Saturday BoTD (Book of the Day – a day early)
stargrace (( Please remember that these are NOT my books, they are player-written books found on the Antonia Bayle server, specifically owned by my mystic Ellithia in her Norrathian Library. The works within the books may not be all creative masterpieces, and you may find them elsewhere in the net, please don’t betrate me for posting them here if it turns out that they are not original pieces of work. If you’d like to visit the library, feel free to head to the North Freeport Mage tower, bottom floor, the house is under the name of Ellithia in the magical housing complex ))
Gorowyn – A Horrible Place to Live – By Dawid
Dangerously free-thinking Free Citizens have sometimes contemplated what life might be like outside the walls that protect Freeport. This article is the second part of a series titled: ‘Foreign city, a horrible place to live’. Readers be warned! Do not read this edition while eating or drinking, for this tale of Gorowyn will surely spoil your appetite.
It is surely a challenge to build a capital city where the geography is virtually guaranteed to wipe out the very heart of your Empire, but the founders of Gorowyn have stepped up to the challenge. Gorowyn lies in the heart of a volcanic archipelago in the ocean of Timorous Deep, making it the most foolish place in all of Norrath to build a capital city. Free Citizens wanting to visit Gorowyn must take care not to be engulfed in a fiery sea of magma, boiling up from the earth like angry words of wisdom might boil up from the throat of our mighty Overlord.
Building a city in the inside of a volcano also brings more immediate disadvantages. Poisons waft from the sulphurous waters below, rendering the inhabitants of Gorowyn sterile. The indigenous Sarnak people have adapted to this condition by growing “children” in giant eggholders, but non-sarnak races do not have such a recourse. Breathing in the air of Gorowyn for any amount of time may result in sterility, loss of sexual appetite, anti-Lucanic thoughts and suicide. Because of the lack of natural sunlight in the city, it’s inhabitants are generally pale, slow-witted and decrepit.
Gorowyn has the highest suicide rate of all the Norrathian cities. This isn’t just due to the poisonous fumes wafting from the waters. The design of the city plays a major role as well. Platforms have been arranged along the rim of the volcano, spreading out goods and services in a highly irregular goods and services in a highly irregular manner. A system of horizontal and vertical lifts “help” the visitor to cross onto the different platforms, though these moving platforms are highly irregular and do not appear to have fixed points of departure and arrival. There are no signs to help the visitor, and the guards are unhelpful. After hours of aimless wandering around identical platforms, the unprotected depths of the volcano beckon like the embrace of an old friend.
Housing in Gorowyn is similarly impractical. The ceilings are impossibly high, so they can only be decorated with great effort and at great expense. A light hung from a Gorowyn ceiling will only be a pale reflection upon the ground below – like a distant star fixed under a Free Lucanic sky. The stairways are adapted to the needs of the oversized indigenous people, making them veritable mountains for the outsider. Last year, three Free Citizens broke their necks and died while attempting to descend a Gorowyn staircase. Five were permanently crippled.
The vast majority of the population of Gorowyn is made up of “Sarnak”, a disgusting halfbreed race of lizard-men with an impractical anatomy. The sarnak have tiny arms and hands, making it impossible for them to perform well in any but the most simple aspects of manual labour. They uriniate from only one hole, making them breeding pools for infectious diseases. They sit as a fae might, with overbearing spines that make it impossible for them to stand up straight like disciplined Free Citizen.
To compensate for these obvious failings, the sarnak recruit outsiders to work for them like slaves. Free Citizens who choose to migrate to Gorowyn are put to work in to migrate to Gorowyn are put to work in sweatshops where, among other tasks, they must use their muscled arms to produce food and furniture for their new Sarnak Overlords. Another unpleasant task left to outsiders is separating the urine from the faeces in Sarnak urinals.
Although nominally loyal to Freeport, the city of Gorowyn tolerates the presence of Qeynosians and Kelethinians. You may find Qeynosian assasins and foul agents of the usurper bug-queen “Amree” preying on you while you are inside the city limits. These outsiders may attempt to strike up conversation with you, but do not fall into this trap! Their “friendly” attitudes are but a ploy to lure you to their secret torture chambers, buried deep in the mountain halls of the volcano.
In conclusion, Gorowyn is the ideal home for sulky misfit experiments gone bad. If you are a failed scientific experiment and/or looking for a place to commit suicide, talk to the Gorowyn ambassador in the militia halls of West Freeport. All other Free Citizens are advised to stay clear of this mountainous death-trap.