Numenera Setting Notes: Points of Interest Part V
Continuing on through the Ninth World Guidebook, we head north past the Cloudcrystal Skyfields to the land of Lostrei, where various animist tribes who believe in the spirits in all things have semi-unified to create … not a nation, exactly, but a land with a central council where its disparate peoples can talk together. And, not going to lie, I think my favourite part of the world so far is up here. I’m not sure why it snagged me so hard, but the first time I was browsing through this book, the Glass Sea area grabbed me. Hard. It’s amazing.
Part V: Lostrei, the Spiritlands (Ninth World Guidebook)
Aerathis, the Capital City. For if you want some solarpunk vibes. Aerathis is built around the Gaians’ animist beliefs, so it incorporates large elements of the environment around it, inviting trees into the buildings and building around rather than through things like natural crevasses. It’s a city of metal and glass, and you’d think that makes it a prior-world city, because those techniques are mostly lost, but it’s less than a century old, built by a secretive guild within the city called the Builders. Who may or may not have the guidance of a prior-world AI to explain things. Heh.
Iripendra, in the Indigo Forest. Because it’s a clearing where, for some hyper-specific prior-world reason, food doesn’t spoil and sex can’t get you pregnant. Because building a contraceptive clearing in the woods was a thing some past civilisation felt a need for? I have some questions.
The Kileti-fior, or Temple of the Wellspring, in the holy city of Cheloh. It’s a massive ‘vaguely egglike’ tower with a great pit in the middle where priests pull up ‘energies’, which can actually power things. Anyone can join the priesthood in here, even if passing through, and help perform some of the rituals, and you get a little glass badge to say you joined the lowest order of the priesthood in this fashion. I think I just like the little glass badges? This could be the Catholic and/or enjoyer of history via objects in me, I like the echo of medieval pilgrim badges.
Chayn, in Southern Lostrei. Because it’s a town built around a giant hovering prior-world building that ‘stands’ atop a pillar of light. It’s called the Glittering Castle, because naturally, and the mayor lives up there. But it’s not standing on a beam of light, the beam of light is just emanating from the generator keeping it afloat. The beam lands on a giant yellow crystal in the centre of town on the ground, and you can hook up to the crystal for power, so the whole town essentially has electricity and all the conveniences. So far, so good. But, um. Chayn has, for probably completely unrelated reasons, ‘a far greater incidence of mutation than anywhere else in Lostrei’. So yeah. This is not a place of honour?
Kasistromis, in Southern Lostrei. It’s a giant tower of metal and synth that’s fully organic and alive inside. Anyone going in gets basically eaten. Not hurt, just swallowed, and then unwillingly transported along the organic passages and chambers of the interior. You can’t control your movement or get out until Kasistromis basically poops you back out. Nobody’s ever been able to talk or communicate with the tower, it’s just there. Vibing. Presumably hoping for something actually digestible to wander in.
The Shifting Lands, in Southern Lostrei. It’s a savannah. That, about 50ft down, sits atop giant square metal plates that move parts of it over each other. It’s all one giant puzzle floor, moved by a single giant mechanism, for no known purpose. That’s roughly 40,000 square miles (200 miles across) of giant earthen puzzle that’s just there. For reasons.
Ashuri Isle, off the coast of Lostrei. The name means ‘Exile’, and in theory it’s an island of criminals and exiles and self-exiles who wanted no part of Lostrei society. Owing to the lethal shoals around it, though, and the lack of charts outside of certain particular captains in the area, it’s as much an island of castaways and shipwreck survivors. It’s not overly violent, though, just full of people who wanted to do their own thing. I’m vibing with it.
Arsorra, on the northern coast of Lostrei. It’s a beach town backing onto a jungle, and a little way inland is something called the Stone Hatchery. Which is a piece of land that is, slowly, and for whatever its own strange reasons, tearing off piece by piece and floating upwards in little floating ‘islands’. They ascend at a fixed rate, about 40/50ft the first year, then 400/500ft or so a year for the next few. When they hit 1500ft, they, along with anything unfortunate enough to still be on them, vanish into thin air. The town occasionally uses this to get rid of criminals, stranding them on bits of land that are clearly about to be airborne. Which is … an interesting choice? Do you jump to your death from a great height, or see what happens after a few years of exile when you hit the edge of the sky? (Or get a friend with a flying creature or numenera to get you off, obviously. But. There’s an interesting little background).
The Fluid Tower, in the Glass Sea. The Glass Sea is an inland sea that during spring and summer goes so dead calm it becomes like, well, glass. The Fluid Tower is a 400ft extrusion from the sea that is hardened water. Not ice. Just water, that is currently harder than steel. Some people have scraped some material from the tower, and it immediately turns into liquid again, but can clean anything. The ‘walls’ are translucent, and there seems to be liquid water inside, full of fish that can suddenly enjoy a lot more of a view than usual. It looks like there’s a way for those fish (or people) to swim up into the tower from the sea itself, but that might be an illusion. I just love this thing. What a fantastic inexplicable thing to just plop in your world. The tower also has three hovering androgynous faces that float in its vicinity that sometimes ward people away, sometimes not, and even occasionally speak various opaque bits and bobs to people. This area is just weird and I love it. It might be my favourite thing in Lostrei, as random as that might be.
Orcourt, where the Glass Sea meets the Tiomon River. It’s an ancient prior-world city that’s half inhabited, but in a much more fun way that usual. From the modern wooden docks attached to the lower edges of the ancient towers, you take ‘float shafts’ up to habitation level: the upper stories 300ft up that are connected by ‘an invisible field of force’ that acts sort of like water. Stuff weighing less than a ton floats on it, and you can swim through or sail along it, like invisible canals between the buildings 300ft in the air. You can also ‘wade’ through it, but balance is tricky, and if you successfully reach the ‘bottom’ of the 12ft deep canal, you will fall through it. There’s a school for nanos in this city, and it’s just … it’s really quite fantastic.
The Glass Sea as a whole area is just … probably one of my favourite parts of this world so far? I would live there. I’m gonna go to Nano school in Orcourt. Can you imagine growing up in a city like that? Playing in the ‘canals’? Everyone having that story of the one kid they knew who swam too deep and fell out the bottom to their death 300ft below? Teenagers whose whole point of pride is that they’ve successfully figured out how to ‘wade’? Sailing into the city on a fishing boat from below, looking up to see a whole city’s worth of people just swimming around in the air 300ft up? Vendor boats sailing around an invisible canal 300ft up selling tea? Out into the sea a bit, there’s a great tower of glass-like solid water where fish can take in much the same views you can. Fisherfolk here regularly fish up glass fish, live ones, that they then throw back, because if you keep them until they die you start to know stuff you shouldn’t know and don’t want to. It’s just … I love it. I love this area. What a fantastic part of the world. Genuinely, I love it so much.
I’m gonna make a fisher nano from Orcourt. What a place. Heh.