<Note from Crawler Priestly. 14th Edition>
Larracos is like a dream. It is a living, breathing poem. A song. One that marks itself indelibly onto your bones the moment you experience it the first time. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s an inverted funnel of museums and galleries and colleges and of color. The NPCs live here. They have purpose and life. For the first time since we have been dragged into this horror, I feel awe and wonder and something other than rage. But it is a tainted and fleeting feeling. This city should not be here. It is too beautiful to be used in such a terrible, senseless way.
I still don’t fully understand the fable with the volcano and the centipede at the bottom and what sort of metaphor, if any, it’s supposed to represent, but whoever designed this wonder at the center of the ninth floor was someone who appreciates fine detail and the art of turning the mundane into visual music. It is too beautiful, too real not to be a copy of someplace that truly existed, and it is difficult for my mind to make sense of it. For the first time, I don’t know where the real ends and the nightmare begins, and it has taken my breath away.
The Semeru dwarves supposedly built it, but they don’t control the city. Not anymore. They’re still around, mostly in the pubs. They’re also the non-combatant caretakers of the inverted castle, which sits in the center of the city at the bottom of the well.
The diameter of Larracos isn’t that great. It’s smaller than some of the cities on the Hunting Grounds. But the city itself has layers, going deeper and deeper, like an inverted cone. My culture has a story of a people who built a tower to reach the gods before the gods struck it down and scattered them all. I believe that legend is what this city represents. The Semeru were attempting to reach the Celestials who live not above, but below them. This action somehow awakened Scolopendra at the very base of the volcano.
This city thrives. Each level is something new and exciting. There are districts. One with theaters. Museums. Colleges filled with bright-eyed NPC students. Temples. Stores. Tonight, before we are expelled, I plan on sitting down and enjoying a play. A play, in this place. Can you believe it?
I will draw a map for you. The one Milk drew is still good, but it lacks detail.
The alien beasts congregate in the pleasure districts. I don’t dare venture down there, lest my impression of this fantasy is tainted. That’s where one may find the Desperado Club and the brothels. It’s where they hire their mercenaries, though I hear those markets are already bled dry. It’s where they trade their wares and buy their weapons from the murderers who cleaved through us like chaff on that nightmare of a sixth floor.
The aliens get expelled when we do. Less than thirty hours until the fighting begins.
They’ll be back. Once only three armies remain, they’ll be able to re-enter the city, and it will be destroyed. They say by the time the fighting is over, none of these NPCs are left alive. None of these buildings stand. It is all destroyed in the pursuit of an imaginary prize. This makes my heart hurt. This volcano world is obviously a fairy tale. But is this city real? It looks real. It smells real. There is history here. And if so, what’s the purpose of giving this to us? To show us a wonder that once existed, to remind us that they don’t care what they destroy? To beat us further into submission?
And what of the NPCs? What of their suffering?
I fear what will happen to my mind when I see it destroyed.
