Vecia Sol

A City in the Civen Republic

Vecia Sol considers itself the one of the most civilized cities in Civen, and its residents say such at every opportunity. It is a city of galleries and salerooms, troupes and workshops, where a man can make a decent living carving frames and women become wealthy deciding what a painting is worth. Where Civenopolis was raised on a fortress and has never entirely stopped behaving like one, Vecia Sol insists it was built as a haven for artists.

It is also one of the major trading cities of the east, and most goods bound for Civenopolis from that direction pass through it first.

History

The city grew where the river feeding the Iron Bay meets the road going east. The Empire built the Crossing, a bridge raised originally for Legion traffic, and the city grew naturally on the other side of it.

Initially built as a mirror to the capital, the settlement had a large wall built around it. The wall came down over time as the city outgrew it, and much of the stone was reused in the buildings that stand there now. The gates are gone, but their names stick to the neighborhoods around them, and locals still give directions to them.

Three patrician houses grew with the city and have run it for most of its lifetime—Valerius, Marlowe, and Katullin. All three are “old money”, and  well-known names to those that do business in Vecia Sol.

Two centuries ago, the forum building in the center of the city burned in a fire that raged for days. The prevailing reading, offered by the Septons of the day and never seriously disputed since, was that the Elemental had made her preference known: her worship wants no permanent structure, and a place of such strong feeling was hers by right. The three houses jointly funded a garden in its place, with their names cut into a founding stone in an order that is said to have taken a year to settle. Vecia Sol has held its forums in the open air ever since.

The Garden

The Garden is the heart of the city in the literal sense: the streets radiate from it and the auction and exhibition houses face onto it, so that the shopfronts all look at the same area.

It is hedged at the edges, laid out in beds and gravel walks under trees that were planted when it was made, with a colonnade along part of its length and fountains in the older sections. The three houses gave to it separately, and still fund its tending to this day. The many statues scattered throughout are placed by House Valerius, with the family name cut into every plinth. A handful of gardeners are kept on staff, a job that many are happy to have .

In the center is a large clearing where forums can be held. Civen’s guarantee that any citizen may speak in the forum regardless of status is exercised here, with the crowd as the only gatekeeper. The weather does not have an effect on the forum; debate goes on in the rain, since everyone understands that a patrician can wait for a better afternoon and a working man cannot. When the forum actually gathers shifts with the season, and everyone knows which weeks the Garden is at its best and which it is mostly mud.

A good deal of business gets done on walks in the Garden. Two people walking cannot easily be listened to, and being seen strolling with someone attracts far less notice than being seen going into a room with them.

The City

The main streets run out from the Garden like spokes, and what is sold on them changes the further out you go. Closest in are the trades that exist because the salerooms do: pigment and ground colors sold in paper twists, brushes, quills and cut nibs, gold leaf, sealing wax, varnish, framing timber, small tools. Bolts of fabric get propped against the walls where the light can reach them. Further out this gives way to food and cloth and everything else a city needs, and at the edge of the old line there are the haulage yards and anything too large to carry in.

A fair number of the sellers setting up stalls are not from the city. Traders coming through on the eastern road will set up for a few days on a spoke that runs down to the crossing, sell what they have, and move on. That street is the loudest, least respectable, and generally has the most interesting goods.

The streets inside the old line will not take a cart, so goods are broken down at the edge of the district and carried in by hand. Vecia Sol has a large trade of porters who know every alley and back door in the center, and go in and out of every building in it without anyone paying them much attention. As a result, anything large and cheap stays out on the main roads while anything small and valuable ends up in the middle.

The middle of the city, or “old town” as it is sometimes referred to, builds upward rather than outward. Upper floors overhang until the streets below are little more than gaps, and most tradespeople live directly above their work.

No estate stands inside the old line, as there is no room for grounds. Patricians have modest villas on the outer edges of the spokes; the three major houses each live about half an hour’s walk out from the edge of the city proper.

Southwest, where the ground drops toward the water, are the fish markets and the landings. The buildings there are newer than anywhere else in the city because of frequent flooding, and as a result the rents are low and it is considered the poorest part of Vecia Sol. Crime is not something that happens often, but when it does it is in the Southwest.

The Katullins keep a good deal of their business down there. The patrician children of the city will often go there to drink where nobody knows them, which is almost true.

Culture

Nearly everyone in Vecia Sol works in an arts trade; every household will have someone who grinds pigment, sews cases, hauls, cleans a saleroom, pours drinks, or plays an instrument. Even those who never touch an art piece know roughly what things are worth, and the city is full of laborers with many opinions on the subject.

Wine is local, cheap, and everywhere. Fish comes up from the southwest markets and is easily accessible in the poorer quarters, and costs a great deal more by the time the best stuff has been carried up to the Garden. Food and wine that comes in via the eastern road is the expensive end of the table, and served accordingly.

Evenings in Vecia Sol are well-provided for, largely by the Katullins. Playhouses, wine halls, and gambling houses are common, and a plebian with savings can afford a good night out at most of them. Troupes perform year-round; the traveling ones pass through often enough that the city is often the first place in Civen to see a new piece.

Forum debates are a spectacle as much as a civic function: they are free, outdoors, and draw crowds who have no stake in the outcome but a great deal to say about it afterward. A well-argued position is discussed amongst the populace in wine halls for weeks, while a badly-argued one is discussed longer.

It is also, unofficially, the one of the easiest places in Civen for a plebeian to become patrician. Elevation is meant to reward public benefaction, and nowhere is devotion to the arts easier to demonstrate than in a city built entirely around noticing exactly that.

Education

The Republic’s free primary schooling is available in Vecia Sol, as it is anywhere in Civen, and most children attend until they are ten. After that the city is nearly all apprenticeships. Septly clusters take very few, and those seeking military service will leave for Civenopolis.

What a child apprentices to at ten tends to settle the rest of their life, and the trades here are the ones the salerooms need: carving, gilding, framing, printing, appraisal. The best masters and are selective about intake, and families with standing get their children placed through connection as much as coin. Children of those without either spend years proving a child’s hand is worth the master’s time before they’re considered and often will apprentice informally, run errands in a workshop, and be tolerated until the work speaks for itself.

Trade

Vecia Sol’s wealth is in art, wine, and fine goods, most of which arrive from the east. Everything travelling between Civenopolis and the border must pass across the Crossing, so it sees a lot of the best goods. Its blacksmiths, who prospered enormously through a century of war and have found the peace less generous, sell a great deal of work to buyers who take it out along the eastern road. What comes back is the fine goods Vecia Sol is known for having.

It is a matter of manners in the city to not question a piece of art’s origins or authenticity after it has been given proper appraisal and paperwork. A guest may ask where a piece came from and will be told the dealer, the crate, and the year it arrived, and a guest who continues to question the piece has made an error. Over the following season the offender finds that the smaller invitations stop arriving, that their appraisals take longer, and that no one volunteers any information on incoming pieces. A season or two of better manners generally repairs the faux pas. For a patrician this is an inconvenience; for a dealer’s clerk it is the end of a career.

The smiths are the exception to this rule. They are very proud of their work and will describe it in detail to anyone who asks.

Worship

Sept worship in Vecia Sol is ordinary Civen practice; scattered temples, no fixed schedule, invocation as the day requires. The city’s particular quarrel is over which of the Seven the arts belong to. Performers, poets, and the troupes hold for the Elemental. The appraisers, cataloguers, and scholars of provenance hold for the Scholar. The dispute is ancient, entirely unresolvable, and conducted with great enjoyment on both sides.

Officially there is no place of Draconus worship in Vecia Sol. There is, however, a modest marble dragon in the Garden, funded by the Valerius family, which sometimes finds offerings left at its base. Nobody has ever objected to this practice on the grounds that it is “just a statue”.

The Three Major Houses

The three major houses have held power in Vecia Sol as far back as most can remember, since well before the Senate was established and the city began electing anyone. In the distant past the Valerius and Katullin families were in open feud; duels in the streets between them were commonplace and resulted in several injuries. The Marlowes came along and, through methods unknown, calmed the constant feuding.

Valerius

This house holds the west, facing Civenopolis. Their current head is referred to as the Baron, which is not a rank as much as it is a nickname. One of the Senate seats for Vecia Sol has been held by a Valerius for as long as anyone can be bothered to remember, an arrangement the city has long since stopped finding remarkable.

The Valerius trade is sculpture and the arts. They broker rather than carve, and marble being what it is, none of their business can be done quietly: it arrives in daylight with a great many men watching, and it goes up in temples, on civic frontages, and in the Garden with the family name cut into the plinth. A century of that has left the city physically full of Valerius, which is one of several reasons they keep winning elections. Their clients—carvers, finishers, riggers, the men who build the cradles—are among the largest and proudest bodies of skilled tradesmen in the city, and they turn out during voting times.

The Baron’s two elder children are each missing an eye, one the left and one the right. This was plainly done to them and nobody has ever asked by whom, though rumors point back to the bad blood they have with the Katullins.

What is said against them concerns the younger generation. The elder Valerius are unfailingly courteous about the other houses in public; the younger are not, and have had to be walked out of parties they were not asked to leave quietly.

Marlowe

They hold the middle. Theirs is the legal trade: wills, contracts, dowry settlements, arbitration, and the appraisal and authentication all of it depends on. No estate is settled in Vecia Sol and no collection sold without a Marlowe having said what a thing is and what it is worth, and there is a fee somewhere in all of it. They hold the accounts for the Garden’s upkeep and have done so for as long as the Garden has existed.

When the Valerius and Katullin houses have business with one another, it goes through Marlowe. Neither family would put it that way and there is no arrangement anyone could point to; it is simply that a Marlowe drew up the contract, or held the deposit, or was asked to say what something was worth, and the two houses did not have to be in a room together.

The house is run by Constance, the eldest of three sisters, who signs everything the family attests to and has since her father’s death. The middle, Mary, married a Vane many years ago and is at every party in the city. Anyone wanting the family’s ear generally starts with her. The youngest, Alice, does the authentications; she is twenty-six and dealers have been known to hold a sale until she is available.

What is said against them is that they are exceedingly careful. House Marlowe takes on very few clients, on the grounds that a patron with too many clients serves none of them properly. Those they do take are looked after extremely well.

Katullin

This house holds the east, facing the road out towards Vlean. The current patriarch is Abraxus, a man getting on in age but no less sharp for it. They are generally well-liked, though in living memory not one of them has held office. Katullins often say, with great warmth, that the Valerius family handles the political side of things very well so they see no need to run against them.

Their money is in wine and in the scribal trades such as paper, ink, and presses. The family keeps playhouses, gambling halls, and wineries; the troupes, musicians, and courtesans who work in them are pledged to the house. It is a lucrative business, and there is hardly a person in Vecia Sol who has not had a good evening somewhere that Katullin coin paid for.

In recent years the house has put money into Freelands trade. One granddaughter comes and goes frequently; the other founded a press there and married the Consul to the Freelands. Several people speculated the latter wasn’t as much luck as it was a long game finally paying off—marrying their middle child into the Marianus family did more for the Katullin political standing than anything money could have bought.

What is said against them is that a great deal about the house is not accounted for. They turn over indentured servants faster than anyone can explain, move more freight than wine and paper would seem to require, and keep more hired swords than a merchant family should need.