The Fallen Cities

"There are some things we were not meant to know, they say. But you wouldn't be down here if you took that seriously." Beyond this point lie spoilers for Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies, or Mask of the Rose. This may include midgame or minor Fate-locked content. Proceed with caution. You can find out more about our spoiler policy here.

"There were four cities before London. One day you may know all their secrets."

London is not the only city to have been brought down to the Neath. Four other cities came before it, all traded to the Bazaar for their own various reasons. Very few wish to consider the possibility of any coming after.

Traces of these former cities can be found throughout London. The Fourth City is the most present by far, as a remnant stands just outside the city: the Forgotten Quarter. London is also in frequent contact and rivalry with the Khanate, the floating city-state established by Fourth City refugees on the Unterzee.

What Does It Take For a City to Fall?

"Two figures step into the chamber, hunched and garbed in many-petalled black cloaks. Masters of the Bazaar. One carries a clay cup, the other an unlit candle. The one with the cup says, 'I think we can be of service to each other. Allow me to propose an exchange...'"

When an existing Fallen City held by the Echo Bazaar reaches a period of instability or rebellion, the Masters deliberate to determine their next candidates. Each city might have a specific quality or collection of objects that at least one Master covets. At least one of the Masters travels to the Surface to broker a deal with a city's rulers, offering a solution to a problem (sometimes a manufactured one) and typically using love as a motivation for a ruler to accept. Curiously, the interval between Fallen Cities has grown shorter over time; according to developer commentary, London and the cities after it might not even endure a full century under the Bazaar’s dominion.

After the signing of a transaction, the city's elite are usually given a brief window to prepare the citizenry, though under urgent conditions the Fall may happen immediately.^{[citation needed]} The Stone Pigs reduce the previous Fallen City to rubble, and drown the remains in lacre, killing nearly all its inhabitants. Meanwhile on the Surface, a swarm of bats darkens the sky, and the freshly sold city is transported into the Neath. The new city literally falls atop the old one after the tide of lacre drains; it is then subjugated by the Bazaar, and business carries on as usual. The repeated occurrence of this process has created an archaeological stratification in the area around the Bazaar, pushing the ruins of old Fallen Cities deeper into the earth, and allowing direct descent through the layers in certain locations.

In extraordinary cases, and in part thanks to the very impermanent nature of death in the Neath, certain individuals from previous Fallen Cities may survive long after the obliteration of their original city. The majority of these people now reside in the Tomb-Colonies, owing to their great age. Anybody who could survive that long and still remain a part of Fifth City life is either incredibly wily, powerful, or simply useful.

The First City, ca. 27th century BCE

First City coins.

"Only two things are known to remain of the First City: the name, the Crossroads Shaded By Cedars, and the saying: even the First City was young when Babylon fell." "The first taught restraint..."

The First City, known as the Crossroads Shaded By Cedars, was located in ancient Mesopotamia. Its ruler, desperate to save his dying lover, struck a bargain with the Masters: the lover’s life in exchange for the city. The Masters fulfilled their end by embedding a sherd of the Mountain of Light into the lover’s chest, transforming him into the living island of Polythreme. Though preserved, he was horrified by what he had become, and in his anguish, turned against the priest-king who had doomed him. An astronomer, having foreseen the Fall, warned the people, prompting many to flee before the city's descent. Blaming her for disrupting the deal and the lover's transformation, the ruler imprisoned her in a lightless dungeon, then handed her over to the custody of Mr Apples, who ensured she would suffer further. Among the few known survivors are the ruler himself, now the Manager of the Royal Bethlehem Hotel, and the transformed lover, now Polythreme’s King with a Hundred Hearts.

The Second City, circa 1335 BCE

Relics from the Second City.

"Never mention the Second City to the Masters of the Bazaar. Mr Wines will look at you narrowly and give you its worst vintage. Mr Cups will fly into a rage. Mr Veils will harangue you for your discourtesy. Mr Iron will say nothing, only write down your name with its left hand." "...and the second betrayed..."

The Second City was located in ancient Egypt. The Duchess, then a younger daughter of the Pharaoh, was formally betrothed to him by royal decree, yet her heart belonged to a humble scribe. In secret desire to escape her imposed betrothal and join her lover, she dispatched a cobra to poison the Pharaoh. Almost immediately, remorse overtook her, and she sought to undo her crime by bargaining with the Bazaar: she would surrender her entire city in exchange for her father’s life. The Second was the longest-lived of the Fallen Cities, enduring two millennia and four hundred years in the dark. Such longevity was no mere chance: in the early days following the city's descent into the Neath, the Masters were deceived by the Pharaoh’s Daughters and imprisoned within the House of Feathers. Trapped there for centuries, the Masters, once they managed to break free, harbored an undying hatred for all things Egyptian. Remnants of the city live on in Visage and Arbor; the Salt Lions hail from the city as well. Survivors of the Second City include the Duchess and most of her sisters, as well as the Cantigaster.

The Third City, 9th-10th century CE

A statue from the Third City.

"No-one talks much about the cities that preceded London. The Third City seems to have been acquired a thousand years ago. It had five wells, they say. And the weather was better." "...The third taught us hunger..."

The Third City was Mayan; there is some debate as to its identity. The priest-kings of the city were already aware of the Masters and their bargains, and offered the flesh of a god as a bargaining price. The Masters accepted in desperation, rattled by the catastrophe of the Second City, and chose Mr Candles as their sacrifice. Mr Veils led a scheme to trick Candles into believing that only a small portion of his flesh would be taken, but in truth he was ambushed and devoured alive by the priest-kings. His mangled remains were discarded into one of the Bazaar’s lacre wells. From that moment, what was left of him became Mr Eaten, a being of vengeance and madness haunting the Neath. As for the Priest-Kings, they ascended the Chain and became the God-Eaters.

The majority of the Tomb-Colonies are built upon Third City architecture and mythology. There are a handful of living survivors of the Fall of the Third City, including the First Curator, and, of course, the God-Eaters themselves.

The Fourth City, 1254 CE

A relic from the Fourth City.

"Who carves horse-head amulets out of bone? Whoever lived in the Fourth City. If all the Fourth City amulets on sale are real, they must really have liked horses." "...the fourth we remade..."

The Fourth City has been well-studied, and many of its survivors are known to London - for instance, the Gracious Widow. It was the capital of the Mongol Empire, and fell just over six hundred years before London. The romantic entanglement between Princess Cheren, the Khan’s favored daughter, and William of Paris, a captive sculptor, as well as the fraught relationship between Cheren and her father, drew the interest of the Masters. Mr Wines was dispatched to initiate negotiations for the eventual purchase of Karakorum. An invasion by the Khan’s relatives from Cathay (China), provided a timely opportunity. Mr Wines sought to use this conflict to pressure the Khan into selling the city. The siege soon turned against the defenders; grievously wounded and desperate to save his city and his daughter, the Great Khan accepted the Bazaar’s offer. As a result, both Karakorum and its besiegers were drawn into the Neath. Unlike the rulers of other fallen cities, the Khan did not survive to witness the outcome. He succumbed to his wounds shortly after signing the deal. While physical remnants exist in London's Forgotten Quarter, its true legacy continues in the Khanate.

The Fifth City, 1862 CE

"The city around the Bazaar is called the Fifth City because, they say, it's not the first the Bazaar chose as a home. You can still turn up bricks from the older cities, now and then. Look: here's one marked with an eye." "...The fifth will live on in the heart of the Sun..."

The Fifth City became the home of the Bazaar just over forty years ago. There are numerous living survivors of the Fall of London. When the Prince Consort fell ill with typhoid and died in 1861, Queen Victoria was shattered. Her overwhelming grief drew the attention of the Masters, who offered to preserve him in exchange for everything she owned, including London. Victoria agreed. Parliament was informed but chose to keep silent, fearing unrest. On February 14, 1862, the Masters returned and took the city into the Neath, crushing the ruins of the Fourth City beneath it. It is widely known that the Empress arranged the Fall to save her beloved Prince Consort. The Consort seems rather wan, however, and something else has already befallen the rest of the royal family...

The Sixth City, and the Seventh?

"The Masters have always been fond of Paris." "...and the sixth..."

Who knows what the Sixth City will be? There are rumors that the Masters might buy Paris - after all, Paris is the City of Love. As for the Seventh City, there are similar whispers of Moscow, when "the Comet" - Halley's, perhaps - passes in the 21st century. But these are mere speculations, and time is known to be treacherous; it could just as well be Berlin in the 1980s.

Real-Life Inspirations

There are a variety of known examples of “tells:" the archaeological term for a settlement built directly atop the ruins of its predecessors. Rather than excavate down to bedrock, when rebuilding a city destroyed by war or disaster, inhabitants leveled the gaps between ruined structures with earth, rubble, and other means of landfill. Over centuries, this cycle of construction, destruction, and leveling produces a vertical “layer cake” in which every horizon corresponds to a distinct era of occupation. The sites of Uruk and Babylon have had dozens of occupation layers revealed by archaeologists, constituting at least 4500 years of settlement, and at least five distinct urban periods during the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE have been identified at Tell Brak in northeastern Syria. One particular ziggurat in Babylon was destroyed and rebuilt so many times that its ruins now lie meters beneath later streets!

Many tells formed because the original site of a city offered enduring advantages, even after a catastrophic collapse. For instance, Jericho was built around a perennial spring in an otherwise arid region, and has been the site of dozens of successive communities - from late Stone Age hunter-gatherers circa 10,000 BCE, to the present day. Much of the time, however, building a new city on top of the old one simply made practical sense. River flooding, like the cyclical flooding of the Nile or the Euphrates, deposited sediment over ruins that provided a stable surface to build on after the waters receded. When wind-blown dust and leaf litter gradually buried an abandoned area, new construction could simply begin atop it. Lastly, not only was it labor-intensive to clear away the whole of a ruined wall rather than reusing the materials, but some locations simply provided too much religious or cultural significance to be abandoned; in fact, medieval European churches were often built to incorporate the remains of an earlier basilica or Roman temple.

Tells, at least conceptually, are not exclusive to the Middle East. The Roman city of Londinium was founded over a Celtic settlement on marshy ground. After the Roman evacuation, the Anglo-Saxon Lundenwic sat nearby, and eventually grew enough to reuse Roman roads and walls. As medieval, Georgian, and Victorian London expanded, new streets and buildings rose over layers of Roman timber wharves, medieval clay, and more recent foundations. Today's engineers are constantly navigating this patchwork of buried history to build subway tunnels and upgrade sewers.