How do you view Duskwall?
I see it as sort of a combination of Gotham with ghosts, but I’ve been more focused on the city of crime angle than the haunted city angle, to the point that I haven’t actually seen a Whisper in any of the games I’ve played yet, and when I see other people post supernatural haunting things it usually feels a bit out of place to me, but of course there’s lots of ways to envision your Duskwall.
The Empire as a whole feels sort of like a lower-tech Warhammer 40k, not sure if anyone else has been getting that vibe..
I am steeped in the Thief games, Dishonored, and Warhammer, so of course that flavors my baseline. I also found “Death of a Necromancer” to be a formative book (by Martha Wells), and it sort of has a mash-up of Sherlock Holmes, corrupted fey, and Victorian seances. Plus I have a Gothic problem. So, that’s the soil my city grows in.
Supernatural stuff is only ever an amplification of realistic concerns writ large. So for me, Duskwall is an empire, so it is by its nature vampiric; it lives off the life force of the leviathans, and it is unsteady in its power. Those who live by stolen energy roil in it upon death, and the city draws in more than it can contain.
Using ghosts means using images of stolen power lingering past death. The grasping continue to grasp, the victims snatch what power they can or find their need and hate filled out in an echo of electroplasm.
Duskwall is a city that is desperately unreflective. It is rooted in the Iron Law of Distribution–them that has, gets. Like all empires, its essence is theft and injustice. If the concept of fairness got a decent hearing, power would be stripped from the powerful and given to those reduced to desperate subsistence or slave work. The living can never allow that, and they fuel their industry on the living; when the living die, then their life force is scrubbed out, or repurposed to continue fueling the empire.
No one wants real justice, because it would destroy the world they know. Instead, they want power to claim a better place in that world. Anyone who does want to restructure the status quo is a profound threat to everyone else, and bitter enemies will close ranks to destroy them.
That is the city stance, its foundation and flavor. Like a martial arts stance, it is about stability and balance, and you can go lots of directions from there. See how it informs how the nobles interact? How the criminal classes know which lines they can cross and which they can’t? How the supernatural ebbs and flows, how to use it, and what sub-plots it may best underscore?
To sum up: everyone in this city is a vampire, feeding from other vampires. The weak and the victims aren’t very good at it. The aristocrats use the law to manage harvesting the life owed them. All energy flows to the center, and when there’s a break in the draw then there is chaos until a new route is established and life again flows to the center.
The wheel goes round, but that only matters to those on the rim.
Like all empires, its essence is theft and injustice.
Andrew is wise.
I’m steeped in the victoriana of the setting. Dishonoured, Penny Dreadful, Real Life Oamaru (in New Zealand) and The Rocks (in Sydney) are all big influences for me. If you ever get a chance, visit both – they are amazing.
http://steampunkoamaru.co.nz
The low-key “steam punk” aesthetic, London-ish city, and the presence of magic can’t help but conjure Lankhmar and (especially) New Crobuzon.
And of course, the coursing electricity brings to mind Dunwall.
A big difference between Duskwall and the setting of Dishonored is if you accept John Harper ‘s statement of the Leviathans being immortal and undying. This means that while the leviathans of the Dishonored setting are being hunted out of existence… this can never happen in the Duskwall setting. The Mosquito Model of the Nobles of that city need never end, as long as they continue to harvest enough leviathan blood to render down into plasmic oils to run the Empire on.
Brad Elliott That depends how you interpret that statement. If each individual Leviathan is immortal, doesn’t mean they can’t be killed by hunters, or that they reproduce fast enough to continue supplying the empire.
Brad Elliott Tolkien’s elves and orks are immortal and undying, but still fading from the world, and entirely able to be killed by violence.
Likewise all the elves but the wolfriders in Elf Quest. Immortal doesn’t mean invulnerable.
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson and Thief is how I see it.
Chris Boyd Nikos Carcosa I think Brad is going by John’s statement that in his version of Duskwall, leviathans can’t be killed by any known means: https://plus.google.com/117646243340764868749/posts/74rT5DnBije
very cool!
I <3 this thread.
So I re-watched both modern Sherlock films last night! This has become my latest inspiration for blades 🙂
I particularly like the ‘flashback’ scenes justifying current protagonist difficulty and the whole adage of ‘announce off-screen badness’.
The costuming and architecture is wonderful too.