"City of Lifts", "City of Mist", "City of the Compact". All are applicable to Mytos, which while closer to a town in population, is still significant to the
City-States Region for all of these reasons. Located at the bottom end of the waterfalls cascading down from
The Great Plateau, Mytos is the base into which lifts from above carry crates of grain and other food down from the
Fertile Lands for sale in the wider region via the
Lasair Canal . The waterfall often leaves the town in a bit of a haze as watery mists settle over it, giving the otherwsie workmanlike port an otherworldly quality, especially in the morning.
Most significant to the history of the region, the land upon which Mytos now stands was the flashpoint that led to the formation of the
Lasair Compact, the document that defines the existence of the City-States and their relationship with the
Mages.
“This stops here.”
-unknown mage, outside Mytos
0 AC
Founding and the Compact
In the centuries following the
Dragonscourge, humans that survived that cataclysm eventually migrated into the western coastal region of the continent. The area had been very marshy during the
Imperial Era but the climactic changes wrought by the Dragonscourge led to it drying enough for settlement to be reasonably easy. A number of small cities rose and the populations settled into a tense existence, frequently warring on each other on a small scale.
Mytos was founded as a lumber mill at the base of the Great Plateau, long before it was discovered what was atop it. Trees that were harvested from the
Britwood Forest were floated into the (then)
Lasair River and cut into lumber with mills powered by the flowing waters. The wood would then be sent down the river on barges to the growing city (or cities, depending on time frame) of
Kolar-Malara.
As detailed in the history of the
City-States Region, eventually it was discovered that the Great Plateau was host to the
Fertile Lands. The potential for consistent and plentiful agriculture could revolutionize the region, and control of those lands could make one city supremely powerful.
Armies from both Kolar and Malara as well as other smaller cities soon converged on Mytos. As the tense standoff seemed to be close to sparking an all-out war that could devastate humanity once and for all, a handful of
Mages appeared. With a brief demonstration of power, they negotiated an end to the standoff and created a formal arrangement between the cities of the region that stands to this day. The
Shrine of the Compact, within the Britwood, stands in homage to this moment.
From a Mill to a Port
The rediscovery of the
Fertile Lands changed the reason for Mytos's existence practically overnight. The lumber mills continued to run, but instead of shipping wood downstream, it was used to build a series of staircases and eventually gigantic rope-based lifts. Steady platforms built into the side of the plateau serve as staging areas; others are raised and lowered between them. Cargo and passengers alike make their way from the floor of the region to the land atop the towering plateau, and today enough food to feed the City-States flows through the town.
Eventually the Lasar River was, through the combined efforts of
Mages and engineers and laborers from several
Guilds of the City-States, converted into the
Lasair Canal. This massive works project removed any curve or direction change from the river and made it easy for barges to flow downstream or to be pulled upstream.
At its point in between the plateau and canal, Mytos naturally grew into a gigantic warehouse. The town itself exists as a series of ropewalks, platforms, and storehouses. A maze of elevated pathways allows locals to get from place to place easily and quickly; a number of wooden boardwalks along the sides of the canal make for easily moving cargo. A set of ramps at the western end of those walks allows for crates to be transfered onto carts and wagons for trips to be made overland to the northern cities, especially
Alanor and
Aratosa.
A Hive of Activity
Today, Mytos is full of movement in a way quite unlike any other city in the region. It easily handles more cargo than any port, even
Kolar-Malara (though over half of what passes through Mytos eventually reaches the twin cities). All this movement requires an immense amount of labor, and that is even before factoring in handling the lifts. While most of the mechanical means by which the lifts are managed exist at the top of the plateau in
Teneara, actually controlling those lifts requires the expertise of a worker (or two or three, depending on the lift itself) riding it along with its cargo.
The somewhat chaotic nature of the city tends to make it a little difficult for those unfamiliar with it to make their way around. It is for this reason that most merchants dealing in goods moving through the city tend to hire a local agent to work on their behalf. Being able to get easily around the maze of ropewalks quickly can mean the difference when it comes to getting a shipment onto a departing barge, and many merchants would prefer to leave that level of stress to a local while they reside in
Britor and check shipments halfway down the Canal.
Informal Government
This detachment between those who have paid for the goods and who are actually making sure they get through the city can lead to the occasional bout of corruption. There is not any official government within Mytos - its chaotic transition between mill and port happened through the efforts of a number of groups, each trying to ensure they had prime locations in relation to the expanding lift system and/or the canal. The result of this chaos is the random-seeming structure of the buildings, and a lack of any formal governing bodies.
Instead, the city operates on a very loose arrangement between several guilds, some of which compete directly in the same line of work. This is unusual within the region and has occasionally led to disruptions in service as, for example, two competing Bargeloaders' guilds fight over control of a choice spot on the boardwalks. This rarely spills over into outright warfare, but bloody skirmishes do occur from time to time. The one rule that
every guild agrees upon - to the point that violating it would result in every other guild throwing the members of the offending guild into the canal - is that conflicts between guilds cannot ever involve
fire. The wood-and-rope nature of much of Mytos means that an outbreak of fire could devastate the entire city and starve the City-States.
Comments