City of Ten Thousand Years

Walking around the city as the light fades
(Is it all, that you remain?)
I’m thinking about each promise that I have ever made
But I know what they will never say,
I know what they will never say,
Century after century they remain ...
Idlewild, 'Century after Century'

I have been having an idea recently. As some people are aware, I like fantasy literature of a fairly specific kind. I don't much like Feist, Eddings, Jordan, Wurts, Hobb etc. I do like Leiber, Vance, Wolfe, Moorcock, Le Guin and Harrison. Anyway, I have this relatively vague and undeveloped thought of running a game that incorporates some of the ideas brought out in my favourite authors, a game with rules based on the existing Ars Magica mechanics.

Some flavour text:

It is Amec Sasleb, the City of Ten Thousand Years, the centre of civilization, learning and life. It is an edifice of the new, built on the old, built on the ancient. From the hill of the Old City the Inner Walls look down upon the Span of Kings, stretching out across the sparkling canals to the New City.

It is a city of people. They are:

• the Cypherists, keepers of the lore of the millenial machines that manufacture ceaselessly for the people. Only they know the codes that cause the great machines to function correctly.


• the thaumaturges, studying the white arts by day, and the black arts by night. They travel the Spirit World in dreams and reality, and summon chugs and sandestins, the essence creatures of the two planes, to their service in magical rites.


• the Visitors, recent arrivals from over the ocean. Silent, dispassionate traders, they emerge at dusk from their Raft Embassy to strike bargains with the mercantile leaders of Sasleb.


• the Patriarchs and their army of clergymen, on the one hand praying to a host of gods that no longer respond, on the other clinging to temporal power and always manoeuvring for more.


• the nobles of the old houses, full of pride and desperation, who send their sons to the academies to learn the secrets, in the hope of protecting their power.


• the Guilders, craftsmen who intend to use their new money to challenge the old order.


• the kobolds, servants of humans in every walk of life, midget dog-headed cowards who are no less able than humans but never seem likely to challenge their subjugation by the rest.

Gangs, supporters of different factions, roam the streets. Drunken Guildsmen assault lone nobles in the public squares. People appear and disappear mysteriously. Disputes are solved by duel more often than by law, but the law when applied is either swift and brutal, or slow, and brutal. Assassins, thieves, poisoners and food tasters are rarely out of a job.

Oh well, getting a bit bored with this expository rant. However, I am actually planning on running a game, set in an approximately 18th-century technological era, with all or some of the elements described above. If and when a little more is developed, I'll put out a call for three or four players. Drop me a line if you're interested.