Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
Septum Rivers
Welcome to Septum Rivers, where the strong come to thrive and the weak come to die. The shattered city where brutality and depravity rule the streets, where sanity burns to ash in the darkness, where monsters come out to play in the night.
Welcome to my city, baby! —Julius "The Prince" Bellwether, boss of the 1000n1 Knights
Septum Rivers: City of the Damned
So, you are that new big-shot arrival, huh? You sure don't look like much (not for this town, anyway), but hey, you were smart enough to come to me before throwing yourself face-first into the grinder, so at least we have a good start. Here, take a seat and make yourself at home. Want anything to drink? Milk maybe? Like all the good kittens? Oh, don't look at me like this, I'm just teasing.
Yeah, believe it or not, but not everyone is this big into "not dying horribly" these days. Some guys just barge in like they own the entire fucking town! All loud and bold and nasty, always so ready to spill blood and split skulls. WAY too eager to make a big name for themselves on those streets, and make it as fast as possible. Only for Septum Rivers to do what Septum Rivers does — send them back home with anus so mutilated and so gaping, that it will forevermore leak with blood and liquid humiliation. If they are lucky enough to survive at all, that is.
But you are a different type of beast, right? You did your homework and you found this little nest of mine, and now you have questions. And a lot of them, too! You want to learn more about this syphilis-riddled whore of a rotting city before you ride her. You want to learn how to survive her pestilent caresses and how to evade being crushed under her bloated bulk. But most importantly, you want to learn how to suck her fat tits dry without going mad. A wise decision indeed.
The Shattering: One Bad Night That Broke the City
So, what's the deal with Septum Rivers, anyway? Look at this urban jungle of ruination and misery, this rotting carrion of the once-proud industrial giant. Hopelessly overran by brutal gangs, crawling with fucked up cults, plagued by deviants of the worst kind imaginable — all of them locked in perpetual territorial butchery over scraps of power. Torn away from the outside world and besieged by the military, cartels, and every 3-letter agency in the book. A festering shitstain of human folly firmly squashed under the benevolent yet very heavy boot of one Desmond Donovan (yes, THAT Desmond Donovan, the lord and master of Donovan Inc megacorp). No town gets fucked this hard just like that, right?
Well, truth be told, nobody here has the faintest fucking clue what trully happened, because the first shot of that fateful night was so impossible that brains and computers choke on it alike. No, seriously, I saw some recordings, and boy oh boy, there sure is something in there, but your brain simply refuses to process it! The only people who could tell you anything (remotely) useful were the survivors from the ground zero, but every single one of them will give you a different (often contradicting) story — ranging from confusing to horrible to fantastical. So yeah, shit happened, deal with it!
What we DO know is that the Shattering took away a pretty sizable chunk of the city, right there in the middle, and then regurgitated most of it back into a bloody mess. The rest? Well, fuck us too, because we got backhanded with an earthquake so fucking strong, that my teeth won't stop chattering to this very day! Entire districts collapsed into a titanic sinkhole and got flooded by local rivers, birthing our most famous tourist hotspot: the "Night Marshes". You heard the stories about that place, right? Sure you did, otherwise you wouldn't be in Septum Rivers at all!
The Night Marshes: Where The Dark Things Howl and Bray
Would any price be too steep for your dreams to come true, child? All that I asked for in return is the flayed skin of your brother; just the skin, you don't even need to kill him. Think about it like an unwrapping of your birthday present,
that should help, yes? —Darkling known as the Wishmaster
Well, lucky you, because stories are true: the Night Marshes is where all the odd shit happens. It is a vast and terrible swamp shrouded in deep, perpetual darkness where the High Strangeness rules over man's logic and sanity. A twisted cityscape claimed by alien vegetation and toxic waters, endlessly ravaged by glitching reality and weather so unnatural that she seems to have an evil intent of her own. The entire area is also apparently WAY bigger on the inside than on the outside (wrap your brain around that one!), but nobody knows how big exactly because no expedition that went too deep ever returned. Most folks figure that there must be some "other side" in there, but what that would be is anybody's guess.
To make it worse, literal monsters come from the Night Marshes — alien beasts, crazed robots, travelers from distant worlds or alternate realities, eldritch nightmares, you name it. Many of them spooks seem confused to even be here, though, and like everything else they don't like staying in the swamp, so they try moving to the rest of the city. Yeah, that oppressive, suffocating darkness fucks with your mind and fucks with it hard, eventually driving people and animals violently insane. "Agony Syndrome" is what we call this phenomenon here.
But it is all worth it in the end because there are treasures in the Night Marshes, you see. Artifacts and technologies from across a hundred alien worlds (well, at least I like to think of them as such). Hidden inside the ruined buildings, drifting in the stinking waters, or scattered across that graveyard of human misery beneath them — seeds of wealth and power, ready to be claimed by whoever gets to them first. Throw in some alien structures as well (or even shreds of alien landscapes!) — just appearing seemingly out of nowhere, often replacing (or merging with) local landmarks — and you have nothing short of paradise for treasure hunters, researchers, and adventurers.
The Nightfall Zone: Playing With the Big Boys
Donovan's megacorp tries keeping everyone at bay from the Night Marshes — after all, he went through a lot of loops and hoops to secure the entire city even from the government — but you have fun stopping the locals from going in. Three words: not fucking happening! The black market is not only our here pride and joy, but it has become this town's very life's blood as well.
All the big players play that game. They send boats into the darkness every day to fish for the good stuff, to hunt for especially rare creatures, or to explore mysterious places. Many like raiding corporate vessels or hitting whatever research stations it managed to set up there. Others sell their services to researchers and explorers from beyond the city (or even other gangs!), getting fat by controlling the infrastructure essential for launching expeditions. Whatever it takes to have a dick even slightly bigger than the rest, so you can smack them across the face with it.
That's what the Nightfall Zone is: territories owned by the most powerful gangs and cults in Septum Rivers, scattered across districts that directly border that hellish swamp. Centers of street culture, illegal commerce, and political power. Hotspots of greatest brutality and human shitfuckery. Theater of endless power struggles over the scraps pulled from the darkness. It is the true face of Septum Rivers, and not even the corporate dogs can control it.
Powers: Becoming Less Than Human
Monster? Pfff, nah, I'm just a human. Now get up and fight,
I only took one of your legs! —Ruby Slaughter, (allegedly) just a human
With all the alien tech lying around, you can gather a lot of personal power in Septum Rivers (as long as you know what you are doing), but we also have actual super-assholes here. Two major types of them: "freakers" and "mancers".
- Freakers are guys who got "lucky" on that hyperbolic Russian roulette and came back from the Shattering with some interesting abilities, properties, or transformations. Yeah, superpowers, you could call them that. Don't start imagining guys in tights, though, because they are more of the "I got glitched with my car into a clusterfuck of flesh and metal, so now I honk loud and go fast" type. Not very glamorous, but power is power, and lording your superiority over everyone else is the way of life here in this town.
- Mancers are guys with psychic powers, although most of them consider themselves to be "mages". You see, after the Shattering, all types of mystics started coming out of the woodwork, pilgriming to the Night Marshes for one personal reason or another, and (among a legion of phony douchebags) some turned out to be legit. Who would have thought, right? Yeah, the city's now a magnet for all the weird shit, no matter from which side: from beyond the Night Marshes or from our own world! Ain't that a treat?
Beyond those two, be ready to encounter all kinds of cybered-up bastards, fucked up mutants, victims transformed by alien maladies, and many more. Often in some colorful combination of all the above. Living on those streets ain't pretty unless you grab it by the neck and make it so.
That should cover the basics of what you got yourself into, I think. If you thirst for some fat details, don't be a stranger and come on in to bother me as often as you want.
Septum Rivers has 4 Followers
Find your way!
Resources
WHO WE ARE
LEGAL
Get the news
Listen to our Podcast
Our Allies
