In the universe of 'The Last Enemy' the human race first arose in a single very Real shadow somewhere in the formless chaos of the early universe.
The early humans were guided and taught by their god, an entity named Rutiostom, which later developed and changed into the Unicorn of Amber. As such the ancients lived in a society that was a stern, austere and devout theocracy inhabited by a long-lived people, each with the same lifespan as an Amberite - some tens of thousands of years. Over a very long time the population grew and formed what became a large city.
The priests of Rutiostom had to continually use the magic taught to them by Rutiostom to keep their shadow from dissolving back into formless Chaos under them. As such the priesthood were responsible for all aspects of life in the city, and although everyone in the city had some education, only the priests knew magic, which made everything work.
The whole place was abandoned a very long time ago after being invaded and sacked. The invaders were a race of demonic creatures. This ties in with what else is known of the history of the universe, in which it is written that the Demons of Chaos, under the aegis of their deity, the Nameless (also the Unicorn of Amber), grew powerful and enslaved the human race.
By the present day all that remains of the vast majority of the city are the tumbled remains of its incredibly ancient-seeming buildings. There are a few fossilised remains to be found, and a few faint frescoes on a few walls.
The ancient shadow itself is a wide rocky bowl ringed by high sheer cliffs and filled with a continuous layer of cloud. Huge jellyfish creatures float through the sky, and 'trains' of suns, ten or more together in a line, rise from random points about the horizon, move rapidly across the sky and sink again with dizzying speed, usually accompanied by faint 'whoo whoo' noises, as if they really were trains.
At one point on the cliff face is a small cave used by the Unicorn, with a small and narrow trail leading up to it.
Time in the shadow flows some twenty five times faster than it does in Amber, and the place is very Real, as Real as Amber itself although, despite its Reality, the shadow is easy to shift into using the Pattern. The place is also very old, some ten to twenty million Amber years of age. Magic is strong there. The shadow is closer to the Chaos end of the universe than to Amber.
Below the clouds is a rocky landscape made up of the tumbled remains of the incredibly ancient buildings of the large city, with jellyfish in the sky and clouds above them. Given its age it has weathered well, although since the Big Fight between Dworkin and the Unicorn the ruins are now rather more ruinous than they were before.
One building in the city is better preserved than the rest, protected and warded by a self-regenerating magical power. It is the main temple of Rutiostom, a building in the form of a three-storey high six-sided pyramid of white stone.
In the centre of the temple is a six-sided altar, above which hovers a statue of ... something ... a swirling shape, rather like milk swirling into coffee, but in three dimensions. There are additional enchantments on the altar. These are different to the other magic that is incorporated into the temple.
The swirling statue over the altar is full of black memory sparks which are visible through a life-force lens. The magic on the altar holds them trapped within it and prevents them from dissipating. In addition to this, the magics on the stone 'swirl' kill any person placed on the altar and transfers their spirit into the swirl as their life-force drains away, leaving just the memory-spark. It does not beam the life-force away to anywhere.
This disposal of the dead was intended to preserve something of the deceased, as a form of psychic mummification. People were brought to the temple when they were dying so that their spirit would go into the stone swirl. Criminals - ones guilty of serious crimes - were exiled so that they could not be preserved. If a person died in an accident, could not be brought to the temple in time, and so who was entirely lost, then this was considered to be a great tragedy.
The six wall panels of the temple show a variety of images, in the following sequence:
Taken together the images represent the entire cycle of life within the ancient city. The style of art is representational, but also somewhat stylised, as though the images are of generic rather than specific occurrences of the events in question.
On the pointed ceiling of the temple, directly over the altar, six large human faces look down into the temple. Alternating male and female, like the people visible in the frescos they all have mid-brown skin, bright green eyes and medium-brown hair. They all seem to be in early middle age. The faces are quite detailed and realistic, enough so that one could recognise the people depicted from their paintings. These are the six high priests of Rutiostom, the rulers of the city under it.
Also within the city is a room of very solid stone construction with only one door out, a solid metal door rather like that of a bank vault, with no handle or hinges on the inside. The Unicorn kept Dworkin imprisoned within this room. It was because of this that the shadow was discovered by the player characters, and later explored and excavated by them.