The Red City Philharmonic Orchestra disbanded centuries ago. As such, their instruments have grown restlessly out of tune and starved of human touch. The lights are still on in the old opera house where they await their musicians, but dead noise saturates the air to a point of near-total darkness. Cleaning robots have learned not to enter, and dust has cloaked most of the surfaces inside.
Hyperborean mountains are formed of pure hematite, with veins of naturally occurring steel sprawling throughout their interior. Some of the grandest peaks reach as far as the ionosphere, slicing the northern lights in two as they pass overhead. Their bodies resist climbers and prospectors as easily as they resist the wind, but erosion and entropy always find a way.
A careful look at the dustrider’s rifle reveals that it was once the body of a dragonfly. Its tail has been hollowed into a long barrel, and its mandibles are now the trigger of a complex firing mechanism. Discs have been carved from its transparent wings and arranged in parallel to serve a scope’s function. As it slides off his shoulder, the thick knots of its former exoskeleton are firm in his hands.
Benthica is the underworld’s most prestigious seafood restaurant. It is located on the opposite side of the planet’s surface from the Marianas Trench, and is constructed from bricks of black water that have crystallized from the sheer pressure of the ocean’s depths. Strange, luminous creatures can be seen swimming through walls that are otherwise solid for everyone else present. Among them is the nameless child of Hades and Charybdis, who is prophesied to someday be the death of Poseidon.
The pacmancer gazes into the arcade cabinet’s screen and sees his own death; someday, it will be hollowed of its digital components and repurposed as his sarcophagus. He watches the little phosphene phantoms dart about and sees something familiar in their wandering eyes. Perhaps he even knew them while they were alive. The shared border between the spiritual and virtual realms is thinner than either possess with the physical. That’s what makes the ritual work.
In the Violet City, a creation myth is told that involves not just the beginning of time, but also its end. The world begins as worlds often do, with the gods overthrowing the titans who built it and establishing their dominion over man and nature alike. The story abruptly jumps forward billions of years, however, to the inevitable feud between them that destroys all things. It is at this point that we encounter the remix goddess, who rises out of the ocean of white noise that their war left behind.
Hadean architecture requires efficient use of vertical space in order to properly house the planet’s hundred billion deceased. Although the dead have nearly as much space in which to dwell as the living (as they reside all throughout the Earth’s hollow interior), it is impossible for their population to ever decrease. In order to prevent a crisis, the most industrious of the dead have gathered to solve this problem that the gods have otherwise neglected.
To aid in slaying Medusa, the gods offered Perseus a helm that granted him invisibility, as well as a shield with a mirrored surface. So the legend goes, he was able to use the former to obtain the element of surprise, and the latter to face her without meeting her petrifying gaze.
Of course, that’s only half the story.