Even in ruins Naulochos is magnificent, its cracked crystal minarets reflecting sunlight onto the dazzling remains of the city’s diamond dome. Enduring the ravages of time and scavengers alike, Naulochos’s old grandeur can still be discerned in the shells of its towers and skyscrapers, in the vine-covered Arcturian colossi, and in the long-deserted Pyramid Arena where the Ctjn elite once gathered to watch T’ltssk sky-jugglers and Xoulic shadowphages perform in the center sphere.

Circling the Pyramid are the scarred remnants of the Avenue of the Planets, beneath which one can find Naulochos’s elaborate subway and sewer systems, followed by the remains of its sister city Antikyra. Though less visited than its above-ground sibling, Antikyra’s skeleton holds at least as many engineering marvels, from the massive array of cloning tanks ringing its perimeter to the great generators that powered Naulochos for decades to the bone factories that recycled their workforce into the tanks. The arrival of newer, outside power sources would render those generators obsolete, along with the Antikyrans that operated them, and give rise to the structures remaining at Antikyra’s heart: the doppelganger gardens that delighted so many Naulochian children and the grandly macabre Circus of Mirrors that entertained their parents.

The most famous landmark in either city, of course, has not existed in any form for over 2500 years: the containment wall, completely destroyed within minutes of losing power one morning in 5291, allowing a lethal tide of twinned flesh to spill into the streets above.

—Recorder 3000-21