The Solar City23.IX.2023
The Solar City is the #002 wonder in the "Wonders of the Outer Realms" catalogue. It is a dreamlike city comprised of iridescent glass obelisks, in between which immortal, immaterial spirits wander the skies.
How it looks
Not everyone can even see the city from far away, and even less people can enter it. But to those who can, the city presents at first its central part, the thousands of half-transparent towers of glass and mirrors a couple hundred meters high. Yet this is only the core of the city, and if one goes out, they would observe buildings gradually diminishing in height until eventually dissolving into an endless suburban sea of cottages, often unique and extravagant ones - the sea which in turn slowly fades away into mist. Nobody from the outside could see the City at its whole, past the mist - only the core and maybe some territory around it.
The City can appear in different locations, jumping irregularly between at least a dozen different places at random. Yet these locations are always on the shore of a sea or large lake, facing towards the sunrise.
The core of the City is around twenty kilometers long and five kilometers wide and is situated along the shore, with the long side facing it. Towers populate it densely, with streets in between rarely wider than fifteen meters - yet the whole city is still constantly engulfed in light, as it can pass right through the towers, reflected, refracted and decomposed into rainbows left, right and center. Some regions have streets be perfect straight lines in a grid pattern, while others have a chaotic plan of entangled alleys. All around the city are also squares, and they in contrast are usually giant, up to two hundred meters across, and almost always are full of decorations.
The towers themselves are very diverse, no one like the other. They differ in shape - some are cylinders or polygonal prisms with various numbers of angles, some are antiprisms, cones, pyramids, there are twisted ones and a lot of shapes that are hard to even sum up to a single category, including one that's a double spiral of two intertwining towers. And they also differ in material and its optical properties - some are clear transparent glass and some are stained glass, single color or an entire rainbow mosaic; some are lined with mirrors along the walls, flat or concave, and some are covered in small chunks of reflective surface like a disco ball; some are fuzzy and transluscent on the inside, some refract and redirect light, some are literal spectral prisms that turn it into a rainbow, and there are even ones that play around with light polarization. The streets are also usually mirrors or layered stained glass, making for a fading gradient effect in the reflection. On top of that, many rooftops have additional mirrors, lenses, spectral prisms and polarizing crystals on them that dynamically turn, following the movement of the Sun. The whole city is thus a hypercomplex optical system, that harnesses and distributes light all around itself no matter where the Sun is.
While during the day the City is engulfed into multicolored light coming from the Sun, it's a whole different story at night. The obelisks themselves light up, radiating light of all colors, and in between them small flying flames pop up, that look like chinese lanterns, except they slowly stroll around in the air instead of flying up.
How to get here
As it was said, not everyone can even see the City, as it requires for them to be "pure souls" by City's standards. The purer the person is, the more of the City they could see and the closer they could approach before it disappears, and the purest of all may enter the City and talk to the spirits. And if the City especially likes the person and they stay for long enough, it will offer them to become a spirit themself and move in.
The standards for "purity" the City has may be somewhat unusual by human standards, but they make sense. They are: being independent as in not having strong dependencies on anything, be that people or material possessions; being peaceful and nonaggressive, and having no unprovoked spite even deep down; being unbigoted and loving the Universe with every living being inside it.
Additionally, if these standards of purity apply, a person may approach and enter the Solar City not only when physically present in its location, but also when seeing it in a dream - which can happen even if they are from a different world and had never heard of the City before. Finally, some spirits enter the City through the Random Forest.
About the spirits
The spirits inhabiting the City are beings, technically immaterial, that can shape their appearance in any way they like.
I used the word "technically" here, since they can alter their degree of being material and touchable to each other however they want - but they are always at most as tangible to an outsider as the City itself is for that outsider. The same applies even when they leave the City - which they can freely do with no consequences, since the City calls them back in before transitioning to a different realm anyway. The spirits can't, though, interact with any non-sentient objects not from the city, thus they are completely invisible and inaudible to any recording technology - just like the City itself. This also means they can pass through walls. They levitate, freely moving in all three dimensions and unaffected by gravity.
Spirits are very diverse in how they like to look and dress, but the general vibe is: artsy and extravagant. They can wear loose multilayered clothing and tons of accessories, - it's rarely full-out jewelry, but rather stitched imagery, pins, and also all sorts of pendants, necklaces, bracelets, earrings and more, but usually of common materials like iron, glass or wood, though still elegant and ornate. Some spirits have a unique scent to them, and some have ornament patterns on their skin. They rarely like adhering to a single style or tone throughout their outfit, preferring to be colourful and flamboyant, and often like patterned or patchwork clothing. Some spirits change their appearance nearly every day, some alternate between a set of outfits they rarely make edits to, and some mostly present themselves in a single unchanging form.
Spirits can conjure small physical objects the same way they conjure their appearance - so everything they wear they can just take off and give to someone else. However, these items tend to disappear when not in the City or held by a spirit for a long time.
Of all biological needs a mortal being has, spirits only need sleep, for mind maintenance purposes. Hovewer, some spirits like eating spirit-conjured food for taste, and even compete in cooking.
Despite being immaterial by nature, spirits really like engaging in physical contact with each other - they value it as a manifestation of love and trust. Since they are only able to touch each other by mutual will, it is always consent-based. And since spirits can shapeshift however, they have access to all sensual pleasures any sentient being can have - and much, much more.
Spirits live in above-mentioned suburban cottages, and their homes adhere by same rules as the spirits themselves - that is, they can freely shapeshift and furnish themselves hovewer they would like it. These homes are in some way sentient spirits themselves, caring for a community living in them - and the spirits do the same. Spirits rarely live alone or even in pairs, usually in groups of three up to ten-fifteen - entire coliving communes, within which the spirits are simultaneously family, friends and lovers to each other.
The core of the Solar City is mostly a community area for spirits to gather in-between buildings for meeting new spirits, social interactions, parties and showing off. Spirits who just moved in town, or just moved out of their home for some reason, and who thus not yet found their perfect commune, are usually spending more time here in search for one, but it's rare for any spirit to not visit the core for an extended period of time.
Notable places
- Spiral Twins are the two above-mentioned towers intertwining in a double-stranded spiral. They are cylinders of clear glass, both around ten meters in diameter, and they are connected with hundreds of stained glass crossbeams, which form a rainbow gradient top to bottom. The whole structure is two hundred and fifty meters tall, notably rising above the skyline and thus being an easily recognisable symbol of the city.
- The Noontide Tower is the highest tower in the city, a thin stretched triangular pyramid three hundred and thirty three meters tall. It serves as a sort of a gnomon to a colossal sundial built into the city, projecting a patch of rainbow light to stroll between a dozen main city squares, along a ring of boulevards that connects them.
- The Crystal Goddess is a hundred meter-tall statue of a feminine-looking person, made of transluscent, green-tinted glass. It stands on a hexagonal truncated pyramid of a pedestal, that arises right from the water relatively near the shore. The person has long loose curly hair, wears simple robes and a crown of thorns, and raises one hand to the sky, in which they hold a staff with a simplified symbol of the Sun atop of it. This Sun from the staff is an unofficial emblem of the City, and the Goddess themself is usually perceived as the City's personification.
- The Waterfalls Square really has three magnificent waterfalls, that pour down from building rooftops and fall for a hundred and fifty meters until plummeting into the ground, engulfing the square in light foam. Most of the other buildings surrounding the square are covered top to bottom with greenery, mostly grapevine, and the square itself is home to a rock garden. Spirits have a habit to go on dates here, and those who don't have one can seek a partner for the night here among spirits who came with that same goal.
- The Lavender Garden is a large park on the outskirts of the City's core, comprised of trees eternally blooming with shades of pink, lavender, mauve and white. It smells like lilac and incense and jasmine here. There are no pathways in the park as flying spirits don't need them, and all the benches are situated right in the tall grass; there's also an occasional swing between the trees here. This is also the place where travellers from the Random Forest first enter the Solar city.
Notable events
- Carnival Month is a month in which life in the City's core pumps up to the maximum, with spirits more plentiful and colourful than ever filling the streets to live life to the fullest and events happening nearly every day. The first and the last days of the month see massive festivals, for the whole day and the whole night respectively, with tens of thousands of spirits zooming across the streets and dancing in the air. The opening festival sees the spirits with giant sheets of multicoloured fabric, which they leave all around hanging on buildings and lampposts throughout the festival - and so the whole city becomes dressed in a patchwork of millions of these sheets for a month. The closing one sees them with bright coloured flames, which they burn the sheets with, enlightening the city in a magnificent show of harmless rainbow fire.
- The Love Night is marking the middle of the Carnival Month. It is the night when spirits who long for it indulge in love with everyone who mutually wishes so, in every way they know and mutually want. The City dims its light on that night, sticking to deep colours with a unique palette in each region of the city.
- The Dark Month is opposite to the Carnival Month in the calendar. During that time, night time illumination is heavily dimmed, and it shuts off completely for the first and last night of the month. These two days also see processions, but mournful ones, with single-colour lights, orange in the first day and silvery-white like moonlight in the last. During these days, spirits remember, grieve and pray for all the suffering and sorrow mortal beings ever beared, for everyone who ever died, for everyone who is being mistreated across all material worlds and for every victim of every atrocity ever carried out by sentience.
- The Night of Hymns is marking the middle of the Dark Month. On that night past midnight, the City is filled with spirits chanting - with all their different voices, but in harmony, seamlessly flowing from one motive to another in different regions of the City and as time passes. The City only orchestrates the very core motives nessecary for that continuity, but past that everyone chants about what their heart tells them to. And though the hymns start, in spirit of the month, as mournful laments, they get brighter and brighter as time passes, until a final triumphant hymn starts marching through the whole city right at the brink of dawn, and climaxes at sunrise. It's always the same hymn, an unhofficial anthem of the Solar City, just named: "Sunrise".