Blavatsky

[Ari Rahikkala]

Chopped off from http://shireroth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11516 where it would really have been a bit off topic after all the awesomeness:

The sanct of Blavatsky was built in 2956 to 2961 ASC, in the late parts of the McCallavre boom. That's when Straylightian structural engineers had finally figured out the designs and building materials for making sancts that could last pretty much indefinitely as long as someone was around to switch in new load-bearing parts every couple of decades. Unlike the other sancts built in the time, however, Blavatsky was engineered, well, in a word, quite terribly. The exact quote that history remembers from the time is:

The artist/architect proclaims it a reactionary response to the rigid, archetypal sancts of his day. No one really knows what this means, and many engineers are frankly baffled at how the thing stays upright. Inside, the ill-lit corridors twist into odd, meandering corkscrews that mysteriously turn back on themselves. There are rumors that a strange sub-species of man inhabits the air ducts.

Just so that there's no confusion over this one, the designer was not Dante McCallavre - he's the one that Straylightian history remembers as having designed various well-engineered ones - well, at least architecturally - such as Sargassum.

The sanct of Blavatsky went on to exhibit all sorts of weird supernatural properties. One day it wouldn't even quite be there, the other day everything would be normal except there would be a magical academy around that the locals would insist had always been there. Sometimes it would exhibit charter-of-Micras magic, sometimes thaumodynamics, sometimes reality buffering. One could give numerous lectures about exactly how all of these things worked...

... but it's hardly relevant, since as the sanct went through the incremental rebuilding process that keeps them floating over the centuries, the supernatural weirdness went the way of the poorly designed corridors. Blavatsky is pretty much a sanct as usual these days, except for, you know, the whole thing with the mirrors.

Yeah, the mirrors. They don't look in mirrors in Blavatsky. Something out of the wild youth of the sanct stayed behind, hiding in the reflections. We don't know what that force is and how it works, other than that it represents and manifests as a sort of turning inward. It's hard to explain, really, and it always varied with different people. Some would glance at a mirror once and immediately freeze there, standing in place for hours. Those would usually have no recollection of anything strange happening afterwards. Some would see themselves as older than they were. Most often, though, what anyone would see in a mirror would be the mirror looking back - that is, not as a reflection of the image of the person, but as that person zirself studying the person looking at the mirror. The fundamental turning inward: Being examined, being judged by yourself.

And then there'd be the ones who spent the rest of their lives screaming after looking at a mirror. That happened quite a few times.

Anyway, that's pretty much it for the history lesson, the rest should be pretty obvious. It actually took a few hundred years for the traditions to really take hold, but by now mirrors are simply considered anathema by everyone in Blavatsky. They've got very competent people at their customs taking care of every brave researcher and neophyte who's trying to come in with a mirror just to get to look at it, and as far as I know no unauthorised ones have gotten through in the last thirty years or so. Of course the authorised ones are a separate matter altogether, they let one in every ten years. I hear the last one was a screamer.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

The artist/architect proclaims it a reactionary response to the rigid, archetypal sancts of his day. No one really knows what this means, and many engineers are frankly baffled at how the thing stays upright. Inside, the ill-lit corridors twist into odd, meandering corkscrews that mysteriously turn back on themselves. There are rumors that a strange sub-species of man inhabits the air ducts.

Y'know, I haven't played that game in about ten years, yet that still leapt out at me.

[Harvey Steffke]

Yeah, darcologies were awesome. Sure they were probably evil, but I couldn't help having a twisted monument here and there to remind people that there were worse things to worry about in a city than my fire budget.