Tallhold

A tallhold (Phoenician: x, : x) is a large, multi-family communal settlement historically prevalent in Serica, designed to be easily defensible typically through fortification or use of natural obstacles, such as hills and mountains - thus the namesake of the structure. These structures are prototypically associated with the Phoenician people extant especially in south Serica, where they served as hubs of community life and activity in given localities. Given their centralized and defensible nature, tallholds generally served as the seats of Phoenician political aristocracy throughout much of its early history, the nerve centers of Phoenician civilization. Today, tallholds have largely faded from prevalence, superseded by the development of modern urbanized cities which outgrew their static fortifications.

The exact date of the tallhold's conception is indeterminable, archaeological evidence indicating that it has existed for as long as the need for defensible settlements existed in Proto-Serican civilization. The earliest tallholds were entirely natural, sedentary settlements which were constructed in defensible positions in mountains and caves - geographical features especially common in the valleys of the Fengquan River which cradled what would become the Phoenicians. Constructed settlements became more prevalent with the development of a cohesive political culture in Phoenician societies, as city-states were established around the shrines of the pyrolatric cults which informed Phoenician traditions and norms - it is from these city-states that Infernalism emerged, from the ennoblement of the city of Taosongya. The heavily fortified settlements recognizable today as tallholds would not emerge in full until the Horsemen Migrations of the 9th century BCE, when the nomadic migrated southwards into the South Serican Plain. Incentivized by the need for collective defense against constant raids by the tribal nomads, Phoenician communities consolidated evermore into clustered strongholds: every settlement eventually fortified themselves, from the rural villages with their simple s to the ennobled citadels with their high walls.

In the modern day, tallholds are a relic of the past, existing in Fengese media insofar as a reminder of a much more decentralized, dyscephalic past where the absolute ascendancy of the Infernalist faith had not yet been instated throughout the region. Nearly all of the oldest cities of Fengjiang, especially in the central Fengese heartlands, were originally tallholds, whose ancient fortifications have mostly been torn down to make space for the needs of industrialism and urbanization as Fengjiang entered modernity. Today, the great gees recognizable to the modern Pyrosphere as the beacons of the faith number among the only tallholds that have escaped dismantlement.