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The City

a vast decaying city scape of twisted metal and crumbling brick. Filthy water sometimes runs in rivulets from the buildings, collecting in brackish pools. The air is stale and carries the faint taste of copper and iron. The temperature alternates, remaining slightly warm and stuffy half the year while becoming bitterly cold and miserable the other. Rats scurry just out of sight. Decrepit and rusted. Light flickers wanly from the few remaining sources at night while during the day the sun takes on a sickly yellowish hue. Periodically, a rust colored wind will blast through the city, causing any who remain out in the open to spontaneously grow bits of machinery, or have their limbs and organs replaced by metal and gears, creating grotesque amalgamations of man and machine. Almost all of the remaining machinery and automated systems have rusted out or are malfunctioning badly. Even the few that remain in working conditions are still plagued with increasing issues, heading steadily towards permanently failing, their machine-spirits dying or going insane.

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Perhaps the one saving grace, the one piece of respite within the perpetual urban decay and squalor is what the techno tribes call, “The Dreaming.” An ancient network of virtual life, it gives a holographic overlay over parts of the city where it remains strong, giving these few districts and neighborhoods the look of a paradise, though it is a falsehood. The techno tribes believe these to be the dreams of the Gods below, a vision of what is to come, and those that encounter it often fall sway to the sickly sweet vision of heaven in a desperate attempt to escape the filth of their surroundings. These few spaces of the Dreaming Network that retain some of their former potency and have managed to snare a sizable number of the primitive cyborgs can sometimes take on a life of their own, manifesting a Hologram Spirits through the interface of the still human mind of the cyborgs and the ancient techno-theurgical network. These Hologram Spirits manifest as guardian demons, their forms drawn from the minds of the techno tribes to provide protection and succor to tribesmen who hide amidst the crumbling buildings, who in turn provide it with worship and belief, the nourishment the Hologram Spirit needs to sustain its existence.

Despite the ruin, the City grows. Perpetually radiating outward like a cancer, the city inches forth almost imperceptibly yet unstoppably as buildings seemingly form from nowhere and the landscape shifts, the streets and alleys twisting and tessellating, making the city an ever shifting labyrinth with few if any permanent landmarks beyond the massive Tower at the City’s heart. For all the unchecked growth, even the “new” buildings maintain the same decrepit appearance, as though rundown from birth, another byproduct of the decay brought on by the rust winds. The sheer slopes of the Omen Mountains are perhaps the only indication of an end to the city, but even they are being slowly eaten away. With the growth of the City, it occasionally goes down deep into the dark places, burrowing into some ancient superstructure like a tick, occasionally vomiting out a creature of nightmare, a terrible automaton that tears through the hapless Altered that encounter it before slinking back into whatever nameless metal Hell it came from. The few who journey down into these hidden places, and even fewer who return, speak of spidering hallways of breathing metal and plastic, shot through with veins of sparking light and black viscous liquid.

Altered Humans, The Techno-Tribes

Goal: Emulate God by transcending humanity and remake them in the image of the Machine God. All those organic have turned away from the binary vision of God and are unholy meat bags.

Throughout the infinite levels of the city scape of Sanctuary, there are a few humans who manage to call this place home, although it may be a stretch to call them “human.” The desperate and the mad, those that live here have been altered and changed, body and soul, by the flesh warping winds and the vast machinery. Many have gathered within the upper ghettos of the City, huddling around the dwindling number of working food replicators and heat sources while occasionally venturing out to vainly attempt to find clean water or something of value to trade, all while avoiding the remaining malfunctioning defenses. Despite the dangers, there are many that embrace this life, seeing their machine limbs and warped metal flesh as gifts from the almighty. The city is their home and their object of worship, a proving ground to forge them into the automaton image of God. While a few live on the outskirts of the city, trading what scrap they find to passing merchants and enjoying a modicum of comfort, the more fanatic believers live closer to the center, the better to feel the effects of the changing winds to become more and more machine. These fanatics look down upon any unchanged by the rust-winds, at best reacting with pity and at with worst vicious hostility for the fleshly heretic. Those few that attempt to flee from the city are stricken with disease and death, as the modifications from the rust wind break down outside of the tempering influence of the city. Only those young enough to not carry too much of the taint or those willing to sacrifice their own bodies are able to escape. Those living in the lower levels find sanctuary where they can, but still must contest with the rust-winds that blow through

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The Altered have repurposed and scrounged what they can from the City, turning old construction equipment and protective suits into arms and armor to use against each other or to stave off the Hunter-Killer Cast-Offs that occasionally attack from the levels below. Welding masks have become helmets while nail guns are repurposed into viciously effective crossbows. Scavenged environmental suits are worth their weight in precious metals for their ability to stave off the rust winds. Those who have truly given themselves over are greatly changed in appearance, displaying greatly enhanced strength and speed, built in weapon systems, and a barely human appearance.

Inspirations: Imagine a post-apocalyptic city/ cyberpunk urban sprawl. Check out The Veil for Powered by the Apocalypse, Japanese Cyberpunk like Tetsuo the Iron Man, The Division video game, and others. The Matrix is what you want to look at for the Dreaming, while Altered Carbon is perfect inspiration for the sort of VR overlay that periodically creeps into vision. Think Urban Mad Max with chrome and neon. If you want some more real world inspiration, the Kowloon Walled City in China is almost exactly what I imagined for images of “The City.”

Design: design wise, the City is a great place for a procedurally done dungeon. The fact that it’s always changing and slightly expanding means players could explore this for quite a while, and even set up a base here with the right Words and an expenditure of dominion. Humanity is a pretty resilient creature, and there are potentially as many people scattered throughout the City as need be. The main issue will be how to deal with the “Rust Wind.” What the Rust Wind is is up to you, but it’s meant to function as a roving environmental hazard that can be dangerous to most things if caught unawares, adding a degree of complication to setting up a base or stronghold here. With the Dreaming, you can have even more fun by just suddenly putting a completely different environment in to throw people off their game. Turn the corner in a crumbling alley, then BAM! Rainforest. Ideally, the Dreaming was meant to be a combination of the titular Matrix from The Matrix films and Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime. Hell, if you want good inspiration for Godbound, mine the shit out of Australian myths and legends for material. In the same way, the Hologram Spirits function in the same way as the inhabitants of the Dreamtime in that that they are not so much worshipped as revered, but how they function with the techno tribes is up to you

Timeworn survivors are probably going to be your go to when stating up the Altered, whether they be murderous or simple survivors, the partially mechanized bodies are meant to be your justification for adding a gift to what are otherwise normal mortals

As to the Hologram Spirits, I’d say use Animas as a template from the Godbound core rulebook. The majority are probably going to be minor spirits with the occasional major spirit that has managed to gain a small cult, say the size of a city block. Those that have managed to pull in and influence an entire tribe are probably going to be in the Mighty category, though they should be few and far in between.

Areas

Series of twisting alleyways, that appears to have been placed haphazardly Skyscraper half toppled, or fully toppled, blocking the path in front of the pantheon A habitation block in the midst of the city A field of rebar and twisted steel growing like a field of over grown grass Trees made of iron and leaves of copper spill out from an alley and from the sides of a building A block filled with seemingly abandoned storefronts, as plastic mannequins stand haphazardly in the windows An area with humming machinery, slowly spitting out some manner of goods An overpass or expanse of highway running through the City, sometimes completely bisecting a building or structure A yawning pit or sewer opening going down deep into the earth, covered in steel and rivets

Fixtures

Sparks or flickering neon from a dying machine A particularly decayed or ruined area; crumbling and falling apart Something seemingly new and shiny beginning to rust before the very eyes of the pantheon Odd sculptures made of industrial castoffs that look like people or animals made from spare parts structures seemingly appearing in midair, only to crumble to the ground minutes later heavily covered in graffiti flickering neon slowly burning out sputtering machinery giving off the occasional spray of sparks flickering holograms and dancing images of a dying area of the Dreaming an area completely out of place with the urban area around it looking like: a tropical jungle snowy tundra a desert a wooded forest a vast ocean chrome and neon baroque finery role 2 and combine the two

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Encounters

altered humans scrounging for food and parts

a tribe protecting one of the few working food replicators or a pool of brackish water

scavengers from the rest of the Reach hunting for scrap to take back with them

heavily modified “Mad Max” raider combat cyborgs spoiling for a fight

A machine-creature has escaped from the lower levels and began hunting the techno tribes of altered humans squatting in the City, seeing them as no more than parasites

A Hologram Spirit resembling a bio mechanical lion man that manifests out of nowhere to protect cowering techno tribesmen.

Techno-Shaman, the Witch-Engineer- An inscrutable being who is extremely knowledgeable about the area of Sanctuary. The Techno Shaman is a priest to the very idea of advanced technologies, to what once was. He, she, or it slowly works at restoring the old machines in the area. Wears a tiki mask made of repurposed machine parts and a cloak of plastic and woven cables

The Rust Wind- a terrifying whirlwind or gentle breeze of red-brown rust that blows through the city, decaying structures and mutating flesh in its wake, leaving patches of metal on skin, or body parts changed into robotic appendages