Reflections on a City

I had the pleasure of being spirited away on a business trip to spend much of the last week in and around the old town on the castle hill of Budapest. 

Hungary is a country that, to the European outsider, is encountered through a thin veil of fantasy. The Hungarians are Europeans, no doubt, but they retain a hint of the vast Eurasian steppe about them. Their language, and the aesthetic preferences rumoured in their art, crafts and architecture, speak of roots in an altogether different substrate to that of the peoples who surround them. 

The consequence is that Budapest, to the non-Hungarian, is a city that feels as though it ought to belong in a different plane of existence. It is a city with magic in the air - rumoured in the distance, or stowed away in secret attics, or hidden behind ornate doorways or at the end of high narrow alleyways. Never even really glimpsed except, if one is fortunate, at the extreme periphery of one's vision, like a flitting shadow. 

A feeling that there are things being said and done behind closed doors that one cannot dream of but suspects are filled with strange import and concealed meaning. A feeling that beyond upstairs windows are meetings and whisperings in rooms decorated with signs and symbols in gold leaf or etched in silver. Summonings and secrecy. Old books in old languages filled with old knowledge and paged by old fingers, read by ancient eyes. 

A feeling that one is on the border of something grand and mighty and distant - a shard of another reality that stabs into our own.

A feeling that it is a city of adventure - of cellars that lead to labyrinths and mazes, of wizards' studies, of collectors of rarities and obscurities, of pipe-smokers and calligraphers, of softly murmured rumour in coffee shops and over goulash or dishes of river fish, of antique shops selling merchandise of unknowable origin and vast heritage, of sidelong glances and whisperings in ears. A city defined by a public face which cannot fully conceal the private mind. 

Ultimately, the city-based campaign is one of great appeal. A city can contain worlds within it. Dungeons hidden beneath streets, of course, but also portals to other dimensions - not to mention conspiracies, plots, assassinations, subterfuge and secret war. What is especially noticeable about it is that it presumes that much of what passes for adventure is to a greater or lesser extent deliberately hidden. What goes on in terms of adventure must in some degree go on in a fashion concealed from polite or 'normal' society. A visit to Budapest was enough to kindle my appreciation for this kind of game, since as an outsider I was by definition required to approach the city in that vein - as a place whose real nature was partially disguised from me. I recommend a visit.