Zep Tepi

The city of Zep Tepi is a magnificent place filled with strong architecture that rises above the city streets and striking processions of nobles as they march on eunuch-borne litters with silken veils to keep out the stinging insects.  It has been rebuilt several times, each time more splendid than the last, as each pharaoh creates some personal monument or landmark to commemorate his existence.  These edifices take the form of fountains, new buildings, statues, or gold-plated masjid.  Several strange landmarks such as a circle of arches placed in the center of an open garden, give tribute to rulers now all but forgotten.

Zep Tepi is a blaze of color.  Embroidered curtains sway between pillars decorated with gold and ivory marking he edges of masjid, wealthy houses, and even moderately well-established shops.  Even in lower class areas, where such curtains are too expensive to hang, the shops have archways, delicately ornamented in gold and ivory or colored tiles.  Even where a building has been ruined, their remains bare and delicate framework crafted by hand over many hours of work and as beautiful as many of the overworked pieces of the noble quarter.  It is a city where each step is carefully planned, and the stones of the street are often festooned with small carvings done by artists practicing their craft.  Artwork and beauty truly are everywhere.

Innumerable figures carved in low relief are painted in gorgeous colors against the sides of the buildings forming mosaic or frescoed scenes.  Some are bright and vibrant while others have faded over the years, and, while coloring still clings to them, the ark grey marble beneath shines through like bones through briht flesh.  Gleaming in the sunlight, the great processions move from one side of the city to the other, tracing their way through the noble and merchant's quarters towards the throne of the King of Kings.


The city itself has a chaste outline and a delicacy of structure between the curve of its streets and the high spires of the tallest buildings -- a practiced dance of stone and te movement of its citizens that is like nothing else.  Here is the first true worship of sculpture, the first brilliant awakening of the sculptor's art and it is strewn like candy through every corridor of the city itself.  Even in the poorest neighborhoods, the doorways are carved and the stones of the street speakof legends and myths.  Faces are carved into te walls of the alleyways by beggars pleading for some food to reward their simple talent.  Even children shape clay by the fountains where their mothers wash the family linen.  The monolithic sculptures of the nobe quarter, the tributes to pharaoh and consort were designed to express the majesty of nobility and the towering eye of the gods.  The sculpture of Mallaham, influenced by the genies and the strange studies of the alchemists and wizards there, sufers from indistinct perspectives and a curious distortion of the human frame -- muscles are strained as if the form itself is oppressed by its own existence and driven down y mortality.  However, in Zep Tepi people go quietly about their affairs conscious of their human pride.  Here the human dignity of ordinary people is expressed as well as giving honor and tribute to the divine.  Zep Tepi is not simply a city of nobility: it is a city of all humanity.

Zep Tepi has overcome numerous obstacles to emerge as the bustling center of commerce that it is today, but its roots still remain in the culture and attitudes of the highest nobility and the lowest peasant.  The great walls of the city enclose a fairly modern world, shut off from the dangers and mysteries of the desert.  Sometimes it is even possible to forget entirely the desert that reigns outside the high marble walls.

A thin river trails through the eastern half of Zep Tepi supplying both commerce and water to the city.  The eastern quarters of the city are considered to be the "wealthy" and "merchant" area, while the northern (toward the ocean) and western portions are dirtier, watered by wells rather than fresh flowing water, and generally considered less prestigious and more dangerous for travelers.  The easternmost portion of Zep Tepi borders the Lachrymose Sea and is constructed on a great rise above the city.  On top of that rise is the largest building in the city; the Khasbah tiz Ouregis.  Other significant places within the city include the Enhatyaka Masjid, the Ribat-kel-Fatah or "Victory Fortress" bridge across the Rabhaszem river, the Grand Bazaar, and the Palace of the Pharaoh.