Riccamino and the Occult-Futurists

The peninsula of Riccamino is a troublesome subject to scholars of history. When the lost continent fell to the plague, records kept by the Kingdoms of Law had it as a mostly pastoral place, communities of shepherds and fishermen dotting the hills and shore below mostly uninhabited mountains, a few coastal cities that barely qualified as more than large towns. Its rediscovery by Lawful peoples was therefore a shock: a small whaling fleet, looking for shelter from an unexpected storm, sighted the smoking edifice that now extends across the peninsula, as well as the legions of vessels drifting in the water around it.

The structure is mostly a vast soot-spewing factory, in which all manner of strange goods are assembled, including further infrastructure for manufacturing. The architecture of the factory itself looks archaic, but the materials it refines and finished products that result seem unstuck in time. Coifs of chain mail in a style that fell out of favor in decades past are used to reinforce armor of ceramic, steel, and plastic. Citizens labor by guttering torchlight to assemble the circuitry that carries power through the dirigibles of the Riccaminoan navy. Many parts of the factory are nearly inaccessible to human life, and the secret of how they are maintained and serviced is kept from outsiders.

Atop the factory structure, like a malleable crust, sit the terraces and walkways of the ancient coastal cities. Where gondolas once traversed canals, now balloons drift placidly through open sky-channels between towers. As the factory below expands, the cities are simply pushed upwards, the bridges modified to uncouple and rejoin as needed like a children’s toy on much greater scale. The result is multiple layers of habitation which can only access each other by either balloon or by towers full of spiraling stairs. Owning a home at the height of the city might be a conspicuous show of wealth, but owning a tower that extends through multiple is a sign of much more concrete power.

Control of Riccamino is contested by multiple groups within it, but the foremost faction is the Occult-Futurists. These militant sorcerers treat their victory as so inevitable as to already have happened, and their unmatched ability to occupy, expand, and exploit the factory infrastructure means that their opposition fears that they are right. Many still fight their influence: for example, roving gangs of genteel Aerialist-Egalitarians still emerge from their family’s mobile tower-dirigibles to challenge the Futurists and each other to deadly duels, while dubiously affiliated piratical elements conduct guerilla warfare from the lower inhabited edifices towards ends both revolutionary and conservative.

The Occult-Futurists dominate the navy of Riccamino, and their project of conquest helps maintain their power and popularity. One day, they say, Riccamino will extend to other lands, where you too might live. Forward the conquests and you will have the opportunity to escape the smog and smoke, while still being a part of an unbroken chain back to the beating heart of Riccamino by way of the bounty it produces from its burning depths. The furnaces provide, should provide, must provide morally speaking, and the only place beyond the reach of their providence and thus taboo to conquest is that which lies below the ocean.

The Kingdoms of Law maintain an uneasy peace with Riccamino. They are mistrustful of the Occult-Futurists, but have no strong alternative to them in mind.

Lastly it is worth mentioning the most wretched beings of Riccamino, the Devils. They seem not so much people as byproduct, and they emerge from the depths of the factories, oddly shaped beings incorporating animal, human, and inanimate material into their caricaturesque appearance. Humanity does not know by what process they form, though many speculate wildly, and they do not feel the need to share, if they know at all. They simply seek something better than abandonment in factory depths. Some form villages deep in the furnaces or along the sides of the factory, some climb to human society (though they cannot hope for much more than to be pressed into labor or treated as an odd pet within Riccamino itself), and many construct what makeshift vessels they can to set off across the sea. A great many of these refugees have landed in the wilds outside of Catage.



When I imagine the Devils I usually think of creatures from Bruegel’s Fall of the Rebel Angels (as in the example above), or Bosch’s Garden of Earthy Delights (as in the example below).