In Strawberryfield…
San Rosille’s low-income slum district. Formerly a rural area with fields outside of the city walls, it has been built up and paved over. A bad part of town, but not the worst, Hyacinth’s house is located here.
217 Violena Street
Hyacinth’s boarding house, originally someone else’s boarding house which was abandoned during the war. It is narrow, detached, and three storeys tall, with an attic, cupola and front porch. Repairs have been sporadic, apathetic and weird. Nearly all the shingles are gone from the roof, and the walls have been variously shored up with brick, stone, or new windows. All the windows are made from broken glass which Hyacinth merged back together with lead, and which passersby often take it upon themselves to break again. Milo has fixed them so that they still break, but sweep themselves up and stop the projectiles from doing further damage. (Previous experiments in human psychology indicate that when the windows don’t break at all, the neighborhood tends to escalate rather than give up.) There is a sign near the front door which says: Rooms to Let and No Dogs, and a smaller sign beneath in the same style saying: No Real Horses. The house itself and part of the crumbling wall around it have been painted with multicolored puzzle pieces.
The gate has been replaced with a piece of plywood bearing a fragment of an advertisement with a woman holding a glass of champagne. The yard is full of trash, much of it sorted for eventual use: glass bottles for windows, piled brick and stone for the walls, tin cans for silverware, scrap wood for burning. It is terribly obvious that this is the crazy house where the magicians live, but also a place to come for cheap medical care and a shelter during magic storms. It is located between Eddows Lane and Sabot Street, just off Green Dragon Alley and near Swan’s Neck. The neighborhood is variously hostile and relieved to have them.
Strawberry Square
Strawberryfield was planned, give or take the actual planning, as a system of squares with services and market space for what was once a rural area outside the city. The wide spaces in between have been overrun with cobbled streets and cheap structures, but the squares remain. Strawberry Square is the oldest, and was once the nearest to San Rosille, abutting the colored ghetto at the edge of what used to be the city proper. Presumably there were some strawberries planted there at some point, but it has all been paved over, and the ghetto walls have crumbled to dust.
Strawberry Square contains an ancient public water pump and space for market stalls. The bank of pay toilets is a more modern addition. There are also benches, flowerpots, gaslamps and a modicum of maintenance. Apart from the marketing stalls, which see occasional daytime use, there is a lot with a hitching post and trough for horses, and some broken newspaper vending machines that have ads for call girls and local businesses in them. All these are subject to frequent ‘vandalization’ by very selective vandals who strip off the metal parts. The police were mystified by the theft of both toilet doors in the summer of ‘75 and have no reason to connect it to the shirt factory fire in Candlewood Park.
The postwar presence of a brothel has depressed the usual commerce in the area. The Tiw’s Day farmers’ market has moved north to SoHo.
Strawberry Square connects to Eddows Lane at the east, and Muro Road at the north, with various alleyways (including Green Dragon Alley) also winding through the buildings around it.
Green Dragon Alley
This straight and narrow passage has its origins in a drainage ditch that was meant to direct rainwater and irrigation into the San Rosille sewer system, and not its streets. The surrounding area slopes gently downwards, with Hyacinth’s house being about four feet higher than Strawberry Square at the end, and the corner of Eddows and Violena being about two feet higher than Hyacinth’s front yard. The capacious sewer grates connecting it to Strawberry Square remain, though now they rarely handle more than seasonal rains. At some point after it was paved over and built up, a green dragon was painted on one of the walls, but either the wall or the paint has vanished into history.
A bombed-out warehouse takes up most of the space behind Hyacinth’s house. Across the way is a faceless rental storage building which may have been abandoned but still gets new locks on the doors when the old ones are broken off, and an empty lot that was cleared of its crumbling shop after the siege. The Dove Cot, a brothel, sits at the east side of the alley fronting Strawberry Square. On the west side is a walled space that would be suitable for temporary market stalls and is sometimes occupied by itinerant salesmen who don’t mind setting up near a load of prostitutes.
The Dove Cot
A remnant of century-old gentrified hopes for Strawberryfield, similar to Hyacinth’s house, it was turned into a brothel by some enterprising ladies after the siege. There is no singular pimp or madam, rather its founding members had certificates printed and divided up shares. This was meant as a temporary solution for the paperwork, but they have thus far remained incorporated. The buy-in for new members is a percentage of earnings. It is all very legal and licences and medical records are kept meticulously up to date. Nevertheless, some stigma remains, as well as hostility towards less fortunate sex workers who may be doing it illegally and ‘giving us a bad name.’
The building itself is in compact, urban gothic style, also much like Hyacinth’s house, but wider and with little front yard. What there is is nicely landscaped. The Dove Cot ladies are proud of their home and have done a much better job of maintenance and remodeling than Hyacinth, but they pity her rather than resent her for tanking their property value.
Eddows Lane
This is 217 Violena’s nearest cross-street. It ends slightly north of them at Muro Road, which marked the outer wall of the old city and cuts off many other streets similarly. It is cobbled, like most of Strawberryfield, with no sidewalk. There is a bus stop at the southeast corner of Eddows and Violena, and another at the northwest for travel in the opposite direction. Hassan’s Kebabs occupies the southwest corner, and there is a nail salon at the northeast. Heading southward, one will find Cinders Alley, with the street school and railway bridge, a drugstore with a soda fountain, and a dry cleaner’s, among other establishments.
Most residences on Eddows are above shops and rented to one or two families, but scattered gothic-style housing remains, some of it still occupied. The Toussaint family lives on the third floor above the dry cleaner’s, with ‘Uncle Steven,’ the owner, occupying the second.
Cinders Alley
The result of a natural wash from the dammed and rerouted Arlo River, and unplanned urban expansion which necessitated a new factory district and an elevated section of train track. Cinders Alley is relatively wide, relatively dry, and relatively isolated. Many of the shops and houses near the tracks were bombed out during the siege, and unlike the tracks themselves there was little point in rebuilding.
Given the relative lack of debris and the sturdy shelter of the bridge above, Seth Zusman thought it a good place for a home, and later a school. He has furnished the place with cast-offs and out of his own pocket. The desks, tables and chairs are warped and wobbly, but not splintery or unsafe. There is usually a medium-sized green chalkboard and enough pencils and paper to go around. He keeps his personal belongings in a broken trunk and maintains a nest of blankets and pillows for himself behind the chalkboard, for nominal privacy. The bridge and the area under it have some enchantments slapped on them to keep it nice under there, including a temperature control.
There are no books, very few electives, and no homework.
Swan’s Neck
The odd bend which gives this alleyway its name was the result of a surveyor’s error. The property owners were amenable to it, as square footage lost in one area was regained in the other, and it became a private dirt road and then a public landmark. Due to the lack of fields in Strawberryfield, it is no longer visible from a distance, but the wiggle is still remarked upon by passersby. It leads up to nothing more interesting than a manhole cover with utility access and a small plaque mentioning the history and the surveyor’s error, which is frequently vandalized.
Sabot Street
Ground zero for discount housing in Strawberryfield, the options are primarily doss houses and wretched little furnished rooms with a shared bath. Rarely do these buildings get over two storeys high, being very cheaply constructed. Public houses, bodegas and cheque-cashing businesses abound. Heading northwards, one will eventually reach MacArthur Park, and the neighborhood tends to get nicer after that, working its way towards the classy end of South Hollister with a barrier of nice brownstones in between. Sabot Street sheds its derelict name at Ha’penny Square, and past that is known as Poppy Lane.
Brickdust Row
Though separated by Muro Road, which follows the old city wall and includes the old ghetto wall, Brickdust Row is considered a part of Strawberryfield. The cheaply-built brick buildings are the remnants of a walled ghetto that once segregated the colored population of San Rosille. It began as an allotment of farmland with small cottages on individual plots and its own central square, then grew urbanized with the rest of Strawberryfield. For a time they maintained their own government and police, but desire to use common spaces like the harbor, canals and train tracks begat cooperation, and it became a colored neighborhood as a matter of convenience rather than law. During this period it was sometimes called Rainbow Row.
After the siege, even the established demographics fragmented and only the sameness of the buildings indicates some kind of planned community. The colored school, where Mordecai and others of his generation received a free public education, remains only as a building and has been converted into a block of flats.
MacArthur Park
This is the nicer park that is walking-accessible from Strawberryfield. Notable features include sporadic patches of grass and mud, benches with arms in the middle to keep people from sleeping on them, and a dry fountain with an ugly cement fish. There are no places to climb or play ball, unless you’d like to avail yourself of a tree or a brick wall. In Strawberryfield, fashionable people do their ball-playing in streets and dirt lots and their climbing in abandoned buildings. It is just off of Sabot Street, north of Thicke Street and south of Ha’penny Square.
Second Hand Shop
There are many, but the one nearest the house is on Sabot Street, a little north of Violena. On the front window in white paint it says: Second Hand Clothes and Books 2/10sc. There is a lot of dust inside, on books and knick-knacks and other ephemera, on green-painted metal shelving, and on circular racks of hanging clothes. A single changing room occupies a back corner, requiring a key from whoever is manning the counter. Intended purchases may also be piled on this counter while browsing, for later packaging in brown paper bags or repurposed boxes. Delivery of furniture items is available for a fee.
Ice Cream Parlor
Prepackaged frozen treats of various kinds are available in most drugstores and bodegas, and anywhere with a soda fountain will have chocolate, vanilla and strawberry for floats and shakes. For ice cream concoctions with flair, you need a parlor. The one nearest the house has a torn awning that just says: Ice Cream. The expense of having signage custom made may explain the popularity of generic-named businesses in Strawberryfield.
The inside has a pink and white striped theme, a soda fountain with Min-Min sodas, and ten ice cream flavors listed on a chalkboard in the front window. There is a small fenced area outdoors with wrought-iron tables and chairs and pitifully distressed white paint, but no umbrellas or anything else to make it nice out there. It is east of Sabot Street and south of Violena, near Apple Blossom Square.
In SoHo…
The art district. South Hollister Avenue is a vaguely L-shaped street that begins uptown as North Hollister and becomes SoHo as it curves toward the sea. Galleries, supper clubs and theaters occupy the northwest portion, nightclubs, public houses and bargain cold-water housing for starving artists in the middle, and bars, cabarets and urban blight at the end.
La Stella
This is the nearest movie theater to the house. It is one of the old palaces, repaired and updated somewhat on the cheap after the siege. There is a wide, white marquee on the outside of the building, with films listed in a haphazard mix of black and red lettering. Likewise, the blinking bulbs surrounding it are a mix of red and yellowish-white.
Inside, the color scheme is red and gold, with the plush carpeting having been replaced with red linoleum and the gold mirrors with shiny wallpaper. There is a bar in the lobby, but it has not been in use due to changes in codes and licensing after the war. There is also a snack bar, but the popcorn it sells comes in dusty boxes from a distributor and is not fresh-made. Two sweeping staircases lead from the lobby to the balcony, where the colored audience or other weird-looking people are obliged to sit. This situation is known as ‘segregated seating’ or ‘the candy dish,’ and is still in use in many entertainment venues.
Only one screen is on offer, but it is a large one, with a stub of stage underneath for the musical accompaniment which is no longer required. The roster of movies and short films (including music reels, news reels, serials and cartoons) is played on an endless loop from opening to closing, and a ticket will buy you entry at any point, after which you may leave whenever you desire. Two pictures, A and B, are shown on weekends and Frig’s Day nights, and tickets are discounted on Sigurd’s Day afternoons.
Artistic SoHo appreciates La Stella for its funky old-fashioned charm and uniqueness, whereas Strawberryfield likes that it’s cheap. It is located in the middle section of South Hollister, surrounded by cute little boutiques and restaurants.
The Black Orchid
A drag club, but a very nice one. It is operated by two older ladies, Lalage and Barbara Cavendish-Rafferty, who style themselves as married. They have an adult son named Harry, whom they adopted from the Saint Dennis’s Home for the Wayward and Debauched just outside of town. Besides providing shelter for the indigent, Saint Dennis’s painted nuns also operate a farm, apiary and brewery. They supply the Black Orchid with all their beer and most of their cosmetics. The staff of the Black Orchid like to tease Harry and say he still smells of hops.
Some kind of sketchy fringe entertainment has been operating at the site of the Black Orchid for over 100 years, beginning with a molly house, which passed into the ownership of Barbara’s grandfather about fifty years ago. She and her almost-wife purchased the structure just after the Veaceslav War, managed to keep it together during the siege, and rebuilt fantastically afterwards with help from their loyal staff.
It is licensed and operated as a supper club rather than a nightclub or — gods forbid — a cabaret, but it is located on the seedy end of South Hollister, near the ocean and Candlewood Park. You may have chicken, steak or fish with rice or potatoes and seasonal vegetable while enjoying the entertainment. Due to their support of the molly community, many a young LGBT+ individual in San Rosille has lived on a diet of chicken, steak or fish for a time, even if they’re not quite legal for the club yet. Takeout comes in swan-shaped foil and a white paper bag, so young people supporting themselves this way are called Silver Swans, or just Swans.
There is a two drink minimum, with mixed drinks available at the separated bar, or wine with dinner for those who are not pub-legal yet. It is a classy establishment, well-lit, clean and safe, despite the abundance of advertisements for LIVE NUDE dancers around it. The ladies and gentlemen working there have organized a sort of walking carpool to get home safely after hours.
Despite its history as a molly house, neither sex nor rooms to have sex are for sale. The dressing rooms are all upstairs, where the rental rooms used to be. The performers using them have their names written on strips of colored tape, which are easily moved between doors as needed. Nobody’s things are ever where they’re supposed to be and there is a lot of chaos and half-naked people rushing about during shows. There is an implicit agreement that at least one room will be kept free for illicit encounters, but no money will change hands. A room may be reserved in advance by applying a piece of tape and writing: Gloria Gaynor. When finished, it is traditional to remove the tape and apply it to the wall beside the kitchen bulletin board, so everyone can amuse themselves counting the Glorias.
The Slaughterhouse
San Rosille’s answer to the Grand Guignol, the Slaughterhouse is a postwar establishment owned and operated by an enthusiastic compendium of young actors and tech people, all of whom would just love to direct. The name comes from a deal made with the local slaughterhouses, for their used blood and offal. The props and tech are as real as possible, while the gory plotlines are ridiculous. The Slaughterhouse operates at the perfect intersection of young, hip and sensational, and is doing quite well for itself.
The building is an old theater, bought cheaply after the war and retrofitted with a lot of cement, latex, and easy-clean surfaces. The indoors retains its original decor, done up to look like a summer evening outside, with fake plants and painted people and vistas on the walls between the private boxes — albeit with a lot of repel charms plastered over them. The balcony offers bargain seating and standing accommodation, but not segregated seating, and the ground floor is mid-to-high-priced. The Splash Zone in front of the stage and the private boxes are quite expensive, for vastly different reasons.
You will find the Slaughterhouse in the middle section of South Hollister, south of La Stella, surrounded by a lot of opportunistic bars that are open late nights.
Our Merciful Lord Charity Hospital
In the neighborhood south of South Hollister amidst the brownstones near Brickdust Row rather than off the street itself, this is the charity hospital that serves SoHo and Strawberryfield. It is likewise a brownstone, vast and somewhat derelict but nicely-landscaped in the courtyard areas. The nuns staffing it are a conservative sect following the Man Joshua, the Miriams, who also feel called to operate soup kitchens, thrift stores and workhouses. The combined profits of this charity empire are ostensibly filtered back into it, and they are a registered non-profit organization with the freedom to employ child labor and skirt tax laws.
Long wards with large windows and wheeled dividers between the beds are common, private rooms are rare. The floors are tile or linoleum and the walls are smooth white plaster. The waiting rooms are small, cluttered and smoke-stained. Fees are kept artificially low, and will be waived altogether if you fill out the right combination of forms.
A clinic, an emergency room, a maternity ward, a surgery center and crisis-style drug overdose and mental health care are available. There is a very small section where patients needing long term care may reside, but it is squalid and often full. Poor people who truly cannot take care of themselves will be sent to the public asylum outside the city, or released onto the streets to die after signing a few forms.
Our Merciful Lord reserves the right to refuse care and frequently does. There is a large wooden gate which may be drawn over the entire front of the building when rioting gets near.
San Rosille Natural History Museum
This building is technically on NoHo, above the bend and near the Art History Museum. (The Modern Art Museum is farther down and truly in SoHo.) It was done up in imitation classical architecture about a century ago to give it an air of respectability after the San Rosille Fire of 1262 gutted the original structure. Very few exhibits survive from before this time, including some fossils and a stuffed alpaca that was done up by a royal taxidermist who had no idea what an alpaca looked like.
The museum’s displayed collection is fairly small and static, and still being repaired after damage from the siege. High ceilings, painted murals and a courtyard with a rotating art installation make it all seem a little more impressive. More specimens are off-exhibit in the wings and the basement, available for academic study upon request. There are rooms dedicated to dinosaurs and fossils, gems and minerals, reptiles and insects, sea life, birds and mammals, science and magic, stars and planets, and the history of the earth — which includes a small section on ‘primitive cultures’ with stolen grave goods from Ifrana and the Magnus Islands which they are not giving back. The singular reconstructed dinosaur skeleton, Milo will tell you, has been incorrectly assembled in an upright posture, resulting in dislocated bones in the tail.
Tiw’s Day admissions are free or discounted, depending on the time of year.
Downtown…
What was begun as a Thessalonian port city a couple thousand years ago is now Downtown San Rosille. It has been destroyed and rebuilt many times, and little of the original architecture or planning remains. Green spaces are few, streets are narrow and buildings close-knit, with very little sky.
Canburry Square
The original site of San Rosille was planned as a system of squares, much like Strawberryfield. Unlike Strawberryfield, it has had a couple thousand years of destruction and rebuilding to break up anything like a coherent structure. Hennessy’s has had more effect on downtown San Rosille’s current configuration than its original squares. Nevertheless, a scattered few remain and have become historic landmarks: well-maintained, dotted with statues and beloved by tourists.
Canburry Square contains a central statue of Mademoiselle Orianne Canbury and her cats, who, by legend, was an eccentric hoarder who single-handedly put out the devastating San Rosille Fire of 1262. “I just figured it out,” the plaque quotes her as saying. “My cats were unhappy.” There were twenty-four cats altogether and the sculptor faithfully reproduced every one, but they are not all on the central sculpture. Children and tourists may amuse themselves trying to find all of them. Mittens is in the catnip behind the drinking fountain.
There are a few other monuments scattered about, as well as benches, businesses, and shade trees with metal guards around the trunks. Due to the tourists, it is a popular location for buskers and people selling things out of carts, many of whom lack permits.
The larger of two riots occurring in August of 1375 began in Canburry Square, when a colored man set off some kind of explosive device, injured two young men and started a fire. He disappeared into the city and was never found.
Herald Street News
Owned and operated by a Priyati family, the Green-Taras, who apparently thought an idiomatic Anglais translation of their name (Khadiravani) would help them fit in. What we might call a ‘convenience store’ in San Rosille is called a ‘bodega,’ a mot juste on loan from Iliodario. The Green-Tara’s cross-cultural collision course is a small storefront with a green and white striped awning and a logo of a red elephant in a circle painted on the front window. Herald St. News is printed above the elephant in white, and Candy — Cigarettes — Magazines below it. A green-painted plaster figure of Khadiravani, a being of indeterminate gender considered a single aspect/incarnation/personality of a much larger god, sits in the right hand corner of the window.
Inside, behind the window, there is a card table with folding chairs. A small lunch counter with three fixed stools is also available, to the left of the cash register as one walks in. Prepackaged, convenient food is on offer, including chips and soda, candy bars, sandwiches and empanadas.
Newspapers are updated twice daily (a selling point! They are almost a newsstand!) and other periodicals weekly or monthly, depending. Comic books and cigarettes are behind the counter, to discourage shoplifting. They do not have a dispensary or a liquor license, and they do not have a freezer. For drugs, a small selection of alcohol, and ice cream one must go down the street to Mr. Patel’s pharmacy.
As is common downtown, the Green-Taras live above their store, in a cramped two-storey floorplan with the kitchen, living area and bath above the store and some bedrooms above that. The residential windows looking out onto the street have sheer curtains, for privacy. On the ground floor there is a back room for storage, but no basement. The stairs leading up to the living space are accessible from this back room, which is separated from the store by a beaded curtain.
There is no public restroom, but John or the kids might let you go upstairs if you seem desperate.
Herald Street runs parallel to Angel Lane, one block up from Canal Street, and is near Canburry Square. A bus stop is right in front of the store — another selling point!
Windless Watch Factory
That’s W-I-N-D-less, like the thing you do to a watch — but not these!™ The factory is a smallish one with a niche product, new construction and new technology since the war. The walls are industrial brown brick, with a few obligatory smokestacks peeking out of the roof. Inside is primarily one long assembly line, folded in on itself, with a partition between Assembly and Quality Control, and between Quality Control and Packaging.
A small office on the second storey has wide windows to allow for observation of the whole operation, and a comms system for yelling at individual slackers. The speaker box in the Enchanting Department falls silent on days when Mr. Rose is working there. The management have long since decided he is an alien in a complicated disguise who came to San Rosille to drink coffee and make watches, and they know he does not respond well to criticism. He cannot be explicated, copied or nudged, but left to his own devices he increases production by twenty-five-percent on days when he is working, innocently plowing through their backlog and repairing rejects and broken returns as he goes. The company-approved enchantments and prefabricated parts are very cheap, so there are a lot of broken returns.
Windless Watches™ come with a 365 day guarantee! Because on day 366 they die en masse and you need to buy another one — with a very few exceptions that Milo produced when he accidentally came to work stoned. Windless Watches™ are more disposable than pet hamsters. Milo feels sorry for them.
The factory is located on Angel Lane, one of a few lucky businesses taking advantage of new space available downtown after the destruction of the siege. Milo does not know how fortunate he is not to be working in Candlewood Park, nor does he know he could ask for the moon and management would give it to him — out of a deep affection and abiding respect… for their Yule bonuses.
Angel Lane
One of the first improvements made by the ancient Thessalonian port city of Kallistratos was to connect the ocean to the river, a few miles inland. A couple thousand years later and the Marselline city of San Rosille retains its system of canals, but no longer has any use for them. Some of them have been absorbed into the sewer system, some have been paved over and some are merely ignored. But, during the siege, they made a convenient dumping ground for dead bodies and refuse of all kinds.
Post-surrender, the city required some serious cleanup, and it was decided to pick one canal and throw all the extant dead bodies into it, then pave over it. This became Angel Lane, named either as tribute or appeasement to the spirits of the dead. This expedient but unsanitary disposal was not publicized and knowledge of it is more legend than history. The canal still gets ocean water in it, but thus far the system of sewer grates has prevented any recognizable chunks from washing up on the beaches. The creation of Angel Lane also made a nice new area for businesses downtown!
Pension Office/Post Office
Located on the south side, at the upper edge of SoHo, this is the most convenient location for the General to collect her pension cheques, which she attempts to do on the first Frig’s Day of every month. It is only a pension office on this one day a month and no records are kept there. The long counter has multiple windows for service, framed in brass cages, and most of these are repurposed for the alphabetical dispensation of cheques, with only one being available for the post. Folding tables are also set up with personable attendants to take care of any grievances or difficulties.
Lines are long and it can take hours to receive any kind of service, in rain, heat, or snow. This makes a fine excuse to socialize, check in with old friends, or start a fight with old enemies. A few nuns are always on hand to serve coffee and doughnuts to the people waiting outside. By long-standing tradition, whoever has to deal with the crazy hat woman who sets her cheque on fire every month gets a small bonus and a voucher for a drink at a nearby pub.
Public Library
There is a small extension uptown, but this is the main branch. If the poor in Strawberryfield want free reading material, they need to pay bus fare. The library is large and middling-historic, with a central dome and a rotunda. There is a mural of water birds on the inside behind the checkout counter, done by a famous naturalist who has been deceased for about a half century. The mural survived the siege mostly intact, under a combination of magic and sandbags, as did the building and its collection.
The library is segregated, with a small annex for the colored population. Among other things, colored patrons are not allowed access to new releases, rare and historical books, toilets, or the Children’s Corner with the really cool wooden mockup of a castle in it. Only very dedicated or desperate colored readers bother about the San Rosille Public Library.
Milo and the General are both devoted fans of the glassed-in restricted area with the rare and historical books, which must be handled with white cotton gloves, but they have yet to run into each other. Now that Milo’s access has been revoked due to a small fire he started in a study room, this is even less likely to happen.
Uptown…
San Rosille’s wealthy population fled the increasingly industrialized and paved downtown area and moved north into the hills. Here is a delightful respite from bustle and traffic with large parks and wide avenues, but still all the comforts of city life. It is pretty but dreadfully expensive.
David’s Townhouse
It is fashionable for wealthy country people to own a townhouse in the city, and for wealthy city people to maintain an estate in the country. David Valentine’s affiliation is unknown and unknowable, but he preferred the city. His townhouse — a narrow, box-like section of terraced housing with a brick facade and intricate green trim — was ground zero for insanity, police sirens, and the best parties. The houses come in groups of three alike, and he had the middle one, for maximal annoyance.
A formal dining room, a kitchen and a salon with a piano are on the first floor. On the second are the more private areas, including a study, parlor, library and bath. The third floor has bedrooms and another bath. There is no attic, but there is roof-access and a basement, which provided space for David’s more mental pursuits.
The original facade is gone since the siege, but Hyacinth can still recognize the building and hear ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ on those rare occasions she passes it. It is said to be haunted, but this is probably some damage David has done to it that is too fundamental to be found or repaired. It is currently a rental.
Hennessy’s
The department store, it takes up an entire city block — although at about 175 years old, much of the city has been planned around it. Originating as a small mercantile, it is now an international institution, with branches in Farsia and Elbany. There are still a few Hennessys on the board, but it is owned by the Abdul-Hamid family.
The original Hennessy’s in San Rosille was badly damaged during the siege and is still recovering. The Abdul-Hamids may be deciding whether they want to deal with Prokovian interference or cut their losses and operate out of Farsia. The entire fourth floor was blasted away and it has been replaced by a greenhouse garden department, with a glass floor that serves as a skylight. The ground floor is also glass, mainly display windows with ornate entrances to the north and south. Each entrance has a gold-trimmed green awning labeled: Hennessy’s Fine Goods and Imports with est. 1200 and 2102 Mille Fleur Road below it in smaller printing.
Inside, the center of the building is open all the way up to the garden department, with every other department organized around this central space. There are wooden escalators leading up to each floor. The restaurant is on the third floor, with a spectacular view of Mille Fleur Road and Guillory Park.
There is a perfectly ridiculous amount of merchandise available and more of it can be special-ordered. The moment one walks in the door, a fleet-footed serviceperson will come running to take your coat, and in every department plenty of people will be happy to offer you their assistance in desperate hope for commission or tips.
Hennessy’s has a dress code, for workers and shoppers. Men must wear jackets and ties and women must wear skirts no higher than three inches above the ankle.
Mille Fleur Road
San Rosille’s market district centers here, with every shop trying to get as close to Hennessy’s famous address as possible. Much like South Hollister, it flows towards the ocean and all the class runs out of it on the way down. At the end, near the harbor, is a large fish market.
Courtney’s Shoe Outlet, where Ann and Milo buy their footwear on clearance, is on Mille Fleur Road, practically within sniffing distance of the fish.
Main Pension Office and Records
This is a large building with pillars around the outside, not unlike Hennessy’s, but nowhere near as big or fun. There are quite a lot of stairs leading up to the entrance, which are difficult for wounded soldiers to navigate, but this is certainly unintentional. The historic building is exempt from the Marselline Disabilities Act. Military records are stored here, including the personnel files for the entire Marselline Army. The bureaucracy is jaded, comfortable and impenetrable. Card files and desks with dim yellow lights are available for research, as well as multiple counters and places to line up or sit and wait.
Sol Invictus Hospital
Run by the worshippers of a bird-headed god who call themselves Phoenecians, this is the only hospital in San Rosille which accepts colored people. It is also the most expensive, thus explaining how they can afford the necessary anti-magic facilities for safety. It is a palatial building of gray stone with many private rooms, bright windows, maid service, state-of-the-art technology, and a small staff of colored physicians who are capable of calling gods for divine intervention.
Due to the anti-magic ward, it is uptown’s designated shelter during magic season. There are not many colored people who show up in any case, given the distance imposed by the income disparity.
The private asylum, where the wealthy insane and infirm may recuperate long-term, is adjacent and separated by a large walled garden. Locally, ‘The Walled Garden’ is referenced as a destination for recovery from drug addiction, nervous breakdowns, melancholy and all other fashionable malaise which the aristocratic class is heir to.
Guillory Park
This is what’s left of the King’s Woods, an area set aside for the royalty to get some hunting in that nobody felt quite right paving over entirely as the city expanded. It is a carefully curated and idealized remnant of San Rosille’s more rural past, including a picturesque length of the Arlo River which has been rerouted through it. An area with cheaply-constructed three-quarter-scale fake thatched cottages is billed as a historical recreation/museum and quite popular with tourists and children. Locals know to avoid the cottages at night, as an aggressive gang of feral raccoons makes a habit of raiding the trash cans after sunset.
Other entertainment includes mazes, manicured gardens and picnic areas, boating, bird watching, feeding and petting wildlife that ought not to be fed or pet, and a primitive water park that was constructed by a sadistic Queen Consort with too much time on her hands as a sort of prank on the Royal Court. People are still finding new jets, often at the expense of permanent eye damage, and nobody can find the water source or turn it off. Fun for the whole family!
The park is regularly stocked with cute deer because the stupid things keep wandering out and getting run over, and magically modified organisms like Perma-Fawns (patent pending) are illegal in Marsellia. Quite a few of San Rosille’s upper crust fed rather well off the deer and rabbits in Guillory Park in the early part of the siege, before it was depleted.
It is said that in the winter following the Cut-Flag Revolt, a boy with white rosette and a ragged black coat with a red handkerchief wrapped around the sleeve was seen wandering in Guillory Park and asking passersby, “Did we win?” This is widely regarded as a prank, but the political cartoonists had a field day. The popular image of the Cut-Flag revolutionaries remains a bunch of out-of-touch kids lost in their own backyard. A boy in revolutionary garb wandering into view and asking, “Did we win?” is still considered quite funny in most comedy venues, but a bit of a cheap joke.
Chateau LeRoux’s elaborate courtyard blends seamlessly into the park on its west side, and the zoo is right up against the east side, separated by a fence of brick and iron. There is a tiny steam train which connects these two popular destinations and hits most of the touristy places within the park on the way. Gasoline-powered vehicles are prohibited and navigating the huge area can get quite expensive if you rely on the tiny train — which is the point.
It is considered bad form for MPs to ride the tiny train unless they have their children along, but they are technically allowed to do so and be reimbursed if they can’t find parking near work — Chateau LeRoux predates the invention of the automobile and you may not park on the lawn. (No, not even if it’s a legislative emergency, Howard.) Jokes are often made about MPs getting lost and putting in a day’s work at the zoo without noticing the difference.
The San Rosille Zoological Garden
This is what remains of the zoo, which is doing its best to operate as sort of a botanical-animal-memorial garden with a lot of empty cages and a hippo. They might’ve converted to a memorial garden altogether if the hippo didn’t make it.
Lucky the Hippo, legend has it, wandered out of his damaged enclosure and escaped being eaten with the rest of his kin during the winter of 1368-69. The hungry zoo staff set traps for him and hunted him with improvised spears, but he eluded capture until a week after San Rosille’s surrender, when he was found, emaciated, eating the bark off a tree near the Victory Fountain. It seemed silly to eat him now, and the picture in the newspaper made him something of a celebrity survivor, so they put him back in the zoo and rebuilt around him.
Landscaping came a lot more cheaply than new animals. The old cages remain officially empty, though repaired and with memorial plaques about the animals that used to live in them. The zookeeper’s (really hippokeeper’s) dog is often imposed upon to fill up the empty spaces and give patrons something interesting to look at. He is a very patient and venerable lap dog named Jeremey, with a variety of tiny outfits. He may be found impersonating a lion, a zebra or whatever else the zookeeper’s wife has deigned to sew, during daylight hours in fair weather. You may purchase biscuits to feed him, but please do not give him peanuts, they are bad for his digestion.
Segmented cabbages may also be purchased and lobbed hopefully in Lucky’s direction, but his war experience has left him jaded and he mainly stands there and stares. The winding pathways, exotic plants and park benches still make the zoo a popular, if melancholy, place to spend an afternoon, and you are welcome to buy peanuts, cold sandwiches or a balloon from a vendor.
The Chambers of Parliament
Chateau LeRoux was originally a country estate existing well outside the old city walls. Due to the urban encroachment — and the tax write-off — the LeRoux family donated it to the national government shortly after Marsellia began calling itself an empire. Since then, it has been extensively renovated within, with one large chamber, many small offices and a rotunda. The original brick facade and the expansive courtyard remain intact, albeit with multiple repairs that have been made as subtly as possible to its historic appearance. The manicured lawns and intricate brick pathways make a fine place for picnics, afternoon strolls, protests and occasional riots. A private garden is located behind the building, just off the central rotunda, hemmed in by more offices on either side, where workers may take their lunches in relative peace.
The Marselline Parliament has its members allotted by district and population size. Due to an ancient desire for hereditary lords to remain in charge of their lands, each district is allowed to select its representative however it sees fit, with some of them simply sending the largest landowner or his eldest son, and others using more convoluted methods like bake offs or lotteries. A term is nine years long and most MPs who do not wish to make politics a career have had quite enough by the end. Many of them stop showing up altogether or send people from their districts to vote on their behalf. (This is allowed when a full session is not commanded, but you may not send the same person to two sessions in one term. Representatives of smaller districts quickly run through their friends and family and must either show up themselves, abstain, or grab random people off the street like an aggressive drug dealer offering a hit of government.)
This makes for quite a diverse political body, and there are no fixed parties for members to join. Rather, alliances are formed after every election (taking place for about ⅓ of the districts every three years), and after reaching 25 members or more, they are allowed to give themselves a name and send one member to the Chambre Petite (often elided to “Petty”), which is responsible for penning the legislation later voted on in the Chambre Grande.
Some alliances, and alliances between alliances, are quite old, but there are always new ones jockeying for position. Rarely do named alliances reach more than 49 members without spinning off another alliance which gets to send another representative to the Chambre Petite.
There are no caps on the size of either the Chambre Petite or the Chambre Grande. Currently there are 690 representatives in the Chambre Grande and 23 in the Chambre Petite, but they show up for either at their discretion, unless the Prime Minister commands a full session. Formerly, this power was granted to the Emperor and the PM, but they are now the same person.
Hileigh Park
San Rosille’s horse racing track, which, like much of uptown, also used to be outside of the city. What it has gained in accessibility it has lost is respectability, but the private boxes remain exclusive and have a dress code. The first full week of January is designated Imperial Week, during which races are held daily, the Emperor (now the Prime Minister) attends, and Hileigh Park regains its full standing in the world of fashion and high society. Ordinarily, races are held Frig’s Day, Sigurd’s Day and Tiw’s Day, and off-track betting is officially discouraged.
By the Sea…
San Rosille’s seashore splits the difference between business and play, with a bustling harbor, a new industrial district, an amusement park, and lots of reasonably well-maintained beaches.
Papillon Island
It is not butterfly-shaped but advertised as butterfly in nature — freewheeling, colorful and fun. The Ferris wheel also has a large lighted butterfly in the center, for those of you who have no interest in metaphors. Papillon Island is not quite an island, but a peninsula that is partially covered by water at high tide and then looks very island-y. A long pier has been built connecting it to the mainland for ease of access, which leads up to a boardwalk full of shops and storefront amusements. There are dark rides, an arcade, candy, ice cream, and souvenirs, among others.
Past the boardwalk is the amusement park proper. The Ferris wheel and wooden rollercoaster are obvious and available year-round. Several other attractions, such as the towering Gravity Drop, are magic-assisted and only available in late summer. A steam-powered automated pipe organ presides over a multipurpose area which may be a dance floor or a skating rink and can be heard over long distances, warring with the carousel.
Much of the park is paved, out of kindness to ladies’ shoes, but some sand and grass remains at the edges and under the rides. Altogether, it is more Coney Island than Disneyland, and a budget version at that, but quite enough for a war-torn city still recovering from a siege. Space is limited by geography, and if Papillon Island is to become anything more impressive it will need to expand onto the nearby beaches or employ magical intervention.
The Harbor
There are two, but the one off Candlewood Park only gets freight shipments and is not a popular destination. All of the area around Candlewood Park is called ‘Candlewood Park,’ in any case. ‘The harbor’ means the one near downtown, where fun things like fish for the market and merchandise for Mille Fleur Road and disembarking passengers and recreational boaters come from. It is a fractal series of dark wooden piers with moorage available for large craft and small, with all classes of seafood restaurant taking advantage of the view.
Large boats used to unload their cargo onto barges for the canals and smaller boats could continue to the industrial section of town as they were, but trains and trucks made the canal system obsolete and it is no longer in use. There is always a great deal of traffic around the harbor, especially business days, but the rerouting of freight to Candlewood Park has mitigated this somewhat.
The harbor is a friendly, vibrant and boisterous place, and very popular with tourists and new immigrants who just got off the boat. There is a constant noise of chatting, shouting, steam whistles and honking horns, accompanied by camera flashes. The sunset, with the lurid sky punctuated by ships’ masts and smokestacks, is beloved by amateur photographers and postcard companies alike.
Candlewood Park
This is the less nice park which is walking-accessible from Hyacinth’s house. The advent of trains and growth of the city necessitated a new industrial district in San Rosille for, well, new industry. The freight line was extended southeast, and a sparsely-populated section of Strawberryfield was bought out or otherwise evicted and partially leveled so factories could be constructed. A secondary harbor for ocean-going freighters was also put in. North of this harbor, an area optimistically reserved for the workers’ recreation on lunch hours and after work gave its name to the whole messed up system. Thus, Candlewood Park created its own homeless population at its inception, which has been on the increase ever since.
Smoke, horrible chemicals and dubious safety practices make traditional housing in the area a nonstarter. Those that were able fled to the nicer areas of Strawberryfield and walk or take the bus if they must return. Those that find themselves unable to hold down a job or put together the doss for a bed congregate in the park and the areas around it. Unlicensed prostitution is rampant, from people of every gender who are desperate to afford a warm place to sleep for the night. Transactions are usually conducted in alleyways and bushes, due to the lack of housing. Drug use is also frequent, but sales are easily accomplished in any of the numerous bodegas, which are licenced to provide pharmaceuticals as well as a cheap lunch.
In the park itself, the benches are made of cement and the ground cover is sandy and sparse. Thorn bushes thrive and little else; only a very few of the ornamental candlewood trees remain. In the surrounding areas, there are many box-like factories with smoke stacks and sweatshops with fire escapes that are not up to code. There is a large freight yard with crisscrossing tracks, from which a regular supply of transients attempts to depart to greener pastures. They are seldom successful.