| Bannikel | |
|---|---|
| Latitude | 2°30'S |
| Longitude | 31°40'E |
| Population | 34,520 |
| Languages | Mafenga |
The architecture of Bannikel presents a fascinating historical mystery to visitors who marvel at the size and complexity of the port's series of nested and fortified seawalls and breakwaters. Capable of sheltering the harbor from typhoons and hurricanes, and constructed to defend against naval threats that no longer exist in the northern Parlanic Sea, the city appears out of place. The massive stone blocks that make up the oldest portions of the port outstrip anything else within the modern city, or anywhere else on the coastline of the Sabo Jungles. Combined with the unique Mafenga bloodline, explorers have long theorized that Bannikel was constructed in antiquity as a distant outpost of a large, powerful, and sophisticated seafaring empire from either across the Parlanic Sea or farther north on the continent beyond the range of local maps. For whatever reason, Bannikel lost contact with that empire, be it parent culture or colonial master, and for at least 2,000 years it has developed largely on its own.
Apparently content to exist as a city-state for much of its history, Bannikel developed largely in cultural isolation. Bordered by the dense and hostile Gwopesh Jungle to the east and the blue of the sea to the west, the city possesses no easy land route, yet ocean trade has increased significantly in the past century, and Bannikel's fortunes have waxed. Though Bannikel is far from being a pirate city, its lords turn a blind eye to pirate vessels as long as no piracy takes place within their claimed waters, and their own navy of several dozen ships enforces this edict with deadly force. Otherwise, any ships willing to pay a nominal duty on their cargo and reasonable docking fees are free to use the port, with one glaring exception: Bannikel steadfastly refuses to admit slave ships, and often refuses ships captained or even crewed by Nchubbesfu because of that culture’s predilection for the flesh trade. Whether on the grounds of moral disgust or racial bigotry - or both - Bannikel's actions in this regard have been the cause of bloody naval conflicts with Nchubbesfu slavers. These conflicts have also stoked a burgeoning expansionist desire within some members of the city's ruling elite.
Bannikel's ruling council draws its members from the ranks of the city's nobility, but it also grants representation to the priesthood, the merchants' compact, and the military. Still, most power remains inherited rather than earned, even within the latter groups. Bannikel's citizens rarely criticize the oligarchy, however, as they live in relative prosperity, with few external threats and a largely homogenous populace negating any ethnic strife.
The source of their prosperity, since the founding of Ujaland, Guteng and Qwiafu, has been the huge amount of mutual trade that has sprung up between the port and its southern neighbors, particularly within the past decade. The Mafenga generally act as middlemen for trade between those colonies and outside traders and merchant companies unwilling to anger the Turlonan crown or deal with agents of the Caliph in Qwiafu or the Sabo Products Consortium in Red Bay. Despite several attempts to establish a trade embassy within the city, Turlonan agents invariably find their ships attacked by pirates after sailing from the port, and messages to or from Turlona lost or intercepted. The lords of Bannikel claim innocence, but their own best interests lie in preventing the influence of any of the imperial powers within the city's walls. Bannikel's status as a center of trade not under the thumb of foreign powers remains the city's primary goal, and some on the council, including its young Speaker and his brother, who captains the city militia, even seek an expansionist change in policy that would ultimately lead to clashes with the SPC out of Red Bay.
At the city center, bordered by the inner ring of canals, Bannikel's grand market marks one of the biggest points of convergence in the Sabo Jungles between the goods of the interior and those of the civilized world. Not just poorly crafted trade goods, jewelry, and cheap alcohol, the merchant goods that arrive in Bannikel entice traders from power centers typically outside of the easy reach of imperial trade consortiums, and in turn exchange these exotic goods for those of equal quality, eschewing the raw resource trade of Red Bay in favor of quality local craftsmanship. Watched over by scarlet-and-black-clad Mafenga guards, the markets outlaw all weapons within their bounds to ensure that the frequently heated haggling at the marketplace never erupts into violence - or at least nothing more than bruised flesh and wounded egos.