The next day they explored the city together, finding mysterious yards full of containers and pipes…
… non-operating, unfinished subways…
… and loads and loads of apartments, the great majority unrented.
Well, if they don’t like the present neighbors (and they *do* have neighbors themselves — more on that soon, perhaps), there’s plenty of other places to live here. No land for sale in the area, though, except for one small 512 going for 58.6 lindens per square meter. By contrast, Baker Bloch paid an average of about 0.7 lindens for the land he set up 7 Stones on about 5 months back. So: expensive! Way too costly to contemplate another purchase, even if he had the tier freed up for it. So this is strictly a rental scene for his extended family, to tell a story about a burg much larger than 7 Stones, and its promise but also, yes, failure to live up to expectations. Rows upon rows upon rows of apartments, a strong police presence, pockets of interesting neighborhoods. But not enough, Sandy had determined a while back, and now with Merry Gouldbusk joining in the lament. Not enough to ultimately survive.
I compare with VHC City, a considerably smaller affair than NWES (still much bigger than 7 Stones, though), but with a strong, central *structure* the whole community is built around and which keeps it thriving. This would be the Virtual Hotel Chelsea, a dominating force. NWSE has no such centerpiece that I can tell, *unless* this police hq can become it.
Probably not, but thought I’d mention. Merry and Sandy Herbert also visited there this fine, crisp early October day. Merry saw something she didn’t understand.
“Look, *Herbert Dune*,” she declared while pointing upward. “INGO,” she pronounced clearly. She had said INGOR before and they had to reshoot the scene. But it was a logical mistake, *because* Ingor Ratts was a famous figure from WES, the town that kind of sort of prefigures New WES, or what we now call NWES. “Like the four directions, North West East South, combined into one,” Herbert Dune explains another time for Merry about the town’s name origin. “It’s pieces of a puzzle fitted together. Here, let me show you. I know this dude uptown who can tell us more.” But before we get to that: the first name. Merry Gouldbusk again here, then:
“INGO, Herbert Dune, is my *brother*, my slightly older brother.”
“Big Brother, then,” states Herbert Dune while nodding. “I know how they are.”
She stared at the banner again, realizing: he’s been watching me all along!
Sunklands 