Aquila

Aquila is a port city on Canarque, the continent most of the Empire calls the New World. The city was established there after the ship Imperius returned in 289 AVD with the discovery of the continent.¹

With Aquila founded, colonisers flocked to the Canarque route, and the Empire went on building relations with the continent's native Inran and Geroni peoples.¹

In Yeni Dünya

The campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World") begins in Aquila. It is set years after the campaign Sürgün Günlükleri, on the continent the Empire calls the New World, after Castor's discovery in the west.²³

Founding and growth

In the physician Bruno Rossi's memory of his own arrival, some years before the main story, the Empire had issued its decree to send colonists only after the first results of Castor's research with the mages came back, and Aquila was then a harbour without walls and a handful of buildings.⁴⁵

In the campaign the city has some twenty thousand inhabitants and is laid out on the model of White City. Arrivals who are not soldiers have grown in number over the last two or three years. The city's own farming cannot feed it, and the governor needs trade with the communities around it. Despite its name, the New Quarter was the first part of the city to be built.⁶⁷⁸⁹

Harbour and rules

Aquila has two harbours, and most passenger ships put in at Explorer's Harbour; there is no other harbour in use nearby. Arrivals give their name, birthplace, the place they come from and their trade to be registered, and the harbour physicians make them drink a bitter liquid said to strengthen them against disease. Those from the Empire drink it free, while natives pay a small fee; the professor Galevan had fought for it to be free or very cheap. The city's printed rules require registration, a light in the streets at night, and no heavy armour or weapons in the Kaleönü quarter before the castle.^{1011121314151617}

Quarters

The poor quarters of Kuyruk and Sur Dışı lie outside the main walls; between the New Quarter and the Merchant Road are the homes of working people. Beyond the Wheat Gate, in the Green Quarter, live hunters, fishers and the wilderness guides of the Yaban Gezer guild. When the gates are shut at dark, those left outside can find lodging in these outer quarters. At dawn the gates open, barges carrying goods and people begin to move on the river, and workers set out for the fields to the north.^181920212223

The Merchant Road quarter, close to the trade, has an inn built over a natural hot spring with a bath behind it, and the Coalition of Enlightenment keeps a large laboratory there. In the Meydan quarter stands the house of the high judge, near the castle and guarded at its door. In the Castle quarter an old building was raised from the wood of a tree that the druids had blessed and brought over with the first settlers; a dwarf and a gnome engineer of the Guild Union fitted it with a great lightning rod. Smuggling is common enough that the larger quarters have meeting places underground, closed to outsiders.^{2425262728293031}

City life

The Safir Kadeh is a two-storey inn whose upper floor is wider than the lower, its timbers braced with iron; listed attendants keep its door, coachmen and servants wait outside, and its guests are wealthy and noble. Its upper hall looks out over the castle and the river, with tables set apart by screens. At the other end of the city, at a place called the Pit, those who have money put something into the common pot and those who have none eat free. Sticks lodges at the Buhurdan.^3233343536

Imported goods are scarce and shared out at the harbour, so unregistered goods feed a black market in luxury foods, supplied by dealers such as Otto. The Guild Union has several buildings in the city. There are fewer than twenty physicians, and no public library.^3738394041

There is no Inquisition in Aquila, and the church's staff and direct power are limited. Its temple of marble, whose patron is Alarath, stands near the castle in one of the safest parts of the city, outside the Castle Square where heavy armour may not go; inside, an elevator of wooden pulleys, drawn by three or four novices, carries old priests to the upper floor.^42434445

During the campaign the city prepared for the festival of the Red Moon, linked with the night when the veil between the worlds is thinnest, when people gather in the streets so as not to be alone; see Night of the Red Moon.⁴⁶⁴⁷

Government

Aquila is governed by Governor Alexander, who was appointed from the centre. Two imperial families, the Von Mansfeld and the Stratmore, are named as the leading houses of the city. After settlements founded far from the city met with deadly attacks, the governor ordered their people gathered into Aquila.⁴⁸⁴⁹

When rumours spread that the governor was dead, mounted soldiers drove the people of the streets into the square before the castle. Alexander came out alive, weak and anxious. He told the crowd that he had been poisoned the night before by a native, and that another native had helped to draw out the poison; violence against the natives had followed the rumours, and he would not allow it. As he spoke, three men were hanged from the walls.^{50515253545556}

Spoiler: Later eventsGösterAçık ettiği: Yeni Dünya #24; Yeni Dünya #26 · Ne okuduğunuzu söyleyin

Later in the campaign at least fifty or sixty ships under the flags of The Legion approached the harbour, greeted by magical lights from the city. Their landing was made a ceremony: priests with incense and hymns, mounted knights and an old priest with a great book came down to the harbour, and the governor rode on a throne in his carriage to meet the legatus. During the ceremony hidden archers shot at the legatus; no arrow struck, and the legionaries quickly overcame the attackers.^57585960

The newly arrived legionaries proved far harsher than the old garrison, beating a man of native looks with the hilts of their swords during the searches. Imperial intelligence believed the attack had come from the other side and aimed at provocation more than killing. The governor cancelled punishments where his authority allowed, while the legatus left the palace in anger, blaming the attack on the governor's soft policies. Trebuchets and other siege engines, packed for assembly, were carried up from the harbour.^6162636465