City Of Mists: The Infrastructure

City Of Mists: Introduction
City Of Mists: The Law
City Of Mists: The Departments

City Of Mists proper is located on a northern side of its island, around a natural deep harbor, partly covered from the east side by a chain of smaller islands which really are tops of undersea mountains. The crescent shaped port constitutes the Old Town. It contains numerous piers, wet and dry docks, and an impressive array of warehouses, sprinkled with dozens of cheap hotels, bars, and bordellos for sailors. It also contains numerous custom offices and bureaus allowing for quick dealing with bureaucratic paperwork, as long as one does not irritate custom officers at least.

All the port infrastructure is owned by the City Of Mists and administrated (mostly) by the Department of Harbor. Warehouses are usually leased to corporations and private individuals, sometimes for short time but often for years or even decades.

All of the City is connected to a power grid, owned by the city and maintained and administered by the Department Of Infrastructure, which formally holds monopoly over providing electric power anywhere on the island but sometimes sells licenses for use of emergency power generators and small scale solar panels. Interestingly, the department keeps the location and exact type of power plant or plants powering the grid secret—gossip states that the power is generated in rather old nuclear plant or two build in the late sixties as a part of secret deal with American government.

The Department Of Infrastructure is also maintaining majority of the plumbing in the city, providing fresh water from the mountain springs. Its primary uniformed force, the carabiniers are acting as public security force and traffic enforces, and keep units trained in firefighting. Many corporations keep their own firefighting or rescue teams, though. Carabiniers' stations are spread through city, combining role of police precinct, firefighting stations, and minor courts, equipped with jail cells and retaining magistrates empowered to judge minor offenses.

Higher judiciary functions are held in the building complex of the Department of Justice, focusing primarily on legal arbitration between corporations, and to lesser extent with criminal justice. There is a large amount of overlap in law enforcement functions between departments, with investigation branches of departments vying to get their hands on criminal cases that can increase their reputation, gain influential corporate allies, or have high chance of including assets forfeiture, and at the same time try to avoid cases that have low chance of successful prosecution and political, social, or financial gains.

Lack of higher public education negatively influences the local pool of candidates for investigative branches of the departments. In fact, the various department offices often hire foreigners with law enforcement, military or investigative backgrounds, often overlooking troubled past of their candidates such as criminal convictions or disgraceful conduct.

There is no public health care on the island—there are numerous private hospitals, which are legally obliged to provide a basic ER care, but anything beyond that requires having proper health insurance. Some corporations keep their own medical facilities restricted to their employees and shareholders. Outside of the city, in the southern and western parts of the island lie two charity hospitals, formally private but sustaining themselves from voluntary gifts.

There is no public education on the island, either, with a small number of private schools in the city. Many corporations offer their employees some sort of high class tuition for their children, with small classes often providing education in a way favoring the corporate interests. Again, outside of the city the islanders have a few village schools maintained with local funding.

The city has very well developed cellular network with multiple companies competing over private and corporate customers with cheap phone services and high speed internet. All the departments are offered free phones and near-free services, a condition for communication company to operate on the island.

Evil Alchemy!

A new publication is here. I wrote a number of necromantic-themed alchemical discoveries for Wayward Rogue Publishing for their Vivisectionist Hybrid Class.

City Of Mists: The Departments

City of Mists: Introduction
City of Mists: The Law

Since the forced removal of president and suppression of legislative assembly, the Departments are the controlling force behind the City Of Mists with the council composed of the departments' commissars being the real ruler of the island. The council is composed of heads of five major departments, and eight minor departments. The division between major and minor departments is fluid to a degree, based on their influence and relative power, with Departments Of Finances, Department Of Harbor, and Department Of Defense having their dominant positions unchallenged since the coup.

Department Of Finances oversees taxes, customs, and bank regulations giving it leverage over banks and other corporations operating in the city. It's main source of political power is balancing city budget and assigning funds to other departments. While other major departments and some of the minor ones are usually capable of finding alternate sources of revenue to finance their operations, all the commissars prefer to remain in the Department Of Finances' good graces. They have their own investigation branch in the form of the financial inspectors, with the right of investigating any transgression that involve money or loss of public profits, and include armed arrest and seizure unit.

Department Of Harbor controls the port, the warehouse infrastructure, and the customs. having great deal of influence over corporations that trade in physical commodities. They are the most financially independent of the departments, receiving port and warehouse fees, and control tariffs flowing into the city budget. Like financial inspectors, custom inspectors have very wide array of investigative powers, armed arrest and seizure unit (trained in infiltrating and capturing ships), and the harbor watch uniformed units. They also keep a number of military-grade gunboats and two helicopters.

Department Of Defense is the military force of the island. While the army (called the militia to present itself as the citizens' force) itself is predictably small, with few thousand soldiers, its four (not very modern) tanks, four APCs, two jets, two combat helicopters, and three transport helicopters are unmatched force on the island. The department own revenue is limited to fees on weapon trade coming through the city, selling obsolete equipment, but they have big influence of companies that manufacture, test, and trade weapons, and the commissar is experienced in reminding the Department Of Finances who removed the president and gave power to the departments in the first place. While the regular troops are rather poorly trained, the small troop of gendarmes has better training, better equipment, and the widest array of legal enforcement powers.

Department Of Justice oversees criminal investigations and judiciary proceedings. It is composed of a number of judges and procurators who keep their own retinues of detectives that examine facts and gather evidence of serious crimes and are de facto plain-clothes police. Department of Justice has the lowest amount of independent revenue of the major departments, and maintains its status mainly because of the need for civil courts in the city full of corporations. It keeps a small number of uniformed guards who provide security to the department buildings, the judges, and the prison in the middle of the island.

Department Of Infrastructure is responsible for regulating new constructions, maintenance of streets, power grid, and sewerage, and retains monopoly for providing electricity and fresh water. It is the only major department that does not field investigator agents but it keeps a large force of uniformed carabiniers, second only to military, for the purpose of maintaining public peace, enforcing traffic laws, fighting fire, and fulfilling the role of uniformed police.

Minor departments include Department Of Communication And Science (mostly assigning radio frequencies to corporations), Department Of Culture And Education (a sinecure, whose sole activity is occasional extortion of money and favors from the thriving porn and sex industry via veiled threats of issuing unfavorable regulations), Department Of Fishing (which is actually a department of the territorial sea and all its resources), Department Of Health (does a little regulation, all the local health care is private), and Department Of The Island (which oversees the farming and environmental regulations, and deals with most issues on the island outside of the city).

City Of Mists: The Law

City Of Mists: Introduction

Modern City Of Mists is a bureaucratic oligarchy with a tangle of vague and arbitrary laws.

Formally, all the laws should be issues by a legislative assembly—a body composed of "respected citizens", elected by and from the population of the island's citizens. The last legislative assembly gathered during the Presidential Crisis Of The 1958, when the military officers forced the president to convene the assembly using the restrictive criteria favoring the military and their allies as delegates, and resign. The puppet assembly "temporarily" reformed the ministries into Departments headed by newly instituted Commissars, and gave them an array of special prerogatives, including the right to issue executive orders that had the binding legal power of laws issues by the assembly itself, until reviewed by the assembly, canceled by the Commissar, or vetoed by two other Commissars. The commissars are restricted to issuing executive orders concerning only their own department's scope of activity but there are certain overlaps between various departments...

The legal mess could be cleaned by legislative assembly... But it has to be convened by the president, a function currently vacant. In theory any commissar could issue an executive order initiating the presidential election but of course any two commissars could veto it.

Many of the laws, including both the old official legislation and later commissioners' orders are deliberately open and relying on the judgment call of a magistrates or officers of the state involved in application of the law—including the option of not prosecuting a criminal action. The decisions of not prosecuting a crime does not shield a offender from being persecuted by another magistrate or officer of the state of the same or higher rank and right competences.

Citizenship

Majority of the residents are foreign nationals. There is also a very large number of stateless people here. Local citizenship is hard to receive, allowing for purchase of land on the island, voting in presidential and legislative assembly elections, and being elected for either. Citizens can't be arrested without warrant or by officer of the state witnessing them committing a crime. Non-citizens can be arrested without warrant and kept in jail for seven days, but they have the right to contact their legal representative immediately and inform a single person of their arrest after they are processed through the system. Employees of major corporations having their bureaus in the city can count on the leniency of the local law in most cases, going away with anything less than murder, bodily assault against officer of the state, or a crime against their own or another of the local corporations or their employees.

Punishments

There is a single prison on the island but it is used sparsely. The current laws favor high fines and expulsion of non-citizens guilty of serious crimes. Expelled individuals can't return for one or more years, depending upon specific sentence. Death penalty is formally legal, but currently only mass murder could warrant such sentence. This does not prevent law enforcement from being "less than careful" when apprehending criminals they would deem worthy of execution.

Vices

Most vices are not prohibited in the City Of The Mists: prostitution, gambling, alcohol, brutal sports. Narcotics were legal in the past, until USA pressed the local government in early nineties to ban them, partly because of number of USA citizens visiting the island to acquire drugs, and partly because of the drug trade passing through the city. The legislation banning the narcotics was mostly nominal, though—possession of narcotics is subject to forfeiture of the illegal substance, subject to destruction by apprehending law enforcement officer, and possibly fine if, in the officer's sole judgment, the narcotics were intended for sale. The new legislation did little to reduce amount of drugs flowing through the city, except for filling pockets of low and medium rank law enforcement and custom officers.

There is no statutory age of consent. The law makes it up to the court to estimate emotional maturity of the minor and circumstances of sexual contact with one in case of complaint, but due to international pressure, sexual contacts of adults with minors less than thirteen years old are always prosecuted.

Gun Control

Any non-military grade weapons can be owned and kept at homes. Carrying a concealed handgun around the city requires a permit issued by one of the departments—a quick formality involving a yearly fee (citizens are exempt from the fee). Open carry is frowned upon as a breach of public peace and might end with fine or forfeiture of the offending weapon if the owner of the weapon is unable or unwilling to conceal the weapon. Rifles and shotguns formally can't be carried around the city, but there is an exception for carrying them between home, firing range, and weapon shops, unloaded. Corporate security forces can bear long arms on corporate premises according to individual deals between their corporations and the council.

Using a gun while committing a crime is a sure way of attracting heavily armed response from officers of the state, including military gendarmes, and corporate security forces.

City Of Mists: Introduction

City Of Mists is a strange place. A huge city on a small Caribbean island. While the rest of the island enjoys tropical sun, the city itself is usually veiled in mists rising from its port—a silent testament to the cold current from a depth to the north struggling with the warm sea around the island.

At first the island was settled by French colonists. There are no records of indigenous population, though they might be simply forgotten. The bulk of the island's "indigenous" denizens are descendants of black slaves brought here by French. They are a minority on their own island now, however, a mere few tens of thousands as opposed to three-four million population of the city itself. Most of them are fishers and farmers on the gentle western and southern slopes of Mont Charniere, the mountain dividing warm and sunny part of the island, from the much cooler and misty bay. The bay, despite its mists is the center of the City's existence, a natural deep harbor that was harnessed in the XVIII century by slavers and pirates, and later in late XIX and early XX century by whalers. The City itself arouse in the Roaring Twenties from the earlier makeshift port. Its vague legal status and unorganized administration made it a useful port of call for many criminals smuggling rum into newly (and shortly) dry United States in bulk. Flow of cash from the smugglers led to development of warehouses, repair docks, hotels, and entertainment avenues that in return attracted first wave of legitimate businessmen, tourists, and vagabonds from all around the world. In the Thirties, the development slowed but not stopped, as the smuggling became marginalized by short lived companies dealing in stock and speculation, trying to make living in the times of Great Depression. Many of the newcomers of that time were fleeing poverty, outstanding debts, and bankruptcies. The second World War brought a number of refuges, spies, and war profiteers trying to take advantage of the island's neutrality. End of the war did not stimulate the economy and a slow decline pushed the second president toward the mild socialist reforms in the middle of the fifties. This lead to a military coup, sponsored by major businesses and companies of that time, that forced the presidential resignation and oversaw forming of a new national legislature that abolished presidency, reformed existing ministries into Departments, and established the rule of Council Of Departments—a collegiate body composed of the Departments' Commissioners. The highest ranking officers became the first Commissioners of the new governing body. This did not helped the declining economy. In the sixties, after the Cuban Crisis, the ruling junta managed to acquire financial aid from the United States (in the form of favorable loans and bogus military contracts) to fight socialist and communist influences. The military rule and economy alike declined in the seventies and eighties, with some stimulation from drug cartels and international weapon traders. End of the Cold War stopped the meager financial aid from United States and de facto finished the military oligarchy. Communication and computerization progress in the nineties, combined with lax laws led to development of financial sector and turned the City into a huge hub of brokerage later further stimulated by a number of big and small corporations moving from Hong Kong just before its return to China.

Since the turn of the century, the City Of Mists development is steady and fast acting, with wide array of corporations and organizations benefiting from lax financial, work, and custom laws, governing departments' institutionalized corruption, and tangle of law and security enforcement branches of various Departments undermining each other, more interested in competition over financing from the Council than prosecuting wrongdoers.

Creation Myth: Archipelagia

In the beginning there was only the Night. The Night was all that was, for there was nothing else. The lone Night gave birth to the Cosmic Egg and it was no longer alone. The Cosmic Egg was quiet and cold, though, so the Night started a fire to warm the Egg. The Night never before started the fire and got burned and scorched and grew all black from the ash and smoke, and the pain drove the Night to hide behind the Cosmic Egg creating division between the Night and the Day. The Day warmed the Cosmic Egg from one side while the Night cooled it from the other, so the Night started turning the Egg around so it would be warmed from both sides, and the Cosmic Egg was turning and warming until its shell cracked and splintered and fell apart. Inside the Cosmic Egg, there was the slumbering World. The World awoke when the shell fell apart and it cast the shards of the shell away, and the shards flew and spread across the Night and the Day, except for the three eldest and largest shards that circled the World just behind its grasp. And all those shards became the Firstborn—the gods of the skies.

The World then warmed itself by the fire and cooled itself by the Night and after some time spawned multitude of progeny, the Secondborn. The Secondborn were small and insignificant to the World, though, and it did not care about them, and as it wandered and moved, and stretched, and shaken, and scratched itself, it crushed and killed many of the Secondborn, and gave no thought to their demise. The Secondborn were afraid and pleaded to the World to be careful and to spare them, but they were small and insignificant so the World heard them not. The Secondborn despaired and grew desperate, and when the World went to nap, they met and conspired, and decided to kill the World while it slept, so it would not wander anymore, nor move, nor stretch, nor shake, nor scratch itself, killing no more Secondborn. As they decided so they done, each Secondborn stabbing the World, and while they were small and insignificant, and could not pierce deep into the World, they were so many that the sheer number of wounds caused the World to bleed profoundly and die.

The Secondborn never killed the World before so they were unprepared for the amount of blood springing from its wounds and were cast aside or flooded with the World's blood. Many were crushed by the blood, many held their breath until they suffocated. Those who were surprised and did not held their breath, and those who held their breath but decided to let go before they suffocate swallowed the World's blood and were changed. As the blood flew from the many wounds and flooded the surface of the World, only the World's head and feet, and elbows, and knees, and fingers, and toes, and other members stuck above the blood. The Secondborn that survived found themselves beneath the waves of the blood, and they changed to live underneath the blood, and they sucked the power of the World from the blood until it grew transparent, and they grew to be the gods of the sea, mating and fighting, and giving birth to a multitude of creatures living in the depths.

When the Secondborn stabbed and killed the World, when the blood gushed from the wounds, the unspent seed of the World gushed too, spilling across the surface of the World. Where the drops of World's seed dropped, either on the exposed members of the World, or in the depths of the flowing blood, the volcanoes rose above the waves, and gave birth to the Thirdborn—the gods of fire and the islands scattered across the sea. And they wielded the great power over their islands and their roots beneath the waves, but their power did not extended into the waves of the sea, nor across them. As the Thirdborn were scattered far and wide, only a few were close enough to each other and unbarred by sea to mate, fight, and give birth to living things of their own. The remaining Thirdborn lived apart and alone until the children of the Secondborn crawled on their islands from the sea, and the children of other Thirdborn sailed over the seas to them...

Campaign Idea: World Of Aliens

What would happen to the World Of Darkness, if it was openly visited by aliens—the visitors from the stars? Not your typical sneaky grays mutilating cattle and abducting lone drivers from sideroads, no. The "we come in peace to bring you prosperity and raise your civilization of higher level of development" kind, like Taelons or Visitors... Advanced beings whose open arrival would shake the social and political foundations of the mortal world and the hidden world of the supernatural alike.

The Benefactors presence causes various governments and institutions to flock to them, superficially strengthening the United Nations acting as an intermediary in the dealings with them. Of course the steps needed to advance humankind would require certain sacrifices—some customs and freedoms taken for granted in the past might be deemed backward and keeping progress in check, some technologies could be deemed hurtful to spiritual development, some biological aspects could be deemed retrogressive, some ideas could be deemed memetic infection... All those would need to be restricted, some actions taken to remove them, or even a total eradication programs initiated. Everything for the good of the humankind.

New technologies, new ideas, and new customs are being introduced. Children are taught in new ways, their minds unrestrained by obsolete prejudices of the pre-contact culture. Adults enjoy unprecedented prosperity and safety... Especially in the light of economical stability and strengthened United Nation aided by the Benefactors bringing undreamed peace to recently conflicted regions. Development spreads around the globe together, people move toward urban centers leaving more of the countryside uninhabited with automated farming replacing rural population.

Carefully selected individuals are enhanced biologically, technologically, and psychologically to act as representatives and agents of the Benefactors. Brilliant, powerful, and yet strangely distant from the rest of the population.

Of course, some people do not adjust well to the cultural shock caused by the arrival. Some of them need to be medicated or even isolated both for their own safety and to protect the delicate structures of society during the transition phase...

Do the Benefactors know of the existence of the supernatural? They seem all-knowing after all... But are they? They haven't acknowledge existence of the various supernatural beings hiding in the shadows in any way... Yet. What will they do when they discover the hidden world? Reveal it? Keep it secret? Destroy it? Who knows...

What the supernatural beings know, is that the Benefactors do not fit their world... Their creations do not exactly seem to respond to supernal magic, like if they were governed by set of Arcana different from those known to the mages. Since their arrival alien spirits representing incomprehensible ideas appear with growing frequency while the old spirits are growing restless or hiding in the wilds. Many of the constructions developed with the Benefactor guidance clashes with the God-Machine's infrastructure...

How will the supernatural beings adapt to the new world? Will they survive? Hide deeper? Try to insinuate themselves into the new order? Lash against the intruders trying to prevent the promised progress or reveal the dark side of the Benefactor's influence over the humankind?