Come with me as we delve into the feral fauna of lustrous Lamplight!
Greetings and salutations, I am Varys Matthau, Orchard’s Parazoologist Premiere! Heh, no, I don’t mean that with certainty, but as you well know, I am a studied and avid researcher in the biota that call the curious corners of this vast Verse home! From the Singing Snailwings of Orchard’s Horsehead Nebula to the emergent fauna of the Resurge-Verdance Sector. Yet, all of that is fairly close to home, isn’t it? That is why my next sojourn takes me further afield than ever before.
We return one last time to Lamplight! The city on the edge of Everis! Again, much has been said of the people and arts of this place, and the mysteries abounding beyond.
Today, we delve into this near-impossible city’s darkest corners.
The Neoclassical District
I should start by noting that, unlike the other native populations or long-term residents of Lamplight, those who live within this district shun the light. Which, considering what the founders went through and the culture that shaped it, makes perfect sense.
Indeed, the Neoclassical District was born not of individuals fleeing political/earthly dissatisfaction or entering a sort of voluntary exile, but of a desperate faction of refugees fleeing the march of the Neon. Indeed, “Neon-London” is one of the newest facets to have slipped from the moorings of Lampeter and vanished into the proverbial maw of the dread Neon God.
As such, despite the expansive parks and archaic architecture that do little to block the Lamp above's limited light, the district has an almost restrictive feel. Shadows seem longer, alleyways and back paths go unlit, and I’d forgive a visitor to believe some establishments to be vacant as their storefront are morose panes of black glass reflecting not. The natives are comforted by the Shadow, though, and indeed, seeing starkly happy compared to the dour nature of their domain, and if the stories are to be believed, those visitors, largely literary figures I am told, who chose to stay long term in this district have the greatest um… ahem, survival rate.
Regardless, given the district's origin, I was not honestly expecting to find any faunal transplants, as I doubted many of the original refugees had put much thought amidst their flight towards what little wilds must have remained at the time. At first, the district seemed to confirm my assumptions.
And then I met the Strix (*???)
I head the stories first, a specter of the old world, the ghost of a Harkhret pioneer, even something one avid individual from Sol dubbed a “Pattern Screamer”. A being that vanished in the light, and emerged as a looming form the second it stepped into Shadow.
I thought it a figment, or if real, another manifestation of the nonmatter, working on the minds of the observers, praying on their fears of the light, or attempting to alter it to a fear of the Shadow. I was not expecting it to be a fully corporeal entity.
But on one of my sojourns through the city, I found my path blocked by the very thing I had been warned of. Thinking it a trick of the mind, I reached out to prove its nonexistence and instead found my hands meeting fine, downy feathers. The creatures hooted balefully at me and took a few steps back, into the light, and vanished before my eyes!
As far as I can ascertain, it is a species of owl, quite a large one at that, standing over two meters, yet still capable of flight, perhaps aided by the lesser gravity of the city. Regardless, I can’t ascertain the exact genus, as the creature appears visible only as an owl-shaped mass of feathers, so black they stand out against the void itself.
Furthermore, the brighter the light it is exposed to, the more the creature “disappears,” meaning the light of the lamp itself simply renders it unseen to the eye, aided in stealth by the augmented feathers common to owls. Yet, the light of a fire, a flashlight, or a gas lamp renders it immaterial, allowing it to pass through objects, much like the ghost many people take it for.
Despite this, I have observed the entities still able to manipulate objects in this state. At least I believe I have, and have not been documenting true poltergeist behavior, ha! I can only postulate what would happen to the creatures if they were exposed to brighter light, like that of a true sun; if the trend holds, they would likely phase out of existence.
I am uncertain how this adaptation came to be, whether it was an alteration of Lamplight’s environment or a trait born of an attempt to adapt to the Neon that has only been further augmented.
Aside from their feeding habits, which reveal them to be largely herbivorous with a preference for fruit, I have identified only one other shared trait across the unique specimens I observed. While visible, I only saw one individual ever open its eyes.
A Light Amidst Darkness
A member of another endemic species in the district had cornered it. While I was fighting to maintain my impartiality as a wildlife observer, it opened its eyes, revealing most of its face.
And where it pointed its gaze, it became bathed in sharp, ugly, neon-pink light. Its attacker fled as if scalded, and I was left near blind, stumbling my way to hopeful safety, the sight of its mournful, gleaming eyes seared into my memory.
The noted attacker was a Concrete Panther (Rattufelis sapiensvenator), one of the few forms of invasive/introduced fauna into Lamplight that the natives actually seem eager to get rid of, and that refers not just to those in the Neoclassical District but to the entire city.
The reason is simple. These lion-sized rodents have not just a taste but a preference for human flesh, and they eagerly hunt other sophont specimens as well over all other prey if it is available. Despite attempts to cull them, they still thrive in the Neoclassical District, thanks to the unique oddities that surround their dens, but more on that in a bit.
As I said, they are very large rodents, most closely resembling overgrown rats, with dense black fur overtop grey skin that is surprisingly thick, particularly around the neck and stomach, a defense against prey but also each other. They may have a preference for sophonts, but they are rabidly hungry creatures, meaning when times grow especially lean, cannibalism is absolutely on the menu, up to and including their own bodies. Quite a few individuals I observed were missing chunks of their tails, fingers, or entire feet.
Furthermore, their constantly growing teeth require them to gnaw on hard materials to keep them not only at a workable length but also sharpened. This means that not only are they a danger to individuals, but also to property.
I have concluded that these animals are not entirely natural, born of some mutation at some point in the fall of Grand London. However, it would take information long lost to us for me to piece together anything truly congruent.
Their eagerness to consume human flesh, mixed with their uncanny intelligence, capability to mimic the cries of wounded humans, and deep aversion to light, copious amounts of which causes their skin to flake and smoke, leads me believe they were created as a weapon against those that shunned the early days of the Neon’s coming.
As such, their existence within the Neoclassical District is a dread reminder that most would be rid of.
The only issue is their burrows seem to be formed of nonmatter, and attempts to interfere with them cause an immediate and painful unraveling if the sudden emergence of a snarling Concrete Panther doesn’t take you first. Curiously, the burrows seem stable and generally undetrimental to Lamplight. The defenses could almost be viewed as programmed, but by whom, and for what purpose, none can say. All in all, natives to the district have detailed maps of the burrows and do their best to avoid them, while setting traps and guards to catch Concrete Panthers unaware as they exit or return.
Oddly, even though it a major weakness of theirs I have not observed a single use of light as weapon against the Panthers by the district’s natives. The few I broached the topic with seemed particularly affronted by my questioning, and I believe my time in this district is quickly coming to an end, as any further attempts at an interview have been met with cold shoulders and colder glares. Natives of the other districts, notably, have no such qualms.
A Bandit & his Wounds
By some bit of grace, the beasts are surprisingly infertile for rodents, only producing up to two kits per union, meaning that while they have resisted attempts to drive them out of Lamplight, their numbers are still falling. Normally, I would be affronted by these actions, but as deep as my love and devotion to the numerous fauna of the Verse goes, there is something distinctly unnatural about them that gives me pause.
For most in Lamplight, this district would be the end of my journey, or rather the end of the circuit, emerging back into the busy streets of the Keivan District. For all the beasts I have discussed, I have catalogued a dozen more, and surely I would seek to compile all of that before setting my eyes on the sojourn across Lampeter.
They are right, and I will certainly do this in the days to come, but… There is one more place I must ferry us first.
The Sluice is a place easily forgotten and near impossible to parse in truth, but it exists, a second skin beneath the curiosity of Lamplight. It took more time, effort, and prodding than I can accurately describe to get the natives to even speak of this place, despite its effect on their everyday lives! The visiting academics were even less helpful, their draw to the titular light, and the nothing beyond forcing their eyes skyward.
And all the while, the Sluice, a mystery undelved, lay right beneath their feet.
See, in my preparations to come to Lamplight and catalogue its mock biosphere, I chewed through all manner of literature regarding the city’s founding, growth, and alteration, and I noticed a through thread.
All cities make waste. And while tossing it into the nonmatter seemed conceivable, it also seemed an unnecessary risk.
Additionally, the piping had to go somewhere.
As such, the Sluice is supposed to be the sewers of Lamplight, and, as is widely known in the cryptozoological sphere, the vast underworkings of the Verse are home to curious biota, man-made caverns that force adaptation and evolution on a folkloric scale. The Eastern Sewer Alligator (Alligator manhattanus) is the perfect example.
So, I began to wonder, what possible entities could lurk beneath the perpetual oddity of Lamplight?
The answer was more baffling than I expected.
One of the prevailing theories regarding the existence of Lamplight is that it is the remains of a Harkhret Angler, a colossal edifice of bio-artifice, with its organic terraforming technology a thing of legend sought after for all manner of reasons, even though most of it has largely rotted away. As I have noted, I am not a historian, but Harkhret is a curious intersection of specialities, and with the recent findings coming from Sol, I was more than willing to give this theory its time.
The Sluice… complicated matters. The entrance was an old one, situated on the outer edge of the Keivan district, though marked with a language my translation artifice refused to parse—a first warning, perhaps, who can say.
What was curious to me was that, in all my probing, not a single individual mentioned knowing any caretaker of these under-workings? This was meant to be a city of hope, altered through time into a haven of poets, academics, and the obsessed. In either case, who would have accepted being in sanitation? It was a fair point, yet what then kept the system moving smoothly?
It took quite a while to pry the door open, but upon my entrance, what awaited me was the scent of mold and, far worse, and not much else. Curiously clean stonework greeted my light, eventually revealing itself to be a haphazard net strung beneath the city above, so muddled and labyrinthine that I did not doubt that the unprepared would have grown lost without a doubt. Perhaps that fact, mixed with the natives' aversion to the dark, is what kept them from delving within, or at least acknowledging the necessity, for surely, for it to be this clean, someone had to be down here.
I… can’t say if that observation was right, for even as I write this, I am still lost as to what I observed in that null-touched below. The walls changed, the worked stone falling away to something calcified and hard, the patterns stratified in a manner I took to be muscle.
Worked stone to dead “flesh” that was odd enough, but as I kept walking, it changed more, the temperature dropped, and I felt my body beginning to tingle. I had left the light’s embrace, and that meant the non-matter could have its say, yet while that worry of what could happen filled me, I continued forward. The walls grew more and more rounded, an odd wetness coating every inch, making it slippery and sticky at once, tugging at my numbing feet. I don’t know why I didn’t turn back.
I just kept walking; it was only when I felt a “give” in one of my fingers that I snapped back to my senses. The fingernail had come away, and yet I felt no pain.
I blinked and realized that there were threads of non-matter all about me, like veins of ore running through a material, white and red and glistening.
As I watched, I swear to you I saw it move, a twitch that seemed to extend all around me, a minute contraction, but it sent me to my knees.
And then I found what I had come for, or more accurately, it found me.
A white ribbon of flesh slipped upwards from the floor and wrapped around my hand. I cried out and fell back, attempting to pull free, but all I did was draw more of the thing from its nook.
It was flat and bulbous at the same time, with not a single thing differentiating one section of its body from the next, like a chain of living bubbles set in two dimensions, coiling over and over and over about my deadened arm.
I have come close to death in this line of work before, from angry poachers to rabid wildlife to simple accidents. But in that moment, I believed I would never come closer. Until, of course, feeling returned to my hand.
I watched in my shocked fascination as the creature lay part of its body, what I can only take to be the head, against my fraying finger. Dozens of tiny filaments split free of an orifice and worked in a mesmerizing tandem as I watched the creature knit my wound back together. Indeed, I had a new nail, properly anchored, and though a bit overlong. I can’t begin to tell you what process this was. Still, the creature released me, and it was at that moment that I became aware that many of the white threads I saw covering the walls were the self-same creature, languidly shifting about the walls, stitching together rifts that the nonmatter had departed from. They grew smaller as they worked, some appearing to expire, shriveling into husks only to be replaced by another, with the dedicated bodies melting into the ground as I watched, a brief crimson viscera pooling out before vanishing.
Weaverworms(???), are what I have taken to calling these creatures, and I can’t begin to classify them as anything beyond evident and clearly magical, and likely a work of artifice.
How can it be anything but considering how the deeper I delved, the more it all changed. I had always wondered what Lamplight rested on, what kept the land fertile, hells, what kept the land whole with the devouring force awaiting any that dared past the light’s border. Should Lamplight not be but a disk spinning beneath the arching gleam? I can’t say, for the mysteries surrounding its existence are too many to count, yet, IF it was the initial work of the Harkhret, and the emergence here was purposeful, would they not make preparations to resist the consumption? Or are they something else, adapted to feed on nothing and give back something? I don’t really know, but as I got to my feet, I noticed a throng of them inching towards another pathway, and there another light gleamed, a white akin to the lamp itself.
I had come so far, found a curious little miracle, you can understand then why I would think I could find more? I realize now that perhaps this place was getting to me just as any other visitor. I could have turned around. I should have turned around, gone back to the true light above, been thankful for these small revelations and the accolades they would likely bring, and moved on. Yes? Yes! Of course, that is sensible, that is believable, that is even-minded.
But I didn’t. I went to the door. I went beyond it, and what I saw there I can’t put words to, except perhaps, that the light within gleams far brighter than the one above…
Half blind, I found myself stumbling into a sphere of stone, anchored amidst the not-flesh-not-stone surrounding it.
Within, I found writing, scrawled across every inch, except on the far side, where a mural of a figure wreathed in a heavy cloak, with a singular rune hanging in the air above their head, was situated. As I said, I’m not a historian, but it would not have mattered even if I were, for I had so little to take it in before I heard a crack from behind and above me.
A shape detached from the ceiling, changing from a stony texture to a near clear form, landing before me, unfurling to reveal something that mixed cephalopod and tardigrade into a towering monstrosity that flailed towards me with eerily human hands.
I backed away, and then another fell, and another. The sounds they made as they approached were like drowning static, a constant trill that made my eyes ache and ears burn.
I was not supposed to be here. None were supposed to have gone this deep. I knew it then, though I am not sure whether this is a conflation of my mind or a message ferried to me by these strange creatures.
I have dubbed them Sluice Guardians (???), for little else about them was revealed to me outside of their immediate desire to do me harm.
I kept backing away as they filled the room, fanning out, nearly a dozen, hands reaching out to caress the walls, acrid, acidic smells, and the sound of burning accompanying each touch, melting the text away.
My back found the far wall, and they thronged ever closer, and I think my head touched the rune, but I can’t be certain.
All that remains of the moment is an empty pit at the heart of my mind, echoing with painful headache, other cities cast adrift, shifting about the edge, whose names taunt the tip of my tongue before slipping away once more.
I awoke on the floor of my room, my own vomit as a pillow, and not a person believing a word of what I told them of what awaited within the Sluice.
The Horrors Below
I worry this last section may cast the rest of what I have discovered here in a poor light, and perhaps further raise questions about the integrity of my sanity. Not that it matters, many of my associates already thought me foolish for coming here, even more so from where I head next…
Should I care what they believe, though? I’ve learned much and found the beauty of nature thriving despite the improbability on this precipice. I am proud of that fact, delighted with it even.
And yet.
I am left with more questions than when I arrived. Why are nonsophonts better at adapting to Lamplight? How did some of them even get here? Who were the Harkhret? What is down there amidst the true dark and the false light? Should I go back? If there is life amidst the bowels, if its song ripples about the edge, then is there a chance, can something be out there amidst the- no, no. I need to move on. Maybe I’ll come back later, but for now, I have had my fill of darkness.
Not sure if the light that’s waiting at the end of the line will be better, but we’ll see, I suppose.
This long and perhaps muddled recording has been the work of Varys Matthau, Orchard’s Parazoologist Premiere. Thank you for joining me, but I must bid adieu to both Lamplight and you.
You’ll be hearing from me quite soon, but first, I’ve got a train to catch.