The Honorable Society of Engineers
Connects to: 17.16, 19.31.10, 29.14.01, 29.14.09, 29.14.52 and 36.11.
Half guild, half civic institution, the Honorable Society of Engineers has been one of the greatest societies in the Shuttered City since the Sinking began.
Originally a minor guild in the early days of the city, the Sinking of the City drastically magnified their importance to its survival, and gradually it became another arm of the sprawling municipal government. Today the Society counts hundreds of engineers, masons, smiths, carpenters, bricklayers, and architects among its ranks, along with a handful of earth elementalists and wizard-transmuters. The Waterworks is technically one of its sub-departments. The Society maintains the physical integrity of the City, and to that end its members spend much of their time in the Undercity, for as the city sinks, the addition of new construction above the old adds ever more weight atop the crypts and basements below.
As a result, the Society is embroiled in a desperate, heroic, ‘round the clock effort to repair and shore up the crumbling, moldering Undercity. Legions of criminals and their skeletons slave away in the depths, adding pillars and buttresses, replacing stones and brickwork, pouring cement and inserting rebar under the supervision and aid of the Society. Brave Crack-Finders, structural engineers armed with maps, lanterns, and the best armor and weapons the Society can provide brave the depths of the Undercity to record every crack, shifted foundation, bowed ceiling, and tilting wall.
Never was the importance of the Society more aptly demonstrated than under the reign of Doge Vogende II, who cut the Society’s budget significantly when he came to power in order to finance the construction of many additional floors to a tower owned by his family. It was not even a year later when the same tower collapsed into the Undercity, taking the Doge and his entire family with it. The next Doge immediately returned funding for the Society to its original levels, and invested them with broad new legal powers. To this day the site of the collapsed tower is called Vog’s Folly, and is used by the Society as a quarry for building stone, though occasionally they’ll pull out treasure. Or corpses.
The Society has broad legal powers that they use to assist them in keeping the city in good repair. Only they can authorize new construction, unauthorized building is punishable by being consigned in perpetuity to one of the chain gangs laboring for life and undeath in the Undercity. Once a year on Weighing Day they levy a tax based upon the weight of all one’s possessions (including one’s body), predisposing even the wealthy toward thinness and light-weight furniture. The Society also demands accurate maps of all constructions; the creation of unmapped secret passages is forbidden and punishable by being sealed alive into the offending passage. Indeed, the problem has become serious enough that an entire Department has been formed, called the Department of Obscure Annexes, for the explicit purpose of ferreting out trap doors and hidden passages.
Despite the Weighing Day tax and their budget from the Doge, the Society is quickly realizing that if they cannot access the deepest parts of the Undercity for repairs, serious structural issues will soon put the City in danger. Unfortunately, the deep reaches of the Undercity are infested with eldritch horrors, Dead men’s tongues and vile cults (29.14.10 and worse), not to mention unregulated undead and criminal enterprises. The Society regularly petitions the Doge to send the militia, or a party of adventurers into the lowest parts of the Undercity, but the Doge simply cannot afford such a massive undertaking. As a result, the Society has taken to deliberately perpetuating and spreading rumors of fabulous treasure lost deep within the Undercity, and occasionally even fabricating outright lies, all for the purpose of luring adventurers into the Undercity to clear the monsters out for them.
The Society maintains its headquarters and administrative heart in the Honor-Hall of the Society, an underground complex of blueprint archives, storehouses, laboratories, academies, armories, and offices where the Engineers toil unceasingly to save the city from collapse.
On a minor note, Engineers of the Society can be identified by the plain steel band worn on the middle finger of the right hand. Any person found wearing such a ring on this finger without being a recognized member is subject to removal of the offending digit.
Connections:
- The Master Mason of the Society is Baron Harenghast, who is not popular with his subordinates (29.14.52).
- Some crack finders have contracted lycanthropy in the Undercity (36.11).
- The mud around Smuggler’s Isle (17.16) is especially sought after by the Society of Engineers as an ingredient in their cement. This is not because it is especially strong but because it has a weak magical resonance that slowly fades with time, allowing the engineers to keep track of how old a certain piece of construction is. This is of especial use to the Department of Obscure Annexes as it allows them to detect suspicious new construction that may hide secret rooms.
- Some maps drafted by Engineers are sold by Lunfar in Jahur.
Hooks:
- Who originally founded the Society, and why?
- What dark secrets has the Society uncovered in their explorations of the Undercity?
- What lies still buried in Vog’s Folly?
- How much of the Shuttered City’s secrets does the Department of Obscure Annexes know?
- What rumors (and bald-faced lies) have the Society been spreading to attract adventurers?
- Are any of them true?