El Arafa
Overview
The El Arafa (Aubadyi: القرافة),is the City of the Dead, situated beneath the sands of the Caliphate of Aubayad.This is a huge underground series of catacombs consisting of tombs, burial mounds and graves, that would normally be above ground - but in this nation they are interred within a gigantic columned underground catacomb structure that extends for uncounted miles beneath the lands above. No one knows who started it, or even where the corpses come from, but the grounds are ever ready to accept more corpses for burial.
It is sometimes called a Second Burial as the body is being buried within a catacomb that is itself already buried.
Section Qualities
Each Section has a particular color given to it's lighting, and when one Section is filled, another, empty section appears - colored with different colored lights in another area adjacent to per-existing tombs. No order has been found to these colors, and no one is clear which Deity is responsible for the ever increasing burial space.So far there have been three sections that have appeared since the Aubaydi entered the land above.
Who Pays The Ferryman?
The entire complex is permanently flooded - yet no one seeking to retain their sanity or their lives would dare drink from this water - indeed, it has been known to simply turn to dust when exposed to sunlight/ no plant gains any sustenance from it. Anyone seeking to drink it simply finds it turns to sand in their mouths - but when spat out - returns to water again. So it is not enough to kill anyone but it is enough to annoy. (Some unlucky travelers have left the City thinking they have filled their water skins to the brim - only to find mouthfuls of sand once they are in the deserts itself.)Ferrymen ply the area - taking people to visit dead relatives and to take the bodies of the dead to their resting places. It is said to mirror the process of Charon in the afterlife - and the price is the same - a silver piece for the each leg of the journey - one to get to the grave and one to get back.
Infrastructure
The entire series of catacombs is in actuality a gigantic underground cavern wherein there exist ever expanding sections. Each section covers a rectangular area of changing dimensions. Each cavern discovered so far always covers exactly 9,999 square meters, each catacomb section has a corpse storage capacity of approximately 100,000 bodies - some in tombs, some in graves and others in mausoleums. In each catacomb, there are 336 columns and each column is 9 meters high. Also, each is entered into by descending a 52-step stone staircase - said to be one step for every card of the deck in the Thieves' deck - death being the ultimate thief. The columns are erected at intervals of 4.80 meters, form 12 rows (one row for each clearly designated month of the year), each containing 28 columns (one column for every letter in the Aubayd Alphabet).
Founding Date
55CY
Type
Underground / Vault
Location under
Owning Organization
Comments