Heliamphora.

Of all the efficient little pockets of industrialization that settled on the Eastern Fringe, near the sea, Helianth is a city of a particular reputation. Five miles inland, early Post-Crisis era (the year AD1887 by common reckoning) settlers of the Technophile vein began a remarkable construction, in a typical Technophile fashion, expanding in all directions with little order and planning that remains unfinished and expanding to this day. The verdant surrounds are nothing remarkable for the East; moderately sized inland fauna and flora (Volume II: Flora and Fauna), a host of native uncultivated (Volume I: Peoples), offshore winds (Volume VI: Goegraphy). Helianth comprises a sprawling web of experimental architecture and radical lines and shapes, a cooling spire breaks above the cloud-line from the center of the city, punctuating and highlighting the haphazard approach to architecture often displayed by this diverse people. The superstructure is not unlike Old-World Paris, save the Seine (readers may wish to consult Selected Readings for the Old-World Scholar, Volume II: Empires, for a more detailed overview); an irregular hexagon conveniently sectioned into elaborately intertwining districts. Due to the libertarian nature of the Technophiles, no pattern to sequential ordering within the city is present. Simply examining the architecture going by can be enormously interesting for those so-inclined: efficient utilitarian boxed houses flowing into renegade pieces of construction, jutting invasive angry lines into their somewhat more classical neighbours. Having no regulation for this area of expression, the superstructure of the city quickly grew out of hand, nowadays more akin to an 'urban jungle' (if I may be so quaint) of complex interlocking cables and the majority of the recently made edifice seemingly at war with one another. To the outsider, modern Helianth can be a jarring experience.

The ruling body, known simply as the Bureau, had, as tends to be the case, well-intentioned origins. The core ideal being liberty in intellectual and artistic pursuits. To that end, Helianth suffered very little government regulation at its inception, which accounts for its rapid and unpredictable expansion. The Bureau existed to facilitate this through efficient public services, not to govern and impose. This largely anti-interventionist policy would inevitably serve as a fulcrum of much social tension in later years. A near completely autonomous society gave way to a steep economic division. Many of the polymaths of the original settlement within Helianth were well-versed in business-minded matters and quickly sought to elevate their position, steepening their socio-economic distance from the more artistically inclined of the Technophiles. The artist culture slowly fell into a poverty. Slums were established, shanties became the common accommodation in particular districts. And for all the public services offered by the Bureau, they could not keep up with the skyrocketing population. Before long it was not uncommon for effluent to flow into the streets from the underdeveloped sewerage system. At the same time, the boundaries and population of the metropolis expanded faster than the power-grid could manage, and for a time the entirety of the settlement was subjected to power blackouts. The Black Decade (AD1902-1913), as it's known. Infrastructure had largely broken down, and during this period of strife Helianth was to be thrown into a geo-political void. It would appear that the Technophiles had grown so distant from their host culture so as to lose their remarkable efficiency in all matters industrial, however the precise circumstances leading to the Black Decade are not currently clear to modern historians, and I will not be so uncouth as to descend into radical speculation.

During this time of economic, political, and social desperation, a number of solutions were proposed and ultimately rejected by the Bureau as unfeasible. Several possibilities were explored to the point of new power generation, but they were quickly shown to be hazardous and unsustainable for a city so large. In fact, there appeared to be no source of power efficient enough to support the population.

- Excerpt from A Brief Catalogue of the Eastern Fringe, Volume III: Cities and Settlements. Prof. C. F. Hutchens, 1987, New London Royal Pub. House

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You ever been to Helianth, kid? I don't suppose you would've. On the Eastern Fringe, east coast of the Americas, out west across the Atlantic, funny that 'innit? Nice place to fly, even-like offshore winds, the whole bit. Maybe one day cap'n 'll stop fucking around and take us out where there's real life waitin' for us.

Funny thing, Helianth, settled by Technos, back in the days when that kind of settlin' was all the buzz. You know how it goes; ragtag bunch of social outcasts cast off into the void and make some'in for 'emselves. Anyway, these Techs were all about freedom, but they were so free that the whole city collapsed one day 'cause they didn't have enough bloody power for all the freedom people were needin'. So they went for a couple o' years without power and one day just surged back onto the map, they found new power.

I don't know what the hell it is, fuck, I'm no savant or anythin', but it's some weird type of science that, that does things like Helianth does. What comes outta' the power stations is clear, and hits the air and all of a sudden shines. Whatever comes outta' the power stations from makin' power hits the air or light goes through it or whatever, and it just sparkles, like slow-fallin' stars. What the problem is is that it's also toxic, this sparkle dust stuff, so the generators only go on at night, when all the people are locked up behind their filters and windows and chokin' brick walls. It's a city, it's like that, kid. So all the sparklin' dust comes out at night, and after a while, at about 2 in the mornin' I reckon, the whole city is shinin'. It's not part of the air, so it doesn't blow away, and it all collects over Helianth in this great bloody big lit up cloud of some'in. It's like a magic city from far away, you can see it on the plains for miles, a starfield, some call it. So, just picture it, yeah? This completely quiet city, crazy buildin' like the Techs do, glowin' from all places like the heavens come to earth.

The thing is though, about all the little firefly things, is that they are definitely poisonous. We were well sick after havin' just flown over it all briefly, back when I was quartermaster on a cowboy ship, bounty hunters, I'll tell you that one sometime if you're quiet. And it bein' all shiny-like, night animals from those parts head in every night to see what all this sparkly business is about: small birds, big birds, bugs, stray cats and dogs, bigger ones like sheep and all that, and even some of the local native people, if you'll pardon my animal comment before. Those ones have even some of 'em made it all part of their myths and stories, like the lights are the souls of their dead families. The poor blighters don't know how right they are. They come about from whatever it is night animals, er... folk, things, all that do at night, right into the middle of that big blob of poisonous starlight. And they just drop dead. You can hear it when you stay the night there; big thumps on the roofs and the ground when they just keel over and cark it, poor buggers. And then you wake up in the morning after the sea winds have blown all the stuff away and the Bureau, that bein' their government, come to clean it all up, and this is the really horrific part this, the streets are lined with dead things. A layer of dead birds and mice and bugs and lizards completely covers the streets, and the bigger ones, somehow they all manage to clump about the thinner alleyways, so you've got your sheep and cows and bigger cats and tribespeople all collapsed in heaps in the alleyways. And then, even bloody worse, all the poorer folk come in and take it all away, they take it all as a free meal. You can see big old women carryin' sacks of dead mice any day o' the week, all lumpy sacks of dead things and the like. A right sea of deceased animals and people, bein' swept away by the currents of the poor. And it all starts again. More corpses the next day to clean up, and they all take it as part of their life, the Helians, as they call 'emselves.

But, what's really right disturbin' is the tribespeople that come in at night. They drop dead right at the moment that they're believin' that they're talkin' to their dead ancestors or whatever, so they've got these great bloody toothy smiles on their faces. And the smiles stay even when they've choked to death on shiny poison dust, so everywhere in the mornin', there are these big piles of dead men, smilin' like there's no tomorrow. It's like rigor mortis decides to do 'em a favour.

Transcribed (with revisions for clarity) from a conversation with Quartermaster Dale, on board the Good Ship Nereid during my stay as a powder monkey (1939-1942).