Nexus

 

In a Nutshell

 

A great city-state in turmoil, this once-vibrant city has been hit by two major calamaties in the year 771r, and is currently adjusting to bridge its previous role as foremost economic power in the East and its current role as a refugee camp and disaster zone.

 

Demographics

• About the same size as: City of New York, including Manhatten Island
• Population: 870 000 and falling
• Magnitude: 16
• Transportation: Three river junction and center of a vast overland trade network

 

 

 

 

 

Luminaries

 

ICA-ICC and conflict is encouraged in Nexus, but staff should be present to witness any scene that escalates to possible death for either side.

 

• The Council of Entities, Legislative council overseeing matters pertaining to the governance of Nexus
  • August Master 'Squirming Sausage Tamer' (Lo Xan)
• The Emissary, figure of myth and legend, both a symbol of authority and enforcement arm of the Council
• Gods
  • God of Nexus trade, Loach of Many Coin Rivers 
  • City Mother of Nexus, Lice of Silver

• Exalts
  • Lunar Trickster, Seven Devils Clever

 

Culture

 

Enhancing commerce, •••

Individual freedoms, •

Oligarchy, ••

 

Economy

 

• Production: Imported Iron is turned into steel in the Nighthammer district, and is shipped Creation-wide.  Nexus is currently the premiere producer of high-grade steel in Creation in volume and quality.  Many other side-industries thrive off this primary industrial economy.  Goods have to be imported to support the workers, raw materials for the forges, and currently all other production has been effectively disrupted due to the Mist.  Firewander is still producing high-grade drugs in nominal quantities.
• Standard of Living: The most extreme standards of living are in Nexus, more so than any other place in Creation.  Both the poorest and the richest call Nexus their home.  Everything is for sale, and if you cannot afford it, you cannot have it.  Health, housing, food, education, there is no support provided for an individual by anyone for free.  No taxes means no centralized support system, and the Oligarchs who call Nexus home don't want to share unless they're getting the better deal out of the exchange.
• Throughput: Until recently, the most active city in Creation for trade.  Currently, A lot is being imported as material is needed to reconstruct Nexus in its new form, however that will take shape.  Refugees are fleeing in droves, reducing the population quickly.
• Stability: The biggest free market in Creation has been kicked hard twice in the past year, and is groaning in protest.  The individuals who make up the market forces in Nexus are looking out for themselves, and this slows down recovery even as other nations lend a hand. 

 

Geomancy

 

The six tombs of nexus have their own dedicated level-5 Manse working to keep their defenses running, and there are numerous lesser Manses in the area.  The Six Tombs of Nexus are:

• The Tomb of Candle-Eyed Skulls (Sentinal's Hill)
• The Tomb of Red-Hot Iron (Nighthammer, used as primary energy source for forges and smelters)
• Tomb of Keening Spirits (Firewander)
• Tomb of Singing Blades (Bastion)
• Tomb of Ice (Nexus)
• Tomb of Night (Nexus)

 

Government

• Oligarchy, Plutocracy

• Management: Free-market competition at its most hectic.  Even in the throes of a calamity, people are trying to find the best way to make a fast obol off of other's misfortune.  The Council oversees and profits from all transactions either directly or indirectly through their vested interests.  The Guild is barely more than a well-connected tradehouse at this point, and has been depleting its owed favours and markers to try to maintain the visage of dominance.  The Council issues civilities that promote a positive trading envirnment for the rich, stripping the rights of the poor and maximize tax revenues for the Council of Entities.

• Prudence: The Council of Entities, and their rich trading partners represented in the various trade houses scattered throughout Nexus and Bastion, run the city for all intents and purposes.  All information is collated and assessed by the council, and decisions and Civilities are the result.  If the Council mysteriously disappeared, chaos would reign until they were replaced, most likely by the Emissary himself.

• Integrity: In a city that has corruption as a legitimate form of commerce?  This place has none, save the Dogma.

 

Military

• Strength Fifteen mercenary companies operate out of Nexus, with a total of 20 000 combatants between them of varying quality, training, equipment and leadership.  A significant portion of them are on assignment outside the city at any given time.  Currently, there is a scheme in place to artificially inflate some mercenary forces and send them abroad to deplete the number of poor in the city, as a way of managing class tensions.
• Dexterity No overall leadership to the companies, save possibly sorcerous control, could weld these units together into an effective fighting unit able to match a similarily numbered force.  Each company is specialized towards its task, and when confronted with a situation matching its specialization, they do rather well.  Otherwise, they would appear to be disorganized at best.
• Militia The Emissary has proven to be the only force so far necessary to act as a militia. 

 

The Curse of Nexus

 

 

Nexus is crippled.  Thousands leave in hurried, frightened droves as blackish clouds and an everpresent mist seeps through the city.  A being of tremendous force drove himself to the heart of the city and there laid the Curse of Unyielding Mist, a devastating and permanent damnation of the city that only may be revoked if its terrible conditions are met.  Rumors and fearmongering sprout up around nearby nations, as some power has again unlocked the magic of the Curse, and now no nation is safe.  The curse was laid in the Season of Fire, RY 771, and after following the devastation of the Guild Bank, has left the city reeling.  (Log Pending)

 

Shortly therafter, the counciler Squirming Sausage Tamer moved to protect residences of those who wished to remain within the mist. Furthermore, an ally of the Council of Entities known as 'Amat the Blessed Desert' has created a nigh-infinite source of food somewhere within the mist. This spawning pit teems with a seemingly infinite supply of nutricious locusts which are amongst some of the tastiest delicacies now available in the city. 'Bugfood' (as the commoners are beginning to know it) is cheap and plentiful, and it is known that consuming this food exlusively for several weeks eventually provides a being with the ability to see within the mist and endure it without difficulty (amongst other fantastical benefits). Accordingly, Bugfood is very popular with those who seek to either reclaim the mist or do business within it. Sausage Tamer seems motivated by a desire to distribute Bugfood without consideration of profit or depleting supply. Most who consume Bugfood have become members of the cult of Amat.

 

(The particular oath required of the Emissary is not widely known.  For those who do discover it and try to find a loophole, it has 17 successes / Linguistics 4 behind it that say 'No readily available loopholes exist')

 

Many believe that recovery is possible, and the River Treaty came into effect, forcing Great Forks and Lookshy to extend aid.  Orduin was seen constructing a refugee camp earlier this month to the East of Nexus proper. 

• The Central records of Nexus were moved in a rush. An enterprising individual managed to hijack some of the more important records and is 'safekeeping' them until someone compensates them for their safekeeping efforts.
• Massive looting took place, with the poor becoming rich while others losing everything overnight as the migration occurred. 'Mist' sales happened, as refugees left with little or nothing trying to get away from the cloying Curse. Most could not take it all with them, and settled for a fraction of their possession's value.
• The Council is fracturing, seeing this great upheaval as a time to advance their personal agendas. Many emergency Civilities were passed to smooth the flow of refugees out and the transition of governance, reducing the most e gregarious acts of wanton destruction and loss.
• The Mist itself is now a point of smuggling. The Yu-Shan gate officially closed, and secretly kept running, with an illusion in place. Others, who want to do business without being seen, move through here unobserved, and all sorts of unsavory practices have sprung up. It resembles something of a free-fire zone, since no commerce of volume is conducted here. Some, too desperate or poor to move, were mutated by the mist, and eked out a living. Some, assuming the power of Nexus, and thus the Emissary, broken, tried a hand at raiding, only to collapse and be turned into patches of perfectly edible fungi.
• Nighthammer is mostly unaffected, so Nexus steelworks goes on, with most of their supplies being shipped in through the docks, including food. Nexus steel is still being produced, and while there was a brief hoarding, the continued production from Nighthammer merely meant that the hoarding greater-than-average sales.
• Bastion, home of the elite and/or wealthy, also largely unaffected, is teeming with activity. Individuals have moved on their own initiative to co-opt various efforts to make a quick obol. A road is suggested be built to connect Nighthammer and Bastion to the main overland trade routes, which of course will be tolled. Fearing resentment from the poor, who were most affected, many have spontaneously hired them as militia, neighbourhood watch and mercenary forces and sent them off overland to forestall any kind of uprising against the rich. Far from home, they are left to their own devices. Banditry is common. Others desire that the section of their district facing the Mist be walled from it.
• Firewander is still benefitting from Prince of Revel's last gift to the district, the drug-producing jungle monolith, which took on many refugees until they were full to the gills. Hired mercenaries maintained order, barely, and now are sternly turning folk away with no business there.

 

Collapse of the Guild Bank

 

In the wake of the RY 770 Water collapse of the Guild Bank, surreptitiously engineered by Shadowed Fortune, the social structure of Nexus has been irrevocably shaken. The police of Nexus have always been mercenary companies hired by the wealthy upper class of Nexus to patrol the streets and maintain order. With the collapse of the Guild Bank, many of the wealthy upper class of Nexus lost their supply of funds and were unable to pay the mercenaries, or were forced to pay them with silver cash during a month-long period when the market value of silver cash was dropping like a stone.

 

As a result, there were problems.

• In Nexus District, the Emissary himself quelled rioting with a rain of white fire that burned only flesh, mutilating and incinerating mercenaries who were looting the marketplaces. None shall obstruct trade. No one shall commit wanton violence. In the wake of that, the beleagred marketplaces re-opened under the silent observation of the Emissary itself, ensuring orderly conduct and preventing a total collapse of trade
• In Nighthammer District, the Nighthammer Iron League proved their mettle, enforcing a rigid curfew and brutal justice over anyone who sought to take advantage of the increasing social turmoil to engage in looting. The organization grows from a mercenary company to a wholesale local government in Nighthammer, ensuring order through the time-honored tradition of publically and atrociously executing scofflaws until people stop fucking around. Though they do not report directly to the Council of Entities, neither do they claim any of their authority, and so the Emissary has refrained from burning them to the ground.
• In Five Bridges - formerly Cinnabar - mining operations ground to a halt at first, as payment for the workers dried up. As urban anarchy grew more widespread, many took refuge in the mines, praying for deliverance and safety. Many died of hunger, but others were left gifts of food by mysterious forces when they slept.
• In Bastion, the wealthy few found their funds drying up. At first, many attempted to pay their mercenary guards on credit. This was poorly received, and as the rioting and looting began, savaging the once handsome estates of Bastion, the more canny of the wealthy few began wholesale liquidation of their assets in to the ownership of the cannier mercenary companies. As a result, though much of Bastion was ransacked and many wealthy families ruined, many stately homes remain intact and strong - though they are stripped wholly bare of valuable art, fine wines, and other luxuries that could be used to barter protection from the Hooded Executioners. This winnowing of the oligarchy has separated the weak from the strong, and the nobles of Nexus have returned somewhat to their merciless, hard-bitten money-grubbing roots.
• In Sentinel Hill, the ethnic neighborhoods barricaded themselves off from the rest of the city and quietly attempted to wait out the chaos. They were not completely successful, in that food shortages within them led to tiny civil wars within them, brother against brother and one in three dying.
• In Firewander, the coiling jungle itself seemed inclined to protect those within it, still shaped by echoes of Sura's mad benevolence. Medicine and rare herbs, still as valuable as cash, are parleyed directly to greedy mercenaries at losing rates to maintain order, and many bandits are buried in the roots of the trees, their livers devoured by the hungry jungle to make brighter flowers.

 

Sun Worship has recently become the major religion amongst the poor and many people have banded together to improve thier lots in Sol's name.

 

Locations in Nexus

• Nexus District
  • The Tomb of Ice
  • The Tomb of Night
  • Guild Headquarters
  • The Little Market
• Nighthammer District
  • University of Nexus
  • Lookshy-town
  • The Tomb of Red-Hot Iron
  • The Garden of One Hundred Dreamt-of Sighs
• Five Bridges
• Bastion District
  • School of Philosophy
  • The Bath of Luminkai
  • The Tomb of Singing Blades
  • Saintly Chapel
• Sentinel's Hill
  • Council Tower
  • The Tomb of Candle-Eyed Skulls
• Firewander District
  • The Wyld Zone
  • The Tomb of Keening Spirits
  • Guo Chun's Drinks
  • The Silver Louse
• Gates of Nexus
• Sky District

 

Locations near Nexus

• Stones of Exile
• Borderstones
• The Yellow River Dam