The Gant Pole
The leathery carcasses of hollowed-out beasts line the ventricles of this stone heart. Ancient blubber bubbles up around paths of bone and hide that squelch with every step. A distant drip carves eternity into hours.[1]
The Gant Pole is a gigantic calcified heart, and a place where the creatures of The Unterzee go to die.[2]
The Corridors of The Heart
The Pole possesses a powerful attractive force that calls out to any old being that nears the end of their life: from the largest of behemoths[3] to the simple humans.[4] The Pole's pull extends beyond The Neath and can even attract people from The Surface.[5]
The humans that followed the call of the heart tend to congregate at it's very centre, inside a big pool of Gant.[6] The only time when these old zailors leave the pool is when they come to feed on the Zee-Beasts that have just arrived at The Pole.[7] While all of the pool's zailors are old, some of them are truly ancient, even dating back to The First City.[8]
Elbow Deep in the Nearly Dead
A notable exception to The Pole's usual inhabitants is a group of haruspices, who divinate answers to questions from the last moments of the dying Zee-Beasts, and are led by an old woman called The Fading Haruspex.[9] The woman herself hails from The Third City, although she had been living in Whither for many years before being exiled from the city for breaking it's laws to spare a child's tears. Now her only desire lies in finding an answer to a fabled Question that can only be answered with truth.[10]
Disarmed and dismembered
A zub known as The Irrepressible patrols near the Gant Pole. Renowned as the most feared vessel in the Unterzee, it fires Irrigo ammunition, and it resembles a beast more so than any sort of ship.[11][12] Its captain is the Pianolist, an exceptionally dangerous individual with a penchant for Vivaldi. He is the leader of the Set, a group of mad artists who roam the zee. The Pianolist seems to relish poetic irony, especially when betrayal is involved.[13]
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IT TORE OUT THE HEART. THE SHAME REMAINED
"Over time, their correspondence calmed the monarch, and when the time came for the monarch to depart, the monarch's appetite was transformed, like blood into tears."[14]
The giant stone heart once belonged to an enourmous Shame, a defilement of The Great Chain,[15] born from an union between two different links,[16] one of them imbuing the Shame with the light of a star.[17] The Gant Pole was created when the Shame fell in love with a Travelling Sun. While The Traveller's hunger was soothed by his contact with her,[18] his naked need couldn't be truly erased, and he eventually travelled towards the farthest East.[19] The Shame was heartbroken by this, and so she tore out her own heart.[20] The heart sunk beneath the zee-waves and started emitting sadness and melancholy, which was mistaken by the lower beings as a sense of peace that could confort them while near their deaths.[21]
References
- ↑ Gant Pole, Sunless Sea
- ↑ Where the Zee Goes to Die, Sunless Sea
- ↑ You heard the Glory's story, Sunless Sea
- ↑ The Old Zailors, Sunless Sea
- ↑ Bring Recent News to the Old Zailors, Sunless Sea
- ↑ The Gant Chamber, Sunless Sea
- ↑ Attempt to speak with the Old Zailors, Sunless Sea
- ↑ Share your secrets, Sunless Sea
- ↑ The Fading Haruspex, Sunless Sea
- ↑ Ask what she seeks down here, Sunless Sea
- ↑ You have defeated the Irrepressible!, Sunless Sea
- ↑ Attempt to detach the Irrigo-cannon, Sunless Sea
- ↑ A Zubmarine surfaces!, Sunless Sea
- ↑ Fumble in the darkness, Sunless Sea
- ↑ Leviathan, Fallen London "The heart once belonged to a Shame(...)A creature that should not be. A defilement of the Great Chain."
- ↑ Go ashore with the Adventuress, Sunless Sea
- ↑ Take a sample of Gant from the pool, Sunless Sea
- ↑ Fumble in the darkness, Sunless Sea
- ↑ Fumble in the darkness, Sunless Sea
- ↑ Leviathan, Fallen London "It was spurned by its beloved and tore out its own heart"
- ↑ Leviathan, Fallen London "Now the heart emits sadness, and beings at the end of their lives mistake it for peace"
