Architecture

Meridian is all about levels and stone. Everything, except for the half-timber is made of a blue or grey stone and most houses look like they were hewn directly from stone, their shapes being rough and erratic. We sometimes even see cave-like openings here and there. Houses are built on top of other houses or a solid and high rock base. This is what causes the town to have so many levels. Level building can also be found inside the (possible) old palace which uses galleries and stairs to create a multitude of levels to walk around in.

The city levels are connected through stairs and thin stone bridges we can see spreading everywhere across the city like webs. These are very unique for Meridian and cannot be found in Earthen architecture. Many of them connect the small towers of Meridian, each sitting atop a high cliff looking over the city. It remains a mystery of these towers are simply houses with a different shape or if they serve a more official or maybe even magical purpose.

Another epochal influence we can clearly make out is that of the renaissance, famous for its round roofs and domes, amplified use of columns, smoother walls and more elaborate ornaments. Finally, Meridian's columns are (most of the times) twisted, not straight. In Earthen history they can be best related to the Solomonic columns, which appeared in Rome around the 4th century (though supposedly dating a lot older than that) and later became popular in the baroque epoch, mid 16th century.

So while Meridian shows many influences from Earthen architecture, the city also shows its very own interpretation and variation of these along some new and unique ones which make the place so wondrous. 

Galhot seem very skilled when it comes to building caves or underground dwellings. The city Meridian is completely undermined with tunnels and caverns and passageways, halls with pretty columns and the more modern sewers. And under the Tower of Grendal, they built an entire city just to escape Phobos. In a few panels of Meridian we can even spot caves built into the rock holding a Metamooran house. If we then look at the picture on the left, we see the flying stone bridges and stairs that wind their ways up and down between buildings that are so characteristic for Metamoor.
But why do they have these skills? Why do they go underground when they could simply hide in the mountains or forests above ground? Is it pure coincidence that both the rebellion, the refugees and the people of the villages around the Tower of Grendal all decide to go underground in hiding instead of looking for something suitable above ground?

I looked up a few reasons, why living beings might go underground to live there.

• adding living space to an overpopulated area/city
• escape from hot climate
• provide safety during war or other crisis
• saving on environmental resources

Now if we check these for Metamoor, the living space makes sense for Meridian. It's a very populated city and takes up most of the planet. However the caves we get to see are either newer but then sewers, not meant for living, or older, more elaborate but unoccupied and worn down. Hot climate is non-existent on Metamoor so we can rule that one out and we don't know the state of any natural resources so we could only guess at the last one. Finally, the safety question we know is the reason for the city under the Tower of Grendal. If we look at Earth, underground cities are there, too but most are in hot climate or overpopulated cities while the rest are made for the dead. The perception of underground living is mostly negative, associated with catastrophic environmental events, hell, hard labour, lack of control through isolation from the rest of the world, etc. etc. So here's what I'm getting at:

The way I see it there are two reasons why these underground places were built:

1. Both were created to escape danger. The city under the Tower was to hide from Phobos whereas the one under Meridian might have been made for another crisis of similar proportion but which took place several hundreds of years earlier, leaving it empty for a time until the refugees from Phobos found them again.
2. (This is a far stretch:) The Galhot might have been used to being pray for generations, which left this instinct of going underground in the face of great danger stick. This theory is mostly based on the animal kingdom where underground tunnels are almost exclusively occupied by pray animals which seek shelter from bigger animals above ground or even in the air. We know that Metamoor has at least two big ferocious creatures - the Scuttler and the Sarvak - so a theory that they might have had even more of such big, aggressive beasts in the past that might no longer be around isn't terribly out of line. Still, there's no proof for this whatsoever, other than my personal feeling that its weird going underground, facing the trouble of building caves and housings and bridges over ages, risking cave ins, never seeing the sun and feeling secluded and alone from everybody else - I mean who chooses that over simply going for a secret spot in the forest or mountains first? It just seems... odd.

Whatever the reason for these underground places might be, it's possible there are more of them somewhere across the world. Maybe forgotten or sealed away or simply lying dormant. And whatever the reason, we know that the Galhot have some skill building these underground spaces and flying bridges and ceilings and working with stone. I mean... just look at it. I don't want to know how long it took to build all of that.