> I'm not familiar with cities set hard against mountains, except for > Denver. Capitals should be easily accessible. Perhaps one can > counterargue that the Empire is so wartorn that a sheltered position > for DC makes sense, but at the moment I can't see this. I freely admit that the choice of Dragaera City as center of the Empire doesn't make any sense to me. Vlad says that Dragaera City was built on a fertile plain. He sees mountains to the west, Paarfi mentions mountains to the east or southeast (he doesn't state their direction, but they are "on the way" to Redface taking the southern route around the desert). Furthemore, there are a couple of references to the Dragaera River, to the east of the city, which was apparently destroyed by Adron's disaster (btw, why didn't the chaos follow the riverbed? What keeps it "contained", especially during the Interregnum?). There are a couple of references to a Canal that ran from Candletown to Dragaera City (again, why didn't the chaos flow through the canal?). Why build a city at a place that you have to build a Canal to for easy transportation? Perhaps there was something about the location that we're not aware of; perhaps Amorphia was more easily conjured there for whatever reason. Another possibility is that the "fertile plain" Vlad refers to was the FIRST of its kind discovered by the Dragaerans, so they immediately stopped, set up shop, and then, later, continued exploring. As I mentioned in a previous email, Kieron and Zerika united the tribes, and then headed east, and ran into the Kanefthali Mountains. Perhaps they went south around the mountains and continued east, ran into the Suntra, turned south, and found the "fertile plain", declared they were tired of marching all over the place, and build a city. Little did they know that the entire southwest, and a good portion of the south and immediate southeast, was excellent farmland. Bryan