Yes, well, what can a humble cleric write about the Dolorous City, the Axis Astra, the orb from which the destiny of a thousand suns is decreed? What words, so carefully chosen, so woefully inadequate, can do aught but be eclipsed by their opposites; for in truth Byzantium Secundus embodies convolutions and conundrums and contradictions as innumerable as the race it oversees.
Little wonder that the residents of the world ofttimes seem mad, dwelling there is an experience at once transcendent and horrific. Byzantium Secundus is the seat of government, and yet none rules there for more than a fortnight. Our very astronomical measurements are calculated in terms of distance from it, and yet the planet itself is so turbulent that nothing concrete can be ascribed to it. It is the pinnacle of Urthly civilization, and yet wars of indescribable savagery wrack its surface and slaughter its cultured residents by the thousands.
I shall endeavor to present a few disparate images, which in and of themselves are as inadequate as the fabled narrative of the blind monk who, discovering the palp of the Chernobogian Slitherer probing beneath his cassock, saw fit thereby to describe the entire beast and thus sent a coven of Avestite Inquisitors to their doom; but which might provide the rudiments of a mosaic by which the astute reader can discern somewhat of the Dolorous City's nature.
The planet itself is of a size with Urth, and is temperate and mild as planets go, with a variegated surface. In the early days of the Diaspora it proved quite habitable in comparison to such hellish orbs as Sutek and Pyre, and so it was that the seat of the Second Republic was founded on the soil of this world. Besides its clime, Byzantium Secundus' system provided the Republic an additional boon, for the vast bronze ellipse that is Byzantium Secundus' jumpgate leads the astute traveler to more worlds than any other gate does.
And so it was from Byzantium Secundus that the lords of the Republic built their legacy. It was from Byzantium Secundus that adult humanity, having left Terra's embrace, surveyed the void which the Pancreator had mandated them to master. Byzantium Secundus was the staging ground for the jumpships that carried human colonists and missionaries to a thousand worlds, and Byzantium Secundus became the surrogate home to which the waifs of the Diaspora could look for guidance.
When overweening pride corroded the Second Republic, Byzantium Secundus became the symbol of that, too. The skies hissed with the emissions of bizarre engines; animate golems and artificially conceived freaks lurched through the fields and streets; the very air and soil became saturated with the toxic residue of countless ill-starred sorcerous experiments. And so, to the increasingly discontent vassals of an uncaring suzerain, Byzantium Secundus became synonymous with the Republic's folly and blindness.
And thus it was that on a dark night in the year 4000, beneath the stars whose ebbing had provoked the populace's outrage, the Dolorous City fell to the allied forces of the Ten Houses, whose names any schoolchild can recite.
In the ruins of the senate chambers the Ten met with high officials of the Church Universal, and a mandate condemning the obscene artifices of the Second Republic was put into place. Alas, the Ten could no so readily agree on a constitution to replace the godless structure they had overthrown, and what was finally implemented was a regulatory patchwork quilt contributed to by all and suitable to none. Such a mosaic, whose spheres of influence heaved and grated one against the other like the volatile continents of Istakhr, could prove naught but unstable; thus it was not long before the fractious Ten were at each other's throats. And then there were Nine... and then Eight... and then Five...
And the strife continues to this night, despite the Church's best efforts to arbitrate; and, woefully, Byzantium Secundus, as befits its lofty sobriquet of Axis Astra, is at the center of the maelstrom. Rare is the hour that Byzantium Secundus' lanes and colonnades fail to rattle with the concussions of bombs and the crackle of beams. Hostage-taking is as common a pastime as hop-theej; nobles must rely on war-craft merely to travel to their embassies; and wickedly incited mobs roam the streets in search of victims. Yea, I am told that the very waters of Byzantium Secundus rise constantly, as though the tortured planet itself sought to rub soothing balm on its infected skin.
Notwithstanding, most noble factions maintain holdings of one sort or another, on one or another of the planet's continents; and I misspeak not, I think, when I say that in the building of these embassies the warring parties attempt to deny the ongoing turmoil through sheer brazen extravagance. From the manors of the Hawkwoods to the fortified villas of the Decados, from the quaint chateaux of the Li Halan to the deceptively spare loggias of the al-Malik, Byzantium Secundus' skies smile upon some of the most elegant, sumptuous and opulent edifices ever to grace the worlds of the Diaspora. Even the palaces of the Guild-spawn are hard pressed to rival the domiciles of those nobles who have long dwelt at the Axis Astra.
I presume the reader has heard the stories of the nobles' debauches. Such excesses are perhaps understandable, as the war-weary nobles attempt to deny the peril without by indulging every sensual delight and decadent whim. I am told (though, of course, have no desire to know firsthand!) of 20-course feasts of such ostentation that it seems an entire planet has been depopulated for the gastronomic delight of the rulers; of slave children forced into unspeakable tableaux with aliens for the amusement of countesses and marquis; of unarmed captives pitted against savage Vorox in barbaric gladiatorial spectacles. The depravities, I am further told, are most monstrous among those families who have long inhabited Byzantium Secundus.
And then there are the poor; and I misspeak not, I think, when I aver that their proximity to the jaded elite makes them only the poorer. Byzantium Secundus' many cities, though vast and superficially majestic, oft remind me of the vij-fruit of Icon, whose sweet and luscious core is surrounded by layers of stinking slime. So the palaces of the nobles spire amid endless expanses of tenements and hovels, and amid these slums countless humans scuttle like lice and die like mayflies. It is said that of those desperate brutes constituting the ranks of the Scravers, the Musters and other vile criminal syndicates, one in three boasts an origin from Byzantium Secundus.
Perhaps the only thing uniting Byzantium Secundus' disparate populace is a healthy contempt for all those not fortunate enough to have been born onworld. And so I warn the prospective visitant: Despite its civilized veneer, Byzantium Secundus is as hostile and unforgiving as the jungles of Stigmata. Nay, Byzantines are not quite so haughty as the Hawkwood, so savage as the Vuldrok, so avaricious as those of Leagueheim, so treacherous as the Decados; yet the soul of the Byzantine is a cauldron blending all of these dubious qualities, and many more besides, into a potent and unhealthful brew.
So: glittering palace and guttering slum. Zenith of human achievement and nadir of despair. Power-maker and fortune-breaker. Garden of tranquillity and cauldron of carnage. Whatever Byzantium Secundus may or may not be, she is the Axis Astra, the weathered but still proud Queen Mother of human endeavor, and he who would assume the mantle of the fading suns must reckon with and tame her if he would have any hope of victory.
