Kennet Undercity

<infobox> <title source="name"><default>Kennet Undercity</default></title>

<image source="image"></image> <header>Basic Information</header> <image source="map"></image> <label>Type</label> <label>Location</label> <label>Inhabitants</label> <label>First Appearance</label> </infobox> The inverted version of Kennet filled with violent gangs, drug use, and casual sex; pretty common for an Undercity.

Geography/Description

Its residents aren't protected by innocence in the way people normally are.<ref>“What’s a practitioner?” Sloane asked.

Verona shrugged a bit. “A witch. And don’t punch people that call themselves practitioners. They might curse you or sic an Other on you.”

Mallory looked Verona up and down. “Yeah? Okay. Sure.”

That easy, huh?- Excerpt from Fall Out 14.3</ref>

Some of the people living there come in from other Knotted Places whilst some have filtered in from the outside world because they fit in, there are also innocents that get trapped there by accident.<ref>“Ohhh. Me? I guess. I’ve been places, you know? Surviving. I was too young to remember, then I was here. But there are definitely new people. Mostly they go with the flow. And then there’s people who… you know they’re from outside. They’re pulled here, maybe they filter through society at a downward angle instead of filtering straight. That doesn’t make sense. It’s dumb.”

“Nah. Not that dumb. So there’s people… kinda appeared. Haven’t really carved out a niche?”

“Okay, but then there’s ones like you… maybe you half-existed somewhere, filtered out, filtered back in?”

“Who the fuck knows?” Mal asked. “Time and place get fuzzy when you’re trying to get through the days.”

“Hm. And then, third group, there’s people who- I guess they might be the outsiders in reality, and they become non-outsiders here? We call them innocents, but that might be generous.”

“Sure. Like there’s guys who just sorta wandered in, saw people fighting in the street, or there was a shady bar and people doing mystery drugs in the alley and they were like, ‘I’m home!’. Or they didn’t care.”

“Or life kicked their asses enough they can’t tell the difference between this and reality.” - Excerpt from Fall Out 14.3</ref>

As Kennet loses people and businesses, the Undercity gains population.<ref>“Worse. The other option is what we’ve got right now… it keeps going. People leave, homes empty, businesses close. Which means that more people leave, more people lose faith in Kennet, more businesses close because the lower population can’t sustain them. The inverse side of Kennet gains what we lose…”- Excerpt from Fall Out 14.3</ref> Matthew speculated that either the two will balance out with each having half the population, or that the Undercity will consume all of Kennet's residents, destroying the town in the process.<ref>But I have experience living with dark reflections and dark influences. There are two ways this can go, I’m thinking.”

...

“Way one? We find our way to a fifty-fifty equilibrium. Balance between the two sides. Things balance out, new reality we gotta live with.”

“What’s the other option?” she asked.

“Worse. The other option is what we’ve got right now… it keeps going. People leave, homes empty, businesses close.- Excerpt from Fall Out 14.3</ref> He suggests that Charles is doing it deliberately to make it harder for his enemies to get to him.<ref>“The more I think about it, the more I think it might be what Lis, Edith, Maricica and Charles want.”

“How?”

“You were there for at least three hours rescuing one person, right?”

“About. Had to deal with the warlord in charge of the school.”

“Now imagine that for Charles’ enemies to get to him and Lis, they have to go through that. Past three, five, six, ten different warlords, people with rules, people with demands. And it still takes a day to get there, complicated by interruptions that could risk resetting that progress.”- Excerpt from Fall Out 14.3</ref>

The Undercity version of the cinema has been filled with arcade games, each game is colored to indicate the level of danger, either white, yellow, or red. Each game offers a chance to win tickets that can be turned in for prizes, with deadlier games giving more tickets.<ref>- Gone and Done It 17.4</ref> It was raided on the instruction of Lis and damaged relations between kennet above below and found.

Residents

• Vice Principal of the School
  • Freak and Squeak
  • Mallory
  • Sloane
  • Brennan
  • Narcissa
  • Coma Boy
• Bitter Street Witch of Downtown
  • Giblet
  • Donny
  • Wishbone
  • The Oldbodies of Pitch Row
• The Foreman of the Factory (deposed)
  • Stew Mullen
  • Bracken Fry & Bag Fry (escaped)
  • Doyle (escaped)
• The Resident (deposed)
• Family Man of the superbia suburbia
• Unaligned
  • Stuck-Arounds
  • Mouse in a Trenchcoat

• Anselm
• Appaloosa

Points of Interest

There is a mirror version of Louis Riel Public School run by a seven-year-old Vice-Principal.

In the Undercity, the Kennet Arena is broken and burnt out. It's possible to travel between the two versions of Kennet using city magic on the puddle of water in front of the arena.<ref>The ground of the parking lot was wet, but it was an inexplicable sort of wet because it hadn’t rained recently and there was no source for the water.

Verona walked slowly across the parking lot until the scene came into view. Past the reflection, she could see the Arena as the Sable had rebuilt it. Partially.

Broken on this side, shattered, burned, and stained with blood.

Past the reflection, it was intact enough to use for activities.

She used chalk, drawing across the water, to capture that reflection. Drawing a square. She added a touch of city magic, the signature-like scrawl of the cityscape of Kennet in abstract.

To get in, it was the same thing, but in reverse.- Excerpt from Fall Out 14.3</ref>

The downtown area has been claimed by the various Undercity gangs, who stake out their territory by plastering the walls with gang marks and killing any rivals who enter.<ref>The stark blue emblems of the Bitter Street Witch seemed to be drawn along the west-facing walls all in a vague line cutting across downtown. Each one had a bird nailed to the wall in the center, some disemboweled, some so decayed that the nail and a bit of feathers sticking out of dessicated flesh were all that remained.

Until they reached one corner, where an incomplete sign had been painted. A middle aged guy was sitting there by the unfinished diagram, throat slit, the dead bird who was going to be mounted on the wall shoved into the bloody gash.

A bright yellow scrawling was drawn over the faded blue mark. Drippings from the paint had fallen onto the body. - Excerpt from Fall Out 14.5</ref>

History

It was created after Charles became the Carmine Exile, the damage creating a dark mirror of the town the spirits, power and Pattern flowed into and filled up.<ref>Up until a location was disturbed. That which was flat and ordered becomes uneven, with droughts and floods of meaning and concept. Spiritual flows concentrate, interrupt, feed back on one another, and disrupt.

And that which was hidden becomes obvious, and the obvious is buried, and much of this is subtle, except for places where it is not. The same spaces that could form an animus if given enough depth are all there, as shallow impressions and greater ones, or even ones that aren’t actually meant to be, that are jarred into existence by the great shuffling and confusion, or pressed in by the flows of certain spirits into certain impressions, digging those impressions deep.

And as a town forms a dark half, the impressions are filled, the universe contrives, power flows and people form, with vague memories of histories that become sharper as they are defined and clarified, with roles as simple as ‘the third smartest child in class’ or ‘the boy who is good at sports’, until a rough balance has been reached.

A dark underside to the town forms.

Once that rough balance has formed, the flooding of spirit and other powers form an equilibrium, though it is imperfect, and spirit and other energies steadily flow out, from the town above to the town below. The town above steadily loses people, the town below gains some, but only to a degree. It is uneven, and when the town above dies, the town below will die too. - Excerpt from Wild Abandon 18.a</ref>

References

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