ever there was one. ~R) The first assault was repelled, and as the Kalduuhni licked their wounds, those became infected. The enemy retreated from Gathran Forest, but Honas Graigh determined they needed to rid themselves of the Kalduuhni threat. So they pursued the enemy to their home, Honthal. (It’s fascinating that millennia after its destruction, there’s a village in Kalduuhn named Honthal. ~R)

Honthal was a city, bigger and cleaner than Honas Graigh. And while they solidly defeated the forces of the Kalduuhni, the Gathrani warlord, one Marthaneanh, decided against razing the city and enslaving her people. Instead, he offered them the kiss of peace and brotherhood – and fealty. Marthaneanh saw something his countrymen, the nobles, had not considered: an enemy beaten would surrender, and with an oath of loyalty the Gathrani sphere of influence had doubled.

Not only did Honthal expand Gathran’s territory, but their knowledge of architecture, especially sewer systems and aqueducts, immediately bettered life in Honas Graigh.

Within a decade, the swamp of filth a great deal of Honas Graigh became whenever the winter snows melted was no more. Instead Kalduuhni engineers built the first sewers, which transported the elven refuse into the nearby river. It sounds so simple now, but it still was an admirable undertaking. For any age. Aqueducts were constructed, transporting water from the mountains in the east to Honas Graigh, supplying fresh water to all her people, and also flushing the sewers’ contents through a miles long system of tunnels into the river in the east.

The sewer system of more recent history was added to that original Kalduuhni design.

Kalduuhn was the first expansion, and while Gathran never sought battle with her neighbors, said neighbors felt threatened all the same. Trade, territory, the reasons were diverse; at times Gathran hired her armies out to other realms to defeat their enemies. This usually was a calculated move on the King’s part, as he always expected betrayal from the erstwhile employers/allies. An expectation these other realms usually were all too happy to fulfill. When this happened, when the employer/ally decided to deny payment to the Gathrani warriors, the warlord had standing orders to immediately turn on the offending party, subdue the region, and add it to Honas Graigh’s territory.

Over the millennia, a lot of the original town, and even its later incarnations, have vanished. Fires were as much a reason for the occasional urban renewal as consolidation and overeager emperors. (The same holds true for Breiamhbéo. ~R) Some areas retained their “ancientness,” even if the original wooden and timber-frame, wattle-and-daub structures were, for the most part, replaced by stone and liquid stone mortared buildings.

Viewed from above, Honas Graigh is a warren. Now, even after a century of being abandoned, the traces of civilization are impossible to miss. (It’s surprising no one ever dared resettle the site. ~R) The roads meander and crisscross in such a way that, in many places, one can detect some reason behind it. Others retain the original haphazard adherence to the environment. As skill in both crafts and magic improved, natural limitations stopped being obstacles but became optional. Not only did Gathran’s engineers reshape hills and redirect rivers and create lakes where they had been none, they also cut through mountains to make way for their ubiquitous roads which still serve as reminder of Gathrani power all over Taogh.

I’ve already mentioned that cheap and more importantly fire-prone buildings made way for stone and mortar ones, with the only wooden features being window-frames and furniture. As the engineers mastered lighter methods of building sturdy buildings, these buildings also grew taller. Five storey houses became the norm, housing numerous apartments for the common folk. These still resembled the original, cheap cinder blocks, but normal flame could do no harm.

Separated from the islands of higher apartment buildings – a few forming a rectangle with a common courtyard in the center – stand the houses of the nobility, the villas. Those of the richer Mages occupy as much space as one of those islands. Walls keep the rabble out, the only way in a guarded gate. (While we of Breiamhbéo like to claim we are different from Gathran, our nobles and wealthy also dwell in villas much like the ones found in Honas Graigh.) These villas, as expansive as they might be, housed one family, and their servants. Again, there seems little difference between Breiamhbéan domiciles and Gathranean ones. Well maintained gardens surround villas, some even went so far as to erect a miniature bathhouse on their property.

Bathhouses are unique to Gathran. It’s not as if the Gathrani were the only ones who discovered cleanliness – of course not – but where showers or tubs or washcloths are sufficient for many others, the people of Gathran enjoyed bathing in the company of strangers, a mingling of rich and poor, mage and commoner alike. Magic kept the waters pristine, some of the mages received special education how to keep infection and disease from the water. According to a mage I spoke to, the process is easy enough, remind the filth it’s lighter than water, and “scrape” the scum and filth off the surface. There were several bathhouses in Honas Graigh, many in close proximity to the aqueducts.

Five or six aqueducts supplied all of Honas Graigh with fresh water, and the sewers originally constructed by Kalduuhni engineers flushed the feces of a million elves into the one of the Tallon’s tributaries. The city center sported both a gladiatorial arena, and the grand Capstaed, home to the ever popular chariot races, which, incidentally, were adopted from Zyrreni, the nomads of the Zyrren plains east of the Bridge. Dotted throughout the city were schools, libraries, and theaters. But the center of Honas Graigh most certainly was the Àite-coinneachaidh. The great Roads originated here, stretching in all four directions. The temples to all the gods surrounded the plaza; even deities who only required a shrine had their temple here. Several courts, both public and private, also were in the buildings embracing the [Forum], not to mention the great marketplace. Of course there were smaller houses of worship and shrines dotted throughout the city, but the main temples bracketed the Àite-coinneachaidh.

There was one additional temple to Lesganagh, well outside the city limits. In fact this House of War and Sun has remained on the same spot it was originally built, long before Gathran’s expansion. This temple stood on the highest peak of the nameless mountains. No one worshipped there regularly, no sacrifices to the Lord of Sun and War were made here, except for on the occasion of war. On the morning of Honas Graigh declaring war against any enemy, the gates to the House of War and Sun were flung open on both eastern and western ends of the temple, and a specially created golden orb, tempered in the blood of the most valiant soldiers, was placed in the House’s center, greeting Lesganagh’s Glowing Orb each morning and bidding him farewell each evening. Initially, it was a simple place, like all of Honas Graigh, over the millennia it became more elaborate, painted marble columns, painted statues to the ruler of the gods and the most hallowed Leghanies of Gathran. When peace was made, and the war ended, the gates were shut once more and the golden disk placed into Lesganagh’s painted marble hands. [As discussed in the scroll regarding sacrifices and offerings, the disks of prior wars, vanished when the gates were flung open, and Lesganagh’s light entered the temple. ~R]