Night's Grasp

by Alexandra

Night's Grasp

This is the most shaded and protected neighbourhood of the City of Night and Shade. When Degrunda was a monarchy, the royal castle existed here -- but after an uprising and overthrowing of the monarchy, the castle was torn down and replaced with homes for the common people. These days, however, the city's ultra-wealthy call this neighbourhood home.

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The protective embrace of shadow

The mass of nearly one billion kilograms of volcanic stone leans precariously out over the City of Night and Shade's most wealthy neighbourhood; the settlement's darkest shadows find their home here among the lights of the elites. The weight of the mountain lends gravity and presence to the space, as if the natural fortification justifies the privilege that the lucky few in this neighbourhood command. Narrow roads granted the luxury of winding without care for safety or efficiency weave their way through the mansions built of black volcanic rock, the same as what towers over them. By all accounts, the people of Night's Grasp might as well be royalty -- but they can't be "royal", because the Degrundan people violently overthrew the royals decades ago.
In Degrunda, darkness means life; after The Seven Day War, a mysterious illness broke out -- it spread through human hosts among the northern countries of Cathedris, causing intense sensitivity to sunlight. At the same time, a disease hit many of the global north's staple crops, seemingly inverting the amount of sunlight for them to grow. This pushed the people to the shadows, where their skin would no longer burn, and where their diseased crops would instead thrive. Shadow became home -- the darkness became power. For Degrunda then, there was no better place to call home than the City of Night and Shadow; here a natural cliff formation causes over 70% of the inhabited space to be in perpetual darkness.
Of course, power breeds power, and eventually began the long thousand year reign of Degrunda's monarchy, the lineage of Obsidian Royals. They built their castle out of metamorphic rock and volcanic glass, sprawling and towering along side their protective mountain overhang. For centuries they ruled from this castle, while the City of Night and Shade grew steadily at their feet. However, when the age of Degrundan Enlightenment began (thanks in large part to the secretive inventions and discoveries of the Veiled Academy), the common people rose up and overthrew the royals. The castle was entirely disassembled and used to build housing for the newly empowered "regular folk"; this was however an omen for what was to come, as these once royal-stones were eventually used to build mega-houses for an entirely new ruling class.