The old mansion

The old mansion, or palace as it is sometime known, is basically a ruin. But the gardens are quaint and of course have the new sentinel tower, the other one being inaccessible as it is within the Garden of the Dead.



It was afternoon and I left my hotel with Sabrina, a friend who lives in the southern hill. She had come to meet me with a shopper, a slim man with dark hair and darker sunglasses. Of course the weather wasn't good.



The plan was to head to the retail zone and buy a new suit and then have lunch. Usually to get there you would take the tram on Dashman Street, which splits the city in half.

The City

The palace is at the centre of everything, yet no one has been inside in years. Or seen beyond it's walls. Not even the soldiers who spend all their time guarding it.

I once asked old Toban, who runs a shop in the market selling medication that will make you see another world with red objects on the roads, whether he remembered.

"My father once told me that he had asked his grandfather what was in there. Even he couldn't remember. But he said it had always been closed but that has a child he had asked his father. He said that his father used to take messages from the city and that inside the square wall were lots of building. One was the main palace but right at the centre is an even older building and that is where the Delphine used to live."

I was impressed. "My father never remembered anything, or to ask."

"Well it was a long time ago and I doubt you could get in when there was anyone living there. Not just like that. However it was long ago. I guess there were people on the other side of the river then."

The Mall and the square without a monument

There is a pathway along the wall on the side of the market. It is quite narrow although people use it because it is the quickest route to the tourist sector and the proximity to the barracks means there's less chance of getting mugged.

The real entrance to the market is in the south via the red light district.

Walking eastwards along the path you come to the mall. It was there that I walked. In the distance ahead of me I could make out the cathedral spires. It was cold because it morning.

Legend has it that in the days of the empire there were processions up and down this road every day at 12. But that was long ago. Now it is one of the unclaimed places in Storck - along with Garden of the Dead where the old sentinel is located - and the only thing living is the trees. They are old and spindly and look like they've been living on concrete but at least they are alive. Unlike the palace at the north end of the road which looks like it is, a shell.

Once you get across the mall things liven up a bit. Carriages appear and things are starting to kick into action. I'm going to the Golden Goose hotel for some breakfast.

Albert, the head waiter at the Golden Goose believes there used to be a statue of the Delphine in the square at the end of the Mall. Now it's just a hole in the ground.

A bright crisp morning with blood on the ground

One of the curious things about Storck is the wall that separates the market from the barracks. It's red brick and fairly thin. It is about six foot so if you are tall you can see from one area to the other. The soldiers marching up and down while people stagger out from the market having taken whatever they might want to take in there. And beyond the barracks the palace, or at least it's towers.

It's curious because it seems to have been built to separate the two areas. Yet it looks like the kind of thing you'd see in a back alley rather than the divide between two widely contradictory elements of the city. Storck is pretty much split in half along that line with only the mall cutting across it where the wall stops. The financial and retail districts which are further on are separates by roads.

There is blood on the ground. Some people must have got caught out when night switched to day. Most likely they had been in the market and the door men had missed them.