The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City The Gyre — The Town of Flotsam and Jetsam The Gyre, the spiritual home of the briny, is a well-known landmark that lies in the Great Lyme River. It is a town built upon flotsam, which Scrying in the Blight has formed into a slow whirlpool in the river and which rotates with the Paranoia grips the Blight — and for good reason. The city slowness of the hour hand upon a clock. That it floats at all is remarkable; is alive with scrying devices, familiars, arcane eyes, imps and that it is a thriving settlement with buildings, boardwalk streets and piers countless spies. The hardest thing to keep here are secrets. Visitors is unbelievable. From the shore, figures can be seen moving gingerly may find the paranoid nature of locals hard to fathom at first, but along the boardwalks, as smoke drifts from chimneys, and hundreds of after a few days, the plethora of spies begins to become obvious. colourful boats bob in the foul waters. Imps lurk in corners, homunculi watch from behind hidden grills, and the feeling of scrying is almost overpowering. Every day there is a 5% chance* that visitors may be scryed, either Hobbington’s Lamp deliberately or accidentally. Creatures notice the sensor by succeeding The great sea lantern lies at the farthest point of the Lyme. The huge sea on a DC 17 Wisdom (Perception). In almost all cases, this scrying is lantern is powered by a broken† elder fire elemental, and shines out like a a mere coincidence, a chance view of some wizard of divination out ghastly green gash across the night sky. looking for information not connected to the visitors. Such a huge amount of scrying, however, can make one complacent... Locals often refuse to divulge information, and this is particularly The Windmills true in the case of information perceived to be dangerous. As a As the river broadens, so the windmills grow. Once there were result, Persuasion checks to gather what the GM feels is sensitive many vast windmills, which rose across the bay, but fire, neglect, and information are made at disadvantage in the Blight. skulduggery has seen almost all fall back into the river. Many of the *Roll a d20. If the result is a 1, scrying is possible. remaining windmills are lashed to the rocky islets or manmade islands that jut up like broken teeth from the bay. These islands are very useful for anyone with a need to be hidden. The Jumble (a.k.a. the Cat’s Cradle, The Hollow and Broken Hills the Madness, the Maze, Here, the land splinters and falls into the sea in a thousand spires and the City of Thieves) hollow hills. Miracles happen here: statues weep, and wells remove malady. This archipelago of tidal stacks, cliffs and islets, as well as being He was on a narrow balcony barely two feet wide, which led off home to countless people, is home to churches. Temples and places of ahead and rounded a corner over a dizzying drop. Below lay a town. worship rise here, as well as the (now full) Great Blight Cemetery — itself Yet no ordinary town, this town rose in every direction — up over now a huge area of decaying tangled briars and undergrowth, ruins and steeples and roofs of thatch and stone and slate, beyond narrow towers mausoleums. Many come to Hollow Hills to take the air and listen to the and round balconies that hung impossibly over the grey city beneath. birdsong of the tree-lined avenues and parks in this district. Limestone Timbers of huge size bolted with iron bars as thick as a horse were outcrops abound, and these have been variously turned into grottoes, its skeleton, its flesh the flotsam and jetsam of the city. It leapt rivers, temples, follies or occasionally more sinister places best avoided. Bridges strangled canals and turned in streets so narrow two children could — both natural and manmade — criss-cross this area of fractured land. barely pass. “This …” said Themris with a smile, “is the Jumble.” Sanctuary The Jumble is a vast, confusing maze of streets that rise upward and The most holy city-state within a city state, Sanctuary is the home of the outward — some would say in mockery of the Capitol itself. master of the church in Castorhage. The present ruler, His Holiness the It is easy to get lost in the Cradle — streets sink below ground and rise Father of Castorhage, balances a precarious thread between enemies, again to rooftop streets, taking a dozen ladders before continuing along a allies, and those who wish to succeed him. The ruthless Borxia family gable that ends at a bare wall, beyond which may lie the garret of a naga number one of his Holiness’s most troubling neighbours; this terrible artist, a madman or cringing orphans. family has designs upon the throne and crown of Castorhage itself. The majority live here in cramped confusion to escape something — taxes and enemies, wives, lovers and Knockers. It houses a vast population of ne’er-do-wells and villains, as well as many common folk simply trying The Eye to make their lives a little richer. It is, in many ways, the safest place to be One day there was a church called Saint Cartwell’s, which stood a villain; the nickname City of Thieves has long been associated with the proudly near the West Lychgate of the Great Cemetery; the next it was Jumble, a place where it is very easy to get lost and come to harm. gone, replaced by a vast hole. Locals claim the hole appeared at midnight Like the Capitol, the Jumble has its own streets, markets and laws. A and that the devil rode out of it on a goat with a man’s face. The Eye is local vigilante force patrols the streets at night, but foul things still make deep and cold and menacing. Birds occasionally swoop into its gloom and a home and hide here. do not return, and ropes have been lowered down into it and the men on them have not come out again. And recently, similar holes have sprung The Bazaar up across the region. Gas and disappearing explorers have hampered exploration of the Eye and the other holes. Allegedly the greatest market in the world, the Bazaar sits beside and Powerful clerics, bishops, archbishops, and holy fathers rule this area within the Jumble, oozing along its streets like a sickness. It is a thousand of the city. Behind the smiles and religious paraphernalia seethes a hotbed streets filled with countless shops, stalls, markets and traders. of intrigue, duplicity, lust, and greed for power as church battles church for supremacy.Sample file The Sinks Castorhage — built partly upon clay and silt deposits — is literally dancing upon its own grave: The more weight that comes to bear, the faster the sinking takes place. This is nowhere more apparent than in the Sinks — literally a drowning town. 24 The Blight Campaign Guide: CyclopÆdia Infestarum Branner the Brat King Branner I of Castorhage (891–899) ascended the throne at the age of seven and was often sickly. He was commonly known as Branner the Child for his tender age, but was sometimes cruelly referred to by East Enders as Branner the Spoilt Brat. His reign was largely influenced by his regent and stepmother Loris (a.k.a. Loris the Mad Bitch by East Enders), and died under suspicious circumstances at the age of nine. In 897, Branner, the then king of Castorhage, ordered the creation of a new town for artisans. This would be a place of grand canals and gilt buildings, of towers and cathedrals and art. Branner, always a strong- willed child, decided that it would be wise to use an area of the city known as the Grey Lake, famous for its shallow waters, as the basis for the town. From the start, the project was doomed. A mysterious number of accidents occurred, workers disappeared, and wages had to treble overnight to keep the work going. Piers vanished in moments, taking those working on them into the waters, never to be seen below. A curious fog — Jack’s Candle — seeped up at night and killed with its poisonous kiss. It remains the main reason for the multitude and high cost of canaries across the city, Toiltown (a.k.a. The East, the birds dying as soon as they get a whiff of the marsh gas itself to give their owners precious moments to take precautions. Numerous attempts East Ending, The State of Sweat) were made to abandon the project. By this time, however, Branner was sick, and his stepmother Loris insisted that work continue. Even after her Everyone hates vast Toiltown, even the overseers and manufactory child’s death, the long-lived (and despised) stepmother insisted that the managers who dole out their cruel forms of justice within. It is a place of work be concluded — as a fitting tribute to her dear departed stepson. endless manufactories and sweatshops, workhouses and underground mills. Even at its finest, it was obvious that Branner’s Folly (as it had become One is regarded as a true East Ender only if born within earshot of the known) was sinking — towers leant, walls ruptured, cathedrals sagged. Great Black Bell of East Ending. The lowest castes of the city make their Yet after a few decades, the sinking suddenly halted, and the town was left homes here, and a vast number of slums have developed over the years.