Domicilium

Zul Sector of the Domicilium

The Domicilium is a vast sprawl of houses, from homesteads and tenements to mansions and estates, forming a city-wide residential zone in Aelyria Prime stretching from the outskirts of Prateia in the Southwest to the edge of Highport in the Northeast. Divided into two major administrative districts, or sectors, the Domicilium falls under the jurisdiction of the Aedile of Aelyria Prime, though it can be found sprawling throughout all of the municipal districts and urban wards of the Capital City. More topical than contiguous and technically encompassing every class of housing or accommodation offered in the city, the Domicilium is organized into the following segments:

• Zul Sector, with a Northwestern Exposure
• Sur Sector, with a Southeastern Exposure

Layout

The Domicilium spreads throughout the entirety of Aelyria Prime and is less an actual geographic district, municipal ward or urban parish of the city and more a zoning class authorized by the city government for specific development, investment, and management. Around the Forum, a series of water-channels from Aucore Wharf create a series of navigable canals bordering lush boulevards and posh avenues, the streets hosting tenements and townhouses of all varieties and sorts. To the western bluffs, the Domicilium is more organic, rising up gently against the rolling hills and seaside bluffs; this pattern repeats in the north, where the rigid formal housing used by the Military in The Castle is augmented with makeshift homes and improvised apartments wherever public space and usable lands can be found. In the Merchant District, many quarters and residential areas tend to mirror the art and architecture found in the Forum, with waterways to provide access to many of the homes. However, each district and ward has its own cultural and architectural flavor to the housing within.

Though it is more or less evenly distributed throughout all of the wards and districts of Aelyria Prime, the Domicilium is administratively organized into two segments, or sectors, known as Zul (in the north and west) and Sur (in the south and east). This functional division is purely for the convenience of budgeting, but it does roughly match the architectural style and engineering methodologies used to construct the different initial plots of land. The Residential District fabricated about the Forum with concentric rings, canal waterways, and broad byways, is marked as Sur. The Residential Zones that emerged organically in Old Prime and then flourished in the new districts after the Forum was constructed is marked as Zul.

History

During the First Kingdom, shortly following the establishment of Colonia, King Constantine made plans to establish a residential district to house the burgeoning population of adventurers and merchants flocking to the Realm. As Aelyria Prime grew in size and stature, so did the designs and plans for a section of the city devoted purely to housing; administratively, the position of Aedile was created to handle the monolithic public works and municipal services offered to citizens. However, it was not until the proclamation of the First Empire that saw the first blossoming of Aelyria Prime's residential infrastructure. Prior to that point, citizens purchased townhouses and apartments located mostly in the Lion and Unicorn parishes of Old Prime.

Empress Michelle embarked on an ambitious urban planning project in the ancient metropolis by clearing out the moist grounds and marshy lands beyond the old city gates and building an administrative, cultural, and economic center of power, the Forum. Pulsing outward from the center of the Forum were a series of wide streets, elegant avenues, and opulent boulevards formed in concentric circles that served as a major intersection point for new housing projects of all classes and types, shacks and hovels alongside manors and compounds. With the onset of the Golden Age and its accompanying population boom, thousands of new homes were erected across the Forum and older wards began to have their residences redesigned and refurbished. By the end of her reign, Empress Michelle witnessed the organic emergence of homes to the northwest of the Forum, technically outside of the city districts proper and rising up against the hilly and rocky terrain before the beach bluffs.

Sur Sector of the Domicilium

Throughout the Second Empire, this population trend continued and habitation across both styles, or sectors, became more profound and pronounced. When Duke Veldar was named Chief Minister, and the first Exchequer of the Realm, a rudimentary system of loans innovated by the Bank of Aelyria enabled the purchase of land and homes for a fraction of their value by borrowing against their future worth. Intended to benefit citizens who could not yet afford home ownership, mortgages in fact empowered the rich with new purchasing power. As a new generation of wealthy merchants and influential aristocrats began to occupy the nobility, luxurious estates were built on pristine lands occupying numerous acres and hectares in the countryside outside of the Capital City. Though Imperial Law expressly forbade the establishment of feudal territory within Crown Lands, there was considerable fear that nobles might begin to partition the housing of Aelyria Prime that the Emperor appointed the populist Marquis Soc de Ambergois to the post of Advocate General in order to push through reforms that would protect tenants from becoming serfs.

Rather than subjugate the city, however, the wealthy patrons and powerful benefactors began to exert their influence through informal collectives and reciprocal alliances of guilds and factions acting on their behalf; as a consequence, the value of land within the capital city skyrocketed. A catastrophic economic meltdown occurred in the year 9587 when the Aelyrian Stock Exchange issued a correction that valued the monetary worth of the Bank of Aelyria at one-fifth of its actual currency holdings, largely because it had been improperly issuing loans to home-owners who could not afford to pay off the interest on those mortgages, much less the principal. Following this amortization, the Emperor declared a state of emergency, froze all wages and prices, and imposed a ban on all home mortgage practices -- a ban which continued well into the Third Empire. Unable to enact meaningful Urban Reforms to match his ambitious Agrarian Reforms, the Emperor lamented that the Empire was in a state of uncontrollable financial freefall so severe, that for the first time in its existence, the Imperial Government was openly resisted in its efforts to collect taxes. Civil wars and rebellions eventually created sufficient institutional chaos that precipitated the Empire's collapse in concert with the financial weakening wrought by the markets.

Under the reign of Empress Alyssa Chrysinaria, Aelyria Prime experienced a rebirth as it flourished once more as the metropolitan center of the Realm. The chief beneficiary of the influx of new trade and the growth of its population in excess of three million inhabitants was the Domicilium, which was fondly referred to as "the Residential District" (though, because it transcended all municipal districts, wards, and parishes, this term was purely symbolic). To promote growth and facilitate immigration, the Empress ordered Aelyria Prime establish housing incentives; this resulted in a series of heated elections between Maria Thanossa and Arianna Kyalis to head the City Council as its Council President to usher in the urban reforms. In Arianna Kyalis' administration, the city established the Housing and Public Works Authority, an agency that supported the Aedile with extensive institutional infrastructure and organizations that purchased neglected plots of land, improved them, and sold them at-cost to poor citizens. Through Maria Thanossa's presidency, Aelyria Prime benefited from a proliferation of new investment as the Guild of Merchants collaborated extensively with institutes of higher learning in the Scholar Quarter to rebuild dilapidated homes and earn considerable profit, which was later used to fund new business ventures in the nearby Mercantile District. By the reign of Emperor Valerian Constantius, all of Aelyria Prime's wards, parishes, and districts had Common Housing buildings that offered inexpensive, subsidized housing, while the Domicilium as a whole proved to be an extremely lucrative investment opportunity with a return that rivaled most other markets.