Tramline 46

The customs cleric stamped my papers with a hiss and a smear of burning ink, and just like that I was loose inside Atlantis. The air here is hotter, sharper. Even the shadows have weight. I paid for a spot on a rickety tram running the shore — half ferry, half train — and clung to the rail as the city slid past.

For awhile The Pier stretched before me: forests of cranes, moored liveships, like drifting towns, warships bristling with cannons. Airships descended like carrion birds to snatch their cargo. It seemed to continue as far as the eye can see. The whole Inner Bay of Atlantis was one giant harbor, with trade, navy and passenger ships heading for their destinations or going back home. I saw few gold and obsidian yachts floating lazily in the docks. They were all under the watchful eye of some heavily armed mercenaries from The Brass Oath, the city guard for money. I saw a speedboat gliding by, I'd like to think that it was some smugglers, too fast for the coast guard to catch.

Soon the ferry-tram crawled its way away from the shore and headed for Downtown, where towers of glass and steel pierced the morning sky. Streets are wide and clean, scrubbed too clean. Every doorway watched by a statue or a guard. People there don’t walk fast, they glide, like they already own tomorrow. Someone muttered that a man could starve to death here without leaving the shadow of a bank. One could break their neck trying to see the tops of the Spires, the tallest of all the skyscrapers in the city center with narrowing tips, like spears reaching for the sky. But above them all the Arcanum Needle rises to dwarf even the mightiest of the corporate towers.

Soon the buildings start getting shorter, only ten to twenty stories high, square shaped, and the streets are filled with people, bikes, rickshaws, and arcanum powered automobiles and other trams. Some even try to ride their horses only to get blocked by a hooded palanquin. The streets start to get more narrow and the buildings look like they are leaning to one another in a crowded market place as we rattle toward Old Town. Gobble stone streets, evening prayer bells ringing slightly off key, painted windows older than anyone alive. Tourists and pilgrims are walking about in huddled groups. Doubtless they have come to see the Saint Arva’s Basilica or the Old Castle. Locals are holding onto their belongings tighter and walk quickly past the courthouses. The stones here don’t just carry history — they carry judgment. The narrow streets and building leaning over darken the day which makes me think about the Undercity, or the rumor I have heard of it. A sewer grate yawned open as we passed, and I swear I saw candles flickering far below. Shapes watching from the dark.

The tram rattles on as the sun moves across the overcast sky. In time the old and new town shrink to neighborhoods, and sometimes it grows back again to some local city districts. The tram curved inland, giving a glimpse of Suburbia. Rows of white houses, clipped gardens, children in Lamplighter uniforms. Peaceful on the surface, but the air felt tight, like someone else’s dream. Too perfect, too rehearsed. But in time, the law and order gives way to the life and nature of The Favelas. A sprawl of tin roofs and patchwork shrines, smoke rising from cooking fires and duel-pits alike. Towering tree houses of The Low-Bridge Pride offer shelter to its friends and I can see vigilant sentries on every branch. Music and laughter, shouts and hoots bled from every alley, too loud to be ignored, too desperate to be joyful. This is were The Vergefolk live, and every wall is painted with their ever shifting territorial markings, murals and prayers. I kept my gaze forward.

In the distance, the jagged rim of the Caldera spat smoke into the sky. I glimpsed sparks inside the volcano, fires that never seemed to go out. Bazaars spilled over every ledge, cable cars strung like spider silk. That place glowed hungry.

The tram clattered on, but the city hadn’t shown me everything. Atlantis was still measuring me, still listening. And above it all, the Arcanum Star breathed.

The City

Atlantis is not one city, but many layered on top of each other. Each district offers opportunity — and danger — in equal measure:

• The Pier — docks, leviathan life-ships, smugglers, and naval might; where the sea collides with law and crime alike.
• Downtown — obsidian skyscrapers, corporate shrines, syndicate boardrooms; the city’s polished, predatory heart.
• Old Town — cathedrals, courthouses, haunted stone streets; tradition clings here, though rot waits beneath.
• Undercity — sewers, ruins, outlaw miracles, forgotten gods; a world beneath the world.
• Suburbia — middle-class sprawl of comfort, gated dreams, and quiet control.
• Favelas — chaotic slums of gangs and street shrines, driven by passion and survival.
• Caldera — hollow volcano of bazaar markets, reckless trade, the deeper you go, the steeper the price.

To move through Atlantis is to pass through different worlds, stitched together by law, greed, and miracle. A city where everyone has a dream, and will to survive.

References

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