Kalvernach, The City of a Hundred Terraces

[Citizen K]

Hi all,

My next session is beginning in Kalvernach so I've been reading up on it, and I confess the title "City of a Hundred Terraces" had me a bit confused.

Is it referring to terraces in the topographical sense of layered earth? Or in the architectural sense, such as roof terraces? Based on the one image of the city on page 81 of Universe and the descriptions of sloping streets, I'm guessing they are referring to earth terraces.

Thanks!

[Patrick Cialf]

Kalvernach is built between a row of cliffs and the river Seleane, with a lot of mine adits downside and rich villas upside. So you may have natural terraces, cutting terraces or marble terraces, as you like, according to the kind of characters you introduce.

[StripelessTiger]

Yes, it is between two cliffs, the hills of Femfrath and the mountains of Tulach, which is a plateau. It also borders a town that is dug into the cliff faces. It reminds me of the cliff dwellings in the western USA. Since the ground is not level, it stacks and the buildings stack with it, butting up next to each other and adjusting to be built on uneven footing. As the name suggests, much of the town probably has 'steps' as you ascend from the gate to the higher portions of the city. You could interpret this as both the geography and the architecture. I feel they go hand in hand.

Book 2 - Travels, has a Canvas "Say it with Flowers" that ideally is supposed to be placed in Kalvernach. Reading the scenario reveals that everyone is close neighbors with everyone else, the buildings connect and are build off of one another, and everything closely watched since it is a tight knit community. Space has become an issue so they started building up. It even states that the buildings all have multiple levels, and that the rooms can be assumed to be rather small based on their descriptions. They started stacking architecture to account for limited space.

I could just be reading into it, but it is up for interpretation. The wording is not specific enough to make a hard guess, so whatever makes sense will work.

[Clovis]

The descriptions were definitely made to leave room for interpretation, but yours makes sense: you could definitely depict Kalvernach as a very crowded city with cramped neighborhoods!

[StripelessTiger]

The descriptions were definitely made to leave room for interpretation, but yours makes sense: you could definitely depict Kalvernach as a very crowded city with cramped neighborhoods!

Kalvernach reminds me of a place where they started building a community in the belly of the mountains and the town quickly outgrew the space available and they had to get creative. It also seems like some of the native peoples got displaced due to the quick growth of the town, or maybe they had already left (killed by feondas?).

Lucrative mines of salt and silver ore would give them plenty of economic incentive, but also potentially turmoil with the mine workers. Especially considering the town is built where an ancient race once existed and dug tunnels into the mountain sides that the Feond are now coming out of an attacking people.

I'm pretty sure that I'm correct in that the "troglodytic city" and Kalvernach are in the same area/region.