Kolar-Malara

At the mouth of the Lasair Canal lay two cities joined by a history of growth, conflict, interdependence, and rivalry. One, the center of wealth and the movement of gold across the City-States Region. The other, the home of the strongest Guilds. Together, they make up the single largest population of Humans on Lasair, the center of trade along the coast. The location and power of the cities grants a level of safety from the wilds unseen in any other city, though the large population means that there are more potential threats within the city than one might experience in the more remote or quiet towns.

Founding and Fracture

The settlement of Kolar are founded by some of the earliest post-Dragonscourge refugees that had made their way into the coastal lowlands. Following what would eventually be named the Lasair River, the settlers reached the sea. The region used to be damp and marshy, but climate changes wrought by the war resulted in the terrain drying slightly and becoming more amenable to settlement.

These first settlers relied largely on fishing, both from along the river and from building small craft using wood from the Altwood Forest. From this small start the town grew into a city over the following decades, spanning both sides of the river and using its strength to exert influence over the smaller newly-built cities within the region. Kolar had created a large trade network even then, leveraging its sea access and easy wood supplies. The mining center of Aratosa was founded by a family from Kolar; traders from the city were the first to encounter the dwarfs at The Sink.
This wealth and power came at a cost, however. The gold flowing in and out of the city was held in too few hands. One side of the city, on the north bank of the river, was full of large homes and counting houses. On the southern bank were lumber mills, warehouses, docks, and blacksmiths. The families in the north owned much of the trade; poor workers in the south did much of the work to produce that trade. Kolar had also chosen to grow an army and this disproportionately drew upon poorer folk from the southern side of the river.
Wealth disparity of this kind would not stand forever, however, and things came to a head when a veteran soldier named Jere Malara came home from a campaign against another city in the southern part of the region. He and his unit were discharged as the army returned to the city; each soldier given a small stipend as a reward for the work they had carried out. As Malara and his fellow soldiers contemplated the small bags of gold they'd been handed, they watched large wagons full of spoils carried into the northern side of the city. Already disillusioned at this display, Malara returned to his home to discover that his partner and one of their children had died from starvation.
Stunned by this loss from simple poverty, while he had witnessed immense wealth being carried across the river that same day, Malara became enraged. He first returned to his unit, other soldiers who had come home to find similar stories of loss. Their mutual anger at the injustice of the city grew; they began to speak out about what they had suffered and about what others in the southern half of Kolar experienced daily. They found a ready audience and other voices who stood beside them.
This spark eventually grew into a flame, which ignited a firestorm. The soldiers with Malara recruited others from within the city's armies who, along with massive number of volunteers within the common people, organized a revolt against the wealthy of the north who they saw as growing rich off of their own work. This rising culminated in the "Day of the Sundering": the north side was ravaged by angry-but-organized groups from the south, the homes and offices of the most egregiously exploitative nobles were ransacked and burned, and the southern half of Kolar declared that it was now its own city - one which the people chose to name after Jere Malara and his lost family.

A New Start

With the Sundering of the city into two, the other cities in the region saw weakness and a chance to grow their own influence. With these threats, the two cities - Kolar and the newly born Malara - understood quickly that they did need each other to survive. Leaders from both cities, including experienced tradepeople from Malara and the surviving nobles from the north, met and after long and difficult negotiations came to establish an effective relationship between the two sides of the river.

These negotiations resulted in the tradesfolk in Malara being recognized as a vital part of the two cities' economies; the nobles in Kolar were recognized for their knowledge in handling gold and trade. It took decades to fully come to a true balance, and the rivalry between the two has never truly settled out, but this recognition between the two cities and the systems they created led to the essential creation of many of the Guilds of the City-States that exist today.
The two cities' struggles against one another came to a head with the discovery of the Fertile Lands atop The Great Plateau. It was armies from both cities threatening to spill into total war that spurred the Mages to step in. The foundation of the Lasair Compact, with its limitations on how many soliders any given city could keep active, finally quashed any direct conflict between the twin cities. With the advent of the Mercenary Guild and their enforcement of the peace (with Mage support) the cities settled into a more supportive relationship.

The Twin Cities Today

The two cities remain the largest in the City-States Region by a long margin. Kolar remains a city full of wealth but to a much more modest degree compared to the pre-Compact era. The enormous manors that were burned down in the Sundering were built back but much smaller. The wealthy families that ruled the old city still make up the bulk of the nobility today, but with significantly less power and with more less gold flowing into (and out of) their pockets. Malara still has workshops and lumber mills and warehouses, but there are also large homes with the minimalist luxury that is the trend among senior Guild workers, as the long centuries of gold flowing through the southern city have given it its own distinct character rather than just being the "workers' quarter" of Kolar.

Some of the cities' influence has lessened over time as the peace of the Compact allowed other cities to grow and develop their own trade. Shipbuilding has moved entirely to Altor, Britor rose to handle some of the grain coming down the Lasair Canal (and gained even more wealth as a seasonal home for the Kolar-Malaran wealthy), and Aratosa became a power in its own right thanks to the growth of its mines. But as the oldest and largest "city" in the region, located at the mouth of the Canal, Kolar-Malara will always remain a significant player along the coast.

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