The Windy Road: Locus Akraisel: Imaginary Places

Locus Akraisel, The City of Lost Alleys

Made up of all of the lost or destroyed sections of the greatest cities of all time, the City of Lost Alleys is a strange amalgamation of humanity from the beginning to the end of time. It spirals out in a vast sprawl from the center point, where the tower of Babel sits. These parts of the cities are not always in the physical condition that they were destroyed, but resemble a mixed of the reality and the idealized memory of the city in question.

There are even parts of the City that are from mythical or fantastic cities. Especially those that have had significant importance in human culture at some point, but then lose they're prominence, an aspect of that city that has been glossed over. Examples include the kitchens of Camelot, or the tea houses of Atlantis.

Locus Akraisel is a portrait of an amalgamation of exemplary - and therefore fantastic -- cities, lost in a space-time limbo where bazaars and caravan routes appear side by side with skyscrapers and traffic jams. The cities themselves are fascinating. This City is of the exemplary, the oneiric, and the surreal. It is of the historical and the Mythic, side-by-side, as one.

The City of Lost Alleys can be a vast ocean in which survival is not certain. If you look from a distance, you observe a sea of roofs, and have no more knowledge of the dark streams of people than of the denizens of some unknown ocean. From this perspective the city is always a heaving and restless place, with its own torrents and billows, its foam and spray. The sound of its streets is like the murmur from a sea shell and in the great fogs of the past the citizens could believe themselves to be lying on the floor of the ocean. Even amid all the lights it may simply be the ocean bottom, among the luminous, gliding fishes. This city is a place of silence and mysterious depths.

Yet, like the sea the City refuses nobody. Those who venture upon its currents looking for prosperity or fame will find them, and often much more than they considered.

Locus Akraisel is the city itself as sacred place with its own joyful and sorrowful mysteries.

Chancel Attributes

Accessibility: Convenient (+2)

Locus Akraisel is accessible from every city on the Realm of Earth, and some beyond.

Accessibility: Open (-2)

Unfortunately, these entry ways are open and easily findable.

Avara: Banes (-1)

Semiotic Liberation League: A league of terrorist semioticians, who attempt to overthrow the powers that be by crafting words and images so powerful that they drive viewers mad, or even kill them.

Avara: Banes (-1)

The dérive, or drift, is locomotion without a goal, in which one or more persons drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there'. The dérive is 'playful creation' of all human relationships taken to far extremes. The derive arrives unexpectedly and can claim any inhabitant of the Chancel (except the Powers and their anchors).

Magical Inhabitants, Many, Can be Anchored (+4)

The people of Locus Akriasel, drawn from throughout time and space, are closer to the ideal state of activity, are capable of pushing the limits. Their actions are all inherently archetypical. Whatever someone does with skill and dedication (and love) has power. All inhabitants of the Chancel can be made into Anchors.

Normal Magic (+3)

Alchemy (+1)

Magics are practiced in the Chancel.

Deviant Technology (-1)

The indigenous technology of Locus Akriasel involves crystals and musical tones and strange energy sources and does not have power beyond the Chancel. Anything created inside the Chancel will usually utilize this.

Weird Science: Spirit Medicine (+1)

Strange sciences and philosophies involving spiritual integrity, the healing of the spirit, and matching body to spirit exist. This technology can function outside of the Chancel.

Weird Science: Psychogeography (+1)

The study of the effects of geographical settings, consciously managed or not, acting directly on the mood and behavior of the individual. This is ultra-Feng-Shui and can be used anywhere in Creation.

The Garden of Forking Paths (+5)

A museum within a flowered labyrinth, in and through, and around the great Tower of Babel in the center of the Chancel. The Garden leads to the past, other realms and even other chancels. One must install something from that place and time in the Museum amongst the labyrinth. Activation cost is 4 RMP -[value of item emplaced]. Most items slowly loose their efficiency in the Garden.

Borderguard, 2 levels w/ 4 penetration (+10)

The inhabitants, the walls and the city streets are all loyal to their Imperator. Whispers of intruders will make their way to thePowers no matter where they are in the Chancel. They City of Lost Alley's is not powerful enough to fit back (yet) in any but the weakest ways. But that is often enough.

Enemy Gateway (-4)

The nature of Locus Akriasel I such that cities, even other chancels, offer easy egress. This had lead to a two-way gateway being formed somewhere in the Chancel to an Enemy Chancel.

Erus: Warden (-3)

The architect Antonio Gaudí Y Cornet has been brought back to life/restored to flesh/reincarnated by Akriasel and set free upon the City of Lost Alleys and the given a degree of power for some enigmatic purpose. Gaudi seeks to continue his life's architectural work of Gaudí, with it's remarkable range of forms, textures, and polychromy and the free, expressive way in which these elements of his art seem to be composed. Gaudi is preoccupied by his work, which is slow as he relies on local workers. It can cause problems with the Power's own plans.