The Updates

Were you to travel on one of the great steam hulks carrying trade goods up the Wallspring River to Horizon, here is what you would see...

The city sits astride the river, its wall stained with the ash of war and the smoke of factories. The Imperial Palace sits above it all, and the halls of government and the manses of the nobilty cluster around it like rats feasting on a hunk of cheese. And below them sprawls the factories and the docks, the slums and the tenements, the garrets and the gables of the lower city, vast even seen outside.

And when the ship approaches the city it's a curious thing, because the passengers and crewmen all become conscious of a direction that has always been present but never felt, the direction that runs from Wallwards to Truewards, and as one's sense of geometry shifts so does one's perception. The palace is, quite clearly and plainly, built into the Great Wall of Horizon, the grand edifice built by human slaves under the directions of the gods to keep the True Lands safe from the Treacherous Lands beyond. The Gods are gone now, away from the world in their flying barges which sail beneath the stars, but the wall endures, as does its city. And you're conscious now - it seems the most obvious thing in the world - that the Sun does not travel straight across the sky at all, but moves overhead in a circle, and "night" is merely what happens when the Sun moves out of sight beyond the Wall.

And the City, now obviously much larger even than it seemed, seems like a great tidal wave frozen in stone in the act of smashing itself against the Wall. And through the wall and under the Palace winds the Wallspring River which carries the ship deeper into Horizon, and soon the ship comes to the great bridge which links the factory district of noise and fire and steam to the sprawling docks where ships from all nations dock. The bridge bears proudly the crest of the Mayor of Horizon, Colonel Zero himself, to whom curses and blessings, oaths and toasts, and thunderous, furious newspaper editorials are dedicated daily.

And on the bridge is the Riverview Inn, a neutral ground where the criminal mob-lords, the master thieves, the hedge-wizards and the bohemian artists and the government spies and the foreign agents and the sleazy guardsmen and all the little lords of the backstreets and the alleyways meet on neutral ground, to have a brew and a chat and plan their next crimes, schemes, gambits and masterstrokes.

The GM team consists (alphabetically by surname) of Arthur Boff, Matthew Habgood, Victoria Harris, Andrew Pickering, Eleanor Smith, and James Wyatt. They can be contacted at team_of_traitors at yahoogroups.com - replace "at" with the relevant symbol to send messages.

Update List

Send your e-mail address to Arthur at arthur.boff at gmail.com and you'll be added to the update list.