Old City Walls

The line of the Old City Walls of Katrapetch was first laid out in 9490 BPC by the fourth Raja, Rahul Rholab.   Originally the walls were little more than an ambitious outer boundary established for the purposes of managing traffic and taxation. They had no serious defensive function and they were set quite some distance beyond the limits of existing building around the rivers. As such, they offered no significant barrier to the conquest of the city by the Empire of Bradalkut in 9364 BPC.   After the fall of the Empire of Bradalkut in 9016 BPC, the Raja Jalaluddin Ashraf, who had gained more authority over local affairs, ordered extensive reconstruction of the walls to raise their height and strength, turning them into proper fortifications suitable for the role Katrapetch played within the Protectorate of Bress and later within the Trinity Moon Triple Enfolding.   A third phase of building coincided with the erection of the Royal Palace of Katrapetch two thousand years later at a time when the city had complete independence, but the defences would not be seriously tested until the famous Battle of Katrapetch in 4485 BPC, in which the city fell to the invading forces of the Old Pale Empire. In the image below, the last free Raja, Manish Rathore stands on a northern loop of the rampart, prior to that fateful battle.     In truth, Katrapetch had largely outgrown its ancient walls by the time the Old Pale Empire came calling and the sprawling suburbs beyond to the east and west were a weakness which exposed their defensive inadequacy.   In due course the construction of new walls replaced the earlier ones, the so-called Pale Empire Walls, built much further out from the city centre and completed in 4177 BPC. From this time on, the Old City Walls were gradually absorbed into the internal fabric of the city, losing their identity over the following centuries as neglected sections fell into disrepair, stonework was reclaimed for other uses and inconvenient remnants were demolished completely to make way for new building. Although it is a little misleading to define the completion of the Pale Empire Walls as the date the Old City Walls "fell into ruin", it is certainly valid to think of that as the start of a very long, slow process of decay such that very little of their original structure survives today.   Only, in the pattern of streets around the ancient centre and in a handful of special places, can evidence of the Old City Walls still be discerned. One such place is shown in the image at the head of the article. This is the Alkalooth Gate which opens south through what remains of the Old Walls into the southern suburb of Alkalooth. Here we are looking north through the Alkalooth Gate towards the Pabaph district of central Katrapetch.