The Fort of Elders

The Church of Christ served as the meeting room and office of the Council of Elders since it was constructed in 75 AD. With the town growing bigger and more residents to be responsible for as well as the fact that Church Square was amongst the busiest junctions in Nahervue so there was always someone seeing who is coming in and out, privacy was a growing concern.

The Council of Elders had also recently mandated Haggard Tims as the first ever First Commander, in charge of the security and maintaining the peace of Nahervue. First Commander Tims had 28 men under his command but was getting increasingly agitated as he had no base to command his men from. He was a highly respected man in the Nahervue community and his word carried a lot of weight, so when he threatened the Council with resignation if they did not take his request for a base to operate out from and serve as the forces’ headquarters, everyone paid attention.

First Commander Tims, who was also personally in charge of the safety of the six Elders alongside their personal men, sat in many Council meetings, along with many other influential people in town. The idea came up a late winter’s night in 223 AD, when the temperature had dropped in the negatives and there was literally no one out on the roads. First Commander Tims had pulled all his patrol teams from the field for their safety and had stuffed them in the Stone Towers before heading over to the church to attend the meeting. He showed up and announced he could no longer continue to be responsible for the town’s security with have a central point. Incidentally, just before Tims had walked in, the conversation was about finding a new home for the Council to operate out of as the space in the Church of Christ had just become too small. That is when the idea came up that why doesn’t the town build a fort to compliment the Stone Towers and serve as both the seat of government and the seat of the Nahervue Forces.

The idea was put to a vote, and almost all the registered residents of Nahervue over the age of 18 cast their choices in what became the first ever public vote in the history of Aliphiara. The results were positive for the construction of the fort, which almost immediately was dubbed the Fort of Elders by the townsfolk. It took about two years to build, slowly jotting up from the sea and towering majestically over the Bay of Hope. Each of the six Elders had their own chambers, and there was large meeting room and reception/dining hall. The Forces side had rooms filled with enough beds for over 200 men as well as three rooms that served as the base of operations for First Commander Tims.

The most striking feature of the Fort of Elders was the fact that it was built on water. Of course, it was very shallow water, but it was by far the largest project of any sort taken on in the history of Aliphiara. It immediately became Nahervue’s most distinguishable feature, eclipsing the Stone Towers in both stature and notoriety. The fort was built at the mouth of the White River, a mass of stone that would come to represent chaos, violence, and death in the future.