The Second City

"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.

"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."

"Certain of the Masters of the Bazaar - Mr Stones, Mr Apples and Mr Wines, and possibly others - seem to have a particular contempt for Egypt and the Egyptological. Perhaps they're simply reacting to the fashion for the Pharaonic that overcame London before the Descent. But it's unusual that they should care."

"...and the second betrayed..."

The Second City was originally located in ancient Egypt. Its remnants live on in Visage and Arbor, and have more recently resurfaced throughout London. The Salt Lions are also a relic of this city.

The Second Fall

"He will open his mouth to the stars. He will scream until his voice is gone, until his lungs are filled with blood, until the void between the stars opens between his teeth. And his daughters will bow, and his priests and attendants will pray, and the horizon will part like a sleeper's eyelids at sunrise."

As the First City neared the end of its unnatural lifespan, the Masters of the Bazaar turned their gaze elsewhere. The Pharaoh of a great desert civilization knew of the Bazaar and made overtures to it, possibly to sell his city to the Messenger in exchange for a way to ascend the Great Chain of Being. But whatever the Pharaoh had planned was undone by his own daughter.

The Duchess, one of the younger daughters of the Pharaoh, was betrothed to him according to royal custom, but her heart belonged to a humble scribe. To escape her fate and join her lover, she dispatched a cobra to poison her father. Almost immediately after the deed was done, remorse overtook her, and she sought to undo her crime by bargaining with the Echo Bazaar: she would surrender her entire city in exchange for her father’s life. The Masters' methods kept him alive, but transformed him into the venom-oozing monster known as the Cantigaster. He was reportedly coherent enough early on to speak to his subjects, but it may be that his daughters were impersonating their father to hide his condition.

Once the freshly sold Second City was drawn down into the Neath, the Masters declared themselves Pharaohs and ruled in the erstwhile Pharaoh’s place. Not to be outfoxed, however, the princesses hatched a plan to deceive the Masters and remove them from the equation. They invited the Masters to a funeral procession, which led to a temple called the House of the Feather. The Masters were led inside by the eldest sister - or perhaps the funeral was hers, and her being dead was part of the plan. Regardless, the Poisoned Priestess sacrificed herself to trap the Masters inside the House of the Feather for over two thousand years, making the Second City the longest-lived of the Fallen Cities.

Left to their own devices, the sisters sought a way to protect their people from the Bazaar’s lingering influence, and allow them to flee in the event that the Masters broke free. They turned to Parabola, the land behind mirrors. Parabola had previously been dimly lit, but the princesses commissioned an artisan of the Neathbow, later known as the Mistress of the Skies, to craft an artificial sun called the Skin of the Sun. The precise details of the Parabolan sun's construction are unclear, but there were ushabtiu involved in the undertaking, and it appears that the project involved modifying the egg of a great Fingerking in its shell, resulting in it hatching into an object made of glass. The object was then molded and raised by the people of the Second City. The newly-born sun scorched the Parabolan landscape and melted the colors of the sky itself. providing warmth and light for agriculture, pottery, and the growing of wheat in the Neath’s lightless depths.

Encouraged, the sisters proceeded to begin work on the Palace of the Rising, a place where the citizens of the Second could dwell in sunlight once more - but eventually the House of the Feather "was opened," and the Masters escaped. The sisters were forced to flee, leaving the project unfinished. The Masters quickly made a deal with the ravenous priest-kings of their next Fallen City and betrayed one of their own, allowing him to be devoured by the power-hungry mortals. In an additional blow to the princesses' plans, the bodies of the Second City's people had been preserved inside ushabtiu to allow their minds to wander indefinitely in Parabola, but the surge of lacre when the city neared its end annihilated most of the citizens' physical bodies alongside the rest of the Second City; the few who survived were changed irrevocably. The ushabtiu that remain are able to retain their memories while sealed, but when opened, their memories vanish, and they become confused and filled with resentment.

Aftermath

"We were a royal house then. We played those black-cloaked vultures for fools, so we did. Beat them at their own game and pulled the nose of the Bazaar. And they never forgave us. Kept the youngest sister hostage while the rest of us ran for it."

After their release, the Masters hunted the sisters. Most evaded them, scattering across the Neath and beyond. The Duchess, however, was captured and held hostage (she may have acted as bait after drawing lots with her sisters). The Masters' imprisonment was traumatic, and a mere reminder of the Second City is enough to send them into a rage. The field of Egyptology is suppressed, and Second City artifacts are practically illegal.

Four of the Duchess's five sisters still live yet. The eldest sister sacrificed her life to ensure the success of the family's plan, but still remains as the undead Poisoned Priestess. The second is the Obstinate Adoratrice, who is intent on finishing her older sister's work in building the Palace of the Rising in Parabola. The third sister is the Mother Superior of Abbey Rock. While some sources have the Duchess as the youngest sister, there are accounts (including that of the Obstinate Adoratrice herself) where the youngest perished on the Surface, making the Duchess the fourth of the six. The fifth became the first Roseate Queen of Arbor.

Culture

"You remember dim streets lit by nooked lamps. Drifts of sand fringed the square houses. Even all these years after the Fall, there was still sand. ... Statues stood on every corner, crested with head-dresses. A black river murmured past the Beloved's Palace. At the heart of the city, between the Bureau of Correspondence and the Temple of Judgement, the Bazaar's spires climbed into the gloom."

The Second City was renowned for its mastery of toxicology, a field in which it excelled thanks to its access to exotic and now-extinct creatures. Among these, none were more sacred than the crocodile. These creatures were bred by the priesthood to be albino, adorned with elaborate jewelry, and venerated as divine symbols. One such creature, the Yolk-in-Yearning, a crocodile possessed by a Fingerking while still in its egg, served as the City's key to opening a path into Parabola.

As with all the Fallen Cities, the Second engaged in diplomacy with the other powers of the Neath. Though the extent of its success remains uncertain, it is clear that the Presbyterate harbored a lasting contempt for it. Spiritually, the Second retained deep ties to its surface heritage: before the Fall, its people worshipped a solar deity known as the Aten, and this continued despite the lack of sunlight in the Neath.

Linguistically and culturally, the Second City evolved in strange directions. Its hieroglyphic writing began to diverge from Surface conventions, increasingly shaped by the influences of the Correspondence. While barley and beer remained staples of their agriculture, the Second also experimented with fungal fermentation, developing alcoholic brews from mushrooms, uniquely adapted to their new subterranean home. The City had a developed irrigation system, and rumor has it that they created this by diverting the waters of Hell.

Historical Inspirations

While some neocartographers in London speculate in favor of Alexandria, there is abundant proof that the Second City was instead the Eighteenth Dynasty city of Amarna, briefly the capital of ancient Egypt under Akhenaten. Amarna was constructed around 1346 BCE, in a previously uninhabited area on the banks of the Nile. Its creation was inseparable from the religious vision of Akhenaten, who broke with the powerful cult of Amun and elevated the Aten, the sun disk, as the supreme deity. This monotheistic or henotheistic shift (scholars debate the degree) was radical, and the move away from the old capital of Thebes to the new city of Amarna constituted both a physical and symbolic break from tradition.

The city’s layout centered around open-air temples designed for solar worship, with a direct axis aligned to the sun. It was built rapidly, reflecting the urgency of the king’s religious mission. Key structures included the Great Aten Temple, the royal palace, and a series of elite residences and administrative buildings. Hundreds of clay tablets in Akkadian (the diplomatic lingua franca), called the Amarna letters, were discovered at a “Bureau of Correspondence” in the city. Interestingly, the Amarna Period also had its own art style, much more realistic and grounded (even when portraying royalty) than the rigid formality of Egyptian artwork before it.

Amarna, however, was not built on strong political foundations. Akhenaten's religious reforms were highly divisive and lost him many powerful allies within Egyptian society; Egypt's foreign influence also waned during his reign. Akhenaten's beloved capital was quickly abandoned and dismantled after his death (ca. 1336 BCE), as his successors, including the famous young pharaoh Tutankhamun, quickly restored the old religion and moved the capital back to Thebes. Akhenaten's name was later erased from monuments, and his reign was condemned as heresy.