We don’t really know about the relative timelines of the Bazaar and Stone, do we? It’s logical to assume that the Bazaar brought Stone (one way or another), but it’s not a logical necessity. It also makes one wonder if, after all, the Presbyterate doesn’t depend on the Mountain of Light as much as I thought it did. What might it have looked like before the Mountain? Now there’s a question…
Hang on guys. If we’re going to talk about when the Bazaar first fell to the Neath, we should all be on the same page about what happened during that time. Especially since, with how I understand the events (which I freely admit could be wrong, especially since I recall getting this information from other players rather than drawing directly from the game itself), Stone would have been in the Neath for a very long time before the Bazaar fell.
[ul][li]The interstellar messenger we now know as the Bazaar, and the Judgement we now know as the Sun, have a Relationship of Some Sort. It may have been the cosmic equivalent of a one night stand or a fling, or may have been more protracted. Either way, it produced offspring: Stone, and the relationship overall probably meant more to the Bazaar than it did to the Sun.
[/li][li]The relationship between the Sun and the Bazaar ends. This may have been before the birth of stone, it may have been after. But it ended.
[/li][li]Stone was hidden in the Neath, where the Irrigo of the Nadir sheltered her from Judgement Light.[/li][li]The Sun sends the Bazaar with confession of love to another Judgement.[/li][li]The Bazaar makes this journey, but this other Judgement rejects the Sun.[/li][li]The Bazaar fears that this rejection will inspire such despair in the Sun that it will commit suicide.[/li][li]The Bazaar delays delivering its message, so that it can try to find a way to convince the Sun to love it instead, preventing its despair.[/li][/ul]Now, this is incomplete—it doesn’t cover anything involving the Masters, for one thing—but it does provide a window for Stone to be in the Neath before the Bazaar begins its quest. Stone would have been born and hidden there, while the Bazaar was off delivering the Sun’s confession. It’s suggested by the Long Road destinies that it can take the Bazaar a very long time, at least on a human time scale, to travel just from the earth to the Sun, let alone between Stars. Enough time, I suspect, for the Presbyterate to spring up around Stone, and for a compact to be made with Stone—or even Salt, if a union between a Judgement and a Messenger producing offspring was a big enough reason for it to come to the Neath.
You are right. I was reminded of this the other day, by some in-game text or other. In terms of full Neathy history, the Bazaar is a newcomer.
(For what it’s worth, this makes me more sure of my interpretation of "Babylon" as the Bazaar, in the earlier discussion.)
[quote=Siankan]
I seem to remember someone saying something about the Fall being in the middle of a siege; if that’s true, then 1388 is the probable year. [/quote]
Doesn’t The Silver Tree document the Fall of the Fourth City? That game is set in the 13th Century rather than the 14th (1254 to be precise). Though I may be talking entirely out of my hat because it was so horribly grindy I never finished it. So there may be some kind of time-skip involved or it may not document the fall at all. Someone who managed to play it through to the end might be able to tell you, though.
1254? That’s the year William of Rubruck visited and documented Karakorum, so it’s an important year in that sense. Nothing significant happened to the city itself that year, at least that I know of. Does William show up in the game?
You play a monk or priest from the west, newly arrived at the court of the Great Khan, if memory serves. So you could make a case that the player character is actually William of Rubruck (even though you can call your character anything you like). Don’t recall running into him as an NPC.
Sounds like classic Failbetter: choose the right historical details to make your plot more resonant, then make that history serve your own ends.
Is the Presbyterate older than the Cave of the Nadir? Do we know which came first, or how the Cave of the Nadir was created?
The nadir likely came before everything else, as without its irrigo the neath could not exist.
Indeed. The Irrigo of the Cave of the Nadir is what blocks the Law-Light of the Judgements from being enforced in the Neath. Meaning that its creation predates everything else. Indeed, assuming (as many, myself included, do) that the Neath is a result of spatial unnatural spatial distortion, the Cave of the Nadir likely predates even the whole of the Neath itself—as such an unnatural distortion would have been a violation of the Judgment Law.
And, as idle speculation, if my earlier timeline is correct (and if any of you think it’s horrifically wrong, I would like to know that), it may be that the Neath was specifically created to hide Stone, so that the other Judgments would not discover the Sun’s dalliance with the Bazaar.
As to the nature of the Cave of Nadir itself (at the risk of veering too far from our primary topic), I don’t think we know much, save what we know generally of Irrigo. “Nadir” is a word that means “lowest point.” Interpreted literally, the actual nadir of the Cave of the Nadir would be the furthest point from the Surface. Interpreted more metaphorically, it would probably refer to the Cave’s nature as the source of Lawlessness in the Neath, and the place most intensely shielded from Sunlight.
I’d think the Second was negotiated by a certain master we do not mention, and he might well have been in on the sisters’ trick. It feels right to me, at least – perhaps he knew, perhaps he admired their cleverness when he found out. Perhaps he simply forgave them. I don’t know the details of the second conflict involving that city, so it may be that was the greater tricky, and helping with that – and not accepting the city – is why a certain someone ended up not so well off. Or entirely well off, depending on how you look at it (don’t look at it that way).
Fires, who so loves London, seems a likely candidate for negotiating its fall. He’s very concerned with what players think of the city, after all, and he doesn’t want the Bazaar to leave it, or to pull another city down atop it. Now he could just like the city, but it seems like the kind of behavior that the one to obtain the city would engage in.