Piranesi

by Susanna Clarke

Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his journals, day after day, he makes careful note of the tides that sweep through the lower halls, the birds that nest in the upper ones, and the statues — thousands of statues — that line every wall. He visits them, names them, and considers them his community. There is only one other living person: a man he calls the Other, who visits twice a week, seeking a Great and Secret Knowledge the House is said to contain. But messages are appearing, scratched into the walls. Someone is trying to reach Piranesi. And the House is not what he thinks it is.

19 characters, locations, and items in this world codex.

Characters

• Laurence Arne-Sayles — The disgraced academic who first proved the House exists — a brilliant, charismatic scholar whose obsession with ancient knowledge led him to open a d
• Piranesi — The Beloved Child of the House — a gentle, meticulous soul who has mapped its halls, named its dead, and studied its tides with the devotion of a scie
• The Dead — Thirteen silent residents of the House — skeletal remains found in scattered halls, each given a name and tended with devotion by the only person who
• The Other — The only other living person Piranesi knows — a well-dressed visitor who comes twice a week seeking the House's hidden knowledge, treating both the la

Locations

• The First Vestibule — The entrance hall where the House begins — or where Piranesi's memory of the House begins, which may not be the same thing.
• The Hall of the Minotaur Defeated — A hall Piranesi has named for its central statue — a fallen minotaur, spear-pierced, captured at the moment between defiance and death.
• The House — An infinite labyrinth of marble halls filled with statues, flooded by tides, drifted through by clouds — not a building but an entire world, beautiful
• The Lower Halls — The drowned levels of the House — vast marble halls claimed by the sea twice daily, where tides surge through vestibules and coral grows on the feet o
• The Middle Halls — The habitable heart of the House — dry marble galleries above the tide line where Piranesi has made his home among the statues, warmed by a sourceless
• The Other World — The world outside the House — our world, with its cities and universities and people, which Piranesi has almost entirely forgotten and which the Other
• The Upper Halls — The cloud-halls of the House — marble galleries so high that weather forms inside them, where albatrosses wheel through mist and fresh water condenses

Items

• Piranesi's Journal — Years of meticulous notebooks filled with tidal observations, statue catalogues, sketches of halls, and the quiet, devoted record of a life lived enti
• The Albatrosses — Wild seabirds that nest in the Upper Halls of the House — wheeling through clouds and marble galleries, the only other living community Piranesi share
• The Faun — A marble faun caught mid-leap, pipes raised to silent lips — one of the House's most joyful statues, frozen at the height of a dance it will never fin
• The Gorilla — A seated gorilla carved in dark-veined marble, its massive hands resting on its knees, its expression one of ancient, patient intelligence.
• The Great and Secret Knowledge — The hidden wisdom the House supposedly contains — an ancient magical tradition that scholars in the other world have pursued for centuries, and the re
• The King on Horseback — A monumental equestrian statue — a crowned figure on a rearing horse, commanding a hall with the authority of someone who ruled a kingdom that may nev
• The Tides — The sea that breathes through the House — tidal waters that flood the Lower Halls twice daily, bringing life and death in equal measure, as regular an
• The Woman Carrying a Beehive — A marble statue of a woman holding a beehive with exquisite tenderness — one of Piranesi's favourites and a landmark he navigates by.

View full codex at Simulacra.Ink