Walls of Tudhan

The Walls of Tudhan, the Tudhanian Walls, the Great Walls, or simply said the Walls are one of the two concentric fortifications protecting the city of Kartam. After the capital became far too large to be confined inside the older Harkonian Walls, Tudhan IV commisioned another defensive palisade. As the work was monumentary, the planning phase lasted for three years after which another three were spent by appropiating the land along the walls path. The construction finally started in 552 AGV, ending some twenty two years later in 574. Although the lack of appropiate materiel, multiple slave uprisings in the quarries, major revolts in the city all hindered the efforts, Amoratte Hasdrubilis, chief imperial engineer managed to keep the strict timetable,

This wasn't enough however, neither for him, nor for the emperor. Tudhan IV died in 570, after a brief but serious illness, while Hasdrubilis wandered up the spire of the Western Seagate in the autumn of 571, where he never returned. As his body wasn't found either, the case gave birth to several gossips in Kartam. By that time all the more important landmarks of the defensive belt were completed every single gatehouse and reinforced bastion stood at its place, only pieces of wall and some minor fortifications remained unfinished.

After the death of the chief engineer the process caught wind, and it was finished in some three years at the orders of emperor Kharan II. Contrary to his father, he was much more a man of sword. He finished all the projects that became a drain on the treasury, took up arms, and went on to conquer much land in the western part of the subcontinent.

The Tudhanian Wall are four miles and six hundred yards long. The circuit encompasses the entire city of Kartam. It passes the River Karam twice, both locked by a seagate on the eastern and the western end of city respectively. Thirty-six major gatehouses are placed during the course, with an unknown number of postern gates. Every hundred yard a square bastion is placed, packed with up to four ballistae. The level of battlements runs in a height of sixty feet above the ground, while the bastions spring up to a hundred feet. Uncounted murder holes, scorpions and lesser artillery are at the defenders disposal, while the walls, at the basement fifty, at the crown still thirty meters thick are able to withstand even the most brutal bombardment.

Nominally the Walls of Kartam are defended by the Šurghan Host, by the City Guard and by the Sacred Band. From these the first are considered elite soldiers, the third a decent, albeit religiously fanatic force of questionable moral and discipline. The City Guard is all but rable, corrupt, prone both to mutiny and defection. As such they are employed only in the absolute necessity.

Kartams walls were never breached, but besieged was it also only once during the Fourth Aharganite War in 965. This was defeated with relative ease, thanks to the military mastermind Atti Nartahalis who was the supreme commander of the defense.