The Apprentice’s Tale - Part 3: The Red Cities
over 6 years ago
– Sun, Sep 24, 2017 at 05:05:18 AM
What to say of the cities? After he bought me, my master brought me to Vance, where we lived modestly in a room above his favorite tavern. Despite his occasional protestations, I can think of no better place to have grown up. In Vance, the canals divide into a spiderweb of streams, which serve as the city’s streets. At night, a thousand colored lanterns light the channels. The city refuses to sleep. In those late hours, a handful of chits can buy almost anything, though one must watch one’s purse closely. My master would often say that Vance is a city of thieves, yet I could say the same of any other city we visited. Perhaps it was the company we kept.
The Red Cities number some two dozen. Every one is located near some source of water. Thus, most are located along the canals, as Vance is. Yet there are a few outliers. Star-ruled Zodiac is an oasis within a great bowl of rock, which somehow traps the water from the pole with no need of canals. There, it even rains. In Ziggur, a place I shall shun and curse all my days, the people are rationed water that condenses within the atmosphere processor.
In any city, the majority of construction is stone and mud brick. Sometimes, this construction can be quite shoddy…my master told the story of being thrown through a third-story wall in Chiaro.
Daily life is a struggle for all. No one is well-heeled enough to be certain where their next skin of water will come from. Every hand toils to earn food and water, whether attached to the arm of a laborer, a scribe, or a sellsword. Still, better the cities than the sort of town I grew up in.
Traveling between cities can be difficult. Hire a boat down the canals, and you risk pirates. Desert thieves say the water pirates are soft; the two missing fingers on my master’s left hand put the lie to that. Travel overland, and you risk the desert thieves, not to mention the desert itself.
Yet for all that, the journeys are worth it. Few of the city-states are truly self-sufficient, and anyone who can trade or steal commodities in one to sell in another stands to earn more than their share of water.
Ah, but how to buy that water, or the knife you need to earn it? Each city manufactures its own money, backed at some level or another by rations of food or water. Most use ceramic coins or chits, treated in some way as to challenge the skills of counterfeiters. In Vance, for example, an iridescent glaze is applied; a similar technique is used in Zodiac. Illium’s coins give off a radium glow; I’ve used one to lure a mark down an alley on a dark, cold night.
The greatest quantities of both money and resources are naturally controlled by the upper classes, our supposed betters. Different cities have different aristocracies, ranging from Vance with its nobility of merchants and thieves to the theocracy of cursed Ziggur. Yet the divide between rich and poor is razor thin, a fact of which every one of us is keenly aware. Thus, some of the wealthy are given to acts of extreme generosity, in the hopes that we will visit the same upon them should their fortunes turn.
In general, the people of Mars are given to grand gestures. We are keenly aware that we live in our planet’s last days, and so we weep and curse and love openly and with abandon.
This is true of no one more than the rogues of the Red Cities, a fraternity of which I have sometimes been a member. Gamblers curse their luck with the names of forgotten gods, while bravos seek satisfaction of one another in the streets and taverns. A slight against a hired sword can find a man with a handspan of steel protruding from his back. These rough characters inhabit the lower-class portions of town, but are sometimes hired by the upper crust as bodyguards and assassins. Many times, my master was hired by a young noble to fight a duel in his place.
The Apprentice’s Tale – Part 2: Sand and Sky
over 6 years ago
– Sat, Sep 23, 2017 at 05:12:13 AM
We live upon an old world, and you can find that in every aspect of life and death. My master often spoke of the world dying. As a child I imagined I could hear its groaning sighs on the wind. As a grown woman, that is not a fancy I have entirely left behind.
My first voyage across the desert began the day after my master bought me. Or, as I’ve come to think, bought my freedom. Clad in long desert robes and silk breathing masks, we set out beyond the borders of the square mile in which I had lived all my life. The desert, then as now, was temperate by day, frigid by night, and extended forever in all directions. Though we followed an ancient track, no one could have seen it who had not learned it by heart, master to apprentice, as it was with me.
My master often said that the sun no longer looms as large as once it did. Certainly, it no longer warms the planet with the same intensity. While the air itself is thin, it is thick with dust, creating the strange scarlet skies. As the sun rises or sets, the dust gives it an eerie blue halo. Like many, my master was superstitious about night and the color blue. Twilight lasts an hour or more at both at sunrise and sunset, and at that time you can clearly see the blue star called Earth.
Dust storms are common, and can cover huge regions. We were fortunate not to encounter any during my first desert crossing. A few times a century, a storm will rise out of Hell’s Basin and engulf the entire world. A planetwide dust storm can leave behind an epidemic of the maddened and possessed. It fell to my master sometimes to put such people to the sword.
Bodies of water are few, and rain is rare and precious. Some parts of Mars have not seen a drop in thousands of years. Sometimes I’ve seen ice clouds in the coldest, highest parts of the sky, giving it a violet hue. This ice can be harvested by intrepid flyers – one of the thousand ways Illium maintains its flowing fountains and generous water rations. Other water comes from ancient wells, or is processed from layers of ice beneath the sand. The marsh people of the old sea beds distill their water from the muck. Indeed, I have been forced to do so myself, and can say that the results are musty and unpleasant, but as life-giving as a drink from any other source
.
Yet Mars’ greatest waterworks, those which sustain our remaining societies, are the canals. The canals are the final legacy of the First Martians, miraculous channels that melt water from the polar cap and irrigate large sections of the planet. Nearly all of the Red Cities depend on the canals for water and trade, and repairs to the canal network are one of the few subjects that can bring our feuding rulers together in cooperation.
The Apprentice's Tale - Part 1: Sand and Sky
over 6 years ago
– Fri, Sep 22, 2017 at 05:00:32 AM
“I have lived a long life,” my master used to say. “Soon it will be my turn to die. And not long after, the world’s turn.” And then he would order another drink.
When my master took me in, I might as well have been an orphan. He bought me from my mother for a handful of ceramic chits laced with the radium of Illium. They were worth a dozen rations of water, but he might as well have handed her his flask of liquor directly. I know he was carrying one.
Why my master did that, I don’t know. He told me, at various times, that my father had been his brother-in-law, or that they had served together in the war. There were other stories, too. Any or all of them could have been true. I often suspect that he took me on because he pitied me.
Whatever the case, he raised me from the age of 13 as his own child.
He died three years ago.
The master was a man of wild stories. He had been across our Red World a dozen times or more. He told me of hard-fought battles, of daring deeds, of the love of princes and princesses. He talked most often when we were practicing with swords. I think he talked to teach me how to fight while distracted. He told me his stories, and he told me that one day I would have as many of my own.
From the time he adopted me until his death, he made his way as a fencing instructor and a hired bravo. He made little money this way, but always enough to keep him in his cups and to keep me well-looked-after.
This book is our world as he saw it, the world in which he lived and died. I am giving you his words as honestly as I can, and with care taken not to reveal certain indelicate secrets. I am giving you the legacy of a dying man on a dying world. I am giving you Mars.
***
I spent the first 13 years of my life in the desert. It is, as anyone will tell you, a hard life, harder even than in the cities. We were fortunate…we had an old well, an artifact of the First Martians that plunged deep into the permafrost and sucked out the water.
The desert brigands merely collected dues from our village; we were spared the seasonal ravaging that came to so many others. My master told me about the brigands. He told me that no man joins them by choice, that they are bands of outcasts driven farther away from society than any others, save perhaps the lost inhabitants of the dusk cities.
He never said whether he fought with or against them.
Without walls or buildings, the desert towns are also subject to the full fury of the elements, including the dust storms. When those great red clouds come rolling out of the desert, they bring scouring debris. Worse, though, is the dust itself, fine as smoke. It seems to suck the moisture from your tissue, and you must try desperately to hold your breath, lest you be taken by a ghost. Storms give voice and motive power to the dead, who can otherwise travel only on the wind.
Still, there are reasons to stay. Overland trade can support many a community, as can the rare operating mine. Some take the difficult path of raising meat animals, and bring in a measure of prosperity in selling them to the larger settlements. Some few are even located on oases, where vegetables can be grown and water is not quite so scarce.
Desert towns aren’t precisely hospitable, but they can be good places to go to ground. I can vouch for this from experience. More than once, my master and I were hunted across the desert by those would have our water. Some towns will hire wanderers as protectors, to ward off desert raiders, or even to enforce the law.
A few of our ill-omened expeditions into the lost places began in towns like the one I grew up in. Despite the danger ahead, I was never tempted to stay behind.
More Art! - 400+ backers/400+% funded - and next stretch goal
over 6 years ago
– Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 06:42:50 AM
Day 2 Morning update - we've passed 400 backers and 400% funding! AND - we've added more awesome art to the Cavaliers of Mars projects! This is amazing!
Let's keep the energy and enthusiasm up, because our next stretch goal is another biggie! It's time to populate the districts of Vance!
At $27,000, we'll be able to further explore Vance with "City of the Towered Tomb - Part 2: Citizens & Outsiders" - From the well-heeled nobles to dispossessed expatriates, meet the people of Vance. This will be released as a PDF that we will send to all backers who pledge for a reward tier that include a CAVALIERS OF MARS core book PDF.
So, keep spreading the word! Share the kickstarter link on your social media! Let your friends know that you're taking a trip to Mars and you want them to come along! And don't forget - you've already seen the manuscript (check out Backer update #1), so go on forums and talk about the amazing setting and mechanics!
Let's keep this party rolling! Thanks to everyone for their ongoing support!
Districts confirmed - and next goal!
over 6 years ago
– Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 10:31:16 PM
No breaks! We've just cleared another stretch goal - and the "City of the Towered Tomb - Part 1: Districts" PDF has been added to the rewards list!
If you're like me, you've been staring at the cover all day. That image, plus the other artwork we've shown samples of so far, is inspiriting and really helps set the scene. Working together, we can add even more!
At $20,000, we'll be able to substantially INCREASE the ART BUDGET, providing even more great images to get lost in.
Thanks for an amazing 12 hours! Let's keep it rolling!
