Edge-of-Town is a nautical, isolated little borough. Plenty of room for things to get weird. Also I really like lighthouses.
Points of Interest
Church of the New Speech
A group of rabid-eyed drifters has taken over the desolate Church of the Third Catholic Cathedral and is evangelizing their faith: abandon speech, communicate only through music made with pipes and hacksaws! Little success to date.
Ecumenical Recitals
This concert hall (of a sort) is run by a shy Mockery who will under very few circumstances speak to you. The idea is you show up, take a seat, deposit some coins in the slot, and the bank of pianos and steam organs will spring to life and play the music on the sheets of paper that thread through them. Like player pianos, but louder.
Experience Gallery
Formerly a power plant, now serves as a gallery and habitat for a group of experimental artists who think that you can create interesting art by sending high voltage through people. Under many conditions this is safe. They are not above kidnapping for the right effect.
Grubpile
Grubpile: “We serve food, and lots of it!” The speciality is seafood. Customers have been stopping by less since the church down the way got noisy. This isn’t making anyone happy.
Letty’s Pyre
Cremating bodies is more hygienic than burying them. The Pyre also serves as a lighthouse for ships passing by this rough section of coast.
Moon Tower
At the top of the moon tower (like a miniature Eiffel Tower), there’s a bank. It is very easy to prevent anyone from getting there by pulling up the ladder.
The New School
A highly experimental university with a very small enrolled base. Students are expected to teach courses. Nothing is audited. It’s mostly useless but there’s a small chance on any given day that someone will be lecturing about the true locations of valuable shipwrecks, or an infinite energy source, or something.
Sea Drop
Before the borough discovered a better way, they just dropped corpses off the edge of the cliffs into the sea. There are thousands of dead bodies down there. Local rumors say not all of them were empty-pocketed.
Shattered Glass Tavern
A local tavern, habituated by a mix of humans, Mockeries, and an occasional alien. Tradition is that on your first night, you break a beer mug with your face.
Scooters by Fran
Rent a rare electric scooter and take a ride down the Museum Line! The Line is kind of unstable but the museums, concert halls, and galleries are very good. Fran’s scooters are not useful on footpaths. Please lock them when leaving them.
Sound Museum
A shipwreck (the Lady of the Velvet Seas): the body of the steamship is mostly still intact and has been converted into a museum of sounds. This is where you can go to hear the rare cry of the falcons of the Southern Forests, or hear a blind man’s reaction upon regaining sight.
Tontine Inn
Most inns don’t have a lawyer in residence. 20% off the rack rate if you’re willing to sign over a 5% interest in your inheritance triggering only when you die at the Inn. Doesn’t get much business but the payoffs are worth it.
Translucency
Best food and drink in Edge-of-Town. Probably worth the requirement to remove all your clothing before you enter. The thing is, that also makes it the safest place in town.
Complications
City Tram
The line is on fire. A tram is on fire. It’s unclear if the source of the probkem is Letty’s Pyre or maybe the Church of the New Speech ruffians, but that may not be the most pressing issue.
Museum Line
There are several tourist attractions along this transit route, and a relatively large number of touts who are paid in relation to the number of bodies they drag into their attractions. At the moment, they’re dragging away someone the player characters have come to care about.
Footpaths
At any given moment, given the quasi-aquatic nature of the entire borough, one or more of these are washed out or at the very least slippery and dangerous.
Factions
The Light Keepers
Before there was a lighthouse, Edge-of-Town subsided in large part on illicit gains from wrecked ships. It’s a cleaner, safer borough now. Take that a step further, and it’s the light itself that guides locals towards a moral life. Living an immoral life, thus, is to deny the power of the light. The Light Keepers try to keep people from doing that.
Drive: removing sinners from the world
Leader: Old Cormorant (his work name, not his real name)
Current Project: destroying the pathway to Sea Drop (8 slice clock)
NPCs
Winston Carryround
Winston represents the interests of the Subterranean Anti-Spelunker Society. It is a Machine, but is cloaked by a voluminous woolen overcoat and a shapeless bright red felted hat. It feigns muteness and uses eloquent sign language. Occasionally it’s accompanied by an interpreter.
Goal: return to the Underground with the most outre human creation, so as to win the Vermin Prize
Plan: sponsor an artist to create a work of art to specification
Itch: to understand food
Vero Streamline
Vero is a trapeze artist who believes that her best work comes when she’s guiding the untrained through the intricacies of aerial dance. Any fool who can float well can be pretty; shaping yourself to an amateur’s tune requires more. She always has a candidate in mind, spending weeks following them closely to learn the way they move. She has built a complex series of ziplines and swings above the borough, often using electrical lines as part of her design.
Goal: become acclaimed not just in Edge-of-Town, but everywhere
Plan: at any given moment, to fall in love with the way someone moves
Itch: to become a steam powered machine
Sister Caroline
The dear Sister is a charity-minded woman who follows a vague non-denominational faith. She’s filthy rich, living in a mansion near the sea cliffs. Her guilt is such that she feels compelled to slowly give away her fortune to those who need it; her arrogance is such that she is unable to give away money without first explaining why she thinks you fell to such depths.
Goal: to become broke through charity
Plan: recruit more people into her circle, so as to increase the efficiency of her giving
Itch: to go to sea
Encounters
- Four semi-drunken sailors (5 HP, d8 bulky marlinspikes) looking for corpses to feed to Letty’s Pyre.
- A chamber music quintet (3 HP, d6 secondary instruments), unable to find paid performances what with the local resurgence of dissonant music and player pianos. They’ve resorted to muggings.
- Ten small drones (2 HP, d4 tiny drills) which would like to burrow inside a human head and observe. Winston has something to do with this. If someone voluntarily lets one in, they take 2 HP damage and lose 1 DEX. If one hits someone three times in a row, they get in anyway and the someone still loses 1 DEX.
- Two Light Keepers (10 HP, d6 firebrand, fire can spread to those they hit) looking for sinners to purify.
- One crusader (8 HP, d6 rapier, +1 armor padded vest) with vengeance on her mind. Her brother died in a shipwreck off the coast, and she blames the borough and everyone who lives there.
- An Alien (STR 15, 10 HP, d8 electric gun, +1 armor electrified carapace) who interprets the music of the New Church as a challenge to battle.
Treasure
The Peregrine went down off the coast a week ago, and an accident at an insurance company has revealed that it was carrying a £1000 value painting of Duke Valmont’s privates. (Blackmail value, not artistic.) There’s probably not more than a week left before the seawater destroys it completely.
Be First to Comment