City Plan: Stellan#

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 33:61 is the Free Oreth Coast States almanac, Part 2, line 61), and nothing here overrides canon. The Atlas puts the city's marker 47 km from the coast and its harbour marker 117 km away. This plan follows the text: a harbour on a drowned river mouth.

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 harbour, the walled city and the country round it.
• About 2½ times: the twenty wards, the 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.

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

The city at a glance#

The walled city and the twenty wards#

• The Free City Wall (proposal name; canon walls of 1470–1471). The plan draws the wall round the old city on the harbour's west shore, 10.9 km round. The Quays run along the harbour below it.
• The twenty wards (proposal). The canon has twenty syndics chosen "by the wards" (33:61). The plan gives the city twenty wards, numbered as a trading city would number them:
  • the First to Fourth Wards are inside the wall;
  • the Fifth to Eleventh ring the wall, on both sides of the harbour;
  • the Twelfth to Twentieth lie beyond them, on the landward side.

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. Stellan is rich and quick, and it builds upward:

• The Exchange towers, about 90 of them, stand round the Exchange inside the old wall. Stellan keeps its money where its walls are, as old trading cities do.
• The Station towers, about 170, stand round Stellan Station in the Fifth Ward.

The towers carry storm shutters for the Girdle storms. On the plan they show as dark footprints in blocks built almost to the street.

Getting around#

• The Merrin road (canon: "the Stellan road", 34:26) runs north by Fennick to Low Merrin.
• The Aldport road (proposal) runs west along the coast to Aldport, "Stellan's southern town, a few days' sail from the Imperial port of Hesk" (34:25).
• The Harbour Bridge and the East road (proposal) cross the harbour and lead east.
• The Shore Line (canon), "the one railway" of the coast, runs "to Aldport" (33:164). The canon does not name Stellan as a stop; the plan brings it through Stellan Station (proposal).
• Air. "Tessmere and Stellan airports" (33:166). The plan puts Stellan Airport on the coast plain to the west (proposal place).
• By sea. Stellan's food "comes in on Rovessa decks" (33:98). "Stellan trades with everyone, the Imperium included" (33:64).

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 Stellan the rules take this form:

• The leaders' streets sit together. The First Syndics fill the four wards inside the wall, by their whole names, with no titles.
• Everything is numbered that can be. The wards are numbered, and so are the Twelfth Ward's streets, First Street to Twenty-ninth Street.
• Each ward has its own theme, so a Stellani can tell a ward by its street names.
• The coast country's old lanes keep their founders' names: Marl's Lane, Maro's Lane.
• The old villages keep their own streets: Cane Street, Boat Lane, Chapel Street. The villages are Canefield, Heronby, Mangrove Cross and Palmhurst (proposals).
• Estates were built on the fields that sold, each with a theme, and fields whose owners never sold are still farmed.
• Every street longer than 80 m has a name: 5,487 of 5,634.
  • 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.

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-".
• First Syndics of the Varro and Brennan families have no streets, because the canon's near-identical groups crowd them.

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 city's marker was 47 km from the coast, and its harbour marker 117 km away. A ria (matching the text's drowned river mouth) now reaches the city, about 47 km long; the marker moved the last 14 km onto its new bank, and its harbour marker moved with it.
• "A day's sail from Hesk." Settled, 20 September 2026. It was said of both Stellan (33:64) and Aldport (34:25) — identically, despite the two towns sitting at different distances from Hesk Holding. On the corrected Atlas, Stellan is about 1,278 km from Hesk and Aldport about 680 km; neither reads as a single day's sail. Stellan's line now reads "a week's sail from Hesk", and Aldport's "a few days' sail from the Imperial port of Hesk" — distinct figures for two distinct distances.
• How many wards. The canon gives twenty ward syndics (33:61), not the number of wards. Settled: the plan assumes one ward for each.

Guidance for AI actors#

• "Call people by their names. No honorifics, no ranks." (33:219)
• "The Imperial mark (IM) circulates in Stellan and Aldport, where the Hesk trade is." (33:157) The shore-note is the coast's own money, "pegged to the crown" (34:46).
• A Stellani gives an address by ward: "the Sixth Ward, Factor Lane"; "the Twelfth, Fifteenth Street".
• What is canon, and what is only the plan: the harbour on a drowned river mouth, the walls, the ward syndics, and the institutions marked canon are canon. The wall's line, the twenty wards' bounds and numbers, the streets and their names, and the exact positions are the plan's proposals.

Sources#

The almanac, approved 19 September 2026:

• the Free Oreth Coast States (32–33) and their Register (34);
• the Vesper Orbital Compact (42);
• the Atlas's places at Stellan.

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