Notes from Small Planets

by Nate Crowley

  INTRODUCING: DESCENSUS

  This unique township, deep under the abandoned realm of Kranagar, has been embedded thoroughly in Mittelvelde’s physics-defying dungeon strata to the extent that it’s entirely out of reach of the surface, and only accessible by magical means. Above and below it, and in all directions, the Dungeon sprawls, full of weirdness and danger and wealth. With no sunlight to grow crops, the city’s economy is based on forage from the depths, so it’s a place of bone-and-hide tents and lean-tos among stalagmites and statues of forgotten kings. The streets stink of tallow, leather, mildew and brass, and the food is … memorable. It’s also got what you’d call a rough clientele: adventurers, entrepreneurs and burnouts whose only common characteristic is that they think ‘fighting in a hole’ is a reasonable lifestyle.

  It’s best to come to Descensus with a working understanding of what the locals call ‘levels’. Essentially, with every storey of Dungeon one travels downward from the city, the more resources are found, and the more monsters guard them. Consequently, social status is governed by how many levels deeper than the city’s bottom a person has ventured, and guests are no exception. The price of goods, the level of service you’ll receive, and even the type of establishment you’re allowed to enter all depend on what ‘level’ you can boast. Since you’ll be Level One by default when you arrive, you’ll be limited to the very shittest drinking establishments. As such, it’s definitely worth heading down to the tunnels three levels below city limits and kicking apart a few of the rats and spiders that live there. After half an hour of stomping vermin, you can simply head back to town and sell the meat and pelts for booze money in a Level Three pub.

  I called out for the Elves as I walked their empty chalk-white streets, but only birds called back. At one point a lizard regarded me from its basking spot atop an empty wagon, but I think it was just an ordinary lizard. In the market square, stalls were still set with trinkets and jewels (admittedly, I pocketed a few handfuls), while the tavern tables were still set with pitchers of wine. I was beginning to think the city was entirely deserted, until I saw movement at the distant harbour.

  At first I took it for heat haze, but as I got closer there was no mistaking: it was something like a party. Three great silver ships were docked at the marble quay, and before them an astonishing banquet had been set out on trestles. Figures were seated all along the hundred-yard tables, sipping from china cups and nibbling at plates of dainty sweetmeats as elegant servants attended them.

  At the table’s centre, resplendent in silver cloth, sat a woman who must have been eight-feet tall, and from whose head branched fine platinum antlers the width of a man’s reach. And yes, her ears were definitely pointy. Surely this was the Elven Queen – but hadn’t she left these shores generations ago?

  To either side of her sat ranks of slightly smaller Elves, while they in turn were flanked by people of all kinds – humans, Dwarves and others still whose peoples I had not encountered. All looked ancient, with white hair and wispy beards, and all wore expressions of almost eerie placidity.

  They continued to eat and drink wordlessly as I approached the table, and I began to feel like I was experiencing some sort of hallucination: the whole set-up seemed dreamlike, and – to be frank – desperately creepy. But still I plodded forward, and when I got to within twenty feet, the Queen addressed me.

  ‘Master Floyd,’ she susurrated, with a voice as cold as her smile was warm. ‘You’ve arrived just in time to join us for our final meal. Won’t you come and take a place with us before we embark?’

  ‘Good day,’ I said, trying to sound urbane, although the words came out as a sort of stifled honk as I tried to process my shock at the Queen knowing my name. ‘That’s dreadfully kind. Yes, I would be, ah, honoured. And … where might you be embarking to?’ The Queen laughed musically then, and cream-white membranes slid sideways across her eyes as her face creased in amusement.

  ‘Why, to Larathainne, dearest fool! To the land of our people beyond the sea, where you may live in splendour with us.’

  ‘Isn’t that … just … an Elf thing?’ I volunteered, my voice contorting into a questioning squeak.

  ‘Not at all, Master Floyd. All are welcome in Larathainne, and many who were born to other folk are joining the voyage. Isn’t that right, friends?’ At this, she glanced up and down the table, where the various decrepit warriors nodded in docile agreement.

  ‘Now come,’ she said, extending a twig-thin hand towards a silver chair at the end of her table. ‘Come and dine with us before we depart, and we shall talk of what lies ahead.’

  Reader, I ran a fucking mile.

  — FROM THE TRAVEL JOURNAL OF FLOYD WATT

  1. WELCOME TO EROICA CITY[1]

  The bustling metropolis of Eroica City would be a spectacle by itself: it’s the quintessential urban jungle, where steam rises from manhole covers at dawn and honking traffic flows through the skyscraper canyons like a mighty river. But it’s not the daily drudgery of human life that makes Eroica special – all that might as well be the business of ants compared with the epic lives of those who fly above the streets.

  Why Eroica?

  Charting a moral course through life can be a taxing business. Sometimes it’s simply exhausting to tell good from bad in the wide grey ocean of the world, and you wish you had a guiding light to show the way.[2] In Eroica, there are hundreds of them, and they’re easy to spot because they can usually fly and they dress mostly in bright primary colours. They are the Superheroes. They’re bigger than us, they’re better than us and they showcase every quality we could hope to attain in their constant fight against Crime. The Superheroes aren’t just superb moral exemplars, either: they’re a fucking riot to watch. Simply look to the sky whenever you hear the sound of fists meeting flesh at Mach 3 and you’re guaranteed an experience akin to being beaten over the head with a sack of action figures after nine bong hits.

  Meet Your Heroes

  Roughly one in five-thousand Eroicans is born a Superhero (or a Hero, as they humbly prefer to be known), but in a city of eight million, that makes for a lot of Heroes. Powers tend to manifest in people during their early teens, and range from common abilities such as flight and immunity to the effects of being punched, to more esoteric things like mastery of geese or the ability to make people fall asleep by playing the bagpipes.[3]

  ARE THEY MAGIC, THOUGH?

  Technically, Superheroes are magical, since there’s no viable scientific explanation for anything they do. But since Eroica is a technological destination, they’re uncomfortable seeing things that way, and so tend to excuse their astonishing abilities away with vague alibis involving mutations, radiation or animals. It’s fair enough – they’re just being modest.

  But budding Heroes are faced with a huge question: do they join the city’s ranks of licensed defenders or renounce decent society and fight as a Baddie for the forces of Crime?

  The Good Life

  Each day, the forces of Crime try to steal from the decent businesses working in the name of Good,[4] and each day the city’s Heroes fight back. It’s a battle with no end, and who knows what would happen if the forces of Good were ever beaten.[5] Luckily, each company employs a stable of salaried, licensed Heroes to protect their property from Crime. These consummate professionals wear astonishing costumes corresponding to the brands of their sponsor, and constantly patrol company premises, on the lookout for wrongdoing.[6]

  FRANCHISE REBOOTS

  Often, when multiple companies have property in the same district, several different stables of Heroes will have overlapping turf. In these situations the different stables will never interact – to the point of actively ignoring the presence of another company’s Heroes – out of sheer respect for their sponsor’s intellectual property rights.[7] IP is everything in Eroica: when one of a company’s Heroes retires, the firm will usually hire a new hopeful to take on the mantle, refreshing the costume design and livery to suit current marketing objectives in th
e process.

  Most companies hire Heroes on the open market, with the most powerful individuals going to the firms with the deepest pockets. Nevertheless, some CEOs – despite having no powers themselves – insist on joining their teams in person, often wearing fancy armour of their own design. This always seems like a good idea for PR purposes, until an actual combat scenario occurs – at which point the executive will usually talk over all the actual experts before hammering the whole endeavour into the ground with a series of appalling tactical decisions.

  Baddies

  Some Heroes are too twisted or foolish to earn an honest living for Good. These lost souls inevitably turn to Crime, becoming known as Baddies in the process, and waste their lives stealing cash, food and medical supplies from Eroica’s economy, before distributing it to the criminal underworld.[8] Baddies can be just as powerful as Heroes, but they’re universally idiots. I mean, they’d have to be, wouldn’t they? Everyone knows Crime doesn’t pay – and that’s not even a platitude here. It’s literally the case. Baddies don’t get a salary at all, and anything they steal they immediately give away. Nihilistic dunces, the lot of them.

  City Environs

  Just outside the city is Liz Fisticuff’s Home for Muscular Children, one of Eroica’s oldest and most prestigious Hero Colleges. Taking in orphans and troubled waifs from the city’s stinking tenements, it educates dozens of new Heroes every year under the watchful, beefy eyes of Liz herself.[9] As a private enterprise, the Home costs a fortune to attend, so students can only complete their studies with the help of scholarships from potential sponsors, which they pay back after graduating and getting hired. It can take decades to clear the debt.

  At Eroica’s heart is the financial district: a shimmering hive of smoked glass and chrome, where people in colourful braces roar into big phones all day. And at the heart of the district is the Central Bank, a building that has essentially been built into an unassailable bunker after long years of assault by Baddies. It’s said the vaults could withstand the explosion of an atomic bomb in the bank’s lobby, and yet still, year after year, the Baddies find ways in. There’s a fight at the bank on average three days out of five, so be sure to have your wits – and your camera – about you if you visit.

  With sixteen-hundred demigods constantly battling each other in the streets, all with instantly recognisable branding, the business of journalism is on permanent overdrive in Eroica. The Newspaper District stretches for a dozen blocks and employs more than a hundred-thousand reporters: a teeming army wearing typewriters down to smithereens in their struggle to keep up with the daily drama of the city. For tourists, nothing beats the hustle and bustle of this coffee-fuelled dynamo.

  All Baddies are defeated in the end, either by constant attrition or via a Showdown, and if they are captured they are given a choice: take on a sponsorship contract and become a Hero, or be sent out to the city limits and locked away in Eroica Asylum. There’s no trial and rarely any assessment of mental health involved: it’s simply assumed that you’d have to be mad to choose prison over renouncing Crime and fighting for the good of the city. Visitors can pay a small sum to tour the Asylum, jeering at the Baddies through the bars and mocking them for making poor life choices.

  Overlooking the sapphire waters of Eroica Bay is the shining, monolithic headquarters of the Sprodsley Motor Company, the largest corporation in Eroica. On its roof, complete with outdoor pool, full bar and private helicopter, is the clubhouse of the Sprodsley Champions, the most glamorous, high-profile and well-funded Hero outfit in the city. They would probably be the most successful team in the city, too, if it wasn’t for the leadership of Mike Sprodsley, the company chairman’s halfwit son, who insists on leading the Champions into battle despite having no powers beyond an infinitely extending budget.

  One of the great curiosities of Eroica City is its only Crime-free neighbourhood, surrounding the headquarters of the Pepple Bros Cat Food Company. Uniquely, Pepple doesn’t hire any Heroes – instead, it earmarks a quarter of what a normal firm would pay for posthuman muscle, and uses it to provide healthcare, amenities and foodstuffs for the inhabitants of surrounding blocks, whether they are employees or not. Strangely, Baddies don’t touch Pepple territory, and what the company loses in revenue from advertising on Hero costumes it more than makes up for in savings on property repair.

  Famous Heroes and Baddies

  The enormous Kaptain Krinklems is head of the Finesnax Five, the beloved superteam charged with protecting the Finesnax Food Conglomerate. Clad in bright green armour, she is emblazoned all over with the logo for Krinklems, Eroica City’s premier baked corn snack. And with her telekinetic rending powers, not to mention her full-throated battle roar of “Enjoy baked corn snacks!’, she’s beloved by children across the city.

  As headline guardian for the Eroica Petroleum Corp, Petrolyna has had a bit of an image change in recent years. After her sponsor was vilified for a disastrous oil spill upcoast, her previous incarnation – a menacing, masked creature in heavy black industrial gear – was quietly retired and replaced with a cheerful oil worker in overalls, who takes a day each week to clean the muck off seabirds.

  A few years ago, Skeleton Key was one of the most popular Heroes in the city, with his eerie skull face and his ability to make his fingers change shape at will.[10] But when he was caught using his powers for inappropriate purposes – in the intimate company of a competitor Hero, no less – he was stripped of his sponsorship. Inevitably, Key turned to Crime, where his grim visage and lockpicking ability has made an even bigger name for him as a Baddie.

  The Crab Sherpa is a man of very advanced years, who combats Crime by patiently and methodically guiding a large number of crabs to the scene. He can’t control the crabs directly, but he certainly knows how to chivvy them along. Unfortunately he’s not much good as a Hero, as by the time he arrives at a trouble spot the Baddie is either long gone or immediately begins stamping on the Sherpa’s charges, while he stands to one side weeping and mouthing, ‘my crabs.’ Nevertheless, he is seen as a delightful underdog by millions, and so the Nebsworth Paper Company keeps him on the payroll.

  The dastardly Gravy Jones is one of the city’s most notorious Baddies, and travels around in the Gravy Boat, a 26-ton road tanker full of piping-hot gravy. He can also shoot boiling-hot gravy from his hands, and briefly turn his own blood to gravy to enter one of his famous Rages. Several of the city’s major gravy brands are rumoured to have approached him with lucrative contracts, but it seems his heart belongs to Crime.

  Staying Safe

  On the one hand, you can’t ignore the fact that Eroica is constantly being terrorised by Baddies. On the other hand – if we’re honest – it’s pretty easy to stay safe from them. Nine times out of ten they’ll be focused on robbing a bank or raiding a storage depot, with minimum civilian injury. The problem comes from the subsequent fights with Heroes – once a proper ruckus starts up, it tends to ricochet around the city like a ball bearing in a washing machine, levelling buildings as it goes.[11] And while I’d love to assure you that you’re guaranteed rescue by a noble Hero should debris tumble your way, you’re better off stacking your odds by standing near an advertising billboard if trouble kicks off. Companies will tolerate a certain amount of human collateral damage, but they won’t stand for their branding being damaged.

  As a general reassurance, it’s worth noting that, even for baseline humans, it’s incredibly hard to die here. For some unfathomable reason, falls that would end a person elsewhere just leave light bruises here, and blows to the head that should cave in skulls simply clonk people into a gentle sleep. Minor injuries[12] can be forgotten about in a matter of hours, and barely any injury is fatal. It’s got to the point where the Heroes find it hard to take funerals seriously anymore. Four times out of five, the departed Hero returns somehow.

  Eating and Drinking

  If you’re into enormous portions then one of Eroica’s Hero Buffets is the place for you. At these caverno
us dinner barns, food is cooked in industrial quantities and carried out by the bucketload to be guzzled by ravenous Heroes on breaks between missions.

  Alternatively, if you can scare up the right underworld contacts and fancy roughing it, you might be able to join one of the street cookouts regularly thrown by Baddies, where an entire neighbourhood will be treated to the spoils of a dastardly raid. I wouldn’t lower myself to this sort of thing, but Eliza went and said she quite enjoyed it.[13]

  If you’re really flush, treat yourself – and perhaps a date – to a five-star meal at Excelsior, the rotating restaurant atop the Grundlinger Typewriters tower. It’s where Eroica’s CEOs go to toast their daily successes, and rarely a dinner service goes by without an attempt by a Baddie to storm the restaurant from the outside, and their subsequent foiling by one of the Grundlinger Seven. It only adds to the fun: after all, nothing quite sets off a romantic meal like two titanic figures battering the paste out of each other in the sky beside your table. It’s like meat fireworks.

  — TESTIMONIALS —

  As a little girl, I always dreamed of being saved from a fire by a Superhero, but I didn’t see it panning out this way. I mean, she looked the part – she was gorgeous, with red vinyl wings and the logo of Mad Charlie’s Furniture Warehouse curled around her thighs. But as she carried me away from the blaze, she kept whispering to me about the great prices on offer at Mad Charlie’s, and it got really off-putting. Even as she set me down on the street she was trying to get me to sign up for a loyalty card, and I just wanted to get away.