Nullgate (A fragment)

There was a seaport at Null five hundred years before the Alronians reached it.

The northern coast of Etrea is a singularly unfriendly one. Fjords are treacherous there, filled with shallows, jagged rocks, and several peoples less than open to newcomers. The Naeth who dominate most of the north are hostile in the extreme, and their Aghat and Hentre neighbors have learned to fear Naeth longships, and thus, are none too quick to welcome strangers. All of this was before Alronian triremes made their way into the waters as well, heavy with weapons and quick to use them.

The people of Benar, living as they do on an island to the west of Etrea, require trade to supply them with many things they desire that their island does not supply, such as most kinds of food. The soil of Benar is less soil and more patches of dirt the rocks somehow forgot to infest, and their livestock tends towards the dwarfish cousins of mainland beasts. However they arrived in their isolated home, they have long made the sea provide as much bounty as it could, and as such trade came naturally to them. But they needed a harbour.

Null was not yet named anything when the Alronians sailed into its waters. The Benar sailors had found this large natural harbour, surrounded by steep cliffs on all sides, and had settled in to draw fresh water. From that beginning, people from across the north had found them, and the Benar had done what they could when surrounded by dangerous, aggressive people who had things they wanted. They used the cliffs as fortification, and built lifts to ascend and descend to make deals. There were no portals, passages or gates in the natural wall around the ramshackle seaport, and so the Benar had called their little trading port Nullgate.

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