The Seven Wonders (And other marvels of the world)

Document Structure

Clauses

It has 10 chapters in total, with seven dedicated to each specific wonder of the world, the culture that construct it and the specifics of it, like the historical background, the making of it, accounts of people using or traversing them, mayor figures that had something to say or do in them, what are its construction materials, etc.

The rest three characters are dedicated to three continents each, with the small wonders and marvels that one can find in them. Small in scale, but still having a remarkably interesting story to tell.

Historical Details

Background

The book called Seven Wonders (and other marvels) was created by Go Dorrion, a bard of the Minareth University of sciences and bardic knowledge. Go Dorrion was specialized in natural history, economic history, military history, languages and architecture, and so when he turned 500 years old his mentor the old Aba Galat, the Arch President of the university funded his decades long expedition through the world so he would write a book about it, a book detailing the history of the world, a book about books, the story of us all.

Instead what he write was a book detailing the wonders made by mortal hands, as a testament of the will that shapes the world, and how we are not different from each other. He later wrote a spiritual sequel to the book were he goes into detail about how each culture that gave rise to each wonder rise from nothing and later erected those wonders, pondering on the meaning of culture and history.

History

The book contains the history and culture of at least seven different peoples, its wars, their folk and lore, their mores and more. And so, some cultures who have no written history and appear in this book can only be known to outsider here, having no other recorded history or writen ethos.

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The Seven Wonders (And other marvels of the world)

The Nine Fiery Veins of the World:

In the most northern part of the Baktraria continent, the peoples known as the Albaqir live. Of course, they can be found in more parts of the world as colonist, travelers and foreigners, for example the Albaqir district of

Qart Hadasht or the Albaqir colonies along the lands of the Imperial House Dejure.

They are half human, descendants from the original men (Cro-Magnon) and a distant relative (Neanderthal), unlike the other breeds of men that are only descendants of the original men. And so, their bodies display the best of both worlds. Their woman’s are of Amazonian built, fierce and sexually charged, while their men’s resemble the other breeds of them, with almost no other change but the hair. In the Albaqir culture a men is seen as something less, an incomplete being, and so their men’s let their hair grow long, almost like in the tail of Radekina Flynt, the Edekhan mistress that let her hair grow to tied up bundles of wood and escape the island where she was stranded. Her woman’s actually can’t grow too much hair, thanks to some breeding anomaly they cannot have more hair than just a bundle around the head. Their skins are black as charcoal, and some people think that they are demons because of it.

But, nonetheless, in their natural habitat the Albaqir people are more than human, they are the resourceful sons and daughters of the fire, and so, like the glauchs can bend the lightning, they can cast fires to defend themselves.

The bodies of the woman´s is incredibly built for war, in my ten year long stay i´ve never seen a woman with less than 1.70 cm of height. They have big breast, black nipples, are built like a tower, strength compared to the Bretons and curly hair. Having a matriarchal society that bears a little resemblances to the sexually liberated tuskens but with some reverse roles. Womans can be the only ones that can inherit property, but a male heir can inherit if there is no other woman in line. Every time a noble woman dies the other woman’s start a brawl in the city, and mate with the man that defeats her, giving him “the time of his life”, using techniques like the ones in Edekhan or tusken brothels to extend the pleasure and assure fertility because in their culture fertility is closely tied with the sexual pleasure that the encounter gives you, this way they can assure that no crisis of succession happens if the child born is female, but if it’s a male they castrate him and train him to be a Shadow Assassin, personal guards of the Fire Ladies.

Their religion is called “Lady Agni Ashanti of the fiery hearth” and preaches about the goddess-made-form called Agni Ashanti, a being similar to Lady Hawkwind to the glaucho culture or Ninnghizida for the tuskens, a god that represents the culture of the people made flesh and is female. They sing about the coming battle against the White Spirit and his Black Horde, the moon spirit that carries the walking dead into battle against the hearth of the world. And so, they erect temples and city states in the nine inactive volcanoes around the Fire Belt of the continent.

Which leads us to the first wonder: the nine fiery veins of the world.

The Albaqir cities that are located in the Fire Belt are a series of nine city states and temple cities built using techniques that are analogue to the Edekhan building methods without any of these two cultures ever crossing paths. They use concrete made from volcanic ashes to build their temples, and even thought their constructions are not aesthetically beautiful they are vast and ambitious. Sometimes one temple is abandoned and another one is built on top of it, or maybe right beside it, or under it in the deepness of the volcanic mountains. The quality of the mortar concrete is such that can even outlive minotaur constructions, and so the temples and constructions here are at least 15.000 year old, one can only imagine the labyrinthine structure’s that develop over time, like a walled city insides a city, full of priests and warriors of fire, praying and fucking, honing their skills of war, harvesting obsidian to make tools, and continuing to expand the ever growing cities of fire.

Of course, the cities are connected through a complex road system straight from the Edekhan Empire, after the failed Ares Campaign in Albaqir lands they borrow some building methods after marveling with their already look alike building methods, prompting an evolution on the connectivity of Albaqir cities, with roads made in an imperial style, using again volcanic ash to make roads that can last a lifetime, and so the veins of the cities connect each other, traversing on horseback or on camelback the distances to the ever growing population of the temples and cities.

And so, the interconnected nine city states and temple cities of the Albaqir people are the first Wonder that I visited, spending ten years in the court of the Fire Ladies and Lords from the nine cities, marveling at the complex fortress that are built on top of inactive volcanoes, like labyrinths made from concrete and gold, made to last until the end of the world.

The Shield of Malador

In the northern part of the continent of Baktraria, the second wonder that I visited is located, eastward of the Nine Fiery Veins of the World there is a city called Marreysha, and its close fortresses, twenty five villages and two cities were built by Malador the Builder, the legendary Great Chieftain of the Iron Horns of Northern Baktraria, a minotaur chiefdom independent from the Haudenosaunee-Minotaur confederacy.

Malador 3000 years ago inherited from his father the Northern Confederacy of Baktraria, a confederacy of thirteen tribes of Minotaur’s of the region, along with some keldoren and Albaqir communities. His was a peaceful reign, using the vast amounts of wealth to improve the infrastructure of the region, funding countless of cities to house the ever growing population and fortresses against the Hrismarian raids. Minotaur’s have a particular distaste for overcrowded places, because they are bulls after all, and so in large communities it’s a great problem to secure a good amount of land to the different communities. And so, Malador built more small towns that he even needed, stretching its people across all realm. That lead to some logistic problems that we will analyze later on, but at least as a social and infrastructural project it was a success. The economy was booming with vast amounts of skilled workers thanks to Malador´s patronage, great amount of work in the quarries and woodtowns, and even Malador building certain buildings himself alone when not overseeing the realm.

And so, even before the construction of his famous Shield he was already Malador the Builder.

And then, the only war of his reign started. The trader harbor town of Dhazaria, formerly known as Skaramanzia, was the source of the conflict, after two high ranking spies of the master of spies of Malador were caught and hang in public, the secret work of these two spies was made public, with the involvement of Maladow because he was tracking a criminal and mercenary captain that had committed genocide in a war wich his father participated on. He had to use spies to track him because the patrician´s and Sea Lords of Skaramanzia favored him and owed him money. Tensions between the chiefdom and the city grew even more, with the merchants refusing to sell goods to the power while Malador stayed in power, and so racial tensions grew between the Keldoren who saw Malador as a scheming and dishonorable assassin and the Minotaurs who saw him as one of the best rules they ever had.

Malador, in one reclkes political move, declared war against the city to cleanse his name in holy combat. This act arguably was the first mistake in his political career, he was more of a steward than a diplomat, and so he angered more and more the Keldoren people, now acting as a warmongering maniac and not a diplomat who had been insulted.

The city of Skaramanzia being only a small city state actually called on to the help of more and more merchant republics of the Keldoren, citing the keldoren spirit against the foreign conquerors, a great power and a race with great renown bulling the small races and small world powers. And so, Malador in his action help in the unification of the Keldoren Merchant Republics and their Sea Lords by giving him a common enemy.

The Keldoren were great archers and marines, expert in maritime combat and tactics, but still are shit soldiers, a lesser race with almost no strength in their bodies when compared to the super strong and super resistant minotaurs. And so, with their great amounts of money they called on mercenaries to help them fight.

They waged war for ten years, with neither side on the wining streak. First the Keldoren conquered all the land north of what latter would be known as Malador´s Shield, later losing all land and retreating to the sea. Malador would launch a counter attack and capture Skaramanzia and the surrounding villages, losing it later to lack of supply routs. The Keldoren were masters of maritime combat, but minotaur’s were masters of ground combat, and so one would win in their specialty, with neither side wining so much that the other would just retreat forever. Skaramanzia was conquered seven times in seven different sieges, and then the Shield was started to seeing is construction, in the middle of the war.

The city of Marreysha is built in the middle of a mountainous formation of three parts, two horns piercing the mainland at the sides, and one strong head in the center. And so, in the shape of an inverted lml the mountains of the Iron Horns shield the Northern Baktrarian Chiefdom from outsiders, with most mercenary forces of the Keldoren staying in the coastal cities.

When the incursions of mercenaries started to cross the mountains Malador did the only thing that he knows best: To build.

He started erecting one mountain fortress to secure one path, then another, and another, and another. Most of the people in his realm lived in near Marreysha, in the countless villages that he founded and thinly spread, and so it was difficult to man the fortresses that he build, starting emigrational programs to build more mountains fortress to move the people and a garrison there. This actually had the unforeseen effect of needing Malador to build even more fortresses to have the plan to full potential, draining his arcs of gold but stopping the raiders from passing the mountains. At the end of the war the mercenaries were not daring to cross the Shield Of Malador, the 30 fortresses that he built in the mountains to keep raiders out, and so with no territory gained from neither part, and the reserves of gold of both party’s draining, the war simply ended, with no treaty nor the racial hostilities ending.

Later on, Malador continue on to build more projects, unifying the fortresses with tunnels, roads and canals, effectible making one huge fortress that spanned the entirety of the mountains, making it the new hub for his chiefdom and new capital, with the social structure changing so dramatically that the new generations of minotaur’s born inside the one huge fortress formed a sacred order of warriors known as Maladors Spear, to keep on maintaining and maning the different parts of the one fortress.

50% a military base, 25% a labyrinth with roads and tunnels across a difficult mountain to trek, and 25% city of millions of peoples. The Shield of Malador is a great project of engineering with a military touch, lacking in aesthetic please but with efficiency and greatness in mind, carved from the same mountain, and with large portions made completely from iron and steel, with massive gates made from iron and bronze, a order of holy warriors dedicated to protect and maintaining it, The Shield of Malador is one of the three wonders located in the Baktrarian Continent.

The Zigurat of Cartago

For the third and final Wonder in the continent of Baktria I wanted to travel to the Heretic´s Straits and visit the Tomb of Osiris, the first and only Edekhan to rise in revolt against Ares, but the Horde of Sinne, the Monstrous Men, and the Men-like Monsters are ravaging the places, and the necromancer´s covens are gathering, foul things are smelled in the land, and so I had to flee after having some assassins catching up to me, when words of my travels and plans to visit and compose a book about the Tomb of Osiris had traveled to the Vampire Courts of Carcosa, the Forbidden City. The people´s there wanted me dead, and so I had to cancel one of my visits, at least for now and get started to travel to ancient Qart Hadasht.

Qarth Hadasht, or Cartago for the Edekhans, was an ancient city state and later small republic that was the fiercest enemy of the rising Ares the Conqueror, his most difficult enemy and after the conquest hardest people to assimilate. You see, my dear reader, Qart Hadasth was conquered, but only the city, the hearths of the people after being raped and salted by the Edekhans never had submitted, not even a single second of his 3500 years of history. With many titles and incarnations, the Qartheen had kept their culture alive, sometimes as a rebellious movement of youths, a dangerous movement of well-intentioned extremist, a secret cult only allowed for the highborn, you name it and the Qartheen people had tried it for surviving assimilation against the Edekhan Empire.

Founded by Elesh settlers on a promontory with sea inlets to the north and south, after finding silver mines they turned a low life colony into an independent city state, often trading with the Haudenosaunee tribes long after the conformation of the Confederacy, using them as mercenaries for their various wars against the Asatian tribes, proto-edekhan realms and pirate raids. After some generations they developed into a somewhat primitive republic, unifying the concepts of democracy found in other Elesh polis and the concept of maritime republic of the sea traders Keldoren, and so the high class of Qarth Hadasth was a mix of Free Men of the polis, and Sea Lords from the republics, a mix of oligarchy, plutocracy, thalasocracy and direct democracy.

This is, a defined basis for what a “Free Men” was considered, the right to vote and ask for certain laws to be pass or certain topics to be discussed. Laws and topics of discussion on a national assembly were distributed in different kinds, with matter pertaining the religion, infrastructure, military campaigns, trade, etc., with the generic Free Men of the city able to vote on just local laws, with the ability to vote for more important laws, even the wars that the city entered were locked to allow the votes of only individuals of certain wealth, military power, connections or a combination of them. And so, you could only vote for laws that had to do with merchants if you were a merchant or owned a ship, if you weren’t in the army or in the guilds you could not vote for laws for them, even if they affected you directly. While power was passed down to a council of the wealthiest people of the state, sometimes this post was open to inheritance, but sometimes not.

After the Conquest this system was changed to the standard Imperial Serf System in the Edekhan Empire, and all the highborn were killed, replaced by House Zama holding the province and declaring themselves as the Kings of Silver, or Silver Kings.

After the Conquest the city changed drastically, the edekhans changed or genocide some mayor cities under the protection of Qarth Hadasth, changing the name of the province to Carthago. The mayor settlements of the Keldoren people were wiped out, the Asatian tribes were enslaved and added to the population of the territories, and enslaving the Sacred Band of Horns too, moving large amounts of Minotaur’s from one part of the province to another to prevent rebellion. Finally, from kilometers away, the Edekhans moved the populations of Tuskens from the Dune Sea to ancient Carthago.

Carthago was ruled by the Silver Kings, shrouded in silver hair, grey eyes and a particular taste for human flesh. They practiced ancient rituals of blood magic, enslaving elementals with forbidden blood pacts. And so, after the war against the Kalermenian Leeague, they erected a ziggurat in the style of the Kasbahs of the Tusken people, converting it into a university for warlocks to train, needing constant supply of slaves to build stone by stone, implementing stone elementals called Gnomes for the most delicate parts to build, creating in just five years what normal human hands can only achieve in 25 years, using ancient blood magic to bend the earth to their knees, erecting a massive pyramid of solid stone with 150 meters high, an impressive staircase facing the four winds cut from marble and decorated with shining silver, an underground labyrinth to house even more seminaries and studies on warlock practices, and a temple dedicated to Ares the Conqueror in the most high part, with a small floor to house the altar and a ceiling made from electrum, coupled with a statue for the Conqueror made from marble, electrum and jewels in the eyes of the size of melons.

Of course, after the First Schism, the empire was divided in the East and West, with the west rapidly declining and their territories with massive uprisings or the noble family outward abandoning the territory.

This was the case for the city of Qart Hadasht, with the Silver Kings dying in the revolution that crowned a high King for two years until the new government could be created after the chaos. After that, to honor the Qarteen culture they recreated the old way of government, with an immigration program to establish keldoren colonies and ghettos insides the mayor cities of the province.

The minotaur’s reformed the Sacred Band of Horns, as protectors of the city, a more specialized kind of local garrison with a mixture of minotaur tactics of war with the equipment of hoplites, albeit larger in size to fit well in the 3 meters long minotaur’s. And so, the Sacred Band once again protects ancient Qart Hadasht.

The remaining army-in-exile of the Silver Kings later reorganized in the mercenary company called The Silver Companions, and started selling their arms to Qart Hadasht to help them and themselves to gain renown as a new power.

And after the new government was instructed, the first mayor change was to rebuild the Ziggurat of Carthago.

The laboratories, torture dungeons, scrolls of forbidden knowledge and slave pens were completely destroyed, the statue of Ares was melted and sold, and with the money of a giant statue of gold, silver and ruby, they rebuild the Ziggurat. They erected another ziggurat on top of it, creating a super structure made of concrete, marble, stone and sand to envelope the ancient university. The new pyramid of Carthago was made from white stone, marble and decorated with runes symbolizing the struggle of the Qarteen people along these 3000 years, with the story of the Sacred Band fighting against Ares in a last stand, Lady Hawkwind honoring the spirit of the dead glauchs in the city, the discovery and founding of the city by Queen Dido, the statue of Ares being melted and sold, the veterans of the second Imperial-Elesh war training militias to resist Ares, etc.

The Ziggurat of Cartago houses many religious temples, all inside the structure and in the numerous platforms in it. The temple is large enough to have three roofed platforms in it, being a right star pyramid built on top of the squared ziggurat, being cut in the middle and having two more of them attached with land bridges, with the one in the center being the far more larger and central pyramid, housing the most important religions for the Qarteen people.

In the pyramid of the right, called the “Temple of Tanith and her thirteen Ghosts”. In it, the small Square in a garden with a gazebo in the center is located, honoring the God Carm Roc, a lesser god of the glaucho people, with high gardens and a caste of gardener priests; Later, the goddess Aphrodisya, the syncretic combination of an Elesh goddess and a tusken goddess, has a temple of whore priestess, making love and getting high in ecstasy in order to commune with their goddess; Stoicis, the minotaur god of struggle, a temple with no priest because it’s the patron god of the sacred band, and so the soldiers gather around the statue of Stoicis and make offerings, with no gold or silver than that, a very frugal worship; and finally the Golden Statue of Tanith, and the granite statue of her thirteen ghosts, the royal guard of the goddess mother of all Qart, because Tanith is the patron goddess of the Qarteen Elesh culture, with the mainland Elesh worshiping another different set of gods, witch Tanith borrows some similarities. Tanith for the Elesh living in Qart Hadasht is the mother of the world, the goddess of war, creator of medicine and the personification of the world.

The left pyramid is called “Blue Temple of Ileduce”. The temple has a little deformation of the pyramidal form, because a river goes through it, and so they build a small brick bridge to cross the river and built a temple on the middle of the bridge to honor Ileduce, the god of the Keldoren people, the kraken of the depths that rests in the ocean floor grabbing the planet with its eight arms and will start to squeeze it until its destruction if no one gives him animal sacrifices, only marine life like seals, fish, or even seagulls, with walls decorated with aquamarine stones and sapphires; The asatian tribes living in the provinces under Qart Hadasht have a temple there, but I will talk more about it in the small section dedicated to minor wonders there, because the temple here is a replica of the one they have in their homeland; Massinice, another god of the Keldoren, a minor god, the swan that helps them build their swan ships, god of architects and sailors; and finally the temple of the High Born, a mayor minotaur god, the personification of the Great Plain, the minotaur after life, with priest living in poverty, patience as one core virtue and a small library of wind based spells.

Finally, the Great Pyramid of Qart is the center building, being one of the most large religious temples in the known world, sometimes called The Palace of a Gods, a mural depicting the final war is the last piece of the history depicted in the outer walls, but this time filled with gold once the stone was scrabbled, the stone floors are polished until they reflect almost like a mirror, showing the great mural painted in the ceiling, the failed battle of Lady Hawkwind and Ninnghizida against Ares the Murderer, with Ares impaling the Great Lady and choking Ninnghizid, but in a glorious way, using the two goddesses that reincarnated and later killed thousands of Are´s descendants to give form to the unyielding spirit of the city during foreign occupation. Later, in the original pyramid, in the heart of the building, the last temple rest, an expensive construction of Doric columns decorated with ivory, platinum, electrum and diamonds rests, with an electrum statue of each god of the Qarteen-Elesh pantheon, without Tanith because her patron goddess has a temple of her own.

The Tomb of Osiris

The Pleasure Temple of Petru Tembar

City of a Thounsand Bones

The Walled Forbiden City of Onishi Ranken

The Tomb of Osiris

My journey was nearing completion, but still there was still a place that I had to visit. The Tomb of Osiris was still a thing imprinted in my mind, a dark and gloomy place full of mysteries, a library and a tomb at the same time were forbidden knowledge resided, like a dragon sleeping upon a treasure trove.

Still, while I looked away from the sea I felt if that feeling could take me there from any point in the world, a city of heavenly sin, sleeping with the devil there and paying the price in the morning. The power of what has been before was surely rising to trap me within, and riding the endless caravan that was the roads of the world I managed to get there, to sweet Babylon, at the black gates of the Hastur Watchtower.

The place was a cove with a castle built upon it, a black castle built from a mysterious oily black stone, with mangled trees reclaiming the abandoned villages surrounding it, but still the dark forest would not dare to lay even a leaf on the black castle. At the center of the castle there was a lighthouse that rumors say guided lost ships to the courts of the vampires, but this time we were going there over our own volition. We arrived with one swan ship full of mariners of keldoren origin, and in the distance we saw a single individual atop the Watchtower of Hastur, maybe he was one of them, the legendary Blood Kings, descendants from Osiris the Heretic. Or maybe he was just smelling our blood.

After all, I recalled the story of Osiris, and his brother Hastur, both descendants from the main line of Edekhan blood, Ares himself and not his uncles like the rest of the Eastern Empire. Osiris was an insatiable man, he was as bloodthirsty as the edekhans can get, but still he wanted more, more lands, an entire kingdom for himself. He dominated a stretch of land that nobody until this age knows where it is, maybe it was the land that his ancestor currently have, but the official story suggest otherwise.

Osiris had a brother named Hastur, an obsessive man that dressed in drags, acted like a woman and wanted to be a woman, he wanted to bleed like them, bear children’s like them, and so he sometimes would cut himself in the groin or act like her sisters when they were pregnant. Of course, such acts like dressing or acting like the opposite sex are not a red flag, but that man take it to another level. He would have foreign diplomats and courtiers burn at the stake for calling him a…well, a “he”, and perform weird magic rituals adoring queer gods to make a woman of himself. He was, by all accounts, a woman traped inside the body of a man, but the Edekhan madness and their particular culture was tearing at his brain.

And so, the two brothers had a dream, a weird dream comparable to the one Ares had thousands of years ago, and so they embark on a quest to find the source of this dream. One cannot unseen the madness that plagued these two young mans, and so they nobody was surprised when after five years after they arrived they had rejected Ares as their god, adoring a new set of gods and drinking the blood of their fellow edekhans. Maybe madness was in their veins before “that” thing took hold of them, but now it really flow IN their veins.

They raged a war against the empire, bringing with them half Edekhan offspring, monstrous men and men like monsters, half creature and half human, or sometimes half Edekhan. Wolf children, rat children, pig children, even dog, fox and turtle. Monsters that knew how to walk like men, atrocities made from blood pacts to elder gods of blood, wearing armor half made like butchers knife but ten times bigger, clubs with spikes and spears.

They would claim that a god that to our eyes resembled a tree had fallen down from the sky, and only through blood sacrifices to that they would reanimated to have the blood of all the planet, the destroyer of worlds and bringer of darkness, Cain.

They called themselves Vampires, a new race made from a blood pact to the weird tree that had fallen from the sky, a race that depended on the blood of others to survive, and now the madness of the two founders of House Lupercal run on the blood of its members, because all those that had their blood were suddenly turned into those creatures of the night. Some burst into flames when the sun touched them because they were just walking in the sunlight, and others just kept on sleeping until the night. But no matter what was it, the Edekhans descended upon them just as if Ares himself had reborn and from the shock of his return he had killed most of the vampires.

After some time, they retreated to the place where the tree had fallen, and built a city named Carcosa. After some time they continue with their weird experiments until another war broke down with the Edekhan Empire, and the mighty Ares the Twelve wearing the gilded armor of Ares the Conqueror killed Osiris Lupercal, but not before a single drop of his blood was dropped into one of his wounds, turning into a vampire and killing himself with a fire elemental. Osiris ´mangled body was on the floor, half burned and shattered with the mighty hammer of Ares the Conqueror, a hammer that had in the past the blood of two living gods.

Osiris the Heretic was on the floor, dying, loosing precious blood and with half of his body in flames. And so, his sons did the only think that they could, and offered him to the tree, to the extraterrestrial outer thing that had a mind of his own, with branches moving on its own, twitching and creeping to accept the body of the First Blood King, and finally keeping him in stasis, burring the branches and roots inside his body to keep him in a coma like state to preserve him to the ages, feeding him constantly with sacrifices to maintaining him and the three. And so, the Tomb of Osiris was born, with Osiris now being a mummified corpse, half tree and half corpse.

We arrived at Carcosa after entering with the ship into a river of unknown name and origin, and so we traveled to the forbidden yellow city, taking a good look at the inhabitants, queer looking fisher folk with sharp teeth’s and statues of fish gods with human heads, and sometimes human bodies with fish heads. They would sacrifice humans into the deep sea to use as chum to lure krakens to the surface, and praying to the krakens when they arrived, sometimes giving them virgins abducted from other lands. Thanks to the corruption of the tree nothing grew on this lands, and the animals were abducted to be in the slave army of men-like monsters, and so they value all the things that we brought to sell them, and so they did not kill us.

They guided us to the yellow city of Carcosa, but the city was not yellow nor was a city. Abandoned and grey, the yellow walls were unpainted by the time and wind, and the towers were unmanned, with an eerie feel to the air surrounding it, almost if the corruption was not in the earth, but in the air, and with ever breath we take we were scouring ourselves with it.

By what I could gather until that point the Tomb of Osiris was now the place of a long library, and from here you could see the legendary tree, a large protuberance that stretched far beyond any normal tree should have, with queer colors in the night, sometimes glowing red, blue and green like the fish´s in the river that hunted prey by luring them with pretty colors. Sometimes a raven would come in and out from the tree, almost like if someone was controlling it, flying in unnatural ways for a simple bird.

Most of the crew was ready to sail away to the ocean, most of them were rich anyway by selling even the most mundane things to the fisher folk there, who had an unnatural quantity of gold and jewels with them. But most of them were afraid of the things that they saw, the weird gods, the abandoned city, the shadows looking at you when you are sleeping, and the strange marks that some of our men had in their necks. The ones with the mark were abandoned in the port of Carcosa, an abandoned place full of derelict ships with no apparent master of ships or sea captain to rely orders.

I could not abandon my research here, I must continue even if the crew abandoned me. I gathered the people with the marks on their neck, fully knowing their fate, armed them with weapons if we need them, and scout the city. In case I don’t come back I will give my book to the crew, and instruct them to give it to the arch president of the Minareth University. I will not fail, mark my words.

Minor Wonders:

The Lost Wonder: Ozymandias Silence Castle

Purple Harbor

The Pearl Temple

While I was traveling along from the first to the second Wonder, I came across a building that I had to write about. Near the old university of Minareth (my alma mater), along a secret path of stones and fire, for those who would dare to dream about the stars and contemplation, the place of formation for one of the original founders of the university: The Pearl Temple.

There, it lies the home for the Pearl Archers, a secretive society of archer monks who practice chastity, silence and emotional detachment from the physical world in order to study the stars, the universe and their god. They can only talk a small quantity of words per day, and so like Minotaur’s they try to choose carefully the words they use, being naturally patients thanks to their detachment from “perceivable reality” and slow to respond. Besides, in my opinion are a bunch of hypocrites, preaching about austerity and living in poverty, but their temple is made 100% from pearl.

The stories tell about a small fishing hamlet, the heritage and family trees reveal that this fishing hamlet was maybe composed by humans, Tuskens and Albaqir for equal measure. This fishers lived in poverty, always with enough money to live by the day, surviving in their small village but never daring to go to the deep desert. One time, one of the sailors had a dream about a god under sea that was calling him, but not by name, but using the name of the village to talk about him. He interpreted as if the god was urging him to throw away his real name and identity in the hope to find him, because only when you abandoned the physical world that faulty eyes can see you can find god. After that he became a priest for the unnamed god, living in poverty and abandoning his wife and children. After a while he gathered enough money and followers to find his god living under the sea.

He embark for weeks on end, with a small fishing boat, venturing into open sea to look for his god. He had hired some deep sea divers, expert fisherman who hunted fish by holding their breath for extended periods of time thanks to an outstanding training, and even some of his followers had that kind of training.

He, along his followers, started to find clams full of pearls along the way to find his god, patrolling the reefs looking for god. They didn’t have a need for something like that because they preached about poverty, and so they started to gifting them to the families that they had abandoned, soon enough helping the village with so many influx of rare gems.

The village in no time became a hunting ground for pearls, and so markets started to rise, warriors to protect the caravans, entire fleets to mine the resource, etc. But still the priest wasn’t able to find his god.

Until one day, when the entire village now started to helping him in return for improving their lives, and with the combined efforts of the entire town they found his god, living inside a giant clam, fulfilling the prophesy when the entire town come together as one and found him.

When they got out that giant clam of the sea with the help of a ship they were not amused by what they found inside it, actually. A clam bigger than an elephant can only house a pearl so big, and so they quickly all wanted a piece of that. But the priest would have none of it, he along with his followers took arms and seized the giant pearl from the hands of the ignorant population, it was a mighty endeavor but they managed to hide it in the long forgotten house of the priest. And so, they started to carve onto it, following the indications that the god trapped inside it send to their minds. It was almost as big as the house that pearl, and the remaining pearl dust was used to decorate the house of the priest, which by this time had become the first and only temple for his god of unknown name and origin.

And so, they temple of the Pearl was erected, in the shack of a poor fisherman, using the remaining dust to give the illusion that the rest of the house is actually part of the original pearl itself, using resin, pearl dust and glass to fill with details of the beginning of the order.

And so, the Temple of the Pearl, that now has complete dominion of the village that was founded on, made purely from a giant pear found on the inside of a clam, surrounded by a house decorated to near perfection with pearls, glass, and other kind of gems, even aquamarines, sunstones and other precious gemstones.

The order of monks practice ritualistic archery, being known as great archers, able to see targets as far as eagles, using blood rituals to transmutate like alchemist stones or small pieces of iron into pearls, and so they employ in combat arrow and spear heads made of pure white pearl, being able to pierce even the toughest knightly armor.

The temple itself is rather small, but it’s made from pure gems, being the only temple in the known world to have such expensive building materials. Entry is forbidden for non-believers, and so I was only able to gaze it from the outside. But it’s a wonderful sight to the eyes, a small palace of pure white against the yellow and red sun of the desert, with a beautiful display of colors when the shadow is casted and the sun hits the almost transparent building, deflecting a myriad of colors like the rainbow. Such beauty is extended in the roof of the temple, with statues made from pure pearl to honor the most important archer monks of the order, and the walls decorated with sunstone and jade.

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Type

Manuscript, Historical

Medium

Paper