The City of the Steps

After comment from a reader, the ‘harshness rating’ of this post has been increased to level 4. See comments below.

A novel format from THW, occasioned by the generation of a rich seam of AI images. A ridiculous farrago of nonsense; publicity material, perhaps, for a 1970’s Sword-and-Sorcery novel, a second-rate rip-off of the Gor series…

In Noom, known as the City of the Steps, built around and into a solitary steep-sided granite outcrop from the plain, one outlandish and savage custom is, somewhat remarkably sacrosanct for a city otherwise considered dull by even its most fervent supporters (valued, rather, for its reliable maintenance of the accounts of merchants and traders across the wide expanse of the Sthekarr Plain). However dull they may be, among the denizens of Noom the Night of the Ordeal is generally pointed to, and insisted upon as being foundational to the continued blessing of its Gods.

All sectors and classes across the city will ardently defend and promote this custom, this fell and disturbing ritual— all, that is, but unmarried young girls, who, on the eve of their 21st birthday, are destined to be chained, naked, by their nearest male relative, to those steps nearest the abode, and left there until dawn, to be used and abused by all comers, without restraint…

Here is Ktriash: she is from a high Aristarch family, arrogant, certain that she is destined to become important among the Wise Women. She has refused all her parents’ near desperate pleas to accept marriage to the son of a rival family, designed to end a long-running and expensive feud. She offers herself with confidence, though her doubts are mounting as the stroke of midnight approaches, when she will technically be 21 and the ravishing will begin.

Ktriash

Many of these girls, of course, do not survive their Ordeal. These unfortunates are considered to have been taken by the Gods, to become their handmaidens. No matter what vileness, what cruelty has been done to them, it is an article of faith that they have ascended to the mystical mountain tops, above the clouds, to attend in their youthful beauty on the Gods, for all eternity.

Their sad corpses are delivered to their destination on a barge, set on fire, and sent down-river, the huge and ancient safety chains lowered so that the slow but irresistible current of the Sabbelest can take them, still ablaze, down over the mighty and terrible Falls of Kreshnu.

Here is Sturiana: a rather silly girl from a low status family, Sturiana has chosen to believe all the dreamy stories she has seen in the street-plays and read in the copper coin books, which tell of girls who find themselves through the Ordeal, and end up love matched with a handsome Aristarch.

Sturiana

Those girls who do see the dawn are gathered up and cared for most tenderly, sheltered from the prurient eyes of the citizenry, and particularly from their own families. Within twelve moondays, though, those girls who are not judged by the Wise Women to be pregnant are once again exposed, on the steps around the seat of the Prime God, the Radiant One, Askendr (the Wise Women are themselves survivors of their own Ordeal). Some last a day or two, none more…

All record of these poor souls’ existence are then expunged from the city records. Families erase their names from their memories, as if their daughters, sisters, nieces, had never existed.

Here is Clusit: Clusit is terrifed, desolate, desperate, but has had it powerfully impressed upon her by her mother and (comfortably married) elder sister that she must do all she can to hide her fear, and offer herself well. She is trembling, uncontrollably.

Clusit

Those survivors who are deemed to be pregnant are venerated, carrying as they do the children of the Gods.

They are brought to term, but are parted from their young at 3 months. Those who bear male children are trained in the ways of the Wise Women. Those who bear female children are auctioned as bed-girls to the Aristarch class.

Their children, boys and girls both, are trained in the temples as priests and priestesses, never to meet a member of the opposite sex. Rumours, ribald jokes and salacious art concerning the ways in which these sacred but sequestered individuals satisfy their urges are commonplace (the Gods are known to be constantly eager for violent sexual congress; surely their offspring must inherit these desires).

Such is the strangeness of the City of the Steps, otherwise considered one of the least interesting cities of the Nine Realms, peopled by careful and conservative burgomen and burgesses, obsessed with preventing their daughters from marrying young.

Whether this is from a pious desire to offer their daughters to the Gods, as is the public insistence or, as the gutter rats tell it, that they are driven by determination not to deliver the large dowries also customary in the city, is a matter of some debate …

Here is Vishnask: she is deeply in love with Treskan, who would have married her 6 months previously, save that his father had demanded too high a dowry, to which her own father responded angrily, so that the men fell out. Treskan is with her; they are both in agonies. Treskan is promising to defend her until the dawn against all comers, Vishnak is torn between hoping that he can, and certainty that in fact she will see him murdered before being raped herself. She is spreading her legs wide, telling Treskan that she must, to have a hope of surviving; she hopes to drive his jealousy and horror to the point where he repudiates her as a slut and a trollop, so that he will abandon her; she loves him so, that she does not want him to die in vain.

Vishnask

A note on the illustrations: the consistent pose is part of the tradition. Girls wishing to live know that their only hope is to become pregnant. Lore has it that only those who offer themselves willingly, encourage those who use them, can receive the favour of the Gods— that a God will chose to momentarily possess a man who is spilling his male-seed into her womb and impregnate her. Most girls offer themselves, wide open, even while trembling in horror, for the men who come to them, begging to be used. Those who do not are often stoned, rather than used, since they are obviously apostate.

That this whole tradition arose during the reign of a mad king who seemed unable to sire sons, was cooked up by his favoured High Priest as revenge on the wives who had attempted to prevent his appointment, is suppressed, denounced as a scurrilous conspiracy theory. Historians who study the period are discreetly warned not to venture into this episode, for fear of ‘incurring the disfavour of Askendr’— code for ’likely to suffer a mysterious accident or tragic food poisoning’.

A further note on the seasonality of the custom. Since the ravishing cannot begin until the girl has turned 21— at midnight— seasonal variations in the length of the night-dark matter.

Girls whose 21st birthdays fall on a day when the night-dark is at its longest are much less likely to survive (survivors marginally more likely to have been impregnated). Girls who fall at the opposite end of the scale, when the first night-dark of their 22nd year is particularly short, have higher survival rates (and lower impregnation rates).

Since the seasons on alter-earth are not sole determinants of the period of night-dark, due to the large size of the primary moon Strialla sometimes extending the night-dark at dawn by blocking the early sun, and sometimes shortening it by being full, there is a good trade in astrological advice for prospective parents as to ‘propitious dates’ for coitus, providing calculations and tables as to the length of the night-dark 21 years into future, based on anticipated birth dates, in hopes of increasing the chances that a daughter will survive.

This has led to Noom becoming well-known for its astronomers and astrologers, who in turn provide money for the development of ever more sophisticated astrolabes and observation glasses.

Perhaps surprisingly, given the difficulty of predicting birth dates before a couple has even made the decision that the man will stop smoking Khrasht (all Noomian men smoke Khrasht in the normal course of things, and not just because it makes for non-viable male-seed), the number of girls likely to have their Ordeal on any given night is quite strongly matched with the hours of night-dark— there being notably fewer girls chained on the steps on dates with long night-dark durations. That this is markedly different across the different layers of the social spectrum suggests that the upper caste habit of confining a woman who is near term for several months allows them to carefully ‘manage’ the official birth date of their female offspring.

A practical note on the illustrations. Let THW know in the comments if it is worth bothering to upload the many versions to an online folder.