City of Bones

The City of Bones is a collection of buildings in Arianiga with special spiritual significance to the earth people nearby. The City is made entirely of the bones of the honored dead; after their flesh decays, the skeletons of those chosen to join the city are dismantled and incorporated into the structure or furniture of one of the city's osseous edifices (or, in rare cases, used to start a new building).

By no means are all the dead any given tribe commended to the City of Bones; the incorporation of one's remains into the City is an honor reserved for the most revered and respected of the deceased. More than one skeleton being added from a single settlement within the same year would be highly unusual. Some settlements do contribute more remains to the City of Bones than others—in general, the closest settlements to the City tend to give more of their dead over the City of Bones than the farthest, though there are many exceptions. Today, the City of Bones is estimated to contain the bones of about 140,000 skeletons.

The City of Bones has different names in the different languages of different groups of earth people. Several of those names, however, translate as "City of Bones", and this tends to be the name generally used by outsiders.

Construction

Structures in the City of Bone are composed of bones and bone fragments, cemented together with a bone paste made from treating ground bone with certain chemicals. No skeleton is ground completely into paste, but nor is every bone of any skeleton left intact without any used for paste. Since all new skeletons require adhesion to existing structures—or, even if used for new buildings, adhesion of their bones to each other—each skeleton necessarily must contribute some bone paste for the construction. (An exception may occur in the rare case that two bodies are incorporated into the City at the same time; it's possible that all the bone paste is contributed by one skeleton, so that the other is used entirely for structural elements.) By no means are all the walls constructed identically; some, for instance, are constructed solely of leg and arm bones, while others are a more chaotic concretion of smaller bones; one building, the House of Heads, is made entirely of skulls. In many cases, intact bones are not used; the component bones are intentionally shattered into shards of various sizes before construction.

It takes an average of about 8.3 skeletons to produce one square meter of wall or roof, though this proportion varies by the thickness of the wall and some details of its construction. This also omits the skeletons that are used for furniture and decoration rather than for the main structure of the edifices; counting those skeletons, the ratio comes out to about 10.5 skeletons per square meter of structural elements.

History

The City of Bones is almost two thousand years old, having begun when one hero, Mbene Bom, apparently requested on his deathbed that his bones be used to found a new city. Legend has it that he said the spirits had told him this, but it remains unclear just what spirits he was talking about; spirits of any sort played a minimal role in the beliefs of his people. In any case, even if he did say this, it may have been the result of moribund delirium rather than the report of any real communication. In any case, Mbene Bom's wishes were carried out, and his bones were set in the earth in a remote location, to form part of the cornerstone of a new building there. As the story spread, other honored dead were brought to the same place, their remains combined with those already there. The first building, the one incorporating Mbene Bom's bones, became what is now called the Old House; within a few hundred years, however, other buildings were already being started near it.

As the City of Bones slowly grew, so did its area of influence; remains were brought to it from a wider and wider area. It also increasingly became the focus of other beliefs and ceremonies, with new myths evolving about the city in many earth people cultures. The Old House remained the largest building in the City of Bones for centuries, until finally it was completely surrounded by other buildings and left with no room for further expansion. (Even then, some builders tried to expand it upward, but this idea was fairly quickly abandoned.)

Contents

The City of Bones today comprises ninety-one buildings in various stages of completion. (It's hard to definitively call any of its buildings complete, however, since later bones can always be added to existing structures.) The Old House, located in the city's center, has lost its place as the largest building to the Maze on the outskirts, but still remains a noteworthy landmark. After the Maze, the largest buildings in the city are, in order, the Star House, the Old House, the House of Arches, the Bathhouse, and the Great Hall; there is a substantial gap between these six buildings and the next largest, which currently happens to be the Channel House.

Although no plan was ever made for the layout of the City of Bones, the city gradually added to over centuries by many independent individuals who never communicated with each other, nevertheless there has been some order to its growth. Five roads radiate from the Old House, more or less straight; two of these terminate, one at the Maze and one at the Temple of Spines, but the other three extend all the way to the city's outskirts. While the six largest buildings are scattered more or less at random about the city, the other larger buildings tend to occur in clusters, with "neighborhoods" of small, one- or two-room buildings, between and around them.

While many regard the Old House as the center of the city, the shape of the city is irregular enough to make this identification ambiguous. Also widely regarded as the city's center is an open space a few dozen meters south of the Old House, simply called the Square. Near the center of the Square is a pit called Heaven's Well, partly lined with bones. A relatively new feature of the city, the Well was begun only a few centuries ago, but it has become the focus of various enchantments.

Surroundings

The City of Bones was intentionally first established far from civilization, and that hasn't changed; as the earth people have spread into new territory, they have deliberately given the City a wide berth, out of respect for what it represents. The City exists on a dry plateau with little foliage nearby save for a few stunted shrubs; the nearest water source is the Leidi River that meanders below at the edge of the plateau.

The nearest permanent settlement, Orange Ridge, is almost ten kilometers away.

Ceremonies

Although it (officially) has no permanent inhabitants, the City of Bones is used as a venue for various ceremonies important to the earth people. One such ceremony, of course, is that accompanying the incorporation of a new skeleton into the city; while the details of this vary from people to people, it is always done with great pomp and ritual, and overseen by a priest or shaman. Ceremonies to invoke blessings or counsel from the dead are also popular, though they rarely yield verifiable results.

Among many tribes, it is usual for young men and/or women to have to spend one or more nights alone in the City of Bones before they are considered adults—other tribes have a similar ceremony, but reserve it for those who aspire to the priesthood or other special positions, rather than requiring all their adolescents to go through it. The idea behind this practice, often called the Communion, is that the youth will commune (consciously or otherwise) with the dead whose bones make up the city, and be inspired by them.

Other ceremonies may also be performed in the City of Bones as well, varying by tribe. Some tribes even go so far as to conduct animal sacrifices there—or in a few cases even human sacrifices, though this is very rare.