Wondervale
Decades ago, just as Absalom began to recover its footing after the shock of Aroden’s death, the city’s leading intellectuals, inventors, and merchants organized a Festival of Wonders to showcase mechanical and cosmopolitan delights aimed at imagining a better, brighter future. They hoped that this would revive the civic spirits of a demoralized populace and reassure other nations that Absalom remained strong and vital, notwithstanding the loss of its patron god.
Because Eastgate and Green Ridge were then, as they are now, the most sparsely populated districts with the largest tracts of undeveloped land, the city put its Festival of Wonders there. Officials paid farmers to turn their fields into green lawns for a season, ordered the city’s parks to be strung with suspended bridges and shimmering mazes of lights to connect them, and invited Absalom’s inventors and engineers to reconfigure a swath of the area into the Wondervale. They erected replicas of Nexian wizardpalaces and Vudrani water gardens, Tian-Dan pagodas and Dehrukani crystal shrines. The Festival ran for months and was a smashing success, attracting crowds from throughout the Inner Sea and beyond. Any doubts about Absalom’s vibrancy were assuaged, and the city’s wealth and status were assured.
Most of its structures were dismantled after the Festival, and the farms were returned to their owners’ use. Part of the fairgrounds was preserved, however, and over time wild greenery grew up around the structures to grant the gilded palaces and crystalline spires a surreal, half-ruined air. Foreign plants broke free from their pots and spread across the grounds. Various pets, escaping from Eastgate’s careless owners and animal dealers, colonized the makeshift wilds.
Today the Wondervale is a marvelous, bewildering, slightly frightening jumble of semi-maintained architectural follies from across the world, visions of the future as imagined by thinkers over a century ago, and plants and animals that have developed a unique ecosystem around this peculiar landscape. Young lovers often walk through the Wondervale to enjoy its fanciful scenery, as do tinkers, poets, inventors, Brigh’s faithful, and anyone else seeking inspiration through juxtapositions of unexpected elements. Some say that the ghosts of foreigners who died far from home are drawn to familiar designs and structures that are unique within Absalom.
Certainly, some of the abandoned buildings continue to astound, particularly the floating towers meant to evoke the wonder of similar airborne structures found to the south on the isle of Jalmeray. Today these towers have become the home of immense flocks of bats that swarm out at dusk, resulting in the colorful name of the “Vampire Towers” among the locals.
Because Eastgate and Green Ridge were then, as they are now, the most sparsely populated districts with the largest tracts of undeveloped land, the city put its Festival of Wonders there. Officials paid farmers to turn their fields into green lawns for a season, ordered the city’s parks to be strung with suspended bridges and shimmering mazes of lights to connect them, and invited Absalom’s inventors and engineers to reconfigure a swath of the area into the Wondervale. They erected replicas of Nexian wizardpalaces and Vudrani water gardens, Tian-Dan pagodas and Dehrukani crystal shrines. The Festival ran for months and was a smashing success, attracting crowds from throughout the Inner Sea and beyond. Any doubts about Absalom’s vibrancy were assuaged, and the city’s wealth and status were assured.
Most of its structures were dismantled after the Festival, and the farms were returned to their owners’ use. Part of the fairgrounds was preserved, however, and over time wild greenery grew up around the structures to grant the gilded palaces and crystalline spires a surreal, half-ruined air. Foreign plants broke free from their pots and spread across the grounds. Various pets, escaping from Eastgate’s careless owners and animal dealers, colonized the makeshift wilds.
Today the Wondervale is a marvelous, bewildering, slightly frightening jumble of semi-maintained architectural follies from across the world, visions of the future as imagined by thinkers over a century ago, and plants and animals that have developed a unique ecosystem around this peculiar landscape. Young lovers often walk through the Wondervale to enjoy its fanciful scenery, as do tinkers, poets, inventors, Brigh’s faithful, and anyone else seeking inspiration through juxtapositions of unexpected elements. Some say that the ghosts of foreigners who died far from home are drawn to familiar designs and structures that are unique within Absalom.
Certainly, some of the abandoned buildings continue to astound, particularly the floating towers meant to evoke the wonder of similar airborne structures found to the south on the isle of Jalmeray. Today these towers have become the home of immense flocks of bats that swarm out at dusk, resulting in the colorful name of the “Vampire Towers” among the locals.
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