Flute Street

From The Fifth City Wiki

"Flute Street, the home of the Rubbery Men. It's a cavern. Nothing like the size of the Neath, but still huge. There's light here. A hazy golden glow, like the bottom of a honey sea, of uncertain source. You brush past delicate floating motes, the seeds of coral dandelions."[1]

Underneath London lies the ancient Rubbery city of Flute Street.

A Refuge for Axiles[edit | edit source]

"The Rubbery Men one sees in London are the most human of their kind. There are others. Ones who have more legs, or are twice the size of a man. They walk, crawl or slither past you. Some shy away, especially the human-like ones in London clothing."[1]

Here, the Rubbery Men are able to practice their Shapeling Arts in peace - amassing large quantities of amber, molding bodies into strange and esoteric figures,[2] and communing with the Flukes.[3] The Flukes here control the Rubbery Men of London,[4] sending them out into the city to gather Vital Essences.[5][6] The Rubbery Men are frustrated by this task, since many human Londoners greet them with stones instead of words, but they continue to dutifully serve their mission and would not think of rebellion.[7]

The Flukes are fascinated with human life and innovation, and see people as extremely lucky to be able to experience simple things like breathing, fire, and music.[8] As such, the Rubberies have built Shapeling laboratories,[2] where they aim to create the best human facsimile possible so that their masters can learn about humans more effectively.[9] However, the Flukes fundamentally cannot comprehend the challenges that the Rubberies face, at least in their current form, and they are quite exasperated with their minions[10] and the state of Flute Street.[11]

While the great majority of Flute Street is grown and shaped from amber and black coral,[12] there are some ruined alien buildings that may have been transported or reconstructed from Axile. Whatever devices they may contain, they seem to have been built for something more ancient.[13]

Deep beneath Flute Street, under layers of previous Fallen Cities[14] and through miles upon miles of spiraling tunnels,[15] ancient proto-Flukes and Rubbery Men alike lie encased in amber. Presumably, these are the original forms of both species, as they were in Axile.[16]

References[edit | edit source]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Flute Street, Fallen London
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Flute Street, Fallen London "Enough. You must know. You stride into the cave. Inside, there are... devices. Constructions of amber and coral and steel and glass. [...] you deduce their function. The Rubbery Men use amber to capture something... some Vital Essence of those who handle it. With these Essences, they grow, they change, they warp flesh into patterns that please them. [...] are they making new shapes down here?"
  3. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "The Rubbery Man flops carefully into the Fluke's pool. The Fluke exudes a viscous substance reminiscent of honey [...]"
  4. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "The things in the pools [...] are called Flukes: something of Rubbery kind. A Rubbery Man enters the pool carefully, and remains under the water for a good twenty minutes. He scurries off, perhaps to do the Fluke's bidding. [...] How can a thing that resembles an oversized sea urchin hold such sway over the near-human Rubbery Men?"
  5. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "All these Rubbery Men have been to London. The Flukes – the spindly things in the pools – sent the Rubbery Men up there to gather... something without an easy translation. Something that humans have and rocks don't. Bats have it, water doesn't, amber doesn't much."
  6. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "Every day, a few Rubbery Men are dispatched towards the surface in twos and threes. They're hard to read, but the mournful gurgles and frightened twitching lead you to believe that they don't relish the duty. Perhaps once a week, a Rubbery Man returns with handfuls of amber."
  7. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "They hate London. People throw things and hurt them. And humans don't understand. They hate that they were shaped to talk to humans and that they can't even... [...] What do they want to do that they can't?"
  8. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "The Fluke thinks humans are blessed. Breathing air! Talking! Music! Fire! It gets very excited on the subject of steam engines [...]"
  9. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "The machine grunts and burbles into life [...] the Vital Essences infuse the Rubbery subject. [...] It lasts for hours before the last of the amber crumbles away. The Rubbery Men drag the subject out of the glass chamber. He's bald and grey-skinned and very nearly human."
  10. ↑ The tunnel branches, Sunless Sea "The Rubbery Men do not do what they are supposed to do. (We try to improve them.) Among humans, they are sad. (We should have made them with more teeth.) Among Flukes, they disobey. (We should pierce them with more spines.) "
  11. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "The Fluke is exasperated with its minions. Why can't they gather Vital Essences faster? Why can't they make a steam engine? Haven't they been given every adaptation to pass unseen in human society? [...] They've been here for millennia, and look at the place! Is this the new utopia? The great new empire built in the remains of the half-stolen city?"
  12. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "Some of Flute Street is of wet stone and living black coral. But much of it is translucent, something like amber and something like yellow glass that hasn't quite set."
  13. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "This isn't from a place deep within the earth. This building isn't from the Earth at all. The building is arranged in rooms that spiral inward, like a nautilus. At the centre is a contraption made of an unfamiliar green stone. It could be a musical instrument of some sort, if the player was a jellyfish with eight mouths."
  14. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "For centuries, Flute Street has been built up on layers of earlier remains, so the lower the tunnels the older they are. You pass through the Bazaar's known history as you descend."
  15. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "You descend in a tight spiral. For days. The abandoned part of Flute Street is a thousand times the size of the section inhabited by Rubbery Men."
  16. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "To start with, these are recognisably Rubbery Men and the occasional Fluke. But you can see the form change as you descend. The Rubbery Men were once something quite different. The changes are gradual, but here they were four-winged and four-legged. There they were something like a vertebrate octopus. In the deepest tunnels, there are no pseudo-bones. Were they without bones, in their original form? Or without bodies altogether?"
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