the Ahrisheni Waterways & Art

Here's the latest map for the Atlas Elyden, and one I've been wanting to make for some time - giving some information on the river-system known as the Ahrisheni Waterways as well as the engineer-warriors who maintain it and keep it safe.

The art was commissioned specifically for this by Dominique Van Velsen, and I've added the full art to the post as an attachment as I had to crop it to fit the page.

Thank you so much for your support  :)

This is the low-res version available to everyone.  Become a Patron at the Acolyte tier for access to my back-catalogue of High-res, PSD and textless maps. That includes the High-res version of this map, as well as the textless version.

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Even a cursory glance at a map of Ahrishen is enough to show a layperson that it is a relatively flat land dominated by rivers and lakes. This terrain has shaped Ahrisheni culture going back millennia, and even prior to the diminishing of Elyden’s water level, life in the Areshi plains in the east, the Lakelands in the south, and the Neagari plains in the north was little different to today, with stilt-walkers in the countryside, fields of rice, asparagus, mint and persimmon dotting the landscape, and herds of wild aurochs wading in wild marshes all a common sight. Farther inland, ancient bogs paved the way for the most famous Ahrisheni industry of antiquity - peat working.

History

The Ahrisheni people have been conscious of the waning seas of Elyden for some time - the low elevation and shallow incline of its floodplains have made changes in sea level readily apparent and each generation over the past few millennia has noted unending change of coastline. This newly-revealed land has been fertilised by the deposits of the river Aresh, creating fecund plains, providing Ahrishen with an ever-growing land that is conducive to farming, grazing and agriculture. Farther inland, new lakes have formed over the past centuries, including the Doida, Euradia, and Qaril, all of which have become homes to thriving wildlife populations as well as settlements.

Attempts were made to stall the shrinking of the Sea of Pyrea by constructing an elaborate system of dykes and dams between 3420 - 3540 RM but the efforts were costly and of little benefit and ultimately abandoned, though the remnants of the old dykes can be seen in various areas of the Demeral and other plains in the west of the nation.

Though now considered natural, many of the lakes and waterways farther inland can also be traced back to ancient peat workings, which helped shape the the terrain of inner Ahrishen millennia ago.

The Riverlands

Even before the wane of Elyden’s seas, when the Sea of Pyrea stretched as far inland as the ruins of Ihrmen, some 400-miles from the present-day coast, Ahrishen was a land of winding river and lakes, dominating the Areshi plains in the east and coastal plains in the north and south. Largest of these are the Nalesh in the north and the Aresh in the south. Today, the Aresh flows for no less than 2,500-miles and dominates the geography of Ahrishen.

Its people have been using barges and river boats to navigate these rivers and lakes for millennia, and in many cases settlements were connected to each other not by roads but by ferries and boats - a tradition that continues to this day, though large highways are now a common sight crossing rivers, connecting the more industrious cities with each other and allowing the trade and movement of heavy goods overland, without need of rivers.

The propensity for using river travel led to some settlements or regions that were geographically close being accessible only via long circuitous routes, which led to the creation of canals to link relatively close bodies of water, including rivers that might have been part of unrelated drainage basins, or which were otherwise tributaries of the same parent river.

The Canals

The first canals were simple channels cut between rivers and/or lakes. This work was often carried out by peat workers and reed gatherers during their off-season. Though as construction of canals increased in c. 1100 RM, there became a need for permanent canal workers-jobs. These individuals were entrusted not only with the digging of new canals, but also their maintenance and that of locks and the banks of connecting rivers, keeping them free of debris and overgrown plants such as reeds.

As the skills of these engineers increased, so too did the intricacy of canals - with locks becoming used to link waterways at otherwise different elevations. Today the use of stepped locks is common, as are aqueducts that carry canals above roads or otherwise unnavigable bodies of water.

It is thought that there are over 5,000-miles of canals in Ahrishen today, around 900 of which are major highways, travelled by commercial barges and travellers alike. Altogether these canals and the lakes and rivers that they connect are referred to as the Ahrisheni Waterways.

The longest single stretch of canal is the Areshi Canal, which links lake Ranaga with lake Actaea, providing a shortcut between the river Aresh and Savest, respectively. It is 93 miles long and contains 43 major locks and hundreds of smaller ones, as well as inns, villages and cities along its length, making it one of the busier parts of Ahrishen.

Canal boats cannot navigate large bodies of waters such as the large lakes that dominate the interior of Ahrishen due to the effects of currents and winds. River harbours have been created where canals and streams meet larger bodies of water, offering mooring to canal boats, where goods and travellers are switched to larger boats more capable of traversing these larger lakes, some of which can be hundreds of miles long.

The Royal Corps of Hydraulic Engineers

Ahrisheni engineers are masters of water management and their locks, dams, aqueducts and dykes are amongst the most intricate and well-designed and maintained in all of Elyden. Deep concrete reservoirs are built in areas prone to flooding to reduce the chance of damage to the canals and waterways and nearby settlements. Water collected this way is put to use in agriculture, for instance.

What started as a seasonal workforce has since become an elite force of engineers, officially appointed by the Ahrisheni government in 3499 RM after centuries under a different name. Since then the Royal Engineers (As they are more commonly known) have dug canals, built bridges, hollowed tunnels and cleared waterways across Ahrishen. They are responsible for the maintenance of the major canals, and some regiments also act as skilled rangers and warriors who patrol dangerous parts of the waterways, protecting them from banditry and other illicit activities. Their presence in this capacity is heaviest in the relatively unpopulated south of Ahrishen.

Despite the work of the Royal Corps, their members are stretched thin, and many areas - typically the more rural internal regions and isolated communities - are expected to carry out their own day-to-day maintenance on the canals, and most navigators are expected to be knowledgeable in the operation of locks, as many are unmanned. It is only in larger busier sections of the Ahrisheni Waterways that the Royal Corps carry out simple daily maintenance.

Industry

The Ahrisheni Waterways form the backbone of industry in Ahrishen and were pivotal in the migration to industrialised manufacture, with waterwheels providing free reliable power to many small workshops as well as larger manufactories along its course. As industrialisation spread across Ahrishen many of these smaller workshops grew into major manufactories that have since come to rely on the canals for their continued operation.