John Doe 4✦ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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agoodyarn2025-11-24 02:46 pm
entirelymyown) wrote in agoodyarn2025-11-24 02:46 pm
an arranged marriage for ceaselesslabor
Carcosa was thought to be lost.
There were all manner of myths, all manner of stories; some said that someone with the gift of earthquakes sunk the land into the oceans. Others said that it was lost far earlier, that the city itself slowly died as the continents shifted and the fabled Lake Hali dried up, the country lost to the dunes of the great deserts and unsuited to such an environment. Still others said it was entirely a story, made up, the kind of thing used by ancient travelers to spice up their tales and historical accounts to cover up for the deeds or misdeeds that politics would not allow them to speak of honestly. That last one was the most accepted of the stories, or it was until the headline came out in the Times.
Carcosa is Real! Envoy Arrives at UN!
It was, it turned out, an island nation located in the center of the Atlantic Ocean, far from any of the standard ocean routes and difficult to navigate to given the strangeness of the weather patterns in the area which meddled with magnetic reckoning. As the use of a magnetic compass had risen throughout the world (instead of relying on those with Directional gifts), the island had been 'missed' more and more until it was forgotten, only encountered by the occasional lost ship that by the same misfortune would never be able to find them again. They had become, by no surprise, incredibly isolationist and it was speculated by scientists that the natural energies that caused the anomaly might in fact be the reason why Carcosa was said to have singularly powerful magical gifts in its people and especially in its royal line. Others thought it might be a matter of natural selection or even careful breeding: cut off from the rest of the world and the advancements brought by crossing cultures, Carcosans had only been able to rely on themselves and their gifts, making those with stronger and more useful gifts much more likely to prosper and procreate given the relatively small population. Nevertheless, it turned out that that part of the 'myths' was true: there were a few more articles, later in the paper, discussing the gifts of the Envoy and his crew, all of which were the sort of thing deemed miraculous and even mythical these days. Technology had just made such things more trouble than they were worth, unstable and unreliable and reliant on a single individual; a machine could work for anyone, and science had no favorites.
It was the sort of thing that made magic feel more magical again, really.
And brought on a rush to exploit the island, it's people, and what resources they had which, as it turned out, were extensive. This led to the King closing the port and strictly limiting the interaction between the foreigners and his people. And, of course, to a second arrival in New York City.
King Hastur II himself, younger than anyone expected, unmarried and childless, walking into the UN himself and politely requesting a chair.
...how Daniel Saltzman, a lumber magnate, true, but no one with a title, not a Rockefeller or a Carnegie, managed to get his attention during that visit is anyone's guess. Some of the gossip rags decided it must have been a connection made over a shared tendency towards religion, while others were much more cynical and claimed it was about the money and nothing but the money, that Saltzman was an old traditionalist willing to invest in Carcosa more than the others who'd put their money into steam and electric and gas. No one can agree what it is, but what is evident is that Saltzman offered a husband for the mysterious young king and that said king had accepted.
How his adopted son, Arthur, took the news, well...
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