Vinjetter från Cadillac City

[Man Mountainman]

Mitt förra inlägg om Cadillac Crazy Cillerz rönte inte så mycket uppmärksamhet. En delförklaring kan kanske vara att det är lite mastigt att sätta sig in i 77 sidor rollspelstext. Därför tänkte jag använda den här tråden för att posta några kortare utdrag ur texten, så att gemene forumit kan få en liten känsla för spelet och dess ton och stil.

 

[Man Mountainman]

Entemo
Other names. Bugs.

Favored magical aspects. Weird, Wild

Of all the weird inhabitants of Cadillac City, the Entemo might be the weirdest. Their name comes from Greek entomon, meaning “insect,” and that is what they are: insect-fairies, with six limbs, chitinous wings, exoskeletons, mandibles, the whole shebang. Some are almost human in form, but for the extra pair of arms and the butterfly wings on their backs. Others are entirely arthropod, but for the glint of sapience in their compound eyes.

The Entemo live in Bugtown, a kaleidoscopic vista of multichromatic houses, with vast bazaars where strange substances and otherworldly artifacts change hands, where caterpillars chatter the hours away at hookah pavilions, butterfly ladies dance hypnotically in storefront windows, and six-limbed junkies slumber in opium dens. The Entemo are known as merchants in narcotics, as normal and accepted in their culture as booze is in ours, and some of them even secrete hallucinogenic chemicals from their own bodies. For this reason, many youths brave the labyrinthine streets of Bugtown, where it is easy to get lost and easier still to lose oneself.

Entemo are strange, not just in physical aspect, but in their ways of thinking. They lack our concept of a personality, a stable set of traits and habits that follow a person through their lives. Instead, they view the self as subject to constant transformation. For them, intoxication is not a deviation from a “normal” state, but is existence itself; even when “sober,” you are intoxicated with the chemicals produced by your own brain. Sex and procreation means something very different for someone who lays a million eggs and lets nature sort out who will live and who will die; relationships mean something very different for someone who eats her partner after coitus; and growth and maturation means something very different for someone whose whole body-plan changes during the pupal stage.

Since the Entemo are so different, not just from us, but from each other, their culture values change over constancy, innovation over tradition, and frank dialogue over reliance on unspoken rules. That makes their society at once liberating and maddening. They love talking, and the air of Bugtown is constantly filled with the chatter of chitinous voices, some on frequencies that a normal ear can’t hear. Even the grid plan of Bugtown is in a constant state of flux, as new buildings rise and old ones are torn down.

 

[Mogger]

William Burroughs + China Mieville = @Man Mountainman

 

[Man Mountainman]

William Burroughs + China Mieville = @Man Mountainman

Innan man börjar ge mig såna där fina komplimanger och jämföra mig med berömda heroinister osv, får man dock komma ihåg att de flesta av de här koncepten (inklusive entemo) en gång hade sitt upphov i Risings fruktbara hjärna. Jag är blott det medium som omvandlar hans idéer till ord.

 

[Mogger]

Innan man börjar ge mig såna där fina komplimanger och jämföra mig med berömda heroinister osv, får man dock komma ihåg att de flesta av de här koncepten (inklusive entemo) en gång hade sitt upphov i Risings fruktbara hjärna. Jag är blott det medium som omvandlar hans idéer till ord.

Go figure. Oavsett, det är även välformulerat och målande.

 

[Man Mountainman]

Go figure. Oavsett, det är även välformulerat och målande.

Kul att höra!

 

[Man Mountainman]

Undead
Other names. Twice-born, stiffs.

Favored magical aspect. Dark.

Though many a grieving parent, spouse, and friend have hoped for undeath as a second chance to see their loved ones, when it actually happens, they are usually disappointed. The Undead are not like us, and though they retain most memories of their previous lives, the experience of oblivion can change a person profoundly.

The Undead are dead people reanimated by the dark aspect of magic. Some are deliberately returned to life by magical rituals, while others are brought back by the unpredictable magical forces permeating Fairyland. Whatever the cause, the Undead have returned to a second existence, one that may turn out to be very different from their first one. If you choose to play one of the Undead, you must pick one of the other kinds as well: that is what your character was before being reborn.

Though the Undead were once among the living, they no longer identify with their former selves, and they refer to their reanimation as their “second birth.” Undeath changes a person, makes them cavalier about the difference between life and death, less concerned about the finality of all things. The living (a term resented by the Undead, who prefer “once-born” or “warmbloods”) strike them as unbearably sentimental and neurotic. To the living, the Undead seem callous, aloof, and insensitive, though many find their intimate relationship with death and their reckless, instrumental attitude to existence intriguing—not to say sexy.

Shunned by the living, the Undead mostly stick to their own neighborhood of Corpsetown. Built around an old graveyard, Corpsetown’s unique aesthetic reflects the morbid sensibilities of its inhabitants: houses like towering mausoleums, weeping angels standing guard by doorposts, headstone shutters covering the windows. The insides are usually cozier, because the Undead do not really want to live in crypts; they just like to give the impression that they do.

Despite the ghastly visuals, Undead society resembles nothing so much as a college campus. Many Undead have family among the living, but they are unlikely to maintain an intimate relationship with them after their second birth. The Undead can’t have children (though they can and do enjoy sex); and so, Corpestown is a city full of bachelors and bachelorettes unfettered by the responsibilities of their former lives, filled with the vigor of a second youth, and ready to party. Combine this with the Undead’s characteristic Devil-may-care temperament, and you can understand why the parties of Corpsetown have a certain reputation in Cadillac City.

Still, groceries must be bought and rents paid. Employers are understandably reluctant to re-hire formerly deceased employees, so the Undead often have a hard time finding gainful employment. Some end up starting business ventures of their own that hire exclusively from their own kind. Others find themselves compelled to seek out less scrupulous employers. The crime lords of Cadillac City have discovered that the Undead, with their physical resilience and unhinged temperaments, make for excellent enforcers.

There are two major types of Undead: revenants and ghosts. Feel free to introduce additional types of Undead in your game, like vampires, mummies, or whatever your cold, still heart desires.

Revenants
Some people call them “zombies,” but they will let you know that that’s offensive. The revenants are walking corpses, Undead brought to life in the flesh, either by magical rituals or by wild magic. When rituals are involved, it’s usually because someone wanted their loved one back and paid someone to do it, or because an Undead with a bit of magic skills wanted a new friend (or boyfriend/girlfriend). Depressingly but unsurprisingly, the young and the beautiful are overrepresented among those who get brought back this way. You know how people are.

Revenants do not age, and they have no body heat. They need to eat, same as everybody else, and they strongly prefer flesh—though the notion that the Undead engage in cannibalism is a pernicious myth (or so they say). Though they can take quite a beating and even lose a limb or two without flinching, they are not immortal: destroy their brain, and they’re gone for good. Though the magic that animates them also stops any putrefaction processes underway (again, contrary to popular belief, the revenants do not stink of rotten flesh), neither do they heal like the living do; any wounds they get must be stitched close, and those stitches will adorn their bodies until True Death claims them. Which is all the same to most revenants, who wear their stitches with pride.

 

[Swedish Chef]

Cool

 

[Man Mountainman]

Animal
Favored magical aspects: Prog, Wild.

The Animals of Cadillac City speak, walk on two legs, and wear clothes. It's difficult to generalize about the Animals, because each species has its own quirks, but as a group, they make up the reliable backbone of Cadillac City society: the moral majority, the petit-bourgeoisie, the shopkeepers, the schoolmistresses, all those upstanding, respectable, and oh-so-boring citizens who are scared out of their minds by all this fairy magic nonsense and rock’n’roll rigmarole. These are the kind of people who huddle at the feet of the Pig, hoping he will restore order and good sense and willing to sacrifice anything, including their own children, to see it happen.

But there's something phony about all of this. The thing is, an Animal is never more than one step away from their savage roots, from nature red in tooth and claw. All this bourgeois respectability is just a façade, meant to hide and repress that shameful truth. Dress a pig in a tuxedo; he’s still just a pig. The Animals envy the Elves, for whom refinement comes naturally, like breathing. For the Animals, refinement is a chore, one they put up with because everybody else does.

There are exceptions, of course. You are likely to be one of them. The youth, they see through the phony morality of their parents. Increasingly, young Animals have begun to ask themselves: what is really wrong with being an animal? Why hide your true nature?

There are many kinds of Animals, and though they all share certain common traits, as described above, they also have things that set them apart. When making your Animal character, allow yourself to be inspired by the real-world behavior of its mundane counterpart or by the traits attributed to the species by folklore and tradition (owls are wise, foxes are cunning, and so on).

Below follow descriptions of some notable Animal races in Cadillac City, but these are far from the only ones. Feel free to pick any animal species you like and make it an Animal.

Pigs
The pigs consider themselves the pinnacle of creation and the true defenders of order, morality and decency. The mayor of Cadillac City, Neville Oinkington, is a pig (indeed the Pig); and the pigs are very proud of this fact. The pigs are pillars of society: captains of industry, bankers, judges, university professors, bishops. The more uncouth cousins of the pigs, the wild boars, constitute the backbone of the city’s police force.

Rabbits
The rabbits are something of an outlier among the animals of Cadillac City. They are mostly working-class and they have their own ghetto: Bunnytown. Some of the most infamous gangsters of Cadillac City history have been rabbits.

The rabbits are looked down upon by other Animals for their boorish habits, their large families, and their violent customs. But the rabbits have more in common with their fellow Animals than it may first appear. They believe strongly in family and tradition, and their clan-based morality can be just as stifling to a young person as the middle-class respectability more commonly favored by animalkind.