D: Dangerous dreams & dynamic dead demagogues

Traveller's tales of dreams and late agitators

A surprisingly large amount of the documents describing the Free City of Jubylon are travel descriptions of various people passing by, businesspeople or alleged diplomats. Quite a few of them have described having strange dreams when staying in particular locations in the city, in particular the third, fifth and eighth floor of the Khemet Horus Hotel. I will go into more details about what we know about the hotel (obviously, the supposed hotel in a supposed city) in a later publication, but for now I want to focus on the dreams and discuss what we know about them.

A few things are recurring in the descriptions. One is sleep walking, where the poutier of the hotel usually stopped the guests before they went out the main door. A few did make it out, where a few were injured along the way. The sleep walkers that escaped getting hurt all ended up in Harbour Square sitting on benches outside art museums and facing the ocean just before the sunrise. Quite a few romances began that way, most of them very passionate for better or worse.

The descriptions of the dreams all have various common elements. A dark blue horse, almost black. An outdoor seemingly natural labyrinth with mountainous walls. Scenes from the founding of the city of Jubylon. That and at least one of the two most famous demagogues from Jubylon.

Alexander Thymós was an agitator who argued for a reform in the city’s health support, including a brand new sewerage system that later ended up being passed with the administration’s headquarters being named after him. He made many enemies along the way and was banished from the city for a short while. When he returned to the city, he was honoured and respected, but had a hard time finding his place in Jubylon again. Two years after his return, Thymós died by his own hand by drinking raw liquid opium. Claire Vérité was a fine artist from high society who burned several of her works publicly in protest of the state of the city’s defences and Jubylon’s neutrality when war broke out with an invasion forty miles from the city. She argued for individual responsibilities and freedom, and the duty to take up arms when it was needed to defend freedom. Her effort led to reforms being passed to improve the army and to her being banished from the city as well. She then led an expedition against the invaders. An army of artists, labourers and a few mercenaries trying to redeem themselves. No members of that invasion returned alive to Jubylon, but they did contribute to the defeat of the invading force. They disturbed supply lines and, in an spectacular lucky ambush, cut down most of the enemy general’s supply staff in a hail of machine gun fire.

Descriptions of both Thymós and Vérité match the descriptions we have from the dreams of travellers. A clean-shaven burly and bellicose man with long hair in wearing brown clothes and gloves. A thin muscular woman with fire in her eyes dressed in colourful patters with blood on her hands. They appear alone, but apparently their quest for truth and justice have continued, even beyond even death.