About this universe
Invited by necessity, Taliesin Vorne must slip through the dazzling dangers of the Duchess’s masquerade, risking exposure to install a listening device in her prized lungs-filter. The glittering masks conceal more than faces, and one misstep could doom the rust-born forever to the poisonous fog below.
Tone
Tense and elegant, with a constant undercurrent of menace. Wealth and decay rub shoulders in every breath.
Themes
class disparity, surveillance and secrets, corruption, survival at any cost
Protagonist
Taliesin Vorne
Taliesin Vorne moves with the wary grace of a scavenger in unfamiliar territory; his rust-streaked eyes miss nothing beneath his borrowed court finery. Lean-built, with wiry limbs and hands calloused from years in the undercity fog, he radiates nervous resolve beneath the lacquered mask that never quite fits.
Goal: To successfully install the listening device in the Duchess's lungs-filter without being detected.
How it begins
Taliesin Vorne presses a lacquered mask to his face, its fresh scent stinging his nose as he edges through the velvet-curtained threshold of the Duchess’s sky-borne ballroom. He feels the magnetic lift in his bones, a subtle hum beneath polished marble and swirling feet. The air tastes too clean, unnaturally sweet, every inhalation a reminder of how far he is from home. Gilded courtiers glide past, laughter muffled behind ornate filtration masks. Taliesin tucks the sliver-sized recording device into his sleeve, scanning for the Duchess’s emerald-clad silhouette amid the shifting crowd. A footman blocks his path, eyes flicking over Taliesin’s borrowed attire.
"Invitation, sir?"
the man asks, hand outstretched. Taliesin steadies his breath, feeling the weight of his mission pressing against the hollow of his chest.
About this world
Ferrum-Kyne is a vertical metropolis where the privileged soar on magnetic plateaus and the rust-born endure in the corroded depths below. The air is sharp with copper, and social rank is dictated by access to anti-corrosive resources. Sky-ships crumple into the ruins, fueling a black market of survival. Courtly intrigues unfold above while the lower levels rot.
Ferrum-Kyne rises from a sea of oxidized wreckage, a city divided by altitude and ambition. The nobility glide between luminous plateaus upheld by humming magnetic fields, their structures lacquered in shimmering anti-corrosive glaze. Life in these upper echelons is masked, both figuratively and literally, behind ornate respirators and gilded attire. The air here is filtered, perfumed, and heavily guarded; any hint of the world below is considered a contaminant, both physically and socially.
Beneath, in the gravity-slumped undercity, the rust-born hustle through a labyrinth of collapsed sky-ships and machinery, skin and lungs stained by the metallic fog. Here, life is barter and risk: scavengers trade in scrap and stolen oils, doing what they must to stay alive and keep the city above functioning. Nobility depend on this silent labor but rarely acknowledge it. The economic divide matches the physical one; black market syndicates, whisper networks, and a fragile code of honor maintain a tense balance between the strata.
Technological wonders, magnetic lifts, artificial grav-fields, and filtration masks, are the currency of survival. The elite’s anti-corrosive lacquer is both armor and status symbol. Politics in the upper plates is a dance of masks, secrets, and surveillance, with every noble plotting to protect their oxygen and their lineage. Recent years have seen an increase in system failures, masked as sabotage. Rumors spread of a rigged ventilation system that systematically deprives the rust-born for the gain of the few, fueling unrest and mutiny below the plates.
Daily life, whether amidst the rust or above it, is dictated by the need to breathe easy, and to avoid breathing the wrong air entirely.
