That’s why I’ll tell it as I saw it, like describing a picture or series of pictures, without putting too much emphasis on the grotesque anomalies and abnormalities of the … but there! – do you see what I mean?
‘The Lady Karen’s aerie had belonged to Dramal Doombody, and so it has to be fairly representative of all the aeries, or castles if you wish, where they sit atop those fantastic stacks. So let’s begin with the stacks themselves:
‘As far as I was able to tell they’re natural, weathered out from the mountains in their slow retreat. Why the stacks should remain while the earth around them crumbled . . . I’m no geologist. Maybe they were once the cores of a series of volcanoes, choked with a basalt magma which was tougher than the surrounding cones. The craters have long gone but these titan plugs remain. That’s theory, of course, and anyway it doesn’t matter. The stacks are real, and since time immemorial the Wamphyri have built their aeries on them.
‘But just looking at a stack from a distance, you don’t see the entire picture. By that I mean that you don’t see the actual stack. It’s there, inside the shell, but what you see is that shell, which through the ages the Wamphyri have built around the inner core. So … the next question has to be: what is this artificial “skin” made of?
‘Well, I think the best way to answer that would be to liken a stack to coral on a submarine shelf. The stone is there, and the living coral forms a skin on it, and the skin dies and itself becomes stone. So on the submarine shelf the “skin” is dead coral. And on the stacks . . . it’s dead flesh.
‘When an aerie requires repairs or extensions, the Wamphyri breed cartilage creatures whose sole function is to bridge a gap, form a section of wall, roof over a new hall or causeway. Which is to say, their living bodies form the building or repair materials. Except I said “breed” and that’s the wrong word. They don’t really breed anything, they merely change what already is. They take out of storage a troglodyte, perhaps, or punish a vampir-ized henchman who has been remiss in some way, or maybe steal a Traveller or two from Sunside. All human or sub-human flesh is the same to the Wamphyri. They can take it, change it, mould it to their individual needs. These cartilage things lock themselves in position wherever they’re required, die and eventually fossilize there. Being of vampiric origin – having been vampirized – they take a long time to die; maybe they don’t die as we understand it, but simply age and become . . . fixed.
‘So what I’m saying is this: when you walk through an aerie, as often as not you’re surrounded by the fused, polished bones and the hard, leathery hides of what were once men. And if you look closely enough – which is something you very quickly learn not to do – then you start to recognize the shapes of altered rib-cages, thigh bones, spinal columns and even . . . but I think you get the picture.
‘The Wamphyri can stand extremes of cold. That’s not to say they prefer it, simply that they seem inured. Except when under siege, they do heat their stacks with a complicated sort of central heating. Gasses are burned in the base of the stack and the hot air is channelled through pipes – great, hollow bones, usually – to every level. Other pipes carry the gas itself, which may then be burned as required. There are two sources for these gasses.
‘Each aerie has its refuse pit. “Refuse” to a Wamphyri Lord can be anything from bodily wastes to wasted bodies. You know what vampires feed on. Well, they’re not obliged to (indeed they can go without blood, without sustenance generally, indefinitely) and they do vary their diets with vegetable fibers, various oils, even fruits which are gathered during sundown on Sunside. They have vast storehouses of foods such as these, not to mention larders of suspended troglodytes and Travellers. In this instance, let’s consider their “usual” fare.