Adenia

From gronkfinder

Adenia (pronounced ah-dih-NEE-ah) is a city in central Izgrev. The development of the city has been a long-standing project led by House Corvus, one of the Viridian senatorial families who control the protectorate, an effort to build a potential new capital untethered from existing power centers like Chervan, Vatar, and Imorkan. Despite having been under construction for over a century, with the first streets laid down in Y9830*, Adenia has been a continuing failure, due both to the difficulties of large-scale building efforts in the cold marshlands of Izgrev and the unwillingness of the Izgreve to move to such a location en mass.

Adenia was envisioned by House Corvus to be a modern city, immaculately planned and administered for an efficient, orderly society. Its streets along a perfect grid were to be lined with great stone and brick buildings organized in blocks around central common areas, either small parks or plazas. Great buildings of state in traditional Viridian architectural styles were to be be located in the very center of Adenia, while large stone and earthwork fortifications were to surround all of the city. Ultimately, however, very little progress towards these lofty goals has been made. Many of the planned streets were laid first, in order to allow for the easy transport of construction material across the city, but the stonework of these paths have largely disappeared into the marsh. Foundations for homes, stores, and a grand courthouse alike have likewise sunk into the watery soil. The great amount of rain- and snowfall the region receives has not helped efforts either, transforming the entire site to mud and limiting the amount of time each year that work can take place. Those that have guided the project across generations have steadfastly refused to either relocate Adenia or adapt others methods, insisting on sticking with Viridian styles of architecture even in a landscape wholly unsuited to them.

Nearly all of the population of Adenia live in diffuse clusters of homes, effectively villages in their own right, that surround the planned site of the city. Though intended as temporary work camps to be demolished once the core of the city was built, these villages have become increasingly more permanent, transforming from collections of tents into settlements that would not look out of place elsewhere in the Izgreve hinterlands.