As suggested last time, a sketch for a 'scum narrative' in the Faufreluches setting.
A presumed playable structure might be a point-crawl four deep and three wide, with increasing risk the longer one stays in a region. Additions could be made to the cast list, but a dozen will serve to give an impression.
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The Scene
Brachemond is a prosperous world, both from years of cultivation and from its useful position in the topography of Curtmantle space. It is the home of House Ximenzborg, who permit a variety of enclaves in the proud city of Elsinjoz.
One such enclave is that of Tortuga-Clyne; one of the more wilfully mysterious of the great Magnate Houses. Orbiting the cold world of Audubon-5 is their home: The Moon; Algranesh - from which they dispatch wonders. Best-known of these are their remarkable timepieces: bioclocks or hyperclocks of remarkable reliability even across the gulfs of the galactic void and the dislocation of Curtmantle space. Second are the thousand strange alloys of The Moon; Algranesh, shaped into a thousand ornaments and tools all catalogued and marketed by Tortuga-Clyne.
As notorious as their products are their prices: a ritual for any sufficiently high status exchange is that they are never paid in mere specie or anything standard or common, but only in goods, services or rights as specific and obscure as the thing or service they provide. The Mint regards them as something between a challenge, a calculated insult and a curiosity - and it is a rite of passage to sit through a high-end Tortuga-Clyne exchange.
So an enclave was a necessity for them. Thus, the Audubonian Exchange: a net of secure warehouses, private landing grounds and assessor complexes surrounding the great cube of the Praetorium. It is an affectation of Tortuga-Clyne that they are a 'House without Servants', that their needs are adequately filled by a group of antique 'analogue robots'. That this flirts with the Regency's prohibition on machine-minds has not stopped the members of the family from bringing them up.
Even if no servant will ever set foot in the Praetorium, that does not mean there is no need for labour in the Exchange. Supplies go into the Praetorium, rubbish comes out. Guests are escorted, directed and pampered. Diplomatic signals are collected, goods packaged, customs officials accommodated, boundaries are patrolled, motorcarriages refuelled and spies identified.
Throughout it all, the handful of Tortuga-Clyne residents are watching from the dusty halls of the Praetroium. Stooping eccentrics and hypochondriacs, frequently veiled, they are the talk of any visitor to the Audubonian.
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The Overture
But now they are the talk of all Brachemond. Last night, following a conference in the Praetorium, Ximenzborg forces moved rapidly to seize the Audubonian. No whiff of hostility had been detected before this - not so much as one look askance in the Seigneuria. Something has changed very, very quickly. Ximenzborg has acted with absolute certainty: witnesses report not just household armigers but also the Fortunate Companions - the honour guard of Dagmar Ximenzborg, conspicuous in honey-coloured battle-plate and war garlands about their brows. The lantern-jawed face of Dagmar Ximenzborg herself has been seen leading the assault on the Praetorium.
Come the dawn Secretariat minutemen are picking through the Audubonian, cataloguing everything. There are rumours of Pastorate ministers in the red coifs of witchfinders entering the cracked cube of the Praetorium. The House of Ximenzborg is certain, so certain as to be incautious, bringing the attention of these notoriously neutral organisations to the attention of a Magnates' feud. Certain, that is, or scared. The citizenry of Elsinjoz take their cue from their masters, and make a nervous breakfast.
But what do you know of this? Last night you had a job, perhaps even a good one. Today you don't. Today, you are tainted by association. Your quarters are on the edge of the Audubonian Exchange. It is time to leave.
Transport out of Elsinjoz has crawled to a halt, as a cordon tightens its hold. The dress, skills and mannerisms of those even remotely associated with Tortuga-Clyne will give you away. There is one place you might make for. About a hundred and fifty miles outside of Elsinjoz is a district given over to the Stadtholders - a permanent reserve. Ximenzborg reach into this backwater will be slow and tangled in a legal quagmire. Maybe you can go to ground there.
But the reserve is a long way off, and you have only what is about your person....
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The Cast
Of Tortuga-Clyne
You were a....
Cellarer: take a corkscrew, jigger, apron and a decanter of spirits (technically worth quite a lot, were it not for the gilt Tortuga-Clyne symbol on it).
Chambermaid: take a trolley of assorted linens, an iron and a demijohn of caustic cleaning chemicals.
Moneychanger: you have managed to carry with you small sums in six different currencies, only two of which are approved by the Mint and only three of which anyone's ever heard of.
Shipping Clerk: take an exquisitely minimalist tea service, an off-world carved boxwood ornament, two cans of paraffin, four preserved freshwater fish and a pocket perpetual almanac. Your warehouse had some interesting things in it.
Gardener: take a pair of comfortable kneepads, a trowel, a pruning knife and a handful of exotic blooms.
Bouncer: take a shock-glove. Get close enough and you can render unconscious anyone not wearing powered battleplate. However, you were selected for your brawn and imposing presence.
Server: take a tray of assorted, rather soiled nibbles, a palette knife, a ThermoPad ("Keeps your Soup Simmering on the Sideboard!") and several old guest lists.
Perimeter Guard: take a wide-band secure communicator. You'll be able to listen into Domestic Service Corps chatter, at least for a bit. Also take a sidearm and one clip of ammunition, as well as a very smart uniform with lots of well-placed badges.
Schematician Process Avatar: you know exactly how to produce high-quality canvas according to a variety of timetables with almost any workforce and the right motivation. You also have a clipboard.
Glossatrix Aide: your senior was supposed to her have finger to the pulse. You just arrived from off-world. You have a beautiful outfit, a winning smile and a stack of fancy magazines geared to a variety of Brachemondian tastes.
Secretariat Cypher-clerk: you have trained very carefully to memorise absolute gibberish, so that someone may quote the correct keyphrase to you in order to decode it. You will remember nothing afterwards. (Also, your shorthand is amazing). Take a smart blue tabard and a string of mnemonic beads.
Praetorium Staffer: take a dusty robe, a Tortuga-Clyne bio-abacus and a mask. You will not remove the mask.
Of Ximenzborg
The Domestic Service Corps of Ximenzborg's armed forces is divided into two commonly encountered groups.
The Intramurales are local enforcers, usually older troopers rotated out of frontline service. They patrol their own districts, largely focusing on minor issues of civic order. They have the reputation as fiery Chauvinists in the name of Ximenzborg, happy to raise fist or club in defence of their liege-lords - and in protection of their own little sphere of influence.
Their matt cream box-backed motorwagons have won them the curious nickname of 'Dairymen'. It is a long-standing joke that the family, spouse, favoured paramour or crony of an Intramurale will run a liquor shop, gaming parlour or other licensed enterprise.
The Extramurales go where required within a given region, or indeed beyond. They are dedicated long-service professionals, focused on come in several kinds.
Extramurale Investigators appear doing standard information-gathering and detective work, lightly armed and clad in the distinctive blue-black service tunic with chest ornaments of rose-pink and dove-grey braid.
Extramurale assault teams are not seen until they want to be. They are heavily armed and practiced in swift, powerful operations against their targets, distinctive in the irregular gaze-warping cross-hatching of their ash-grey body armour.
Extramurale Informants are not seen. But they're definitely there.
The Fortunate Companions don't care about you. Really, they don't. They're busy going through purity exercises with the Pastorate or on honour guard duties. But if they happen to be nearby when you manage to make your presence known, their wargear lets them break through a house wall, leap over road vehicles and perform improbable judo throws with a charging aurochs.
Also: divers families of yeomen, burghers, freeholders, villeins, metics, guard dogs and mendicants.
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The Places
Nearmost the Audubonian Exchange
Procyon Terrace
A street or so of large, well-built buildings, given over the years to the offices of the Pastorate - administrative offices, the Metropolite's Residence, a Seminary, a carefully inconspicuous barracks for Wardens.
Witchfinders walk openly in the dull dawn light; clerks and Ministers emerging from the offices have clearly slept little. No Intramurales can be seen, and it would be odd indeed for them to show their faces here.
Fabian's Conduit
Even if the Audubonian had it's own generator, most enclaves in Elsinjoz do not. The Conduit is the great sunken channel for power cabling, the provision of water, the removal of waste. It reaches directly out of the quarter to splice into the main arteries of the city. A row of narrow, elegant trees sits over it and ornamented pillars have subtly placed entrances down into it.
The Conduit channels are unattended most of the night. Maintenance engineers are only now arriving. In places, the desperate or the tormented make temporary shelter.
The Diplomatic Penumbra
About the Audubonian and the other cluster of embassies and consulates are a series of little specialist shops, set in winding crescents of terraced houses. Uniform tailors, pastry cooks, discreet little banking houses, high-end vintners, places where you can hire footmen for a banquet or dancers for a party.
You know people here. Everyone knows what happened. No-one will help you. None of them are badly off, but most would like a little more and all would suffer from the attention of the Extramurales.
***
Firmly within Elsinjoz
The Campanologist's Tomb
A housing district for the loyal middle-rank, dotted with small shops. Many of the streets have little piles of Tortuga-Clyne goods, carefully smashed and discarded. Young men, possibly cadets in an Ximenzborg military academy lounge in the courtyards.
A minor house named Laagercruz owns many of the vendors here; their current paterfamilias is a younger man who is flirting with defiance of Ximenzborg.
Muinadona Fields
Dense housing in a grid of overcast alleys, defined at one end by the low bulk of the Pastorate Hall of St Yoshifusa [EDIT: This should now be 'Celb. Yoshifusa'] and at the other by the broad field with the two opposing stages for the scrum-based ball game 'Hounds and Mastiffs'.
The Intramurales attend here in large patrols, to prevent the possibilities of outflanking in tight alleyways. No-one here really knows or cares about goings-on uptown.
Esquiline Park
Recreation grounds, flower-beds, promenades, tea-houses and vendors of sweet-meats. A gap between wards, tended into green splendour. Statues of Ximenzborg dignitaries, Brachemond grandees and abstract personalities of the Regency's virtues dot the pathway.
The barracks for the Ximenzborg Foot-and-Motor Guards are nearby, and it is their custom to spend free-time in the Esquiline, generally clad in their distinctive walking-out dress. The number of them that are armed, alert and active will vary from time to time.
***
Just beyond Elsinjoz
SW167 Livestock Processing
Where pigs, or things that might as well be called pigs, are sent. An area of vehicle parks, feed ramps and stockyards gives way to slaughterhouses, boiling vats and curing halls.
The best-known product of Elsinjoz are the 'void-cured' sausages. Specialised containers are packed with sausages and the assorted flavourings and preservatives and slowly mature to completion in the course of interstellar travel.
Occasionally, stowaways try to hide in the void-curing containers. They are generally found having choked to death in a cloud of pulverised herbs and spices.
The Cinnabar Brakes
A long belt of dense red cane snakes round the North and East of the city, cultivated as a deliberate environmental and defensive measure. Immaculate gullies of jade-sheened concrete water it, where rangers in slow flat punts slowly patrol.
The brakes are far too dense to move through swiftly, but discourage pursuit very effectively. You would not be the first to note this, and miserable red shacks may be found in various states of repair. The residents will have fled at your presence.
Tollyard 5
Like a concrete tag hanging from the knot of a major junction. Vehicles are checked, permits are issued, drivers fed, maps checked, bladders emptied.
A small Intramurale station may be found here. Screens in the main concourse display pictures from the sacked Audubonian, and speculation about what was happening there is splenetic and rife.
***
Nigh on the Reserve
Glazed gullies
A series of shallow valleys in the landscape. Ximenzborg have found that quickest way to make use of these was to roof them over and turn them into vast greenhouses. The fresh fruit and vegetables from these find their way to maintain the working population of Elsinjoz in relative health.
Shabby camps for the labour parties exist outside, where the inhabitants shiver when they leave the heat of the gullies. Concealment in the gullies would be difficult, and deeply uncomfortable for those unused to the conditions within.
Danstal Lodge
The Brachemond Mint has a back-country centre here, used (variously) as a retreat, a discreet locale for sensitive exchanges and an examination centre for promising candidates. The grounds are largely kept wild, with only a few trails through the mix of wood and heath being maintained.
Danstal Lodge is at present empty, barring a maintenance and security team. The Mint being who they are, the lodge grounds are under intense surveillance with reliable data feeds to Elsinjoz.
Iagkyrkan
A settlement connected to the main rail artery. It largely serves to act as a depot for outlying farms and freeholdings. One fabricator station, one wholesale store, one retail store, one dairy, one hostelry, one gaming parlour, one projectionist's hall, one Pastorate Hall the size of a racquet court, one admin hub and four barbers.
Rural Intramurales have far more leeway than their urban counterparts. The Station Chief in Iagkyrkan is intelligent, proactive and bored.
The Reserve
Shelter? Perhaps. The Reserve is bounded by a trail of sensors, intended to track animal movements - and trespassers. The Stadtholders will be on the alert, but the reserve is a big place. A discreet life might be possible. And there are ways through and out of this province.
Of course, life here for any length of time will need tools of some kind; likewise some raw materials. You know where to find those, don't you?
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Other Notes
- Tortuga-Clyne is the the work of Patrick Stuart, of False Machine. Among other things. He may make the briefing document on them available in time.... [EDIT: He did!]
- House Tortuga-Clyne's symbol is a tortoise carrying the sun on its back.
- House Ximenzborg's symbol is a black tower on white surrounded by drops of green-gold chrism. This is all shown within a quatrefoil frame of carmine. (Variations exists, generally replacing the tower with another object or symbol).
- The 'scum narrative' layout comes from the sources mentioned in previous posts, though the 'Fall of the Embassy' theme comes from a few sources. The atmosphere of Ice Cold in Alex, an early chapter of Use of Weapons. And, once again, the mix of urban and rural evasion in Rogue Male.
- Though, of course, given the various parties who might club together to get out of Elsinjoz, Stagecoach might be an interesting comparison.