FrontsFronts remain fundamentally unaltered from AW (see AW pages 136-150).
Fundamental ScarcityThe City is a place of startling inequalities, and away from gleaming towers and fortresses of the Macrocorps, life is shaped by adversity and scarcity.
- Hunger (Food is always an issue for those too poor to escape the grinding poverty and oppression of the streets)
- Thirst (Whether it be a thirst for knowledge, freedom from persecution, freedom from want. Everyone in The City thirsts for something they don't have).
- Ignorance (...is bliss? Ignorance gets you a Hirplakker Commune gunship going mental on your block when that little strike you organised over fair pay interfered with the factory production cycle. Everyone in The City knows that knowledge is power, or more accurately, lack of knowledge gets you killed.)
- Fear (The Shift, that your neighbour has more than you, that your children will die of malnutrition and not care for you when older...)
- Decay (The City is literally falling apart, decay is rampant, physical, psychological, spiritual)
- Despair (There's only two ways to leave The City, by your hand or by another's)
- Envy (There’s always someone in The City who covets what you have)
- Ambition (Want your neighbour's windmill? fucking take it! No fucker's gonna stop you, as long as you have the biggest balls, guns or friends. Generally in that order.)
ThreatsThese are the 5 categories of threat.
- Demagogue
- Grotesque
- The City
- Affliction
- Brutes
DemagoguesA demagogue threat is the demagogue, his gang or organisation, and other people under his control. There are 6 types of demagogue.
- Capitalist (impulse: to own and sell)
- Communist (impulse: to consume and swarm)
- Prophet (impulse: to denounce and overthrow)
- Fascist (impulse: to control)
- Collector (impulse: to own)
- Predator (impulse: to hunt and dominate)
GrotesquesA grotesque is still fundamentally a person, a human being, yet their humanity has been crippled, either eaten away over time by the insidious nature of The City, or shattered in one horrific moment. The names of the grotesques are taken from (or perhaps it was vice versa) the 6 suits of a standard 80-card pack of playing cards that is so prevalent in The city.
- The Daemon (impulse: craves satiety and plenty)
- The Priest (impulse: craves restitution, recompense)
- The Assassin (impulse: craves pain, its own or others’)
- The Temptress (impulse: craves contact, intimate and/or anonymous)
- The Captain (impulse: craves mastery)
- The Warlord (impulse: craves overthrow, chaos, the destruction of The City)
The CityThe killing fields of the contested grounds, the grand Cathedral of sideband media, the rusting, brooding menace of the iron Bastion and the hulking caverns of Crossbar Terminus. These are just a few of the places within The City that make life so interesting for its inhabitants. The locations of The City can be broken down into 6 broad threats.
- Prison (impulse: to contain, to deny egress)
- Breeding pit (impulse: to generate badness)
- Furnace (impulse: to consume things)
- Mirage (impulse: to entice and betray people)
- Maze (impulse: to trap, to frustrate passage)
- Fortress (impulse: to deny access)
AfflictionsAn affliction threat isn’t a person, it’s something threatening that people are doing, or that is happening, or that has come to be.
- Disease (impulse: to saturate a population)
- Condition (impulse: to expose people to danger)
- Custom (impulse: to promote and justify violence)
- Delusion (impulse: to dominate people’s choices and actions)
- Sacrifice (impulse: to leave people bereft)
- Privation (impulse: to impoverish people)
BrutesA brutes threat is a group of people, with or without a leader. Acting in crude, perhaps provisional, concert.
- Chaser (impulse: to victimize anyone vulnerable)
- Devourer (impulse: to consume someone’s resources)
- Ganger (impulse: to victimize anyone who stands out)
- Cult (impulse: to victimize & incorporate people)
- Mob (impulse: to riot, burn, kill scapegoats)
- Family (impulse: to close ranks, protect their own)