City Plan: Sallow#

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 18:112 is the Lesser Crowns almanac, Part 2, line 112), and nothing here overrides canon. The canon places the city "on causeways at the eastern edge of the Sallow Meres" (18:112) and says little more, so nearly all the detail here is proposal.

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 Meres, the districts and the villages.
• About 2½ times: main streets, the causeways and the great buildings.
• About 6 times: the longer streets and the smaller places.
• About 12 times: the name of nearly every street.

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

The city at a glance#

The districts#

The Meres fill the west of the sheet: open water, isles and blackreed beds, with channels between the beds (proposal). The old town stands on the Mere Isle, just off the eastern shore. Causeways join it to the shore and to the near isles, and three channels run from the Meres into the town on the shore.

Getting around#

• The causeways (canon: the city stands "on causeways", 18:112). The plan names five (proposals):
  • Captain's Causeway, from the Mere Isle to the shore, for Ingrid Sallow;
  • the Lodestar Causeway, for her ship;
  • the Isle Causeway, out across the Meres from isle to isle;
  • the North Causeway and the South Causeway, to the near isles.
• Boats. The Mere Wardens patrol the channels by boat (18:117), and mere-racing is "Reed boats on the Sallow channels" (18:350).
• The Stair Railway (canon): "The Stair Railway (1890s) links all seven capitals. Electrified, not maglev." (18:281) Mere fog closes it for days in autumn (17:170). Sallow Station (proposal) is in the New Town.
• The Wychford road (proposal) runs east toward Wychford, the "Forest town on the Sallow border" (atlas).
• Meremouth, the "Lake port of Sallow, where the Meres drain west into the Wild" (19:37), lies far to the south-west, off the sheet.
• Air. The canon lists no airport at Sallow (18:284).

Landmarks#

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

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 Sallow the rules take this form:

• The rulers' streets ring the Mere Isle. The Kings and Queens of Sallow fill the old town, with the Captain herself (Ingrid Street) and House Meresby, which claimed her descent (17:110). The reigning Queen has no street.
• Each district names its streets for its work or its ground: the boats and the Meres on the Isles, reed-paper in the Staithes, the fen's plants in Eastside and the New Town.
• The New Town is numbered, First Street to Thirtieth Street.
• The old lanes keep their founders' names, the given names of the fen families: Hywel's Lane, Madoc's Lane, Seren's Lane, Tomos's Lane, Iolo's Lane.
• The villages keep their own streets: Staithe End, Reed End, Ferry Street, Boat Lane.
• Estates were built on the fields that sold, each with a theme:
  • flowers (Violet Road, Larkspur Way, Kingcup Gardens);
  • stones (Obsidian Grove, Sunstone Way);
  • trees (Walnut Road);
  • herbs (Sage Way);
  • birds (Owl Avenue, Tern Drive).
• Fields whose owners never sold are still farmed, with the estates round them. The canon says Sallow's farmers "are still draining reedland" (18:120).
• Every street longer than 80 m has a name: 4,973 of 5,123.
  • A name is used once in the city.
  • The estates may repeat a name found far off, never within 6 km or in the same locality.
• No towers. Sallow is "Old, poor, stubborn" (18:119), and the poorest per head of the Seven (18:116). It does not build upward.

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", "-combe", "Salt-", "Grey-" and "Hollow-". The canon's own Meres, Meremouth and Meresby keep their names.
• House Callow and King Bran have no streets, because the canon's Sallow and Brannock groups crowd those names already.
• No village takes a name beside the canon's Wychford or its Brightwick.

What the plan does not settle#

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

• Settled, 19 September 2026 (the harbour repair). The Atlas marked the Meres 335 km west-south-west of the city and Reedwater 312 km south-west. The Meres (four linked lakes, matching "lakes, channels and blackreed beds", 17:160) now reach the city's own eastern edge, as the plan's street layout already assumed, and Reedwater and the Mere Wardens moved to their own shores. Meremouth, the Meres' own lake port (17:149), moved to the western shore, 28 km from its old mark.
• The Royal Fens Garrison (18:117) is Sallow's royal regiment. The Atlas marks it 127 km south-south-east. Settled: a garrison posted out in the Fens it's named for, away from the capital, needs no explaining, and the plan is right to leave it off the city sheet.

Guidance for AI actors#

• Sallow is "Old, poor, stubborn and proud of the Captain." Its queens "sit first at Landfall Day in Aletheia, and Sallow never lets anyone forget it." (18:119)
• The motto is The Mere Keeps Us, the anthem Ingrid's Crossing, and the emblem blackreed (17:65). Captain's Day, 8 Sowing, is "For Ingrid Sallow. Boats light the Meres." (18:311)
• A Sallow address names the district and the street, and on the water the isle: "the Mere Isle, Ingrid Street"; "the Staithes, Quire Avenue".
• What is canon, and what is only the plan: the causeways at the Meres' eastern edge, the Meremoot, the Mere Wardens, reed-paper and the blackreed beds are canon. The isles, the channels, the causeways' names and courses, the districts, the streets and their names, and the exact positions are the plan's proposals.

Sources#

The almanac, approved 19 September 2026:

• Chapter IV (05);
• the Lesser Crowns (17–18) and their Register (19);
• the Atlas's places at Sallow.

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