Kairsan

Kairsan is a town in western Ofalna Province, most famous for being the birthplace and later residence of the famed Risevani poet Hirdan Gersenga. As of 2045 it has a population of 27,951.

Geography

Kairsan occupies a small, forested mountain valley near the coast of Enibase Bay, and follows the shape of the valley northeast to southwest; the older districts of the city are more inland, while the lands to the southwest which used to be for agricultural purposes have been expanded into since the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Fame

The town is most famed as having housed Gersenga at many points during his life; born and raised there, he left the town for the city of Isana at age 20; 24 years later, at the age of 44 and after his retirement from the Risevan Assembly, he returned to the town where he would live out the rest of his years in a house a short distance away. The poet wrote most of his poetic works in Isana, but turned instead to essays upon returning to Kairsan; for this the scenery around Kairsan is sometimes called "the most described land of Risevne", given the content of the essays which largely focused on the natural beauty of the region.

Many memorials to the writer exist, including the three houses he had lived in as well as his grave in a nearby temple; Gersenga's residence on the outskirts of the city, where he spent the last three decades of his life, is presently home to the Gersenga Museum. At the same time, the Gersenga Institute is a research institute meant to promote knowledge of, and research into, the works of Gersenga as well as his contemporaries. The international fame of the writer means that the town is not just a local but an international attraction, though strict laws controlling new construction and land use has managed to keep the town much as it was in the early 19th century when the last round of major constructions occurred.