The Falling Walls of Monatheron
Connects to: 14.01, 29.01, 47.11, 50.11 and the City of Shuttered Windows.
Greater than the Holt of the Bloodied King (29.07), higher than towers of the Shuttered City and vaster by far than the Bastion of Rhegard (05.20) is the cyclopean bulk of the castle of Monatheron. It is the last remnant of the drowned kingdom of Andara (47.11) that spread ecstasy and terror throughout these lands in the days before the Tarrasque was brought in chains to doomed Bergolast (32.28).
The old line of Andaran kings has long since dried up but a half dozen cyclops lords, each more inbred and sickly than the last, vie for power as the castle crumbles around them. This can be quite dangerous as the city was built with blocks of stone many spans tall and when they fall they easily crush anyone that they happen to land on.
It seems that each year more stones fall and one by one the engines of wonder slow. These days the wind hisses through the rotted canvas of the thousand windmills that crown every tower of the castle. As the towers crumble, more and of the human servants of Monatheron move into improvised bivouacs under the various fallen stones while serving the one-eyed lords of the city, each in precisely the same way that their mother or father did before them.
Among the most important of these duties is caring for the six sacred breeds of Andaran cattle. These beasts are unlike those seen elsewhere and any who crossbreeds them or removes them from Monatheron is thrown into the cat pits that lie in the lower levels of the castle. However, Monatheron does export a great deal of beef, much of it being sent to the City of Shuttered Windows as “gifts,” for Monatheron’s strength is far too withered to resist the power of the City’s Doge.
Currently, one of the primary concerns of the lords of Monatheron is outdoing each other in fashion. It is forbidden for any of their race to wear dead things and, as the fashion changes from year to year cloaks of mewling cats, tunics of caged birds (often birds of paradise, a fashion which the Sosarian cattle barons have adopted in a crude form, see 50.11) and much more can be seen in the castle’s halls.
The current fashion is for the cyclopses of the city to smear their hair with nutritive unguents that attract luminescent beetles that crawl over their bodies in dazzling ever-moving patterns (sometimes beetle-eating snakes are added to keep things more lively). This fashion has some admirers in Shuttered and one can tell much about the courtesans of that city by what beetles cling to their hair. However the from that this has taken in the grimier brothels of the Undercity can be a bit disconcerting.
Connections:
- Drogo the Baldfaced (29.01) was able to rustle some moon-horned cattle under cover of night, only to find that all of the cows he had stolen were female or steers. His attempts to get his hands on a bull or crossbreed them with other cattle have not gone well.
- Thorek Ironhide is served by an exiled cyclops who has assassinated several elder members of the council that stood in the Winterjarl’s way, thanks to his knowledge of secrets forgotten by the younger races (14.01).
Hooks:
- Is there anything to tell about old Andara that now lies under the waves of the Keening Sea? How did it spread “ecstasy and terror?”
- What are the engines of wonder?
- What sort of people serve the cyclopses? What sort of jobs do they have? If each has exactly the same job as his/her parent there must be some strange or obsolete jobs.
- What are the six sacred breeds of cattle? What’s so special about them?
- Cat pits?
- Any other bizarre living fashions?
- I’m not sure I want to hear what the Undercity brothels have been up to with the beetles…
- What secrets does Thorek’s cyclops assassin know?
