Lands like the Elder Continent and Polythreme are aeons away in the dark pitch of the Unterzee. Yet, despite their eldritch nature, rumours swirls that they are the remains of other great Cities that Fell. This author neither disputes nor supports these claims. What this author does offer is a puzzling set of contrary evidence to stimulate further discourse on the matter.
The city around the Bazaar is called the Fifth City because, they say, it’s not the first the Bazaar chose as a home. You can still turn up bricks from the older cities, now and then. Look: here’s one marked with an eye.
The Fourth, Third, Second, and First Cities must all have been in some closer proximity to our great Fifth Fallen City.
There is Flute Street, and there is the Forgotten Quarter itself, but for such things as finding bricks from the Temple of Eyes of the First Fallen Kingdom whilst on one’s daily walkabout despite Secrets and Gossip obtained regarding Polythreme? It is evident that there is more to the story.
Others tell of the Fifth City being dragged directly to the place where each preceding fallen city lies, crushing them under our towers and bridges and arrogance. There seems to be room for very little further beneath us, at least in the city proper. Surely it is for the lands across the Unterzee, over mountains and through the graveyards of gods, to concern with Other Realms?
What are the things under the City? In no particular order, these are said to be: the first Four Cities; the Masters’ summer homes; the hatcheries of the Rubbery Men; and a number of gigantic sleeping beasts which are drugged every year to prevent them awakening and destroying the Neath. These are sometimes referred to as the ‘stone pigs’, but that’s probably some sort of mistranslation.
Or perhaps less certainly. (Summer homes of the Masters? In the same place as the Second City?)
Perhaps you will enter some conspiratic Salon with these thoughts. Perhaps you will engage in the discourse of which this author hopes to stimulate. Perhaps you will do nothing. To each, their own.