Wravint: The Divided City

The city of Wravint is an architectural wonder. Built six miles north-west of Chaldin in the middle of the desert, it was dedicated as a temple-citadel to Erathis and intended to be a masterpiece to showcase the wonders of what civilisation could achieve.

The buildings are made of huge blocks of light yellow stone, each perfectly sized and shaped to the position it occupies. Water is pumped from deep underground to just below the surface, where it runs through pipes and sluices to be carefully deposited on subterranean fields, each lit by a series of crystal lenses and mirrors that tame the harsh desert sunlight to gentle glow.

For decades, Wravint was a holy site. Pilgrims of Erathis, goddess of civilisation and construction, would travel for miles just to touch the walls and marvel at the huge, intricate stone mechanisms that slid smoothly back and forth to keep the citadel alive.

The use of the past tense here might make you suspect things are no longer so peachy. You would be mostly correct.

What happened next

No-one knows entirely. Pilgrims and merchants reported that the high priesthood were working on something, but either no-one in the city knew what it was, or they weren’t talking about it. Atop the highest tower, a new machine emerged, one of dozens upon dozens of sliding stone cubes. They ranged in size from that of a horse to the size of a fingernail. Over time, they engulfed the top of the tower, and moved ceaselessly, the slight variations in their colours producing bizarre mandalas and patterns seeming at random.

Then, one day, the city was empty. The stones still went about their routines, including the bizarre arrangement around the tallest tower, but there was no-one there. Visitors after this point reported a deeply unsettling feeling, as if there were many people present but just out of sight, and many voices just at the edge of hearing. There are tales of people who entered the citadel simply vanished as soon as no-one was looking at them. Most people won’t stay there long anymore, and supposedly some have gone mad after spending too much time there.

If you visit, you’ll find that all the buildings are all clean and maintained. The fields are well-tended and overflowing with crops. The water still runs through the underground network. It’s just completely silent apart from all the people you can’t hear, and empty apart from all the people you can’t see.

The last resident

There is at least one person still remaining in the citadel, however. The few who have seen them have nicknamed them “the last resident”. They appear in a little room at the base of the tallest tower, and their appearance changes daily. They’re probably different people each time, but it’s hard to tell. If they like the look of you, or if you bring them things they want, they might tell you a little about where everyone went. They won’t tell you how it happened, however. They’re all very clear on this: no-one should try to recreate what happened here, and they’re certainly not going to help if you’re mad enough to try.

All the citizens of the city are still present. They’re just not all in the same place, and the places they are aren’t the same as where you are. Every day, all of them move to different, overlapping versions of the city. The version that any given person ends up in is extremely difficult to predict. Worse, the different versions can interact with each other in complicated ways. The only place that records who is where and when is stored in the enormous Book of Iterations, on a lectern behind the last resident.

As you can imagine, this makes things very complicated. You may or may not be able to see the shopkeeper you were talking to yesterday, depending on which places you both end up. It might also be difficult to talk to him even if you can find each other, because he’s distracted by other customers you can’t hear, and you’re queueing behind people that he can’t see.

Why the players might want to come here

Wravint is still a marvel of architectural magic, and much ancient wisdom is stored here. The last resident can provide answers to many impossible and esoteric questions, for a price. The problem is that he or she will have to find the person who has that information.

Roll a d6 for each question the last resident agrees to answer. It takes roughly that many hours to get the answer (if they can, of course), and it’ll pass through that many versions of the city. Say the players as a question about displacer beasts (an apt question in such a place). Librarian Ong is the expert on magical beasts of that nature, but he’s not in the same place as the last resident. Farmwife Sechen is in a place that overlaps with Librarian Ong and could ask him for you, but to ask her, the last resident will need to find Weaver Tolui, who can speak to Farmwife Sechen.

As you can imagine, the question and answer may get a little paraphrased or reinterpreted along the way. Feel free to have some fun with the response if the dice comes up 6.

There’s also a tonne of treasure here, if you can find it and get it out safely. It’s up to the GM whether removing an item from one place removes it from all of them, and how much the residents of the city can interact with the party. Suffice to say, the people here will be pissed if things start disappearing from their versions of the city, and being in a city full of really angry people you can’t see or hear is going to get interesting really fast.