(set: $transCounter to 0)
|sample1)[(transition: "dissolve")+(align: "===><===")[Dystopia Rising: Texas and]]
|sample2)[(transition: "dissolve")+(align: "===><===")[Dystopia Rising: New York Present]]
|sample3)[(transition: "dissolve")+(align: "===><===")+(css: "font-size: 200%;")[**DEAD MAN'S HAND**]]
|sample4)[(transition: "dissolve")+(align: "===><===")[[Travel to Essex ]]]
|sample5)[(transition: "dissolve")+(align: "===><===")[ ]]
{
(live: 1s)[
(set: $transCounter to it + 1)
(if: $transCounter is 1)[
(show: ?sample1)
]
(else-if: $transCounter is 2)[
(show: ?sample2)
]
(else-if: $transCounter is 3)[
(show: ?sample3)
]
(else-if: $transCounter is 4)[
(show:?sameple5)
]
(else-if: $transCounter is 5)[
(show: ?sample5)
]
(else-if: $transCounter is 6)[
(show: ?sample4)
]
(else:)[
(stop:)
]
]
}You find yourself, perhaps for the first time but perhaps for the hundredth time, in the polished and brassy interior of the largest and only locomotive in the continuous Lonestar Wastes. The Ox is a gestalt amalgamation of derelict construction vehicles, old and despotten train carcasses and the engine from an ancient jet plane set into its [[lead car]].
(text-style: "italic")["The core distinction between those of us who believe in a god, graveborn or otherwise, and those of us who do not, is a matter of [[assumed intent.]] "](text-style: "italic")["The core distinction between those of us who believe in a god, graveborn or otherwise, and those of us who do not, is a matter of assumed intent.
Those of us who believe that long ago some deific figure designed and then implemented the universe and all its laws - [[that is one sort of person.]]"]
(text-style: "italic")["The core distinction between those of us who believe in a god, graveborn or otherwise, and those of us who do not, is a matter of assumed intent.
Those of us who believe that long ago some deific figure designed and then implemented the universe and all its laws - that is one sort of person.
It is another sort entirely, and one I get along with quite well, who insists we’re all here as a matter of [[great luck.]]"]
(text-style: "italic")["The core distinction between those of us who believe in a god, graveborn or otherwise, and those of us who do not, is a matter of assumed intent.
Those of us who believe that long ago some deific figure designed and then implemented the universe and all its laws - that is one sort of person.
It is another sort entirely, and one I get along with quite well, who insists we’re all here as a matter of great luck.
But then, I have always been the lucky sort. And I don’t mind the idea that all this came about in a bit of a cosmic wrinkle. [[I might even prefer it that way.]]"]
Perhaps you boarded the Bravado line from the city that shares its name, the small and understated mining town in the middle of the San Saba Territories. Or perhaps you hail from more distant settlements, who have begun to themselves lay track and trade into the south from the far and frigid north.
Either way, Essex is your destination and the final stop punched into your ticket stub.
Outside the sky is a perfect sapphire blue, though bleeding towards purple at the edges where the summertime sun is [[beginning to set.]] The Dune Sea is far to the west, but the San Saba territories are as dusty and warm as the inside of a kiln after a day’s labor and twice as humid. Inside the train, at speed, you breathe easily. But the smoke belched from the Ox’s massive engine climbs up in an arc behind the train and the Lonestar Sun catches it, filmy and dark, [[and refracts into a rainbow of oily sky.]]
Inside the train you are not alone. Farmers and philosophers, marauders and mill workers sit in the row seats that make up the majority of the passenger car. Some have come and gone, but most of them boarded and stayed - destiny bound, as you are, for the [[City of Light and Sound.]]
And -- Mist and Shadow, you reflect, as the train crests a sizable plateau and the dimly lit silhouette of Essex appears on the horizon. Even from here, at several miles distance, you can make out the twin spires at the edge of the city and, incredibly, the twisting shape of the most famous tree in the San Saba - rising up and out of the heart of the Thicket that, once, was a an urban metroplex.
[[Take a closer look at Essex]]But now, as you draw closer to Essex, you see and reflect that language no longer describes the stupendous forest-city that lies before you now. A kind of oasis, in the middle of a blastland so large as to itself be a Greater Waste, the rough circle of the city looks like a bright green ring against an otherwise vast and featureless glasstop of the San Saba.
And at its center, like a rare jewel pulled from the dust and dross of the surrounding desert, lies the Fountainheart, better visible now as a great edifice of white stone, pockmarked with dark pigeonholes, ensconced in a double-helix of bark and foliage. It was not a tree, once. But it is certainly a tree now.
[[Arrive in the city.]]
You pass first, small patches of grass seemingly growing at random intervals miles from the city’s center. But these grow gradually into rolling pastures, shrublands and valleys before becoming grander still as great and stately forests with thick, overhanging branches that - for an instant - fool you into thinking the day has gone suddenly dark when the train passes beneath them.
Slowing now, with the squealing sound of breaks and metal-on-metal, you watch as the thick trunks of trees flash by and, you think, despite the blur, that you see the pallid faces of the people who supposedly live in them peering back at you.
[[Arrive at the Station]]As the Ox slows further still, you can make out the individual shapes of buildings through the forest. Some of these are built as if to accommodate trees where no tree belongs - and it occurs to you that this was probably not a design choice on the part of the architects.
Now, deep in the heart of the city, it has become difficult to see the sky for the leaves and the air has begun to smell of old wood and leaf rot. For an instant you think you hear the distant sound of music - before the breaks scream insistently and you feel the titanic locomotive come to a full and languorous stop.
You have arrived at the Ox Yard.
[[Depart the Train.]]It takes a while for the other passengers to disembark. You let them, being in no particular rush. Instead, you reach into your pocket and remove a small, well-read and refolded piece of paper. When you received it, it smelled like perfume and trail dust. Now - it mostly smells like the inside of your pockets.
[[Reread it.]]You unfold it. It invites you to the City of Light and Sound - it venerates you as a worthy contestor, or candidate, or celebrity. There’s the picture of the Brass Rose, all done up in gold ink. There’s the signature that convinced you to be here at all. Your eyes linger on the logic, penned in your terms, that tells you that you might find fortune in the Mist and Shadow as likely as the next Survivor - and perhaps more if you are cunning.
[[Time to Go.]]As the last of the other passengers depart, you move to stand; folding the paper and shoving it back into your pocket as you do.
You exit the train as the sun finally sets. Outside it is several degrees cooler, and once the train has stopped its wheezing, steam clouding the platform and rendering the city beyond an indecisive haze, you once again hear the gentle sound of a guitar somewhere out in the dense woods that surround the station.
[[Make for the Brass Rose, your Destination.]] You step off the platform and into the trees. Once, Essex was a series of concentric circles and deliberately laid out city-streets. Now, the geography of the city renders it nearly unnavigable save for the well-worn footpaths that lead you into the township proper.
As you stride down them, or stagger, or ambulate - you pass the varied persons that make up the Essex citizenry in its complexity. A melting pot and a trade hub, Essex is known not only for its novel flora - but for the rich body of culture expressed by its citizens.
[[Sightsee a little.]] Even now, you can see young people - largely unaccompanied by guardians, of every strain festooning the trees along the path with dimly glowing red lanterns which, upon your closer inspection, you realize are the severed and preserved heads of the undead.
Their mouths hang open in shock or anger - sometimes held that way with wire and glue, to reveal a flickering candle set into the tongue. You wonder briefly if they’re poured with mortuary wax.
[[Keep up a good pace, though.]]You pass by ramshackle homes, with blacked out windows and possessing an acrid smell you only notice around gross psionic use - and great villas made from new wood, surely purebloods and the like who have moved here in the months since the city became a kind of paradise.
You see men and women lurking further back in the treeline, whose faces are painted with red branching symbols and accompanying scowls - and bleached monks with greasy marks on their brows, many of whom arrived with you on the train, who stoop in the street to bow towards the Fountainheart tree, visible from essentially anywhere in Essex.
[[Follow the flow of traffic.]]You allow the crowd to carry you. After all, you suspect you are all traveling to the same place.
For another thirty minutes, perhaps, you drift like a ghost through the strange city and the day gives in to night. As the last vestiges of the sun vanish behind the treeline - the city of Light and Sound wakes up.
[[Watch.]]
For a hare's breath, the city is dark. And then in the splendid method of fireflies, a million tiny lights blossom on the branches of every tree from the Fountainheart to the edge of the Scrapes. All variations on blue, the heads of mushrooms - uninteresting in daylight, rupture into splendid color and radiance against the velvet backdrop of early evening.
The city seems...larger now. In the distance you can make out the pinpricks of light that are distant bioluminescence, lending the forest a grander scale.
Around you, you hear the quiet gasps of your peers.
You only get to see it first, once.
[[Arrive at the Brass Rose]]
It emerges, as you do, from the trees suddenly and sublimely. A villa, a castle and a plantation style home all at once, the Brass Rose is a three story affair framed in a corona of warm yellow light, lit from inside.
Its doors are the size of fishing boats and cast entirely from Brass, the currency most employed in these parts. Far above them, at the peak of the third story, you can make out a huge cast- brass rose, as large as a poker table and surely about a hundred times as heavy, set into the capstones.
From behind you, several hundred other figures emerge from the treeline and, inside the Brass Rose, you hear the same music as you did at the station start up again; a lonely guitar playing a few lonely notes.
[[Listen.]]
Those few strummed notes are met by a staccato drumbeat that sets the feet of several Survivors to tapping immediately. Shortly thereafter you hear the telltale peel of a saxophone to a cheerful allegro that, to your ear, sounds like it might be somewhere in the trees behind you.
An orchestra of sound suddenly pours out of the Brass Rose and, all at once, the electric lamps you had not seen set into the ground nearby blaze to life - and rather that blues and greens under a leafy sky, you and two hundred other people stand in golden, sharp relief while music fills up the clearing as though it were a pint glass.
[[And then the doors creek open.]]Between those two-ton monoliths steps a woman in burgundy and gold, with hair like spun obsidian and the delicate and knowing posture of a madame who knows her work and her will. The Concierge, who penned many of the invitations herself, steps into the warm electric light of the lamps and to the edge of the Brass Rose’s expansive poarch and greets you all.
“Welcome, Mistresses, Marauders, Mastermines and Menaces -” Begins the Vegasian in a tone that betrays great practice. “To the Brass Rose on the eve of our Grand Opening.”
[[Lean in.]]“Behind these doors lie adventure,” She promises with an indulgent expression, “and opportunity for those bold enough to seek it out. But also - here lies libation and luxury, for those who crave higher deviancies than gossip and gold.”
The Concierge extends her hands, palms up and in the inviting gesture of a priest, and smiles brilliantly to the crowd gathered at the base of the steps - yourself included.
“The Brass Rose knows what you want, dear customers and companions. You need only seek it out.”
[[Watch as she steps aside.]] The Concierge, her brief speech concluded, gestures to the open doors behind her.
Inside you see the sweeping hint of a spiral staircase, and you smell the smoke of cooked meats and good cigarettes. You move to obey.
“Welcome.” She greets you as you pass into the foyer. Everything is gold and glass. Someone in a starched uniform directs you to the gambling floor.
Everything is new and brilliant and beautiful. You wonder absently how long it will stay that way.
[[Stay a while. And see what happens.]] F I N
OOC: Thanks for playing! That's your intro to the setting! Now, if you want to know more the landing page at www.dystopiarisingpresents.com has about a million more pages of lore on Essex, the factions in the city, and the events of weekends both past yet to come.
Thanks so much for being here. I hope you enjoyed this short adventure and it got you in the MOOD for some ROLEPLAY.
Have a great evening! See you for Act 0 at 10pm CST!
-Shan, Aesa and the DR Natl Team