Table of Contents The Journal of Laxmi Guptra Dahl 2 How to Use This Book 20 The Four Mysteries 27 Chapter One – Character Generation 28 Chapter Two - Bestiary 35 Chapter Three – The Yellow City and The Topaz Isles 79 Chapter Four – The Hundred Kingdoms and Láhág 141 Chapter 5 – Lamarakh and Lower Druk Yul 195 Chapter 6 – The Mountains of the Moon and Sughd 220 Appendices 274 Maps 302 Credits and Licensing 311 1 The Journal of Laxmi Guptra Dahl Being an account of a traveller in distant places The Geographical Society of the Yellow City 2 The Yellow City and the South In the highest strata are the slug-people, the race who built the city's first buildings, founded its great civilisation, and The city at the mouth of the God River has many names. The who have lived there since, they say, the dawn of time. They City of Topaz, the City of Gold, the City of Gods, the City of alone are permitted to own fixed property, to import and Whores. The Old City, the First City, the One City. The Grand export goods, and to attend many of the city's libraries, Lady. The Great Stink. But this humble author will call it the archives and madrassas. They are a pompous and effete Yellow City, which is what the people of his home call it, people, fascinated by clothes and fashions and the because of the way it glows in the light of hot sunny days. decoration of their own appearances, though they love learning and study and pursuits scientific, aesthetic and The humble author is sure that even the distant reader is sorcerous. familiar with the Yellow City and its venerable history. He would therefore not seek to patronise with an account of its Below the slug-people are human beings, who are origins. He will instead describe some aspects of its themselves separated into castes. Some are warriors in character that will be of note to a visitor from foreign climes. private employ (for there is no public military in the Yellow It is the greatest city in Yoon-Suin and undoubtedly the City), others are shopkeepers or sailors, while others fight world, however, so the account must regrettably be for money or sell their love (the whores in the Yellow City incomplete. being notable for their beauty and skill). Their lowest rank is called the ulufo, the people who herd giant cockroaches in First, the inhabitants. It never fails to impress a visitor to the the darkest alleyways. These cockroaches eat the city's litter Yellow City that its citizens are by turns the wealthiest, most and are in turn eaten by their herders, a sight which can be refined, and most educated people in all the world, yet at seen on any street corner around the docks and the river the same time capable of the most malicious cruelties and side. The scent of the roasting insects seemed to the humble licentious depravities. Like all those whose societies are author to resemble chestnut, though he did not eat the ancient and rich, they are also cynical and filled with ennui. meat. The most singular feature of their life, which strikes any visitor the moment he arrives, is their strict hierarchical Lowest of all are the crab-people, who live outside the city in stratification, which all inhabitants obey without question. the mangroves and the rocks called the Topaz Islands, and are not permitted to enter the city proper except in servitude. They are unintelligent things, but strong and 3 tough, and they are sometimes forced to do manual labour These cartels are the most powerful bodies in the Yellow or simple tasks, on pain of death or torture and for scant City, and their leaders, who sit in council once a month, are reward. They are undoubtedly unfortunate and pathetic what passes for rulership there. These families are slugmen beings, very meek of character, though the people of the all. One can sometimes see them about the town, being city think of them as the reincarnated souls of criminals and carried on palanquins by muscular eunuchs from Druk Yul. breakers of taboo, and deserving of their miserable lot. They Usually their power is only outdone by their corpulence. do not generally have names, though those in employment are often daubed with paint to signify who is their master. Knowledge comes from traders, but also from the exploring The humble author saw one goaded into executing a guilds. The rich slug-man families of the city clamour for criminal: it severed the man's head from his neck with one knowledge of the world outside, since they leave the Yellow movement of its claw, without showing any emotion on its City so rarely, and so they give patronage to institutions arthropod countenance. which send men forth to gather strange beasts, draw maps, and survey for minerals. The biggest of these exploring The people of the Yellow City are many and varied, but they guilds is the League of the Road, whose home is in a great are united in their love for three things: opium, knowledge, palace many thousands of years old: its ceilings are painted and tea. deep blue and dotted with white spots which resemble distant stars, signifying to its members the nature of their It is difficult to say which of these vices is the worse, for all desires. The League sends explorers far and wide, ranging have their merits and their flaws. Opium keeps the people in over Yoon-Suin, seeking ever more about the world and its a pleasant state of bliss. But its abuse is widely contents. It claims to have a menagerie of beasts deep in its acknowledged to cause loss of ambition. Knowledge makes halls that no outsider has ever seen, and its archive has as the city a seat of learning the envy of all the land. Yet its many books as there are people in the Yellow City. There is pursuit has given the Yellow City a surfeit of sophists and more knowledge forgotten there, men say, than is known learned fools. Tea pleasures the tongue. But it also makes today many times over - in ancient books and scrolls written the bladder weak. in languages no longer understood. Opium, knowledge and tea each flow down the God River to That brings our account to a description of the city itself. the city in a constant stream. The opium and tea comes from distant Sughd, where growing conditions are best, and in the There are two things that the visitor will note as soon as he city seventeen cartels traditionally monopolise their trade. arrives. The first is that the city is yellow. Although this is 4 naturally to be expected from the name, it is no less striking little patch of the river bank. The scent of incense mixes with when one sees it for the first time. The rock from which the the stench of blood sacrifices and sewage whenever one buildings are made glows like gold in the sun, from the topaz finds oneself close to the water. shot through it, so even from a great distance one can see it sparkling like some barbarian’s image of heaven. (It is only when one starts to smell it that one realises how far this is The Old Town from the truth.) As one moves West the city gradually quietens and grows The second is the river. Or, rivers. At the Yellow City is where less and less busy. First houses, then entire streets, then the God River, running down from the north, meets the sea, finally entire neighbourhoods seem abandoned and partly and shatters into a great delta. The city has grown up overgrown. around the waterways, almost as if the sediment and detritus washed downstream has built up about the mouth Curious about this phenomenon, the humble author often of the river, layer on layer, over thousands of years, until one went walking in these areas in his time in the Yellow City. At day it came to be a living metropolis and the city was born. first the humble author did so tentatively, fearing thieves and whatever strange beasts might live there. But he soon If he stays a little while, two days or more, and strolls about came to see these places as dominated by feelings of it, the visitor will be struck by the architectural legacy which melancholia and incredible age, rather than danger. the city’s thousands of years of history have endowed to it. Everywhere are palaces, towers, temples, tenements and As he ranged deeper and deeper into the Old Town, as it is domes of different styles and heritages, which have been called, the humble author began to discover the city converted into residences, religious institutions, offices of eventually merging with the very jungle itself. First he found bureaucrats, indoor markets, ghettos and back again many streets given over to trees and bushes, pushing their way up times over. through the pavements. Then he came across great plazas, palaces and temples from the Yellow City’s distant past, On the river banks, one always finds temples and shrines. covered with vines and mosses, with trees growing through The Yellow City is a city of gods, and this is one of the their cracked floors and up through their broken roofs. reasons why the God River is so called. Nobody can count Ultimately, these buildings come to resemble not so much the many spirits, divinities, powers and deities worshipped human constructions but eerie vegetation-covered there.