Tak-Fizun, the Chained City

[yutzen]

The Vezarym Consortium. One of the oldest nations of these caverns, and I only say “one of” because I’ve found no record that can properly straighten out whether they, the Clans or the old Nakravia[1] were truly the first in our current maps. Notably, however, their current capital is not the oldest of the capitals, not by far. No, Tak-Fizun is but a replacement, the city that took the lead and ran far ahead with it once the city we now call Old Zik-Fizun was razed by a pyroclastic flow.

Ah, the New Zik-Fizun project was amusingly naive, in how these things work; cities can be rebuilt exactly how they were, and both Old and New Zik-Fizun are fine cities in their own way, but capitals are a more fickle thing than that. More than masonry and the populace inhabiting it, they’re symbols, the structural and political face the region shows everyone else. And as it turns out, a railway hub turned into a luminous, bustling, ever-busy market of markets, all suspended above the darkness below, was a perfect face for the Consortium.

And it’s this suspension that brought me to visit it, not so long ago, looking for a few clearer answers on why a railway hub comes to be suspended on chains above the Stygian Maw, of all places. Surely stringing up an entire city above a miles-high abyss isn’t the wisest of moves. At the very least, eccentricities aside, it seems horrendously expensive, which is not something the Consortium is known for liking. And sure enough, it is: The eighteen chains are as titanic as they say – they look quite a bit more imposing in person than any second-hand imagery would tell you, stretching so far into the dark you can hardly see their anchors – and the price paid for them was immense. The deals needed to be forged with the Kingdom of Ferigoz to have them cast and installed, railway hub and all, are the stuff of legend.

And if you’ve read my work before, you’d know I am one for digging past the mystique to reach the truth of a legend.

The first thing you notice once you stride onto the Iron Rim of the city, where the chains are hooked, is a faint smell of smoke. Nothing like the Red Plateau or the Spires, or Lords forbid, Asniblias[2], but definitely off-putting for those used to cleaner winds. But when you know the chasm it’s suspended over, you’re almost thankful for the smoke – the bottom of the Stygian Maw is outright sordid, and not a hint of that putrefaction makes it up to the city. Just the smoke of home and industry: Firewood, coal, and a few hints of oil.

Deeper in, and you find yourself surrounded by the many towers of the city. You may feel a pang of bafflement at the idea of a suspended city being so vertical, until you see the winged shapes flitting back and forth across them, and you realize the streets you walk on are but a formality. And if you have the eyes for that, you’ll spot the abundant catwalks between towers right after that, as if each floor were universal rather than a matter for each individual tower. A seemingly universal agreement among structures meant for very different inhabitants and purposes – as you will then see by the rather eclectic architecture, oft combining the dark angular spires you’d expect with imitations of other nations’ styles. You’ll notice one common thread, with every tower lined with jutting barbs that make them seem entirely unwelcoming… And then you’ll narrow your eyes, and realize they’re actually perches, so that conversations and transactions may be done comfortably inverted.

Of course, you will only take these sights in if you’re good enough at blocking certain distractions out. If you ever visit, I warn you: The very moment you’re past the Iron Rim you will be assailed by enthusiastic peddlers, and generally enthusiastic Vezarym that wish you a good stay. And of course, I don’t mean to be rude and place them both in the same category. In fact, even the peddlers would hardly be a bother; so long as you understand what you’re in for, and understand all the prices involved, everyone can walk away happier.

The simple hangup I personally have with this part of the path is that all Vezarym understand our hearing isn’t as sharp as theirs, and that they have to up their usual whispery speech to match. And far too many of them overcompensate. The words “Nizika kan chirza-ni[3]” will be chiseled into your eardrums the first time, I assure you.

Nevertheless, past the Iron Rim and the outer towers, heading towards the center of this suspended metropolis, you will see actual industry at work. Great smokestacks hiding among the assorted towers, spewing steam and heavy smokes into the air, become a common sight; you will not see the factories themselves unless you head down towards the actual innards of the city, but the rattling underneath your steps and the distant rumble of steam engines are unmistakeable. The towers around you give way from shops and abodes to offices where you order rather than buy, sign deals rather than exchange. Now you’ve entered the true and proper heart of the Consortium, its rail iron arteries snaking towards its every corner, and the borders of every nation it can reach, and its locomotive lifeblood coming and going without pause.

Overstretched metaphors aside (and I do apologize), this is where my last trip to the Consortium found me, as I readied to look deeper into the deals that forged the chains that hold this city aloft. I didn’t just want the classroom version, told to their pups when it’s time to learn the version of history where half the truth’s been polished away to leave a shiny, appealing lie. I wanted the scraps, to look into the missing pages to piece together what was written on them, to dive into the very ledgers of the transaction that made sure Tak-Fizun could exist. And fortunately enough, a scholar in my position has the right pointers, from the right contacts, to know where to look…

And in this case, I knew what I needed to pursue, most of all, was a contract. For in any deal of this magnitude there must be something written down, even if only to tuck it away in an old vault until the paper rots away. Vezarym may oft pride themselves in the art of the informal deal, with nothing but spoken words, but these are nations speaking to one another, and their every word is an individual document. I just needed to find at least one, and track the rest from there; just one crumb is enough to find the whole loaf, as I’ve heard some say.

Fortunately for me, they attempted an old trick that weeds out most adventurous sorts, and all those who are merely duty-bound in what they’re trying to investigate. Rather than file it away under lock and key, stowing the paper trail away in a grand, impenetrable vault, they hid it away as if it were entirely mundane, scattering it to the winds of bureaucracy across multiple civilian archives. Hidden amidst the endless piles of old litigation, business contracts and real estate purchases, among other such things. Indeed, the monotony alone would turn away almost everyone, and the fruitless search that follows would stop even the most determined, as they’d have to deal with the inherent troubles of such a search in such a mundane, unglamorous and entirely open environment. The delays between working hours, requests, and the fact no smash-and-grab will ever be possible when so much time is needed to find one’s prize, forcing them to cooperate with a process that could well outlive them…

Subterfuge, however, breaks through just fine, as the mundanity involved is a perfect disguise to those who know how to wear it.

All it took was knowing just one of these archives, a simple (if oversized) notary office, and going from there. Documents seeking a signature from someone who never existed, observation of the patterns when faced with a less-than-routine procedure, keeping track of the new and the old – and the outright geriatric, for that matter – and pouncing on distractions to know where matters were indexed…

After that, taking a different name and making it seem like I’d been a part of the archive for months, if not years, was almost easy. Why, I was just another worker, of the sort that come and go, moving on to newer things, newer places, their place among the files just a stepping stone in their lives, just a source of sustenance. And looking back, that wasn’t too far from the truth, wasn’t it? Much as I wasn’t there for a salary. No, prowling the files, browsing the indexes, digging through the dustiest of paper piles, any servitude and actual work done throughout was to thin the possibilities, close in on the true target. Even if it meant being the last to leave just to have more time. For an office is an office, and a job is a job; only ones with a passion for their work would question the things that make their shift easier and smoother, and over there, none ever did.

Well, one did, quicker than I both expected and hoped, but not quick enough to make it count. The one that would’ve been my supervisor, had I been working there… Perhaps I gave myself away just a little, with our occasional clashes when I offered to be more helpful than most were. But more likely she just didn’t believe what the documents and her own eyes were telling her, that I’d been there for some time already. To her, the past in this archive wasn’t quite so blurry and temporary, as it’d be for the ones at my “level”, and thus she was likely catching on despite my little tricks. Right when I was finally closing in on what I needed…

But unfortunately for her, and perhaps shamefully for me, there were other ways. As she approached and chimed in, I spoke misleadingly, a little bit cluelessly, just a stray, baiting little explanation related to some entirely unrelated security contract, as I thought of what to do. And when she let annoyance creep into her voice with her answer, I got an idea… and I took it as a chiding, the one that finally snapped the wagon’s wheels. I whirled around and went off on her, about how she’d kept chiding me throughout my “employment” from beginning to end. That I had been doing everything right and yet she continued to judge and berate, even now. Especially now, that I had been more proactive. That I’d been trying to make it all right. I was positively furious!

Enough that I ended up “cracking” and telling her she’d breached our every contract, and that she owed me. And let me tell you, especially those of you that don’t know Vezarym: That is one loaded word indeed.

Ah, the wrath of a bureaucrat. It can be frightening if you aren’t fully sure of what you’re doing, the moment you don’t know where you stand is the moment you are swept away in a flood of rules and verbosity, and brought low by laws you hardly knew existed… Another recommendation to all: You have to know where you stand, your rights and wrongs. What doesn’t concern you can be left as a second priority, but you cannot forget what does. This is the metaphorical defense… as for the offense? You must poke where there may be doubt. Even if it’s a stab in the dark at the edges of the matter, you have to hit on a point where they aren’t entirely sure, and show utter confidence in doing so. Even if you know so little you aren’t sure whether you’re lying or not. And when that doubt shows itself, you pounce upon it.

And it worked, of course, though I had far more advantages than she thought, and of course just enough forgery to make sure she’d have to start sifting if she wanted to prove me wrong. And that bought me the last few moments I needed to find what I needed. Unassuming little contracts in a pile, right between some old caravan contracts and a few permits for digging wells at the bottom of the Stygian Maw[4]. So I feigned one last snap, declaring I didn’t have to take this, that I would only see her with an arbiter by my side, and simply stormed off… never to be seen again.

In case you are reading this, dear notary, I won’t give away your name, it would be a discourtesy at this point. But, one last salute to the one that caught on, and I do apologize for the grief I put you through during that moment, as well as those that followed. If it’s any consolation, you can rest assured this will hurt them far more than it ever did you.

Now, to the actual affairs, as I could examine them once I had switched the metaphorical mask for (very real) reading glasses.

Even in this there were encovering layers and details, of course. The materials, their transport, their forging and even their installation upon their current places, they all had a very different contract regarding their purchase, one that at first glance would seem heavily weighted in favor of the Consortium if taken at face value. Especially in all dealings involving the laborers themselves; it seems so obvious to send your own experts on the matter to assist in the actual process that it almost feels crass to point them out directly in the contracts, with numbers and titles and even names as part of the body rather than the signing parties. As if they were but another payment in themselves.

But then I looked into the very edges of these chains of deals, those so mundane I could have simply asked for them without bothering with my little ruse. Where properties were bought and sold, simple warehouses and lavish, yet unremarkable homes. Where services were promised and rendered, by names missing their titles and importance. Where transportation was ordered and paid for, while being as oblique as possible about what was actually moved. Layers of mundanity whose lies are all by omission, easily missed if you didn’t know the context. If you weren’t aware of the backbreaking effort those “all present furnishings included” clauses were truly doing. The far more famous titles hidden behind those ordinary names. The thoroughly-avoided contents of every cart and wagon made to cross between Ferigoz and the Consortium during those key months.

Refined flux. Sallow-Silver. Sunderstone. Eyes of Al-Zari, ten carats minimum. Alchemical reagents, very particular ones, including some infamous ones like gillsbane and cryptcrawler sap. If you know even one of these, you may be alarmed – and should be, mind you – but I would be neither surprised nor up to judge if you didn’t recognize even one. Allow me to summarize for you: These are all ingredients, of the metallurgical kind. The sort of metals and additives you’d need to smelt silver and gold and even platinum into something properly weapons-grade, treat them until they’re harder and sharper than steel, without losing an ounce of weight, and as untarnishable as ever. All with a side of the sort of gems you’d need to imbue said metals with ambient energies, which such rich materials conduct frighteningly well.

Weapons-grade precious metals, all in all, and the jewelry to further empower them. Enough of it all to arm and armor whole regiments… All of it yet to be smelted and forged, delivered to those who knew how to work them, and knew the needs involved. Needs that were, perhaps, eclectic, far from uniform even. The sort of uneven needs that you’d have if you were to equip, say, mercenaries, rather than any state-formed army. After all, it had happened before: The Brotherhood of Silver Shields, the Resplendent Regiment, and Nilzag’s Diamonds had blazed these gold-paved trails in the past.

Indeed. I am almost entirely convinced that, in return for these chains, in exchange for their design, their manufacture and their installation, the Consortium and the Kingdom pacted the beginning of the fourth Gilded Raid. Rather than the result of the Vezarym gaining the upper hand, wielding their accumulated wealth and power to carve through the land with a horde of elite sellswords they equipped and trained themselves, this was a compound effort. And while I can only speculate on the extent of their cooperation, on who called each given shot, the fact this was the only Raid since the first that ever targeted the Voska Empire has some intriguing implications all by itself. The usually-cordial relations between Kingdom and Empire were at a low point by then, after all, and the whispers of the King wanting retribution for Voska’s affronts were well known[5]…

It would match up very well with the damage the Raid itself caused. Far less damage to the Kingdom than usual, even when ransacking the crops near the border to keep their supplies. The Ifchi enclaves in the Hollow-Lands had their share of suffering, but still remarkably less than the Second or Third. Tower territories were struck as hard as ever, not quite as damaging as the Third, yet far more than the First… But Voska? It took decades to recover any ground that wasn’t frozen after all was said and done. It was a blow to their power and their reputation alike – especially the latter, finding themselves forced to fend off fancy, gold-covered sellswords at the very gates of their own capital. Their old territorial ambitions were put on hold for nearly a century after that…

Yet with the idea in mind that this was the work of two nations rather than one, suddenly the Empire seems a little more respectable in managing to fend off such a thing. We all knew the Fourth was a dangerous one, but the details of just how much are, as always, mired in more historical muck than one would wish… But this? It leads one to believe it was far worse than either the Consortium or the Kingdom would publicly portray. Especially as the former distances itself from the idea of such raids, and the latter offered quite a few trades and dealings to aid the Empire in standing back up, though what they got in return was far clearer than this: Understandably or not, the deals were lopsided, the prices hiked in the Kingdom’s favor, with interests stretched far into the decades to come, and lightened with time as a favor, to cleanse all the bad blood that had built up between them…

And all of this, they got for forging and grounding the chains that suspend Tak-Fizun above its chasm, bridge and city in one. All of that, in exchange for doing what the Ferigozi do best in a far grander scale than before, yet still very much their expertise… Why, it almost feels like a bargain, of the sort the Consortium rarely offers, does it not?

I suppose we will all find out how close I was to the truth by the level and nature of the pursuits that’ll follow once this is published and read. But then again, the Consortium and Kingdom alike appear far more reasonable to my eye than the Tower would ever be, especially about events that went down centuries ago, with every offender involved long dead[6]. But that may perhaps be too optimistic, isn’t it? Perhaps it’ll become a situation where the mildest thing one might have to do is call me an utter liar, to dismiss all I have laid out as a flight of fantasy – which is reasonable enough, so much of the proof I have is rather more perilous to deliver than I’d like. But I’m sure there will be great deliberation on the idea that you have to act, because otherwise, there will be signs of weakness, chips in an armor that should not exist, and hardly does. Perhaps in bringing this up and making it public, where it was already known in hushed whispers, I have created a whole affair that imperils me, because it tampers with reputations as a whole.

All the more reason to go ahead and publish, I say. Ironically and hypocritically enough, these little masquerades aren’t something I’m a fan of.

To my faithful readers, I thank you for your time in finding and reading another one of my tales, and hope it’s at least painted you an image of what to expect from this chained city, and the Consortium as a whole… good and ill alike. To those new to my scattered writings, those who picked this up on a whim or a whisper, I hope you learned something as well, and that I’ve painted a proper picture of the Vezarym nation for you, distant as you are[7]. And to those that are ever so alarmed to see my name again, and the little secrets it brings upon all I’ve signed, well… do what you must. I wish you good luck finding me.

Yours truthfully, the Ever-Restless Nirrhamidh.

[1]Korve territories that now form the Northern sector of the Pact of Krawgry, for those not aware. Which is likely, there are quite a few reasons this particular proto-nation is oft forgotten.
[2]Northeastern side of the Kingdom of Ferigoz, for those lacking a map. Quite an industrious place with metalworks of the sort that carve their place into history itself, but the fumes are the stuff of legend themselves.
[3]The rough literal meaning is “may you harmonize well [with the choir]”, but in this case it’s meant as “enjoy your stay”.
[4]I am as confused and perturbed as some of you likely are. Barring using the leachate as a pseudo-ore for the more toxic metals, or perhaps as a form of slow-poisoning a despised spouse, I can hardly think of a use for the percolated sludge you’d get out of such a well. Worse still, at least one of them was approved.
[5]By historical standards, of course. But to provide context: King Alvigaz IV took the throne earlier than most, barely old enough not to need a regent. The Kingdom already had a hard time respecting this, but the Voska Empire, riding the highs of successful conquests in the North and eyeing Kingdom territories close to the Hollow-Lands, were eager to taunt and provoke, with both insults and border skirmishes aplenty. Alvigaz was young and unstable, but shrewder than he seemed, to the point my current theory hinges on the idea this looks very much like something he would do.
[6]And here goes the obligatory “as far as I know”. Life and death can be so inconsistent down here, and the thought that some distant participant, or perhaps even Alvigaz IV himself, would still be alive to bring retribution on my head… it’s far fetched, utterly unlikely, but unfortunately for me it is not impossible.
[7]I am obviously not discounting the possibility that these writings somehow made it to the Consortium, and perhaps Tak-Fizun itself, in which case this would all feel a little absurd. And in which case, seeing that you have a fairly sensitive datum in your grasp, I would also recommend that you start running if you haven’t already.