The Place
Vulkanis, the Volcanic City, is a city carved into the heart of a dead volcano, its deep tunnels lit by magical fires that give an eerie, ever-shifting glow, its silence broken only by the forge and the word. The volcano is a black cone 1.2 km from its buried base to the lip of the caldera, and the 1.2 km is the depth the dark elves have carved out of the stone, the caldera itself 300 m across, its rim a ring of cooled obsidian that the dark elves walk in silence. The city falls in nine terraces down the inside of the cone, the upper terraces where the word is kept and the lower terraces where the forge is kept, and the terraces are joined by the long descent, a single broad stair cut in the living rock that runs 400 m from the caldera gate to the deep forge-halls. The stone of the city is a deep umber to a true quiet black, and the black breaks where the glass has taken it, the volcanic glass lying in sheets along the tunnel walls in a violet sheen that the shifting fire-light keeps moving. The air in the tunnels is warm and dry and carries the smell of hot metal and of the deep fire, and the smell is where the city keeps its one voice. This is the place where the depth has become the identity, and the identity is the only thing the stone will not give back.
How They Live
The Dark Elfs carve their city into the old volcano, chambers of black stone and glass, their tunnels deep and lit by the forge-fire, which is the only light in Vulkanis, cold and eerie and never still. They do not make fire for the sun, because the sun has never reached the depth, and the not-reaching is the city's first law. Food is the city itself: the forged metal, the word, the oath, and the fire that keeps the craft honest, the forges running in the lower terraces and the word kept in the upper, and the keeping is the work the city values. Water is drawn from the volcano's deep veins, which the forge-keepers tend like a garden, the veins lying 80 m under the deep forge-halls in water that tastes of iron and of the deep fire. The defense is the city itself — a visitor who steps into the tunnel is already in the path of the word, and the word is the alarm and the welcome and the sentence. The day is measured by the forge, which is also the calendar, because the volcano is the only clock the word needs.
People
Home of the Dark Elf, whose holds are counted by forge, and the forges keep some six thousand dark elves in the deep, six thousand being the most the stone can hold without the word running short. The clans are ranked by mastery of the deep, not by age, and the ranking is the only order the city has, for the dark elves have no king and the not-having is their only law. The forge-keepers tend the deep veins and the forge-fire, and the keeping is the only work the city values. The skin of the dark elves is a deep violet to a near-black, with a network of fine violet veins at the temples that glow faintly when a dark-elf is casting, and the glow is the dark line's most persistent claim. The eyes are a pale, luminous violet to a soft silver, and the glow in the dark is the city's way of saying the depth is home. An elder dark elf is marked by a full silver-violet head that comes by the third century, and the silver is the only ornament the city allows. The dark elves keep their word for a thousand years, and they remember who broke theirs, and the remembering is a form of patience that the sun-side races find unsettling.
In Stories
The place where the word is the only honest thing, and the thing is the fire, and the fire is the craft, and the craft is the end. It was in the lower terraces that the dark elves first learned the weight of a word kept in the dark, and the learning cost them the sun and gave them the depth. The city has kept the word ever since, and the keeping is the stone's way of holding the fire honest, and the fire is the only light the deep will ever need.