I recently began a project to adapt John Harper’s blades in the dark to an original setting, a city located at the crossroads of twelve interconnected fantasy worlds, each based on a sign in the western Zodiac. This location overlaps significantly with city of Doskvol in terms of vibes and tone, and fits easily atop the “infrastructure,” but has some significant differences in terms of gimmick and material history.
The city is situated specifically in a world that draws from motifs and associations resonant with the zodiac sign Scorpio, which leans very deliberately into gothic horror and noir tropes. This world has been plunged into existential turmoil when a group of thinkers, attempting to free themselves from reliance on Nature, Literally Killed the Sun, bringing eternal night and a plague of restless dead, as in Doskvol. The city itself is called, plainly, “Lighthouse City,” and it is exactly what it sound like: almost every structure is mounted with some sort of light, which serve the same function as the lightning barriers in blades, protecting the city from supernatural incursion.
I will begin my approach with the factions that Harper supplied on page 283 of the core book. A good portion of then can be left well enough alone, and some require mere cosmetic or thematic alterations.
- The Bluecoats, Crows, and Gray Coats have each been renamed as the Night Watch, The Gulls, and the Nights End, to fit the flavor of the city more.
- The Cabbies and the Brigade are given technology more in keeping with a city heavily reliant on boat traffic - in addition to goatdrawn carriage, the former has motorized water taxis, and the latter of course possessed a fleet of fireboats. The Cabbies also double as hearse-drivers.
- The Billhooks have been reflavored as “Cannery boys: A tough gang of ex-waterfront workers who gutting knives, fishing hooks, and harpoons,” to reflect the city’s history as a fishing capital.
- The Deathlands Scavengers are renamed the Sandbar Scavengers, and are reflavored as a naval salvage operation. The Deathlands as a concept are less of a thing in this setting, and most magical artifacts are the result of tidal forces depositing alien flotsam from other worlds.
- The Lampblacks are renamed the Wickies (representing disenfranchised lighthouse workers who turned to crime), and have been raised in tier and hold to reflect their vast numbers.
Other factions require more thought and development. Vampires are a much bigger presence in Lighthouse City than they are in Doskvol - in fact, they constitute a defined political class. The constitution of Lighthouse City has enshrined the freedom of every individual to pursue the privilege of becoming an immortal union of flesh and spirit, yet citizens are subject to “moral screening” to make sure they can handle this immense and terrible responsibility.
- I have made the Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh one of the entities responsible or this process. The church is moved from the “fringes” to the “institutions” list, to reflect its central role in the legal and cultural apparatus of the city, but I have given it a Weak hold, reflecting the fact that it is under threat of losing status as the main arbitrator of Vampiredom.
- The City Council has been split into two governing bodies, the harried and ineffectually bureaucratic House of Day (iii); and the elite, largely undead House of Night (iv), which find themselves in perennial legislative gridlock, and have been lowered in tier to reflect this.
Counter to the Vampires are the Penumbrists; they are an ideological-scientific-religious movement descended from the “cultured” monster hunter archetype. They see the Cataclysm as having resulted in a fractured collective psyche, and that both society & individual “monsters” can be healed through proper application of a scientific dialectic. They are especially popular among werewolves, which are also a Thing in this setting :). Penumbrism is represented among several factions:
- The Path of the Moon (Formerly the Path of Echoes): A new spiritualist movement, popular among the city’s elite.
- Luna Institute for Psychopempsis (Formerly the Reconciled): A walled-off section of severely haunted city blocks, now repurposed into a sanatorium and research center for the treatment of “psychically unwell” Ghosts.
Mentions of specific geographic and ethnic terms have been replaced by their equivalents, which I will go into detail with in another post. Lighthouse City is not currently part of a traditional empire, and as such certain assumptions about its administrative structure are altered.
- The Imperial Military is divided into 2 seperate bodies - a private military company of about 100, and a standing professional army of 150 troops.
- The Ministry of Preservation is renamed the Customs Authority, which theoretically regulates and subsidizes intercity trade
- The Inspectors are now the Undertakers - a body of private investigators that emerged from literal morticians. Due to their scientific and supernatural expertise, they have de jure jurisdiction over the investigation of murders that supercedes the Night Watch. They are extremely secretive and opaque.
- The Foundation is reworked as the Keeper’s Union, a powerful trade union consisting of Lighthouse Keepers. They’re knowledge of the city’s many lighthouses are unparalleled even by the technocratic sparkwrignts, with which they are in an uneasy stalemate