The City of Light; Ariya

Ariya the Impregnable lies above a narrow peninsula on the central southern coast of Ariya. The port is a small, sheltered bay blocked by a white marble seawall. The wall is twenty feet high and ten thick, and has earned the name "Dolphin Wall" for its antique murals of porpoises at play. It terminates in the prince's palace, the Tower of Morning, a strong marble citadel that protects and lights the harbour. At the wall's far end lie the remains of a gigantic statue of el-Arrasi erected shortly after the Great King's death. A rare earthquake destroyed this massive marble edifice in 1488 Ma. At that time temple mystics warned against rebuilding it, and now the memory of it is long lost, and it would prove impossible to reproduce. The city's white walls, ancient but well- maintained, are twenty feet thick and thirty high. In general the poorest parts of the city are those closest to the walls, because of their association with low-status soldiers. The richest homes lie towards the city's center.

All parts of the city are spotlessly clean. Because of the Temple of Avani's emphasis on cleanliness. Ariya's ancient aqueducts are equally well maintained, and the city boasts Cerilia's most advanced water system, with its own sewers and even the ability to pump water into the richer homes and baths, giving them access to a water pump in their courtyard rather that a well. Ariya has no defined wards or districts, but rather a patchwork of tiny, diverse neighbourhoods organized around extended families called geirhou. Most geirhou try to monopolize their particular craft or trade, a citizen mist go to one neighbourhood to buy a gold earring and another to get boots mended. A day's errands can take one all over the city.

Outside the walls stands Ariya's only new construction, a shantytown of refugees from the war-torn countryside. This dirty maze of shacks has become known as the "Thieves Market" for its reputed population of criminals and procurers. Devout and disciplined Ariyans - unaccustomed to western faults - find depravity in those who fail to bathe regularly, and a visitor from a large Anuirean city would find the Thieves' Market quiet, its thieves inept and its vices tame.

Ariya is built on the site of a Masetian city called Saria. For a brief period during the Masetian's reign the city was ruled by a particularly unpleasant cult which strove to turn people from the light of the true gods, and used a sinister series of catacombs known as the Labyrinth of Reason. When theBasarji took possession of the city it was already a ruin, and much of what remained of Saria was pulled down to make way for the Khinasi structures, but the sewers of modern Ariya were based in the streets and alleys of old Saria. While the sewers themselves are barely tall enough for a man to crawl through, they occasionally open up into flooded rooms that are the remains of chambers and cellars of that ancient place. No one knows quite what could be hidden in the flooded and ruined undercity. Whenever construction opens up a new chamber the priests of Avani are quick to bless the room, and then have it collapsed.Ariya the Impregnable lies above a narrow peninsula on the central southern coast of Ariya.