SPOILER Aelumia urbanism thread

Hello everyone, I loved exploring the Aelumia citadel so I'm making this thread so I can broadcast my observations on it and a bunch of shitty maps I made. Feel free to add yours by replying to this thread :v


Main map

Let's divide the citadel into sectors:




To expand a bit more on the less obvious things:

- I'm calling the green zone the administrative sector because the main explorable building in it seems to be an administrative one (lots of bookshelves, offices / reunion lounges and no kitchen / bedroom)

- I'm calling the white zone the residential district because the main explorable building looks like a (admittedly bedroomless) townhouse and its buildings look like they're mainly town houses.

- There is a good reason for the dotted line in the residential zone, which I'll get into right now.

Class divide in the residential zone

The residential zone is split between rich and poor, along the dotted line in the map above. Something a bit more obvious in game:

Here we have the dividing wall / gate





On the east side, regular houses





But on the west side we see towers galore



(excuse the hummingbird)

These are probably a sign of wealth, mirroring the towers of Bologna, where during the Middle Ages the richest families would build towers on top of their homes as a sign of power / wealth (among other things)

That means the class divide we observe on our journey across Fruma is present even in the capital, neat!


Visitable buildings

There are a few (too few imo) non-cave non-shop buildings you can enter in the citadel, those I could find are in the following map



The town “house” in the residential district lacks a bed but I’m calling it a house anyways because it has a kitchen and library and living room and it’s in the residential part of town.

Also of note is that there is what seems to be a Bovemist temple in the administrative complex :


Could it be a secret sect worshipping another god than the queen? The Aelumia resistance cell right under the nose of the government?? Yeah it’s probably an easter egg.

Not much else to add beside the fact that however unfortunate it may be we can't barge uninvited into more buildings it's certainly because the citadel is in lockdown due to an ongoing terrorist attack / coup d'état.

The lighthouse is neat

We all know there’s a lighthouse symbolizing the controlling nature of the Fruman government

What I’d like to focus on is a tiny bit of emergent worldbuilding:



To get to the lighthouse from the barracks (because I’d assume most people working at the lighthouse are soldiers stationed in the barracks) the soldiers need to cross the entire residential zone, reinforcing the feeling of being watched / protected by an omnipresent military for the citizens of Aelumia.

Why is the marketplace only accessible through the industrial sector?

If you were a law-abiding citizen of Aelumia, with no knowledge of secret resistance metro tunnels, and you wanted to go retrieve some of your hard-earned emeralds at the bank or do some hard-earned shopping at the marketplace, you would have two options:

Option 1: W A L K




Walk across the whole thing, crossing the citadel barracks, something that would probably significantly increase your commute, cause there is no way a regime as paranoiac and controlling (you know cause they built the eye of Sauron in the middle of their capital) as Fruma's would let a random citizen take a walk through its barracks. So, get ready to go through heavy screening / paperwork / interrogations if you want to take this route. Then once that's done, you'd still have to walk a good half diameter of the citadel, said diameter brings us to option two.


Option two: take the metro like a sensible person.

There are 3 metro stations in the Aelumia citadel, two of which aren't on the map:










(Taking a small break off complaining there to look at the position of these stations, one is in the residential zone, one is at the university, and one is at the entrance, which are good places to put a station at, good job John Aelumia!)

So, if you wanted to go to the marketplace as fast as possible you would do that:



So take the metro from station A to C, shaving off more than half of the commute. However, there is still one glaring issue, besides the fact that you'd still have to walk a considerable distance (the queen really does care about the fitness of her citizens thank you Queen Fruma), you, or really anyone who wants to (legally) access the marketplace would have to go through the industrial sector and inhale all of the toxic fumes emanating from the various exhausts popping out of the walls and the chemical plant.



Hmmm delicious clean air

Why is that? Why not simply have metro A have an exit both into the residential zone AND into the marketplace? Does the queen want her subjects to get lung cancer? Is she stupid? Is it to make sure Aelumian's life isn't too good?

This boggles my mind so much, it was the main reason I made this thread and Aelumia goes down one rank on the tier list solely because of this inconvenience.



Anyways that’s it for the things I had to say on Aelumia, the whole city area is great and there’s lots to analyze in there so props to the content team for that, really cool!

Hope you enjoyed reading my somewhat structured rambling now if you'd excuse me I got some world events to farm.

 

I suspect zero thought was given to the positioning of the Aelumia stations. Metro maps are known for being very inaccurate, although relative to other locations the points should be correct.