I wanted to use my recently released Infinigrad: The Weird City Toolkit to create a suburb. Here is the result! I may end up creating some art for this and putting it into a PDF in the future, but other projects have my attention at the time being....(I used some A.I generated art for the post using this handy little tool: https://huggingface.co/spaces/flax-community/dalle-mini)
For those interested, in my mind this town is on the shore of The White Sea. To the south of the town, along the shore, is The Crab Temple, and to the East is the mud plain of Fosmuck and the city of Chorospyrog.
Coral Towers:
A coastal walled hamlet on the fetid shores of The White Sea. Limestone spires connected by crumbling arches tower over ancient canals. A secretive cabal of pirates are the ultimate authority in the town.
The Coral Walkway:
There are two docks in Coral Towers. Each is connected to a set of stairs that spiral around the nearest tower. These stairs ascend 6 storeys to where a large public balcony rings around all of the towers in the town. This is The Coral Walkway. This balcony is the major public thoroughfare in the town, high above the grey sludgy sand below. The Coral Walkway crosses over the canals of the town at several ancient limestone bridges. The main public entrance to each of the towers is from the Coral Walkway.
The Black Skulletilia Cabal:
A secretive band of pirates that runs Coral Towers from the shadows. Garbed in dark leathers, cloaks and helmets made of huge black lizard skulls. They are led by a master alchemist whose specialty is warping human flesh into semi-organic weapons. The pirates are famed for their fearsome hand to hand fighting using foul retractable claw blades their leader alchemically installs into their hands. The Black Skulletilia Cabal is in open warfare with several other pirate cabals that sail The White Sea. They are always opportunistically seizing fresh flesh samples (in the form of animals and prisoners) for their alchemist leader to experiment upon.
d6 Black Skulletilia Cabal Members: Assume all are garbed in dark leathers, cloaks and helmets made of huge black lizard skulls.
- Cat the Beetled: Skin crawling with palm sized black beetles - these grant some protection from curses. Needs an outsider to assassinate a competitor in the cabal.
- Skinny Ruib: Lizard skull helmet is gilded with a design of silver flowers. Eager to show his fighting prowess to nearby cabal members.
- Chronok the Pompous: Has a huge crimson frilled collar beneath his skull helmet. Desperate for a meeting with his leader, Cornelis Helik.
- Dancing Sword the Filthy: Stinks - outfit is coated in decaying fish. Attempting to gather a crew to dig a buried treasure he has the map of.
- Bright Helm: Lizard skull helmet is white and glowing. Has been drinking and is keen for a brawl.
- Plumm: Enormously tall and muscled. Doesn’t know how to swim and would like to learn.
Cornelis Helk, Master Alchemist: Rarely leaves his temple-like library of reagents. He has warped himself through decades of chemical experimentation to resemble a crimson scaled lizard man. Many horns sprout from his head, and needle claws delicately tip his red fingers. A retinue of confrontingly chemically mutated humans serve him - each warped into the shape of alchemical equipment: Crawling moaning and bleeding; beaker trays, buckets, cauldrons and the like (these do not live long in their tortured forms). His search for the elixir of immortality is never far from his thoughts.
Town Map:
1. The Barrel Factory (12 storey workshop): Topped by chimney stacks puffing plumes of black smoke. Ancient house-sized faces carved into the exterior walls, huge, crumbling, vacant and expressionless.
- Sweaty, slimy skinned workers operate churning, thundering, automated machinery that produces perfectly air tight barrels of the highest quality.
- The tower is powered by rusty, room filling machines housed in the lower storeys. These have massive cables that dig deep beneath the earth - taped into some subterranean energy source no living person no longer knows nor understands. ‘
- The workers in the tower, and the residents of the town, all agree the machines here are haunted.
2. The Vivifying Tower (12 storey sorceric power generator): Tangles of arm sized tubing weaves in and out of this tower’s limestone. Each tube is pumping with dark red liquid. The tower hums and causes headaches.
- Viscera covered workers in leather aprons work with heavy cleavers to chop free limbs from animal (and sometimes human) sacrifices. These are tossed into altar-like receptacles that grind and churn the meat and feed the building. Each storey of the tower has several leather and blood coated robed wizards chanting and meditating at the receptacles. Each wizard has a huge, bloody, third eye.
- The blood based engineering magic summoned in the tower keeps the crumbling limestone structures of the town intact. A lack of sacrifices will result in cracks appearing in nearby towers, or chunks of rock falling loose. A spate of disappearances follows shortly after.
- The ground floor is a putrid pool of ancient blood and viscera. An undead levithan wallows in the red muck.
3. The Black Skulletilia Cabal House (12 storey pirate loot vault): Planks and chunks of hulls of defeated ships are bolted to the exterior of the tower. Dead pirates hang from nooses or are crucified all over the walls - some are just bones.
- Heavily armoured (donning chainmail instead of leathers) Black Skulletillia Cabal pirates the vault. They are silent and stoic and will not let any one who is not a part of the cabal inside.
- Decades of ill begotten loot is locked away inside the tower. Treasure, weapons, magic items, anything a successful conglomeration of pirates would acquire. Well stocked and comfortable dormitories and pleasure facilities are also here for the cabal members.
- Cornelis Helk, master alchemist and leader of the cabal has his laboratories and reagent libraries on the top storeys . Helk rarely leaves his temple-like library of reagents. He has warped himself through decades of chemical experimentation to resemble a crimson scaled lizard man. Many horns sprout from his head, and needle claws delicately tip his red fingers. A retinue of confrontingly chemically mutated humans serve him - each warped into the shape of alchemical equipment: Crawling moaning and bleeding; beaker trays, buckets, cauldrons and the like (these do not live long in their tortured forms). His search for the elixir of immortality is never far from his thoughts.
4. The Dockyard (12 storey storage warehouse): The walls of this tower have been melted by lobs of acid at some point in the past. Great melted craters pepper the top of the tower and thick rivulets of melted limestone run down the walls.
- Each storey of this tower is devoted to a different warehouse. Some are owned by The Black Skulletilia Cabal, others by independent merchants/traders/pirates.
- There is always hosts of dock workers lugging stock in boxes to and from the Dock 1 (d1). They are thick limbed, rough looking and utterly silent. They hate their work being interrupted.
- Leathery imps the size of dogs record and operate the inventory list of everything stored in The Dockyard. They are rarely seen. The imps have been falsifying some of the records and have amassed a fortune of stolen merchandise at g1.
5. The Tower of Deathly Calm (12 store graveyard and dust den): Huge lengths of scarlet silk are bolted to this tower - they run down the walls like rivers of blood.
- The bottom 6 storeys of this tower are devoted to the interment of dead pirates and residents of Coral Towers. Their bodies are laid to rests in crypts, tombs and limestone coffins.
- The top 6 storeys of the tower are referred to as “The Dens of Grief”, here heavily cushioned chambers are devoted to the silent imbibing of dust. Mourners and dust users are required to whisper here, but may smoke themselves into forgetful oblivion with impunity.
- Ancient catacombs dig deep beneath the town and the earth. Here ancient pirate lords lay - their hordes protected by traps, curses and rum soaked magics.
6.The Parlour (10 storey drinking and tattoo den): Ancient tattered ship sails hang from this tower. They are all painted crudely with the insignia of pirate crews, both active and defunct. A smattering of figureheads poke through the sails.
- The bottom 6 storeys of this tower are drinking and dancing halls. The closer to the sandy ground floor one travels the more depraved and debaucherous the halls become. The many years of constant partying, near rioting, have had a toil on the lower levels - which are little more than ruins filled with refuse and merry making detritus.
- The storeys above The Coral Walkway are the operating rooms and dwelling quarters of master tattooist - whose work provides minor magical enchantments to those who wear them. The tattooist, Dimir Guilder, has had both arms mutated into an insectoid and biological contraption of needles by Cornelis Helk, Master Alchemist (leader of The Black Skulletilia Cabal). The insectoid tattooing arms produce their own ink, which is vivid and prismatic.
- Dimir Guilder has amassed a not inconsiderable horde of wealth, magical artifacts and curios as payment for his valued services. People travel from far across The White Sea to receive his inkings. He has grown to enjoy wealth and power and thoughts of overthrowing Cornelis Helk have begun to ferment in his mind.
7. The Garden Tower(8 storey condominium tower): Fresh water flows down the sides of this tower in pretty, miniature, waterfalls. An exotic array of paradisitic plants flower all over the walls.
- The wealthiest and most successful residents of Coral Towers dwell here in opulent apartments. Competition to secure an apartment has become somewhat extreme of late, murders and assassinations to free up an apartment for new residents has become common.
- Heavily armoured (donning chainmail instead of leathers) Black Skulletillia Cabal pirates guard the entrance to the tower and entrances to individual apartments. These positions are purely transactional though - and any one with enough coins can convince the Cabal guards to turn the other way during a break in (or even help bloodily evict their once clients)
- The bottom two floors of the tower have been sealed off by mass of bonemeld (weblike tangles of bone). Beyond the bonemeld a powerful bone smith has been excavating beneath the tower in search of some ancient treasure they have spent decades infatuated with. Rumours say the hunted for treasure is a “Golden glowing eye”.
8. The Mess (6 storey inn): A tower rimmed with column and arch way balconies filled with revelers drinking and feasting. Piles of refuse have accumulated on the coral walkway beneath. The tower walls are burnt and blood/graffitti/vomit/filth stained.
- Somewhat zombified serving staff assist the patrons here. Serving large quantities of foul food and drink for a handful of coins. Black beer flows in great abundance. The staff all appear to have open wounds - the observant will see tiny white crabs darting to and from these.
- Filthy and unsecure rooms are available as lodgings. They are filled with sand, and stink of dead sea life. The previous tenant, in a drunken stupor, often needs to be forcibly removed.
- The bottom floor of the tower is home to a hive of sentient and parasitic insectoid crabs. Tiny white crustaceans with electric blue veins running through their translucent carapace. The hive is a sodden mass of sand and decomposing flesh. The figurehead of the colony is an enormous, corpulent butcher who shambles through the tower wielding a meat cleaver. He is long dead, his decomposing flesh riddled with tiny crabs (who are in fact animating the flesh).
Other locations:
The Canals.
w1: The water here is dark and red. It stinks of flesh (run off from Tower 2).
w2: What appears to be a dead body floating in the water. It glitters with jewelry. If fished from the water the dead body will rouse (especially if the jewelry is pilfered with). The body is in fact a pirate who became comatose from the imbibing of too much dust in The Tower of Deathly Calm (Tower 2). Depending on their treatment the pirate may be thankful or enraged. The pirate would also like to know who threw their dust frozen form into the canal...
w3: A skin of tiny, dead, white crabs covers the water. The crustacean mass seems to have floated from The Mess (Tower 8).
The Docks.
d1: Largely empty. A large black sailed ship is being unloaded by silent workers. They are moving huge, locked chests, wrapped in chains - lugging them to The Black Skulletilia Cabal House (Tower 3). They are being watched by pirates garbed in dark leathers, cloaks and helmets made of huge black lizard skulls.
d2: Sullen dock workers silently drink from multicoloured stone steins. They are drinking a clear, highly alcoholic, liquid. They do not want to be disturbed.
The Ground Sands:
g1: Leathery imps the size of dogs have a village of scavenged storage crates and chests. There is a fortune of stolen merchandise and treasure squirreled away in the makeshift huts.
g2: A red crystal monolith, coated in barnacles. Touching it grants good luck for a day.
g3: A grove of misshapen trees and brushes - all constructed of melded bone.
g4: Slow writhing pirates mostly covered in mud, muck and sand. Uncovering them reveals their decomposing bodies are animated by a host of tiny parasitic, white crabs (the same crabs from The Mess, Tower 8).
g5: A group of crab/octopus/man mutants inhabitants a muddy village of broken, discard barrels from Tower 1. They largely survive from meat strained from the flesh run off from Tower 2 at w1. They have plans to break into The Vivifying Tower (Tower 2) and feast on the meat contained within.
