City Plan: Ilyrion#

Kethra Almanac • City plans • Approved 19 September 2026 • drafted 19 September 2026

Status: approved. Briana approved the city plans on 19 September 2026 (City Plans and Map Styles Approval). Where this page calls something a proposal, read it as approved. The points under What the plan does not settle are being settled on her instruction of the same day.

Status before approval: This street plan is new material, so it waits for Briana's approval (Almanac Approval Decision). That covers every street, its name, and every district and building not marked canon below. What it takes from the approved almanac is cited to file and line (for example 21:34 is the Ilyr Sanctum almanac, Part 2, line 34), and nothing here overrides canon. The Atlas spreads its markers for the Archive Mount and the city's institutions 68–177 km from the city so they can be read at world scale. This plan follows the text: "The Archive Mount ... sits at its centre." (04:60)

Using the plan. Drag to move, and zoom with the mouse wheel, the + and − buttons, or a pinch. Names come in as you zoom, each set lettered to read at the same size on screen:

• Whole city: the Mount, the terraces and the country round them.
• About 2½ times: main streets and the great buildings.
• About 6 times: the longer streets and the smaller places.
• About 12 times: the name of nearly every street and stair.

The ⤢ button fills the screen. North is up, and the scale bar bottom left is always true.

The city at a glance#

The Mount and its terraces#

• The Archive Mount (canon) was begun when "The keepers find caves in the young basalt of the Mount and begin the Archive Mount." Then "Ilyrion grows on its terraces." (20:90) "The Archive Mount was chosen because the vaults could be sealed in rock and kept cool." (20:185)

• The levels inside the Mount (canon, the figure of the Archive Mount). "The deeper the level, the higher the Key needed to enter it." (21:27) From the top down:

  • the Public Reading Halls: "Released findings, copies, schooling · First Key";
  • the Licensing Stacks: "Designs behind every licence · Second and Third Key";
  • the Founder Stores: "Data in Founder formats; readers are few · Fourth Key";
  • the Sealed Vaults: "Closed since the Silence; contents unknown · Fifth Key, by Conclave vote".

  Below them the figure marks "The Unmapped Door?", which is rumoured. Whether it exists is open (05:247).

• The terraces. The figure draws six terrace bands on the Mount's flanks, "houses cut into basalt". The plan gives the city six terraces, numbered from the foot of the Mount upward, with the summit above them (proposal).

  • Each terrace is a flat shelf about a kilometre wide.
  • A basalt terrace wall about 75 m high rises between one terrace and the next.
  • The summit stands about 2,035 m above sea level and the plateau about 1,500 m (proposal heights).

Getting around#

• The stairs. "Terrace-running | Racing up the stairs of Ilyrion" (21:243). Every street that climbs a terrace wall is a Stair or Steps, and a Hill or a Rise if it carries traffic.
• The funiculars (canon: "funiculars on Ilyrion's terraces", 21:188). The plan runs four of them straight up the Mount, from the Circuit at the foot to the summit: the North, East, South and West Funiculars (proposal names).
• The rack railways (canon: "rack railways into the highlands", 21:188). The plan brings in the Castaly line from the south-west to Ilyrion Terminus, and the Orlo line from the north-east to Ilyrion East (proposal routes and stations).
• The roads (proposal). The Circuit runs round the foot of the Mount. The Castaly Road goes south-west toward Castaly, by Vessan, a "Market town on the road from Castaly to the highlands" (22:31). The Orlo Road runs north-east. The Keyworks Road goes to the Keyworks.
• Air. Passenger aircraft fly "between all major cities" (04:112), but no airport is named. The plan proposes Ilyrion Airfield on the plateau to the north-west.

Beyond the terraces#

• The plateau. "Earthkin crops on the terraces: rice, barley, tea, citrus, vines." "Few grazing animals: the terraces cannot spare the land." (20:158) In the plan the plateau round the Mount is terraced fields, crossed by old lanes, with the villages of Sevry, Quenna, Amaun, Irvel and Delmey (proposals).
  • The lanes keep the names of the archive families and others who first laid them: Drummond's Lane, Sorrel's Lane, Lune's Lane.
  • Estates were built a few fields at a time, each with its own theme: dome-garden plants (Jasmine Drive, Fig Way), terrace crops (Grape Way), stones (Jasper Road, Tourmaline Way), birds (Kingfisher Drive, Lark Court), herbs (Hyssop Road) and Kethra's native life (Gloamwing Close, Glassmoth Drive).
  • Fields whose owners never sold are still farmed.
• The Wild. "Native Wild covers 92% of Aelos." (20:156) Beyond the farmed plateau the plan shows native forest, which no one eats (20:156–158).

Landmarks#

Canon places are marked canon. Their position on the plan is a proposal unless the text gives it.

Not in Ilyrion (the plan leaves them out): the Quiet College, in Idrenne (20:305); the Examination Halls, in Keldry (20:342); the Order's seat, the Citadel (21:128); and the Castaly Quarter and the Castaly Licence Exchange (22:54).

How the streets are named (proposal)#

These rules, as Briana set out on 19 September 2026, hold for every city plan:

• streets are often numbered;
• famous people, leaders above all, get streets, and those streets sit together;
• an estate takes a theme, such as flowers;
• many streets keep the name of whoever first laid the road;
• some streets simply stop at a field whose owner never sold, and the suburbs have their cul-de-sacs.

In Ilyrion the rules take this form:

• The leaders sit highest. The First Custodians have the Sixth Terrace, just below Conclave Hall. Ilyr keeps whole names, so the streets carry them whole: Liesl Nakamura Street, Nadia Okafor Street.
• Each terrace names its streets for one thing. Going down: keeping and the record, the archive families, the towns of Aelos, the terrace crops and the dome gardens.
• The Keyworks is numbered, First Street to Twenty-sixth Street, as a planned works town would be.
• Every street and stair longer than 80 m has a name: 8,612 of 8,860.
  • A name is used once on the terraces.
  • The plateau's estates may repeat a name found far off, never within 6 km or in the same locality.

The names avoid everything the naming rules and the canon forbid:

• Nothing is taken from Earth's places or history (05:266).
• No new name uses the crowded families: "-gate", "-mere", "Salt-", "Grey-" and "Hollow-".
• The archive families the canon's near-identical groups crowd have no streets: Marrow, Orrel, Tessel and Venn. Delacroix is also left out, because it would read as a famous Earth name.
• Sennet, a harbour town that shares its name with the word for grief for Earth, is left out, and so is Tamsk, which names two different towns.

What the plan does not settle#

These are open for Briana; the plan follows the text in each case:

• The Atlas's markers. The Archive Mount's marker is about 108 km from the city's. Conclave Hall's is 68 km away, the Keyworks' 177 km and the Office of Keys' 78 km. The text puts the Mount at the city's centre, Conclave Hall "on the Mount" and the Keyworks in Ilyrion. Settled: the same world-scale spreading as every other city (see the harbour repair's marker-offset note) — the plan places them at their true in-story locations, inside the city.
• The age of the rock. The Mount is "young basalt" (20:90, 20:132) and also "An older, extinct cone" (20:134). Settled: "older" reads as older than Irrin, the active volcano nearby — young in the age of the Mount's own range, older than its still-active neighbour.
• Seen from the sea. Sailors call the Mount "the first thing seen from the sea" (20:44), but on the Atlas the city is about 1,570 km from the nearest coast — too far for a literal sightline regardless of the Mount's height. Settled: read as sailors' saying, the Mount's height and fame carrying the claim rather than a literal line of sight; it is not a claim about Ilyrion having its own coast.
• Mount Irrin. "Its terraces feed Ilyrion." (22:64) Its marker is about 500 km away — a plausible trade distance for produce, not a claim of adjacency. Settled.

Guidance for AI actors#

• Speech is Archival: "old, precise and a little cold" (05:25). Ilyr say "it is recorded that…" (21:255).
• "Never photograph the doors of the Mount." (21:254) Key marks are stamped on every document, door and data-store. "Key marks appear on documents, not on people." (21:251)
• Foreigners stay in the Castaly Quarter "unless an Ilyr sponsor obtains a guest key for them", and "Wandering beyond it is an offence." (21:253) A foreigner in Ilyrion carries a guest key.
• "Once a year the Order flies its frames over Ilyrion." It is the only frame display in the Sanctum (21:245). On the Unmapping, "the whole day is silent" (21:211).
• An Ilyrioner gives an address by terrace: "the Fourth Terrace, Istrin Lane".
• What is canon, and what is only the plan: the Mount and its levels, the terraces, the funiculars, the rack railways, and the institutions marked canon are canon. The terraces' number and names, the heights, the streets and their names, and the exact positions are the plan's proposals.

Sources#

The almanac, approved 19 September 2026:

• Chapter III (04) and Chapter IV (05);
• the Ilyr Sanctum (20–21), with the figure of the Archive Mount, and its Register (22);
• the Atlas's places at Ilyrion.

The plan is built by _build/make_cityplans.js from _build/city_specs/ilyrion.js, which lists every canon line it keeps.