Port Cecil
"Rumpled convolutions of coral fill the water, glimmering with silvery light. The harder you look, the more you see shapes amid the chaos, almost as if they were sculpted. This one could be a crenellated castle: that one, a horse's head.
A neat little port huddles into the side of a coral island - prosaic Imperial docks and houses tucked away in a baroque organic chaos. In that curious silvery light, among the frozen chaos of coral, the scene has the unreal air of a pencil sketch, crumpled and discarded."
Port Cecil is a town on the largest island in a coral reef in the eastern Unterzee. Its main export is scintillack (glowing coral). Its inhabitants are strangely fond of chess; it seems that because of this they hallucinate that the pieces (which are sharp and often blood-soaked) have their own agendas. Well, those may not be hallucinations, as the chess matches the inhabitants play mirror the power struggles of the Neath, between the Lorn-Flukes, the Bazaar, Mt. Nomad, and the gods of the Zee, among others.
Underneath the port, there is another chess-loving power, an incomplete one called the Principles of Coral, waited on by Rubbery Men. It was a former Lorn-Fluke, and it wishes to descend the Great Chain of Being (it actually wants to become less important, which is rather interesting). Its goal is to fall to the bottom of the Great Chain, and become nothing more than a collection of rocks. To do this, it has spent a long time transforming itself into Principals of Coral. As in the entire island. Now it just needs a few more items...
