Many times, the travellers I've met along my darkened paths have wondered about these most mysterious places of all - the Archons' Citadels.
What is it like to come near one of them?
What is it like to enter it?
Can one even go there in a "normal" way, i.e without dying and being drawn to the Oubliettes of Forgetfulness?
What do the rooms look like, and how does it feel?
What kind of beings would you meet?
Specifically the Citadel of Tiphareth seems of interest to many that I've talked to.
I've never gone there myself, to be honest - bloody fool I'd have to be to do so - but...
Here's a brief elaboration on what the rumors say and what the visions have shown me.
The Archon's Will
The very first thing you'll notice when you get even remotely close to one of the citadels is the overwhelming psychic emanantions of the Archon's monolithic presence. The entire place is surrounded by an aura of the being's Principle, for miles and miles in every direction.
Even the citadels of those Archons that have been shattered and broken still have this - although for them it can be felt as a more subdued or fragmented sensation.
Some describe the fallen Archons as "dead", but we all know what is said about Death, and Beginnings... In any case, these ruined citadels also still exude powerful metaphysical influences. It is only the Demiurge's that seems to be truly gone.
Tiphareth, however, is far from "dead", and not even close to being broken or shattered. She is in fact one of the most powerful Archons in existence today. And her citadel's emanations confirm this.
Her citadel is spotted on the Endless City's bleak horizon (or, in fact, much closer in many accounts) by travellers in Metropolis much more often than that of any other Archon. Even from far away, one can feel the sheer Allure that radiates from the gargantuan building.
Coming closer, this presence of the Archon constantly prods and digs at your mind with its immaterial spidery tendrils. The Beguiling Goddess' will seeks to invade your mind - and most often succeeds, given enough time to wear down your defenses (if any).
Trespassers in the citadels general vicinity will experience powerful yearnings, melancholic memories of beauty, and urges to create, preserve, or possess artful or pleasureable things. Some will feel like they have fallen in love with the citadel itself, irresistably drawn closer to it and craving to enter. Others will become irrationally infatuated with their fellow travellers or other creatures that cross their paths. Some feel compelled to spontaneously create aesthetic displays, and spend hours arranging mandalas and mosaics from the rubble of the Metropolitan ruins around them, or bursting out in song and oration seemingly completely unprovoked.
These random and non-sequitur emotional and spiritual compulsions are all expressions of the Archon's Will.
It is near impossible for a reguar human being to withstand this psychic onslaught. Only those who are strongly aligned to one of the other Higher Powers (such as through a pact, or discipleship), or have arcane defenses (e.g. emotion-numbing or mind-focussing rituals or sigils, such as offered by some paths within the Schools of Passion or Madness) can resist the urges of the Lady of Allure for any meaningful time.
All others will eventually see their mental defenses eroded to the point of complete breakdown, and end up - at the latest upon arrival at the citadel, but likely much sooner - reduced to mindless drones unquestioningly servile to the Archon's overpowering Principle.
When being Enticed by the Archon's Will while in the vicinity of the citadel, roll to Keep it Together.
On a (10-14), you may only chose to become sad, obsessed, or distracted.
On a (-9) you reduce your Stability -2, and must advance closer to the citadel. Additionally, from then on double all penalties from low Stability for the purpose of any further attempts to Keep it Together.
When you become Broken from this, you are Enslaved by the Principle.
When becoming Enslaved by the Principle, roll +Soul, one single time.
(15+) Your mind and soul are entangled by the principle, but you somehow manage to preserve some shreds of your own personality, even in the face of the Archon's monolithic will. Change your Archetype to The Disciple, and serve Tiphareth well - or suffer the repercussions of her disappointment in your subpar performances.
(10-14) You become a Thrall of Allure, mindlessly adrift in the Principle's compulsion and freely manipulated by the Archon to serve as a pawn in her complex schemes and machinations. You can not free yourself from this state, but might conceivably, perhaps, yet be rescued by others from your new dronelike existence.
(-9) You become The Spider's Feast, your soul devoured by Tiphareth. This is much like becoming a Thrall of Allure, but no one can rescue you. Your original personality is too completely gone, or you destroy yourself in short order, amidst orgies of debauchery, adoration, and frenetic artistic mania.
Entering the Spider's Den
If you can manage to arrive at the foothill outliers of the mountainous architecture with your mind still intact and your soul still your own, you may enter the citadel.
Alternately, if you enter the citadel through a Gate or Portal you will most likely arrive directly in the labyrinthine entrails of what is, for all intents and purposes, the Archon's own body in the city-dimenion of Metropolis. The same could be true if you are pulled into Metropolis and the citadel by an uncontrolled rift in the Illusion. Or if you are captured by Tiphareth's servants - either in Elysium or Metropolis or perhaps even elsewhere - and taken to the citadel for punishment, inquisition, and correction.
(In all these cases, you can probably skip the next couple paragraphs, and continue reading at Closer to the Centre of the Web.)
Either way, once inside, a veritable maze of rooms, corridors, atriums, hallways, domed gardens and other interior archetypical architecture awaits you. If you approach from the bottom, the first couple dozen floors may seem deserted (but need not actually be) and derelict. Even here, however, the Archon's Principle is clearly felt in every aspect of everything there is. The dust and rubble forms hypnotic patterns on the floor. The doorways and halls are shaped in aesthetically pleasing ways, inviting you to approach and advance. Eerily enticing music can be heard from far above. The musky scent of exquisite drugs being smoked hangs faintly (or heavily) in the air.
The manifestations get more glorious, more complex, and more grandiose the further one ascends. The lower levels more often express allures of a rather basal nature, or that are fallen out of fashion (or even memory) in Elysium. Rooms resemble strip clubs, betting dens, drug houses, cobblers', weavers', and woodcutters' workshops, collections of musical instruments popular in antiquity (and all but forgotten about today), or even cave paintings. The more elevated layers, above, exhibit more current and more spectacular attractions, promising the fulfillment of desires more refined and the craving of tastes more acquired.
Many rooms are also completely deserted, some looking as if cleaned out in a hurry, others crassly damaged by violent conflict. In some places, corpses of unknown creatures still lie, perhaps dessicated in age-old death, perhaps still bleeding from their ghastly wounds. The War of the Archons has taken its toll, even here.
Around the periphery of the citadel's base, entire areas the size of whole cities are laid to waste, the glum Metropolitan twilight seeping in through torn down roofs and missing walls. Some of them are slowly being repaired by tekrons and acrotides. Others are rendered unsalvagable by nuclear radiation, the lingering after-effects of horrible combat magic, or other reality-distorting and life-destroying phenomena.
Failed lictors, mutilated mancipia, and demented angels prowl these parts - either in abject search of penance for the unforgivable misdeed of disappointing their patron mistress, or lost in desperation and griefing madness. Some are simply looking for easy victims to prey upon and sate their burning and unholy urges.
No place here is entirely without beauty or grace, however. At the very least, the forlorn allure of a bombed-out cathedral is always felt even in the most ruined regions. The desolate enticement of humanity's forgotten, primitive, or looked down upon pleasures and vices suffuses others.
Closer to the Centre of the Web
Climbing the citadel's interior architecture high enough, you will at some point experience very abrupt changes in the environment. All of a sudden, the gloomy and oppressive maze of rooms, hallways, ramps, stairs, ladders, halls, atriums etc. you have been travailing turns into an outright cacophony of grandiose and majestic splendor.
Profane materials such as ordinary concrete, wood, or steel are no longer seen anywhere. The lower levels were already highly ornate in places, but here everything is made from marble, silver, mahagony, at least. Imagine it like a mad collage of Sun King Louis' palace crossed with the fanciest shopping mall you've ever been to, with elements mixed in of everything from Byzantine emperors' treasure vaults to modern casinos and luxury villas.
Flashing neon lights like from an 80s arcade hall illuminate one room only to give way to playfully shimmering waterwave lighting, as if shone from a swimming pool filled with multicolored liquid. Blacklight is tints a goldsmith's workshop in the oddest illumination. Blindingly bright spotlights as from a movie set prevent any shadow from existing in a Persian bath house. Paper lanterns are the only light source in a black marble parliament building the size of a small town, where the allure of power bleeds visibly from the insignia of political office at the walls, swiftly evaporating into a ghostly fog that haunts the hallways for any receptive to its temptations.
There are incredible art galleries here, with sculptures, paintings, everything. Gigantic performance stages. Lingerie factories. Towering sandstone monuments. Advertising billboards. Quiet stone gardens. VR gaming parlors. Exquisite palaces of colored glass.
Bizarre and glamorous parades of creatures painted and clad and
flesh-shaped in the most exquisite fashions proceed through the rooms
here, their dance and song irresistibly enticing. You can see TV stars amongst them, and historical celebrities. Everyone is slim, fit, sexy, and perfect. Or if not, they're desperately craving to be.
There is sex, so much sex. And drugs, oh the drugs!
The entire place is a gargantuan, jumbled, cramped, expansive, complex labyrinth - almost as if a puzzle to be solved, alas, what mortal soul might dare even contemplate to embark on such an undertaking!? - a labyrinth of fancy. All allure, all sparkle, all flash.
Underneath the whole razzle-dazzle, one might suspect precious little in the way of real substance, or deeper meaning. But few at this point have the mental fortitude to even maintain that train of thought for longer than but a few idle moments. Soon enough, the next spectacle distracts you from these musings, as likely as not to never to think of them again.
When orienting yourself amidst the myriad distractions of the citadel, roll to Observe the Situation.
Since all of the spectacle everywhere makes this an act of self-control in itself, however, you must apply any penalties from low Stability to this roll as if it was an attempt to Keep it Together.
On a fail, the GM may answer a different question than you asked, you may lose a lot of time pursuing whimsical fancies or following false leads, or you attract unwanted attention. (The GM makes a move.)
What Purpose to the Spider's Design?
The rooms, as well as their arrangement and contents, deny logical interpretation. I'm calling them "rooms" only for want of a better term. Should perhaps think of them as areas, or locations. Rooms is far too mundane a word to aptly describe even a fraction of the places you will behold in there.
Some of them serve a purpose, while others are for all intentions seemingly random expressions of the Archon's very nature.
Since in essence the citadel is the Archon, its entire manifestation is the embodiment of her Principle, all its smaller aspects endlessly replicated within itself, because that’s how the power expresses herself.
Or to put it another way - if you think of the citadel as the Archon's body, the rooms within are much like it's organs. As such, they don't have a conceivable purpose, at least not one that is readily decrypted by the ordinary human mind. We're like ants swallowed up by a tiger, forever climbing aimlessly and astounded through its capillaries even if we managed to avoid the churning, all-consuming pits of its acidic stomach.
That said, there are some areas whose use we can recognize - even though they, too, are usually tinged in alien aesthetics and appear inhumanely larger than life to our dulled, imprisoned senses.
There are vast libraries and cramped archives where the acrotides keep and retrieve their timeless records. Museum galleries showcasing artifacts of the great exploits and horrible conflicts the Archon was involved in. Conference rooms where the lictors meet and discuss the fate of Elysium. Porno-Shrines and Disco-Cathedrals where they devoutly come to celebrate and worship their Principle. The gilded dormitory vaults where the few surviving angels of the Malakhim Choire are kept, when not roused and sent out to do Tiphareth's bidding in the outside worlds. The gemstone-encrusted crypts where those of their brethren lie that are tragically too ruined, by sorrow or mutilation or Infernal curses, to be of any further use to the Archon.
The Oubliettes of Forgetfulness are here somewhere, long term residence for the dead souls of those who were already entrapped by the Principle in life. The twin burdens of individual personality and a lifetime of less-than-perfectly-glamorous memories are lifted from them here.
And reeducation camps, for those who were taken prisoner by Tiphareth's servants and are yet in misguided opposition to the Archon. They are shown the light of True Allure here, their rejection of ruthless hedonism mercifully abolished from their tainted minds.
Peak Tiphareth
If all this spectacle and damn-near divine perfection can not offer to you what you came to seek, you may feel tempted to ascend the very top of the citadel. Almost needless to say, this is a task beyond insanity, and amongst the least-advisable undertakings in the entire cosmos.
Those who would meet with an Archon's innermost essence had best be really sure of what they are doing. And even then, the quest is far from easy or simple. There is no one who has given a reliable account of having reached the very top, yet.
The very laws of time and space - already severely relativized during the passage through the hundreds of levels below - become entirely jumbled, then completely meaningless. Repeatedly you will believe that you have succeeded - that you have indeed reached the zenith, the final glorious cathedral, the top of the crystal mountain.
But over and over again you will be forced to realize that, no, this was what you thought was the heart of the palace, was in fact merely one more of the ornate pillars supporting the real peak, and centre, of the Archon's massive, essential, inconceivable being.
It is unknown if there even is a definitive peak. Does an Archon have a concrete ending point? Is there a True Self to discover, to face, to interact with?
Or is the Principle's real nature too abstract, too all-encompassing to ever be nailed down to such pedestrian, mortal concepts?
Some say that at the very top, all the Archonic citadels become one - and that this is where the Demiurge's Citadel used to arise from. Others claim that this theory has it all backwards, and that it is the exact other way around.
Perhaps they are both right. More likely, they are both wrong.
In either case, the experience turns into a metaphysical one. A spiritual travel much more than a physical one, for we cannot at this point meaningfully talk about it in terms of architecture any more.
After all, the citadel is not really a building - just like, at the end of the day, Metropolis isn't really a city. That's just the shape it takes.
What Truths Lie Beyond these bodily manifestations, every Seeker will have to discover for themselves.
So travel unsafely and with impunity - and may you return with tales worthy of the gods we used to be, and may yet once more become!
Only where boldness and caution become one and the same, the traveller truly walks divine.
(Babylonian proverb)
