Behold Serthica, seat of aerial steampunk dreams. Once a lone citadel, it was fissured years ago in the two semi-autonomous regions of Eidris and Minaras by the spectre of long-gone sickness and civil war. Every 12-hour cycle, one of the citadel halves is covered by an invisible magical protective field and succumbs underground, while the other rises. Eidris emerges at 6:00, while Minaras replaces it at 18:00. The citadel half that is overground has full aerial access, while its counterpart rests below amid looming caverns.
The two citadel halves meet overground during 6:00-7:00 and 18:00-19:00 on broad, neutral zone corridors that crystallise between them. All magical barriers drop down and allow free movement via temporary stay papers.
Characters can slip into other citadels and extend their stay past a 12h cycle, but must be discreet and avoid ID checks. An underground network of ‘eye rentals’ has also developed: for 3,000 coins, you can buy six hours of possessing the (willingly conceded) body of a citizen in the other citadel half.
Each region governs itself. Resources run vast and inexhaustible in Serthica’s great underground mines. Formal hostilities between Eidris and Minaras have ended, but fresh conflict seems imminent — both citadels accuse each other’s populations of not being human.
Frustratingly, necromancers and the spiritually sensitive cannot detect any spirit or dead things in all of Serthica, even from fresh corpses.
On a better note, the local population of cloud sky whales has never been more prosperous.
The former east of Serthica and house to its parliament, Eidris rises overground each day at 6:00. It remains bound to myth, tradition, magic and the dragons that once built up the citadel. Many of Eidris’ citizens are sorcerers, priests, exorcists and temple keepers, who foster and accept every strain of faith and magic. The forever resplendent Eidris retains its appetite for wealth, tall architecture and luxury. Many nobles patron magic, the arts and support and breed dragons.
Eidris operates a magically reliant economy: golems support local terraformation and agriculture, a neutral gnome population handles mining, while technology is typically imported from Minaras and iminently optimised to run on magic rather than Minaras’ fuels. Sprits in Eidris run carefree, unburdened, indolent and high, led by Serthica’s monarchy — which refuses to concede it has lost control of Minaras.
✘ DRAGONS
While Eidris has adopted some of the zeppelins and base planes of Minaras, day-to-day transport between skyscraper palaces is achieved by small breeds of white dragon.
■ White dragons freely enter companionship with some of the graduates of Eidris’ flight schools. A bond with a dragon is not guaranteed, and the creature must accept its rider. Each dragon typically serves up to five citizens throughout its lifetime.
■ The relationship between dragons and riders is somewhat symbiotic: during flight, the rider’s mind is fully open to the dragon. The creatures communicate non-verbally through pulses of feeling through this mental link, or millisecond fragments of images. A dragon, for instance, might soothe its rider with the visual memory of a still lake.
■ Riders feel echoes of the danger or damage suffered by their dragons and are compelled to protect them.
■ Dragons offered for transport are typically 10 to 30 years of age and lack fire or offensive magic. Larger, veteran dragons affiliated with Eidris’ army have such powers.
NOTABLE SITES
■ The Palace of the Sun: the gilded and precious lodgings of Eidris’ monarchy.
■ The House of Parliament: another vestige of administrative power, running local operations.
■ Merchants’ markets: most useful for those seeking luxury goods (gems, pelts, exotic animals, spices) and magical artefacts.
■ Refreshment wells: small well mouths or streams that give a temporary boost to magical reserves or stamina. Found scattered and marked across Eidris, to help the magical population.
■ Dragon flight schools: eight such establishment across Eidris, open to all those who can pay an 8,000-coin fee. Characters should take a minimum of a month’s time to learn flight properly, but may have intermittent access to a dragon after two weeks.
■ Dragon grounds: large towers that serve as dragon shelters during Eidris’ underground period and as the creatures’ heavily heated breeding nests. Only dragon physicians and carers are allowed within.
Moody, maudlin and night-bound, clockwork Minaras occupied the west of Serthica and raises its head overground at 18:00. For years, tech and light-loving Minaras has housed the scientists, technicians, merchants and brave minds behind Serthica’s innovation.
The numerous laboratories, factories and academies of Minaras are constantly at work, building off metals imported from Eidris to create fire weapons, fuels, large air ships, watch towers and, obsessively, medical units, vaccines and health treatments.
The mood of Minaras is highly structured, disciplined and surveilled, with most vulnerable areas requiring clearance papers. Indoctrination for new arrivals is inevitable. The average citizen of Minaras thrives under government care.
Short trains can take you through Minaras, but many choose to travel by airplane — for a handsome 5,000 coins and a three-weeks’ work, you too can earn a pilot’s license.
Of late, the eye of the ruling government — which rejects the former Eidris-based monarchy of Serthica — has turned on clockwork droids, beautiful and subservient mechanical creations that can improve local industry.
✘ CLOCKWORK DROIDS
■ The city’s elite and many of Minaras’ PC arrivals — at player discretion — receive a clockwork droid assistant, which accompanies its master assiduously.
■ Assistant clockwork droids do not have pre-programmed offensive abilities, but can excel at planning, grooming, cooking or some aspect of logistics. Depending on its cost and model, a droid can be prodigious or inept — choose your own!
■ Clockwork droids obey some of the the expected laws of robotics: they cannot harm humans or allow humans to come to harm through inaction. They cannot wilfully ignore an instruction they understand or can enact. They also cannot allow the interests of one (human) to take priority to the welfare of the many citizens of Minaras.
■ Droids are equipped to provide basic medical care and report back injuries and sickness to government facilities.
NOTABLE SITES
■ Aerial academies & flight schools: institutions that respectively create and loan planes or train pilots. The small public transport planes do not come armed.
■ Mechanical factories: building everything from base weapons to engines and droids.
■ Health institutes: constantly inspecting and generating cures, vaccines, bio-enhancements and mechanical parts engineered for human use.
■ Underground and public trade markets: from weapons to metals to forge instruments, if you want raw materials or tech, someone in Minaras has it — on the books, or in a convenient dark alley.
■ The Place of Sigil: the sprawling seat of government — diligently attended by zealous ministers and a hotspot for (typically unsuccessful but worryingly frequent) assassination attempts.
■ Watch ships:great airships that patrol Minaras for any sign of crime or infiltration.
Science and magic combine in the tight Neutral Zone: a circular stretch of land of no more than 5 km2, which remains overground at all times. It adjoins either Eidris or Minaras, when the citadel halves rise up for their assigned time overground.
The Neutral Zone is financed by both citadels, but governed by none. It offers sanctuary to those caught in the hostilities between Serthica’s warring parts. No weapons are allowed in the Neutral Zone, which is defended by its own magical wards and clockwork droid infantry.
NOTABLE SITES
■ Vassarizhia, the Old Heart:Serthica’s tallest building, a behemoth clock tower that sets the time of all of Serthica. It announces the time when the citadel halves must emerge or submerge and contains the mechanism that allows these daily transitions. The artificial heartbeats of all the droids of Minaras are programmed to synchronise with it.
■ The Sanctuary: formerly an embassy for foreign dignitaries, now largely the site of diplomatic talks between Eidris and Minaras. The Sanctuary’s school of diplomacy prepares negotiators from either side and hosts the citadels’ rare peace or administrative summits. Some say the Sanctuary’s ruling conclave has been the single beneficiary of Serthica’s civil war.
The tubular, labyrinthine underworld of the Mouse House surrounds Serthica like a filthy, coarse and industrialised chokehold. Built to the 50m width of a large vessel, the Mouse House comprises makeshift stone roads, defunct rail tracks and uneasy pathways from the ports into Serthica. Expect no windows, crammed community homes and no real prospects for the Mouse House’s largely criminal and heavily impoverished exiled population. Only light incense sedatives keep the region’s many thieves, beggars and murderers relatively tame.
A coal train traverses the Mouse House daily, bringing coal deliveries from the ports to Eidris and Minaras. Small, humble paths lead furtively into whatever half of the citadel is burrowed. The many denizens of the Mouse House often feel as condemned as the mutated, large rats they coexist with, and dream of a day when they might be received overground.
ARC IV: SERTHICA
Behold Serthica, seat of aerial steampunk dreams. Once a lone citadel, it was fissured years ago in the two semi-autonomous regions of Eidris and Minaras by the spectre of long-gone sickness and civil war. Every 12-hour cycle, one of the citadel halves is covered by an invisible magical protective field and succumbs underground, while the other rises. Eidris emerges at 6:00, while Minaras replaces it at 18:00. The citadel half that is overground has full aerial access, while its counterpart rests below amid looming caverns.
The two citadel halves meet overground during 6:00-7:00 and 18:00-19:00 on broad, neutral zone corridors that crystallise between them. All magical barriers drop down and allow free movement via temporary stay papers.
Characters can slip into other citadels and extend their stay past a 12h cycle, but must be discreet and avoid ID checks. An underground network of ‘eye rentals’ has also developed: for 3,000 coins, you can buy six hours of possessing the (willingly conceded) body of a citizen in the other citadel half.
Each region governs itself. Resources run vast and inexhaustible in Serthica’s great underground mines. Formal hostilities between Eidris and Minaras have ended, but fresh conflict seems imminent — both citadels accuse each other’s populations of not being human.
Frustratingly, necromancers and the spiritually sensitive cannot detect any spirit or dead things in all of Serthica, even from fresh corpses.
On a better note, the local population of cloud sky whales has never been more prosperous.
Check out character team assignments to figure out their mainstay location.
Image source.
EIDRIS
The former east of Serthica and house to its parliament, Eidris rises overground each day at 6:00. It remains bound to myth, tradition, magic and the dragons that once built up the citadel. Many of Eidris’ citizens are sorcerers, priests, exorcists and temple keepers, who foster and accept every strain of faith and magic. The forever resplendent Eidris retains its appetite for wealth, tall architecture and luxury. Many nobles patron magic, the arts and support and breed dragons.
Eidris operates a magically reliant economy: golems support local terraformation and agriculture, a neutral gnome population handles mining, while technology is typically imported from Minaras and iminently optimised to run on magic rather than Minaras’ fuels. Sprits in Eidris run carefree, unburdened, indolent and high, led by Serthica’s monarchy — which refuses to concede it has lost control of Minaras.
✘ DRAGONS
While Eidris has adopted some of the zeppelins and base planes of Minaras, day-to-day transport between skyscraper palaces is achieved by small breeds of white dragon.
■ The relationship between dragons and riders is somewhat symbiotic: during flight, the rider’s mind is fully open to the dragon. The creatures communicate non-verbally through pulses of feeling through this mental link, or millisecond fragments of images. A dragon, for instance, might soothe its rider with the visual memory of a still lake.
■ Riders feel echoes of the danger or damage suffered by their dragons and are compelled to protect them.
■ Dragons offered for transport are typically 10 to 30 years of age and lack fire or offensive magic. Larger, veteran dragons affiliated with Eidris’ army have such powers.
NOTABLE SITES
■ The House of Parliament: another vestige of administrative power, running local operations.
■ Merchants’ markets: most useful for those seeking luxury goods (gems, pelts, exotic animals, spices) and magical artefacts.
■ Refreshment wells: small well mouths or streams that give a temporary boost to magical reserves or stamina. Found scattered and marked across Eidris, to help the magical population.
■ Dragon flight schools: eight such establishment across Eidris, open to all those who can pay an 8,000-coin fee. Characters should take a minimum of a month’s time to learn flight properly, but may have intermittent access to a dragon after two weeks.
■ Dragon grounds: large towers that serve as dragon shelters during Eidris’ underground period and as the creatures’ heavily heated breeding nests. Only dragon physicians and carers are allowed within.
Image source.
MINARAS
Moody, maudlin and night-bound, clockwork Minaras occupied the west of Serthica and raises its head overground at 18:00. For years, tech and light-loving Minaras has housed the scientists, technicians, merchants and brave minds behind Serthica’s innovation.
The numerous laboratories, factories and academies of Minaras are constantly at work, building off metals imported from Eidris to create fire weapons, fuels, large air ships, watch towers and, obsessively, medical units, vaccines and health treatments.
The mood of Minaras is highly structured, disciplined and surveilled, with most vulnerable areas requiring clearance papers. Indoctrination for new arrivals is inevitable. The average citizen of Minaras thrives under government care.
Short trains can take you through Minaras, but many choose to travel by airplane — for a handsome 5,000 coins and a three-weeks’ work, you too can earn a pilot’s license.
Of late, the eye of the ruling government — which rejects the former Eidris-based monarchy of Serthica — has turned on clockwork droids, beautiful and subservient mechanical creations that can improve local industry.
✘ CLOCKWORK DROIDS
■ Assistant clockwork droids do not have pre-programmed offensive abilities, but can excel at planning, grooming, cooking or some aspect of logistics. Depending on its cost and model, a droid can be prodigious or inept — choose your own!
■ Clockwork droids obey some of the the expected laws of robotics: they cannot harm humans or allow humans to come to harm through inaction. They cannot wilfully ignore an instruction they understand or can enact. They also cannot allow the interests of one (human) to take priority to the welfare of the many citizens of Minaras.
■ Droids are equipped to provide basic medical care and report back injuries and sickness to government facilities.
NOTABLE SITES
■ Mechanical factories: building everything from base weapons to engines and droids.
■ Health institutes: constantly inspecting and generating cures, vaccines, bio-enhancements and mechanical parts engineered for human use.
■ Underground and public trade markets: from weapons to metals to forge instruments, if you want raw materials or tech, someone in Minaras has it — on the books, or in a convenient dark alley.
■ The Place of Sigil: the sprawling seat of government — diligently attended by zealous ministers and a hotspot for (typically unsuccessful but worryingly frequent) assassination attempts.
■ Watch ships: great airships that patrol Minaras for any sign of crime or infiltration.
Image source.
THE NEUTRAL ZONE
Science and magic combine in the tight Neutral Zone: a circular stretch of land of no more than 5 km2, which remains overground at all times. It adjoins either Eidris or Minaras, when the citadel halves rise up for their assigned time overground.
The Neutral Zone is financed by both citadels, but governed by none. It offers sanctuary to those caught in the hostilities between Serthica’s warring parts. No weapons are allowed in the Neutral Zone, which is defended by its own magical wards and clockwork droid infantry.
NOTABLE SITES
■ The Sanctuary: formerly an embassy for foreign dignitaries, now largely the site of diplomatic talks between Eidris and Minaras. The Sanctuary’s school of diplomacy prepares negotiators from either side and hosts the citadels’ rare peace or administrative summits. Some say the Sanctuary’s ruling conclave has been the single beneficiary of Serthica’s civil war.
Image source.
THE MOUSE HOUSE
The tubular, labyrinthine underworld of the Mouse House surrounds Serthica like a filthy, coarse and industrialised chokehold. Built to the 50m width of a large vessel, the Mouse House comprises makeshift stone roads, defunct rail tracks and uneasy pathways from the ports into Serthica. Expect no windows, crammed community homes and no real prospects for the Mouse House’s largely criminal and heavily impoverished exiled population. Only light incense sedatives keep the region’s many thieves, beggars and murderers relatively tame.
A coal train traverses the Mouse House daily, bringing coal deliveries from the ports to Eidris and Minaras. Small, humble paths lead furtively into whatever half of the citadel is burrowed. The many denizens of the Mouse House often feel as condemned as the mutated, large rats they coexist with, and dream of a day when they might be received overground.