Avlor Aten

Avlor Aten is a city-state of the Geroni in the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World"). Its head consul called it the Geroni city nearest to the settlements of the Empire, about two weeks on foot from Aquila; outside the walls lie farmland and military posts, but the city keeps no villages.^{1 2}

The colonists of Canarque have kept building ties with the native Inran and Geroni, who use calendars wholly different from the Empire's.³

The painting

The band first saw the city in a painting found under the silver of the vault of Willow house, with its name written beneath it. It showed shining stone walls lined with giant statues as tall as the towers, cloaked over one shoulder and holding scrolls, among fountains, green spaces and orderly streets, with round and domed buildings unlike those of the Empire or the elves. Driverless four-legged golems carried its citizens; the Geroni have many mindless automata that do the work they are given, leaving people free for philosophy, the sciences and the arts of war.^{4 5 6}

The painting could carry the living into it. It first set the band down in a sealed, decaying temple of sharp, angular art, unlike the round city of the picture, and from its library Fauna alone once heard, far off, the sounds of a living city.^{7 8}

The street mural

The way out of the temple opened not into a building but onto a street, through a temple mural painted on a wall. The head consul said the mural had stood there for some eight hundred years, and that he knew of nothing like this happening before; from history books he knew that the arcanists of old had shut objects and places away in pocket worlds inside paintings. The seal had been broken not by the band but by an earlier guardian who broke the door to get out. The chief arcanist, it was later said, did not think the painting had woken of its own will, though he did not rule out a hand from outside.^{9 10 11 12 13}

The city

Some twenty to twenty-five armoured soldiers in white waited outside. The band were bound, their weapons and bags taken, and driven to a building of civil officials, where soldiers in golden cloaks with bronze shields and steel spears took charge of them. The chief arcanist came in a carriage drawn not by horses but by a large four-legged golem, which a tabaxi watched closely holding a ring the arcanist had given him.^{14 15 16 17 18 19}

Along the way they saw automata keeping watch at important points, carrying loads in shops and working in gardens; the head consul named the armed guards, the servitors and the labourers apart. More is told under Automata of Avlor Aten. The head consul also spoke of schooling from about four to ten, of teachers held in honour, and of poor people and bad houses in the city despite its wealth.^{20 21 22 23}

The city is ruled by a council of three: the civilian head consul, Orpi; Julia, over the courts; and Soteris, over military matters. People of the city who have more than one body must, by law, wear a number; see Multiple manifestation.^{24 25}

The Eyes of Aten

The Eyes of Aten are the city's detectives, led by the tabaxi Kuraks, who wears their badge of an eye within a clawed paw on his shoulder. The head consul said that the city had always chosen tabaxi for the work, for their gift for hiding and for finding what is hidden, and that other cities have no such custom.^{26 24}

The escape

The band were kept apart from the other prisoners, in a room of four beds beneath a military post, to be taken to the prison the next day. The head consul offered to help them escape: his human guard was to be drawn off and not killed, though the guard-machines of stone, bone or magic might be broken; their things would be left before the council met and the escape made during the meeting; they were to go west, avoid the great gates, cross the wall by rope with a bearded contact, and meet him the next day at his family's old house by a lake to the southwest. He also meant to swap his numbered brooches, which he admitted was against the law.^{27 28 29 30 31 32}

About two hours later a bearded tabaxi passed their belongings through the window bars, and the band opened the cell door. Three armed guard-machines stood watch, two below and one above; the band's spells could not still them, and they fought by written battle protocols, with no one directing them. Two were broken, each bursting into flame as it fell. Upstairs, in an office with old cages and an iron maiden standing like a museum piece, the band poured oil, climbed out of the window and set the room alight, while the bells of the nearby prison rang.^{33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41}

They found their own way to the western wall, throwing pebbles charged with the sound of running feet into the wrong streets. At the wall, some forty feet high, Sticks climbed up and tied a rope while patrols on ostrich-like mounts drew near. On the way down two companions fell, one of them senseless, and were tended before the band walked on. They did not meet the agent at the wall; they went straight on to the lake house, a small log-walled cabin with a jetty and an old boat, where the head consul arrived about an hour later with the key. He told them that the council had meant to hold them in chains for detailed questioning, which meant torture.^{42 43 44 45 46 47 48}

Diplomacy with Aquila

Soteris said that the city stood on the brink of war with the Empire and pressed the band for military knowledge. The head consul, by contrast, had heard from those who met the governor of Aquila that no policy of expansion was being followed, and argued for diplomacy, though in other cities some wished to band together against the Empire and fight. He said he helped the band so as to have people in Aquila who could carry word both ways; he wanted no spies, but one day a letter might stop a war. He feared too for the Inran, deadly fighters, he said, but no match in strength for the Empire or the Geroni cities, caught between the two.^{49 50 51 52 53}

At the lake house the offer became a task. The band were not to seize the governor but to bring the head consul's offer of help to him by a road he would trust. The consul gave them a letter under his seal, saying only that its bearers spoke for him, with no details in case it fell into the wrong hands. If the governor died, he feared, the hard-handed commander of the legion, two great noble houses and the Empire-minded chief of the mages would gain sway; diplomacy would not end, but its terms would harden. The Geroni were one people but not ruled from one centre, he added, and he asked that an envoy with power to bargain, or a mage, be sent in secret.^{54 55 56 57}

He promised to pay their road and any bribes before they went, and more on success; he gave them the money he had in the house, and promised a charm against hostile magic once he was safe. He asked that what they carried go only to those who would give diplomacy a chance.^{58 59 60 61}

Spoiler: The governor's illnessRevealSpoils: Yeni Dünya #11 · Say what you have read

The head consul's message for the governor was that his poison was in truth an old curse of the Inran that turns skin and organs to wood, which only the consul's people could halt. He guessed the governor had at least a few months but less than a year, and that persuading a healer of great power among his own people would take time and politics.^{62 63}

Spoiler: News from the cityRevealSpoils: Yeni Dünya #12 · Say what you have read

Reaching his allies by mental messages, the head consul learned that the military commander had shut out the council and brought a mage into the city: a coup, the second in the history of Avlor Aten that he knew of. Julia was held captive, while some senators and consuls had fled. He proposed to withdraw to an allied castle, no more than two days away, that was not in the plotters' hands, and warned that war-minded circles of the Empire might take the news as a chance to attack.^{64 65 66 67 68 61}

Among the Geroni cities

The head consul said that some Geroni city-states have made others economically dependent on them, and that though the cities have warred with and occupied one another, no single great government has ever united them. In one of the sister cities, he said, an old dragon with silver scales has lived in human form and served as head consul for some seven hundred years.^{69 70}