Article Braintstorm: Planar Metropoli

Musings on Axis. I think this manages to capture the sort of mood I want the city to have:

Though Mechanus claims you as its own, I know what lies in your heart and it beats in time with the seasons of Arborea. – poet laureate, Amphine del Or’zho

I recall Axis. Fair Axis. The Spiral City. I remember…I had a room on the outer road, facing the rest of the plane. I awoke every morning to the same site outside my window, despite the fact that the city was always turning. And every morning, I walked down 38 steps to the side door of a café that could have been exchanged for any other such café in the city and nobody would have noticed the difference because there was none.

Every time I entered, I sat at the second table to the left of the door. It was always empty, because I hadn’t yet arrived to fill it. Every morning, the plump halfling woman would come to my table and ask me what I wanted, and every morning, I would ask for the same thing: a sliced apple – 10 wedges, bread – 3 slices, butter, water. Fifteen steps took her back to the counter to retrieve my food. And 15 steps brought her back. I thanked her in the same tone of voice I always thanked her in and paid my five copper...

And that’s when the spell of the city was always first broken for the day, you see. It was the coins. They were never the same. And it was always after that that I started listening to the road noises outside. Everything else about the city was so regimented, so ordered, but that road. That road was magical. It was a breath of chaos in a city and plane whose entire existence was strictly controlled. And I gulped it in like I was drowning.

Once the spell was broken, that’s when the poetry always came.

(I'm writing this cold, so consider this a first draft. Also, if you'd prefer to keep this as a brainstorming thread, I could start a new one devoted to developing Axis)

The Three Stages of Growth for Axis

Stage 1: Finding the spiral and the building of the first observatory

Originally, Axis was nothing more than a long spiral road leading up along an axle between two cogs. There was an odd brief dip in the center as the road's gravity shifted, but otherwise, there was nothing particularly significant about the location.

That is, nothing until a Guvner named Suntest Celban, passing along the road paused at the dip briefly and looked up to see the whole of Mechanus turning above her head. Since the area surrounding the connecting axel was clear of any major gears or cogs, she could see a long distance into the plane. Seemingly hundreds of miles in some instances. Though she had a schedule to keep, she resolved to return to the spot and set up an observatory.

Many months later, after going through the proper bureaucratic channels and making sound arguments in front of a number of different advisory and financial panels, Suntest had a work order for building an observatory at the location, blueprints and a caravan's worth of building material (in this case, Baatorian red sandstone). She returned to the site post haste and a scant six months later - as measured by a single rotation of the axle - the observatory was built, and the beginnings of a small settlement began to form around the structure.

Stage 2: The city grows, a brief war with the Modrons and the drawing up of a town charter

Time went on and as the needs of the town grew, a number of off-plane caravans started passing through to accomodate them. Warehouses were organized and built, and taverns along the road were established. The observatory that Suntest had originally built started expanding into a full fledged school devoted to studying Mechanus.

A number of years into the growth of Axis, a group of gnomes, blueprints and designs in hand, arrived with the intent of "...speeding up the economic growth of the city by expanding its vertical transport capacities!" Tenative approval was granted, pending further study and the gnomes set to work, building a basic yet functional cargo lift that utilized the rotation of the city-axle to do most of the lifting work.

It was about this same time that the popuation of Axis started to experience a surge, as more and more people sought out the city and it's wonderous vantage point of the plane. This surge included a number of more chaotically inclined individuals who simply enjoyed being able to get lost in a crowd. As a result, the city experienced a fair amount of confusion as drifters started arriving and setting up a squatter's city at either end of the axle along the cogs.

Before too long, a small team of modrons arrived and disassembled the squatter city before moving further up along the roadway to tear down the other structures that had been built. Though people tried to plead and argue with the Modrons, they were soundly ignored. Before too long, violence erupted as people tried to stop the Modron team from destroying their livelihood.

The first team was destroyed, and the city residents knew that it wouldn't be long before more would arrive to finish tearing down the rest of the city. An impromptu barricade was built by the townsfolk along the base of the spiral road on either side of the city, and runners were sent out into the planes to recruit defenders for the town.

It was scant hours before the arrival of a force of armed Modrons, that small militia of planars agreed to help the city out. A Guvner city representative was sent out to meet with the Modrons to see if a settlement could be reached. He returned unsuccessful and told the city to prepare to defend itself. A quarter-rotation later, the Modrons launched their attack from both sides of the axle.

Long story short, the Modrons attacked three times in as many days, each time the force was larger than the previous and were repeled three times, with ever more casualities on both sides. On the third occasion, a meeting was arranged between the Octon in charge of the sector that Axis found itself in, the head of the now University of Axis and the acting mayor of the city.

According to the Octon, the city was being attacked because it was seen as a threat to the local order. Its deconstruction and removal of all traces was necessary to maintain the integrity of the sector. The Guvner explained about the importance of the university in furthering the understanding of Mechanus and the mayor explained about the economic importance of the city. Together, the three of them worked out an agreement for the city. It would be allowed to exist so long as it was policed by the Modrons, who would keep watch to ensure that all chaotic elements would be reduced or outright eliminated.

Over the next week, after meeting with various town representative to ensure their interests were protected, a formal agreement and town charter was worked out for the newly recognized city of Axis. A city barracks was constructed to house the town's new police force. A series of town edicts was posted throughout the city, detailing new laws for punishable behavior. Life in Axis more or less settled back down into normalcy once more.

Stage 3: Axis is redesigned, the arrival of the Sensates and the growth of the arts within the city

The new policies enacted by the Modrons in the city formalized life in Axis more than anything else ever had. Prior to drafting of the city charter and the arrival of the police force, the only aspect of the city that the Guvner's concerned themselves with was running the university. They saw the rest of the city that had grown up as mere happenstance and mostly ignored what happened outside their walls.

Now, they integrated themselves into the planning of the city, laying out city roads and new buildings according to new city plans that had been drafted up. This, of course, meant that the older buildings in the city had to be removed. Under the direction of a series of city planning officials, teams of Modrons went about deconstructing then rebuilding the city with utter precision.

The University claimed the ring about the center of the axle as their own, and it saw expansion to its current dimensions during this time. The outside edge, being the main trade road through the city, saw the largest and most expansive buildings. Closer to the axle, buildings became more utilitarian. City walls were constructed across the ramp at either end of the axle, as well as at one additional point approximately 2/3rds of the way up the ramp, each one demarcating a new area of the city. Beyond the ramp gates, buildings were constructed to the edge of the cog and no further.

It was shortly after the work crews went about restructuring Axis that the city took on the sometimes surreal quality that marked it as belonging to Mechanus: The citizens started developing unshakable routines. For those who stayed in the city for longer than a week, days would start blending together. Outside of the spiral road, buildings look identical, the inhabitents are virtually interchangable as their schedules were indistingushable from one another. A newly placed planar citizen could find whole months of their life slipping away without them being fully away, though a visit to the main road would draw most people out of the routine. Oddly, this effect seems to extend to all people who might call the city home.

The peculiar dichotomy between the wonderous and unique vista the city afforded visitors and how quickly such a view became routine attracted the attention of a small number of curious Sensates. Eager for such a different experience, a fair number have decended on the city, coming and going as their whims carried them. Over time, they developed a practice of creating something unique when one snapped out of the city's trance. A piece of poetry or a sketch using whatever was at hand. Sometimes a song would be sung, or they would give an impromptu performance. Often times, such a bubbling up of creativity would pull others out and prompt them to create something.

Such practices were originally frowned upon by the Modrons when they first started happening. When they started happening with an ever greater frequency, the Modrons started issuing fines to the offenders and eventually would-be artists started being arrested for public indecency and chaotic behavior, behaviors that were now outlawed. Like what happens when most things are made illegal, the practice was moved underground. These days in the city, behind closed doors and by special invitation only, theater is performed, artwork is displayed and music is played. In the Axis city jail, a number of artists and musicians are held, awaiting trial or exile from the city.

We should definitely incorporate Tso if we're adding a slave trade to Axis, because Tso are flipping awesome.

Well, I originally had the shaft as being about six miles long. The shaft itself is probably rather substantial, so I'm thinking it's somewhere on the order of 2/5ths of a mile in diameter (about 2000 or so feet) The spiral road is probably out a fair ways from the shaft, on the order of about a mile, and is somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 feet wide.

Since we're dealing with a spiral road and not a straight one, the distance is going to be longer than just 6 miles. I'm guessing it'd be somewhere around 15-18 miles. That allows a decently shallow incline that wouldn't be crazy to climb and would make it about a 5-6 hour walk on foot. The addition of stairs and elevators would make that shorter.

The main road would be anchored to the shaft by a series of moornings, and if you looked up/down from one side or the other, you'd see them arranged in an X pattern. Each one is, say, 200 feet wide and has been modified to be a road. Each one is lined on either side by blocks of buildings that stretch from one mooring to the mooring directly above it in the X. The bulk of these blocks are made up of apartments. At the appropriate level, bridges stretch out from one block to the mooring of another.

The structures closest to the mooring road house businesses or other services. The density of businesses is denser the closer you get to the spiral (three up/down layers deep close to the main road and dwindling to just one layer close to the shaft.

Along the main road itself, the buildings become more elaborate. The entire outward spiral is filled with structures of one kind or another, virtually enclosing the city. Most of the outward facing buildings have windows so folks can look outwards onto Mechanus.

The University takes up the middle section, having been build up along the shaft itself (the only point along the entire stretch where the gravity pulls towards the axle). The observatory is being built along the outside of the enclosed city, right at the mid-point. Elaborate gears and other mechanisms are being constructed to ensure that the observatory can stay stationary while the city turns, and that it can rotate so that any view can be had.

Is there anything I'm missing?