City Plan: Arvenne#

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 18:47 is the Lesser Crowns almanac, Part 2, line 47), and nothing here overrides canon. The canon names only the old town and the upper steps inside the city, so nearly all the detail here is proposal.

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

The city at a glance#

The steps#

The plan draws the upper steps as bands running north-east to south-west, each rising some 26 m above the one below it at a short steep face (proposal heights). The city climbs them to the north-west. The streets run along the steps and straight up them, and a street that climbs a step face is a Stair or Steps.

Where the city builds upward (proposal)#

"Sometimes big cities build upwards instead of sprawling outwards", as Briana put it on 19 September 2026. Arvenne builds upward as Aletheia does:

• The Station towers, about 250 of them, stand round Arvenne Station on the lower steps.
• Not on the old steps. None stand on the steps of the old town or above it.

Getting around#

• The Stair Railway (canon): "The Stair Railway (1890s) links all seven capitals. Electrified, not maglev." (18:281) Arvenne Station is a proposal.
• The Western Road (canon): "from Arvenne to Westhaven" (18:282).
• The Arvenmouth road (proposal) goes down the Stair toward Arvenmouth, "Arvenne's port on the south coast" (19:29).
• The Brightwick road (proposal) runs north-east to the Free City, which lies "entirely inside Arvenne" (17:150).
• Air. There is an airport at Arvenne (18:284). The plan puts Arvenne Airport on the steps to the south-east (proposal place).

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 Arvenne the rules take this form:

• The leaders' streets sit together. The Kings and Queens of Arvenne fill the old town. The reigning Queen has no street.
• The Council's streets meet at the Secretariat, named for the states and the Crown that sit in it.
• The Lower Steps are numbered, First Street to Thirtieth Street.
• The old lanes keep their founders' names. They come from mixed pools, as the canon's rosters do (17:241): Jago's Lane, Pascoe's Lane, Morvan's Lane.
• The villages keep their own streets: Fold Lane, Press Street, Stile Street.
• Estates were built on the fields that sold. On the upper steps they take the vineyard's words: Trellis Drive, Cellar Close, Grape Road. Elsewhere they take flowers, trees, birds, herbs and stones. Fields whose owners never sold are still farmed.
• Every street longer than 80 m has a name: 7,686 of 7,899.

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

• Nothing is taken from Earth's places or history (05:266).
• No new name uses the crowded families.
• House Carrow has no street, because the canon's Harrow group crowds it.

What the plan does not settle#

• Settled, 19-20 September 2026 (the harbour repair). Arvenne itself is an upper-Stair city, 624 km from the sea, and stays that way — the Kingdom's own "short stretch" of coast belongs to Arvenmouth, its port town, which moved onto its actual shore in the harbour repair along with its naval station. The plan's choice to draw only the upper steps and leave the sea off Arvenne's own sheet was already right; Arvenmouth's page carries the coast.
• The Secretariat. The text puts it "above the old town" (18:47); the Atlas marker was 70 km south-west, the same world-scale spreading as every other city's institutions. The plan follows the text and places it in the city. Settled.
• The College of Arvenne (17:713) and the royal residence are not placed in the city by the canon, and the plan leaves them out. Settled as left out.

Guidance for AI actors#

• Arvenne is the Seven's state "most like the Crown" (18:55): "Arvennish families marry into the Chartered Houses." The speech is soft Stair burr (17:676).
• At Council sessions "a wordless hymn, The Steps, is played" (17:52). Crowning Day is 20 Bloom (18:307).
• An Arvennish address names the district and the street: "the Old Town, Gaspard Street"; "the Lower Steps, Sixth Street".
• What is canon, and what is only the plan: the terraces on the upper steps, the old town, the Secretariat above it, the vineyards, and the institutions marked canon are canon. The steps' heights and shapes, the districts, the streets and their names, and the exact positions are the plan's proposals.

Sources#

The almanac, approved 19 September 2026:

• the Read Me First (00), the Introduction (01) and Chapter IV (05);
• the Lesser Crowns (17–18) and their Register (19);
• the Atlas's places at Arvenne.

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