+ By Gas Mask and Fire Hydrant: Golgotham +
(With apologies to M. John Harrison and the authors of Confrontation for the amorphous kitbash of their ideas and writing!)
+ The Planet +
The world that came to be known as Golgotham was settled – as far as the Imperium's patchy and unreliable records can tell – as a mining and manufacturing planet nearly 14,000 years ago. In its purpose, little has changed in the ensuing millennia. Encrusted with manufactories, processing facilities and refineries; and pocked with mines, docks and launches, little of the surface is visible. Nothing would be familiar to the early settlers: the oceans have been reduced to shrunken chemical sludge-ponds, the mountains razed to rubble, the topography churned and devoured by the ravenous demands of the Imperium.
The great urban developments – combined housing and factory blocks known as hive-cities – have swelled and proliferated to form great carbuncles that far overtop the lost mountains of ancient times, after which many are named. Sections of these ever-growing hive-cities have expanded, collapsed and broken out into divided city-spires, each building on the ruins of those that came before. Groups, or 'Clusters' of hive-cities that sit closely in geographical terms form interconnected and entwined structures as their roads, tunnels and flight paths form physical networks that mirror the electromatiic, telegraphic and psychic communication networks. Between these clusters are the vast deserts of industrial ash that cover the surface of the planet with a mobile, corrosive skin. Over this desert lies a cloud layer of airborne pollution, so that the great spires of the city hives rise from a drifting mist of tainted vapour like islands out of the sea.
Despite its environmental decline, Golgotham remains productive; and thus of importance to the Imperium. Its natural resources long-depleted, the waste-heaps of previous generations have become a new source of riches. Indeed, the populace, high-born and low alike, are united by the necessity of reclaiming everything – from the food they eat to the air they breathe – from the accumulated wastes of the declining, exhausted world. The planet lives by dint of autocannibalisation; and it is wholly reliant on imported or synthetic nutrition. As with hive cities across the Imperium, each incorporates numerous factory-clusters dedicated solely to converting used organic matter – all organic matter – into synth-food. Real food is an expensive luxury for the most prestigious and affluent aristocrats; and little more than a myth to the bulk of the hive-dwellers.
It is unlikely that the population will ever be tallied; and all estimates are almost inevitably laughably inaccurate; because like all hive worlds, Golgotham's population is vast. An attempted census of just the uphive zones of a single comparatively well-ordered Hive, Confronsis, recorded over a billion inhabitants; but the hive proper sits on a vastly larger warren of abandoned factories, overbuilt habitations and other ruins; whose enormous population can only be guessed at.
+++
+ What is Golgotham? +
+ In short, it's the thinly-veiled ersatz Necromunda – as you've probably guessed from the suspiciously familiar text above; which is a quickly and loosely rewritten version of the original Confrontation background – which can be read in full through the noospheric inloadlink above. +
+ I personally think this introduction to the planet was never bettered, and not having such detail present in the later release of Necromunda was a terrible shame. Sure, it was 'god-level narration', but having comparisons with the real world made it all the more clear what a crapsack world the planet was. +
+ With the new Necromunda out soon, the PCRC are starting to get enthused; Golgotham is the result. The gangs of the PCRC will be duking it out through the underhive (and beyond?) or Hive Confronsis. By shifting the setting to Antona Australis, we've bought ourselves a little freedom. Different members will be adopting the familiar Houses – this might be as simple as a change of name, or might be a full rewrite and reskin of the underlying house tropes. +
+ What am I doing? +
+ Rather neatly, all of us seem to like different gangs, so there's not going to be too much overlap – though even if two PCRC members want to play (say) Orlocks, it's easy enough to use the same rules but have two separate Houses in the background. +
+ I'm going to be taking the pseudo-religious/mediaeval aesthetic of House Cawdor as the root of my gang. The eponymous Gretchin of Greenstuff Gretchin [+noospheric inloadlink embedded+] recommended In Viriconium, a fantastically evocative series of vaguely-linked and aggressively non-genre stories by M. John Harrison to me a while back, and reading that has really sparked my imagination. +
1 comment:
I'm really glad you enjoyed it; it's a wonderful series! ^^
Personally, I love where you're going with this and I think that was the major appeal of Confrontation over Necromunda; the unrestrained aesthetic of gang creation over the dictated houses and their predetermined get-up.
I was really inspired by Spiky Rat Pack and their Confrontation collaboration a while back and I have always wanted to do something similar.
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