The City of Drift

 (Some Discord bros gave me a hand with some of the scent markers. All images by John Atkinson Grimshaw.) 

Once stolen by Ghosts, (allegedly), and still on the run,Drift moves with the mist like a ship drifting at sea, coalescing and emerging,overlapping and interlacing with other places, its streets curving aroundtheirs, its buildings interspacing theirs. So Drift is always changing a littlewithin itself, as it translocates, seamlessly, from place to place. 

It is a town without clear boundaries, signified by mistsand gloom, smoke and smog, the ripe interweaving patterning of bells, the cloppingof its slow, thin horses, the whispers that skitter through its alleyways andthe layers and waves of subtle scent that mark its palaces and shops.

 

The Coming of Drift 

The town no longer has a place reserved for it in clearreality,  instead being confined to theocean and the mists, to the gloaming of dawn or the embers of the day, toovercast nights or fog-shrouded days. 

Drift comes upon normal places silently, infiltrating itsalleyways between buildings in the fog or smoke, at night or in the afternoon,in silent or ill-travelled streets. The exact moment of its arrival cannot beperceived, (in fact that exact moment does not even exist, lost in therecords of time the same way the location of Drift is lost on the maps). 

The first signs of Drift are the pungent scents of itsshops, narrow alleyways between buildings that previously had no gap, theoff-kilter clopping of its pale horses, the smell and distant sound of the sea,no matter how far from the sea you may be, the melodious overlapping of bellstelling one time or another, or signalling one direction or another, and thelow distant vibration, a sound unlike a horn, deep as a beast, but more regular,coming from the statue of Mutability which stands on an island in the citiesharbour. 

All the alleys into Drift lead downhill, no matter wherethey emerge or what the rest of the geography is doing. The alleys are narrowand shrouded in mist, perhaps with the gas lamps hanging from the rear of oneof its thin carriages retreating. 

Once an entry is there, it has always been there, withevery sign and evidence of its permanent existence in place; with the same dirtand texture of its current location, the same or similar materials, the sameroad surface and a sign, if that is usual, in the style of whatever place itis, pointing inwards, spelling ‘Drift’. The sign and walls and floor will bedirty or worn or clean and sharp, just like the place of its arrival. Graffitiwill lead in seamlessly from walls which were always there, turning on to wallswhich have only ‘always been there’ since a moment ago. Vague half-memories ofDrift emerge in the minds of anyone approaching an entry; it doesn’t much of astir. When its there, people soft of remember that it has always been there. Whenit is gone it is nearly forgotten. 

Magicians, adventurers, occultists, mediums,fortune-tellers,sea-captains, rope merchants, perfumiers, opera singers andhooded figures sometimes suspect when drift will arrive and where and quietlypack the local pubs and cafes, sitting creepily and ruining the ambience forthe locals, waiting for a moment that cannot be sensed, after which, the vaguememory of the existence of Drift will be revealed especially to Publicans, theHomeless and Cab Drivers past middle age. 

Asking them before this moment will only get you afunny look, but waiting for that senseless un-time and asking then; “Doyou know the turn into Drift? Its somewhere around here I think?” And theanswer will be a clear “Course I do mate, down the road on tha left innit.Dunno why you’d want to go there.” 

 

The History of Drift 

Founded By Ghosts 

Ghosts walk the streets of Drift City - antechamber tothe shadow world, (allegedly). The founders of Drift City were all dead by thetime they arrived, (they came on a Ghost Ship), that is why it took them solong but also why they could find it. 

In other stories the Ghosts stole Drift, either tokeep it or to keep it safe. Maybe it was a High Fantasy thing? Saving it fromthe Dark Lord? Or a Steampunk thing? Some experiment which killed theexperimenters but left them as ghosts in an empty city? 

Whatever. At some point early in the history of Drift, itwas an empty city, but for Ghosts. At that same point it was also a placelesscity, drifting, as it still does. 

Maybe whatever created the ghosts made the city Drift,maybe not, but the Ghosts were the first residents, the Founders, and they arestill here and are still the Founders. The Municipal Government of Drift hasnever changed, though it has faded in and out of intelligibility over time.Bylaws and judgements are communicated (though not decided) by Mediums. Theghosts are conservative but reliable, difficult to influence via bribery orpork. Because Drift was founded by ghosts its government buildings are cemeteriesand visa versa. 

Of course there are new ghosts, now and then. If theyhave a knack for it they stay in place and work their way up the ranks. Changeis slow. But Drift is a relatively safe place for ghosts. 

 

Populated by Exiles and Slaves 

Shipwreck victims, outlaws, explorers, outsiders. Exiles.Escaped slaves, forgotten Kings. Like many harbour towns, Drift is a mosaic ofeternal expatriates. Unlike most there is no ‘back country’, and no mainethnicity, apart from the Ghosts. 

It is rare for anyone to settle in Drift City who is notan eccentric, outcast, or hunted, or anyone who is not comfortable with ghosts,gloom and strange sounds. 

Since all the major governmental roles are occupied bythe dead the living elite of Drift are made up of traders, skilled craftsmen,artists, mediums, magicians, Sea Captains, ship owners and the lords ofinsurance. The lack of (tangible) nobility makes it a relatively flattish, butquite high-toned upper crust. Birth gives a little rank but reputation more. 

 

Turning Into Drift A Maritime Town 

Drift is usually a shore city and usually has a harbourof sorts. Sometimes it even has a harbour when it appears far inland. Almostall of its economic activity comes via ship and the sailors of Drift City canalways find their way home; they will get there through the mist. 

Usually, one turns into Drift through the alleyways atits periphery and heads downhill towards the moaning of Mutability. On the rareevents one can see a view through fog, smoke or gloom, (that is not a carefulTrompe l’oeil), one sees the tangled towers and alleyways and mixed-up ziplinesof Drift cascading down in a bricolage of driftwood architecture, down to theharbour, the Opera House and the statue of Mutability, the goddess bearing anintermittent torch of fire as pale and translucent as the mist itself, mostvisible to those near death, with the city spread out around it like ashattered crater of houses with about two fifths cut out of it to let in theblack sea. 

 

A City Of Alleyways 

The alleyways are crooked, long and thin. There are notreally any streets in drift, or anything you could easily call the Main Way,just alleys leading off alleys. The widest roads are about the width of thosein a Medieval European town; ghostwives can chatter between windows in theoverhanging eaves, people can easily leap across, bridges, improvised orcarefully designed, are thrown between buildings over streets. 

It’s hard to tell the difference between a gap leading toan alley or just a deep porch. Turns are hidden in nooks. Alleys are gated offbut the gates are left unlocked. The boundary between public and private isnebulous. Its common to feel that you are trespassing. 

When its busy on a lane, people just turn off, looparound. There is always a possible detour in Drift, people percolate throughthe city like chemicals in blood. 

 

Buildings Long, Tall And Deep 

Long thin buildings lead off long thin alleyways.. Buildingstall and slender, tenements housing the descendants of pirates, shipwrecks,those lost at sea, traitors, slaves. Drift has famous glassworks,  many buildings are tall, slender and glassfronted with iron frames. The curtains are always closed of course, but you cansee lights moving behind them at night. 

Others have narrow frontage but go deep to the rear, endingin gardens. Others are long laterally, old manufactories, or built like them, asme buildings occupy differentpositions on the same street, or on another street, either crossing the road ona bridge before dropping down, forming part of the same building but on theopposite side of the road, or even overleaping or burrowing under a whole rowof building by bridge or tunnel before occupying an entirely different street.Sometimes the doors and exits are quite different to the buildings position; enterthrough a narrow door, turn a corner, climb steps to an attic space, cross overthe entire block of buildings through a shared attic, take steps down and findthe bulk of the building facing a different road.

This aids intrigues in Drift - many secret or forgottendoors, dumb waiters, shared rooms, attics or cellars, and many houses oroffices directly adjacent to others across a thin wall while the actual entrancesand addresses are in quite different parts of town 

 

Trompe l’oeil 

Trompe-d'oil is prized in Drift, though many of thepaintings are decayed. Most high-status buildings or frontages will be paintedtrompe l’oeil, so that the a description of that painting forms the part of abuildings (or a doorways at least) address. ‘The House of Many Leopards’, the‘fourth door in the Garden of Setebos’, ‘down there on Flamingo Row’. 

While the rich can have their buildings painted andregularly upkept, the middling classes must subsist on pasted Trompe. Many ofthe famous painters have tall, thin buildings with tall, thin doors. When theirhuge paintings are complete they are rolled out through the multistorey doorsand shifted into place to block street entrances,  to occupy blank walls at the end of longavenues, or have holes cut in them for windows and doors before being pasted upas the front of residences. 

Over time all the paintings blotch and stain, and thoseposted up can peel away, or part away, leaving ghost signs or layeredpalimpsests of variegated images from different eras. Though of course at onepoint this very decayed palimpsest style, painted as such, was itself adeliberate artifice and quite in vogue for a time. 

 

Texture 

In Drift, everything is textured and patinaed. Nothingshines like new and nothing is entirely clean. It would be nearly pointlessanyway, what with the fog, smoke, rain, gloom, the salt from the sea and thelichen and hot breath of its closely packed, though quite quiet, population.The ghosts wouldn’t like it either. 

Ald and worn things are treasured, new made things arenot. Wood smoothed by many hands, or by the sea, cups with long-use stains atthe bottom, even the slight abrasive chipping of glass or crystal. Smokestains, soot stains, sun paling, grooves and bends to things. This is thetexture of Drift. It is a somewhat comfortable City, the chairs tend to bewell-used and easy to sit in. It’s a place where one can slouch easily againsta wall. 

 

Smells and Bells 

Because Drift is so gloomy, foggy, smoky, private, narrowand labyrinthine, the city has developed a parallel sensory language tocommunicate place and location. 

Businesses communicate themselves via scent. Places of businessthat don't have their own smell will license one from the council. any placethat cooks is allowed to fan its scent about and all do,

though there are bylaws and arguments between placesabout the use of too much smell or spice. Other shops are allowed tocommunicate their presence through a registered system of scent markers. 

Coffee beans are popular in Drift, though not fordrinking. Instead people carry small bags of them in deep narrow pockets.(Drift pockets can be so narrow and so deep that a special form of tongs forreaching into them is in common use). If they need their scent palate cleaning,they pull out the bag of beans and take a deep sniff. In the lee of this strongscent, which fades quickly, their sinuses regain some sensitivity anddiscretion which may have been lost throughout the day. 

 

Occupations by Scent 

Chandlers smell of beeswax. Blacksmiths of coal smoke andhot metal. Armourers of lapping powder. Jewellers of Ambergris and Furriers ofMyrrh. Gambling houses smell of vinegar, Undertakers of Freesia. Tanners ofurine, Fullers of urine and lanoline, Brewers of Hops but Pubs of Beer. Cobblerssmell of leather and beeswax, Butchers of blood. Bookshops smell of their paperand each shop only sells books printed on paper from the same forest so eachshop has a smell quite distinctive to keen readers but a seemingly randomselection of books. Clerks smell like wig dust and aniseed, Lawyers of wormwoodand brothels of Mint, the slighter and sweeter the mint smell the moreexpensive the brothel. Heralds have purple coats , and they are associated withthe slight fish sauce smell from the marine snails used for that dye whileWhisperers smell of Roses. Mediums smell of incense (the only professionallowed to burn it) and Fortune Tellers of fruitful hemp. Knackers smell ofdeath. 

 

Locations by Bell 

Drift has a latticework of bells. Every quarter has alarge Belltower which peals in an agreed sequence with each other quarter, witha slightly different tone and a different pattern to each. So Bells in Drifttell not so much time, (though an experienced habitant can tell time from thebells, due to micro differences in rhythm and pattern), but place. 

The large low-frequency bells are raised up about eachquarter and below them in each Rue and Tangle, major notable buildings likeTaverns, Temples or Cemeteries, have their own bells, set to higher pitcheswhich get lost and trapped in the weave of alleyways and so don’t disrupt otherquarters much, and rung in their own evolved patterns of rhythm. 

Some residences, usually at least one on each street,hang wind chimes outside their door; silver for the wealthy, wooden for thepoor. 

So the city is covered and woven with a pattern of smellsand bells such that those who know the place can easily find their way about,finding general locations by the Great Bells, smaller areas by lesser bells,and single businesses and houses by bell and by scent. 

This rolling wave of soft continual sound, underlaid bythe sound of the sea and the moaning of the lamp of Mutability, can be somewhathypnotic and disturbing for new visitors, but after a time one becomesaccustomed to it, and ultimately, becomes an initiate, with the sensory net ofthe city making its structure and places as clear as day, regardless of thecloseness and gloom. 

 

Whisperers 

Public conversation in Drift is muffled or whispered.Crowds are never loud, (except possibly if there is a riot at the opera), butthis seems to suit the mood and conventions of the city. 

Whispers do infiltrate through the alleyways likeinvisible snakes though, wyrms of muttered sound that fleet past, or curl andspiral, hunting questing, before disappearing into a turnaway or over a roof. 

These are not just whispers but Whispers; the substanceof much communication in Drift and the main power of its Law. 

Professional Whisperers ply their trade in Drift City,seek the smell of Roses, then give them a lock of hair, or enough personaldetails, (always in riddle form and without mentioning names), and they can seta whisper to chase after someone, susurussing past others like a snake andresounding only in the ears of that one particular person. 

In most cases this is used only for urgent messages forthose difficult to find, like a kind of aggressive Telegram service. Harassingor irrelevant Whispers are punished, (though small numbers of CriminalWhisperers exist). 

Whispers are also the primary method of policing in Driftand all the strongest ‘Blue’ Whisperers are licensed and well-paid members ofthe Constabulary who whisper under licence. 

If a whisper warrant is given for a suspect, name knownor not, only enough details, or some fragments of hair or blood are needed, theBlue Whisperers send packs and flocks of dense whispers after that person,finding them wherever they are, slowly driving them mad with the continualimprecations of guilt and crime until they give themselves up or deafenthemselves. 

Sadly the deaf are mistrusted in Drift for exactly thisreason and often drawn into the world of Crime. 

 

Thin Aesthetic 

Long thin things are favoured in Drift. Shoes are usuallypointed or square-toed, hats tall and, as we said, pockets very thin and verydeep. One carries pocket tongs to reach things in there and these have theirown inner pockets. Pocket tongs are not carried openly as this is a sign ofcriminality and there are polite genuflections to make if one must employ themin the street. Round people wear tall thin things and are called fools fordoing so; ‘roundlings’ and ‘spheres’. 

Thin foods are preferred; slices are slender, baguetteslong. Round foods are disapproved of; the soup bowls are square andsharp-cornered, or shaped like boats as are the spoons, which are like concaveoars. Thin tall glasses and mugs are used. High-status banquets are cascades ofspikes and verticality as the cities cooks, both living and dead, compete toout-do one another in how spired and slender a meal can be made. 

The poor subsist on noodles, long fries, eels in batterand long onions, all of which are actually pretty good. 

Cabs and carriages can by hired but they are all veryslender, the axles about three feet across, so a carriage sits one, or twofacing each other, or a sumptuous carriage can have two half-decks with twomore seated above and behind those on the lower deck. These are quite unstableand special gyroscopes are made to keep them somewhat steady. 

The thin carriages are pulled by horses specially bred tobe similarly thin; the "Driftwood Stretch" breed, a grey to white,somewhat inbred, slow but steady, good at finding their way and so thin theyare uncomfortable for most to sit on. Yellow eyed, they are used almostentirely by the coachmen of Drift. They can walk as easily backwards asforwards, as easily uphill backwards as forwards, and can strafe or sidestepslowly. 

 

Strange Transports 

The city has numerous curious boutique travel formsdesigned to deal with its slopes and its dense and winding layout.Single-person micro cable-cars exist to take commuters upslope at high speed.Zipwires can get you downhill fast. Tower-contained hot-air balloon baskets cansave you steps if you need to gain height. Micro-zeppelins are employed byYouths and the Police who pursue them. Registered roof-walks are marked byyellow rope but being seen on the roofs beyond the rope or after dark is anoffence punishable by Whispering. 

 

A City Of Hucksters And Seers 

Seers, mediums, clairvoyants, hucksters, magicians andthe like are legally protected and live TAX FREE in Drift, on a 'one drop'basis of possible accuracy or validity. A seer or prophet is judged so if thereis even one drop of possibility that they might be right, or have accuratepredictions or communications.  In orderto deprive a Huckster of this protected status one must prove not only thatthey are wrong, but they are reliably and knowingly wrong, a near-impossiblefeat in court. 

Despite this legal protection and tax-free status, Driftis not completely overflowing with hucksters as there is quite a lot ofcompetition for accurate soothsaying, too many futures for any single one to beworth worrying over. 

Yet the poor, the homeless, the criminal, drunk, derangedor absurd are all, in their own telling, ‘Mediums’, or diviners or soothsayersor something of the like, as groups or ‘organisations’ of such are always validand cannot be easily harassed, no matter how very obviously drunk, criminal orhomeless they are. 

 

Drift City Opera 

The major social event, and major social location, of thecity, the opera itself; a massively vertical slender pie-slice with far toomany fragile upper stories and its foundations excavated below floor level soseats beneath the performers can look up at them, with mirrors above the stageso those below can see what is happening at the rear of the stage. Excavationsso deep that the floor of the opera house has fallen away and the basement is apool of black water people sit there in little coracles to watch and hear theperformance.