From MercutioV@aol.com Sat May 6 15:01:21 2000 Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 09:36:00 EDT From: MercutioV@aol.com To: mike@thekeep.org, harnums@thekeep.org Subject: Trainyard-WR Fiction Behold! Campaign fiction from my twisted little mind! A little possible addition to Mikes Geography section. Rough form only, mny spelling/grammer errors, probably. Enjoy. -M- THE TRAIN STATION Near the center of the True City, just off the Royal Way that leads to the harbor pool and Citadel Avalon, is the Train Station. Trains arrive and depart from Avalon daily here, and you can probably catch one bound for wherever you're going out in Shadow...... for a price, of course. The Train Station fits seamlessly into the surrounding neighborhood, a tribute to Prince Ludwig's fine design skills: a square shaped terminal, decorated tastefully with columns and sweeping stairways, faces out into the Royal Way; standing in front of it, you can look directly down a street at the Grand Square of White Repose. Statues and carvings dominate the entryway, a Grande Arch, and a small forest of beautifully maintained shrubbery surrounds the Station. If you listen carefully from the outside, you can sometimes hear a train whistle blowing. This is, of course, all an illusion; the Station is positioned like it is, not for aesthetics, but so as to totally obscure the Trainyard, boarding platforms, and actual Trains from public view. Locomotives may be romantic and all, but are in fact horribly noisy and not a little bit smoky and noisy. The trainlines are kept hidden by high buildings expressely designed for that purpose while they run through the city; out in the countryside, they run in between two tall lines of standing pines. After climbing the stairway and entering the Station through the archway, one finds oneself in a very large, high-ceilinged room of stone. Two sweeping staircases to your right and left ascend to the seond story; ten smaller archways with stairs leading up to the boarding platforms line the far wall. Six of these are open to the public at all times, while the other four are roped off most of the time and have a steward watching them, usually. Ticket windows line the left and right walls, and an information kiosk (quite obviously a new addition; it's not as worn as the rest of the room and a little off-style) stands in the center. Here you may change whatever currency you might be carrying into Coin of the Realm and pick up a brief informational packet about the Station, as well as an EXTREMELY truncated daily schedule of SOME (read, NOT all) of the major train routes for the nearer, more prominent and popular Shadows. BE ADVISED: this schedule is NOT gauranteed, by any means. It's a copy of a copy of something that was never very accurate to begin with, and is currently an experimental project of the Master of the Yard in an attempt to bring some sort of order to the system. It changes on a daily basis and is NEVER complete. If you have someplace important to be or cargo to haul on schedule, make other arrangements. Said arrangements can be made by ascending either set of stairs to the second floor, where the stewards keep their offices. They'll hook you up with something, though it'll likely cost you. If you need really _special_ arrangements, go all the way to the end of the hallway, and knock on the oak door. This is where Prince Horatio d'Ambar, self-appointed Master of the Yard, keeps his office. It's a large expanse of open space, richly carpeted, set before his massive wooden Louis Quatorze desk. The walls are tastefully decorated with various pictures of the Train Station and trains; a shot of a massive, mouldering locomotive decorated in the colours of the realm stands out. Behind the desk, a floor-to-ceiling plate glass window looks out onto the boarding platforms directly below and the Trainyard itself. Though obviously well-used, Horatio often spends long periods of time away from this office; just leave a detailed note on the desk. He'll get back to you. THE TRAINYARD >From Horatio's office, one is afforded a magnificient view of the Trainyard. It's a massive jumble of switchings, sidings, old locomotives, new locomotives, passenger cars, boxcars, dining cars, cars for everything, all being hustled about constantly by the switchmen and stevedores. The buildings that back onto the Yard, with the exception of the station itself, are all warehouses and receiving areas; cargo going to or coming from Avalon is here loaded onto or off of trains. In truth, the vast bulk of the Trainyard's activity focuses on this endeavor; passenger transport is an interesting and highly public sidebar, but all of Avalon's trade that isn't consigned to the sea comes through here. Dead center in the Trainyard, almost totally obscured in it's own outpourings of steam and soot, is the Foundry. This is where the amazing shadow spanning locomotives designed (presumably) by Ludwig are produced, as well as the less impressive but equally important shadow gauge track, and other sundry items. Few people understand exactly how this is accomplished; the central firebox (referred to as the 'Heart' on the blueprints) of every locomotive is always assembled in exactly the same way, according to an arcane set of designs, and the rest of the locomotive subsequently built around it. Even Horatio, who knows more about the Trains than anyone else, does not fully comprehend the processes involved. It has been theorized that Ludwig may already have been more than half mad when he conceived of them. THE PLATFORMS All the passenger-related activities in the Train station are centered around it's ten platforms. The first six of them are simply ordinary train platforms; people stand on them while waiting for trains to arrive, walk across them to the station when they disembark, etc etc. There's very little noteworthy about them; it's the OTHER four platfomrs, accessible only through the roped-off archways inside the Terminal, that elicit the most curiosity. The first of these is where the Royal Train is kept berthed, always up to steam and ready to depart, twenty-four hours a day. A large, black iron locomotive tows an vast array of cars; every member of the Royal Family, EVERY member, has a car here, decorated in their personal colors and furnished accordingly. Even disinherited or otherwise out of favor members are represented in the Royal Train; Angus and Ludwig both have cars, as does the Ashen Prince, though the nameplate on his has been defaced. All former Queens of Avalon have cars as well, even Gwynaev. Nimue's car, foremost in the line save for the engine, is particularly beautiful, while Darako's car (rather inconveneintly located in the middle-end, which forces people to walk through it to get to Dante's) is quite hideous. The Royal Train is used primarily on official state visits or when the Family elects to go somewhere as a group, which isn't often. The next platform connects to the private spur line running out of Avalon to it's first and only Branch Station, located at the south Cardinal Gate of Princess Juri's School for Girls. A functional neccessity given the School's location in Juri's own private shadow, this platform and the single private train that runs from it are dedicated exclusively to servicing the faculty, student, and staff of said school. A recent addition to the Train Station, and a joint venture between Juri and her nephew Horatio, this platform generally sees very little use except on week-ends, when the students have liberty in the True City, and at the beginning and end of each term, when its filled with gaggles of girls either departing or returning to the school. Students always ride free on this train, and on all other trains twice a year when they return home or to the school; a special arrangement reached between Juri and Horatio. Also, presenting a student I.D at the ticket window is always good for a discount; another little arrangement. Horatio approves thorougly of his aunt's educational endeavors, and often personally drives the first train out from this platform at the begginning of each new school year. Moving right along, the third 'private' platform is where Horatio's personal locomotive is kept berthed. Commisioned specially from the artisans in the Foundry, then further refined by him, this monstrous engine is the pinnacle of locomotive power. It's got ALL the options. Half as big again as the next largets locomotive ever built in Avalon, and decorated in Horatio's personal colors. It will run anywhere, and shift through shadow at his will; track always appears beneath it's wheels. It never needs wood, or coaling, or water, and while it carries a small trailer that would on a normal train be used to house these things, on Horatio's train it is devoted to storage space, enough for two or three small cars. Horatio enjoys taking it out into the countryside on odd days and racing it up and down hill and dale, laughing. The Princess Joan has made numerous pointed comments in his direction about how it's massive size must be 'overcompensation' for other 'shortcomings,' but Horatio merely laughs them off. He occasionally brings it alongside Joan's horse in the countryside in a kind of impromptu race. While he never wins, he enjoys annoying her by blasting annoying country-and-western chase music out it's speakers. It's a fun train, really. ^_^ The last platform in the Station has fallen into almost total disuse; weeds grow in the cracks of the concrete, and ivy has begun to encroach upon the rotting hulk of a locomotive that sits berthed there, never moving. Rust covers large patches of it's steel skin, and it's headlight has been smashed. This is Ludwig's Train. At least, that's what it's called, and that's what's assumed. It appeared in it's berth shortly after Ludwigs final disappearence from Avalon, and has no overt connection to him other than the fact that his name is engraved upon the boiler. Decorated in the black and white of the King With No Name, rather than Ludwig's white, gold, and purple, there is nontheless something grand about it's slowly decaying bulk; it is the largest Avalonian locomotive save for Horatio's. It's wheels remain blocked for safety reasons, and the exterior slowly rusts, but a number of the older stewards carefully maintain it's inner workings; it presumably will run. What is mostly disturbing about it is that some say...... it does. Sometimes, late at night, after they've had one too many in their cantina, the stewards will speak of a ghostly form they've seen from their trains, way off in the distance, far from Avalon, between shadows. A phantom train; a great black and white trimmed locomotive, headlight flaring proudly, cutting through the night. Always it runs paralell thier course for a time; always, it turns away into shadow before they can see it quite clearly enough to be sure. And when they return to the Station, they look at Ludwig's Train, rotting away, and wonder what has become of their mad Prince. One of the stewards, a gray-haired man named Artagnan, tells a different tale. He says once, on a long run out to the very edges of the Black Zone, where shadow runs into Chaos, he saw something different from his vigil in the caboose; a long spear of gold, fuzzily incandescent, running along behind the phantasm of Ludwig's Train. He only saw it for a moment, before it burned away as his train swung around back towards lands where the Pattern hold firmer, but he is sure. And when he tells this tale, the other stewards mutter into their beer and speak haltingly of the fabled Gold Express, which comes for those who have been chosen or proven themselves, and takes them to the Station at the Ends of the World. Horatio sometimes stands in the back of the cantina, and writes down notes, and keeps his own counsel.