A veritable city-within-a-city, Nefalia's Bridge evokes the grandiose architecture of the Mannic peoples.
- excerpt from Wondrous Sights
Nafalia’s Bridge is a large bridge which spans from the edge of Meradarath to the closest point to the island-city on the coast of Yekare.
Nafalia's Bridge was constructed in the final decades of the Dark Age of Man, with construction beginning in IV 924 and ending in IV 983.
It is incredibly long, and wide enough to hold fifty elephants side-to-side. Nafalia's Bridge started as simply a bridge, but over time the urban sprawl of Meradarath grew to cover it. Today, it is a claustrophobic and densely populated labyrinth of shops, taverns, inns, apartments, temples, and ports. Tall towers of wood and stone haphazardly constructed over centuries cover the bridge, giving it a ramshackle appearance. However, the original parts of the bridge still maintain their rich engravings. Starting at the coast and moving towards the city, reliefs carved into the stone of the bridge during its construction chart the history of Meradarath from its founding to the construction of the Bridge.
One road, called the City Road, weaves a straight line through the Bridge from the coast to the city, and this is the main artery by which goods enter and exit the city by land. However, traffic on the City Road is known to be so dense that it may take days simply to traverse it. Despite this, thousands of merchants every day make the arduous and exhausting trek through the City Road to gain access to Meradarath's rich markets.
The bridge received its name from its chief legislative sponsor: Magister Nafalia Sulana. As Magister of the city, she prioritized the construction of the bridge as the face of a series of architectural improvements. Opponents of the policy derogatorily referred to it as "Nafalia's Bridge" in an attempt to sell it as a vanity project. However, despite this, the project remained popular and the name stuck for lack of a better one.
Magister Nafalia Sulana, chief sponsor of the bridge and its namesake