Note: Anyone involved in the Invaters campaign probably shouldn’t be looking at this.
History of Longstepper Isle
They say that uncounted millennia ago, before Longstepping was even invented, when the first empires after the age of darkness were braking up, the last and great wizard of the dying Ceyan empire took refuge on the island of Longsta. The Ceyan empire died in fire and madness, and few places were spared its death throes. The High Wizard made his (or her, no one is quite sure) last stand on Longsta, along with her many apprentices. In those dire days, she made an open offer to all the wizards of the land, dark or light alike- “You will be welcome here.” Her commandment gave way to the Truce, and his tower, the Imperial Building, stands as a testament to his greatness to this day.
The Truce is simple, and is composed of three laws, the only three laws of wizard city.
“1. Action for Action, Word for Word, Eye for an Eye”
The basis for the “justice” system. If someone steals from you, it is your responsibility to seek justice… unless you pay your 5 gold monthly charge to the proper “fellas”. There is no central authority, no protection aside the friends you have and the charity of strangers.
“2. What happens out of the City, stays out of the City
Normal politics or even morality don’t really affect the city much. Unless someone threatens the city, the city as a whole stays out of things. No lands have ever been conquered by the city-state, but no empire has ever claimed it either.
“3. Armed company is polite company”
Necromancers and Clerics, Devils and Celestials; both are welcome in the city (though it remains an unwise idea to flaunt such statuses, save in a few select locations). Regardless of sins committed elsewhere, Longstepper Isle welcomes you.
Notes on Designing Wizard Cities
Longstepper Isle is without question a “wizard city”. The Truce ensures that even the vilest sorcerers can live here without being overly molested. In some ways the city is a retirement home for the greatest and most infamous wizards of the past age. No one knows the cities population; at least a million humanoid, with at least a hundred thousand wizards, plus planar and unusual races, but it could easily be five or ten times that. There is no central authority; the city exists on the edge of anarchy every day, held together only by the overwhelming power of its most established residents.
I think that wizard cities need to feel different from a normal city. Normal cities can be immense, confusing, and dynamic, and they aren’t infused with the raw creative energy of the cosmos with inhabitants who can warp reality. Wizard cities should feel like Cyberpunk-Hogwarts-Discworld-Lankhmar-Sigil madness. I like to start with a skeleton framework and build from there, and for Longstepper Isle, the focus is on the organizations you’re in. People are the focus, not locations. Also, this is obviously a WIP, so some detail may change.
There’s a lot of great content for designing cities mostly ran by wizards: Goodberry Monthly’s Wizard City and Skerples’ MIR are very underrated in my opinion, as the epitome of good city design is building a flexible skeleton in which content can be easily added (MIR was exceptional in including dynamic change into the foundation of the city through the tempo system). I don’t like running cities like in “The City of State of the Invincible Overlord” where each individual building is fleshed out and designed with NPCs and inhabitants. Every city falls somewhere between the two extremes of “skeleton framework” vs “each building, street, and NPC described”.
However, this is Nod, and Wizard City is an on-the-nose Mid-Renaissance high-magic New York; so we have a pretty big head start in fleshing this out.
The District of Amden (Staten Island)
An eerie, dead city all on its own. Block after block of dust choked streets, quiet as a tomb, sealed off from the rest of society. The style is uniform, as if they were designed as a whole. The bricks are a deep, wine-dark purple that fit together without mortar as if the towers were cast from a massive mold.
The whole place is unstable in the timeline. No one is sure how long it’s been there, but everyone somehow knows it wasn’t always there. The wizards think it was made sometime in the distant, distant past… or future. A lot of the buildings aren’t measured in square feet, but in half life.
It is eerily quiet, oddly disconcerting, and a complete, occasionally non-Euclidean, headache to navigate. Static seems to fill the ears while you walk, and any animals- even insects- are wrong, with multiple limbs and of unknown species.
Who lives here: Homeless, the insane, heroes on quests, and vermin of dubious genetic stability.
The Fringe (Bronx)
Originally, the Fringe was unattached to the city, but the Archmage Stavola bribed the the god of the Heart River to separate it from the mainland, in order to win a bet with the Council of The Invincible Nine. Local tradition holds she gave the god her first born in trade (which she herself acquired from one Baron Tolkas, after winning the infant in a bracing game of cards). The baby is still worshipped as the patron saint of the district to this day.
As a whole, it’s the roughest of the districts. When you first get to Longstepper Isle, you normally find yourself here. Currently, Cortillion refugees from the Demon Wars have fled into the city, and are often rejected as plague-ridden demon worshippers- rumors that the few demons who have followed them are only too eager to stoke. The most constant stream of immigration are those who have fled from Talmara, the lands across the Great Chromatic Ocean. This far from their homeland, some hope to recover from their curse. (In short- around 10-30 years ago, the continent of Talmara was cursed- every human within it transformed into an animalistic version of themselves. If you want to play a leonin/tabaxi/arakocra/any-animal-based-race (except a few like loxondon which are special) you’re probably from here. After leaving the continent, the curse has a chance of wearing off. It’s a lot more apocalyptic then it sounds, as it more-or-less doomed the continent to a race war).
Walking through this portion of the city is the opposite of Amden: it’s loud, active, everything is alive. The buildings are often more ramshackle (drawing scorn from the inner city) but would be palaces anywhere else. It’s cheaper than other districts, and can be a bit seedy.
Who lives here: The Red Wizards (various socialist fronts, definitely not funded by the Chrysanthemum People), The Poor, Immigrants, Refugees, The Talmarans, and breath-taking variety of gangs taking advantage of all of the above.
The Tower-City of Kitzeh (Manhatten)
Kitzeh is a city of city, with towers that soar into the sky. Some of the most powerful wizards own their towers outright, but many are owned by guilds. Some towers are simple square constructions, built with Walls of Stone spells, but most are decorated to the gills, with the most extravagant materials, enchantments, and glamour’s. One tower is a massive statue of its creator, another constantly strobes rainbow light, and another is a black iron keep with blood red lightning that constantly crackles around it. On the next block…
This is the center of the city. It’s the place to be, with closed door auctions raffling off enslaved gods and uber-magicks. Here the soul brokers of the First Hell trade with their agents, trading souls for power and gold, or vice versa. The dragon bank has its branches here as well. A few public buildings are maintained here, partially as a charitable act to win goodwill, partially from genuine goodwill, and largely to get the Red Wizards to shut up. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. There’s an entrance to the tombs here; a surprisingly little-known literally underground bar for the “no longer organically viable”. It’s also where the Imperial Building is.
As a whole, it is expensive, overpopulated, cutthroat, competitive, and ostentatious to the point of utter frivolousness.
Who lives here? Everyone, wizards, witches, the dragon bankers, archmages, law-devils, sorcerer kings, fleeing dictators, liches, those burdened with the curse of too much ambition, mages, magic users, and did I mention wizards?
The Imperial Building:
Of the only ruler of Longstepper Isle only his/her tower remains. It stretches at least two miles into the air, and mages have counted at least 512 floors. Impenetrable to every type of scrying magic and teleportation, it is a locked box impenetrable to the gods themselves. Supposedly, the one who is able to reach the top of the tower will become the new wizard-king, able to rewrite the rules of wizard city and lay claim as the new supreme leader. The door is open to all, but the tower is incredibly dangerous, killing most who enter swiftly- though those who do return, do so with fabulous treasure, which oddly seems to “restock” after a successful climb. Supposedly less than a hundred people have climbed up to floor 50, and no one has gone past 100. From some trigonometry, wizards have calculated from the angle that space is being distorted within the tower (if the forest on level 8 didn’t give it away), and estimates for its true height have varied between 600 and 2,000 floors, though most sages assume 1,000 floors. Rumors hold that an intelligence- the wizard-king, a construct, ally, or apprentice- now watches the trials and will select the successor, and thus any attempt by the non-ordained is doomed.
Side Note: Guilds in Longstepper Isle can be anything from social clubs, to grand coalitions, schools, businesses, gangs, secluded councils, illuminati-franchises, co-ops, hobby or sporting leagues, and public health advocacy groups. Almost any organization is called a guild, and most wizards are in at least a dozen (and more than a few in hundreds).
Obensode (Brooklyn)
Obensode- it originally stood for “Old but not so old”, as the previous name was purchased by the devils in the Future Market, in exchange for ensuring that a deity (which one isn’t certain) didn’t meddle in the district’s affairs. Any time anyone renames the district, they immediately forget the name they made, and Obensode was the closest anyone could get.
It’s the most “gentrified” area, meaning fly-by castings are rather rare and non-heroic types can more-or-less safely eek out a comfortable life here. It’s known for its monuments; recreations of the most famous places and locales across the multiverse, yours to tour from the comfort of your own city! See the palace of the Cortillions, the Chrysanthemum People’s Hall, or walk the bi-frost bridge! (“come on, it’s just like the real bi-frost bridge! Only two copper a walk and you don’t have to deal with any angry men with hammers!”).
Fancy in a worn sort of way. Fewer massive towers are here; it’s considered pretentious, though this may be jealousy in some cases. They have their own network of underground bars.
It is heavily populated, industrious, mazelike, oddly timeless, and obsessed with status.
Who lives here? Established immigrants, wealthier non-magic folks, tourists, wizards who prefer to stay away from the bustle and grit of Kitzeh or the Fringes.
Manican (Queens)
A newcomer to the city might mistake Manican for any other city in the world, albeit a capital in and of itself. The majority of the non-casting portion of the city lives here, but many of the luxuries of the city have entered into normal life- intricate sewers cart off waste, the rich enjoy controlled temperatures, and trade goods from around the world can be found here. The districts trade chaos for a most confusing order; the district is considered labyrinthian by outsiders, with stone built on stone leading to entire neighborhoods built without sunlight… sometimes to the preference of the inhabitants.
It’s most well known for it’s Longstepport. Teleporting is quite difficult over more than a few hundred or maybe a thousand miles, meaning there’s no way to get across the Chromatic Sea, unless you want to pay a literal fortune to a Ship from Port. The invention of longstepping was the gasoline to the cities growth. Each step warps space, allowing you to travel thousands of miles, all the way across the ocean. It’s a bit dangerous, requires a guide, and can only get you to a few locations reliably- even longstepping has a range limit (about 5-7,000 miles)- and it only works to and from Longstepper Isle.
Manican is subdued (relative to the city as a whole), large, developed, and stable (as it could be).
Who lives here? Absolutely anyone and seemingly everyone.
Walltown or Slum City (Nassau)
Walltown is it’s technical name, but most call it Slum City, is all along the border of Manican. It extends anywhere from a few hundred feet to a few miles into Long Stepper Isle, and is where the most wretched beggars dwell, yet the entire district has a regal, if drug-addled, bearing. Beggar kings hold courts with aristocratic procedures. Ascetic paupers gladly work long hours to sustain a meager existence. Those disenfranchised with the city flee to this haven, and everyone else can’t bear the smell.
It’s dirty, shoddy, falling part, and in disrepair, but surprisingly honest in its poverty.
Who lives here? The Beggar Courts, the Philosopher-Whores, The Pauper-Monks, the Orphan-Guild, the Righteous Order Of Panhandlers
The Rest of Longstepper Isle
The remainder of the island, filled with rural wizards and farmers, desperately trying to produce enough food to supply the city. There’s never enough of course, even with the prodigious amounts of magic used (everything from simple, stolen druidcrafts, to more complicated transmutation or alchemical fertilization, which has about a one-in-five chance of exploding or otherwise ruining the harvest, and a one-in-five chance of tripling the average harvest).
It’s a bit damaged from the magic runoff of the city- less “wild magic” and more a “miasma of lazy, temperamental magic”, where spells might snap back at their masters, or where children might be born with broken eyes that see only when closed, but it’s generally idyllic enough by longstepper standards.
The plants and animals grown here are utterly alien, and sometimes unique. Massive Spurnpuff trees provide their sweet, chewy, fibrous fluff to soups and children. The oddly spicy Styx-grass grows in clumps and clusters. Swine of enormous and destructive size, horses that run for miles without tiring, the whale-bats with their fine water-proof fur and delicious, blubber-white meat, and enough strange and peculiar agriculture to warrant its own entry.
