Saturday, October 3, 2020

Secret Warehouses

 Technically, the Secret Warehouses aren't located in Wizard City. They're located in extradimensional space, making them unregulated law-null zones for the storage of unscrupulous objects.

The 14 5/8th's Street Gang, led by Aggravated Sal, manages these extradimensional locations by holding the keys of entry. A key is, simply, an object. It can be anything: a wand, a shoe, an actual key, a password, a thought, a person, a sandwich. When paired with its 'door' - essentially any other kind of object - an extradimensional space opens. Typically, these pairings have some sort of intuitive association, as purely random objects rarely tend to form spontaneous hidden spaces.

For instance: a gold-colored brick in a wall might be a door, and its key would be a gentleman's cane. Or a series of three dogs might be a door, and the key would be one slice of ham fed to each (the portal forming when the dogs begin eating in a triangle formation).

Why does this happen? Why is this the only way that extradimensional spaces spontaneously come about? How come children are especially good at locating new spaces? Why doesn't the Bureau of Spatial and Temporal Matters have a firmer grasp on these secret places?

From Raiders of the Lost Ark
From Raiders of the Lost Ark

In the 14 5/8th's Street Gang, secret meeting spots are held at a premium.  The most prized of these meeting spots are the truly secret ones: sealed documents detailing directions to the meeting location, either written by someone now dead, or laboriously recorded then forgotten by its finder using memory loss magic. These locations are bartered and shared like trading cards, with collectors forming entire decks or filing cabinets worth of safe havens to hide from rival gangs or the wizard police.

d6

Name

Details

1

Loyd the Voyd 

Keeps a star-studded cloak close to the chest. Not a hair on his body. Eyes are swirling black vortexes. Under that cloak is the vacuum of space. Talks like a wind down an empty alley - all high pitched whistle and rasp.

2

Betty with the Deep Pockets

Trench coach, shifty eyes. “Gotta watch out for those 4th dimensional shamblers… They can be anywhere and everywhere!” Pockets so deep you could fall in and never be found.

3

Betty with the Mirror

Never looks at anyone directly. Always reflected through a hand mirror. Stylish and well-groomed. The reflection seems to have a mind of its own.

4

The Tall Hatter

Real short guy with a stubby chin. Wears a stack of hats two meters high. Bowlers, boaters, tops, cowboys, tricorns, piths, panamas, buckets, trilbies, hombergs, boonies, pork pies, fedoras, ushankas, and a single red fez at the bottom. Each one goes somewhere. Except the fez. That’s just a normal hat.

5

Broth the Sacker

Tall burly guy, bare arms with muscles like rebar and a big bird’s nest beard. Carries a bunch of burlap sacks for people-snatching. Put ‘em in the sack and they’re gone - fallen to who-knows-where like a reverse rabbit pull.

6

Aggravated Sal

Leader of 14 5/8th’s. Terrible fashion sense, red beard, short temper. Very short temper. Pockets full of space-vacuums and extradimensional-loaded battering rams. Critics will be unmade.


Secret Meeting Spots (d20)


Sometimes you need to set up a meeting, but you can't do that just anywhere in Wizard City. You need a place where The Police, The Secret Police, and the Ultra-Secret Police can't listen in on your illicit deal-making.

  1. Equidistant Conference Room - Famously egalitarian non-euclidean design (those darn gnomes!) ensure that everyone seated is the exact same distance away from every other seated person. Standing up and sitting down is always a bit of a trip. Very popular with anarchistic groups.
  2. Inside A White Sperm Whale’s Mouth - Surprisingly roomy, if a bit gooey. Do mind the tongue! Sperm whales are famous for never snitching to the cops, and their innate mind shielding, hence their popularity by criminal groups.
  3. The Gym - Literally nobody goes here except Beemus The Wizard of GAINS, and he’s cool. Don’t mind the grunting that sounds like a car alarm falling off a cliff.
  4. Inside a Wine Bottle - Pull out the cork and shrink yourself down. Pocket dimension inside. Fancy spaghetti and wonderful wine collection served.
  5. Toilet Bowl Conference - Two-way scry through a toilet bowl. Very awkward with multiple people. Convenient, for all bathrooms are your oyster!
  6. Kiddie Corner at the Bookstore - It’s like this little treehouse for toddlers with children's books on shelves carved like ladybugs. Of course wizards don’t bring their children to the bookstore, so now it’s mostly used by drug dealers.
  7. The Infinity Hotel - Infinite rooms means infinite possibility! Just keep walking and eventually you’ll find a decent meeting place.
  8. The Mall - “DO NOT GO TO THE MALL”, says literally everybody. But, Bah! That’s just for tourists. The Mall’s a great place for a secret meeting, as long as you pay mind to the Soul-Stealing Mannequins.
  9. Secret Police HQ - They’ll never suspect an illicit meeting right under their noses. Like, literally right under their noses. Literally.
  10. Some Guy’s Trench Coat - Not even extradimensional, just some really big trench coat that this guy rents out by the hour. Has just enough room for everyone underneath. May require riding on someone’s shoulders. Meeting typically held on the move.
  11. Dreams - They’re monitored by the Police, of course, but you can still create a secure space by making the dream gross enough that nobody sifting through the backlog will want to look at it.
  12. The Exsanguination Zone - Best for short meetings, as merely being in the zone drains your blood out through your skin, and nobody likes excessively blood-drenched socks.
  13. District Quadripoint - The precise point at which the four districts of the city meet is technically a legal deadzone in which nobody has jurisdiction. Just need to be one-dimensional and you’re good to go!
  14. The Past - Having meetings in the future is problematic, so why not have them in the past? (Don’t answer that.) Carries obvious risks of butterfly effect and whatnot, but what wizard hasn’t screwed up the time continuum at least twice?
  15. The Portal of Endless Screams - I mean, you have to shout over the billions of otherworldly screams constantly emitted from the portal, but at least eavesdropping is unlikely.
  16. District Council Meeting - You can say or do anything you want at these meetings, it’ll be on record, and exactly zero people will care.
  17. The Knock-On-Wood Diner - Nothing says illicit deals likes waffles! Also, declaring good fortune will definitely get you jinxed if you don’t actually knock on the wooden counters. Blame the wood spirits.
  18. In the Alley of the Rat Prince - The Rat Prince can detect when somebody is lying, and is sworn to bite them on the ear whenever this happens in his presence. He is, however, quite geriatric and moribund, and requires the assistance of several power-scheming rat-men to move. They all vie for this privilege.
  19. The Hat Shoppe - Many secret rooms containing special secret hats. Built like a series of interconnected escape rooms. They say one owner is a retired “cleaner” for Locke-Key International, and the other is the head of the League of Felonious Gentlemen. Neither have ever been seen.
  20. Balanced Atop The Dread Souffle At Le Restaurant Tranquille - A precarious meeting spot, to be sure, for the Dread Souffles unleash unspeakable terrors should they deflate. Best to have exceptional balance and heavenly etiquette when perched upon ornamental pedestals meant for silent birds alone, as bourgeois wizards nibble at its corners. Nobody will dare disturb you there. Must communicate in sign or quiet writing.
Step on in, why don'tcha?

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