Forum

[Mallus]

Some new stuff from my friend and collaborator Rolzup, who is going to run this campaign.

• The Eternal Bureaucracy, which co-exists with the city in some metaphysical way, processes the spirits of the dead, assigns them an afterlife, and ships them across the Aster Sea to their final destination -- ideally. In practice, the Eternal Bureaucracy is just as riddled by corruption, red-tape, and general incompetence as any mortal agency. More so, even. The majority of the dead spend years waiting to be processed. Centuries, in a few cases.

• A sort of shantytown of displaced souls has grown up around the city, where the dead spend their time waiting until the Bureaucracy will see them. There are, of course, Things that prey upon these luckless bastards, resulting in plenty of available bearths on the Black Ships....

• For those who wish to cheat the whole process, they can seek out the services of the Lithogenic Guild; Medusae and their kin, who will (for a fee) turn their clients into stone so that they can await the End of World in peace and relative safety.

He also proposes a train, "I had the idea last night of enormous Stone Golems, working to an exacting schedule, taking turns pulling a string of cars to and fro with chains of improbable size....", but he's not sure it fits.

I think it does; a train pulled by giants running north to south, carrying goods from across the Sea of Dreams to snowbound barbarians and drug-addled snake cultists (and all stops in between).

I replied, "One of the phrases I keep coming to is: "It's the dawn of the Age of Man that unfortunately takes place after the apocalypse". Trains are a great symbol for human --'mortal' in this case-- ingenuity, industry and ambition. I love the idea that the overall setting theme is this vibrancy set against a backdrop of melancholy, people making the best of it after the end of the world, a port city of great energy, full of promise and progress, despite the fact that here, the living, cohabit with the restless dead.