If the portion of the city we’d seen so far was a twisting, ramshackle ramble, the portion Grellk and his mercenaries led us through was equally labyrinthine, but the buildings crowded to each side were of a more permanent nature: made of fitted, mortared dark stone blocks. Most were streaked with an oddly greenish tracery. Some that we passed, though, exhibited beautiful branching wispy patterns, almost... tree-like.
Anna, too, noticed, but one of Grellk’s men swatted at her hand when she reached out to trace one of the meandering grooves. His only explanation was a terse grunt and shake of his hooded head.
Grellk’s only response when I asked him about them was to reach into a pocket and withdraw a rounded, palm-sized brass contraption. He pressed a knob on the side, and the clasp sprang open. He held it up, sighting through a slit in the thing’s lid, turning a fitting that ran around the edge of the faceted glass surface. Beneath that glass were a series of geared workings and a pair of needles that floated on some sort of odd metallic liquid, suspended above the cogs and gears of the guts of the device by another pane of the glasswork. One of the needles looked to be of the blackened, twisted iron that the city builders liked to use for their ornamentation, while the other gleamed a familiar reddish-gold. The finest splinter of red dragonstone, with a single golden thread running its length.
“Ten ticks, men,” the dwarf rumbled as he snapped the contraption shut. “Get the lead out of yer boots, gawpers, unless you want to be caught in the next flume’s out-vent.”
At my third attempt to question him, Grellk just shook his head. “Less gawping, more walking, Uplander. It’s still twelve more blocks to the nearest canopy.” He raised his voice, and I’m sure I noticed the slighted tremor of fear in it as he barked “Seven north, five east! Put yer hustle on!”
“[It was]… a rounded, palm-sized contraption of brass. He pressed a knob on the side, and the clasp sprang open. He held it up, sighting through a slit in the thing’s lid, turning a fitting that ran around the edge of the faceted glass surface. Beneath that glass were a series of geared workings and a pair of needles that floated on some sort of odd metallic liquid, suspended above the cogs and gears of the guts of the device by another pane of the glasswork. One of the needles looked to be of the blackened, twisted iron that the city builders liked to use for their ornamentation, while the other gleamed a familiar reddish-gold. The finest splinter of red dragonstone, with a single golden thread running its length.”
“[It was]… a rounded, palm-sized contraption of brass. He pressed a knob on the side, and the clasp sprang open. He held it up, sighting through a slit in the thing’s lid, turning a fitting that ran around the edge of the faceted glass surface. Beneath that glass were a series of geared workings and a pair of needles that floated on some sort of odd metallic liquid, suspended above the cogs and gears of the guts of the device by another pane of the glasswork. One of the needles looked to be of the blackened, twisted iron that the city builders liked to use for their ornamentation, while the other gleamed a familiar reddish-gold. The finest splinter of red dragonstone, with a single golden thread running its length.”
Part compass, part time-keeper, part Radiance detector, the Navicron — along with a troll hide cloak — is an essential piece of kit for the independent mercenary, messenger, or merchant operating in the Eternal Emperor’s City of Crystal Splendors who cannot afford the lease of an Imperial Syharwehr.
The device keeps pace with the mechanisms housed in the Deeps beneath the city, and is used to accurately mark the time and location of the next or nearest flume out-vent and guide the user to the nearest canopy.
Travelers used to use logbooks, which contained charts and tables, but these proved cumbersome and somewhat difficult to manipulate. As paper became increasingly rare in the Empire, and the logbooks were highly susceptible to the hazards of being caught in the outflow of those vents around which they were meant to guide its user in the first place, a cheaper, more reliable mechanical calculation mechanism was devised.
Because they rely on spring-and-coil brasswork mechanisms, which in turn require daily winding, a navichron must be synchronized with the master beacon, which strobes from atop the Emperor’s Tower at the center of the city. The lens of the sighting mechanism is dynamically polarized, allowing the user to determine their angular position within the city. By aligning the navicron’s inner and outer positioning rings based on the shade, angle and periodicity of the central beacon, the vent alignments can be predicted and thus, avoided.
The black iron needle picks up the magnetic tug of the closest canopy’s lodestone marker, while the sliver of red dragonstone measures the direction and intensity of Radiance sources.
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