Tevious Map - Basic HTML

From A Concise Survey of Tevious, a collaboration of the Mapmaker’s Guild, complied and edited by Dindol the Journeyman Historian

Some General Information about Tevious:

Tevious is a small country with a total population of 1.9 million people, and has long been an autocratic society.
Tevian agriculture operates on a principle of equilibrium, maintaining a balance between arable and pastoral farming that ensures reasonable yields year to year, with some surplus going to general storage for hard times. Food is grown and used by rural farmers, whose surplus is sold at market or given to Estate Lords in lieu of taxes. Within cities, food is purchased at markets or from specialists (bakers, etc.). In turn, the urban dwellers produce goods and provide services for rural residents.

This system has been successful for centuries due to the country’s smaller size and lower population, which reduces demand for foodstuffs and cultivated land. Rural peasants and urban lower classes live comfortably – they will never get wealthy, but are unlikely to starve.

Tevious consists of three basic town configurations:

Cities: These are the urban centers with large concentrations of people, where non-agricultural trades are the primary means of making a living. Lompaer and Tamol were planned towns with predetermined street grids, while Deverell, Sharrad, Burken, and Pianmar grew-up into more tangled and piecemeal layouts.

Estates: These are rural communities associated with each city. Generally, they consist of individual dwellings, clustered around a Lord’s demesne or at the center of privately owned plots of farmland, everyone sharing communal pastureland. A number of Estate Lords live in the cities –closer to amenities and the political sphere – administering to their estates through managers. Estate Lords that live in their Estates typically hold demesnes of their own and any non-agricultural trades are centered around the Lord’s demesne.

Independent communities whose leaders answer to the Crown directly:

Villages and Boroughs: These small communities are not associated with a city or estate. They are generally mixes of agriculture, pastoral farming, and lodging for travelers.

Hamlets: Within the Jewel Forest, it is not unusual to find the foundations of abandoned buildings. Although documentation is scarce, historians believed that the Jewel Forest had once been cultivated as orchards, and wayside hamlets – clusters of dwellings centered around an inn or tavern with stables – used to be scattered along the highways. It is commonly accepted that, as the Jewel Forest became overgrown, most hamlets were abandoned for the urban centers or estates where farming is easier and jobs are plentiful. Only the two major Crossroads’ hamlets remain fully intact.

Northern Villages

The Northern Villages consist of fifteen independent villages, scattered throughout the Northern Forest. Although they are the most isolated and uncivilized communities within Tevious, the coastal villages do some trading with merchants from the greater continent.

Estimated Population (All Villages Combined): 20,000

Building Features: Wooden huts and leather tent structures are common, as well as simple tree houses.

Primary Trades: hunting, trapping, fur trading, water dealing

Secondary Trades: fishing, musical instruments (drums), storytelling, and leatherwork

Lompaer (Capital City of Tevious)

Set into a valley where the two primary mountain ranges meet, Lompaer is the largest city in Tevious and the Royal Seat. Two large bridges span the Tevious River. The southern bridge spans the valley, leading to estates on the eastern bank of the Tevious River. The northern bridge that leads to former mines is rarely used since better ore was found elsewhere.

Estimated Urban Population: 200,000

Estates: 21 estates (with an average of 3000 people per estate)

Architectural features of the city: The majority of Lompaer’s buildings are made from stone. Architecture is generally practical and geometrical, with squared edges, simple circles, and smooth, rounded archways. Lompaer boasts wide, well-planned cobblestone streets with vast sewer systems. Parts of the city are tiered to fit into the landscape, and Casil Antalio, the royal palace, sits at the highest point, built into the Dar Senchian Mountains.

Primary Trades: academics (teachers, scholars, scientists), Sorcery (in the past), metal mining (gold and silver), quarrying (marble and granite), black-smithing, milling, tailoring (With its high concentration of nobility, Lompaer has a strong clothing district)

Secondary Trades: shipping, dockworkers, grain farming, baking, printing, and cattle husbandry (within the estates of the northern Spritian Plains.

Burken

Said to be the former capital of Tevious, Burken is the second largest city and the religious center for the country. The northern part of the city rests on the solid, level ground between the hills and marshes, while the southern part is built up above the flood plain of the Tevious River’s delta, supported with sandstone pillars and protected from flooding by an extensive sea wall. There is rampant crime and poverty: beggars, thugs, and urchins plague the city.

Estimated Urban Population: 155,000

Estates: 25 estates (with an average of 4000 people per estate)

Architectural features of the city: Dark shale and sandstone brick buildings are intermingled with archaic wooden structures within a tangle of streets and alleyways. Architecture is eclectic, ranging from blocky and monolithic to peaked and narrow. Underneath its fieldstone and cobblestone streets, the pillars have created numerous underground canals and catacombs that serve as the sewer system.

Primary Trades: Peat farming (for fuel), cereal farming in the northern and western hills, religious leaders, masonry

Secondary Trades: Journalism, academics (theology, history), pottery, merchants, traders, theater, prostitution, thievery, and gambling

Draeling Lea

An independent Borough, the Draeling Lea is a series of tree-groves in the middle of the Spritian Plains. Its population is mostly Draelings – fragile beings whose pigmentation is vibrant and colorful – and Draes – those whose lineage is mixed human and Draeling

Estimated Population: 10,000 (Historical note: the Lea was abandoned during Trevarre the Tyrant’s occupation.)

Building Features: Draelings live inside larger trees and in tree houses within the trees. It is said that the Onbekai taught them how to build these structures.

Primary Trades: healing, music, pottery, folk magic, and botany

Secondary Trades: jewelry, musical instruments (flutes)

Tamol Crossroads
An independent hamlet, the Tamol Crossroads rests at the junction of the Northern King’s Highway and the Tamol Highway, primarily catering to travelers between Lompaer and Tamol.

Estimated Population: 9000

Jewel Forest Crossroads

An independent hamlet, the Jewel Forest Crossroads is a large village at the junction of the Western King’s Highway, the Jewel Forest Highway, and the Pianmar Highway. Although it primarily caters to a large number of travelers from around the country, it also participates in the gem trade, and is home for many gem-harvesters who work within the Jewel Forest.

Estimated Population: 15,000

Pianmar

Pianmar is the third largest city in Tevious, and is one of the oldest. Its location on the western coast makes it an ideal international trading hub, as well as a prolific fishing center. (Historical note: Pianmar was used as a prison camp during Trevarre the Tyrant’s occupation.)

Estimated Urban Population: 102,000

Estates: 20 estates (with an average of 3000 people per estate)

Architectural features of the city: The city shines with its tall glass-stone buildings with angular, delicate features, pointed arches, intricate engravings, and flying buttresses. Its gravel streets are made from jewel-dust, creating a shimmering effect. There are no sewers, but small channels carry rainwater and gray-water to the Dartevian Sea.

Primary Trades: jewel harvesting, jewelry, culinary arts, gem-smithing (masonry with jewels)

Secondary Trades: architecture, music, and musical instruments

Tamol

The fourth largest city in Tevious, Tamol is known for its large number of estates that are nestled within the Tamol forest. Instead of converting the massive forest into arable land, the people of Tamol and its estates have chosen a more pastoral method of farming, utilizing perennial vineyards and orchards to grow produce, only using arable farmland on the eastern banks of the Tevious River, accessed by bridges.

Estimated Urban Population: 90,000

Estates: 45 estates (with an average of 3000 people per estate)

Architectural features of the city: Groups of wooden buildings with tile roofing are lined up amid grassy, tree-filled plazas. The gravel streets have no sewers, so residents avoid Rainwater and gray water by walking along wooden sidewalks that are connected to the buildings.

Primary Trades: Lumber, woodworking, carpentry, furniture, hunting, and farming/plantations

Secondary Trades: fishing, shipping, dockworkers, printing, merchants/traders, thievery (petty criminals organized into a thieves’ guild)

Sharrad

This small, mountain city is nestled at the base of the Sharrad Mountain range, while its estates are scattered among the mountain slopes, working the stone in quarries and taking advantage of prolific grass pockets to feed their herd animals.

Estimated Urban Population: 75,000

Estates: 18 estates (with an average of 500 people per estate)

Architectural features of the city and estates: Squat wooden and stone homes are clustered together, and often built shelf-style into the mountains

Primary Trades: Animal husbandry and herding (shepherds, drovers), quarrying, masonry, wool export

Secondary Trades: farming, metal mining, horse training

Deverell

Flourishing in the rich, sheltered farmland at the elbow of the Tevious River, Deverell is the smallest city in Tevious, but it is growing. Plans are being made to build bridges such as Tamol and Lompaer’s in order to expand to the southern banks of the river.

Estimated Urban Population: 60,000

Estates: 16 estates (with an average of 800 people per estate)

Architectural features of the city and estates: Most buildings are small and made of wood or mud-brick. Some civic buildings and estate manors are built from stone provided by neighboring Sharrad. Most of the streets are dirt, but some areas have started converting to gravel and stone.

Primary Trades: textiles (farming plants similar to cotton, flax, and silk), weaving (with wool from Sharrad as well as the harvested plants), Master artisans often ship their finished textiles to Lompaer for tailoring

Secondary Trades: fishing, grain and vegetable farming, dairy/cattle

The Dagian City

The Dagian City lies in the heart of the marshland. Named for the god Dagir, it is the oldest city in Tevious, and is still home to Dagir’s monastery. It is also home to the Felisken – mythological beings with strikingly feline features.

Estimated Urban Population: 5000

Estates: 5 estates (with an average of 500 people per estate)

Architectural Features of the city: Giving the appearance of disrepair, its low, creamy limestone and sandstone buildings are covered in soft blankets of moss, often blending into the vegetation. Building groupings are set on solid, tufted grassy island clusters, connected with extensive stone bridges that span the numerous canals and pools of water. The great buildings such as Palise Batrill are masterpieces of organic architecture, carved with graceful curves, rounded edges, and intricate bas-reliefs.

Primary Trades: Academics, Healing, pastoral gardening and produce harvesting

Secondary Trades: Hunting and spear fishing in the marshes

Adesco
Adesco is an independent borough associated with The Dagian City. The maze-like town was built by the followers of Dagir, and rests on a hillock 15-20 miles outside of Burken. Previously used as a way post for travelers, it is connected to Burken and The Dagian City by a series of underground natural canals that feed into the swampland. It is said that the Felisken still use these passages for travel.

Frehyem: The Onbekai Nation

The Onbekai’s territory is located in southern-central Tevious. It is a sovereign nation, home to the Onbekai people and independent of the Tevian Crown. Tevians have limited information about this territory, for it is encircled by a series of spelled stone markers, embedded into the ground, that compel outsiders to avoid the area or get turned around. At birth, each Onbekai citizen is given a stone that dispels the effects of the border magic. In the past, certain members of Tevian Royalty were given stones as well.

Estimated Population: 400,000

Architectural Features: The Onbekai are very connected to the forest, and they often build their stout timber homes and extensive tree houses around an intact tree, using it as a central support. They build outwards, tying off all other timber so as not to damage the living tree within. In rural areas, huge trees that are already dying are hollowed out to create homes.

Primary Trades: Lumber, woodworking, stone mining, biology, and hunting