The City Who Slumbers Not

City! I am true son of thine;

Ne’er dwelt I where great mornings shine

Around the bleating pens;

Ne’er by the rivulets I strayed,

And ne’er upon my childhood weighed

The silence of the glens.

Instead of shores where ocean beats,

I hear the ebb and flow of streets.

—Alexander Smith, 'Glasgow'

The City is an old thing, built long before living memory. It reaches out endlessly in every direction—east & west, up & and down, inward & out. Layers of new creation spring up over layers of ruin, the old consumed to make way for the present. Petty factions vie for power, each eager to further their goals and advance their standing—councils, unions, cults, and consortiums of all stripes always interfering in each other's works.

The City is alive, change its near-sole constant; a fixed map is of little use to anyone, save perhaps as something to blow your nose with. Everything in the City matters to someone; quite who might not matter yet, but they do exist. Life is everywhere, even in those bits abandoned by humanity.

By Stephan Martiniere

The Sewer-Ferry Syndicate

The Sewer-Ferry Syndicate are one of the City's most wealthy purveyors of transport, providing passage all across its lower regions. They provide financial and military backing to gondoliers and boat captains of all kinds, undercutting or threatening any potential operators who refuse to pay their dues. They often draw the ire of those who call the sewers their home—the Rat-Speakers, fungus cults, &c.—and are quick to ally themselves to those who might see the City's annals 'cleaned up', as it were.

Goal: Outcompete financial opponents, regulate all passage through the sewage network

Allies: The Plumber's Guild, Waterworks, the Sludgemarket

Enemies: Other transport suppliers, the splintered Fishing Coalition, native denizens of the sewer system

The Church of Urbis

Members of the Church of Urbis are worshippers the City itself, ever-eager to perform good deeds in Her service. They revere those who work to maintain Her various boroughs and enclaves, and often take it upon themselves to clean up messes or decorate empty spaces in Her honour. They deride other forms of faith as idolatry and heresy, including those who worship the City in the "wrong" ways. Bureaucrats, lawmen, and officers of local governments are among the Church's most common adherents.

Goal: Convert all to the light of the City's worship.
Allies: Hapsmire District Council, the Street-Sweeper's Guild
Enemies: Litterers, loiterers, other faiths (especially the Cult of Metros)

Their Majesty's College of Wizardly Study

No one quite recalls whose majesty the College was named in reference to, but the College Board's bureaucracy thinks it adds an air of grandeur. It is but one among many institutions offering tutelage in the practice of magic, each eager to draw the eye of new prospective students to extort for money and saddle with debt shape into the next generation of scholars! The College is particularly renowned among its peers for its research into spatial manipulation, though accusations remain of stolen experiments; total codswallop, of course.

Goal: Provide as much return to investors as possible education to all who desire (and can afford) it!
Allies: Very little; the academic world is one of spite, not friendship.
Enemies: Agselsior University, the Institute of Elemental Arts, Gdinsleslav Academy; the list goes on.

1d50 factions for player characters to love, hate, or owe copious amounts of money to: