Thursday, September 2, 2021

The city of Graz Throne



    Dream-Washed Ortellion’s most striking feature is its ring of hundreds of multi-colored moons. They throng together in an impossibly crowded band, in defiance of conventional physics. They come from a rare astral conflux; all five major astral currents in Chunky Space meet here. The Moons are psychic eddies, swirling conglomerates of dream vibes. During the day their influence is weakened by the sun, but at night the dream tides they create rule the surface of Ortelion. Dream tides can sweep away reason and make people follow alien impulses. They also allow dangerous astral creatures to live on Dream-Washed Ortellion. As a result the native Maskforms¹ live in underground structures, protected from the dream tides by the simple dreams of the dirt and loam. The planet’s biggest (and only) city is Graz Throne.

    The gateway to Graz Throne is the Maskform Federation Headquarters. It sits outside the city proper in small spits of flatland amid a wild marsh. Like most of Dream-Washed Ortellion it is ruled by the strange fluxes of the dream tide. As a result it had to be built into the ground and covered with turf. As a result it looks like an archipelago of lumpy meadows rising out of a tidal marshland. Sometimes you can witness a hill splitting open, flaps of sod hanging in the air as spacecraft taxi in and out of the concealed hangers.
    
    In addition to being a spaceport, it is also an active military base. Foreign ships are directed to dedicated bays on the outskirts. Upon arrival outsiders are assigned a liaison officer whose job it is to handle customs, security, refueling, all of that messy business. As a matter of course all liaison officers are part of the Federation Intelligence Corp. It is considered rude to comment on this.

    The road to the city proper is shockingly narrow; a double line of bricks with dirt on either side Teams of porters use single wheeled barrows pulled by splay-footed pack lizards. The path leads out of the marshland and into the grain fields around the city. The fields are loney; the houses are underground so during the growing season it’s possible to see miles of fields without a single person in sight. The boundary of the city is plainly visible; the hidden sod houses are replaced with above ground cottages and the grain is replaced with orchards and vegetable plots.

    The first impression of Graz Throne is that it is impossibly rustic and picturesque. Wood and stone buildings tower above cobblestone streets. The fretwork is all laced through with an arabesque pattern that flows and changes throughout the city. The buildings are crowned with statues of maskform heroes and fantastical creatures. The largest and tallest structure is the Graz palace complex.It is a veritable hydra of whitestone towers, the tallest of which is the Moon Anchor, which dwarfs all other buildings. At the top is the prismatic pink Jubilant Moon, whose astral radiance keeps the dream tides away. The effects of the Jubilant Moon can be felt through most of the city. The air seems to vibrate and there’s a lightness to every movement.

    The caravansary district is in the outskirts of the city, where the buildings are still low. It consists of a trio of hotels, each with a large circular courtyard. This is where caravans come into the city. The bulk majority of goods are used to satisfy guild contracts, but there are always stalls where the public can buy tchokes and curios.

    The Alchemy district is marked by whimsical smoke stacks and glass reservoir tanks full of colored liquid. Guilds that use and refine chemicals, such as the Tanners Guild, the Dye-Makers Guild and the Potion Brewers guild. The smoke stacks are astral catalytic converters that transmute astral pollutants into harmless compounds. Even with these precautions, the Alchemy district is notably grimier than other parts of the city. The Scrubbers Guild works all across the city but their fiercest battles are here. If left unchecked, pollution build-up can cause grim grime, a sort of carnivorous mildew. Masked and googled scrubbers can be seen on scaffolds, working around the clock to prevent this.

    Graz Throne is located in a temperate zone and it’s also on a coast. This means that it has cool summers and mild winters. Dense fogs are common year round. During the day weather is anodyne but at night the influence of the Jubilant Moon takes over. Rainstorms have a beat and the thunder comes on time. Fog banks whirl and curl in a hidden rhythm. Frosts form in impossible fractal patterns.

Factions and Organizations

    The Maskform Federation is a relatively young polity created in response to Father Corp² piracy. What began as a simple self defence alliance has snowballed into nascent regional power. More than mere safety, the Federation offers unity and political purpose for disaffected Maskform youths. The federation has support from the Crown of Graz, which granted them the right to build a spaceport. This link to the outside world that doesn’t use the traditional astral trade routes is the Federation’s biggest advantage in local politics. Other than that, they are relatively powerless in local politics. Their favor with the throne doesn’t translate to favor with the other powers in the city. The trade guilds and the caravan houses see the Federation as a threat or a rival to their power bases. While their aims are roughly compatible with the Fool’s Parade, they have a hard time fielding fools, as their motivated and zealous personnel base finds participating in the Parade to be frivolous. As a result the Fool’s Parade is less committed to the war against Father Corp than Federation leadership wishes they were.

    Every resident of the city will tell you the Throne of Graz is purely ceremonial. This is broadly true but what they fail to mention is that on a world with as much astral influence as Ortellion, ceremonial is different from powerless. The monarch of Graz is trained from birth in the questing arts³. They are an elite questor that uses their talents to mediate between the dream realms and the Maskforms. Their most important duty is to maintain the link between the Jubilant Moon and the city but they have other tasks on Ortellion and in distant dream realms. The guild of Questors is the power behind the throne. It is the elders of the guild that monitor the omens and dispatch the monarch on her quests. Though they would never admit it, the guild has split into two factions; a “pro” Federation faction who sees Father Corp as an existential threat and an “anti” Federation who sees the Corp as a distraction and the Federation as threat to their power.

    The true municipal power in Graz Throne is the Parade of Fools, a singular endless party that snakes through the streets. The will of the parade arises from the interplay between the party goers and the whims of the Jubilant Moon. Anyone can join the parade, they must simply surrender their minds to the pull of the Jubilant Moon. Once under lunar influence, they are called directly to it, each step bringing them closer. Once they join the Parade they are given a title and costume fitting to their aptitudes and their vibes.. At the front is the Fool King, an enormous amorphous robe. Most of the time multiple people are the Head Fool at once, all bound together in the costume. Sometimes they struggle against each other, sometimes they seem to act with one mind, all according to the whims of the moon.

    Throughout the city there are circular intersections with public stages. These are called grumbles and it is here that the business of government happens. The parade snakes its way into the grumble, coiling around the central stage. The Head Fool announces the grumble and introduces the participants, explaining the structure of the debate to come in garbled moon logic. Positions are expressed through the medium of performance, each song or dance or act assigned a political meaning obvious to the revealers but obscured to onlookers. The crowd makes it’s will known through jeers and cheers and costumed agents are dispatched to carry out various functions of government. After every named fool has given their piece, the head fool announces the location of the next grumble and the Parade sets off once more.

    At the rear of the parade are the stilt wearing Dropsey Men, who keep a watchful eye for any parade goers showing signs of exhaustion. They point them out to the Knap-timers, who discreetly dose them with a mild sedative and load them onto the knap cart where they are delivered to specialized recovery rooms around the city. Towards the front are the gaily colored Bumpers who clear civilians from the path. Positioned throughout are the black clad Dred Fools. Armed with mancatchers, they respond to violence and emergencies with ruthless efficiency.

    The economic powers of the city are the guilds and the caravan houses. The guilds are unions of artisans who control factories and sources of raw materials. The caravan houses are pan-cosmic organizations who control trade routes through astral currents. Dream-Washed Ortellion is their space hub.

    There are dozens of guilds in the city, with some notable examples being the Sandwich Artisans Guild and the Dollmakers guild. While on the surface Graz Throne seems to be pre industrial, the guilds use special astral technology to achieve similar results. For example, instead of robots they use dolls made out of magic wood. While this enables a high degree of production, it doesn’t have the same “snowball” effect of traditional technology bases. The output of Graz Throne has been more or less static for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Guild artisans focus more on subtle refinement and mastery of existing techniques as opposed to innovation.

    Some guilds are vertically integrated, meaning they control farms or other operations in the area around Graz Throne. Other guilds rely on a complicated network of contractual obligations to other guilds and Caravan houses. Some of these contracts are hundreds of years old. Collectively, they are called the Gations, and guild members talk about them as though they were holy texts.

    Guilds are granted their charters by the fools parade. Every active guild is required to have at least one member present in the parade for at least half the time (as certified by the Minion of Rolls, who serves under the Mad Scrivener). In addition, guilds keep professional partiers on retainer, to bolster their influence over the Fool’s Parade. The capricious nature of the parade can make it hard to tell if such hired boosters have an effect, but the guilds would rather act futility than risk being out maneuvered by their rivals.

    Most guilds are run by specialist artisans. They have an “Apprentice - Journeyman - Master” hierarchy. The masters run the guild by democratic council. To become a master, a journeyman must complete a masterwork. Journeymen without the skill or the ambition to do so often specialize in middle management, become factory foreman and contract negotiators. Most citizens wear their guild badges as cloak pins but it’s not required.

    Not every guild fits the artisan model. The Students Guild is made up of foreign maskforms and guildless teenagers. They use membership fees and grants from the Fool’s Parade to pay other guilds to share their specialized knowledge. They send more courtiers to the Parade than the other guilds, leading to the perception that they have a special favor. The members of the Ragamuffins Guild live in the city's orphanages. They have a special permit to work as guides and messengers. The Questors Guild is sometimes called the Near House. In addition to teaching the Questing Arts, they fund terrestrial caravans that trade in the scattered townships across Ortellion.

    Once a guild is established and chartered it can feel like a permanent institution. This is not the case; under extreme circumstances the Parade can revoke guild charters. The most infamous case happened hundreds of years ago but it still casts a shadow on the present day. The Pipers Guild were exterminators who used hypnotic melodies to remove various urban pests. The exact details were suppressed and never made fully public but it's known that their allegiances flipped from the city to the pests they were supposed to fight. Their charter was revoked, and they were hunted down by the Dred Fools. The last masters of the Pipers Guild died in public giblets hanging from what was once their guild hall. They were replaced by the Raters Guild, who train native weasel-like creatures to deal with vermin.
    
    But it is said that the teachings of the Pipers Guild lived on in the whispers of their old enemies turned friends. It is said that the sprites and malmalkins⁴ of Graz Throne sing the old songs of the pipers into the ears of sleepers. Some of those unfortunates awake as piping fools, the most notorious form of errant fool⁵. Piping Fools use their hypnotic powers to spread chaos through the city. A single Piping Fool can shut the city down for weeks, as residents hide inside with their ears stopped up with wax. Fortunately Piping Fools are rare, with one emerging every few years. As even errant fools serve the will of the Jubilant Moon, they are not held liable for their actions, but their knowledge of the piping arts makes them too dangerous to live in society. When they are caught by Dred Fools they are sent to live in the Damn Spit Asylum, a remote building out in the marshes.

    In response to resistance from the Federation, Father Corp has set its sights on Graz Throne, in order to undermine their power base. They have begun beaming a multi-level marketing scheme into people’s dreams. If someone accepts the pitch, they wake up with a bedroom full of cheap Father Corp products and the compulsion to pawn them off on others. The Fool’s Parade has declared this practice illegal and will destroy any Father Corp products they find. Nevertheless, Father Corp products are finding their way into the daily lives of the citizens, subtly changing and weakening the guild system. It is unclear how Father Corp is transmitting the signal, as interference from the moons of Dream-Washed Ortelion should block any astral transmissions. Doomsayers allege that the Jubilant Moon has been suborned somehow. This seems unlikely but it has dire implications if true.

    Most citizens of Graz Throne belong to a guild, and it is their guild that feeds them. Guildhalls and guild dorms have onsite cooks (usually a high status journeyman, but in a food based guild they could be a master) who prepare meals using raw ingredients from the Grangers Guild. This means food culture in Graz Throne is focused on supplemental foods, little things meant to tide over guild workers between meals. The Sandwich Makers, the Grillers and the Confectioner’s guilds each have their own army of food carts, hoping to entice passing workers into spending a few Guilders. Potions flavored with sugar and cream are popular beverages. There are health potions, meal replacement potions, even potions that let you work while you sleep. Graz Throne beer is notoriously weak, as the Brewers Guild must satisfy the thirst of the Fool’s Parade. Instead of putting effort into beer, the masters of the Brewers Guild focus on high end spirits

    Like most of the Maskforms in Chunky Space, the citizens of Graz Throne are largely Bastardist. They believe they are descended from the original bastards, and it is their destiny to reclaim their legacy. More specifically, they believe early Maskforms were designed to rule over the astral realms created by the Obelisk Dreamers. Aside from that, the most important religious institutions in the city are the Mystery Cults. These small organizations worship specific sites and phenomena across Dream Washed Ortellion. It is a rite of passage for city youths to make a pilgrimage into the wilderness in order to experience a mystery. Some notable examples are the Order of the Green Heart and the Cult of the Unwinding River. Cult pamphlets make up a large proportion of the city’s street trash.

    The Caravan houses are important institutions to Maskform society in Chunky Space because they keep the tribes connected through trade. Each house has its own list of crossing points, locations where a group can transverse from one current to another. Graz Throne is the largest Maskform city and manufacturing center in Chunky Space, making it a vital part of every caravan route. Astral trade is complicated, but to put it broadly, raw materials come into Graz Throne and finished products leave.

Locations

    The Blue Lounge is nested deep with the sewers and access tunnels that underpin the city. The rays of the Jubilant Moon don’t reach underground, making the lounge a respite from its influence. For this reason it is a popular spot for the professional partiers that spend too much time in the Parade of Fools. On their off hours they are quiet, serious types who nurse weak drinks and compulsively play phantom instruments. For the cost of a few drinks you could learn quite a bit about the doings of the Parade.

    The Singing Sandwich is the Sandwich Artisans Guild hall and one of the most highly rated restaurants in Graz Throne. The titular dish is made using special fungal steaks that resonate in the aura of the Jubilant moon. Recently, the fungal farms in the building's basement have been taken over by a malmalkin infestation. While the building is closed, a host of journeymen have set up pop-ups outside. Tensions are rising. The situation could result in a major shake up in the Guild.

    The Questor’s Guildhall is a one story building with a wide footprint. The first floor is a museum warren dedicated to the guild’s achievements. Every room is crowded with stuffed monsters and dubious relics. A hidden door leads down to the real guildhall, which is a series of training labyrinths. Anyone who can find the door is entitled to lessons in the questing arts. The upper labyrinths are home to padded constructs painted to look like monsters. Lower, there are real monsters.

    The Dress Makers Guildhall is a large complex. In addition to it’s show rooms and dormitories it has a large central courtyard where a monthly sword fighting exhibition is held. A masterwork dress has so much attention and care put into it that it develops a sort of ontological inertia. In astral environments a masterwork gown functions as heavy armor. The exhibition matches demonstrate both advances in fashion and martial utility. A masterwork knight gown can run up to thousands of Guilders but they are invaluable at social functions and dreamworld battlefields alike. Journeyman gowns are more affordable but also more easily damaged and defaced


Special dress features

1 - Ribbons - The dress has four 10 foot ribbons arranged on the back. When worn, these ribbons animate under the control of the wearer. They can be used as whips or light spears

2 - Pocket Fortress - The wearer can retreat into a pocket dimension, leaving behind an armored bustle. The pocket dimension has enough space to fit 10 adult humans and can be outfitted to the wearers specifications

3 - Clone projector - the wearer can project up to five decoy images of themselves

4 - Flower launcher - Wrist mounted projectile launcher that uses thorned flowers as ammo






Encounters (1d6)

1. The Fools Parade smells contraband. They're ransacking market stalls and seizing Father Corp products. Tensions are high


2. A brass band is playing an energetic tune and the street lights are dancing along. There are signs of structural damage in nearby houses.


3. The federation is holding a triumph, parading a captured Father Corp executive in chains. “Help me” he mouths to the pcs. The parade picks up speed, hoping to avoid the parade of fools.


4. An exorcist is giving a public demonstration. The patient is strapped to a chair and their mental parasites are made visible and expelled. He then shoves them in a jar. Soon, something much larger than any of his jars will be expelled.


5. A horde of tiny living pastry men run down the street, with armed bakers in hot pursuit


6. An old woman walks down the street counting a large stack of credits. A gang of low lifes eyes her warily. She is a highly trained questor and this is in fact a trap


Footnotes
1.Maskforms are a human offshoot that adapted to live in astral environments. In a dream realm they take the form of a mask on a mutable body. In real space they revert to their ancestral human form.
2.Father Corp is an Astral mega factory that consumes and processes astral matter. Its agents have been been raiding Maskform villages in Chunky Space.
3.The Questing Arts are a collection of philosophical precepts, mental exercises and martial katas that teach the practitioner how to fight and maneuver in astral environments.
4.Sprites are non-sapient insects that resemble tiny human beings. Malmalkins are self replicating doll constructs that have been living feral in the walls of Graz Throne for centuries.
5.Errant Fools are people under the influence of the Jubilant Moon who for whatever reason don't join the Fool's Parade. Other common types include Moon Faces and Jacks Jumping

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