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<span class="mu-s">Tunegan, 13th Day of Kostrimun, 883 A.C.E. – Cathagi – First Light</span>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_jMCjmqOno&ab_channel=YokoKanno-Topic – The CityThe City, when you see it, leaves you short of breath. Not for its beauty, although it must be said there are worse sights in this world to behold than Nova Cathagi from the sea beneath the rising sun. It is the very existence of the City that beggars belief. It’s presence, it’s mere being in defiance of all your previous reckonings of scale and proportion. If a learned man told you in knowing tones that here alone lived the majority of the human race, but for your far-reaching travels across the continent and beyond you would be hard-pressed to name them a liar. Port Bounty, the largest city in Cantôn, was never near so sprawling. Fair Aubrey, the jewel of the Cantônian realm, was never so proud. The City is a dread thing. Dread in her ancient glory and dread in her monumental scale.
<span class="mu-i">“We launched a crusade against this? And won? In Almighty’s name, how?”</span> Your muttered words are spoken softly under your breath. For of course in Heaven’s name all things all possible… but to triumph against this would have taken some sort of miracle, surely. Little wander the Cathagi view your people as barbarians. But at least you are free, free in heart and faith both. <span class="mu-i">“Reginae wept, how many souls inhabit this city? A hundred thousand? A thousand thousand?”</span>
And high above it all, like a lion taking its leisure in the sun, rears the imposing Crescent Palace. Imposing is a faint word for the structure, not grasping one-tenth of the awe it imposes on the viewer. The monks and scholars have been heard to name it the single largest man-made structure in the world. Looking upon it with your own eyes, you have only one reasons to doubt them. Men could not build such a thing. At first break of day you had presumed it was a mountain, a geographical feature on the otherwise flat land ashore. As the light improved yours eyes continued to see but your mind refused to believe. You had thought the Royal Palace of Aubrey a fine thing indeed, admiring from a distance the jewel of the city and judging it a worthy seat for the Royal Throne. But you could fit a hundred Royal Palace’s inside this monstrosity. A thousand. The histories speak of no City before this one, and of no Palace but this. You can see why.
You are finally here, having walked in the steps of your grandfather before you. The destination of your long pilgrimage. At the birthplace of the Brothers and the founding of the One True Faith. It was here, on the sun-kissed southern shores, that chains were shattered and by their own sweat and blood men were made free. It was here that Cantôn was born. And it is here you must walk now in your final Vigil, setting aside your equal parts dread and trepidation as you step into the mouth of the beast.
For a Knight is Sworn to Valour.
