A WRAITH SUPPLEMENT BY SHATTERED ROSES

FOR THE WRAITH PROJECT

How to Use This Book
Necropolis: London is a supplement for Wraith: the Oblivion drawing on the information pre-
sented on the city in Ends of Empire. It is set after the devastation of the Sixth Great Maelstrom in the
London of 2013, and details a world on the cusp of disaster in both the Skinlands and the Shadowlands
This book is intended to act as a resource to the people playing Wraiths inside an online environment, to
give new players an exhaustive idea of what to expect from the city both among the living and the dead,
and to allow Storytellers to use and adapt the setting for their own games.
It details two new factions present solely in London, as well as some of the Restless that run and
populate them, presenting an original setting away from the usual conventions of the Hierarchy.
t is an example of what happened to a single city after the Maelstrom, its fall into darkness and slow
recovery to strength, as well as speculating on the future of the storm-wracked city.
This book also aims to set out some of the major locations in the city of London and its history on
both sides of the Shroud, giving Storytellers and their players a post-Maelstrom setting against which to
run their games, or join the existing one.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter I: Introduction 02
Chapter II: History 07
Chapter III: Geography 14
Chapter IV: The Confederacy 31
Chapter V: Death By Water 35
 CHAPTER ONE:
INTRODUCTION
Theme and Mood
Theme
The theme of Necropolis: London is struggle.
Since the city was first founded on the banks of the
Thames, there has been a constant struggle for control
on both sides of the Shroud. It has also been the fate of
many of the city's souls, both living and dead, to
struggle for survival.

Now the city stands on the cusp of utter destruc-

tion, and throughout its twisting streets and labyrin-
thine tunnels everyone struggles to survive, while the
new powers that have arisen from the ashes fight
amongst themselves for control of the city's resources.
Mortals pick at the sodden rubble beside the river for
scraps of food just as the Restless circle burning build-
ings like vultures in search of relics and new recruits
for their own personal wars.

No matter what else goes in inside the city limits,

life, and death, are always hard.

Mood
Existence in the London of 2013 is a dark and mis-
erable thing. The mood of the setting should be bleak,
desolate and often inexplicable. A lot of the time,
strange things happen inside London without rhyme
or reason. A twisted nightmare logic often applies,
and as a result, any game set in London 2013 should
be desolate and often very, very weird.

This doesn't mean that there is no hope to be found,

after all, we are out to have fun. All it means is that
the hope can often be difficult to see, and even more
difficult to achieve.
The City Now the city lies in a confused disarray and it is
The city of London right from its beginnings in the young Restless who have a chance to build their
Roman times, was a city of trade. It is hardly surpris- own futures now that an eternity of tradition and au-
ing then, that on the other side of the Shroud, trade tocracy are gone. However, the young wraiths holding
was the life-breath of the city right up until the Sixth the reins of London's power seem unable to break the
Great Maelstrom struck. However, after that, the soci- dictates of the past that have so long been imposed
ety of the dead began to spiral into chaos, and the over the lands of the dead, and the city finds itself in
lands of the living began to decay in a violent, vivid danger of changing one dictatorship for another.
reflection of the lands of the dead. What's more, the most ancient of the city's wraiths are
far from gone for good, and the constant barrage of
Slowly, global warming began to wring the pros- the Maelstrom has only made them colder, made them
perity and life out of the city. The temperatures rose, darker, made them meaner.
smog became a daily sight across the city, and unpre-
dictable weather caused outbreaks of disease that
halted the majority of London's tourism in its tracks.
A Patchwork World
However, the worst was yet to come. Much of the London is in fact not one city, but many. Over the
world was beginning to suffer from a rise in sea-levels years, the new has been built on top of the old, and
and increased flooding, but no one ever suspected the the old torn down to be replaced by the new. A city on
Thames Barrier to give way. But it did. Thousands top of a city on top of a city. And the dead do not for-
died, and many people found themselves living in get what once was as easily as the living. The result is
over a foot of tepid river-water. Cases of disease sky- a labyrinthine puzzle-work city of the old, the new
rocketed, discontent grew among the public, and vio- and the ancient, as the city was built, rebuilt, and con-
lence became commonplace. tinued to grow and engulf the towns around it. Be-
Claiming more and more power over the people cause of this, the city is often dream-like in the logic of
of the city, and auctioning off more and more of the how the different buildings and spaces interlace and
public services in order to cut taxes and quell the in- lap over the lands of the living, and therefore young
surrection, the government ushered in more and more wraiths often find themselves getting lost in unusual
laws restricting peoples rights. This culminated in the and alien landscapes that seem to obey no ones rules
Public Order Act of 2012 which gave the police the but their own.
power to shoot to kill, and also made public execution In addition to this, before the Maelstrom, London
legal for the first time since 1858. boasted one of the most diverse populations in the
Inevitably, London's gang culture grew, and soon Dark Kingdom of Iron. Certain districts across the city
the privately funded police force was massively over- became havens for the other Dark Kingdoms of the
stretched. They ceased to patrol the worst areas of the Shadowlands. The largest of these was Chinatown,
city, which were mainly situated in the East End. The which boasted one of the largest populations of Jade
area quickly earned the name of the No Go Zone, a citizens outside the Yellow Springs. However, this
filthy slum under control of a gang called the East End was to be the downfall of the city, as when the Jade
Soldiers. Emperor staged his invasions, London's own citizens
rose up against her.
It is presumed that London's small Dark Kingdom
A Bitter Reflection communities were wiped out in the Maelstrom, be-
The lands of the dead didn't fare much better in cause none have been seen since, and most restless
these dark times. The Hierarchy dissolved under the have forgotten that they ever existed. Still, London's
weight of the Maelstrom, dozens of denizens of the diverse history holds true, and the city still boasts citi-
Shadowlands, wraith and spectre alike, were hurled zens with a wide spectrum of beliefs. As for the com-
across the Shroud to rise in bodies they didn't recog- munities of foreign ghosts, well, who knows what
nize, factions of violent Mediums rose up against the lurks in the deepest tunnels of the underground sys-
dead, and new factions formed out of the ashes of in- tem . . .
stitutions that had ruled for millennia.
London at a Glance
Population: 10 Million

Climate: Largely unpredictable due to global

warming. Generally warm and wet, prone to storms
and flash-flooding although droughts and snaps of
arctic cold also occur from time to time.

Flooding: Throughout the years following the

new millennium, London's situation began to worsen.
Pollution grew worse and worse every day until the
Thames caught light. Homelessness became rife, as
did disease, and public services grew worse and
worse. Global warming meant that the city's weather
became erratic, and in 2010, the Thames Barrier gave
way, swamping the city. Now, many buildings
around the river are lost entirely and the only dry way
of crossing the river is by using Tower Bridge. Many
of the city's poorest citizens live in homes flooded by
anything from a couple of inches to three feet of filthy
water. The sewers are flooded and mostly unusable.
Disease is rife, and crime grows worse with every day.
What's more, the flooding is only going to get worse,
and with frequent cold snaps bringing hypothermia,
and the subsequent thaws bringing disease, things are
looking dark for the city.
Monarchy: The once great British Royal Family
are now barely even mentioned in day to day life.
Long before the flooding, the Monarchy had become
nothing but a puppet to the government, and soon,
that same government they had handed the reins of
power to, was cutting their spending. Unable to main-
tain their home at Buckingham Palace, the building
fell into disrepair, and eventually, as the state of the
city grew worse and worse, the monarchy withdrew
to their ancestral home at Windsor Castle. Now the
Palace lies abandoned, and the monarchy are nothing
but a distant echo of the past at best, or a joke at
worst, to the average denizen of the city.
Business: Business has grown to be huge in Lon-
don. Companies invest and run the Health Care, the
Fire Brigade and even the Police. They then cut as
may corners as they can to save costs, and charge as
much as they can for their services, in order to maxi-
mise profits. Business is kept the not-so-secret guiding
force behind city politics by the constant stream of
cash that greases the wheels of government from the
lowliest MP all the way to the top. The world of Lon-
don citizens is all about business, and the largest of
the meta-corporations, Megadon, is slowly closing in technically publicly funded, show more and more of a
on the last of the public services, and purchasing them definite bias as the days pass. The other television
for its own gain. channels contain various degrees of advertising with
Police: London's Police force is a privately-funded various degrees of bias, but with so many sources say-
shambles. Under-funded, corrupt and massively un- ing so many different things, it is often impossible to
derstaffed, the police refuse to patrol the more un- get anywhere near the truth portrayed in the news
pleasant areas of the city and are often slow to re- without actually being there when the events occur.
spond to call-outs, if they respond at all. Even when Culture: Despite the current state of the city, the
they do arrive, they are unilaterally swayed by bribes arts still draw a welcome reception from city-dwellers.
which means much of the city is left in the hands of A number of exclusive nightclubs exist north of the
the gangs. river, far from the filth and the flooding, which are
Health Care: One of the first things to be sold off regularly frequented by the city's high society. As the
to fund tax cuts was the country's National Health flooding began to take effect around 2005 and crime
Service. The hospitals are now privately run by mega- began to worsen, people turned to the arts in order to
corporations, and the divide between the rich and the forget about the state of the world they were living in,
poor is mind-boggling, with the poorest citizens often and government was only to happy to pour cash into
used as guinea pigs for new drugs without either their the arts to help them. London boasts both the Royal
knowledge nor their consent. The one exception to the Ballet and the Royal Opera, working out of the Royal
rule is the Metcalf Clinic based in what remains of Opera House in Covent Garden, which, although it
Hammersmith Hospital in the north of the city, which has seen better days, is still a grand, dusty beauty to
provides health care for all. behold. The Royal Albert Hall and several of the lar-
ger art galleries such as the Tate and the National Por-
Fire: The fire service has only recently been sold trait Gallery have also survived, although they have
off in order to fund the most recent bout of tax cuts, done so at the expense of their poorly funded breth-
and as a result, it is both severely under-funded, and ren, and most smaller, private theatres have long gone
still true to it's original purpose. Though many expect out of business.
that the fire service will soon begin to respond only to
calls from citizens who have paid the corresponding Scene: Aside from the velvet-rope clubs fre-
protection premium, returning to the days when stan- quented by the high society, London has everything
dards were displayed on the sides of houses to show from run down restaurants and American-style diners
the fire brigade which ones to put out when a whole to extreme fetish nightclubs, and places where you're
street caught fire. People suggesting that, with the more likely to get a broken nose than a drink. The
current spate of cutbacks in building materials, this most infamous of London's clubs are Club Headon, a
may mean another fire like the one that near de- club for the rich and famous which sits in Notting
stroyed the city in 1666, are currently being ignored. Hill, not far north of Buckingham Palace; Redemption,
For the time being however, the fire brigade respond a relatively safe club set into an old church and with a
to all those who need them, although their equipment decidedly Christian feel to even the heaviest music;
has certainly seen far better days, and it often takes and the Slaughterhouse, a dangerous club in the East
them hours to put out even the smaller house fires End decked-out like an abattoir where only the most
they attend to. brave and stupid of the population dare to step.
Local Media: London has several newspapers,
although the largest of them is the New London
Times, formerly just 'The Times', which is run out of Traveling to and Around London
offices on the north of the city. It is known to be sym- Road Travel: London is accessible by almost
pathetic to both the government, and the big busi- every major road in the United Kingdom. Many of the
nesses behind it, and suspicions that the money greas- England's largest roads cross the country and lead
ing the wheels of parliament is also at work here and directly to the capital city. Many of these roads have
growing more and more widespread. The city is also their origins in Roman times, and even before. Even-
home to several television channels, including seven tually, these roads connect to the M25, a large motor-
run under the guise of the BBC, which, although still way that forms a ring about the capital. Poorly main-
tained in recent years, and given to bouts of incompre- tem are the most dangerous ways of crossing the city,
hensible traffic that can snarl everything to a halt for with gangs and violence commonplace throughout
hours on end, the M25 is still by far the best way of both services. Because of this, most of London's citi-
reaching a required destination within London, with- zens use cars or cabs, or cross the city by foot, rather
out reverting to the city's labyrinthine back-roads. than risk the under-funded and rickety busses and
Air Travel: London is serviced by three major air- trains inside the city limits.
ports; Heathrow, Stansted and Luton. In recent years, Cars and Taxis: Although London's roads are
Heathrow has become neglected. The flooding cuts poorly maintained to the extreme, and deregulation of
very close to the airport, and it's mostly fallen out of the city's taxis means drastic differences in fares and
use as a result. However, the other two airports re- safety, the roads are the transportation of choice for
main active, and planes leave them for locations right many of London's citizens. The roads surrounding the
across the world on a regular basis. With the closure river are mostly flooded, and the only dry way across
of major parts of Heathrow, Stansted has developed the water is to use Tower Bridge, which, with greater
quickly, having several runways added in recent elevation and some maintenance, has managed to sur-
years, and becoming the city's primary destination for vive more or less intact. Other roads are either par-
air travel. tially or totally flooded, pot-holed or in bad need of
Rail Travel: Just as many of the major roads in the resurfacing. The traffic on the streets in beyond belief,
United Kingdom lead inexorably to London, such is and hijacking by gangs of thugs is not utterly unheard
the case with the countries' major railway lines. Lon- of in the city's less-protected areas. Still, the roads are
don has a massive underground or subway system the safest and easiest way of getting around London,
that serves the inner city, with large stations such as especially for those who know all the shortcuts and
Victoria, Euston, Clapham Junction and London back roads.
Bridge serving as junctions between underground and
overground services which stretch out like the legs of
a giant spider across the entire country and into Wales
and Scotland.

Getting Around London

Buses and Trains: London has an extensive sys-
tem of busses as well as trains, with both the older-
style red double-decker busses, and newer, single-
deck coaches in use across the city. In addition to this,
the underground system forms a tight web across the
city, and you are never more than a few hundred me-
ters from a tube station, operating on one or more of a
dozen separate lines. The underground lines used
most often are the Circle, District and Northern lines,
which between them cover most of the inner city.
However, since the flooding in 2010, much of the un-
derground train network has become utterly unusable
by the Quick. This, combined with the tube system's
immunity from the Maelstrom means that it is often
the most popular haven for Restless of all three fac-
tions. With the Midnight Express missing and pre-
sumed lost, St Dismas Station South is almost entirely
abandoned even by the dead, and even the Confeder-
acy's Midnight Express-style Marble Court does not
call at the abandoned station any more. To the Quick,
the busses and what remains of the underground sys-
 CHAPTER TWO:
HISTORY
Beginnings 1176, when the ill-fated, wooden bridge across the
Thames was replaced with a stone one. Early London
From London's earliest days as a Roman settle- Wraiths used those skilled in Inhabit and Outrage to
ment, it was a patchwork of both materials and cul- bring huge quantities of stone across the Shroud, and
tures. It was founded as a trade town, situated on a began building. Soon, the city had a place where the
wide, deep river, but inland enough to resist a coastal intrepid Wraiths travelling to and from Stygia could
attack, and trade has marked its history on both sides meet without interference from the living. Simple,
of the Shroud ever since. pale towers were soon constructed over the roofs of
the houses on the bridge, giving the dead a place to
When Roman rule collapsed, the town inside the gather over the heads of those still living.
mile-square, Roman-built wall was as good as de-
serted, and it was here that Shadowlands history in The new stone-built bridge in the Skinlands also
the area began. The Restless took over the deserted wrought many changes in the lands of the living. The
town, exploiting a natural byway that led to the Isle of arches of the bridge were small, and restricted the
Sorrows, and the large space left almost entirely at flow of the river, so that come winter, the Thames
their disposal, ripe with Haunts left by the Romans. would freeze over. People started to skate on it and on
The Restless of early London paved the byway, creat- the surrounding mashes with ice-skates made from
ing the largest route leading from the Shadowlands to animal bones, and wintertime markets were soon tak-
Stygia with dazzling Roman efficacy. ing place on the river throughout the colder months.
Trade continued to boom, and the community of the
Alfred the Great re-founded the city inside the Dead swelled, with hundreds of relic boats and carts
walls to protect his people from attack, and the Rest- rolling up the river to the entrance of the byway,
less were forced to find more innovative ways of transporting goods to Stygia and other areas of the
avoiding the population. At first, they stuck primarily Kingdom of Iron, as well as other Dark Kingdoms
to the back streets, ducking out of the way of the pass- across the world. Agents of the Hierarchy regularly
ing Quick. Before long though, London's Wraiths passed through the city, maintaining a strong hold
were learning how to jump between rooftops, across over all who resided there, protecting them, and the
the small stone streets, holding their meetings on the precious byway, from harm by outside forces.
roofs of small wooden huts and larger, stone-built,
Roman dwellings. It was here that London's tradition
of roof-wraiths was founded. The Heretic Offensive
The government of London changed again with and the Founding of a Necropolis
William the Conqueror's invasion, and Restless of dif-
ferent cultures - Saxon, Roman and Norman - began to The balance of power only changed in the 13th
mix on the other side of the Shroud, trading with one Century, when a huge influx of catholic monks came
another and with Stygia. When William built the to London, among them, the Dominicans and Francis-
Tower of London in 1080, London's Wraith's found cans, or Black and Greyfriars. The Shadowlands suf-
themselves a new ally in the shape of the Corax, and fered from a similar influx of hundreds of Heretics,
the Dead maintained good relations with the ravens carrying their religion on to the other side of the
for nearly a thousand years. Work on a large haunt Shroud. The Black and Greyfriars became a regular
away from the city's population began in earnest after sight in the London Deadlands led by Blackfriar
Brother Dominic, and Greyfriar Brother Francis. In the early
14th Century, an attempt was made by the two orders of friars
to wrest control of the city from the hands of those acting on
behalf of the Hierarchy.

The Legions of Stygia were ill-staffed and unprepared for

the attack, and for the fervour with which the Heretics fought.
For several years, the battle was fought both on the open
streets, and over the roofs of the city. Until the middle of the
14th Century, it seemed as if the Heretics had the upper hand,
and they may even quell the Hierarchy and gain control of Lon-
don. However, fortunately for the Hierarchy (a coincidence
those in-the-know are more than aware of), in 1348-1349 the
Black Death killed a third of the population of the city, bolster-
ing the ranks of the Skeletal Legion by nearly 500%. A high-
ranking Skeletal Legionnaire by the name of Matthew Thatcher,
was quick to send the newly dead onto the front-line, and
within a decade, the Heretic threat was greatly reduced, al-
though it did not entirely disappear until 1531 when Henry
VIII broke with the Catholic church and disbanded the monas-
teries, cutting the Heretics off from a supply of new recruits. It
was only then that the two leaders of the Heretic alliance were
supposedly hunted down and killed.

The disbanding on the monasteries in the Skinlands caused

massive amounts of land previously owned by the church to
open up for habitation, and soon, the population of London
was rising rapidly. Over the next few hundred years, towns
such as Southwark and Whitechapel (1500's), Bethnal Green
and Spitalfields (1700's), Deptford and Shepherds Bush (1800's),
and Wimbledon and Surbiton (1900's) were all swallowed up
by the growth of the city, leading to an even greater degree of
cultural diversity and patchwork community. London is not
one city, but many.
The same was soon true among the Restless.

About the same time, towards the end of the 16th Century,
the Guilds were cast out of London, and the first Necropolis
was founded there. Trade suffered badly for quite some time
with the loss of the Guilds, but the Hierarchs finding them-
selves in control of this new and dangerous project were quick
to seize control of the situation, putting their own Restless tal-
ented in Inhabit, Argos and Moliate in where the Guilds had
been cast out. That many of the same faces remained on the
dockside, manning the traderoutes and beginning to found the
forges and expand the Haunt over the Thames, was a fact that
most in power chose to ignore, and most at ground-level chose
not to mention.
 Soon, the area around the London Bridge Haunt
was thriving to new-found heights. When the Hierar- The Necropolis Grows
chy took over control of the city and began to establish The next major upheaval occurred in the mid
their Necropolis, the population of the city skyrock- 1700's. In the Skinlands, both the houses on London
eted. Rooftop markets and walkways were scattered Bridge, and the ancient Roman City Wall were demol-
everywhere, and hoards of relic vessels drew up and ished by the Georgians. For quite some time, the
down the river each day. To begin with, the Ana- Haunt on London Bridge had been the centre of both
creons of the Hierarchy enjoyed an almost equal split the culture and the government of the Necropolis.
of power, and the varying cultures and races were all When parts of it were pulled down, it was only some
governed with a surprisingly loose hand. The Guilds quick work by the city's Harbingers, Spooks and Ar-
were also allowed to maintain a stronger presence tificers that kept it from being destroyed altogether.
than in the other fledgling Necropoli, and possessed However, once its future was assured, the majority of
power almost equal to that of the Hierarchy, although the bridge belonged to the dead, and they were quick
always behind closed doors. By far the largest Guilds to take advantage of that. The Haunt swelled both
in London at this time were the Artificers and the Har- above and below the waterline, and soon, the Citadel
bingers, who, together, worked to exploit the fruitful was founded.
trade routes the city had to offer, although the Spooks
were approaching them in power. By the 1850's, large quantities of Chinese and Jew-
ish immigrants were beginning to settle in the city.
Further outbreaks of Plague were commonplace, Links with the Dark Kingdom of Jade and the Shad-
occurring throughout the 15 and 1600's, and feeding owlands of the Middle East were strengthened. How-
the Skeletal Legion with countless recruits. Soon, Mat- ever, this would soon backfire, and when Charon
thew Thatcher, the now Skeletal Anacreon, was as made war on the Dark Kingdom of Jade, feelings ran
good as the Head of State for the city, and all the other high across the city. Those Restless from the Jade
Anacreons were nothing but window-dressing. Still, Kingdom who had both evaded transportation back to
they met behind his back, and planned a resurgence. their home country, and escaped enthrallment or forg-
Even in the halcyon days of the city, unrest was swell- ing, rose up against the Hierarchy, and it was only
ing behind closed doors. Civil War in the 1650's after a lot of fighting with both swords and words that
brought many more across the Shroud, this time the rebellion was quelled. However, that same dissat-
boosting the Grim Legion, and in 1666, the Great Fire isfaction did not fade with the hearts of the Jade citi-
of London not only added to the numbers of the Em- zens, and, with the coming of the Sixth Great Mael-
erald Legion, but also put an end to the Black Death. strom, London would once again be made to pay for
The balance of power looked as if it may shift away the complacency with which it treated its foreign in-
from the Skeletal Legion, and for a while, politics habitants.
within the city became more heated as each Legion
worked hard manipulating the lands of the living and Meanwhile, the population of the city was grow-
the dead for their own personal gain in this, the oldest ing at an almost impossible rate, and rose from
and most prestigious of Necropoli. 950,000 in 1800, to nearly 6 million in 1900. The mas-
sive influx of Dead walking from the mills and facto-
The decree from reinstated monarch Charles II ries swelled the Emerald Legion further, and political
stated that buildings should be made of stone in the relations became a tense sharing of power with the
future, to prevent the spread of further fires. The Skeletal Legion. The huge numbers of dead, and the
building and rebuilding that followed fed the Shad- number of Artificers coming across the Shroud from
owlands with massive amount of relic material from the factories, meant that the huge forges across the
which to build the rooftop walkways, and reinforce city were swelled and developed, occupying the lofty,
the massive Haunt on London Bridge, whose pale hollow roofs of their Skinlands counterparts. The En-
towers were spiraling into the London sky. fants of the Industrial Revolution faced either a long
initiation in the forges after a long life in the factories,
or a short stay in the furnace followed by an eternity
of numbness and nothingness. London was becoming
the largest producer of soulforged and Moliated There was great unrest and uprising in the city
goods in the Dark Kingdom of Iron, and was soon throughout the 1800's. The tensions between the an-
producing exotic goods to trade with the Deathlords cient Anacreons finally blossomed into full-blown
themselves. But the politics of the city were shifting war. Plots were made in the back rooms of the Citadel
again, and another stroke of good fortune (or, as some and executed on open streets. Political unrest spilled
suspect, good planning) was played to the Skeletal out into the day to day lives of London's Restless, and
Legion in the 19th Century. Cholera broke out, taking by the dawn of the Great War, both Tabitha Shepherd,
up where the Plague had left off, killing thousands, and the ancient Skeletal Legionnaire Matthew
and feeding the ranks of the Pestilent dead. Thatcher Thatcher, as well as the Anacreon of the Grim Legion,
once again became the driving force of the London had fallen into Harrowings from which they had not
Hierarchy and the instability and insurrection were returned.
soon to follow.
However, the fighting was a blessing in disguise
When underground railways were installed in the for the city, which was left in the hands of younger,
1860's, the Restless were quick to take advantage of faster-thinking Wraiths by the outbreak of the War to
the labyrinth of tunnels out of the way of the Quick, as End All Wars, the Forth Great Maelstrom, and the In-
well as the still-growing rooftop city. The under- surgence. The Maelstrom was ferocious in its force,
ground tunnels were favoured mainly by Renegades and soon, the great Citadel of London Bridge was left
and other Restless otherwise unwelcome in the Ne- uninhabitable. It was only the quick thinking of the
cropolis, to the point where after the 1940's, the Hier- new Anacreons that kept the city from disaster as they
archy ceased to even patrol them as casualties were worked fast to secure a safe haven in the Tower of
becoming so high. London, using their Puppeteers and Haunters to
guide the actions of the living, and retreating into the

Two World Wars arms of their old allies, the Corax.

The 700 year old London Bridge was finally When the Grim and Emerald Legions united to
pulled down in the 1800's and replaced by a newer seize the city, London fought hard. However, with the
structure with wider arches, that eventually proved Maelstrom raging, and with only the good will of the
too heavy for it's foundations, and was sold to Ari- raven-folk keeping them from its grasp, the fight was
zona in the 1920's. Quick work by Skeletal Legion Ar- a long and difficult one. Ultimately, the remaining
tificers meant that most of the Citadel survived, and Legions, aided by the advise of the often sympathetic
that which didn't was quickly repaired from the rub- Emerald Anacreon Lincoln Wattson, made the deci-
ble, or from the constant belch and flow of the forges. sion to cease openly fighting the Grim Legion for the
At last, the dead had control of the entire structure, well-being of all the Wraiths of the city. Instead, the
and no longer had to worry about the passing of the resistance was driven underground, sheltering in un-
living around them. derground stations along with the living, conspiring

But the development of the city didn't stop there.

Nine huge docks were built on the Thames in the
1800's, and the Restless began to struggle to find the
space among the hoards of Quick to trade their own
goods. Huge winches and cranes were commissioned
by Thatcher, worked from the rooftops to the river, so
that goods could be loaded onto the ships without
interference from the living. Despite this show of
power, Thatcher's opposition continued to grow, pri-
marily from the Emerald Legion's new Anacreon, an
early industrial factory worker called Tabitha Shep-
herd who rose quickly through the ranks to replace
her unsuccessful predecessor.
with the Renegades to recapture London for their cropolis, the tense sharing of power, and threat from
own. Renegade gangs meant that the city was ill prepared.
The city walls and the towers of the Citadel were in a
However, this only happened once Lincoln sorry state, and quickly gave way under the force of
Wattson and the Emerald Legion, as well as the Guild the storm. The Citadel was all but destroyed by the
of Spooks closely allied to them, turned away from the Jade invasion, and all Hell broke loose as the govern-
Grim Legion and joined them. Then, the strong leader- ment of the Necropolis gave way and the Anacreons
ship left in control of London once again proved its were destroyed. Jade Kingdom citizens of Chinatown
worth, and almost as soon as Agora fell in Stygia, they rose up from within the city, raw with the memories
loyalists rallied. The recapture of the city was almost of ills long past, and Harrowings took place on every
totally bloodless, and before the Maelstrom began to street and rooftop. The roofways were soon taken by
quell, London was once again in the hands of the Sty- the Jade army, and the panicked London dead ran
gians, the Citadel was theirs again, and the Grim Ana- wild among the crowds of the living, adding to the
creon, Julius Mirros, was consigned to the forges. already huge number of souls extinguished across the
However, the Legion of violent dead did not remain city. The Maelstrom finished off almost all of those left
quiet for long. above ground and it was only the Renegades, shelter-
ing in their underground tunnels that were immune
The Blitz began in September 1940, and with it, from the winds and the Shades. The small communi-
their numbers, grew once more. 20,000 people were ties from the Dark Kingdom of Jade, Swar, and Les
killed in the bombing, and a large number of them Invisibles were wiped out along with the Hierarchy.
crossed over into the Grim Legion under their fresh- Or at least, no one has seen them since.
faced Anacreon, Charles Peters. For a moment, the
Skeletal and Emerald Legion's power wavered. Once The world of the Restless began to fall apart. Im-
again, tremors of potential power-struggles began to mediately after the onset of the Maelstrom, London
reverberate across the city, tremors only made worse was cut off. The Midnight Express ceased to run, and
when Lincoln Wattson disappeared under unusual the tunnels it had once steamed through were treach-
circumstances and never returned. erous and unpredictable. No one that ever entered
them came back.
So it came to pass that the new Anacreon for the
Skeletal Legion, the relatively inexperienced Harvey The Byway that had once meant so much trade
Sanders, was forced to ration power with the Emerald and prosperity to London collapsed almost entirely,
and Grim Legions in a three-way share that crippled and again, anyone daring or stupid enough to enter it
the city more than it benefited it. More and more trade found themselves in strange lands, and often beset by
was taking place irrespective of the Legions, and spectres. As the surge of the storm ebbed and swelled
when the massive London Docks closed in the 60's in an echo of the global warming which was then only
and 70's, a Renegade gang run by 1920's gangster just beginning to take effect in the Skinlands, king-
Freddy Carmichael and his lifetime moll Alice Baker, doms and cities became isolated and descended into
stepped in to take control of them. Increasing numbers chaos, brought on by the disintegration of the Hierar-
of small Renegade and Dark Kingdoms communities, chy and a complete lack of information from any-
and centuries of ferocious power-struggles meant that where beyond the walls of the surviving fragmented
the Hierarchy's control of the city was becoming tenu- Necropoli. The Shadowlands stretched out for hun-
ous. A situation only fed by the Depression of the 80's dreds of miles around the city to the nearest Necropo-
and 90's, feeding the ranks of the dead with hundreds lis in Paris, much farther than any Wraith could travel
of Restless ill-content with authority. in the grey space of the day between the waves of the
Storm. The settlements of Restless nearer by in Brigh-

The Sixth Great Maelstrom ton, Birmingham and Oxford were found to be en-
tirely destroyed, entirely deserted. Last of all, the
In 1999, the Sixth Great Maelstrom hit the city. Tempest offered a treacherous road at best, with hun-
Whereas, in the past, a solid Hierarchy rule had al- dreds of tiny, often dangerous Shifting Zones appear-
ways seen the endurance and rebuilding of the Ne- ing in and around the city, and the storm beyond the
city limits falling into a chaotic and confusing disarray For a long while, there was anarchy. The dead
where even the most competent of Harbingers lost rampaged desperately among the living and the fabric
their way. of reality began to tear. Among the individuals
thrown across the Shroud was a powerful Nephwrack
The last words to reach the city before the outset known as Shadowshimmer, an ancient Spectre with
of this utter isolation told vague rumours of the de- her sights firmly set on becoming a Malfean. Her
mise of the Deathlords, the disintegration of the Hier- crash across the Shroud certainly made her plans
archy and the transcendence of Charon. After that, all more interesting, but didn't hinder them. As society
contact with a world outside London was lost. The broke apart, Shadowshimmer was amassing an army
Hierarchy cracked and crumbled with the after-effects on both sides of the Shroud and dancing with aban-
of the Jade Kingdom attack and the lack of solid lead- don in the rubble. Oblivion rose like bile in the mouth
ership, and it wasn't long before society fell apart. The of the city, Shadowshimmer's troops began to congeal
Guilds and Heretics fragmented in the turmoil, draw- into the most organised spectral force London had
ing in on themselves and conducting their meetings in seen for centuries, and behind every Skinlands disas-
small groups behind doors carefully closed against the ter or failure lurked a Spectre. Soon, they were show-
Maelstrom which raged almost constantly. ering their rage down on humanity and walking
among the disparate Restless massacring every Par-
For a long time, the world of the Restless Dead doner and Freewraith talented in Castigate that they
remained in a turmoil that only fed the swell of Obliv- could find.
ion, wraiths took shelter in the underground tunnels
at night, when the Spectres screamed and rampaged
in the streets, and undefended Enfants lost their exis- The Resurgence
tences every hour. With the initial blast of the Mael- And that is where the story of the Restless would
strom, the destruction of the Citadel and the ferocity have ended; in the cold and the darkness and the
of the Jade invasion, the numbers of wraiths in the city desolation, if it had not been for a small group of mor-
soon ebbed almost beyond belief. tals, Mediums and Psychics who did what the dead
could not and raised their heads in the face of destruc-
These events also had a devastating impact on the tion. Calling themselves 'The Knights of the Black
world of the Skinlands. The invasion of the Jade forces Dawn' after one of the final days of the crisis where
and the force of the storm drove hundreds of Wraiths the London sun never rose, the group found out about
into crossing the shroud to seek protection from the the Restless influencing and propagating the
devastation. The loosely-enforced Dictum Mortuum Skinlands turmoil, and fought back against Shadow-
slowly broke down entirely, and the blast of the Mael- shimmer and her army, eventually destroying their
strom forced dozens of Wraiths and the encroaching Risen bodies, and driving the Shadowlands Spectres
Spectres across the Shroud to Rise in bodies that were out of the city, albeit temporarily. However, unsatis-
often not their own. fied with just Shadowshimmer's army, or unable to
tell the difference, the Knights of the Black Dawn were
soon exterminating every Risen they could find and
chasing down all Wraiths who dared to break the
Shroud. It was only when the dead presence in living
London subsided, that the Knights retreated back be-
hind closed doors, and even now, that's not always
where they remain.

Finally, around the year 2005, when the Knights of

the Black Dawn had run their course, structure once
again began to form out of the chaos of the Shadow-
lands. Up until then there were very few havens for
the dead to hide in. But, in 2005, with the Skinlands of
London beginning to echo the dead in its isolation,
Shadowshimmer was destroyed, and those that had to London, a group who have something Joan Suther-
been hiding were finally able to step back into the land does not, and which as yet, she has been unable
open. to wrest from them; a Haunt on the surface. 'The Uni-
fied Alliance of Death by Water' make their home in
A powerful Renegade by the name of Joan Suther- an old building just north of the river, which some-
land rose up to unite all those who would follow her how, despite their lack of numbers, remains immune
in the single pursuit of protecting themselves against to the storm that seems to have overwhelmed all other
the still-swelling tide Oblivion. Once again, the Rene- Haunts. Run by the onetime Masquers Guildmaster,
gades and former members of the Hierarchy united Autumn-Storm-Gathers, Death by Water are primarily
against a common enemy, and 'The Confederacy of a group of artists, poets, thugs and nihilists who have
the Freewraiths of London' was formed. twisted the buildings reflection in the deadlands into
something part garrison, part gallery, part nightclub,
Many of the remaining wraiths soon flocked un- and if some would have you believe, part Labyrinth.
der her banner and she began to organise her army, Despite their dark reputation and seeming lack of or-
assigning each wraith to a task-dedicated unit or to an ganisation, Death by Water somehow remain a factor
individual assignment, both tailored to suit the differ- in London's politics, although it is anyone's guess as to
ent skills of her followers. This acknowledgement of how. However, the rising number of malcontents and
personal ability is the main reason that Joan remains suppressed artists in modern London continue to feed
in power to this day. But the damage had already their numbers, and what's more, behind the facade of
been done, and with the disastrous chain of events both the Confederacy and Death by Water, the Guilds
already well underway, the taint of Oblivion in the and the Heretics still watch and wait.
Shadowlands became unstoppable. The Shroud thick-
ened, and the Skinlands became a distant memory. An In the present day London of 2013, massive levels
effort to perceive, and an even larger effort to affect. of crime and disease, terrible health provisions, pollu-
However, this, as with the wars that wracked the city tion, unemployment and unrest, mean that more are
in the 19th Century, proved to be a blessing in dis- crossing the Shroud since than the end of the Second
guise for London's dead. World War. Conditions are ripe for the Confederacy
to swell with power, perhaps even to reclaim and re-

The Present build the former Necropolis. Or for Death by Water to

actively recruit more members and mount a challenge
A number of riots and uprisings in the Skinlands to Joan Sutherland's rule. In addition, the fragments of
on Christmas Day 2011 led many more to Joan's rule, the Guilds, and growing number of Independent
her numbers growing into the hundreds, many times gangs mean that there are more factors and players for
more than the small number of Restless that survived control of London now than ever before among the
in early 2005. Restless of the Necropolis. Conversely, it also means
that Fetters are harder to protect, and with the Shroud
However, having lost touch with their closest al- so tainted by Oblivion, that Passions are harder to
lies, the Corax, with the coming of the Maelstrom, the feed. Harrowings are daily occurrences and Castiga-
Restless of the City were unable to do anything as the tion is virtually unknown. The turnover among the
walls of the Tower of London, more than a thousand dead is huge. When, and if, this will stabilise, and if it
years standing and once their shelter from the Mael- does, who will emerge in control, remains unknown.
strom, were pulled down in rioting. Relations between
the two became tense, and many Restless avoided
contact with the Ravens entirely, leading to even
greater isolation among the dead.

But Joan's supremacy even then was far from

complete, and aside from the Independent gangs who
fight and scratch an existence in the remaining un-
claimed tunnels, there is another group who lay claim
 CHAPTER THREE:
GEOGRAPHY
London Almost all of the Haunts that once dotted the city-
scape are now long gone and offer no protection from
London was once a great, grand city with a his- the storm. Those that do remain are jealously guarded
tory stretching back over a thousand years. And while by their owners, used as another lever on the reins of
the history still remains worked into every nook and power so that the average member of London's Shad-
cranny, settling over the city like a fine coating of owlands gains little benefit from them.
dust, much of what once made London so grand is
now gone.
The Streets
The Thames barrier gave way in 2010 and many of In recent years, the Shroud has grown so tainted
the streets are flooded, with people living in anything with the bitter bile of Oblivion that mortals do not
up to several feet of water and filth washing through normally appear to the denizens of the Shadowlands,
the streets. Crime and disease are rampant, and the and the Restless must join their spectral cousins in
government does little to stop them from spreading having to work to see the lands of the living. Because
further. Some areas of the city are entirely in the of this, the streets of the Shadowlands are all but de-
hands of criminal gangs such as the East End Soldiers, serted to the eyes of the dead.
while others cling to their dusty pasts and erect fences
and gates to protect their streets and houses. Here, during the day, Independent Wraiths and
Confederacy Reapers pick through the soaked rubble
The rich-poor divide is at breaking point and eve- and dilapidated buildings like vultures, searching for
rything is controlled by shady companies that conduct relics and Enfants to feed the maw of their civilisation.
their shady business in walnut paneled boardrooms. In places, fallen rubble entirely blocks the streets and
The largest of these companies is Megadon, which alleyways, the city is entirely grey and deserted with a
owns a large nuclear power plant a few miles outside harsh dead wind that blows constantly through the
the city and influences almost every aspect of life in streets, a constant reminder of the Maelstrom that will
London. come with the nightfall.

For the dead, things are little better. The Mael- At dusk, the air-raid sirens of the Confederacy
strom has forced much of the population under- wail across the city, warning of the oncoming storm
ground to hide in the tunnels. A single stroke of luck which hits the city every night at the darkening of the
exists in that, since the Shroud grew thick with the sky without fail. At this point, the streets fill instantly
taint of Oblivion, water is no longer harmful to the with howling, razor-edged winds, and the ragged-
dead, and London's ghosts can pass through the clawed spectres that roil in it, making the upworld
flooded tunnels with no more than a mild feeling of utterly unusable to the restless dead.
disconcertion.
Between the remaining buildings left standing, or
Still, this seems like cold comfort to many who are nearly standing, in the Shadowlands, are the tattered
forced to eke out an existence in the dark and the cold, remains of the thousands of rooftop walkways and
forced to choose between the iron fist of the Confeder- platforms that once let the Restless walk the city with-
acy, the nihilism of Death by Water, or the danger of out fear of Harrowing among the countless bodies of
taking on the Shadowlands alone. the living shifting below. Now, most of these walk-
ways are in a sorry state, hanging pitifully from the
sides of the buildings or collapsed entirely into the streets
below. Those that do remain between the buildings, rock
and roar nightly with the scouring winds of the Maelstrom,
and even by day, these relics of what once was are consid-
ered unsafe, and mostly left well alone.

The Underground
Since the thickening of the Shroud wrought the water
of the Skinlands all but harmless to the dead, the tube sys-
tem has become the jewel in the crown of the monstrosity
that the London Shadowlands have become. The tunnels of
the once-proud underground system are the most useful
resource the Restless Dead now have available to them be-
cause they are they only place in the city that is both mostly
unclaimed by any faction, and protected from the storm.

The upper levels of the underground system away

from the river are still used by the mortal population of the
city, and are an ideal place for London's dead to feed their
Passions. Ciphering off the excess emotions of the living to
animate their delicate Corpus. However, the parts of the
tube system that are still in use are dark, violent places of
murders and beatings, and many Wraiths have been over-
whelmed by their shadows while trying to pass through
the still-populated tunnels. Down here in the filth and the
darkness, the horrors of the real world, and the horrors of
the dead aren't too far apart. Reality blurs in the desolation,
and the Shroud becomes thinner.

Because of this, this is the place that many new Proc-

tors and Puppeteers come to practice, while their more ex-
perienced brothers and sisters run rampant among the
crowds. This has only served to darken further the already
black reputation applied to the tube network.

Deeper into the darkness, and further underground

beneath the tide-line of filthy floodwater, the Restless are
able to operate away from the prying eyes and stifling emo-
tions of the waking world. Here, everything is utterly
numb. The Marble Court of the Confederacy rattles
through the deepest and darkest of the tunnels while pa-
trols of the factions soldiers guard its route with an effi-
ciency brought on only in those who fear for their exis-
tences should they fail.

In addition, there are miles of abandoned tracks and

crumbling, flooded stations and small service rooms that
serve as much needed safe ground and hard-fought havens
for the cities Independent Wraiths and Mediums.
 However, the flooded tunnels beneath London bed, the Citadel was filled with pale twisting passages
can often be as dangerous as they can be useful, and and hidden, secret chambers. Forges were built into
some places beneath the water-line are off-limits even the very walls of the Citadel, feeding London's mas-
to the Dead. The most notorious of these is St Dismas sive trade in soulforged goods, and many more were
Station South, although there are many others besides. located in the surrounding area.
The deepest of the tunnels are abandoned even by the
dead, and rumours continue to circulate of Restless The Citadel was based on the Medieval bridge,
who go down there and never return, or who do, but which had houses built directly onto it, with arches so
only to tell strange stories about echoes of people and restrictive to the flow of the river that it used to freeze
places long forgotten lurking down there in the dark- over in the wintertime. When the bridge was pulled
ness, and turns in the tunnels that open into the heart down during the Georgian era, the masses of relic
of the Tempest, or worse. stone crossing the Shroud was used to further the con-
struction of the fortress of the Dead.

The Black Market However, the grand Hierarchy citadel was a pri-
An event rather than a place, the Black Market has mary target to the invading Jade forces just prior to
only begun to take place over the last year or so. The the Sixth Great Maelstrom, and all but fragments of
market has no specific location, instead it occurs in the great walls were destroyed. Now all that remains
different places across the city to avoid detection by of the once great fortress of the Dead is a pile of damp
the Confederacy and other enemies its owners have rubble and shards of dilapidated towers. Scavengers
made since it began. and Artificers are the only ones who remain to pick at
the rubble, and strange creatures dwell in the depths
The market offers free trade to all willing to pay of the fragmented fortress far below the tide-line.
the organizers a cut of their profits, and as such at-
tracts a number of Independent and Guildwraiths as
well as artists from Death by Water and even the odd The Marble Court (Haunt 4)
Confederacy member subverting the rule of their mis- The Marble Court, or the Court of the Freewraiths
tress. of London, is the stronghold of the Confederacy. Here,
wraiths belonging to the faction spend a large portion
Information about the time and location of the of their time, performing their duties, reporting to
market is passed around entirely by world of mouth Joan, utilizing the services of one of the rare Pardoners
among those are capable enough and careful enough or just relaxing and sharing their thoughts with one
to look. another well out of the reach of the storm. Although
Wraiths of the Confederacy can expect the protection
The market itself is a ramshackle collection of of the army wherever they go, there is a certain imme-
stalls and stands that do a roaring trade in relic and diacy to the safety offered by the Marble Court.
artifact goods scavenged from the rubble or lifted
from Confederacy hoards, as well as trading in The Court itself takes the form of a Midnight Ex-
Thralls, information and anything else that a Restless press-style train made up of relic carriages and
heart may desire. The atmosphere at the market is patched together with soulforged Corpus. It rattles
usually quite boisterous and busy, feeling mainly like through the now flooded and disused tunnels of Lon-
part Turkish bath, part East End homeless shelter. don's underground system pulling up at the odd de-
serted station to pick up or disgorge a group of

London Bridge wraiths into the murky gloom.

Once a grand and beautiful structure of relic mar- What follows is a tour of the layout of the Marble
ble and carefully soulforged Thralls, this huge Ne- Court detailing each carriage and its atmosphere, as
cropolis citadel that spanned Thames built up into well as the kind of Wraiths usually found there.
lofty curved towers as wide as the bridge it was built
on. Its huge buttresses plunged deep into the river
The Engine Carriage #1 - Soulforgers
An early 20th century Victorian steam engine, the A rolling forge and haven for the master Usurers.
steam engine drawing the Marble Court is the product The smoke from both the engine and the forge is thick
of Britain's worst ever rail disaster, 1915 Gretna Green here, and it's often hard to see through the rancid at-
crash, which killed over 200 people. Over the weeks mosphere. Here is where the spectres and those
that followed the crash, so much of the nation's fury, deemed to have displeased Joan and burnt by fire and
passion and grief was poured into the news reports, hammered by steel. Many of the wraiths working here
and the terrible stories passed around over dinner, are huge, slick, charred creatures, their facial features
that when the engine of the London Express was fi- barely distinguishable as they sweat and hammer
nally broken down for scrap, it emerged darkly majes- screaming corpus into weapons, armour and cur-
tic on the other side of the Shroud, sat on the tracks rency.
where so many had died.
Here is also where those guilty of lesser crimes are
Despite the efforts of many wraiths, the train re- brought to be stripped of their pathos by the Usurers,
mained where it was for many days after its reappear- both because of its proximity to the coal tender, and to
ance in the Shadowlands, and when it disappeared, warn them against future crime with a view of the
the Restless simply assumed that it had been de- forge.
stroyed after the lines were reopened and Skinlands
trains ploughed through it. The carriage itself is a windowless, wooden
wagon car, possibly once used to transport coal, or
It wasn't until after the Sixth Great Maelstrom that other industrial products up and down the country.
the truth became known.
Most law-abiding Restless of the Confederacy
Sometime during the chaos after the storm hit, the never even see the forge, and those who do wish that
locomotive was spotted plowing through the deserted they hadn't.
underground tunnels. Shortly afterwards, carriages
began to be added to it, and Joan set up court there.
Carriage #2 - Thralls
How this ancient wreck survived so long unno- Another masterstroke of planning was to place the
ticed, just who is behind the wheel and how Joan Thralls and Enfants next to the forge. Here is where
managed to strike a bargain with them is unknown. the criminals are brought to wait before they are pun-
No one has ever been seen to enter or leave the an- ished for their crimes, where those enthralled to an-
tique locomotive. other are kept when they are not needed, and where
the newly reaped Enfants of London are left to wait
before they are brought before Joan.
The Coal Tender
The horrible truth about how the engine was fi- In doing this, all new wraiths are given their first
nally moved lies in the coal tender directly behind the taste of how tough death can be very early on, as well
locomotive. This open-topped wagon is full almost to as shown just what will happen to them if they don't
the brim with crystals of raw pathos that emit an odd do as their told.
pale glow into the tunnels around the patchwork
train. The carriage is a quiet, empty, grey place, much
like the forge before it, and filled with downcast eyes
It is well known among the Confederacy that the and Thralls and Enfants chained to the walls, or one
sentence for lesser crimes is often to be stripped of all another. A kind of gloomy purgatory, this is often one
your pathos and left cold and numb by one of Joan's of the first sights for the new Wraiths of the Confeder-
master Usurers, who then transfers the energy into acy, the screams and the fire of the forge flashing
one of these crystals, and casts it into the coal tender through the crooked door.
to fuel the massive engine.
Carriage #3 - Reapers relics collected that have not yet been assigned a pur-
pose, as well as any left-over artifacts from the forge.
It makes sense that the Reapers are kept in close And the makeup of the carriage itself supports this. It
proximity to the newly-reaped Enfants. From here, appears to be a cast-off from the Oriental Express, or
they can keep a close eye on their precious cargo, reas- some other colony locomotive, and is made from care-
suring them if needed, and carefully escorting them fully carved rosewood and delicately inlaid glass. All
before their mistress when she calls them. in all, it has a decidedly colonial feel to it.

The Reapers of the Confederacy are often solitary Here, among the stacks of chests and boxes, the ran-
creatures, and their place in the Marble Court reflects dom objects littering the floor, the pages and pages of
this. Every bit as cold, grey and spartan as the place inventory, and the staccato voices, a Wraith could find
where the Thralls are chained, this is a cool place of almost anything.
few words and thin smiles. With little decoration or
furniture and often one or two solemn-faced, scythe- Heavily guarded because of the threat of thieves, very
carrying individuals. Possibly the oldest part of the few Restless get to see as far forward as this.
Marble Court, the carriage is a ramshackle affair made
from wood, with air rushing in between the loose
boards, and the glass rattling frantically in each of the
dozen tiny windows.

Carriage #4 - The Elite Guard

The most talented and stoic soldiers in Joan's
army form the Elite Guard. Led by Altair, this carriage
is often full with over a dozen large, armor-clad indi-
viduals laughing, gambling, or talking among them-
selves.

A step up from the silence and desolation of the

Reapers, this place is still simply, functionally fur-
nished, but there's a much better atmosphere here.
With a few simple tables, chairs and bunk beds, this is
Carriage #6 - Mortal Affairs
A somewhat secretive division inhabit the car-
the place where the Elite Guard talk, rest and socialise. riage behind the relic collectors. The coach belonging
to the Mortal Affairs division is every bit as idiosyn-
The home of the Elite Guard has no windows, and cratic as the Haunters, Spooks and Puppeteers that
is a rounded, streamlined metal wagon. It's suspected inhabit it. Old rivalries set aside after the Maelstrom,
that while in the Skinlands, it was part of a secret gov- former Haunters and Puppeteers, as well as new
ernment convoy, but no one knows what it was carry- Wraiths talented in these Arcanos have worked to-
ing, or what befell it to bring it into the Shadowlands. gether to produce a monstrosity that's part Hard Rock
Cafe, part Planet Hollywood. A 50's chrome and glass
Carriage #5 - Relic Gatherers affair, the carriage has been heavily augmented with
pictures of movie stars and pop idols, a homage to
Another step up in mood, this carriage is often
filled with much of the hustle and bustle associated mortal culture of recent years.
with the rest of the train. Here is where those talented
in Inhabit and Outrage, among other things, review Here is where the Wraiths of the Confederacy's
their orders and collect their finds. most idiosyncratic division gather to plot, bitch, and
discuss the latest orders to help, hinder or scare the
The carriage is hung with many exotic and un- mortal population of London.
usual items which Joan has not yet found a use for,
and filled full of antique, battered chests storing all the
 A few Wraiths outside the division are occasion- population, all vying for their mistress's attention.
ally allowed in here, and those who are inevitably
leave smirking.
Carriage #9 - Courtesans
Behind the heat and hustle of Joan's Court, rests
Carriage #7 - Infiltration the home of the Courtesans. An elaborate showpiece
This austere-looking, wooden Victorian carriage of a carriage, carved intricately in wood sometime in
has been left pretty much intact. Instead of being gut- the late 19th century, the inside has been decorated
ted like other carriages on the Marble Court, the home dramatically in a theatrical style, the walls hung with
of the Infiltration division still retains the tables, tea- thick red velvet, the ceiling painted, the exposed
sets and silk flowers it had when it was destroyed. woodwork carefully gilded with even the odd mirror
amongst the shimmering light and cloth.
Split into a number of simple booths, and looking
as if it's rolled straight off the set of From Russia with Here is where the artistes of the Confederacy
Love, here is where the top spies and Masquers of the come to practice their music, poetry or acting, to per-
Confederacy sit and talk in hushed voices, or meet form, to entertain, and to snipe behind one another's
beneath the clock with carnations in their buttonholes. backs. In here, it's all about show-business, Darling.

Most Wraiths heading through he towards the All of the Confederacy's Restless are welcome
front of the train are met by stony silence and the cold here, to talk and be entertained among the music and
eyes of the spies boring into their Corpus, and no one light of the Courtesans, and the coach is never without
knows what secrets and gadgets the carriage reveals a handful of restless, talking, or sharing a little, all too
when outsider's backs are turned. fleeting laughter.

A division of guards are stationed between this

coach and Joan's Court, the prevent the eyes of un-
Carriage #10 - Savants
wanted Restless straying into the forward carriages. From the music and poetry of the Courtesans
comes the quiet and solitude of the Savants, who are
privy to the Confederacy's limited library.
Carriage #8 - Joan's Court
This carriage was part of British Rail's rolling On waking up in the Shadowlands, there's a lot a
stock in the 60's, and it still displays the faded red and young Enfant wants to know, and even more they
blue colours along the sides. Inside however, the car- need to be told if they are to survive to do their duties.
riage has been gutted, and now looks more medieval This is where the Savants come in.
than modern. A huge marble chair stands at the head
of the room, where Joan is often found deep in Within the relative peace and quiet of the small
thought. Around her, the floor is thickly carpeted, the library of relic and artifact books and scrolls, the new
walls are hung with tapestries, and the whole scene is Wraith is taught all about his new existence, has his
lit by faintly flickering soulfire. talents assessed, and all his questions answered for a
period of no less than a week. Once the new Wraith is
Here is where Joan and Altair spend most of their comfortable with his knowledge and adjusted to his
time, where Restless of the Confederacy go to ask for new existence, he is assigned to a unit and sent out to
Joan's services as a Pardoner, and where her divisions perform his duties. Restless lucky enough to gain the
report to her on a weekly basis. This is where the favour of a mentor will gain a little further teaching
Queen of the Confederacy holds court, and the car- and attention, but fore most of London's dead, this is
riage is attired as finely as its task requires. where their teaching begins and ends.

Music and poetry from the Courtesans can often A small, refined library with shelves of scrolls,
be heard within this coach, which can sometimes be- desks and lit by lamplight, there are always a few
come quite busy with the swell of the Confederacy's Restless moving about this carriage. Curious members
of the Confederacy spend a little time here searching
through the limited scrolls available, while the Sa-
Carriage #13 - First Class
vants conduct and school the newly dead. A traditional British First Class carriage, the cen-
tral corridor has glass windows on both sides looking
into private First Class compartments. The Restless of
Carriage #11 - Internal Affairs London often use them compartments for more pri-
All the Wraiths of the Confederacy will spend at vate conversations, pulling the thick black curtains
least a little time among the Wraiths of the Internal over the windows overlooking the corridor with only
Affairs division. The Restless of London go here to the shifting light of the water-filled tunnels to trouble
meet with Usurers, Masquers, Monitors and all-to- them.
scare Pardoners, to enlist their aid in their day-to-day
woes. A lot of the Confederacy's more delicate business
is conducted here, as well as sensitive conversations in
If a Wraith is injured in a fight, troubled by her the private lives of dozens on individual Wraiths. The
Shadow, or dangerously close to loosing a fetter, she six carefully designed silver and ebony compartments
will go here to ask for help. Help she is entitled too as are lit by tiny soulfire candles and are open to anyone
a member of the Confederacy. However, those who who is both in need of a room, and able to find one
come to rely on these services too much are often unoccupied.
looked down upon, and may just find themselves acci-
dentally reassigned to an unpleasant mission.
Carriage #14 - Soldiers
The simple black Victorian carriage is divided into At the very rear of the train, there is a constant
private booths where the Wraiths of Internal Affairs reminder of the military force of Joan's army, just in
will meet their clients, with a large waiting area at the case the Restless whispering and walking among the
front of the carriage and a corridor running down be- private First Class Stalls and music of the Courtesans
tween the compartments. The decoration is simple forget it.
wood and silver, and lit by tiny flickering flames of The very back carriage of the Marble court is a
soulfire. large, wooden, windowless caboose covering two
low-ceilinged floors and packed to bursting with
Joan's heavily armored soldiers.
Carriage #12 - Common Room
The place where most of the members of the Con- Looking more like an animal transport coach than
federacy go to socialize and spend time among their something made for people, the ramshackle carriage is
fellow Restless. This underground carriage has been nevertheless where most of the army go to relax, talk,
gutted and widened to provide the Restless of London and receive orders. Badly lit and eerie, most Wraiths
with a large space to inhabit. rarely enter this carriage in case they find themselves
on the wrong side of one of the guards and end up
Lit by electrical-seeming strip-light run off the 'falling' to the tracks.
main engine and fitted out with benches and rails for
Restless to lean against and sit on. This brightly lit The army here act both as a rear-guard in case of
carriage full of Wraiths of often the easiest piece of the any attack, and as a reminder to the Restless of the
Court to spot in the darkness, and the mutter of voices Confederacy of the strength and force of their army,
and glare of the light has occasionally been seen for better or worse.
across the Shroud on the darker nights.

Entertainers from the ranks of the Courtesans and

members of the Internal Affairs division can often be
seen milling amidst the crowns, offering their services,
and this is where most Restless of the Confederacy go
to relax.
North London The British Library (Basement is Haunt 3)
The British Library is one of the stranger places in
The north of the city is generally considered to be
the more upper-class side of the river. North London the London Shadowlands. It was once a great reposi-
hosts the last few echoes and rumours of what the city tory of Hierarchy information, the drab 1960s exterior
once was, with the high class nightclub Club Headon, augmented on the other side of the Shroud to reflect
and several well-off housing districts and gated com- the great historic libraries of Rome and Alexandria,
munities resting within its boundaries. and a wealth of tunnels carved into the bare earth be-
low to store the Hierarchy's books and savants away
Buckingham Palace rests in the north of the city, from the mortals above.
deserted and derelict since an increasingly disliked
royal family were forced to leave the city because of Now, all that is left of the upper levels of the
the crime and falling standards of living in favour of building as its representation in the Skinlands begins
their ancestral home at Windsor Castle. to decay, are shreds and tatters of relic manuscripts
and fragments of the great suspended walkways that
Also within North London are several large parks once held much of the Hierarchy's collection above the
and green places which, while now largely overgrown swarming hordes of the living.
and neglected, still offer a little solace to the people of
the city. The Metcalf clinic set up in a wing of Ham- Below ground, it is a different story altogether.
mersmith Hospital offers free healthcare to the popu- The deep vaults that held the most useful of the Hier-
lation since the Health Service disintegrated, and the archy manuscripts have been inaccessible since the
dusty Victorian houses offer solace to all those that Maelstrom, with piles of relic stone blocking the way,
can afford them. and other, darker things guarding the entrance fero-
ciously, wild now that their masters have long since
North London is about the most pleasant of the fallen into their final Harrowings. If anyone ever did
remaining districts of the city, with the district of manage to gain access to the vaults, who knows what
Westminster offering a bitter-sweet reminder of the they may find there, however for the time being, the
former grandeur of the country's government. building is deserted, ravaged nightly by the viscous
winds of the Maelstrom.
Death by Water (Haunt 4) members of the faction spend most of their nights. The
music played covers everything from the Cure and
(1) - Entrance: From the outside, the building is a Bauhaus to Tool, Stabbing Westward and Nine Inch
rundown early Victorian affair. No doubt once a Nails, all with a decidedly dark mood to them. Down
grand old building, time has taken its toll on the one- here, the throb of the music drowns out the pain by
time printers. The paint and plaster peel from the day, and the spectres at night.
brickwork, the hundred-year-old glass crumbles like Down here at least, the Wraiths of Death by Water
crystal in the windows, the doors hang loose on their are safe.
hinges...
Despite this, very few people are prepared to ap- (3) - Cages: Suspended a few feet over the heads
proach this structure in the Skinlands, the ground of the Wraiths on the dance floor are a pair or round-
floor is partially flooded at high-tide, and tale abound bottomed, arched cages, suspended from the ceiling
of supposed 'hauntings'. with a mixture of rope and chain, hung here and there
In the Shadowlands, the building remains in more with meat-hooks and barbed wire.
or less the same state from the outside, patched up Autumn's favorites among the Death by Water
here and there with soulforged corpus against the loyals are often granted the use of these cages to dis-
storm, but the music the swells from within can be play their talents and maybe endear their master a
heard from streets away. little further. It's considered a mark of great status
The upper floors of the building are left more or among club-goers to be granted access to them, and
less derelict, during the day, the Wraiths of Death by the cages are never without a host of khol-touched
Water may use the hundreds of rooms, large and boys and girls to fill them.
small, for what they will. At night however, these lev-
els are off limits to all but the guards on watch that (4) - Tables: Along the back wall, running beside
night, as the Restless of the club retreat beneath the dance floor are a number of small circular tables
ground, far away from the screams and whispers of and black velvet chairs. From here, Wraiths too weary
the shades. to dance often sit and watch, or talk in raised voices
The ground floor opens up into a huge, run-down among themselves over the roar and howl of the mu-
lobby, filled with broken wood and newspaper, slick sic. Some of the regular faces at Death by Water can be
with water and slime, and always occupied by around seen here watching the dance floor, and during the
half a dozen guardsmen who watch over the Restless day, when things at the club are quieter, people often
entering the club, protecting their own and turning use them as a place to meet, talk, and plot.
away the unwanted.
Once inside, most Restless turn immediately right, (5) - Bar: Made almost obsolete by the near total
heading through a small door and down a Z-shaped lack of drinks to be served in the underworld, the
stairway into the basement. Here, the building be- drinks that are available here are hugely expensive,
comes heavily augmented by the dead, the stairway and even then, no one asks where they came from.
turning slowly to chrome and glass and corrugated Nevertheless, many people cling on to their
iron, twisting and emptying into the main room of the memories of sitting at bars in clubs when they were
club. alive, and enjoy the feeling. The barman spends most
of his time leaning across the wire-scratched surface of
(2) - Dance Floor: On turning the final corner and the bar, talking with other Restless, and his position is
walking down the last few steps into the main hall, really just another mark of status, with little or know
members of Death by Water are greeted by a huge actual duties involved.
swell in the volume of the music, and the flicker of The more open Restless of Death by Water, those
sodium-orange and magnesium-white lights over the straying from their small, clandestine cliques or seek-
crowds that dance and sway in the centre of the room. ing new ones are often found at the bar talking and
laughing, albeit bitterly.
The walls are bare red brick, hung here and there
with black velvet or aging posters of long-dead bangs,
the dance floor is where the more active and alive
 (6) - Exit: Just to the right of the bar, a small creating a sight that's part captivating, part nauseat-
wooden door hangs loosely in its frame where in the ing.
Skinlands there is nothing but an empty hole or worn,
rotten brickwork. The doorway leads into a long, (9) - Glass Room: To the far right of the dance
grey-clad corridor, with doors lining the right-hand floor, a small area of the club is partitioned off with
side that lead to a series of small rooms and other cor- cunningly crafted soulforged glass that runs from
ridors. Storage spaces, broom cabinets and forgotten floor to ceiling. Within the open doorway of glass
archives during the building's days as a printers, these room, the music is almost unnaturally muted, and the
rooms now serve as private rooms for all but the grist area is filled with small, circular tables and velvet-
in the mill at Death by Water. Autumn, unlike Joan and-wire trimmed chairs.
Sutherland, values the personal freedom of the mem- Here, the Restless not fortunate enough to have a
bers of his faction above all else. room further back in the building can rest, and the
The privacy of these rooms is almost universally other members of Death by Water meet to talk with
respected, and the spaces are often highly personal- one another away from the throb and swell of the
ised by the Wraiths fortunate enough to own them. dance floor. Still others come here to sit and watch
Decorating a room in the Shadowlands is a long and away from the noise, turning their gaze to the throb of
laborious affair, and it is a mark of esteem among the the dancers, or the eerily perfect beauty of Autumn-
other Restless there to have a personal space filled Storm-Gathers.
with small relics and soulforged bric-a-brac. Because
of this, these small personal items are an excellent cur- (10) - Couches: On the L-shaped couches of the
rency at the club, the most unique items fetching a glass room, wrought in studded black leather, lace
king's ransom in Oboli, or whatever else the owner and silk, the Wraiths who do not yet have a room at
desires. Death by Water may Slumber almost without distur-
bance from the screech of the music. Those more
(7) - DJ Booth: At the centre of the near-wall lin- gifted in death may recline and talk, maybe sipping an
ing the dance floor is the huge relic sound system that extortionately expensive drink bought for them by a
pumps music endlessly into the club and the Shadow- paramour.
lands surrounding it. The system is set up behind a
screen of clear, reinforced, soulforged corpus, and ap- (11) - Autumn's Couch: Between the glass room
pears incredibly complex, taking months, if not years and the dance floor is a small alcove completely sur-
to build up such a large relic collection, and a skeinful rounded by a slender, blackened railing with a heavy
of pathos to power. black velvet and lace curtain can be pulled about, se-
Because of this, its owner and operator, a former cluding it entirely from the outside world.
Artificer named Jude, is entitled to pathos from any of Here, Autumn-Storm-Gathers spends most of his
the members of the faction, and access to the services time reclined luxuriantly on a velvet and barbed wire
of anyone skilled in Usury should he require it. chaise lounge. There's room enough for half a dozen
Because of his status, Jude attracts quite a follow- people to stand around him, and Autumn often con-
ing, and he is never without a handful of young, hope- ducts his less public meetings here.
ful Wraiths around him, hoping for a little luck when Most of the time however, the curtain is drawn
Jude finally decides to choose an apprentice. back entirely, bunched together in front of the heavy
wooden door on the right-hand side, so that Autumn
(8) - Podiums: Another massive mark of status can watch the nightly goings on of the club, somehow
and respect for those that care enough to fight, bitch managing to look uniformly apathetic, smoking his
and gossip over it, the podiums stand on either side of disturbing artifact cigarettes.
the sound system and are available to only those most
in Autumn's favor. (12) - Autumn's Chamber: Just above the curtain-
Small, raised squares, surrounded by railings and lined alcove is a door that leads to Autumn's private
set with a steel poll at the centre, a more or less per- chamber. The few Restless who have been in here de-
manent resident of one of the podiums is Rose, who scribe it as utterly decadent, even by the standards of
makes eerie use of her fluid corpus in her dancing, Death by Water, hung with velvet and full of items all
shaped from the corpus of unlucky Wraiths. of the Tempest and onto the disused track, collect its
Here is where Autumn conducts his most private passengers and cargo, and roll out on the other side.
of meetings, retires to Slumber, and houses his pre- However, since the train vanished with the coming of
cious artifact library of Romantic literature boasting the Maelstrom, the station and the area around it has
works by the likes of Shelley, Byron and Coleridge. stopped being a place of bustling trade and travel
In truth, very few Wraiths will ever see the inside among the dead, and instead has become something
of this room, so the rumours will remain exactly that. much darker. Nothing is known of what became of
Which is just the way Autumn likes it. the Midnight Express, all that is known is that it
ceased to run immediately after the Maelstrom, and

South London the tracks that it once used to run along became a dan-
gerous place where the lines between the Tempest and
Often considered to be the more down-class of the the Shadowlands, what is, and what has been long
two sides of the river, South London actually hasn't forgotten, begin to blur.
done as poorly as everyone would have expected. De- If the Shadowlands is the realm for the dead, then
spite the poverty, the rundown conditions and the St. Dismas Station South is now where the dead go to
dismal, failing architecture, the south of the river has die. Echoes and snatches of people and places long
done far better than anyone could have predicted and since forgotten that haunt even the dead. Not surpris-
the public-spirited club Redemption bears testament ingly, Londons dead find this quite disconcerting, and
to this. as a result they tend to avoid the area all together. Its
hypothesised that the reason for these echoes is that
With relics of great ancient structures such as the well-worn paths into the Tempest left by the Mid-
Winchester Palace, and ancient sites of interest such as night Express have begun to open, leaking memories
Southwark Cathedral, and the Globe and Rose thea- of memories into the deadlands, but in truth, no one is
tres the south of the city is steeped in its own form of quite sure.
tired, dusty history that makes it a rich, charged place
to the dead in a city where so much is cold and numb.
Much of the activity of the dead has always been cen-
The Rose (Haunt 5)
tred around the south of the city, and since the Sixth An Elizabethan theatre built on the banks of the
Great Maelstrom that has only become more apparent. Thames in 1587, and renovated in 1592 before falling
out of use in 1606, the Rose was a place of debauchery,
The echoes of ancient buildings on the surface and bear-baiting and plays for twenty years in the heart of
the host of tunnels rich with pathos below ground Renaissance England. However, its sort stay in the
mean that it is the most active distinct in what is left of land of the living empowered it with a wealth of emo-
the Necropolis, and despite the presence of many ar- tion that didn't die when the theatre was finally torn
eas best avoided, there are always a few Restless to be down. Because of this, the building seeped through
found here by day, talking in hushed voices, or pick- the Shroud shortly after its destruction, twisting
ing through the rubble. around and often even overlaying the structures later
built in its place.
So, it came to pass that a few years after the thea-
St. Dismas Station South tre was torn down, it reopened for business in the
Once, this place was a station to the living, after lands of the dead under the watchful eye of its one
that, it was a shelter to them during the Second World time shareholder and playwright Christopher Mar-
War. After the war, the station was left as a desolate lowe.
reminder of the desperation that people had felt dur- The huge relic playhouse, capable of holding over
ing the Blitz. This was until the mid 1950s, when the seven hundred souls, went on to spend hundreds of
station, and the half a mile of track around it, was fi- years putting on plays from an alliance of Sandmen,
nally sealed off and forgotten. Masquers and Chanteurs, carefully guided by Mar-
Abandoned and unvisited, the station became a lowe himself.
stop for the famous Midnight Express, and remained However, the playwrights Shadow grew steadily
so for many years. The train would simply roll in out stronger as the centuries passed, and when the Sixth
Great Maelstrom struck, Kit Marlowe retreated inside However, when the Sixth Great Maelstrom
his theatre and locked the door fast against the Rest- erupted, a Nihil opened up beneath the museum and
less and the Storm alike. Few have entered the theatre the Haunters that weren't destroyed were forced to
since and returned unharrowed, however, those that flee. Since then, the Imperial War Museum has closed
have tell of an ancient ghost, closed off inside the last its doors after a series of inexplicable, and often fatal
remaining piece of the world he loved so dearly in life, events. Now the building lies deserted and boarded
getting eaten away slowly from inside by his equally up in the Skinlands, while in the Shadowlands, the
ancient Shadow. long-destroyed hospital wings shimmer back into ex-
istence, spectres and Nothings swarm like flies about
So the theatre remains closed to the dead. a corpse, and only the fool-hardy approach it.

The playhouse itself is a roughly ring-shaped

structure with a pit for the groundlings at the centre Battersea Power Station
and the stands and stalls for the more well-off among Once the largest of the functional forges in Lon-
the edges, set into the walls with the covered stage don, the location was carefully acquired by Hierarchy
against one side. It is made up of damp-ridden plaster agents versed in influencing the living, who saw that
set against rotten black beams, and topped with a the place was built in the lands of the living, but
thatched roof slick with wet and rotting straw. The nearly never used, instead left standing and aban-
theatre is surrounded by soulforged iron fencing and doned for use by the dead. The station functioned as a
gates that are locked closed against the rest of the huge soulsteel works for over a hundred years, belch-
Shadowlands. ing smoke into the Shadowlands and draining pus-
like plasm into the Thames. It is estimated that more

The Imperial War Museum than a five hundred thousand wraiths, spectres and
drones were forged here, and some say that even that
A long time ago, before this place was a museum, estimate is far too conservative.
the building used to be the Bethlehem Hospital for the However, with the coming of the Maelstrom, the
Insane. Bedlam Asylum. forge was deserted, and in the aftermath much of
Originally founded in the early 1600s as a place to what was useful was reclaimed from the ruins by the
treat the insane without victimising or criminalising Artificers. Now, the building lies empty and derelict
them, the asylum was moved to the building now in both the Skinlands and the Shadowlands, slowly
hosting the museum in the 1800s, where it remained crumbling into the Thames and filled with shards of
until the 1930s. useless soulsteel. At night, the winds keen eerily
The reality of the asylum was a desolate and bleak through the hollow building and abandoned chimney-
experience, by the 1800s people were paying a penny stacks. Unprotected from the storm, the forge now lies
to stare into the cells and laugh at the poor, ranting deserted, although the Restless whisper of the Artifi-
wretches trapped within. Patients were exposed to the cers plan to reclaim what was once theirs.
horrors of electro-shock therapy, de-pressurisation,
and many other brutal and terrifying treatments de-
signed to cure the patients. The scars that these treat- East and West
ments left on the souls inside the asylum never quite
left either the patients or the building. Even before the
Maelstrom, many strange and disturbing events were The East End
reported from inside the museum, while in the Shad- An area of the city covering the east of the city on
owlands the building was renowned for the hosts of both sides of the river, even during the city's golden
Nothings that lurked within its walls, trapped forever days it was a rundown are of industry and relative
in the cycle of madness and pain that had sent them poverty. Now, with the Thames Barrier out to the east
rocketing through the Shroud. For a short while, the all but gone, the East End has become a sprawling
Haunters took up residence in the museum, building urban nightmare of water, waste, filth, disease and
huge walkways in the roof-space of the building and crime.
conducting their guild meetings there.
 The police no longer patrol the area and criminal the Citadel, but was sunk when the Sixth Great Mael-
gangs run rampant. At best, the East End is filled with strom hit shortly afterwards.
soaked rubble and the burnt-out shells of buildings, at Since then, rot and age has taken its toll on the
worst, it is a place where the city's poorest citizens live great ship, and constant exposure to the Maelstrom,
in over a foot of filthy water. the spectres and the tide of the river have meant that
With more than enough angst and despair to go little more than a rusted, rotten hulk at the bottom of
around, the East End is not surprisingly an are which the Thames.
most of the restless dead choose to avoid, with only The ship now rests to the east towards the now
the reapers of the Confederacy daring to enter it to lost Thames barrier, and is usually swamped and ob-
reap the souls born out of all that hate and desolation. scured beneath the thick, misty water of the Shadow-
lands. However, during extremely low tides when the
The Docklands: Once, the Docks were the hub of river-water ebbs low, the ship is left exposed, beached
trade inside the city of London among the living and on the grey-sanded beaches of the Shadowlands.
the dead. While the living were using cranes, winches Nothing but a huge, hulking structure of what looks
and pack animals to load cargo on and off their huge like badly rusted iron, it creaks and groans perpetu-
trade ships, the dead erected their own jetties and ally when exposed, and the suspicion lingers among
winches in secluded corners of the docklands, and the dead that the ship houses some kind of malig-
worked from the rooftops of dockside buildings. nance. It is even suggested that the ship acts as the
Trade among London's dead was raging, and the city haven for the great plasmic beast that lurks in the
traded in Oboli and artifact goods that were manufac- Thames, and that the ship is responsible for the arrival
tured in forges right across the city, often sending of the creature, some kind of secret weapon long pre-
goods as far afield as Stygia and the other Dark King- pared in the Yellow Springs for use in the assault on
doms. London. This talk is enough for the most part, to keep
During the 1960s, the docks were closed down in the Restless Dead well away.
the Skinlands and were left deserted. The dead took
immediate advantage of this and commerce in the St Nicholas's Church: This bleak little church
Shadowlands bloomed where the living were falling rests just back from the water-line in the eastern side
into a Depression. of the city, in the district of Deptford. It was here, on a
However, since the Maelstrom, the docklands bleak morning in 1593, that the playwright and poet
have been deserted on both sides of the Shroud. In the Kit Marlowe was consigned to an unmarked grave
skinlands, the docks are massively flooded and dere- after being brutally murdered in a guest house a few
lict, populated only by the rats. To the dead, the docks days before.
are equally deserted, the hard built jetties and winches Since then, the Norman building has undergone
destroyed by the storm, the byway that once brought many revisions; a harsh Victorian church hall now
so much trade down the river to the docks desolate stands about the original tower, and a pair of cor-
and closed to even the most daring Harbingers, and roded stone skulls stare out towards the city from the
the forges that once provided so many artifacts for gateposts.
sale are left open and exposed to the storm. The church was a miserable and deserted place
However, should the Maelstrom ever ebb, and the even before recent nights, its windows smashed, its
byway reopen, the docks have never been more de- doors rotten. However, recently it has undergone a
serted by the living, and should the city scramble back number of attacks, inflicting vandalism on the church
to its knees, the docklands would provide an indis- and the graveyard surrounding it. Many of the graves
pensable way of trading of whatever is left of were desiccated despite police attempts to stop the
Charon's empire. attacks by installing razor-wire fences. Finally, at the
close of the year, the old church was gutted by fire, the
The Emperor's Wrath: The flagship of the Em- fence around it torn to shreds by bolt-cutters. Now the
peror of the Dark Kingdom of Jade, made from pure building is an empty, blackened shell, and with
white jade, beautifully carved, hammered and crafted, money for the restoration a bleak and distant hope in
the Emperors Wrath headed the Jade fleet that in- the darkness, an empty and blackened shell it is likely
vaded London in 1999. The warship lead the attack on to remain. The Knights of the Black Dawn have been
blamed for the attack, although the Restless are un- some theatres flourished, the smaller concert halls
sure of their motivations. were driven out of business and fell into disuse. Be-
cause of this, the modern West End is a mixture of
The No Go Zone: The district at the centre of the grand glass buildings such as the Royal Opera House
East End under the control of the East End Soldiers is where the musicians and dancers enjoy an almost ce-
known only as the No Go Zone. Very few of even the lebrity lifestyle, and hundreds of small, derelict build-
poorest people of the city will go here, with the only ings that once put on obscure works and modern
attraction being the violent, drug-laden club known as plays.
the Slaughterhouse. Murder, rape and shootings are a To the dead, the West End offers a patchwork of
nightly occurrence and the police have long ago for- ageing memories and floods of Pathos as the people of
saken the are. Even the most dedicated of investiga- London flock in their thousands to the latest produc-
tive journalists thinks long and hard before taking an tions of Swan Lake and Madame Butterfly to escape
assignment to enter the area. from the torment that flourishes all around them.
In the Shadowlands, the No Go Zone is little bet-
ter. While the rest of the East End births wraiths furi-
ous at the way they were forced to live their lives, the The City of London
dead of the No Go Zone are beyond hope, with even At the centre of London lies a mile square collo-
the youngest of children falling quickly to the ranks of quially known as The City. When Londinium was
the Striplings. founded by the Romans over two thousand years ago,
Even during the day, the air of the No Go Zone is they built a wall to encompass their new stronghold,
thick with the threat of spectres, and only the most and although the wall was demolished by the Georgi-
foolish of Restless enters there at all. Still, with the No ans, the area that fell within the city wall is still con-
Go Zone feeding the ranks of Oblivion with an almost sidered to be the hub of city life.
daily certainty, the Shadowlands will never be re- Although much of the City was flooded in the
gained for the dead so long as this small area of the disaster of 2010, it seems to have recovered far better
East End is around to imbue living souls with such a than anywhere else in London. Along with the pre-
feeling of wretchedness. dictable host of abandoned buildings and ruined ar-
What's more, every day spent ignoring the threat chitecture, several large companies still make their
it poses only makes the problem worse for both the homes on the upper levels of office blocks inside the
living and the dead of the city. The citizens of London boundaries of the city, from where they can look out
don't need the latest government reports to tell you across the burst riverbanks and the filth of the
that the No Go Zone is growing. Or that so long as Thames.
nothing is done about it, or the East End Soldiers at its This oldest part of the city offers much to Lon-
heart, it is not going to stop until it has swallowed the don's dead, with over a thousand years of love, life,
city whole. death and devotion soaked into every brick and road
winding through it. Despite this, other powers seem

The West End to be at work in the City, and despite many attempts
to claim patches of it for the Confederacy, Death by
Taking up an area to the west of the city, and pri- Water or strong, independent gangs, all such attempts
marily north of the river, the West End was once a so far have failed, with misfortune befalling the
place of countless theatres, music halls and dance pro- would-be colonists at every turn.
ductions. And, despite the deterioration of conditions
in the city, the arts have fared far better than could
have been predicted. When the situation in the city St Paul's Cathedral
became too much for the citizens of London to bear,
they turned to the arts and theatres to take them away (Haunt 5, Upper Levels are Haunt 2)
from the horror of their daily lives. The cathedral is still represents a huge centre of
Still, the falling condition of the city took its toll Pathos to the Dead, even though its reflection in the
on the West End, and the increasing presence of big Skinlands begins to ebb with neglect. Several of Lon-
business in all aspects of London life meant that while don's Heretic cults, not to mention the Confederacy,
would dearly love to possess it, not least because it The Restless were still caught underground, hiding
shows total immunity to the storm. However, no one from the storm, when the Tower was nearly destroyed
has yet mustered the strength and numbers to seize in the riots of 2012, the dead were hidden from the
the cathedral, that appears in the Shadowlands as a storm, secreted deep underground and unable to help
mixture of its modern incarnation, and the three pre- their former allies.
vious cathedrals that stood on the site, the last of Now, the Shroud has darkened, the walls have
which was destroyed in the Great Fire of London. The fallen and the Tower is abandoned by all but the ra-
cathedral is greatly warded against entrance by the ven-folk. The eyes of the dead now turn once again to
dead, although who is responsible for instating the the Tower, some wishing to rebuild their relationship
warding remains unknown. Because of this, the Pa- with the Corax and help them to rebuild what once
thos and protection offered by St Paul's remains was, while others scoff at their former alliances, and
strictly off limits. see the crumbling spires as yet another potential
There is however, an exception to this rule. handhold in the climb towards reclaiming the surface.

The one place inside the cathedral walls where the

Restless dead encounter no resistance to their entry is The Roman Wall
the upper level galleries. From here, several Heretic In the distant beginnings of London's history, the
groups gather regularly to watch the sorry, depleted Roman settlers built a wall to defend the nascent city
Mass take place below, and young Proctors work from attack. The wall stood for thousands of years
themselves into a frenzy in the Whispering Gallery. before it was finally pulled down by the Georgians in
The cathedral often offers temporary respite to the 1850s. The destruction of the wall in the Skinlands
ghosts unfortunate enough to be caught up in the caused extensive damage to its Shadowlands reflec-
Maelstrom. However, all attempts to make use of this tion, which had protected the city through three Mael-
and establish a permanent settling, have always re- stroms. However, the Artificers guild was quick to
sulted in a slow erosion of the buildings protection respond to the crisis, the wall was quickly repaired in
from the storm that only begins to repair itself once the deadlands, and the mile square of city inside the
the offending Restless have left. Necropolis was protected from the two Maelstroms
that followed.

The Tower of London However, the Hierarchy was falling into quarrel-
ing and infighting, and maintaining the city wall that
Before the Maelstrom, the Hierarchy would have had protected them for so long was soon forgotten
dearly loved to gain control of the Tower of London, about. Because of this, when the Sixth Great Mael-
along with the wealth of Pathos that inevitably comes strom hit with a force previously unknown of, any
with it. However, the sheer volume of mortal soldiers, rudimentary protection that would have been af-
citizens or tourists within the Tower walls made even forded by the walls was gone, and the storm overtook
considering entering the place a hazard. the city in an instant.
Even without considering the mortal population The necropolis wall was torn to tatters, and now
that frequented the Tower, the Hierarchy soon found only shards of it remain, torn at nightly by the storm.
the place to be occupied strange, raven-like creatures Still, the Artificers have plans to repair and rebuild the
that seemed to hold some affinity with the spirits of wall, making it stronger than it has ever been and pro-
the dead. Soon, the Hierarchy, and many more of Lon- tecting the city from the might of the Maelstrom, how-
don's dead besides, found themselves coming into ever, all attempts at achieving this so far have failed,
contact with the Corax, and even entering into a kind and many have been lost in the attempt.
of friendship with the raven-shifters, who would often
trade their secrets with Hierarchy information bro-
kers. The Old Bailey
However, with the coming of the Maelstrom, the A court of law has stood on this site for several
dead were driven underground to seek shelter, desert- hundred years, however, before the Old Bailey was
ing their former allies in the Tower to make their way build, the court was secondary to the massive prison
through the dark times that followed on their own. that stood on the site. Newgate.
 Renowned throughout the city, and throughout However, the Dominicans were overcome in the
the world for its inhospitality and the many con- lands of the dead, and in the Skinlands, the monaster-
demned that passed to their executions in the streets ies were disbanded by Henry VIII in the 1600s. Their
outside. The church across the street, St Sepulchre's sites of worship were torn down in the Skinlands, ig-
tolled out the hour of execution, and even had a tun- nored in the Shadowlands, and little else was thought
nel running to the prison, where a bellman would of them.
walk every night ringing his handbell and saying: However, since the Sixth Great Maelstrom, many
have reported sighting these strange dark monks and
their former co-conspirators the Franciscans, wonder-
"All you that in the condemned hold do lie, Pre- ing the tunnels around Blackfriars Station. The
pare you, for tomorrow you shall die; Watch all churches that stand above the fallen monastery rever-
and pray, the hour is drawing near That you be- berate at dawn and dusk with unearthly music, and
fore the Almighty must appear; Examine well reports continue to come in of a great, golden cathe-
yourselves, in time repent, That you may not to dral stretching out into the spaces beneath these
eternal flames be sent: And when St. Sepulchre's churches, taking up forgotten vaults and service
bell tomorrow tolls, The Lord above have mercy shafts. Whatever the fate of the Franciscans and Do-
on your souls. Past twelve o'clock!" minicans, many suspect that there were never quite as
wiped out as the Hierarchy would have liked every-
This gruesome tradition continued until Newgate one to think. Although these reports remain, at the
was closed in the 20th Century, and the Old Bailey moment, unsubstantiated.
was built in its place.
In the Shadowlands, the building was often a
huge centre for negative energy, and was mostly
The Tempest
avoided until the prison was destroyed. After this The Sixth Great Maelstrom had an unforeseen
however, the Hierarchy made use of the abandoned effect on the Sea of Shadows surrounding the city.
spaces beneath the new courtrooms and condemned And where the tide of the Tempest had always ebbed
their most hated enemies to be locked in cells in the low around the city, with the coming of the Mael-
old Newgate Prison where they would remain, fed by strom, the force of the storm was directed elsewhere,
centuries of Angst until they were consumed slowly leaving the Tempest surrounding London's exposed
and painfully in the silence by their own Shadows. on a large island of blackened earth. Still, this didn't
After that, their Shadow-Eaten souls would writhe in seem to make it any safer, and spectral winds, rains of
the pain of Oblivion until they, at last, were con- teeth, blizzards of long-forgotten diaries are all com-
sumed. So brutal were the Hierarchy in bringing this mon occurrence in London's Sea of Shadows.
about that the victims were often soulforged into their Nevertheless, it is often used as a short-cut by the
cells so that they may never escape. Many Renegade Harbingers Guild, especially at night when it is nearly
lords met their final ends here, and while no one has devoid of spectres, most of whom are pouring
yet ventured back to Newgate since the Maelstrom, it through Nihils into the Shadowlands.
is assumed that many of them are still there, crazed In the Tempest, the sky is cast a deep, boltgun
and Shadow-Eaten behind the cold brick facade that grey, the tumble-down shells of buildings reduced to
overlays the more modern court. a blacked rubble silhouetted against the glowing grey
by a soft halo of magnesium-white. The city is nothing

Blackfriars but an empty, burnt-out husk here, lit only by the gi-
ant red sun that burns and reels in the sky like a single
Back in the 12th Century, a great monastery stood rolling eye of a man slowly dying.
on the site at Blackfriars, drawing its worshipers from The salival water of the Thames turns oil-black,
miles around to sing Mass with the monks that gave thick as molasses, and the river moans desperately
the monastery its name. These black-robed friars or with the turn of the tide. Scattered across the Tempest
Dominicans brought their religion across the Shroud are an abnormally high number of Shifting Zones that
with them and caused the Hierarchy an awful lot of descend upon even the most experienced Harbingers
trouble culminating in a play for power. left in the city. What's more, here the giant sea crea-
ture which many have claimed is an arm of the Kra- and the wailing echoes that reverberate in the silence.
ken lurks beneath the river, its tendrils like liquid To break free of the forged entities inside the cloud, a
metal edged with razor-blades, and its many faces full character must make a Strength + Brawl roll at diffi-
of thousands of blackened eyes and many more jag- culty 6. If they fail, they may try again, but at diffi-
ged teeth of broken bone. The creature seems to prey culty 7, and so on until the difficult exceeds 10, at
randomly of the Restless and Spectres of the city, which point the Wraith is trapped and must wait to be
drawing a toll from all those to must cross the river rescued by his companions, or the next Restless to
where it rests. happen upon the fog who must make the same
Strength + Brawl rolls, and risk becoming captured

Shifting Zones themselves if they linger too long. Finding a way out
of the fog itself requires a successful Wits + Enigmas
The Tempest around London's boasts an incredi- roll.
bly high number of Shifting Zones. Some are serene
havens that seem peaceful and perfect at first, but The Stygian Byway: Once, this was the largest
slowly sink beneath the tide of the storm leaving any byway running between the Shadowlands and the Isle
unfortunate Wraiths stranded in the Tempest and fur- of Sorrows, once, this was the strongest trade-route in
ther from home than they should be. Others are far the Dark Kingdom of Iron. But that was a long, long
more dangerous, offering the Restless glimpses of time ago now.
their most exotic dreams and wildest nightmares be- Once, London's was the biggest producer of soul-
fore leaving them stranded, or sucking them in and forged goods in the Western Shadowlands, with spec-
entrapping them forever. tres, drones, renegades and traitors all falling to the
The Shifting Zones known to drift around the city forges. Relic ships would slip down the sides of the
are mainly those concerning soulforging, an echo of river to unload their goods, and load up on freshly
the city's dark past as the largest soulforgers in the forged artifacts before sailing to the lip of the byway
Dark Kingdom of Iron. The Sargasso Sea and the Sea and unloading their purchases onto carts and wagons
of Broken Glass are both reported in the Tempest that rolled down the byway, or by taking the more
around and under London's, as well as other Shifting treacherous channel that ran alongside the paved road
Zones previously unknown to the Restless. to Stygia. The byway itself, as well as the channel be-
side it, lay out to the west of the city towards the wet-
Fog of the Forges: This Shifting Zone is specific to lands resting on top of the river itself, the lines of real-
London's as far as anyone knows. It appears as a sti- ity blurring around it.
fling, thick grey fog of smoke, ash and other pollut- Now, the channel is gone entirely, closed up or
ants that chokes the Restless that enter it and reduces just torn from the fabric of the world by the Mael-
vision to less than a foot, often, Wraiths who do not strom. The byway rests at the heart of a flooded mire
stick close to one another are separated in the fog that where the sun never rises for the dead, and light never
seems to stifle even sound, and emerge to find them- comes. There is utter silence in the darkness, and crea-
selves miles apart from their original location, and tures unknown to even the oldest of Confederacy his-
each other. torians lurk in the marsh and the long, dead reeds.
Occasionally, this fog is also accompanied by Stretching away from the mire, the byway is lined
strange ghosts of those who have fallen to the forges by black, rotten trees, and as you follow it, it leads you
over the centuries. These creatures appear as twisted out of the darkness and the wet, the air grows colder
gestalts of who that once were, and what they have and colder, snow lies about the bases of the black-
become. Thus, a wraith who was forged into a single rotted trees and shines with an eerie silver light. Only
Oboli could appear as a man with the Stygian seal the silence persists, and that is overwhelming.
branded into his chest, or in a chainmail of coins. All individuals and scout parties to have ever ven-
These creatures emerge from the silent fog and wail tured down the byway have never returned, however,
and grope at those unfortunate enough to become rumours persist of a great, derelict monastery that
trapped in the smoke. stands by the side of the dangerous, deserted byway,
Wraiths trapped in the Fog of the Forges are at -1 populated by strange and unpredictable Heretic crea-
dice to all rolls due to the choking nature of the smoke tures.
 CHAPTER FOUR:
THE CONFEDERACY
For most Restless, the Confederacy is simply all Not all members of the Confederacy are assigned
there is to existence after death. Most Wraiths are to Units, many of them work individually on special
reaped, brought before Joan Sutherland in the Marble projects, and some simply work alone. However, Joan
Court, accept her offer of membership, and are as- thinks it best to assign as many Restless as she can to
signed to a unit that uses their unique skills. work within Units, because as long as she does, every-
The Confederacy owes most of its success to this one is keeping a close eye on one another for both spy-
harnessing of individual skills. It increases the effi- ing and Catharsis. Both of which can be devastating if
ciency of the entire operation, and makes Wraiths feel the go undetected.
more valued. Or so they'd have you believe. Divisions Below are a number of suggested Divisions, with
that a Wraith may be assigned to include Reaping, the types of Wraiths that may make up each unit (and
Relic collecting or Entertainment, with many more Arcanoi that are common in those Wraiths), the his-
besides. Each division is composed of many units in- tory of the Division and what exactly it is that they do.
corporating anywhere between 1 and 10 wraiths, who Despite this, players are should feel free come up
spend most of their waking, working moments to- with their own ideas for Divisions if they think of
gether, reporting back to Joan on a regular basis. something more fitting for their character.
Despite the seemingly rigid structure, the Confed-
eracy is not as restrictive as it seems, and all its mem-
bers are left with time enough to tend to their passions Savants
and fetters, all under the protection of the faction's Fatalism 3, Mnemosynis 1-5
soldiers. More than this, many Wraiths nurse friend-
ships outside their units, and even among the Inde- Membership in this Division is far more depend-
pendents or members of Death by Water, although ent on mindset and a desire to learn than any Skill or
Wraiths that are seen associating with the latter are Arcanos.
watched very closely thereafter, and anyone found Despite this, many of the savants, librarians and
sharing Confederacy secrets is immediately converted historians of the Confederacy's small relic library are
to a form where they can do no more harm. talented in various arts that help them make sense of
information. Everything from Shellriding and Fatal-
Ever. ism to the secretive arts of Mnemosynis can be found
among the Savants, as can a large bias towards

Divisions
Knowledges such as Academics, Enigmas, Science,
Occult and Wraith Lore.
The Confederacy is divided into Divisions, each of It is the job of the Savants to educate the newly
which serves a purpose. Beyond this, each Division is reaped Wraiths in the ways of the dead, answering
separated into Units, which include one Wraith their questions and doing their best to make sure they
skilled in every art needed to perform the task. These are quickly and cleanly interpreted with the rest of the
units work together, often becoming close friends and Confederacy.
remaining in one another's company indefinitely. However, the Savant's job is so much more than
Even if these wraiths don't become close, the Con- that, and in addition to schooling new Wraiths, mem-
federacy demands that they cooperate, and for this bers of this division are often called upon to advise
reason, very few Units are spit up and reassigned be- high-ranking members of the Confederacy, or to help
cause they just don't get on. one of the other Divisions, or just a solitary member of
the Confederacy in researching a specific topic.
 Despite the presence of an entire division of scholars, the li-
brary of the Confederacy is pitifully small, and easily outflanked
buy the collection in the possession of Autumn-Storm-Gathers.
Because of this, Savants are constantly driving to improve the col-
lection, and the Division has been known to indulge in an awful
lot of competition and information hoarding as the stuffy, stoic
librarians constantly try to outdo one another.

Relic Collectors
Outrage 3, Usury 1, Inhabit - Flawsight/4

There are two kinds of units of Relic Collectors among the

ranks of the Confederacy.
The first contains Wraiths with knowledge of Outrage 3,
Usury 1 and Inhabit 1. These Wraiths are notified of the location of
an item with high potential of becoming a relic on destruction.
When they find the object in question, the Wraith with a basic
knowledge of Inhabit will detect the object's weakest point, and
the Wraith with Outrage will strike it hard, hopefully destroying it
whilst the Usurer keeps them in Pathos.
A step up from this is a unit fortunate enough to have a
Wraith with knowledge of Inhabit 4. The process then becomes a
lot less tiresome. These units are sent out in search of a particular
kind of object (swords, guns, ashtrays etc), and upon finding an
example of said object, the Artificer performs Claim and the Spook
destroys it as above. The object is converted instantly to a relic
upon destruction.
In either case, once the relics have been gathered together,
they are transported carefully back to the Marble Court, the Spook
acting as a good defense against any possible highwaymen along
the way.

Soldiers
Argos 3, Keening 4, Moliate 3, Outrage 3, Usury 3

A soldier's life is both the hardest, and the most rewarding in

all the Confederacy.
While their job requires them to constantly put themselves at
risk, to fight spectres, plasmics and drag Restless screaming to the
forges, they also receive the most respect and freedom of any
Wraith under Joan's rule.
They are often gifted with some of the most prised relics and
artifacts in all London, carefully gathered and forged simply for
their benefit. What's more, when two Wraiths are at odds, the
word of a soldier will always override the testament of the other
Wraith.
However, despite all the luxuries afforded to the military of
the Confederacy, if a soldier is found to be abusing their position
in any way, they can expect to suffer greatly before
they are dealt with, permanently. Soldiers may be tal- Courtesans
ented in any or none of the Arcanos presented above, Keening 2/3, Moliate 2, Mnemosynis 1-5, Intimation
but all have a strong inbuilt fighting ability, and a 1-5
large amount of Confederacy training given to en-
hance this. They are usually placed into units of Part entertainers, part spin doctors, the Courte-
around 5, though some may work alone, or in gangs sans serve the less vital need of London's dead, keep-
of up to 10 if the situation requires it. ing them happy. This is done through a mixture of
entertainment and propaganda, both mundane, and

Mortal Affairs not so mundane.

The ranks of the Courtesans contain more than a
Embody 1-5, Inhabit 1-5, Outrage 1-5, Pandemonium few Wraiths talented in Mnemosynis and Intimation,
1-5, Phantasm 2/4/5, Puppetry 1-5, Usury 3 not because of any role these guilds played in recent
events (London's dead wouldn't know either way),
An incredibly diverse Division, members of Mor- but because since the fall of the Hierarchy, things like
tal Affairs units usually possess either Puppetry, that have simply ceased to matter.
Phantasm or Pandemonium, and then any of the other The hit some of the more talented Wraiths among
arts listed above in addition, although there are excep- the Courtesans can provide can be hugely addictive,
tions to this rule. and most of these Restless are incredibly careful about
An idiosyncratic group of individuals, despite the when and how they use their powers.
official quarrels between Haunters and Puppeteers Despite this, the role of the Courtesans is crucial,
having been put aside, no one in Mortal Affairs seems they spread positive feeling and a beneficial view of
to be adverse to bitching behind one another's backs, the Confederacy throughout the ranks, and it is due to
and these bitches are still often directed along the their poetry, music, and more exotic services, that so
Puppeteer/Haunter boundary. little dissent has troubled the Confederacy since its
The mission statement of those in Mortal Affairs is creation.
at once both brutally simple and mind-numbingly
complicated. Their job is to watch, spy on, interfere
with, influence, hurt, scare and destroy specific mor- Soulforgers
tals in accordance with the plans of their mistress. Crafts - Soulforging; Usury 2
Working in groups of anywhere between 1 and 8,
these units are usually assigned to scare those looking Much more of a skill-based division than an Arca-
a little too deeply into things they shouldn't be, bias nos-based one, the Soulforgers began with a defector
the local police or politician into looking the other from the Artificers after the Sixth Great Maelstrom,
way etc. who taught the apprentices below him, who taught
Although this job is often seen to be easy, and a their apprentices, etc.
lot of fun, in reality, the world of Mortal Affairs can be In actuality, very few Restless learn how to Soul-
terrifyingly dangerous. Not only are all the members forge without first learning the ropes at Intimation
of your Division and even your own Unit constantly and even undergoing a kind of initiation ritual. This
trying to outdo you or stab you in the back, but adds weight to the claim that the Soulforgers are the
groups such as the Knights of the Black Dawn are al- closest thing to a Guild left in Dead London.
ways just around the corner from anyone who acts a Most Wraiths who find themselves part of the
little too blatantly. Soulforging division are inevitably incredibly strong,
In fact, a lot more of these eccentric, insane crea- stoic individuals, who have few qualms (for whatever
tures disappear every week than most could possibly reason) about forging Wraiths as well as spectres.
grasp, and as rumors of a mission involving the They are possessed of a fair amount of physical brawn
Knights begin to circulate, thse losses only seem to and, as mentioned above, a fair dose of Inhabit.
increase further. The only other quality possessed by many of the
Soulforging Division, is Usury, which is used to pre-
vent the Wraith being forged from entering a Harrow-
ing whilst they are being hammered into whatever other wraiths covering all the skills above. These units
Joan has deemed appropriate for them. use Fatalism to search out those destined to die soon,
Soulforgers are inevitably marked by the heat of and in ways that may cause them to become Wraiths.
the forge at the front of the Marble Court where they They also include someone talented in Bulwark to
spend most of their time, and are second only to the make nighttime rescue missions into the storm possi-
military in the amount of respect their receive. For ble, and an Usurer to replenish some of the Pathos
their's is a hard lot, and most Wraiths cringe at the Bulwark uses, occasionally even cannibalizing their
thought of forging even the most feral of spectres... own Corpus, and the Corpus of their comrades to do
so. However, because of the necessity of Castigate,

Internal Affairs these units are few and far between, are usually only
mobilised in emergencies to rescue souls at risk from
Moliate 2, Castigate, Fatalism 3, Lifeweb 3, Usury 2 the Maelstrom.

Wraiths blessed with even the slightest amount of

Castigate usually find themselves in the Internal Af- Infiltrators
fairs Division. More a collection of Individuals than a Moliate, Fatalism 2, Inhabit (Shellride), Puppetry 2,
collection of Units, these Wraiths spend most of their Argos 3
time in the social quarters of the Marble Court, seeing
to the other members of the Confederacy. The job of the Confederacy's spies is a dangerous
Part of the package offered to Enfants joining the one. Often, many of them don't come back from their
Confederacy is the presence of help in the face of first assignment. Those that do usually don't come
problems with themselves, their fetters, their Shadow, back from their second.
and the like, and the Wraiths of Internal Affairs are Working entirely alone, many Infiltrators remain
the ones responsible for providing this help. in deep cover for many months, having no contact
With the ability to heal wounds, quell Shadows, with the Confederacy past the weekly reports they
strengthen failing ties to the Skinlands, replenish Pa- send to Joan. They receive no word in return. In fact,
thos and offer anxious Wraiths a (not always truthful) the only way they know the Confederacy hasn't
glimpse of what lies around the corner, the Wraiths of ceased to exist is by continuing to see the patrols out
Internal Affairs are much in demand. on the streets, and by having their messages removed
A collection of generally calm, collected individu- each week from the place they store them.
als, Internal Affairs are always there to help in a crisis, A relatively small Division, most of the Confeder-
although those who come to rely on them too much acy's spies attempt to crack Death by Water, although
are inevitably looked down upon as unable to manage there are others stationed in Heretic and Guild cults,
on their own. as well as Independent gangs.
Given to as much idiosyncrasy as the Mortal Af-

Reapers fairs Division, spies are often highly secretive or para-

noid, and work one of several different ways. The
Argos - 2, Castigate (Bulwark), Usury 1-3, Fatalism 1 most common way for a spy to infiltrate an organisa-
tion, is for them to Moliate themselves to look either
There are two types of Confederacy Reapers in like a typical recruit for said organisation, or a cap-
London. The best known are the solitary souls tal- tured member of the faction in question. After that,
ented with Argos 2 and occasionally Bulwark who the Wraith attempts to integrate themselves with the
roam the grey-smeared skies above London scouring group, and find out as much as they can.
the ground for the slick, shimmering shapes of Rest- Other methods include Skin/Shellriding in the
less imprisoned in their Cauls. These Wraiths are of- vicinity of faction members and attempting to hear
ten introverted and isolated individuals who prefer what they are saying, masquerading as a defector and
their own company and spend most of their days learning to get away very quickly indeed, or even
wandering the streets in search of new Enfants to masquerading as a member of another Division and
bring before their queen. spying on fellow members of the Confederacy. Under-
The second kind of Reaper works in a unit with standably, the last one is kept rather quiet.
 CHAPTER FIVE:
PEOPLE
The three most famous faces in the Confederacy most certain that there's much more to Joan's life than
are undoubtedly Joan Sutherland, Altair, and Tristan this, but whatever it is, she's not making it public
Alfere. knowledge.
Joan began her stay in the lands of the dead
Joan formed the Confederacy after the chaos fol- among the Hierarchy. She was reaped by then- Centu-
lowing the Sixth Great Maelstrom, and has lead it ever rion Altair, who took her into the citadel, and saw that
since. It is her firm rule, strategic mind and brilliance she was kept safe in her first days among the dead.
in the art of Castigation that meant Wraiths survived However, this existence was not meant to be, and
in London at all. Despite this, in recent times, Joan has it was months and not years before Joan was fleeing
been seeming more and more unstable, and people her reaper and his Hierarchy for the arms of the Rene-
wonder how much longer she can remain in control gades. Rumour has it that Altair even helped her leave
before she slips... the citadel and establish herself with a local Renegade
Anyone wanting to get to Joan, will have to go gang, although this in as yet unproven.
through Altair. A former Hierarch, Altair is now Within the protection of the Renegades, Joan be-
Joan's some-time lover, and the head of her own per- came a competent Shroud-breaker, and was soon in-
sonal guard of elite soldiers. Strong, silent and stoic, terfering in the life of her husband. It wasn't long be-
the same people whispering that Joan may not be long fore George Sutherland was committed to Bedlam,
in slipping from power whisper that Altair may re- and not much longer before he died there.
place her. It's well recorded that some time during the Har-
Tristan Alfere is the chief to the Confederacy's rowing that followed, Joan changed somehow, be-
Courtesans and entertainers. He can almost always be cause when she emerged on the other side, she was
found at the court, reeling off poetry, writing quietly colder, harder more brutal and a proficient, brilliant
in a corner or increasing morale and spreading propa- leader.
ganda. Although his intensely nervous disposition She quickly rose in rank and esteem until she was
makes him often less than believable. leading the gang she had been a long-time member of,
directing raids into the Hierarchy and causing utter

Joan Sutherland havoc. It was then that the Dark Kingdom of Jade in-
vaded and the Sixth Great Maelstrom hit, and Joan's
Between the conception . . . And the creation role among the Restless of Dead London changed
Between the emotion . . . And the response more than she could have ever expected.
Falls the Shadow Her skill at leading and organizing meant that in
—The Hollow Men - T.S Eliot the darkest hour of the dead, she rose up and united
the fractious, frightened Wraiths of London against
Like most of the Wraiths of Dead London, Joan first the soldiers of the Jade Empire, and later the spec-
Sutherland really has not been among the Restless tres and the storm.
very long. She lived and died in Victorian London. It was in the heat of battle that Joan and her reaper
She was born into a wealthy family and married be- Altair were reunited. For the first time in half a cen-
neath her. Rumour is that she never let her husband, tury they fought side-by-side, and planned together in
George Sutherland, forget it. the months of hiding that followed.
Perhaps this was the reason why he strangled her While Shadowshimmer and the Knights of the
to death one day in November and dumped her body Black Dawn were killing, Harrowing and causing
in the dirt and steam of the Victorian streets. It's al- havoc above ground, Joan was consolidating her
 Passions: Help Others (Guilt) 4; Lead (Love) 3; Perse-
vere (Determination) 4
Arcanoi: Argos 2; Castigate 5; Castigate (Ancient Arts)
5; Fatalism 2; Lifeweb 1; Moliate 2; Usury 3
Fetters: Marble Arch 3; Imperial War Museum
(Bethlehem Asylum) 4; Flooded Victorian House 3
Willpower: 8
Shadow: The Bully
Angst: 7
Thorns: Nightmares; Shadow Traits (+2 Strength);
Shadowplay;
Shadow Passions: Hurt Others (Hate) 4; Make Others
Bow to my Will (Anger) 4; Kill Men (Spite) 3
Merits and Flaws: Storm Warning 1pt Merit

Image: Standing barely over 5ft with wild wisps

of dark hair, wide, doe-like eyes and full, cupid's-bow
lips, Joan hardly looks the part of a vicious warrior
and steely leader. Still, there is certainly something
forces. When Shadowshimmer was out of the way, she about her that makes people uncomfortable, makes
rose to rule the remaining Wraiths with Altair at her them think twice before addressing her in anything
side at the head of the martial arm of her newly less than a reverent tone of voice. She is rarely seen
formed organisation, The Confederacy of the Free- out of her soulsteel armour which shines slickly as
wraiths of London. mirrors in the torchlight of the Marble Court, and
Since then, Joan has worked on extending her in- clicks and creaks softly when she moves.
fluence and continuing to protect the Restless and en- Roleplaying Hints: You are strong, cold, confi-
sure the survival of Wraithkind on the whole. She dent and ruthless. Exercise your will as much as it
does this both by protecting, reaper and assigning the takes to get your subjects to obey you. Give warnings
Restless under her control, keeping them occupied, if you have to, but never more than once. Never show
keeping them from the mouths of the spectres, and a glimmer of emotion if you can avoid it, although
through nursing their souls and their Shadows with more and more these days anger is overcoming you.
her now unique talent in Castigate. You may know how strong your Shadow has become,
but you do not believe it, or do not believe it affects
Nature: Autocrat; Demeanor: Director you. If anyone mentions the issue, loose your temper
Physical: Strength 3; Dexterity 4; Stamina 4 and threaten them until they back down or you have
Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 3, Appearance 3 them sent to the forges.
Mental: Perception 4; Intelligence 3; Wits 3
Talents: Alertness 2; Athletics 2; Awareness 2; Brawl
3; Dodge 3; Empathy 2; Intimidation 4; Leadership 3; Altair
Subterfuge 2 Men should be either treated generously or destroyed,
Skills: Etiquette 1; Melee 3; Security 3; Stealth 2; Sur- Because they take revenge for slight injuries -
vival 1; Technology 1 For heavy ones they cannot.
Knowledges: Academics 1; Bureaucracy 2; Enigmas 1; -- Machiavelli
Finance 1; Investigation 3; Law 2; Linguistics 1; Wraith
Lore 4; Vampire Lore 1; Medicine 3; Occult 2; Politics Very little is known of Altair before his entrance
2; Science 1 to the Shadowlands. It's rumored that he was a pit
Backgrounds: Allies 1 (Altair); Artifact (Armour) 4; fighter, or bare-knuckle boxer in the back-street clubs
Artifact (Sword) 4; Eidolon 1; Haunt 4; Notoriety 5; and bars of London in the early 1800's, although there
Status (Confederacy) 5 is little or no evidence to substantiate these claims.
However, if these rumors are to be believed, then one
of two things is true. Either Altair was killed during a Nature: Judge; Demeanor: Loner
high profile illegal fight in one of the largest fighting Physical: Strength 5; Dexterity 4; Stamina 3
dens in Georgian London when his opponent pulled a Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 2, Appearance 2
knife on him and stabbed him to death, or he was Mental: Perception 3; Intelligence 3; Wits 4
killed by an infuriated sponsor, who lost an awful lot Talents: Alertness 2; Athletics 3; Awareness 2; Brawl
of money on him after a particularly bad fight. How- 3; Dodge 3; Empathy 4; Expression 2; Intimidation 3;
ever, if either these rumors is true, then it seems cer- Leadership 4; Streetwise 3; Subterfuge 1
tain that he was stabbed to death, and his deathmarks Skills: Firearms 2; Melee 4; Security 4; Stealth 2; Sur-
certainly seem to support this. Then again, it is then vival 3
still impossible to know which, if either, of the rumors Knowledges: Bureaucracy 3; Enigmas 2; Investigation
to believe. 5; Law 4; Wraith Lore 4; Medicine 2; Occult 4; Politics
Either way, Altair found himself a victim of vio- 4
lence and a member of the Grim Legion by the mid Backgrounds: Allies 4 (Confederacy Soldiers); Con-
1800's. From there, he fell easily into the role of pro- tacts 3; Artifact (Armour) 5; Artifact (Sword) 5; Eido-
viding quiet, unquestionable support. He was always lon 3; Notoriety 3; Status (Confederacy) 4
there to fall back on in a crisis, and whenever a high- Passions: Protect the Innocent and Helpless (Duty) 4;
ranking Hierarchy official had a job that needed doing Treat All Fairly (Justice) 4; Guide the Confederacy to
that no one else would do, it was always Altair that Better Things (Hope) 3; Protect Joan (Devotion) 2
ended up carrying it out. Despite this, he always Arcanos: Argos 4; Outrage 3; Lifeweb 3; Moliate 4;
seemed to survive the difficult missions all but un- Usury 4
scathed, and soon, he was gaining in rank and esteem Fetters: Flooded Tube Network 2; Georgian Town
within the organization that had adopted him. House 4; Run-down Flooded Building (Former Fight-
It's not known why, but for some reason, around ing Den) 3; Juliet Collier (Mortal Girl and Descendant)
the turn of the century, Altair took in an Enfant that 4
he reaped, and guarded her with more care and affec- Willpower: 8
tion than he had ever shown anyone else during his Shadow: Mr. Adventure
stay in the Shadowlands. That Enfant was Joan Suth- Angst: 4
erland. Thorns: Devil's Dare; Shadow Call; Cat Food
However, his new companion was quick to disap- Shadow Passions: Endanger the Psyche (Thrill Seek-
point him, and within a few years, Joan had fled to the ing) 3; Chase Impossible Odds (Exhilaration) 4; Best
arms of a local Renegade gang. Some people even Others in Combat (Arrogance) 4
whisper that it was Altair that aided her escape, al-
though they never whisper it too loudly. Image: Altair stands easily over 6 12ft tall with all
Altair quickly fell back into his quiet, supporting the bulk to match it. His pitch-dark Stygian steel ar-
role within the Hierarchy, and by the time the Sixth mor is shaped perfectly over the rise and fall of his
Great Maelstrom hit, he had made quite a name for muscular frame, and made up of a series of carefully
himself. During the Jade Empire attack and the Mael- polished plates that shine a wintered-silver in the
strom that followed, Altair lead his Hierarchy com- light. He moves with the calculated, oiled precision of
panions is rescuing those less fortunate and less well a cat, walking so lightly despite his heavy armor, that
armed from enemy forces, and from the spectres. It people rarely hear him until he taps them on the
was then that he ran into his former companion Joan shoulder. His just-off-blonde hair is trimmed close to
Sutherland once again. his skull, and sticks out in odd points, and his narrow,
In the heat of battle, the two of them reformed the ferociously blue eyes are almost constantly scanning
bonds that had been broken between them so many his surroundings. For the most part, he is seen in cor-
years before, and in the chaos that followed when ners and shadows, just watching silently.
Joan announced her plans to form a new organization Roleplaying Hints: For the majority of the time,
to protect the Restless of London, the Confederacy, it stand utterly still and be utterly silent, usually with
was Altair who was first to stand silently at her side. your hands linked behind your back. If Joan asks
something of you, nod curtly and do it. When she is
losing control, step in and talk to her, be calm, guid-
ing, but firm. With your men, be equally quiet and and left more or less to himself. Tristan made few
firm, if they have concerns, listen to them, but ulti- friends, and was often found alone, whispering to
mately make sure they know who they answer to. himself, scrawling on the walls in relic charcoal, and
When you are in the ranks of your soldiers, open up a often caught stealing scraps of precious artifact paper.
little more, talk and even smile from time to time. However, someone out there liked him, and Tristan
Should you speak to anyone else, be calm, fair and always managed to survive with little more than a
measured. slapped wrist.
When the Sixth Great Maelstrom hit, Tristan pan-

Tristan Alfere icked. He suffered terribly in the battle and the storm,
and when Altair found him, he was a nervous wreck.
What we call the beginning if often the end Nevertheless, once out of the force of the storm,
And to make an end is to make a beginning. Tristan proved undyingly loyal to Joan and Altair,
The end is where we start from. and Joan could see that Tristan's ability with words
—Little Gidding - T.S Eliot wasn't without its usefulness.
Maybe it's because of this that Tristan finds him-
Tristan was a little unstable even when he was self where he is now. Head of Joan's division of Cour-
alive. He began his term in the Skinlands well enough, tesans. He certainly seems to have calmed a little with
receiving a good education in an early 1900's grammar the proximity of other artistically inclined restless, but
school where he took a shine to English and began to only time will tell if Joan's decision to appoint him as
socialize with other artistically minded people. His her poet laureate was a wise one.
family were well-off enough to support his artistic
inclinations, so Tristan much of his early twenties at- Nature: Child
tending parties and socializing with the likes of TS Demeanor: Follower
Eliot and Henry Cowell. Physical: Strength 2; Dexterity 3; Stamina 3
Although never talented, motivated or extro- Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 2, Appearance 2
verted enough to make a big name for himself, Tristan Mental: Perception 3; Intelligence 3; Wits 4
continued to write poetry which was seen as contro- Talents: Alertness 4; Awareness 3; Dodge 1; Empathy
versial, modern and brilliant among the circles which 2; Expression 4; Streetwise 2; Subterfuge 3
he passed it. Skills: Crafts 2; Drive 2; Etiquette 3; Meditation 2; Per-
However, Tristan found himself quite unable to formance 3; Security 2; Stealth 3; Survival 2
move with the times, and while the 20's gave way to Knowledges: Academics 3; Bureaucracy 2; Enigmas 3;
the 30's, Tristan was still stuck yearning after the past. Investigation 2; Law 1; Linguistics 3; Wraith Lore 3;
When the Second World War broke out, Tristan was Occult 2; Politics 3; Science 2
dumbfounded. When the King's men came looking to Backgrounds: Contacts 4; Artifact (Lyre) 3; Artifact
conscript him, he stood by astounded. It wasn't long (Endless Notepad) 3; Relic (Pen) 2; Notoriety 2; Status
into the war when Tristan was killed in a battle on the (Confederacy) 3
Western Front. He took a bullet in the stomach, and Passions: Write (Love) 4; Perform (Self Confidence) 3;
died slowly in the filth over the hours that followed. Listen to Others (Curiosity) 2; Obey Altair
Something about the war changed Tristan. (Gratefulness) 2
Whereas before he had been quiet, shy, enthusiastic Arcanos: Argos 1; Keening 4; Moliate 2; Usury 1;
and inspired, emerging on the other side of the Phantasm 2; Pandemonium 1
Shroud he was paranoid, agitated and often really Fetters: British Library 2; Manuscript of Poems 5; Pho-
quite insane. Almost entirely unable to look after him- tographs from the Twenties 3
self, he was quickly taken in by the Hierarchy and Willpower: 5
sent back to a place where he'd hopefully feel a little Shadow: The Paranoid
more stable. To London. Angst: 4
While sending him back to the city he had loved Thorns: Bad Luck; Freudian Slip; Honeyed Tongue;
so much in life certainly seemed to relax him a little, it Trick of the Light
didn't seem to do anything to quell his fits of hysteria. Shadow Passions: Show the Psyche how Pathetic he is
He was placed in a low level position in the Hierarchy (Self Hatred) 5; Alienate the Psyche from his Friends
(Fear) 4; Drive the Psyche Mad (Paranoia)

Image: A wiry, wide-eyed twig in the wind, Tris-

tan seems to be almost everywhere at once, which
makes him useful as the head of Joan's Courtesans,
who are, by their very description, part entertainers,
part spin-doctors. However, Tristan has always been
far too paranoid and hyperactive to fulfill either of
those roles properly, and people wonder why Joan
keeps him on at all. His appearance is somewhat ec-
centric to say the least, his dress a patchwork of differ-
ent times spanning from the art deco to the medieval,
his dishwater-blonde hair is ragged in tattered waves
about his pale, drawn face from which his milky-blue
eyes flicker back and forth almost constantly.

Roleplaying Hints: You are almost unnaturally

frightened and anxious. If someone startles you, jump
out of your skin. When you speak, babble, let your
words flow together until what you are saying no
longer makes sense. When you are in a safe environ-
ment, listen to others, make nervous suggestions.
When you are performing one of your works, your
hands shake, your voice may even quiver a little, but
otherwise be nervous, but confident where your po-
etry is concerned.