The first rays of the autumn sun shone over the decadent city of Prima, largest human settlement in the known world. (Although this is often disputed by the T’angese) The glorious golden rays fixed on the Palace of the Royal family, making it seem as though the ornately patterned windows were made of gold. This was something they could afford. The rays settled on the statue of Finn Robertson, the great prophet, in Purity Meet. The statue too shone a gold colour, the effects glinting off every available surface.
But these were not the only places in which the light settled.
Across the river Ængle and the king’s Palace Island, past the poorer districts and over the city walls, through the tributary, the Finch and onto the other side of the valley, in a country park like area with a few houses and crescents sprinkled here and there in reminiscence of the Great Expansion.
Here, in one of the modern townhouses of Hawthorn Crescent, number six to be exact, that is where our story shall take place. It does seem hard to believe when we see a house that is taller than it is wide, with a hideous yellow brick pattern. Fortunately, the rising sun changes that to a pleasant shade of peach.
But enough about the house, for now. Instead we need to concentrate on the occupant of this house. You will not find his name in Creep’s Peerage. Neither will you find it on the Father’s proscription lists, thank goodness. This young man’s life his passed through the sieve of chance with mostly no adverse effects and subsequently, he has not yet left his mark. But this is about to change, soon, this man will become something, as soon as he makes a cup of tea for his breakfast.
This man is Olato Thistlewaite, and he is also late. The device that he invented to wake him up on time for his patronage has not worked (something wrong with the applied pressure to the surge conduit I believe) and instead slowly steams in the corner.
Finally our hero stirs in his sleep and flips the dirty white sheet over the side of his jury-rigged iron bed.
Groggily he rubs his eyes and stares around the small squalid room, his eyes passing over the chipped and damped walls of his dilapidated room and rested on the broken mechanics before realization kicked it.
Olato cursed and pulled a grubby white t-shirt and plain black trousers from a wardrobe before hunting for some shoes and a waistcoat under his bed. In his frustration he lashed out at the machine only to dent his shoe and have it squirt oil into his face. Luckily the oil was a liquid (once again, this may have been due to the amount of pressure in the surge conduit)
Downstairs the toast was burnt, due to everything being timed and ready in the townhouse. Olato washed the oil off his face and pulled the burnt bread out of the fire-grate. He was out of the door (which locked behind him) before he realized how burnt it was so he threw the blackened squares into a bush as he ran across the cobbles whilst putting his waistcoat and jacket on.
In his brown tattered briefcase were the blueprints from last night which he would display to his patron, Mr. Robert Forscythe, a man who had truck it rich by renting warehouse in the west side docks. He had subsequently seen Olato’s design and mechanics and had sponsored him to produce blueprints which he was to present every morning on time in order to get his pay. These designs were at the moment plans for a submersible device which was circular. It worked like the sky to earth craft that the skyships used for relaying passenger to the ground.
Olato had heard about skyships in the Wasteland. He had heard about their prows cresting the sand dunes and flying into the clear blue sky. He also knew about the technology which kept it aloof. It was a guarded secret with most personal designs but usually sails, turbines and LTA technology figured in it somewhere.
By now the sun had risen fairly high and it shone off the pebbles in the road that Olato’s feet were running on. On either side of him, trees rustled in the autumn wind, their leaves falling like so many fledgling birds that had nested in their branches. He was wheezing now, the run down the hill every day was tiring, but he had to press on if he wanted to catch the ferry, which he did.
But as it was things were not going right this morning and so as he reached the banks of the river Finch, Olato was disappointed to see the ferryman sailing across the tributary whose banks had shrunk with the recent set of clear skies and lack of rain, such was unusual for Prima and many people suspected wizards’ influence, everything bad generally was blamed on them.
Wizards had ‘the gift’ as they called it. This allowed them to control the elements and, as the Purists saw it, daemons. But Olato did not believe in daemons and such rubbish. Magic was just a fundamental force in the universe of which he had possessed no skills, such things led to imprisonment and even death in the most extreme cases. Magic was a dangerous plaything and most people adopted a ‘look not touch’ philosophy when dealing with it.
Subsequently Olato was in no position to call upon the wind spirits to carry him to Mr. a Forscythe’s house or allow him to walk on the water. Instead he would have to take the ferry boat which sailed from the banks of the river Finch to the centre of Prima, where the tributary met the Ængle. The fee was quite cheap, which is why Olato used the service as a pose to a cabbie, whose cart or carriage would get caught up in the early morning traffic.
But Olato was late, as I have already said, and hence the ferry had sailed without him, this meant he would have to wait another hour for the service. He could not do this, as he was already late for his patron.
His patron gave him money that he needed every morning. He liked money, the gleam of it and the chinkly glingle noise it made in his pocket. He did not want to loose that.
His only option now was to run and cross one of the many bridges over the Finch to get to the Eastern Gate. The offices he needed to get to were in Bakerflea, but the traffic around the South gate was a nightmare of smog and horse dung, so most sensible people took the ferry, or if they were in similar unfortunate circumstances to Mr. Thistlewaite, they ran around to the Eastern Gate. So once again Olato’s feet pattered lightly over the cobbled floors as he carrying the papers in a leather satchel over his shoulder. Olato ran through the Iron Foundries workhouse and crossed the Bridge at Finchmeet Green, which in reality was no longer green due to the excessive pollution being churned up by the steam-powered forges and casts in the metalworking areas of the Finch, the water downstream was no longer drinkable.  The stench coming from the river however made the run even more unbearable and he was desperate to get away from the Finch, luckily the ominous shape of Pine Hill loomed ahead amongst the bustling suburbs which Olato had entered into.
The suburbs were where poorer families tended to live. They were dirty and scrotty, being outside the city walls, and were home to all sorts of disease and infections. And that is not even touching the iceberg. The workers from the factories lived here too, bringing the dirty habits and language they learnt at their jobs home to their children.
All of the buildings were stained with soot from the factories and loggers on Pine Hill and around the Finch.
Olato was careful to but a monogrammed handkerchief over his mouth and nose before he continued to run down the squalid streets of the area. He was almost within the city walls, he could see them drawing ever closer like macabre tombstones encircling a mourner. This description was accurate for any person living in Prima.
As Olato grew nearer he saw a long line of vagrants and cripples in chains. One man with a rotting leg caught his eye. This sent a shiver up his spine, mind you it was better than the hospitals, and those were only for the rich as the poor ones had a reputation for such bizarre practices as pre-mortem autopsies to find out how a patient would die. Funnily enough the result was usually disembowelment, apart from one old man on whom the tests showed that he was slowly being eaten by worms, nevertheless a large sum of the taxpayer’s money was spent to find out the cause of this.
Pressing on Olato ran inside the gates, ignoring the various guards and carts. Once inside the scenery was not changed much, the buildings were now made of wood instead of slate and clay brick, the amount of erosion meant that varnish was easier and more cost effective than stone. The people were generally more richer and less trustworthy and the streets, whilst not being paved with gold, were paved with stone and coated with filth, Olato walked on the pavement where it was cleaner and narrower, watching out for guttersnipes and urchins who would rob him blind, in the case of Snead Eye-Prier and his gang, this was quite literate.
Olato continued to run, pushing past the ordinary folk who were selling their wares or having discussions in the streets. A young man yelling a headline about another Zone War in the Princedoms distracted him and he ran face first into a lamppost. Quickly brushing himself off, Olato looked around for anyone that could have stolen his satchel, but it lay undisturbed on the ground where it had fallen.
Just then a cart containing wool passed by. This was inspiration as all wool passed through Sparsit Way, the centre for distribution into the factories. Mr. Forscythe’s office was in Speckled Lane, which was only 3 blocks of offices and houses away. While all of this processed through his head, Olato jumped onto the cart and buried himself deeply in the wool, immersing himself in the chemical scent of the Iodine products designed to kill the fleas. The unspun wool itched as the cart bounced up and down on the cobbled lanes, but the soft fleecy fabric was good padding and it was better than running through the streets.
Catching his breath, Olato leant back on the side of the cart and relaxed. He hoped he looked inconspicuous as this was probably not legal, knowing the newly elected law management, the Purists, they would have some sort of law against this and he may be fined on trumped up charges. Olato also had a bad political record, his parents and he had all voted VIGIL, a small left wing party. His was quite unpopular in the right wing circles and the members were always being impeded or imprisoned.
As he thought about this, Olato pulled a small notepad out of his waistcoat and sketched a new design that he would make into a blueprint that had just occurred to him. It was a way of storing energy in water, but the device was so big and unwieldy it would never be built.
Finally the distant smoky smell of fish alerted him into concentrating on his surrounding and he quietly and surreptitiously leapt off the back of the cart and dusted himself down, sealing his satchel before getting his bearings.
This was hard in Bakerflea, because the wind managed to blow the fog and the smoke into the area, making a thick green-grey mist that sank to the floor. Together with the gas lamps, this was a very eerie place and the inhabitants were quite suspicious and odd.
The general effect was one of a perpetual night. The science, as Olato recalled, was far behind it. As it was, the fog contained strong magical energies, anything could happen here.
This was Red League Road, if he continued along here for a while then he could cross over into Speckled Lane. He crept carefully along the streets, wrapping his arms around the valuable documents and shivering.
Shivering because of the cold, the fog blocked out most of the sunlight here and although one could hear the rest of Prima from a distance, Bakerflea remained as silent as a grave. Provided the grave was not inhabited by a particularly noisy corpse.
Olato did not usually take this route and so he got lost a couple of times before arriving at the mouth of Speckled Lane. Suddenly a cat behind him scared Olato into running through the darkness, counting the steps until he reached the familiar looking door. The steps were damp and hard as he walked up them. The knocker was cold and silver in the little light from a nearby lamp. Suddenly, as he reached to knock on the door, it swung open. Expecting his master, Olato was shocked to see no-one there. Knowing better to enter a person’s house without being invited, Olato waited outside. He was still waiting five minutes later when he hazarded a cry into the house.
“Hello? Mr. Forscythe? It’s me, Mr. Thistlewaite” his voice echoed around the house.
He reached out to a gas lamp, so that he might turn it on a shed some light in the room. Oddly, it caught mildly aflame at his touch. He looked around and beat out the fire with first his hand, followed by his handkerchief, which stifled the flames, but was badly burnt. That was odd, spontaneous combustion was not unheard of, especially in Bakerflea. There was magic afoot, Olato would have to be more careful.
Mr. Forscythe lived alone, well apart from his daughter, but she spent most of her time working at the Lunatic Asylum as a psychiatric nurse of some kind, so she was rarely home.
Olato tiptoed in and wiped his feet on the floor, leaving the door open. Something was odd, the air tasted strange. None of the lights were on in the corridor, so it was hard for Olato to make out the stairs in the dark. On the walls were portraits whose eyes bored into the back of his neck. With his knees knocking together, fearful of what he might find or what might find him, Olato turned the corner into the front room.
The sight that greeting him was a mess, there had quite clearly been a struggle of some kind. The furniture was scattered and several valuable china plates that had been placed over the fireplace were smashed. This was not right, Robert Forscythe treated this office as a second home, he had several staff to watch it at all times. On the walls was a large insignia of some kind. It was an eye with three pairs of eyelashes. Painted on a blank space of wall where a bookcase had been toppled over, the sign had been painted quickly but skilfully in a red liquid that could only have been blood.