Thanks.GoodKingJayIII said:Cool stuff.
Me too. It's one my favorite parts of fantasy, the freedom to make the abstract literal and/or concrete.I've always liked the idea of the Astral Sea as a literal sea.
OK:Can't wait to see more.
- The Cult of That-Which-Is-Not worships a Sphere of Annihilation, which is either a path to paradise or a one-way ticket off the wheel of existence entirely.
- An abandoned temple houses an entity known only as The Dog. An enormous hound, the size of a war-horse, it's apparently immortal (some 200 years old now) and virtually unkillable (as testified by the number of now dead folk who have tried). It wanders throughout the building, never showing any particular signs of more-than-canine intelligence, and will occasionally accept gifts of food from petitioners. Those whose offering are accepted find themselves receiving a small blessing of some sort -- luck in love, recovery from illness, a sudden windfall.
The Dog is served by a small and fanatical priesthood, who follow it about and clean up after it. They make a small living for themselves selling its droppings in the Five Fathoms Market, where buyers assume that the crap of a Dog that might be a God *has* to be worth something. If nothing else, it makes excellent fertilizer.
- The Breakers... it's the neighborhood behind a section of the perennially-being-rebuilt Sea Wall where the enormous pieces of flotsam that are deposited by storms into the harbor are brought to be broken up by men with adamantine hammers -- each hammer is worth the cost of a 100 men's lives, and attempts to steal one are punished accordingly. Most of these pieces of 'flotsam' are huge chunks of obsidian from Avernus, the first island of Hell . They get broken down and used as morally-suspect building material, and for Rituals. Sometimes the pieces contain devil larvae/devils. Sometimes the pieces are from other islands/planes. Sometimes they're alive. Either way, the men of the Breakers *try* to put them to the hammer.
- The Governor has appointed Magistrates, one for each district of the city, to keep the Peace and enforce the Law. Unfortunately, he hasn't defined either of those terms, and the Magistrates (each with their private army of bailiffs/cops) are largely free to follow their own whims.
- Even more unfortunately, the Governor is a deeply paranoid fellow. Every two to four weeks, entirely at random, he draws lots and reassigns each magistrate to a different district. Ostensibly this is to reduce corruption and graft, and to make it more difficult for them to establish enough of a power-base to be a potential threat, but most folk are convinced that he's doing this just to with the populace.
- People are adaptable, however, and have learned to exploit this. It's not uncommon for fugitives to flee from one district to another; the Magistrates' men are fiercely territorial, and will often let a runner go free just to give the give their rivals the middle finger. And of course, what's a crime in the Breakers today might be perfect legal in the Shambles...although it's entirely possible that this will change with tomorrow's sunrise.
- The Governor himself has a large force of soldiers working for him. Minotaurs, for the most part. They need some kind of vaguely euphemistic title, although the people refer to them as the Cuckolds.
- There is a train system of a sort; two enormous Stone Golems, working to an exacting schedule, pull a string of cars attached to a heavy chain to-and-from through the city. When Gog is pulling, Magog lets out the slack of the chain...and vice-versa. This train cuts across the districts, and has its own set of peacekeepers.
There's more, but my collaborators are still looking over the new material...