Cenotaph Road
Along the foggy coastline of Graefsher, a cold stone road stretches on through the fog. Seagulls feast on the burial flies and detritus of roadside commerce, and fishermen and farmers trade and drink together in roadside taverns and camps. The stone road is unusually wide and well-maintained for a Hainish road, with brush on both sides beaten back to make room for horsemen and peddler's stalls and blockage typically cleared in days. Every so often, the road expands further, opening into a clearing with a small Uvaran shrine and grave memorial. These war-memorial clearings, each dedicated to a different hero who fought against the Scourings of the ancient past, are excellent spots for travelers to camp or break for lunch - they are frequent meeting areas and prime real estate for peddlers selling their wares. Every so often, it is not uncommon to see stones or wooden carvings bearing the sigil of a noble house or knightly order.
The Cenotaph road is a war memorial, a trade route, and a military installation, running along the coast and Western interior between Telgen and Keilbar. To deface the road is, to many, an attack on Graefsher's people and culture - so it is best for outsiders to treat it with respect. When vandalism occurs along the road, the surrounding villages are prone to watching suspicious people and even harassing those 'troublemakers' that are perceived to misbehave. Similarly, knights who witness anyone disrespecting a banner-marker or memorial related to their house are prone to lash out. So travelers ought to be wary walking this road.
Similarly, while the road is reasonably well maintained and safe, that is no certainty. The reputation of the road for safety can lead to some bandits preying on its rougher corners, and sometimes the road passes through haunted battlefields from which monsters may crawl - perhaps unsettled by a wagon wandering too far from the road to make camp. Other monsters crawl from the sea, smelling unprotected travelers so close to their waters. The knights and militias who maintain this road dispatch the lesser beasts in due time, and Telgen's knights ride out to purge the road if anything larger comes - but that is hardly what the victims of these attacks think.
The road runs a good 130 miles - a good 15 days worth of travelling for many. The road ranges from being under a mile from the sea to a good 6 miles inland for much of it.
History
This road is older than Stildane - as long as people have walked here, they have walked this path through the coastal lowlands. But while other eras have called it a number of things, the Cenotaph road in its modern form (graves and name and all) date back to the 1700s, when the road was first paved for military use and then consecrated in 1760.
Following the Tulip War of 1800, the road went from being managed by a united military, to the domain of a number of disparate families. Parts of it fell into disrepair, while other parts grew grander. Things became quite bad in the early 1900s, when a charismatic mercenary named Yellen Brittlespines gathered dissatisfied peasants and frontiersmen under his banner to 'collect' unpaid fees from a great house in the form of road accostments. Yellen was slain, but his story attracted many other brigands to the poorly maintained parts of the road.
Restoring the road and refurbishing it in grand fashion (with truly regular memorial markers, rather than wildly inconsistent ones, and a regular maintenance schedule) by Queen Gevess Neshelna in 1920. The rennovation has proven extremely popular among the people of Graefsher, and even though the road has become "privatized" by feudal actors again, the maintenance schedule has been kept more-or-less intact.
Founding Date
1750/1920
Type
Road
Parent Location
Contested By
Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
