Maps/Unterzee
A hump of dark rock swathed in mist, like a hundred other Unterzee islands. But here's a grand house, windows aglow. Lawns, impossibly green and lush in the false-star light. Raked gravel paths. An unexpectedly warm breeze carries the faintest trace of lavender.
FALLEN LONDON! Deep. dark and marvellous. All voyages start here: and this is where successful voyages end.
Once, this simple fishing village was part of the London suburbs, before London fell and the waters rushed in. Smoke spirals from cottage chimneys. A lonely hill rises behind town.
The Canal ascends, through locks and gates and shadowed turns, to the sunlight of the Surface.
Factory-engines roar like false lions. Blood thunders in the dock-pipes. Crimson lightning skitters across the deck, leaps to the rail, coils there like a cat. The city is reflected in glassy-calm harbour water: the citizens there have the heads of dogs and serpents.
Hell has brought freedom to the Iron Republic: freedom from all laws, even those of nature.
A naval base, with the Royal Navy's emblems, curiously amended. Efficient, bright-eyed women and men work briskly. They are singing: hymns with unfamiliar words. Hard-faced Royal Marines bar entry to the Geode's heart. A plaque by the docks has been defaced with orange paint, 'STATION V (ADJUNCT)'.
HE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN T
Towers and ramps and galleries and stairs of ice, raised and spun like an architect's honey-dream. No spider ever wove so complex a web. The towers are utterly pristine, untouched by human life, but a pitiable encampment squats by the dock.
The Mourn is a stalagmite vast as a crag, and its foot has no safe harbours. The corsair's citadel nestles halfway up. An intricate system of winches takes the strain... and a ship rises slowly from the zee. Her hull creaks in protest. Grizzled zailors groan and cling to stanchions.
Higher, higher. The Unterzee shimmers like glass below. Children clambering in crevices cheer and wave alarmingly. The winch-motor slows, and it hangs in a cradle next to a red-bowed pirate cutter.
"You heard of the Pillared Sea, where Irem lies? Wise man from Irem came here, oh, eighty year ago. He planted three pillars. They were as big as fingers when I were young. Now they're as you see them. In my son's time, they'll be big as dock-cranes."
A black spit of an island, far from anywhere anyone would want to go. And that's how the Sisterhood likes it. Here stands their fortress-convent. There are bear-traps that look friendlier than this.
Machinery hums behind high steel walls. Up the hill, there are visible outlines of warehouses and a building with a spire. But the lamps are low where they burn at all, and your ship the only one in harbour.
Climb the fungal-fibre ladders to its summit. Shaggy, suspicious villagers scratch a living here, amidst endless clouds of spores and scurrying mobs of plant-animal hybrids. None of them ever leave. "Monsters," one explains darkly. "Zee full of monsters."
London's first Unterzee colony sweats under a blanket of southern heat. To the right of the dock, the sapphire-mines yawn. To the left, the Governor's house stands, prim as an Elderwick mansion. Behind lies the fungal jungle, ghostly in white and violet.
A deep, well-lit cavern, thick with a fungal smoke and cave moths. Far above, a lighthouse fire burns. The scent of it is curiously medicinal. It clouds your head and burns your lungs. Farther into the fog, you can make out laboured breathing.
There is no habitation in sight, no market, very little in the way of a maintained dock. A stretch of sand thickens into damp, black earth, from which sprout stunted... Palms? Not quite: tall fungal growths with frond-like caps, as if someone sculpted the idea of a tree from a mushroom.
Two basalt beasts, cathedral-sized. They frown eternally at each other across the black waves. The north one carries an encampment: creeping human figures eat away at its features like rot, pick-pick-picking. There's a supply dock below.
