Sophocos (building)
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The 1001 Steps of Sophocos are, according to the Ritualists, the stairway to heaven. Or at least an ambiguous and highly contested concept of what most Ritualist scholars contend to be a place of true spiritual enlightenment.
A raucous metropolis of sorts now clusters about the base of the tower, its markets full of hawkers selling relics, knickknacks, tchotchkes, and sometimes genuine artifacts. The rich and poor rarely mix here, with walled palaces accommodating the former, and clustered slums and tent cities providing crowded homes for the latter. Internecine riots and other forms of religious violence are common, only fitfully suppressed by a militia funded by the city's rich merchants. A riot of flags and banners now festoon the tower, with rival bands of competing pilgrims sometimes engaging in violent skirmishes during their ascent. For the wealthy, shortcuts to enlightenment now exist in the form of precarious makeshift elevators which run some hundreds of feet up the sheer wall of the tower. The landscape surrounding Sophocos is now scarred with vast strip mining operations searching for buried relics and treasure.