Sungrave

Story so far

Sungrave is the greatest city of volcanic Io and the seat of House Raa, carved by mirrored lasers into Boösaule, the moon's highest mountain, and along its 540-kilometer range. Following the draconic obsession of the Raa's progenitor Akari, its builders shaped whole peaks into a host of stone dragons—wings buttressing their heights, necks craning toward Jupiter, duroglass windows glittering like scales—above a city hollowed by Red drillcrews within the mountain's heart. Powered not by scarce helium-3 but by the tidal heating of Jupiter's gravitational war on Io, its pulseFields outlasted Octavia's Sword Armada a decade ago, when the besiegers' ships ran out of fuel before the shields failed.

Austere, martial, and obsessively clean, Sungrave stuns Lysander on arrival—its new ships and full docks proving the Rim Dominion has not been sleeping. Now Dido's coup rages through its stone corridors, silent squads arresting Romulus's loyalists as the captive Lysander and Cassius are lodged as uneasy 'guests.'

Appearance

A vast necropolis of black-stone dragon-spires flecked with topaz and zircon riding a frozen, fissured mountain range that vents subterranean heat; within, spartan geometric rooms of rough-cut stone, steam caldariums, botanical complexes, and great cisterns of Europan water—no chairs, no frivolous comfort.

Role

The Rim's capital and House Raa's seat; the dragon-carved mountain-city where Lysander and Cassius are held amid the coup.

Relationships