Thursday 27 June 2019

whats in draculas sewers

  1. Big fat corpsey men with smiles on their faces slowly jellifying in baths of scummy water. Lilypads and croaking toads. Touch the men - they wake up and tell you their tales of woe. The baths melt sadness out of your body and put it in the toads.
  2. Floating market - covered boats chained together in wide channels of filth. Low brick roofs, guttering candle flames. Tosher merchants in wide hats to protect from ceiling drips selling junk, rotting fish, unrecognisable piles of filth. You may be robbed.
  3. Deep circular brick-walled shafts connected by underwater passages. Rusted suits of armour at the bottom. They grab you and beg you in sepulchral voices to restore their honour so they can be free. search them - get their maybe-magic swords.
  4. Waterwheel in fast-running river of ichor. Igors tinkering with machinery. Connects via leather belt with some vast engine elsewhere in the castle. Igors paranoid about you stopping the water.
  5. Beautiful young cultists in white robes drowning a bull in waist-deep water at the edge of the river of ichor as a sacrifice to cloacina, goddess of the sewers. The bull cries for help in a near-human voice.
  6. Giant albino marabou storks picking through the mud at the bottom of a drained cistern, looking for flopping dying fish. They will eat you. Marble columns rise into the shadowy heights above.
  7. Puppet theatre. Tentacles come up through floorboards, manipulate big finger puppets, stage satirical plays about world events. They will try to draft you into the plays. they use real weapons. unclear how the squid does the voices.
  8. Blind emaciated prisoners shackled in cells, ankle-deep in flowing sewage. new arrival pleading for release. You recognise them. Fat ogre guard with rat best friend, keys jangling at belt, is immune to the horrible stench.
  9. Ratville - like a miniature Bavarian town full of respectable petit bourgeois shopkeepers and insect farmers, all good citizens and devout Christians. Want the big folk to keep them safe, maintain social order.
  10. Smuggler’s den, abandoned, full of tarnished treasure - moldy statues, rotted paintings, mushy books, greening jewelry. Fungus growing everywhere. Patient mushroom men want more treasure to destroy.
  11. Natural crevasse lined with carnivorous plants, gleaming like jewels. sundews and flytraps, fat buzzing flies drawn by sickly-sweet stench. Must be crossed on precarious rope bridge. Skeleton w/ jewelled rings held in belly of one large plant.
  12. Flooded church. Water torrenting in through bell tower, draining through crypts. Hungry monkfish hidden in confession booth. Angry toshers tearing apart Bible, trying to work out why there’s no spells in it.
  13. Fatberg - giant blobby hive of congealed fat and grease, gestating pale little clone fetuses in wall-embedded pustules. Polite. Can see and speak to anything inside. Wants to you go to sleep in it so it can replace you with clones.
  14. Maze of fogged, water-blackened mirrors with mold growing in their cracks. Knee-deep water. Evil giggling midgets in little coracles follow you around pretending to be your reflection. Medusa whose breath tarnishes mirrors, gaze midgetifies you.
  15. Dirty water swirling down giant brick funnel. Wrecked wooden ship caught in net of thick rope stretched over funnel mouth - home to Posh Harry the tosher king, who covets everything you own but is cowardly and always willing to bargain.
  16. Waterfall tumbling off edge of cliff into infinite darkness that leads to earth’s core. Huge white bat-pterodactyls nest in stalactites hanging from roof, barely visible at edge of darkness, swoop in to catch fish and dolphins from falls.
  17. Submarine docks on shore of vast cavern lake. Igor crew fending off toshers who want to scrap the last intact sub - they are trying to get it working so they can escape the castle forever.
  18. Beach of pale sand on shore of vast cavern lake. Fishermen hauling in thrashing, whiskered catch that threatens to escape. they will chop it up, flense it and use its oil in lanterns that animate shadows - you can have one if you help them.
  19. Rickety Blackpool-style pier with carnival games extending into vast cavern lake. all the games are run by ghosts. You can win an evil teddy bear but if you lose the ghost gets your body and your spirit’s stuck here.
  20. Huge pipe organ on rocky island in vast cavern lake, being played by giant albino squid. She is married to Dracula. She loves puppets, music, drama, romance. she hates fake friends. She is lonely. The treasure of Atlantis is at the bottom of the lake, and she can fetch it.

2 comments:

  1. Cool idea! Nothing like jellifying in a sewer! I will point people here this week on my blog/podcast.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is very atmospheric and highly enjoyable !
    Nice work !
    I might even use it for my London 1814 sewers...

    ReplyDelete