Paguel

Paguel [pa-GOO-el] is a city at the southern end of Lake Anlutu in the Triminot region of central Ororr, about 200km south of Remel. Due to its position on marshy ground where the River Wiyel flows into the lake, the city has been flooded and even destroyed many times in its history.

Previous cities were erased by the shifting course of the river and the lake shore. In modern times, a system of relief canals, drainage and other flood defences protect the city from the worst damage, though floods still occur.

The city is sprawling with wooden buildings of one or two storeys, on piles driven deep into the soft earth. The waterside bristles with piers and docks, with many locals living on house-rafts anchored in the shallows. Fishing is a local staple since the lakes teem with greenfish. Paguel is bustling but not prosperous, a flourishing market for local traders and stopping point for travellers, but with nothing much to offer visitors other than mud and fish. In the declining years of Ancient Remel, around 1600 BME, Paguel was seized by the Kingdom of Seqal and held for nearly thirty years, held as a ransom against Remelese trade. With the downfall of Ancient Remel and the new kingdom of Garnarré-Remel, Paguel became fully absorbed into the new kingdom.

In the early Jade Epoch, Paguel was an independent Issid city-state. It was always the poor neighbour of Ancient Remel, and was soon came under Remel's control. The city was strategically important, since it guarded the southern reaches of Lake Anlutu, and controlled the river trade route up the River Wiyel.

According to legend, an ancient king of Paguel erected a grand palace of towers and obelisks, imported at ruinous cost, to demonstrate his wealth and greatness. As soon as the palace was finished, the towers began to totter in the soft mud, eventually toppling into ruin. Hence the Ororran saying, “like the Towers of Paguel”, meaning a grandiose and self-important scheme which is doomed to failure.

The story appears in the Analect of Just Works, the book of folkloreplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigFolklore

Folklore

This is in a series of articles about oral traditions, tales, folk practices, and folklore.

topics cult1 and moral tales well known to Ororrans.

The version traditionally told in Remel names the Satrap of Seqal as the foolish ruler, during the brief Seqali conquest of Paguel. This is likely just an expression of the rivalry between the two ancient powers, which still echoes into modern times.

In either case, no real archaeological evidence exists of such towers, though the tale is popular amongst tourists and pilgrims, who buy plaster models of the Towers of Paguel in their brief stop at the local docks.