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| Source: Rastislav Kubovic |
CALIDUM
It’s warm enough here to make one sweat without armor, just the way the deep-dwellers like it. It feels like being in a barn attic in a hot summer, and smells about as pleasant. They pipe magma up from the depths in big stone tubes that radiate heat like an oven. Touch one get second degree burns. People stay well away. Slaves often don't have a choice.
Rarely are so many people squeezed into so narrow and hot a place so callously. There's always the sound of someone screaming, near or far, like cicadas in the distant wood or right inside your bedroom. The Grand Flesh Markets hide the suffering and ecstasy in fractal spaces of honeycombs upon honeycombs, down to the most remote of small places that can be a mere foot-leap away.
A primarily mercantile district, in which many of the Lesser Houses with their new money build their estates. A single giant hole to the sky in which all air is vented upwards gives the impression of all the space and freedom in the world. For good and ill, it gives people hope.
The Temple of Beauty
The acolytes and priestesses of the Temple of Beauty are unmistakable, for in their devotion they seek to emulate the "interminable Form of the gods". This study irreparably warps their flesh. Their eyes are far bigger than the outliers of their species, sometimes two or three times as large: big soft wet orbs with expressive depth, sometimes over the line of the uncanny. Their bodies plunge towards voluptuousness, towards softness and roundness like paleolithic fertility goddesses. Eyes bigger, bodies rounder, it all cumulates at the totality of the eye and the sphere, where Beauty is beheld. To the foreigner this transformation can seem horrific.
The Temple is a pillared dome, like the Pantheon. A single aperture in the ceiling welcomes in the light of the sun and the moon captured by a mirror array on its peak. Acolytes and servants busy themselves in serving the study of beautiful forms and debating what makes them so. Side chapels host mirrors, nearly all subtly warped and curved to accentuate certain parts - and as one sees reality eventually becomes.
Its greatest treasure, Beauty, painted by the divine artist Acerion during the reign of the second Spider Queen Amantia, lies in such a side chapel, guarded by a network of acolytes and priestesses and finally The Eye Tyrant Azrith'rir - the epitome of the temple's philosophy. The journey to it, though, can be severely disorienting. As the flesh of the acolytes warps the deeper one goes, so too does the space. The hallways seem to bend against gravity. Rooms seem too large or small to pass through. There are too many mirrors, too many watching eyes. Then eyes within eyes within eyes...
The acolytes and priestesses of the Temple of Beauty are highly desired, not just for their spherical appearance (which the drow find irresistible) but for their blessed countenance. It is believed that the mere proximity of this beauty grants favorable divine disposition in all matters: business, pleasure, and war.
C1: Two Wine-Stained Youths
Statues depicting two sons in merriment, each clasping a tipping cup. Stale wine soaks their feet and the chalices of many beseechers litter the ground. The shrine is always tended by two drunk brothers, and when they can no longer stand they are replaced by two others. It's a fanciful life for a beggar-acolyte, to live on offerings of wine and more wine.
The story goes that these two brewed the first venom-wine: fermented mushrooms mixed with honeywasp venom. It made them drunk-high for a week, and gave offered gods such a buzz that they forgot their obligations to their nations. Three patron gods of archery, justice, and masonry nursed hangovers while their cities were sacked.
The Baelic Bathes
House Bael, Lessers of great wealth from moneylending, offer the most scalding and chilling of baths in the entire city. For those who really enjoy their hot baths to be literally scalding, or cold as ice. Frequented by athletes preparing their bodies for the Baelathon - yearly games of strength and endurance of which the primary contests are climbing, swimming, and exposure.
Snow is brought down from Galea and magma pumped up from Tenebris to offer baths both literally boiling and ice cold. For the most extreme of customers, they even offer magma rooms and pools of near-frozen mercury, liquid at much lower temperatures than water.
The Kordelian Arena
Paid for by the graces of wealthy House Kordelia. Sometimes called "The Black". It is a vertical amphitheater of 180 degrees: patrons can watch through holes in the ceiling, standing above and sneering down at the fights below. It's customary to toss down fine drink and food to victors.
Judicial fights are most prominent in this arena: prisoners being executed for religious crimes, being fed to monsters or carved up by rude gladiators. Avadia di la Kordelia is the Master of Ceremonies and Executor of the Law. She is every bit as bloody and theatric as her reputation precedes. Overseeing these proceedings is the Idol of Ikord-Victory, who is as eager as anyone to see good contest.
Sometimes the Arena will host unusual exhibition fights, particularly on religious festivals: tunnel fighting, with the floor replaced by glass and an ant colony dug underneath; orcish aquathon, underwater wrestling with the arena flooded; demon baiting, as dangerous as it sounds.
Stepmonger's Guild
The grand guild house of vertical porters, elevator operators, roofers, ladder lenders, and stair guards. Resembles a tower a princess might be imprisoned in, but a bit broader and grander. The stairs ascending to the building begin level with the rest of the district, and climb ten stories high near straight up, so that the guild can keep a watch on its monopoly of height. A monopoly minded by force: use anything even resembling the a ladder, without the guild's permission, and you'll be visited by ladder-breaking thugs when you sleep. Easier to just pay the guild its fee or give up your dreams of ascension.
Services, from most expensive to least expensive, also from highest guild rank to lowest:
- Elevator: The guild operates an elevator that goes from Mountain Temple to Calidum. It is essentially a big loading elevator, managed by the Castle Priests of House Ronove, who wear boxy shoulderpads and pray to the ropes. Typically used to move expensive, fragile goods or religious idols during holidays.
- Stair Guards: intimidating enough to hold a portal and demand money. Usually there's no charge for going down stairs, only up.
- Roofers: fixing roofs, floors, and cables. Requires good balance and solid training.
- Ladder Lenders: they rent ladder usage and do thuggery on unsanctioned ladders, or anything approaching an unsanctioned ladder.
- Vertical Porters: they carry heavy things up and down stairs, and are trained on perilous stairs like mountain mules. Most guild members are this. Considered the dregs of the guild, and often get hazed or bullied by more senior members.
Hilla de Ronove is guildmaster: a Lesser of great power and influence, whose House god is Ronald the Castle. A statue-shrine to his smiling self dominates the guild hall. (If you're picturing a ten foot statue of Ronald McDonald, you're not far off.) Hilla is a greedy and capricious woman: rotund but incredibly fit (she does climb stairs and ladders basically all day), surrounded by hefty bodyguards, richly dressed. She spends much of her time playing the Greater Houses against each other so that she can maintain her House's dominance. Otherwise, she realizes, they would all gang up against her.
Barber
Cleanliness and hairlessness are important to social standing in November. And "To get the smoothest cut you will need a good barber from Choom and Daughters." There are no finer body scrapings in November! They will get those pesky, shameful hairs, from crown to darkest reaches, and at very affordable prices. Advertised frequently, particularly in the neighboring baths.
Choom is a kobold, and has the patronage of House Kaisar, whose god is a sharp knife - a favorable match for any barber, no doubt. Manumitted a kobold generation ago, Choom dreams of sending her daughters, now citizens, into the military for plunder, glory, and advancement. She's quite optimistic for the future, having just bought some tall steady-standing skeletons to reach high places for her.
Gods' Glories Gladitor Family
The preeminent gladiatorial school in November, funded by House Kordelia and run by Invincible Andrus - a man said to have ate the flesh of dragons and acquired their strength. He has that kind of dragonborn look to him, for certain. He has never lost a match against man or beast, but he is starting to get on in years, so he's been freed and retired to gladiatorial instruction. His saying goes: "If you're going to die, die well." One day, in his mind, he'll live up to this code.
Kordelia is most famous for hosting games of exotic monster fighting, and often buys creatures from foreign hunters and traders at exorbitant fees for this purpose. As such, the Gods' Glories train to fight them, but also to serve as loyal bodyguards for the matron and her family. Nobody wants to fight a gladiator in the streets, much less a Glory monster hunter who can wrestles beasts that eat man.
That said, their reputation and fearsome appearance is largely what keeps them dominant. Few are willing to test themselves against the best the House of Victory has to offer, and that means they're more bark than bite when fighting against people.
Breadmaker
Grains are a novel food to the Novans. A diet of sunless crops like protean algae and bitter mushroom wine make bread taste sweet as cupcake. It's cheap enough now that the common folk can afford it, and they can't get enough of it. It's always in demand. The breadmaker Harember always runs out of the big round cracked loafs. Broad-shouldered, square chin, stocky like his Ember ancestors and highly tolerant of heat - this man is like a Hercules of breadmakers. He's got no time. Always busy. Shrine to Lera, god of spawn and erection out front. Makes sense - doesn't bread also rise, like mushrooms and penises? This is how bakers get the reputation for fecundity.
Cloud District
Moisture catches and lingers on the inside rim of the caldera, where the Cloud District apartments snake up the inside walls of the mountain like veins from the aeorta of the city. A great many people live here along the narrow and treacherous stairs. They quickly become used to climbing or else they become used to falling. There are no guardrails, and some paths seem more for mountain goats than man. It's not uncommon to hear of someone 'unfortunately plummeting', particularly if they crossed the Stepmongers.
To prevent this fate, many stairs in the Cloud District have little shrines to Orienio on the first step, depicting a hooved god of the mountains holding a curved staff like a shepherd's hook. Prayers can help find sure-footing and decisive action when needed.
C2: The Owl-Headed Man
Expressions can be tricky to read on a bird's face, but luckily the horned owl always expresses the contempt it feels. Man from the neck down, owl from the neck up. He holds scales in the right hand and collects offerings in the left. People leave him bloody hearts.
He is the patron god of the Measurers Guild, and they do not speak his name for fear of catching his judging eyes. Petitioners make offerings when they have an important decision to make: hefty business transactions, coupling proposals, joining the army. The Owl-Headed Man offers wisdom and augury. The Measurer's Guild, however, are a corrupt bunch. Sometimes by trickery they tip the scales one way or the other, and they take bribes to influence results.
The Practical Market
In the forum before the Owl-Headed Man lies The Practical Market, where the Measurer's Guild does their business. Upon the many divine scales are people judged and weighed against the seemingly impossible standards established by the Guild. What is the measure of a man? At the Practical Market they would know.
On any given day between one hundred and five thousand enslaved people, cattle, and creatures make their way through the bureaucracy of the Practical Market. The masters of the Measurers Guild know them all to terrifying detail. How do you measure a slaves loyalty? A bodyguard's courage? A chattel's hope? They know: by fanatically-guarded standards and systems of 'new numbers' have they reduced life to their scales.
Yet still there is corruption: Measurers are often bribed to the pleasure of buyer and seller and sometimes even the measured. Hints, perhaps, of cracks in the system. One might think that absolute knowledge of the measure of man would withhold their cynicism, but to the contrary it seems to flourish. Perhaps the measures are not as foolproof as is claimed...
The Living Pits
It's as awful as it sounds: anywhere from one to ten thousand living enslaved peoples and livestock kept in pits or stone cages. Disease is common, as is cruelty, callousness, and indifference. The more successful November's military campaigns are, the worse it gets.
The guards and overseers are all privately managed, with stipends paid for either by the Measurer's Guild or their employing Houses. The only one who feasibly keeps them in check is the Priestess Glomia di la Vassago, who has religious authority to chastise both overseer and slave under the invocations of foreign law-giving gods, but it concerned more with 'right behavior' and a smoothness of proceedings, rather than kindness. Still, the imprisoned people look up to her for protection, as they have no-one else.
In the darkest corners of the Pits, people whisper with spiders and dream of vengeance against their masters. The outlawed Cult of Poisons lives on in unbroken chain from slave to slave, teaching conspiratorial secrets: how to make the poison, how to administer it, and how not to get caught. They listen and forget the recipes, to remember them in dreams later on, becoming sleepers for the whispered outlaw goddess. It is as the Priestesses would fear: the forsaken matron-god of the dead monarchy lives on, fostering betrayal and the righteous consumption of noble flesh.
The Dead Pits
It's hard to imagine a place worse than the Living Pits, but here it is: where the flesh of the matronless dead becomes bound in servitude until their bodies grind to dust. Chilled by corridors bored through the mountain wall, the Dead Pits are a feast for the enterprising necromancer. Dead beggars, debtors, unclaimed foreigners, and the dead enslaved are brought here. Anyone who would have been buried without honors or acclaim ten generations ago are now fodder for the machine of civilization, to be resurrected and put to work by their previous owners or the state.
The necromancers are tireless. There aren't quite enough of them to keep up with inventory, so they inhale vapors prepared down in Tenebris to keep them alert and potent in magic. Some haven't slept in months, and it shows on their faces: they call it 'death mask'. Principle among the accountants of the risen dead is Tulia di Fingol-Mar, of the House of Worms. She ensures that the Worm God gets their due: innards and organs taken from zombies and skeletons to-be, fed to the worms for their god's necromantic blessing. It's an economic necromantic engine: bodies get blessings to make zombies, to acquire more bodies to get more blessings.
The job of collecting bodies for the Dead Pits is so horrid, disrespected, and dangerous than only the most dishonored of undead do it. These Drudges are November's lowest of the low, and are forbidden from most places in the city.
Cloth Dealer
Cloth dealing is a cutthroat business. The best and most profitable silks are low in supply, and loyalty is an alien concept to the spiders of Tenebris. Those who mean to outbid Glasya di Bael will need to contend with her hired muscle in the Pickhand Family. She pays them partially in discounts on expensive silks, making them the best-dressed gangsters in the city.
Cloth and color are at the heart of class. It is easy to masquerade as your betters, provided your can buy or steal the proper wardrobe. Bolts of cloth, enough to weave an outfit, in terms of cost relative to the earnings of the average shroom farmer:
One Month's Work: Myzal. Spun torn fibers from structural mushroom varieties by the teeth of Tenebri harvesters. Cold when it's cold, and hot when it's hot. The poor man's cloth. Often better to wear nothing at all, save for the shame of nakedness.
Two Month's Work: Downy Wool. The birdherd's prospect. Keeps one warm in the mountains, but itchy and somewhat smelly. Painfully insulating in the hot mountain deep. Popular among working class in Fumo.
One Years Work: Catcher Silk. Spun from the webs of Catcher Spiders in the deep. Lightly sticky, but very comfortable. Common adornment for well-to-do peoples of all stripes.
Hundred Years Work: Widow Silk. Bought with flesh and curated spider-mates. Produced in the deepest darkest of pits by the grand Widows of the deep. The mainstay of the patrician class, further made costly by expensive dyes. Feels like a second skin, and is as strong as chainmail.
Ten-Thousand Years Work: Royal Silk. Made by the descendants of the ignominious Spider Goddess, of which all but two known remain. To wear this is to declare yourself royalty or god. Worn only during triumphs by those who have accomplished Invocatio - the theft of a god. Said to grant utter invulnerability, and feels like the warm embrace of the divine.
Public Granary
Public grain for public use, as determined by the Priestesses of the Temple of November. Most often it's contracted to bakers to make bread for public games. Sometimes surplus is given to the legions. You would be surprised how dangerous it is: for guarding the grain is a hypoxic labyrinth to which only the Priestesses are privy.
In the early days of the city, grain theft was common. Criminals were common, yes, but also fiery things from the wild volcano below. A combustible spirit loves nothing more than setting alight wheat. It's practically they're favorite thing to burn! And so in those early days the houseless stonecutter Hanon constructed a defense: the hypoxic labyrinth.
The storerooms are guarded by winding passageways, chokepoints, and hypoxic sumps. Perhaps fire could creep into a cell here or there and snatch some grain, but all of them? Unlikely. Difficult for thieves, too, since there are traps and false ends and confusing motifs to strangle a wizened adventurer. Every so often tale will be told of a grain thief become lost and buried in 'heavy air'. Their corpses are put on public display to dissuade other thieves. Evidently, it doesn't always work.
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