Horizon: City of Traitors

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The Horizon 1 Site

HORIZON IS OVER!

The webpage remains up as a permanent archive of game material, mainly for the benefit of nostalgic players - although if you'd like to run a Horizon-inspired game for your friends, that's wonderful too. Horizon will be succeeded by Legacyin Trinity term of 2006.

If you like you can look at the (sketchy, incomplete) GM notes as well.

The City

"Where is this city? Struck out of time! Where is it builded? On the brink of truths and lies. Not truth and falsity - Oh, no. No. Nothing so grand. Here we are sunk on the abyss of discrete fibs, innocent misobservations, brilliant speculations that turn out wrong and kill - Oh, there is so much less truth in the universe than anything else."
- Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren

A Small Note On the Local Geometry

Things get strange close to the Horizon Wall. Within the bounds of the City one suddenly becomes aware of additional directions to the standard north, south, east, west, up and down: Wallward and Trueward. Wallward being towards the Wall, Trueward being out of the City and deeper into the True Lands.

This geometric oddity has five consequences:

  • Most people don't worry about the geometry. Most PCs shouldn't either. It hurts your head and only really becomes important if you're planning around-the-world trips. Here and here you can see the notes of a foolish cartographer who delved too deeply into the problem.

  • The city is much larger than it initially appears, and rumours of people finding entire abandoned districts hidden in the vast alleyway mazes are common.

  • All roads lead to Horizon; if you walk far enough down the Imperial Highways in the True Lands or, presumably, in the Treacherous Lands, you will eventually reach the City.

  • Straying from the road is dangerous; if you stray from the Imperial Highways close to Horizon you will end up in the Wall-blighted realm of Vegdarbarra, a land of battling warlords and crumbling fortresses dating from the First and Second Ages.

  • Within Horizon one is able to perceive that the Sun does not travel in a straight line across the sky. Rather, it moves in a circular path and "sets" when it travels over the Wall into the skies of the Treacherous Lands. Yes, the Wall is that large.

What Is Found Here

The Riverview Inn will be the venue for most Horizon sessions, which occur when both Moons are full.

Everyone will surely be interested in the traditions and superstitions of the criminal underworld and related subcultures.

The article on the government gives the details on Mayor Zero's administration.

The Mayor of Horizon is elected, but only 15 people have the vote.

Transport in the City is conducted by mundane as well as by extraordinary means; old-fashioned subway trains, steam-and-clockwork taxis and wind-up wings are in vogue, as well as horses, carts, carriages, chariots, ships, boats, and good old-fashioned feet.

Dogs witness oaths in Horizon, drugs poison people's minds and bodies.

Numerous organisations operate in the City aside from the government.

The districts of the City range from the quaint to the ramshackle to the terrifyingly dangerous.