Laesnum
Laesnum, Princess of Cities, stands as the birthplace of The Nadallic Empire, home of Nadall before his ascension, and the senior of The Seven Capitals. It is the oldest, grandest, and most holy city beneath the empire, housing numerous temples, palaces, and libraries dedicated to its most prized son. From its humble beginnings as just one of two dozen lesser cities of Fennao, the past thousand years have brought it unparalleled prosperity and beauty, becoming the pinnacle of Ascendist culture, the brightest star in the most brilliant constellation.
The largest draw to Laesnum and certainly its defining trait to outsiders across the empire is its status as its religious heart and the end point of The Heaan Walk, the once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage all able must make to pray in the center of Nadall's Cult. Pilgrims come from all reaches of the empire, from over mountains and across seas, walking the long roads. Vast shantytowns curl outside the old stone center of the city, housing tens of thousands of travelers all through the year; a steady tide pouring in and out, come to see the city for the first and, likely, only time in their life. These outgrowths are mere beside the old quarter, with rough roads and shorter buildings and further detritus, but have risen to become nearly half the city, now far more than hostels and drinking halls playing host to travelers.
Being the first of the Seven Capitals, Laesnum also houses the lion's share of the empire's bureaucracy. Throughout the city, thirteen royal palaces serve as the administrative heart of the empire, connected by a vast network of tunnels and catwalks over the city, plied by numerous pages sending missives back and forth. These palaces house a colossal staff of priestly scribes, scholars, and functionaries supported by an army of servants, most of whom live on the grounds; entire neighborhoods devoted to the legions required to oversee the far-flung empire. The empire and its priesthood have steadily devoted more portions of Laesnum to temples and offices, amassing a significant chunk of the city's space and populace around the ever-expanding need.
History
There was once a plentitude of cities older than Laesnum, but time has worn them away and now it stands among the oldest cities in the empire, dating back at least six centuries from Nadall. Those Before Ascendant years, over a third of its total history, mirror the time, land, and people, and proved little reflective of the soaring heights the city would achieve.
Laesnum first grew from Fennant farmers, coalescing around mud-brick houses and markets, then turning into a hub for artisans and craftspeople, like most of the small cities beginning to emerge from Fennao. The young city amassed steadily more weavers and smiths and potters, their trades sought by many in the surrounding countryside, eventually emerging as a prosperous, if unimportant, regional power, notable for its export of fine ceramics.
After The First Ascension and the burgeoning rise of The Nadallic Empire, Laesnum took center stage for the first time in its history as a capital and key political location, shortly followed by Glimmon. This precipitated a meteoric rise in wealth, construction, and cultural importance for the city, as it took on unparalleled religious and political significance. In all fields, a flurry of building projects began in the next 200 years, as the population swelled multiple times over and immense shrines, defense works, neighborhoods, and workshops sprawled out from the old city, built of mud-brick and wattle-daub houses.
The city's meteoric rise abruptly stopped in the 250s with the outbreak of the First Orilon War, as conscription, food insecurity, and panic gutted it. From 250 to 360, the population fell from nearly 500,000 to just over 70,000 as Laesnum became a ghost town from which people fled. In this period, public works decayed; trade plummeted; and large districts went abandoned, not reclaimed for over a hundred years. This period in Laesnum's history was by far its darkest, but, thankfully, was not to last.
In the late 4th century, with the conclusion of the Orilon war, Laesnum's prospects brightened along with the larger empire's. Population and economic activity rose immediately, and, after 150 years, was better than before. Construction in this period, 360-750, made and remade much of the city, with great works built as a show of the city's recovery and restored vitality. Here Laesnum saw its new heights of comfort, stability, and prosperity.
The growth period ended in the late 700s, under similar, though less destructive, circumstances to the 4th and 5th centuries. During the Second Orilon War, the city declined and gradually weakened over less than a century. It fell, but far less than its first bust, as the empire and its capital were by that point, drastically more secure and built up, after having learned from the prior catastrophe. The decline was lesser and the subsequent rebound, starting in the 760s, was greater.
Modern Laesnum begins following this second bust, as the city bloomed faster and more radically than even after the first bust. The population, economic, and construction boom that built the current city was greater perhaps than any other city in the empire, as it sprawled and crept upward with thousands of stone buildings, adorned with a myriad of bronze ornaments. The creation of the Tysoiki Mirrors symbolize the ultimate rise of Laesnum, lighting up the sky and being a brilliant, unique marvel, unseen anywhere else in the empire or beyond.
Landscape
Laesnum rests upon the five Mubalu hills, alone within a flat plain on three sides, and with old, worn down mountains on the fourth. It does not lie on the banks of a river or lake, a historic disadvantage in the pre-Nadallic days, instead relying on road traffic and drawing water from the endless springs beneath the city. This factor—the open plains around, exposed to foreign forces—has intensely influenced the city's growth, driving policy since the pre-Nadallic era.
In times of strife and war, through the empire's early days, the Ascendants spent decades building up walls, trenches, and tunnels to raise defenses from the open space. These efforts culminated in the complete Halkisian Walls in the 4th century NE, a mammoth complex of miles of defensive works heaped upon and in the ruddy, clay-rich soil. These works, while finally remedying an ages-old worry of the city's local rulers, never were tested. The Orilons never breached as far as the open fields of Fennao, leaving them there only to stand proud. As that threat waned, the works became reabsorbed into the city as the pilgrim shantytown spread further out from the Old Quarter and ate up the gentle, muddy fields surrounding it, ballooning outward through the centuries of peace.
The one point not requiring defense is the Uappian Bluffs, a rough mountain range backing Laesnum to the northwest, cradling a portion of the Old Quarter. These weathered peaks lie just close enough to the city to shelter it, but far enough back to never impede its sprawl; remaining ever a backdrop of scraggly slopes populated by twining bushes and trees, hooked in the gravel. From those gravel slopes, come raw iron, lumber, and quarry stone, the lifeblood of its construction, eeked out by a host of laborers working in the mountains.
Contrasted against the labor and natural resources extracted from the Upappians, are the villas and lodges that nestle in its deeper recesses. There, among the glens and glades, squat many civic officials' retreats, just off from the city to secluded in the sunny bluffs. These resorts have proven influential, and growing more so, as a meeting place for dignitaries and powerbrokers in Laesnum, removed from the Ascendants' watch eyes, hidden among the mountains.
Cityscape
In the pre-Nadallic era, like most Fennant cities, Laesnum was a town of small, squat buildings, between one and three stories, built of fired bricks and wooden supports. These blocky structures were often open, with wide windows and patios giving access to the warm nights and songbirds. Most buildings were devoted to artisans's homes/workshops, the lower floor used as a showroom and studio and the upper inhabited by their family. Connecting these tenements were broad, unpaved thoroughfares leading from the outside walls into several open, centralized market areas where rural vendors came to sell basic staples to the city's populace. This forms a town of low, flat buildings intercut with broad empty swaths ringed by old, quarried stone walls, home to some 10,000 people. In the 11th century of the Ascendants, it houses two and a half million.
After the advent of the Nadallic Era, Laesnum expanded rapidly, both in population and in size. With the influx of wealth came more elaborate buildings made of stone quarried in The Uappian Bluffs. First only shrines and off-shots of the new Nadalline Palace were built of stone, but more prosaic structures followed and soon older, meager wood-mud-brick houses were replaced by cut stones and, even more so, fired bricks made from better quality materials from the mountains. This influx of new building materials coupled with the rise in overall wealth in Laesnum, led to another rise; one of the skyline.
As the city sprawled and more civic and religious buildings arose in its center, space close to the Old Quarter became more attractive to the newly wealthy Fennant priests and aristocrats, wishing to be and have ready access to the center of power. Hence, they built luxurious apartments, rising five, six, or sometimes seven stories, housing those not wealthy or influential enough to own a private complex. These tenements, which soon spread to dominate much of the city center, are a defining feature of the city to the present day, decked in balconies and bronze ornaments and hung with numerous chimes by order of Nadall. Toward the outer city, the buildings slope down, making the whole resemble a gargantuan hill when viewed from the mountains.
Another defining feature of Laesnum, true of most Ascendist cities, is its bronze and brass adornments, seen on every building and street. Plaques, lanterns, railings, sculptures, and chimes decorate all surfaces, kept polished under penalty of taxation. Bronze statues stand on most street corners, and fountains with elaborate water features form the centerpieces of squares, made from numerous, fine brass pipes. However, as impressive as these features are, they constitute a small portion of the metal works that give Laesnum the name, City of Bronze. Most of it is small bronze pieces—giraffe heads protruding from cornices, phalluses hung over doorways to ward off Orilon spirits, and the hundreds of thousands of dangling, swaying chimes that resonate through the city with each gust. When viewed at sunset or sunrise, these millions of pieces of metalwork, studded through the city, and especially in the Old Quarter around the palaces, shine like fire. This luminance, coupled with the gentle tinkling of the windchimes, is perhaps the most ethereal quality of Laesnum, unparalleled by any other city in the empire.
Tysoiki Mirrors
Above Laesnum, hangs the feature that makes it unique amongst the empire and the entire known world, a resource of poets and bards for three hundred years; the Tysoiki Mirrors. The Mirrors are, currently, seven continuous pieces of glass, varying from 800 to 1,500 feet, polished to reflect the city below. They hang four hundred feet in the air, suspended by Nadall's magic, raised upon the conclusion of the Second Orilon War as a monument to the Ascendants's glory upon defeating the Orilons for the final time.
Thousands of workers forged the Mirrors, heating fields of sand resting on bronze plates over bonfires. First, they built five, one for what was then each Ascendant, adding two more centuries later in 1047 and as recently as 1053 with the Ascension of Veres and Retphha. The initial raising and subsequent additions elicited massive celebration throughout Laesnum, with revels lasting for weeks on end, lighting up the Mirrors all through the night with traditional lanterns and candles to honor the incredible rarity of an Ascension.
During the night, the Mirrors shine like the Moons, blurring and becoming magically fogged as they reflect Laesnum's light and emit to it a gold-hued light created from within. The Mirrors' light is said to be mystical, and those under it in the night cannot hide from Nadall's sight; such is often used in reference to criminals, lovers, and city watch. They figure prominently in paintings of Laesnum, as poetic subjects, and in religious literature, serving as a direct symbol of the power, elegance, and mysticism of the Ascendants.
Halkisian Walls
Settled in the heart of the empire, grown rich from centuries of trade, tourism, and imperial patronage, Laesnum worries little over its defense. The city sprawls widely, unlike the Frontier Cities which are coiled and tightly compact. The Eldest Sister has not feared siege or sack since the first Orilon era, over half a millennia ago when they constructed the Halkisian Walls from the first to fourth centuries. These defensive works, constructed by Halkis, are a colossal series of three walls, a network of aqueducts and underground storage chambers, and earthworks spread around the city.
The Walls were originally constructed in a time of uncertainty and peril when the The Orilons loomed and encroached on Fennao. Since then, however, they have atrophied and grown vestigial. Laesnum has far expanded beyond them, leaving the walls and ditches as strange markers of the city's prior size, now entombed deep within it. The earthworks were cleared piecemeal over the 6th and 7th centuries as neighborhoods spread out to accommodate the swelling population. But, the aqueducts and vast storage halls, ensconced underground, were expanded; bolstering Laesnum's stockpiles in case of famine, plague, or political turbulence.
"Laesnum, city of music and bronze, you sing to me in every statue and chime. Far above the mirrors dance, reflecting us so much greater and smaller than we are. Laesnum, you are as no other under the threads of night."
Related Traditions
The Heaan Walk
Night of Candles
Myma Masks
Related Tech
Laesnum Pottery
Bronze Forging
The Heaan Walk
Night of Candles
Myma Masks
Related Tech
Laesnum Pottery
Bronze Forging
Related Locations
Nadalline Palace
Shrine of Nadall
Halkisian Walls
Library of Karsa
Old Quarter
Great Square
Tysoiki Mirrors
Nadalline Palace
Shrine of Nadall
Halkisian Walls
Library of Karsa
Old Quarter
Great Square
Tysoiki Mirrors
Founded in 589 BA by Fennant farmers and artisans united in community Alternative Names
Princess of Cities, The Eldest Sister, Cradle of Nadall, House of Nadall, City of Bronze, City of Music Population
2,590,000 (1050 NE)
Both these booms followed large depopulations caused by The Orilon Wars, one between 250 and 360 where the city cratered and was reduced to a vast, empty husk, and a second lesser collapse from 660-740.
Location
Fennao, Northern
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Laesnum is located in Fennao, situated on its northern plains and on the outlying edge of its heartland. In the pre-Nadallic era, this distance from the center of Fennant culture and trade diminished the city, however, in the centuries since Laesnum has dramatically eclipsed older cities and become the point power radiates from while providing key military isolation.
Capital
Laesnum serves as the chief religious and political capital of The Ascendant Empire, also acting as the major administrative center for Omwela.
"In the holy hours when the sun goes down, the Mirrors outshine the stars and moons. It makes you feel blessed to be born into their Light."
The Little Prince
A Beutha Pater, or 'little prince,' governs Laesnum, under the direct order of The Ascendants's themselves, unlike most Beutha's who report to Provincial Governors. This relationship is unique to the Seven Capitals, whose rulers act as immediate agents of their Ascendants, giving them privileged political power. Within the city, the Beutha oversees the physical and spiritual welfare of the population, its infrastructure and security, and higher matters of state delegated to them by the Ascendants.
Beneath the Beutha, there are over 80 lesser priests each managing a parish, seeing to smaller, but essential matters. They administrate waste disposal, maintenance of civic buildings, security, and constituents' spiritual health, seeing that they worship at the shrines and give offerings on holy days. These 83 wards, or Unnae, and their leading priests form the backbone of Laesnum's rule.
The Chimes
Poets named Laesnum, among many epithets, the City of Music, for, as many travelers remark, such can always be heard in its streets. The tinkling sounds of tens of thousands of wind chimes roll over the poorest and most opulent neighborhoods, as all houses are mandated to put out chimes and wind flutes by religious custom. This warbling, almost-dream-like undertone pervades across the toil and bustle of an eager, active city, providing a mystical quality to the holy city.
"When the twilight comes, the bells toll and the city falls still, the winds sing on and they mingle with the sound and the hushed prayers making a song all their own"
City of Reliquaries
As the center of Nadall's Cult, Laesnum houses many of the most significant relics in the empire, many coming directly from the time of the First Ascensions. Among the numerous shrines in the city, pilgrims may find purported artifacts even at small, poor, street-corner altars. However, in the few great shrines, temples divinely backed by the Ascendants and their Ascendiles, there sit the utmost sacred icons; those directly tied to key religious events.
Some of the many artifacts venerated at these shrines include:
- Weapons from the Battle of Funar Lhash when Nadall Ascended, among other holy struggles
- Robes, quills, and vestments used by Ascendants and Ascendiles
- Stones and masonry from the old city
- Pottery thrown by Tiksuma, Nadall's craft master. Additionally, some scribes and biographers claim that buried within the Nadalline Palace, there exists pottery made by Nadall as an apprentice
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