A Review of MALUSTRIOUS BROOD

 A book of monsters, of visions. A 102-page pure art book with “12 iconic monsters from the pastiche swirl of d&d's fantasy pool ….

“Gnome, Nereid, Salamander, Sylph. Ogres, Hags, Dragons, Basilisk/Cockatrice, Orc, Manticore. And two Very Much d&d , the Catawhere and Eye Tyrant.";

Art, and Expressionist art in particular, is hard to review and think about, so instead I forced the artist to do that, by interviewing them! What follows is a pretty wide-ranging interview gathered roughly into the following general subjects;

• Texture
• Colour
• Composition
• Form
• Orcs
• Big Ideas

There are lots of close-ups of fragments of the pages, used when talking about specific elements, and because I didn’t want to try replicating any of the full illustrations other than those already included in the promotional text. I wouldn’t want you to take the impression of these fragments as the impression of the works as a whole, let along when held in hand, which creates a much stronger impression.

Texture

pjamesstuart; ok so a huge amount of the book seems to be its textures. Are these different on every single page?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Yup different on every page, each was hand layed (with the cut out images on top) out on a piece of real estate sign for ease in scanning. This actually turned out to have some problems later because I didn't cut the real estate signage to consistent size.

pjamesstuart; Did you have any particular plan for these?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; That each monster section should have its own unique background texture. That's about it

 

this is printed on the paper (my photo isn’t very good)

pjamesstuart; They seem to be made up of complex layers of actual physical materials treated in various ways, and maybe of some deliberate use of digital scanning errors? What else went into these?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; I'm not sure about deliberate scanning errors..oh wait no yeah the Catawhere has some . Oh and the Orc and Eye Tyrant chapter heads.

Done by dragging or moving an image while it was mid-scan.

One of the Catawhere was done with photocopy fuckery.

Some of the process for the textures involved digging through a box of ink and texture experiments and seeing if anything was suitable.

Or just messing around with whatever paints/oils/spraypaint/ink/paper I had lying around and then letting it dry outside, and then sometimes using it but often reworking it or not using it at all.

90% blind experimentation and then selective curating the results.

Though wanting each chapter texture to have its own feel meant sometimes I went "okay no more ink shennigans , going to have find something else"

John Blanche once said that with a really good picture,
even the smallest part of it, when examined in isolation,
should be interesting to look at, which I think is true of this book.

pjamesstuart; How did working on the textures intermix with choosing and making the figures? Did it happen in parallel? In Sequence?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; For the vast bulk of it the pictures were done first, then textures created and pictures arranged as the textures were done.

However the decision to create a chapter head meant needing to create a extra page (as to keep the page count divisible by 4) , and sometimes that meant creating more drawings for the extra texture page.

pjamesstuart; Whats a 'standard' (if any could be), workflow for making a page of Malustrious Brood?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Um.. once the drawings were "done" (i.e I thought I had roughly enough be doing a crude layout) , I'd dig through my old projects and experiments and see if there was something. If nothing , try and think of something I hadn't messed around before with and if it felt appropriate to the vibe of the creature.

Then once this , sometimes considerably back and forth, process had created a use texture page , I'd then try and arrange some of the drawings on it.

This usually resulted in frustrations that I was going to have to cover up the most interesting bits of the texture, as none of the texture pages were created with that much considerable with where anything would go on top.

Sometimes the drawings would get swapped between pages as space and overall context demanded. I tried to get all the loose sketches together and also give the more developed ones space to breathe (often giving them their own page just for them)

So yeah it was a whole process of curation , reacting and adjustment , to get the drawings to work with each textured page, there wasn't just in the way of a deliberate plan.

 

The Orc probably had the most planning as I wanted to have them "echo" through the background of subsquent Orc pages by photocopying and repeating some of the drawings (sometimes on transparency film).

Plus trying to get a "very angry school boy creating a scrap book of murderers , weapons and world war 2 facts" feel to it

A quick video of the boards;

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Incomplete list of things used in the textures:

Rags, stained rags, old singlet, old t-shirt, design on old singlet blown up with photocopier to giant size, lace, glue, grease, baking soda, rust, blood, ink , spraypaint, butchers paper, vinegar, pva, spray varnish , water colour, ohp transparency , sewing diagrams, house paint, translucent paper, real estate sign imagery

Colour

pjamesstuart; There are many colours in this book. Did you have any kind of conscious plan or intended method, or did you just do everything based on VIBES?

 

Many forms are almost like beer tankards filled with a thick cloudy brew slowly mixing into something else

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Nothing super conscious , other than seeking a more diverse palette as the project went on

If I had planned it out more , I would of made more an effort to have the Nerieds be more greens and the Sylphs be more blues. As it was they ended up blending into each a little too much.

As a fix for that I post scan adjusted the Nereids colours a little and arranged the elementals by the name <Element> Elemental <Name> so the Sylph and Nereid wouldn't be right beside each other.

pjamesstuart; Most creature-types have a main dominant colour that appears in a variety of forms, and maybe one or two other spot colours. What tells you what colours something is meant to be?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Again just vibes. Some got a bigger range of colour experimentation (ogres) , others arguable got too little (Salamander, Gnome) . I think the monsters that already had a strong consistent design, that I myself wanted to redefine (Orcs, the Elemental Spirits) , I ended up sticking to a narrow focused palette , while the ones were it was already wide open (dragon , ogre) I just went with whatever. I'm not 100% sure why though

(Eye Tyrant might be an exception here)

Basilisks got a lot sickly colours , and I wanted to really have some jaundice yellows, bruise purples , infected pus greens in there. Anything to make this thing look dangerous.

 

closeup of a highly polychromatic beast

pjamesstuart; What did you use? I see pens like biros, felt tip pens? Some things look like watercolours but could be created some other way.

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Yeah good old biros, felt tip pens of a variety of quality , ethanol to bleed inks out, water colours, water colour crayons, regular crayons, twink, charcoal , ink , acrylic paint, house paint, pencils, photocopy toner

 

pjamesstuart; Some colouring follows the shading a form might have, other colouring is more like you poured thick liquid into a glass the shape of the creature and shined light through it. Other is like lines of energy within a beast. Do you know when you start out what you are going to do?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; I think I always start with the "line" and add lines until it's done or it needs something else , then hit it with colour using whatever medium.

Then it's a case of adding more colour or line to fix whatever just went wrong and it either working out or turning shit , in which case start again.

I heavily favour mediums that can put on top of each in any order , as I don't think I've ever successfully done the old "little pencil, colour blocking, final inking" method. I've tried it , but it looks so lobotomized when I do it, I've all but abandoned that approach.

Crayons are a pain as you can't really go over them that well but can successfully go pretty much anything else, and allow colours that lack innate opacity to go over darks.

Back to the question: I have "hunches" and "itches" but every step is a surprise and something like a friendly but heated argument .

I've got a maxim about "an Okay drawing is useless" , so if a drawing feels like it's "okay" (as in I can reliably create something with that amount of Good) , I'll keep experimenting until it hits a "high tide mark" or otherwise rare quality I'm not sure I could get again. (this might not mean it's a final drawing, it might instead be saved to serve as guidance )

Or it's completely destroyed , but valuable data and inspiration is generated.

I think of this as sacrifices to Tiamat; and sometimes you just lose a drawing that seemed to have potential , and sometimes you get a happy accident.

Speaking of which:

pjamesstuart; This isn't really about colour but; some places monster faces & other things are scratched through, or blasted over, so it feels like the page was a screen and was glitching or a photograph that was overexposed. How did you do this?

 

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; This is the whole "keeping going until the drawing is destroyed or brilliant" thing. Sometimes the page actually rips , requiring sticking additional paper underneath. Actually sometimes something on the other side ends perfectly fitting and getting used. The eye on the Antiphoenix from Veins of The Earth is actually a mark on a piece of paper that was beneath the initial drawing . It was revealed when a hole was torn from working on too wet ink and then permanent attached to the drawing when it perfectly fit.

This is Tiamat throwing me the occasional blessing for everything in art and life that I've inadvertently sacrificed on her altar .

One of the Manticore's has a similar effect , but I think it was me scrapping back layered crayon to rework something and the underlying effect was really good so kept it. I think I added a pupil though?

Composition

pjamesstuart; Thanks for the responses! Next I want to talk about COMPOSITION, (after that will be 'form' which will be the last one).

Do you know there is a kind of natural curl to a lot of your single-page compositions? Especially for the more lithe & loopy monsters? I will try to make a little image of this.

 

It begins at the top left, curves into the centre or lower right, forms a pool there and spirals out into the lower left again, often as a tail or limb

Other compositions are 'blot' or 'block' monsters which are placed like they were poured into the belly of the page and then slowly spread out.

The 'loop' in particular reminds me a lot of the Z shape Frazetta often worked into his painting.

Did you have any particular plan for composing the one page and two page images, or any effect you wanted to achieve?

What was the methodology?

How do you know if a page 'looks wrong' or 'feels wrong'?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; HUH

I did not know there was this SECRET SIGIL

Out of all the haphazard intuitive processes that went into this book, composition is probably the most haphazard of all.

The considerations are mainly so each drawing gets enough "space" and doesn't too greatly mirror or be similar to the surrounding drawings (including any on a opposite page)

EXCEPT when its a collection of "concept" drawings, where I thought it grand to show or suggestion the developing of the process and the various alternative possibilities that rapidly fire off in my brain

Other considerations is to with the gutter and place the monsters, were possible , so they don't look like they are running away into the gutter (so heads to the edge, tails to the spine)

Form

pjamesstuart; Edge Detection - does your brain have this? Because the vision of the world one often gets from your work is that things often just don't have boundaries, but kind of vibrate like quantum particles, or blur like a time-lapse map of the borders of eastern europe. I mean, are edges a thing in your reality?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Yes But No. Like there's this deep deep deep contrary instinct in me that always seeks out contradictions, exceptions, inconsistencies, stray threads and just Points Them Out. I think it manifests in art (somewhat) by a resistance to going "yes this definitely the Limits Of This Things" , and a desire to portray the buzzing border of potential movement, past movement, spiritual intensity, failure of perception, stink, noise, unclarity

So it's like Post Modernism going "look at all these things obstacles that prevent us from seeing truth"

but unlike.. whatever strain of post-modernism is that kinda goes "so..guess truth isn't really thing", instead we must see The Noise as well as The Signal

like understanding the limits of truth should make us appreciate the effort for truth and not dismiss it to seek solipsism

pjamesstuart; dang you actually have a philosophy behind this

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; It's more I getting philosophy from it if I look at it and think about Why, but ultimately I do it because it's my nature

pjamesstuart; Is a body for you just a carrier for eyes and teeth? The toothed grin is like a signature for your work. (Also, did you know in miniature painting some painters emphasise 'eyes and teeth', because they seem to play some dominant role in helping people perceive and organise a facial form?) If you have EYES plus TEETH, what is the third or fourth thing you need to show what something is?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; I think they are just really good at giving a coherence to something incoherent and because my drawings risk/are total incoherent explosion , slapping the teeth and eyes in there really gives it a hook.

The spine or jawline tends to be the first thing I draw

pjamesstuart; Do you study anatomy? Some images strongly suggest yes, but it is as if there are two spirits fighting inside much of your art, one trying to locate actual things in space, with muscles and gravity and skin and stuff, and the other being more like 'wait what if there was none of that and things were basically energy and not 'things' at all'

 

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; yeah but badly? I'm terrible at drawing things in front of me , I don't have very clear "mental images" , drawing almost feels like sculpting with twitchy ambulatory wire to me? Like the pen starts making marks and I battle with it to get it to do something I want.

But spending frustrating time trying to draw accurate from a reference does help inform this "sculpting". To that end , I've attended life drawing books, have several (Probably over half a dozen?) anatomy books (human and other animals) and spend time and effort learning about the muscles and the bones etc.

I also find it really interesting because I Too Have Bones and Muscles and The Desire To Improve Them.

But I think it's know how impactful departure from plausibility is when it comes to monster design

pjamesstuart; Do you have preferred shapes? (A slight teardrop shape seems to come up quite a bit in a lot of your art.)

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; I try and avoid falling into patterns too much , but the most consistent shapes that show up when I start scribbling are:

Long shapes like snakes, eels, sharks

Beaked shapes or triangle head shapes

Ambiguous quadrupeds

Hunched over big limbed bipeds

pjamesstuart; Do you know when a form is right? How do you know?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; It's like.. when someone tells a joke and the when you realize that you think its funny? In fact laughter is sometimes my reaction to when I get a form or expression right. There's a sense of both surprise and recognition ?

When a form is wrong.. it's either because it's obvious and absent of energy (something can be obvious and Have Energy though) or like something about it interferes with its own dynamic and needs The Energy Bolded or The Blockage Destroyed . Or I guess it's just gone completely wrong and its not even recognizable.

Orcs

pjamesstuart — How on earth did you come up with so many good pictures of fucking Salamanders? 😂 There's like three bangers in a row here.

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD — Lizards is a good shape

Think the palette there is a bit monotonous but the expressions are really good

Conceptual I'm most pleased with my riff on the orc

pjamesstuart — Tell me what you like about the Orc concept you came up with.

 

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD — That it riffs off the old use of it meaning "spirits of the dead", Tolkiens use of as the spectre of industrialized warfare, and dehumanization monstrosity cycles.

Plus having a fancy angle in suggesting they are a memetic virus that co-opts the " immunisation" response ( the fear of the enemy becoming or being orcs is a vector for infection as people justify their increase in brutality and ruthlessness)

But also can work as a pure game utility "it's okay to kill these guys because they are distilled war criminals"

Visually I tried to get some of the Orcs to have this ambiguous mix of panic, hate , anger, fear

While others are pure hell bastards

But yeah one of the nasty things about war propaganda that is tapping into the legimately fear that any human population has a capacity for brutality, and that brutality is easily expressed on outsider groups

And by exploiting that fear , it then feeds and utilizies that capacity

To be honest my original motivation for putting design notes in between the chapters was do a bit how fucking weird dominant voices solution to "fixing" orcs was to lean hard for into "we are 1000% here all our fans making their sexy noble savage baddie OC 😍😍😍"

But nah didn't think it was worth the page space doing a The Kids Aren't Right bit

The only bit I left in like that was mentioning the extra limbs on the Catawhere

I also had a bit about manticores getting wings from Gygaxian shenanigans idk just seems like filler

Ditto some early waffle about the origins of some of these, like fuck I just wikipediaring, people can do that themselves

Big Ideas

pjamesstuart; That was all I could think of to ask about the art in a 'pure art' sense, like about the acts of creation and construction, but I haven't asked any like 'meta level' questions, (which I tend to avoid), but you did have a fair amount of complex ideas about Orcs, so;

• Are there any 'big ideas' you had about the monsters?
• Anything you discovered or thought you understood more?
• Anything you were trying to get across?
• Is there..... a SUBTEXTS???? or like a metaphor or meaning or whatever, in these images?

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Yeah any "big ideas" I tried to include in the chapter heads.

While the initial idea was "do a bunch of versions of that monster" , the process involved exploring both what is the essence of that monster both visually and conceptually/psychologically.

With both very intertwined and probably inseparable, but still distinct somehow.

think exploring the concept-essence of each monster was far more of a reductive process; like is a hag a hag because she lives in a hut in the wilderness? Or is a hag likely to be in the wilderness because she's feared ? And then why is she feared? It's her power, and what are her powers etc?

Compare a manticore being in the wilderness , to me you start losing something of the manticore if you take it out of the wilderness, there's something about the manticore that is a manifestation of an unknown wilderness and the wild stories that start coming from it.

Actually as an aside here these are actually different wildernesses. A wilderness with a hag in it , is the wilderness "beyond the hedge" , a wildness just outside your lights and most tread paths. (so could be remote villages, sewers , slums, ruins, back roads, islands etc).

While manticore wilderness is "here be dragons" wilderness; blasted nigh untamable terrains and desolate vistas.

Having a "here be hags" on very remote area of the map or a manticore living in a forest a hour away from a city , creates interesting questions but I think both are subversions or deconstructions.

As in doing something interesting with a disconnection or conceptual jolt, which only happens if something about it doesn't quite make sense.

While exploring the visual essence of each monster was (mainly) and expansive process; seeing how far I could push it basically.

But note when I talk about any of this I want to be clear it's not the "ideas, theory, then art" that art academic likes to present as The Only True Path. All this is stuff I think about in retrospect or sometimes as a weird chattering aside in my brain as I work on something; it's commentary but it's not the navigator or captain

I think ultimately art is the space the between words, if its completely reducible in words then you should just use words

Good art often makes you be able to think about stuff and come up with big strings of words and ideas , but it's a terrible mistake to think that's ultimately Is The Work

 

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; To use a tree metaphor , it's like a fruit tree. The art is both the tree and the soil and the mycoline web and whatever else . The words you can say about it is the fruit. Fruit is portable, countable, immediately digestible and a trade good. But to think only of the fruit and the not the tree (and everything connected to the tree) is a deep and profound foolishness .

As is dismissing any fruit tree not currently having pickable fruit as basically not existing

EDIT: Though this metaphor suggests as we only plant fruit trees for fruit , we only should create art to talk about it, but I reject both of these concepts, but must acknowledge that people could think that a) That's the only reason to plant fruit trees therefore the metaphor says..

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; Wait one more thing and jumping back , with a couple of the monsters (gnomes, orcs) there's like a cluster of different big tangled concepts and my reduction process would be a deliberate rejection of basically alot of the most popular , but arguably essential concepts, that exist in current culture.

Orcs I guess digs deeper into the psychological underpinnings of the "barbarians at the gates" and brings in some of the Tolkien fear of industrialization, so that's still engaging with the popular view.

While gnomes basically rejects everything anyone has done in the last 100 years and tries to include knockers and kobold mythology as gnomishiness

 

FINAL STATEMENT 

pjamesstuart; Excellent. Finally, would you like to end the interview by saying anything grand, insane, overwrought and/or megalomaniacal? (Purely in order to maintain SCRAP WORLD brand coherence.)

SCRAP_ULTRA_WORLD; THERE'S ALWAYS FREE CHEDDAR IN A MOUSETRAP BABY

Behold; monstrum

A book of Others. A book of visions. A book where every night for a month, or a year, someone slept and deliberately had nightmares, or at least, deeply hallucinations, and each morning they woke up and drew pictures of those nightmares. (And then narrowed them down to the best.)

Every sophont dwells within a necessary cage of thought, one concept piled upon another, growing in slurries and small leaps, but only ever from one central point. Yet, in every case, the boundaries of expansion, of what can be comprehended, and of what can be imagined as comprehended, must be challenged; such is the flame of life and mind.

Thence; the Other, the known but un-known, a beast woven from what is and what may be.

The meaning of this is always discussed; mapped one way, the book of Others is just a map of self, for where else can the Other be conceived, so that, in roving further and imagining deeper, seen as a whole, the conception of self becomes more clear.

Others say 'no shut up this is actually a book of monsters' - a searchlight pointing outwards, illuminating the storm-wracked unknown, and the metaphor of a searchlight is perhaps the best; for those at one end, an honest attempt to pierce the dark, attention pointing out, but for those watching from the silence, a statement saying 'here am I'.

As critiques of course, we consider both at once.

All I dislike about it is the glued spine but book production and distribution from New Zealand is fucking nutty so take what you can get frankly.

You can buy ‘Malustrious Brood’

HERE

Song of Audacity

 “The Condottieri Stella 

What defined them, more than any single quality was their ever-burning humanity. Strangers to fanaticism and despair, the Contottieri, or ‘Sky Corsairs’ were engaged fully in every aspect of human life. 

These were no bare-hulled mercenaries or joyless Malmukes, nor the more-human, but shaped and regulated, citizen-soldiers of a democratic polity, who might carry sharp personal hearts, yet beneath serial-numbered uniform kit. Call them pirates if you will, and some were purely that, or gangsters, of which; not a few. But they were poets, artists, creatures of business (all), technicians, explorers, adventurers, lovers, highly aggressive assault troops, brave as Lions, as neurotic as cats. Cunning mercenaries all and men of Art. 

Let none say they were not principled men! Only that their principals differed, even within themselves, and were always in direct contact with an immediate material world of staggering danger and opportunity. And how else may a principal be measured, questioned, sharpened or lived with, than through, and by, holding palm-to-palm, the mutable hand of Fate?” – Francis Malledini, ‘Wars of the Centaurus Arm; the Condottieri Stella.

 

 

Models, Painting and Aesthetic 

The core idea that began this was; what if Mechwarrior wasn't fucking ugly? 

The Mechs of Mechwarrior have a battered Ford-Factory boxy midwestern aesthetic which; fine if you like that sort of thing but I have never once fantasised about getting into one, any more than I have wondered what it would be like to get into a bus. 

Added to that was my recent experience with applying decals to miniatures, for the first time, using Microset and Microsol. 

For those unfamiliar with the irregularly curved pauldrons of Space Marines - that is where the symbols go. For which; either git real good at freehand or use decals. And if you do use decals, get ready to suffer, for the decal is small and wants to lie flat, and the surface it goes on to is irregular and curved. And small. 

Various Mythradic mysteries attend this process - the secret of making very fine and small cuts around the radial edge of the decal, avoiding the symbol in its centre, the careful applications of light varnish beforehand, of clear paint solution afterwards to equalise the surface sheen, of very careful staining and weathering to help disguise seams and failures, (without also obscuring the symbol on the decal itself of course). Such labyrinths of near-alchemical fury. 

All, or most, of these were abraded, and in some cases, vanished, by careful applications of micro-set, (which prepares the surface and allows the decal to 'melt' onto it). and Micro-sol, (which does more forcible mutual adhering later). Suddenly my transfers were going on easy, and they looked good! 

This lead me to a thought; what if you designed, or brought into being, a model line, specifically based around the use of decals. The models, and the background, would all be designed for transfers to be applied. 

What transfers though? 

My mind turned immediately to the High Middle Ages/early Modern period. To the Italian Wars, and to the glories of pattern-on-pattern-in-pattern heraldry. Of stripes and stars, heraldic beasts, coats of arms, cheques, dags, trinary hanging ballsacks and geese-rampant, and also a little of the Formula-One ultra-capitalised high-speed racer, their car blazoned with signs and adverts, of that one boxer who took money from a sponsor to have their branding on the bottom of his shoes, so they would be photographed if he was knocked out, and somewhat of Games Workshops post-future heraldry where the iconography of trans-stellar hyper-corps and meta-states melts into a dream of symbols. 

Above all I dreamed of actually-attractive mechs, things designed by Italians rather than by Midwesterners; absolutely slathered in bright, confident, blazing heraldry, of bobbaunce and a vision of outgoing prideful masculinity taken from before the Great Renunciation and the democratic business jacket. 

These machines would be battered and weathered by war, but their flags and pennants would flutter proudly, even if they have to be made of electrostatic material to make them fly when there is no wind, or no air. 

The patterns, signs and symbols on a mechs chassis would be the record of its actions, of allegiances so old the current pilot doesn't know them, of contracts taken, deeds done, of heroism and shame. As in heraldry, each sign or pattern would have some meaning, either obvious or hidden. 

And all of this to be personal; no uniforms, no regulation, instead a culture of fantastic mercenaries, perhaps banding together in 'Companies' long enough to wear similar heraldry, or at least wearing the sign of their current company, but perhaps moving on from that, fighting alone or in loose associations of 'free lances'. 

Mercenaries, but not without honour. That takes us back to the Condottieri Stella.

Tomy Zoids Zeeva Zevle battle vehicle ostrich type NIB 1992

 

The ‘Cultures’ 

Don't call them 'Empires', they wouldn't like that. Think of them as tendencies, or smears of interstellar power. Each powerful enough, in its own way, to provide a sincere threat to the others, and each also desperately vulnerable. 

The Cultures are what might be called transhuman. At least for any that once were human, they are no longer so. Others may be alien, though it’s hard to tell for all seem alien now. Cybernetic hive minds, thinking world-spanning biological substrate, carefully genetically engineered Brave New World Climax Societies, perhaps mildly extra-causal semi-sublimed polities, extradimensional half-gods, swarms. 

None of the 'Cultures' are 'evil', at least in the Warhammer sense. At least no more evil than any other Empire. Sure they might have done a war crime here and there but that is in the past. Nor will they compulsively eat your brain, or turn you into one of them. Though they may make some strong arguments that you should join. They can negotiate. They pay well. 

They have reason to fear each other for each Culture is so different that the magisterium of the others makes them a potential strong, strange and unpredictable threat. Probably the galaxy belongs to one of them but none are eager to start the world-burning  hyperwar that might complete that praxis. They are old. They are maybe a bit too comfortable. They are willing to wait. 

But the Centaurus Arm remains unclaimed, and it is home to strange wonders, secret histories and relics of forgotten time, to the residue of ancient climax-species and the mathematics of unknown philosophies, and the wild evolved residuum of their existence, not to mention all the extremely valuable basic resources that any 'Culture' needs; water, heavy metals, rare materials and so on. 

Each Culture would quite like the Centaurus Arm. They each edge closer, unwilling to commit, fearing the apocalypse. Far from here, across arms of the galaxy, each faces the other, quietly, across a hundred thousand minor volumes. No-one wants it to all kick off. Even the big computers can't predict how it might end. 

Hence; proxies. Fractured tribes of tech-denying humans are moving through the Centaurus Arm at a glacially slow pace, aboard massive generation ships and hollowed out moons jammed with crude fusion drives. They are even fighting each other occasionally, and they have a particular ritualised form of warfare which limits the long-term damage of their conflicts. They don't use nukes, complex A.I. or bioweapons, let alone ontological or reality-scarring weaponry. It’s basically monkeys fistfighting each other in crude machines. 

So use them, employ the humans to stake claims, gain resources, control paths and vectors. They are a deniable, (though everyone knows everyone else is doing it), cats-paw, and they respond well to payment in gold, (as well as other resources). You can buy them off with minor toys. They even set up complex social and economic organisations to arrange their own exploitation! You don't even need to send in agents to hire this or that warband or kin group, instead they self-organise into 'Companies' and even pitch for 'Contracts'! You can just pull them off the shelf. 

From the perspective of the 'Cultures' this has only been going on for half a millennia, so early days yet. As the humans see it, their whole sprawling culture has adapted to one of mercenary service, and many Companies and Capitanos, have grown ridiculously wealthy doing it. Some have even become rulers of moons. This has shaped the whole of human culture into one where the flaws and virtues of the crafty mercenary philosopher king are the dominant ethos of the whole race. In a way they are all Condottieri Stella now, for, though they don't always wield institutional power, these are the heroes and leaders of Man.

 

Moebus I think

 

Humanity and Humanism 

Neither bigots nor fanatics, but not necessarily 'good'. Who are they? They spend their money on libraries and art, on music and display; the culture of the Condottieri Stella is a savage high culture, not a milky democratic one. Pride anneals all, the pride of men and women ready to risk their lives, and combined with this; a love of all that is human; of love, friendship, loyalty and affection, and of human culture and human lives. 

I see them like Renaissance Princes, or at least, aiming to become such; gold gathered from the battlefield spent in the courts of man, owners of libraries, sponsors of artists, of painters, sculptors, musicians, engineers, where the sponsorship of technical art and useful science, goes alongside with that of the fine arts, where corporate power is unsteady, due to the chaos of war and vast distances involved, where the power of science and technology is likewise, potent, but shattered and hard to scale.

In part because the culture of the Condottieri Stella refuses full submission to the machine, in other, the irregular supply of strange resources. In part because the Cultures, the likely-alien backers of the Condottieri, for whom they fight their proxy wars, specifically don't want them to progress past the singularity; that might transform them into a possible competitor, such a powerful agent would require an equivalent response from an opposing 'Culture', which would quickly spiral the Centaurus Arm into the destructive and unpredictable hyperwar the 'Cultures' were trying to avoid. 

So Humanity remains, retained as a useful and limited tool by the Cultures, and by the deliberate refusal of the Condottieri, and their specific orientation of their own piratical high culture around the products of unaltered humanity. 

Since the Condottieri Stella are the highest-status figures in their own societies, and since they are a source of irregular funding, resources, and of martial interest, they shape the ethos of those cultures. 

That the Condottieri Stella have no single fanatical goal, or single grand opposition which justifies and unites them, does not mean they do not have ideals, or dreams of past and future, or questions about the meaning of their lives. 

They have lots of ideas, they throng with them, for a Condottieri Stella is also, as well as being a mercenary, a bandit, a captain, a C.E.O., a Patron of arts, a friend and ally to some and foe to others, is also a philosopher, or at least they read philosophy. They may have written books, or at least hired others to do so. 

While other wargames might dispose the profits of a successful campaign into materiél, or raw status, the Captain of a Condottieri Stella Company, leaves behind them, a trail of books, paintings, sculptures, performances, music, films and poetry, a kind of living library which serves to represent them, their company, and their ethos or philosophy. 

True some Captains might be interested only in propaganda, in forms and stories sufficient to push up their payments and burnish their reputations, but as others would point out, this also is an ethos, though it does not call itself such. 

Others; many, have dreams; ideas about what humanity is or should be, of mans relation to the immensity of time, of the Cultures, of the Centaurus Arm, of God and sorrow. Some are tragic, some positive, some empirical, others abstract. Some tell their story in the blazing of pennants, others speak like funerals, guarding their poems and philosophy like grieving turtles. 

What matters is that their ideas are human and that they have them, and that they matter. Fighters argue over these things, they might even come to blows. Friends might be divided by philosophy, or art, while long-time foes might find themselves united by a common theme, a mutual appreciation of the meaning of a life, or by love for an aesthetic, though they must battle none the less. 

That these are battles of ideas does not mean they are battles of extinction, but arguments via arms. Always the Man has the Idea, not the other way round. Always there is consideration, mulling over of concepts or ideals, thoughts of process and precedence, of final ends against current means. Always questions of virtue and expediency, honour and survival. The very wrestling with these questions is the animating spirit of the game. Two Capitano's might battle on the field of war, then agree in the opera house, two co-philosophers could end a battle with a chess game, or a debate. You might be able to talk them out of it. A man might weep for his enemy and deride his friend. 

What I describe here is an annealing of a culture of deep humanism with one of controlled and ritualised violence. The personal, political, religious and ideal interwoven through the core human experience sharpened and made vivid by the extremity of war, of life and death. 

That such figures care about money is no confirmation of hypocrisy, for money is never, or rarely, all they care about. Always they balance the needs of the day against those of the morrow, the passions of the ideal against survival. A miser might fight to bitter ends if well-resourced and rightly motivated, while an honour-bound hero might retreat, thinking only of the survival of their company and soldiers, unwilling to expend their lives, this time, in too straight and narrow a combat. 

The intermixing and continual balancing of complex multi-layered motivations does not corrode the ideal or produce a scene of gold-gathering hypocrites, but exposes and enlightens humanity by placing controversies of the ideal in the only place they ever really exist; in the hands and hearts of living souls, bound by material condition and limited circumstance. 

In the world-view of this game, high ideals in the hands of those who have only such ideals, who are driven only and entirely by the ideal, are worthless, and would be seen, (by the characters in this game at least*), as a moronic bashing together of toys. 

To risk a final glorious charge, in order to stand by a principal, or hold to ones honour, might be very glorious, but if that charge risks the whole life and future of a company, where then does virtue lie? In standing by principal, or taking a practical path, for the lives one wagers with are not one’s own. Sane people may disagree on this, and even souls disagree within themselves, and that is the kind of choice and turmoil that Song of Audacity is made to express, for the turning over of virtues and deciding of fates, not just once, but over time and long campaigns, and the interweaving of the wisdom of the moment with the wisdom of time, that whole process, is the humanism I am talking about. 

It's not interesting if they are shit people. They might be 'bad'; manipulative, acquisitive, back-stabbing, but such a character can be 'good', to those they ride with; a provider of futures, a shaper of fates, and a magnificent patron of arts which may burn through time, (think the Borgias). Likewise a soul may be craven, calculating, willing to retreat, but should never be a coward exactly, for in this careful weighing of the moment against the future, they preserve not only themselves but their Company, their companies families and futures, as well as the wishes of their patrons.

 

ELF 2 500 1984

 

The Game Itself 

A 28mm wargame based around mechs, and maybe a handful of troops. No more than 30 models per side. The high-status leaders are always in the best mechs. These would be scaled at about the size of the Imperial Sentinel, with some a little bigger and some a little smaller. 

There are only humans in this game and they are always fighting each other for money. This is explicitly a game of contracts and resources, and the contracts are dietetically directly *from* the Cultures which have hired each side in this battle to do particular things. 

Mission objectives would be largely asymmetric and blind. Each side might be there to do a quite different particular thing, and wouldn't immediately know what the other side was there to do. It might be possible for both sides to win, or for both to *lose*, monetarily at least. 

A Company can 'break contract', going off the books, perhaps to escape what they see as a losing situation, or even imbued with the spirit of Ares, swearing vendetta against a rival company, though that may not have been in the contract. 

To avoid a 3rd party playing DM, this would be mediated through smartphone. You would have all your rules online, and a living list of your Company, with its current state and resources. Then you and the friend you want to fight would go to the app, sign in and confirm some rough details of the battlefield, and the app would act as each of your 'contractors', sending mission objectives to each players phone separately. At the end of each turn you would update basic details of what objectives and damage you have taken, and confirm the other players losses and objectives. There may be 'turnarounds' where, in the middle of a battle, your 'Contractor' suddenly changes what they want you to do, and why, perhaps offering increased payment for certain goals. 

The record of your Company would be held online and if people wanted to team up together in larger narrative battles, you could scan each others phones to join an alliance for the day. 

As in Necromunda and Mordheim, the presence of cash earned from battles, and of damage taken, troops lost, repairs made, alliances broken or stood by, disasters, successes, friends and enemies, would make the 'Company' a character of its own. 

The cash sponge that stops super-successful Companies from running away with everything is the funding of arts, artists, libraries, philosophies, music, culture, technology, etc etc. Naturally as a Capitano becomes more and more respected, they become more like a Prince, and as a Prince, they lead not just a warband but a collection of aesthetics and ideas, leaving their print on human culture across the Centaurus Arm. This 'Cultural Victory' effect is the true status symbol for Captain and Player alike; those who are most successful and leave the greatest mark are written into the official history of the game, their aesthetic and ideas becoming a strand of humanities great over-culture, which others may align with, copy or defy in the future.

 

Andrew Stewart Jamieson

 

The Modelling and Roleplaying 

You would have to do this yourself, off the books, but as the game manufacturer, False Machine would sell transfers and symbols for various Contractors, tendencies, alliances, battlefields, achievements, ideas, principals etc, and you would be able to apply these to your mechs to show where they have fought, what for and why. 

Or you could just assemble your mechs and decal them with whatever you think best, and base your Companies philosophy and history on that. 

The subtlety of owning and developing your philosophy is likely too complex for Wargame mechanics, we would have to rely on gamers to think about them and roleplay them, (we could include it in the RPG). The game could provide potential reading lists for people beginning their philosophy.

 

Kallamity 135 scale HDM-07 BRIEGEL I master, 2005

 

Mech Design 

Anything, just not ugly, and it must have wide flat surfaces for decals. 

I dream of mechs influenced by, designers like Kallamity. (But not copying; Kallamaty’s designs are precisely arranged for the scale they are at), and also by early race cars, the more vibrant end of the Japanese robot market, mixed with the neo-industrial style of 40K, especially the Ad Mech, Imperial Guard and, Tau and of course, Knights. 

No antigrav, and a healthy dose of anthropomorphism. 

Kitbashing would be fine and dandy I think. We could even start of selling 3d printed kits to alter or amend GW kits and other into something more ‘Song of Audacity’ 

 

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* I am not against this in other fictions but it is specifically not what this one is about.

 

VotE:Redux – Agriculture

Big lie – agriculture is impossible underground. But of course that makes the whole setting a lie, which it is. Since VotE was originally a ‘more-pseudo-naturalistic’ view of an underground world, accepting and systematising that pseudo-reality just takes me closer and closer to the point of; “this wouldn’t actually work”. 

You could never have enough rope. Never carry enough light. Never find enough to eat. Never stay warm enough. Likewise, you couldn’t grow things underground. In a way it would be more honourable to accept a more highly fictionalised Underverse with lots of light giving mushrooms, flat-floored caves and convenient cities harvesting something or other. 

Still, we have come this far and perhaps it might be interesting to consider possibilities, even just for their own sake. So; 

 

Who Needs to Eat? 

Largely mortals, and those who feed upon them. 

‘Mortal Feeder’ in these terms includes anything broadly like a man which feeds on the kinds of food men need, and also those who feed upon such men. 

Omnivores like Humans, Cambrimen, Chaos Goblins, Dvargir, Knotsmen, Funginids (usually), Olm (though they are Uncivilised), RayMen, and Trilobite Knights. 

Rare obligate civilised predators like Opal-Winged Chiropterae, Soft-Heads, and Vampires. In particular there will usually only be one Soft-Head or Vampire in even a large city. 

‘Non-Mortal’ in this sense means less ‘immortals’, but those who are not part of an easily comprehensible food chain, or who simply require no sustenance, like Golems (many Vizier of Deep Janeen), Aelf-Adal, Archeans, Silichominids, Substratals and the Dead. Though each or all of these may require abstruse or specialised sustenance, for which a complex mortal population is usually a boon. 

Populations 

This is the most made-up part of everything. Cities definitely couldn’t exist underground but we must build an illusory scaffolding to make it feel as if they could. I base my estimations on a very shallow understanding of desert-cities during the vague-medieval world and ancient world. If I want to come up with figures about how many of such and such there should be, then I begin with the idea of places in a vast desert, and with a culture like that of a desert people.  

 

Proportionate Food Needs 

High – 20,000+ mortal feeders 

This many mortal feeders with attract, sustain and be sustained by, complex systems of power which will almost guarantee a substantial non-mortal population. The functional population could be 40 or 50 thousand. 

Likely the seat of an Aelf-Adal Terror-Lord, or a Capital for some more-mortal power, such as Knotsmen or Dvargir. Should be the centrepiece of a Campaign and/or the only or dominating major polity in a large Volume. 

·        Roll two, three or four times on three or four time on ‘Common Systems’

·        Roll once or twice on ‘Rare or Singular’ list. 

 

Medium – 7,000+ mortal feeders 

A small town with a 100% mortal population.

A medium-sized City (10k to 12k) with a large majority-mortal population.

A large city(20k or more with a majority non-mortal population.

 

·        Roll once on ‘Rare & Singular’

·        Roll twice on ‘Common Systems’

·        Or; ignore ‘Rare & Singular’ and three times on ‘Common Systems’

 

 

Low – 500 to 5,000 mortal feeders 

A 100% mortal village or small town.

A large Town (5k to 10k) with a low, (10 to 30%) mortal population.

A City (up to 50k) with a very low (1% to 3%) mortal population. 

·        Roll twice on ‘Common Systems’ 

 

Experimental Agriculture Table 

 

Common Systems (d10) 

1: Natural boon, Vulcanism

2: Natural Boon, Radiation

3: Natural Boon, Migration Route

4: Immaterial Exchange, Gheistoculture

5: Immaterial Exchange, Mnemoculture

6: Immaterial Exchange, Psychoculture

7: Immaterial Exchange, Umbraculture

8: Immaterial Exchange, Somnoculture

9: Dumping Ground

10: Food-Malmukes 

 

Rare & Singular Systems (d8) 

1: Autophagic Urbanism, Heads = Ourouboros, Tails = Looper City

2: Elemental Citizens

3: False Sun

4: Inwardly-Infinite Ontological Harvest

5: Kaiju-Mine

6: ‘Kite’ Nation

7: Predatory Urbanism, Heads = Fisher-City, Tails = Psychic Projecton

8: Stable Gateway, 1 in 6 chance of Sky Hunters 

 

 

Common Systems  

Natural Boons

(Or quasi-natural. At least these are not specifically supernatural systems and are usually related to the environment.) 

 

Vulcanism 

May be no more common in the Veins than on the surface, and much more dangerous, as the gasses produced will have nowhere to go. 

Nevertheless the HEAT would be incredibly useful, feeding all kinds of life, fungal forests indeed. If the runoff could be managed some how (elemental or magical aid?) it might form the base of a valuable nitrate source. 

 

Radiation 

Plutos realm. A long-standing eruption of radioactive basalt, or some strange and complex xenolith still humming with radioactivity. This could even be an Archean or Substratal Keep or Embassy, forming a kind of culture-within-a-culture, or a quarter, while also generating energy for the rest of the settlement. 

Citizens farm black radiation-eating fungi like the mass inside the Chernobyl reactor.  

 

Migration Route 

A huge and regular migration of flying beasts like Lamenters, Micro-Bats, Mega-Moths or some other stranger species that may live largely on the surface, or even exist between realities, but which passes through this chokepoint at predictable and regular intervals. 

Could be something as simple as airborne spores or floating plankton from some higher realm. 

 

Immaterial Exchange Environments 

Rare Energy Exchanges can be the basis of an Underworld food chain; entities that can convert something usually inaccessible to our reality into real and consumable flesh. 

(This helps get rid of all the ghosts and dreams from those endlessly compacted worlds, of which there are simply too many, too much. See Design Commentary below.) 

 

Gheistoculture 

Bee-sized bats with lucent wings, small enough to feast on the ghosts of insects. Perhaps these bats themselves are ‘harvested’ by subtle nets, or perhaps the exploitation of their guano is a saner long-term policy. 

This City then, must lie at some crossroads between afterlives, or be present at the vortex point of some long, slow, maelstrom of souls. 

 

Mnemoculture 

Snails which eat memory. Difficult to harvest or feed, but in theory, a renewable resource. 

Harvesting directly via the individual would be difficult, instead let each pay a memory tax, one teased from their skulls in the manner of Severus Snape, then decanted and mixed into fertiliser and spread into the terraced gardens of Snails, which sustain in their turn, true gardens of fungi. 

 

Psychoculture 

From Above 

City feeds on literalised psychic emanations from above - depends on angst and trouble of surface cultures and works to ensure continuity of supply. May instrumentalise abandoned dErO tech, or similar, to produce crude psycho-slop for the masses and gardens. 

From Below 

City feeds on literalised psychic emanations from below - likely eating the dreams of a mad god or chthulu-esque entity. Reliable supply but drives everyone even more insane than usual. 

(Rare) Autophagy 

City feeds on own literalised psychic emanations. Own culture tuned for maximum sensation & experience to ensure continuity of supply but they must feel or starve and jadedness-famine is an inevitable consequence of high-intensity feeling. 

 

Umbraculture 

Darkness moves through the underworld like semi-sentient weather, harvested by wind-traps woven by hyperdimensional limbs, condensing, perhaps to lucent black mana, scraped and harvested from traps by guilds or bloodlines. 

The pollutant in this case would be Eigengrau. Not the predatory Caterpillar thing, but the colourless ‘back ground grey’ hanging over the city like smog. (Though likely nearby volumes are infested with Eigengrau-the-monster, drawn by the Un-Smog). 

 

Somnoculture 

The devouring of dreams sounds almost too-gentle a method. But of course we don’t even know what dreams do, and so cannot understand their loss. Need the dreams come right from the head? Or could they be harvested from ambient air in the manner of Gheists? 

Passive Somnoculture 

An Aelf-Adal Terror-Lord, (Tyranofictor? Tyranosomnia?), being composed party of dreams, might have a clear idea on the weather of such dreams and where they might go, and might locate their Coagulation-City in just such a place. 

The method might be via fields of pale gape-mouthed orchids like unreal pitcher plants. Harvested they deliver only a queer poisonous sap which must be treated before it becomes a waxy tofu. Another might be the construction of ‘Dream Traps’ in the classical hippy style, but woven by intelligent spiders imbued with a dangerous magical sentience, and employed on an industrial scale. 

Active Somnoculture 

Psycho-Serf Agriculture; City farms in dreams - or forces others to do so - usually children as they have the most fertile dreams and are easy to terrify and control. Generations of surface children secretly made slaves in their own unconscious until they fear to sleep 

Mass Pscho-Raiding; City simply steals food from peoples dreams. If you dream of having a feast, suddenly someone with negative-image black skin or some hideous dwarf/gnome things are stealing your food and won't let you have any. 

 

Dumping Grounds 

Something dumps food, or nitrates, onto the city, either as a direct trade for worship or just by accident. 

Sewage End Point; either hyperdimensionally, or through very long term ad careful engineering, the City has located itself at the outflow for one or more surface-level cultures. Or at the end point for a ‘magical disposal’ mouth, or inescapable maelstrom of some kind. This stuff may wash up in vast beaches of rubbish and shit, along with disposed-of people, to be harvested and picked over by the City Below. 

Offal-God; A divinity of some kind gains worship above, , for ‘consuming’ and disposing of such unpleasantness, and another form of worship below, for delivering mana. 

 

Food-Malmuke Class 

Slave Clerics; raised without eyes, sometimes without tongues or even fingers. Brought up in total ignorance of everything except the one thing they are meant to believe. Ignorant, lobotomised mass-produced holy fools. Cast Food and Water spells en-masse. Like parasites on the love of a merciful God. 

Indentured Mages; created like slave clerics, though more difficult to manage as some intellectual capacity is required. Drug use and superficially high status can be more effective means of soft control. They cast 'Create Light' and Summon creatures regularly, to be eaten. May be depopulating ecologies of some unknown plane like bodiless buffalo hunters, before invisibly moving their attention elsewhere.  

 

Rare, Singular Systems 

Things where, there really shouldn’t be more than one in any particular setting, or it will get boring. 

 

Autophagic Urbanism 

Ouroboros City 

City  feed off their own past, sending forces back along their own loop to take resources and slaves. 

They must keep growing more powerful so they can defeat their own past but the cultural and physical destruction of their own history forms unstable paradoxes and cripples them in many ways. They live in fear as they never know when their own future will arrive to consume them. 

'Looper' city 

Sends forces into their own distant future to do the same. They practice forced cultural decline, creating their own 'Dark Age' so their future selves are not strong enough to defeat their current-selves. Result is more stable and predictable as fewer paradoxes result, but the cities future raiding-point and its current-self are continually creeping closer and closer to each other until inevitable moment of mutual annihilation. 

 

Elemental Citizens 

Elemental citizens create energy just by living there. Like a resort feeding off a high-status 'Tourist' class. Could be Archeans, Silichominids, Substratals or others. 

Stone-eating bacteria or Archea common here, farmed over cycles of millennia with herds of nomadic sonic pigs and cave crickets guided through the volume of the cities agriculture. 

 

False Sun 

A favourite of Aelf-Adal Terror-Lords 

Usually based around a large, open central area with agriculture of some kind taking place on every surface, floor, walls and roof. Golems or slave spider-castes farming the upside-down area above the city. The False Sun held in suspensions of mighty chain in the centre. 

1-3. A 'Ghost Sun' made from the dead souls of deceased citizens. Pale light and you can see the individual souls trapped inside. All citizens must give their soul to the Ghost Sun on death. 

4-5. Imprisoned being - chained light elemental, fire elemental, angel or devil. Held in spiderworks of eternal iron. 

6. Mechanical Sun - rare, often using hyper-dimensional mechanics. Gnonmen Capital has a Futurist Clockwork Uranium Sun fed by rare heavy metals. 

 

Inwardly-infinite Ontological Harvest 

City is inwardly ontologically shattered like a schizophrenics dream. Golems and child slaves sent into its fractured core to scavenge food appearing from 'nowhere' i.e. dropped or created by people who don't exist. 

This has a substantial effect on the cities layout, making it in, effect a ‘ring’ around an infinite inner core, which is treated as a private reaving and pillaging area. (Although, being infinite, may also be supremely dangerous). 

May be related, connected to, or built upon a foundation taken from, the ‘City of Infinite Ruin’, or the ‘Incoherent Isles’. 

 

Kaiju-Mine 

The City is build on, over, under or inside some Hyper-Being, either its corpse, or one somehow still-living. 

This might be some ancient Titan, Arch-Angel or God, or a more prosaic Kaiju. Could even be an Elder-God equivalent. 

The nature of the ‘substrate’ will likely have a significant effect on the character of the city. If people are eating Angel-Jerky, or God-Stew, or gnawing on Shub-Nigguraths bones, it will effect the psyche, culture, rituals, even the religion and behaviour of the citizens. 

This is also a massive singular source of food and will likely be carefully and relentlessly defended from the many raiders and scavengers who would also feed upon it. 

 

'Kite' Nation 

Far, far, up above, a polity which exists purely in order to service the City. 

This polity may drop down food directly, send it by river or via more abstruse magical means. They may send tribute, and/or even their sewage and cast-offs. 

A common method is a culture hidden in high valleys or inaccessible mountaintops, almost impossible to reach from the outside world and live in either terror and/or worship of their underground rulers. They may see the City Below as the afterlife, Dreamland, or simply a source of frightening and/or magical power and authority. 

In essence this would be a little exo-national interruption of the culture of the Veins into the surface world. It would be secret. Its defences would be strange and dangerous; the City Below, would take a deep interest in maintaining their ‘Kite’. Though they could not send large amounts of troops or material ‘Up’, and whatever they did send would function likely only at night, their forces would be potent, magical, unearthly and strange. A good origin for a Lovecraftian story or an entry-point to the Underworld. 

 

Fisher-City 

The City controls a ‘Bermuda Triangle’ type zone of Disappearances. Perhaps related to a storm, a strange moving forest of shadows or similar. Ships, armies, pilgrimages, small towns, caravans and more are know to irregularly disappear in relation to this phenomena, which may be bounded partially or totally by area or circumstance, (only beneath certain stars, or when the moon is thus, or once a decade between the mountains or so-on). 

These things or people may be transported by magic, or even charmed or mind-controlled into feeding themselves into something like the Deep Carbon Observatory. 

(Another Dero favourite as their mind control machines allow them to create powerful giga-conspiracies on the surface.) 

This might be another good entry to a VotE Campaign. 

 

Samaris Economy 

The Lords of the City either project, or have actually built, (i.e. ‘Samaris’), another city above ground. 

Goods consumed by the ‘Samaris’ are simply dropped or transported down to the ‘real’ city. 

Though expensive, and rarely enough for survival on its own, this is actually a relatively fair and sane method of sustainment. The Under-City isn’t supressing, subverting or dominating anyone, their economic exchange is quite real, simply executed through a ‘front’. 

 

Stable Gateway Light Well 

(Another favourite of Aelf-Adal; they like ‘light’ above their dreamlike towers.) 

Often above the city like a false sky, or a moon shining down, this is your classic stable large-scale warp gate to some other plane or dimension. Of course it might be a portal to somewhere no-one wants to go, like one of the Hells. However, many Hells have quite a lot of Firey energy and some light, as well as interesting sulphurous weather that can come through. It could also be to some Realm of Chaos, casting a warping light over the City. 

In most cases the ‘end point’ of the Gateway is either inaccessible or carefully hidden in the other Realm. Sometimes somewhere fortified or simply hanging high up in the air. 

The culture of the City will likely have some kind of exo-settlement in the other realm, and may even have diplomatic relations there. 

 

(Rare) Sky-Hunters 

The City goes full Whale-Hunter via its stable gateway, using complex airships, they rove the skies of the Other Realm, (probably at night, if they have night wherever ‘there’ is), and hunt whatever Megafauna they find. 

These may be asuras, angels, devas, devils or demons. They drag back the corpses and feast.