Table of Contents
|
North Gate aka The Caemlyn Gate South East Gate aka The Tear Gate |
General Description
Far Madding lies north of the Plains of Maredo, and is near the borders of Andor, Illian, and Tear.
The city is on an island in the center of a large lake about 10 miles wide, 10 miles long.
Three gates lead to a bridge into the city. Each of the gates has a village attached to it.
The Lake
WH, Chapter 23, page 460-3
The lake, bordered along the west with a narrow wash of reeds, was ... no more than 10 miles long at most and less than that wide. A fair-sized island crouched in the middle, surrounded by high, tower-studded walls as far as she could see, and covered by a city.
...Small, beamy craft dotted the water, none more than six or seven spans in length, some hauling in nets, others creeping along on long sweeps.
North Gate aka The Caemlyn Gate
On the Caemlyn Road
WH, Chapter 23, page 460-3
...out of the trees above a wide road that curved southward out of the hills to a lake perhaps a mile off, on the edge of flat land covered with brown grass, a sea of brown stretching to the horizon. This of course will be green grass since the weather is fixed.
WH, Chapter 35, page 629
leaving the city...The road climbed and wound through forested winter hills, where only pine and leatherleaf showed green and most branches were stark and gray.
Village of Glancor
WH, Chapter 23, page 463
...The road turned onto a spit of land jutting half a mile or more into the lake...
...At the end of the spit, a village of gray stone houses with darker slate roofs stood between road and water on one side. Village women hurrying along with large baskets...the fortification opposite the village...a mound of tight-fitted stone five spans high with soldiers watching through the barred faceguards of their helmets from atop towers at the corners. Some held drawn crossbows...From a large iron-plated door at the end nearest the bridge, more helmeted soldiers spilled out into the road.
Ajalon Bridge
WH, Chapter 23, page 466
The bridge was flat and as wide as the road behind, with low stone copings on the side that would stop a wagon from plunging over but gave no shelter to attackers, and it was long, too, perhaps as much as three-quarters of a mile, and straight as an arrow. Now and then one of the boats passed beneath, which they could not have done had they had masts. Tall towers flanked the city's iron-strapped gates--the Caemlyn Gate was the name...
leads to Avharin Market
WH, Chapter 23, page 466
...The street beyond...was wide and straight, full of people and carts, lined with stone buildings two or three stories high, and it all seemed a blur.
...They crossed a large square with a huge statue of a woman in the center....Einion Avharin. The statue was pointing towards the Caemlyn Gate. A row of leafless trees divided the street beyond the square. Sedan chairs and coaches and men in square-scaled armor threaded through the crowds...
South East Gate aka The Tear Gate
On the Tear Road
Village of South Bridge
Goime Bridge
leads to Nethvin Market
South West Gate aka Illian Gate
On the Gold Road
Village of Daigan
Ikane Bridge
leads to Amhara Market
WH, Chapter 22, page 432-3
The Amhara Market was on of the three in Far Madding where foreigners were allowed to trade, but despite the name, the huge square had nothing of the look of a market, no market stalls or displays of merchandise. A few mounted riders, a handful of closed sedan chairs carried by brightly liveried bearers and the occasional coach with its window curtains drawn made their way thorough a sparse yet bustling crowd that might have been seen in any large city. ... Around the square, as at the city's other two Strangers' Markets, the tall stone houses of bankers rubbed shoulders with slate-roofed stone inns where the foreign merchants stayed and blocky windowless stone warehouses where their goods were stored, all jumbled in among stone stables and stone-walled wagon yards. Far Madding was a city of stone walls and slate roofs.
...A round marble pedestal in the center of the square held a statue of Savion Amhara, two spans tall and proud in fur-trimmed robes of marble, with elaborate marble chains of office around her neck. Her marble face was stern beneath the First Counsel's jeweled marble diadem, and her right hand firmly gripped the hilt of a marble sword, its point resting between her slippered feet, while her raised left hand aimed a warning marble finger toward the Tear Gate, some three-quarters of a mile away.
Guard hangs out in the square with a large wooden stick and chases away pigeons from the statue.
Streets
Street of Joy
WH, Chapter 22, page 435-6
The gray stone shops and inns along the Street of Joy changed the farther you go from the Amhara Market. Silversmiths replaced cutlers, and then goldsmiths replaced silversmiths. Seamstresses and tailors displayed embroidered silks and brocades instead of woolens. The coaches that rumbled over the paving stones now had sigils lacquered on the doors and teams of four or six matched for size and color, and more riders were mounted on prime Tairen bloodstock or animals as good. Sedan chairs borne and, afoot, shopkeepers in coats or dresses heavily embroidered around the chest and shoulders were outnumbered by folk in livery as bright as that of the chair-bearers. Often as not, bits of colored glass now decorated men's hair clips, or occasionally pearls or richer gems, though few men walked whose wives could afford gems.
...Guards patrolling in threes...as soon as one patrol strode out of sight another appeared, and wherever a street wider than an alleyway met the Street of Joy, a stone watchstand stood with two Guardsmen waiting at the foot in case the man atop spotted trouble.
Side street, from Street of Joy
WH, Chapter 22, page 438
Hawkers displaying pins or needles or combs on their trays...Few people wore embroidery, and a simple cord tying a man's hair was much more common than even the plainest clip. These streets were cramped at best, and crooked, a haphazard maze where cheap inns and narrow stone apartment buildings of three and our stories towered over the shops of butchers and candlemakers and barbers, tinsmiths and porters and coopers. Coaches would not have fit along these streets, and there were no sedan chairs, either, no riders, and only a handful of liveried servants, carrying baskets on errands but strolling and looking down their noses at everyone around them except the Street Guards.
Alleys
From the Street of Joy...darted into an alley between a tiny basketweaver's shop and an inn with a sign so dirty the name was completely obscured.
Those alleys were even more crooked than the streets...making a warren of their own through the interior of every block of the city.
...windowless stone walls
...passages barely wide enough for two men abreast.
Blue Carp Street
WH, Chapter 33, page 609-11
There were no sedan chairs or liveried servants to be seen on Blue Carp Street, and carriages would never have fit along the narrow, twisting passage. Slate-roofed stone shops and houses lined the street, most of two stories, sometimes jammed on hard against the next and sometimes with a little alleyway between. The pavement was still slick from the rain...Not far along on the other side of the street, the building housing the shop of the bootmaker Zeram rose a full three stories, not counting the attic under the peaked roof.
A skinny man with very little chin....lifted a brown-crusted meatpie from the charcoal grill on his barrow
...To the south, an alleyway separated the bootmaker's from a single-story house, a dangerous drop, but on the other side, a two-story building with a seamstress on the ground floor stood wall-to-wall with the bootmaker. Zeram's building had no windows except at the front--in back was another alley, for taking away rubbish.
...from the bootmaker...a short drop to the seamstress's roof, with only three more to cross before another low building, a candlemaker's shop, and an easy jump to the street, or into the alley behind the buildings....the nearest watchstands were out of sight.
...The candlemaker's...with an alley at one side. Ahead, the narrow street twisted back the other way. No more than fifty paces farther on was a watchstand with a Street Guard at the top, but another building of three stories, a cabinetmaker's that shared the alleyway with the candlemaker, blocked the rooftops beyond from his view.
...the bootmaker's shop...The alley that ran behind the buildings was a little wider than the one to the street, the rocky soil rutted with the tracks of the rubbish barrows that were pushed along it mornings. Blank stone walls rose around them. No one wanted a window to watch the rubbish carts.
Design Considerations
Landscape
See section above describing the lake and bridges and streets.
There is a waygate near Far Madding.
Plant life
Pine and leatherleaf along the north road to Caemlyn.
Animal life
No animal life mentioned except horses in the city.
Building exteriors
Grey stone buildings with slate roofs. Low buildings have deep eaves.
Building interiors
Buildings
The bootmaker Zeram
Located on Blue Carp Street just above the Illian Gate.
WH, Chapter 33, page 609-610
...the building housing the shop of the bootmaker Zeram rose a full three stories, not counting the attic under the peaked roof.
...stairs put in right up to the third floor, so it's private, but she wouldn't pay for having a new door cut as well, so the stairs come out in the shop, and she's not trusting enough to leave that unlocked at night.
WH, Chapter 33, page 613
on the roof...It was a trapdoor set among the slates high toward the peak, with metal flashing to keep water out of the attic...lowered himself into a dusty space, dimly lit by the light through the trapdoor...Except for a chair with three legs and a chest with the lid thrown open, the long room as as empty as the chest.
...another, larger trapdoor lying flat against the floor...brass hinges...storage room...in a room that seemed to have taken the attic's place from the wardrobes and cabinets shoved against the walls, the wooden chests piled on one another and tables with chairs standing atop them.
...from the storage room...pulled the door open, he darted into a large lamplit room with a posted bed against the far wall and a fire crackling in a small fireplace.
The Counsel's Head
An inn overlooking the Nethvin Market.
The common room
WH, Chapter 32, page 599-600
...the sign over the door, painted with the stern visage of a woman wearing the jeweled coronet of a First Counsel, swung on creaking hinges. The common room was smaller than that of the Golden Wheel, but the wall panels were carved and polished, the tables beneath the red ceiling beams not so crowded together. The doorway to the Women's Room was red, too, and carved like intricate lace, as were the lintels of the pale marble fireplaces. At the Counsel's Head, the serving men secured their long hair with polished silver clips....The Counsel's Head catered to the wealthier outland merchants.
The clock on a mantel in the Women's Room -- a clock with a silver case...rang with small bells as he came into the common room.
...were settled on a long red bench in front of one of the fireplaces.
...appeared through the door to the stableyard from the common room
The guest rooms
WH, Chapter 25, page 481
...sat on the bed...back against the wall...carved wall panels and windows overlooking the Nethvin market was better than that they had abandoned at The Crown of Maredo. The pillows stacked beside him were goose down, the bed had an embroidered canopy and curtains, and the mirror above the washstand had not a single bubble. The lintel above the stone fireplace even had a bit of simple carving. It was a room for a well-to-to foreign merchant.
WH, Chapter 33, page 606
...opened the front of the bedside table long enough to take out the strap that Mistress Keene made sure was in every room...The thing was as long as her arm and as wide as her hand, with a wooden handle at one end and the other end split into three tails.
...dropped the thing to the flowered carpet.
The Counsel's Plaza
Located at the center of the island, the is a huge, round, festival square paved with white stone. It contains:
Hall of the Counsels
WH, Chapter 22, page 468
This stands at the center of the Counsel's Plaza. It is a great palace, round structure of all white except for the tall blue dome on tope. Massive fluted columns surrounded the upper two levels below the dome. Broad white stone stairs lead up the second level on either side o. A pair of tall arched bronze gates stand at the center, at the entrance. The lowest level was all white stone carved with diademed women more than twice life-size, and between them, white stone sheaves of grain and bolts of cloth that seemed to have their free ends rippling in a wind, and stacks of ingots that might have been meant for gold or silver or iron or perhaps all three, and sacks spilling out what looked like coins and gemstones. Beneath the women's feet, much smaller white stone figures drove wagons and worked forges and looms in a continuous band.
...across the square and through the Hall of the Counsels' open gates into a large, high-ceilinged room that appeared to be an indoor stableyard. A dozen men in blue coats, squatting beside sedan chairs with both a golden sword and a golden hand painted on the doors, looked up in surprise....sweeping the stone floor...leading horsed down a wide corridor that gave off the smell of hay and dung.
WH, Chapter 22, page 471
...lead them along broad, blue-tiled corridors hung with bright tapestries and lit by gilded stand lamps with glittering mirrors....up long flights of white stone stairs that hung unsupported except where they touched a pale wall, which they did not always.
...up a final curling flight of stairs, enclosed by walls, and suddenly they were on a balcony with an intricate, gilded metal railing that ran all the way around.
Arched doorways edged with white stone, like the one they had come through, marked stairs at three other places around the long balcony.. Her voice echoed in the dome.
The Guardian
WH, Chapter 22, page 473
She stepped cautiously closer to the gilded railing and peered over...pressed herself against the elaborately worked metal balcony. The drop was 20 feet, a smooth floor tiled in blue and white to make a convoluted maze centered on a double-pointed red oval rimmed with yellow. Beneath the balcony, three women in white sat on stools spaced equally around the edge of the floor, right against the dome's wall, and beside each woman, a disc a full span across that looked like clouded crystal had been set into the floor and inlaid with a long thin wedge of clear crystal that pointed toward the chamber's center. Metal collars surrounded the murky discs, marked off like a compass but with ever-smaller markings between the larger. ...the collar nearest her appeared to be inscribed with numerals. That was ll. No monstrous shapes.
WH, Chapter 22, page 476
...The formerly clear wedges were now black, and rather than pointing toward the chamber's heart, somehow they had turned in roughly the same direction. Men's channeling. If it was red, it would be woman's.
First circle cuts off the one power for women - at the gates.
Second disc cuts off the one power for men - before the villages.
Third disc detects channeling in a radius outside the villages.The dungeon/jail
WH, Chapter 34, page 621
...felt his way along the stone wall beside the pallet, reaching a corner almost immediately, and then a door covered with rough iron straps. No hint of light seeped in around its edges....the floorstones, cold beneath his bare feet. The next corner came almost immediately, and then a third, where his toes struck something that rattled on the stone floor. Keeping one hand on the wall, he bent and found a wooden bucket...he was inside a black box three paced long and just over two paces wide. Raising a hand, he found the stone ceiling less than a foot above his head.
The Counsels' Chamber
WH, Chapter 34, page 623-5
...walking along the lamplit corridors of the Hall of the Counsels...The corridors should have been empty at this hour...Blue-coated clerks were scurrying everywhere.
Clerks and messengers half-filled the columned anteroom to the Counsels' Chamber...across the blue floortiles...opened one of the tall doors carved with the Hand and Sword.
The Counsels' Chamber was not large. Four mirrored standlamps sufficed to light it, and a large Tairen carpet in red and blue and gold almost covered the floor tiles. A wide marble fireplace on one side of the room made a fair job of warming the air, though the glassed doors leading to the colonnade outside rattled in the night wind, loud enought to drown the ticking of the tall, gilded Illianer clock on the mantel. Thirteen carved and gilded chairs, very nearly thrones, made an arc facing the door..
Monuments
Monuments from over 500 years, when Far Madding was the capital of Meredo.
See above section. I think the monuments are the carved women, etc around the building.
Counting Houses
The banks owned by the wealthiest women in Far Madding.
The Crown of Maredo
WH, Chapter 22, page 443
...round tables in the common room...stairs at the back of the room...
...Despite the grand name, it was a modest inn, with two dozen rooms on two floors above. The plastered walls of the common room were painted yellow, and the men serving table here wore long yellow aprons. A stone fireplace at either end of the room gave it a marked warmth after outside. The shutters were bolted, but lamps hung on the walls took the edge off the dimness.
...near the kitchen, at the door to the Women's Room. Men were not allowed in there. Aside from a few flowers painted on the yellow walls, the Women's Room was not much fancier than the common room, though the stand-lamps were painted yellow, too, and the facings of the fireplace....women wore yellow aprons same as the men's....more than one table in the women's room.
The Golden Wheel
WH, Chapter 32, page 591
The Golden Wheel was a large inn, just off the Avharin Market, with a long, beam-ceilinged common room, crowded with small square tables.
...women's room
WH, Chapter 32, page 594-5
...two large fireplaces on either side of the room
...to the stairs at the back of the room.
Another tall man swaggered in, through the door to the stableyard, almost at the foot of the stairs in the back of the room.
...Peering through the yellow arch to the women's room.
The Heart of the Plain
The Palace, Aleis' Palace
WH, Chapter 25, page 493
...the stable, a low structure set in a corner against the front wall.
Aleis' palace was not a patch on the Sun Palace, of course, or the Royal Palace in Andor, or any of the palaces kings and queens ruled from. It was her own property, not attached to her position as First Counsel. Others, larger and smaller marched away on either side, each surrounded by a high wall except on the end where the Heights, the only point approaching a hill on the entire island, fell away to the water in a sheer bluff. Still, it was not small either.
Sitting room
WH, Chapter 25, page 493-4
...would have offered a good view of the lake if the curtains had not been drawn to keep in the warmth of the blaze in a wide marble fireplace...on a small inlaid table beside her chair...over the back of a padded chair.
...a heavily worked silver teapot sat on a four-legged stand on one of the side tables...
The Three Ladies of Maredo
An inn in Far Madding. That is the only information known.
Political Description
Far Madding was once the capitol city of the country of Maredo, which arose following the War of the Hundred Years. Today it is all that remains of that nation, which withered away some time prior to 600 New Era.
The city state is run by women. Men are not allowed to do trade and banking. Women may punish men by strapping them.
Run by the council of 9. The head of this council is the first among equals.
WH, Chapter 22, page 473
...in flowing blue silk robes worn over their dresses like sleeveless coats, richly embroidered in gold and trailing behind them on the floor....Each woman wore a large pendant in the shape of that gold-rimmed red oval suspended from a necklace of heavy golden links, and the same shape was repeated at the front of each narrow golden diadem.
Contains huge ter'angrial that prevents channeling. The effect for males extends further from the city than the female effect.
Names are recorded at the gate. There, swords are either confiscated or a fee is paid and they are wrapped with wire. If when you leave, you don't have the sword or the wire is tampered with you are taken and held until all crimes are investigated and solved and you have been proven to not be involved.
Trade and Economy
Silversmiths, cutlers, goldsmiths, seamstresses and tailors.
A wealthy man is one whose wife gives him a generous allowance or a widow who was provided for.
People
Besides the natives of Far Madding, hundreds of the Aiel turned up here to be gai'shain or servants.
Physical looks
Clothing
Women
Hair: worn up and rolled or in buns.
Clothes: embroidery
Men
Hair: long, sometimes all the way to the waist. Tied at the nape of the neck or held with a clip.
Coats
Military
Street Guards: Steel-capped, leather coats sewn with overlapping square metal plates and a Golden Hand on the left shoulder.