Ohttrazdbarh

Ohttrazdbarh (Praeta: Eight-Ring City), was a planned fortress city of Ransenar, situated in the county of Holwinn, on the northern shore of the Red Elwynn, where work began on what would have been an ambitious undertaking the fifth month of 1710 AN. The city was to have been formed of an outer defensive wall with eight flaktower bastions, three concentric belts of industrial worker habitation rings, an inner defensive wall with four citadel ziggurats, a concentric ring of mixed commercial premises and middle class residential habitation, a concentric ring of upper class habitation blocks, and the "Centrum Bastion" housing an arsenal and command & control facilities for the Grand Army of Ransenar as well as offices for the municipal authorities of the city.

The area of the city's jurisdiction would have bordered onto that of the bailiwick of Cabbagefall in the Imperial County of Shireroth. One advantage of the placement of Ohttrazdbarh is its position watching over the riverine trade proceeding up the Red Elwynn from Musica to Shirekeep.

Presently the site is notable for its partially flooded foundation pit.

History

The site of a Ransenari garrison since mid 1677 AN, the advantageous position of the location that would become Ohttrazdbarh was known to the Lord Chief Steward of Ransenar, and the Lord Protector before him, as it ensured a corridor of unbroken communication between Goldfield and Shirekeep. The original cantonments, formerly occupied by Home Service regiments of the Army Department of Holwinn on rotation, was evacuated and the site levelled during the fourth month of 1710 AN.

On 7.VIII.1710 AN work began on the foundation pit at the point where the Centrum Bastion would eventually be constructed. Surveyors and engineers from the Honourable Company quickly noted the high water table of the marshy alluvial floodplain and forwarded requests for drainage and pumping equipment to the authorities in Goldfield. Revising their initial estimates, the surveyors recommended that an area of eighty square kilometres be drained and excavated to a depth of eighty metres. Once the excavation was completed, the foundation pit was to be walled with concrete to the thickness of eight metres and a series of permanently manned pumping stations to be constructed at the bottom layer of the pit. Over these would then be built the arcology structure that would house supporting infrastructure organised in the Kalgachi manner around a central core housing the key power generation and utility system control stations for water and sewerage. Proposals to cap the area contained within the foundation pit by the means of a prestressed concrete dome were rejected out of hand as being beyond the means of any known technology available to man. It was eventually decided that the intended subterranean structures would be covered by infilling of the foundation pit as each layer, building back towards the former surface, was completed.

In spite of some doubts as to the scale of the works, and continuous discussion between the project principals about how to present the proposals for approval by the Ransenari Congress, the excavation of the foundation pit continued through the fifth month of 1710 AN quite unimpeded by these considerations of practicality.

Work at the foundation pit was abandoned in the second month of 1712 AN, as funding was not forthcoming in the aftermath of the accession of Ransenar to the Benacian Union at the start of the year.

In the fifth month of 1723 AN elements of the 6th Engineer Regiment and 3rd Works Regiment of the Ransenari Grouping of Forces (RGF) arrived to take possession of the site. Over the next twenty-four days a series of three concentric earthworks would be dug around the abandoned pit along with a large tent encampment a kilometre to the east of the site.

On 1.VIII.1723 AN, garrison duties at the site were transferred to the 3rd Riverine Infantry Regiment of the RGF.