It is occupied by the Sinquisition : they remodel it to their purposes : to cultivate and torture : but the city was built by others for others and keeps its own counsel. Everything is temporary : the great apartment blocks slowly turn against each other : passageways to other districts are sometimes closed off entirely by the turning of the gears. It is a place of detour and dead-ends.
The Bloom will
ultimately rush over whatever barriers are erected, catch and co-opt
the residents. This is inevitable, just as the refugees took the
city from it's builders who had lost the city before they finished
building it. The implications of this certainty are everywhere. The
mined buildings. The pit traps. The elite members of society who
sleep with weapons under their pillow for that night when they are
called to run interference for the evacuation, giving their (un)
lives so that La Ciudead can continue - after a fashion - elsewhere.
A certain
celebratory nihilism underneath all the piety. The only sure thing
is to continue running.
Nevermind this two
cities in one bit. Every square has, rather, a three-part existence:
The city whenever you want! Does it happen on the first of the month? At irregular intervals? On high holidays - clockworkings on which have been superimposed the (un) death days for saints? That there is a rhythm is the important thing. Obviously it's turning all the time anyway: but to keep things simple, make it chunky. Lo rez is the best rez.
Take a pile of six sided dice : roll
them and stack them in a nice grid.
Numbers that are the same have worked
themselves into a single section. Adjacent numbers (2 to 1 or to 3
for instance) have some sort of passageway between them be it
bridge, tunnel, gate, etc. Numbers further apart are not connected.
For now.
1
|
BLOOM!
|
There's been a large incursion in
this sector. Perhaps a passageway to the Outer Shell opened up and
critters are streaming through. The City gets weird. Table C-1.
|
2-5
|
The Usual City Stuff
|
Hierarchy and order. Rage, rage
against the lighting of corpse candles with structure on top of
structure. See Table C-2 below.
|
6
|
CLOCKWORK COOKOO!
|
The Old City uncovered by time and
shining through : Artifacts and gearcraft. See Table C-3 Below.
|
There's a good chance then that a 1 or
a 6 is isolated. Good! If not - the invaders can escape into the
general population and you've got real trouble.
Luckily for you, there's table C-4 to
help you. Measures of last resort.
TABLE C-1 : The Bloom has Breached the Barrier
TABLE C-1 : The Bloom has Breached the Barrier
1
|
Haunting (Ghost)The
space is taken over by a malevolent presence. Objects begin to
move of their own accord. Stay in one place too long and you get
weaker and weaker : older and older - the light that animates your
corpse is consumed by something more comprehensive than your
survey of self. Imagine carbon-monoxide poisoning, but with eerie
laughter and shapes at the corner of vision. |
2
|
Fast Footsteps (Specter)The
noises in a J-Horror movie,a child running, on the ceiling, inside
the walls. Giggling to itself. The City itself is infected by a
malevolence, necrosis from a spider bite of the Bloom. If you
follow the footsteps, you will learn things about La Ciudead that
you never knew. The Footsteps know everything geographical : the
secret doors : who will come again.
It will try to drive you : off a cliff, into an ambush. You
could trap it perhaps and release it like an egg grenade to sew
confusion. |
3
|
Hunter Killers (Wraith)Highly
disciplined hunting expedition - commanded by your basic tall dark
and armored shade - handsome if you like the void. Darth Vader up
on this mother.
Although not above feeding on the locals (in fact, probably one
of the party is frothing his figurative mouth and can't help it -
to be sternly chastised or even killed by their leader) they are
after ONE escapee - and are fairly focused. |
4
|
Diggers (Vampire)Minions
dig a grave site to deposit their master. They are jumpy.
He is half awake.
If allowed to persist : he will set-up a castle : a labyrinth :
a tower. Space will condense and fold back on itself. All is to
hide his rather shallowly buried body : the earth resists all
efforts to burrow further. |
5
|
The Fellowship of the Wraith
(Skeletons)
It's one of them : isn't it, who has a nemesis egg inside him.
The leaders are arguing : interrogating : turning on each other.A caravan of Skeletons. Scared. Pursued by a Drainer of some sort - they think. There is certainly always another found in the morning - all energy left him, bones distended in a way that shouldn't be possible : like one of those flowers you soak in water and it grows 4 times the size. |
6
|
Mediocre Wight Man (Wight)
He's almost made it. He has fed
and fed. He has flayed the skin of corpses and drunk from the well
at the center of all apparitions. He is beginning to change. It
almost drives you mad : the skin growing again from the bone : the
hair sprouting in clumps.
Into the barrow, to curl up you chrysalis! Instead, he has
found himself here. All will be undone. But yet. The city still
offers solitude, in the abandoned corners. Imagine the TMNT Rat
King, his bandages, his half-speach. |
7
|
Quinceañever (Zombies)
As the lurchers come to life in a
Bloom proper : they, the doomed, throw a party. May as well. The
Drainers will catch up to them soon enough.
But what a party! It has a life of
it's own, wrapping up everything in a protective bubble of excess.
Even the drainers get caught up in it. Even you get caught up
in it. |
8
|
Charlie Chuckles (Ghast) He is a man yet : but he has turned himself into a creature by means of murder and rituals and bone chimes. He's not undead : he's post-dead : reanimated but skipped the dying part. Attended by dancing girls in flowing dresses : they are somewhere along the process but not so advanced. All are wide-eyed at the dark promise of La Ciudead - all will feel particularly betrayed when they are captured and expelled. |
9
|
Screamers (Ghouls)A
seemingly limitless supply - pouring from an opening : after some
scrap : they can smell it : but La C is a pretty good place to
hide : all in all : if you are a living thing. The stench of death
is everywhere : it's like water to ditch the bloodhounds. The Screamers don't care. They're knocking everyone over : they are in a frenzy. Citizens out of the way : you're in the way! |
10
|
Nursery (Nemesis Shadow) It's Alien all over again, isn't it. Eggs growing in bodies and energy fields : crackling with electricity. Little hands poking out. The shadow in question is QUITE spent : having done all this : he is draped across the floor like a Persian rug. Most probably he won't even have the energy to rise. But the eggs : they are a hatching. |
11
|
The Duelist (Lich)
A jauntily dressed and fairly young lich has taken his first shot at making bone golem/mummy/construct.
He has done a pretty poor job : he
lacks the patience or the precision for this type of job. What he
DOES like is to fight : and he will challenge anyone to knock him
out of the circle : this is entertaining for him as he waits.
Since he did such a piss poor job of the magic : he'll be waiting
a long time.
If you can knock him away - he'll be impressed : so impressed
he's off to train more to knock you clear dead at a later date. |
12
|
Bones the Barbarian
(Skeletons)
There are the civilized dead, who
on awakening try to avoid being harvested and want to catalog the
world and write poetry and torture their fellows to unlock the
lost tone . They build cities and such, or steal them.
Otherwise, when you wake up : you
can make an idol of the sleep from which you emerged, and attempt
to return your mind to that place : to revel in the now. No dragon
gods for you. Motion. Action. Blade and Fire and Anvil.
Those guys, not them guys.
And yet : here they have stumbled into a city. How will that
go? |
13
|
Royal Refugees (Mummies)
Fancy folks who fled with elite
guards. A family, with children. They didn't make it. But they
almost made it. They made it here.
They alternate between homicidal and aristocratic depression.
Their duds are trashed - flies are everywhere. They are
disappointed that it came to this. |
14
|
Boy Scout SurvivorsThey
are young : on some sort of vision quest deal where you expose the
next generation to the wilds so that they can push back when the
time comes.
They are lost. But dangerous - some real talent here. They
think they are in a mythic underworld - everything has a double
meaning. This can be exploited if you talk to them in an
appropriate convoluted manner. |
TABLE C-2 : The City as she Stands
1
|
Slums
Here is the beating heart of La
Ciudead. Anyone can be found here. Even if somebody is somewhere
else in an obvious way : they are also here.
The houses are built on top of
each other : alleys split into their own alleys : there are always
people about: in front of their apartments, selling useless items,
taking note of goings on.
If suddenly there aren't people, you know something is up. By
that point, you're probably too late and have been caught in it. |
2
|
Jail
At times they are dark and
oubliette-y - little grates with fingers sticking out : boxes
stacked on boxes like a Cargo ship.
Sometimes they are open air with a lot of freedom of movement
but some sort of killer-weird in the fountain and anybody who
tries to run will be pulled back and drown. |
3
|
Town Watch
Nothing to see here folks.
There are guards swarming everywhere. They've set up a command
station and everything. Something has gone down. Is it worth
sticking your neck out to learn what? |
4
|
Tent Revival
A charismatic preacher or illegal
cult. Perhaps around a recently excavated cult site. Perhaps
around an object.
The Sinquistion frowns on any of
these object-based worships. They would contend that the TONES are
the only source of divinity. But they tolerate some of these as
they will burn themselves out sooner if you just let them be.
There's always zealots though who can't help it and go in
burning and slashing anyway. |
5
|
Market
The most intractable parts of the
city. Older than anything : highly specialized : usually selling
only a single thing with loads of meaningless variation - usually
for the worse.
Got any +1 Swords! Sure! But each has a flaw : think of it as a
signature of manufacture. Otherwise how do you expect to sell a
thing as boring as that? Maybe it is a set of 5 and when it
crosses paths with it's mate it wants only to be reunited. Maybe
it makes it hard to sleep. Maybe it grows hair for the winter
climbs and must be shaved every morning. Lux! |
6
|
Sin District
Gardens. Libationaires. Prostitutes who have learned to project
a small amount of their animating electricity : you too can be a
drainer.Brightly lit. |
7
|
Bureaucracy
The Singquisition loves paper.
Everything should be cataloged, tracked. Universal employment : as
long as everything can be filed.
There are all sorts of minor functionaries, laboring away. The
entire history of the world exists somewhere, written down
longhand. |
8
|
Carcinogen LibraryThe
Sinquistition is of the belief that the destruction of forbidden
books only spreads their essence : the words themselves consumed
by fire will reassemble themselves on some other page. Much better
to water the heresy down : hide the worst of the lot amid the
dross.
There are many many of these small libraries : each guarding a
single book - it will be surrounded by similar titles, or books
with a similar essence. Even magic means cannot divine the
location of the needle in the haystack. Perhaps the librarian
knows : but he is among the most fanatical and will not help you. |
9
|
Miraculum
To succeed in magic is to be
spirited off, to gradually to drift at right angles away into the
firmament. The body may remain, ill-tended if wiry, but the wizard
is elsewhere, doing else-things.
To fail?
The minor successes that launched such an unsavory career have
already separated the user from his fellow citizens. The failures
find each other's company. They congregate : poor ashen
practitioners selling minor enchantments. The streets here have a
static charge : the sense that anything could happen : but will
most probably fizzle out first. |
10
|
Closed for Repairs
The
city, forcibly occupied or not, still needs lubrication and
maintenance, lest the great gears stick and shake the foundations.
It is old and irritable. Any district can be shut down at a moment
: yellow caution tape wrapping around, clockworkers swarming in
their lugubrious way, carrying oil-cans and hammers, gathering in
circles stroking their chins in contemplation of the city's
persistent mystery.
Although some of their
fellows in the diaspora label these "collaborators", the
servitors see themselves as merely another mechanical part of the
City itself, and sleep onsite in wire hammocks. |
11
|
Thieves' Guildhall
If the City is a great mechanism
(and it is!) the many mafias and street gangs and fraternal
criminal organizations are the oil that lubricates it's
bureaucratic stickiness.
(never mind the ACTUAL oil,
mentioned above, that must be applied)
Usually it is much more efficient to go through a guild rather
than braving the bureaucracy, start to finish.Gang territory is everywhere, and best not forget WHOSE territory you are in : but for every Chief there is a fortress : be it a flower shop, the back room of a jazz club, an under-cave, or a homeless camp. It is here the group retreats to if in a war over territory, and here that you will go to ask a favor. |
12
|
Adventurers
Adventurers are like a flu-bug
descending on a household. They pass from place to place, laying
the one low only to move on : expelled, shunned, antibioticked
away with the promise of quests and megadungeons.
They set up camp at the inn, or a
boarding house. Trouble follows.
Every once and a while : a group
of them will get it in their head that La Ciudead itself is the
adventure they seek. These individuals need to be forcibly
expelled at once : they tend to dig themselves in.
As this is a business best accomplished by seasoned
professionals, there exists a domestic career available for
adventurers after all. Sometimes two competing "extermination"
firms end up under contract to kick their rivals out of their
respective neighborhoods. |
13
|
Nobility
Formal palaces with thrones and
supplicants. The Nobility are generally either Mummies or very old
Ghosts - one time invaders, they set up court, and integrate
themselves into the workings of the City. Ghosts require rituals
to prevent themselves from dissipating. They might be able to
grant 1st level spells. The Mummies spend a lot of energy dressing
down.
Mummies. They're just like us. |
14
|
The Whore of Brouhahon
At the very center of the city's clockwork is a Candy Heart : She spells out, letter by letter, the history of the world - in that original language, of snarl and alarm call. The words are long and flowery and devoid of consonants.
The Sinquisition says it spells
out SOLFEO, over and over again - but looking too long burns out
the eyes, so who can say. She is a gas. She is a liquid. She is a
solid. She grows inside you.
She escapes, from time to time. Has a walkabout - puts on a
skin of melted skin and blue gingham. There will be a long parade.
Best keep away. |
TABLE C-3 : The City formerly Known as 349b5823d04
1
|
Boarding Hooks
Imagine something like the opening
scene in Meaning of Life : the City itself in some sort of
clockwork imagination can approach and make an attack at the
center of some other city : hunt them like Whales. Render them to
their core components.
Perhaps, even, this is what happened, how ancestor of the
Sinquisition achieved escape and the La Ciudead was overwhelmed :
a hole in the world through which they fled. You ever punch a guy
and he starts bleeding on you and you get scared a little? |
2
|
Analog Gardens
Precise. Weirdly blocky like an
8-bit gameset, giving the same elusive happiness. Possessing Wu
without Wabi.
The entire thing moving as one. A playroom for some executive. |
3
|
High Ceilinged Laboratories
High science - lots of glass. Maybe there will be some critters
of whatever sort preserved in alcohol or in a stasis field. Maybe
it will be an atom smasher or something, just taking two objects
and sparking them against each other, noting the color.The Sinquistion loves these. If you can find one, keep it from submerging again, they'll give a nice reward. Turn it into a prison cell/torture chamber. |
4
|
Open Concept Offices
These will still have clockworkers
in them. banging on typewriters. They didn't leave as the city
sunk. They were asked not to by an exec. No walls.
Perhaps, as with the Monkeys, pounding away with their pointer
fingers, they have produced a SCROLL with a spell. Perhaps it is
one that will light the world on fire. |
5
|
Motion Picture Halls
Movie halls - still running.
Weird, abstract things - oil slides with chimes. A machine that
puts a cell in front of the light and it lights on fire, slowly
crumbling, pull. Insert another.
Often not a hall at all but open air. These are older machines,
more deteriorated, more likely to be malfunctioning. |
6
|
Prionpriapus
Nemesis Shadow are just the last
in a long line of infections that throw off the clockwork. Most
are not of the life/unlife axis at all - but rather constituent
parts mounted 90 degrees wrong : bad replicative programming :
sharp edges that strip the gears.
These are junkyards and quarantine : Monoliths working like
magnets for misfolded clockworkmen. |
7
|
Spare Parts-yards
Graveyards
: but orderly : every piece sorted by purpose - color (which can
determine age of manufacture) and condition.
Spider
constructs tend to the parts, cataloging them, piling them up or
dropping into pits.
Everything is intended for
ONE purpose and one purpose only : adapter creep clockwork style.
An enterprising murderhobo could probably find all sorts of
treasures with banal uses that have extraordinary possibilities. |
8
|
Evacuating Clockworkers
The worst is happening and the
City has been utterly breached : screaming horrors and shadows are
everywhere.
They keep organized, but coiled
tight tight tight trying to maximize their position into the
run-chutes to escape. It is tense.
Anything at all could spring the
it : cause a blast, loss of formation. This, then, is like an
unexploded munition, just waiting to blow up.
There are floor captains, with colored vests. |
9
|
Failing Levee
Here there has been a big breach,
and no matter what anyone does, it keeps on springing leaks.
It's one of those intractable
fairy tale situations where dozens of doctors from distant lands
are called to wake the sleeping princess. In this case engineers.
They argue, try outlandish braces or engine pumps. The walls
break. The guards push the hordes back.
Rinse and repeat. |
10
|
Reloj-bservatory
The Stars operated in a manner
familiar to the inner life of a clockworkmen. They turned against
each other - and great telescopes were constructed for the sheer
pleasure and awe at as above so below.
Complicated fortune telling
dictates policy.
Many are now pointed at the Bloom. The old equations applied to
these irregular patterns give interesting results. |
11
|
Cookoo Reactor
Great beating heart (s) of La
Ciudead. This is the kind of thing like an a pulp cover : fair
maiden or (perhaps sulking rival) chained up on a cliff awaiting
to be consumed as a tax.
At the appointed hour, out from a
door : often unseen - comes some sort of horror. It feasts and
renews the harvests.
The offerings may seem quite modernistic : the Sinquisition is
not above finding a Reactor and offering someone to feed it. |
12
|
Antennae Towers
Tall, transmitting frequencies far
off. Or else receiving. Maybe there is a box somewhere printing
out the results, or to feed the inputs.
Often partially colonized by other
critters - as nests, or as towers for slimwizard - who intertwine
themselves with the infrastructure - cultivating spark elementals
: volterage, ash, and man, who take the form of an army or a
criminal enterprise - shambling about as if in a dream, eyes
glowing like a single set of embers.
They will insert themselves into your life : Ningauble, Sheelba
: and commandeer you to find other, taller, latticeworks to climb. |
13
|
Fancy Restaurant
The most dangerous place.
They have evocative names with
many layers of meaning : referencing classical poetry but also
tragic military defeats and mythology.
Dragons will sometimes come to dine : they, being the most
heavy metal of all mortals and immortals, appreciate even more
than a clockworkman a meal made of gold garnished with bronze
flakes and a tin wedge. |
14
|
The Boardroom
Everything decided by committee.
If an executive has a rival and
wants to neutralize him, if he can get him on the right project he
won't surface for years and years.
They are sleep deprived, irritable, and trapped. Powerful
beyond measure but powerless. There is left over catering
everywhere. Stacked on the last leftover catering. Sticky notes
and arcane scribbling. |
TABLE C-4 : Counter Measures
1
|
Confetti Blast
Dozens of little glass spheres
explode, releasing adhesive paper bits.
In the vacuum of the sphere's they don't stick, but as soon as
they're out in the air, they stick to everything : each other :
the city, citizens, invaders. |
2
|
Thrusters Go!
A tremendous spring launches the
infected block into another in a random direction like a
jack-in-the-box. This is devastating for both of them : and also
creates a barrier of rubble against the incursion.
Survival is possible, but those thus afflicted will be trapped,
and given the circumstances, rescue is unlikely. |
3
|
Whippits
Out of great gargoyle mouths, the area is pumped full of
something not dissimilar to Smilex (Joker Juice). Everyone gets
light headed - even the most dour depressive brooders have a happy
time - everybody keels over paralyzed - dead or not? |
4
|
Insinuation C-4
Pipes run along the ceiling that
instead of waste or steam or other transported substances
(although doubtless those pipes are there too – don't confuse
them!) is filled with Process Oil. A valve turns and said Oil
mists out (from a set of pipes, naturally, completely inert on
it's own), mixing in the air to create little pockets of Parallel
Possibility.
Creatures thus afflicted are parallel-ized, working their way
through all the possible permutations of every action – deeper
and deeper, spreadsheet after spreadsheet – standing very still
lest they set off another chain of events in their head. |
5
|
Orange Crush
Bio warfare. A plague house is
revealed right at the center of the area - from which are released
1d6 emaciated sufferers from the Crush. They survive, but most who
contract the disease turn a predictable color somewhere between
Red and Yellow and start to compact until they are little balls.
As mobility is constrained by the effects : the epidemic should
itself stay contained. One hopes. |
6
|
Blank Holiday
A Festival! Celebrating an
embryonic Godling with an unpronounceable name. Inside a fountain
is an egg : raising the temperature just so will crack it.
Either the critters will turn on
it and consume it's energy : sating them and making them slow
although erratic, or they will fall down and worship before it.
Either way, a prepared team of acolytes will arrive and make a
temple right there. There is a gravity to all these proceedings,
and a magic that will occupy the invaders long past their
expiration. |
7
|
K.I.T.E. S.hield
Killers Internal, Tarrying for
Expected Summons.
Secret organization activated. The
Underdeep state. Anyone could be a member. There is a red light
that goes off and they launch into action. They have no mercy :
and empathy only for other hidden agents.
Often - upon surviving an incursion, these orgs start doing
politics, feeling very sure of themselves. |
8
|
Anti-Barrier-otics
A fireline. Mirror magic creates
counter creatures. Doubles the intensity of the infection, but
they IN even as the Bloom moves out.
The counter creatures usually have a defining characteristic :
like glasses, or a uniform haircut. |
9
|
Fortress Undeadica
Containment. The infected area
drops into a chasm. No further action taken. Bridges will be built
over it.
Flyers and climbers you'd think
could just navigate out, but there's something in the mechanism of
dropping that makes gravity resist them : so they're well stuck.
Enterprising folks from above can try to visit though. |
10
|
Tower Fiends
It's only now that you notice
these little birdcages everywhere. Kept well fed are little demons
with sharp sharp claws. Infernal stirges or what have you.
They won't be fed now. At first slowly, then with increasing
hunger, they will rampage about for some sustenance. They don't
like to go too far from their homes, so it's a pretty controlled
system. |
11
|
Bug Chaser
Due to a fiendish plot,
incompetence, or ennui and moral decrepitude, the official in
charge with this sector's defense doesn't resist the incursion. He
encourages it!
Secret paths are opened to neighboring sectors. It's a full
blown epidemic! |
12
|
Power Station
To quote Dr. Suess : "Off
again! On again! In again! Out again! Through the machines they
raced round and about again."
This self-same official,
distracted from his job by machinations/ malice/malingering, puts
his scheming into a more productive use. Sure : the invasion wants
corridors to other areas of the City - step right through these,
boys!
Just tubes, right back to the center of the sector. But they'll
keep trying. Meanwhile, the treadmill is generating electricity.
That can be used to animate : well anything. Generally something
ambitious and destructive. |
13
|
The Good News and the Bad News
There's good news and there's bad news. Which do you want
first? |
Good News First
The
Good News : The Towers mentioned above, instead psuedo-stirges,
are installed with archers. They have been training for this :
taking the odd pot shot, for many months.
The Bad News : Upon seeing
their success in clearing the square, they take it upon themselves
to hire a magician to make their towers levitate : and they set
out rampaging across the city. |
|
Bad News First
The
Bad News : The critters climbed the towers and expelled the
archers. The sector is now defenseless.
The Good News : Territorial
little guys, aren't they? Not only does whoever took the towers
draw the attention of the rest of the infestation, but they
eradicate them entirely : appointing themselves the new first line
of defense against further encroachment by the outside. |
|
14
|
The Broom Loom
Candles are lit by a suicide team
that dunk the surrounding area into positive and negative material
planes, rapidly alternating, until the strobe makes the area move
in slow motion.
It slows and slows until those
inside are as statues (including, obviously, said suicide team,
who have to keep the candles lit lest the breath of deathless blow
them out).
Inside : it's its own thing. Continue as before. But there's no leaving the party. |
 |
| Christiaan Huygens |
If you really want
to get fancy, you can make boxes in boxes. A 3x3 grid contains nine
3x3 babies. You can make a whole family tree of a city. There are
exits and entrances. And sometimes, suddenly, as the rush of ghouls
bears down upon you, there are neither.
Bibliography and some Obvious but Useful Resources :
Yoon Suin, Dead Planet, Gathox Vertical Slum, Scenic Dunnsmouth, Denethix sections of Anomalous Subsurface Environment
