| abstract
| - What’s even more maddening is that once you’re on the road, it seems to always bring you back to the city, regardless of how it twists and turns or even if you turn your back and walk away. Eventually, the Inevitable City looms once again in front of the hapless traveller. Rumours persist these roads even wind their way deep into the Empire and lands beyond, ensuring some poor soul is bound to be trapped, the Inevitable City his only destination. The Inevitable City first looms on the horizon, standing like a jagged wound against a slate-grey sky. The City plays tricks on the eyes, sometimes seeming as if it is remarkably close, then far away, thus making it impossible to determine the distance. It exudes a brooding evil, with gates shaped like gaping maws. The Inevitable City is covered in a black dust that resists all attempts to be brushed or washed away. The most detailed account of the Inevitable City comes from the Liber Malefic, otherwise known as the Book of Chaos Foreseen, penned by the scholar Marius Hollseher. Hollseher denies he actually travelled physically to the Inevitable City and that his account of the place came to him in dreams and visions. He claims he saw several duplicates of himself, downcast and lost in thought, making their way inside the city. Hollseher cannot account for why this is so — perhaps they were illusions, visions of seeing himself in the past or future, or clever Doppelgangers, formed from Chaos to tempt and demoralise him. He managed to escape from eternal entrapment within its walls by turning away from the City and walking into a mysterious mist that formed at his deepest depression. No one else has claimed to see this mist, despite his firm belief that it exists and is the only way out of certain doom. Although the streets and halls of the Inevitable City seem lonely, it actually hosts a large number of beings. The souls of the cursed, or those that stumbled inside, eternally wander its desolation, desperate for a way out. Disembodied forms plead and beg for guidance, while others claim to know the way to the City’s exit but ultimately lead those that follower deeper into its walls and farther from any way of leaving. Daemons and Mutants also prowl its streets, cackling with glee at the plight of the lost. They rarely attack, but they taunt and torment from afar. The Inevitable City is curious in that Daemons from all four of the Gods of Chaos can be found within its walls. Whether this means that the City is neutral ground for them or the Daemons themselves are trapped, no one knows. The Inevitable City is a symbol of all that is lost, and the plight of those that find themselves in desperate situations with no way out. Its illusions and mazes have a way of returning a traveller back to the same location, regardless of what route he takes. Scholars believe the Inevitable City is a living metaphor for the downward spiral that the lure of Chaos represents, for once you walk down the dark path there is no hope of return.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)