Introduction to the city of the hundred fiefs

Short book synopsis
A young lady has to defend the patch of an enormous metropolis that is under her control while she struggles to improve the life of the inhabitants of her towers. A powerful lord attempting to reunite the whole city under one single rule threatens her independence and her life, especially when he swallows her previous neighbour and she becomes his next target...

Meta

Genre

Romantic Fantasy, High Fantasy.

Location

A city full of towers divided into a hundred fiefs over which powerful lords and ladies rule.

Unique selling point

Explore a magic-filled metropolis where lords and ladies are all powerful and fight fiercely for every patch of lands and witness the consequences for the people living under them.

Setting the scene

The world

Magical power is linked to the land. One individual can become lord over a specific area, gaining superior control over everything and everyone there as well as protection for themselves while they stand inside of it. However, while it may be difficult to do so, seizing the land from their control can be done. Especially if they suffer an unfortunate death.
The world is covered by such area with no patch of land left unoccupied, no matter how small. Lords and ladies make alliance with each other or gather under one allegiance to face common problems and threats, however those are fleeting and rarely survive more than a generation, if even that.

A fief surrounded by its magic field by Szabo Viktor on Unsplash

Metropolis

Big metropolis are rare, as holding large areas in place of fierce competition is extremely hard. Most people prefer to tempt their chance in the countryside where it is easier for anyone with notable power to just claim any land and build a village there. However, a few places in the world have very powerful magic, boosting that of the people living there as well as their health. As a consequences big urban area have been built on top. Yet, very few are the individuals who manage to claim it all, and once they are dead, the city immediately divide in small turf zone, each under the control of a different lord or lady. Those are the fiefs.
Metropolis are covered with enormous towers so that the lord and lady can maximise the use of space inside their land. Everything is done inside those towers: living, manufacture, farming, and fighting. And it is tower by tower that each lord and lady fight in an attempt to reunify the whole city under their unique control.

Farming on the external walls of a tower by Luoxi on DepositPhotos

The City of a Hundred Fiefs

In one such city, the situation is particularly bad. The urban area is especially vast , and the division into especially tiny fiefs has been so long lasting that he city is now only called the City of the Hundred Fiefs. In the absence of a solution, the lords and ladies have established a neutral zone where they can all gather together to debate current affaires and make common decision for the city.
The regulation of trade is an especially important topic, as food still need to come in from the countryside, as well as material for magic, and it would be all too easy for a lord or lady to block their circulation and blackmail those further along on the trading route. To avoid this, corridors of circulation have been established between the fiefs.
Everyone was becoming comfortable with the situation, just when rumours start to spread. There would be a lord among them with the ambition to reunite the whole city. and given how he has started to swallow one fief after another, it looks like he might actually have the power to do so...

The City of the Hundred Fiefs by diversepixel on DepositPhotos

MC

The MC was born in the city and suffered through the rule of a particularly bad lord. Fed up with the situation, she secretly trained her magic skills until, as a teenager, she arranged to meet the lord and use the occasion to kill him and claim the land for herself. This led to an intense period in which she had to fight to get her authority and power respected by her neighbours and people alike, as well as change the way the fief was ruled to improve her people's life.
Just when the situation was stabilising and she was started to look more outwards and considering forming her own alliances with the other lords and ladies, one of her direct neighbours falls to the new would-be king. This makes MC the weakest and most vulnerable of the man's current neighbours, his obvious next target....

by grandfailure on DepositPhotos

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