Llesu

Llesu exists at the end of time, when the expansion of the universe has stretched space so that light is slower than the stretching and all stars except one have gone dark. The sky above the city is pale amaranthine. A bloated red star, greatly expanded from its original size, hangs low in the sky producing light no better than twilight. Only moons remain in the sky alongside the dying sun. Snow falls lightly over the city. The surrounding environment is cold.

The city is built on and into a great hill that is, in fact, a vast tower of accumulated construction: layers of buildings piled atop older layers until what appears to be a natural elevation is revealed to be an artificial structure. Streets are cobbled. A broad avenue called Castle Ward Hill rises toward an acropolis crowned with black towers and a great black dome, castellated in a mighty spiral with statues of man-shaped figures supporting the buildings. A permanent Wall of perfectly regular, mountain-height geometry stands at the city's margin, its top nearly touching the dying sun.

Several miles beneath the city lies the Well of Nahaman, a deep underground chamber whose walls are rough black stone rising toward a distant light above, with reflected water light on the lower walls. Antique machines hang like stalactites from the walls. A pool of warm water occupies the bottom of the chamber. The well was once serviced by a lift, now long gone. The depth of the chamber means only dark energy penetrates from outside, making it suitable for the Judicator's apparatus to collect and reconstitute the informational pattern of a deceased person.

Llesu is mostly abandoned in the areas accessible to visitors, with only scattered signs of life. It is inhabited by a small number of figures brought there by the Judicator's people, including individuals transported from earlier periods in the universe's history who did not die to arrive there but traveled only as all things do, only faster. Some of these residents have been present in Llesu for hundreds of years.

The Judicator Ragama and entities like him maintain armed servants in the city: vast treaded war machines of red-black metal with asymmetrical, spined hulls, ribbed and fluted weapon-barrels, and pulsating organic tubes between the ribs, which move in patrols through the city streets.

**Castle Ward Hill**: A broad avenue rising toward the central acropolis, lined with man-shaped statues supporting the buildings along its spiral castellations.

**The Acropolis**: The elevated center of Llesu, crowned with black towers and a great black dome.

**The Wall**: A permanent barrier of perfectly regular geometry at the city's margin, reaching mountain height, its top nearly touching the dying sun.

**Well of Nahaman**: A deep underground chamber several miles beneath the city, containing antique machines and a pool of warm water. The site where the dead are wakened from sleep and reconstituted by the Judicator's apparatus.

**The Judicator's Temple**: A Gothic church with twin belfry towers, a round stained-glass window between them, one tower missing its top, and a hole in the tiled roof of the nave. Inside, the nave holds smashed pews, cables of braided metal snaking across the floor, monstrous statues in niches along the walls depicting many-eyed, many-handed, moth-winged, bat-winged, and tentacle-bearded figures, and crumbling frescoes on the vaulted ceiling showing angels. A bassinet-incubator stands on a pedestal where the cables converge, surrounded by banked consoles showing holographic displays in Watcher-script. The temple houses the egg of the Quiet.