Sugarcane

It's a dull, rainy day in Undertown. Waves of heat from deep within the bowels of the earth heat the waters of the Great Lagoon. The resulting mists rise high up to the cavern ceiling, where they condense amongst the phosphorescent lichens and funghi that cling to the rocky surface, and fall as a fine drizzle.\n\nThe glow from these circadian flora - what passes for daylight here beneath the mountain - filters through thin clouds that hang above the city, casting everything in a watery grey light that is utterly devoid of cheer. The air is chilly and heavy with moisture, and you can feel your clothes sticking to your body in the most unpleasantly clammy of ways.\n\t\nAll morning you have been trying to working in a small office area set up at the back of your holdings. You listen to the sighs, groans and rythmic thumpings of the brothel at work around you, and reflect on the fact that although you grow more used to these surroundings every day, you still can't see how anyone can be expected to think straight in conditions like these. Besides for yourself, the three "workers", and their clients, the building is empty. Your compatriots are all out on various small errands and morsels of business around the city, and by midday you are feeling cabin fever start to set in. \n\nTucking up the collar of your cloak against the miserable cavern weather, you step out the side door and into the street, shutting the door behind you gently so as not to disturb the rutting couples within. That would, after all, be bad for business. \n\nThe street to your right is crammed full of merchants shouting at each other from under parasols and umbrellas, and passersby elbowing each other in an effort to get through the throng into shops and stalls. Not much hope of peace and quiet that To the left things are much quieter, on the gentle hill that curves down to the docks, and the Great Lagoon.\n\n*<<choice "Towards the docks">>.

[[Return to the atrium.|MuseumAtrium]]

You say nothing however, not wanting to get caught up in some endless conversation - you still have a good ten minutes left until you reach the eastern shore.. You stare off into the distance, and let your mind wander for the rest of the journey.\n\n[[Next passage...|Eastern Jetty]]

As you walk up to them, you smile briefly and mutter something about wanting to stretch your legs. The gondolier grins at her compatriot and slaps you on the back.\n\n"<html>As good a reason as any to be out on this most fuckin' 'orrible of days, I say. We'd better get you out on that Lagoon.</html>"\n\nShe gestures to her boat, which is bobbing slightly at the quayside. You are grateful to see that the gondola has set over it a canvas awning stretched over a frame, to keep the rain off.\n\n[[Get into the boat|Get into the boat]].

With the light rain falling against your face, you wander down the street, vaguely making your way in the direction of the docks, but in no real hurry you drift aimlessly from shop to shop, stopping to peer in through windows and breathe in the spicy smells that occasionally drift out of open doorways. You find the pervasive chill that worms its way through your clothing to be strangely restorative, and as you draw nearer to the quayside, you can see that the jetties and pontoons stretching out onto the water are largely devoid of boats; a peal of hearty laughter and the fug of blue smoke that rise from a window as you pass tell you that most of the Ferry Gondoliers have retreated inside the boathouse, fed up with the lack of custom due to the weather.\n\nWalking onto the jetty, you see gladly that not all the Gondoliers have been driven inside by the rain. A couple wait at the end of a pontoon, smoking elaborate pipes that belch the same blue smoke. You catch a whiff of it as it drifts towards you. It smells sharp and acrid, and your head swims for a second; strange voices seem to whisper to you from deep within your own mind. You shake your head and they stop. You feel suddenly nervous, and wonder if the gondoliers always smoke this dark substance before going out on the lake.\n\nYou fears are soon forgotten however as the two Gondoliers catch sight of you and call out jovially, tapping their pipes out against their thighs as they do so.\n\n"Hoy, <<print $name>>, well met my fine friend! Heading into town in this weather? You've got more resolve than most in this place." \n\n*<<choice "Walk towards the gondoliers">>.

The gondolier holds the boat steady against the jetty as you step down into it. Sitting below the awning and looking out across the rainswept water, you feel a brief, pleasurable shiver of cosiness.\n\nGuided by the steady paddlestrokes of the gondolier the ferry noses away from the quay, and soon enough the pontoons fade into the mists behind you. Alone on the water, it is as though your gondola could be the only living part of Undertown. You stare out across the waves, listening to the steady slap of water against the hull and the soft patter of rain from the cavern ceiling high above falling against the awning, thinking of nothing much in particular. You wonder vaguely whether to talk to the gondolier.\n\n*<<choice "Make small talk">>.\n*<<choice "Stay silent">>

You admit that the note on the door does give the whole affair a slightly darker edge than your average casual murder, but with between business deals turned nasty, bad blood between neighbours, and giant rats in the sewer system, there is no end to the ways a person may meet their doom down here. One more shopkeeper who fell afoul of the competition is hardly worth worrying oneself over.\n\n[[Next passage...|Eastern Jetty]]

An interactive minigame set in Undertown's Museum on a rainy day, for expositional purposes.

The doors swing to a close behind you, shutting out the bustle of \nthe street outside. Ahead of you are the vaulted arches of the museum, stretching off into the tunnels of the mountainside. Within these halls, years, decades, possibly even centuries' worth of knowledge is archived. You breathe in deeply, the musty scents of paper and wood calming your nerves.\n\n[[Next passage...|MuseumAtrium]]

Welcome traveller, to this short interactive story, set in the museum of Braersgyth's Undertown. Before we begin, please set your character name by clicking the button below.\n\n\n[[Set my name|Are you ready to begin?]]

<<silently>><<set $name = prompt("What's the name of your character?")>><<endsilently>>\nWelcome, <<print $name>>. Are you ready to begin?\n\n[[Begin story.|A dull day in Undertown]]

/* Your story will use the CSS in this passage to style the page.\nGive this passage more tags, and it will only affect passages with those tags.\nExample selectors: */\n\nbody { color: #000000 \n\t/* This affects the entire page */\n\t\n\t\n}\n.passage {\n\t/* This only affects passages */\n\t\n\t \n}\n.passage a {\n\t/* This affects passage links */\n\t\n\t\n}\n.passage a:hover {\n\t/* This affects links while the cursor is over them */\n\t\n\t\n}\nbody { background-color: #ffffff }

A Day at the Museum

You have hardly opened your mouth when the gondolier, sensing a chance for conversation, takes off with some tall tale. She talks at such an exhausting pace that you hardly care to take in every word, but you gather the general gist. She talks darkly about how she heard (from a friend of a friend of an aquaintance of a business associate) that a shopowner down in the residential quarter was muttering in a tavern about how he found a strange man in a hood poking around in the trash out the back of his premises. The next day, the shopowner had vanished, and a sign on his store said that he had taken.\n\nGradually you become aware that the gondolier has finished talking, and you realise suddenly that she is waiting for a reaction from you.\n\n*<<choice "You Make interested noises and speculate on the implications of her tale">>.\n*<<choice "You scoff at the ridiculousness of her story and point out that this would hardly be the first time someone had vanished in Undertown">>.

Written by Ewan and Louis. As if anyone else would.

You don't pay too much attention to the gondolier's tale; after all, you live in Undertown. Backstabbing and dodgy dealing are penny a dozen down here, and despite the efforts of the Lords' Council and their Envoys to keep the city ticking over, it isn't wholly uncommon for people to go missing every now and again. Bad blood between neighbours, business deals turned nasty, giant rats in the sewer system; there is no end to the ways a person may meet their doom down here. Even if this 5th-hand, 2nd-rate tale is true, it is hardly worth worrying about.\n\n[[Next passage...|Eastern Jetty]]

A collection of placards and etchings hang on the wall, telling the story of how Undertown came into being:\n\n<html>Early History</html>\n\nAlmost six centuries ago, there were several small regions at war with each other in the land, each controlled by a central citadel. However, as it had control of the coastline and with it one of the greatest sources of income to the region with the ability to trade overseas, the port citadel of Arensyr began to gain victory after victory. Soon, the other citadels were forced to surrender. Their monarchs were either executed or imprisoned, but the King of Arensyr recognised that destroying huge swathes of the other regions and their populations would not help much in controlling their citizens. The citadels were allowed to continue to exist with a degree of autonomy, and even retain some of their lands, as long as they agreed to certain conditions. The most notable of these were that the citadels must revoke their absolute monarchies, and instead install councils of elected leaders that would report to the Crown of Arensyr, and that the trade cities would have to account for every coin and every ware traded , in the form of paperwork showing proof of trade and proof of transportation. This was in part to avoid the citadels building up wealth beyond their station, and from developing alleigances or military forces in secret.\n\n<html>Braersgyth</html>\n\nBraersgyth is one of these trade cities, also known as "bridge cities" or "trade bridges"; semi-independant city-states, run seperately from the Crown Lands but controlled with a firm hand by the crown. Each bridge city owns by right the region immediately around it, and these trade bridges are, in theory, strictly controlled trading hubs, dealing with documents and paperwork for traders entering different regions and provinces. This means that if a merchant does not have the correct documents when they arrive at their destination saying they have been through one of these hubs and had their wares vetted, they may find it almost impossible to sell their wares (or be forced to flog them on the Black Market to shady dealers who are unlikely to give them a fair price). All this paperwork is then checked quarterly by ambassadors from the Royal Control for Trading and Commerce, which is under the rule of the Crown Ruler of the land.\n\nIn return, the Crown defended the shores of the region during wartime, and supplied guards accross the region, both to keep the trade routes relatively safe and to enforce a strict standard of trade in all regions. This is a system that had stood in place more or less unchanged for several centuries, and for the most part it was tolerated with little \n\n<html>Undertown is born</html>\n\nHowever, just under a century ago a series of gruelling wars meant that there was a great demand for timber, which Braersgyth, the bridge city controlling trade in the far south of the region, . As a result, the Royal Control (and by extension, the Crown) began imposing increasingly heavy taxes on traders in an attempt to rebalance the trading order and divert caravans through the other trade cities. order to fund a series of increasingly unpopular wars, which involved conscription from the overpopulated western cities. Several of the most powerful merchants in Braersgyth (who comprised most of its council) decided that, in order to circumvent these taxes, they would take advantage of the system of phosphorescent natural caves and tunnels beneath the city that were at the time used mostly for storage of grain, lumber, and other materials. Working in secrety, they began to establish a secret trading hub below Braersgyth, and then laundered the money out bit by bit into legitimate interests through the overground part of the city. These founding merchants became the first Lords of Undertown. \n\nWord of this secret hub free from taxes and the strict controls of the crown spread accross the Southern Region, and Undertown began opening its gates to anyone who could provide sufficient references to vouch for their character. In time, a thriving town sprung up below the mountain, with people making their homes around this centre of free commerce. Due to increasing pressure from advisors and the kingdom at large, the wars burnt themselves out and the taxes were relaxed somewhat. However, the Lords had found their new, controlled and regulated black market below Braersgyth to be immensely lucrative, and although the taxes were less than they had been during the wars, the line of Lords has swung more towards the darker end of the moral spectrum. Where once was a technically illegal but morally sturdy endeavour, providing for the local area, the still vibrant Undertown is now run by a darker breed of Lords, and the town has some more morally suspect endeavours.\n\n<html>The shape of things to come</html>\n\nNow, three quarters of the way through the 15th Age, and with a new King on the throne, the relations between the Royal Kingdom and the lands to the west are becoming strained once more. Warlike tremors have been rumbling in from the forward bases across the seas, and taxes are being raised once more to fund increased production of defence materiel, driving more and more people via this worst-kept secret. Even the Crown knows of its existence, but has never been able to prove it due to the political status of Braersgyth as one of the eight Gythus in the land."\n\n[[Return to the atrium.|MuseumAtrium]]

A helpful signpost points the way to various exhibits, displays, reading rooms and archive chambers.\n\nWhere would you like to go?\n\n[[Map of Undertown|]]\n[[A Brief History of Undertown and Braersgyth|History of Undertown]]\n[[Getting around Undertown|Getting Around]]\n[[Maps of the Region|\n[[The Lords' Council|\n[[The Envoys|\n[[Circadian Rhythms: Flora and Fauna|Circadian Rhythms]]\n[[Trade and Commerce|\n[[The Crown and Royal Lands|\n\n\n

At last, the Eastern Jetty swims into sight.\n\n\n*THIS SECTION IS UNFINISHED. CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO JUMP TO THE MUSEUM.\n\n[[Jump to the Museum...|MuseumEntrance]]