I happened to find a snippet of someone’s journal, and in the tradition of London, stole it.
“When the Sixth City falls, I will be safe in Parabola. I will walk its new streets, the strangeness of its sharp-edged shadows. I will look through the windows as I pass, at the cathode shadows dancing on the ceilings. They’ll leave me offerings and pay me with prayer. It’s a pity about London. But everything passes. Except me.”
I propose that the Third City was Calakmul.
We know:
What was the Third City? No-one talks much about the cities that preceded London. The Third City seems to have been acquired a thousand years ago. It had five wells, they say. And the weather was better.
At its apogee Calakmul was the capital of a regional state covering over 3000 square miles (8000 square km).
Calakmul (along with many other Mayan cities) collapsed as a regional power and population century sometime between the early 9th and early 10th century A. D., about 1000 years before the Fall of London.
More significantly, the city had thirteen reservoirs, five of which were major ones.
References: Wikipedia and this: http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/calakmul/Calakmul.pdf[li]
edited by Lady Sapho Byron on 1/21/2016
Calakmul’s the most convincing guess I’ve seen yet! Its rule by "Snake Lords" doesn’t directly tie to in game evidence as far as I know, but it would certainly fit the general lore.
OVER-EXTENSIVE EDIT:
Credit where it’s due, apparently Trodgmey posted this Calakmul evidence back in 2012 on this thread.
Found some old college notes on Calakmul, nothing relevant to these hints but just in case here are some snippets:
— aka Kan
— in NORTH of lowlands (Gasp! :P)
— polity at height of power 562-695 AD, subduing and allying with rivals (much warfare and politics)
— serious defeats at Tikal hands 695, 736, rest of Calakmul’s allies defeated by 744
— Calakmul Dynasty ends in 909, but it’s been marginal for a long time by this point
I also came across a general Maya page talking about wells (cenotes and chultnob) — they’re important across a wide region, so most cities are going to match to some degree. And to put things in perspective, Calakmul had its day in the sun, but Chichen Itza was a much bigger deal ("largest, most powerful, most cosmopolitan Mayan state in history" according to my notes). After calming down a bit, I think old C.I. is still punching as a heavyweight in this competition.
Oh, and abandoned chultnob were used for burial, so that may be where failbetter got the idea.
edited by TheThirdPolice on 1/26/2016
The First city, May be Bylos as it was the ancient Phoenician capital
(established [color=rgb(37, 37, 37)]between 8800 and 7000 BC)[/color] and was near the Cedars of God. Hence the reference to " the Crossroads Shaded By Cedars".
Resurrecting a bit from all the way back on the first page, but I saw this and got very excited! I’m a bit of a nerd for Egyptian history, and with all the discussion of Akhenaten, the pieces dropped into place, as it were.
I think the symbol being discussed here is, well, the sun itself, or the symbol of Aten! Take a look - fits the description startlingly well if you don’t take it quite so literally, and think of it the way a current Londoner would if they found a piece of gold in the same shape - a fragment of a wheel.
I got very excited about this correlation. Don’t know if anyone’s ever mentioned it before, but there you have it! Seems to add some credence to the Amarna theory.
EDIT: Alright, one more bit about Amarna, and sorry again if this is a repeat, I did my best to read all 22 pages of goodness here. Note that Amarna was referred to as ‘Akhetaten’ at this time:
"The document records the pharaoh’s wish to have several temples of the Aten to be erected here, for several royal tombs to be created in the eastern hills of Akhetaten for himself, his chief wife Nefertiti and his eldest daughter Meritaten, as well as his explicit command that when he was dead, he would be brought back to Akhetaten for burial […]
‘His Majesty mounted a great chariot of electrum, like the Aten when He rises on the horizon and fills the land with His love, and took a goodly road to Akhetaten, the place of origin, which [the Aten] had created for Himself that he might be happy therein…’
The electrum caught my eye considering the ‘white gold’ of the fragment found in the storylet quoted above. It also jumped out due to the prominent mention of the Pharaoh’s well-loved daughters, who I believe have come up in this thread before as another strong piece of evidence for Akhenaten being the Pharaoh of the Second City.
EDIT 2: One more then I swear I’m done.
While not the youngest daughter technically speaking, Ankhesenamun seems like a good candidate for the Duchess. The other five daughters of Akhenaten appear to have had very nebulous lives/life spans in the historical record (with the fifth and sixth youngest daughters of Akhenaten dying possibly in childhood). She has the most interesting adult life by far of all the middle/younger girls - she went on to marry Tutankhamun. There aren’t many more dramatic stories of the premature death of a monarch in history than that of Tutankhamun. But then there’s this very intriguing tidbit:
"The Amarna letters indicate that Tutankhamun’s wife, recently widowed, wrote to the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I, asking if she could marry one of his sons. The letters do not say how Tutankhamun died. In the message, Ankhesenamun says that she was very afraid, but would not take one of her own people as husband. However, the son was killed before reaching his new wife."
Apparently the theory goes that her new betrothed was possibly murdered on his way to her - perhaps even by Ay, the Grand Vizier, who has also been implicated in Tutankhamun’s death. Either of these two husbands/fiances seems a good candidate for the Cantigaster, especially if we take the ‘asp’ that’s been referred to as ‘biting’ him a bit more in the spirit of Egyptian royal symbolism than literally.
edited by baudelairean on 4/21/2016
I would like to bring people’s attention to the “long dead Facebook status updates” mentioned in this post from another thread, here: http://community.failbettergames.com/topic796-little-secrets.aspx#post10330
WHERE can I find such little tidbits?
First of all, cool responses guys! Thanks!
Secondly, as to colonies, interesting about London’s probable one and Visage being the Second City’s. I think others brought evidence of one of the further Tomb Colonies being the Third City’s colony.
Thirdly, I’m pretty sure generally we were agreed on Amarna and Tutankhamun being the Second City and Cantigaster respectively. Though it’s nice to have some more fleshing out of the history!
Fourthly
[quote=Equation]I happened to find a snippet of someone’s journal, and in the tradition of London, stole it.
"When the Sixth City falls, I will be safe in Parabola. I will walk its new streets, the strangeness of its sharp-edged shadows. I will look through the windows as I pass, at the cathode shadows dancing on the ceilings. They’ll leave me offerings and pay me with prayer. It’s a pity about London. But everything passes. Except me."[/quote]
Now this isn’t certain by any means, but having walked through cities at night and seen lights and shadows dancing on the ceilings of houses through windows from people watching TV and older TVs being Cathode ray tubes, it looks like maybe the Sixth City may be stolen in the TV age. Or maybe not.
Btw, do we know if anyone in London is from the Third City? Since the person who strikes the bargain always seems to remain near the Bazaar after successive stolen cities. The Manager of the Royal Bethlehem for the First, the Duchess cor the Second and the Widow for the Fourth. Any sign of someone from the Third?
edited by CivilEngineers on 5/17/2016
The three priest-kings in the Tomb Colonies (though I do not think you can actually interact with them in any stories yet) are from the 3rd city. Red Bird, Snake, and Cat
If you are interested in the 3rd city, feel free to look me up in character and chat. I have theories! :)
[quote=CivilEngineers]
Btw, do we know if anyone in London is from the Third City? Since the person who strikes the bargain always seems to remain near the Bazaar after successive stolen cities. The Manager of the Royal Bethlehem for the First, the Duchess cor the Second and the Widow for the Fourth. Any sign of someone from the Third?
edited by CivilEngineers on 5/17/2016[/quote]
[li]
Well, without getting too much into a fate-locked storyline, there is a tidbit with a Third City prisoner still out there rowing a brass trieme.
He did say that the common people of the city had no part in the horrible business with the wells.
The only named character I know of from the Third City is the First Curator in Sunless Sea.
[quote=CivilEngineers]Btw, do we know if anyone in London is from the Third City? Since the person who strikes the bargain always seems to remain near the Bazaar after successive stolen cities. The Manager of the Royal Bethlehem for the First, the Duchess cor the Second and the Widow for the Fourth. Any sign of someone from the Third?
edited by CivilEngineers on 5/17/2016[/quote]
I thought Feducci was one of the Mayan Princes from the Third City. He’s referred to as "an exiled prince of the Tomb Colonies" and given their connection to the Third City, I don’t think it’s a stretch. I always assumed his interest in the fighting rings was to "grow" the population of his cities.
[li]
Feducci is
not a tomb colonist at all. He’s a disguised agent of the Presbyter. EDIT: The story wiki claims Feducci is from the Third City, but only in passing and not on his main page. And the same passage also puts forward the Hopelchen theory so I don’t really trust it.
edited by TheThirdPolice on 5/29/2016
Is there any particular significance to the role of the rulers of the cities as civil as well as religious authorities? The Manager was apparently a priest-king, the Pharaoh would of course claim godly descent, and I believe the God-Eaters qualify as well.
I’m sure they presided over quite a few important ceremonies and functions, but they left the day to day altar cleaning and minor services to the other priests.
And the Empress is still the head of the Church of England.
The Khan breaks the loose pattern, however.
If I opened an encyclopedia to five random historical polities, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that four of them had some form of nominal or real theocracy.
If you have ever played the silver tree it becomes fairly obvious that the fourth city is Karakorum, the capital of the mongol empire. If you go on a voyage of scientific discovery it pretty much tells you that the second city was some part of Egypt
It’s been a while since I was here so I can’t remember if this has already been discussed but I found this in the Cave of Nadir
“The revolutionaries of the Third City sleep here, fifty-five of them. They would have made their republics in the tomb-colonies. It was not permitted them…”
This seems to suggest to me that Venderbight was a Port Carnelian-esque colony of the Third City. Which fits well with the snippet that describes tomb colonies as “more Mictlan than Milan.”
Could Venderbight have been designated a tomb colony by the Masters as punishment for attempting to secede?
I was wondering about some text in SMEN, and now I think it adds evidence about Amarna, though the place and time of the Second city seems to have been ironclad long ago. But I think it is a little interesting.
"’There were three descents,’ the Priest confides, ‘before the betrayal.’"
"The first descent was that which was given for that which was promised. (The Drowned Man makes no promises to us. He gives us only lessons.) For the second, the hunters of echoes remembered the ways of sunlight, and learnt the stories of the heart. (The Drowned Man’s heart was flensed, and we will taste it.) The third: O, the treacherous walkers of the river’s shadow! They snared the echo-hunters! (This began the chain of tales which concluded in the Drowned Man’s first-feast. So praise that treachery.)"
Since the three descents were before the betrayal, we can safely exclude the fall of the third city. And now the first descent can be the Fall of Bazaar and Masters (and maybe also some Axiles) from the High Wilderness, the second descent is the story about a heart made of a shard from the Mountain of Light, and the third, is the treacherous walkers in Armarna, a city built closely following the trend of River Nile, which is very special among all the ancient Egyptian cities. It looks just like the shadow of the river.
In Sunless Sea, found something about the First City having bronze tablets…
