Metropolis is one of the most mysterious of the dimensions beyond the Illusion's Veil in Kult. In spite of being included in every edition of the game (unlike some other realms, such as Gaia or the Underworld for example), the place is still a riddle to many of the game's fans.
In some cases perhaps it is a matter of only knowing the newest edition of the corebook, and not having access to older versions of the lore. In other cases, perhaps what's there in the books is perfectly understandable to them, but feels like it's just too little, or the wrong kind of information presented.
People ask questions like:
Why is there a whole dimension of city-stuff, just for it to be desolate and empty? What's the point?
The book says it used to be our home, and that we can feel it calling to us - but then why is there nothing interesting to do there?
The book lists a few inspirations for possible scenes, but they almost invariably remain... oddly inconclusive. Why are things described so vaguely?
If we used to live there when we were gods, why is the place filled with nothing but ruins and monsters? What's so divine about that?
Okay, so there are Archons and acrotides and angels... azghouls and tekrons and gynachids... Lost Gods and distorted humans... But all of them are described as threatening, alien, and generally rather unapproachable. What's the gameplay value in these beings, except for murdering characters in various brutal fashions?
Ah, and about that murdering of characters: Granted, it's great fun - but you can get that from any other critter in any other dimension. What makes Metropolis truly special? Why would I want to use that realm in my games, over any of the others the setting offers?
I think I have a take on Metropolis that can address at least some of these questions. Maybe most of them. Here it is:
The Lie
There is no such thing as "Metropolis". The very idea of an eternal city that is every city, from every time, and which all our cities are merely fragmented mirror images or pale imitations of, is of course utterly insane. Whatever patterns of clues to its actual existence "beyond the scope of our limited senses" you may believe to discern from the unhinged ramblings of paranoid schizophrenics, psychotic occultists, and drug-addled mystics, are just that: Random outbursts of sick and twisted minds, poor confused souls who should seek treatment, not write books and blog posts and chatroom tirades.
It is merely the confirmation bias of your own obsessed fixations that lets you see any patterns at all in such deranged "evidence" in the first place. You must realize that if you'd look hard enough at that sort of drivel, you might eventually find any pattern you want. Which in turn makes whatever you do think you discover in there, utterly worthless of course.
Cities are just bunches of brick, metal, plastic, and concrete. We build them because it makes sense for us as a species. Humans are social animals, and in our increasingly complex societal interactions, it is simply convenient to habitate close to each other in large numbers.
There's really nothing more to it.
Now take your medicaton and go back to work. Watch some TV later, that'll ease your mind.
The Madness
Normally, the above is true - for all (or most) practical purposes anyways. But in the darkest corners of the city, in the most derelict areas, the most dilapidated basements, and the most rundown backyards... Something more may at times shine through.
Here we find the first purpose of Metropolis:
To provide an all-comprehensive, setting-intrinsic underpinning for Urban Horror.
See, the game is wholly focussed on providing a horror experience, and its primary setting is by default urban.
So the existence of Metropolis "in the background" of the Illusion we live in, firmly anchors these two aspects. It ties them together and provides a consistent backdrop for all kinds of horrifying things that might happen in the city. Think all sorts of creepypasta and urban myths - from Sewer Crocodiles to Slenderman... they all can be tied to, and explained via The Eternal City lying beyond the scope of our limited senses.
Its borderlands are where the monsters come from, and where the missing children disappear to. It's where occultists build their temples, criminals hide their ill-gained spoils, and outcasts, madmen, and mutants make their lairs.
It's where the laws of physics start to come undone, and where madness seeps into your perceptions with every breath you take, every step you walk further into the past-industrial, post-postmodern, post-civilisatory darkness of its forlorn and deserted, yet still relentlessly menacing streets.
At this level of exposure to The City, you can use Metropolis to create horror in the veins of anything and everything from Split Second to Predator II, from Candyman to Dark City.
Note that this type of using it doesn't in fact explain anything about the underlying cosmic truths of The City, but as a GM you can evoke a brooding sense of truths yet to be discovered about it. The whispered promise of a consistent explanation - if only you could venture far enough, and learn enough of its secrets to make sense of a more complete picture behind it all.
This level of gameplay involving Metropolis is where the Aware Archetypes work the best.
Most often, games of this kind will revolve around excursions into the eerieness and terror of the unknown beyond, and a return to normality after (if) the PCs have successfully confronted their horrors on the other side.
Much like the classical hero's journey, characters can descend into the other, magical world (only in our context, "magical" means "horrifying" of course), become transformed by it, and then (perhaps) go back to their mundane lives - if they're lucky.
So, to return to our initial questions: This already provides possible answers for some of them.
(Note that I'm taking care not to speak in absolutes here. As you will see, Metropolis can be many things, and presented in many different ways. Which one is the right take for your group, at your table, playing your scenario or campaign - only you can decide. And I trust that you'll know the right approach when it comes time to settle on it.)
The place can be described as desolate and empty, because in our bustling, shiny, modern cities, that is scary to us. Endless mazes of deserted streets, no reception on your phones, all the buildings abandoned and/or in ruins... and stalked by unseen predators... It is the antithesis of what our cities are built for. We can no longer feel safe when other people, familiar routes to well-known places, and hell, even basic supplies such as food and drink are no longer easily within reach.
With the trappings of civilisation stripped away, the city turns into a nightmare version of itself. A liminal space where the familiar is twisted into the uncanny. Metropolis is the enchanted forest of our postmodernist age. The forbidden reaches of the world we inhabit, in which we are violently pushed out of our comfort zone - and into the realms where both the horror and the magic happens.
Oh, and the monsters? Ideally they should remain half-revealed, and almost invariably threatening. You should not feel a need to explain them, nor make them any more communicative than they strictly need to be in order to scare the living bejesus out of your characters.
You should however, take care to thematically or symbolically tie them to what's been going on in the game beforehand.
- If the scenario revolves around a downtown church that keeps burning down every [Easter / Christmas / 6th of the month / time a baby is babtized there / ...] but always reappears completely unharmed the next day, consider making your Metropolis monster an insane angel perhaps.
- If a lab accident at some high-tech, off-the-books government research facility is what set things in motion, having a tekron involved beyond the Illusion might be fitting.
- A serial killer who inexplicably keeps evading capture by mundane means could turn out to be traceable only in Metropolis, and might be revealed as an azghoul who hunts people that have mistreated it in their past (and present?) lives.
- A series of apparent suicides at the city's most ancient graveyard or crypt might have a Lost God that is trapped in The City of the Dead behind it, and the twisted and deformed borderliners who serve it by feeding its depraved appetites in exchange for eternal unlife.
Doing this sort of thing allows your players to make some sense of what is happening, and get some semblance of a grip on how to handle your (incomplete, always remaining semi-obscure) terrifying reveals.
In this sense, the setting material and creatures and example scenes in the books make up a toolkit for you to freely use as you see fit. Pick and choose what is most useful to you, and never mind about the rest. Maybe you'll never bring a ferocco into your games, and if so, who cares? Or maybe your very next campaign might offer the perfect opportunity for using one.
The Truth
Ultimately, there are even deeper Truths to be unveiled in Metropolis however. The above is still somewhat superficial windowdressing.
I have described the setting chapters that deal with it as a toolkit - yet you could say that it's a toolkit which oddly never explicitly states its purpose. Some feel that the descriptions thus remain vague, hard to grasp, and on the whole feel a bit... aimless?
My personal take on it is this:
The City as described in the books (Note: I adore the depiction of Metropolis in 1st and 4th ed Kult, and abhor the so-called "Metropolis" sourcebook. Yes, the quotes are justified here. Come fight me on this.) is described the way it is, in order to enable you - at your table, for your games - to address the eternal elephant-in-the-room question of Kult:
"What's up with that whole Divinity thing, anyways?"
I postulate that this is why it can feel like vague, undefined, oddly not-really-going-anywhere-fast in the book texts. It is by necessity our job as GMs to flesh out the details according to what answer to the above question we give for ourselves.
Is "The City" simply a powerful symbolism of humanity, somehow intrinsic to us as a species and thus metaphorical of our collective divinity? So does a Ruined City signify our fall from power? Did we rule it as physical, bodily gods, and have our "Palaces of Man" there? Like an urban version of Olympus or something?
Or was it built more like a miniature terrain table, a craftsman's hobby project to show of our skills? Merely a meticulously decorated shelf to keep our (aggressively acquired and abusively loved) toys in? Did we "rule it" more by hovering over it as disembodied entities of raw power and glory? Was it a worldcrafting project, much like we build fantasy worlds for RPGs, then populate them with NPCs for our players (other gods who come to visit?) to enjoy (or abhor) interacting with?
It is also said that we kept our treasures there, and many are still buried in the debris, if one knows (remembers!) where to look.
What were those treasures?
That is defined by what you think was valuable to us, back then. Time machines? Teleporters? Arcane-powered warp drives? Clairvoyance orbs? The perpetuum mobile? Perfect cybernetics? The secret to preventing cancer and living forever? Poetry that reaches so deep into the human soul that it enables true telepathy between any who have read it? Music that lets you dance atop the Vortex' crashing waves of raw, creative chaos, and stimulate it into spitting out whatever you wish into existence? The secret to build quantum (or trinary) computers? Perfect invisibility spells? Telecommunication devices so advanced they're basically just neuro-linguistic imprints, embedded directly in your brain's synapses? Wands of Fireball?
See, the books just tell you that this used to be your house, before an evil landlord got a hold of the whole block and had you kicked out of it, years ago. That it has fallen into disrepair ever since. There were several home invasions, and a bunch of creepy people have made ill-begotten use of the place. Some of your shit might still be hidden there, and you have to ask yourself: Do you want it urgently enough to go back and poke around for it?
...because that's all it can tell you with any confidence, right?
The rest must by necessity remain conjecture and suggestions. Possibilities for potential current affairs there.
You see, there might be no one in there
at all... or the neighbourhood kids might sneak in on weekends to have
sex on your couch and piss on your carpet. Some junkies might be
shooting up in the bedroom. Your cool mantelpiece may be wrecked by
vandalism and have swastikas spraypainted on it. A ruthless genius may
have set up a fucking meth lab in your cellar. Which one of these it
will be in any given game... depends wholly on what your GM wants to
tell you about the nature of your divinity.
(And those who usurped it,
them and their ways of going about it are a big reflector on that same
divinity as well!)
Hell, was it even a living-in-it kind of "home"?
Or was it your office? Your church? Your theatre stage?
Come pay it a
visit to find out!
So that was a lot of theory on the subject. Next time, let's see if we can find some good practical implementations for all this.
...
tbc
...
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