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phantasmods) wrote2017-07-19 11:42 pm
phantasmods) wrote2017-07-19 11:42 pm
DUNGEON INFO: INCENDIA
AREA GENERAL
Once a thriving city, the streets of Incendia are now empty of human life - by day, it seems as though the entire population simply vanished overnight. Shops are still standing with open doors and sale signs in the windows; trees rustle in the breeze from the lake to the south. The city as a whole is very green, and even aside from the Fissure, is quite blatantly magical; the dividing lines on the roads glow of their own accord, and semitransparent illusions model clothes in shop windows, turning to admire themselves as though standing before a mirror. Skyscrapers that look like bottles, with seamless glass sides and the green of gardens spilling from the tops, fill the skyline.
And by day, everything is peaceful, except for the signature distortion of the Fissure, which manifests as sparks at the corners of your vision. But by night...
By night, the city burns. It's impossible to tell where the fire starts once the sun goes down; it doesn't really seem to start anywhere, but it happily consumes buildings, vehicles, trees, and anything else that might be out and about on the streets. Unless you have some incredible resistance to heat, the only way to escape the flames is to go underground - to the former subway stations and other places beneath street level that still lie open. They're rather toasty near the stairs, but it's far safer than trying to stay above with the inferno, especially later in the night as buildings begin to warp and collapse from the heat; even those immune to flame are not safe from that.
And then come morning... The flames die down, and the city resets itself, becoming the image of abandoned tranquility once more. A flock of pigeons flutters away from a restored rooftop to peck at bread still fresh from the bakery.
A dead city trapped in a century-long cycle of burning and renewal - such is Incendia, the city of flames.
Please note that while items in the city reset at dawn, creatures do not - if you burn to death in the night, you are still dead in the morning, your remains vanished from the streets with the rest of the rubble. Additionally, while items in shops are restored if left untouched, they do not renew if removed from the city - whatever you take with you looting will not magically reappear endlessly. (Bakery displays consumed by the pigeons seem to be an exception.)
It is also worth noting that while it is indisputably a modern city, Incendia runs off magic rather than a technological basis.You'll find no overhanging wires here, though streetlights are plentiful enough; power instead is conducted through the inlay of magical circuits in the streets themselves, slightly pulsing lines of power. Similarly, cars and the like run off these circuits instead of gas; thus, without some modification, they won't run outside the city limits.
Critter: Flame Pigeons
Danger level: Low to none
Type: Magical animal [domesticable]
Environment: Incendia, any aboveground and entries to belowground areas
Behaviour: Coo(l).
These birds appear, at first glance, to be basically regular pigeons, albeit in shades of charcoal and black with orangeish iridescence on their necks instead of the purple-green sheen common to the normal sort. Typical city pigeons, they have next to no fear of people, and generally won't flutter away unless actively shooed. It's quite easy to tempt them into landing on your hands or knees with an offer of food. They tend to move around in flocks, usually in the early morning and late afternoon, sleeping through the majority of the day and becoming active again as the flaming nights approach.
Which is when their more unusual traits become apparent. Modified by the intense fire magic of the city over the last century, these pigeons are warm, almost hot to the touch as one strokes their feathers. They have a full immunity to the nighttime flames, and tend to nest along the stairsteps down into the underground more because it's the only location that will certainly not collapse than out of any fear of the fire. Their eggs are similarly warm and look like unnaturally smooth embers of charcoal.
Although most of the pigeons are colored as described, it's possible to find a few other varieties - the near-white of ash, either on the whole of the bird or scattered through the feathers, is common. Birds that genuinely glow with the colors of orange flame aren't particularly uncommon, and quite rarely one may find a bird in other colors of flame (though be wary, as the blue ones tend to be even more intensely hot to the touch than average).
Resource: Fire Crystals
Frequency: Small ones common, large ones uncommon to rare
Type: Energy/magical resource
Environment: Any aboveground and the edges of the Underground that reach near the surface.
These red-orange crystals are warm, often almost hot to the touch, and their appearance is likely no surprise to those with a few other expeditions under their belts. They're the one sign of the fire in the city in the day, and start to spark with a wavering flame as the sun goes down, but removing them from where they've grown in various nooks and crannies doesn't do much to slow the flame come nightfall.
LAKEFRONT SHIPPING AND INDUSTRIAL ZONE
Numerous shipping containers build a towering maze along the flat spaces immediately next to the lake, the remains of what was once a bustling shipyard full of traffic from the three rivers that empty into the lake and the one that twists out of it and heads southward to the sea. There are no barges full of cargo here any longer, however, and no new goods coming into the port.
That doesn't mean that the port is still, however. Really, the furthest thing from it. Containers glide back and forth along magical tracks, levitating according to seemingly random processes and to random destinations. Magical cranes and control towers, standing empty, overlook the whole process. The result is a practical maze along the lakeshore built of stacked containers - one that changes over the course of the day, easily bewildering anyone who might not have the greatest sense of direction in the first place.
A bit further inland there are also a series of abandoned factories - some of which are in disrepair enough to indicate that they were abandoned well before the fire came to the city. For those that are still active - largely textile and food packaging plants - the machinery continues to gleefully run unsupervised in the same way that the shipping flats do. By the end of each day, there's a bit of a pile up of output at the end, crates and boxes and bolts of fabric waiting to be loaded into transport by human overseers that will never come, which instead burn at the end of the day before the cycle starts anew at dawn.
There are a total of four underground stations along the port section of the lakeshore, all of them connected to the same route, which eventually turns off to head into the main part of town at one end.
Critter: Soot cats
Danger level: Low to none
Type: Magical animal [domesticable]
Environment: Incendia, any aboveground but primarily the shipping yard and park
Behaviour: Lurker cat is lurking...
At first glance, you might not even recognize this black shape as a cat - they mostly look like large, fluffy balls of black soot, and they tend to leave little scatterings of black footprints where they walk and black spots where they rub up against building and the corners of shipping containers. It's only on closer inspection that one can make out the shapes of ears and long, bushy tails - or perhaps it's just that you saw a pair of feline eyes, the color of glowing embers, peeking at you from some dark corner.
The feral cat population isn't as unfriendly as one might expect, though. Those with the patience to sit somewhere for a while - and food, food always helps - may find themselves headbutted by a particularly friendly creature. Or perhaps you're feeding the pigeons and one of the birds' usual predators will put in an appearance for dinner. And those who take the extra time may even find that their new charcoal-smearing friend will even come home with them - like the domestic cats they're descended from, soot cats don't fear much of anything.
HECTOR WILDE MEMORIAL RITUAL PARK
Spanning nearly a dozen blocks on any given side, the Memorial Park is largely a wide-open green space, with trees and other landscaping lining the trails, edges, and creating a few more private spaces within. (Think something more along the lines of the Washington Mall or the Seattle Center.) The paths are largely paved, there's (self-compacting!) trash cans and benches, and so on. In total, there are five underground stations scattered through the park, three near the edges and two in the middle, split between two routes that intersect at one of the middle stations.
The central features of the park are threefold. The first is the progression of flowing water and still pools on the far eastern side, full of shaded benches and ornamental trees, ending in a wide pool with the bottom covered in coins. (If you throw a coin in the wishing fountain that's in a world where magic is actually real, does it work?) In the southeast corner, there's a large, perfectly flat stone hexagon - with enough broken bits of chalk around the edges to suggest where the 'ritual' part of "ritual park" is done.
And in the center is a huge... Well, is fountain really the right world for a water feature that hangs in the air of its own accord? A half-sphere of clear water hangs in the air, as though held by an invisible fishbowl, and water flows both down from it and back up in a complex pattern (that is, in fact, programmed, and can be figured out if one watches for some ten or fifteen minutes). The main water body even sometimes changes shape, to a proper sphere, a vertical or horizontal figure-eight, or a horizontal ring. Based upon the signage surrounding the basin the feature sits in and its benches, it was once open for people to run through and under the stream to find relief from the summer heat.
And surrounding the fountain plaza are the abandoned tents and stages of what was surely, at some point, a bustling music festival. Two large stages, on opposing sides of the wide field surrounding the fountain, a large series of food booths, and the abandoned tents of craft vendors all remain, along with any number of banners hung from lamp posts and the glow of energy circuits in the pavement to power the whole thing. (Booths can be found on the Shops Page under the Music Festival header.)
The contrast of the silence is deafening.
Hazard: Fire ants
Danger level: low to medium
Type: Magical creature
Environment: Aboveground, mostly in the park
Active: Daytime, when disturbed
These bright red ants might be mistaken for sparks at a glance, especially when there's only a few of them making their way over to investigate your lunch. At their nests, however, it becomes more apparent that they really are as much fire as ant, as the small, sandy hills scattered around the park (and occasionally planter boxes and the like in the rest of the city) seem to emit a constant small flame from the number of ants inside.
If the hill is disturbed, the entire colony mobilizes against the aggressor, bringing with it not just burns from the aggressive insects, but the painful sting typical of the Earth species with which they share a name.
Critter: Echoes
Danger level: Medium to high if disturbed
Type: Undead
Environment: Incendia, any aboveground but most common in open spaces
Behaviour: Haunting
There are any number of ghosts in Incendia, spirits of the people who saw everything go up in flames on that fateful night (and every night since). Most of them are not dangerous - indeed, unless one has a particular affinity for the dead, they will go completely unnoticed.Most, but not all.
Echoes are the spirits of those who, after their deaths in the fires, hold some grudge against the living - jealousy of the survivors, blame against those who saved themselves. And they don't much distinguish between the survivors of a hundred years ago and the living explorers who are newly come to the city. Typically, they are most active in the hour after dawn and the hour before dusk, the times nearest the flames that consumed them, and most commonly found in wider spaces, but they can in theory be found anywhere.
At rest, they manifest as not much more than a faintly colored heat distortion, usually either dark or the reddish of flame. However, when disturbed, the wavering in the air turns suddenly into a pillar of flame the color of the distortion. Instead of the sound of flames, there is an impression of wordless screaming, not heard but felt in an emotional sense and echoing in the minds of anyone who witnesses the transformation. The darkness of the flame seems to correspond to how much malice they hold towards the living; though the ones the color of natural flame won't not burn you up with them, they won't pursue those who attempt to escape. The darker ones, on the other hand, will give chase, sometimes for up to several blocks.
And unless you've ice magic or a weapon specifically designed to hurt ghosts and the like, they're impossible to harm...
RETAIL DOWNTOWN
The downtown of Incendia is clearly what was once a hot and trendy shopping district, with the bottom floor or two of nearly every skyscraper home to a handful of small shops and sometimes to larger departments stores. Coffee shops, burger joints, and the like also crowd in among the retail, as do the occasional grocery or drugstore. For a full list of shops, see the Downtown header on the Shops Page.
Aside from the shops, there are taxis left abandoned on the street, as well as bicycles, normal cars, and the occasional motorbike (or what passes for a motorbike, given the magical source of their propulsion). The buildings themselves are tall and glass-sided; the seamless glass could only have been put there by magic, and by day it reflects sunlight down into the streets, keeping even the areas that are in the shadows of the buildings well lit. (By night, of course, it goes up in flames.) They seem to be mostly office spaces for what were once big companies; closer investigation reveals textiles, mining, shipping, and food to be the major local industries, along with an impressive banking building and several magic-related companies that take the place of the tech sector. Basement parking garages stand open, their guard stations empty.
A little further out, past that central business district, are a bunch of tall apartment buildings with gardens spilling out of their balconies, most not quite reaching a third the height of the central skyscrapers. Many of the flowers are blooming out-of-season, filling the air with colors and sweet scents. Other apartments hang paper lanterns over their balconies, which glow faintly even in the sunlight with magical charms intended to ensure the safety of those who live there.
There are quite a lot of underground stations in the downtown area, unsurprisingly enough, many of them in places that routes cross and/or overlap. In total there are five routes spread between eight stations, and not a single one of the stations is exclusive to a single route, at least based on the maps projected on the glass walls of the shelters that cover the stairs down to the underground proper.
Hazard: Broken lines
Danger level: low to medium
Type: Magical construction
Environment: Aboveground, primarily downtown but really anywhere
Active: Erratically; all daytime
Not all of the magical inlays on the city streets are in perfect repair - though the city's overall condition resets each morning from the fire damage, there's something about the lights in the sidewalk, with their solar glow, that occasionally does not function properly. At these spots, the glowing line seems to swell, glowing more brightly and expanding across the pavement, creating a 'bump' in the line. About a third of them are marked off with hazard tape, testament to life in the city before the fire, but not all of them.
As long as you don't step on them, there's not a problem. But those that aren't paying attention will find their feet at the nexus of a small explosion of magical power - usually, only enough to knock someone off their feet and knock the wind out of them, but occasionally more severe. Those who keep an eye on such things will note that the magical burst is a mix of light, electricity, and non-elemental magic.
THE UNDERGROUND
Unlike the once-bustling city above, the worst of the Fissure's effects do not follow down the stairways leading to what was once a series of subway stations and similar mass transit. You can escape the flames here overnight... But that comes, unfortunately, with the side-effect that the restoration of the city every morning doesn't reach down here, either. Unlike above the ground, the Underground shows every bit of the century-plus of decay and neglect since the Fissure manifested. The pipes on the wall and rails on the floor are more rust than metal, and the smell of mildew permeates.
Obviously, no trains are running here. However, the tunnels they once ran through are, for the most part, clear and open, allowing characters a way to traverse between parts of the city without going to the flames above. They're dark, lit only by the dim glow of magical inlays around the tracks, and some of those are broken, plunging the routes into full darkness for sometimes blocks at a time, but so long as you don't step in one of the deep puddles of collected rainwater and muck, you'll surely be fine. Surely.
Under the downtown, and not connected directly to the city above, is a huge, sprawling station of several levels. There's a good bit less mildew here, and a good bit more magic, strong enough to be palpable in the air to all but the most magically-insensitive. There are the remains of two shops and three restaurants here, but good luck finding anything useful in them.
In addition to the nexus of routes, there's two banks of elevators that rise to the surface above and beyond. Taking them in the daylight leads to the top of one of the city's skyscrapers - with no other access route, notably - and the empty, sunlight plaza of the Resona Aere Teleportation and Airship Port. Six airship docks and an array of what must have been teleportation circles, all of them now blacked-out and nonfunctional. Abandoned luggage can be found here, testament to the refugees to fled the city and its increasing instability.
Note: All of the underground stations have at least one one-person public restroom... Though given their condition, you'd be forgiven for not wanting to use them. The plumbing does still work, however.
Critter: Flame dogs
Danger level: Medium
Type: Magically-modified animal
Environment: Usually the Underground, day or night; however, during the day they can occasionally be found scavenging or napping in the sun in the park or other parts of the city.
Behaviour: Packhunters
The descendants of the handful of dogs that survived and went feral within the reaches of the city in the aftermath of the Fissure's appearance. Though they're descended of domestic dogs, there's something distinctly wild about these lanky mutts, and they're not especially friendly to humans. Though you can occasionally pick out evidence of one breed or another in an individual, on the whole there's nothing special to indicate what sorts of dogs you're dealing with.
Except, you know, for the flames. Sparks run down their fur, clustering around their ankles and tail-tips, and their mouths are wreathed in flame when open and they tend to puff smoke out their noses even at rest. In spite of this, they don't much like to be up among the fires, and so they come down to the underground at night, wandering in packs of various sizes to mark out their territory. Anything that isn't other dogs is potentially food.
Critter?: Oil Slimes
Danger level: Low to medium unless you're too close to the surface; high if within range of sparks
Type: Fissure creature
Environment: The Underground, the darker the better
Behaviour: Slimy
These bits of magical oilslick cling to walls and crevices in the darkest parts of the Underground, where even the flicker of the magical powerlines doesn't reach adequately. They're scared of lights and will jump out at anyone carrying a light source, and for good reason, since, being oil, they're super flammable.
Fortunately, outside of range of flame, they're really just kind of gross, unless you end up swallowing some. But being that they're liquid, they're also pretty impossible to kill unless you send them up in flames, at risk to yourself and anyone else around.
SUBFISSURE AND LODESTONE STATION
The secondary Fissure is immediately obvious as one approaches the station, which is set up in what was once a smaller park to the north of the downtown. The visual distortions change several blocks away, both above and below the ground (as Lodestone does, in fact, sit less than a block from an underground station). In addition to the sparks-in-the-corner-of-your-eyes effect, there's a distinct warping that makes everything look out of proportion...
In fact, "out of proportion" could very well be the entire summary of the sub-Fissure, as those entering it will quickly discover. Emotions run high, in a way that is obviously supernatural if you have the mind to be aware of such things at all, but being aware of the effect doesn't make it easier to control.
Lodestone Station itself is smaller than Keystone, though similar in overall design. There is only a single small floor set above the ground, which is home to the station's transmission equipment and an elevator leading to the safer areas further below.
The park, meanwhile, is more natural than the larger Ritual Park; it would take a skilled eye to see how the native plants are landscaped, though it can also be deduced from simple logic. Aside from the station, a restroom building, and a small plaza and playground with picnic tables, the park is shady and cool and greatly resembles the forest across the lake, only about half of its trails paved. It's only about two city blocks of greenspace, less than a quarter of which is taken up by the station.
Once a thriving city, the streets of Incendia are now empty of human life - by day, it seems as though the entire population simply vanished overnight. Shops are still standing with open doors and sale signs in the windows; trees rustle in the breeze from the lake to the south. The city as a whole is very green, and even aside from the Fissure, is quite blatantly magical; the dividing lines on the roads glow of their own accord, and semitransparent illusions model clothes in shop windows, turning to admire themselves as though standing before a mirror. Skyscrapers that look like bottles, with seamless glass sides and the green of gardens spilling from the tops, fill the skyline.
And by day, everything is peaceful, except for the signature distortion of the Fissure, which manifests as sparks at the corners of your vision. But by night...
By night, the city burns. It's impossible to tell where the fire starts once the sun goes down; it doesn't really seem to start anywhere, but it happily consumes buildings, vehicles, trees, and anything else that might be out and about on the streets. Unless you have some incredible resistance to heat, the only way to escape the flames is to go underground - to the former subway stations and other places beneath street level that still lie open. They're rather toasty near the stairs, but it's far safer than trying to stay above with the inferno, especially later in the night as buildings begin to warp and collapse from the heat; even those immune to flame are not safe from that.
And then come morning... The flames die down, and the city resets itself, becoming the image of abandoned tranquility once more. A flock of pigeons flutters away from a restored rooftop to peck at bread still fresh from the bakery.
A dead city trapped in a century-long cycle of burning and renewal - such is Incendia, the city of flames.
Please note that while items in the city reset at dawn, creatures do not - if you burn to death in the night, you are still dead in the morning, your remains vanished from the streets with the rest of the rubble. Additionally, while items in shops are restored if left untouched, they do not renew if removed from the city - whatever you take with you looting will not magically reappear endlessly. (Bakery displays consumed by the pigeons seem to be an exception.)
It is also worth noting that while it is indisputably a modern city, Incendia runs off magic rather than a technological basis.You'll find no overhanging wires here, though streetlights are plentiful enough; power instead is conducted through the inlay of magical circuits in the streets themselves, slightly pulsing lines of power. Similarly, cars and the like run off these circuits instead of gas; thus, without some modification, they won't run outside the city limits.
Critter: Flame Pigeons
Danger level: Low to none
Type: Magical animal [domesticable]
Environment: Incendia, any aboveground and entries to belowground areas
Behaviour: Coo(l).
These birds appear, at first glance, to be basically regular pigeons, albeit in shades of charcoal and black with orangeish iridescence on their necks instead of the purple-green sheen common to the normal sort. Typical city pigeons, they have next to no fear of people, and generally won't flutter away unless actively shooed. It's quite easy to tempt them into landing on your hands or knees with an offer of food. They tend to move around in flocks, usually in the early morning and late afternoon, sleeping through the majority of the day and becoming active again as the flaming nights approach.
Which is when their more unusual traits become apparent. Modified by the intense fire magic of the city over the last century, these pigeons are warm, almost hot to the touch as one strokes their feathers. They have a full immunity to the nighttime flames, and tend to nest along the stairsteps down into the underground more because it's the only location that will certainly not collapse than out of any fear of the fire. Their eggs are similarly warm and look like unnaturally smooth embers of charcoal.
Although most of the pigeons are colored as described, it's possible to find a few other varieties - the near-white of ash, either on the whole of the bird or scattered through the feathers, is common. Birds that genuinely glow with the colors of orange flame aren't particularly uncommon, and quite rarely one may find a bird in other colors of flame (though be wary, as the blue ones tend to be even more intensely hot to the touch than average).
Resource: Fire Crystals
Frequency: Small ones common, large ones uncommon to rare
Type: Energy/magical resource
Environment: Any aboveground and the edges of the Underground that reach near the surface.
These red-orange crystals are warm, often almost hot to the touch, and their appearance is likely no surprise to those with a few other expeditions under their belts. They're the one sign of the fire in the city in the day, and start to spark with a wavering flame as the sun goes down, but removing them from where they've grown in various nooks and crannies doesn't do much to slow the flame come nightfall.
LAKEFRONT SHIPPING AND INDUSTRIAL ZONE
Numerous shipping containers build a towering maze along the flat spaces immediately next to the lake, the remains of what was once a bustling shipyard full of traffic from the three rivers that empty into the lake and the one that twists out of it and heads southward to the sea. There are no barges full of cargo here any longer, however, and no new goods coming into the port.
That doesn't mean that the port is still, however. Really, the furthest thing from it. Containers glide back and forth along magical tracks, levitating according to seemingly random processes and to random destinations. Magical cranes and control towers, standing empty, overlook the whole process. The result is a practical maze along the lakeshore built of stacked containers - one that changes over the course of the day, easily bewildering anyone who might not have the greatest sense of direction in the first place.
A bit further inland there are also a series of abandoned factories - some of which are in disrepair enough to indicate that they were abandoned well before the fire came to the city. For those that are still active - largely textile and food packaging plants - the machinery continues to gleefully run unsupervised in the same way that the shipping flats do. By the end of each day, there's a bit of a pile up of output at the end, crates and boxes and bolts of fabric waiting to be loaded into transport by human overseers that will never come, which instead burn at the end of the day before the cycle starts anew at dawn.
There are a total of four underground stations along the port section of the lakeshore, all of them connected to the same route, which eventually turns off to head into the main part of town at one end.
Critter: Soot cats
Danger level: Low to none
Type: Magical animal [domesticable]
Environment: Incendia, any aboveground but primarily the shipping yard and park
Behaviour: Lurker cat is lurking...
At first glance, you might not even recognize this black shape as a cat - they mostly look like large, fluffy balls of black soot, and they tend to leave little scatterings of black footprints where they walk and black spots where they rub up against building and the corners of shipping containers. It's only on closer inspection that one can make out the shapes of ears and long, bushy tails - or perhaps it's just that you saw a pair of feline eyes, the color of glowing embers, peeking at you from some dark corner.
The feral cat population isn't as unfriendly as one might expect, though. Those with the patience to sit somewhere for a while - and food, food always helps - may find themselves headbutted by a particularly friendly creature. Or perhaps you're feeding the pigeons and one of the birds' usual predators will put in an appearance for dinner. And those who take the extra time may even find that their new charcoal-smearing friend will even come home with them - like the domestic cats they're descended from, soot cats don't fear much of anything.
HECTOR WILDE MEMORIAL RITUAL PARK
Spanning nearly a dozen blocks on any given side, the Memorial Park is largely a wide-open green space, with trees and other landscaping lining the trails, edges, and creating a few more private spaces within. (Think something more along the lines of the Washington Mall or the Seattle Center.) The paths are largely paved, there's (self-compacting!) trash cans and benches, and so on. In total, there are five underground stations scattered through the park, three near the edges and two in the middle, split between two routes that intersect at one of the middle stations.
The central features of the park are threefold. The first is the progression of flowing water and still pools on the far eastern side, full of shaded benches and ornamental trees, ending in a wide pool with the bottom covered in coins. (If you throw a coin in the wishing fountain that's in a world where magic is actually real, does it work?) In the southeast corner, there's a large, perfectly flat stone hexagon - with enough broken bits of chalk around the edges to suggest where the 'ritual' part of "ritual park" is done.
And in the center is a huge... Well, is fountain really the right world for a water feature that hangs in the air of its own accord? A half-sphere of clear water hangs in the air, as though held by an invisible fishbowl, and water flows both down from it and back up in a complex pattern (that is, in fact, programmed, and can be figured out if one watches for some ten or fifteen minutes). The main water body even sometimes changes shape, to a proper sphere, a vertical or horizontal figure-eight, or a horizontal ring. Based upon the signage surrounding the basin the feature sits in and its benches, it was once open for people to run through and under the stream to find relief from the summer heat.
And surrounding the fountain plaza are the abandoned tents and stages of what was surely, at some point, a bustling music festival. Two large stages, on opposing sides of the wide field surrounding the fountain, a large series of food booths, and the abandoned tents of craft vendors all remain, along with any number of banners hung from lamp posts and the glow of energy circuits in the pavement to power the whole thing. (Booths can be found on the Shops Page under the Music Festival header.)
The contrast of the silence is deafening.
Hazard: Fire ants
Danger level: low to medium
Type: Magical creature
Environment: Aboveground, mostly in the park
Active: Daytime, when disturbed
These bright red ants might be mistaken for sparks at a glance, especially when there's only a few of them making their way over to investigate your lunch. At their nests, however, it becomes more apparent that they really are as much fire as ant, as the small, sandy hills scattered around the park (and occasionally planter boxes and the like in the rest of the city) seem to emit a constant small flame from the number of ants inside.
If the hill is disturbed, the entire colony mobilizes against the aggressor, bringing with it not just burns from the aggressive insects, but the painful sting typical of the Earth species with which they share a name.
Critter: Echoes
Danger level: Medium to high if disturbed
Type: Undead
Environment: Incendia, any aboveground but most common in open spaces
Behaviour: Haunting
There are any number of ghosts in Incendia, spirits of the people who saw everything go up in flames on that fateful night (and every night since). Most of them are not dangerous - indeed, unless one has a particular affinity for the dead, they will go completely unnoticed.Most, but not all.
Echoes are the spirits of those who, after their deaths in the fires, hold some grudge against the living - jealousy of the survivors, blame against those who saved themselves. And they don't much distinguish between the survivors of a hundred years ago and the living explorers who are newly come to the city. Typically, they are most active in the hour after dawn and the hour before dusk, the times nearest the flames that consumed them, and most commonly found in wider spaces, but they can in theory be found anywhere.
At rest, they manifest as not much more than a faintly colored heat distortion, usually either dark or the reddish of flame. However, when disturbed, the wavering in the air turns suddenly into a pillar of flame the color of the distortion. Instead of the sound of flames, there is an impression of wordless screaming, not heard but felt in an emotional sense and echoing in the minds of anyone who witnesses the transformation. The darkness of the flame seems to correspond to how much malice they hold towards the living; though the ones the color of natural flame won't not burn you up with them, they won't pursue those who attempt to escape. The darker ones, on the other hand, will give chase, sometimes for up to several blocks.
And unless you've ice magic or a weapon specifically designed to hurt ghosts and the like, they're impossible to harm...
RETAIL DOWNTOWN
The downtown of Incendia is clearly what was once a hot and trendy shopping district, with the bottom floor or two of nearly every skyscraper home to a handful of small shops and sometimes to larger departments stores. Coffee shops, burger joints, and the like also crowd in among the retail, as do the occasional grocery or drugstore. For a full list of shops, see the Downtown header on the Shops Page.
Aside from the shops, there are taxis left abandoned on the street, as well as bicycles, normal cars, and the occasional motorbike (or what passes for a motorbike, given the magical source of their propulsion). The buildings themselves are tall and glass-sided; the seamless glass could only have been put there by magic, and by day it reflects sunlight down into the streets, keeping even the areas that are in the shadows of the buildings well lit. (By night, of course, it goes up in flames.) They seem to be mostly office spaces for what were once big companies; closer investigation reveals textiles, mining, shipping, and food to be the major local industries, along with an impressive banking building and several magic-related companies that take the place of the tech sector. Basement parking garages stand open, their guard stations empty.
A little further out, past that central business district, are a bunch of tall apartment buildings with gardens spilling out of their balconies, most not quite reaching a third the height of the central skyscrapers. Many of the flowers are blooming out-of-season, filling the air with colors and sweet scents. Other apartments hang paper lanterns over their balconies, which glow faintly even in the sunlight with magical charms intended to ensure the safety of those who live there.
There are quite a lot of underground stations in the downtown area, unsurprisingly enough, many of them in places that routes cross and/or overlap. In total there are five routes spread between eight stations, and not a single one of the stations is exclusive to a single route, at least based on the maps projected on the glass walls of the shelters that cover the stairs down to the underground proper.
Hazard: Broken lines
Danger level: low to medium
Type: Magical construction
Environment: Aboveground, primarily downtown but really anywhere
Active: Erratically; all daytime
Not all of the magical inlays on the city streets are in perfect repair - though the city's overall condition resets each morning from the fire damage, there's something about the lights in the sidewalk, with their solar glow, that occasionally does not function properly. At these spots, the glowing line seems to swell, glowing more brightly and expanding across the pavement, creating a 'bump' in the line. About a third of them are marked off with hazard tape, testament to life in the city before the fire, but not all of them.
As long as you don't step on them, there's not a problem. But those that aren't paying attention will find their feet at the nexus of a small explosion of magical power - usually, only enough to knock someone off their feet and knock the wind out of them, but occasionally more severe. Those who keep an eye on such things will note that the magical burst is a mix of light, electricity, and non-elemental magic.
THE UNDERGROUND
Unlike the once-bustling city above, the worst of the Fissure's effects do not follow down the stairways leading to what was once a series of subway stations and similar mass transit. You can escape the flames here overnight... But that comes, unfortunately, with the side-effect that the restoration of the city every morning doesn't reach down here, either. Unlike above the ground, the Underground shows every bit of the century-plus of decay and neglect since the Fissure manifested. The pipes on the wall and rails on the floor are more rust than metal, and the smell of mildew permeates.
Obviously, no trains are running here. However, the tunnels they once ran through are, for the most part, clear and open, allowing characters a way to traverse between parts of the city without going to the flames above. They're dark, lit only by the dim glow of magical inlays around the tracks, and some of those are broken, plunging the routes into full darkness for sometimes blocks at a time, but so long as you don't step in one of the deep puddles of collected rainwater and muck, you'll surely be fine. Surely.
Under the downtown, and not connected directly to the city above, is a huge, sprawling station of several levels. There's a good bit less mildew here, and a good bit more magic, strong enough to be palpable in the air to all but the most magically-insensitive. There are the remains of two shops and three restaurants here, but good luck finding anything useful in them.
In addition to the nexus of routes, there's two banks of elevators that rise to the surface above and beyond. Taking them in the daylight leads to the top of one of the city's skyscrapers - with no other access route, notably - and the empty, sunlight plaza of the Resona Aere Teleportation and Airship Port. Six airship docks and an array of what must have been teleportation circles, all of them now blacked-out and nonfunctional. Abandoned luggage can be found here, testament to the refugees to fled the city and its increasing instability.
Note: All of the underground stations have at least one one-person public restroom... Though given their condition, you'd be forgiven for not wanting to use them. The plumbing does still work, however.
Critter: Flame dogs
Danger level: Medium
Type: Magically-modified animal
Environment: Usually the Underground, day or night; however, during the day they can occasionally be found scavenging or napping in the sun in the park or other parts of the city.
Behaviour: Packhunters
The descendants of the handful of dogs that survived and went feral within the reaches of the city in the aftermath of the Fissure's appearance. Though they're descended of domestic dogs, there's something distinctly wild about these lanky mutts, and they're not especially friendly to humans. Though you can occasionally pick out evidence of one breed or another in an individual, on the whole there's nothing special to indicate what sorts of dogs you're dealing with.
Except, you know, for the flames. Sparks run down their fur, clustering around their ankles and tail-tips, and their mouths are wreathed in flame when open and they tend to puff smoke out their noses even at rest. In spite of this, they don't much like to be up among the fires, and so they come down to the underground at night, wandering in packs of various sizes to mark out their territory. Anything that isn't other dogs is potentially food.
Critter?: Oil Slimes
Danger level: Low to medium unless you're too close to the surface; high if within range of sparks
Type: Fissure creature
Environment: The Underground, the darker the better
Behaviour: Slimy
These bits of magical oilslick cling to walls and crevices in the darkest parts of the Underground, where even the flicker of the magical powerlines doesn't reach adequately. They're scared of lights and will jump out at anyone carrying a light source, and for good reason, since, being oil, they're super flammable.
Fortunately, outside of range of flame, they're really just kind of gross, unless you end up swallowing some. But being that they're liquid, they're also pretty impossible to kill unless you send them up in flames, at risk to yourself and anyone else around.
SUBFISSURE AND LODESTONE STATION
The secondary Fissure is immediately obvious as one approaches the station, which is set up in what was once a smaller park to the north of the downtown. The visual distortions change several blocks away, both above and below the ground (as Lodestone does, in fact, sit less than a block from an underground station). In addition to the sparks-in-the-corner-of-your-eyes effect, there's a distinct warping that makes everything look out of proportion...
In fact, "out of proportion" could very well be the entire summary of the sub-Fissure, as those entering it will quickly discover. Emotions run high, in a way that is obviously supernatural if you have the mind to be aware of such things at all, but being aware of the effect doesn't make it easier to control.
Lodestone Station itself is smaller than Keystone, though similar in overall design. There is only a single small floor set above the ground, which is home to the station's transmission equipment and an elevator leading to the safer areas further below.
The park, meanwhile, is more natural than the larger Ritual Park; it would take a skilled eye to see how the native plants are landscaped, though it can also be deduced from simple logic. Aside from the station, a restroom building, and a small plaza and playground with picnic tables, the park is shady and cool and greatly resembles the forest across the lake, only about half of its trails paved. It's only about two city blocks of greenspace, less than a quarter of which is taken up by the station.