Solenna

Aurel prices its harvest at Solenna. Grain, fruit, livestock, and seed arrive from the converging river basins by barge, road, and agricultural freight line. In the exchange halls they become contracts and allocations: what remains in a region, what enters the Hundred Granaries, and what continues to Amberward for export. The city’s locks, quays, and markets therefore work to the rhythm of planting and harvest even when the Estates are not sitting.

Solenna was influential before it was formally Aurel’s capital. Regional governments, agricultural institutions, and landholding families already met here because all of them required the exchanges and none could operate them alone. Those meetings became the Estates. The assembly now chooses the Purveyor for life and gives Aurel’s name abroad, while Solenna’s civic government remains responsible only for the city.

That division defines the place. Solenna can delay a shipment, certify a contract, or set the terms on which a harvest enters wider trade. It cannot command the basin governments or dispossess the old estates whose water and roads feed its markets. The city governs movement and agreement; the country beyond it remains in other hands.