The Second City
"Never mention the Second City to the Masters of the Bazaar. Mr Wines will look at you narrowly and give you its worst vintage. Mr Cups will fly into a rage. Mr Veils will harangue you for your discourtesy. Mr Iron will say nothing, only write down your name with its left hand."[1]
"Certain of the Masters of the Bazaar - Mr Stones, Mr Apples and Mr Wines, and possibly others - seem to have a particular contempt for Egypt and the Egyptological. Perhaps they're simply reacting to the fashion for the Pharaonic that overcame London before the Descent. But it's unusual that they should care."[2]
"...and the second betrayed..."[3]
The Second City was originally located in the New Kingdom of Egypt and fell to the Neath in the Eighteenth Dynasty,[4] during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten (1353-1336 BCE).[5] Its remnants live on in Visage and Arbor, and have more recently resurfaced throughout London after the events of the Prelapsarian Exhibition. The Salt Lions are also a relic of this city.
The Second Fall[edit | edit source]
"He will open his mouth to the stars. He will scream until his voice is gone, until his lungs are filled with blood, until the void between the stars opens between his teeth. And his daughters will bow, and his priests and attendants will pray, and the horizon will part like a sleeper's eyelids at sunrise."[6]
As the First City neared the end of its unnatural lifespan, the Masters of the Bazaar turned their gaze elsewhere. A great Pharaoh knew of the Echo Bazaar[7][8] and made overtures to it,[9] possibly to sell his city to the Messenger[10] in exchange for a way to ascend the Great Chain of Being.[11][12] But whatever the Pharaoh had planned was undone by his own daughter.[13]
The Duchess, one of the younger daughters of the Pharaoh, was betrothed to him according to royal custom,[14] but her heart belonged to a humble scribe. To escape her fate and join her lover, she dispatched a cobra to poison her father.[15] Almost immediately after the deed was done, remorse overtook her,[16][17] and she sought to undo her crime by bargaining with the Echo Bazaar: she would surrender her entire city in exchange for her father’s life.[18][19] The Masters' methods kept him alive, but transformed him into the venom-oozing monster known as the Cantigaster.[20] He was reportedly coherent enough early on to speak to his subjects, but his daughters may have been impersonating their father to hide his condition.[21]
After the Fall[edit | edit source]
"We were a royal house then. We played those black-cloaked vultures for fools, so we did. Beat them at their own game and pulled the nose of the Bazaar. And they never forgave us. Kept the youngest sister hostage while the rest of us ran for it."[3]
Once the freshly sold Second City was drawn down into the Neath, the Masters declared themselves Pharaohs and ruled in the erstwhile Pharaoh’s place.[22] Not to be outfoxed, however, the princesses hatched a plan to deceive the Masters and remove them from the equation. They invited the Masters to a funeral procession,[23] which led to a temple called the House of the Feather.[24] The Masters were led inside by the eldest sister - or perhaps the funeral was hers, and her being dead was part of the plan.[25][26] Regardless, the Poisoned Priestess sacrificed herself to trap the Masters inside the House of the Feather for over two thousand years, making the Second City the longest-lived of the Fallen Cities.[27]
The Sun[edit | edit source]
"We will not see another day, for every day will be a night. Let every night, then, be a day, in dreams that stream with bright sunlight. Pray to the gods that rule the day. Pray to the gods that rule the night. Blow the glass, blow until it glows, and raise it high into the sky."[6]
Left to their own devices, the sisters sought a way to protect their people from the Bazaar’s lingering influence, and allow them to flee in the event that the Masters broke free.[28][29] They found their solution in Parabola, the land behind mirrors. Parabola had previously been dimly lit,[30] but the princesses commissioned an artisan of the Neathbow, later known as the Mistress of the Skies,[31] to craft an artificial sun called the Skin of the Sun.[32] The precise details of the Parabolan sun's construction are unclear, but there were ushabtiu involved in the undertaking,[33] and it appears that the project involved modifying the egg of a great Fingerking in its shell,[34][35] resulting in it hatching into an object made of glass.[36] The object was then molded and raised by the people of the Second City.[37] The newly-born sun scorched the Parabolan landscape and melted the colors of the sky itself.[38] providing warmth and light for agriculture,[39] pottery, and the growing of wheat in the Neath’s lightless depths.[40]
The Palace[edit | edit source]
"This is Parabola. We [...] brought light to it. The ushabti were built to construct a new home for the Second City, where we could live forever beneath the skin of the sun."[41]
Encouraged by the successful creation of the Parabolan Sun, the sisters proceeded to begin work on the Palace of the Rising, a place where the citizens of the Second could dwell in sunlight once more[42][43] - but eventually the House of the Feather "was opened," and the Masters escaped.[44][45] The sisters were forced to flee, leaving the project unfinished.[24] The Masters quickly made a deal with the ravenous[46] priest-kings of their next Fallen City[47] and betrayed one of their own, allowing him to be devoured by the power-hungry mortals.[48] In an additional blow to the princesses' plans, the bodies of the Second City's people had been preserved inside ushabtiu to allow their minds to wander indefinitely in Parabola, but the surge of lacre when the city neared its end annihilated most of the citizens' physical bodies alongside the rest of the Second City; the few who survived were changed irrevocably.[49] The ushabtiu that remain are able to retain their memories while sealed,[50] but when opened, their memories vanish,[50] and they become confused and filled with resentment.[51]
Culture[edit | edit source]
"You remember dim streets lit by nooked lamps. Drifts of sand fringed the square houses. Even all these years after the Fall, there was still sand. ... Statues stood on every corner, crested with head-dresses. A black river murmured past the Beloved's Palace. At the heart of the city, between the Bureau of Correspondence and the Temple of Judgement, the Bazaar's spires climbed into the gloom."[52]
The Second City was renowned for its mastery of toxicology, a field in which it excelled thanks to its access to exotic and now-extinct creatures.[22] Of all animals, however, none were more sacred than the crocodile.[53] Crocodiles were bred by the priesthood to be albino, adorned with elaborate jewelry, and venerated as divine symbols.[54] One such creature, the Yolk-in-Yearning, a crocodile possessed by a Fingerking while still in its egg,[55] served as the Second City's key to opening a path into Parabola.[56][57]
As with all the Fallen Cities, the Second engaged in diplomacy with the other powers of the Neath. Though the extent of its success remains uncertain, Presbyterate records indicate "a deep distaste" for it.[58] Spiritually, the Second retained deep ties to its surface heritage. Before the Fall, its Pharaoh dissolved the veneration of the old gods[59] and encouraged the worship of a solar deity[60] known as the Aten;[61] this continued despite the lack of sunlight in the Neath, thanks to the creation of the Skin of the Sun.[40]
Linguistically and culturally, the Second City evolved in strange directions. Its hieroglyphic writing began to diverge from Surface conventions, increasingly shaped by the influences of the Correspondence.[62] While barley and beer remained staples of their agriculture,[citation needed] the Second also experimented with fungal fermentation, developing alcoholic brews from mushrooms, uniquely adapted to their new subterranean home.[63] The city developed an irrigation system,[64] which was supposedly created by diverting the waters of Hell.[65]
Legacy[edit | edit source]
"Information about the Second City is suppressed, even more so than material about the other Fallen Cities. Benthic scholars date artefacts of the City to over three thousand years ago, but they stop short of engaging in Egyptology – a discipline which the Masters despise."[66]
After their release, the Masters hunted the Pharaoh's daughters. Most evaded them, scattering across the Neath and beyond. The Duchess, however, was captured and held hostage[67] (she may have acted as bait after drawing lots with her sisters).[68] The Masters' imprisonment was traumatic, and a mere reminder of the Second City is enough to send them into a rage.[69] The field of Egyptology is suppressed,[70] and Second City artifacts are practically illegal.[71]
Four of the Duchess's five sisters are still alive. The eldest sister sacrificed her life to ensure the success of the family's plan, but still dwells in the Hinterlands as the undead Poisoned Priestess. The second is the Obstinate Adoratrice, who is intent on finishing her older sister's work in building the Palace of the Rising in Parabola. The third sister is the Mother Superior of Abbey Rock. While some sources have the Duchess as the youngest sister,[72][73] other accounts (including that of the Adoratrice herself) claim that the youngest perished on the Surface,[74][75] which would make the Duchess the fourth. The fifth sister became the first Roseate Queen of Arbor.
The legacy of the Second City is etched deep across the Neath. Its most consequential imprint is, of course, the forging of the Skin of the Sun, whose brilliance still stains the previously lightless Parabola with illumination. Across the Unterzee lie the vast remnants of their architecture. Foremost among these are the Salt Lions, two colossal sphinxes that once guarded the House of the Feather. The island of Visage, first settled by citizens of the Second, preserves vestiges of Egyptian beliefs and traditions through mask and ritual. The Mother Superior's Sisterhood still stands on Abbey Rock; though the order has assumed many guises across the centuries,[76] a number of its members are noted to have dark skin, implying their shared heritage.[77] The Roseate Queen fled across the Unterzee to Arbor with her adherents,[78] who have established a comfortable home for themselves in the City of Roses.[79]
Historical Inspirations[edit | edit source]
While some neocartographers in London speculate in favor of Alexandria,[80] there is abundant proof that the Second City was instead the Eighteenth Dynasty city of Amarna,[4] briefly the capital of ancient Egypt under Akhenaten (originally Amenhotep IV); in fact, the Pharaoh is referred to as the Hand of Aten in game text.[5] Amarna was constructed around 1346 BCE, in a previously uninhabited area on the banks of the Nile. Its creation was inseparable from Akhenaten's religious vision, as he rejected the worship of the creator god Amun and elevated the Aten, the sun disc, as the supreme deity. This monotheistic or henotheistic shift (scholars debate the degree) was radical, and the move away from the old capital of Thebes to the new city of Amarna constituted both a physical and symbolic break from tradition.
The city’s layout centered around open-air temples designed for solar worship, with a direct axis aligned to the sun. It was built rapidly, reflecting the urgency of the king’s religious mission. Key structures included the Great Aten Temple, the royal palace, and a series of elite residences and administrative buildings. Hundreds of clay tablets in Akkadian (the diplomatic lingua franca), called the Amarna letters, were discovered at a “Bureau of Correspondence” in the city. Interestingly, the Amarna Period also had its own art style, much more realistic and grounded (even when portraying royalty) than the rigid formality of Egyptian artwork before it.
Amarna, however, was not built on strong political foundations. Akhenaten's religious reforms were highly divisive and lost him many powerful allies within Egyptian society; Egypt's foreign influence also waned during his reign. Akhenaten's beloved capital was quickly abandoned and dismantled after his death (ca. 1336 BCE), as his successors, including the famous young pharaoh Tutankhamun, quickly restored the old religion and moved the capital back to Thebes. Akhenaten's name was later erased from monuments, and his reign was condemned as heresy.
References[edit | edit source]
|
