Locus Analisel, the city of the endless deluge, was once Greater Seattle. After the chancel's creation the mortal world was left with a new bay, Seattle's downtown, and little memory of anything important about Seattle save the art and music scene. The chancel has become a metropolis in its own right, but now resembles its original form only slightly. Locus Analisel has been changed into a testament to gothic architecture, inhabited by a million lonely souls.
Feel yourself walking. Each footfall descends into a thin stream of water, yet your footing is secure. From above comes unending rainfall, yet it is somehow beautiful, unthreatening. Your footing is made of closely fitted cobbles, only thinly rounded so they are not painful to walk on, but the majority of the water flows between the cracks and away from where you step. As you walk you see cascades of water flowing in precise arcs from the tops of buildings, and you can make out hundreds of gargoyles atop the forbidding buildings. Perhaps it's the constantly sheeting rain, blocking your sight, but everything looks somehow washed of color, uncontrasted. The gaslit street lamps pour light on a landscape that is almost like a black and white photograph. All that you can taste and smell is the rainwater, all that you can hear is the endless fall of water onto stone.
Dawn comes suddenly as the sun finally crests the Eastern mountains. The light pierces through breaks in the clouds and glances beautifully off the flickering water in the air and on the ground. For a few minutes the clouds clear and the rain stops, but there is no rainbow to promise that the rain will not be forever. The landscape is still without depth of color, gray. The city begins to wake up and go to its tasks. You reach a major road and find a trickle of taxicabs and motorcycles. They seem to be running on steam power, but refined to a pure science. There are no personal automobiles, each individual drives by alone. From overhead there is a rumbling as a locomotive moves by, pulling its train out of a tunnel and onto elevated tracks. Some of the passengers look at you curiously, but they seem to be less curious about their fellows.
In the sunlight the buildings come into stark and beautiful relief, their forms precise gothic architecture. Above, a gargoyle stands from his post and stretches, then flies off in search of a better perch. Distantly you hear the roar of water, and you see one of the city's immense canals carrying rainwater between the mountains and the sea. The clouds begin to let loose a light shower again, cutting back your vision. The rain falls, you remain alone, and your inquisitiveness has only just begun.
The Chancel is roughly 11 miles across east to west and 7 miles north to south. On its western and southern sides there is only the Atlantic, edged with lighthouses powerful enough to pierce the hardest rainfall. On the north and east are mountains, an offshoot of the Rockies that is steep and insurmountable without great difficulty. Those who seek to leave by either of these routes face great danger unless blessed by the Nobles who control the city, and could literally come out anywhere in the world with ocean or mountain range. The divide between mountain and ocean means that travel southwest is a gradual descent.
Locus Analisel has six large, artificial canals. Four of these run directly East-West, seperating the city into five horizontal bars. Two run roughly Northeast-Southwest, splitting the city into thirds. Each canal also serves as a major roadway, with several lanes to either side of the vast waterway. The canals receive most of the city's rainwater eventually, gathering it through clever channels and pipes built into the city's infrastructure.
The city has five train lines that are supported by three major stations and numerous stops. These tracks go above and underground at intervals, and are the primary means of city-wide travel by those that have easy access to them. Four of the lines enter tunnels in the eastern mountains, but only trains specially chartered by the Nobles ever go this far.
The Chancel has a substantial sewer system. It is carefully seperated from the canals, but can go anywhere else in the city. Some passages are so tight and winding that only a cat could navigate through, but many are large enough to accommodate an entire spy network.
As previously noted, the city is built in a style combining many of the best elements of Gothic and Victorian architecture. Inside, buildings are full of tight corridors and small rooms, and few areas can comfortably fit more than one person at a time. As a side effect of this process, buildings are often labyrinthine and full of interesting passages and places to find things.
As a deviant technological state, the technology of Locus Analisel resembles what Earth's technology would be like had the wonders of the 1800s not discovered electricity until very recently. Since technology was converted directly, virtually any modern convenience from Greater Seattle now has a steampunk analog in the chancel. Televisions and Computers are replaced by glass panes full of pressurized gas held in front of a lantern. Automobiles possess complicated steam engines. Refrigerators use vacuum-pump compressors. There is some degree of electrical know-how, powering radio towers and difference engine networks, but it is largely much bulkier than its Earth counterparts. In general, any chancel analog of a technology developed after 1900 will not work on Earth. Of special note is that not due to inability, but to Noble edict, citizens are not allowed access to private automotive conveyances other than motorcycles, firearms are not allowed to be owned by private citizens, and anything else deemed dangerous is in limited supply. Earth technology introduced to the chancel converts to its steampunk analog within a week unless preserved by an expenditure of miraculous Realm energy, and even then it will become its analog in a matter of months if not kept up.
The city is seperated into a dozen districts with different functions.
The heart of the city. City Center district contains the political offices of the city, including the courts and central police station. The two most notable features are the Cathedral of Loneliness, the haven of the mysterious Noble that has the most power over the city, and the Heart of the Chancel. A huge needle-like tower with no visible openings, save to the Nobilis, is said to contain the being that the entire Chancel is named for and built upon, the angel Analisel.
Spanning nearly four square miles, the grounds of the university are immediately south of the city center. The School of Falling Tears is an institute of learning that offers classes on nearly any conceivable subject, including magical theory. Dorm rooms are individual, and classes consist of impersonal lectures and private study.
This large area of coastline supports all the businesses that deal in any way with the outside world. Since making the chancel a completely closed system was beyond the needs of Analisel, those who work here are allowed to make short-term trips to the outside world and to trade the city's low-tech manufacturing for crucial external foodstuffs and other materials. As planes created with steamtech would not last long outside the chancel, the "Airport" is actually an area of bubbled reality that allows passageway to nearly any airport in the world, though only a small hanful are usually accessible to the city's mortals.
Despite its area, this district has relatively few, widely spaced buildings. Here the owners of businesses live and work, seen as a necessary evil but cordoned off from the rest of the city.
This area contains most of the chancel's clubs, theatres, nickelodeons, and other entertainment venues. There is also a multi-function sports stadium, but as sports encourage group interaction and often result in injury the stadium is only used for musical perfomances, by order of the city's governor. Popular places include the 5-13 club, a musical venue lifted unchanged from Greater Seattle, and the Kinetodeon, a palace where imported films from Earth have been fixed to run on kinetoscope equipment for very small audiences.
This vast area contains a number of factories and low-rent houses. Here is produced all manner of things that the citizens find useful, from motorcycles to household kinetoscopes to networked difference engines. A number of other goods are produced here for export, from refined steel mined in the mountains to furniture made from imported wood. Anything important to modern earth that could be made before 1900 is likely produced in the chancel for export.
These two areas are full of tightly-packed tenements that are owned by those that don't quite meet middle class status. The expanses of apartments are broken mainly for graveyards, some of which are growing quite haunted and are thus avoided by the locals.
This area supports housing not quite as poor as the previous area, as well as the city's fishing industries.
This area is home to those that are neither high nor low economically in the city. It is full of people trying to get by and climb up the ladder without falling back down.
This area is full of people that have nearly made it. There are large houses here, though nothing particularly exceptional, and there is even some forestation.
The home of those that have money, the Highlands are several square miles of forests and green lawns in the midst of a large city. Manor houses are spaced apart from one another, situated on sloping hills with a good vantage to see the whole city when the rain thins. The only flaw to these people is that their status is not perfect, for none of the city's rulers seem to live here.