However, some of Konrad and Saskia’s designs are drawn purely from the realms of the imagination, such as with 2025’s Ythari – The echo of silent stars (see here for more). This is also the case for their first design for 2026, which actually opened over a month ago in late February, but with personal things being what they are, I only recently managed to visit.
Entitled The Array, this build is an engaging mix of fantasy and the imagination. A place which, in many respects, defies logical description but which weaves a tale all of its own within one’s head, the notes accompanying the setting helping to open the door to imaging.
Then the vision came.
Not a dream—visions in The Array were never dreams. They were memories, borrowed from the Primordium itself.
Lira saw a vast ocean, black and endless. She saw the Primordium as it once was: a drifting seed, searching for a place to anchor. She felt its loneliness, its hunger, its ancient purpose. And then she saw something else—something rising from the deep, something that made the Choir’s harmonics tremble with fear. The vision snapped away.
The Choir scattered, their lights dimming as they drifted back into the fog. The Veins beneath Lira’s hands throbbed once, sharply, like a heartbeat skipping. Abyssara was preparing for something. Lira stood alone on the terrace, the Mist swirling around her, the echoes of the Choir fading into silence. She didn’t know what the Primordium had shown her—or why it had chosen her—but she knew one thing with absolute certainty.
The city was waking up.
– Natthimmel description, February 2026
For some reason, this description put me in mind of assorted Arthur C. Clarke short stories, including The City and the Stars. I’ve no idea why, as there is little in the way of any form of connection between Natthimmel’s The Array and that story, or indeed, The Nine Billion Names of God, another of Clarke’s stories which for some reason dropped into my thinking = although the idea of something long asleep waking to make a dramatic change in the status quo does sort-of track (with The Array having a City wakening, Clarke’s story having a deity).
To be clear, The Array owes nothing to Clarke so far as I’m aware; it was to his shorter stories to which my mind flowed for some subconscious reason. Rather, The Array is a place of glorious mystery; a city of geometric shapes bought together in a manner that is both familiar an alien, interspersed with organic growths peppered with bioluminescent stands and ripples, some of which appear connected to the buildings. Bioluminescence is also much in evidence in the plants growing from the wetland from which the city appears to be rising, the plants both familiar and also somewhat alien as well.
Some of the buildings in the city can be entered, revealing more exotic growths, whilst stairways offer routes to upper levels – although some might be a little difficult to reach, whilst deep in the city is an events space. Very little here seems to be static, lights and shapes roll across walls and floors and while they don’t move themselves, the strands and trails of bioluminescence etched into many of the walls and the twinkling of luminescence among the trees further adds to the sense of motion and life.
Lifeforms and some very Earthly technology can be found within the setting. In the case of the former, fish float in the air whilst fantasy-like gossamer creatures float and “swim” through the air in and around the city’ towers. These latter creatures seem to take two forms – one fish-like, the other more plant-like. Some are blue, some are orange, all drift apparently without a care for those who visit the city and explore, ethereally aloof in their drifting. Elsewhere, dragon-like creatures might be found, both near the Landing Point and within the city itself.
In all, a place very much worth visiting for its mystery and ability to suggest stories and tales as to its origins and future.
SLurl Details
- Natthimmel: The Array (NewMoon, rated Moderate)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 