Excerpts
Rumors speak of a city by the waters, a grand shining beacon of civilization. A maze of streets and buildings, built into one another and atop, as though assembled by some crazed godling tossing buildings like a child might toss wooden blocks. Yet this gives away to a gigantic open air market, ringed about by permanent shop; rare cargoes from about the Known World can be purchased here, for those with the coin to spend; indeed, more than one merchant caravan has turned an outrageous fortune switching cargoes for the rare and exotic goods purportedly found there. In this place, too, a grand library is said to reside, with books of fantastic knowledge and rare scholarship. As one heads past the grand market, one approaches the swell of the great hill upon which an ancient castle is perched; about the castle and taking up much of the surrounding countryside, a series of estates speak plainly of those fortunate wealthy who reside here. The city has its own satellites; a smaller section, isolated by a stretch of countryside that would take about an hour to cross on foot, brings one to a district where guilds and barristers hold sway - at the far end is a place of opulent temples, great stone structures built by the best craftsmen money, faith and prestige could buy.
Yet many mysteries shroud this grand metropolis, this city of cities, this beacon of memory. Perhaps the first is its location, for those travelers who have claimed to walk its streets have claimed to encounter it in many divers places. Though all agree that it was along a shoreline, and most agree that it was athwart the line of land and sea, the reports, which are otherwise remarkably similar to one another, have placed this mystifying metropolis in several places all far removed from one another upon the map of the known world. Perched upon the spindleward peninsula that juts into Lake Tenebrae one time, emerging from the drylands as they approach the northern seas another. Yet a third time, in the depths of Gingurdash Swamp. It has purportedly been found in a number of places up and down the western shorelines, and at least once it straddled an island in such a way that the waters flowed between the main portion of the city and the guild districts.
Another regards the temples of the district, for it seems the gods to whom they are built are not always the same; by most accounts the gods are all accounted for, but in those that make much detail of their visits, the actual locations are in conflict; one account places the temple of Moradin in the centre hub; another marks the dwarven creator as being located in one of the peripheral temples along the horseshoe. A third insists the dwarven creator-god only occupied a small shrine in a hall set aside for the use of non-human visitors to the city. Less reliable reports speak of strange, unknown gods - not heretical ones, like the black spider, nor infernal ones like the silver-tongued devil - simply gods that they did not recognize.
How does a city roam from place to place, leaving no sign of its passage. Perhaps as important, why does the city roam; why does it not ever … take root.
Yet many mysteries shroud this grand metropolis, this city of cities, this beacon of memory. Perhaps the first is its location, for those travelers who have claimed to walk its streets have claimed to encounter it in many divers places. Though all agree that it was along a shoreline, and most agree that it was athwart the line of land and sea, the reports, which are otherwise remarkably similar to one another, have placed this mystifying metropolis in several places all far removed from one another upon the map of the known world. Perched upon the spindleward peninsula that juts into Lake Tenebrae one time, emerging from the drylands as they approach the northern seas another. Yet a third time, in the depths of Gingurdash Swamp. It has purportedly been found in a number of places up and down the western shorelines, and at least once it straddled an island in such a way that the waters flowed between the main portion of the city and the guild districts.
Another regards the temples of the district, for it seems the gods to whom they are built are not always the same; by most accounts the gods are all accounted for, but in those that make much detail of their visits, the actual locations are in conflict; one account places the temple of Moradin in the centre hub; another marks the dwarven creator as being located in one of the peripheral temples along the horseshoe. A third insists the dwarven creator-god only occupied a small shrine in a hall set aside for the use of non-human visitors to the city. Less reliable reports speak of strange, unknown gods - not heretical ones, like the black spider, nor infernal ones like the silver-tongued devil - simply gods that they did not recognize.
How does a city roam from place to place, leaving no sign of its passage. Perhaps as important, why does the city roam; why does it not ever … take root.