Downtime 05 ❖ May 22, 2020
Lan receives from Garviel a jar containing a living human hand, dripping with honey. The enchanted extremity is able to levitate and wield items with the strength of its erstwhile arm, and seems eager to escape. The young necromancer departs Rastingdrung to study it, and so passes out of this story and into another.
Rea spent several nights drinking and talking with one-armed Leander; he began to speak more of his time at the palace, of the caprice of the Chatelaine, and complain bitterly about the current captain of the guard, who he feels usurped his position in an unfair contest. He asks often after the Zyanese ivory he requested, and mentions speaking with a master craftsman about his plans for it.
| Rea gains Associate of Leander. |
Garviel meets with the blind armourer Crestefal. He runs his fingers over the shell, saying, "this creature died by sacrifice. The bone must be made to remember and resent the blade if it is to repel it; bring me a quart of blood from a place of sacrifice and I will temper it to a hardness that no blade may score."
Garviel, Caenn & Aeris, through intensive study of the book An Exquisite History of the Noble Fleischguild all acquire a reasonable grasp of the written Zyanese tongue, as well as some of the basics of the history of Zyan Above. The section of the book detailing the origins of the city is not very detailed and assumes some knowledge on the part of the reader, the work focusing primarily on the development of the guild over the years.
The white-haired Zyanese were once nomadic exiles, who fled their homeworld to the floating island of Wishery via a mysterious door, which they sealed and buried behind them in fear of an unrecorded threat they had left behind. The early years were hard, as they struggled to eke out an impoverished, lawless existence on the craggy rock, beset by harsh winds, dwelling in caves, prey to internecine raiding and the strange creatures of the deep caves and the jungle below.
This wretched state of affairs continued until they encountered and propitiated the Archons, who granted the people of Zyan strange many powers in return for service and sacrifice. The Archons craved worship, offerings, and agents in the great game they play against one another.
With the aid of Afatis, the Inquisitors Guild ended the lawlessness of Zyan; the Guides explored the depths of the island and the jungle beneath; and the Fleischguild, worshipping Vulgatis, Archon of Unseemly & Fecund Growth, in his aspect as Malprion, Lord of Organism, provided the archons with their required offerings and the formerly wretched people of Zyan with meat and medicine. Human sacrifice is mentioned but seems to have been rare in those times.
Together the guilds began building the city of Zyan, protecting themselves from the cruel winds behind ornate masks and within stone fortresses and arcades. The first stones of the Abattoir were laid at this time.
Zyan's fortunes waxed further with the advent of the Incandescent Kings, the first of whom forged or obtained a magnificent artifact known as the Metaphysical Crown. The coronation was a time of great hope and fear for the Zyanese; some unspecified threat, seemingly emanating from the crown itself, threatened to doom all they had accomplished to ruin; but the threat was vanquished, or did not materialise, and the Incandescent line ruled for centuries, and oversaw the expansion of Zyan, rearing towers and palaces above the city, and below, expanding into the undercity of Zyan Between, building the Catacombs of the Fleischguild and the Inquisitor's Theater, taming the white jungle and building in it magnificent haning pagodas and a fabulous summer palace, with fluted parapets and razor thin walkways. Within its walled garden, carefully tended groves grew heavy with luscious fruits and flowers so vivid that their image would be seared forever with a glance into the eyes of waking mortals. In the summer palace, the guests of the Incandescent Kings soaked in bathes of lapis-lazuli and emerald tiles, and reclined on velvet cushions while feasting from topaz tables heaped with succulent jungle fare.
The summer palace was also said to contain the greatest library of Wishery, in which could be found many fabulous and terrible works that have been lost to the waking worlds. It is said that here one might peruse the Grammary of the Void, describing four languages that were spoken before the creation of the world. Or, if one dared, one might learn the rituals contained in the Evocation of the Doomed City, through which one can enter different regions of that cursed city whose name may not be uttered, where sublime and perilous secrets may be gleaned.
The book documents with pride the Fleischguild's growing mastery of butchering the White Jungle beasts, speaking also of stranger creatures, ravenous beasts from the dreamlands of Mars or the Moon, and a thing recovered half-living from an alien battleground, a thing so intriguing and blasphemous it was sealed away in the catacombs, never to be studied by mortal eyes.
The book ends its history roughly 200 years ago, with the guild preparing for the great feast that accompanies the crowning of a new line of kings. There are dozens of subsequent pages, all left blank, though the first of them is dotted with small water stains, as though of tears.