Luzern, they called it. But the name itself was a whisper, a half-remembered dream woven into the very fabric of Urizen. Urizen, the first of the Four, a being of pure reason, a cartographer of the soul. Legend dictates that Luzern was born not of geological happenstance, but of a deliberate act - a solidification of his conceptual understanding of the world. It rose from the turquoise depths of Lake Lucerne, a shimmering monument to his logic, its buildings stacked with the precision of a perfectly constructed equation.
The city’s architecture is… unusual. Structures seem to defy gravity, angles are unsettlingly perfect, and the materials themselves hum with a faint, almost tangible energy. The stone, a peculiar grey-silver, reacts subtly to emotion, deepening in hue when joy permeates the air, fading to a dull slate during moments of profound sorrow. Local lore speaks of ‘resonances’ - echoes of Urizen’s thought patterns imprinted within the city’s very bones.
“The citizens of Luzern,” wrote the Cartographer Elias Thorne in his fragmented journals, “believe they are living within a vast, self-regulating algorithm. They strive for perfect order, for absolute clarity, yet find themselves perpetually grappling with paradoxes they cannot resolve.”
Lake Lucerne itself is no ordinary body of water. It’s said to be a conduit, a swirling nexus of Mercurian energy - the domain of the second of the Four, the embodiment of change and illusion. The lake's currents, particularly around the island of Einsiedeln, are notoriously unpredictable, shifting with an unnerving fluidity, reflecting not just the sky, but perhaps… other realities. Sailors whisper of phantom vessels glimpsed beneath the surface, shimmering with iridescent light, navigating paths that defy Euclidean geometry.
The ‘Mercurial Bloom,’ a phenomenon occurring every seventy-seven years, is a spectacle of impossible beauty. The lake’s surface transforms into a kaleidoscope of color, shifting through every conceivable hue, accompanied by a chorus of sounds – not of water, but of whispers and half-remembered melodies. It’s believed to be a manifestation of Urizen’s attempt to capture and contain Mercurian chaos, a desperate, ultimately futile effort.
“I witnessed,” recounted a traveler named Silas Blackwood, “a flock of birds – not birds, exactly, but beings constructed of pure light – rising from the lake. They moved with an unsettling grace, their forms constantly shifting, and for a moment, I felt as though I was staring into the heart of chaos itself.”
Luzern is a city haunted, not by ghosts in the traditional sense, but by the lingering impressions of the Four. Their influence permeates every aspect of life – the rigid adherence to schedules, the obsession with precision, the unsettling feeling of being observed. The city’s council, known as the ‘Logicians,’ is comprised of individuals who claim to be able to ‘read’ the resonances within the stone, guiding the city with a chillingly detached logic.
There are rumors of hidden chambers beneath the city, containing fragments of Urizen’s original conceptual maps, guarded by automatons powered by Mercurian energy. Some believe that finding these fragments could unlock unimaginable power, while others warn that they represent a dangerous distortion of reality.
“The city,” observed one scholar, “is a testament to the seductive allure of absolute knowledge. It’s a beautiful, terrifying prison, built upon the foundations of reason, yet forever trapped in the labyrinth of its own logic.”