Knife's Edge

[Kindling]

The City of a Thousand Wings

Through inchoate clouds of Almost and storms of Void soars a metropolis; wracked but not ruined.

It flees.

Through skies upon skies and over the realms and continents of a dizzying diversity of worlds, planes, and dimensions.
Reality and existence are far from singular to the city.

It was certainly doomed, in aeons past, until Angels came and gave it wings. Now it flies, hunted through an eternity of eternities.
And they stay as parasites. Gaunt and greedy, inhumane and inhuman. Angels; more and less than people.

The city is called Knife's Edge.

Angels

The Parasitic Police. The nickname is true only if one allows for a very loose interpretation of the final word.

Once, they dwelt in a city of gold and ether. They were immortal, perfect and pristine. For one reason or another, lost now to history or secrecy, they joined the quotidian Rest of the universe.

Away from their homes, the spirit-engines of the golden towers no longer sustained them. The Angels hungered. They starved.

They waned.

Then, they found salvation. Knife's Edge. Their power could save it, and in return, the populace would nourish them. A child here, and grandparent there. The life-force of sacrificed Knifers would replace the sweet psychic nectar of that golden city.

Angels today are gaunt, ashen creatures, their former glorious beauty turned sour by the meagre subsistence they can take from the Edge's populous. They are spiteful and greedy, selfish now after centuries of understanding deepest Want and Need and Hunger.

Many have been driven somewhat insane by these feelings that, for most of their eternity-long lives, they had never known. These individuals are become cruel and acquisitive even by the standards of their grasping fellows.

Hematophagists

Blood is life; liquid power.

At the time of the Bronze Queens, the Warlocks En-Carmine came to prominence through the the practice of hematophagism. In the centuries since, the skills of the gore-feasters have trickled like arterial ichor into every corner of Knife's Edge, until today, any citizen with the stomach can learn to take power from blood.

Commonplace as the grisly practice has become, only a few rare Knifers now approach the legendary abilities of historical hematophagists. The path of the vampirist is a precarious one, and few who pursue the art seriously manage to keep hold of their minds long enough to achieve any great power.

It is all too easy for hematophagists to lose themselves in the untold emotions and chemistries of the imbibed, to become a gestalt. This loss of individuality reduces the blood-magician to a base, instinctual level of primordial, animal impulses - feed, rut, sleep, fight.

The sanatoriums of Glib Furrow overflow with the damned demented, and more often than one might think, their madness is that of the blood-bloated.

Recievers of the Lynx

The future is something no mortal can ever witness. The present is all that exists. Thus, it is not the future that the Receivers of the Lynx explore, but echoes of the present, sent out, and returning, warped by possibility.

Their predictions are always vague, and often flawed, but many Knifers pay good money for them, nonetheless.

It is not certainty that they give, quite the opposite. Instead, it is hope. If their prediction is positive, then the client becomes hopeful that it might be true. Conversely, if it is negative, the client hopes it is untrue.

Why exactly so many people pay for such a service may never be known for certain. But they do, and so the Receivers are one of the wealthiest, and thus most influential, organisations in Knife's Edge.

Deities of The Edge

Knifers know a myriad Godlings, Spirits and She-Deities, but such are of the worlds and lands over which Knife's Edge passes.

Five Powers call the city itself their home.

Anguish, Dolour and Grief; the Trinity, sister-goddesses of Life. Knifers offer prayer and sacrifice to them as placation, that they might avoid the Trinity's tortuous attentions.

The Laughing God. That is, Death. He Who Waits in the Beyond. At funerals and by sickbeds, libations are made to this deity, that he may receive the deceased or dying persons into his domain with kindness, and treat them with hospitality during their stay there.

And finally, the Horned God. The Enigma, whose name is invoked only in darkest secrecy by his priests. It is whispered he was the principle Power in the Edge at the dawn of its history, that he manifested physically and mated with the Obsidian Queens.

Although many Knifers who have come to the city from the worlds it travels above, or are descended from such, hold on to their people's traditional beliefs, all citizens of the Edge at least respect these five Gods, even if some may not exactly revere them.

Growlside

Crumbling tenements, scaled by creepers, spilling vines from jungle-like roof gardens. The streets between are gap-cobbled and scattered with scrubby bushes.

This is the wilderness of Knife's Edge, the bestial ghetto. Growlside.

The folk who live here are wild, poor and proud; lycanthropes and anthropomorphics.

By day, the atmosphere is placid enough - the Growlsiders are labouring for pittance in other districts or basking in the sun. Night brings the chaos.

Frantic street parties of frenzied carousing and maddening music tear the small hours asunder, and visceral violence slashes down overgrown alleys.

The natives of Growlside are strong and savage. They live fast, and luck to the outsider that intrudes on those lives. Even if he is welcomed, it may be the death of him.

The Queen's Palace

Royalty, though rife, holds no more than financial power in modern Knife's Edge. It was not always so.

For well over a thousand years, three dynasties of Queens dominated the city, littering the streets with cadavers every time they smelt disobedience.

The Palace, though now largely ruined, is a relic of those times. Its oldest sections are among the most venerable pieces of architecture in the Edge, dating back to the birth of the city.

It sprawls decrepitly across the centre of Knife's Edge, flinging out arms of crumblesome stonework in between the abutting boulevards. The longest of these, which penetrates into the richer districts, is the headquarters of the Blitzers' Guild.

Apart from that one section, however, the Palace is the demesne of those crepuscular folk, the Umbral Get - their home, and their project.

The under-Palace is as ancient as time itself in places, and has secrets most Knifers can only guess at. The Get delve these tenebrous deeps, and keep closely guarded any lore they unearth. It is rare enough that they let outsiders enter the Palace at all, let alone see what lies beneath.

Whores

Over twenty percent of the human population of Knife's Edge were born of prostitution.

It is a lucrative, if risky, business and the harlots and gigolos of the Edge command equal measures respect and revulsion. They are socially Untouchable, yet physically quite the opposite. The majority of Knifers, of both genders, use their particular services, although only a few do so with any great regularity.

At the centre of the whoredom lies the Mothers' Coven. Rumours about these gnarled old madams twist like invasive roots through the city. Some whisper they are priestesses of the Horned God, others that they're demons, sustained by human sexual energy, and still other theorise that they are the newest dynasty of Queens, ruling Knife's Edge through desire rather than fear.

Whatever the truth, the Mothers' Coven is a force in the city. They protect their own, through mysterious and gory methods, and they hold nearly as much financial power as the Receivers of the Lynx.

The Blitzers

When wealthy Knifers want someone killed, they go to the Blitzers' Guild.

The Blitzers operate heavily armed and armoured death squads quite openly, and perform executions for anyone with the cash to pay. Their killers haven't the subtlety to be truly called assassins - standard Blitzer strategy is to tear through a target's home like a rusty sickle.

Although they guarantee to their clients that the specified Undesirable will be killed, they never say the same for collateral damage. Anyone between the Blitzers and their prey has a good chance of winding up dead or crippled.

Having bulled through his or her household, usually in the space of less than a minute (they're unsubtle, not unprofessional), the Blitzers will then eliminate their target or targets with brutal efficiency. Traditionally a crossbow bolt is fired through the head at point-blank range, but other methods are accepted.
Beheadings and disembowelments are often requested by clients, although the Guild allows operatives to use their discretion during a job. Blitzers value speed and shock above all else, so the kill will often be simply made in the most expedient way possible.

Fleshingrove

Bloodsmog clouds the nominally-easternmost (of course, in a transdimensionally-nomadic city, such directions as the points of the compass are entirely arbitrary) district of Knife's Edge like a charnel cataract.

Up through the gorily glistening haze claw that which generates it; meat trees. Mindlessly humanoid flesh-fruit dangle from their gracile, leafless limbs, waiting to be harvested to fill Knifers' bellies.

Fleshingrove is not only the farmland of the Edge, it is also its industrial quarter. Between the plantations, manufactories and forges grind through shift after jejune shift, consuming fresh labourers and then excreting them hours later, exhausted and bedraggled.

Memery Slain Lane

The cultural quarter of Knife's Edge concentrates the bulk of its more historically-oriented institutions on one long, straight street. Memery Slain Lane.

The road is home to the Death Museum, where a myriad of corpses, in varying states of decay, are exhibited; the Wristington Collection, where labyrinthine halls lead confusingly from displays of antediluvian cookery texts to caged monstrosities from Worlds below; the Glistenpole Gallery, which is not only hung with works of art, but carpeted and ceilinged with it too; the Unnatural History Museum, where sorcery of all kinds is chronicled, the Royal Museum of the Military, created as a propaganda tool by the Silver Queens, to instil fear by showing off the brutality of their predecessors; and the Saturial Collection.

Sinner's Croft

Senmut Kheft.

Before Knife's Edge ever existed, when the fires of the first sun she knew were as yet unkindled, and the universe was in its minority, the Hundredfold Star was ancient beyond belief.

Hoary tradition, gleaned from millennia-old translations of the writings of a long-extinct race, allows for hermetic rituals to extend sorcerous tendrils through time, space, and other dimensions too alien for mortal ken.

They reach through eternity, and connect to the Hundredfold Star.

These rituals are fleeting, and the mortals that work them become eerie and puissant only briefly. But when the rituals are combined with architecture, then the potency remains as long as the stones endure.

Edifices throughout the Edge were built thus, in the time of the Obsidian Queens. Great basalt behemoths rearing ugly and primordial against the more modern architecture that surrounds. At least the efforts of later builders attempted grace; the old monuments are brutish and hold in their design no pretence at any other aesthetic. They were not made to please mortal eyes, but to channel and store power.

They wallow in solitude, their pathways trodden by the cautious feet of a few unfortunates with nowhere else to go. These vagrants are driven there out of desperation, but they are seldom seen much once they take their devilish shelter.  

Sucked in by the occult gravity of the buildings, they emerge less and less frequently as they become entranced by the inaudible song of the Hundredfold Star, until they lose themselves entirely in the mad screaming rush and deathly stillness of the puissant architecture. Their bodies live or die, unattended by their minds as they dance to a rhythm of pure astronomical power.

There is one exception, and that is the edifice in Sinner's Croft.

It is the Great Temple, the cathedral to the Trinity. Priests Desolate and Gloom-Ministers moan litanies of despair to drown out the silent song of power in the vastly oppressive halls. Supplicants come at all hours of day and night to assuage the Sisters with sacrifices and susurrations of prayer.

All but the most tearfully inconsolable know, though, when they enter, that misery is but a guest in this most ancient of houses. Something terrible and majestic lies behind it, something named Senmut Kheft...


[ic]
The drinkers were frozen a few seconds, like startled gargoyles, as the newcomers entered. Two young bravos laced with scars, their haunted eyes ageing them; an elderly, grey-bearded man (his eyes, by contrast, gleaming with youthful energy) and a burly rat-woman in shit-kicking boots and a faded jacket.

The door closed softly, and their collective attention returned to their cups and pipes. Taker d'Orlierre moved to the bar, Ihsan at his side. They ordered wine, cheap and loathsome, and then sat.

There were but two tables in this tiny drink-house. At one was the quartet that had so nervously assessed them as they entered, and the other was where they now reclined.
A scratchy phonograph of balalaika music cut through the opiate-smoke from a back room, underlining rather than appeasing the awkward silence.

Ihsan downed her first cup in one, and started pouring a second.

The rodent was the first to speak. "Hanney says he can get me on the next Piratical the Toothspitters run. They split it all even, like."
"Piraticals is death, sooner or later, lass. You mark my words." Rumbled the old man. "Seen too many mates of old vanish off the Edge and never return, running Piraticals."
"Could be I make my fortune, though, y'know? Them Toothspitters know what they're about, they do."
"Aye, could be. All down to the world though, isn't it?" It was one of the younger men speaking now. Taker and Ihsan couldn't help but overhear, despite their neighbours' hushed tones.
"I heard," continued the bravo, "Uduak told me, Uduak who lies with Painted Molly sometimes. He went down on a Piratical, oh, while back it must've been now. Place looked a prize from above, all glittery towers and curved bridges between 'em. Figured it was full of loot, just waiting to be took. Them as lived there - beetle-folk, like - was little buggers, didn't look no problem. Easy work, they thought."
"Let me guess, they thought wrong?" his friend interrupted, his voice tight as he held in a lungful of smoke.
"No, no. All went like they'd had it planned, set the firepots down on the beetles, then shot those as they'd missed. Then down the ladders into the towers. Better, right, than they had thought. They come into a room with the walls lined with racks and racks of spears!"
"Spears? What's so-" The rat-woman broke in, but was cut off.
"I'm getting to that, isn't it? They was all tipped with heads of crystal, right. Sharpened, worked gems on sticks, and a whole room of 'em. So they grabs as many as can be carried, and bang, they're out. No fuss, and them away and laughing. Or so they thought."
The old man looked up from refilling his pipe and glanced meaningfully at the rat-woman at this point.

Ihsan leaned across the table to Taker, habitually rubbing at her shaven scalp. Her crimson eyes widened slightly.
"Toothspitters, dear. That lass knows someone in the Toothspitters. Our man's a Toothspitter, ain't he?" She murmured, and her companion smiled wanly as he nodded.

"So that was it; before they was even clear of the city, all of them dead." The bravo finished his story with glee, "eaten by the hatched-things or fried, like, by the sorcery."
"Like I says, death," grated the old man.
"Hanney's done alright out of it, mind," the rodent sounded defensive now, "told me about a couple he done where it's rich food, armfuls of treasure, and all the raping that evil bastard could wish for from start to finish. He said one time, one lot down there paid them to go raid the next place over. Doubled their takings, like - pay and loot."
"It's chance, isn't it? Just another manner of gambling, like."

Just as their conversation was about to move on to another subject, Taker stood up sharply, and stepped over to their table. All four's eyes snapped around to lock on him, and their hands all vanished beneath the table like startled rabbits into their burrows.
"Excuse me, gents, lady, but I couldn't help overhearing. You, ma'am, you know a fellow in the Toothspitters, yes?"
"What's it to you?"
Taker reached into his frock coat, and suddenly there were three pistols and a knife present in the hands of the drinkers. He laughed humourlessly.
"My purse, friends. I'm reaching for my purse. Allow me to buy another bottle for your table, eh?" The weapons were lowered but the icy glares remained.
"And you, my girl, you might well tell me where I can find your Toothspitter mates, mightn't you?" The purse landed, heavily, on the table.
"Maybe I don't know where to find them," the rat-woman said slowly.
Fuck's sake, thought Taker, she thinks she's being clever. He turned and exchanged a glance with Ihsan. She stood, and he flung himself to one side.

In the cramped little drinking-den, the gunshot was very loud. One of the bravos' brains were ejected from the back his head by the bullet, making a great mess across the wall. Next to him, the other was killed by the throwing-axe smashing in his ribcage.
The rat-woman threw her knife and Ihsan deflected it with her spent pistol, stepping in closer.
The old man raised his gun, but Taker had twisted back around and punched him hard in the face, so that he rocked back and his shot hit the ceiling.

"Listen, you fuzzy little bitch," growled Ihsan, her features twisted to resemble some spiteful demon, "where do we find this Hanney fucker? Or do you want to lose a limb?" Her second axe was in her hand now, and she was looming grimly over the still-seated rodent.
Taker dropped a knife into his hand from his sleeve, and held it to the old man's throat. He looked well stunned, but there was no point in taking unnecessary risks.

"The Auroch and Chimera, on Evenday nights." Came the surprisingly calm reply. "He'll be in one of the back rooms, most likely. He won't be alone, mind"
"Good. The more the merrier," chirped Taker, snatching back the purse with his free hand.
Ihsan's axe made a sickening sound as she wrenched it free from the still-twitching corpse.
"Sorry for the mess," she called to the barkeep, as the couple made for the door.
[/ic]

[Seraph]

I love the visuals.  The pictures really seem to create this world.  It's very gothic.  What's neat is the idea that the pictures are all black and white, which would lead you to think of moral absolutes, but the truth of the matter is that you can barely see.  How can you determine good and evil when all you can see is a blur of pure black and pure white?

The terms which should make seeing easier make everything harder.  I get the feeling of stumbling around, lost.  Things are so "clear" as to be indistinguishable, and the terror of sightlessness is a very frightening thing.

[Steerpike]

Wow wow wow wow wow!  Brilliantly inventive... I LOVE the names, the tantalizing hints - this is poetry, man.  The chiaroscuro of your visuals, the gothic vampirism of your angels, the insinuations of blood-as-power... Glib Furrow, Growlside, Warlocks En-Carmine - I'm jealous.  Feels a little like Planescape meets Sin City.  I want to run a game in it already!  You've got a devotee.

[Wensleydale]

This really is, as steerpike said, poetry. It's giving me very gothic mental images, and I'm loving it. Vampiric angels, right? But are they ACTUALLY angels?

[Steel General]

I was actually thinking more like 'Planescape' meets 'Dark City'. But this is really well done so far. Bravo!

[Superfluous Crow]

I must admit that i often refrain from reading many posts, but this immediately caught my attention. I really like the way it was written: very stylish, and while it gave you enough hints to make it interesting, it didn't reveal enough for it to become dull. It has a somewhat mysterious quality to it. Angels as darker beings is a nice idea, and so is the idea about turning vampirism into a choice and craft. My only criticism is that it in its entirety might be a bit too dark; it seems there are almost no points of light. But then again, seeing as that seems to be the premise of the idea, it hardly qualifies as actual criticism, eh? Really nice work.

[Kindling]

[ooc]Wow. Thanks for the praise, guys! I'm flattered.

As to the similarities to Sigil and Dark City... I hadn't thought of it, but you're right, in a many ways. I realise my vision of how a Knifer Angel would look actually has a lot in common with the Strangers from Dark City... only, with wings, obviously.

As to CC's comment about it being "too" dark in tone... again, right, but it took it being said for me to realise it. Like you say, it's not necessarily a bad thing, but I will have to think on it. A "shades of black" setting was certainly not my original intention.[/ooc]

[Seraph]

[ooc]Wow. Thanks for the praise, guys! I'm flattered.

As to the similarities to Sigil and Dark City... I hadn't thought of it, but you're right, in a many ways. I realise my vision of how a Knifer Angel would look actually has a lot in common with the Strangers from Dark City... only, with wings, obviously.

As to CC's comment about it being "too" dark in tone... again, right, but it took it being said for me to realise it. Like you say, it's not necessarily a bad thing, but I will have to think on it. A "shades of black" setting was certainly not my original intention.[/ooc]

I didn't get the idea that it was necessarily "shades of black," but I did get the idea that in a black and white world, the white was just as scary as the black.

It's sort of like they are inextricable opposites that feed into one another, such that the "good" ultimately just perpetuates the evil.  I almost get the feel that there are moral absolutes, but at the same time that those moral absolutes are in fact quite meaningless.

I don't know how closely this fits what you were intending, but I like it.  I don't think I would have any hesitation in playing a game set in Knife's Edge.  (Granted, for this to be practical, I would have to know more, but it already sounds like loads of dark, gothic fun.)

[Steerpike]

It's dark but beautiful.  In my opinion darkness only becomes tedious when it becomes pointlessly vulgar.  Anyway it sounds like the plethora of worlds and planes Knife's Edge will come into contact with would supply plenty of "colour" to an otherwise black & red setting.  It seems to me that there's a twisted earnestness and certainly vitality to Growlside, and the Powers are elegant in their morbidity, rather than merely grim.

[Kindling]

BUMP: Placeholders filled in.

[Steerpike]

Love the Umbral Get - great name for a race.  So did the Queens predate the Angels and the salvation of Knife's Edge via the wings?  Or did they coexist for a time?  You seem to hint at a sequence of Queens (obsidian, bronze, etc).

[Kindling]

[ooc]I had imagined that the Queens lost power at least a few decades before the Angels appeared on the scene, but it might actually be quite interesting to have their deposition be a result of Angelic influences.

As to the sequence, you've hit the nail on the head. There were three dynasties, the first being Obsidian, then Bronze, and finally Silver.[/ooc]

[Steerpike]

This image reminds me greatly of your setting:  http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=137&t=679586

[Drizztrocks]

Ummm....Sorry, I don't really understand it....

[Steerpike]

As in, the image I linked to?