Short Story
After the Golden Sun; Life in the City - The Arrival
By Marahute Sol
- Disclaimer: I still do not own Golden Sun. Nor do I have-the rights to any of it... Nutbunnies.
- Author's note: The ever so valid warning: may contain nuts.
In laymen terms, most cities in the world of Weyard do not differ much from bee hives.
The people walking around on the streets seem to have some kind of purpose. As to what that purpose is, that remains a fascinating riddle to most outsiders.
There are only a handful of cities on the map. The most renowned one is called the Great City of Merchants, famed for its many thieves, pickpockets and great mince pies. It is also known for selling nearly everything the world of Weyard produces, for the right price that is. From Hammat's Silk and Silver Tiaras to titanium plated shoes and Mythril underwear. What most people know too, is that its defences are substantial. One can safely say, after seeing them, that one needs an army of LotR's proportions to invade that city. It is also safe to say, that even with such an army, safety does not come in numbers when faced with the descendents of the Eight Lighthouse Saints.
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The travel from the swamped areas of Myrthaes to the Great City of Merchants had been a strange one. Casey knew, and gladly told the others, that the city had a great wall surrounding the city, protecting everybody living inside from attack. He also knew that eight broad stone roads led to the city, mainly because of the amount of trading they did, but also because the past leaders thought it to be a pretty neat idea. He, however, failed to understand what mysterious reason they could have had for building all those small stone forts they had encountered several miles outside of the city's influence and far away from the other storehouses, ordinarily situated next to or at least near one of the main roads.
When they arrived at the city's outer walls the first thing that drew the attention of their eyes was the well known sight of the city's outer walls. It was build using massive yellow marble blocks, expertly cut in dimensions of three by two feet wide and at least eight feet long. The surfaces were so smooth that you couldn´t fit a single sheet of papyrus between the individual pieces of rock. The building techniques used to achieve this, Lidiya judged, had to have been invented by the greatest architects and Earth Adepts known to Weyard. The wall was at least twenty-eight feet high and by itself formed one of the most impressive city walls ever seen, even without the rest of the defences.
The particular standard moat that lined the city walls wasn´t particular standard. It was more of a river, as in, it was a river. When planning the location and most other particulars of the city, the leaders decided that it should not be build near or next to a river. They in fact decided that it should be build in the middle of one and it should go around it.
It was a difficult and painstaking operation. Firstly, a handful of Earth adepts dug a large canal in which the river would be diverted. Secondly, and many Water Adepts were needed in order to do this, they redirected the powerful flow of the river and wielded it around the construction site through the temporary canal. After that, the building of the city's wall and the digging of the canal like moat were commenced. When they were completed they closed off the temporary canal and allowed the water to take its course via the new moat and saw, with great relieve, that their wall stood solid against the constant pounding of several metric ton of water pressure.
Now, the river extended twenty two feet in width on both sides of the city and was at least fourteen feet deep at its shallowest point.
The city´s harbour was built on the outside of the wall and is, by most standards, quite massive as well. It was initially made entirely out of bamboo and wood and situated on the converging end of the river´s flow, that is to say: the river flows from west to east, towards the Wetland Delta (1). Where the two streams of the moat meat each other again, in the middle of a vast network of platforms and bridges; the trading junks (2) have a place (3) to dock.
A few years ago however, the city's council passed the idea of placing a better docking system, a system that would ensure more junks to actually be able to dock. Its construction was drawn up by an engineer, a Fire Adept, of great skill. He used the principal of an old hunting tool. Take a couple of tall pillars and string a couple of ropes between them. When the small junks approach them they grab hold of the rope with a predesigned tool and howl themselves in.
Though its seize has grown little over the years, at least fourteen war junks can be stationed there while still allowing about twenty trade junks to keep loading and unloading their goods at all times.
An ingenuous contraption of cranes allows for swift transportation of goods from the ships, which are docked outside of the wall, to the market on the inside. Only the city´s own merchants are allowed to enter the city from the docks via the same system that is used for the goods.
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When the four warriors walked towards the city´s main gates, the only way in and out of the city unless you were called Katie Sol, they couldn´t help but marvel at its grandeur as well. There were two bridges and two gate systems, swamped with people going in and coming out.
An unofficial law has been passed that actually forced people to use the left hand bridge for coming in, and the right hand bridge for going out only. This was done to prevent blockages from closing off the entire entrance, or, exit..
The two draw bridges were made of one and a half foot thick oak and are covered with thin plates of rock on the top to prevent the hundreds of carts and people passing overhead from damaging it. Four great chains are attached to both sides of the bridges and all disappeared into the four, sixty feet high, towers behind the gates. The design of the towers allows the city to draw up the bridge in a mere twenty breaths.
Wrought iron bars, an inch thick, were weaved into a complicated looking, foot thick, twenty six feet high gate which was able to block all vision from one side to the other. Behind the first gate, a couple of foot away, was a second gate and a few feet behind that one, a third. Above the gate systems, covering the space of a large mansion, were several odd looking contraptions capable of lifting the gates in under fifteen breaths (4).
Large shadows fall on the inner and outer grounds, depending on where you are standing, by towers of at least fifty feet high, standing in intervals of no more than forty feet apart and made out of the same yellow marble blocks. Casey noticed that there were enough windows in them to station eight longbow men and judged the towers big enough to fit at least twenty armoured soldiers. The walls were patrolled by fully armed, heavily shielded guards with the strongest crossbows, swords and broadaxes he'd ever seen. They were slowly walking from tower to tower, carefully surveying all that happened in and outside the city.
Each of the towers had two identical and ominously looking devices of unknown purpose on the roof area. It was explained to Casey as a Cat Puller or something like that.
Entering the actual City was an entirely different story. Most people reacted in pretty much the same way as coming across the insides of a Molerat for the first time; the first thing they do is curse and then find themselves strangely fascinated by the odd smell and sight displayed in front of them.
With a population of almost five thousand citizens and a professional army of nearly four hundred it was indeed the largest city, but also the most densely crowded one.
As the four warriors followed the signposts toward the market near the east side of the wall, Lidiya started humming.
(1) Home of the greatest harbour in Weyard and greatest variety of fish. Not much a favoured place to go for those still in possession of a sense of smell.
(2) Junk? As in a Chinese sailing boat junk? Dude, read a book.
(3) Due to the strong current or the river, a better way of putting it is 'a chance to dock'...
(4) The world of Weyard used the duration of a breath as their smallest time unit. Ten breaths roughly equal thirteen seconds.