City Plan: Cordale#

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 18:64 is the Lesser Crowns almanac, Part 2, line 64), and nothing here overrides canon. The canon says little about the city itself: it is "a quiet inland seat", while "Money and ships live in Port Serell" (18:64). 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:

• Whole city: the districts and the villages.
• 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 districts#

The old seat stands on a hill above a stream, in a shallow valley that falls to the stream from both sides (proposal). The Ambrey aqueduct comes down from the uplands to the north, ends in a cistern on the summit, and runs on toward the coast.

Getting around#

• The Stair Railway (canon): "The Stair Railway (1890s) links all seven capitals. Electrified, not maglev." (18:281) On the plan it keeps to the valley of the stream, and Cordale Station (proposal) is in the New Seat.
• The Port Serell road (proposal) runs south-east down to the port.
• The Irondown road (proposal) runs north beside the aqueduct, toward Irondown in Hastholm.
• The Ambrey road (proposal) runs west toward Ambrey, the "Vineyard town on the Stair of the western coast" (atlas), and on to Westhaven.
• Water. The Ambrey aqueduct is canon in name: "Cordale's dry coast depends on the Ambrey aqueducts." (18:287) Its course past the capital and the cistern on the summit are proposals.
• Air. The canon lists no airport at Cordale. The Principality's is at Port Serell (18:284).

Landmarks#

Canon places are marked canon. Their position on the plan is a proposal unless the text gives it.

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 Cordale the rules take this form:

• The princes' streets ring the hill. The Princes and Princesses of Cordale fill the Old Seat, and its winding streets are Lanes and Crescents. The reigning Princess has no street.
• Each quarter names its streets for its trade: the Bank Quarter for money, the Serell Quarter for the sea, Fountains for the dry country and its water.
• The New Seat is numbered, First Street to Twenty-fifth Street.
• The old lanes keep their founders' names. They are the Stair's mixed family names: Ferrer's Lane, Delorme's Lane, Vilar's Lane, Castagna's Lane.
• The villages keep their own streets: Olive Press Lane, Cistern End, Fountain End, Well End.
• Estates were built on the fields that sold, each with a theme:
  • the dry country (Pomegranate Green, Aqueduct Way);
  • herbs (Marjoram Drive, Parsley Avenue);
  • trees (Hazel Gardens, Oak Avenue);
  • flowers (Violet Gardens);
  • birds (Swift Avenue, Redstart Drive).
• Groves and fields whose owners never sold are still worked, with the estates round them.
• Every street longer than 80 m has a name: 5,380 of 5,527.
  • A name is used once in the city.
  • The estates may repeat a name found far off, never within 6 km or in the same locality.
• No towers. Cordale is "a quiet inland seat" (18:64). The money that raises towers lives in Port Serell.

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: "-gate", "-mere", "-combe", "Salt-", "Grey-" and "Hollow-".
• House Amberline has no street, because the canon's Amberline, Ambergate and Ambrey are close already.
• Prince Anselm has no street. The canon gives the name to princes of the Crown and of Cordale, and gives Ansel to kings of Ormsby, so a street would not say which it meant.

What the plan does not settle#

These are open for Briana; the plan follows the text in each case:

• Where the money is. "Money and ships live in Port Serell" (18:64), but the Atlas puts the Bank of Cordale beside the capital. Both are true: the plan keeps the Bank in the capital and leaves the trading and insurance houses at the port. Settled.
• The Guild yard's hulls. The Guild counts 5 hulls at Cordale (51:110), but the yard's marker is inland. Settled: the plan gives the yard a frame ground and no berth, and Port Serell — with its own naval station and Rovessa berth since the harbour repair — carries the water side.
• The aqueducts. The canon names them for Ambrey, which the Atlas puts west of the city, but does not say where they start or whether they water the capital. Settled: the plan brings one down from the uplands to the north, which stand high enough to feed the summit.
• Harbour walls. "Cordale's harbour walls were built for them" (17:169) cannot mean the inland seat. Settled: the plan takes them to be Port Serell's, whose own coastal position is now correct.
• The Cordale School of Navigation and Finance (17:714) and the Serell Ledger (18:292) are not placed by the canon, and the plan leaves them out. Settled as left out.

Guidance for AI actors#

• Cordale is "Sea-facing, clever, cold. Cordale thinks in ledgers and remembers debts." (18:70) The motto is The Sea Pays, and the anthem is Serell Water (17:62).
• Sail Day, 2 Blaze, blesses the boats at Port Serell, not in the capital (18:308).
• A Cordalese address names the quarter and the street: "the Old Seat, Oriana Street"; "the New Seat, Ninth Street".
• What is canon, and what is only the plan: the inland seat, the Bank, the Council of Guarantors, the Guild yard and the Ambrey aqueducts are canon. The hill, the stream, the aqueduct's course, the districts, the streets and their names, and the exact positions are the plan's proposals.

Sources#

The almanac, approved 19 September 2026:

• Chapter IV (05);
• the Lesser Crowns (17–18) and their Register (19);
• the Free Banner Guild (50–51);
• the Atlas's places at Cordale.

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