It’s best to come to Descensus with a working understanding of what the locals call ‘levels’. Essentially, with every storey of Dungeon one travels downward from the city, the more resources are found, and the more monsters guard them. Consequently, social status is governed by how many levels deeper than the city’s bottom a person has ventured, and guests are no exception. The price of goods, the level of service you’ll receive, and even the type of establishment you’re allowed to enter all depend on what ‘level’ you can boast. Since you’ll be Level One by default when you arrive, you’ll be limited to the very shittest drinking establishments. As such, it’s definitely worth heading down to the tunnels three levels below city limits and kicking apart a few of the rats and spiders that live there. After half an hour of stomping vermin, you can simply head back to town and sell the meat and pelts for booze money in a Level Three pub.
I called out for the Elves as I walked their empty chalk-white streets, but only birds called back. At one point a lizard regarded me from its basking spot atop an empty wagon, but I think it was just an ordinary lizard. In the market square, stalls were still set with trinkets and jewels (admittedly, I pocketed a few handfuls), while the tavern tables were still set with pitchers of wine. I was beginning to think the city was entirely deserted, until I saw movement at the distant harbour.
At first I took it for heat haze, but as I got closer there was no mistaking: it was something like a party. Three great silver ships were docked at the marble quay, and before them an astonishing banquet had been set out on trestles. Figures were seated all along the hundred-yard tables, sipping from china cups and nibbling at plates of dainty sweetmeats as elegant servants attended them.
At the table’s centre, resplendent in silver cloth, sat a woman who must have been eight-feet tall, and from whose head branched fine platinum antlers the width of a man’s reach. And yes, her ears were definitely pointy. Surely this was the Elven Queen – but hadn’t she left these shores generations ago?
To either side of her sat ranks of slightly smaller Elves, while they in turn were flanked by people of all kinds – humans, Dwarves and others still whose peoples I had not encountered. All looked ancient, with white hair and wispy beards, and all wore expressions of almost eerie placidity.
They continued to eat and drink wordlessly as I approached the table, and I began to feel like I was experiencing some sort of hallucination: the whole set-up seemed dreamlike, and – to be frank – desperately creepy. But still I plodded forward, and when I got to within twenty feet, the Queen addressed me.
‘Master Floyd,’ she susurrated, with a voice as cold as her smile was warm. ‘You’ve arrived just in time to join us for our final meal. Won’t you come and take a place with us before we embark?’
‘Good day,’ I said, trying to sound urbane, although the words came out as a sort of stifled honk as I tried to process my shock at the Queen knowing my name. ‘That’s dreadfully kind. Yes, I would be, ah, honoured. And … where might you be embarking to?’ The Queen laughed musically then, and cream-white membranes slid sideways across her eyes as her face creased in amusement.
‘Why, to Larathainne, dearest fool! To the land of our people beyond the sea, where you may live in splendour with us.’
‘Isn’t that … just … an Elf thing?’ I volunteered, my voice contorting into a questioning squeak.
‘Not at all, Master Floyd. All are welcome in Larathainne, and many who were born to other folk are joining the voyage. Isn’t that right, friends?’ At this, she glanced up and down the table, where the various decrepit warriors nodded in docile agreement.
‘Now come,’ she said, extending a twig-thin hand towards a silver chair at the end of her table. ‘Come and dine with us before we depart, and we shall talk of what lies ahead.’
Reader, I ran a fucking mile.
— FROM THE TRAVEL JOURNAL OF FLOYD WATT
1. WELCOME TO EROICA CITY[1]
The bustling metropolis of Eroica City would be a spectacle by itself: it’s the quintessential urban jungle, where steam rises from manhole covers at dawn and honking traffic flows through the skyscraper canyons like a mighty river. But it’s not the daily drudgery of human life that makes Eroica special – all that might as well be the business of ants compared with the epic lives of those who fly above the streets.
Why Eroica?
Charting a moral course through life can be a taxing business. Sometimes it’s simply exhausting to tell good from bad in the wide grey ocean of the world, and you wish you had a guiding light to show the way.[2] In Eroica, there are hundreds of them, and they’re easy to spot because they can usually fly and they dress mostly in bright primary colours. They are the Superheroes. They’re bigger than us, they’re better than us and they showcase every quality we could hope to attain in their constant fight against Crime. The Superheroes aren’t just superb moral exemplars, either: they’re a fucking riot to watch. Simply look to the sky whenever you hear the sound of fists meeting flesh at Mach 3 and you’re guaranteed an experience akin to being beaten over the head with a sack of action figures after nine bong hits.
Meet Your Heroes
Roughly one in five-thousand Eroicans is born a
