Between lashing rain and bursts of lightning, lay a city in the purest sense of the word. Gleaming silver towers dominated the view, their steeples and spires reaching up into the sky, as if in a silent contest to see who could come closest to touching the stars. The downpour sprayed against stone walkways and passages shielded in red glass, which linked all the towers together at random floors. Looking down Sam found no ground or streets, the city’s foundations simply disappeared beneath a sea of dense mist.
- Chapter 7, Spirit Rider: The Royal Problem
~~~
The pocket-dimension of Alec-Cassem was discovered during the Imperial Era, with many magicians choosing to settle here in relative isolation, rather than contend with the burgeoning empires of the other races. Left largely to themselves, they crafted a city of soaring silver towers, drifting over a mist of pure charged magic. Being a pocket-dimension, the only ways one may enter Alec-Cassem are either by teleportation, use of a portal-door, or summoning the city's guardian Magistruct Athena.
Whilst many magicians flocked to Alec-Cassem during the city's founding years, it was not until the Age of War that near ALL the magicians gathered here. Between the discovery of Dymystric weapons and armour able to nullify magic as well as the roving Scitteran Empire hunting them, the rest of Paralex was an unwelcome place. It is estimated that now, 90% of Paralex's magicians reside in the city. The mass influx forced them to build in, not out. Towers meant for work and offices, became places to house families instead. Where once opulence and elegance ruled across the city, districts and levels of wealth emerged.
Cut off from the electrical grid which supplies the rest of Paralex, the magicians rely solely upon crystal energy to power their city. But besides this, magic controls all else, such as Graviturges commanding great brass elevator platforms to carry people up and down the towers, where some have a hundred or more floors.
Major sights include the Grand Arena, where magicians may pit their skills against one another in enchanting games or duels, for the adoration of the audience. Elsewhere stands the Great Library, the largest such collection of knowledge in Paralex. Within the Myrddin's Tower, the Archmage and their Council of Whispers decide upon matters of law and order.
Yet for all the magical wonder of the city above, darker things lurk below...
“Centuries back, the magicians were obsessed with studying and experimenting on dangerous creatures. One day there was a breach and the lower floors of nearly every tower in the city were flooded with monsters. Now they’re sealed off from the public, for safety reasons.”
- Chapter 8, Spirit Rider: The Royal Problem
~~~
When the magicians learned about the Beastmasters of distant Karmune and Vasane, they sought to replicate their powers of creation. Monsters and creatures were summoned from all the corners of the world. But the magicians' foolhardy experiments swiftly got out of hand. During a great calamity, near all the highly dangerous beasts they'd gathered were released, plunging the city into chaos. At a great cost, Archmage Hiron contained the monsters to the lowest levels of several towers and so sealed them away.
Now just about every tower within Alec-Cassem has Minus Floors. Whilst the most dangerous monsters of all remain trapped in the deepest bowels of the towers, the barriers holding back the other beasts require constant maintenance and support. Breaches are uncommon, but do occur. Officially, even levels directly above the Minus Floors are perfectly safe, but that doesn't stop the rich from occupying a tower's highest floors whilst the poor are forced to live below.
The Minus Floors themselves have been left to ruin; the crystals powering those areas having long since gone dark. Yet the monsters down there have learnt to thrive in the black, squalid places which were once offices and meeting rooms, having fashioned their own ecosystems and food-chains.
Some rumours claim that the creation of the Minus Floors was no accident, that any variety of lost treasures lie down there; anything from forbidden spells, to a Magus Staff. In either case, it's a rare day when I'll rent rooms on a danger floor (the so called 'safe' levels directly above). Rates are dirt-cheap, but you get what you pay for when you're just a barrier-breach away from waking to find a metaphysical tiger on the end of your bed.
"Atlantis – Architects be blessed – holds a great many marvels, which Paralex has sought to know for centuries. But I am no traitor. Do you know how much I was offered for information, when I first emerged from the Sheprian Ocean?"
- Chapter 11, Spirit Rider: The Royal Problem
~~~
Deep beneath the Sheprian Ocean, lying on the seafloor, is the ancient city of Atlantis. Reputedly built Before History by either the Creators or the earliest atlantiens (atlantien beliefs often conflate the two), barely a handful of non-aquatic species have ever looked upon it and ONLY atlantiens have ever been permitted within. I count myself amongst the lucky few to sight it and cannot stress the risks required in getting myself purposely swallowed by a glass-whale swimming in the area, getting all the notes I could, and escaping before I could be digested or drowned. But I digress.
The blue-green towers rise and curve out of the ground, in neat pairs in some areas, and a jumbled mess in others, the whole city appearing like the skeletal remains of a mighty beast. Every part of Atlantis is connected, the base of one building leading into the next, so that the inhabitants may travel from one end of the city to the other, whilst never touching the ocean around them. Rather dismally - or perhaps intentionally - the city has a distinct lack of windows, leaving the activities of the atlantiens within as a mystery.
This remains the only true example of atlantien architecture. Whilst there are occasional structures crafted nearer to the shore, the natural pressure of the ocean makes most building beneath the waves unfeasible. However an unknown phenomena renders this particular patch of the Sheprian Ocean completely untroubled by the forces of pressure! Should a person simply be able to hold their breath for long enough, they could quite comfortably swim from atop the waves to the very seabed many, many leagues below. Such has not been observed anywhere else in Paralex, giving many to wonder if it is an effect of Atlantis itself.
One of the few things known about Atlantis, is that it has struggled for space for more than a millennium. Every year, each citizen must vote for a certain number of their fellow atlantiens to be exiled from the city. Whether leaving by choice (considered a great personal sacrifice) or by vote, once an atlantien has passed Atlantis’ borders, they may never return. Only every five years, are exiles permitted to send one short message back into the city. Any who are found to have shared the secrets of Atlantis with the outside world will have their names and deeds stripped from all records, referred to thereafter as Traitor (insert number). This extends to their living family, who will be automatically cast out of Atlantis too.
“All the Demons, Legio included, are supposed to be sealed away in Tartarus,” Grim said.
Chapter 12, Spirit Rider: The Royal Problem
~~~
It's said only the mad, the brave, or the damned, willingly go from Paralex to the Demons' pocket-dimension and prison, Tartarus. To which group I belong, I'll leave you to decide. Suffice to say, the Gateway into Tartarus has been fixed, ever-open in the centre of Suratrat since Before History. Whilst the Creators-made Guardians of Tartarus overlook the Gateway, preventing the Demons from entering our world, we the people of Paralex may pass through at our leisure. Even still, so few have publicly done so - and returned alive - that the ancient Order of Demon Hunters were only too happy to have me conduct the once-per-century survey in their name.
Through the Gateway lies a lonely, crumbling tower upon a tiny island shrouded in impenetrable fog. This place alone, this 'atrium' of Tartarus, makes for a disquieting locale. Whilst a person cannot see beyond the surrounding fog, there is a sense that something - neither of Paralex, nor the Demons - lurks within.
This aside, at the base of the tower, stands a ring of archways, each one bound to one of the Demons. For if Tartarus is the prison, then the archways are the cells. Step through one and you are transported to another 'realm' of Tartarus, the Demons having made each place their own over the millennia they have spent in captivity. So too are the archways tied to their respective Demon's lifeforce - should their bonded Demon be destroyed, the corresponding archway fractures, evermore leading to nothing at all.
To read the archways and know whether any further Demons have (so often the Order of Demon Hunters hope) destroyed themselves - is all it takes to complete the survey, yet my passion for exploration urged I see the 'realms' for myself. I spent barely a few seconds in each, fearful of incurring the Demons' wrath, yet found the following:
- An eerily quiet, darkened chamber, with a small candle sputtering in the distance.
- A twilight forest, every immense tree decorated with the skeletal remains of uncountable creatures.
- A ruined, moonlit city, where I sensed a thousand eyes peering from every darkened corner.
- A dilapidated hall brimming with half-drawn schematics and notes in a language I could not read.
- An oaken library of shelves carrying both books and wooden children's toys.
- A forge or metal-works, where innumerable spouts of magma pour into strange casts and channels.
- A gloomy, swampy battleground, overlooked by a solitary mountain-top citadel.
- An echoing cavern, so vast I could see neither walls nor ceiling.
Within the last, I heard the demented wailings of the Demon Specto - often called the All-Seeing Madman. Such a terror was struck in me that I thought it high time I took my leave. Sometimes, in defiance of all reason, when the night is too quiet by half, I hear him still.
"...But to deny them an afterlife altogether. To see them trapped, formless, in the dark cold silence of the Underworld, until the end of time..."
Chapter 7, Spirit Rider: The Royal Problem
~~~
According to legend, references to the Underworld were included on the incantistone for the Grim Reaper Summoning Ritual, however said incantistone has been either lost or destroyed since its discovery Before History. Ancient porturgic myths suggest it could be a pocket-dimension where the laws of nature do not correspond to the rest of reality. No one has either found a Gateway to such, or ever gone there and returned. The Reaper itself has made passing mentions of such a place in historical records, though how it came by this information is unknown. By all accounts once the Reaper obtains its desired soul, both the soul and the Reaper's body unform, so if any transportation to the Underworld occurs, this is unseen.
All this to say that the Underworld is a curiosity that may or may not exist at all. Amongst the few trinkets of knowledge the Reaper has divulged - supported by mystromortic studies - it's been suggested that the Underworld is NOT the intended final destination for unbound souls. Rather, being taken there represents a 'stalling' of an unbound soul's natural journey (please consult your own religion(s) for further details).
If indeed the Underworld is connected to the lands of the dead, then for an explorer such as myself, it represents the final great unknown. Perhaps when I am old and have seen all there is in this world, I can start mapping the next. After all, every legend of the Grim Reaper attests that once a soul has been taken to the Underworld, they have never returned. What the legends singularly fail to mention - is whether they can.