| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Skullcup

Page history last edited by D Morin 15 years, 5 months ago

Skullcup

 

 

The mining town near Dosin Pali which was created specifically to hold the prisoners for the otataral mines.

 


 

'Beneth had picked her within hours of her arrival at Skullcup, the mining camp in the Dosin Pit.'

DG, UK mmpb, p.116

 

'If there was enough cheese and bread she could save some for Heboric, though he insisted that it was fruit and meat that was needed. But both were worth their weight in gold, and just as rare in Skullcup."

DG, UK mmpb, p.118

 

"A single Malazan guard waited at Nearlight's gate. Beyond him stretched the raised road that led into the pit town."

DG, UK mmpb, p.119

 

"Rubble-filled pits lined the raised road until it joined the other two roads at the Three Fates crossing, a broad fork that was flanked by two squat Dosii guardhouses. North of Twistings Road, and on their right as they approached the forks, the Deep Mine Road; to the south and on their left ran Shaft Road, leading to the worked-out mine where the dead were desposed of each dusk.

 

The body wagon was nowhere to be seen, meaning it had been held up on its route through the pit town with more than the usual number of bodies being brought and tossed onto its bed.

 

They crossed the fork and continued on to Work Road. Past the north Dosii guardhouse was Sinker Lake, a deep pool of turqoise-coloured water stretching all the way to the north pit wall. It was said that the water was cursed and to dive into it was to disappear. Some believed a demon lived in its depths. Heboric asserted the lack of buoyancy to the quality of the lime-saturated water itself. In any case, few slaves were foolish enough to try and escape in that direction, for the pit wall was as sheer on the north side as it was on the others, forever weeping water over a skin of deposits that glimmered wet, polished bone.

...

Beyond the pit was a lifeless desert and withered rock, with no drinkable water in any direction for days. Those slaves who somehow made it up to the pit edge, and then eluded the patrols on Beetle Road, the track that surrounded the pit, had left their bones in the desert's red sands. Few got that far, and the spikes named Salvation Row on the sheer wall of the Tower at Rust Ramp displayed their failure for all to see.

...

Work Road ran its worn cobbles past Bula's Inn on the right and the row of brothels on the left before opening out into Rathole Round. In the round's centre rose Sawark's Keep, a hexagonal tower of cut limestone three storeys high. Only Beneth among all the slaves had ever been inside.

 

Twelve thousand slaves lived in Skullcup, the vast mining pit thirty leagues north of the island's lone city on the south coast, Dosin Pali. In addition to them and the three hundred guards there were locals: prostitutes for the brothels, serving staff for Bula's Inn and the gambling halls, a caste of servants who had bound their lives and the lives of their families to the Malazan soldiery, hawkers for the struggling market that filled Rathole Round on Rest Day, and a scattering of the banished, destitute and the lost who'd chosen a pit town over the rotting alleyways of Dosin Pali.

DG, UK mmpb, p.120-1-2

 

"The Dosii regulars have lost all discipline. They ignore the duty rosters, spend all their time tossing coins at Bula's There's seventy-five of us and over two hundred of them..."

- Pella

DG, UK mmpb, p.119

 

"A fire had been started in Skullcup's western arm - somewhere on Spit Row."

DG, UK mmpb, p.217

 

"She ran on, the alley paralleling Rust Ramp. A hundred paces ahead waited Darkhall and the barracks."

DG, UK mmpb, p.215

 

Sawark's Keep

 

"Directly ahead, Sawark's Keep rose squat from the from the centre of Rathole Round, its huge, rough-cut blocks of stone stained from the greasy smoke that never really left Skullcup. A lone guard stood at the entrance, a pike held loosely in one hand.'

DG, UK mmpb, p.156

 

"The ground floor was an armoury, weapons lining the walls in locked racks. A table and three chairs were off to one side, the leavings of the guards' breakfast crowded the small tabletop. Up from the room's centre rose an iron staircase.

 

They ascended a single flight to Sawark's office. The captain sat behind a desk that seemed cobbled together from driftwood. His chair was plushly padded with a high back. A large, leatherbound tally book was opened before him."

DG, UK mmpb, p.156

 

 

Deep Mine

 

"That he had no hands gave the Pit Captain sufficient reason to assign Heboric to the carts. Daily he struggled at his harness, hauling hundreds of pounds of broken rock up Deep Mine to the shaft's Nearlight. In every other harness was an ox. The beasts hauled three carts, while Heboric pulled but one..."

DG, UK mmpb, p.118

 

"...Deep Mine, with its thick, rich and straight vein of Otataral running far under the hills..."

DG, UK mmpb, p.118

 

Twistings

 

'They were in the third reach of Twistings Far shaft. The reach had been gouged out by the Rotlegs and was barely high enough to crawl for most of its quarter-mile length. The air was close and stank of Otataral dust.'

DG, UK mmpb, p.116

 

"Once they neared the main shaft, it was four hundred paces to Twistings' Nearlight...Twistings followed a folded vein, rising and diving, buckling and turning through the limestone."

DG, UK mmpb, p.118

 

Deepsoil

 

"On the other side of the pit, Heboric tilled the parched earth of Deepsoil."

DG, UK mmpb, p.153

 

Back to Seven Cities - subcontinent

Back to Geography

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.