DShomshak

Focus in: Collapsed buildings, whether caused by earthquakes or terrorism.
 
Mind Scan to search for survivors under rubble.
 
Desolid or lots of Shrinking to move through the rubble for same purpose. (And a shrinker might be able to bring down an air hose or other items, if they're small or narrow enough.) And Tunneling, of course!
 
Super-strength or TK to move the rubble, and so get at survivors.
 
Force constructs to move rubble fall under TK.
 
Supermages, gedgeteers and other people with VPPs can do, well, whatever they want within point limits. Life Support Use vs. Other? Indirect Teleport vs. Other at Range to pluck survivors out directly? Healing powers for the wounded?
 
Summoned entities (elementals, robots, whatever) to help with the work.
 
Repeat exercise for other specific forms of disaster.
 
Dean Shomshak

Focus in: Collapsed buildings, whether caused by earthquakes or terrorism.
 
Mind Scan to search for survivors under rubble.
 
Desolid or lots of Shrinking to move through the rubble for same purpose. (And a shrinker might be able to bring down an air hose or other items, if they're small or narrow enough.) And Tunneling, of course!
 
Super-strength or TK to move the rubble, and so get at survivors.
 
Force constructs to move rubble fall under TK.
 
Supermages, gedgeteers and other people with VPPs can do, well, whatever they want within point limits. Life Support Use vs. Other? Indirect Teleport vs. Other at Range to pluck survivors out directly? Healing powers for the wounded?
 
Summoned entities (elementals, robots, whatever) to help with the work.
 
Repeat exercise for other specific forms of disaster.
 
Dean Shomshak

Focus in: Collapsed buildings, whether caused by earthquakes or terrorism.
 
Mind Scan to search for survivors under rubble.
 
Desolid or lots of Shrinking to move through the rubble for same purpose. (And a shrinker might be able to bring down an air hose or other items, if they're small or narrow enough.) And Tunneling, of course!
 
Super-strength or TK to move the rubble, and so get at survivors.
 
Force constructs to move rubble fall under TK.
 
Supermages, gedgeteers and other people with VPPs can do, well, whatever they want within point limits. Life Support Use vs. Other? Indirect Teleport vs. Other at Range to pluck survivors out directly? Healing powers for the wounded?
 
Summoned entities (elementals, robots, whatever) to help with the work.
 
Repeat exercise for other specific forms of disaster.
 
Dean Shomshak

I see the Poll went up while I was writing a little story set in our new world. What the heck, I'll post it anyway. I tried to fit in as much of the world as I could without going all checklisty, so I apologize in advance if your favorite bits didn't make it in.
 
You may find aspects of the story familiar.
 
A TALE OF FOLLY:
THE TOWER OF BELAB
 

 
King Belab believed he was the mightiest monarch in all the World, and he may well have been right. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been great conquerors. Belab ruled a full five times seventeen archipelagoes, rich in all the good things of life, and also much gold. With such a population to tax, he was personally mighty as well: strong enough to break stone with his hands, dextrous enough to knock butterflies from the air with a flicked pebble, tireless, cunning, and so comely that people begged to serve him.
 
(And wisdom? Well… His grandfather had bought up his wisdom, and ended up abdicating to live as a hermit on a wave-swept skerry. So Belab left wisdom for his advisors.)
 
It was not enough. Belab easily defeated every personal foe, but what could he do to make himself the greatest of his line? To become, indeed, the greatest in the World?
 
So Belab sent seventeen times seventeen heroes to scour the World for the greatest treasure of all: a wish. (He knew about the Fire Dragon, of course — his great-grandfather had summoned it to burn several troublesome islands — but the Fire Dragon’s methods for granting wishes usually involved burning everything that was not the desired result. Useful for some things, not for others. Anyway, it had been done before.)
 
At last, a hero returned to present King Belab with a grungy, chipped clay jug with a clay stopper. “I have better,” the king remarked, and motioned for the executioner.
 
“No, wait!” the hero said. “It summons the Genie! I used it myself. The Genie appeared, and I wished for the jug and the Genie to pass safely into your possession, for you to use. Open the bottle, and call out the Genie! If it fails, I shall gladly lay my head on the executioner’s block.”
 
So Belab took the jug, pulled out the plug, and commanded, “Come out!” And the Genie did, appearing in a puff of smoke. This time, it appeared as a bright purple Quantim with three heads, carrying a bright pink tribble.
 
The Genie bowed low and said, in three-part harmony, “Master, what is they will?” It raised one hand, fingers ready to snap.
 
And Belab said, “I wish to rule the entire world, and all who live in it!”
 
The Genie paused. Then it paused again. And again.
 
“That… is not possible,” it said carefully. “Only the Gods can affect the entire World, and even then there are restrictions mortals wot not of.”
 
(“Wot not of?” one counselor whispered to another. “Who talks like that?”)
 
“I heard that,” the Genie said. “And near-divine spiritual beings talk like that, to show they’re serious. Want to make something of it?” The counselor raised his hands and backed away. The other counselors followed, and perhaps they showed wisdom in not wanting to get involved.
 
“Anyway,” the Genie continued. “I can’t grant a wish to change the entire world. “I can grant a wish to change arbitrarily large portions of it. So if you want to rule everything and everyone within a thousand leagues, or become the master of Sitnalta, that I can do. Or, how about this: You become absolute master of all the world that you can see. Ready?” And it raised its hand again.
 
“No!” Belab interrupted. “I know this one. You make me master of what I can see right now. I already rule my palace, so I’ll have wasted my wish.” He thought a moment. “You grant a deferred wish. When I’m ready — when I see a part of the World I want to rule — then I make the wish, and you grant it.”
 
“Heh,” the Genie said. “Clever. And within the rules. Done.” It snapped its fingers, and a wand of wood appeared in Belab’s hand. Okay, a twig. “When you’re ready, break the wand. All that you see then becomes yours, and all people living there become your willing slaves.” It turned back into smoke and streamed back into the clay jug. The plug leaped from Belab’s hand to stopper the jug again, and the jug vanished.
 
Belab was well pleased with himself. He’d heard the stories about wishes and genies and sausages on noses. But he had gotten the better of the Genie! “King Belab,” he murmured to himself. “Super Genius!”
 
Immediately he gathered soldiers and servants for a journey to the highest island in his kingdom. Eagerly, he scanned the horizon. To his anger and disappointment, he could not see any place he did not already rule.
 
Now what? Take ship to some other archipelago, or the great land mass of Okanadu? The Genie’s wand would make any place an easy conquest, but Belab wanted more than that. The answer came to him in a flash of insight. Move higher. The higher he was above the World, the more he would see, and so the more he would rule. As the Genie said, it wouldn’t be the entire World, but it could be an arbitrarily large portion. And he smiled.
 
King Belab soon found that raising himself higher was easier said than done. Ride a firehawk into the sky? Alas, he was not himself fireproof. But Belab had a great kingdom to draw upon, so he chose a simple method: He would build a tower. So he commanded; and so it was done.
 
From all the islands of his kingdom came carpenters and masons. An entire city grew at the foot of the tallest mountain. Seventeen times seventeen shiploads and caravans of building materials arrived every day for the builders of the tower. And it rose, higher and higher. When it threatened to topple, buttresses were built from the sides, then buttresses to the buttresses, and immense loops of chain to pull the structure inward against its own more-than-mountainous weight. The very mountain it stood upon was hollowed for building stone, until it became a vaulted shell.
 
Each Fleenday, King Belab ascended his tower and looked toward the horizon. Indeed, he saw new lands, places he knew of only from sailor’s maps. Then places even the sailors did not know. But always there was a smudge on the horizon that might be more.
 
People rebelled, of course. King Belab’s soldiers slew them, leaving fire and blood, until the people learned to obey once more.
 
Saboteurs tried to stop the construction: Fairies, Quantim, Fire Hawks, the Dreaded. The soldiers stopped them, as well.
 
Prophets rose to warn that King Belab attempted too much, that he would trespass on the prerogatives of the Gods. That led to more rebellions. Heroes came from afar to try killing the king. But prophets die, just like other mortals, and King Belab took quarters in the immense cobweb of wood and brick, stone and chain that his tower had become, where no one could find him if he did not want to be found.
 
Then the storms came. Gale after gale. Folk murmured that the prophets were right. The fire Dragon came — and fell to a barrage of great stones hurled from machines or by King Belab himself. He boasted, “The Gods themselves cannot stop me!”
 
At last the chief architects of the Tower (by now it more than merited a capital letter, and needed no other identification) came to King Belab and told him they could build no higher. “There is no more room for buttresses! There are no chains strong enough! The very stone cracks under its own weight. Climb now, and be content.”
 
“You know of no other way to build it higher?” he asked the eldest of the architects.
 
“None,” said the elder. King Belab beheaded him.
 
“And you?” he asked the next-oldest architect.
 
The second architect pleaded, “Great king of all kings, I cannot give you what I don’t know!” So Belab beheaded him as well.
 
“Do any of you know anything?” he demanded. “Or is your usefulness at an end?”
 
The remaining architects looked at the headless bodies burning on the pavement of Belab’s chamber. Then one raised a trembling hand.
 
“I have heard,” he said, “The Charr-Loti can raise structures of webs and spars. Very light, but very strong. I have not seen them myself, but it might be true.”
 
And so seventeen more champions went forth with soldiers, and they returned with a Charr-Loti who knew the art of spinning webs that support themselves. They also brought many of the Charr-Loti architect’s kin. King Belab explained, in detail, why the architect should fear to defy him, and the Charr-Loti agreed to build the Tower higher.
 
Another year of labor passed. At last the Charr-Loti said the Tower was ready. “When it is raised, you could touch Timra’keth’s topmost blanket,” she said. “Though I fear what would happen should you do so.”
 
But King Belab was beyond fear. He strapped himself into a basket at the center of an immense web of silk and bamboo that the Charr-Loti had spun on the top of his Tower. Countless laborers pulled on the guy-ropes. The great web pulled in on itself, and the basked rose.
 
Clouds gathered for a great storm — but the Tower already rose higher than the clouds. It shook from the wind and lightning, but the chains and stones held. King Belab laughed as he saw the tempest far below him. He shouted down, “Higher!” And rose, one league, two leagues, seventeen leagues. And as the clouds cleared, he saw new lands on the horizon. “Higher!” Ten thousand leagues he saw. He could have an empire that made his present kingdom seem like a dot. But there could be more. “Higher!”
 
… and then a butterfly, tossed above the clouds by the great winds, fluttered wearily to the strands of the Tower.
 
And, exhausted, died.
 
One Quantim noticed the butterfly and the little puff of flame on the strand of silk. He vanished, and so he lived to tell the tale. If anyone else saw… it was too late.
 
Crackle! Snap! The silken cable burned, and broke. One end, still aflame, touched another cable as it flailed. That cable burned, too. Two cables, four cables, seventeen cables, seventeen times seventeen!
 
Up above, King Belab felt the tower of webbing shake. Did he have time to pull out the Genie’s wand? We do not know. For in seconds he was falling falling, falling, as the silken tower unwove itself. He crashed into the top of the Tower like a stone from a catapult — and the entire Tower shook. Stones cracked. Chains snapped. Buttresses collapsed. And the Tower fell. Avalanches of masonry slid down the mountain, though not far, until the hollowed peak collapsed in on itself.
 
The column of dust rose to cover the sky like Timra’keth’s blanket. The dead among the mountain of rubble caught fire, and set the wooden props ablaze. Fire engulfed the mountain of rubble. The Fire Dragon appeared, but there was no one living to demand anything from it, so it flew away.
 
No one can guess how many thousands died in the Tower’s fall. More died in the fighting as Belab’s kingdom fell apart. So it goes. But there is some balance in the World, and some limited repayment. His island was left with a great deal of metal, brick and stone ready to be reclaimed for other purposes.
 
Many came from far and wide to dig through the fallen Tower in hopes that, somehow, the Genie’s wand had not burned and they could use it themselves. Nobody found it. No one even knows what crushed and charred fragments of bone might have been King Belab’s.
 
The Tower is all gone now, travelers say. Some claim the ice took the island, though others say Belab’s island remains temperate and the mountain where he built is now a shallow lake. That, and the tale, are his monuments. And a word: People say, “Belabor” when they mean someone is working too hard and too long on a project or an argument, to the point of abuse.
 
It’s something.

Dean Shomshak
 

I see the Poll went up while I was writing a little story set in our new world. What the heck, I'll post it anyway. I tried to fit in as much of the world as I could without going all checklisty, so I apologize in advance if your favorite bits didn't make it in.
 
You may find aspects of the story familiar.
 
A TALE OF FOLLY:
THE TOWER OF BELAB
 

 
King Belab believed he was the mightiest monarch in all the World, and he may well have been right. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been great conquerors. Belab ruled a full five times seventeen archipelagoes, rich in all the good things of life, and also much gold. With such a population to tax, he was personally mighty as well: strong enough to break stone with his hands, dextrous enough to knock butterflies from the air with a flicked pebble, tireless, cunning, and so comely that people begged to serve him.
 
(And wisdom? Well… His grandfather had bought up his wisdom, and ended up abdicating to live as a hermit on a wave-swept skerry. So Belab left wisdom for his advisors.)
 
It was not enough. Belab easily defeated every personal foe, but what could he do to make himself the greatest of his line? To become, indeed, the greatest in the World?
 
So Belab sent seventeen times seventeen heroes to scour the World for the greatest treasure of all: a wish. (He knew about the Fire Dragon, of course — his great-grandfather had summoned it to burn several troublesome islands — but the Fire Dragon’s methods for granting wishes usually involved burning everything that was not the desired result. Useful for some things, not for others. Anyway, it had been done before.)
 
At last, a hero returned to present King Belab with a grungy, chipped clay jug with a clay stopper. “I have better,” the king remarked, and motioned for the executioner.
 
“No, wait!” the hero said. “It summons the Genie! I used it myself. The Genie appeared, and I wished for the jug and the Genie to pass safely into your possession, for you to use. Open the bottle, and call out the Genie! If it fails, I shall gladly lay my head on the executioner’s block.”
 
So Belab took the jug, pulled out the plug, and commanded, “Come out!” And the Genie did, appearing in a puff of smoke. This time, it appeared as a bright purple Quantim with three heads, carrying a bright pink tribble.
 
The Genie bowed low and said, in three-part harmony, “Master, what is they will?” It raised one hand, fingers ready to snap.
 
And Belab said, “I wish to rule the entire world, and all who live in it!”
 
The Genie paused. Then it paused again. And again.
 
“That… is not possible,” it said carefully. “Only the Gods can affect the entire World, and even then there are restrictions mortals wot not of.”
 
(“Wot not of?” one counselor whispered to another. “Who talks like that?”)
 
“I heard that,” the Genie said. “And near-divine spiritual beings talk like that, to show they’re serious. Want to make something of it?” The counselor raised his hands and backed away. The other counselors followed, and perhaps they showed wisdom in not wanting to get involved.
 
“Anyway,” the Genie continued. “I can’t grant a wish to change the entire world. “I can grant a wish to change arbitrarily large portions of it. So if you want to rule everything and everyone within a thousand leagues, or become the master of Sitnalta, that I can do. Or, how about this: You become absolute master of all the world that you can see. Ready?” And it raised its hand again.
 
“No!” Belab interrupted. “I know this one. You make me master of what I can see right now. I already rule my palace, so I’ll have wasted my wish.” He thought a moment. “You grant a deferred wish. When I’m ready — when I see a part of the World I want to rule — then I make the wish, and you grant it.”
 
“Heh,” the Genie said. “Clever. And within the rules. Done.” It snapped its fingers, and a wand of wood appeared in Belab’s hand. Okay, a twig. “When you’re ready, break the wand. All that you see then becomes yours, and all people living there become your willing slaves.” It turned back into smoke and streamed back into the clay jug. The plug leaped from Belab’s hand to stopper the jug again, and the jug vanished.
 
Belab was well pleased with himself. He’d heard the stories about wishes and genies and sausages on noses. But he had gotten the better of the Genie! “King Belab,” he murmured to himself. “Super Genius!”
 
Immediately he gathered soldiers and servants for a journey to the highest island in his kingdom. Eagerly, he scanned the horizon. To his anger and disappointment, he could not see any place he did not already rule.
 
Now what? Take ship to some other archipelago, or the great land mass of Okanadu? The Genie’s wand would make any place an easy conquest, but Belab wanted more than that. The answer came to him in a flash of insight. Move higher. The higher he was above the World, the more he would see, and so the more he would rule. As the Genie said, it wouldn’t be the entire World, but it could be an arbitrarily large portion. And he smiled.
 
King Belab soon found that raising himself higher was easier said than done. Ride a firehawk into the sky? Alas, he was not himself fireproof. But Belab had a great kingdom to draw upon, so he chose a simple method: He would build a tower. So he commanded; and so it was done.
 
From all the islands of his kingdom came carpenters and masons. An entire city grew at the foot of the tallest mountain. Seventeen times seventeen shiploads and caravans of building materials arrived every day for the builders of the tower. And it rose, higher and higher. When it threatened to topple, buttresses were built from the sides, then buttresses to the buttresses, and immense loops of chain to pull the structure inward against its own more-than-mountainous weight. The very mountain it stood upon was hollowed for building stone, until it became a vaulted shell.
 
Each Fleenday, King Belab ascended his tower and looked toward the horizon. Indeed, he saw new lands, places he knew of only from sailor’s maps. Then places even the sailors did not know. But always there was a smudge on the horizon that might be more.
 
People rebelled, of course. King Belab’s soldiers slew them, leaving fire and blood, until the people learned to obey once more.
 
Saboteurs tried to stop the construction: Fairies, Quantim, Fire Hawks, the Dreaded. The soldiers stopped them, as well.
 
Prophets rose to warn that King Belab attempted too much, that he would trespass on the prerogatives of the Gods. That led to more rebellions. Heroes came from afar to try killing the king. But prophets die, just like other mortals, and King Belab took quarters in the immense cobweb of wood and brick, stone and chain that his tower had become, where no one could find him if he did not want to be found.
 
Then the storms came. Gale after gale. Folk murmured that the prophets were right. The fire Dragon came — and fell to a barrage of great stones hurled from machines or by King Belab himself. He boasted, “The Gods themselves cannot stop me!”
 
At last the chief architects of the Tower (by now it more than merited a capital letter, and needed no other identification) came to King Belab and told him they could build no higher. “There is no more room for buttresses! There are no chains strong enough! The very stone cracks under its own weight. Climb now, and be content.”
 
“You know of no other way to build it higher?” he asked the eldest of the architects.
 
“None,” said the elder. King Belab beheaded him.
 
“And you?” he asked the next-oldest architect.
 
The second architect pleaded, “Great king of all kings, I cannot give you what I don’t know!” So Belab beheaded him as well.
 
“Do any of you know anything?” he demanded. “Or is your usefulness at an end?”
 
The remaining architects looked at the headless bodies burning on the pavement of Belab’s chamber. Then one raised a trembling hand.
 
“I have heard,” he said, “The Charr-Loti can raise structures of webs and spars. Very light, but very strong. I have not seen them myself, but it might be true.”
 
And so seventeen more champions went forth with soldiers, and they returned with a Charr-Loti who knew the art of spinning webs that support themselves. They also brought many of the Charr-Loti architect’s kin. King Belab explained, in detail, why the architect should fear to defy him, and the Charr-Loti agreed to build the Tower higher.
 
Another year of labor passed. At last the Charr-Loti said the Tower was ready. “When it is raised, you could touch Timra’keth’s topmost blanket,” she said. “Though I fear what would happen should you do so.”
 
But King Belab was beyond fear. He strapped himself into a basket at the center of an immense web of silk and bamboo that the Charr-Loti had spun on the top of his Tower. Countless laborers pulled on the guy-ropes. The great web pulled in on itself, and the basked rose.
 
Clouds gathered for a great storm — but the Tower already rose higher than the clouds. It shook from the wind and lightning, but the chains and stones held. King Belab laughed as he saw the tempest far below him. He shouted down, “Higher!” And rose, one league, two leagues, seventeen leagues. And as the clouds cleared, he saw new lands on the horizon. “Higher!” Ten thousand leagues he saw. He could have an empire that made his present kingdom seem like a dot. But there could be more. “Higher!”
 
… and then a butterfly, tossed above the clouds by the great winds, fluttered wearily to the strands of the Tower.
 
And, exhausted, died.
 
One Quantim noticed the butterfly and the little puff of flame on the strand of silk. He vanished, and so he lived to tell the tale. If anyone else saw… it was too late.
 
Crackle! Snap! The silken cable burned, and broke. One end, still aflame, touched another cable as it flailed. That cable burned, too. Two cables, four cables, seventeen cables, seventeen times seventeen!
 
Up above, King Belab felt the tower of webbing shake. Did he have time to pull out the Genie’s wand? We do not know. For in seconds he was falling falling, falling, as the silken tower unwove itself. He crashed into the top of the Tower like a stone from a catapult — and the entire Tower shook. Stones cracked. Chains snapped. Buttresses collapsed. And the Tower fell. Avalanches of masonry slid down the mountain, though not far, until the hollowed peak collapsed in on itself.
 
The column of dust rose to cover the sky like Timra’keth’s blanket. The dead among the mountain of rubble caught fire, and set the wooden props ablaze. Fire engulfed the mountain of rubble. The Fire Dragon appeared, but there was no one living to demand anything from it, so it flew away.
 
No one can guess how many thousands died in the Tower’s fall. More died in the fighting as Belab’s kingdom fell apart. So it goes. But there is some balance in the World, and some limited repayment. His island was left with a great deal of metal, brick and stone ready to be reclaimed for other purposes.
 
Many came from far and wide to dig through the fallen Tower in hopes that, somehow, the Genie’s wand had not burned and they could use it themselves. Nobody found it. No one even knows what crushed and charred fragments of bone might have been King Belab’s.
 
The Tower is all gone now, travelers say. Some claim the ice took the island, though others say Belab’s island remains temperate and the mountain where he built is now a shallow lake. That, and the tale, are his monuments. And a word: People say, “Belabor” when they mean someone is working too hard and too long on a project or an argument, to the point of abuse.
 
It’s something.

Dean Shomshak
 

I see the Poll went up while I was writing a little story set in our new world. What the heck, I'll post it anyway. I tried to fit in as much of the world as I could without going all checklisty, so I apologize in advance if your favorite bits didn't make it in.
 
You may find aspects of the story familiar.
 
A TALE OF FOLLY:
THE TOWER OF BELAB
 

 
King Belab believed he was the mightiest monarch in all the World, and he may well have been right. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been great conquerors. Belab ruled a full five times seventeen archipelagoes, rich in all the good things of life, and also much gold. With such a population to tax, he was personally mighty as well: strong enough to break stone with his hands, dextrous enough to knock butterflies from the air with a flicked pebble, tireless, cunning, and so comely that people begged to serve him.
 
(And wisdom? Well… His grandfather had bought up his wisdom, and ended up abdicating to live as a hermit on a wave-swept skerry. So Belab left wisdom for his advisors.)
 
It was not enough. Belab easily defeated every personal foe, but what could he do to make himself the greatest of his line? To become, indeed, the greatest in the World?
 
So Belab sent seventeen times seventeen heroes to scour the World for the greatest treasure of all: a wish. (He knew about the Fire Dragon, of course — his great-grandfather had summoned it to burn several troublesome islands — but the Fire Dragon’s methods for granting wishes usually involved burning everything that was not the desired result. Useful for some things, not for others. Anyway, it had been done before.)
 
At last, a hero returned to present King Belab with a grungy, chipped clay jug with a clay stopper. “I have better,” the king remarked, and motioned for the executioner.
 
“No, wait!” the hero said. “It summons the Genie! I used it myself. The Genie appeared, and I wished for the jug and the Genie to pass safely into your possession, for you to use. Open the bottle, and call out the Genie! If it fails, I shall gladly lay my head on the executioner’s block.”
 
So Belab took the jug, pulled out the plug, and commanded, “Come out!” And the Genie did, appearing in a puff of smoke. This time, it appeared as a bright purple Quantim with three heads, carrying a bright pink tribble.
 
The Genie bowed low and said, in three-part harmony, “Master, what is they will?” It raised one hand, fingers ready to snap.
 
And Belab said, “I wish to rule the entire world, and all who live in it!”
 
The Genie paused. Then it paused again. And again.
 
“That… is not possible,” it said carefully. “Only the Gods can affect the entire World, and even then there are restrictions mortals wot not of.”
 
(“Wot not of?” one counselor whispered to another. “Who talks like that?”)
 
“I heard that,” the Genie said. “And near-divine spiritual beings talk like that, to show they’re serious. Want to make something of it?” The counselor raised his hands and backed away. The other counselors followed, and perhaps they showed wisdom in not wanting to get involved.
 
“Anyway,” the Genie continued. “I can’t grant a wish to change the entire world. “I can grant a wish to change arbitrarily large portions of it. So if you want to rule everything and everyone within a thousand leagues, or become the master of Sitnalta, that I can do. Or, how about this: You become absolute master of all the world that you can see. Ready?” And it raised its hand again.
 
“No!” Belab interrupted. “I know this one. You make me master of what I can see right now. I already rule my palace, so I’ll have wasted my wish.” He thought a moment. “You grant a deferred wish. When I’m ready — when I see a part of the World I want to rule — then I make the wish, and you grant it.”
 
“Heh,” the Genie said. “Clever. And within the rules. Done.” It snapped its fingers, and a wand of wood appeared in Belab’s hand. Okay, a twig. “When you’re ready, break the wand. All that you see then becomes yours, and all people living there become your willing slaves.” It turned back into smoke and streamed back into the clay jug. The plug leaped from Belab’s hand to stopper the jug again, and the jug vanished.
 
Belab was well pleased with himself. He’d heard the stories about wishes and genies and sausages on noses. But he had gotten the better of the Genie! “King Belab,” he murmured to himself. “Super Genius!”
 
Immediately he gathered soldiers and servants for a journey to the highest island in his kingdom. Eagerly, he scanned the horizon. To his anger and disappointment, he could not see any place he did not already rule.
 
Now what? Take ship to some other archipelago, or the great land mass of Okanadu? The Genie’s wand would make any place an easy conquest, but Belab wanted more than that. The answer came to him in a flash of insight. Move higher. The higher he was above the World, the more he would see, and so the more he would rule. As the Genie said, it wouldn’t be the entire World, but it could be an arbitrarily large portion. And he smiled.
 
King Belab soon found that raising himself higher was easier said than done. Ride a firehawk into the sky? Alas, he was not himself fireproof. But Belab had a great kingdom to draw upon, so he chose a simple method: He would build a tower. So he commanded; and so it was done.
 
From all the islands of his kingdom came carpenters and masons. An entire city grew at the foot of the tallest mountain. Seventeen times seventeen shiploads and caravans of building materials arrived every day for the builders of the tower. And it rose, higher and higher. When it threatened to topple, buttresses were built from the sides, then buttresses to the buttresses, and immense loops of chain to pull the structure inward against its own more-than-mountainous weight. The very mountain it stood upon was hollowed for building stone, until it became a vaulted shell.
 
Each Fleenday, King Belab ascended his tower and looked toward the horizon. Indeed, he saw new lands, places he knew of only from sailor’s maps. Then places even the sailors did not know. But always there was a smudge on the horizon that might be more.
 
People rebelled, of course. King Belab’s soldiers slew them, leaving fire and blood, until the people learned to obey once more.
 
Saboteurs tried to stop the construction: Fairies, Quantim, Fire Hawks, the Dreaded. The soldiers stopped them, as well.
 
Prophets rose to warn that King Belab attempted too much, that he would trespass on the prerogatives of the Gods. That led to more rebellions. Heroes came from afar to try killing the king. But prophets die, just like other mortals, and King Belab took quarters in the immense cobweb of wood and brick, stone and chain that his tower had become, where no one could find him if he did not want to be found.
 
Then the storms came. Gale after gale. Folk murmured that the prophets were right. The fire Dragon came — and fell to a barrage of great stones hurled from machines or by King Belab himself. He boasted, “The Gods themselves cannot stop me!”
 
At last the chief architects of the Tower (by now it more than merited a capital letter, and needed no other identification) came to King Belab and told him they could build no higher. “There is no more room for buttresses! There are no chains strong enough! The very stone cracks under its own weight. Climb now, and be content.”
 
“You know of no other way to build it higher?” he asked the eldest of the architects.
 
“None,” said the elder. King Belab beheaded him.
 
“And you?” he asked the next-oldest architect.
 
The second architect pleaded, “Great king of all kings, I cannot give you what I don’t know!” So Belab beheaded him as well.
 
“Do any of you know anything?” he demanded. “Or is your usefulness at an end?”
 
The remaining architects looked at the headless bodies burning on the pavement of Belab’s chamber. Then one raised a trembling hand.
 
“I have heard,” he said, “The Charr-Loti can raise structures of webs and spars. Very light, but very strong. I have not seen them myself, but it might be true.”
 
And so seventeen more champions went forth with soldiers, and they returned with a Charr-Loti who knew the art of spinning webs that support themselves. They also brought many of the Charr-Loti architect’s kin. King Belab explained, in detail, why the architect should fear to defy him, and the Charr-Loti agreed to build the Tower higher.
 
Another year of labor passed. At last the Charr-Loti said the Tower was ready. “When it is raised, you could touch Timra’keth’s topmost blanket,” she said. “Though I fear what would happen should you do so.”
 
But King Belab was beyond fear. He strapped himself into a basket at the center of an immense web of silk and bamboo that the Charr-Loti had spun on the top of his Tower. Countless laborers pulled on the guy-ropes. The great web pulled in on itself, and the basked rose.
 
Clouds gathered for a great storm — but the Tower already rose higher than the clouds. It shook from the wind and lightning, but the chains and stones held. King Belab laughed as he saw the tempest far below him. He shouted down, “Higher!” And rose, one league, two leagues, seventeen leagues. And as the clouds cleared, he saw new lands on the horizon. “Higher!” Ten thousand leagues he saw. He could have an empire that made his present kingdom seem like a dot. But there could be more. “Higher!”
 
… and then a butterfly, tossed above the clouds by the great winds, fluttered wearily to the strands of the Tower.
 
And, exhausted, died.
 
One Quantim noticed the butterfly and the little puff of flame on the strand of silk. He vanished, and so he lived to tell the tale. If anyone else saw… it was too late.
 
Crackle! Snap! The silken cable burned, and broke. One end, still aflame, touched another cable as it flailed. That cable burned, too. Two cables, four cables, seventeen cables, seventeen times seventeen!
 
Up above, King Belab felt the tower of webbing shake. Did he have time to pull out the Genie’s wand? We do not know. For in seconds he was falling falling, falling, as the silken tower unwove itself. He crashed into the top of the Tower like a stone from a catapult — and the entire Tower shook. Stones cracked. Chains snapped. Buttresses collapsed. And the Tower fell. Avalanches of masonry slid down the mountain, though not far, until the hollowed peak collapsed in on itself.
 
The column of dust rose to cover the sky like Timra’keth’s blanket. The dead among the mountain of rubble caught fire, and set the wooden props ablaze. Fire engulfed the mountain of rubble. The Fire Dragon appeared, but there was no one living to demand anything from it, so it flew away.
 
No one can guess how many thousands died in the Tower’s fall. More died in the fighting as Belab’s kingdom fell apart. So it goes. But there is some balance in the World, and some limited repayment. His island was left with a great deal of metal, brick and stone ready to be reclaimed for other purposes.
 
Many came from far and wide to dig through the fallen Tower in hopes that, somehow, the Genie’s wand had not burned and they could use it themselves. Nobody found it. No one even knows what crushed and charred fragments of bone might have been King Belab’s.
 
The Tower is all gone now, travelers say. Some claim the ice took the island, though others say Belab’s island remains temperate and the mountain where he built is now a shallow lake. That, and the tale, are his monuments. And a word: People say, “Belabor” when they mean someone is working too hard and too long on a project or an argument, to the point of abuse.
 
It’s something.

Dean Shomshak
 

I see the Poll went up while I was writing a little story set in our new world. What the heck, I'll post it anyway. I tried to fit in as much of the world as I could without going all checklisty, so I apologize in advance if your favorite bits didn't make it in.
 
You may find aspects of the story familiar.
 
A TALE OF FOLLY:
THE TOWER OF BELAB
 

 
King Belab believed he was the mightiest monarch in all the World, and he may well have been right. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been great conquerors. Belab ruled a full five times seventeen archipelagoes, rich in all the good things of life, and also much gold. With such a population to tax, he was personally mighty as well: strong enough to break stone with his hands, dextrous enough to knock butterflies from the air with a flicked pebble, tireless, cunning, and so comely that people begged to serve him.
 
(And wisdom? Well… His grandfather had bought up his wisdom, and ended up abdicating to live as a hermit on a wave-swept skerry. So Belab left wisdom for his advisors.)
 
It was not enough. Belab easily defeated every personal foe, but what could he do to make himself the greatest of his line? To become, indeed, the greatest in the World?
 
So Belab sent seventeen times seventeen heroes to scour the World for the greatest treasure of all: a wish. (He knew about the Fire Dragon, of course — his great-grandfather had summoned it to burn several troublesome islands — but the Fire Dragon’s methods for granting wishes usually involved burning everything that was not the desired result. Useful for some things, not for others. Anyway, it had been done before.)
 
At last, a hero returned to present King Belab with a grungy, chipped clay jug with a clay stopper. “I have better,” the king remarked, and motioned for the executioner.
 
“No, wait!” the hero said. “It summons the Genie! I used it myself. The Genie appeared, and I wished for the jug and the Genie to pass safely into your possession, for you to use. Open the bottle, and call out the Genie! If it fails, I shall gladly lay my head on the executioner’s block.”
 
So Belab took the jug, pulled out the plug, and commanded, “Come out!” And the Genie did, appearing in a puff of smoke. This time, it appeared as a bright purple Quantim with three heads, carrying a bright pink tribble.
 
The Genie bowed low and said, in three-part harmony, “Master, what is they will?” It raised one hand, fingers ready to snap.
 
And Belab said, “I wish to rule the entire world, and all who live in it!”
 
The Genie paused. Then it paused again. And again.
 
“That… is not possible,” it said carefully. “Only the Gods can affect the entire World, and even then there are restrictions mortals wot not of.”
 
(“Wot not of?” one counselor whispered to another. “Who talks like that?”)
 
“I heard that,” the Genie said. “And near-divine spiritual beings talk like that, to show they’re serious. Want to make something of it?” The counselor raised his hands and backed away. The other counselors followed, and perhaps they showed wisdom in not wanting to get involved.
 
“Anyway,” the Genie continued. “I can’t grant a wish to change the entire world. “I can grant a wish to change arbitrarily large portions of it. So if you want to rule everything and everyone within a thousand leagues, or become the master of Sitnalta, that I can do. Or, how about this: You become absolute master of all the world that you can see. Ready?” And it raised its hand again.
 
“No!” Belab interrupted. “I know this one. You make me master of what I can see right now. I already rule my palace, so I’ll have wasted my wish.” He thought a moment. “You grant a deferred wish. When I’m ready — when I see a part of the World I want to rule — then I make the wish, and you grant it.”
 
“Heh,” the Genie said. “Clever. And within the rules. Done.” It snapped its fingers, and a wand of wood appeared in Belab’s hand. Okay, a twig. “When you’re ready, break the wand. All that you see then becomes yours, and all people living there become your willing slaves.” It turned back into smoke and streamed back into the clay jug. The plug leaped from Belab’s hand to stopper the jug again, and the jug vanished.
 
Belab was well pleased with himself. He’d heard the stories about wishes and genies and sausages on noses. But he had gotten the better of the Genie! “King Belab,” he murmured to himself. “Super Genius!”
 
Immediately he gathered soldiers and servants for a journey to the highest island in his kingdom. Eagerly, he scanned the horizon. To his anger and disappointment, he could not see any place he did not already rule.
 
Now what? Take ship to some other archipelago, or the great land mass of Okanadu? The Genie’s wand would make any place an easy conquest, but Belab wanted more than that. The answer came to him in a flash of insight. Move higher. The higher he was above the World, the more he would see, and so the more he would rule. As the Genie said, it wouldn’t be the entire World, but it could be an arbitrarily large portion. And he smiled.
 
King Belab soon found that raising himself higher was easier said than done. Ride a firehawk into the sky? Alas, he was not himself fireproof. But Belab had a great kingdom to draw upon, so he chose a simple method: He would build a tower. So he commanded; and so it was done.
 
From all the islands of his kingdom came carpenters and masons. An entire city grew at the foot of the tallest mountain. Seventeen times seventeen shiploads and caravans of building materials arrived every day for the builders of the tower. And it rose, higher and higher. When it threatened to topple, buttresses were built from the sides, then buttresses to the buttresses, and immense loops of chain to pull the structure inward against its own more-than-mountainous weight. The very mountain it stood upon was hollowed for building stone, until it became a vaulted shell.
 
Each Fleenday, King Belab ascended his tower and looked toward the horizon. Indeed, he saw new lands, places he knew of only from sailor’s maps. Then places even the sailors did not know. But always there was a smudge on the horizon that might be more.
 
People rebelled, of course. King Belab’s soldiers slew them, leaving fire and blood, until the people learned to obey once more.
 
Saboteurs tried to stop the construction: Fairies, Quantim, Fire Hawks, the Dreaded. The soldiers stopped them, as well.
 
Prophets rose to warn that King Belab attempted too much, that he would trespass on the prerogatives of the Gods. That led to more rebellions. Heroes came from afar to try killing the king. But prophets die, just like other mortals, and King Belab took quarters in the immense cobweb of wood and brick, stone and chain that his tower had become, where no one could find him if he did not want to be found.
 
Then the storms came. Gale after gale. Folk murmured that the prophets were right. The fire Dragon came — and fell to a barrage of great stones hurled from machines or by King Belab himself. He boasted, “The Gods themselves cannot stop me!”
 
At last the chief architects of the Tower (by now it more than merited a capital letter, and needed no other identification) came to King Belab and told him they could build no higher. “There is no more room for buttresses! There are no chains strong enough! The very stone cracks under its own weight. Climb now, and be content.”
 
“You know of no other way to build it higher?” he asked the eldest of the architects.
 
“None,” said the elder. King Belab beheaded him.
 
“And you?” he asked the next-oldest architect.
 
The second architect pleaded, “Great king of all kings, I cannot give you what I don’t know!” So Belab beheaded him as well.
 
“Do any of you know anything?” he demanded. “Or is your usefulness at an end?”
 
The remaining architects looked at the headless bodies burning on the pavement of Belab’s chamber. Then one raised a trembling hand.
 
“I have heard,” he said, “The Charr-Loti can raise structures of webs and spars. Very light, but very strong. I have not seen them myself, but it might be true.”
 
And so seventeen more champions went forth with soldiers, and they returned with a Charr-Loti who knew the art of spinning webs that support themselves. They also brought many of the Charr-Loti architect’s kin. King Belab explained, in detail, why the architect should fear to defy him, and the Charr-Loti agreed to build the Tower higher.
 
Another year of labor passed. At last the Charr-Loti said the Tower was ready. “When it is raised, you could touch Timra’keth’s topmost blanket,” she said. “Though I fear what would happen should you do so.”
 
But King Belab was beyond fear. He strapped himself into a basket at the center of an immense web of silk and bamboo that the Charr-Loti had spun on the top of his Tower. Countless laborers pulled on the guy-ropes. The great web pulled in on itself, and the basked rose.
 
Clouds gathered for a great storm — but the Tower already rose higher than the clouds. It shook from the wind and lightning, but the chains and stones held. King Belab laughed as he saw the tempest far below him. He shouted down, “Higher!” And rose, one league, two leagues, seventeen leagues. And as the clouds cleared, he saw new lands on the horizon. “Higher!” Ten thousand leagues he saw. He could have an empire that made his present kingdom seem like a dot. But there could be more. “Higher!”
 
… and then a butterfly, tossed above the clouds by the great winds, fluttered wearily to the strands of the Tower.
 
And, exhausted, died.
 
One Quantim noticed the butterfly and the little puff of flame on the strand of silk. He vanished, and so he lived to tell the tale. If anyone else saw… it was too late.
 
Crackle! Snap! The silken cable burned, and broke. One end, still aflame, touched another cable as it flailed. That cable burned, too. Two cables, four cables, seventeen cables, seventeen times seventeen!
 
Up above, King Belab felt the tower of webbing shake. Did he have time to pull out the Genie’s wand? We do not know. For in seconds he was falling falling, falling, as the silken tower unwove itself. He crashed into the top of the Tower like a stone from a catapult — and the entire Tower shook. Stones cracked. Chains snapped. Buttresses collapsed. And the Tower fell. Avalanches of masonry slid down the mountain, though not far, until the hollowed peak collapsed in on itself.
 
The column of dust rose to cover the sky like Timra’keth’s blanket. The dead among the mountain of rubble caught fire, and set the wooden props ablaze. Fire engulfed the mountain of rubble. The Fire Dragon appeared, but there was no one living to demand anything from it, so it flew away.
 
No one can guess how many thousands died in the Tower’s fall. More died in the fighting as Belab’s kingdom fell apart. So it goes. But there is some balance in the World, and some limited repayment. His island was left with a great deal of metal, brick and stone ready to be reclaimed for other purposes.
 
Many came from far and wide to dig through the fallen Tower in hopes that, somehow, the Genie’s wand had not burned and they could use it themselves. Nobody found it. No one even knows what crushed and charred fragments of bone might have been King Belab’s.
 
The Tower is all gone now, travelers say. Some claim the ice took the island, though others say Belab’s island remains temperate and the mountain where he built is now a shallow lake. That, and the tale, are his monuments. And a word: People say, “Belabor” when they mean someone is working too hard and too long on a project or an argument, to the point of abuse.
 
It’s something.

Dean Shomshak
 

Steve Long wrote Book of the Destroyer and Book of the Machine years ago.
 
Dean Shomshak

<Folly looks around> What consequences? <launches Anvilrang(TM) to give the world a moon>
 
<Anvilrang(TM) crashes through Ancestral Halls, causing plague of ghosts in mortal world>
 
I'm not crazy! I'm a Super Genius!
 
<Anvilrang(TM) falls on Folly's head> OW! Okay, there was one tiny flaw in that plan. Next time will work for sure.
 
Dean Shomshak

Shipping dominant, but also fishing and shipbuilding. Hadn't thought of whaling, or some analog. I onbly imagined the Render House neighborhood rendering tallow and other leavings from the city's butchers. It's something to consider; thank you.
 
All crews chiefly free professionals, though convicts being sentenced to the galleys is a definite possibility: The society has convict labor, though not slavery as such. Press ganging is such a classic trope that it should exist, but it won't be just grabbing people off the street., But a drunken scrawl across a contract is legal.
 
Oh, bother. Here's the material I already have on the waterfront area from the Player's Guide I wrote about Thalassene, the City of the Sea. This is deliberately written for atmosphere and the common knowledge of residents, not detailed, encyclopedia-style GM information. Also, just the bits specifically about Waterfront activities.
-------------
Geography
Thalassene occupies a spit about 14 miles long and a mile wide. The northwest coast is limestone rock scoured bare and rugged by storms blowing off the Inner Ocean. It rises to a ridge just 50 feet above sea level. The southeastern side has a layer of clay and soil over the limestone, descending gradually to a flat, sandy shore. A low, limestone plateau or mesa rises from these flatlands. Reefs make much of the southeastern coast hazardous for large ships, but at Thalassene the large island of Quisquiline creates a huge natural harbor.
 
[It's loosely based on ancient Alexandria. I'm trying for a more Hellenistic/Classical/Byzantine feel, not scrubby little Medieval Europe where 10,000 people is considered a big city.]
-------------
A Tour of the City
...
 
The narrow strip of the Waterfront curves south and east around Exordium. No surprise, this area holds many warehouses, sailmakers, net-menders, and other businesses catering to sailors, ships and longshoremen. This includes taverns — lots and lots of taverns. Brothels, too, of the low sort for men who aren’t picky after months at sea. Some neighborhoods are notorious as the haunts of foreign sailors with strange and sinister customs, such as the fire-worshipping Kurithans of Tarside. It is whispered that not everyone who seeks the drug dens of Tarside returns… though their corpses may turn up, strangely burned, floating in the harbor.
 
The Waterfront’s most notable landmark is the Pera Sacra, or Sacred Pier. This floating wooden pier leads to the chief temple of Thalassene’s patron god Manakel, built on an islet in the Great Port. Instead of brick or stone, the temple is built of wood salvaged from old ships. Sailors visit the Pera Sacra before a voyage to pray for a safe journey, and after it to thank the god for bringing them back alive. The high priest of the Pera Sacra is Pontifex Gillis Pease, a peg-legged halfling and former sailor whose ship sank far from land. Abandoning hope of rescue, Gillis consigned his soul to the sea. Manakel accepted, and a ship found Gillis an hour later. The halfling is now the most powerful cleric in Thalassene.
 
But the waterfront would not exist without trade. Hundreds of ships dock at dozens of quays. The stevedores are mostly humans, orcs and minotaurs, but they include sturdy dwarves, nimble halflings and stranger folk such as the four-legged, reptilian trogodons. They load and unload cargoes precious or pedestrian: coralwood, cotton and copra, pickles, papyrus, perfume and pearls, great clay jugs of squid sauce, oil and wine, dwarven steel and elven glass, tapestries, toys and tamed pterodactyls, bags of rice, barrels of dates, baskets of alum and caskets of jewels, the spices of a dozen lands, and so much more. The multi-lingual profanity is amazing.
 
Most important are the grain ships. Thalassene is too big for the neighboring provinces to feed. Survival depends on galleons, junks and dhows of rice, wheat and other staples from around the Inner Ocean… and the nearest, largest sources are Viltarn and Macrine. Both states vow to destroy the Plenary Empire — but they can’t stop selling it food. The money’s just too good. The city government is a major buyer, but private trade flourishes, too.
...
Towering over the Great Port stands the immense, fortified lighthouse called the Candlestick. At more than 500 feet, it’s the tallest building in the Plenary Empire. Thalasseners say it’s the tallest building wrought by mortal hands. (Sages who suspect how long people have lived on Old Earth may doubt this claim.) The Candlestick needs no fuel: Its light comes from hundreds of continual flame spells cast on small glass balls, packed together and focused by mirrors.
...
The moat across the peninsula is properly called the Fosse. The ditch is more than 150 feet wide. Small, shallow-draft boats can pole through beneath the five great bridges that carry streets and aqueducts. Dozens of fishing boats use the Fosse to reach the fish markets more quickly.
...
The new settlements beyond the Fosse are called Transfossa. A branch of the Fosse leads to an inland harbor, the center of shipbuilding and repair for Thalassene’s merchants. A very large, very loud man called Ventor Volumnus runs the harbor and drydocks as their absolute monarch. This would make Ventor one of the most powerful men in Thalassene, but he doesn’t care about anything except building ships.
...
The Port Market, Thalassene’s largest, occupies the waterfront between Almagest’s wall and the warehouses and quays. The streets that cross the Market are lined with shops of leading merchants, notably those who import cloth, wine, spices, and other luxury goods. Between the streets is a maze of stalls and kiosks selling an immense variety of goods, from fish sauce to religious icons. Some stalls are well-established venues of small-time merchants and artisans. Others are ad-hoc for whoever arrives first each day to rent the space from the Market’s aedile.
...
Finally, the peninsula of Locheis is Thalassene’s smallest district. The fortified palace of the Inner Ocean Navy occupies the peninsula’s tip. This is the domain of Lord Admiral Probulus Nepos Speltor. It’s no secret the Lord Admiral got the job through his uncle Licinius Speltor, the Prefect of Public Works, one of the Empire’s most powerful bureaucrats. Probulus has no military experience. He had never been on a ship before arriving in Thalassene, and he still has never been outside the Great Port. Everyone in Thalassene knows the Lord Admiral squeezes the Naval and city budget to further enrich his uncle and his cronies.
...
Military
...
The Inner Ocean fleet has its own small harbor in Locheis, or ships dock at the harbor of Cibotus for repairs. From these harbors, visiting sailors and marines fan out to the bars and brothels of the Waterfront. Second Navarch Eudoxus Marinus Crassus commands the naval base and does all the real administration for the fleet. He is a distant cousin of Clavetia’s Exarch Crassus Numerius. Eudoxus has a reputation as a competent captain, though, with a real dislike of pirates. If any pirates are captured, Eudoxus attends the hanging.
-----------------
Large-scale map of city boroughs:

 
1 small square = 10 ft. maps of nothern and soughern halves of the city still in development:

 
Dean Shomshak

Very useful indeed! I was on a "Medieval Commerce" kick for a while, but that was mostly about trade networks; I see my research was far deficient in industry.
 
As it happens, I already had decided that Render House supports a soap industry along with candles and other uses for tallow, so that's an extra reason for keeping salt marshes on the flatter lee side of the spit. Not a nautical neighborhood, but an unexpected bonus bit of information on the city's surroundings.
 
All I'd heard of fulling before this was that it involved fuller's earth; wikipedia tyhis afternoon let me know it's another stench-intensive industry. There's no wat that Fully and Prinks (the milliners' and ribbon-makers' district -- some of that high fashion you suggest) would be right across the street. Fulling also apparently takes a lot of water, even if soap replaces people wading ankle-deep in urine as they trample the cloth.
 
Thalassene is old enough that activities have moved around: Old Vaccary used to be a dairy farm before the city grew around it, Fundus Carduus grew artichokes, etc. So there could well be former Tannery, Fullery and dyeworks districts, but the industries were pushed out of town. And where's the water? Important water-using industries would want first access to the aqueducts. The "New Fullery" could be on the NE side, in Transfossa, and the other stench-intensive industries would likely be placed near it whether they needed fresh water or not.
 
I never would have guessed that brickworks involved anything but baking clay. As I mentioned, though, brickmaking is already placed at a nearby small town. "Brick /town" in Gardens, oddly, has nothing to do with bricks. But also not relevant here.
 
If 6 feet of drop are enough for water mills, then the aqueducts might be sufficient after all. I mention Thalassene is a low-relief city, but 50 feet from the top of the ridgeline to the shore is enough for chains of mills, and the water's still available for drinking and Roman-style bath-houses. I presume that sea water couldn't be pumped up into holding tanks for the mills: I seem to recall that most premodern gearing was wooden, but there'd have to be some metal bits and they'd corrods in no time.
 
And that's an excellent suggestion about water piracy. Reminds me of the illegal tapping of electricity in Mexico City slums. Over time, the city and federal governments just give up, assign title to the land, and regularize the pirated hook-ups. That could make a nice bit of local politicl/economic conflict, between the people who want to license and tax the illicit water access, those who want to stop it, those who are willing to be brought within the law and those who want to keep stealing water.
 
Oh -- burning marsh plants as a fist step in making lye reminds me that, IIRC, seaweed was burned for soda ash, used in glassmaking. I had already decided Tha;assene has a glass industry. It had to, after what I read about trade beads in a book on early money. Big industry in Gauds! I don't think there's be a "seaweed-buring district," but it's another piece of local color.
 
Thank you again!
 
Dean Shomshak

By "rags trade" I meant a fashion district, which would be in an upscale neighbourhood. 
Expanding a bit, the hiring halls were a fairly big deal earlier in this century and might give their names to a neighbourhood, although on reflection I suspect that the associated chapels might be more important, notably the Deep Sea MIssions= Centres, or their medieval equivalent. "The Mission."
 
Fish curing grounds smell bad, and pretty much rule out other use in season; but that's not what's important here. They have to be kept open for use out of season, and the authorities tend to be quite zealous about this because the "teinds" from a fish curing ground can be quite significant. The dispute between Anstruther town and Dryburgh Abbey is one of the highlights of medieval Scottish law and ultimately went all the way up to the Pope for resolution. (No doubt playing its part in convincing the Curia that Scotland needed its own archbishopric so that it never had to get involved in a dispute like that again.)  
 
Halophytic weeds are going to grow like, well, weeds, on a fish curing ground out of season, and will be a lucrative resource in themselves. You can just graze sheep on them, but they're also be useful for soapmaking and lots of other medieval industrial chemistry that starts with making lye. (Including fish curing!) In short, you're going to see stretches of the foreshore kept open and green by significant legal penalties on would-be encroachments. "The Grange"? Or, if it is the castle that owns the lands, "the Marchfield," from "Field of Mars," because it is mostly associated with drilling. 
 
Tanneries and fulleries don't just smell like urine. They also smell like fecal matter, because fecal matter, urine  and rotten milk are all used in the processing. This is why, typically these industries are located outside of the city gates, downwind and near the water and perhaps in close proximity with housing for an untouchable class. If there is a local flax industry, then the retting ponds are likely to be found here (and the flax fields are likely to be here as well.) City industries typically want to keep the wind-and waterborne effluvia of these businesses well away from their own work. This is the kind of thing that helped make London's East End the place it traditionally was. "Cheapside" in London no doubt has some much more antiquarian word usage behind its name, but sounds like a good name for this kind of district. 
 
Brickworks are similarly noisome, but use other reagents --specifically, lots and lots of old time industrial acids, made by burning sulfur. People avoid neighbourhoods where every breath burns, and die quickly if they have to live there, so perhaps no endearing nickname is needed: "The Brickworks."
 
The need for mills is pretty pressing in any large city, but is going to be especially significant in a port town, which is likely to handle a great deal of grain and oilseed. Water mills are going to appear in any riverine setting --even if the run of the current is small, a diversionary canal can bring water in with five or six feet of head, more than enough to run an old time mill. This is going to be the Arsenal neighbourhood, though, so "The Arsenal."
 
Lille, the example that I am thinking of here, and admittedly not a port town, had a substantial heavy wool drapery industry because of water brought in from just up the Deule with no more than a six foot drop between the diversion and the city. It also had a persistent problem with rural shops illegally diverting the water just outside the city limits. In German parlance, these "ground rabbits" were a persistent problem for all medieval cities, and a neighbourhood of temporary homes (the kind that I was envisioning intruding on the fish curing grounds) and temporary shops would be a persistent problem. In tribute to old time German home town xenophobia, perhaps "the Warrens"?
 
If not, windmills work better where there is some kind of relief, because you can pump water uphill into reservoirs when the mills aren't working, but the Dutch and East Anglian examples show they are quite efficient on flat ground. I was casting around for a particularly famous, historic London windmill that obviously isn't that famous, or I would be able to find it, but what I did find is this Wikipedia list of historic windmills in the London area. Most mills took their name from the neighbourhood in which they were located, but there are some interesting cases in which it seems to be the opposite, notably "Battersea," which started out as "Baldric's Sea" before it was drained, mostly by ditching rather than pumping, to be sure, but still a connection. I suspect I would find a number of examples of this around Amsterdam if I looked. 
 
 I hope this is more useful than my initial posting!

Karma? Knowing that you actually deserve the suffering in your life? That your fortunate neighbor really is better than you? Oh, no, that’ll make people miserable.
 
Karma’s complicated, too. Life would be so much easier if people merely had to follow some simple, definite rule about some simple, definite activity such as what they eat or how they dress. Follow the rule, and you’re a good person. Or at least you think you are, and isn’t that what matters?
 
The Abrizons of Spim will not eat tribble on Fleenday. They believe Lhash’ka forbade it. (She didn’t.) The Buntins won’t eat dird at all, considering it defiled meat and a mortal sin to consume. The Middiks, on the other hand, believe one must eat dird every day. The fairies of Tropheria will not wear blue. The Quantim of Znitz always wear blue. Among the people of Mur’kl’ti’ga, all names must include at least one apostrophe, and it is death for a woman to show her left elbow to an man but her husband. A visitor to Fnee must wear a fish on his head for a week to prove he is not a demon.
 
And the chaos of luck isn’t any better. Things just happen? That your life is the plaything of chance? That’ll make people miserable, too.
 
I won’t allow it. It’s kinder to let them make up their own explanations. I’m sure they’ll be happier. Especially when their suffering happens because they did something stupid. And fear! Mortals have so much to fear that’s beyond their control. Let them have the illusion that there are reasons for their lives, reasons they might have some power to control.
 
SO MOTE IT BE.
 
Godrig was startled when the golden retreagle barked at him from the tree. It stuck in his mind. A week later, when he left his hearth unattended and his hut burned down, he remembered the golden retreagle. It was an omen! Godrig told everyone in his village to be wary when a golden retreagle barks. It portends disaster! Many people remembered other cases when they saw or heard golden retreagles before something bad happened. Soon, most people were convinced. From then on, the people of the village feared the evil omen of the golden retreagle. But they knew what to do. Catch the dird and burn it! Surely the sacrifice to Vaiyarran would burn away the ill luck!
 
The people of Nng wept and cried to E’il after three storms struck their island in close succession. What sin had they committed? What taboo had they broken? Then someone remembered the Eech on the shore. The huge, talking rock was of E’il. They beseeched it to intercede with its maker, to avert the storms. “How?” it asked. “I have no power over storms. I haven’t seen E’il since the god made me.” The Nngese were angry in their disappointment. One man said, “Perhaps it will not intercede because it called the storms! It does not suffer; it laughs as our boats are wrecked and our homes fall!” And many answered, “Yes, it is the Eech that brought the storms, the Eech is our enemy!” And so they expended great effort building rafts and ropes to drag the Eech off the shore and dump it out at sea. That meant the tribbles bred out of control, leaving the island nearly barren, but the Nngese rejoiced at their triumph.
 
Chewing strumweed cures blue fever. But the people of Jidrilezza refuse this gift of Mirth, no matter how many of them die. They saw their enemies the Orcks using strumweed for this purpose, and so do not believe it will help them. Indeed, some say that chewing strumweed might turn you into an Orck!
 
The people of Obrox believe that Quantim are demons. They festoon their homes with charms to prevent Quantim from entering to work evil upon them. No one on Obrox has seen a Quantim in generations, which they take as proof the charms are working.
 
The people of Pung He, on the other hand, think the Seaborn are witches and kill any of them they can catch. Any curse, they believe, can be lifted by eating the heart of a Seaborn.
 
The Orcks of Krung are determined and mighty hunters of tribbles and other prey. They attribute much of their prowess to the charms they make from the feathers of three rare dirds. Hunters who lose their charms are cast out and cannot return until they manage to slay the requisite dirds and make new ones: They would jinx the hunts otherwise.
 
The people of Kimble Kimble Kimble know how to identify a murderer, a thief or a witch. Each suspect carries a bit of snork meat. The witch-doctor carries a sacred dird from suspect to suspect: The dird snatches the meat from the guilty, who is slain at once before he can utter a curse. If it later turns out the dird was wrong, it means a sorcerer must have cast a spell to deceive it! Set up another lineup and bring out the dird…
 
And so on, across the countless islands. Humans, as Folly’s creatures, are most prone to fear witches and demons of their own imagining, to seek omens of good or bad luck in waves, clouds or the flight of butterflies, to believe they are cursed and must do something ridiculous to remove it, to wear or not wear something, to eat some foods and refuse others. But no one is completely immune — except maybe the Eech, who have very little to fear and very little choice in their stony lives.
 
Secondary Domain: Superstition and Taboo.
 
TABOO2.BMP

 
…And for the people cunning enough to recognize Folly’s work, it makes a great scam. Witch-finders and self-proclaimed sorcerers easily buy up their Attributes from the gullible. At least until someone thinks they are the witch or warlock causing the problem.
 
 

-Hiring halls for stevedores and sailors;
-Fish curing grounds (open saltmarsh, possibly with drying racks);
-Ropewalks;
-Lumberyards (for seasoning), also naval stores, canvas, sailmakers;
-Tanneries (for sealers). I notice a tannery and adjacent fullery adjacent to the hippodrome, but I don't think that's a very plausible location for them. Ditto a brickwork. 
-Precincts for foreign traders, like the Hanse in London;
-A moneychanging/goldsmithing district;
-Fortunetellers;
-Rags district;
-Granaries, mills, stonecutters, saw mill, nail mill, all needing water access and a fair amount of space, with preferably a millstream or adjacent to a hill for a windmill;
 
 

"So what are we covering up today? More shapechanging alien goo oil  bees? Because I hate them. No? Human monster. Oh, God, not the liver-eating squidgy guy. He was disgusting. Oh. generational incest crime family? Look. Do we need to cover up these freaks? "Cuz it seems to me we could just return the case over to the FBI and maybe they could actually catch those freaks . . . No? Set a bad precedent? Okay, I'll add 'em to the coverup, but don't blame me if they move into your neighbourhood. Oh, right. Forgot you're a goo alien and you live on . . . a reservation in New Mexico? And commute to a secret base in Antarctica? No, no, that wasn't a judging tone. You do you."

Truly, Folly is the God against whom even Gods strive in vain!
 
Dean Shomshak

Should have handed him a copy and said, "We'll wait."

Republicans weigh in on Liz Cheney and direction of GOP — CBS News poll

That should make predation interesting. If this world has predation. Attn Life Deity: Does it?
 
And of course people eat tribbles. I assume this means they self-cook, and the trick is to put them out before they get too badly charred.
 
Dean Shomshak

Heard this on All Things Considered. This article has a bit more information.
 
Rare plutonium from space found in deep-sea crust | Live Science
www.livescience.com/rare-plutonium-heavy-metal... A rare type of plutonium has been found in the crust below the deep sea, offering new clues as to how heavy metals form in star explosions and mergers. ... (1,500 meters) below the Pacific Ocean ...
 
Also: Rare radioactive elements from outer space, created only in the most cataclysmic stellar events, extracted from the ocean floor? That's a superhero scenario that practically writes itself.
 
Dean Shomshak

The drunken sailor district in the waterfront area of an old campaign was colloquially referrred to as "The Stumbles," primariy for the effect that the roads (paved with two hundred years worth of ballast stones) tended to have on drunken sailors.

Speaking of Everburn Trees, look to, once again, Australia. Some years back I read how the eucalyptus tree evolved not just to survive fire, but to exploit it. One consequence of Australia's low relief and location on the globe is that it has more lightning strikes per area per year than any other continent; which means more lightning-ignited fires during its dry seasons. A eucalyptus' oily shed leaves resist decay, and so accumulates in a deep bed of, essentially, touch paper just waiting for a spark. But the eucalyptus also has thick bark so it can susrvive fast-burning wildfires -- and buds embedded in that bark, ready to sprout new twigs and leaves immediately after the fire. So it burns out all other vegetation, making more open ground (conveniently fertilized with potash) for more eucalyptus trees. They're like Niven's sunflowers, only slower.
 
And we human idiots have transplanted eucalyptus trees around the world to similar climates, such as California. As if California needed more wildfires.
 
Ah, Nature. You never cease to amaze and terrify me.
 
Dean Shomshak

As for the architecture of the Charr-Loti, the great problem with webs as an architectural paradigm is that they need external stays to support them... or do they?
 
Back in the 1950s and 60s, Buckminster Fuller and artist Kenneth Snelson experimented with structures based on disconnected struts and cables under tension. Fuller, with his usual love of portmanteau coinages, called the principle "tensegrity" (tensional integrity). Here's a view of Snelson's Needle Tower sculpture:

 
Unlike many of Fuller's ideas, tensegrity might actually be useful. Biologists point out that the musculoskeletal system is actualy a tensional structure. There's a tensegrity bridge in Brisbane. NASA is experimenting with a tensegrity robot for exploring other planets. Tensegrity structures can be incredibly strong for their mass. I presume that a well-designed tensegrity structure doesn't collapse if you cut a single cable. See the Wikipedia article for more information.
 
Anyway, it seems very much like something intelligent spiders would invent.
 
Dean Shomshak