City Plan: Vardenhold#

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 gorge, the rings and the districts.
• About 2½ times: main streets, the great buildings and the marshal quarters.
• 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 rings are small on the whole sheet, so zoom in on the middle to see them.

The city at a glance#

The rings#

• Four rings of walls. "Vardenhold's four rings make a 60-km course" for rampart running, the races along the tops of the city walls (14:267). The plan's rings measure 6.0, 11.9, 18.2 and 24.2 km round, 60.3 km in all. That makes them 1.9, 3.8, 5.8 and 7.7 km across.
• The flag and the arms. The flag's "two ochre concentric rings around a solid ochre centre" are "Vardenhold's walls, and the centre is what they protect" (13:43). The arms show "within two ochre rings, a walled tower" (13:44). The plan puts that tower, the Tower, at the heart of the Citadel.
• The walls climb the gorge. In the plan the gorge has a flat floor 3.4 km wide, then three benches of basalt, each above a cliff. The rim stands about 620 m above the river. The First Ring stands on the Citadel's island, the Second on the gorge floor, and the Third and Fourth on the benches. So the walls climb the gorge sides, as the canon has it.
• The Mosaic Mile. "Basalt and ochre mosaics cover the inner faces of city walls, recording each holding's Roll of honour. Vardenhold's Mosaic Mile is the greatest artwork of the Imperium." (14:249) The plan puts the Mile on the inner face of the Second Ring, facing the Citadel on the north-east, 1.55 km long.
• Wall-ovens. Gorge bread is "Dense wheat bread baked in wall-ovens" (14:239). The ovens are built into the rings.

Beyond the walls#

Where the city builds upward#

• The East Rim towers and the West Rim towers stand at the heads of the Halvek and Marrach Roads, where they top the gorge. This is where the corridor companies keep their offices. There are about 360 of each in the plan.
• The Corridor Station towers, about 130, stand round Vardenhold Corridor Station on the gorge floor.
• How they are built. They are basalt and ochre, in the "severe geometry" of the Imperium (14:260).
• No towers in the rings. No tower stands inside the four rings, because nothing may overlook the Citadel.

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

Getting around#

• The phosphate corridor "runs from Gorgehead through Vardenhold to the southern railhead" (13:113). On the plan it runs down the east side of the gorge floor, through the gates of all four rings.
• The Western corridor starts at the city and runs west to Marrach (atlas). On the plan it crosses the Vard below the rings and climbs the gorge's west wall on a long ledge to the plateau.
• The gorge roads: the Gorgehead Road north up the gorge and the Tolvard Road south down it, both on the west bank, named for where they lead.
• The rim roads: the Halvek Road east and the Marrach Road west, climbing the gorge sides in switchbacks.
• Bridges: the Imperator's Bridge and the Marshals' Bridge join the Citadel's island to the two banks. The Foundry Bridge and the Railhead Bridge cross the Vard outside the rings. No bridge is named in the canon.
• Stairs. A cross street that climbs a cliff is a Stair or Steps, a Hill or a Rise if it carries traffic, and an Incline in the works.
• By air. No airport is stated for Vardenhold. The plan proposes one on the west plateau.

Landmarks#

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

How the streets are named#

• 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 Vardenhold the rules take this form:

• The leaders' streets sit together. The Imperators fill the Second Ring, round the Citadel. The Imperial Families fill the Third Ring's marshal quarters.
  • The Imperium's streets use the name alone, with no honorific.
  • The reigning Imperator's name, Casimir, is shared with three earlier Imperators.
• The East Rim is numbered, First Street to Thirtieth Street outward from the gorge's rim. The Imperium numbers readily: its holdings, its corridor posts, its bond-yards (14:82; 16:50–55; 16:148).
• Each district names its streets for what it is: the walls in the Fourth Ring, the foundry and the railway on the gorge floor, stone and harvest on the benches.
• The plateaus grew the way outer cities grow. They began as gardenland crossed by old lanes, with hedge-fort villages.
  • The lanes keep the names of the families who first laid them: Roth's Lane, Lenz's Lane, Voss's Lane. They are Orethi names, some of them shared with the free coast, as the canon says family names are (32:188).
  • Estates were laid out in grids, as the Imperium builds, each with its own theme: trees (Beech Way, Cherry Way), stones (Chalk Road, Whinstone Road), colours (Sable Way, Rust Road), the harvest (Wheat Court, Linseed Road), herbs (Sage Road) and birds (Dove Way).
  • Farms whose owners never sold are still fields, even where the city has grown round them.
  • The villages keep their own streets: Pound Lane, Oven Street, Smithy Lane.
• Every street longer than 80 m has a name: 12,859 of 13,037. A name is used once within the rings and the named districts. The plateau 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 houses whose names the canon's near-identical groups crowd have no streets: Brannic, Harkin, Veyl and Ormond.
• "The First Walls" are at Gorgehead, not here (13:188), and no street takes their name.