Building Gossamer, Part 7 – The Verdant Quarter

The Verdant Quarter is now complete, meaning that the entire Gossamer map is likewise finished:

Link to a more detailed image of the Verdant Quarter.

Link to a more detailed image of the full city.

The Verdant Quarter is ruled by King Oberon, Lord of the Hunt, sovereign of the endless summer of Mag Mell. Everything here is green and growing, the blaze of summer sunshine shadowed by the forested hills beyond the city limits and the formidable Cloudcastle atop its behemothic stalk. Oberon himself visits the city rarely, being mostly engaged with various hunts, including the Wild Hunt itself when he joins his Royal cousin and rival Arawn, competing to see which can track down more damned souls, to keep the contract between Hell and Elfhame.

Cloudcastle

Arguably the most impressive fortress in Gossamer, Cloudcastle was not built by the Fair Folk but by the Giants of Jotunheim, who used the stronghold as a mobile battle station, raining down lightning and lobbing rocks at Elfhame below during the Enormity Wars. After the Second Battle of Gossamer, Cloudcastle was captured and turned against its creators; now that the Giant menace has been eliminated, the castle serves as King Oberon’s seat, allowing him to gaze down at Gossamer and Elfhame beyond from atop the vast beanstalk that connects sky and earth. Numerous small structures have since been built amidst the coils of the stalk – palaces and salons for Mag Mell’s elfin royalty and other members of the Seelie Court. The Castle itself is a thing of unearthly beauty, the roughness of its Jotun origins tempered by various additions by the aristocratic fey who now reside in its towers and courtyards, quite literally looking down on their subjects below.

The Fairest Fair

The largest bazaar in Gossamer and indeed in all Elfhame, the Fairest Fair is a sprawling marketplace where anything and everything can be bought and sold. Adjacent to the foreigner’s district of Sloomy and to the Leafroad, the Fair bustles with creatures from throughout Faerie and beyond. Goblins hawk rude pistols and clockwork traps, side-eyed by fatstidious gnomes selling pocketwatches and navigational instruments; shy Firbolg sell finely carved wood furniture cheek-by-jowl with pixie nectar-merchants and treefolk with stalls of their own fruit. Here one can find magical pearls stolen from the monsters of the Poison Sea by adventurous finfolk, musical instruments that warble with the voices of the damned, spellbooks from the wizardly metropolis of Hex, silks from the Dreamlands, relics of ancient Jotunheim, baubles from the glittering mines of the kobolds, and thousands of other oddities and absurdities. Also notable here are a number of enchanted fountains, most obviously the huge Giant’s Cup, a draught of which causes amusing (though temporary) increases in height and knowledge of the Giant tongue.

Glister

Sparkling and shimmering with a thousand iridescent colours, the beautous district of Glister is one of the most wondrous in all of Gossamer, a place of living crystal glowing with eldritch power, a testament to the raw power of the Seelie Court. The structures of Glister are a kind of reservoir of magical energy for the Fair Folk of Mag Mell and Tír na nÓg; in times of need, Oberon and others of the Court can draw on the swirling puissance contained within the endless crystals to produce spells of unthinkable power. Apart from functioning as a magical battery, the district also serves as the academic centre of Seelie Gossamer, with many young Fair Folk studying in the glittering halls of the Prism; others take “orders” at the shrines known as the Cathedral of Bliss or the Temple of Love and Beauty, dedicated not to gods or demons but to the grand abstractions that guide the lives of all Fair Folk in the southern realms of Elfhame.

Mistcliff

The Firbolg are generally a reclusive people, taken to hiding away in remote fastnesses and obscure havens. Those who dwell in Mistcliff are a rare exception – a tribe of giants sworn to the personal service of King Oberon, his royal woodsmen and gamekeepers. They tend to the surrounding forests and hills, ensuring that the Lord of the Hunt finds his trails well-stocked with beasts, protecting the woods from outside threats. Aloof from the bustle of Gossamer, they dwell in the district of Mistcliff, a village perched atop a craggy hill overlooking the Verdant Quarter below. From Hornhall rules Slánga, who still retains the title of King himself, though now a vassal of Oberon, who he acknowledges as High King, though that title is now dubious following the fracture of Elfhame into four realms. Here also can be found the Hall of Leaves, a sacred place kept by the Firbolg druids – an extensive library of Elfin history second only to the Library of the Dead in the Withered Quarter, where the uncountable volumes penned by the shades of Annwn gather dust.

Sloomy

Though an uneasy peace now lies between Mag Mell and Logris, things have not always been so. During the time known in Mag Mell as the Bad Dream, the Sleepless War, Mab and the most skilled sorceresses of the Unseelie Court tormented the Verdant Quarter with curses and spells, most spectacularly including the conjuration of Sloomy. Overnight, the houses and shops of the Quarter began to transform, becoming untethered from reality, flowing into shapes fanciful and strange, shapes drawn from the troubled dreams of those inside them. Mab’s spell created a kind of psychic bleed between Elfhame and the Dreamlands, a spillover that turned part of the Verdant Quarter into a waking nightmare. Evil dreams made flesh soon found their way into the streets, slaughtering those that dreamt them into existence in a bloodbath for which Oberon has never fully forgiven Her Moldy Majesty. Though peace has now been reestablished, Mab’s spell proved irreversible, and so the district of Sloomy still stands, a strange, amorphous pocket of Unseelie magic marring the otherwise pristine sublimity of the Verdant Quarter. Its denizens are no longer hostile to the Seelie, but the Fair Folk of Mag Mell visit the district only grudgingly, typically but passing through on their way to the Blooming Quarter. The place has instead become a kind of foreigner’s quarter for the Unseelie and for dignitaries from the Dreamlands, many of whom can be found in the House of Eyes, a palatial embassy of the plane of slumber. Many Lengians have also moved into the area, finding the neighbourhood a reminder of their homeland; though treated with suspicion elsewhere in Seelie Gossamer, here they have found work fashioning silk, rope, poison, and blades, and occasionally as spies for the various scheming nobles of the Court.

Stalkshadow

Beneath Cloudcastle lies the lush forest-land of Stalkshadow, dotted here and there with the homes and hunting lodges of Mag Mell’s elfin nobility. Most prominent of these is the Lodge, a trophy-hall for the notables of the Seelie Court, wherein are displayed the stuffed heads and polished skulls of drakes, chimerae, griffins, trolls, and all manner of other monster, including the beak of a kraken from the icy seas of Annwn. Traveling to the north along the twisting forest paths, the towering shape of the Big Bad Wolf, Vanargand, can be glimpsed, one of the huge hounds of Jotunheim, spawned by the Griefbringer herself, primeval mother of monsters. The beast devoured thousands of the Fair Folk and their servants during the Enormity Wars, but was injured by Finvarra and nursed slowely back to health by Nicnevan, then High Queen of Elfhame, after the battle. When the war was over, the Wolf remained in Elfhame, and though both Finvarra and Nicnevan have passed to Annwn, he still slumbers in Stalkshadow, stirring when roused by Oberon, who met him first as a child, to go hunting in the prodigious forest of the Vastwood to the south.

The Tiltward

Built to resemble one of the castles of the mortals, the Tiltward is technically a working fortress and has been used as such during various conflicts between the Faerie realms, but in truth it is more spectacle than stronghold. It was first established by Finvarra as a kind of toy castle after a particularly enjoyable sojourn to the Mortal Plane, where the Faerie lord discovered the strange sport of jousting. For several Elfin centuries afterwards, Finvarra insisted the entire Faerie Court attire themselves in the guise of mortal knights and ladies and to learn to joust and fight in their fashion. Though such affectations have fallen somewhat out of style in the other realms, they linger especially powerfully in Mag Mell, and Oberon himself has been known to participate in the elaborate tournaments held in the Tiltward. Special laws still apply to those in the district – all speech must be in what is now a very archaic dialect of the mortals’ “Common Tongue” (which itself has diverged into several languages among the mortals themselves), and “anachronisms” must be surrendered at the various gatehouses before entry; strict fines and worse can be levvied against those who refuse to play along.