recently I’ve been reading this book called The Secrets of Rome: Love and Death in the Eternal City written by Corrado Augias and translated into english by A. Lawrence Jenkens and a quite a few parts of the preface about the formation of rome really, really fit the city of Narrani in my worldbuild almost to a T. I felt that it would be cheap to try to restate the passages in my own words, or to paraphrase them and risk losing some of the... feeling? atmosphere? that certain something that makes them resonate with Narrani so much. Instead, i’ll be quoting the passages from the book here and follow each with a little messy blob of words explaining why and/or how it describes Narrani (which could easily end up just being me saying the same damn thing, just in a more long winded and incoherent fashion. But hey, worldbuilding is a messy, messy thing. Ain’t it?) In short, none of the fancy words in quotes are my own work and I ain’t claimin’ they are. (also, I highly suggest reading the book if you have any interest in little, obscure stories from throughout the history of Rome. Its not a book detailing the City’s history at length, and should be read more as a novel. Check it out!) The passages I include are longer than the parts I underlined in my copy, but I’ve included them so they make more sense. The bits that REALLY stood out to me for how well they resonate with Narrani I’ll bold.
“Where can we begin the story of the universe that is Rome? In a city as contradictory as this, filled with all the glory, ruins, and dust left behind by past centuries, it’s possible to see traces of every human event and sentiment in its history”(page 1)
Let me start with saying Narrani isn’t considered a human city, even though humans make up a huge chunk of its population. The city is the homeland to the Crenth, most of its human population both inside and outside of the city crater are Nuhon*, and many of the people inside the city have started to consider then Narran. The city’s culture is rooted in the Nuhon* culture, which was largely adopted by the Crenth when they first formed. As the city grew and people (both human and not) came to Narrani, many to trade and many to stay, the city’s culture absorbed some aspects from its new visitors and residents. It also changed over time in response to the huge, complex urban environment Narrani was becoming, and at the incomprehensible scale it is today, numerous more localized sub-cultures have developed in different parts of the city, and at different depths. While they all share the same Narran culture, there could be some subtle differences between a community in one part of a city, from another community across the city, or one below them. It is complex to the point the more I try to explain it, the more little nuances I feel I left out. The city is a gem whose facets have facets, which then have more facets within.
“There’s not a single event in its past that hasn’t left a sign, scar, or scratch on its hide. Rome will never be a city of order, symmetry, events that unfold according to plan, or the coherent result of urban planning.”(page 1)
Honestly you could just replace “rome” in this sentence with “Narrani” and you’ll have a picture-perfect explanation of the feel I want Narrani to have. I’ve described it in the past as a city that grew organically outwards, downwards, and upwards, often building over, around, and within itself. Countless of thousands of structural changes and new buildings made for an equally large amount of reasons have turned the city into a completely chaotic tangle of maze-like streets, roads, passages, buildings, and every other type of structure under the sun people have utilized in the building of settlements. some parts are cavernous, some are like twisted tunnels and caves where the walls are made of buildings and doors, other parts feel like you’re within a structure that houses smaller structures, almost like an indoor mall. Thousands of people who were born in Narrani in the subterranean parts - which the vast majority of the city is - have probably never seen the sun.
But one of the most important details is that those parts of the city were never actually built “underground.” the city first grew from the bottom of a large crater, and instead of just expanding outwards they expanded upwards, building new structures over old ones in feats of clever engineering that let people still live in the buildings below. Instead of fantasy skyscrapers, the city expanded upwards above itself in layers. Imagine if the crater was a bowl, a vessel. In a way that a liquid’s shape will conform to the vessel its in, the city grew to “fill” the bowl of the crater evenly before growing upwards. Because of this, ancient parts of the city that used to see the sky are now buried under miles of structures built after them, and changed considerably by later additions, destruction, or improvements made. Some parts of the city are harder to get to than others, forgotten, ancient. You know how in the elder scrolls games you can go delving into tombs? people do a lot of that in narrani, but they seek out older districts. Long abandoned, long forgotten. And there are many reasons for that. Theres so much more I could add on to that, but i’ll hold off for now.
“The ancient Rome of Romulus and Remus, as well as the Rome that disappeared with the end of the nineteenth century, were both swallowed by the vortex and dust of history. If I had to note just one feature of the city, I would point to the simultaneous presence of many cities, each locked inside the other, overlaid in three, four, or five layers read to reveal themselves as soon as you look beyond the noisy exterior of the present.”(page 8)
Oh man, does that fit Narrani and how its run. The city is so large, so old, that in order for any semblance of law to be in place, for any sense of organization to exist, the management of the city has had to be divided into regions in which are overlooked and managed by local district** government, which is mostly handled by the Temples. Any parts of the local district** government not directly tied to the Temples are extensions of the Senate*** and are usually related to elections. But even they need assistance from the Temples. And I should honestly write out how Narrani government works, along with the Temples. In a way, because of these divisions for management its almost like multiple cities fused together under the same name.
“Only in Rome could the entrance of an apartment building constructed in 1909 be supported by a buttress belonging to the Circus of Nero, or the columns in a Christian church be taken from a temple dedicated to Venus. These multiple stratifications document an uninterrupted history all across the city, erasing and then adding, with a stubbornness that switches from gentle to violent--like the waves that relentlessly batter the same stretch of coastline.”(pages 8-9)
With all the construction in this ancient city of Narrani lots of material gets re-used, buildings are transformed. Its an ever changing organism. And I really don’t have anymore to add.
“This layering is part of Rome’s fascination, but also its burden. Encumbered by its own past, it has never been, or will it ever be, easy for the city to free itself from its own ghosts.”(page 9)
The bolded portion speaks for itself. But I feel that, like Rome in this book, this characteristic of Narrani doesn’t have entirely negative connotations. Its ghosts are the actions of others in the past that left the present people of Narrani a city so large it defies comprehensions. A city so large it has to be divided into hunks, which are then dived up further to make the task of mapping the city and recording its on-goings, a task that takes thousands, a possibility. A possible task that may never be completely finished, for there are always parts of the city missing. Maybe obscured by rubble, maybe a particularly devious and well hidden path, maybe blocked off by malignant fungal colonies, or maybe waiting openly for a spelunker to luck out.
One large hunk of a deep part of the city has even become its own somewhat independent “state”. A mass of the lower depths with the misfortune of having the lack of one large, regulated passage to the upper parts. Travel to and from relies on obscure, twisting passages in and out of various neighborhoods in various states of abandonment and decay to find the way to the center of one of the largest - and most isolated - city-cultures of Narrani. Jhalltyr is new, dangerous, and its status as an entity within Narrani is murky.
i could go on and on about narrani, jhalltyr, and every little detail of them. But holy heck this got long. Using quotes from that book really helped kinda put into words a core aspect of Narrani, as well as paint an excellent picture of Rome. I’m not done with the book yet, but so far i’m really enjoying it. Check it out!
* - Nuhon is currently a placeholder, im not satisfied with that name.
** - I’m not sure if I wan’t to call the main, largest divisions of the City ‘districts’ but it works in this post for now.
*** - I’m not sure if their central government body will be called the Senate, or if it will be a Senate as we know it. I have a underlying idea of how i want narrani to work, but its still pretty murky.