Valags City
The City of Quills, the City of Poetry, the Garden City, and Gwyfned of the North
Valags, which translates as “Valor,” is hailed as the City of Quills, the City of Poetry, Garden City, and Gwyfned of the North. Its population is 19,000, it was founded in antiquity by the Karmithians, and awarded its charter in 1009. Valag’s crest is a crescent moon, vert, and crowns, argent, on a field of or and vert. This settlement is a lake port, and it is surrounded by agricultural land ideal for white grapes and vineyards. Valags sits in the Barony of Valags, the Duchy of Valodic, the Kingdom of Noelred, in the High Kingdom of Arlium. The city stretches along Valags Lake’s west shore, and that body of water dominates the city and its culture. The city’s lofty walls and towers are pink sandstone. Valags castle on the shoreline is more a lightly fortified palace, and it is decorated with many follies, giving it a fairy tale character. All the settlement’s streets are cobbled, the castle is ringed with amazing formal gardens and plaisances, and the city streets radiate out from this. Valag’s cathedral is built of the local pink sandstone, much of it robbed from now-forgotten Old Karmithian structures. The city’s patron saint is Alexandros the Scribe, but Valags also celebrates a local, non-canonical saint named Desmond the Lion. Valags is connected to Ruislan/Ultimo to the northeast by Old Street, Mydia to the west by Old and Osling Streets, and Orlium to the west by Old and Osling Streets. Likewise, it is tied to Mydia and Imraldun by the Lenns River, and to Verdton by the Lenns and Groan Rivers.
Valags natives feel superior to the rest of Noelred and Arlium, and they are noted for rudeness, poor hospitality, and an ironic, black sense of humor. Those same locals are passionate about their formal and woodland gardens. These arboreal masterpieces are the finest of their type in Aorlis, attracting gardeners and arborealists from all over the empire. Valags and its glorious gardens sometimes have exerted powerful, transformative effects on its visitors. This city is well known for its wines, but most especially for the famed Kendorian Blue wine. The city also features weaving/dying/fulling, and fresh-water fishing. The earl of Valodic’s private, elite military unit, the Badgers, is stationed here, complete with housing and training facilities. Legend has it that failed writers may rediscover their lost muses here. Lake Valags is also the fabled home of Evrienne, Lady of the Lake, of the Summer Court, and the Maid of War. Citizens here are quite proud of their local writers and poets, Anders Burwick, Steven Vintery, and Ronsoir deAsh, selling their works and preserving their old homes and birthplaces. About every 80 years, Valags suffers a wave of the Dancing Plague.
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