Wilusa, City Of Chains

The City of Chains exists everywhere and nowhere, they say — an endlessly unfurling urban maze of black-and-jewels, ancient stone and stranger metals, built upon deeper labyrinths still while the great chains arc and coil far overhead across the glassy dome of the strangely coloured sky.

Few come to Wilusa deliberately, at least at first. Most travelers find themselves in its winding streets by fouling their transit between other worlds entirely; some have been cursed there. It’s a rare wanderer, in comparison, who’s travels lead them directly to this realm …

Many choose never to use the pale ghost-iris, native to the city, to shiver their way back onto a different path, preferring the push-and-pull of the City Of Chains:
to stake their fate on plumbing the Quicksilver Labyrinth;
joining one of Wilusa’s kaleidoscope of guilds, orders and sects;
gathering precious things from uncountable worlds in the City’s dazzling markets;
learning ancient tales from the inhabitants of a catacomb for jeweled saints;
or seeking more dangerous secrets beneath the blade angels’ blank and watchful gazes —

Those who fail quickly find the Keep of Rings and learn the City’s unpredictable pattern, or feed drops of their blood to a ghost-iris and flee back to the world of their home, lest their body and soul feed the ever-widening City and its kaleidoscope of inhabitants.

Wilusa lies outside of the worlds and yet alongside it, and there is none — or, none known — who has ever succeeded in claiming the City for their own.

Those who have tried have left little more trace than whispers and half-remembered poems.

* skulduggery * performance * arcana * *polychrome * cosmopolitan * layers * labyrinths *

while I wouldn’t normally add to a post, Wilusa actually has itself a collection of tables to build out your own City Of Chains over on Itch; pwyw means grab if you want, free and clear ~

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