Vulcan Town: Lava Square – Polytechnic University – Observatory
The cradle of most of modern machinery, the forefront of modern engineering, and the only place with a public square with a lava pit in the world.
Vulcan Town is not within the caldera's main depression – it is located inside a separate crater that protrudes to the northwest from the rim around the caldera. A low mountain ridge in the southeast of Vulcan Town isolates it from the other districts of Glade City. A steep and winding road across the ridge used by travellers in the past has been replaced with a gently sloping tunnel.
The crater of Vulcan Town was where the first ever entry tunnel of the future Glade City was constructed. Eligric, a Germanic king of Antiquity, wished to open an easy entrance into the caldera from his side and thus ordered his builder named Isaak Brockhaus to dig a tunnel in the northeast of the crater. Isaak and his workers successfully completed the task. The next order from the satisfied king was to build a keep inside the crater. Isaak found a suitable spot and laid the stone foundation. But one day, when the builders were raising walls, something cracked suddenly and loudly under them, and in the next moment a whole chunk of the ground vanished in a wide fissure, taking the unfinished building and those unlucky souls beside it, including Isaak Brockhaus.
Apparently, it was one of the previously mentioned "brittle hollows", the largest ever and a very unique one, as no other such chasm has ever been discovered on the surface, and these "hollows" have been known to occur in the deeper mines.
The incident scared the Germanic people, who ascribed it to one or another otherworldly cause, and led to their temporary withdrawal from the crater and the tunnel. Some even claim it had been used by Eligric's political rivals to undermine his authority, as his own demise came not too long after Isaak's.
The deadly pit is still there to this day, in the centre of Lava Square in Vulcan Town. The edges of the opening have been cut and smoothed into a circle, which had to be enclosed with a wrought iron dome, following numerous tragedies (there was a fence before, which, sadly, had proven to be ineffective on more than one occasion). Even though now public safety is a concern, a rather grim rumour has it that in the less enlightened times the pit was used for executions.
Anyone brave enough can ascend the stairs to the walkways that join above the dome and glance down the gaping abyss. Hundreds of feet underneath there is a dim red and orange glow, as if emitted by a monstrous heap of hot embers. The air, deep down blurry with heat, blows out of the chasm's opening like a warm breath of a tremendous beast. Truly, standing there might get fairly anxious, if one thinks about all those perished in the fiery gorge, and before long you find yourself giving in to the local tales of ghosts crawling out of the inferno in the darkness of the night.
While the Germanics were retreating, the Rus advanced. The largest tribe to ever come to the caldera, led by a war princess Milica of the Protasovs, entered the crater from the southwest. When the Germanic tunnel had been discovered, she carefully studied it herself and then ordered her people to build a similar one on the Rus side. It was her who established the first permanent settlement in the crater, which she often visited, while keeping her main residence in the lands outside, west of the caldera.
And that is the history of both gateways of Vulcan Town, Milica's Gate (the southwestern one) and Isaak's Gate (the northeastern one). The construction of Wolven Gate and Fortress Gate has greatly reduced the traffic coming through Isaak's Gate, while Milica's Gate remains a rather busy entry point.
A single institution has dominated Vulcan Town for nearly five hundred years – the Polytechnic University. It grew from the medieval smithies of a fort (it currently serves as the university's Museum of Technology) that were prolific with their studies of properties and applications of various materials, especially the abundant metals. Apprentices flocked to the northwestern crater to learn the craft from the renowned artisans, who meticulously documented all their findings. In time, academic research and its practical incarnation separated from each other, the former continued by a college of scholars, the latter taken over by dedicated craftsmen and manufacturers. This is particularly noticeable in the arms industry, which has been of great importance to Glade City, as it ensures its sovereignty.
Extensive mining fed its own empirical branch of knowledge, which would later evolve into the science of geology. The needs of mining operations have also been a constant incentive for innovation in engineering. It is the University of Vulcan Town that has given the world the steam engine and electricity, which are rapidly transforming the face of the human civilization everywhere.
In addition to all of the above, two major roads that crossed at Vulcan Town carried not only people and wares, but the gradually accumulating knowledge of other lands as well.
Today, the University has two major schools of Natural Sciences and Applied Sciences, with the ongoing debate about separating certain subjects from the latter into a third school – Human Sciences.
The Museum of Technology demonstrates a wide assortment of machinery and mechanisms invented in the University and many of which are crucial to the Glade City's existence. Even if you are not partial to scientific pursuits, there is an exhibit I think anyone will find entertaining – a model of Glade City itself! It is a replica, of course, but of an impressive size: Thirty feet long and twenty feet high. This might be a frivolous comparison, but the replica does resemble a pie, with a quarter of it cut out in the cross section manner. And what a pie it is! On top, it has the caldera mountain rim and the city districts, made out of rock and papier-mache, respectively, carefully painted and with the exhaustive attention to slightest details. But the main purpose of the replica is to show what lies below the city: At the cut-out, an astounded visitor sees a convoluted maze of tunnels and metal pipes, piercing the bedrock downwards and branching out like the roots of a tree, with the very bottom of the replica being a vivid image of the scorching magma.
Astrology was once considered a genuine academic discipline, as the scholars of the past believed the celestial bodies held influence over the earthly substances, and thus even smiths and other artisans had to take heed of the sky observations for the sake of their trade. Now regarded as nothing but a superstition, astrology nonetheless kept a scholar's gaze studying the skies, which paved the road for its heir – astronomy. And twenty two years ago the University obtained means for ample discoveries in that field, as that was the time the University's Observatory was completed. It was built on the slopes of the highest peak of the whole caldera mountain system, Star Cusp, and is accessible by a sequence of three lifts. The viewing platform at Sentinel Peak, slightly below, is visible from there, and you can see the lands to the northeast, towards the river Catoux and Germania, but everything on the ground is too remote and too small to make out. A visit to the Observatory should be arranged beforehand – for this, speak to the University's administration. As I have been told, even amateur astronomers are sometimes allowed to stay for overnight observations with the telescope alongside the University's scientists.