A Visitor's Introduction to Ziggurat

Welcome to the City-in-Amber

Thanks for taking a glance into my first ever world. This has been oscillating between a personal creation and a more consistent 5e DnD setting, but I hope there's something here that everyone can enjoy, as I really learn how to get around the WorldAnvil toolkit.

What is this setting?

The City-in-Amber is a combination of magic-punk and post apocalyptic urban fantasy, inspired by some of my favourite writers of science-fiction, fantasy and the New Weird. The city itself is a self-contained environment - a massive metropolis close in size to London or Hong Kong covered by a magical dome that shrouds the city in perpetual orange twilight. The environments are what you'd expect in an urban setting, though they are geared to ensuring survival in a closed system - large slums containing a diverse populace, magical colleges and alchemy labs creating new machines and improving the efficiency of those that exist, extensive gardens artificially induced to grow crops and vast sewage systems recycling the waste and the dead of the city above.
Much of the city itself is abandoned - the needs of rigorous population control in a closed system, combined with frequent incursions of monsters from beyond the shield have left plenty of uninhabited spaces and districts in which adventure and mystery can occur. The resources of the city are stretched, and many rely on soldiers for hire who are willing to deal with those problems that fall too far down the list of priorities for the authorities to deal with themselves. In addition, the guilds that run the city do not always see eye to eye, and tension between the groups in power can have disastrous consequences.
This is all without considering what lies in the strange Beyond through which the city travels. Creatures known as Trespassers frequently breach the outer defences, and sometimes find cracks that lie in the heart of the city through which to emerge. The ultimate goal of Ziggurat as a whole is to navigate safely through the Beyond and to reverse engineer the ritual that caused the Unmooring, that the city might find safe harbour once more. But navigation in the dark is difficult enough without constant bombardment from interdimensional storms and invasion by alien monsters, and so far, despite the attempts of the city's best and brightest, a solution has not been found. Those courageous enough to venture outside of the shield have never returned, and so those who live within the city consider themselves to be buckling down for a lot longer yet.

What am I looking at?

Ziggurat was once a prosperous trading nation at the crossroads of the world, and resembles those diverse and international cities we know of the world today. When the Unmooring occurred, the city was at the peak of it's golden age; a baroque metropolis of many different influences resembling something like Constantinople, Rome or Vienna. The technology level would be similar to that of the 16th or 17th century - early modern, prior to the widespread adoption of gunpowder. Magic is present in the world and is studied as a science - generally believed to follow consistent laws and respond to the use of various chemical compounds and accurately transcribed rituals, not unlike alchemy. Prior to the Unmooring, magic was mainly the preserve of those wealthy enough to have the time to focus on their arcane studies. After the Unmooring, however, magic became a tool to ensure survival in hostile circumstances. Once, constructs and magical mechanisms were curiosities and parlor tricks to impress the nobility. Now, there is not a part of the cities operation that has not been improved through arcane engineering, lending a light layer of techno-fantasy across the setting.
The people's of Ziggurat are just as diverse as its environs. Whilst the setting has been written with the 5th edition races in mind, Ziggurat can support whatever communities are required to be involved to allow maximum creativity. As an important commercial centre, Ziggurat could have had anyone wandering through at the time of the Unmooring, and afterwards they would have had to dedicate themselves to the city like anyone else. Whilst there is little room for discrimination and prejudice whilst battling inter-dimensional horrors, that's not to say there aren't old tensions left over from historical injustice. In addition, guilds tend to be quite strict in who they employ, so races may find themselves in greater demand to perform duties for which there advantages might prepare them.
Religion and faith is complicated. While the different races and communities have their own deities, no-one truly knows if any of them are listening out in the Beyond, and any worship towards them is done purely for tradition's sake. However, there is an extremely strong Civic Faith which pays homage to Civic Saints; important individuals from the city's past which have performed an important duty or shown to be great in a particular virtue. Power has been derived from particular dedication to the saints, so much so that there are some scholars who believe it is possible to derive some kind of power from the collective will of Ziggurat itself. Unsure what to call this power, many simply interpret it as Divine.

What is the secret of the city?

Ziggurat, as described above, will compose the majority of the world that a casual encounter would see - the bright towers, the teeming populace and the constant need for survival. But it is not THE TRUTH. There is a secret that lies at the heart of Ziggurat that, if revealed, would upend everything it's inhabitants thought to be true. The City-in-Amber should be complex enough as a setting that it can be played without THE TRUTH, engaging with themes obviously present in the player's lives. Also, I have no idea how to properly administrate a twist setting on WorldAnvil, so until then, the full extant of THE TRUTH will have to wait. Once I get the hang of this format, I'll try and put it on here in a fun and engaging way. For now, enjoy the world as it is, and just remember, THE TRUTH is always there. If you look hard enough.