Falling Stars:Main Page
The City
It’s a coastal town, and parts of it are quite old. There’s an antique city that has mostly been buried under newer construction over the last fifty years. The central library actually dates back even further, to before the city was founded.
Downtown is dominated by the hand-shaped headquarters of Grupo Mano, which also employs most of the city’s residents and manufactures almost all of its consumer goods (a la KrebStar from Pete and Pete). Sometimes you can find stuff from their competitors, Pied LTD, though.
there is a bronze statue of a horseman in the local park. On some nights of the full moon this goes missing, only to return at dawn. Nobody knows where the statue goes, or what it does whilst it is gone.
There’s also a major college which attracts students from all over the world, and that’s sometimes led to strife between the townies and the gownies.
The university has a pond with water that's amazingly clear. No one's sure quite how deep it is, but silvery fish swim in it, and even if you catch some, there always seem to be more of them.
The university also has a large archives section in a deep sub-basement. Unfortunately, water got into it, somehow. It is now a vast underground garden of molds and an amazing variety of fungi, and you really ought to have a respirator if you want to go into it.
a recent earthquake has caused some of the buildings in the town to collapse. Rebuilding is ongoing.
Everyone who lives in town has their own, personal pet-- almost always a dog, although there are several cats and mice. These pets are obedient and always stay close to their owners. No one questions where they come from. They accompany their owners everywhere, even to places where animals would not be allowed. No one questions this, either.
You're free to be whatever you want -- but once you make a choice, people expect you to stay with it, period. There tends to be very little sympathy for anyone who, say, realizes halfway through their education or career that this *isn't* what they wanted to do, that they really want to be something else entirely.
The valley behind the city turns golden red around thanksgiving, full of Maple and Oak, and in winter the city is bathed in auroras.
The town is seismically active, and has hot pools whose warmth makes the winters much more pleasurable. The (harmess to humans) microorganisms that call them home tint the waters pleasant colours, including vivid green and purple.
On the coast, long stretches of beach open to the public. People say that just going down to the quiet places and sitting for a spell, watching the surf and sky, is enough to clear your mind and renew yourself.
At night, down on the beach, you can hear music, singing, coming from somewhere out to sea. It's not human voices, it's not something anyone has identified, but it's beautiful music.
