Rue Tasloi

Rue Tasloi is an ancient boulevard that runs throughout Strangewarp. It is paved in broad, irregular black flagstones mortared with gray concrete; it seems ancient, far older than any of the construction that surrounds it. In the times before the Abandonment, it served as a major thoroughfare of the warp, running from one end of the city to the other and back again. It was a main drag, well-lit against the everpresent gloom, home to all varieties of miscreants, deviants and wretches.

In the times since, the neighborhoods it runs through have gradually emptied out. In some the buildings are replaced by something completely other— a forest of spined metal-clad trees, ominous black basalt blocks that hum on subsonic frequencies and emit black mist, or the vast cathedralic structure that has grown, acrasid-like, over much of downtown. The boulevard itself now runs unpredictably; sometimes it loops around to its beginning as normal; other times one finds oneself traveling back the way one came with no memory of having turned around. And sometimes it runs on and on, deep into strange demesnes, out of all knowing or habitation, onward into the black depths at the edge of reality. The prudent generally turn back at this point.

The Shriketree Forest

A shriketree is a tall, metal tree about 18-24' in height, with razor-sharp bark. Its trunk runs straight and branchless before blooming into a canopy of metallic, clanging branches. When sated and torpid, its bladed bark lies flat, and the tree is safe to approach, even to lay against— or stumble into accidentally. But when the tree thirsts, it will greet an innocent touch or stumble with sudden blades, entangling if not impaling its victim. It drinks deep of their blood, and can quickly exsanguinate an unlucky passerby. The upper branches and leaves also take a sharp, funnel-like shape; during Strangewarp's rains of viscera, all the trees bloom at once, every one slaking its thirst from the falling offal. This is the only time the shriketree forest is safe to travel through.

The forest is a swath of former neighborhood where the trees have grown up around empty buildings, even as the buildings have succumbed to the ravages of time at a thousandfold pace. It is more dimensionally unmoored than most Strangewarp locales— and it tends to wander. Traveling through inhabited Strangewarp, it is easy to turn a corner and find oneself surrounded by shriketrees, often within a foot of bumping into one. The way back is choked with trees as well, and only careful navigation can free one from the grove.

When it routes through the forest, travelers on broad Rue Tasloi aren't in immediate risk from the trees— although the branches do arc troublingly over the road, giving the feeling of traveling down a long, bladed tunnel. At such times one can only travel forwards or turn back; turning onto any side street is folly. The trees rule there.

The Cathedral

The cathedral is great. The cathedral is vast. The cathedral is beautiful. The cathedral is all Strange ever was, and all it ever needs to be.

This alabaster growth is easily the largest structure in Strangewarp, and its opalescent glow is the strongest source of natural light after the warp's moon. It stretches 200 feet into the air across much of what was downtown, an endless series of arches and vaults and flying buttresses of smooth, white stone. Every year it expands by another block or so, growing new adjuncts, and subsuming existing structures like an immense nacreous slime mold.

Rue Tasloi winds beneath it, built at its broadest, taking a circuitous route through what was once the heart of the community it served. Storefronts and plazas have been replaced with colonnades and galleries, empty of any living soul, and silent but for the blowing wind— and the creaking of stone as the cathedral expands ever outwards. The chilling glow that radiates from the stone surrounds the traveler here, crowding past eyes screwed shut, seeming to sing with elegance and inexorability and timelessness and certainty of triumph.

We are beauty. We are grace. We are an endless monument to ourself. We— A wise traveler hurries on at this point, lest they become lulled by the siren song, drawn away into the cathedral's endless pearlescent halls. Few organized efforts have been made to explore the cathedral, and none have met with success— or even returned from the first expedition.

The Basalt Blocks

Along a certain stretch of Rue Tasloi, the buildings begin to peter out, replaced one by one, and then by the dozens, with immense blocks of black basalt. The general shape of the original building is preserved— the size of each floor, any balconies or patios or suchlike, retained in vague outline in the block of cold unfeeling stone that has replaced the building. The streets are also scattered with smaller, pillarlike blocks, measuring roughly 0.5m wide and deep, and 1.5m - 2m in height.

Large and small, the blocks seem to hum in subsonic frequencies. The hum is below most ranges of hearing; but it can be discerned by touch, felt through the soles of the feet, shaking ones form with its aching saudade. Spectral analysis of the hum reveals an immense amount of information modulated into the inaudible tones, each block radiating its own distinct broadcast of baffling complexity. Efforts to decipher the hum have failed; the only auditory interpolation engine so far devised was abandoned when all that could be heard through it was screaming.

Traveling this stretch of Rue Tasloi is especially difficult, since the streets are in many places choked with narrow black pillars. At times a black mist slinks out from between the buildings, rendering the area nearly impassable. The mist reduces visibility to near zero even as it renders the hum far louder and more audible, raking the ears with the wails of dozens if not hundreds of blocks on all sides. At such times, even those who leave by the shortest route possible find themselves haunted by auditory hallucinations, and intrusive thoughts calling them to return, to breathe deeply of the mist, not to leave, please don't leave.