Duskrun

There are cities born of vision, shaped by kings and councils. Some are born of conquest, others of gods. They rise and expand by design; such is the nature of settlement and settling. When it burns, memory rebuilds it, as is natural.

Not Varreth.

Or was it Duskrun? Which name came first? The old ones argue, and the younger ones don’t care. Many don’t call it anything; they just fall into it, never to return.

This city was built by necessity, rebuilt by desperation. And rebuilt again. And again. And again.

Welcome to Duskrun, for that’s how it is named in the most common way when it’s not derisively called Clatterspire.

You arrive not at the gates of a city, but beneath it. From below it looks like it fell from the sky and caught itself just in time. Others would say it got impaled on the six needle-like spires sprouting from the jungle. It is a city without a floor or a ceiling. A city built on the skeleton of older cities, older dreams.

Scaffolding holds up walkways, walkways harbor shacks, shacks grow into towers and the towers lean into each other like drunks, propping up what should not stand. It looks a little like some god tried to stack a bunch of settlements atop one another and gave up halfway through. It is, quite frankly, a mess.

Because the city isn’t one place. It is layers of iron and ambition, stacked so high the clouds forget where the ground used to be. Or the ground forgets what the sky looks like.

The Hollow

There is no sky above the crumbling platforms of the yawning pit that is the Hollow. No windows. Just the hiss of steam, the crackle of fire, and the moans of ill-repaired pulleys. This is where it’s said that the city began, what’s left of its underground foundations. It is a mess of a mesh of scaffolding, metal bars, wooden arches, stairs, and ladders. A place where people go to be forgotten, or get thrown into to be forgotten.

Entire neighborhoods dangle from chains, resting on iron beams held in place by forgotten magic. Bridges sag under their own weight but somehow still function, and structures pile on top of one another in defiance of gravity, sanity, and good taste.

Ropes and cables stretch like old veins, thick with arcane static you can feel in your teeth. Magic that’s been patched and repatched so many times it feels wrong. The air smells of damp earth, oil, and iron.

There’s no exit from the Hollow, if you don’t count the Climb or the Drop.

Topside

Go topside, and the world changes. Above the jungle the city becomes a wonder of impossible engineering and reckless ambition. Some parts are centuries old, others were built this morning.

The spires rise like needles from the swirling mist, and many of those who live there never go down to the cloaked jungles below. These spires are:

·      Chain Spire

·      Smokestack

·      Dark Spire

·      Heart Spire

·      Lower Fang

·      Wyrmstem

While each have its own identity, the architecture is common across all of them. They are interconnected by arching bridges and ropes. Gondolas and creaking lifts sway on taut cables and ropes in the ever-churning wind.

Up here, the view is stunning – if you’ve got the coin or the bloodline to afford it.

Topside is a marvel of ancient sorcery and patchwork engineering that’s truly remarkable. Marble halls rise from iron platforms, towers fuse from dozens of architectural styles and buildings cling to every available surface at odd angles bolted and braced, barely stable. Markets rise and fall with each storm. Walkways lead to everywhere and nowhere and stairs sometimes vanish mid-climb.

There is no map of the city that tells the true story, because that story changes almost every day. But that does not matter. The people adapt.

Duskrun is at once ancient and alarmingly new, a marvel of desperate ingenuity that looks as though a stiff wind might unravel it. And yet it endures. And it is absolutely alive. This is a city of second chances and final bets, regardless of whether you are a plank of wood or a person.

Culture

Every street and passageway is a song of accents, languages, and dialects, an intense riot of races and styles. The city does not care who you are, only who you’ll become. Will you join the elite above the clouds? Or fall through the spires into the hollow below with the other desperate?

Nobles layered in silk and armored coats mingle among merchants, mercenaries, outlaws, and mystics. Golems haul crates while children dodge through crowded thoroughfares, playing or running away. Hard to say which.

It is a city of invention and amnesia, of heights no one should reach and depths no one should dare to chart. It is beautiful, precarious, and alive. Ancient and constantly reborn. A place of wonders, of broken laws and forgotten truths. A place where the climb is everything and the fall is waiting.

Step lightly. Speak carefully. Trust no one without a second knife.