To Baztium

Don't look at me like that. I'm not the first to consider this.

The books of our history are vague, but in places too specific. Most tellingly, I swear they are not old enough to talk knowingly of a time so distant from this modern age. Bastion is a beacon of modernity in every way. It radiates raw now-ness into the world, keeping the past at bay, but it's still out there. 

Outside of our city is a crude world, but with each horizon passed things grow more primal. As our expedition passes into the months and years, we start to feel as if we're crossing centuries or millennia. Trains and canals cannot reach our destination, and the march is hard. 

Such a journey requires travel beyond just the march. We must forget our home... I struggle to picture it even now. A distant silhouette. The towering castle-city. Star-lit and noble. We fight the urge to turn back. 

Now our future is clear. A pilgrimage to the great lost city, a paradise to all that can reach it. A sanctuary from this primordial land of cold stone and traitorous trees. From this misery of vengeful spirits and torn guts. 

Ring out the bells, we begin our journey. TO BAZTIUM. 

More of Bastion

Ecky Burgh - Home of the Original Green Smoke

Pudding Deck
- Try the tiny but obcenely priced (1g for an assiette) desserts.
- Enjoy the only spot of clean air in the borough, with great views of others choking below.
- Hear the haunting voice of the wailing-waiter, an avant-garde performer in his second job.

Stack-Wack
- Buy an air-bag from one of the sickly urchins roaming the board-walks. Prices range from a penny to ten shillings depending on how desperate for air you look.
- Call into one of the tiny breather-bars that pump in clean(er) ambience and sell disgusting spirits to disappointed travellers.
- Hope the Green Smoke doesn't descend today (1-in-6 chance each morning/afternoon, d6 corrosive damage each turn just for being in it).

Drip-in-Pool

- Go under the greenish water and enjoy clean air from a rubber tube sticking out of the wall. Dozens of patrons sit around sucking on these, conversing in whatever gestures they can manage.
- Eat specially bred jellyfish live from the water as they swim by (the poolkeeper will swim by and charge 50p a jelly)
- At the top of each hour two prisoners are dropped from above in weighted shoes, each with a trident. If one manages to kill the other, the poolkeeper will (usually) release them from their boots.

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Piling District- Where Things Go to get Broken

The Smashery
- Pay 20s to get anything you like smashed by the finest industrial machinery.
- Pay an extra 10s to push the button yourself.
- Pay an extra 1g to get to try one of the new prototype methods. They're very secretive unless you pay, but they involve an annihilation beam.

Discharge Docks
- Here the debris from the smashery is loaded onto huge barges and taken around the rest of the city. Great place to catch a cheap lift.
- For 10s you can have an hour sifting amongst the debris to try and find something useful (you probably won't).
- Throwing a penny down the Bottomless Well is considered lucky, but don't fall in because it really is bottomless as far as anyone can tell.

Breaker Quays

- Witness some of the most ground-breaking street art in Bastion, made by the Smashers on their days off
- Hear street poetry on the nature of smashing things by day and creating by night
- See the jagged sculpture of the Silver Man, a giant astral being rumoured to have visited the district and helped to build the smashery. 

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Neptile Quarter - Adults must be accompanied by a child.

The Walkaways
- Avoid the pale children that legally own the district.
- Find the occasional creepy-heirloom discarded on the tiles.
- Peek into luxurious chambers kept pristine and locked away from childrens' hands.

Foggy Lane
- Visit the kindershops, selling the crap that kids are able to make without adult supervision.
- Take in a drousy cocktail of naptime-oil in one of the many sleepeasies
- Fall foul of some playground-level rule that you didn't realise, or that some kid is making up, and get banished from the district after paying a hefty fine.

The Crystalory

- Take an ornate canal ride through a maze of glowing, chiming crystals repeating the same stupid song over and over.
- Enjoy the narration of how the children came to inherit the quarter from Granny Neptile.
- Buy overpriced, useless crystals in the gift shop.

Far Theories 2: The Spirits of Everything

Part 2 in a series of apocryphal essays concerning the nature of the Far Lands. Of all the great minds in Bastion, these five writers were available.

The Spirits of Everything - Alfo Praisecake, Author "The Location Paradox"

We know that these Far Lands are not separated from us merely by distance, or even by time. They are at once alien and familiar. They are without number. So far I am the only scholar of note to coalesce these factors into a perfectly logical theory.

The Spirit Theory dictates that the even the tiniest thought or concern of a living thing creates a spark of energy just outside of our perception. Enough sparks create a being, further sparks feed it, and soon this spirit exists as both being and place.

Whether or not there's any truth in the idea, the Spirit embodies the form in which is exists in our minds.

Duty Spirit

STR 6, DEX 15, WIL 19, 10hp, Burn (d4). 

- Assign you a duty, if you don't have one. 

- Burn those who turn their backs on duty.

- Sacrifice itself for another at the first opportunity. 

Lizard Spirit

STR 16, DEX 18, WIL 15, 15hp, Armour 1, Bite (d6, paralyse on Critical)
- Talk and act with cold-blooded detachment.
- Consume things whole.
- Embody toxicity.

Borough Spirit

STR 18, DEX 4, WIL 15, 12hp, Armour 2, Slam (d10).
- Wall off those that belong together from those who are different.
- Crush those that betray their community.
- Do anything to stop you leaving.

Psychiatric Spirit

STR 15, DEX 13, WIL 16, 15hp, Armour 1, Claws (d10).
- Intrude into your mind.
- Lie about the scope of its powers.
- Lock you up. 

Far Theories 1: Inside the Jealous Mirror

Part 1 in a series of apocryphal essays concerning the nature of the Far Lands. Of all the great minds in Bastion, these five writers were available.

Inside the Jealous Mirror - Peter Mannick, Columnist for the Bogroll

Oh how they hate us. But who can blame them?

Bastion is home to the happy factoryman, the playful urchin, the smiling postguard. Together we've told greedy unionists to get back to work, kicked the backwards-minded yokels back into Deep Country, and embraced the glittering star temples that pen-pushing academics want you to abandon.

And so to the Unbastiards. A foreign man, if you can call them that, peering in envy from a land that we don't even bother to map. Their hair is soft, their hands clean. We have only their laziness to thank for their current absence from our city.

Their cities have no work houses or offices, only parks to indulge in their life of leisure. Instead of temples to the stars, they idolise themselves by lavishing riches upon their children. In place of our free market of trade and personal ownership, they wash with the same cloth as their neighbour.

You'll read that the Unbastiards aren't here, but do not let your guard down. If the new family on your street have suspiciously spotless skin, smooth pale features, or a lackadaisical attitude to paperwork, send their name and address to this publication for investigation.  

Unbastiards
3hp, Back-Scratcher (d6), Soft Clean Clothes.
- Indulge in arts and leisure activities.
- Expect to be able to share anyone's possessions.
- Act impulsively without filing the proper paperwork.

Disputed Geographies of the Odd World

Extract from Chief-Pen Shunnock's closing lecture to the Bastion Grand Society of Cartographers, on the day of their final dissolution and demolition.

Over one-hundred-and-eighty-one years this Society has sought to shine a light on the dark parts of our world, only to be dragged into deeper shadows by the interference of ignorance and bureaucracy. 

Yet I wish to end our pathetic history with decisiveness. I declare these five laws of geography to be true, sworn on my own life. Let the end of our institute be the beginning of the peoples' efforts to put this chaos into order. 

The First Truth: Bastion is the hub of everything. A pillar of light that the rest of this nonsensical world must be drawn relative to.

The Second Truth: In spite of Bastion being our sole reliable point of reference, the city itself changes at such a rate, and hides so many unseeable parts, as to make any sort of large-scale mapping impractical. This is doubly true when you consider the Underground. 

The Third: The Deep Country is an utter waste of time and undeserving of our cartographic efforts. Vast emptiness punctuated by embarrassing shadows of our idiotic past. If you can find a signpost pointing to Bastion, you need know nothing more. 

The Fourth: The Golden Lands lie in every direction but North, and the mapping of these lands appear as our best hope to understanding our world. 

The Fifth: Sea Travel to the Polar Ocean to the North presents problems that are beyond the realm of cartography, so all maps should be topped with First-Quill Chinler's Border of Uncertainty to best present our knowledge of that area. 

On the Oddegon Rail

Pale children fill the window
Gazing through spittle to spy a river, a big tree, a wild horse 
The city hurls rocks and cans as we steam away
Clattering against our iron shell

The dining cart is closed
Seats uprooted and torn
There are too many for the ticket-guard to count
The Oddegon pushes forward

Rails scream against hardened wheels
And the bodies become denser
And the air is full of sweat
And breath is hard

Lurching into Barren Gap; The last nail of industry
Bastion's smoke meets dry wind
Lacing of roads and canals becomes thin
On the rail to the Deep Country, where nobody knows a thing

Rumoured Members of Bastion's High Council

Did I ever tell you about the real power behind this great capital of civilization?

The High Council? An old boy's club that lock themselves away, drinking and smoking while we toil in the factories?

Who told you that? It's much weirder than a bunch of toffs! Why do you think you've never seen them?

Would you come down here if you didn't have to?

Look. I even drew pictures.

The Last King

Bollocks.

It's true! Remember that last King of Bastion? Well he keeps himself alive using a weird machine, even centuries after he was overthrown!

But I thought the last King of Bastion was that boy we had beheaded?

No! Before that! The last true King of Bastion.

That one with the breastfeeding thing?

It was before all that lot! They were just pretenders. Anyway, he's up there as a skeleton living the high life. He's the reason we can't get any medicine down here!

Doesn't sound like much of a life. Wasn't the last true King of Bastion the one that got eaten by the animals in his own zoo?

Look. He's bad news, okay? But there's still the rest of the council.

The Maiden



She doesn't look all that maidenly. Is that meant to be a person?

She's from the bottom of the Polar Ocean. There's an ancient race of sea-people down there, you know! She has to be kept in a tank of water, but knows all sorts of sea-folk ingenuity.

Like what?

She's the one that taught us to make coal.

I thought we got coal from mines. Why would fish people know about that?

She taught us to make it better than normal coal. For the factories and that. Before that we were all toiling in fields growing spuds.

So I have her to thank for my black lung?

Anyway, I've saved the best for last.

The Brood



Actually, I heard this one too!

Right! Six songs, one voice, faces glow, feathers below.

Is that how it went? I remember it rhyming better. Haven't heard it since I was tiny. Seriously though, you believe that?

Well it sort of makes sense.

Why would a bunch of chicken-women be on the high council?

They're not really chicken women! They're from the stars!

Ah, of course. So what great knowledge did they bring to us?

Nothing, but they can see the future.

Then why do bad things keep happening? They didn't stop that bridge burning down last week.

They work in mysterious ways. Who knows what their cruel agenda could be!?

You know, I think I'd actually prefer that over a bunch of drunken old men. Here's hoping you're right.

Stone Age Adventures.

Last night I made a light-hearted comment to someone that my next game project should involve dinosaurs. That got me thinking. I knew I was doomed to take this joke-project seriously. We've all seen the anachronistic images of primitive humans fighting dinosaurs, but could this idea have meat for an actual game? I'm familiar with Og and GURPS Ice-Age but neither is quite what I'm seeing in my head. Before I get too caught up in mechanics I want to nail down my overal concept.

The Stone-Age, particularly the Paleolithic, ends over 10,000 years before the medieval era that inspires more fantasy settings begins. This has impact on everything from technology and society through to even more core concepts such as language and religion. To avoid things being too mind-shattering I'm using a wonderful term wikipedia taught me today as a benchmark. Behavioral Modernity. The short of this is that my societies will follow the nine tweaked guidelines below when considering how primitive they are.

- Some permanent buildings, some temporary.
- Purpose-made stone and bone tools.
- Fishing, group hunting and fruit gathering.
- Long-distance exchange or barter among groups.
- Use of pigment and jewellery for decoration and self-ornamentation.
- Figurative art.
- Game playing and music.
- Burial of dead and basic ritual.
- Some animal domestication.

However, notably I want to keep the tech level below:
- Bows and arrows.
- Pottery.
- Agriculture and Animal Husbandry.


I'm imagining the key points of a typical story will feel quite different to fantasy, too. I'm imagining:

- No magic or real focus on earning treasure.
- Significantly tighter focus on a small group and small societies. No wars or huge cities.
- Character advancement through new knowledge and tools rather than strength and skill.
- More focus on survival and acquiring materials and tools.
- Large cultural differences and a sizeable language barrier.

There's been recent talk on the RPGBN concerning historical settings and while I'm not trying to simulate paleolithic life exactly I'm imagining this project as much more of an alternate history than fantasy. The original idea was primitive man fighting dinosaurs, but I think I can do one better than that. I love creating new animals and plants so why not set down my primitive people in a fictional region and fill it with my own creations?

The new creatures and plants will have a grounding in reality, the brilliant Morae River blog being a perfect example of what I'm picturing. A valley would be a good focal point for a region containing a range of societies and creatures but instead I'm thinking a lake. Something about all sorts of life teeming around the coasts of a lake feels right to me. Journeying away from its supply of fish and clean water may be a dangerous undertaking, and perfect subject matter for an RPG. I love the idea of the group of neanderthal-like men climbing over a ridge to come face to face with a creature they've never encountered before.

And so a good starting name for this project has come to me. Stone Lake. Stay tuned for further info.

Understanding the Legendary Styles

The Student followed his Master across the green plain, fresh from a filling breakfast of over-night roasted pork. They approached a shallow pond where ducks swam. The Master's spear lightly tapped the cool water.
"The Initiate must be like the pike. Lean. Focused. Hungry for knowledge".
With a splash, the master's spear sent a pair of resting ducks into motion, fleeing into the air before landing and waddling into a calmer pond.
"The Student must be like the duck. Able to leave the comfort of the water to walk or fly, never staying in one pond for too long."
"And what about you, Master?" asked the Student.
"The Master? The Master will become like the pig. Content, humble and..."
The Master paused before lightly tapping his stomach.
"Understanding his role to provide for others." he finished, with a smile.

- Fluff brainstorming for an upcoming game of A Wanderer's Romance