Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Inferno

A group of denizens (broadly speaking) of the Golden City decide that actually, Hell is hell, and they'd like to get out. But the lower realms weren't designed to be left easily...

The Golden City

The hell of aesthetics. The domain of beauty above all - above comfort, above justice, above compassion, above life. Its pristine boulevards are lined with endless salons, museums, gardens and galleries, and behind them the garrets of those who slave for endless days and nights to keep them clean and beautiful. Its lords and ladies in their mansions sponsor great artists to buttress their reputations, and great critics to destroy those of their opponents. Here the fall of an artist into madness and atrocity in search of inspiration is not only an expected part of the creative process - it is itself a beautiful and desired element of the tragedy of her life.

Bavaria Megaragusa's travel guide suggests the following distinctive sights:

• Caged singers.
• Animation sweatshops.
• Public criticism session - very exciting!
• Human sculpture.
• Gladiatorial dance.

Besides the usual precations for infernal travel, Bavaria Megaragusa suggests:

• Having a spare set of expensive clothes.
• Buying an up-to-date style guide immediately on arrival. It'll cost, and won't actually impress anyone, but it will keep the critical police off your back for short stays.
• If caught off guard by a critic or socialite, deflect with a confident reference to something obscure, or preferably made-up entirely. It'll buy you time to get away while they're on the defensive.

Districts

• Platinum Eidos is the vision of the future. A sleek and sterile district of gleaming silver towers, overdesigned UI, and no pockets. Seductive to too many Etherites, not to mention Syndicate associates. It is the district most tolerant to innovation and new media, and most new ideas make their home here whether or not they like the paradigm. Its Patron, who calls herself 'the Vicar', is a rising star in the politics of the city.
• The Amber Districts are the antithesis of Platinum Eidos. These ossified domains clustered in the centre of the city know what is beautiful and expect it to be studied and adopted by all, rather than for the sublime to be torn down in the name of empty 'innovation'. Each district freezes a past aesthetic in time according to the tastes of its Patron. To a man (they are all male) the Amber Patrons seek to end the ascendancy of Platinum Eidos, but internal squabbles and the Golden Lord's finger on the scales have left them so far ineffective. Their very name and group identity, much to their chagrin, was given them by the Vicar, but the districts now tend to a yellow colour scheme nonetheless.
• The Pavilions of Autosculpture are concerned with the development of the self as the highest artistic canvas. Here one can go - or be sent - to become more beautiful in mind and body. The architecture and furniture of the schools and clinics here tend to be masterworks of living or once-living materials - wood, hair, bone and flesh. This approach engenders frequent fires, but impermanence has a beauty of its own.
• Lower Bohemia contains the city's rabble. The minor artists and performers and hacks who struggle desperately with themselves and one another to find some way they can justify themselves to the authorities. It stretches as an abyssal pit in one edge of the city, crammed full of tiny garrets and byzantine alleys stuffed with salons and schools ravenous for patrons.
• The Undercity is not a district proper but runs among all the districts. It is the vast backstage of the Golden City, a hidden and silenced realm of slaves where the work of upkeeping the gleaming beauty of the facade goes on.

Locations

• The Oubliette is a foreboding brutalist structure which reflects no light. Inside, those who are too ugly to be seen in public slave in absolute darkness.
• The House of Reflection concerns itself not with the production of art but its study and criticism. Within its mirrored halls are found immense libraries of impenetrable criticism one is expected to have read, educational and corrective facilities to improve those who have not, and the domains of the city's most feared and dangerous critics.
• The Iridescence is an underground independent and alternative venue. It takes the form of a burrowing insect carapaced in jewels and precious metals, which emerges from the undercity to nest in next season's hottest location. When whatever its new trend is is in danger of hitting the mainstream, it sloughs off its carapace to leave a building shell and vanishes, to emerge elsewhere with a new angle and design.
• The Golden Coliseum showcases competitive physical arts, most notably martial arts, but also spectacles of dance or acrobatics, often lethal. Competitors in the arena are graded not on strength, but on style, a distinction that has doomed many a cocksure guest.
• The Ivory Tower is the highest-security prison and treasury (in the Golden City, where people are objects, these concepts are not firmly distinguished) of the Lord of the City. Thoughts, feelings and things not for the masses are interred here.

The Wasteland

A Hell adjacent to the Golden City. A blasted desert of bone dust pockmarked with the wreckage of civilisations. Domain of roving marauder bands who sometimes ride out on their mad vehicles to attempt to pillage the City. The greatest of the marauders is known as 'the Calamity'.

Mechanics

Hell isn't quite like IRL.

• Coincidentality varies and usually depends on following the rules of the hell in question. For example, in the Golden City, creating ugly things is vulgar.
• Pattern spheres work on materialised spirits according to their nature, but Spirit is more permanent.

Virgil is a narcotic made from the sense organs of damned souls. Taking a dose gives you heightened senses for 1 hour (+2 dice on sense rolls) at the cost of also heightening your pain response (+1 wound penalty). Long-term abuse by mortals alters the user's aesthetic perceptions to be in line with the Golden City - they see the beauty in suffering and tragedy and the shallowness of mere animal happiness. The drug is extremely addictive, provoking a depression and a craving for sensation if denied after a dependency has formed. Versions of the drug exist that can be imbibed through any sense organ.

Chargen

• XP-based chargen, 100 bonus xp
• Use whatever book or edition works best for what you're trying to do, I'll nerf it if it's too busted in the context of the character.
• Demonic Investments (book of madness) can be bought like Enhancements if you have some reason to have them. They cost the same as other backgrounds but require one point of flaws per investment point. Flaws should be flaws in the context of a Hell game rather than things like 'you seem a bit demonic'. The normal limit is 5 dots. You can probably borrow in stuff from Enhancements as well.

• The most broadly relevant Investments are Attributes, Armour and Countermagic all at 1 point per dot.

• Don't be too fragile

Hikers

Who are you, how did you get here, and why do you want to leave?

Ooyama Shinki (大山 神鬼)

• Renegade Akashaic who is partner of a powerful devil, the blue oni Kikansetsu-maru (鬼神説丸). They do not share a relationship as master or slave, but as kyodaibun (blood brothers, despite them both being girls) and have sworn to take on the world's greatest challenges together. In fact, they are complimentary halves of the same soul: Shinki and Kikansetsu-maru being the red and blue oni of a pair respectively. By temporarily merging their souls through voluntary possession, they can become a third form- the deadly kuroki (黒鬼).
• Banished to Jigoku (Hell) for 108 years or until the end of the kalpa after being defeated by a team of daring Akashaic disciples who sought to curtail her heretical explorations of the profane Shih demon hunter society's chi cultivation techniques and her partnership with a demon.
• Wishes to leave Hell because she is not an infernalist and she wishes to test her mettle against the wills of city men (the Technocracy) once more. The fact everyone here is kind of a dick and she missed out on Free! Eternal Summer has nothing to do with her present desires.
• Shinki means "creativity".
  • The kanji for her name are "great" "mountain" and "god" "oni".
• Kikansetsu-maru's name roughly translates to "circle of intrigue".
  • The kanji for Kikansetsu-maru's name are "oni" "god" "theory" "circle".

Melihellenia (Melody) Trenvile

• Demonic Singer, rebel artist and performer in the Golden City's hippest night spots. As the daughter of Bird of Paradise, Royal Singer to Cal, and a mortal prince, Melody (her stage name) is constantly a locus of the most in rebellion and scandal, and is currently the leading voice in the "Angel Punk" movement, which appropriates Angelic and moral iconography and aesthetics. Her power comes from her voice, which is known to be either angelic or demonic as she wishes. She denies all rumours that she stole it from an angel she seduced (while spreading them on Hello).
• Long Term friend to many in the city, throws a lot of good parties.
• Angel Punk is starting to become mainstream, and Melody's cool hunting has lead her to the conclusion that she'll soon need to move onto a new rebellion. For this reason she's decided to run away to the mortal world, and possibly betray the city in the process. Hopefully this will make quite a splash.

Gloria Stark

• Daughter of Cal and an Hermetic Infernalist
• Mom got gigulled and Gloria sent to Hermetic Hogwarts to learn her trade
• At 16 she got kidnapped and dragged to the city to take her place as one of his princess.
• A year later she still trying to escape, each attempt succeeding at every step of the way, only to have the effort foiled at the last second as part of Cal's living art exhibition of "Absolute Despair in Light of False Hope"

Startia Firenza

• Second generation "immigrant" to the Golden City.
• Former coliseum fighter who was beaten down and is now Melody's backup dancer.