City Plan: Aletheia#

Kethra Almanac • City plans • Approved 19 September 2026 • drafted 19 September 2026

Status: approved. Briana approved the city plans on 19 September 2026 (City Plans and Map Styles Approval). Where this page calls something a proposal, read it as approved. The points under What the plan does not settle are being settled on her instruction of the same day.

Status before approval: This street plan is new material, so it waits for Briana's approval (Almanac Approval Decision). That covers every street, its name, and every district and building not marked canon below. What it takes from the approved almanac is cited to file and line (for example 04:30 is Chapter III, line 30), and nothing here overrides canon. The Atlas spreads its markers round Aletheia over tens of kilometres so they can be read at world scale. This plan places them where the text puts them.

Using the plan. Drag to move, and zoom with the mouse wheel, the + and − buttons, or a pinch. Names come in as you zoom, each set lettered to read at the same size on screen:

• Whole city: districts and water.
• About 2½ times: main streets and the great buildings.
• About 6 times: the longer streets and the smaller places.
• About 12 times: the name of nearly every street.

The ⤢ button fills the screen. North is up, and the scale bar bottom left is always true.

The city at a glance#

The seven steps#

The canon districts are those of Chapter III (04:28–37). The plan also gives each step a main street along it, and a theme for its street names (both proposals, explained under How the streets are named).

"Height on the Stair is status. Asking an Aletheian 'which step?' means asking their class." (04:212)

Getting around#

• The three great stairs (proposal) climb all seven steps. They are named for the three Founders' ships that reached Kethra, the Patience, the Covenant and the Lodestar (00:94).

  • The Patience Stair is the city's axis. It runs from the Tidewards quay straight up the steps, past the Lowtown markets, the Aletheia Exchange, the Royal Academy, the Hall of Voices and the Great Choir, to the Crown Stair. There it becomes the Founders' Walk (canon, 04:37), "a processional stair carrying stones brought up from Landfall", which ends at Halden House.
  • The Covenant Stair climbs the west side of the old city and the Lodestar Stair the east. They run close to the two sides of the old Seawall.

• Walking. From the quay to Halden House up the Patience Stair and the Founders' Walk is about 9 km and 140 m of climb: some two hours on foot. From Lowtown's markets up to the Exchange is about a kilometre. A street that climbs a step is a Stair or Steps if people use it, and a Hill, Rise or Incline if carts do.

• Radial roads (proposal) climb the steps outside the old city: Oriel Road in the east (for Oriel I, who founded the Bank of Aletheia in AL 1698, 08:311); Arden Road further east (for the Arden kings); Rowan Road in the west (for Rowan II, who built the first Corran aqueduct, 08:296).

• The step avenues. Each step has one long avenue along it, so an Aletheian gives directions by step and stair: "Step 4, off the Patience Stair, two streets west."

• Out of the city (proposal):

  • the Thessane road runs north-west over the plateau;
  • the Hollin road runs north;
  • the Corran road runs east;
  • the Landfall road runs along the south shore.

  These are among the heartland's toll highways (04:110).

• The maglev (canon lines: "Aletheia–Thessane–Hollin, and Aletheia–Corran Mouth", 09:220). Its terminal on the plateau north of the Crown Stair, Aletheia Maglev, is a proposal. The trunk leaves west-north-west for Thessane and Hollin; the Corran Mouth line leaves east.

• Crown Railways carry most freight (04:108). The plan's Thessbank Station and its yards lie in the works downriver; the Thess line skirts the old city over the plateau, and the Corran line runs east (proposals).

• Stairfield (canon: "Airport and arena | Aletheia", 09:493). It holds Stairfield Airport, with 41 million passengers a year (09:224), and Stairfield Arena, which seats 96,000 (09:346). The plan puts it on the plateau north-west of the old city, the way the Atlas places it. Beside it is Stairfield New Town, a planned grid whose streets are numbered, First Street to Fifth Street, crossed by avenues of Earthkin trees (proposal).

• Across the estuary. No bridge crosses below the Long Gate. The plan's Long Gate Road runs along the top of the Gate to the south shore; it is the only fixed crossing on the sheet (proposal). Barges work the Thess, "navigable for 1,900 km" (04:109), and the tidal bore must be timed.

Where the city builds upward (proposal)#

"Sometimes big cities build upwards instead of sprawling outwards", as Briana put it on 19 September 2026, naming New York, Chicago and Tokyo. Aletheia does both. The plan follows Tokyo's pattern: the towers stand in clusters round the great stations, with dense streets between them.

• The Thessbank Towers stand round Thessbank Station, downriver among the works. They are the city's business district, about 800 towers in the plan.
• The Maglev Towers stand on the plateau round Aletheia Maglev, about 370 towers.
• How they are built. "Modern towers" are built of Corran iron and belt metals (canon, 04:128). In Stairwork they rise in setbacks, "Stepped roofs that mirror the Stair" (04:144), so each tower is a little Stair of its own.
• Not on the seven steps. No tower stands on the seven steps of the old city, which keep their terraced massing. Height on the Stair is status (04:212), and a tower on Step 2 would overtop the Crown Stair.
• An open quarrel. The Maglev Towers stand on the plateau behind the Crown Stair, and the oldest Chartered Houses say they spoil the view from Halden House.

On the plan the towers show as dark footprints in blocks built almost to the street, thinning toward each district's edge. Zoom in to see them.

The water, the Gate and the walls#

• The Long Gate (canon): "the modern tide barrier: 11 km of gates across the estuary." It was completed in AL 2204 and closes "about 40 times a year" in AL 2314, against 22 in AL 2250 (04:41). The Thess Barrage generating array is built into it (04:98). On the plan it measures 11.0 km, from its anchor in Lowtown to the south shore at Southmere.
  • Why the Tidewards still flood. The Gate crosses the estuary at the city's upstream end. The Tidewards lie below it, on the seaward side: "The people who noticed first lived below it, in the Tidewards" (56:171).
  • Bore-riding is "illegal below the Long Gate, legendary above it" (09:345).
  • "The Thess tidal bore sings the Crossing Song as it travels upriver. Aletheia's children stay up to listen." (05:246)
• The harbour. The seaport is "Aletheia Tidewards (a tide-gated harbour)" (09:223), with the tide-gates of 04:30. The Atlas names a Rovessa berth "the Rovessa quay at Aletheia's port" (atlas). The Tide Wardens police the harbour (03:143), and the Tide-Pilots' guild pilots the Thess (07:46).
• The Seawall (canon, AL 1100s, built by Idris II): "the medieval tide-and-siege wall around Steps 1–3. It still stands in part." (04:40; 08:288). The plan draws it standing along its landward side and its east side; the dashed line marks where it is gone (proposal).
• The three aqueducts (canon): they bring Corran snowmelt 400 km in from the north, built in the AL 1300s, 1780s and 2120s, "the oldest still carries water, and it is stone" (04:83). The plan brings them over the plateau to reservoirs above the Crown Stair.
• Tidal digesters treat the city's sewage "before it goes out on the ebb tide" (04:90). The plan puts them on the waterfront downriver, below the works.

Landmarks#

Canon places are marked canon. Their position on the plan (which step, which side of the Patience Stair) is a proposal unless the text gives it.

The districts beyond the old city (proposals)#

• Highbank covers Steps 4–7 east of the old city. It is prosperous, with its streets named for the Crown's towns and Reaches (Highcairn Way, Lowfen Avenue, Pharos Street). As old roads often are, these are named for where they lead.
• Ashridge is the same steps to the west.
• Bargeside is Step 2 to the west, above the river's barge quays.
• Upriver is the waterfront west of the Long Gate, above the Gate and so protected from the double springs.
• Longstep is the long straight run of the Stair along the estuary downriver.
• Thessbank Works is the industry downriver along the lower steps (canon: 04:33, 04:45). It holds foundries, sawmills, ropewalks and the gasworks, and its street names say so: Foundry Hill, Sawmill Incline, Boiler Lane.
• The outer city is the plateau above the Stair and the south shore beyond Southmere, built the way outer cities grow:
  • It began as farmland in hedged fields, crossed by old lanes, with villages: Oakfold, Pennard, Kestle, Coldbrook and Thornby on the plateau and the south shore, and old Southmere itself.
  • Developers bought fields a few at a time and built estates of curving streets, cul-de-sacs and dead ends, each estate with its own theme of names: Earthkin flowers (Meadowsweet Drive and Honeysuckle Crescent near Coldbrook), Earthkin trees, Kethra's native life (Gloamwing Way and Glassmoth Court near Thornby), the moons and suns (Pandia Court, Theia Close).
  • Farms whose owners never sold are still fields, even where the city has grown all round them. More fields have sold near the city than far out.
  • The lanes keep the names of the families who first laid them (Greenhalgh's Lane, Tran's Lane, Horvath's Lane).
  • The old villages keep their village streets: Green Street, Well Lane, Pound Lane, Pump Street, Mill End.

How the streets are named (proposal)#

These rules, as Briana set out on 19 September 2026, hold for every city plan:

• streets are often numbered;
• famous people, leaders above all, get streets, and those streets sit together;
• an estate takes a theme, such as flowers;
• many streets keep the name of whoever first laid the road;
• some streets simply stop at a field whose owner never sold, and the suburbs have their cul-de-sacs.

In Aletheia the rules take this form:

• Each step names its streets for what the step is. That is why a Lowtown street is a month and a Hallward street is a charter.
• The leaders' streets sit together:
  • the monarchs on the Crown Stair, their royal district;
  • the past First Voices on the Hallward, beside the Hall of Voices;
  • the Assembly's Speakers round the Precinct.
• Stairfield New Town has numbered streets, First Street to Fifth Street, crossed by avenues of trees. It is the only numbered district.
• Every street longer than 80 m has a name: 7,929 of the plan's 8,129 streets.
  • A district uses its theme's names first, each with one ending.
  • It then uses them again with a second and a third ending, as towns do: Tally Street and Tally Lane both lie in the Exchange.
  • When its theme runs out, a district names the rest after the families who first laid them, and then from common pools: virtues, herbs, stones, birds, harvest words and crafts.
• In the old city a name belongs to one street. In the old city and the named districts, each name is used once.
• Suburbs can repeat names. The outer city's estates and villages grew up apart and were joined to the city later, so their names repeat, as real suburbs' do. They never repeat within 6 km, or within the same locality.
  • The locality is the nearest old village: Oakfold, Pennard, Kestle, Coldbrook, Thornby or Southmere.
  • There are six Daisy Closes, one in each locality.
  • An outer-city address gives its locality: "Daisy Close, Pennard".
• The ending follows the street:
  • a Close, Court, Mews or End is a dead end;
  • a Crescent or a Drive curves (in the old city, a Lane);
  • a Stair or Steps climbs a step on foot, a Hill or Rise by road, an Incline in the works;
  • a Lane or a Road is an old farm lane;
  • Gardens, Grove, Green and View belong to the estates.

The names avoid everything the naming rules and the canon forbid:

• Nothing is taken from Earth's places or history (05:266).
• No street is called "Keep", which in the Crown means a prison (03:161).
• The pools avoid the crowded name families: "-gate", "-mere", "-combe", "Salt-", "Grey-" and "Hollow-".
• They also avoid the near-identical groups the canon warns of: Merrow and Morrow, Sallow and Callow, Harrow, Veil, Orm and Thess.

Guidance for AI actors#

• An Aletheian thinks in steps. "Which step?" is a question about class (04:212). Tideward means "toward the sea, toward danger, downward in social class, all at once" (05:119). The greeting is "Good step." (05:141).
• Directions are given by step and stair ("Step 5, west of the Patience Stair"), not by compass.
• In the old city a street name is unique. In the outer city, give the locality with the street ("Daisy Close, Pennard"), because estate names recur from suburb to suburb.
• The lower city floods at double springs. The Long Gate does not protect the Tidewards, which lie below it, and it closes about forty times a year (04:41).
• The Tidewards hold Line migrants, dockers and the Unsonged (04:30). They are also the heart of the Commonweal and the Tideward League (09:59; 56:92).
• Duskwood Park is fenced native forest. Earthkin gardens ring it but do not enter it (04:47).
• The Assembly Precinct is extraterritorial (44:121). Crown law stops at its gate.
• What is canon, and what is only the plan: the districts, the great buildings, the Long Gate, the Seawall, the aqueducts and Stairfield are canon. The streets, their names and the exact positions are the plan's proposals.

Sources#

The almanac, approved 19 September 2026:

• the Introduction (01);
• Chapter III, Domestic Architecture and Urban Planning (04), with its figure of the seven steps;
• Chapters IV–VI (05–07);
• the Caldren Crown (08–09);
• the Homeworld Assembly (44–45) and its Precinct figure;
• Homeguard Command (47–48);
• the Living Worlds Movement (56);
• the Atlas's places near Aletheia.

The plan is built by _build/make_cityplans.js from _build/city_specs/aletheia.js, which lists every canon line it keeps.