User:Laithlie/sandbox

Forty years ago London, first city of the British empire, became the fifth city stolen into the Neath - a vast cavern beneath the earth. Its streets twisted into a labyrinth centered on the Echo Bazaar, who serves as the centre of commerce, and covets stories of love. While London retains a monarch, a parliament, and a mayor, the true power lies with the Masters of the Bazaar - cloaked inhuman beings who oversee domains of trade, and enact their own mysterious agendas. Even physical laws lose their supremacy beyond the sunlight; clocks and maps can no longer be trusted, rats and cats wag tongues as well as tails, and death is often a temporary inconvenience.

While the industry, poverty, and high-class society of Victorian London remain, its strict social mores have been disrupted by strange new factions roaming its streets. Hell maintains an embassy in the city and trades in souls, to the consternation of the church. Artists and academics explore new possibilities unimaginable before the fall. Urchins, criminals, and revolutionaries hide from constables in the rooftops while hidden conflicts unfold below in shadows and reflections. Across the vast ocean of the Unterzee lies the rival Khanate empire, the inpenetrable Elder Continent, and the screaming island of Polythreme, which exports clay labour to London.

Individuals mired in scandal are exiled to the Tomb Colonies, where the not-quite-dead live out their final days. Convicted criminals serve their sentence in New Newgate prison - constructed in a stalactite amongst the roof's false-stars. The temporarily deceased find themselves transported to a slow boat near the land of the dead. Those who succumb to nightmares and madness are welcomed to the Royal Bethlehem hotel or slip into a dream-realm, Parabola, which is closer to London than to surface locations, and is sometimes visible through mirrors.