printThe Tombs
Turn down the wrong street, then make the wrong left, and you'll end up in a sea of darkened and crumbling buildings uncomfortably near the heart of Chicago. Daylight's never a hundred percent here, and the air's always somewhere between humid and clammy. The husks of buildings come from the twenties, the fifties, even the seventies, but they've settled into a sort of uniform bleakness that makes you think of a war zone.
The Tombs have never been a good neighborhood. They've been a rich neighborhood, but never a good one. No one's ever stayed long in the Tombs, if they can help it, and there's a reason for that.
These days, the Tombs are home to some of Chicago's worst off people. There is exactly one good reason to live in the Tombs: most of the bad people are afraid to go there. Unfortunately, most of the good people are, too.
And that's using "people" in the strictest sense of the word.
So who lives there?
Well, there's the truly desperate. Homeless or poor folk who figure being away from the violence outside is worth braving the stuff people won't talk about inside.
Then there's the truly whacked. People who know (or think they know) what lurks in the Tombs, and just don't care. These people tend to be really unpleasant.
And then there's those who are truly trying to make a difference. We've met one of those so far, Jill Thompson, who runs Angel Sanctuary. Comments made by Sandalphon in Little Earthquakes indicate that Torimel was another.
Recently, developer Simon Holmes has organized a number of firms, including Branche, to revitalize the area.
The Tomb, singular
In Fast Car, Xariel discovered that, on the site the Tombs occupy in the Spirit World, there's a massive tomb-like edifice. Very little of it survives- not only is the structure damaged, but much of what remains is simply fading away. This structure is distinguishable now only by the ripples it creates in the breath of God, as the latter drains out of the universe.
The remainder of the structure is vaguely Greek, and most of what's intact flows through the buildings in the human world, as if it determined their structure.
In the center of the Tomb, amidst a forest of impossibly tall, alabaster columns, there's an inscription dedicating the monument as the resting place of the human forces involved in the Vejovis Assault. Beneath the angelic script, there's a long list of names- signatures- of various fallen. Many of these have been obscured by damage; some even appear to have been deliberately scored out.
Among them are: