The Abyss
Locations
“The City” –
A place inhabited by refugees. None of these are Awake,
and will be content to live their lives in the darkened Station for as
long as they can. The City takes up the two topmost levels of the
Abyss, and laid out in a spiral around the Abyss, itself. There are no
waterways in The City, but there are a number of public pools, bath-
rooms and water rooms. Ships can actually dock into the Abyss
through the bottom-most level. Those who live in The City are used
to strangers coming in on ships, and tend to be very taciturn with
them. Moreover, such ships rarely stay long, generally driven off by
the subtle sense of wrongness in the station. Those who stay on,
and go exploring usually end up disappearing, and their ships are
impounded.
The City is protected by ‘volunteers’ who defend the entrances to the
Undercity. Those who find their way up from the Undercity with their
sanity intact are welcomed with a mix of pity and wariness, but the
guards can generally tell the difference between another Refugee, a Lost
One, and a Ghoul. Nobody remembers when they came to the station,
or how. If they’re lucky (or unlucky, depending), they remember waking
up in the Undercity, and fleeing to The City.
The Upper City is where the well-to-do of Abyssal Society makes its life.
They tend to travel from place to place by small air cars, or by the
travel tubes which cross through The Upper City’s extremities. The
Upper City is more a collection of higher-class buildings and businesses.
The Lower City is closer to the middle or low-class slum areas of most
cities. Lower City society thrives in smaller, tighter, and more squalid
conditions. Swoops are common, as are go-gangs which ride them.
Crime and vice are actually a part of the way things work here, and
the threat of Ghoul attacks is common, as the monsters sometimes
work their way in through the ducts and tunnels.
“The Undercity” – A place of darkened catacombs and cannibals and
death. This is where the mad ones eventually come to, and where
they sooner or later join up with some of the marauders or get eaten
by the same. The Undercity connects The City to the rest of the
Station, including its most important functions.
“The Abyss” – Beneath the Undercity is the actual bowels of the station,
itself. The Abyss is actually a huge shaft which encompasses all of
the maintaining technology and ducts and works. Organics found here
are usually destroyed by the Strangers’ droids.
Abyssal Inhabitants
The Refugees: These are the average inhabitants of both the Upper and
Lower Cities of the Abyss space station. They tend to be clannish with
outsiders, but try to look after the Lost which arrive in The City from
the Undercity. Refugees tend to be apathetic and somewhat listless,
going about their lives with drone-like persistence. The average Refugee
tend to ignore the world outside himself as much as possible, though
they can still at least go through the motions of society.
-The tattoo each is marked with twinkles in a muted, lethargic pattern.
-Refugees are seldom Force-Sensitive, and never have any Force Skills
to speak of. Those who somehow become Sensitive and gain Force
Skills become Lost.
The Ghouls: These are savage beings who have gone insane from life
in the Abyss. They hate everybody, including other groups of Ghouls,
and tend to be violent, sadistic, and prone to cannibalism. They prefer
to feed on aged dead, but are not averse to fresh meat, and live in
the deeper tunnels and corridors of the Undercity, where they cause
havoc amongst the Refugee workers who are forced to come into the
Undercity to work on the tramlines and other essential machinery.
Ghouls hang around together in packs, and favor the darker places in
the Undercity, though they are often capable of destroying conduits
which provide light for some areas. Indeed, this is one of their
favorite tactics for waylaying trams full of Lower City workers for a
good, filling meal…
-The tattoo each is marked with sparks violently.
-Ghouls are sometimes Force-Sensitive, though always consumed by
the Dark Side.
The Lost: Most Abyssal Player Characters will be from this category.
The Lost are an anomaly among the other damned souls. Though
they can actually recognize what’s happening around them better than
either of the previous groups, they are automatically marked as
outsiders by both the Refugees and the Ghouls. The Refugees
attempt to take in these poor lost souls and help them to find
productive lives as members of Refugee society. This is less out
of kindliness on the Refugees’ part as it is that they have an
unexplainable fear of the Lost. The average Refugee looks at a
member of the Lost as a normal person would look at an adventurer,
with a mixture of awe, fear, and distance. Lost who persist in
attempting to be outside the norm are ‘encouraged’ to check into
one of the psychiatric facilities in either the Upper or Lower City
to help them get acclimated. The Ghouls, however, regard the Lost
with abject fear and hatred, attacking the Lost on sight, and giving
or expecting no quarter.
-The tattoo each is marked with is faded to nearly nothing.
-The Lost are often Force-Sensitive, and sometimes even possess
Force Skills, despite their inability to remember quite how they
learned them.
