The Wall

The Wall is a long-standing, protective barrier, and great feat of engineering that the people of The City work ceaselessly to maintain as it surrounds their city.

Description

The City's most notable landmark and most important structure, The Wall is a 50-foot-high, 20-foot-wide stone wall with wooden and iron reinforcements and elements, augmented by a magical barrier that permeates the physical wall and extends out above it as an elongated dome shape.

The Wall is a blend of conventional physical wall construction, reactive magical barriers, and innovative mechanical technology that blends the two, and channels the magical protections across the full span of The Wall. The magic of The Wall is fed by the naturally occurring magical nexus point located within the heart of Mount Firebrand, the volcanic mountain which The City resides at the base of. Certain portions of The Wall are constructed upon the leylines that run between nexus points across Pyalea, allowing magic energy to be perpetually and efficiently channelled through the protective barrier.

The mechanical elements of The Wall also allow for its magical barrier to be dynamically applied, controlling how strong a section of the barrier is. This includes the ability to completely disable sections independently on demand, as is sometimes required for maintenance, but most commonly used on each of the city's gates to allow passage in and out.

Maintenance

Maintenance of The Wall is a society-wide effort, and considered to be of paramount importantance for the safety and prosperity of the The City and its population.

Organisation and application of maintenance is handled by the Ministry of The Wall and its various departments. The Ministry is responsible for training and maintaining skilled individuals to tend to each aspect of The Wall, orchestrating and carrying out all required maintenance, as well as deploying teams outside of The City for exterior maintenance.

History & Construction

The Wall was constructed in 2947 PL through a cooperative effort of the elven magicians, gnomish inventors and engineers, and human architects and builders of The City in the early days of their society to protect the population from a variety of external threats.

The unique structure is credited with protecting The City from numerous disasters, dangers, weather events, and hostile entities throughout its history. In the year of its construction it was utilised in protecting The City from the volcanic eruption of Mount Firebrand, a catastrophic event that destroyed much of the region, and had effects felt across the continent.

The Wall now works primarily to shelter the population from The Wilds beyond; a little understood or explored world in current times, that the population is warned never to traverse, and actively kept from doing so, ostensibly for their own safety.

Malick Maga, the chief architect and arcanist of the magical components of The Wall, lost his life during the first phase of construction in an accident involving the tethering of leylines into the barrier as a magic source. Fortunately for the project, his designs were complete and documented well enough to work with, with adjustments made in subsequent phases to avoid a similar accident. The Maga River, the eastern-flowing branch of the Amberflow River, was later named in his honour, representing his outsized importance in The City's survival and prosperity.