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Whistle Street

by Everyl

"All right, that's it. I can't take that blasted noise anymore, we're moving back into Firewander first thing in the morning."
- Obnoxious Muskrat, resident (briefly) of Whistle Street

"You should hear it when Evanescent Mist is feeling creative on his days off. Hm? Oh, he's an air elemental who used to keep the air clean over the forges. I wonder where he's gotten off to these days..."
- Eroica, goddess of a dead song and professional reminiscer

Tellnaught is something of an anomaly in Nexus - a neighborhood that escaped from the squalor and chaos of Firewander and cleaned itself up. Whistle Street is the main thoroughfare in this small, tightly-knit community, running from the (heavily-guarded) southern gate into Firewander all the way north to the southern edge of the Nexus district. Most people only use "Whistle Street" to refer to the portion of the road that falls within Tellnaught, though.

Whistle Street is a clean, well-maintained road, lined with small, mostly-reputable shops and small, high-quality houses, mostly owned by merchants and other moderately-wealthy residents. The neighborhood is generally considered to be safe, thanks in large part to the efforts of the Tellnaught Patrol, which has a highly visible presence patrolling the street and guarding the wall along Firewander.

The buildings on both sides of the street are actually of First Age construction, though they are much smaller than most of the other surviving First Age buildings in Nexus; this is because it was originally a neighborhood of clerks, who worked in the old capital buildings of Hollow (currently in the eye of the Firewander Wyld storm). Their Exalted employers wanted their paper-pushers to live close to the capital buildings without giving up too much prime real estate that could be used for more profitable ventures. The result was many small, closely-built houses of high quality.

Whoever designed the houses must have been bored with the construction assignment, though, as they are not simple residences. The roofs of the various dwellings have carefully-carved grooves and wind-holes built into their nigh-indestructible structure. When the wind blows hard enough, these produce the highly-recognizable whistling sound for which the street is named. Every building has a slightly different cut to it, causing it to sound a different tone and/or when the wind is blowing in a different dircetion. The net effect is that, on windy days, the street is a chorus of harmonic whistle chords. The tones and orientations are done so cunningly that there is never a discordant note. The "music" is generally soothing, and even newcomers to Tellnaught rarely have any trouble sleeping, despite the on-and-off whistling. It is not known whether the architect had any particular effect in mind when designing the grooves, or whether he was just showing off.

However, the whistle-cuts do not work quite as intended anymore. Before Tellnaught seceded from Firewander, the roofs of the buildings had not been cleaned in such a long time that all of the grooves had become too plugged with trash and other detritus to make noise. When the neighborhood cleaned itself up, the locals cleaned the rooftops off, as well, freeing the wind-cuts to make music once again. The whistling became a symbol of what separated Tellnaught from the rest of Firewander, so the residents still do their best to keep them clean. Unfortunately, a few of them have persistent, stuck masses of detritus that nobody has yet been able to scrape off, throwing their tone the slightest bit off from what they should be. This results in subtle discords that most people cannot hear, but that quickly aggravate a few unlucky people. Nobody has yet figured out what causes these people to be annoyed by tones that everyone else finds soothing, so little effort has been put into fixing the problem.

Rumors

• The Tellnaught Quartet has such amazing voices because they practice by emulating the tones and chords of the Whistle Street whistles.
• Ever since the neighborhood cleaned up, there have been persistent rumors that wealthier forces are going to try to drive the "common folk" out to seize the well-constructed buildings of Whistle Street. Different variations on the rumor paint the Guild, the Council of Entities, several different mercenary companies, and various other, even more crackpot ideas, as the villains.

Secrets

• During the big clean-up, more than just building-whistles were uncovered. Unceremonious Gesture, a local greengrocer, found a hidden office from back when Whistle Street was the Hollow Clerk's Ward. Many of the papers were intact - and they included floorplans and design instructions for most of Nexus' First Age buildings. He has so far kept this fact hidden, knowing that there are any number of people who would kill him if they found out that that he had floor plans to, say, the Guild headquarters. He cannot read Old Realm well enough to determine whether the blueprints are complete enough for modern sorcerers to recreate the nigh-indestructible architecture of old Hollow.

Comments

I felt that more streets need to be defined, so I picked this one up. I might try some others when I have the time, if their names inspire me like this one. -Everyl