Kovah

Kovah sits on a high plateau of basalt, a city of solitary workshops connected by a web of pneumatic tubes that hum with the transit of messages. The inhabitants are rarely seen in the streets; they dwell in high towers of brick and iron, their windows glowing late into the night with the blue light of arc lamps. Each citizen is a sovereign of their own small domain, crafting intricate clockwork birds or weaving tapestries of copper wire that capture the radio waves of distant stars. They value the integrity of the mechanism above all else, and their greeting is a silent nod, an acknowledgment of the work that remains to be done.

The city is not silent, however. The air is filled with the rhythmic clatter of printing presses and the hiss of steam from the central exchange. In the lower districts, great archives of punch cards store the collective memory of the city, indexed by a system known only to the oldest librarians. Travelers are welcomed, but they are expected to bring a piece of raw material—a cog, a lens, a spool of thread—to add to the city's infinite project. Kovah is a fortress of autonomy, built by those who believe that to build something with one's own hands is the only way to prove one exists.