Adwen (Cid Aranos) is a frontier city built over old ruins “on the broken border with the zone of Sahara”, the urban core of a disputed region; its two landmark buildings are the Palacete and the Tower of Knowledge. See also Adwen.
| Type | Place (city) |
| Urban population | c. 4,000 |
| Spanish entry | Adwen (Cid Aranos) |
Description
Adwen is not “a city laid out in the Auran, that is, Roman style”. Its builders “tried to build there, so to speak, over the old ruins, a newer city”, so its streets follow the ruins beneath. It is a single city, not a type of settlement, and its region is counted outward from it in three rings:
- Town: about 4,000 people, including at least 150 registered urban families.
- Rural ring: 1,300 peasant families.
- Wider area: “maybe 10,000 people or more… 15, 20”.
The region is “like a disputed territory”; who disputes it is not named.
Landmarks
- The Palacete (“that is like the Palacete”): the main building and visible seat of command.
- The Tower of Knowledge: the institution of learning.
Society
“Here slavery exists; it is a mild slavery, but it exists.”
Surroundings
Outside the town survive “old patches of ancient forest”, now called “the blackened forest, for obvious reasons”. The reasons are not recorded.
Open questions
- 150 urban families against 4,000 townspeople gives about 26 people per family; whether “urban family” names only one stratum or one figure is approximate is unresolved.
- Who disputes the territory, and what age and origin the old ruins have, is unknown.
- Whether the “broken” border is rugged, discontinuous or broken by conflict is open.
- How the Palacete and the Tower relate, who occupies them, and their materials and height are not recorded, nor are the rights of slaves or how one enters or leaves slavery.
- Adwen is the canonical form; Cid Aranos is the form used in the records. Whether they are full synonyms, names in different languages or historical layers of the same city is unknown.