Polythreme

"I saw it! Ask anyone! ...except her. Don't ask her."

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"Polythreme is a city where some principle in the water or earth - they say - makes everything live. This makes it a hellish place. Candles scream as they burn. Furniture is enslaved wood. Buildings are hollow shells of misery. The Clay Men are sold by Polythreme - or perhaps they escape." "Everything's alive there, or so the story goes. Coal burns with a long low moan, steel is forged under protest, new-minted coins still shriek with pain and horror. It sounds a horribly callous place. Not to mention remarkably noisy."

Polythreme, the birthplace of the Clay Men, is a small island nation within the Sea of Voices. Its ruler is The King with a Hundred Hearts.

HERE IS SCREAMING[]

"IN POLYTHREME THE BED I SLEPT ON WAS A SLAVE. THE ROOM WHERE I SLEPT WAS HACKED FROM SCREAMING STONE. THE WATER I DRANK BEGGED ME TO STOP. THEY PAID ME IN COIN THAT PLOTTED MY DOWNFALL. THE MEMORIES ARE TROUBLING. THIS PLACE IS BETTER."

Everything in Polythreme is suffused with an unnatural vitality. Coins scream, houses scream, and if you spend enough time there, even your clothes will come to life and start screaming. Indeed, it is not uncommon to see roaming colonies of clothing, banded together to wear a person instead of the other way around. It's very noisy in Polythreme, for obvious reasons. The Clay Men aren't very fond of this place (because of all the screaming), and they're eager to get their compatriots over to London as menial workers. Many of them are more than happy to spread stories of their homeland, preferably through the words of a well-respected Londoner.