Before we enjoy Chapter 7 later this month, Zoe has put together something special - a lore article on Salgan City!
Most of the action in Liberation takes place within its walls, and Zoe has built a detailed world that deserves more than just glimpses through the story.
I love collaborating with Zoe and I think you'll be really impressed by the depth of thought that has gone into building this world.
Now, enough out of me. Here's Zoe!
This map was made with an online generator (I'm nowhere near as good a cartographer as would be required to make something like this) by fiddling with parametres and moving stuff around until I was satisfied with the result. And, as a bonus, I wrote a short history of the city to go with it.
Salgen City is named after Castle Salgen, the original nucleus from which the city was founded. Also named after Salgen is the dukedom the city is capital of, and the ruling family thereof; the origin and meaning of the name “Salgen,” however, are lost to history.
Castle Salgen was originally established as a defensive bailey to monitor a trade road. It is built atop a rocky crag, which slopes steeply down to the valley below to the south and more gradually to the north. To the east of the castle is a relatively flat area, which was built up by people from the neighbouring region who wanted to enjoy the protection living near a fort offered; this first settlement later became the Old Town quarter, and a trading post was established to the immediate north, where the market square now lies.
The city gradually grew and expanded, first to the north, creating the quarter known as New Town, and then to the west, where the more affluent people built their estates; accordingly, this area is known as the Noble Estates. At this point, the city was becoming an important trading and government centre, and the need to ensure its safety was recognised, so a wall encircling the whole of the crag was built: the remaining unbuilt area soon saw a new quarter spring up, named Stonewall after the defensive wall itself.
Originally, only one gate into the city was built, to the south of the castle. This soon proved impractical because of the steep terrain, which made bringing carts and carriages into the city difficult, so another gate was opened, at the north end: the gates, creatively, are named Old Gate and Newgate, and they give their names to two further quarters which developed organically outside the city wall. The quarter of Old Gate is the smallest in the city, and is just a few buildings clinging to the steep rock to the south of the wall; the quarter of Newgate is instead one of the largest, since the flat ground to the north-east made erecting buildings easy. The area of Newgate furthest away from the city wall, to the north, is very creatively known as Northern Newgate.
The newest of Salgen City’s quarters are the Foreign Quarter and the Slums, to the south-east and north-west of the city, respectively. The Foreign Quarter derives its name from the fact that it is the location of a plethora of inns and alehouses which serve the large amount of merchants and travellers moving along the trade road who, by law, cannot usually enter the city, but still need to be housed and fed for as long as they remain in the area. If they decide to stay permanently they usually move to Newgate or, if they can’t afford proper housing, to the Slums, which are a shantytown made up of rickety huts and sheds and which house the poorest segment of the populace.
The government of Salgen City (and, more generally, the Dukedom of Salgen) is de jure an oligarchy, ruled by a council of nobles and merchants with the archduke at its head; however, it’s de facto a dictatorship, since the current archduke, Ulrich von Salgen, has spent years gathering all power in his own hands. Those who objected to his rule have met their end by being thrown from their horse while hunting in the forest, or by finding themselves on the wrong end of a knife after an argument in an alehouse, or by slipping and falling fell while admiring the view of the city’s rooftops from the top of the castle, or some other way, in a series of mysterious and unfortunate events.
Here's the map with the various quarters outlined:
Note that except for the boundary between the inner and outer city, which is clear-cut because of the wall, all other borders are a bit fuzzy and it's often not entirely clear where one quarter ends and the next begins, it's more of a gradual shift from one to the other.
Well! I hope you've enjoyed this little peek behind the scenes :)
Thank you for your attention, everyone, and I'll see you next time!