Tamriel Data:The Port of Anvil

Book Information The Port of Anvil
Added by	Tamriel Data
ID	T_Bk_PortOfAnvilPC
	50		2
Locations
Found in the following locations: Anvil, Abecean Trading Company Anvil, All Flags Inn

The Port of Anvil
A history of the Abecean's most significant trade city

by Calixta Avidrian

The history of the city of Anvil

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Anvil, largest and most prosperous city of West Colovia, can rightfully be called a jewel in the Red Dragon Crown. From here, the long Gold Road stretches out towards the distant markets of the Heartlands, allowing the passage of luxurious trade goods from the entire western Empire. None of the Colovian cities -- not even industrious Skingrad or the proud Hill of Kvatch -- can compare to Anvil's prosperity and population.

Yet Anvil was not always great. For much of the early First Empire, the so-called Kingdom of the Strident Coast (or Stridenthia) was governed from the isle of Mischarstette by the powerful Shore-King dynasty, direct descendants of the Nordic conquerors. Anvil, at the time, was a negligible fishing village ruled by the minor House of Olo, vassals to the Shore-Kings.

The fortunes of this small township would change dramatically. The Slug-Famine of 1E 2200 decimated the population of the West and toppled the august Shore-Kings. Allying himself first with the Marshal of the Isles, with whom he was fortuitously saved by a pilgrimage to Sancre Tor, Bendu Olo forged an alliance unlike any in history between dozens of peoples enraged by the plague and its origins in far-off Thras. This fine example of Cyrodiilic diplomacy in its infancy saw man, elf, and dreugh come together to wreak terrible vengeance on the Sload and topple the first Pillar of Thras. From humble origins, the Oloman dynasty thus rose to outshine its predecessors.

As Mischarstette had been reduced to a mass grave of plague dead, Olo moved the capital of his hard-won kingdom to Anvil. Contacts with his allies of the All Flags Navy blossomed into fruitful trade arrangements, and soon the kingdom -- once the Kingdom of the Strident Coast -- became better known as simply the Kingdom of Anvil.

Anvil's wealth was little diminished during the First Interregnum, and the rise of the Second Empire saw the town take on a new role as an important port in the conquest of the West. The death of Reman III in 1E 2920, however, initiated an era of decline. Attacks from the provincial powers and trade blockades from spiteful rival Colovian kingdoms tarnished Anvil's prosperity, while the death of the last blood relative of Olo signaled the end of a golden era. Weak-willed magistrates appointed by the Potentates could not stop this decline.

The story of Anvil's submission to Tiber Septim is well attested in the histories. It is said that as the Ruby Ranks approached, the city's most influential families (in those days, only modest merchants) came unarmed to the Conqueror's camp under a flag of truce. They offered to throw open Anvil's gates and put all their ships into the service of a new West Navy, if only the Emperor would accept an innovative new model of government for the Kingdom: elective monarchy. The merchant captains argued that such a system would turn Anvil from a declining backwater into a thriving, competitive center of commerce -- one whose royal elections would swell the coffers of the Red Treasury in the bargain. Tiber Septim agreed to these terms, and Anvil became the West Navy's home port.

In 3E 249, the Camoran Usurper marched his armies from Valenwood to the north, demanding the unconditional surrender of all in his path. The weak King Dorian, elected in a particularly paltry election year, was taken off guard and overwhelmed as the Imperial forces defending his kingdom crumbled on land and sea. During the Usurper's eighteen-year reign of terror, Anvil was ruled by necromancers and pirates, whose brief struggles to control the fiercely independent locals culminated in the total sack of Old Anvil near the end of the year 250. This atrocity nearly ended Anvil's existence, and would have, if not for the intervention of Commodore Fasil Conomorus. The Commodore was able to wrest control of the kingdom from the vile necromancers who had occupied it, burning thousands of dead in the process.

Conomorus raised a new city on the ashes of Old Anvil, with high, thick walls, an even bigger port, and a new, impregnable castle: Goldstone. The new city swiftly regained her former population, then quickly raced past it, as merchants, priests, guildsfolk, and scholars arrived from around the Empire to capitalize on the opportunities offered by the gleaming new city. Though he ruled as King until his death, Conomorus wisely restored the royal elections for his successors, which further encouraged investment by the powerful merchant families. The city's rapid growth, made possible by immigrants from around the Western Empire, made Anvil the second most diverse city in the Imperial Province, only after Cyrodiil City itself. A century and a half later, Anvil stands as a shining monument to the indefatigable resilience of its people.