Working Draft - A Description of Carthagum

The Island Metropolis of Carthagum

Situated on a mountainous island surrounded by a maze of hidden reefs Carthagum is huge. Three sides cordoned by league high cliffs it spills down its concave hillside into the sea in a cacophony of blues struck across by wide pathes of red. At the ocean it continues as giant white fingers of merchant and military wharves that dwarf a multitude of small red houseboats moored and bobbing between each, from the land to each other this red flood flows into the large deep blue harbour.

The harbour is the largest in the known world and can accommodate the fleets of Carthagum’s families, the city's military vessels and the navies and merchants of her tributary vassals. From the cliffs to the east and west of the city massive white stone walls stretch into the ocean, merging with natural reef and rock ledge to form a huge fortification and breakwater, keeping the harbour safe from nature and any enemy fleet. Atop these guarding walls siege engines and battlements protect against any direct attack on the encircling stone.

Amongst the multitude of colourful tiled roofs two massive red and white marbled boulevards stretch from the harbour up to loop and join behind a single blue marbled edifice that reaches into the sky at the top of the city – the council chambers. Across both these boulevards stretch – at the third and two-third mark - two more boulevards of equal grandeur, each travels from joining behind a large red and green park on the eastern cliff’s edge to another on the western brink. These form nine clearly demarcated areas of the city. Along these four boulevards, at intervals, are smaller but similarly blue-marbled buildings situated within their own red and green parklands, the civic, financial and military districts of the city and the famed Carthagum University.

Seemingly swirling from each of these blue veined buildings are market, shop and multi-story tenement districts, as well as the larger domiciles of the city's multitude of wealthy families. These wealthy, commercial and middle-class districts border the blue of the civic centres and the reds of the major transit routes across the city and from the pinnacle of the government building to the harbour.