‘First Look’ posts are introductions to places in the fictional world of Project Drowned Rat. A First Look post isn’t a complete description and may/will contain undeveloped ideas. There will be follow-up posts to develop the places further. Details may change, subject to requirements.
“We were just a back-water for the coal magnates to run canals through and now we’re the centre of the Empire, things are worse.”
Newport–once known as Prussex–was once an inland industrial town, known for its factories and the intersection of railways and canals passing through it.
Prussex had enriched the Danglish Empire and was considered a sordid place by high society, being populated by both the working rich and their workers.
The rising waters have eaten away at the coast and many of the old bastions of power are gone. Prussex, the largest city with the highest elevation, was renamed Newport and is the new capital.
The influx of bureaucracy and Old Money did not sit well with the industrialists and merchants. The working poor had hoped that their lives might have improved by the drastic transformation of Prussex/Newport, but this hope didn’t last.
They were pushed off the high ground and into the lowland slums. Where they couldn’t retain a grip there, they were forced out entirely. The surrounding flood-lands, known as the Murk, have become the home of those who didn’t starve or die to disease, and they have become known as Murkers.
Newport has been Newport for nearly a hundred years. It has become a collection of walled islands, flooded streets, sandbags, levees, pumps and pipes. The waters rise ever higher, Newport is starting to sink beneath the tides, but there is nowhere else to go.
And Newport is getting weird…
An intelligent race of rats–who call themselves Ratties–live here, too. Some of them live among humans, in the walls and under the floors, but most Ratties lurk in the flooded areas. They have formed a culture of raiders and pirates, living in the archipelagos formed by partially submerged towers. Necromancers, book lovers and murderous maniacs, they are resented by their city-dwelling brethren and feared by their human neighbours.
The artwork is coming to life. The Graffini are aliens from outside the universe. They project into this reality by animated statues, paintings, engravings, posters, even songs. They don’t organise into groups, they all have different moods and motivations, they are friendly, treacherous, violent and passive. Like the Ratties, they are a new fact of life in Newport.
Flesh is a canvas. Graffini art (or technology; it’s the same thing) can be used to modify human bodies, changing form and function and making humans partial Graffini. Limbs drawn back on, new body parts inked into existence, circuitry chiselled into skin… the new potential for human bodies and minds seems as open-ended as the shapes of the Graffini themselves. Humans modified this way are usually known as the Illustrated. The first known Illustrated human is Edith Trundle.
There is much to be said about Newport, and will be. Streets that loop in and out of existence, amnesiac gods, the demon’s corpse that lies in the sea, just off Newport, large enough to be a navigation hazard and a forbidden party ground for dissolute youth…
This image came from my Pinterest page, where I source most of the images I use to illustrate these articles.
project drowned rat 