Fluxworld - A Post-apocalyptic World of Manners

[Steerpike]

Fluxworld
A Post-apocalyptic World of Manners

The Flux '" the world-sickness, the reality phage, the Chaos Plague.  Born in the misguided crucibles of science in the distant past the Flux has made this world a queasy wasteland, a roiling phantasmagoria inhabited by swarms of hideous mutants, mankind's final descendents, subhuman in every sense of the word, their genes mutilated and diseased, their malformed bodies aglow with warped energies.  They run and fight and breed in rude tribes that roam the the Fluxlands alongside the strange experiments that escaped from their vats centuries ago and scattered themselves across this unstable earth, a menagerie of nightmare-beasts.  Vast things with leathery wings flap across the seething sky while creatures somewhere between huge toads and squids bask in the black waters of the Tenebrous Sea.  There are stranger beings still in the far reaches of the flickering wastes, where the rules of time and space are twisted, the dynamics of flesh and spirit break down, memory and imagination bleed together and the ground, the water, the air itself quivers with horrors waiting to be born.  The skin of the world rustles with subcutaneous motions, presences '" or absences '" waiting to burst through the fragile dermis of reality and sing their eerie hymns to the tortured, echoing plains.

And yet in this lurid, hideous world, hovering perpetually on the lip of dissolution, civilization persists and prospers.  In the vast, impregnable fortress known only as the Manor the Gentlefolk still rule, Lords if not Masters of this degenerating land.  Though they may affect titles, sexes, genders '" Gentleman and Gentlewoman '" the inhabitants of the Manor long ago abandoned titles and hierarchy, along with constancy of form.  Created through science so arcane as to resemble magic or perhaps through magic so refined and fully harnessed as to resemble technology the Gentlefolk are biologically immortal, immune to all disease (save the Flux itself, to which they are still resistant), and able to alter their bodies with a relative minimum of effort.  Although posthuman in every way most still choose a relatively 'standard' humanoid form, albeit often with exotic colouration and a few similarly cosmetic details '" feathers instead of hair, or seven-finger hands, or the lower bodies of huge serpents, for example.  A few, acting out of caprice or simply a delight in grotesquerie, Refashion themselves more elaborately: it would not be out of place to see an anthropomorphic fox-woman, a sexless thing with a lamprey-like mouth full of gnashing needle teeth, and a man whose flesh is the hue and texture of bark with a nest of carnivorous flowers growing from his scalp sipping tea together in some baroque, enormous hall.  Though they worship no gods save themselves many choose to affect the guises of mythological figures: walking the ornate corridors of the Manor one will see six-armed deities of wisdom brushing shoulders with horned demons, crackling thunder-spirits, and plump cherubim, amongst a myriad of others.

The Manor is shielded by ancient fortifications so complete that if all the mutant armies of the world banded together and besieged its unyielding and iridescent walls they would be unable to ever penetrate even its outermost defenses.  Within the Manor itself every need and care of the Gentlefolk is attended either by the sentient Clockwork Entrails in the Manor basements (self-aware, self-repairing, and self-sufficient, running on chthonic batteries that won't expire for untold millennia), which provide virtually any material want, or by one of the many slave-races engineered in distant antiquity, creatures genetically hard-wired to take pleasure in the service of their overlords.  There are the dull, squat, bronze-skinned Mechanics who attend to any manual labour not carried out by the Entrails; the gorgeous Concubines, hermaphroditic and sensual, sex-objects who provide companionship and physical pleasure; and the Gargoyles, bat-like creatures that provide transportation outside of the Manor if desired.  Other creatures inhabit the Manor as well, specially created by specific Gentlefolk to cater to whatever need or desire they imagine.

Though they lack all laws (as well as money and commerce of any kind) the Gentlefolk have a few codes they maintain.  Disputes are settled through stylized duels and cold-blooded murder is considered incredibly vulgar, carrying the penalty of complete Social Death.  Though casual sexual congress between Gentlefolk is so common as to be ubiquitous there are no families (and rarely even monogamous couples) between the Manor's inhabitants, nor do the Gentlefolk have any children '" the only young Gentlefolk are clones of those very few who die by accident, Flux, or in duels.  The vast majority of Gentlefolk live out their endless lives in detached hedonism, transforming their bodies and satiating their senses, safe within the Manor.  A few deranged souls have taken to dwelling in the so-called Monastery Tower, having adopted an ascetic lifestyle, though this pretension of devotion is just as superficial as any other whimsical pursuit of the Gentlefolk.  The true madmen, however, are the Adventurers.

The Adventurers are those few Gentlemen and Gentlewomen who venture outside of the Manor.  A quixotic and wild-humoured breed, the Adventurers style themselves as true heroes in the purest sense of the word.  They travel the Fluxlands beyond the safety of the Manor walls not to right wrongs, destroy evil, earn coin, or amass treasure, but for the sheer audacious daring of wandering.  Constantly in danger the Adventurers live in a way the other Gentlefolk never approach, a life of thrilling extremes and heady flirtation with actual death, a fate practically unknown to the Gentlefolk save for those few claimed by the duels.  Risking Flux exposure, attack by mutants and wild beasts, deadly weather phenomena, and a million other perils, the Adventurers plumb the shells of dead cities, roam like vagabond demigods through the shifting wastes, or construct for themselves elaborate and terrifying games, races and scavenger hunts and the like that fling them across the breadth of the wild and weird ruins of the world.  Though they return frequently to the Manor to brag of their exploits, display their trophies, and relax after particularly trying journeys, the Adventurers are only truly at home out in the Fluxlands, mingling with the subhuman wreckage of humanity in the thousand tatterdemalion hellholes they call cities (each no more than a hundredth the size of the sublimely enormous Manor) or facing down gibbering monstrosities with unfathomable weaponry.

[ooc]Fluxworld is a Plane for the World-Spheres community setting.  It can also be seen as one possible "outcome" or future for the Cadaverous Earth (providing the whole place isn't devoured by the Fecundity or remade by the Chained Ones) - in many ways the Gentlefolk resemble a hyper-advanced incarnation of the magisters of Skein or the other aristocratic factions of that world, while the Fluxlands might be the Slaughter-lands if the Suppuration grew... or not.

The world itself is inspired primarily by Jack Vance's novella The Last Castle; other influences include Banks' Culture, Peake's Castle Gormenghast, and Poe's Masque of the Red Death.[/ooc]

[Steerpike]

[ic=The Hunt]The last upyr died in a soundless blaze of white light, a subtly tuned phase of energy that liquefied flesh and muscle, leaving a suddenly naked skeleton that rapidly collapsed into a pile of inert bones.  The scuttling vampires, hybrids of ghoul, toad, and lamprey with huge needle-fanged mouths and black membranous skins, had long plagued the local tribes, the mongrel and primitive clans of subhumans who eked out a ragged existence herding chitinous cliff-gaunts and brewing rude wines from the withered grape-vines that clung to the gray and pockmarked hills.  Repulsive as the bloodsuckers were, however, they were not Sir Magdhon's true quarry.  The beast he had followed across the pallid Bleak and the Nine Eastern Hellscapes was a much more singular being, feeding on substances considerably more rarefied than vulgar subhuman blood.

Nonetheless Magdhon found himself fighting his way through swarms of the quasi-mindless upyri, creatures that apparently had shunned his true prey when it passed through the region, as his Aura suggested.  He summoned the array of holo-fields and data screens with a quick mental invocation and scanned the information swiftly, while the sallow miasmas exuded by the upyr pack dissipated.  He rearranged the sequence of the overlapping, translucent projections with deft movements of his delicate white hands, eyes flickering.  He was well aware that he cut a striking figure, garbed as he was in a pristine white suit and hat, sword-cane in one hand and pistol in the other, surrounded by the desolate, misty hills and the bleached remains of his foes.  He muttered a command-word and the small, floating orb-drone that orbited above him began snapping shots of the battle-scene's aftermath.

Magdhon sifted through the data as quickly as he could, trying to isolate the signature trail of his quarry.  Soon more upyri would arrive, drawn by the psychic tremors that would now be rippling through their shared consciousness with the death of their brethren.  He would have to move fast '" the cell of his pistol had been depleted in the last fight and would take several minutes to recharge.  If the vampires caught him before the gun returned to an operable condition he would be forced to activate his shield and waste precious time while the beasts battered at it in futility.  Or he could summon his Gargoyle, of course, but doing so would disqualify him from the Hunt, whose rules forbade all but the crudest forms of transportation.  Lady Orz and Sir Lyonel would taunt him for decades if he was forced to abandon the Hunt because of some wretched band of semi-sentient animals, barely as intelligent as the local tribesman.  He would have to retire from Adventuring out of shame'¦

At last his Aura pinpointed his prey's trail, visualized a map for him based on the orb-drone's constant scans of the local topography.  He would head north, towards the narrow defile that led deeper into the Groaning Mountains.

Something snarled in the gloomy dusk as the ancient sun sank at last beyond the horizon.  The haze was thickening again, bringing with it the rancid musk of more upyri.  Sir Magdhon hefted his pistol and set off into the dimming twilight, smiling grimly, his amber eyes glimmering with the joy of the Hunt.
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[EvilElitest]

I like the weird fey sort of quality that it has, good show

[Steerpike]

Thanks!  Fey, hmn - the Gentlefolk are kind of vain and whimsical.  Anyone else think this world is worth developing?  My focus is going to stay on the Cadaverous Earth, but I'm sometimes a little torn between the slew of various smaller projects I've started...

[LD]

A few deranged souls have taken to dwelling in the so-called Monastery Tower, having adopted an ascetic lifestyle, though this pretension of devotion is just as superficial as any other whimsical pursuit of the Gentlefolk.

I'm actually interested in hearing about all the variations and permutations on nirvana that these aesthetes plan to live; and their motivations for entering into such a life and what they manage to achieve by doing that.

[Steerpike]

[ooc]I was thinking more that they'd be motivated out of boredom than a true longing for nirvana.  The gentlefolk are hedonists: anything for a new sensation.  A few opt to experience the heady tang of faith, the unfamiliar rush accompanying self-denial and self-abjection.  It's like in some sci-fi where the societies have cured all known diseases and conquered the common cold: some people decide to experience disease for recreation, since they're so unused to it.  Not that I'm comparing all religion to disease, just noting that asceticism is about self-denial, and in a society where almost nothing is denied, intentional self-denial might become oddly fetishized.[/ooc]