The City
(Beastlands Realm)
by Rasgon
The City is enormous. It fills an entire realm with buildings, roads, spires, sewers and walls. A Cager might feel at home here except for the unavoidable sense that the City is alive.
First, rodents, pigeons, ants and roaches infest the place like an exterminator's night terror. You can hardly swing a dead cat without a wild dog catching it in mid-air, only to have it stolen by other cats. Once you get used to it (and strangely, it is possible to get used to it), you notice that even the maggots beneath every cobble have a sleekness, a sort of wild beauty that makes them admirable, untamed. The City fills a body with the same exhiliartion the rest of the Beastlands does; a sense of oneness with the part of your soul that was never chained and humiliated by the artificial boundaries of civilized life. The freedom you always imagined a dolphin or a bird feels. It's just a very different variation on the universal theme. Then you have a chance to examine the walls and aquaducts more carefully, and you see the other reason why the City feels alive. Every rock, cobblestone and rusty drainpipe is made out of or intertwined with vegetation. Bricks sprout out of the musky earth like coral with tiny eyes peaking out at you, lamp-posts sprout leaves. The insides of buildings have growth rings like trees. In hidden alleyways and towering roosts live the Animal Lords of the city-dwelling wildlife. King Mouse and Emperor Pigeon. Baron Racoon and Princess Seagull. The Spiderczar. They rule their domains as wise philosophers, and their servants bow to them and chatter to each other in their secret tongues. Teh multiple (and somewhat randomly placed) gates to the City are open to all, but malefactors are rumored to be swallowed by the buildings themselves, and forced to live off the scraps the animals carelessly drop. A squadron from the last Modron March escaped only now, just in time to rejoin the present one. The City is also supposed to contain the secret treasures that the tiny rulers of households find and drag away. Wedding rings, silverware, and carriage keys are found in hidden caches, guarded by beetles and crows. Currently, the Lord of the Sewer-dwelling Crocodiles is at war with the Lord of Feral Pet Hamsters. Strangely, the Hamster Lord is winning. Some suspect she must have extraplanar aid. |