Dastrux city is a geometer’s dream rendered in the fruits of the earth. Kilometers away from the city, an earthen dike separates the suburbs, Dastrux Garth, from the rural countryside beyond. Its course zigzags, allowing a defending army to rain missiles in enfilade. The main road passes through a cut in the dike, the cobbled sides rising twice again a man’s height. Travelers pass through an earthwork military checkpoint exaggeratedly titled “Fort Vire” and into Dastrux Garth.
The Garth is an intensively farmed arc of countryside that stretches in most of circle from lakeshore to lakeshore. Grains wave in the temperate wind, and the sickly scent of fermenting fruit wafts from extensive orchards. Windmill-powered screws haul lakewater up and, with a rhythmic splashing, into the fishponds north of the city.
Huge farmstead complexes stud the terrain, villages in their own right, with massive barns for the preservation of food. Smoke rises from the brick stacks of one, curing meat; steam from the canning of fruit in another; bees buzz in and out the loft window of a third. The wind carries the tang of fermentation from wineries, meaderies, and breweries. Windmills each bear an Imperial seal, for the law deems any machine that can work a laborer, and its owner must both pay its share of taxes and provide it a substitute when called to Legion service. Here and there stands a lone cottage in an herb garden, for the service of harvest-witches is highly sought after. Likewise, a steeple rises from behind a thick hedge entangled with grapevines.
Oxen haul river barges down to the city with cargoes of timber, furs, and iron, while scratching hens and spotted hogs foraging for fallen fruit pay no mind to the traffic in the road. Wagons carrying fresh and preserved food gather like tributaries into a great flood toward the gates of the city. Sometimes they tangle with their counterparts leaving the city that bear new glass jars, empty beer barrels, and burlap-covered hoppers of nightsoil. The wheels bump and clatter as the roads transition to cobblestone. The roads converge, pass through a network of ravelins, and pass on to the gates of the city.
Dastrux City is the latest settlement on a site that has been leveled and rebuilt three times in recorded history and several times in prehistory besides. The outer walls of Dastrux City are as high as those of any castle. Their piers and bastions are regularly geometric, as are the internal main streets and canals. The layout of the entire city is in the shape of a massive sigil to bring the city good fortune in times of siege, warding off the three evils of disease, spoilage, and fire. The walls are plated with a strange white glass retrieved from an ancient dungeon; they reflect both spells and cannonfire with equal aplomb.
Beyond the wall, the city rises, its towers and spires visible from the queue outside the gate. The turrets of nine castles rise above the height of the wall. They offer not only a potent political reward for families in the Kaiser’s favor, but also a second line of defense, and a place of refuge, between the outer wall, should it be breached, and the inner wall, or again between the inner wall and the citadel.
From afar, the sun glints off other towers. Temple spires are visible, as is the scaffolding and cranes of the construction site of the Cathedral of the Canonical Virtues. Most glistering is the bronze dome on the Tower of Stars, which stands on the south face of Knightswall: a grudging concession made by the local estates to the advancement of knowledge.
The Knightswall district rises above the outer wall, displaying the palatial manors of the most ancient nobility. The sun shines sometimes blindingly off their marble cladding, its intricate gothic figurework reduced by distance to the most delicate of pale lace. Around the blue tile shingles of cupolas, chapels, and lofts, the brightly colored flowers of rooftop gardens reach up to the heavens and cascade down over the eaves. The massive lawns and garden ponds of the grounds are divided from each other by lush green thorn-hedges or polished stone walls topped with wrought iron.
The hills rise toward the river, and on the highest stands Citadel Dastrux itself. Surrounded by the grounds and complexes of the Public Palace, the walls of the Citadel are tiled with the same extraordinary glass as the city walls. Beyond, the domes and roofs of the palace are tiled, uniquely in the Empire, in blue and gold. They mingle with the rising castle walls and turrets. Each palace building is a keep, each courtyard a fortress, mounting up and up to the highest castle. From its tallest spire, a massive banner, large enough to be legible from the outermost dike, depicts the azure, a dragon displayed or of the Empire. Blue is the color of the Empire, and gold of the Imperial Family.
