Omnipolis (Working Title)

[Weave]

[ooc]I've been meaning to post this for a while, but I've been very busy. I decided to just post what meandering thoughts I had. The title is definitely not permanent and I can't think of a better one, so yeah. Enjoy![/ooc]

Omnipolis

The Architects built this world long ago, though whether at the whim of the gods or something stranger, we know not. Layers of architecture, infra we call it, built in a spectrum of styles stretching from horizon to horizon, much of which still lit with neogas lights or stroboscopic autoglyphic panels in nu-infra territories or, in the case of arc-infra, meticulously connected sparklamps or streetside braziers. I've seen darker places, yes, areas where the infra goes unlit and unpowered for reasons beyond my understanding, but I do not seek them out like the deranged salvor, nor do I sail the rails across them. Those are places where the lights have all gone out, where the cores buried vectoral kilometers through the depths of the infra are dry husks lit only by the bioluminescent hounds that lurk in the substrata.

[ic]"There are no stars above the infra. They're only out along the Great Blue, or in stretches along the dead parts of the world. Gran says they're the glow that's gone from lamplights and colored fluoresces in those dead parts, that they up and left for the sky ages ago when the Architects never came back to fix them for some reason. That doesn't explain the ones over the Great Blue, but I think it's the opposite: they're just lights waiting to come down when more infra is built across and over it, looking for a home in the lamps." [/ic]

Gardens
The Gardens, like the infra and so many other things, have always been, but Architects do not maintain them like they do the infrascape. They are placed of wild greenery uninterrupted by infra, some several hours across, others mere footsteps in width, bursting from balconies and overhanging bridges. The biggest Gardens are claimed by the cities for food, mostly; the little ones tended by greenthumbs and hermits and what few independent folk reside outside the cities and amidst the infra. The largest Gardens are terraced in a series of rings, open to the sky and sunlight.

Strange things grow in some Gardens, things whose roots merge with the electronica they're grown upon and produce frequencies and echoes and pictures. Some Gardens aren't close enough to the sky and are grown around sparklamps or mirrors, others exist in shadow or darkness and grow bioluminescent things in the lower strata.  

Echoes
There are many Echoes in the infra, even in the cities before they were all heard and sealed away. Voices in other tongues emerging from machines throughout the infrascape, strata to surface, in Gardens, from spiretops, from devices with wiremesh mouths and metallic horns, but they aren't like the deafening susurrus of the cities, always in the periphery of hearing – they do not constantly talk, they must be triggered. Sometimes walking by an Echo triggers it, other times it needs to be switched on, or connected, or brought to a certain place, or touched by a certain thing. Sometimes Echoes make flatographs that move, not unlike the stroboscopic autoglyphs of the nu-infra, but with odd pictures and sound. Sometimes they make holographs that jump out and display people and things like ours, but speaking gibberish and in nowhere places.

Autoglyphs
Like Echoes, autoglyphs can be found all across the infra, at least in the living parts. They run along streets, flash along signs, across the artificial subskies, strobe along the ground, trigger by footsteps. People believe they are the ancient words of our ancestors, written in a language thousands of years old. If the glyphists can be believed, some can even be deciphered, though given the age of the rhetoric there is a large degree of understanding lost in translation.

Volk
The Volk are the machine critters that move about the infra (and some city parts, depending on the superstitions that stand). Some, like the Architects, maintain minute portions of the infra, replacing panels and charging sparklamps, others wander about seemingly aimless or move so infrequently they aren't recognized as anything other than an odd protrusion of infra, but most are harmless background noise.

Some Volk are kept as pets, respecced by wizards as little servants, others are left to wordlessly clean homes, though the Volk there were never recruited as such; they just continue the task they've always been doing and respond to nothing else. Many Volk, especially around Alkenplatz, are hunted by salvors for scrap. That's bad luck, though. Anyone who's anyone knows the stories of the Arcvolk and what he does to those who tamper with the Volk.

[SA]

I like all of this. It is right up my street.

[sparkletwist]

This is interesting, but I also am kind of having a hard time envisioning what this is actually all about. What does the setting feel like, to just walk around?

[SA]

I want to know who the movers and shakers are. Where do they live and what do they eat and how do they coerce the other denizens into compliance? How do children entertain themselves and how busy are the streets and how do they smell and what are the fashions of the day? The city's deafening susurrus comprises what sounds? How varied in size are the volk? Are they only small, as "critters" might imply, or as false protrusions of the infra might they be mistaken for whole buildings? How are records kept, so that the speaker knows the city was built by Architects? Do they only think that it was created thus? Do the echoes ever manifest with discernible intent? Are their languages only and always unfamiliar? What creatures dwell there, amid the infra's endless and strangely lit envelopment, beside hounds and volk and half-electric fauna (and, of course, the people)? Is the speaker even human? Are gods believed in? How are they invoked and to what end and with what effect? Where do people bury their dead?

This is the sentence that hooked me, by the way:

"where the cores buried vectoral kilometers through the depths of the infra are dry husks lit only by the bioluminescent hounds that lurk in the substrata"

Hot stuff.