Marja: The City of Roots

Welcome to Marja, the city of roots. Please enjoy your stay.

Still Life (2025). Collage by me. 

• Underground rainforest city built into the roots systems and plant life of the rainforest.

• The people there mine and sculpt plant life and smelt and do carpentry and move gracefully through the rope-like root infrastructure that makes up the city.

• The people have green-brown skin and pointy ears, but are shorter than most elves and slimmer than most dwarves. Their eyes are white.

• The city is built in an enormous underground cave system. Inspectors regularly evaluate for dangerous ceiling degradation. 

• The city's government structure is mayoral, although the title of mayor is lifelong. Elections are open to all over the age of 30 and under the age of 250.

• There is an ambient sun-like light on the ceiling of the cave from specially grown fungus that makes the city's light levels very similar to the surface. It cycles through day-night cycles. The exception is that the fungus coats the entire ceiling rather than coming from a single source, so shadows are limited.

• Couriers use root systems as zip lines to deliver messages due to the lack of pack animals and birds underground. Letters are delivered 5 times a day due to the importance of correspondence in the city. Some people prefer to use rats, although the rats are just normal trained rats and are less reliable than the human couriers.

• Due to the amount of plant life, the air feels fresh despite being underground.

• Paper-making, in both large and small scale, is an ancient practice for which the city is renowned. The smell of paper sometimes rises up from the ground level, creating a stink that the residents of other cities stereotypically associate Marjans with.

• A secondary good associated with the city is wine, which is grown on city-owned vines and then aged in barrels. (A common romantic activity is visiting the city vines together and making your own fresh wine.) However, the air is humid, which lowers the quality of the wine compared to other underground cities. Most wine produced in Marjan is consumed locally.

• Small claustrophobic tunnels connect the city with neighboring communities. Travelers on such tunnels are required to be armed with a whistle and pickaxe for self-defense and tunneling. Guards at the city entrances check all travelers for compliance with this policy.

• In addition to the mayor, city elites include representatives of various paper guilds. The politics of these guilds is nearly completely inscrutable to the outside observer but organized around obtaining rights over permits and seals for the paper production processes.

• The justice system deals with little crime and violence, and instead mostly resolves trade disputes and interprets the city's complex interpersonal inheritance and distribution obligations.

• The most popular sports are variations on rock climbing, using vines as belay rope and sometimes including a ball, teams, and/or physical contact. For a city so rules-oriented, these games are anarchic and spontaneous, open to anyone and sometimes changing rules mid-game. The only rule constant across all games is no rope-cutting, which is a crime charged as attempted or actual murder depending on the outcome.