City of Ydenia

The Confederation of Free Nations has eight capitals, each seated within one of its eight great regions. Yet there is only one among them that is regarded as first among equals. Ydenia, located upon the continent of Istia, is known as the Eldest Daughter of the Confederation, its heart and its soul. It does not ask for authority or importance, for both come flowing towards it by virtue of its status.

History

Ydenia may strike observers as a city still finding its footing. Compared to the venerable marble-clad majesty of Altavera or the myth-laden stones of Teutei, it appears impulsive, upstart and unrooted.

Yet beneath this veneer of youth lies a far older history stretching back to the days of the Grand Coledeian Republic. Long before the Confederation, before the Empire of Isornei, Ydenia was once a fortress upon the Ibaida River, one of many raised by the Republic to defend against the Tautan and Cetan tribes of the East.

The toponymy of the City itself is uncertain. Scholars trace it tentatively to the Yndei, an ancient Kennic tribe that once held dominion over the region before being subjugated by the Grand Coledeian Republic. What is certain is that when the Grand Republic collapsed in finality in the wake of the Sack of Altavera in 2,012 BSC, Ydenia fell with it. It was sacked, burned, and stripped to its bones, and then some. Most of its citizens were carried off to slavery by the marauding Tautan tribes, and through the Istian Dark Ages, merely a few hundred souls clung to its ruin, living among collapsed colonnades and overgrown, brambled forums.

But the Ibaida River remained and has continued to remain a vital artery logistics. And so, in time, the ruins of Ydenia drew the gaze of empire, and more specifically, Marius the Restorer, the warlord-turned-unifier who would establish the Empire of Isornei from a shattered continent. He, suspicious of his newly subjugated Coledeian and Verlinneian vassals, whose allegiance was begrudging at best, ordered that Ydenia rebuilt as a holdfast on the western bank of the Ibaida. From this vantage, wary imperial eyes could watch the slow-brewing ambitions of the Coledeian heartland, and imperial steel could strike if loyalty wavered.

The reconstruction brought soldiers to garrison the land; engineers and masons shaped the new walls; administrators oversaw the settlement of both Isornian and Coledeian settlers alike. In time, these two peoples became the unlikely architects of the city’s rebirth. Markets opened, churches were consecrated, and streets were named after Marius. Over generations, this hybrid populace imbued the city with a character unlike any other in the region: pragmatic yet proud, immersed in memory yet always reaching forward.

When the Archduchy of Medenei was created as a vassal under the Empire of Isornei's aegis, it was Ydenia that was chosen to become is archducal capital. The ruling house, House Medenei, neither the most powerful nor the most ancient of the imperial peerage, took root there. It cultivated its influence through administrative genius, diplomatic tact and strategic patience, carving for itself a place as an intermediary between the ever-restive Coledeians and the Isornians. Thus, long before Ydenia rose to claim its place as the Confederation’s capital, it had already learned the art of survival in the spaces between powers.

Yet once more did the banners of war darken its horizons. The Six Years' Ruin, a brutal imperial civil war, erupted after years of festering rivalries between the numerous cadet houses of the Imperial House of Alisanti reached its climax following the disputed imperial election of 479 BSC. House Medenei, along with the Coledeians, chose to declare for Lady Vareka of House Ruvaseïl-Alisanti, one of the claimants to the throne of Isornei. Slowly but surely were her forces beaten back, and the vengeful Alisanti host, against whom the Medeneians and Coledeians had fought against, now stood at the gates of Ydenia. No bartering, no entreaties, no parleys could prevent what happened next. Led by the self-declared Prince Gegin Alisanti, the city was sacked once more, in what is now called the Second Sack of Ydenia. So heinous was the slaughter that accounts from that time report of "soldiers wading knee-deep in vitae", and the "Ibaida weeping red for its children."

For a century, it was forbidden by imperial decree to rebuild Ydenia's walls, and for that time, House Medenei had to hold court in its sister city of Kaldea. It was only after such a time of penance had expired that the reconstruction, repopulation and reconsecration of the city began once more.

Ydenia's fate was forever altered during the Age of Ruin, when from the fracturing imperial world there emerged one of its most transformative figures. Fridrik Medenei, a noble bastard born of the reigning Archduke of Medenei and a Dashengese courtesan, would rise to become a statesman of impossible vision. Though the Second Covenant, the defining treaty that created the Confederation, was ultimately signed in the Nomadic City of Eremita, it was Ydenia, the city of his youth, that bore the brunt of that decision.

No longer would Ydenia remain bound to the decaying Isornian Empire. With the ratification of the Covenant, it was cleaved away permanently from both the Archduchy of Medenei and the imperial hierarchy. In its place now was an enclave of the Confederation of Free Nations, a sovereign, extraterritorial administrative heart to the collective will of a thousand nations and their delegates.

The transformation was immediate. Ydenia, long a provincial capital, and still nursing its wounds from the Second Sack of Ydenia, had been important only in matters of regional administration or in the calculus and consideration of local defense and logistics. Now, it was cast into the light of history. Overnight, its avenues filled with envoys, its quiet squares echoed with the clang of scaffolding and construction, and its modest skyline began to bristle with the marble bones of bureaucracies that would come to steer the Known Expanse. Ministries, courts, senates, central banks: these arrived in a deluge, pulled by the gravitational force of Fridrik’s vision and the city’s sudden centrality.

Geography

West Bank

Today, the Ibaida River divides Ydenia both physically and philosophically. To the west is the oldest part of the city, the ancient streets tight and winding, layered in a way that resists easy navigation and defies architectural symmetry. Here, the Senate Dome looms over the city as a sentinel of steel of bright marble; the Confederal Supreme Court dispenses judgment from its  chambers; the Old Administrative Condominium still processes edicts, permits and licenses.

East Bank

But it is across the Ibaida, on the East Bank, that Ydenia reveals its modern transformation. Long reserved for future expansion under the terms of the Second Covenant, the land was once little more than floodplain and fallow ground. The finest architects from every corner of the Known Expanse were summoned to shape the east, chief among them Lord Alta Deiasin of Verlinnei, whose reputation for geometric harmony and audacious scale is etched into every boulevard and plaza. Today, the East Bank of the City is almost dichotomous in its opposition to the cramped, crumbling West Bank. Broad roads fan outward from administrative buildings, cutting through verdant expanses of public parks and promenades designed for leisure, symbolism and aesthetics. Beneath the streets hums one of the first metro systems in the Known Expanse, a feat of Eremitan and Haldsurian engineering that links the East Bank’s bureaucratic sprawl with the cramped complexes of the West.

Space, however, is finite in the East Bank, and the only way to manage its accelerating influx of diplomats, senators, secretaries, technicians, and aspirants is to build upward. Thus rose the cloud-breakers, soaring vertical fingers of glass, stone, and sigil-tempered steel, complexes so tall they seem to converse with the gods of the upper air. These towers combine Welkavian steelwork, Eremitan designs, Verlinneian architectural expertise,, Haldsurian construction, and Furenzian elevators whose whispery ascents have become the background music of a thousand daily routines.

Among these is the Wurtin Tower, which forms the heart of the Confederal Central Bank complex. Forty stories high, it presides over Ydenia’s financial district. Those who work in its upper levels speak in hushed tones, as if aware they are suspended in a space where the weight of decisions made could shift the economy and destiny of a continent. And yet these towers have become strange tourist destinations. Knights in full plate armor, sent from rural archduchies on ceremonial visits, ride the elevators with awkward grace, gauntleted hands gripping brass rails as young secretaries in smart dresses stifle laughter or politely ignore the clangor of sabatons beside polished heels. In Ydenia, even absurdity has a place.

Most importantly, two monumental structures now dominate the skyline of the East Bank. The first is the newly founded Confederal Central Bank building. Its façade is a fusion of Coledeian-Verlinneian marblework and symmetry, Welkavian steel and Tarsidean glass, its Arkaneian and Sareïnian vaults deeper and more secure than any known crypt, and its operations veiled behind layers of enchantment, bureaucratic ritual, and the precision of Sareïlian accounting logic.

Adjoined to this financial citadel is the New Administrative Condominium, embedded into the urban lattice of the East Bank. Here, the Confederation’s expanding bureaucracy will find a new home, for the old administrative quarters along the West Bank have begun to buckle beneath the strain of time, complexity and volume. Ministries once confined to single halls now sprawl across entire wings, and departments multiply like cells dividing in a sort of administrative mitosis. Its corridors are entrancingly wider, its council rooms more seductively flexible, and its walls are embedded with sigils and augmented acoustics that ensure even the softest voice spoken in committee is amplified.

That both these structures rise so rapidly and with such exacting grace is no accident. The funding flows directly from the vaults of House Sareïl. Their influence in Ydenia is no longer confined to the social salons of power or whispered agreements made behind parliamentary drapes. It is poured now into stone, metal, and function. It is they who bankroll this vast bureaucratic recalibration; it is their capital underwriting not just buildings but the character of governance itself.

By binding their name to the city’s infrastructure, they tether themselves to the future of the Confederation. Each loan they issue, each clause in their construction contracts, each wing built according to Sareïlian specifications, binds the Confederation ever tighter to themselves. And like their legendary matriarch Marcelan, they wield that influence without raising their voice, without brandishing titles. They build. They fund. They shape. The Confederation moves forward, and the Sareïls ensure it moves where they wish.