The Powers That Be (
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synodiporia_ooc2019-11-26 06:26 pm
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Slivers & Shards: Jaunt Info
Post-Apocalyptic Psionic Kaiju Funtimes
December 1 - January 24
First was the Age of the Ancients. Nine billion Ancients ruled over all of the Living World, ripe with mushrooms, blue with water. They lived on the High Tables, for they were ascended beings and knew the secret of breathing there. They reigned, we think, for a hundred thousand years, since the birth of the world. They knew Paradise, and they built Heaven. But they were fools, and used fire in war. They burned the World down.
Second was the Age of the Mystics. For ten thousand years after the Death of the World, the Mystics built Spires on the edge of the Tables, unlocking glorious powers and sheltering a chosen few - eight million, it is said. They ruled whole Tables, but no one ruled all the Dead World. The eight million Mystics knew secrets of fire the Ancients never did, and while the World was not theirs to travel, everyone in it lived safe, and no one died before they turned one hundred. But they were fools, and their power ran on water. The seas dried to dirt, and the Mystics died.
Third was the Age of the Shadow. For one thousand years, the Umbrian Protectorate united the Vales of the Fallen World. They could not live on the High Tables any longer, and all people were born thirsty and died thirsty, but they were still united, and they were careful with their resources. They ruled Nations the size of Vales. They delved in the depths for crystals, and found they could place thoughts in them. Many of the secrets of the Ancients and Mystics still rang in the depths. The world had died twice, but the Umbrians thought if they could control the minds of everyone, they could prevent a third apocalypse. But they built the hellstones, crystals that could destroy Vales who wanted to think for themselves. And the hellstones, being a violation of the earth as the Mystics violated water and the Ancients violated fire, drew the third apocalypse up from the heart of the world. The Nation-Eaters devoured Vale after Vale, and the Umbrian overlords were shattered for their hubris.
This Age doesn’t have a name. It’s been a hundred years since the Fall of the Protectorate. By the end of the Age there will only be 60,000 people left, they say. Nobody rules anything larger than a Spire, and anybody who thinks he rules a Spire himself best look out. The secrets of the past were lost when the Umbrian Shadow fell. The only secret knowledge people have now is what their grandparents told them - and their grandparents knew the world would end again soon. “Don’t fuck up the air,” we remind each other. Earth, Fire, and Water all turned against us, abandoned us. The world may be nothing but Slivers & Shards, but this is all the world we got left, and it’s going away soon. Hang onto it.
FALLENHEART LOCATIONS/MAP
1. The Qanat is a horizontal channel cut deep into the rock, which acts to capture and collect moisture. As the only source of surface water for the community, it is guarded constantly and rationed carefully. Each citizen receives two liters per day.
2. The Grand Menagerie is an open-air zoo with twists of thorny acacia-wood fencing. Smaller animals have cages of copper wire. The Menagerie contains a breeding pair of every animal known to exist, and the skeletons of many extinct species.
3. The Market was once a station for Umbrian Protectorate hovertrains. The tuning-fork pylons the trains ran over and between stretch out into the desert, but the platforms and resting cradles have become stalls in what is now an open-air market where caravans from every Spire sell their wares. There is no currency; all trade is based in barter or labor, but the most valuable transactions always involve psychic energy stored in Moonfall crystals.
4. The Theater. A round basin with a circular stone stage and stepped bench seating, the Theater is home to not only dramatic productions, but regular speeches, newscriers, and other civic announcements.
5. The Calculator Council, which consists of the 5 most respected Factors in the Spire, meets in a hexagonal basalt chamber. All deliberations are open to the public from the gallery surrounding the chamber, but only one person may enter the chamber and address the Council at a time. Council meetings occur at dawn or an hour before dusk, on any day two or more Councilors wish to meet.
6. The Avenue of Pillars extends between the Market and the Council chambers, a wide road paved in fossil-heavy limestone, with five-meter tall squared off pillars on either side. The four faces of the pillars are carved to resemble the profiles of humanoid figures - one ostrich-headed, one with a strange, distinctive head shape and antelope horns, one sphinxlike, with a human face but with a burncat's mane, and one with a bald head and goggles.
7. The Mural Plateau is a flattish, sloped slab of stone roughly the size of a football field, upon which lichens are grown, tended, and scraped into artistic patterns of color.
8. The Factors' Tower is a five-story tower with an open amphitheater the size of a classroom at the top. It is where Factors primarily practice and are taught the Vale Arts, and occasionally where exhibition matches with Vale Artists from other Spires occur. It is guarded, because most of the primed and unprimed crystal in the city is stored within the Tower. The Tower also serves to watch over the Western Walls
9. The Watchtower, a slowly-tilting edifice of rough, crenelated sandstone seven stories tall, looks out over the Eastern Walls and the closest terraces.
10. The Statue Garden is simple a section of slope where large chunks of granite, basalt, sandstone, and marble have been deposited after removal from the Quarries. Some of them are marked with paint as intended for some construction project or another; the others may be carved by anyone with a chisel, and have become a haphazard, unfinished gallery of sculpture in many different styles.
11. The Quarries are stone pits from which large amounts of useful, workable stone have been harvested; they lead to extensive underground tunnels and galleries excavated along the paths that lodes of interesting stone strata lay in before being harvested. Some tunnels may connect as far away as the Caves.
12. The Shadow District contains half a dozen pinecone-shaped towers of ceramic and polymer - early Umbrian construction, said to resemble the towers of the Mystic Age. This neighborhood escaped damage in the Fall a hundred years ago, and is still actively being scavenged; but Umbrian security systems involving primed crystal with deadly psychic powers inlaid make it risky. The buildings themselves have not been scavenged for materials because the ceramics and polymers used are resistant to steel tools - much tougher than any modern material.
13. The Walls. Half retaining wall, half defensive measure, these steeply angled walls section off the Spire from the Terraces below. Most of them lie along cliff faces or embankments, so while they are as high as forty feet tall from the base of the wall to the top; from the Spire-side they're rarely more than five or ten feet tall, with walkways on top and guardhouses for shelter and defense at either end.
14. The terraces are just that - terraced fields of mushrooms, rye, and teff on the mountainside; irrigated by qanat-channels into the hillside. All dead animals are buried in the fields as fertilizer.
15. These storehouses and silos contain goods traded in the market, as well as stockpiles of furs, leathers, dried meat, grain, or mushrooms, and occasionally scavenged objects from the Umbrians. Most things stored here are considered common property by the city; those that are private property are under guard.
16. Residential Districts. Most homes are sandstone and brick; one-roomed domed stone huts, roughly egg-shaped, with a small oculus at the top; this being the most efficient shape for maintaining a steady, cool temperature during the day.
17. Blacksmiths, guardsmen, and Vale Artists all use this area to store whatever leather or bronze armor, and whatever bronze or iron weapons they can make - or more rarely, steel, crystal, or ceramic weapons made over a hundred years ago, before the Shades fell.
18. Umbrian Ruins. These blasted-out shells of buildings and crumbling wrecks were destroyed during the fighting a century ago. They've long since been scavenged for anything useful, and are slowly being broken down for the stone needed for new buildings. Hopeful prospectors lead salvage teams through them anyway, but useful finds are rare.
19. These natural limestone caves curlicue deep into the rock. Guards search them regularly to make sure moths and locusts don't start breeding grounds within the city. They're frequent clandestine meeting spots, as well as housing many of the Spire's stills.