Varaar
| Type | Canyon city |
|---|---|
| Ruler | The five gangs |
| Notable sites | Varaar Colosseum, The Hollowed Shadow, the main plaza |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Varaar is a city carved into the walls of a long, wide canyon in the Kella Desert. Tabitha Glowdish introduces it as Eslura's meeting place for the scum of the world, and the narration of The Way Shadows Live as Eslura's bottom of the barrel place for no good people.[1][2] Unlike the rest of Eslura it was created by its own people, the gangs, and five of them have governed it ever since.[1]
The canyon
The city sits hundreds of feet below the desert floor and is reached by a dusty cliff path that narrows to a terrifying track on the way down. From the rim a visitor looks onto thousands of people winding through a dense maze of stalls and sand huts, canopies stretched between outcroppings of rock to shade parts of the city from the heat, and the colosseum at the centre in a honeycomb of streets and buildings.[1][3]
Down in the shade of the cliffs the streets run thick with bodies, pipe smoke and dancers, and a stranger keeps her hood up. Three blocks of one street hold two taverns with lines around the corner, a pawn shop and a second hand clothing shop with blood stained cloaks in the window. Narrow side streets shaded by canopies are lined with stalls selling drugs, moonshine, animals and children, and the vendors whistle at whoever passes.[1]
The main plaza is the city's open ground. Vagabonds beg alms from evening shoppers, merchants crane out of their booths to push secondhand goods, children roll in sand mounds while their mothers shout at them, and a community grazing pen stands off one of the alleys for tethering mounts.[2]
Whole quarters are simply derelict. Reagan Hideaway rode through a vacant section where the windows were boarded, the road was chunked up past repair and rats picked over an uncollected trash pile, found every other street in a similar state or worse, and came to the conclusion that Varaar is always in a perpetual state of disarray.[4] The city is busier in the dead of night than at the sun's peak.[3]
The colosseum
The colosseum stands at the centre of the canyon, its tiered arches rising hundreds of feet with orange flags jutting from the awning and five great statues along the top of its wall, one for each gang, their eyes plated in gold. Tab spat and raised a finger at them.[1] It is where the gangs take their prisoners, and where pergonzias run weekly races.[5][6] A stable attached to the building by a bridge holds mounts in tight stalls with their feed set out of reach.[1]
The Hollowed Shadow
An underground club beneath a grey brick building off an empty cobbled courtyard, run for the highest ranking gang members and burned down by Tab. Its burnt out basement is now home to Fawn and the women who danced there, who keep watchers in every corner of the city.[2][5]
Rewakan territory
The Rewakan gang's hideout is camouflaged among natural rock outcroppings in the depths of the canyon and citizens know to keep their distance from it. Behind a spiked wall and a garden of broken glass stands a cluster of fenced in sand brick buildings, patrolled by guards and by a black hound called Rhazgol with one red eye and one grey.[7]
Government
Five gangs erected Varaar and five gang leaders rule it: the Rewakan, the Nabagari, the Damaziko, the Khaylant and the Senadryn.[1] Tab, who grew up in the canyon streets, calls them ever present, lurking in the shadows and often on the rooftops, and says that so long as she could pay her share at their establishments they did not care that she was an Olphin.[2] The heads of the five sit in decorated box seats at the colosseum with their sigils engraved in stone above them.[8]
Where the rest of the kingdoms of Eslura are watched over by their Rulers, Varaar is kept in check entirely by its gangs.[8] Tab holds that the claim to independence is thinner than the gangs pretend: they still fall under the rule of the Sacred Rulers and are still part of Eslura, whatever they call freedom, and she calls that word Nelazgian propaganda. Nothing Sacred is to be found in the city, which she says the gangs saw to when they laid down its framework.[1]
The gangs sold children. Ferra Ellisvat says the Nelazgians settled on Varaar as their source of Eslurian leaders because Eslurians there were willing to capture young children and pawn them off for a quick buck, and that she was taken that way herself.[9]
Notable events
- Aero Ellisvat's sister was taken from her bed by the Rewakan gang and sold on to the Nelazgians. He joined the gang to find out where she had gone, and joined the Nelazgians afterwards for the same reason.[4]
- Tab killed Burkhan in the Hollowed Shadow and set the club alight to free the women held in it.[2]
- Aero fought his way through Rewakan territory with poisoned cactus needles to take back the necklace called the Heart of the Kella.[7]
- Tab brought Reagan Hideaway down into the canyon to buy knives and steal a mount. Reagan cut the spiked harness off a caged havarrak named Aloeissa in the colosseum stable instead.[1]
- A Rewakan gorilla drugged Aero and Reagan at the Avonbourn and had them carted back to the colosseum to be tried in the ring. Aloeissa was set on them, remembered Reagan, and carried the pair out through the gate and into the streets.[8]
- Tab went back to the Hollowed Shadow to ask Fawn for help, and stayed behind in Varaar afterwards to get Fawn, Ayala and Hybie out of the city before the gangs came for them.[5][4]
Behind the scenes
The map of Eslura letters the city VARAAR, with a noticeably wider gap between VAR and AAR than between the other letters, so the intended form may be two words. Both novels' pronunciation guides give Varaar, as Vuh-raar.[10][11] The bestiary appendix letters it in lower case.[6]
See also
- Gangs of Varaar
- Tabitha Glowdish
- The Hollowed Shadow
- The Kella Desert
- The Way Shadows Live
- Varaar Colosseum
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Book 1, Ch. 14.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Collection, Ch. 2.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Book 2, Ch. 20.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Book 2, Ch. 16.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Book 2, Ch. 10.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Book 1, "The Many Creatures of Eslura".
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Collection, Ch. 1.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Book 2, Ch. 13.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 22.
- ↑ Book 1.
- ↑ Book 2.