[Alvadas Location] The Streets Below

[Bedlam]

Everywhere there are stairs leading downward, behind a locked cellar door, in the corner of the local tavern, in the middle of the streets. They lead down, to the streets below the streets, the home of the Alvads when the earth roared with fire and the skies split. If there is a roof—and there must be, they are below ground, aren’t they?—then it cannot be seen. The sides of the old buildings fade to darkness, like a sky without stars. A bleeding crescent of a moon hangs suspended in the air far above in this faux sky, and never shifts, never waxes, never wanes, locking the streets below in a night that has gone on since the first moments of the Valterrian. The streets below are narrow and dark, they twist and twine, sloping up and down without reason or rhyme and meeting at odd angles. Its beauty is grotesque, twisted—the stones of the Streets Below were twisted by the hands that made them, and their minds and hearts were broken. Its patterns are strange and wrong, and this place follows its own rules, any only those familiar with it can navigate the Streets Below with any ease. Old things fester in these streets—families that have existed and struggled to survive since the first days of Alvadas find their homes here, the government’s offices lie somewhere in this labyrinth of stone and night. And visitors, the homeless, the restless dead gather and wander the streets, searching for a home, or a purpose, or something to eat. It is a dark place, and the Alvads revel in it. They sing and dance and laugh beneath the red moon, in the midst of the mourning dead and below the bleeding moon.