City Plan: Saltline#

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 29:75 is the Line Free Ports almanac, Part 1, line 75), and nothing here overrides canon. The plan is laid out after the almanac's own figure of Saltline (30:35): North Isle along the top, Middle Isle a crescent to the east, South Isle along the bottom, and the lagoon between them. The Atlas draws the Saltline group as one large island with the city's marker inland (see What the plan does not settle).

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 isles, the districts and the water.
• 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 walk.

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

The city at a glance#

The three isles and the lagoon#

The isles and what stands on each follow the almanac's figure (30:35). The districts' names and bounds are proposals.

Getting around#

• The tenders. Most people cross the lagoon by water: "Tender racing | In every harbour" (30:227). The plan shows three tender routes (proposal):

  • the Congress ferry, from the quay below the Tide Congress to the Captains' Table;
  • the yards ferry, from the Exchange Quarter to the yards;
  • the Table ferry, from Tableside to the yards.

• The causeways (proposal). There are no bridges or causeways in the canon. The plan proposes two, built along the reefs that close the lagoon:

  • the Reef Causeway, 24 km along the western reef from North Isle to South Isle;
  • the North Causeway, 3 km across the reef from North Isle to Middle Isle.

  The Gate itself is never bridged, because the carriers pass through it.

• Walking. On the isles, the streets of the old quarters climb the hills along their contours. In the stilt-towns and the Floating Quarter the streets are boardwalks. A boardwalk is a Walk or a Row, and a short dead end over the water is a Jetty or a Landing.

• Air. It is 4 hours by air from Aletheia to Saltline (04:112), and Tessmere and Stellan fly here too (33:166). No airport is named in the canon. The plan proposes Saltline Airfield on South Isle, with a runway laid east and west into the trade wind.

• Space. Saltline Launch opened in AL 2046 (29:104) and flies about 41% of Kethra's launches (30:147); since all spaceports fly about 2,900 (42:216), that is some 1,190 a year, three a day. It is "about three hours by launch craft" to Vesper, and drop-capsules come down "about 40 minutes ... to a Line lagoon" (41:87). The Saltline Tether Yard is in low orbit, not on the plan (30:84; 41:140).

• By sea (23:136–141). The Line Road runs west to Tern Harbour and east to Glasswater, the Stair Crossing north to Aletheia, and the Southern Crossing south to Oathwater Quay. The plan marks each at the edge of the sheet.

Where the city builds upward (proposal)#

"Sometimes big cities build upwards instead of sprawling outwards", as Briana put it on 19 September 2026, naming New York, Chicago and Tokyo. Saltline has more reason than most: 2.9 million people live on 346 km² of island.

• The Exchange towers fill the Exchange Quarter round the Saltline Exchange, where the finance houses (24:174) and the carrier syndicates keep their offices. There are about 250 of them in the plan.
• The Tableside towers are a smaller group of about 90 by the Salt Field and the airfield on South Isle.
• How they are built. The towers are white reefstone-lime and glass, like everything on the Line (04:127, 04:148). They carry storm shutters for the Girdle storms, which "can stall over the Line Isles for days" (01:114).
• What stays low. Congress Hill stays low round the Tide Congress, and so do the stilt-towns, which stand on blackreed stilts.

On the plan the towers show as dark footprints in blocks built almost to the street. Zoom in on the Exchange Quarter to see them.

The water: the Gate, the reef and the roads#

• The Carrier Roads (canon) is "the great anchorage" (24:75).
  • "Every seven years, in Firstred", the whole fleet of 618 great carriers gathers here for the Great Mooring (24:202; 23:77). The last was in AL 2310 (24:28), and the next, in AL 2317, "will fill the lagoon" (29:111).
  • The plan's lagoon, 541 km² of water, holds the whole fleet moored in tiers.
  • The Gap Swim is swum between two moored carriers at the Great Mooring (24:234).
• The Gate (canon, figure) is "the lagoon's one channel". The plan puts it between Middle Isle's south tip and a spit of South Isle, about 1.5 km wide. At a double spring no ship can pass it (29:34).
• The reef. Reefstone rings the isles (01:60). On the plan it also closes the lagoon on the west and across the gap between North Isle and Middle Isle (proposal). "Safe passages through the reefs are House knowledge, passed down and never written in full." (23:130)
• The Quarantine Roads (canon) lie outside the Gate, "where ships flying the grey pennant wait" (29:198). The Water Wardens of 1432 founded them after the Salt Fever (29:237).
• The Floating Quarter (canon) lies outside the reef, off South Isle's western end, as the figure places it: "west-south-west, outside the lagoon".
• Armed ships stay outside. "Nothing armed berths inside a harbour." (51:95) The plan puts the berth of the Armistice Commission's 20 cutters (48:95) on Middle Isle's seaward shore, outside the Gate (proposal). The Free Banner Guild's escort hulls also "lie outside the reef" (51:95).

Landmarks#

Canon places are marked canon. Their position on the plan is a proposal unless the figure or 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 Saltline the rules take this form:

• The leaders' streets sit together:
  • The Portreeves of the Line fill Congress Hill, round the Tide Congress. Their names are the Line's doubled names, "joining both parents' families" (29:214), so the streets are too: Mbeki-Brightwater Lane, Ngata-Tamaru Lane.
  • The two holders of office today, the Portreeve of Saltline and the chair of the Congress, have no streets.
  • The Rovessa's carrier Houses fill Tableside, round the Captains' Table: Adebayo Street, Oda Street, Sundqvist Street.
• Slipside has numbered streets. They run from First Street by the lagoon to Twenty-first Street by the sea. It is the only numbered district.
• Each quarter names its streets for what it does:
  • the Exchange Quarter for the great carriers;
  • Old Saltline for the league's law and trade;
  • the yards for the shipwright's trade;
  • Gatehead for the sea;
  • the stilt-towns for the fish of the stocked shoals.
• The Launch uses both names. Its streets carry the capital's name and the frontier's side by side (Theia Lane and Sól Lane, Pandia and Máni), because every sign on the Line prints both (29:61).
• The outer isles grew the way outer cities grow. Westerly, on North Isle, and Paddyfield, on South Isle, began as paddies and terraced gardens crossed by old lanes.
  • The lanes keep the names of the families who first laid them (Kovac's Lane, Fairweather's Lane, Yelland's Lane).
  • Developers bought fields a few at a time and built estates of curving streets and cul-de-sacs, each with its own theme: garden flowers (Hibiscus Drive, Moonflower Drive), herbs (Comfrey Drive), stones (Agate Drive, Malachite Close), sea birds (Tern Road, Lapwing Way), Kethra's native life (Duskwood Drive, Reefstone Drive), and the sky by both its names (Surtr Way, Kethra Court).
  • Paddies whose owners never sold are still worked, with the estates all round them.
• Every street and walk longer than 80 m has a name: 3,389 of 3,445. A name is used once on the isles. The outer estates may repeat a name found far off, never within 6 km or in the same locality, as in Aletheia.

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 pools also leave out the ports whose names are crowded, Ambergate, Morrowport and Scarrow, and the Harrow and Salt families among the Portreeves.
• No Linecant word has been made up. The canon records none, and "Every carrier House has its own words." (05:26)

What the plan does not settle#

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

• Settled, 19 September 2026 (the harbour repair). The Atlas's city marker was 190 km from open water and its institutions spread over some 280 km (the Handoff Addendum); the equator ran 120 km south of the city. Neither is true now: Saltline moved to the island's own east shore, at the equator itself (matching the Crossing Swim, "across the Line itself, off Saltline", 30:230), and every satellite institution moved with it to the same shore. The island's land shape and its lack of a drawn lagoon are unchanged; a lagoon was not part of this repair.
• The Captains' Table. The figure puts it on South Isle; the Atlas puts it beside the Tide Congress. The plan follows the figure. Settled.
• The Floating Quarter. The text says "off the south shore"; the figure draws it west-south-west, outside the lagoon. The plan puts it off South Isle's western end, which fits both. Settled.
• The Commission's cutters. Whether they are armed, and where they berth, is not stated. The plan berths them outside the Gate. Settled as the plan's own proposal.

Guidance for AI actors#

• A Saltliner gives an address by isle and quarter: "North Isle, Congress Hill", "the South Stilts". Across the lagoon people go by tender, and they time the trip by the tide.
• At a double spring the Gate is shut to shipping and the Tide Congress sits (29:34). When a double spring meets a Girdle storm, low towns flood (01:117). Saltline's quays, pans and lower streets are the parts at risk (29:155).
• Signs and dates come in both forms. A Saltliner may use either name, and choosing one is noticed (00:164–167).
• The Floating Quarter is the Rovessa's. It is leased from the port (30:110), and its people are counted with the Rovessa, not as port citizens (29:77).
• Nothing armed berths inside the harbour, and the Harbour Guard is unarmed against ships (31:40; 51:95).
• What is canon, and what is only the plan: the three isles, the lagoon and the Carrier Roads, the Gate, the Floating Quarter and the Quarantine Roads, and the institutions marked canon are canon. The districts' names and bounds, the streets and their names, the causeways, the airfield and the exact positions are the plan's proposals.

Sources#

The almanac, approved 19 September 2026:

• the Introduction (01) and Chapters III and IV (04–05);
• the Line Free Ports (29–31), with the figure of Saltline (30:35);
• the Rovessa Caravans (23–25);
• the Vardane Imperium (14, 16), the Vesper Orbital Compact (41–42), the Homeworld Assembly (44–45), Homeguard Command (48) and the Free Banner Guild (50–52);
• the Atlas's places at Saltline.

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