Orphaunt, the City of Colors

Of Orphaunt, the City of Tombs

This is a tale told to me by a traveler from that fabled city, and perhaps it is but the ravings of a madman, or if not a madman than one who did not truly know all the ways of their own city. I suspect the latter, as the man I met was, while clever and loud and sure of his abilities, somewhat sheltered in the ways of the world and was utterly at my mercy in a game of thirty-cards, losing both his hecta and his serving creature. When he and I parted ways, he was crossing the cold desert, to continue to "seek his fortune" in ill-favored Swordhaven. I hope I have seen the last of him, for if I see him again I may chastise him for failing to mention that this serving zombie was without kneecaps and can barely lift its own weight.

In any case, I am told that if one travels perhaps two weeks southward from the Realm of Irongate, one finds that the sere and pock marked landscape has given way to a warm and pleasant massing of flower-scented and tree-covered hills. Continuing, somehow avoiding the terrible bird-creatures that rest in burrows to waylay the weary traveller, and the still-leaking fonts of radium-tainted piping which dot the hillsides, the lucky and hardy finds that these tree-covered hills hide a sheltered valley. Within this sheltered valley sleeps the tiered city of Orphaunt, City of Colors, or City of Tombs.

Oh! Orphaunt! When one is amongst the clean streets and the warm breezes of that city, I am told the visitor can revel in the treats for all senses of that place. The eye moves from shade to hue, mosaic and tile and bas relief, the many colors and patterns of the clothing of those bipeds who choose to wear it, the flesh-paint and tattoos of those who do not. The smells of the foodstuffs of a dozen lands, brought together hedonistically in a frenzy of spice. The sounds of the hawkers and the musicians and the high pitched drone of the wires which ring the place and keep far the aforementioned carrion birds. Yes, the city both hustles and bustles. It must be said that the people of Orphaunt are each overloud, and joyful, and self-aggrandizing enough for a dozen, for a visitor might nearly miss the fact that many of the peoples going about their shuffled business do so silently, or that indeed these selfsame people are quite dead, for the dead greatly outnumber the living in Orphaunt. SThe visitor might then note that beneath the city's sussurus of living cries that the city rings with the deep and rhythmic sounds of endless, deep toil, for the city is but the painted and garish plaster sealing the tombs and catacombs and lost sepulchres of the dead of centuries.

Into the heart of the land the grave-roads of Orphaunt wind and burrow. There the dead sleep in tombs befitting their station in life, closer to the surface, in opulence for those who lived in luxury, deep in black and forgotten wells half-submerged in the oily water of centuries. In manufactory and mill and forge the dead toil for the living to dwell in luxury, but the primary use of the dead is to return from the depths with the colorful fluids which travel in secret rivers and seep poisonously beneath the earth. These chemistral leavings are refined for use as dyes and mordants in cloth, dissolved in alchemical wonders, refined for use in radium-powered machina. And, of course, they are used as sorcerous components to infuse dead servants with beneficial traits. Thus do the zombie laborers of Orphaunt hasten their own obsolescence through their ceaseless and terrible work.

But, again, to the living. To dwell alive in Orphaunt is to ceaselessly strive to prove that one is clever, or quick, or strong of arm, and so worthy of becoming a servant in life. The living serve, and when their master dies, the master is reanimated and so becomes tireless aid for the former servant. The wealthy purchase the use of the long-dead, and the House of the Farago becomes ever more powerful. Those who can find no master, or no servant, are less than the dead in Orphaunt, and perform the meanest of labor, doing such odious tasks as might destroy a creature of deathless flesh. Let us speak no more of such unpleasantries. Surely, most find one to serve in the household, or are served. (How it can be that the living serve the living, and not all have dead who serve them, was unclear to me.)

The House of the Farago, the traveler might wonder? Why, it is the school within which the necromancers of the city of Orphaunt are educated, and where the masters of that house wear the seven-striped stole of office.. Those youths who show promise are tested, and there are taught the ways of the eldritch machines and macabre intonations that aid in the city's production of the primary exports, colorful dyes and deathless laborers. There they learn the calculations of the Foresight Hedrons. There they learn the Four and Twenty Ways to Repair the Device, and the Three and Five and Seven Ways to Mend Flesh. Masters of the Art are well respected in Orphaunt, or might go forth into the world to find their fortune as petty kings and servants of the great ones, such as is rumored to be the origin of Tristamere of the Helenskoi.

Or so this greatness is meant to be. Of course, not all who are chosen for the House of the Farago are perfectly suited for a life of knowledge, power and wealth. No, some students might reach the age of adulthood, or more, still unable to master even the basic spells which turn the prospective necromancer from a puppet master using tricks and animative puissance to a true lord of the undying capable of maintaining a single vessel of dead flesh through the generations. Perhaps such a student might be utterly unable to leave basic machinery alone, and perhaps a student might have caused a flood of the dining hall with a terrible vapor which left all within it a most unpleasant shade of cerulean. Perhaps such a student might find themselves summarily graduated and elevated to the august rank of Necromancer, given a shoulder bag, some hekta, a zombie of middling ability, and the admonition to never, ever, ever return to Orphaunt.

Perhaps such a person would find their way toward Swordhaven in the fullness of time.