Norukar, City of the Gods

Norukar, "City of the Gods", also known as Tel-Norukar

The city-state of Norukar lies just off the coast of Targa on the small cluster of islands known as Mnatta. The city is incredibly ancient, believed to predate even the Sdara Vatra. The islands appear to be several steep hills rising from the water like tapered cones. Strange spires, some hundreds of meters tall, sprout from the tops and sides of the hills like giant leafless artificial trees. They are the remnants of an ancient city, though their original purpose is unknown. The hills are terraced and entirely covered by buildings right down to the water-line.

Norukar contains a harbor, walled in and protected by several defensive towers. The buildings of the old quarter are built of stone with large, wide bases and tapering towers reaching sixty to one hundred meters in height, the tallest in pre-contact Cydoria. The newer buildings, constructed in the last twenty years using Rhakadian engineering and technology, are built of lighter concrete and are supported by skeletons of steel. Norukarian towers resemble step pyramids or ziggurats stretched tall and thin and supported by flying buttresses. Some rise as high as two hundred meters into the air. The upper stories of the buildings are connected by sky-bridges so that members of the upper classes can travel from building to building without ever descending to ground level. Small aero-skiffs transport occupants between the upper and lower stories of the towers.

The city skyline is dominated by the aero-ship terminal, a large octagonal stepped tower. It is the tallest structure in Norukar at over three hundred meters tall.

Even before contact with aliens, the technology and design of Norukar, overseen by the secretive Octavium, outshined that of all the other Cydorian city-states. Pre-contact Norukar boasted technological amenities roughly equivalent to those of late nineteenth century North America or Europe with spring-driven elevators, bondrus-drawn street-cars, steel-frame construction, and indoor plumbing.

The hills beneath Norukar are, in actuality, artificial structures built of stone, concrete, steel, and stranger unknown materials. The hills are the remains of a holy city of the Sdara Vatra. Each hill, in its day, was a single giant building in its own right. Over time the outer layers of the buildings weathered, corroded, and decayed. Today, most of the levels have collapsed. The deeper levels hide great domed and vaulted chambers and unexplored passages. This region is known as the “Under-City”. The under-city is inhabited by a race of large semi-aquatic rodents called roshu. There are several access points from the surface to the under-city and many intrepid explorers have braved the journey seeking the lost treasures of the ancients.

Norukar as it appeared during the Age of the Sdara Vatra, followed by Norukar as it appears today, with a cutaway of one of the ancient mountain-ruins.

A view of the skyline of the New Quarter, featuring the new Aero-ship terminal building.