Duskvol

Beneath the streets of Duskvol, there is another city. The spiderweb of canals stretches far below the stones above, winding through miles of pitch-dark tunnels. There are trolleys and trams that run there too, and walkways and secret passages and smuggling runs. There are mushroom cultivation corridors, and whole communities who spend much of their lives without seeing the sky. There are access and maintenance tunnels, sewers and steam-vents, strange machines and the vast arterial network of electroplasmic wiring. There are places where old buildings were simply paved over and used as foundations for the new. Many people have doors in their basements, crawlspaces in their walls, stairs that lead down, down, down...

Healing is hard.

Some say that before the Calamity, there was sorcery which could heal the most horrific wounds in moments, without pain or even so much as a scar. We do not live in that world. There are tools, techniques, and even sorceries of healing, to be sure. But they are neither quick, nor painless, nor clean. And even the best don’t always work quite as planned. There are experimental electroplasmic therapies that are both offered to the wealthy and tested upon the unlucky, but most would be very lucky indeed if they were seen by a half-decent sawbones without either waiting for weeks or paying the kind of rates that drive people to knock on the doors of loan sharks. Some rely on home remedies and back-alley healers. Some take their chances signing up for medical experiments, or as demonstration subjects for the students at Charterhall Academy, hoping they don’t end up as a cadaver for the next class to practice on.

The ships of the Leviathan Hunters are enormous. Nearly floating cities themselves. Huge, hulking mountains of metal, crewed by hundreds of hands, they dwarf the cargo vessels and even the piled-up buildings of the docks.

They are nothing. Toys flung into the waves. They call themselves “hunters”, but to the Leviathans they are barely more than mosquitos, hoping desperately to siphon off a little blood before they are noticed. They may call those paltry creatures that they manage to bring back to port “leviathans”, but in truth they are the other parasites and scavengers that swarm around them. Though even these can easily drag a ship down into the crushing abyss. Not a soul alive knows the true shape of the Leviathans, only those few fragments that approach the surface.

The Ghost field is all around you. Invisible to most eyes, its subtle power infuses everything. It is what allows ghosts and spirits to affect the world, what makes them more than insubstantial echoes of life. And it can be harnessed.

Anyone can attune to this spectral energy, but those with special training or talent are able to do so more easily, precisely, and powerfully. These days, however, you need not be a Whisper to tap into the energy of the Beyond! Thanks to ingenious inventions powered by electroplasm (harvested by the intrepid Leviathan hunters), the Empire has unlocked the ability to channel the ghost field through technological devices.

Duskvol is a city of canals. They are its veins, its arteries. They run from the void sea, through a labyrinth of filtering sluices meant to strain away the nightmares infesting the water beyond the walls. And yet, in the murk of the canals, strange things swim, and only the very desperate even think of drinking from them.

Everything has its cost.

The city of Duskvol is unjust. As in our world, those with wealth hoard power, and those with power hoard wealth. The rest fight for their scraps, perhaps hoping to claw their way out of the hell of poverty, or to simply survive another day. Many toil their entire lives to give their children even the hint of a hope of a better future. Most know the game is rigged, but few do anything about it.

And you? What will you do?

All Cops are Bastards.

In Duskvol, as in our world, there are a members of the Bluecoats who are genuinely trying to do what they perceive to be the “right thing”. But each and every one of them is part of a system which is deeply corrupt and whose primary purpose is to serve and protect the interests of those powerful and wealthy enough to pull their strings. This tends to include systematically oppressing, terrorizing, and extorting those too poor and weak to defend themselves, as well as the ruthless suppression of any whispers of revolution.

For all intents and purposes, the Bluecoats essentially function as a particularly large, well-connected, and brutal gang. This also means that other gangs with enough resources can pay them off or otherwise induce them to turn a blind eye. But even if they tip their caps to you in the street, never forget...

Duskvol is a haunted place. Ghosts and malevolent spirits are as much a fact of life as the eels in the canals. The lightning towers keep the worst of them at bay, out in the cataclysmic wastelands beyond the city. When people find themselves alone on a shadowed street, they clutch spirit-bane charms to their chests, and whisper whatever scraps of ritual and superstition they know. Sometimes, it even works.

And of course, there are the Spirit Wardens, who contain the worst outbreaks and oversee the vigilant disposal of corpses in alchemical crucibles before they can metastasize into angry wraiths. But some slip through. Something always slips through.

The shattered sun rises dark over Duskvol, a splintered shadow blotting out the stars, its once mighty light now visible only as a dim glow that can sometimes be seen seeping out from the cracks in its face, like blood from a wound.

Its embers smoulder on the horizon at dusk and dawn, but the moon at midnight gives more light than what remains of the sun at midday. When the moon is low, or hiding her face, the people of the city rely mostly on firelight and electroplasmic bulbs, on the many lamps that light the streets and those they carry with them, and (in the darkest places) on occasional clumps of luminescent fungi. The wealthiest can even afford the use of radiant energy, which mimics sunlight, like the shining trees that allow the rice-pits of Barrowcleft to grow.