It occurs to me that Donald and I have been doing quite a bit of work on Penelope Love's books (The Widow's Tale and Eurhol's Vale), and the WW-relevant bits haven't been made all that publically known. Has everyone here read the books? They're mainly concerned with the battle for a little pass over the Stormwalk mountains that is supposedly the last supply route to WW, bringing arms and armour from Prax.
As a quick start, she makes a few mentions of what WW looks like. This is, we believe, in 1619.
" Whitewall was built with five corners and a curtain wall."
" Now the Crimson Griffin was laying siege to Whitewall, but only a fool lays siege to Whitewall in blizzard season, when Kallyr Starbrow raises up such terrible storms that she very effectively lays siege to herself."
The Crimson Griffin is insane, and obsessed with Kallyr: take her thoughts on who rules WW with a large pinch of salt.
This is one of her underlings, a Lunar engineer:
" And Earth-Sapper loved Whitewall, because Whitewall did not fall. He loved Whitewall because Whitewall had five corners that were difficult to undermine and a curtain wall to shower arrows on the sappers. Whitewall had detected every mine he had driven beneath her walls, counter-mined, driven down stout posts and stifled fires. Whitewall sent storms to destroy the siege engines as the mammoths dragged them into range. So Earth-Sapper loved Whitewall with all his heart. But the Crimson Griffin had sworn a terrible oath to destroy Whitewall, to pull down her tall towers, to sow her earth with salt, and send Kallyr Starbrow to the fire and the hanging-stake. This oath the Crimson Griffin renewed on every holy day of the Crimson Goddess and every holy day of the Seven Mothers, one by one and all together. So the day Whitewall fell would be the worst day of Earth-Sapper’s life."
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