Unexpected Inspiration Location: Silveridge



Welcome to Silveridge, capital city of Concordia! When a visitor steps into the city for the first time, they’re struck by the contrast between white and color. The architecture varies and no two buildings look the same, but it’s all unified by being almost entirely built from white stone. What isn’t stone is wood or brick painted white.

In a city of artists where individuality is encouraged, this is the canvas and backdrop for the residents’ creativity. What isn’t white is painted brilliant colors and almost every building has windows of stained or colorful glass. Concordia is a tied island and Silveridge takes full advantage of the amount of sunlight it gets. The streets and buildings are lined with trees and flowers, adding to the color. Silveridge is the home of the Protectorates, the people who guard art and artists, and their connection to plants and the earth has meant this was part of the city’s design from the beginning.

Situated at the center of the city, atop a high hill, is the building that gave the city its name. The sun glints off the silver walls of the massive, rotating building that once housed the country’s first inhabitants. Now it is home to the Artisans’ guild and contains sprawling art studios, galleries, and libraries, as well as rooms for visiting artists and the resident scholars.

The inside of most buildings in Silveridge are just as colorful and bright as the outside. The bottom three pictures are how I envision decorating styles: lots of colorful lamps, libraries (both personal and public) where the bookshelves blend into the theme of the room, and even the bathrooms fit an aesthetic. Not everyone has the same taste and style will vary in individual homes, but the public places all tend to be a little over the top. Okay, a lot over the top. Like I said in the post about Concordia, Concordians are all about the Aesthetic.

Magic is tied to art and invention in Concordia, so much of Silveridge in particular is arcanely built or powered. They see magic as just another tool and those who have it tend to want to share it. Part of what goes into being a Weaver of magic is giving part of your time and energy back into the community, so it isn’t just the artists who have magic-enhanced homes and possessions. Concordian artist magic isn’t particularly powerful; it can’t move mountains and you’d be hard-pressed to fight with it, but the little magics woven into domestic things like fabrics, architecture, transportation, and communication make life easier for Concordians as a whole. A writer friend suggested calling this series Contemporary High Fantasy and I think that’s a good way of describing it; I see my characters’ world as having advanced to almost an equivalent of our world’s technology, but culturally and socially there isn’t much similarity.

CONVERSATION

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