A Dreamer's Guide to Daejora (2024)

Explore the City of Eternal Song! Welcome to Daejora! Stadar. Steam rolls out from the Wildertrain as its shudders into stillness at Precipitous Station. The hanging lanterns of pink and yellow paper illuminate the billows of steam. The train car doors clatter open and, through the haze, faces emerge like hopeful spirits from an immaterial plane. Earnest performers and artists, curious observers and connoisseurs alike step onto the platform into the perpetual dusk of the famed City and turn to the Cliff. This is their first step into Daejora proper, and the foothold of Stadar is here to greet them. Buildings of stone and wood blossom out from the base of the Cliff: inns, grocers, pubs and all-important talent agencies. The standout structure is a large, stately institute built with the same sandy stone as the Cliff. Latori. Winding, cliffside streets of bright lights, blaring music and sweat-stained faces, Latori is nightlife incarnate. Nearly every building has an open door from which music trails, whether it’s a jazz house, an art gallery or a training studio. There are quieter nooks in Latori, nestled against the Cliff in the District’s darkest recesses where a writer, dramatic actor or yogi might seek solace from the constant exuberance. But most of Latori is a chaotic place where brass instruments wail, drums pound, paint is splashed upon the tarps and marble is subdued into form via the heavy falls of sledgehammers. Cluubuu. Magical streams of neon light flooding the streets, rows of manses, performance halls and ateliers. This is Cluubuu, where decadence radiates from every corner. This district, like Latori, is characterized by a constant bustle of nightlife. However, in Latori there is grime in the gutters, modestly sized apartments, and laborers mingling with artists. In Cluubuu, streets are immaculate and stone-paved, homes are grand mansions with their own grounds and staff to keep them, and hands and feet are mostly callous-free. Gold-framed automaton street sweepers, shaped like debutantes wearing hoop skirts, readily vacuum up any leaves, garbage or other muck from the streets. Neighborhoods of manses congregate around gardens with flourishing plants, babbling streams over which bridges bend, gazebos under which lovers might meet. Though there are a few music clubs here, the Great Dance Hall remains the major draw for anyone looking to dance the night away. The Hall sits at the very edge of the Cliff under the light of Galamon, the celestial chandelier. For all the revelry, Sound Elementals do not seem to wreak havoc here as they do in other parts of the city—a convenience that many folk, especially those in Stadar, find irksome and even suspicious. Zouit. In the shade of the City’s dusk-to-night cycle, the rolling hills of Zouit shift from deep green, to golden in twilight and finally blue in the shade of the full night. The stars wink above a mostly quiet landscape. Though the city cannot be ignored—with its blaring music, flashing lights in every color, the sonic rumble of sound elementals—its presence is still subdued at this distance. Many of the farmers, herders and ranchers of Zouit prefer it that way. But this is not to say that the love of music and dance is absent among these rural communities. As laborers tend to fields, they’ll swing, dig and stamp to a synchronized rhythm, humming and vocalizing in time with each other. At the peak of midnight when the workday is done, the folksy sounds of fiddles, mandolins, lap-drums and zills play out from lantern-lit porches—often enhanced by tinkered audiophones so their merriment can be heard across fields. It is also said that the rhythmic dance and song, practiced for generations, is a spell conjured to keep the mists and the monsters away from Zouit borders. Beyond the City The Shamblelands. Beyond the City and Zouit—and the perpetual dusk—are the hinterlands of Daejora. These lands experience a full day-night cycle, meaning vegetation of all kinds flourish here. But people from the City do not travel here by foot or mount, for too many have tried to and not returned. Only the Wildertrain offers safe passage through a landscape of beasts, monsters, and oppressive weather—and these are not the only trials that plague the Shamblelands. A phenomenon known as the Rise changes the actual terrain of the wilderness as easily as time changes seasons. This Rise is carried as if on phantom wind, its sound like a chorus of distant voices layering over each other. It changes the land as it passes over, plains to forests, desert to tundra, fields of wild grain to a waste of cracked earth running with rivers of lava. The time between each Rise is in indeterminable, as is the type of terrain that it will bring next. The few folk who manage to eke out a life in the Shamblelands keep hand-written almanacs recording the Rise changes. Each household treasures their almanac as a dear family heirloom, as they are testaments of survival in this strange wilderness. The Waterways. The Waterways have always been a part of the shifting landscape of the Daejora wilds. Through the inherent powerful magic in its rivers, lakes, falls—and even the shallowest pond—this network has persisted through the extreme temperatures of desert and tundra as well as the invasive tangle of jungles or the muddying of swamps. There are no official maps of the Waterways as the Rise changes the terrain around the rivers, though most households keep a slab of stone or sheaf of vellum that marks the general flow of the rivers to teach to young ones and newcomers. The Further. A land where the mists never fade, where the earth is flat stone covered in a layer of fine sand, where Sound Elementals roam free. There are no large trees or dense foliage, as the only plants able to grow here are the spare tufts of grass and diminutive flowers with heads of petals shaped like shrieking faces. There are no instruments playing or voices singing. Only Sound itself may vocalize here, and its song is a dirge for what might have been. The entity lurks within the mist like thunder deep within a storming cloud.