Location – Page 2

Location seed: Morbis Street.

Morbis Street

Description: In many walled medieval cities, there is a street just inside the walls that likewise continuously encircles the rest of the city. Morbis Street serves that function in a particular High Fantasy medieval-style walled city. Most of the year it’s perfectly normal.

One night a year, however (the exact date doesn’t matter, as long as it’s the same date every year), anyone who ‘Walks Up Morbis Street’ while carrying a certain arcane symbol vanishes, never to return. And if somebody does walk the Street on that night and vanishes, then somebody else (carrying the same arcane symbol) will appear, too. A person for a person. Most people who arrive do so with at most a traveler’s pack, but at least one person has arrived pushing a handcart.

Location Seed: The Ghost Barracks.

Ghost Barracks – Google Docs Download

The Ghost Barracks
Location: Kay Moor Mine, West Virginia
Description: three-level underground fallout shelter, with residential and office space. No garage as such, but there are kitchens, storage areas, and a small machine shop. The power and water still work, but the ventilation system always seems to be in need of a serious overhaul. The site can be accessed both from the main mine, and a disguised passageway that originates in a culvert on the New River Gorge.
Purpose: “Long-term stable storage space for various personalized paraphernalia used to facilitate standard individualized post-mortem communication protocols.” In English: it’s where they keep stuff that can be used to summon specific ghosts.
Capacity: designed for fifty people, for six months. It can host a considerably larger number of ghosts, of course. Currently, the Ghost Barracks is set up to accommodate about six to ten living people indefinitely; the mortal staff is rotated in and out regularly, and often uses the site as a staging area for local supernatural operations (which, incidentally, occur in the Appalachians with no little frequency).

Location Seed: The Sybil at Suds-Your-Duds.

Sybil at Suds-Your-Duds – Google Docs Download

The Sybil at Suds-Your-Duds

Description: One wall of eight front-loaded washers with circular glass lids, located in the back of an otherwise normal laundromat. Above each washer is a continuous metal shelf with eight wicker baskets (one for each washer). A bleached plastic chair at one end is reserved for the use of the current Sybil. The Sybil does not have to be present constantly, but she (traditionally referred to as ‘she,’ although more than one man has temporarily been one) always lives onsite, and never takes vacations.

The organization that keeps the Sybil at Suds-Your-Duds running at full capacity is not at the laundromat. It will not let you visit the laundromat for your divination until you have and can show everything that you will need for your divination. Do not try to waste the organization’s time: somebody else wants your time slot, and will be able to take it over on no more than five minutes’ notice.

Location Seed: Neo-Karuizawa.

Neo-Karuizawa – Google Docs Download

Neo-Karuizawa

Karuizawa (Nagano Prefecture, Japan) is a resort town east and south of Tokyo. It has about twenty thousand inhabitants, numerous sporting and recreational facilities, and is generally considered to be a very nice place to visit. One of its major claims to fame is that is the only city in the world to host events from both a Summer and Winter Olympics, and there was an unpleasant domestic terrorist event there decades ago; but today generally Karuizawa is simply a pleasant, charming vacation spot.

Which is why it’s so odd that a clone of it is growing in the jungles of Tristan da Cunha.

Location Seed: The Academy of Saint Philomena.

Academy of Saint Philomena – Google Docs Download

The Academy of Saint Philomena
Location: Poughkeepsie, New York
Founded: 1791
Faculty: 400
Students: 1200, grades 9 to 12
Student to Teacher Ratio: 3:1
Colors: Purple and Green
Motto: Rectam aculeos

This private boarding school is not where They train the nation’s mundane elite; nor is where they train the next generation of Illuminati wonder-workers. To the dismay of new students, there are no mystic portals or labs full of ultra-tech gadgetry at the Academy of Saint Philomena (a resolutely secular institution, despite the name). The students there take no classes on wizardry or theurgy or Mad Science or any of the rest of the dangerous, but often useful, incongruities currently being kept from the Masses. No, St. Phillie is where students learn how to keep the people with those incongruities firmly in check.

Location Seed: The Gravid Impressions.

Gravid Impressions – Google Docs Download

The Gravid Impressions

Description: one of seven caves found scattered around the world. The caves all feature odd markings of clearly artificial, but also clearly non-human, make. The entrance to the Avian and Procyon caves are too small to be easily navigated by humans, and the Cephalopod cavern is underwater. All of the caves fairly hum with theurgical power.

Locations:

Avian (location: Somerset)
Cetacean (location: Timor Sea)
Cephalopod (location: Indian Ocean)
Pachyderm (location: Kenya)
Pinniped (location: La Plata)
Procyon (location: Ohio)
Ursine (location: Siberia)

Location Seed: The Old Consulate.

Old Consulate – Google Docs Download

The Old Consulate
Location: Redstone Lane, Marblehead Massachusetts
Description: wooden three story structure constructed around 1800 AD. 4,000 square feet, on a 7,000 square foot lot. In excellent condition: not listed in any historical register or landmarks list.
Primary Oddity: food doesn’t spoil, age, or decay while on the premises. This was first discovered in 1979, when an owner attempted to discover why he could not make beer in the basement. This Oddity does not affect living creatures.

Secondary Oddity: a complete block on psychometric and time-viewing magic on the building and lot.

Location Seed: The Azure Caverns.

Azure Caverns – Google Docs Download

So I wrote this as my sample text for a RPG that I wanted to write for; they were soliciting material for publication. Didn’t get tapped for it, not-alas. And I hate to say ‘not-alas,’ but it’s the truth: I’m kind of disappointed at how that RPG line turned out. Playtest, playtest, playtest, people.

Moe Lane

PS: Nope, not saying which. Please don’t speculate in comments, either.

Location Seed: Mister Pizza.

Mister Pizza – Google Docs Download

Mister Pizza

(Rose Side, New Jersey)

Description: a ground-level retail pizzaria on a side street to Rose Side’s main street. The pizza oven, grill, and register is right up front; there’s a few tables and chairs in the classic checkered tablecloth style, a jukebox in the back, and the bathrooms are past it and to the left. The place is weathered, but clean. Oh: there’s a payphone. This will be important, later.

It’s always 1987 inside.

Location Seed: The Grumbles.

Grumbles – Google Docs

The Grumbles

This merchant ‘district’ can be found in any reasonably magical fantasy setting; it typically operates inside a single large building. The more decrepit, the better: the wooden beams should be scarred and worm-ridden, the metal nails must be staining the walls black, and the roof — well, nobody in the Grumbles ever actually sees the roof from the inside, but it should be about to fall apart, or possibly over. Oh, and the building should be on the local riverfront. Easier to get shipments in and out that way.

Continue reading Location Seed: The Grumbles.