Clocoa

Somewhere between one and two hundred paces long, the cloaca is three times the height of a man at its tallest point, though curves to the ground either side to the floor, wide enough for a coach and four to dash by. Long of the heartwood it is the most convenient of the tunnels that enters the Delves, so long used that it bows in the middle from the passage of feet. Along its length can be seen the graffito of might have been Troges or Ghul, only lewd, rarely complimentary, cave carvings that are occupied not so much in hunting, but in the hilarity of the reproductive organs. It has always been thus since Pargo and El Clavel certainly, and what little more is known about it comes with most authority from Nikola Bulgar. He speaks of certain Troges legends. When they were above and the Ghilan below, before there was a Delves at all (for that was the mine that took all the softest wood before it reached the heartwood) there were tunnels, and though not the size it is now the cloaca was the largest of them. From here came the ghilan at night to pick at what had been given up by the sea, such as that was the case. And beyond which the Troges would fight them. Though they would deny anty such thing, it is this tale as much as certain others that has lead to Bulgar postulating that where the Troges speak of an Invado Piratus, and earlier an Invado Romanus, might there not have been even before that an Invado Troges? That the ghuls are the true natives?

What is true is that now it is the surest way between Port Mercy and the Delves, and eventually even the Looms. Each morning as the sun comes to the world much of the foulness, the collected awful stink of the Delves is drawn out for an hour of filthy air. It was the point where ‘Parquet’ came no further, when it was stopped at barricades of boats by the pescador red caps, and which despite the gunplay and black powder used then not one mark was made on the old scar of the wood that makes up the floor and walls of the cloaca..