#also obviously there's a lot of calyptra in the sea and shores as well who all have their own coping mechanisms for the human condition | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dawn-of-worlds · 1 year

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Let us build for ourselves a city

Beneath the claws and cloaks and thirst for blood, beneath the touch of Corobel, beneath their strange homes and stranger thoughts, the Calyptra are human. The curse of humanity; to never feel satisfaction, to always chase some greater goal; that is their birthright as well.

At least in humans, this is mitigated by physical reality. Hunger and thirst will crowd out ennui, the day-to-day struggle for survival dominates questions of higher purpose. Some humans go all their lives without ever giving much thought to that nagging sense of imperfection, too occupied with eking out a living.

But the Calyptra live in an otherwordly paradise. They never go hungry, they need serve no kings, and the few beasts that dare hunt them cannot follow onto the shore. Some become great philosophers, engaged in endless debate about reality and morality. Some seek solace in art, carving blocks of regolith into sculpture, adorning it with shades of red. A few boldly journey inland, starving themselves of blood for days at the time, and return bearing meteoric treasures and strange lunar gems. Mystics and poets and craftsmen all exist among them, as they do among humans.

Most, however, build.

(and they call the thing they built a city, but it has no market-squares, no palaces, no temples, no roads or mills or wells, and in fact its people have no need for cities, and hardly even remember them, and the thing they build is no city at all, but a great stone gate, built for a hateful dark star that spirals inward even now)

Truth-Descends-from-the-Heavens is enormous. The cyclopean city stretches beyond the horizon, its great towers reach a hundred meters into the heavens. A great ziggurat, built far from the shore and slowly sloping up, measures half a mile, and some add to it still. Canals snake between the buildings, providing fresh blood to the city's occupants; many buildings collect blood in their basements and so remove any need to ever head outside. Bridges-turned-tunnels, their cracks sealed with mud, span the bloodways, allowing for easy travel between buildings.

Much of this space is pointless, constructed only because construction was called for. Some buildings are hollow within; others are completely solid. Labyrinthine corridors wind around vast empty rooms, stairs are rough and incomplete, sometimes requiring vast vertical jumps to ascend, designs are unbound by considerations of inhabitant or utility. Nearer to the shoreline, the constructions continue beneath the sea's surface. Blood-filled tunnels connect inland basements to submerged vestibules, megaliths ever-untouched by the sun bear glyphs said to turn away sea monsters.

To most Calyptra, the city is nothing but a form of therapy: an opportunity for endless creation that somehow, somewhat, lessens that terrible wanting feeling. They roam it aimlessly, adding onto the design where their strange standards deem it lacking, painting the floors, carving sigils and images in the walls, pausing only to attend to their needs, to breed, to gather stone from the great quarries beneath.

But some take this plentiful space and turn it towards other ends. A lone astronomer has claimed a single tall tower, drawing vast star charts on its walls and floors, heading out to the roof to study the night sky (trying, as she does so, not to glance too much at the shining world's poles). Others construct ritual chambers, crypts, classrooms, libraries, shrines. In a secluded spot one may find a museum, showcasing bones of sea-beasts and treasures from afield, and even a basin of the strange clear fluid from the lifeless ocean far to the south.

And of course there is community, still. Calyptra are no loners, and desire companionship, and a lone Calyptra wandering the halls will in time come across others and join them. In bands from a handful to a hundred, they travel and work together, splitting and merging as they see fit. What conflict the Calyptra know arises between these groups: more commonly over the proper thing to construct than over tribute or territory.

All of these little wars, these tunnels and chambers and dreams, the cults worshipping their grandfathers' works; they matter not to the intelligence behind it. An anthill cares not for its ants, and likewise the dark star sees only an ever-expanding perimeter, an ever more complex target to hone in on: it is pleased at this.

The moon, who is like a god, might once have hoped to resist the hatestar's arrival at great cost, to turn it away, unleash secret arts upon it, perhaps even destroy it. But the city is a doorway, and an inexorable path points through it: while it stands, it shall one day be reached.

(This is part of my previous action; the creation of the Calpytra. No points are expended)

#world 02457 diegesis #i am not going to give any kind of estimate about the population you would need to construct this in 1-2 centuries #but given that the calyptra have a crazy high upper limit on their population right now #i'm pretty confident it's doable #also obviously there's a lot of calyptra in the sea and shores as well who all have their own coping mechanisms for the human condition #the numbers given for building height assume it scales linearly with inverse gravity; if i am wrong please tell me

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