Aeol
Aeol (pronounced /ˈeɪ.oʊl/) is a city of Eidecia that represents the concept of cities. Sometimes called the Ur-City or the Paradigm City, Aeol is considered by its inhabitants to be the center of existence, on the grounds that Eidecia is the core of the cosmoi, and that as the City of Cities, Aeol is the most prominent and most important city of Eidecia. Naturally, many inhabitants of other cities, not to mention other cosmoi, disagree, but the view still remains fairly widespread, and has significantly contributed to the common stereotype of Aeolans as arrogant and self-centered.
Surroundings
Aeol is situated on a barren world replete with volcanic activity and apparently devoid of intelligent life outside the City itself, though explorers have discovered many ancient ruins that indicate that this wasn't always the case. The world, which has been named Ea, is apparently flat, and beyond its boundaries is a strange black expanse dotted with dancing colored lights. There is some evidence, however, that the form of the world is mutable, or that some spatial warping occurs. Sometimes, the edges of the world seem to be joined together, and some travelers who have journeyed into the void have reported that from a distance Ea looks spherical—even though it is clear on its surface that it is not. Though its original inhabitants seem to be long gone, Ea is not uninhabitable, and some colonists reaching the world through Aeol have established a few small settlements there.
Though Ea has not been fully explored, what surveys have been made indicate that it is square in shape and has two large continents, as well as a number of smaller islands. The continents have been named Yyanec and Umashan; Aeol is located on the east coast of the former, where the Areis River empties into the Capac Ocean. To the north of Aeol is a vast woodland—possibly the largest in the world—called the Hecube. Though virtually no ruins have been found in the depths of the Hecube, ruined cities exist all over the rest of the world, showing that once apparently it was home to a thriving populace, while giving no clue as to their fate.
While it may have no remaining ellogous native life, however, Ea is not devoid of wildlife. Lizards and jackals haunt its badlands, and the scattered patches of forest still teem with deer, bears, and other animals. In addition to these panyparic creatures, Ea has some organisms otherwise unknown, including two-headed tooth spiders and mysterious creatures called dolopes that are seen only as tentacles that drag victims below the earth. In the swamps and underground areas of Ea are such oddities as giant green bloodworms and amorphous living slimes.
Geography
Even if it isn't really the center of Eidecia, Aeol may be one of the largest cities there—there are frequent claims that it is the largest city of Eidecia, but given the odd geometries of many eidopoles (Aeol among them) it's hard to actually measure this. Certainly the city's area is at least eleven thousand square kilometers, but may be significantly larger.
Aeol's terrain is hilly, though the extent varies; some parts are so characterized by steep inclines that their roads are filled with stairs and switchbacks; others are flat, or very nearly so. Two rivers run through the City, the Areis and the Hhep. The two actually cross in the center of the city, the Hhep running through an elevated stone channel almost perpendicular to the Areis which runs through a gorge below; how this obviously artificial arrangement started is unclear, as it predates the memory of any of the city's current inhabitants (save perhaps the Hand of the City, and she isn't telling). At the mouth of the Areis, where it meets the Capac Ocean, Aeol has a large port, where it has boats that travel through tradegates to and from other eidopoles. A second port extends into the Hhep, whence ships travel up and down the river to other cities it passes through.
The city is conventionally divided into twenty-seven districts, or boroughs, some of their boundaries comprising obvious features of the city (such as rivers, cliffs, or major streets), others more arbitrary. Each district does seem to have something of its own flavor and a different predominance of land use, though of course they blend into each other to some extent. One of the strangest areas of Aeol, not considered to be part of any represented borough, is the Mews, a warren of narrow alleys that can be entered from all parts of the city, though its actual physical location within the city seems indeterminate at best. Those who live in the Mews are poor and desperate, and most residents of Aeol avoid this area and would leave as soon as possible should they somehow find themselves in it. Unique monsters roam the Mews, some of them very dangerous; inhabitants of these passages may have learned methods to avoid or escape these horrors, but they pose a dire peril to others passing through. Also not considered part of any particular district are the Endless Yard and the Holder's Park.
Governance
The leader of Aeol is the Hand of the City, a personage that manifests herself only as a pair of floating hands, which aren't visibly attached to anything but maintain a relative position and orientation as if they were parts of a normal human. When the Hand talks, she does so through handbirds, creatures found only in Aeol and apparently created expressly for that purpose, which appear like unremarkable birds except when the Hand speaks through them. In those instances, the handbirds speak with a female human voice. The Hand usually chooses to speak through multiple handbirds at once; they will speak in perfect unison, but individual handbirds' voices are slightly different.
The Hand, however, does not personally take care of day to day business; like most of the leaders of the eidopoles, she only intervenes directly in matters of great importance. There are two overlapping systems of governance that take care of more quotidian matters. The Burghal Diet is the older of the two, and is an assembly comprising two representatives from each of the city's twenty-seven boroughs, plus five "supernumeraries" elected by the other members. The Domestic Council is a more recent creation, dating back from a time when the city was run by a handful of noble houses. Though the rest of the populace managed to reclaim most of the government, the houses still maintained some nominal power, though now membership in most of the noble houses is largely symbolic and open to all, and does not reflect any actual connection to the nobles who originally founded them.
Also playing an important role in the city's affairs are the Guilds, each once associated with and still named after a particular trade, but most now having little more connection to that trade than some ceremonial trappings, their membership now encompassing people of all professions. The most powerful of the guilds are the Tanners' Guild, the Clerks' Guild, and the Porters' Guild, though there are many other guilds that also wield significant, if slightly lesser, influence. In all, there are nominally three hundred and thirty one guilds in Aeol, though of those there are perhaps eighty that really boast any significant membership and clout, with fewer than twenty of those being really powerful. While the Guilds exercise no official power in the city's government, they have considerable sway nonetheless through affecting and in some cases more or less controlling the elections of the Council and the Diet.
Time
Like most of the eidopoles, Aeol bases its time system on that of the surrounding world. In this case, Ea, and therefore Aeol, has one sun that passes over the world in a regular cycle, defining the length of Ea's day—about five percent shorter than Earth's—while its three moons define the length of the year, the new year supposed to commence when all three moons are new. This happens about once every three hundred and ninety days, though the actual number is slightly less than that, necessitating the occasional lag year in the Aeolan calendar.
Both the day and the year are subdivided into more artificial units. The Aeolan day is divided into twenty hours of equal length, while the year is divided into sixteen months. The latter is somewhat less arbitrary than the former, being based on the cycle of two of the world's three moons; the hourly division of the day has no astronomical basis and is purely a matter of convenience.
Trade
Aeol trades heavily with other eidopoles, exporting all manner of manufactured goods and importing raw materials (which in most cases are themselves imported by Aeol's trading partners from pathnodes or from surrounding worlds). Though the city as a whole has no particular speciality, many of its component districts do specialize in specific merchandise, which in many cases is signified by the common name of the district—thus for instance in the jewelry district the manufacture of and trade in jewelry is especially prevalent.
The primary type of currency in Aeol is the coins minted in the city. There are a number of different mints in Aeol, but the largest is the Old Mint in the finance quarter. Aeolan coins come in ten denominations, following a regular pattern of alternate multiplication by 3 and by 4. (Some historians have suggested that the fact that the monetary system follows apparently a duodecimal base system rather than a decimal suggests that it was not designed by humans, but this has not been proven.) This means the coin of largest denomination, the mares, is worth almost eighty-three thousand times the value of the smallest, the hage. The Aeolan coins are accepted by many merchants in other eidopoles, as well, though it is by no means universal. For denominations inconvenient to carry in coin, Aeolan merchants also generally accept promissory notes or letters of credit, though these are somewhat less negotiable outside Aeol. Aeol has a number of banks that are happy to change between different currencies for a slightly smaller fee than is deducted by the changers, the largest of them being the Bank of the Hand, again in the finance quarter (which, despite its name, has no connection with or official endorsement from the Hand of the City).