LOC:Marrakesh-The Silver City
Marrakesh-The Silver City
The Beacon in The Dark
"You come through the mountain pass and see it sitting in its valley and the place literally takes your breath away. Words like sublime and monumental start creeping into your vocabulary. You just cannot help it. Towers of crystal and silver, bridges of light, flying buttresses of stone, the place is a wonder to behold. You can tell just by looking at it, this isn't some chaotic mish-mash of styles and cultures and peoples. Not some mere aggregated mass of history and expediency; this is a place that was designed, created, conceived of in its entirety to be what it is. Thought went into it, design went into it, there is no element of the place that you can look at and accuse the architect of being derivative, of cribbing the work of someone else. It is an original creation in and of itself. Beings of every intelligent race in the Multiverse walk its streets; the Silver City attracts everyone.
The symbols of Primum and Entropy, Creation and Destruction, inform every atom of the place, you know that you walk the line between polar opposites here. I have never felt a more powerful location where semiotics was Reality. Every gesture is a metaphor, every step out of doors is symbolic, there are layers of syntactics and pragmatics to everyday life there that most of inhabitants never even realize. Life in the Silver City exists on the levels of Basic, Physical, Metaphorical, Profound, Symbolic, all the levels of Linguistic from Auditory-Verbal to Post-Nihilistic Non-Interactive, and several iterations of intent that I am still attempting to decipher. It is the work of a lifetime just to walk down the streets of The Silver City and attempt to understand all the myriad things that are happening around you..."
-Herr Professor Doktor Manfred Peter Verruckt,
Universitie Dinge Mann Warnicht Gemeint zu Wissen
147 AE
"Marrakesh? Yeah, I've been there, carped all up and down those streets, done The Tour, y'know? Nice place really. The whole burg is posh. Streets are clean, you can buy anything for a song-bullets to bandages, foods to die for, and the Birds, Phwoarr, they are a bit of all right, I am saying. Even the Peelers are polite. Mind you, the last thing you want to do is take a step to the side, if you know what I mean. Buggers are on your arse like a short overcoat, they are. And the last thing they will take for an answer is: 'Thank you, no.'
No matter what you need, go find the right bloke, he'll find a guy what knows a guy who can take you to a guy, and there you go: a handful of .455 Eley hollowpoints or Mary Magdalene's Last Rag. Just make sure you have the cash up front, hey?"
-Edwin Carter Chillingworth,
Agent Provocateur for Her Most Britannic Majesty Victoriana VII
2010
Also known as The City on The Hill, Marachek, Marakesh, Karnack or any number of variations on the name; this is the biggest and brightest of the Cities that still exist Left of Center. It lies many weeks travel East of The Crossroads. It sits at the bottom of a massive valley, surrounded by farmland which is in turn surrounded by mountains. It is just north of The Trading Road, on a well-traveled spur of road, built and maintained by the Silver City. A river runs through and, as if by design, around the impressive city. At capacity it could easily hold over a million people. It is built in concentric circles of mighty walls, four in all, ascending up a large hill or small mountain, much like Minas Tirith or the Platonic Ideal of an ancient city-state hill fortification. Smaller bastions dot the valley all around it.
The city is about half-empty, many of the impressive buildings are uninhabited. If Our Heroes felt out of place in Riverton they will feel unnoticed in The Silver City. Every time period that they can think of and many that they cannot are openly walking the streets of Marachek. Everything from cave-men to beings of Pure Thought are wandering around. Everything that they can imagine and many things that they cannot are for sale here.
Things of Note in The Silver City:
-The Silver City is ruled over by Lady Grey. Lady Grey is a Primum Mistress. Lady Grey is also Immortal. Lady Grey is also the most powerful being Our Heroes will encounter Left of Center, though they may not know it.
-Her Royal Guard and the Knights of St. Justinian use Primum
-Her military command, The Deaths Head (aka der Totemkopf) use Entropy.
-Believe it or not The City Guards are helpful, courteous, organized, efficient, and reasonably intelligent.
-Marrachek is utilizing any number of diverse Types of Reality to run its Utilities; so there is water, electricity, etc... all over the city. It does tend to vary in effect from street to street, though.
-Marachek is also the home of the Schola Sapientiae, a secular monastic order. The Schola is dedicated to preserving Knowledge and History in all its forms.