Editing Diners of Amber (section)

==='''Wala Heights, Taxorami'''===

[[File:Pwalahieghts.jpg]]

Amongst the Diners of Amber is a world that really expresses the point of view that the realms of shadow did not exist before we found them. Wala Heights is one of Random's favorite places in shadow. He speaks of it in Corwin's Chronicles. A place of violence, cards, hang gliding, sultry days and long nights. Thermals ideal for hang gliding and flying.

Wala Heights is an improbable collection of technologies and cultures, mashed together in a fashion that belies explanation. This realm has no ancient history or legends of empire and kingdom. Culturally this place is stagnant. Early in this shadow's history the urge to grow from city-states to empires never really took hold. For tens of thousand years this place has developed a vast patchwork of walled cities that adorn the incredibly rock terrain. Garden agriculture developed as an art here, attempting to get the maximum amount of produce out of the tiny areas of arable land. A class of merchants, who are the only thing nearing a governing body or a religious order, monopolizes inter-city trade. 

This realm must be on a thousand different shadowpaths of a dozen different initiations.  That is the only way to explain the diverse flavors of both foods and technologies.  The fact that one city-state might have electric street lights and its neighbor might use oil-soaked torches for lighting its roads shows that good ideas travel slowly.  The lack of any responsible city government in a city-state is not unusual. 

Food here is scrumptious, strangely spiced and exotic, but the portions are small. The drinks are potent and usually mixed. The beer is nasty. The roast pigeon in mustard sauce is sublime. Look for Mickle Firn's Hovel. It is a great restaurant/ casino with crash space around back. The food they serve is what qualifies this as a Diner of Amber.

Warfare never really grew above band combat. City-states tore building supplies directly off the mountains they were built on and into. Bands, gangs, and block warfare has dominated this shadow where people never developed the knack for recording history. Plays, music, and art, all revolve around the here and now; names are frequently changed to reflect the local clientele and the creator's names are lost. A careful and dedicated historian could chronicle the history of this world by cataloging and indexing the vast quantity of such performances. Having done so the historian would find that none of the people here would care.

"What have you done for me lately?" is the order of the day. People might remember what happened in their own lives but they know better than to try and tell anyone about it. Still, there is something to be said for the hedonistic, live-for-the-moment, live fast, die young, leave a nice corpse, lifestyle that dominates Taxorami.

Waste disposal is a problem in this society clinging to the sides of the rocky landscape. Organic waste and material waste are treated similarly but separately. Recycling is nearly a religion. Material waste is deconstructed to its component parts and reused ad infinitum. Everything here seems to have once been something else. The bottom of this process is that once things are too small to reuse they go into the mush that becomes the bricks and mortar the city is built with. Organic waste is deposited in mixing vats that sends it all through efficient wind-turned millstones that grind everything into mulch. The mulch is processed and elutriated till it is amazingly rich. It is then made available to the public for their wall gardens and personal agriculture.

This brings me to one disturbing thing that highlights their lack of a sense of history and it bears comment. Their funerary practices are grim, if practical. Wood is not exactly scarce but it certainly can't be wasted on pyres or cremation. Open ground is too scarce to use it for burials. With so many people, so crammed together, they are sensitive to bad smells, so the death practice of exposure is impractical too. Recycling is a way of life for these people. So the dead are tossed in to the huge mixing pits along with all the other organic waste products with little or no ceremony. Once a person is dead, his corpse is just meat. Cannibalism is a known, if not an active, practice. The bodies go into the mix. Luckily the millstones are good enough that the free mulch does not disgorge knucklebones and fingernails with any regularity.

No statues, monuments, or memorials remember the tales of the dead. Good works are unremembered; crimes not avenged in a few years are forgotten. Justice is swift and brutal. The preferred form of execution is to be thrown into the mulch alive. Understandably, people prefer to go down fighting if they picked a life of crime.

Lastly, in this land of forgetfulness, Random has managed to obtain a sense of immortality. He did it by importing millions of decks of indestructible and fine playing cards with his name and face on the back. Neat trick, brother dear.


((GM-Notes: This is in the deck for Random's convenience of course.  But it might be a good place for time with Uncle Random.  I had ideas of using this much as Random did, as a playground for PCs.  Obviously Random has a place here, staffed by Amber Elites and Amber staff.  Also, later on in this piece you meet Wet Wendal, a mayor of sort in another part of Taxorami.  Nice to have PCs familiar with the place before getting involved with Wendal.