truemane
2022-07-21, 10:25 PM
[M20] FAR FROM ANY ROAD
PART ONE: A Mirror, Darkly
Haduin sat all day in the street outside the gates of the temple.
His student called out, 'Master, master why don't you enter?'
Haduin looked up, confused. "Enter? It is you who is outside."
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/941056535935729727/999868447506845757/Jacksonville.01.PNG]
The city of Jacksonville, Florida is a very strange place.
First of all, it is huge, but empty. It is the largest city in North America by a fair margin, the population doesn't even break the top ten. The result is a vast creeping tumour of a city sprawling into the forest and swamps without end but, once outside the downtown core, it seems almost entirely like windswept space with isolated pockets of humanity dotted here and there.
Second, it is chaotic: a patchwork of neighbourhoods, suburbs, and townships swept up and annexed into a single ill-fitting and dysfunctional amalgamation of communities.
Third, it is divided and insular. The downtown core contains almost all of the industry of the commerce, and yet is rife with poverty and crime. The wealthy rural communities provide the tax base that is overwhelmingly consumed by the urban centre.
Fourth, beneath the mundane surface, it is a place of deep magic, of powerful convictions, and of multiple competing paradigms that can flip and shift from block to block, street to street, sometimes house to house. There are magical communities in Jacksonville dating from before colonization, and there are cabals that rolled into town last year, all of them deeply separated by tradition and paradigm and geography.
Jacksonville is placid on the surface, but the air is always prickling with tension. Every sunny day is pregnant with menace like a viper sunning itself on a rock. Every cool summer breeze carries the hint of blood and fear. There always seems to be screams, gunshots, crashes, drifting through the air from far far away.
Picture this now: a lonely street lined with vacant lots and shuttered storefronts, meandering through the deepest reaches of Jacksonville where the sprawl breaks against the dark verdant wedge of bayou between Oakleaf and Middleberg. It is the dog days of summer and the heat chokes the city in a suffocating fog. The street is dark and empty in the wee hours of the morning. But in that darkness: a bloom of light. Set back from the road, atop a small hill, a ragged sagging dive bar. It is a sad beacon in an ocean of silence. A bare half-dozen patrons sit within, nursing drinks and greasy foods in sullen silence.
All of creation brims with wonder. It is both the triumph and the tragedy and of the human experience that we blind ourselves to it with the mundanity of the everyday. These six or seven men are about to stand witness to something wondrous, something so unprecedented it is basically impossible.
Like a million dice all coming up six, like a third-stringer pitching back-to-back no-hitters for a week, like someone winning every lottery in the state on the same day, like a million monkeys sitting down to a million typewriters and each and every of them instantly producing the complete works of Shakespeare.
They will see but they will not understand. They will know but they will not learn.
With the creak of wood long-since swollen out of its frame, the door opens...
It took a long, long time to get here, but welcome to Far From Any Road! In your opening post, please let us know what it looked like when you were waylaid and trapped here. Where you were headed, why it was important, what coincidences dropped you here. You may, if you wish, have already tried and failed to leave, but this scene is assumed to be the moment when you realized you're trapped, looked up, and this was seemingly the only light for miles.
A note on the setting: while I will be keeping the main features intact, I plan to playing very fast and loose with the specific layout and geography of Jacksonville, to make the story what we need. Feel free to play equally fast and loose when you need to.
Any questions, you know where I am.
PART ONE: A Mirror, Darkly
Haduin sat all day in the street outside the gates of the temple.
His student called out, 'Master, master why don't you enter?'
Haduin looked up, confused. "Enter? It is you who is outside."
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/941056535935729727/999868447506845757/Jacksonville.01.PNG]
The city of Jacksonville, Florida is a very strange place.
First of all, it is huge, but empty. It is the largest city in North America by a fair margin, the population doesn't even break the top ten. The result is a vast creeping tumour of a city sprawling into the forest and swamps without end but, once outside the downtown core, it seems almost entirely like windswept space with isolated pockets of humanity dotted here and there.
Second, it is chaotic: a patchwork of neighbourhoods, suburbs, and townships swept up and annexed into a single ill-fitting and dysfunctional amalgamation of communities.
Third, it is divided and insular. The downtown core contains almost all of the industry of the commerce, and yet is rife with poverty and crime. The wealthy rural communities provide the tax base that is overwhelmingly consumed by the urban centre.
Fourth, beneath the mundane surface, it is a place of deep magic, of powerful convictions, and of multiple competing paradigms that can flip and shift from block to block, street to street, sometimes house to house. There are magical communities in Jacksonville dating from before colonization, and there are cabals that rolled into town last year, all of them deeply separated by tradition and paradigm and geography.
Jacksonville is placid on the surface, but the air is always prickling with tension. Every sunny day is pregnant with menace like a viper sunning itself on a rock. Every cool summer breeze carries the hint of blood and fear. There always seems to be screams, gunshots, crashes, drifting through the air from far far away.
Picture this now: a lonely street lined with vacant lots and shuttered storefronts, meandering through the deepest reaches of Jacksonville where the sprawl breaks against the dark verdant wedge of bayou between Oakleaf and Middleberg. It is the dog days of summer and the heat chokes the city in a suffocating fog. The street is dark and empty in the wee hours of the morning. But in that darkness: a bloom of light. Set back from the road, atop a small hill, a ragged sagging dive bar. It is a sad beacon in an ocean of silence. A bare half-dozen patrons sit within, nursing drinks and greasy foods in sullen silence.
All of creation brims with wonder. It is both the triumph and the tragedy and of the human experience that we blind ourselves to it with the mundanity of the everyday. These six or seven men are about to stand witness to something wondrous, something so unprecedented it is basically impossible.
Like a million dice all coming up six, like a third-stringer pitching back-to-back no-hitters for a week, like someone winning every lottery in the state on the same day, like a million monkeys sitting down to a million typewriters and each and every of them instantly producing the complete works of Shakespeare.
They will see but they will not understand. They will know but they will not learn.
With the creak of wood long-since swollen out of its frame, the door opens...
It took a long, long time to get here, but welcome to Far From Any Road! In your opening post, please let us know what it looked like when you were waylaid and trapped here. Where you were headed, why it was important, what coincidences dropped you here. You may, if you wish, have already tried and failed to leave, but this scene is assumed to be the moment when you realized you're trapped, looked up, and this was seemingly the only light for miles.
A note on the setting: while I will be keeping the main features intact, I plan to playing very fast and loose with the specific layout and geography of Jacksonville, to make the story what we need. Feel free to play equally fast and loose when you need to.
Any questions, you know where I am.