Saradir

The River Line

A river gives Saradir its shape. The boreal forest here is dense and dark-needled, awkward country for anyone trying to move in numbers, and the water is the one line through it that nobody had to cut. The city grew along that line until it became the major place of its region: yards and landings on both banks, cleared ground behind them, and beyond that nothing but trees for a long way in every direction. Farming and mining amount to little. Saradir raises, equips and moves soldiers, and the river carries them and their supply, fast downstream, slow up, and frozen in the cold months into a road that will take a column at speed.

A Loyalty That Travels

Nothing above Saradir claims it; the allegiance it owes is owed to itself. What it receives comes from well beyond the forest, since cities out on the open grassland name Saradir when asked where their loyalty lies, even where the day-to-day governance over them sits with some other power entirely. Third-wave Ashanar built the place, carrying the south-western instinct for written terms into work that is almost wholly military.