Valgard

Fiction Parallels.

Valgard is a northern city that lies between Jarnfell and Rusavik, north of vastly profitable grass and farmland.

Valgard spread out over miles of high rocky terrain where individual districts are separated by winding paths, extruding crags, sacred groves, and solidary keeps, inns, and academies. A public transportation system moves people and goods throughout the city. Lush stables for the Alfarian's pampered Nordsvensk horses can be found at ever wayside stop. The entire city is protected by a wall that sits more then three stories below the lowest inhabital structure. The wall of Valgard runs around the mountainside, where the rock wall is to the outside and rockface of the interior. Guard towers are continually manned every few hundred yards. The architecture of the city is blend of gold stone with dark slate and soaring wooden structures in the style of stave temples wood shingle rooves. It is said that if one climbs to the highest point of the main castle that they might touch the very heart of the moon.

Valgard is the breadbasket of the northern people, and their rolling grasslands provide cereal crops such as barley, oats, and winter wheat. The average Alfarian eats meat only on festival days, but they have access to a wide selection of imported foods, as they are one of the few cereal crop regions. Alfarian's have a wide and varied diet and, like the Euresu and Dyrlings, are food snobs. Read More

Personality

What is their personality
How do they organize themselves: Typically with a King and Queen, sometimes with Two Kings and Two Queens
Which city-states do they like and dislike
What is their political mindset

Appearance

What is their physical appearance
How do they dress

Religion

The Alfarians spiritual beliefs center around two trees, a silver ash tree and a golden elm tree from whom the first people, Ask and Embla, were created. This duality of shadow and light is played out in the Alfarian personality, their cultural tendencies and in their goddess, Yrsa, who is traditionally depicted as half beautiful woman and half-blind and aging crone. She has a white raven known as Speki (wisdom) and a black raven known as Frœði (knowledge).

The Alfarians believe that an apocalyptic event known as Ragnorok has already happened and that the next afterlife will be found in Hodmimir's Holt, a sacred grove where the ash and elm will be, and a new first people, Lif and Lifthrasir will be reborn. Consequently, all Alfarians are burned on the funeral pyre and then their ashes are buried in the ground with a newly planted tree. Ancestor worship is a strong part of the people's belief and most farms and most villages include a Vårdträd, a sacred guardian tree.