Worldbuilder Spotlight:

Tlapili * was the administrative and Religious capital of the Cicazl

Tlapili is situated in a gigantic meteor crater, around three miles in diameter, in the Acara Desert in southern Nova. The crater's rim naturally extends twenty feet above the surrounding desert, and the Cicazl further fortified this with a double ring of great walls, a layer of vicious wooden spikes between them, now decaying despite the dryness of the desert. (it is worth noting that the nearest source of timber is several hundred miles to the north, in the great Redwood Forests of Kiala- the Cicazl must have dragged the spikes hundreds of miles across the desert). Water was pumped to the city by two great Aqueducts, now mostly destroyed, coming from the mountains to the Northeast and Northwest- their flow was divided at the wall, with half going to the City Proper, and half being channeled into acres of farmland carved from the desert to the north.
The only entrance to the City is via the great Pyramid of the Scorpion, towering over the walls and facing due south, a stairway wide enough for twenty Crusaders to walk down abreast descending from the temple at its peak into the desert.

The city proper is layed out according to a rigid, symmetrical grid, with the vast apartment complexes of the peasants, each topped with long-withered gardens, located towards the south, then, as one progresses northward, the fiercely-carved buildings of the Military Districts (by far the largest portion of the city), the Sacred Marketplace where bloody sacrifices were held on holy days, and the Religious District. A wide avenue leads north from the Temple of the Scorpion, widening into a great plaza at the Marketplace, and finally reaching its end at the palace of the God Emperor- an imposing building, but dwarfed by the Pyramid of the Bishop in Battle behind it. At the northernmost point of the City, the Bishop's Pyramid is built partly into the wall of the crater, with three smaller temples located to either side of it, along the northern rim of the city. Fierce carvings are everywhere, and bas-reliefs dipicting bloody military scenes, some with faded and crumpling paint still clinging to them, adorn almost every surface.

The city fell when the Great Aqueducts were cut off at their source towards the end of the Bloodstained Aeon.

Most peoples regard it as cursed or haunted, and it's said that the screams of sacrificial victims can still be heard on the desert wind- an illusion no doubt brought about by the tombs that line the causeway leading up to the south of the city, which are adorned with statues that catch the wind and produce haunting, eerie notes.

*The name Tlapili is an Intli'Zatlu word normally translated as 'City of Ghouls', but more accurately 'They-eat-men'. Encyclopedists and Historians record the longer name Tlapi'unachatlili, 'It-is-said-they-dwell-there-and-eat-men' in the Old Tongue, but even this is a name used by the Intli'Zatlu hundreds of years after the fall of the Cicazl.

The Cicazl name of the city has not survived, although the Northern Orcs call it Zhuk, and it is often identified with the cursed city of Dugoda mentioned in Tumbruk scripture.

 Create your own free wiki!HelpPublic, not yet premium Privacy Policy RSS