Otherspatial gambling, sports and leisure!
Otherspaces are pretty strange things to have as real estate, although not entirely uncontrollable…and definitely not unprofitable. Just ask Three-J (real name; Jack Jacob Jaredson), owner and psuedo-properitor of Lost Vegas, the Otherspatial entertainment capital of the Occult Underground.
For some bizarre reason known only to Three-J, this otherspace the size of a state can be shaped and re-shaped with only a thought by those with the right talents.
Three-J, of course, has those talents and, with them, has fashioned one giant otherspatial city stuck in eternal nighttime, filled to the brim with bright lights and decadence. With Three-J as its ‘governor’, Lost Vegas has its own make-stift government, courts, police, a somewhat permanent populance and, of course, a thriving entertainment and gambling industry, all of it run and staffed by the clued-in. Hotels, casinos, large gaming clubs and all kinds of sports are open to dukes and lords on vacation or looking for a spot of work.
To get to Lost Vegas is not as easy to get to as its inspiration, though. The various entrances around the world are hidden in the deepest cervices of the largest sewer systems and they are heavily guarded. If you’ve made buddy-buddy with a higher-up in the underground, you could use the social leverage to score an access pass. Anyone known to be with TNI or The Sleepers will have a much harder time, as Three-J has had some bad experiences in the past with them. The access pass you get varies with how and why you got it (some are magickal papers you always have on hand when you’re asked for them, or magickal tattoos that appear on your forehead when asked for them, etc.), although they always have the same basic symbols of the Lost Vegas Goverment on it. You generally can’t lose your access pass unless it’s offically revoked. Limited access passes for holidaying are more common and easier to acquire.
The actual city itself is an extremely urban place, with little-to-no natural plant life growing anywhere. The outskirts of the city seem to be just extensions of the concrete and roads stretching out into an endless horizon. There are no stars or moon in the sky. Three-J simply creates what he needs or wants the city to have as he goes, with new, fully-equipped, hospitals, police stations, fire-houses and banks popping up as the citizenry demands. With the help of several experienced city planners, Three-J has built and re-built most of the place a few times over.
The city uses it own currency and has a fairly extensive exchange rate of nearly all known currencies, with Three-J creating the Lost Vegas coins and bills like the rest of the city’s stuff.
Things and events the PCs can make an adventure of include;
Fight Night
Away from the eyes of the public tiger, competetive adepts often take out their anger in one of Lost Vegas’ many fighting ring venues. Here, boxing, wrestling and other traditional gladiatorial combat rubs shoulders with magick. Usually, there are official limits on how much mojo can slung and how bad, but the fights still get pretty damn wild. Entropomancers and Gambler avatars are attracted to wagering on these fights, Merchants and Plutomancers play bookie and all kinds seek the champions titles are up for grabs.
Day at the Races
There’s no greyhounds or horses around a oval circuit here, instead Lost Vegas prefers something wilder.
With all kinds of magickal speed enhancement and the bizarre otherspatial ground twisting available, the races become hideous combinations of extreme triathalons around a track that has looked like an M.C. Eschler painting. The crowd loves it.
Clockwork Wars
Mechanomancy may yet see a comeback if the amazing contraptions of Lost Vegas Clockwork races and fights are anything to go by. A few major creations of the dying art have become career pit fighters in all kinds of Lost Vegas amusement.
Mo’ Money…
All this money being pushed around in bets, luzury suites and other extravangances attracts trouble like flies. The question is, will the PCs be the ones causing it or stopping it?
…This is absolutely beautiful and I’m putting it to use as soon as my players’ characters are at an acceptable strenth. :Dbb Rock on.
Very, very, very cool.
I think there’s a lot of potential here, but as a temporary or as-yet-not-discovered-how-dangerous-it-is place. Otherwise, given how many people are clued in, you could move almost the entire American OU into there.
I’d play it as:
A) Three-J only really got it up and running a few-to-five years ago and it IS turning into a sort of OU Homeland, but recently someone else has found it and discovered that they too have the power to change it… reality-shifting turf war erupts, which seems fairly “normal” as far as it can at first, until a third and much more unbalanced player arrives with the same abilities ~ This may possibly be a symbolic tie with Three-J (each are an aspect of an original person, the Three-J that founded Lost Vegas was the entrepeneurial side, etc.) or at least that’s what a state full of off-kilter mystics might believe.
B) There’s some subtle or hidden law/s of this pocket world that hasn’t been discovered yet. Maybe it was originally well-suited for gambling and just needed someone who would give it a modern form (Three-J), so that on the upside chance/chaos-based mystics have an easier time with mojo, but those who gamble too often or lose too much (even if they can pay) start to… change. Maybe the reason it was pliable because it was so completely damaged by some event before Three-J discovered it and the more changes he makes, the more buildings he creates, the more likely it is to all come crashing down, possibly causing a mystic genocide unlike any seen for a hundred years. Maybe not all the people are really people. Maybe some of them used to be, maybe some never were. Maybe a few people just happen over and over, with some gambling rooms being vaguely Many Worlds quantum-ish so that if Joe walks in and gambles, Joe That Won and Joe That Lost walk out (explaining the large population). Maybe Lost Vegas is resonant in general, most specifically to Three-J, but more subtly to the population, and strange things are popping up now that there are so many gambling crazy magick men around. Every time Three-J makes a new building, people go missing. His original constructions used pre-existing raw-people supplies from the last time the Otherspace was inhabited, but now that he keeps growing the city… and some of the people aren’t happy at being restaurants.
C) Three-J stumbled onto an Otherspace either On Decline or Not Yet Complete. It’s still on track, it’s just swerving a little to accomodate him. For the former, it’s going to start breaking down soon and strange, unpredictable effects are going to start rapidly reproducing. Or disappearing. For the latter, people and buildings and events are going to start becoming… integrated. While most otherspaces are made from either the reverberations of major mystikally/symbolically charged events or are random, twisted mementos of previous world incarnations, sometimes otherspaces occur in the same way archetypes do (if a non-incarnated concept, like a library, becomes popular) or happen at random when a lucky confluence of spare/scrap/discarded reality gets together (i.e. a small one might occur if a whole ton of folk were wished away by Forgotten by the Gods and a major charge). Depending on what this one was turning into, depending on the effects of Three-J’s manipulations, depending on how much chaos is part of its birth (all otherspaces seem to have some aspect that doesn’t make sense for their theme, if they have a theme at all). Maybe it was going to be the Flying Baby Clouds that Cry Blood Otherspace, but now the Babies will have poker chips for eyes and the ground will be made of desperate, archetypically losing gamblers lying side by side and making slot-machine sounds that catch just before payout.
D) Some combination of all the above.
Without a twist, it sort of makes sense for MAGE, but not for UA.
I like it. I like it a lot. May have to use it sometime.