#the spectral steeds... long lived and seldom born

[eldintower]

the specimen storehouse to me is the vile crux of so much... it represents a violence that is almost (visibly) absent from marika's reign, which is the violence of museums, except there is an unavoidably visible example of this, which is the corpse of gransax preserved in defeat upon leyndell. so following a train of thought the storehouse could be seen as a distortion of farum azula, or its legend, or what has become of its legend under marika's reign- architectures of entombment, and its verticality mirroring what's left of farum azula (the structure of its crumbling provokes a sense of verticality), and even messmer lurking at the top vs maliketh in his cathedral. but i think too that the storehouse is meaningful for marika's character, as it could stand in microcosm for how exactly she has utilized the land of shadow- as a god she is gaoler and entomber and the land of shadow is where she has buried. Buried messmer, who is reached through the storehouse, and buried her home, which is reached through the storehouse, and buried the jar innards, with the clinic being in the storehouse basement, and, most of all, buried an entire culture and an entire people. the storehouse is symbolic of environmental devastation tracing back to a god of life and abundance- there were great horned beasts which once ran wild. and miquella following the path of the god marks his own trail in the horror which is the specimen storehouse