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| Marshall Brown, Pantheon a map!(?) |
The PCs find a clue. "The Pyre Monks know the secret," they say. "We need to find their monastery." How?
1. Directions - On the surface, directions are given with three components: direction, distance/time, and landmarks. Underground, directions are given with three components: rocks, depth, and landmarks.
"Pass the blue-grey marble caves, then travel down to a boulder field. When you hear the hiss of flame, you are close."
All hex descriptions list a rock type and a depth (littoral, profundal, and abyssal). Time is meaningless. A journey might take one group six hours. Another group, following a slightly different path, could take six days. Travelers, wanderers, elders, and experts might be able to give PCs directions, or direct them to someone who can. Trading gold for directions is important.
This is a pretty good model for Cath Celdaenn; you can spend your life on the City surface, sunkissed and ignorant, but the real shit is tucked deep in its folds, its inner districts and sub-sub-sub-boroughs, places that haven't seen the sun for generations. And the deep City is very much like (read: heavily inspired by) the Veins.
Rather than rock type, the navigational detail to pay attention to in the City is architectural style.
"Past the triple arches, go up until you hit Apolyon ruins. If you see square columns, you've gone too far."
There's a fuckton of these. Some share themes: Ancient- and Neognomen structures share a fixation with long, straight corridors and tall, narrow arches. Some are distinguishable only by experts: Ilmari and Eyochic structures are mostly identical, but the latter is usually built on a stone foundation which predates the former.
[Some features: spires, domes, arches, columns, windows, sightlines, scatterlights, waterworks, paths/signage, gardens, reliefs, icons, symbols, phrases/signage, cairns, ceiling/floor detailing, stairs, animalia, public/private spaces]
[Some vibes: comfortable, pious, austere, extravagant, excessive, high/low, mathematical, orthodox, impossible, inconvenient, haphazard, utilitarian, political, strict, overlooked, hidden, double-meaning, square/circular/fractal/spiral motifs]
For those keeping track:
Fort Drakkengard is a Red Sun-style construction with Giantish influences over an Afnordic foundation.
The Ash Palace is a postmaximalist take on a South Apolyon palace, notably lacking the traditional moat.
Cantor's Cradle is heavily inspired by Neognomen, although it's technically its own thing altogether.
The Tomb-City of Shakuay is a mix of Koan and Akadian styles, torn down and reimagined as imperialist powers by their cannibal idiot descendants.
The Line is a brutalist Classical Linear superstructure, later colonized by other, more diverse styles like moss on a log.
The Throne of Shivered Sight is deeply, unsettlingly traditional Drud.
Even the most dilapidated streets have names in Cath Celdaenn, and they are known to the people who live on/around them. A comprehensive map does not and/or could not exist, but an Urbanist can communicate a more precise route to another Urbanist as a codestring. (HGDHGQOECUA = Take Hawthor St to Glaerin Rd to Dolmen St to...)
...wait, what's an "Urbanist?"
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| Mirror's Edge |
Information is power, and the City is dense with information. Unfortunately, most of that information is of dead cultures and outmoded gods, of tax records and granary accounting, of petty rivalries and pettier romances that amounted to nothing of historical importance. It's 99% noise, 1% world-order-overturning treasure.
Or so they might think! But you know better. Every detail, every node, every neuron of Cath Celdaenn is alive and deeply, intimately connected. It's all one big puzzle, and you love puzzles! Puzzles are lovely, especially that satisfying click sound when you solve them. Let warlords squabble over trinkets; you are going to understand everything.
The Urbanist
Start with: 100' of rope coiled impossibly tightly into 1 slot; a travel notebook (may or may not be yours) dense with secret code; a dagger you can't lose, no matter how hard you try.
+1 Save and +1 Language per Template
A: Codes, Cityspeak
B: Street Cred, Decoder General
C: One Door Closes, +1 Attack per turn or +2 MD
D: It All Clicks
A: Codes
Your own code-languages, written and spoken, are incomprehensible to anyone you haven't taught them to. You can crack Urbanist codes in a season, and non-Urbanist codes in a day.
All Urbanists share a common language for navigational codestrings, allowing one Urbanist to follow another's directions flawlessly. Teaching this language to non-Urbanists is their only taboo.
A: Cityspeak
You can learn architectural styles as if they were languages, allowing you to "speak" to parts of the City. It may answer questions about any destroyed landmarks, people who once lived here, and the events of yesterday. Each style also gives an associated cantrip.
Styles include, but are not limited to...
- Red Sun - Sprawling, open, crenelated, eight-pointed star windows. Pack animals won't fuck with you if they can help it.
- Afnordic - Solemn, cyclopean, cylindrical, ramps > stairs, sometimes cairns. You can do an hour's labor in ten minutes, and a day's labor in two hours.
- Ancient Gnomen - Straight and narrow, tall arches, steles, human faces in relief. You get a second Save against fear, sleep, love, and any other state that clouds the mind. You can't get drunk.
- Neognomen - Tall and narrow, golden ratio spiral staircases, geometry > the human body. You can track wizards by scent (smells like stale math).
- Classical Linear - Cubes, square columns, grid plan, larger than life, engraved. You can estimate distance, weight, and radioactivity with unsettling accuracy.
- North Apolyon - Wide, round arches, animals in relief, fractal stepwells. No one can attack you while you are bathing.
- South Apolyon - Tall, round arches, floral, waterworks-obsessed, column-statues. If you offer food in good faith, even monsters will sit and have lunch with you.
- Koan - Winding corridors, spires, echoing, ostentatious, handrail-averse. No one ever questions your right to bear arms.
- Akadian - Rough, spiked pyramidal roofs, narrow alleys, dragons in relief. You deal +1d6 damage when attacking from below.
- Ilmari/Eyochic - Onion domes, painted, symmetrical, fan motifs in the road. You can perform a double-jump.
- Ossic/Necropolist - Crawlspaces, light-chimneys, tall gardens, verandas. You can crawl at a dead sprint, and don't slow to squeeze thru tight spaces.
- Drud - Crooked, haphazard, stone pillars on wood foundations. ("Drud" is a sort of slur amongst architecture nerds.) If you hold your knees to your chest and close your eyes, you appear to be a harmless stone statue.
B: Street Cred
The City itself likes you. You add +[templates] to reaction rolls within the City.
Every important NPC knows who you are.
B: Decoder General
Up to [templates] other characters are always up-to-date on your code-languages, no matter how frequently you change them.
C: One Door Closes
You can open a stuck or locked door by permanently closing another nearby door, and vice versa. If you speak the local architectural style, you can do this by whistling or clearing your throat instead.
The definition of what counts as a "door" is open to interpretation.
D: It All Clicks
You can walk from any point in the city to any other with a day's travel. You can't be killed by City geography.
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| the City's inhabitants can still kill you tho by Michael Macrae |
Very fun!
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