The Last City Archives

February 5, 2007

Jeff R.: The Gardens of the Last City

The city's gardens were always important, as much as the fishermen's docks, but when the last outfort fell and the farms beyond sight-distance of the Brothers became unsafe, their tenants fleeing, becoming even more mouths to feed, the gardens became all-important.

Where there is importance, there is money, money to build the water towers, aqueducts and screw-pumps, money to pay the tenders of the vast fields on the rooftops and walls of the city. And where there is money, there is graft: Alderman Johaness and cronies learned to extract wealth from the garden budget with a brazen deftness hithertofore unseen.

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February 12, 2007

Jeff R.:The Goddess' Tear

On the Avenue of the Gods, just past the Street of Lanterns but before the Crooked Way, there stands a statue. The subject is some forgotten goddess, her cult centuries extinguished and extinct. In the eye of that statue is a blue glass tear. It is said that that tear is hollow, and within it is a poison. This poison, exposed to the air, would spread into a deadly cloud that would kill everyone in the city. It is also said that this is why in all the years and years of siege, the city has never rioted, never burned.

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