Description of Setnakh

Description of Setnakh

There is lots more to say about Setnakh -- e.g. the great Chlen barns and "transient" slave pens (for travelling caravans) are NOT in the town itself but off the map to the west, along the top of the rise that lies between the Rananga and Equnoyel Rivers. There are few clanhouses out there (due to the stench), e.g. those concerned with trnasport: Woven Whip (leather and Chlen-hide) and Turning Wheel (transport). Round Rock has small farms/clanhouses all around the rural parts of this region. Wicker Image and Black Mat (two very low clans) see to the removal of offal from the town -- disposal into the river is not allowed, and garbage is taken out to be spread onto the fields in heavy carts.

The Rananga here is about 500 feet wide in flood season (spring and early summer); it goes down to a mere 20-50 feet in the hottest months of summer and averages about 200 feet wide in the rest of the year, with depths ranging from 20 feet to only 5 or 6 -- not navigable by any but flat-bottomed skiffs. The land slopes away to the north, and hence the floods widen the river to the north of the town and do not reach up into the town very often. The town itself sits on a steep bank (reinforced with dikes) of aout 15-18 feet in height. Floods do occur, of course, and everybody then takes the Sakbe roads to higher ground -- the region between the two rivers rises to elevations of 50-100 feet above sea- level, and there are some pretty villas and farms up there.

The present Mraduharetokoi (Mayor) of Setnakh is a pleasant old bureaucrat: Miyesu hiMayka, of the Amber Cloak Clan. He's about 55, stout, affable, bald, smooth faced and beardless as a baby, and worships Lord Qon. He had hoped for promotion to bigger and better posts, but he is neither very smart nor well- connected. He spends his days in the Palace of the Realm (see the map, upper left side), playing Den-den with his cronies, collecting bribes, and keeping the town's ragged little band of bureaucrats together. He has quarters near the Palace of the Realm, in the Administrative Building there, and his two wives and 6 kids are a terror to his staff of 5 scribes and 3 servants. He has a "police force" of 20 city guards who live here and there abbout the town. This is reinforced by 50 Imperial road guards, who mostly live in the three Sakbe Road towers shown on the map. The Captain of these guards is one of Miyesu's friends, a short, wiry-haired, bandy-legged officer named Bolon hiSiranul, from the southern coast near Jakalla. He is also a Qon worshipper.

I can supply the names and details of other residents of Setnakh if needed.