Merretia: The Continent

The geography of the known world. Sulamir is a city-state. Merretia is the continent Sulamir sits on. This document maps both, plus the Maw, the West Sea, and the named places of interest across the continent.

For the history that shaped this geography (especially the Fall of Aldasen and the sinking of part of the continent), see 06-HISTORY.

1. The Scale of Merretia

Merretia is a vast continent. The precise extent has not been mapped in Sulamir’s public scholarship. The phrase “the eight corners” is used colloquially for the eight furthest cardinal points of surveyed Merretian land, and the idiom “I’ve seen the eight corners” means “I’ve seen everything.” This implies a canonical survey, the results of which are (for narrative purposes) probably not as complete as the phrase suggests.

Beyond the eight corners, Merretia continues into wilderness, hostile territory, or lands not known to Sulamir’s guilds. The existence of any settled civilization beyond that line is OPEN.

Population scale (locked). Sulamir-the-city holds approximately 35 million inhabitants under its dome, divided into eighteen culturally-coded districts (see section 2.1 below). The continental homelands outside the city hold roughly 11 million inhabitants distributed across the eighteen provincial territories. Continental total: approximately 46 million. The city dwarfs the continent in population, holding roughly three-quarters of all Sulamiri citizens. This is the demographic signature of the world: a megacity orbited by sparse provincial homelands whose cultural traditions and ancestral lines are sources, but whose political and economic gravity is decisively in the city. The magnerail and the broader transit infrastructure exist in part to maintain the city’s population in the city while keeping its connections to the homelands alive.

2. Sulamir

Sulamir is the principal city-state of Merretia and the beating commercial and political heart of the continent. It is not a normal city. Its vertical extent is enormous: the ground level sits beneath layers of suspended city squares that the families above use as their own streets and that the families below use as their own ceilings. Families in the lower levels live in heavy shade. Families in the upper levels live in open sky.

The coast and the Great Harbor. Sulamir is a sea city. Its western border is the shoreline itself — miles and miles of harbor-front, sea-wall, and quay running beneath the Dome’s western arc, where the river system meets the Ocean. The city is a prosperous melting pot because of what the water and the rails bring it: trade and immigration from every land on Merretia, the magnerail lines binding it to the other cities of the continent, and fleets of trade ships keeping it bound to the broader world. Travelers who round the eight corners of the world almost always pass through Sulamir to restock, rest, and trade tall tales of their adventures in whatever bar they happen to find.

Scale. Approximately 35 million inhabitants under one dome (see section 6 below). The city is post-medieval techno-magical metropolis scale, comparable to Tokyo at peak density or larger, supported by Founding-era infrastructure (magnerail, Cloud network, deep Steam Tunnels) that no contemporary culture could replicate. The city is also the seat of senate, Council, and most of the continent’s political and economic life. Roughly three out of every four Merretians live here.

Structure. The city of Sulamir sits at the heart of Ahlgenadin province, the central province of Merretia, and is the seat of The Sulamir League guild. The city’s polity-sense and the continent’s polity-sense are the same eighteen-fold entity expressed at two scales: the continent is divided into eighteen provinces, and the city is divided into eighteen districts, with each city district corresponding to one of the continental provinces by shared cultural tradition, guild affiliation, and great-house presence (see section 2.1 below). The phrase “the eighteen provinces of Sulamir” refers to both layers simultaneously. The city’s internal district geography is concentric and vertical rather than strictly horizontal: some districts are primarily upper-level, some primarily underground, some span the full vertical. The Center Spire marks the physical and political center of the city. See 05-GUILDS, 04A-HOUSES, and section 5 below.

Geological seat. Sulamir is built on an immense ancient upthrust, a shield structure rising where the plains meet the sea and visible from the edge of the eight corners on a clear day. The upthrust is older than any memory the guilds hold. It is widely believed dormant, though the Steam Tunnels run along old vent systems and some of the deepest infrastructure taps residual heat the workers take for granted. The city’s vertical character is not merely architectural. It sits on a mountain that happens to be a mountain only in its bones.

Travel within the city. The magnerail (electromagnetic suspension rail system) is the primary mode. Magnerail stations punctuate every level. Each change of train is a climb or a descent into a different Sulamir. See 10-TECHNOLOGY.

The sky over Sulamir. The Cloud network is visible overhead as a texture on the sky itself, a weather-defense and magical-defense shield system held aloft by the tall spires of Sulamir. The highest spire, and the keystone of the network, is the Center Spire.

The two moons. Sulamiris live under two moons. Vashkil, the close moon, is small and fast; it crosses the sky several times each night and is favored in sailors’ and lovers’ idioms for its haste. Alshera, the far moon, is larger to the eye, dimmer, and slow; it tracks the night the way a patient witness tracks a long conversation. Their occasional alignment at day-height is the astronomical signature Prophecy 2 names. Temple of the One scholars note that the names Vashkil and Alshera appear in fragmentary Founding-era texts as an angel-demon pair, and that folk theology has forgotten the connection. The question of whether the moons are in any sense that pair, or named after them, or neither, is OPEN.

Flying craft. Airships of every size and propulsion cross the sky in what looks from below like organized chaos. The pilots, in theory, understand the organization.

Depth. Below the street-level Sulamir lies the steam tunnels and power conduits, maintained by the lifelong community of the Steam System Workers. This is where Oen was raised. Deep beneath that: angel-demon-era relics, dormant machinery, and sealed vaults. Below even those, at the bottom of every shaft that reaches far enough, are the Rhydin levels: pre-Founding human masonry from an ancient settlement the city was built over. See the Rhydin entry below.

Sulamir Forest. A wooded region immediately outside the city walls where various guilds, houses, and outlaws maintain estates, lodges, and hunting grounds. The forest is older than the city it borders and is suspected by some scholars of predating human arrival on the continent.

Sulamir Towers. Particular tall structures of Sulamir, named and storied. Individual towers take specific names that deserve their own entries when they become scenes.

Sulamir Steam Tunnels. The network beneath Sulamir that carries both the electric grid and steam-powered transit. Not a metaphor. A physical maze that the Workers’ communities police better than any Militia.

Rhydin and the Rhydin levels. Before the angels and demons came to bond with humanity and build Sulamir, there was a human settlement on the same geological upthrust: Rhydin, ancient even by the standards of the Founding. Rhydin’s people, languages, religions, and politics are not preserved in any surviving record. When the Founding began, the angels and demons built Sulamir over and through the old Rhydin, incorporating some of its structures into their own infrastructure and sealing most of the rest. The pre-Founding masonry survives at the bottom of the Steam Tunnels, below the angel-demon-era strata, as layered chambers, collapsed avenues, and occasional intact rooms whose purposes no one can name. Steam Workers call these depths the Rhydin levels and treat them with superstition even for the Workers’ own accustomed depths. Most of the Rhydin levels are sealed; a few are known to a handful of workers with inherited keys; some appear to open and close on schedules no one has mapped. Oen knows the upper Rhydin levels better than anyone alive of his generation. The deepest Rhydin levels are OPEN and reserved for later books.

2.1 The Eighteen Districts of Sulamir

The city is internally divided into eighteen culturally-coded districts, one per continental province. Each district is named for, populated principally by, and culturally coded to its corresponding province, and is the city home of that province’s great houses, trade lodge (guild), and diaspora population. The district populations are typically larger than the province populations they descend from. The Tonjani Quarter of Sulamir holds more Tonjani than Tonja province itself; the same is true for most districts.

The eighteen districts:

Tonjani Quarter. Tonja’s diaspora and houses. House Corveliss’s city seat at Corvelith Tower; Alum-sidek Alliance trade lodge; Anglo-Saxon-coded register; far-eastern of the city’s high-status districts.
Hakkari Quarter. Hakkar’s diaspora and houses. House Stoneheart’s city compound; House Trapper’s city compound; Masons’ trade lodge; Anglo-frontier-with-Highland-tilt register; east-of-center.
Yiskii Quarter. Yisk’s diaspora and houses. Lady Summer’s house seat; Emphemere’s trade lodge; Slavic-Eastern-European-coded register; north-central, upper-level prestige.
Multani Quarter (Sahthan-coded, named for the dominant guild). House Mihran’s city compound; Multani’s trade lodge; Persian merchant-prince-coded register; mercantile-dense.
Merjayan Quarter. Merjaya’s diaspora and houses. House Singh’s city compound; Bavit-vita’s Mother Hall (the largest single trade-lodge compound in the city); South-Asian-coded register; southern reaches.
Entoyo Quarter. Entoyo’s diaspora and houses. Temple of the One’s principal Sulamir cathedral and seminary; Japanese-coded register; contemplative-dense, Hokuden-aligned.
Bolanbi Quarter. Bolanbi’s diaspora and houses. The Hand’s trade lodge; West-African-coded register; merchant-wealthy.
Crekoan Quarter. Creko’s diaspora and houses. Red Dragons’ trade lodge; Roman-coded register; disciplined-craft-dense.
Lupanese Quarter. Lupan’s diaspora and houses. Iron Coin’s trade lodge (the continent’s principal banking compound); Italian-Renaissance-coded register; financial heart of the city.
Julin Quarter. Julin’s diaspora and houses. Torrus Ectos’s brawler markets and trade lodge; Norse-coded register; rough-edged dockside-adjacent.
Antodineran Quarter. Antodinera’s diaspora and houses. Order of the Blue Cross’s trade lodge; Iberian-coded register; ceremonial-funereal-dense.
Pogusian Quarter. Pogus’s diaspora and houses. The Core’s trade lodge; Hellenic-coded register; academic-contemplative.
Udlimillan Quarter. Udlimill’s diaspora and houses. Order of the Spider’s trade lodge; Central-Asian-coded register; stealth-coded, river-quiet.
Nolekkelon Quarter. Nolekkelon’s diaspora and houses. Abyssal Fires’ trade lodge; Finnish-Uralic-coded register; intelligence-archival-dense.
Ockallakan Quarter. Ockallaka’s diaspora and houses. Prodigus Group’s trade lodge; Polynesian-coded register; engineering-and-logistics dense.
Frewnese Quarter. Frewna Nurrelle’s diaspora and houses. White Legion’s trade lodge; French-Provençal-coded register; entertainment-and-pleasure-industry concentrated.
Ahlgenadin Quarter (the host district). Sulamir League’s trade lodge; Arabic-Andalusian-coded register; includes the Senate Quarter (where the Hall of Houses sits), the Center Spire, and the central political institutions of the city.
Illibill Quarter. Illibill’s diaspora and houses. Alyu’amare’s trade lodge; the marriage-and-alliance-brokerage register and ceremonial-coded culture.

Inter-district relations. Movement between districts is free within the dome; the magnerail connects every district to every other and to the Senate Quarter. Cultural distinctness is preserved by daily register (language, dress, foodways, festivals) rather than by physical barrier. Each district has its own market quarter, its own Temple branch, its own Marshal detachment, its own civic ceremonial calendar.

Class within districts. Each district internally stratifies the same way the city does as a whole: the great houses at the top, the senior trade-lodge figures and merchants in the upper-middle, the working class in the lower-middle and bottom. The most prestigious blocks of any district are the high-level approaches to the Center Spire and the highest dome-edge views.

The Red Dragon. A tavern at the junction where street-level Sulamir, the old Founding-era infrastructure, and the upper Rhydin levels all meet. The Red Dragon has been operating continuously, on the same ground, since pre-Founding times. It is the oldest continuously inhabited building on the upthrust and probably the oldest on the continent. Its name in the pre-Founding Rhydin register is lost; “the Red Dragon” is the translation, carried forward, that has stuck. The tavern is famously neutral: guild Leaders, outlaw orders, steamworkers, Azhandian emissaries, Mal’akha families, devil-cultists on good behavior, and passing travelers all drink there under an ancient peace the house keeps and no Council has ever cared to challenge. The Red Dragon is the one venue in Sulamir where a scene can plausibly include characters from any social register together without explanation. The Red Dragons guild took its name from the tavern, not the reverse; the guild’s founding lodge first met in the tavern’s Long Room, and the guild’s original charter names the house publicly as “our first hearth.” The tavern predates the guild by an indeterminate span almost certainly longer than recorded history.

3. Aldasen and the Maw

Aldasen (ruin)

Aldasen was the second great city of Merretia during the Founding and the Long Human Centuries, sometimes called “the city under the mountain.” It was the seat of preservation, magic, and older lore, and was the allied sibling of Sulamir. Aldasen was destroyed by the lich-king Zar Valareth.

What remains is ruin. The city proper is uninhabitable. Its former citizens were transformed into ghouls during the fall and some may still shuffle through the rubble. The geography of the region is unstable: mountains toppled into the sea during the catastrophe, part of the continent sank, and new features appeared that did not exist before.

The Maw

The Maw is the stretch of sea off the Aldasen coast where the continent sank. It is deep, dangerous, and haunted. Rumors of Aldasenian treasure, sunken mirror-works, Kravis creatures, and far worse draw adventurers who almost never return.

The guilds officially discourage expeditions into the Maw. Coast guard militias patrol the waters to repel pirates and explorers. Privately, multiple guilds send secret expeditions.

A twenty-two-year celestial event, currently approaching, is prophesied to “cease” the Maw temporarily, opening a window during which the sunken city can (perhaps) be reached. See 08-PROPHECIES.md, Prophecy 2.

The West Sea

The broader body of water into which part of the continent sank during Aldasen’s fall. The West Sea is the primary body of water on the Merretian continent. Sailors speak of seeing toppled mountain-tops rising and submerging beneath its waves depending on tide and season. The Maw is a specific region of the West Sea; the West Sea is larger.

4. The Long Rent

East of Sulamir, running thousands of miles toward the Waste Lands, lies the Long Rent: a colossal canyon system miles deep and wide enough that its far wall is visible only on the clearest days. The Rent cleaves the continent from one side nearly to the other, and its walls expose stratified rock older than any memory the guilds hold. Metals, salts, and rare minerals accumulate in the Rent’s deposits, which sustain several great houses and the extraction trades of the Iron Coin and Prodigus Group.

The quarry belief. Every Sulamiri schoolchild is taught that the stone of Sulamir was cut from the Rent — the primers set the city’s walls and the canyon’s walls side by side, and the match is real. What no scholarship has ever managed is the how. The volumes do not reconcile: the Rent could fill a hundred Sulamirs, and no contemporary craft could move a thousandth of either. The guilds measure the canyon the way they measure their own deepest infrastructure — as an inheritance beyond replication. Sulamir studies its own bones the way later ages study any ancient wonder: the people live inside the monument, and the monument keeps its method to itself. What kind of help the Founding’s angels and daemons actually gave — the scale of it, the means of it — is held in no mortal record.

Folk belief. The Rent was made in a single act, by an angel or a demon or by something larger. Something enormous is said to sleep at the bottom. Expeditions to the floor are rare, expensive, and usually fatal.

Geographic weight. The Long Rent and the Maw are the two continental-scale scars of Merretia. The Rent is the older scar. The Maw is the fresher one. Together they bracket the human world and make plain that the continent was shaped by forces mortal engineering could not repeat.

Cross-reference. Mineral extraction from the Rent is the hidden financial basis of at least one great house. See 11-CHARACTERS.md and 05-GUILDS for guild involvement.

5. The Eighteen Provinces

Merretia is tiled by eighteen contiguous provinces, each held as the hereditary territory of one Council guild. The provinces cover the surveyed extent of the continent from the western Ocean to the eastern Waste Lands, from the northern coast to the southern river country and the Sulamir Forest. Provincial boundaries are ancient and are understood as inherited from the Senate’s stabilization after the Great War (see 06-HISTORY).

The city of Sulamir itself sits on the continent’s western coast, at the heart of Ahlgenadin province, where the river system meets the Ocean — the city’s western border is the shoreline itself. The Sulamir League, the guild that rules Ahlgenadin, is therefore the guild whose seat is the capital city; the other seventeen guilds maintain both a provincial capital in their own territory and a guild seat-house in Sulamir itself. This is the structural reason the phrase “the eighteen provinces of Sulamir” and the phrase “the eighteen provinces of Merretia” refer to the same eighteen territories: Sulamir, in its polity-sense, is the continent.

Provincial languages and accents. Each province carries a primary linguistic and cultural influence that flavors local naming, idiom, cadence, and accent at light to moderate intensity. A character’s name and speech are usually a clue to their origin. Full canon (with sample names, surname patterns, accent descriptions, and distinguishing speech features for all eighteen provinces, plus the polyglot Sulamir Standard register that mediates them in the capital) is in 09-CULTURE section 5.6.

Province profiles. Each province has a deep profile in 15-PROVINCE-PROFILES covering capital and Council Leader, geography and climate, architecture, economy, religious register, political posture, daily texture, notable houses and families, the province’s pivotal moment in the Great War, perception gaps, and open canon questions. Any scene moving out of Sulamir or featuring a non-capital character should consult the relevant province profile first.

Northern provinces

Julin. Torrus Ectos (The Red Octopus). Coastal, northwest corner. Gren’s home province. Fishing, rough-hewn logging, boisterous dockside culture.

Yisk. Emphemere. North-central, interior. Lady Summer’s province. Courtly, elegant, heavily farmed; the province where Summer’s gloom festival was first staged and where it still has its largest provincial celebration.

Entoyo. Temple of the One. North-central-east. Alont’s province. Dense with Temple sites, quiet villages, teaching houses. The heart of the Temple’s doctrinal tradition sits in Entoyo even though Alont’s politics are conducted from Sulamir.

Nolekkelon. Abyssal Fires. Far northeast, bordering the Waste Lands. Rhys’s province. Mountainous, mineralogically rich, contested at the Waste Land frontier; the Abyssal Fires’ library and archives are concentrated here.

West-central provinces

Frewna Nurrelle. The White Legion. West coast, facing the Ocean north of Sulamir. Elacole Stone’s province. Port-heavy, theatrical-cultured — the pleasure-coast above the capital’s own Great Harbor, where the city goes to play and half its luxuries still land.

Pogus. The Core. Center-north interior. Creven Alont’s province. Monasteries, contemplative gardens, the academic ancestor of Sulamir University’s philosophy chairs.

Sahthan. Multani. Center-east interior. Fitz’s province. Merchant-prince country, dense with trade caravans and intelligence networks; a province whose register matches its Leader’s.

Hakkar. The Masons. East, bordering the Waste Lands. Kane’s province. Stonework, fortifications, the Great-War memorials where the Masons’ ancestral commitments are still read aloud on anniversary dates. A frontier province by geography and temperament. Population register (locked). Hakkari people run noticeably taller than the continental norm, averaging two inches above the rest of Merretia. The regional reading is that the frontier rewarded builders, farmers, and soldiers who could carry more; the biological reading is genetics that predate memory. Kane and Tara are tall even for their people.

Central provinces

Lupan. The Iron Coin. West-central interior. Pershaun’s province. Banking strongholds, counting-houses, the coinage that underwrites continental trade.

Ockallaka. Prodigus Group. Center-west interior. Fidi’olliana’s province. Resilience-coded, with a reputation for hardy people and hard ground; the province’s specific character is being built out.

Ahlgenadin. The Sulamir League. West-central, coastal — the continent’s seaboard heart. Berreldin’s province. Contains the city of Sulamir on its coast, where the river system meets the sea. Ahlgenadin is the province whose capital is the capital; the Sulamir League is therefore the host guild for the entire Council in a way no other guild is.

Creko. The Red Dragons. East-central, bordering the Waste Lands on one side and central provinces on the others. Quinton Marvelous’s province. Disciplined, orderly, known for impossibly high standards in every craft. The young man from Creko whose significance is OPEN comes from here.

Tonja. Alum-sidek Alliance. Far east, bordering the Waste Lands. Cyl’s family’s province: House Corveliss’s ancestral holdings are in Tonja, and the inter-provincial magnerail runs from Tonja through the continent to Sulamir’s Great Harbor on the western coast. Nathia Tolleman’s guild-seat sits in Tonja’s capital when not in Sulamir. A frontier province, like Hakkar and Nolekkelon, that looks east toward the Waste Lands first and Sulamir second.

Southern provinces

Merjaya. Bavit-vita. Far southwest, coastal, at the southern mouth of the river system. Singh’s province. The province whose name appears in the Bavit-vita oath (“In Merjaya or wherever calls for aid”) is Singh’s own province, which is why the oath reads first-person-territorial to Bavit-vita initiates.

Antodinera. Order of the Blue Cross. Southwest-central, coastal. Vaz’s province. Healing houses, hospices, ceremonial cemeteries; the register of Antodinera is the register of a province whose work is dying well.

Bolanbi. The Hand. South-central, river-country. Dru Danum’s province. Wealth-heavy, merchant-administered, sits astride the river crossings that feed the city of Sulamir.

Illibill. Alyu’amare. Southeast, river-country. Skylar’s province. Skylar’s vision of a Merretia united under Sulamir’s Council is grounded in Illibill’s own internal harmony, which she treats as a proof of concept.

Udlimill. Order of the Spider. Far southeast, river-country, bordering Sulamir Forest. Jinto Sien’s province. Stealth-coded, thin-populated, valued for its riverine trade routes and the discreet services its province seat offers the other guilds.

5.1 Continental Features

The Ocean. The western boundary of Merretia. Called the Ocean in formal register and “the West Sea” in the specific stretch off the Aldasen coast where the Maw sits (see section 3). Sulamir’s own Great Harbor is the continent’s principal face to the Ocean; Frewna Nurrelle’s ports and Julin’s fishing fleets are its northern companions.

The Waste Lands. The eastern boundary of Merretia. Uninhabited, dangerous, explicitly not part of the Council’s territory. The provinces of Nolekkelon, Hakkar, Tonja, and Udlimill form the eastern frontier line and share the cost of wasteland-watching: watchtowers, Marshal patrols, the occasional guild expedition that does not return. The Waste Lands’ specific character is OPEN: working possibilities include Founding-era damage, a region where the Cloud network does not extend, the home of Kaiju-class creatures, or a combination of these.

Sulamir Forest. The broad wooded belt that wraps the southern and southeastern approaches to the city of Sulamir, spanning the borders of Udlimill, Illibill, Bolanbi, and southern Ahlgenadin. A wooded region older than the city it borders, suspected by some scholars of predating human arrival on the continent. Great houses, guilds, and outlaws maintain estates, lodges, and hunting grounds within the forest.

The River System. The blue-line river system on the continental map rises in Ahlgenadin’s uplands, runs through Bolanbi and Antodinera, and reaches the Ocean twice — at Sulamir’s Great Harbor and, by its southern arm, at Merjaya — with tributaries threading Illibill and Udlimill. The system is Sulamir’s principal inland trade corridor after the magnerail, and its seasonal flooding is one of the few weather events the Cloud network does not fully manage. Specific names of the river and its tributaries are OPEN.

The Long Rent. The colossal canyon system of section 4 runs east from Sulamir’s hinterland toward the Waste Lands and crosses several of the central and eastern provinces. The Rent’s specific province-crossings and the location of its mineral-rich deposits within those crossings are OPEN.

5.2 Other named places, towns, and regions

The following are named places of Merretia that sit within the provinces or on the continent’s frontiers. Each is a city-state, a notable town, or a subregion. They are listed alphabetically. Detail pending on each.

Aldasen

Destroyed. See section 3.

Azhandia

A culture and region distinct from Sulamir. House Jukaggle is an Azhandian family with a home and family in Sulamir; their cultural register is Scottish-coded and their claim is that the Azhandian system kept the country safe and their rituals maintained “the wall.” Master Enwith, a prominent self-made entrepreneur in Sulamir, is a freed Azhandian slave whose register is low-British-coded and whose position is that the Azhandian way was unnatural and cruel. The tension between these two Azhandian voices is a model of the broader cultural tensions Azhandia carries.

OPEN. What “the wall” refers to. Working assumption: a physical defensive structure, possibly a Founding-era relic, on the Azhandian frontier.