An Impression of Shar-Burunz, The Bronze City
The sun beats down on an arid spot beside the river Az-Didan. To the north, up the river, the sea of Pearls. To the east, the Silent Desert where Master Faridun lost his way and found God. Further south, the marshy lowlands of Kerzerk. And, to the west the mountainous land where Beshara sits. Now, lay your eyes upon the Bronze City, the spot where King Ghur-Tarokh was struck dead by a bolt from heaven, and the Bronze folk abandoned the life of the saddle. See Sellum’s wall, laid by the hands of giants from lands beyond the desert and upon it the form of her horse which she chased five times round the sacred mountain.
Entrance to the Temple of the Simurgh, Queen of all Birds
Step through the iron gates and upon the Avenue of White Blossoms where litters and camels and carriages bustle between the lines of spindly palm trees, up to the palace. Children run between the horses’ legs with no care for the diplomats, the princes, the preachers, the merchants, the masters of every art and every kind of learning. They have greater concerns, cats to startle, tops to spin, brass bowls of soup to lick clean.
The Facade of Lord Khal-Zun’s Residence
Follow one of those children. She rushes through the side streets, winding past apartments and shrines to Saints and all of God’s different faces. Her little hands pull the lattice gate aside and she bolts up the entryway, to the courtyard, startling her mother’s guests as they exchange pleasantries. A spotted cat lounges on the side of the courtyard fountain. The little girl picks him up and on her way to the kitchen where her father stoops at the stove, he chides her for getting cat hair on everything, he’s shedding in the heat after all.
Window Overlooking The Avenue of White Blossoms
But enough of them, the scent of Frankincense is rising from the street, slipping through the windows. Look out at the blind monks, the silver and bronze of their robes jingling as they sing psalms of praise in the old tongue of Beshara. On their backs they carry cases full of martyr’s bones, freshly canonized by the tolling of St. Az-Raq's bell. There is a new tomb in the necropolis whose inscription reads: “Here lie the Saintly dead who laid down their lives at the hands of monstrous pagans at 2nd Battle of the Two Rivers, 612. May their slaughter never be forgiven.”
The Tomb of St. Az-Raq in the Blue Quarter of the Holy Necropolis
Follow that procession. It goes through the city in a spiral. Through the Great Market where merchants bow as their slaves look on, stunned; around the crowded Arcade of the Sages where books, scrolls, and poems are all for sale; and finally past the University of Kard-An.
Learning's House, The Central Courtyard of Kard-An
The scholars, in their brown robes, look down from their apartments to watch the monks march by. They return to their sweet jasmine tea and debate the weight of the soul and the precise movements of all the heavenly objects. Besharan masters, skinny and poor, are welcomed at the servants entrance. The house slaves receive blessings from them before the Magistrates and their scribes. Tomorrow, the illustrators will describe the scene in gold and ultramarine and purple.
The Garden of Sellum in Summer
And finally, at the center of the city, in the mouth of all its order and chaos, is the Bronze Palace. Somewhere, hidden in its twisting corridors, its spiraling spires, its constellation of domes, are the bones of Ghur-Tarokh. Upon them, the palace has grown like a beautiful weed. Glass women gently glow in dark rooms. They scribble missives and stamp acquisitions requests. Slave soldiers from far off lands study maps of the Besharan empire under the sky in the glorious courtyards. It is dusk, the Sultan prepares to sleep. She smokes her long ivory pipe and lets her maidservants wash her meters of hair, massage her aching feet. Tomorrow she and the city will wake again, the monks will sing in the streets, the magicians study their scrolls, the merchants peddle their flesh, the soldiers perform their endless drills, the scribes copy old secrets, and a whole new army of suitors will arrive to ask for the Sultan’s hand.
The Audience Chamber of the Bronze Palace
The images above are from (in order of appearance):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/thehumanette/8569220073
https://www.flickr.com/photos/90487619@N04/16572976616
https://www.flickr.com/photos/so__p/2083922490/
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shah-i-Zinda_Necropolis,_Samarkand_(490056).jpg
http://www.muslimheritage.com/article/abbasids-house-wisdom-baghdad
https://www.tripadvisor.com.ph/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g294201-d308828-i21424475-Gayer_Anderson_Museum_Bayt_al_Kiritliya-Cairo_Cairo_Governorate.html
Commentary:
So my biggest problem is that I spend hours thinking about the right way to do something, do it, and then become immediately convinced that I've made a horrible methodological error. This is the case with the above piece. Now I'm going to try and convince myself the opposite is true.
This post is useless to running the game in a practical sense. There's no tables, to stats, no maps, because I don't plan to run a game in the Bronze City. This piece is purely an exercise in style and tone. So then what's the value of style and tone? I believe strongly in the power of dreams and fevers and names for nothing and appreciate the skill it takes to build such effective illusions. There are very few projects I have undertaken and even fewer which I have completed which were not inspired by some kind of romantic notion. There is always a feeling which I need to capture to build everything on, a central containing idea which I always have a hard time pinning down. If I could accurately describe the notion which I find interesting currently it would no longer interest me. The Bronze city, and this description of it, serves as a convenient way to contain the world, the notion, the dream, which attracts me to this whole imaginary empire from which we recruit player characters but keeps the whole show vague enough that there is room for interpretation. I want the players, and myself, to see this city as the greatest flowering of a diverse, enlightened, and vibrant civilization. It's the greatest city under heaven, the whole world could not compare. The shadows are always cooler, the sun always hotter in Shar-Burunz. Of course that's all a lie, it's too good to be true. It's a romantic notion about an imaginary place, a lie on top of a lie. So it is useless, but I need it still.
Great, now I believe in myself again. I can't wait to share the more useful stuff with you soon.
This post is dedicated to the Banu Musa brothers whose work should be better integrated into this setting
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