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WARNING: Beyond this point lie extended spoilers for Fallen London, Sunless Sea, or Sunless Skies. This may include endgame or Fate-locked content, including spoilers for formerly restricted storylines such as the endings of Seeking Mr Eaten's Name. Look away now. You can find out more about our spoiler policy here. |
"Two vast winged shapes guard a gate of something like resin, smooth but uneven. It is deep gant - the colour that remains when all other colours have been eaten. Ice crusts over the crack between its valves. Approach, and your breath freezes, falls tinkling in shards from the air. It would be utterly foolish to touch the thing."[1]
The Avid Horizon is the gate that links the Unterzee to the High Wilderness.
Beyond These Gates, an End[]
"The narrow way past the Pale Wastes, past Codex, past Whither. Sought by those mad with strange hunger. All others, turn back now."[2]
The Avid Horizon is the northernmost known place in the Unterzee. It is always accessible by traveling North, no matter where from. It is bitter cold here.[3] Nobody has gone further; dozens have died trying.[4] Zailors, of course, are advised not to go.[5]
One of the nearby docks offers those who have been exiled from London a chance to beg for forgiveness - but they must be willing to sacrifice everything,[6] and there is no guarantee the Admiralty will choose to accept their apology.[7]
The realm of the Judgements, the High Wilderness, lies beyond the freezing High Gate. However, opening it is easier said than done, and involves distracting the eternally vigilant Watchers.[8][9] Perhaps a candle will do.[10][11]
Beyond These Gates, an Escape[]
"Bordered by two vast winged statues, the Gate towers over the shrouded sea that divides the port and the Gate. The other side of the gate opens far beneath the Earth, on the bleak shore of a subterranean sea."[12]
The Avid Horizon served as the Empire's gateway into the heavens; it was here that the Parzifal,[13] the first spacefaring locomotive (or so they say),[14] was built and launched.[13] After New London was built and the vast majority of the city had reestablished itself in the skies, the Empress sealed the gates to the Horizon "sarcophagus-tight;"[15] there was a long enough span of time before this happened, however, that the Quiet Sea formed in space.[16]
The Horizon is made of three parts: the Home Office, a vestigial and bare-bones immigration facility; the Gate, under the eternal eyes of the Watchers; and the Quiet Sea, the aforementioned inexplicable spillage of the nostalgic Unterzee.[17]
It is worth noting that the Horizon is much bigger on the space side, and is also rather far from New London.[18] It is quite a feat of engineering that they got all the pieces of London so far away from the gate to the Wilderness.
Like its counterpart in the Neath, the Empire uses the Horizon to get rid of people who anger its royalty, this time by forcing them to wait in front of the rather imposing gate for a pardon that will almost never come.[19] The Gate also has a mooring post nearby that is covered in crimes, confessions, and names, as an imitation of the tradition before the Wilderness was conquered - though it is not London that answers these pleas anymore, but a criminal organization called the Gentlemen.[20]
The Cults of the Quiet Sea[]
A flotilla drifts on the Quiet Sea, occupied by those left behind.[21] They have roughly organized themselves into three feuding cults:
- The Supralapsarians, led by the Illuminated Archivist,[22] who long for the time of Old London and try to pretend that they have never left.[23][24]
- The Sanctified, led by the Jolly Anchorite,[25] a wine-loving bunch who venerate the Masters of the Bazaar as saints.[26][27]
- The Displeased, led by the Careful Masquerader,[28] who have been betrayed and so they shall betray as well.[29]
Presiding over them all is the Silent Mystic, who attends the rites of all three cults[30][31][32] when not busy meditating upon a wheel.[33][34] She makes vague allusions to her seemingly prestigious past in London,[35][36] but nothing else is known about her.
The Gate of Saints[]
"The gate did not go unwatched. If it was seen and not closed, was that license?"[37]
The Watchers at the gate are not simple statues; they were in fact former servants of the King of Hours, before the monarch's death.[38] The statues, referred to by the Cult of the Sanctified as the Saint of the Key and the Saint of the Lock, were built by and in the image of the Masters, to guard the way behind them.[39] It seems the Judgements do not keep a particularly watchful eye on the gate themselves; the King of Hours did not object to its existence, and after he was slain, no star had any investment in the matter.[40]
References[]
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