Windows - Shuttered

The Shuttered Windows

Connects to: 19.31.09, 23.08, 29.14.14, 29.14.26, 29.14.33, 29.14.41, 29.14.43, 29.24 and 40.06.

You can see them all over the under-city of the Shuttered City, if you know where to look. Some of them are small, only big enough for a child to crawl through. Many are the size of doorways; a few are enormous, like the one that hangs in front of the old marketplace square which is now a dozen yards below the ground. Regardless of their size, what all of these windows have in common is that they are closed. Their great stone shutters have been drawn closed and sealed, so that one may mistake them for a wall until one notices the arcane runes inscribed around the edges.

Long ago, this city was known as the City of Many Windows. The founders of the City built it on a place of confluence, where the strange roads come together, and thus it was that the windows were first opened. Through these portals one could enter the strange roads. These roads cannot be found on any map; those who tread them will meet no other travellers, and see no landmarks beyond the eerie fog that surrounds them. But if they know the way, they will come in time quite unexpectedly to their destination, having travelled hundreds or thousands of miles in the space of a few hours. Such was the power of the City in its glory days, when traders arrived daily from the Twelve Nations and beyond.

All that came to an end during the Chimerical Siege. After Alberon slew Tiamat, the dragon-goddess’s daughter Chimalia was enraged and swore vengeance. She sent her chimerical creatures - owlbears, minotaurs, griffons and others - through the strange roads to invade the City. Driven to the brink, the priests of the city chose to seal up the windows forever. The Chimerical Siege was broken soon after.

Nobody has ever been able to open the Shuttered Windows since that day. However, it is said that the magic of the confluence still lingers within the city walls. One night you may find yourself walking down a dark alley, only to glimpse at the far end an open field, a dirt road, and a skyline obscured by fog. Follow that trail, and you may emerge anywhere in the Shrouded Lands or beyond. Or you may never emerge at all…

Connections:

Hooks:

A Vision of the Distant Past

Connects to: 13.08, 17.17.05, 19.01, 27.12, 29.14.13 and 29.14.20.

Long ago, before the gods went to war (40.06) and the empire of Bergolast was torn asunder, there was an age of great peace and prosperity for this city. The Windows were not Shuttered but wide open, and travellers arrived in the bustling, smoking marketplace from across the world and beyond. The elves of the Kingswood and the troll-folk of Bergolast were considered locals by comparison with those who visited from distant lands - Naros and Grumluda and Zamorqy, a land so far across the ocean that none have ever sailed there, and nothing of that place has reached the Shrouded Lands since the Shutters were closed forever.

Yet even these distances paled in comparison to those travelled by those who visited from the outer planes. In those days the ethereal realm was more permeable - it was possible to push through into other worlds, and for other worlds to push back. There were processions of Nephilium from the Holy Mountain, mighty Galloons from the Forest of Fancy, and ashen-skinned voidsailors from the no-place, which is no place at all. The world has changed since then, though, and if the outer planes still exist, they are not reachable by any known means. Rumors abound that Severard of the Seven Chins (13.08) is not dead and has found a way to travel the planes again, but this is nothing more than hearsay.

In the heyday of the City of Many Windows, the peace was kept by a strange being, neither man nor god. Those who suffered his punishments gave him the name Lord of Pain. The only law that he enforced unwaveringly was that he should not be worshipped. Yet the faith of men difficult to control, and in time the people of the City began to pray to him, and gave him the name ‘Alberon.’ In doing so they made him a god, and this changed him to his very nature. Where he was once reserved and mysterious he became mighty and demanding. From there it was only a matter of time before the war began.

By the time the war was over and the Shutters were closed, the people of the city were already beginning to forget that golden era. In time it drifted out of memory that the name ‘City of Many Windows’ was originally only an epithet, and that the first and true name of the city was Sigil.

Connection:

Hooks:

The Last Window

Hex 29.14.33

Connects to: 29.14.13 and 43.08.

If the musings of the Weeper (43.08) are to be believed there is only one window of the City that yet remains open for it was spared by Chimalia’s curse. Now it still lies in the very deepest recesses of the Undercity below the dens of the Whispering Sisters (29.14.07) and even the troglodytes (29.14.10).

Those who look through this last window see an endless vista of steel-grey skies, great shining arcs of metal pitted with vast fungoid cavities and quicksilver dragons that twist and writhe as they fly.

From this last window strange unnatural beings have come. They are a mass of lines and angles that beguile the eye, with triangles that possess three right angles and twisted loops that circle about while each part of the loops manages to wind ever downwards.

Those few who have ventured down into the levels near the Last Window report that something is being built down there, something strange and alien in its geometries. One adventurer who was able to return from an expedition of the Window lived out her days drawing circles upon the dirt of the White Road and screaming at them while another refused to set foot out of windowless rooms and soothing dark tunnels because of what he had learned about the shapes of the clouds.

Hooks:

Categories: Buildings , Planes , City of Shuttered Windows , Undercity


Original: https://shrouded-lands.fandom.com/wiki/Windows_(Shuttered)