A mass of scripts, styles, and dialects filled the walls, each one crammed round another, following cracks in the stone and round the supporting pillars all the way up the steep slope, until the steps finally curved out of sight.

Known as the Slate, the cavernous staircase climbed almost the entire height of the city, and the interior walls were a haven for graffiti. Memorials, obituaries, meeting dates, lovers' initials, and political statements scratched alongside crude jokes... it was a message board for whomsoever cared to inscribe their statement into the rock.

As such, for those who took the time to peruse them, the walls and pillars also acted as a cunningly accurate summary of happenings in the city, that stretched across centuries just as often as it did class boundaries. One could spend a lifetime traversing up and down the Slate and still not have uncovered a fraction of its secrets...

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