Happy Anniversary Everyone! We’ve been examining Victorian history for its use in Role-playing Games for 4 whole years now! Thank you so much for reading this blog. Every view of Skullduggery in the Smoke means a great deal to me. I would not be able to do this without you reading every week.
It’s been a pretty momentous year full of more ambitious projects than ever before. We started off with a new scenario “Six Stolen Ferns”, then we experimented with turning World War II into a fantasy setting in “Their Finest Hour”, and finally we began the mega project “City of Countless Names” which I am still writing. This blog has become so much more than I thought possible. Thanks so much for your encouragement, and your support.
Findikli (Fundukli, FoondookLee, Fonduklee, Fundoukli, Fynykly, Argyroupolis)
The streets of Tophane run through the village of Findikli, causing many travelers to assume to the quarter a quiet continuation of the larger industrial center. Findikli slopes away from the shore up a hill to the edge of the great cosmopolitan cemetery known as the Grand Champs des Morts. Two and three story shops tightly stacked next to each other line the streets shaded by tall trees. On the ground floor, coffeehouses, tradesmen’s offices, and fruit shops sit open for business, while the floors above serve as middle-class households. Alleys and small docks for fishing ships allow glimpses of the Bosporus to shine into the busy street. Smells of Turkish food and drink such as roasting kebabs or barrels of boza, a beer made of fermented wheat, mingle in the air between street vendors.
Almost all of Findikli’s inhabitants are Nithamiyeen, making it the principal Turkish quarter in the Galata-Pera metropolis. Minarets tower up from mosques and dervishes perform their rites in their Tekkahs, but Findikli contains no Aluminat churches. Eastern Aluminat tradition teaches Xanthos, one of the ‘Eight Voices’ revered by the church, landed here back when it was a fishing village called Argyroupolis outside ancient Byzantium. During his ministry in the village, he founded the first Greek Aluminat church. When the conquering Ottomans arrived they evicted the Greeks from Fundikli’s pleasant shore.
Famous Locations:
The Grand Champs des Morts
Typical of Turkish graveyards, the Grand Champs des Morts seems more like a public park than a necropolis. It sits on 100 acres of lovely green hills overlooking the village of Findukli and the Bosporus to the south. Children run around the thick woods of cypress, acacia, and sycamore trees as their parents relax seated among of the tombstones. Unlike most of the Cemeteries of Constantinople, its deceased residents belong to both the Nithamiyeen and Aluminat faiths. Thousands of white tombstones belonging to every faith except Yehudism cover the cemetery, some crumbled and fallen with age and others freshly inscribed for the recently buried.
In the northwest side, closest to Pera, rest the Roman, Greek, and Armenian Aluminat dead. Engravings in Latin, French, English, and symbols denoting vocations mark the graves. Further south and east on the slope of the hill close to Findikli, stone turbans and bright blue paint identify Turkish graves. Turkish and European thaumaturgists and holy men theorize on the magical consequences caused by so many different burial practices performed on so many burials, for so many years, on such a large stretch of land. Most agree on one thing: as the urban landscape of Pera-Galata creeps closer to the Grand Champs des Morts the potential for necromantic disaster grows.
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