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Barisian Traffic

Here is a music video from the fifth Dooven Muzak album, featuring music specifically written to bring forth books 4, 5 and 6 of the Velvet Paw of Asquith Novels, and which comprise the Morigan Trilogy.

Barisian traffic is the worst in the world. While Oscar sits at a cafe on a pavement in the centre of the city, he finds that it is an extremely dangerous place to be. So dangerous, in fact, that umbrellas are illegal for reasons that become apparent by merely observing what unfolds. This track depicts Oscar sitting on a cafe’s pavement in Barras’ blazing sun while watching the sort of chaos that most cities would consider both illegal and a unique selling point.

Although renowned for its bright climate, Barras was also renowned for its traffic congestion and exorbitant traffic fatality statistics, the latter being so high that new numbers had been invented to assist with their calculation. Crammed to bursting with pedestrians and cars, neither showed regard for either. As a result, its cars were so dented from accidents that when they did drive into pedestrians their crumpled fenders tended to embrace victims, rather than splatter them across bodywork. Such crowding did mean that driving around a corner could take the best part of a week, however, which often led to cars being abandoned halfway around them and contributed further to congestion. Indeed, its traffic was so dreadful that Barras was often described as being ‘one enormous intersection’. As a consequence, it had only one set of traffic lights. These had been disconnected shortly after installation, however, because of drivers’ tendency to focus on cartwheeling vehicles rather than newly installed traffic lights, particularly when the former careered into buildings whenever said lights changed colour. And although this was unacceptable, it did momentarily relieve congestion.

— When Fear Is Not Afraid, chapter 6.

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