Politics. It permeates every part of every society, but means different things to different people. Many would say that they don’t really care about politics, but really they just mean that it doesn’t meaningfully affect them in any way that they notice. Those sorts usually change their tune when that changes. In the Lowcity, “Politics” typically calls to mind images of the Lesh Ministry, the largest and by far the most influential openly political body in the city- and therefore the world. Certainly, the Lesh themselves are seen as thinking that they are the arbiters of political power in the Lowcity- not because they have seized it, but simply because the other people of the city don’t want it, don’t have the drive and constitution that would make them suitable to such work, and as a result such things naturally fall to the Lesh to handle. Of course, in this instance “matters of politics” means “things that the Lesh Ministry cares about”, and predictably this is far from an all-encompassing view of matters political. Politics exist outside of the Lesh Ministry’s purview, as of course it must: it just exists in different forms, ones that the Lesh think of as lesser- if they consider them at all. While the reach of the Ministry is broad- or deep, in the case of this subterranean city- it cannot stretch to every dark and dusty corner of the Lowcity’s endless tunnels. And as such, while the Ministry does affect the life of near enough every resident of the city, in most cases to a not-insignificant degree, other forms of “politics” exist in those tunnels too.

Perhaps it would be beneficial to analogise the Lesh Ministry as a Federal government: it manages matters of overarching importance, things that affect the city as a whole rather than individual residents, such as large-scale infrastructure projects and the overall future of the Lowcity. Most Federal governments would also control matters of foreign relations and trade, but… well. There may be one or two things that the Lesh Ministry involves itself in that are… analogous to that, too, but that is a matter for another time. If the Lesh Ministry is a Federal government, then that makes lesser matters akin to a Local one. Matters on a more personal, granular level, are handled by individuals, rather than the Ministry, with most residents making do with interpersonal relationships and networks. While the machinations of the Ministry still affect people’s lives greatly, in their day to day they are more likely to rely on people they actually know rather than the looming shadow of a horde of bureaucrats they have never and will never meet. If a major tunnel in a majority Grib neighbourhood needs some maintenance, cracked walkways or a small leak leading to standing water accumulating, that is a problem that someone’s cousin can help with. If, on the other hand, critical supports are on the brink of failing… Perhaps the Lesh should know about this. But perhaps this isn’t a tunnel the Ministry knows about, or one which branches off into areas where things the Ministry cannot know about may or may not occur. Mutual Aid is one thing, and it is an essential part of many people’s lives… but so is organised crime. People who fall through the cracks will take the help they need from whomever will give it, and such deals are not always charitable. One can hardly blame someone for doing what they must to survive in a world like this. People do what they must, form the bonds and connections and unspoken policies that they must to build their society in the shadow of Society. It is not a system that replaces interaction with the machinery of Politics, but a different kind of Politics that nestles alongside the other. And of course there are Politics within Politics, necessary concessions to be made or distant relatives to appease in the name of keeping things running smoothly. Where the line is drawn between Big Politics and Local Matters is hardly clear, as well: the recycling facilities where bodies and bodily waste are reprocessed into fertiliser are certainly more closely handled by the Ministry, even if that industry is organised largely by Umbressi and Grib. And then there is the issue of the boundaries between the different peoples of the city, the old assumptions and sometimes-justified grudges… Politics is a complicated beast. An inescapable one. Like a scaffolding built of barbed wire, which holds the whole together but will cut you deep if you ever try to adjust it. 

 

The political landscape of the Lowcity has been adjusted lately, though. And with that change has come a ripple effect throughout all the strata of that subterranean place. A handful of weeks ago, Phlaighin, the current Chief Minister of the Lesh Ministry, very narrowly avoided a grisly end at the hand of a deranged assassin. What could possibly have been a one-off has quickly proven to be part of a targeted campaign against him and his administration: while no subsequent assassination attempts have been made, a number of less-direct attacks have been leveled not just at the ministry itself but its right to exist at all. Many allegations- some backed up by quite damning evidence- have been leveled against the Ministry, claiming that they have far overstepped the bounds of propriety, and of what the average citizen would think of as their duties. While most citizens have a fairly vague notion of what that purview might be, certainly concealing toxic waste dumps, interfering with independent scientific inquiry, and mysterious activities in the Reservoir far beyond the eyes of anyone else who has braved those dark waters go beyond what anyone had in mind. The gist of the allegations is simple: The Ministry is up to something, to several somethings, and if it was truly for the benefit of the average person they wouldn’t go to such lengths to conceal it. And while they are not happy that their secrets are being revealed, they are far less happy that they don’t even know who is revealing those secrets. 

 

Curfews swiftly followed the attempted assassination, as well as increased numbers of Golnur in the streets- strange ones, even by the standards of Golnur, which lash out at alleged dissidents in perfect unison almost before they have reason to act. Threats and demands have been levied at every old grudge the Ministry can think of, as the absence of a culprit makes them more paranoid by the day. It is not just their leader who has been threatened by this attack, but the unspoken hegemony of the Lesh themselves, their position at the top of the pecking order. While they know not who planned this attack, they know full well that Phlaighin was just the man who happened to sit in the leader’s seat. The real target was the system itself, the way that things are and therefore ought to be. Phlaighin himself hardly matters- indeed, while he is an excellent politician and firm hand on the wheel of leadership, he and his Ministry have acted more or less the same way that any of his predecessors or opponents would have. Some have argued that they have acted with admirable restraint, considering what they are retaliating to- and, admittedly, there have so far been no deaths. But tension is building, and in a place as small and cramped as the Low City it is only a matter of time before that tension has nowhere left to go, and the entire thing explodes.

 

Tonight, members of a number of groups have come together in order to… discuss things. In violation of the curfew they gather in a small inn- named after the family that owns it, the Kliib, in the typical Lowcity style- in a relatively cosmopolitan region of the Lowcity, as a sort of neutral ground between parties. Politics tends to move slowly, even if you don’t call it politics, and while everyone has come to this meeting with an eye toward presenting a unified front to the Ministry, few believe that will be accomplished in just one night. After all, these groups are anything but unified- despite the number of unions involved. Representatives of the mining, manufacturing, and farming unions are in attendance, as well as smaller coalitions of interest groups and community pillars, each with their own agenda, many of them typically at odds with each other, all coming together to present a united front to the oppression of the Ministry. It ought to be a heartwarming display of solidarity. Instead, despite the best efforts of the Facilitators present in the room, it is shaping up to be yet another display of how difficult it can be to get people to act in their own best interests, if doing so would also benefit a rival. 

 

The Unionists perhaps have the most at stake, at least in the short term. For predictable and tedious reasons, the unions have been one of the most prominent targets of the Ministry’s wrath since the assassination attempt. This is allegedly because the Unionists are among the prime suspects of organising the attempt, but most everyone else knows this is just an excuse to stamp out working class organising while making an example for others, and as a result the Unionists present are fighting hard for the rest of the Lowcity’s workers to unite with them in the form of a general strike. This would be the first of its kind in the history of the city, and part of the difficulty in advancing this position is simply explaining it across the boundaries of culture and species. 

 

The Moderates are a coalition in the loosest sense of the word, bound together only by the shared sentiment that things have gone a bit far and that everyone should calm down a little. They would like things to return to how they were immediately before the assassination attempt, regardless of what material conditions may have led to said assassination- nobody is sure exactly why the Alcedinidae were hired, but everyone has their theories. The Moderates were largely unaffected by most things that might drive a man to commit such an act, but they are very much affected by the current state of things and thus have been reluctantly pushed out of complacency. Everyone present is aware that they are useful, but that their alliance is brittle and bound to be discarded before long by either side with very little notice. 

 

The Idealists have been waiting for something like this for a long time: a crisis point in Lowcity society that forces a coalition like this, for people to wake up and finally gain some class consciousness. They are mostly younger people, a lot of them intellectuals or pseudo-intellectuals who like talking in grand terms about how things ought to be in small taverns much like this one- in fact it was the Radical faction who suggested that this meeting could be held in Kliib’s Tavern, as the owning family have shown themselves to be sympathetic to such things. The Idealists make good points, have read a lot of compelling arguments that they then make themselves, and want the best for everyone. However they are, most importantly, annoying. They are well read, compared to most others present, and they make sure that everyone knows it, but they are crucially inexperienced in what their critics would call “the real world”. Their ideas are good, but very high-concept, and they struggle to articulate how to act on them in the immediate future. Most other factions are more interested in convincing the Idealists of their ideas, rather than coming around to the Idealists’.

 

Then there are the Radicals, and the various factions within. They are tired of negotiating, tired of incremental improvements and concessions being undone when the Ministry decides to remind people where the true power lies. They have been of the opinion for some time that what is needed is something big, something that will shock people out of complacency and disrupt the status quo enough that it can never settle back into the same shape. The Idealists would call them Accelerationists, and indeed they do not shy away from the fact that things will likely get worse before they get better. But here, now, things have already worsened, will continue to worsen. The time has passed for appeasement and compromise: the Cult Alcedinidae, whatever their motives or the motives of their employer, have handed the people of the Lowcity an opportunity they would be fools to miss. They must act now, decisively, aggressively. Violently? Perhaps that is what is necessary, although there is something of a split in this faction between the more openly aggressive members and the ones who call themselves Holoranites, who instead advocate for injury to the city’s infrastructure rather than its people, as a way of reminding the Ministry that they are all stuck together and that the small people are the ones with true power. 

 

Presiding over the discussion- or argument, as is frequently the case- are the Facilitators. Because while there are representatives of almost every people that lives in the Lowcity present, Grib and Skitterling, Fallen and Umbressi, even some Lesh who understand that things have gone too far, these people are spread throughout all the factions at play. Here, species hardly matters- except for the Lesh, who frequently catch some stray shots that they must bear in the name of decorum. Only absent are the Hohi and Golnur, who only ever have one appendage in Lowcity matters and don’t involve themselves in politics.  Much as the original founders of the Lowcity struggled together out of necessity, carving out this scrap of safety in a dying world, so too must this coalition- nameless now as the Lowcity was in those bygone days- put aside differences and grudges alike to face this challenge. The Facilitators have been working toward this kind of cross-cultural understanding, this coming together of peoples, ever since they came into being; while they are hardly happy about the circumstances that make it necessary, being that they are far from accellerationists, they would be fools not to take advantage of this opportunity.

 

But that is the word of the day, isn’t it? The thing that hangs over all this, the nagging concern at the back of everyone’s mind: who benefits most from this opportunity? Who created it, and who is most able by that creation to take advantage of it? Nobody knows who, if anyone, hired the Cult. Nobody knows who has been disseminating this damaging information about the Ministry’s doings, their projects and their plotting. All anyone can do is speculate, and try to make the most of the situation. Some among the Idealists and Unionists are attempting to walk a fine line: not openly condemning the Ministry’s Adversary, but not openly supporting them either, instead expressing how understandable it is that some have been driven to the point where they do extreme things, how the Ministry itself engages in unsavoury acts as these leaks continue to prove. Many among the other factions are somewhat uncomfortable with this, as it could potentially give the Ministry reason they hardly need to come down even harder on the subversives. These individuals, and indeed most everyone at this meeting, have been extremely displeased with how many Radicals have openly endorsed the Adversary as a revolutionary leader, and are deeply uncertain if the Radicals’ presence at the meeting is a good idea at all. But then, of course, every faction thinks every other is bringing down the movement as a whole, every faction is the only one who Gets It and all the others are wreckers here to bring the whole thing down. The only reason the whole meeting hasn’t turned into an actual brawl, and instead is simmering along as a cacophony of six or so languages being shouted over each other- as well as smells, there are after all several Grib in the room- is the presence of the Facilitators. This is their moment, after all, the thing they’ve been waiting for. Just getting these disparate groups into a room is an achievement in and of itself, but those present are keenly aware that if things go poorly this could be the last meeting of its kind, in addition to the first.

 

Somehow, despite all the shouting and banging of cups on tables, everyone hears the knock at the door. All are immediately nervous; there is, after all, a sign on the door to the Kliib’s Tavern clearly says that it is closed for a private function, and so the first thing that comes to the attendee’s minds is that it is the Ministry at the door, here to shut things down as brutally as “necessary”. Old Kliib walks over to the door in the silence that follows the knock, humming softly to themself as they often do, wiping their long Grib fingers on their apron calmly as if this is a perfectly normal night and the person at the door could be anyone at all other than an armed squad of goons. The only thing that hints at their nervousness is the shaky little breath Old Kliib gives before opening the door, the sense of finality to the gesture. 

 

The door opens… and the tension shifts, but does not dissipate, as the revealed figure is not Lesh, nor Golnur… but a Skitterling, who hands Old Kliib an envelope and leaves. Just a delivery man- but for whom? All eyes are on Old Kliib as the confused Grib opens the envelope and takes out a sheaf of papers- real paper. Wordlessly, Kliib looks through the pages, their hands starting to shake as they read the words on the first, then look at the images on the subsequent. After a time, Old Kliib simply hands the papers over to the nearest Facilitator then disappears to the Tavern’s storeroom, where they busy themselves with organising and reorganising things to take their mind off what they have just read, what they have just seen. All is silent in the Tavern’s main room as the papers are passed around from person to person, hand to claw to hand, as everyone takes in what has just been given to them. Then, for the benefit of those unable to read any of the languages in the note, its contents are finally spoken aloud by the Facilitator who first read it. 

 

The note itself is short, but for its repetitions in several languages of the Grib, Fallen, Umbressi, and Lesh. The gist is simple: do with this what you will. The images… The images that follow are what truly matter. The Facilitator’s voice shakes as she describes them, her horror increased no doubt by the fact that she herself is Lesh and therefore feels some degree of responsibility for what the Ministry has done. But then again, in this instance… they are all responsible, really. All sit in silence, again, as they ponder what is to be done with this information. The Adversary has reached out to them- there is no one else this could be, and the dissemination of knowledge that the Ministry would rather be forgotten is clearly their modus operandi- and given them perhaps the most shocking, the most damning revelation so far. 

 

They do not know what response The Adversary expected of them. Most likely they were intended to release the information, the images, that have been given to them, to further harm the Ministry’s reputation, likely destroy it. The members of this meeting are not stupid, though- most of them, at least. They know that this would be the last straw, that the Ministry would crack down even further… but more than that, they know that the Low City would be forever changed if this got out. Perhaps the Adversary intends for this to quell their revolutionary impulses, to show that if they continue down this path the Low City they know will forever disappear. In that instance it may as well be the Ministry themselves giving them this information, knowing that they would be shocked into silence. It is not lost on the assembled that they have gone in an instant from trying to use the actions of a force they do not understand for their own purposes, to being manipulated by that same force with their own reaction. The ambiguity of the matter has crossed a line at some point, from an opportunity to a nightmare, and they are paralysed by it. Slowly, one by one, the members of the assembly leave Kliib’s Tavern, with even the Radicals only giving a half-hearted attempt at whipping up a response to this new information, a way to use the shock they all feel to their advantage. Perhaps in time they will all come to a consensus over what they should do, but they will not tonight.

 

As it turns out, they did not have time for that. Perhaps one of the attendees decided that they could not keep this secret for even a single night. More likely, The Adversary only needed them as a scapegoat, for them to see these images before anyone else, and thus incriminate themselves. It matters not. The next morning, the common places of the Low City are filled with crowds of people staring at pictures plastered on the walls, on boards, strewn throughout the streets. One could have thought that the Observatory had released a new set of images, but while these are images they are not of space. They are far, far, closer to home. The pictures, printed on paper- real paper- are hard to comprehend at first. After all, none in the Low City have seen anything like the things depicted in them before- or so they think, at first. Then a moment of clarity hits, the vague familiarity of the subject of the pictures suddenly coming into sharp focus, and people begin crying out in horror, disgust. The things in the picture are bizarre, unrecognisable- until the people see the patterns on what can only be skin, unique but distinctly familiar to any who have seen their like before. The scale of the things in the images is difficult to gauge- until the people see that there are people in the images as well, suited Lesh tiny next to the things that take up the bulk of the frame, the bulk of the cavern depicted in the images. The things that run across the ground next to those Lesh could be cables, or strange grooves in the stone floor- until the people see, on the ground and walls next to where they stand now, providing the very air they breathe, the flesh tubes that have been there all their lives, which they take for granted and whose origin they have never really given much thought to. Until now. Until they woke up and saw, plastered all throughout their city, pictures of massive, deformed, imprisoned Hohi, almost unrecognisable, hidden in some cave, with those fleshy tubes running from their flesh and out into holes in the walls, from where they lead to and all throughout the Low City. Like veins in a body, providing air and life. What they are seeing in these images is a central organ they never knew their city had. What they are seeing is the truth of what it takes for them to live. 

 

Too late, whistles blow and Lesh Officers descend upon the gathered crowds, leading squads of the insectoid Golnur who move as one as they attempt to disperse the crowds. But the people have had enough. They have seen too much. They want answers. The whistles are drowned out by shouts. The shouts are drowned out by screams. And then there is only chaos and darkness, as the Low City begins to tear itself apart.

Far above the streets where the Low City’s citizens battle for the soul of their home, lies a warren of empty tunnels. The last lingering drifts of a strange mist are already dissipating. The Hohi have departed from their odd little part of the Low City, returning to the skies where they are free from the underground world’s chaos, its abuses. All that remains now are pictures, printed on real paper, plastered over their walls, showing them the true reason they had been drawn to the Low City all these years. Unlike the people left far below, they have a choice in the matter, and for now they have chosen to leave this place behind. Perhaps they will return someday- their minds are, after all, unknowable, their decisions inscrutable. But by the time they do, there may be nothing left of the strange, dark, and despicable place that was called The Low City.