Eliria Castle
Eliria Castle, also known as the Castle of Eliria or - rarely - as Castle Eliria, was a former royal residence situated in Eliria, the capital of the Riqi Elluenuuerssuarion. It sat on the bank of the Qlyhm Canal, one of the numerous Elirian canals leading to the River Elwynn. It formerly served as the residency of the sovereign and a seat of government for Elluenuueq, housing the Court of the Prince and the Council of Eliria. Devastated during the Second Elwynnese Civil War, it was destroyed - along with Eliria - in the Scouring, a limited nuclear exchange which terminated the conflict.
History
The site that would become Eliria Castle was cleared and settled by the Elfinshi chieftess Tlygowa in the late 1300s, who used a corvée of Elw tribes in the region to raise an earthen mound and set a brick keep atop it, surrounded by a wooden palisade. The location chosen was advantageous as it afforded a position from which to oversee a strategically important part of the River Elwynn. Both the castle and the city that grew around it derive their names from Tlygowa's lyre, the word "Eliria" being derived from the Elw placename enu elirion, "place of lyres". She was not however to hold that keep for long as it soon attracted the covetous gaze of the Elu Verion who gained entry into the keep initially under the guise of hospitality and guest-right, and by introducing the keep's castellan to a new paramour on a subsequent return visit to the Elu's own halls. With the castellan and his new lover returned her retinue of attendants, each one the very picture of coquettish charm. In turn, the other officers and sergeants of the keep were, by-and-by, duly smitten, and fell readily into the thrall of easy company. By the time of the next visit of the Elu Verion, this time at the head of his host and with banners flying, those who were not readily to submit for loves sake soon felt the sharp slicing pain of a blade drawn across their throat, which swiftly brought an end to any semblance of organised resistance. And so it was that the banners of the House of Verion were unfurled on the keep in the year 1410 AN.
The keep was enhanced by the addition of a moat and a circuit of earthworks by the castellans appointed by the Verions, and subsequently by the appointees of the Shirerithian conquerors, and by the Duchess, Mari Greenwood, whom they appointed over the realm as the Kaiser's feudatory. In 1478 the Qlyhm Canal was cut, connecting the castle moat to the river, filling the moat and thereby improving the defensive qualities of the outer earthworks whilst at the same time improving the ease with which provisions and reinforcements could be delivered to the keep. To control access to the moat the Water Gate, a three storey double bastion of stone and brick housing a portcullis of bronze-clad wrought iron, was constructed. These defensive enhancements would not avail the garrison of the keep however when Baron Ardashir arrived to claim the submission of Eliria in 1488. A perfunctory bombardment by the solitary rusty Babkhan field-howitzer that had accompanied the Baron's expedition into the Elwynnese interior had been enough to elicit a prompt capitulation on terms.
The Babkhan-era in Elwynn would see the addition of the Khan Bastion, a six-storey ferroconcrete artillery platform clad in granite and positioned to the immediate south of the castle complex, overlooking the approaches to Eliria from the south - this being the direction from which the avenging armies of the Shiretits were considered most likely to approach, as would happen often enough over the course of the subsequent centuries. Behind this monstrosity the castle and city of Eliria would continue to grow under successive regimes. The palisade and the outer earthworks were replaced two concentric rings of stone curtain walls. These, owing to their evident vulnerability to direct bombardment were protected by further detached earthen outworks, redans, ravelins, and redoubts, screening the approach to the walls. Behind each wall was raised a turf embankment rising level with the battlements whilst the external walls were masked by stacked gabions which maintained a precipitous vertical drop.
The central keep was rebuilt in stone as a round tower during the reign of Harald of Wintergleam, the seventh Duke. In keeping with a reign that would the land briefly, and contentiously, renamed as Froyalan, Harald's architectural choices were heavily influenced by his Vanic preferences and would be redone in later years.
After the end of the Babkhi and 1st Froyalanish eras, the Ode to Multiculture was erected outside Eliria Castle. It is a statue of the Elfinshi duchess Mari Greenwood joininig raised hands with Baron Ardashir. The early modern era would see the military function of Eliria Castle de-emphasised in favour of its use as a seat of civilian government. The Kai Aphmyarkaiph, a Raikothin attack from the north in 1542/43, had swept away the Babkhan administration and garrisons in the north of the realm and left the Elw, for the first time in over a century, as masters of their own destiny.
The 1550's would see the extension of the Qlyhm Canal to encircle the outer wall of the castle with a commercial waterway that doubled as a further defensive water feature. From this circular grand canal would radiate outwards the fifty kilometres of canals dug during the Elwynnese Golden Age (1550–1600).
