Editing Acrozatarim/Gazetteer (section)

===The City of the Hekatonchiere===

There is one power in the Great Sarok Expanse that is unmoved by all that goes on around it - the hekatonchiere.  An enclave of these ancient servitors survived the Dawn War when the hundred-handed ones retreated to their bastions and waited out the conflict.  With the War past, little changed; from time to time, their towering figures can be seen striding across the Expanse either north or south, off to make bizarre demands, give strange gifts or just travel through the lands of the nations under an unknowable agenda.

For the people of the Expanse, it is considered unwise to bother the hekatonchiere and instead one should avoid their settlement at all costs; the strange beings are sometimes serene and peaceful but can become enraged or violent without any apparently cause, so best not to take any risks.  The Expanse-folk often entreat the gods at small shrines to keep the eye of the hekatonchiere away, but they also wear amulets in the servitors' likeness to ward off beasts and evil magic, and most families make a pilgrimage at least once a decade to leave offerings at one of the high ridge-temples that they have established to the hekatonchiere themselves.  What the hundred-handed ones think of this fearful reverence, if they notice it at all, is unknown.

The City, as it is known, is an odd sight; a cluster of hemispheres that themselves bulge more spheres out like metallic blisters.  Regardless of the scourging elements, the entire structure possesses a faintly red cast, like rusted iron, although close inspection reveals this to only be the natural colour of the metal itself.  More than this is hard to ascertain since so few people have ever approached the hekatonchiere settlement, but these accounts do match with reports of other hekatonchiere architecture elsewhere in the world.

The City does have one export, although probably not a purposeful one.  Every year, one or two hekatonchiere emerge from their home and deposit large pieces of metal in the surrounding landscape.  These chunks of discarded metal are not simply rubbish, however - they are (to human eyes at least) incredible works of art, wonderful mixtures of irridescent metallic alloys wrought into three-dimensional patterns.  It's abstract work, not imagery but impression, warped and shaped into intriguing forms that vibrate with fluting music whenever the wind blows through the tunnels and hollows of the object.  Locals retrieve those of the objects that they can (some are too large and heavy to move easily) and sell them on; hekatonchiere 'art' has pride of place in many an eastern merchant's or noble's hall.