The Breakwater

The Ionian Empire coveted Fellport harbor, even from the first explorer to look on it. Even before they finished construction on the Silex Regina mansion that would become the Council House, engineers started planning improvements to the harbor. Surveys and dives determined that the sea floor continued the circle around the harbor, so building a breakwater to almost fully enclose the harbor seemed the best move.

The Emperor sent in one of his trusted advisors to plan and manage the project. Magnus Figulius arrived on the scene and quietly got to work. Everyone called him The Great Potter, since a single letter separated his given name from the title, and he was known to turn a pot or two in leisure hours. He organized soldiers into work details and ordered a hut built, dedicated to the creation of water breathing potions to help the construction process. That hut remains preserved and enshrined under the largest lecture hall on the College campus.

The Great Potter quarried stone from the cliffs nearby and had bargeloads of rock and earth shipped in to help with the massive wall around the harbor. He always needed more workers, so the Emperor found workers for him. Much of the building happened during the Bog Campaign, where the Empire tried to expand into the hills and moors of Dunhill. All captured enemies from Dunhill became slave labor. The legions faced a different family for every battle, so the Ionians just called any Dunhill residents montani or hillfolk, still a derogatory term today. The Empire didn't get too far, especially once the families united to repel the invaders, but they gathered enough workers to get the breakwater done in only 4 years. Dunhill workers who survived earned citizenship, or at least the chance to remain in Fellport, mostly in The Hills on Lakeside of Level 4 opposite Talltown. The Hills have mainly moved up to Level 5 since the Breakwater's completion, mainly because the Fellport Glassworks keeps expanding on Level 4.

The initial breakwater still stands today. The 20-foot-thick stone walls stand 6 feet above the normal high tide swells, still level and well-maintained. The breakwater expands as it sweeps back toward shore, forming a broad expanse for siege weapons to harry approaching ships. An additional 10-foot defensive wall rings the harbor. A wide passage allows access through the middle of the wall, though massive spiked chains stand ready to block off the channel and destroy the hull of any ship stupid enough to try running through them.

Before the exterior walls on top of the breakwater existed, the harbormaster maintained two bonfires to mark the channel into the harbor. The Great Potter had since died, but the Emperor sent his son, Marcus Figulius, colloquially called The Little Potter, though never to his face. He designed and built slim but sturdy towers to flank the harbor entrance and replace the earlier bonfires, tapered round structures standing 60 feet tall with a platform for signal fires under the stone roof at the top. The tower on the right on the way into the harbor became known as the Pirate's Spire, because countless pirates were imprisoned and executed there. The tower on the left gathered shrines around its base, and priests of all stripes started calling it the Spire of Light. Many ships stopped to pay their respects at the Spire of Light before heading off on long voyages, as they still do today.

The Spire of Light holds the Scepter of Light, a powerful artifact that dispels the negative energy calling corpses up from the ocean's depths by sweeping a narrow beam of radiance over the water like a modern lighthouse. It was created 20 years ago in response to many reports of undead attacks on the water. It helped calm the ocean for a while, but now those attacks have gotten worse. A behemoth made up of many corpses attacked the breakwater recently late one evening, but a quickly-organized group of defenders destroyed it.

Part of T.W.Wombat's Lore 24 project, detailing the world around Fellport.
For all city posts, see the Fellport Index. For posts about the wider world, see the Beneterra Index.