City23 Week 2, “Death”

This project began last week. I expect my output will fluctuate; this week I’ve been particularly scatterbrained so please don’t rely on them being nearly 2000 words every time!

As Mazcity is in an area of the world populated by titanic creatures, there was a lot of death outside the city for anyone who found themselves in the “stomping” grounds of various creatures who didn’t always look where they were stepping.

However, due to its immense size, Mazcity itself is rather noticeable even to kaiju, so it has had fewer whole-city catastrophes involving titans. As a city with a growing population, though, procedures and rituals involving death are still a major part of civic order.

Sunday — Rumour

The literal ‘Highwayman’s Ghost’

The tavern at the edge of the city is named after a local phenomenon slash folklore slash rumour about an actual Hegemony-era Captain who deserted her unit, attempted suicide-by-cop, and survived, only to flee into the mountains, becoming a highwayman who preyed on innocents passing between Mazcity and the free nations beyond the escarpment.

The popular poem Woman, Horse, Blunderbuss by Banjo Henrison restages the rumour as a dramatic, romantic adventure undertaken by a mostly fictionalised Captain Viola Luckless in the decade following the gold rush. The most famous section of the poem, a confrontation between Luckless and her old flame, suggests — without confirming — the folkloric “end” of the Highwayman: that during a scuffle on the cliff above the mountain highway, Luckless’s lover fell, and filled with grief Luckless threw herself from the cliff afterward. Luckless’s unresolved conflict is said to have caused her spectre to continue to haunt the highway thereafter.

Curiously, although the Highwayman’s Ghost is known to practically everyone in Mazcity, the only reports of actual supernatural experiences come from visitors and foreign merchants who use that particular stretch of highway between Patcounty and the goldfields. No resident of the area or local trader has ever professed fear of the Highwayman’s Ghost.

Monday — Room

Musee-Crypt

A museum of the bodies of various dead luminaries of the past. During the time of the Human Hegemony, the Musee-Crypt was one of the few places that was not raided or destroyed for its collection of non-human information.

Said information is mostly in the form of corpses, of course, including the body parts of several titans, but it nevertheless served as an important historical and political bulwark against the destructive Human-Supremacism of the Hegemony.

The Musee-Crypt is operated by the Orthodox-Chancery, a pseudo-religious organisation that claims the second-from-the-top spot in terms of professed membership among citizens of Mazcity, but as it fails to qualify for religious tax exemptions, it operates much more like corporate cult.

Tuesday — Item

Perri’s Papadums

This legendary fast food has taken on a double-life as part of a certain religious ceremony, held by humans from southwestern Mazcity in the wake of a loved one’s death. Perri’s Papadums itself now produces special “Wake Breads” for these ceremonies.

Wednesday — Room

Mostly empty room

A room in the upper levels of the grand temple of the Orthodox-Chancery, tidy and entirely empty except for an unadorned wooden chair in the middle.

Thursday — Inhabitant

Death Pumpkin

A kind of “civic pet”, the Death Pumpkin is a harmless dweller of the Orthodox-Chancery Graveyard, though one that proved impossible to contain when originally discovered. Consisting of several pumpkins knotted together by muscular vines, the vegetable-cum-creature has grown to have an average diameter of seven feet.

At random intervals, though no less than every three weeks, the Death Pumpkin will set out from its graveyard nest and arrive at the current dwelling (usually an assisted-living facility or hospital) of a very old citizen. This arrival is often celebrated by the person in question, as they are invariably tired and usually in pain from a long palliative experience.

With the use of its many tentacular pumpkin vines, the Death Pumpkin will support the citizen in leaving their bed and begin the Pumpkin Walk, which starts with a visit to the Pumpkin Walker’s loved ones, followed by a weaving path through (on average) three other locations in the city that appear to have meaning to the Pumpkin Walker themselves.

At the end of the Pumpkin Walk, the Death Pumpkin makes itself untraceable through hitherto-undiscovered means, spiriting away the Pumpkin Walker to a similarly unknown location. Between one and seventy-two hours later, the Death Pumpkin will appear back in its graveyard nest, again through unknown means, sans Pumpkin Walker.

Rarely, items of clothing or jewellery that were on the Pumpkin Walker’s person at the time of their Walk are returned to the location of their bed by Mazcity ravens. Whether the ravens are fully in league with the Death Pumpkin and its mysterious rituals, or they are simply guided by outside forces, also remains unknown, as ravens are even more secretive than gnomes.

Friday — Room

Sanctuary B13 of the Church of BeWhere®

While the Orthodox-Chancery is the second-largest pseudo-religious organisation in Mazcity, it is technically dwarfed by the Church of BeWhere®, a very recent addition to the social fabric of the city due to its springing up around the command and operations of a social media application — in this case, the BeWhere® app for magic slates (more on BeWhere® at a later date).

For reasons involving the operations of the BeWhere®app, Sanctuaries were set up all over Mazcity and the greater countryside. However, Sanctuary B13 — though having a physical location anyone can visit in the southwestern district of Mazcity — has been expunged from the app’s database due to ‘security reasons’.

Saturday — Faction

Rergwe Mobol Seven

The Rergwe Mobol Seven once consisted of Mobol themself, a kor-pango, and six other humans and pango, from countries once ruled by the Human Hegemony. They were an infamous team of thieves and spies, whose activities have gathered their own collection of folklore and rumour, yet nothing in Mazcity has been attributed to their activities in over twenty years.

Given that kor-pango have an average lifespan of 68 years, it is very likely that over half of the Rergwe Mobol Seven have now passed away from old age.