Metropolis

**Metropolis**

Metropolis is humanity’s primordial home. resting atop its 7,777 hills, the city is dead, empty, and quiet. Languishing in its fateful decay, the dark, urban landscape is as menacing and frightening as it is beautiful and miraculous. From horizon to horizon, the shadowy sprawl extends outward in an endless maze of architectural wonders, serpentine streets, and grotesque constructions. Monumental buildings tower over the skyline, quiet and threatening beneath the heavens’ dark firmament. Winds wail through the streets, swirling debris and clutter along cracked pavement. Now and then, the silence is broken by the painful screech of metal beams, followed by a thunderous roar as one of the imposing buildings collapses; its stone dust settling over everything like a funeral shroud. In the many market squares, cracked monuments and statues stare into the night with eyes of stone or patinated copper. Metropolis is the paragon we subconsciously try to recreate in Earth’s cities. It is built from iron, stone, and steel, and stranger materials stolen from conquered worlds. The city has no physical borders. Metropolis stretches infinitely into the night.

Metropolis is a place of fallen splendor, a monument of the past, a tomb filled with wonders. Its crossroads are themselves magic symbols, concealing shrouded meanings. Guards and heralds lie deceased at their posts, shrunken like scorched insects. Incantations have been woven over houses and sludge-clogged channels. It is still possible to find hidden gateways and sealed vaults where the most fantastic treasures lie hidden away.

The sun never rises on the Eternal City. Time seems to have ground to a halt, or maybe the sun has burned out for good.

Metropolis is perpetually cast in blue-grey, dusky light emerging from behind the squalid clouds. A sense of great weight looms over Metropolis, as though its houses and streets themselves are forged from lead or black steel, part of the very earth itself. Its buildings rise all around the visitor, climbing steadily towards the black sky. Any traveler appears utterly insignificant, while the city itself is monumental, unyielding, and everlasting.

Metropolis' architecture lies beyond Time. Here, all major cities from every human era exist side by side, featuring buildings from ancient Rome, 18th-century Paris, London's industrial slums, and unknown arcologies from the future. Here and there, shards of our world's cities intrude into Metropolis.

Alleys, streets, and entire neighborhoods form little enclaves of light and life between the labyrinths of stone and steel.

Those who have wandered through Metropolis and returned to Elysium often feel fragmented, as though something within them has become disjointed, tweaked, or pulled taut. The somber facades, winding stairs, and terrifying Citadels recur in the wanderer's dreams. Memories from a multitude of lives long past start to surface the longer the wanderer dwells on the city.

Metropolis is a maze of alleys, stairwells, streets, avenues, and bridges, where Time and Space function differently than in Elysium. You can walk towards a destination for hours on end without ever coming closer, yet turn around a corner and suddenly find yourself in another part of the great city or be right back where you started.

Traveling through the city becomes a ritual in itself, which often appears crazy and disconcerting for the uninitiated beholder. In order to make progress, the traveler can be forced to walk exactly seven steps into an alley, retrace the seven steps, and then walk back the way they originally came.

In the marketplace with the rusty monument, they might need to switch two specific paving-stones in order to continue in a straight line. Using chalk lines on a tile wall, they can create a new entrance into a domed building. If they sleep there one night, they find themselves in a new place when they wake up.

Metropolis's inhabitants have intuitively learned how to make their way around, but only the most skilled can reach the hidden places of the city. These guides utilize dangerous shortcuts, secret melodies, chalk symbols, blood sacrifices, etchings, and portals in order to get to their destination. They can be bargained with, but they know their worth, and the careless traveler can quickly be led astray - or worse.

Metropolis is filled with many curious phenomena.

In certain locations, sounds refuse to carry, while in others voices echo from times gone by. The city's shadows are deep and cold, occasionally moving as though an invisible source of light compelled them into a new position - like the hand of an age-old sundial. When touched by certain shadows, one might perceive wondrous sensations, a curious chill, or an alien presence. Some are suffocating, as though oxygen itself has been drained, while others are an open portal to another part of the city. Some who have lain dormant in deep shadows have been eternally altered; their dreams, lives, and warmth have been devoured. Even gravity behaves strangely. Travelers can fall from a tall building, plunging towards their deaths, only to have gravity lose its bold as they drift lazily and touch down unscathed. In other places, they can plunge upwards into the clouds, as though the entire world had flipped around.

**The Machine City**

The Machine City is a complex, mechanical construction covering a large part of Metropolis. Colossal steam turbines are wired to primitive pylons, transmitting power over several kilometers. These are interspaced with pistons, gargantuan generators, luminescent reactor basins, and unfathomable apparatuses whose purpose was long-ago forgotten. Some sections resemble an imposing clockwork with gigantic cog-wheels, copper wires, and brass chains. Modern and ancient technology intermingle and various machine parts are interconnected without any apparent purpose. In control centers, innumerable regulators and computers are illuminated by flickering screens and ghostly bolograms.

Rusting metal staircases and ladders connect various sections of the complex. Open shafts run hundreds of meters up and down through the metallic infrastructure. Large areas of the Machine City are dead and silent, but in other parts the wires still spark and buzz, cogwheels revolve steadily, and pistons labor while smoke streams upwards from grating and chimneys.

Should a character spend time tinkering with the Machine City's dilapidated technology, they will discover machines able to bend Time and Space. Prisms shape light into illusions, showing a character's deepest desire. Clone tanks and DNA weavers spawn creatures both beautiful and monstrous. Anatomical charts detail the dismemberment of entire worlds. Ritual chambers with electrodes and surgical equipment open portals into other dimensions. Mirrored screens enable viewers to see throughout Time.

For millennia, the Machine City has been operated by techrons, meek creatures that repair or dismantle parts of the Machine, and occasionally construct new ones. Even though knowledge of the Machine City's exact purpose has been long lost, there are indicators that it plays some role in maintaining the Illusion. This gigantic clockwork city stretches out in all directions and might reshape reality as we know it.

**The Citadels**

Threatening and somber, built in foreign architectures with arches, staircases, and black facades, the Citadels stand higher than any other building in Metropolis, rising mile after mile through smog, haze, smoke, and clouds.

They are the nodes of the Archons' power. It is from here their consciousnesses stream throughout the dimensions, upholding the Demiurge's system of Principles.

Each Citadel is like a black giant towering over Metropolis' dead landscape.

Within sight of a Citadel, you feel as though the building itself were watching you. The nearer you get, the closer your mind comes to that of the Archon's.

It seeps into your pores, fills your consciousness, and reweaves your thoughts, urging you to become part of its Principle. for example, all who reside in Kether's Citadel are filled with deep reverence for the ruling powers and wish to take their own place in the divine hierarchy. All visitors to Binah's Citadel feel their place in the great community, craving ritual, and feeling powerless as an individual before the mighty collective. In Geburah's Citadel, everyone obeys laws, decrees, and age-old references inscribed in iron. Only in Malkuth's Citadel do explorers feel a whisper of their human divinity.

The Citadels are akin to Metropolis itself, laying largely in ruins. Their facades have been dark and dilapidated since the Great War, when the Archons almost wiped each other out after the Demiurge's disappearance. A Citadel's labyrinthine interior consists of giant halls, archives, alien landscapes, endless staircases, thrones, and abysses. the first thousand floors are a shadow of their former glory and home to the Archon's worshippers, beings who have stumbled into the Citadel out of fear or devotion. A few miles up, the Archons' true servants and heralds are encountered. The higher you climb, the deeper into the Archon you travel, as the Citadel is the Archon. Its primordial power and Principles are cast into the building's very foundation.

Four of the Citadels, belonging to the fallen Archons, are blackened, hollowed out, and dead. Parts of the facades have cracked open, their chambers echoing of emptiness, while the Archon's presence is more like an echo from the past. Isolated angels and lictors still wander in these ruins, mourning their former god-kings.

**The Oubliettes of Forgetfulness**

The Citadels are important nodes in the mechanisms of Death. The Archons feed on our souls, and after death the Citadels call to us. We follow the Principle which had the greatest hold over us, and allow ourselves to be ensnared by it. Certain souls can escape this calling, tearing themselves free, while others are caught in an eternal tug-of-war between various Principles.

Far up in the Citadels, the Archons keep souls in innumerable black chambers. There, in complete darkness, we assume the physical form we had in life. We do not need to eat, drink, sleep, or even breathe. We are alone with ourselves, free from suffering, but denied any interaction with the rest of the universe. This solitude is oppressive and suffocating. It devours all sounds, all senses. It is peaceful, yet ghastly at the same time.

Denied outward stimulation, the soul dives inwards, pulling up memories, thoughts, faiths, and convictions which are allowed to flower and protect us in extreme isolation. In this emptiness, all memories and desires bloom like colors on an empty canvas. Here, in this borderland of longing, we relive our childhoods, meet friends long dead, stumble through our first sexual attempts, and remember everything – every passion, yearning, hatred, sorrow, and failure.

Yet each time the memories are pulled out, the more difficult they are to find again. Bit by bit, they are devoured by the Archons’ presence. We are constantly forced to dig deeper inwards, surrendering more and more of ourselves until we are completely empty and depleted. It is like being stripped naked piece by piece, emptying our pockets and baring everything we ever owned. After no memories remain, we exist in nonexistence, unable to comprehend our environment or ourselves. We are devoid of everything. It is only then our soul is set free.

There are those who keep fighting, refusing to give up their memories and innermost secrets. Some are also successful in preserving pieces of themselves, and are reborn with memories from their past life.

**The Abyss**

The Archons’ ten Citadels form a circle around the Abyss, the bottomless gulf where the Demiurge’s Citadel once stood. Now there is merely a deep shaft, surrounded by sheer cliffs. Metropolis extends right up to the edge, the outermost buildings precariously balancing on the rim; occasionally, an odd house falls into the void. One of Metropolis’s oily rivers ends in a thundering waterfall here, cascading down into the darkness. Alien spores, mold, algae, and mushrooms grow along the cliff walls, making the terrain slippery and hazardous. Echoing voices resonate between the cliff walls, accompanied by wailing sounds and whispers. Flying beasts hover like scavenger birds above the Abyss, feasting on the prolific crustacz, which crawl up and down the cliffs, laying their eggs in crevices and cracks. The Abyss is several kilometers straight across, and in some places the other side remains out of sight. Narrow cliff shelves and primitive flights of steps lead down into the darkness, as well as rusty winches and wires which stretch downwards. Even with the light from above, roughly ten meters down everything turns pitch black. It is said that Astaroth himself plunged into the Abyss in search of his lost twin, while thousands of curious people have made the journey themselves to search for traces of the Demiurge.

*\*Information taken from the Kult: Divinity Lost Playbook*