"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."[1]
"The first taught restraint..."[2]
The First City, known as the Crossroads Shaded By Cedars, was originally located in ancient Mesopotamia[3] and is estimated to date back to the third millennium BCE. The remnants of this city live on in Polythreme; ruins and artifacts of the First City can also be found in the Hinterlands, notably under the Magistracy of the Evenlode.
The First Fall
"The sudden sunlight is dazzling, prompting you to step into the shade of the trees nearby. Here the air is sweet and cool; the cedar sap is heady and light. Down the path are a number of small, grey-brick homes. Children in curious garb squeal with joy, workers shout – in an unfamiliar language, but the tone is cheerful. This is a place of industrious contentment."[4]
Before its Fall, the First City thrived as a major commercial hub in Mesopotamia,[5] flourishing through trade with its allies,[6] and growing its influence enough that it even established contact with ancient China. It welcomed merchants from afar, one of whom was the man who would become the King with a Hundred Hearts; he was a Chinese merchant whose caravan met disaster, forcing him to seek refuge in "a mud brick town."[7] He received an audience with the settlement's priest-king,[8] who soon fell in love with him, and they began a relationship.[9]
Some time later, the merchant fell gravely ill and was near death.[10] In desperation, the priest-king accepted the aid of Mr Cups and Mr Candles, two of the Masters of the Bazaar, who offered to save his lover's life in exchange for the city.[11] The Masters upheld their end of the bargain, but in the process, the merchant was transformed into the clay King of Polythreme rather than remaining merely a man. The priest-king's city was claimed by the Echo Bazaar and transported to the Neath, and became the first of the Fallen Cities.[12]
An astronomer warned the city's populace before its Fall, having foreseen its impending doom, and many of its citizens fled.[13] She was imprisoned for this deed,[14] then handed over to the custody of Mr Apples, who ensured she would suffer further.[15]
Culture
"Debts take many forms. Debts of honour. Of money, obviously. Blood. And then there are the debts of greater and more terrible natures. And a debt – no matter how great, no matter how terrible – must be repaid in full."[16]
The First City’s written language was cuneiform, but after its Fall, its script evolved and became distinct from its Surface counterpart.[17] Laws and oaths held great significance,[18] with many of the City’s legal edicts surviving through the ages.[19]
The First City was also known as "the Crossroads Shaded by Cedars,"[20] and its towering cedar trees were an object of worship; it was believed that the cedar-spirit enforced oaths sworn beneath its branches,[21][22] and the tree's sap was used as a sacred seal.[23] In a legal practice called the Cedar-Trial, disputing parties clasped hands before a cedar tree, allowing its spirit to arbitrate.[24] Justice in the First City was not merely law, but an extension of the natural and divine order, and a method of survival for its people.[25]
The city was also home to a prominent Eye Temple,[26] where its priest-king ruled[27] and conducted esoteric rituals.[28] In addition to the cedar-spirit, the people of the First City worshipped an omniscient female deity.[29] Given its age, the First City has gradually become the subject of a number of outlandish rumors, making it a rather difficult task to glean the truth about it.[30][31]
First City Coins
"One side bears what might be a cedar tree. You've never met anyone who can read the script on the other side."[32]
Coins attributed to the First City, though widely dismissed as modern forgeries, hold significance in the Marvellous as substitutes for "fragments of a primal power."[33] They are traditionally exchanged in sets of thirty, the number of silver coins Judas was paid for betraying Jesus.[34]
All First City coins bear an image of a cedar tree on one side. The reverse varies: some display an undeciphered script encircling a profile of a face, others depict the Bazaar itself, and a few show a pair of demonic eyes.[35] Coins have surfaced as far away as Port Carnelian, hinting at an ancient trade network that extended even to the Elder Continent.[36]
Survivors
There are a few confirmed living survivors of the fall of the First City:
- The Manager of the Royal Bethlehem Hotel, who was once its priest-king.[37]
- Polythreme's King with a Hundred Hearts, the lover of the Manager and once a merchant from China.[38] The merchant was dying of "fits," so the Manager brokered a deal with the Masters of the Bazaar to save his life. They accomplished the task by shoving a large jewel from the Mountain of Light into his chest, creating his current form.
- The Capering Relicker, a priest in the Eye Temple, the Manager’s uncle,[39] and the first to brew Hesperidean Cider.
- The Surgeon's Child is from the First City, though it remains unclear whether she is still alive. She was the surgeon responsible for lobotomizing the Bazaar, removing its urge to deliver messages.
- The Yearning Custodian, who was born in the First City and initiated the Marvellous in the Third. He now resides in the Root of Need in Parabola, and is the Keeper of the Marvellous and chronicler of its history and rulings.
- The Sleeping Merchant, who facilitated an ill-made deal between the Bazaar and the Creditor.
- The Lacreous Astronomer, who warned the citizens of the First City to flee before its Fall.
Historical Inspirations
There are two primary candidates for the identity of the First City.
The Sumerian city of Uruk held great prominence in Mesopotamian history, and holds enduring fame thanks to the survival of the Epic of Gilgamesh. While there are differences in the details, what we know of the story of the Manager and the King with a Hundred Hearts generally parallels the Epic; if the connection is valid, then the Manager is Gilgamesh, and the King with a Hundred Hearts is Enkidu. This would also mean the Capering Relicker is probably Utnapishtim, Gilgamesh's immortal uncle, who counsels him in several means of obtaining immortality for himself. In the Epic, Enkidu was made out of clay by the goddess Aruru,[40] but in Fallen London he was a Chinese merchant who was eventually transformed into the progenitor of the Clay Men. Additionally, the King and the Manager have an explicitly romantic relationship in Fallen London, whereas this is not made clear in (at least the extant text of) the Epic.
Other players have suggested that the First City was Tell Brak (later known as Nagar), an ancient settlement in modern-day Syria that was known as an important trade center throughout its history. This theory is primarily supported by the existence of a "temple of eyes" in the First City.[27][41] The real-life Eye Temple famously held thousands of figurines, which all feature a pair of eyes; some of these figurines were supposedly embedded into the mortar between its mud bricks.[42]
References
- ↑ Sidebar Snippet: What was the First City?, Fallen London
- ↑ Bask in the light, Fallen London
- ↑ Crouching in a low stone building, Fallen London "[...] the land between the Caspian and Mediterranean seas [...]"
- ↑ The Season of Ruins, Fallen London
- ↑ Transform this dream with vistas of the First City, Fallen London "At your command, roads cross the jungle, radiating from a central place. Once, the glory of the First City was that it was connected to everywhere else. [...]"
- ↑ Transform this dream with vistas of the First City, Fallen London "We had done something wrong; we were cut off from our sister cities, which were bound to us by treaty and the source of our wealth. What else was there to do but make the journey?"
- ↑ Looking in the garden, Fallen London "You see a group of travellers in the dress of ancient China, haggling for water at a desert spring. A few more steps and the same group are laughing and eating fruit in an orchard. A few steps more, and one of that group, wounded and desperate, looks down a road at a mud brick town next to a cedar grove. Hot, dusty plains stretch to the horizon."
- ↑ Looking in the garden, Fallen London "More steps down the path. A priest-king receives the traveller, in a temple painted with eyes. The priest-king's court are amazed at the traveller, and especially impressed by his silk clothes."
- ↑ Looking in the garden, Fallen London "More steps. The priest-king's court feasts in the open air, under cedar trees. The priest-king and the traveller are seated together, laughing and kissing."
- ↑ Looking in the garden, Fallen London "The traveller writhes and twitches on a stone slab, in some kind of fit. He looks wretchedly thin and haggard. A short step from death. The priest-king weeps over him."
- ↑ Looking in the garden, Fallen London "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...""
- ↑ Meeting the King, Fallen London "[...] The Masters took a diamond from the great glowing mountain in the South and gave it to me for a heart. They made me like this."
- ↑ Inheritance, Fallen London "Astral clouds are billowing over the desert. The heavens are churning. You hurry back to the city and warn people that a calamity is coming. Many leave. The king summons you. Thinking he wants your help to evacuate, you go willingly. You are wrong. He has sold the city, and its people were part of the price. You have put the deal in jeopardy."
- ↑ Inheritance, Fallen London "So dark is your prison that at first, you do not realise you are underground. One night, the king visits you. He exchanged the city for his lover's life, but something went wrong. Perhaps if there had been no exodus, his lover would not be – as he is."
- ↑ Inheritance, Fallen London "The king gives you to a cloaked figure and asks it to make you feel his grief. The creature promises to prolong your torment. It knows about such things. The creature grinds a mountain into you and drowns you in memory-snow until you are filled with the sadness of the whole city. You never see the king again."
- ↑ Press for a harsh sentence, Fallen London
- ↑ The Edicts of the First City, Fallen London "The writing […] is First City cuneiform; the early variety, before their writing truly began to diverge from Surface examples. […] Proper translation will take some time; but the few word stems you recognize suggest that it concerns the repayment of debts."
- ↑ Expand your understanding of oaths and boundaries, Fallen London "[...] You know a little, now, of how that was done. Of how those enforced truths still resonate in the Neath; of the treaties and boundaries they make manifest. But you also understand how the first laws in the dark were almost immediately succeeded by the very first crimes."
- ↑ Provide cover to a Chilly Legal Scholar, Fallen London "[...] He hands you […] a tablet of fired clay, covered in First City writing. Edicts and pronouncements, written as law […] one line catches your eye: ONE DAY YOU WILL MAKE US WHOLE."
- ↑ Sidebar Snippets: What was the First City?, Fallen London "Only two things are known to remain of the First City: the name, the Crossroads Shaded By Cedars [...]"
- ↑ The Way West, Fallen London "In the first of all cities, the Cedar was witness of oaths."
- ↑ Ask about the Cedar, Fallen London "A spirit that came down with the First City," says the Creditor's Solicitor. "Or the double of a spirit that has always lived here." You press her for more, but she shrugs. "It creates the framework for an agreement, and the authority for its enforcement. But it is not itself either law or oath."
- ↑ Sap of the Cedar at the Crossroads, Fallen London "Sticky and indelible. It binds together treaties and poisons oath-breakers." "Merchants treasure this stuff. A guarantee of word and bond."
- ↑ Invoke sacred methods of enforcing an oath, Fallen London "The sapling that grows in the courtyard shall serve to find the balance of the participants' oaths. [...] the verdict will not be the judge's. Both parties are induced to clasp hands before the tree. Each thinks this method will benefit them most of all."
- ↑ Expand your understanding of oaths and boundaries, Fallen London "[...] The oaths those first inhabitants would have made. The truths they spoke into being as a matter of daily survival. The world they had to invent to remain alive, and remain human. [...]"
- ↑ Recertify a double-armful of scraps, Fallen London "I saw the Fall. I raised my jar as the eye temple fell. And they've looked for me ever since. Want me to brew more. They'd flip their cloaks if they knew I was here, under their snouts."
- ↑ 27.0 27.1 Interview the Manager of the Royal Bethlehem, Fallen London "He used to be a king, ruling from a temple made of eyes"
- ↑ My Kingdom for a Pig, Fallen London "Eyes in the temple walls. They watch. Carved irises and eyelids and pupils dilated, chiseled to observe the rites the priest-king works upon the stone altar. They will never stop watching. Never. They are always open. They are painted, and plated with radiant bronze. The walls are wrong. The walls are always wrong."
- ↑ Inheritance, Fallen London "[...] Ahead, you can just make out a stone idol with giant eyes. It returns your stare. "She sees everything," [...]"
- ↑ Ancient stories, Fallen London "[...] They say that the First City was made of shining alabaster and bone held together by belief. [...]"
- ↑ Discuss your scraps with the Salty Fabulist, Fallen London "That one leads to an atoll. On the atoll lives a priest of the First City, who challenges all comers to tell him a true lie. If you can't, you have to stay on the rock with him."
- ↑ First City Coin, Fallen London
- ↑ A lovely place for a lecture, Fallen London "[...] Have you heard of the First City Coins? [...] They're not from the First City itself, of course. The actual coins are no more than thirty years old. But they represent something ancient. Fragments of a primal power, locked away in the Masters' vaults since the deal that bought the First City. [...]"
- ↑ Give them to someone else, Fallen London "Traditionally, one gives these coins thirty at a time..."
- ↑ Examine First City Coins, Fallen London "While all First City coins have a tree on one side, the inscriptions on the other side vary. On a few examples, the undeciphered script circles around a face in profile, or an image of the Bazaar, or a pair of eyes that one can't help but suppose belong to a Devil."
- ↑ Examine First City Coins, Fallen London "First City coins have been found as far afield as Port Carnelian, suggesting that commerce between the Falling Cities and the Elder Continent is ancient. Did they trade with the Presbyterate? A precursor state? Something else entirely?"
- ↑ Looking in the garden, Fallen London "The priest-king wears white linen, and many layers of shining copper and brass jewellery. He is unmistakably the Manager of the Royal Bethlehem Hotel."
- ↑ Looking in the garden, Fallen London
- ↑ Hand over a roomful of scraps for a Coruscating Soul, Fallen London
- ↑ The Epic of Gilgamesh, Uruk-Warka "'Let him be equal to [Gilgamesh's] stormy heart, let them be a match for each other so that Uruk may find peace!' [...] Aruru washed her hands, she pinched off some clay, and threw it into the wilderness. In the wildness(?) she created valiant Enkidu[...]"
- ↑ Looking for the manager, Fallen London "I received him in the temple of eyes"
- ↑ Tell Brak Head, Wikipedia "The temple [...] was named for the hundreds of small alabaster eye idol figurines, which were incorporated into the mortar with which the mud-brick temple was constructed." [Editor's note: this claim from the Wikipedia page is not cited or sourced.]
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