Constantinople, a city vibrant and rich in history, stands as a great seat of culture and of politics at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, under the rule of the Ottoman Empire in the year 1857. This teeming metropolis is a crucible of many peoples — Sunni Muslims, Christians, and Jews together — and the seat, besides, of the Orthodox Church. Its architecture, witness to its Byzantine inheritance, is graced with grand libraries, chambers of antiquities, and the mansions of the great, in a variety of styles that answers to the tangle of its history. A Mediterranean clime brings warm summers and mild winters, and lends its warmth to an air forever alive with scholars, merchants, and adventurers.
To the north of the city lies Thymbra Farm, a comely farmhouse set amongst rolling hills and the workings of an archaeological dig. It played host of late to a dinner arranged by the Calvert family, at which sat such notable figures as Osman Hamdi Bey, a royal polymath, together with young helpers from the nearby dig, Sidra al-Najjar and Ahmet Yusuf. The evening was alive with talk of promising finds at an ancient Greek site, the guests conversing by turns in French, Turkish, and English, as befitted so cosmopolitan a gathering. Amidst the company, Gizem Faruki, a Sufi dervish, held the attendees rapt with her whirling dance upon the terrace.
Yet the mood took a mysterious turn when a flowering tree before the veranda withered in a single night, to the dismay of the guests, and hinting at enigmatic forces astir in the city. The following day Ahmet Yusuf came upon a tree girdled by a thirty-foot circle of ground leached of all colour, whilst Sidra al-Najjar sensed the residue of magic within the farmhouse. Alarm grew when Heinrich Schliemann was reported missing, and Osman Hamdi Bey set a search afoot.
As the party made their way toward the dig, they found a narrow crevice opening into a cave, and within it a partly collapsed stone chamber adorned with ancient frescoes older than Greek culture itself. There they met a Serpent, and learned of interlopers in the next chamber; entering, they found Heinrich Schliemann and Frank Calvert held fast within a magical ward. Having broken the ward and sketched the room, Heinrich would have it that a great door graven with images of Aphrodite be opened. Rufus Dimitrious discovered a nest of valuables in the Serpent's lair — though the adventure did not end there. Upon their return to the farmhouse, Osman Hamdi Bey pressed upon them the legal peril of exporting antiquities from the Ottoman Empire, underscoring once more the city's abiding weight in matters political and cultural. An urgent message then summoned him back to Constantinople, a hint of the intricate interplay of history, magic, and intrigue that marks this remarkable city.
Topkapi Palace, moreover, stands within Constantinople and serves as a royal residence and seat of administration — a complex of ornate buildings and courtyards that displays the grandeur of the Ottoman Empire. It was here that an assassin was put to death by the Egyptian Kavalan, and thereafter Speak with Dead laid upon the corpse. A recess of the court followed the execution, and the attendees were dismissed. The dead man's memories had been wiped away in life, yet in death he might still be brought to yield what he knew.
Constantinople is home, too, to the Basilica Cistern and its underground works. The cistern lies flooded, given over to raised wooden walkways and boats, its accessible entrance kept by two Mansur enforcers. Within, a visitor may light upon a French inscription signed 'PG' by Petrus Gyllius, a magically preserved drum and bag, a submerged mirror that gives back the image of an East Asian soldier, and sundry treasures besides — skeletons, Lydian coins, a sealed metal box, and a pair of magical spectacles. A Medusa statue may drain the cistern and lay bare stairs descending to a lower prison beneath the city — a prison that holds cursed keys, a fire elemental, and several imprisoned figures, Mahidevran Hatun amongst them, together with a scarlet-gowned sorceress who reveals herself upon being freed.