Mordew

by Alex Pheby

  (The) Entrepôt

  That area of Mordew where goods are held and processed for export. Generally, such goods are created in the Fields and Factoria, stored or modified in the Entrepôt and then shipped through the docks via the Sea Wall Gate into the world at large. Where they go then is unknown, but a similar volume of goods is received in the opposite direction and consequently it is assumed they are bartered for goods Mordew is incapable of producing for itself.

  Evolution

  The natural order of things in God’s world is that they process from state A to state B to state C and this process is called evolution. A man is born, then he evolves to a more complex form (a process called ageing) and then he evolves to an immaterial form (a process called dying). It is not only men; it is also lower creatures, since, with enormous Spark energy applied, an insect can become a mammalian animal and then a man. Even an object can be made to evolve, such as a rock to a living rock, and even a man can evolve from a person, to a ghost, to an angel, to a demigod and all through the application of Spark energy, which is the form the will of God takes in the material realm (or, to say the same thing, is a manifestation of the perfection of the weft in matter).

  This is not to say that evolution is usual, since only God and godlike organisms have at their disposal the amount of Spark that evolution requires, but it is natural since no deformation or perversion of the weft is required (unlike with magic), only a source of sufficient Spark.

  Exponential toxin

  An exponential thing is like doubling – if a thing doubles periodically, even if it starts as a single thing, before long there is more of it than the world can comfortably contain. Think of a wasp: if there is one of it that is one thing, but two? Four? Eight? The situation quickly becomes unmanageable if they are all in a room with you, but should you open the window and then outside there are sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four? While you struggle with a pencil and paper to work out how many there will soon be you will panic, particularly if you are being stung.

  The poison of a wasp is sufficient to cause pain, but the sting of one wasp is bearable and a Master would not even feel it, probably. But what of one hundred and twenty-eight wasps? Or two hundred and fifty-six? Or five hundred and twelve? Soon even a Master will be endangered, and such was the thinking of Dashini, daughter of the Mistress of Malarkoi, as she languished in her cell. She made a poison that would multiply in this way, but instead of multiplying a wasp it made the cells of the body multiply (the idea suggested by the same word being used for her room and the tiny objects that make up a man, even a demigod).

  As yet the poison is untested, but there might yet come a suitable day.

  Eye-blacking

  See: Blacking (one’s) eyes.

  (The) Eye of God

  One of two vestigial organs of sight possessed by the weftling but remaining unused in favour of more advanced sensory apparatuses.

  (The) Facade

  The front of the Master’s Manse. To where does it point? It offers no access to Mordew since there is no ground beneath it. Why then?

  (The) Factorium(-ia)

  The name given to the area of Mordew primarily occupied by factories making items of use either for the Merchant City or for export. The area near the Northfields is known as the Northfield Factorium and the area near the Southfields is known as the Southfields Factorium. Both of these areas feed the produce of the fields into the mechanisms of the factories and come out with varied goods.

  The Factorium proper abuts mines driven into the mountains that form Mordew’s eastern side, and converts minerals, metals and other subterranean matter into things needed in manufacturing processes. Along with the fields, the factories of the Factorium employ the majority of the adult workers of the slums, and there are some barracks here for them to sleep in between shifts.

  (The) False Damsel

  A con invented by Prissy by which a merchant may be relieved of their money through a manipulation of either their good or bad nature, regardless of which they happen to possess. In its usual form, the performance requires a minimum of three actors – the Damsel, the Lookout and the Trip Hazard. Once the Lookout has given a signal that the area is clear and the con may begin, the Damsel distracts the object of the con – the mark – with a performance of weakness (often involving the suggestion that the Damsel has been rendered vulnerable to predation). The mark is lured in either by their desire to protect the vulnerable Damsel, or by their desire to exploit their vulnerability. While they are distracted by the Damsel’s story, and at the Damsel’s signal, the Trip Hazard and Lookout run simultaneously towards the mark. The Trip Hazard crouches behind the mark, the Lookout shoves, and the mark falls. The Damsel, having located the mark’s purse prior to giving the signal, takes the purse from the mark as they sprawl on the ground and then Damsel, Lookout and Trip Hazard run away back to their hideout.

  This con has the advantage of requiring little preparation and is quite safe to perform. The Damsel is trained in self-defence and the mark is always of the type easily beaten in a fight. More violent forms of the con exist, and a two-person version performed by a Damsel and an Assassin can be used to confuse a victim while their murder – by stabbing, for example – is executed (though in truth this is little more than a matter of simple distraction).

  Fetch(es)

  A Fetch is a man whose profession it is to collect and deliver persons and goods between one area of a city, generally the slums, and another, generally the abode of a city’s Master, Mistress or ruling class. He is useful in that an employer will often not deign to visit the lowly areas of a city and will seek to prevent the approach to his abode of the dwellers of that area, and yet occasionally intercourse between these two places is required. A Fetch, then, is employed to ‘fetch’ (and also to ‘carry’) things between one place and another. In Mordew, a Fetch’s work is generally the transport of boy workers to the Manse by horse and cart along the magical Glass Road provided for the purpose, and the delivery of the weekly stipend back to those boy workers’ parents.

  Fetch gate

  There are gates through which a Fetch is allowed into and out of the slums, and these can either be unlocked with a key which the Fetch keeps or have guards who know what each Fetch looks like and who are charged with allowing them ingress and egress.

  Fetch’s bell

  One of the characteristic sounds of the slums of Mordew is the ringing of handbells. Each bell is tuned to a different pitch, but the sound of each is sad and mournful. Whether it is possible for a sound to contain emotion, or whether an ear will associate a neutral sound with a group of sadness-causing associations is an arguable point, but either way, the mournful tolling of the Fetches’ bells is an indication that a Fetch is near, and that those with unwelcome children should bring them forth and deliver them to him. These children, for a small fee, will then be taken to the Master by the Glass Road, where they will be put to useful work.

  Firebird

  Imagine a thin, feathered, lizard-like horse whose hooves have been replaced with grasping hands. Onto this monster, place a pair of wings like those of a pigeon or a dove, except large enough to lift the whole apparatus into the air. Then, when you have this idea settled, make it red and flaming, black smoke trailing wherever it has been. This is, approximately, what a firebird looks like.

  Its creation is through the magic of the Mistress of Malarkoi and it is said that she must sacrifice a child of her city by slitting its throat for every firebird she makes.

  In Mordew they are a menace. Many hundreds of them are sent daily to tear down the Sea Wall and if one ever crosses into the city it does mischief there, kidnapping, murdering, and setting fires.

  Firebirds lose their feathers easily, and these can be seen all across the slums (where decoration of any kind is prized no matter how dubious its source).

  (The) Fish

  The body of water surrounding Mordew generates many unusual forms of aquatic life, and even the familiar specie
s are more variable in scale here than they are in other parts of the ocean. The fish that powers the Muirchú is a very large hybrid of whale and shark, a mix that is unprecedented (indeed impossible) in nature. It was caught near the Sea Wall in its youth by the fisherwoman who now captains its ship. She nurtured it, trained it, and built a ship around it. Now it responds to a combination of her commands and the slakes and feeds she has raised it on. It is a sickly creature, however, being covered with polyps and growths and racked with internal pains from its unconventional biology. No matter how far she steers it from Mordew it always returns eventually, against her wishes since she despises the city and its Master. Some sailors say it must eat only the corrupt sea-flukes that grow there, others say that magic is its proper sustenance, others still say that it seeks, tragically, a mate that does not exist, but all sea-folk begrudge its habits, since there are better places to ply one’s trade than that cursed and rain-soaked port.

  (The) Flint

  When written with the indefinite article, this is a material which will spark when struck. It is often found in a tinderbox, since it can be used to ignite char cloth which has been subject to pyrolysis and thereby make a fire. It can also be made into knives.

  When written with the definite article, it is one of the necessary components of the Tinderbox, the most dangerous magical object ever created. The Flint will Spark when struck, igniting the Char Cloth which, transformed through pyrolysis into pure weft-stuff, burns with such energy that it will render anything into nothing.

  Fluence(s)

  A minor but long-lasting type of spell usually cast on a place or an object, which alters it by magic to produce various effects by provoking the weft to enhance or diminish nature. An ugly baby that has been fluenced will inspire, or will never inspire, love; a road that has been fluenced will speed, or slow, passage; a fluenced optical instrument will show things unnaturally near, or unnaturally far. See also: Hex.

  Fluke(s)

  When God makes a thing or causes the conditions under which a thing is made to come into the material realm, then it is always right since he is the weftling and entirely in concert with the weft. It is a truism to say that all those things made by God are natural since the weft determines nature and God is the weftling, so he could do no other than create natural things since otherwise he would not be in entire concert with the weft, which we know him to be. So, when nature as man understands it operates, then natural things are the result. A fluke is an unnatural thing (which is also to say it is magical) since it arrives not through natural processes but through the unnatural influence of the Living Mud which, though it is created through the influence of God, is only created in the material realm and does not contain the immaterial concept that God marries through the weft into the one perfect being and which is required for a thing to be natural.

  Which is not to say that a fluke cannot be made natural, because if it receives the Spark, which is the material form of the perfect immaterial concept manifest in the weft, then its material form can evolve into a thing that is in concert with God’s intention for organisms, and thereby escape its base nature. In Mordew, though, correction through evolution of unnatural flukes is rare and the city swarms with greater and lesser organisms formed through unnatural means. They are corrupted things, the very large proportion of them having no possibility of living – these are known as dead-life – but even those that can live are not natural and are not of a form likely to allow for their flourishing in a natural world. These things, through the flaws in their selves, are prone to wither, and if they do not die then they live lives of more or less misfortune since they are out of step with things as they are or should be.

  A fluke can be a small animal, like a mouse but deformed, and it can be almost invisibly small, but it can also be larger – like a dog or a cat. It can even be the size of a man and can look very much like a man (or a woman, or a child of either sex) but it is not the same as a man since it is born by unnatural means. If one finds a baby, rarely, in the mud and it has not been placed there either deliberately or by accident by its parents, then it is likely a fluke born of the interaction of the Living Mud and, say, a discarded piece of cloth. While the child may appear to be a natural child it will have aspects of the cloth, its immaterial concept, bound up in the fabric of it, and will tend to the cloth-like as it develops. This is a clothliness of spirit and of form and since the idea of a cloth-like man is unnatural and ridiculous the child will likely not live to adulthood. It is similar if the Living Mud interacts with a stone, or another fluke, or discarded generative material, or a corpse, or a ghost. In any case it is not a man, but is always a fluke, since man is made in the image of God and that image cannot be reproduced in a living thing except through natural means.

  (The) Fly Yard

  Flies can be born out of the Living Mud when a carcass is near, and since Mr Padge allows both carcasses and Living Mud to gather in the fenced-off area behind his restaurant, The Commodious Hour, it is consequently abuzz with flies. This has led to it receiving the colloquial nickname ‘The Fly Yard’.

  Folk magic

  Some people are born more closely in congruence with the weft than others and consequently display unusual, magic-like abilities. They may guess what you are about to say before you say it, be able to move small objects without physically interfering with them, or commune with the recently deceased. These powers are a function of their matter and concepts aligning with the weft and thereby exceeding their material boundaries. This excession allows for the retrieval within the self of information from without the self, or, in reverse, the expulsion of energy outside of the self from within it. In either case, the exercise of such powers is called folk magic. In Mordew, folk magic is most commonly performed by witch-women, the necessary lore and simple spells shared amongst them and passed on through generations. Folk magic is lesser in degree than the true magic practised by Masters, Mistresses, all gods et al., since the similarity between these latter organisms and the weft is orders of magnitude more exact.

  (The) Forest

  An area given to trees that acts as a natural boundary between the Manse and the lower city. Some imagine the trees are magical, and that they can come alive in the service of the Master, but this is never tested since no-one dares approach that close for fear of rousing the Master to anger.

  Fruition

  Just as a seed germinates, a bud becomes a leaf, and fruit ripens, so those destined to inherit powers by virtue of a pattern established in the weft must come to fruition. And this process is not often pleasant. Does the soft shoot enjoy breaching the seed-casing, or the bud splitting, or the fruit converting inside to sugar? Very likely not, yet who would say those things should not happen regardless, since, like the ugly caterpillar who goes into its chrysalis and emerges from it in the form of a beautiful butterfly, then the child of a weft-manipulator leaves its powerlessness behind and becomes close to a god.

  Since a weft-manipulator has contact with the weft, just like when a Master or Mistress kills a man with their magic, the pattern of the matter and the concept of that man is remembered by the weft. While the weft-manipulator exists the Spark energy goes to him, because this is why he has taken the trouble to manipulate the weft in the first instance, all his efforts and lore being focussed on this one outcome. But what then when he dies? If he has a child and that child is like him, then the weft is not concerned, as a man is, by the passing of generations. The weft is not a man (except in as much as the weftling is an instancing of it) and knows and cares nothing for his concerns, so when one bearing a pattern and character that induces the flow of the Spark from the weft into the material realm passes into a state of being that exists only in the immaterial realm, and chooses to remain there (through death), then it is only natural that the Spark energy flows to he who bears the same or very similar patterning.

  Imagine if a cloud gathers and the rain falls on a hillside and runs down into a river and this river flows in a par
ticular direction out to the sea. It is not because there is something inherent in that hillside or that river that causes the rain to reach the sea, it is simply that water flows where it flows, and these things make it flow there. So, the Spark flows through the bearer of the pattern that causes the flow, regardless of who it is that is patterned.

  Yet a pattern inherited across generations is not perfect, since each man is unique and even very similar men cannot be said to be the same if this is the case. There must be some difference in them, even if it is invisible. Just as the water would struggle to resume its usual path if the hillside in the example given was to be replaced with a similar but not identical hillside, so will the Spark react when meeting with obstruction when seeking to follow the path established for it into the material realm. As water will cut though rock, and the bends of a river shape the land around it, so, when the Spark meets obstacles, it will abrade them until the obstacle is gone. This is why fruition is uncomfortable for the inheritor of a weft-manipulation pattern – it is changing him. Man is reluctant to change since he fears that he will not have the measure of it, and often an inheritor will resist his inheritance, but the inheritor of power need not concern himself any more than a caterpillar need be anxious that his lack of wings will prevent flight, since in the changing those things needed will be provided to him, just as a butterfly is born bearing the wings that will carry him into the air.