The-city-of-nod
35 entries
Alchemist's Boon
A chain of apothecaries with locations in the Warrens, Ashmarket, and the Annex, selling alchemical preparations, herbal remedies, and low-grade arcane consumables. The quality is consistent, the prices are fair, and the staff are knowledgeable enough to be useful without being knowledgeable enough to be dangerous. The Hospitallers refer patients to the Boon for supplies they cannot provide directly.
Ashmarket
The commercial heart of the city, where the Merchants Guild maintains its principal trading halls alongside hundreds of independent vendors, importers, and fences. Ashmarket earned its name centuries ago when a fire gutted the original market square and the replacement was built on the ashes before they cooled. Goods from Earth and from other Domains change hands here: bulk electronics stripped for parts, canned food by the pallet, arcane components in lead-lined containers, counterfeit pharmaceuticals, stolen art, and occasionally something no one in the market can identify being sold by someone who won't explain where they got it. The market runs on noddish coin, barter, service contracts, and debt. Shipping containers repurposed as shopfronts sit alongside stalls that have occupied the same ground for centuries. A skilled trader can acquire almost anything in Ashmarket, and an unskilled one can acquire most of it at a worse price.
Chuan Feng's
A curiosity shop in Ashmarket that has been operating under the same name for centuries, though whether the current proprietor is the original Chuan Feng, a descendant, or something else is unclear. The shop deals in rare artifacts, arcane components, and items whose provenance is complicated. Chuan Feng's is the kind of establishment where you can find what you need if you know how to ask, and where asking the wrong way means you leave with nothing and a strong sense that you should not come back.
Dark Sand
A stretch of black-grained beach on the shore of the endless ocean, south of the Dockyards. The sand is warm regardless of ambient temperature and produces a faint luminescence at irregular intervals. Nothing grows on Dark Sand and animals avoid it. The Theriae who have attempted to settle the area report persistent unease and dreams of submersion. The beach is used primarily by travellers passing through to the southern Deadlands roads and by individuals who want to be alone badly enough to tolerate the discomfort.
Dockyards
On the shores of the endless ocean at the mouth of the Lotan River is a broad complex of docks, warehouses, dry berths, and other structures that support the maritime business of Nod. Three types of ship dock here: trade vessels that use arcane methods to cross to Earth's oceans, trade vessels that travel between Nod and other Domains by similar means, and fishing ships crewed by bold and often slightly unhinged folk dedicated to pulling up nets of strange lifeforms from the deep to feed the city. Here, Origin Shipping, the largest docking company, manages berths and cargo logistics for the Merchants Guild and independent captains alike.
Genesis Research
A research firm operating from K-Town under Kuron Inc.'s umbrella, focused on the intersection of arcane phenomena and systematic methodology. Genesis employs Scribes, Shapers, and a small number of Seers, and its work ranges from the analysis of Domain-origin materials to the development of new applications for existing magical disciplines. The firm's output is proprietary and its relationship with the Council is the subject of speculation.
Grand Central and the Transit System
The city has a transit system. It has had one for a while. No one knows who built it or how. One morning the residents woke up and it was there, stations and tracks and rolling stock, as though the infrastructure had grown overnight. A significant number of people believed it was a trap. It took time before anyone used it.
Grigori Fortress
An abandoned fortress built on the cliffs at the edge of the endless ocean, constructed to Kaarn scale but never claimed by them. The architecture is massive, angular, and produce an anxiety that is difficult to express. Interior geometry does not match exterior dimensions. Stairways lead to rooms that should not fit within the walls that contain them. People who attempt to settle in the fortress disappear. They are not found dead, they are simply not found. The fortress has been explored, mapped, abandoned, re-explored, and re-abandoned in a cycle that the Chroniclers have documented with increasing discomfort over the centuries. The maps produced by successive expeditions do not agree with each other.
Helstone
A massive standing stone in the Deadlands, roughly three days' travel south of the city. The stone is featureless, dark grey, and warm to the touch. It is approximately forty feet tall and irregularly shaped. No one knows what it is, who put it there, or what purpose it serves. The area surrounding Helstone is unusually quiet, both acoustically and in terms of Shadow activity. Caravans passing near it report that compasses behave strangely and that Seers experience a temporary blindness in their extended perceptions.
Howard and Williams
The largest independent trading house in Nod, operating from Ashmarket. Howard and Williams deals in volume, moving bulk goods between Domains and maintaining long-term supply contracts with the Cardinal Boroughs, the Fields, and several Warrens-based manufacturers. They are not Guild members, which produces ongoing friction with the Merchants Guild over market access and pricing.
K-Town
A burgeoning district and de facto company town controlled by Kuron Incorporated. Bethier Kuron's commercial empire has grown large enough to require its own infrastructure, and K-Town is the result. The district houses Kuron Inc. employees, research facilities, and the corporate headquarters, all built to standards that are conspicuously higher than the surrounding neighborhoods. The architecture is modern by Nod's standards: clean-lined concrete and glass, reliable electrical power from Kuron's own generators, climate control, functional plumbing, and a Wire connection fast and stable enough that Kuron-Mobile devices actually work as advertised within the district's boundaries. Relations with neighboring districts are strained by the perception that Kuron is buying territory and converting it, and by the more concrete grievance that K-Town's private security forces operate with an authority that the Prefex have not formally granted.
Lake Enoch
The tower emerges from a perfectly circular body of water at its base. The lake appears to descend infinitely around the circumference of the tower, whose submerged walls are equally endless. The shoreline is an abrupt circle of Noddish stone, a greyer, less unsettling material than the tower itself, nearly as durable but permeable with the right tools. The general effect is a bottomless well with a pillar at its center.
Lotan River
What starts as a perfectly straight channel from Lake Enoch quickly splits and begins to wind west like a natural river. Roads trace the edges of the water and a collection of districts and communities have grown up along the length of it, the largest being Riverhold. Travel the river far enough and it splits again, with branches weaving in every direction. Following the main channel leads to the shore of the western sea, variously called the Vast, the Ending Water, or simply the endless ocean. The Dockyards are built at its mouth.
Ringhollow
A vertical district carved in a semicircular ring around the southern portion of the city. Ringhollow occupies a valley-like series of deep shafts and excavated chambers that descend well below the surface. The Woven who live here prefer the enclosed spaces, and several Carceri structures form the load-bearing walls of the deepest chambers in ways that make the distinction between district engineering and biology difficult to maintain.
Riverhold
The largest settlement along the Lotan River, built where the river's first major fork creates a triangular spit of land wide enough to support a sizable community. Riverhold is a trade town in character, sustained by river traffic between Lake Enoch and the Dockyards. Warehouses, taverns, repair yards, and the offices of independent shipping companies line the waterfront. The population is mixed but trends toward species comfortable with damp air and the particular rhythms of river life. Riverhold maintains its own local customs and governance, and the Council's authority is acknowledged but rarely tested here because the distance from the Annex makes enforcement impractical.
The Boneyards
Nod's border with the Shadow is thinner in some places than others. The Boneyards are the worst of these. A district of abandoned structures at the city's northern edge where the buildings have a grey, drained quality, as if the color has been pulled out of the stone. Ghasts drift through the streets at all hours. The living avoid the Boneyards unless their business requires proximity to the Shadow, which means the district's remaining population consists of practitioners whose work demands access to things that should stay dead. The Pallbearers maintain their headquarters here, and several independent necromantic practitioners operate workshops in the district's more stable buildings. Some residents have taken to calling the area the Necropolis, a name the Pallbearers consider melodramatic but have stopped correcting. E. As if "Boneyards" is less dramatic
The Cardinal Boroughs
Protected complexes where humans have established self-governing communities, defended by concrete barriers, razor wire, armed patrols, floodlights, and whatever friendly non-humans they can recruit. The largest, Bastion, occupies a walled compound in the city's southern reaches and is the most visibly modern settlement in Nod outside K-Town, with reliable electrical power, functional sanitation, and enough Earth-imported equipment to make it feel like a military installation that has grown a civilian population. Large boroughs exist in every cardinal direction from the Tower. The Order enforces its particular brand of human supremacy in and around these districts, though not all human communities welcome their protection. Several smaller boroughs refuse Order presence entirely, preferring to negotiate their own arrangements with non-human neighbors.
The Catacombs
A network of passages and chambers beneath the oldest portions of the city, predating the Kaarn Crossing and possibly the arrival of any sapient species other than the Carceri. The Catacombs are not fully mapped. They connect to Ringhollow, to the foundations of the Annex, and to locations that should not be accessible from their apparent starting points. The Chroniclers maintain partial records of expeditions into the Catacombs, and the consistent observation across centuries of documentation is that the passages change between visits. It is, perhaps ironically, one of the few places where the dead seem incapable of rising. That does not make them safe; there are plenty of living things lurking in the dark of the deepest tunnels just as dangerous as any ghast.
The Coliseum
Nod's bloodsport venue, located in the Redlight District. Organized combat between willing participants, between participants and beasts, and between participants whose willingness is a matter of contractual interpretation. The Coliseum operates under its own local customs, and the savvy ownership sells subscription viewing to fights broadcast on the Wire, making it one of the network's few reliable revenue sources. The fighters who survive long enough to develop a reputation can earn substantial income. The crowd is mixed-species and enthusiastic. The Mercenaries Guild recruits from the Coliseum's survivors. The Slavers Guild supplies some of its combatants. E. Who operates it?
The Deadlands
Not a district but the barren wilderness beyond the city's outermost southern edges, where Nod gives way to an incoherent mix of desert, savannah, and tundra. As in the east, many roads extend into these lands, connecting to other Domains. The Deadlands are not empty. They contain ruins from abandoned settlements, remnants of millennia of attempts to live beyond the borders, Carceri that departed the city for unknown reasons, and things that live in the gaps between civilized spaces. Caravans venture into the Deadlands to acquire artifacts and materials, escorted by Mercenaries Guild soldiers. The Arsenal, a broken remnant of an ancient fortress from some forgotten war, sits on the Deadlands border, home to a diverse population drawn by cheap shelter and proximity to the caravan routes.
The Fields
Wide tracts of agricultural land on the city's eastern side, carved from the edge of the Weald where the forest thins enough to permit cultivation. The Fields grow Nod's native crops under arcane lights and stranger methods of fertilization, producing food that is available nowhere else and that constitutes a significant portion of the city's caloric supply. What cannot be grown is imported from Earth or other Domains through the Merchants Guild, but the Fields provide the staples. The work is hard, the pay is poor, and the workers are predominantly human and Skulk, with a scattering of Theriae whose lineages incline toward patience and manual labor. The eastern edge of the Fields borders the Weald directly, and the forest has a tendency to reclaim cleared land if the workers stop pushing it back.
The Garden
The city's most notorious nightclub and bordello. The main floor is a large open dancehall with a bar and a staircase leading to the upper floors where the actual business is conducted. Many of its dancers are Masques, their glamour tuned to the desires of whoever is watching. The air is thick with incense, alcohol, and the particular atmosphere that Masques generate when they stop trying to look like anything specific and simply project want. The Garden is located in the Redlight District and has been operating for longer than most of the district's other establishments have existed.
The Glass District
Named for the Slavers Guild's headquarters, a compound of pale stone and vitrum windows that catches the moonlight like a lantern. The district surrounding it has the tense, watched quality of a place where powerful people conduct business they would prefer not to be interrupted. The Slavers Guild operates openly here under Council protection, and the Prefex maintain a visible presence. Security cameras, imported from Earth and supplemented with arcane monitoring, cover the compound's perimeter and the surrounding blocks. It is one of the few locations in Nod where systematic surveillance is operational. Attacks on the compound by abolitionists and resistance groups have never made it past the districts substantial defensive infrastructure.
The Green Path
On the eastern side of Lake Enoch, a swath of forest grows under Nod's sunless sky. How it sustains itself without a sun is yet another of the city's unanswered questions. Much like the Lotan River, this forest channel extends east before splitting into smaller trails that lead to various copses and parks around the city. Following its densest width leads to the Weald, an endless forest that marks the eastern boundary of Nod. The Weald has many roads and paths leading into it from districts and communities across the city, each connecting to other Domains or emerging into the shadow of forested areas on Earth.
The Hibernaculum
A sealed structure in the Boneyards whose doors have not opened in living memory. The Chroniclers' records describe it as a repository, though for what is unclear. The building resists physical damage and magical investigation with equal indifference. The Pallbearers, whose headquarters are nearby, maintain a respectful distance and a standing policy of not attempting entry. Whatever is inside has not attempted to come out.
The Middens
Where Nod throws away what it cannot use. Vast heaps of scrap metal, spent batteries, broken electronics, plastic packaging, cracked arcane instruments, offal, and unidentifiable refuse from Domains whose waste products do not decompose in ways anyone can predict, piled in mounds that have become permanent topography.
The Pale Bridge and the Silver Annex
The oldest inhabited center of the city and the closest thing Nod has to a capital district. The Silver Annex sits on the southern shore of Lake Enoch, growing upon and around the bridge that leads to the Tower like a barnacle on a pier. Stone-footed buildings here predate every other structure in the city. Some of them are Carceri. Some have had more modern structures grafted to them, glass towers and steel-framed additions rising from ancient foundations, while others remain exactly as they have always been.
The Redlight District
The district with the thickest atmosphere and the shortest tempers. Nod's entertainment industry, such as it is, operates from Redlight's cramped blocks of theaters, gambling dens, fighting pits, and establishments of less categorizable purpose. The Garden, the city's most notorious nightclub and bordello, operates here alongside the Dead Disco, a Spectre-frequented club with a clientele that trends toward the unsettling end of undeath, and the Cyanide Club, a private establishment whose membership requirements and activities echo Earth's historical Hellfire Clubs. The Masques who work the district use their glamour openly, which gives the streets a disorienting quality; a face on a billboard changes depending on who's looking at it, and the music bleeding from basement venues sounds different to every passerby.
The Stilts
A district of elevated walkways and suspended structures built above flooded ground. The water beneath the Stilts is brackish, deep in places, and home to Merrow and things less identifiable. The buildings are connected by rope bridges, wooden causeways, corrugated metal walkways, and the occasional chain-link span that sways under traffic. Electrical cable and Wire conduit run along the undersides of the main causeways, stapled to the wood by Tinker contractors who service the district when the tide is low. The Stilts house a transient population: sailors, ferrymen, aquatic Theriae who prefer wet air, and anyone whose living depends on the waterways that thread through Nod's lower geography. The district smells of brine, tar, diesel, and fish guts.
The Stomping Steed
A tavern in the Warrens that leans into its own absurdity. The building is a Carceri, aware and apparently entertained by the role it has chosen for itself. The interior reconfigures to suit the mood of the evening. Drinks arrive at tables through mechanisms that were not there a moment ago. The furniture is comfortable in a way that suggests it is trying. The Steed has developed a reputation as a neutral meeting ground because the building itself seems to object to violence conducted within its walls by rearranging the floor plan to separate combatants.
The Territories
The common name for districts where Theriae communities concentrate, usually organized by lineage under the terms of the Pact. Outsiders sometimes call such areas Kennels, a name that Theriae residents consider a slur. and older texts and lazy conversationalists call them the Packland, which is marginally less offensive but still supposes canid social structures for districts that contain serpentine enclaves, avian roosts, felid havens, and communities whose biology has nothing to do with pack behavior. Among themselves, the loosely connected districts are referred to collectively as the Territories, with individual areas named for the lineage group that holds them.
The Tower
The nucleus at the center of Nod is a tower that stretches into a black sky with no visible summit. This pillar is the heart of the Domain, and depending on who you ask it is either nemo's dwelling or Nemo itself. The walls are made of a silver-veined black marble-like material, impervious to damage. Light near the stone produces a faint vapour that the surface seems to absorb.
The Warrens
A residential sprawl of stacked apartments, converted warehouses, and buildings that grew into each other over centuries until the original property lines became meaningless. The Warrens house most of Nod's working population, species mixed by proximity and economics rather than choice. A Kaarn metalworker might share a wall with a human cobbler and a Theriae family running a laundry service from their front room. The streets are narrow enough that opposing balconies nearly touch, strung with electrical cable, clotheslines, and the occasional Tinker-rigged data wire. Neon signage in competing scripts competes with the dim glow of the Lamplighters' wards for the right to illuminate the ground level. The air smells like cooking grease and ozone.
Vansen Arms
A weapons dealer operating from the Warrens, specializing in modified firearms, arcane-edged blades, and custom equipment for mercenaries and private security. The proprietor, Marcus Vansen, sources from Earth and the Tinkers but is best known for his own special creations. The Mercenary's Guild supplies most of its customer, while members of the Order are banned.
Wrongside
A collective term for the sprawling, unnamed stretches of urban density between the named districts. Travelling through Nod between the Annex and the Packs, or between Ringhollow and the Middens, means passing through Wrongside. The areas are not governed in any coherent sense, their character changes block by block, and the only consistent feature is that no one chose to live there so much as ended up there. Wrongside is where the city's gaps get filled by whatever fits: unlicensed workshops, squatter communities, informal markets, Wire pirate stations, chop shops for stolen Earth vehicles, and the kind of establishments that exist because no one has the authority or the interest to shut them down.