Avar

City of Eternal Light

**Government**: The Council of Revenants ; The Eternal Kyrian Court

**Population**: 200,000

**Languages**: Ivirial

**Religions**: Sythlian cults; Iviria; Kathos;

**Threats**: Recent aggression from cloud giant settlement; corruption of some city guard and local militia; trade company disputes; spy activity from neighbouring nations; Cult of the Wing.

**Notable Areas**: Gordex Distinel; Chapel of the Moon (House of Information, Serithidian Cult)

**Notable Guilds**: Cult of the Wing ; Crossroads Trayd'ng Company; Malan East West Company

## Lore

A brilliant white sight that seemingly blended into the clouds above Whitehead Falls came into view as the trees of the Southern Road parted. Far above them, vast white round walls sat on either side of the falls, seemingly pressed into the rock of the mountain by some great force.

Their facades, polished stone bricks whose engineering was exact so as to present a single piece of architecture without seam, were only just shy of being flush with the vertical cliff upon which they were nestled. Huge open windows in which small trees were set allowed light and breeze to come into the North and South Under Quarters within the walls. Though not visible from the ground below, a full five stories of such windows existed, giving only a slight rumor of the true size of Avar.

The Southern Road wound its way up the mountainside and with each step the towering majesty of the city was revealed. Three full layers of these massive rounded walls sat atop the other, each one set back to mirror the leaning of the mountain and to reveal the expansive “decks” upon which only a minority of the walled city’s shops sat and yet full 20 score buildings sat on the main level.

Through it all, living water bisected the great city with ornate white stone bridges that crossed the wide chasm below, each of them certainly wide enough to allow traffic of four carriages wide.

The Southern Gate was no less decorative than its northern sister and were vast in size, a reminder of the contents and purpose of the city itself: an honoring to the first beings in Evindale: the goddess Sythlia and her daughter after which the country had been named: Ivari.

A great stone archway revealed Avar’s interior, an archway that once saw the magnificent statue of Evin pass beneath, a monument no less than 50′ tall and a base 30′ wide.

The Upper South Quarter sprawled out before them.

“To think,” Myril said, “this is one half of the main level and it’s a small bustling city in its own right.”

Her eyes, open and wide as they could be, scanned the buildings before her, tremendous constructions of wonderful simplicity that, while large for they housed a maximum of three floors of shops and boutiques, were dwarfed by the seemingly never-ending continuation of the city up. The middle layer rested lazily against the mountain and even then, only the tops of its huge walls — though smaller than that she first saw below — were level with the top. Only the upper layer, the Royal House, sat perched above the city proper and from its vantage point, Myril could only imagine the view of her Elven homeland far to the south. Seres grabbed her by the hand and walked toward the edge of the wall to peer down. The falls, mainly due to the construction of the stone around it, made only a hush of sound as it slipped over the edge. They couldn’t see the falls from where they were but instead only the massive cloud of mist at the bottom. The site was dizzying, perhaps more so than the city, a reminder that Nature trumps all. He shook his head to ground himself and darted between caravans and camels, horses and an endless stream of people to arrive in the main square of the Upper South Quarter. There it sat, a low, squat round building with one side raising a fin to cut the air, its center mirroring the bisection of the city by the river: the Distinel itself. Its size seemed small compared to what loomed above it to the east and what lay before it: the Great Plaza of Evindale, an expanse for public use where many a festival and faire had been held. The Plaza, like the Distinel and the City, was bisected by the river. So were all of the City’s creations. Again, a reminder that Nature overcomes all in time as well as the obvious: no one quarter could possibly claim the city’s greatest treasures.