The Coffin Club Presents

-it’s a beautiful, balmy afternoon in Icar and I’m looking forward to getting off work, how about you lovely callers? Ready to get packed shoulder-to-shoulder on the F Train with me? I got yams and Wolfshead at my place in Ticketton if you’re gonna follow. You’re listening to R-ICA, THE best hits this east of the coast, and I’m your lovely impresario Brother Haze leading you in yet another sermon. Lighters up! Let’s get this working day DONE, starting with a request! Slag Dan in Tower Hill, asking for Stranger’s Eyes by Ichor Flame & The Kindling. You got it, Dan-the-man! Don’t punch rivets to the beat! They don’t pay disability if it’s your fault.

Icar has been independent for fifteen years, give or take. In a place this old, built on so much history, it can be hard for the average working stiff to keep track. A lot changes in five years. Fifteen? Forget about it.

The government’s still fighting itself, of course. Tensions rise in every facet of industry; Icar is still the continent’s foundry and factory, foreign contracts keeping the economy afloat while it finds a new identity. The Underground is still riddled with smugglers, pirates, spies and monsters. The rich live in Fogbank and the poor live in Walltown and there’s so much city between the districts, a bona-fide rainbow of ideology and heritage.

What doesn’t change is potential. Possibility. A new era is entrenching itself: Icar For Icar. Want to be a part of the project? The jobs are plentiful! Want your own place to call your own? Weytan’s expensive, the Republic is facing a housing crisis, and Platine, well, the less said the better. Icar is the future, home to a new generation of citizens and immigrants.

And they have opinions.

MEET THE HOSTS

BAD

  • Pronouns: She/they
  • Real Name: Badminton Salts (“…sorry, were we not using those?”)
  • Heritage: Children of the Pitch, orc (Tanvayan).
  • Magical Aptitude: Pyromancy
  • Major: Botany
  • Likes: Spicy food, that big jacket of hers, taller men
  • Dislikes: Loud noises, people being scared of her mask, sour foods

Badminton is a member of the Children of the Pitch, a religious sect that still uses the noxious materials and protective gear of a few generations ago. Rarely seen in public without their gas masks and heavy coats, the Children have a bit of a reputation for being intimidating and isolationist. This doesn’t do much for a girl’s social life, and as she works through college she’s seeking something a bit more…standard. More sheltered and awkward than her appearance would suggest, Bad feels like she has something to prove to her peers if she wants to be accepted.

CITRÓN

  • Pronouns: He/Him
  • Real Name: You can call him Citrón
  • Heritage: Orc, Icar born and raised
  • Magical Aptitude: Pyromancy
  • Major: Little of This, Little of That. Did his Generals, never settled on anything, never graduated.
  • Likes: Icar-Style Sweet Potatoes, New Shit, Finding Shit, Honest People, Passionate People.
  • Dislikes: Hiding Shit, Dull Shit, Liars, The UCC and Its Bootlickers.

Citrón styles himself as a Son of Icar. A truth-teller. A seeker of the past and all that’s hidden under the soil. Freelance Journalist and Urbex Scavenger, he crawls the Underground and restricted zones looking for all that’s been left behind. He’ll take you along too, if the pay’s right and you don’t look like you’ll need rescuing. A great lover of sweet potatoes, Icar-style. A great hater of the UCC and the remnants it’s left behind.

LENA

  • Pronouns: She/It
  • Real Name: No. (show name: Helena Handbasket)
  • Heritage: Isenveld expat.
  • Magical Aptitude: Monster-Souled (Mimic).
  • Major: Ancestral Studies
  • Profession: Train driver.
  • Likes: Women, concerts, cooking, taking in indie art.
  • Dislikes: Most of her family, work, wrestlers breaking kayfabe, stopping to think.

Lena moved to Icar almost three years ago and has been getting acclimated by throwing herself in head-first, severing her old ties and getting implanted with a monster soul. Outgoing on a good day, capricious on a bad, her life outside of work is dedicated to having a good time and repaying the underground art scene of Icar for letting her crash on couches and express herself until she got settled in.

NIGHTFROST

  • Pronouns: She/her.
  • Real Name: None of your business.
  • Heritage: Icar Orc, raised Pyrophite.
  • Magical Aptitude: Theoretically can do some pyromancy, but doesn’t.
  • Major: Philosophy.
  • Likes: Free thinkers, the band The Beast’s Cold Embrace, alligators, butterscotch ice cream.
  • Dislikes: Religious fundamentalism, summer, sports, olives.

Nightfrost was born the daughter of a Pyrophite priest and grew up heavily involved in the faith. By the time she was a young teenager she began to question her upbringing, and by the time she entered college she had fully broken from the Pyrophites, joining a growing secularist movement in Icar. She will, if you let her, go on and on about the Pyrophites attachment to the past leads to it being enmeshed with conservative and xenophobic elements within Icar, though she knows coming on too hard will put people off and tries to play it cool as much as she can.

TIMP

  • Pronouns: They/Them
  • Real Name: Timpani (“It’s all anyone calls me!”)
  • Heritage: Kathen
  • Magical Aptitude: Monster-Souled (about a 111.22 on the Hornbostel-Sachs)
  • Position: Apprentice assembler, 3rd grade
  • Likes: Motors, things that have motors in them, things moved by motors, personal protective equipment.
  • Dislikes: Cutting corners, late maintenance, complicated social situations, singing off-key.

Timpani is a recent emigrant from the Kathen Republic, aware of their country’s actions in the history of Icar, but only recently getting to confront them as they follow the footsteps of many an artisan to work in the city, in this case to produce automotive engines. Having met some but not many who share their fascination with the machines, Timp assumed they’d meet many more as they arrived to work in the factories, but all they found instead were inefficient work environments, poorly upkept facilities, and most of the product getting shipped right back out of Icar. Timp isn’t sure how to fix a lot of these issues, but they’re looking forward to discussing it at the next union meeting.

DISTRICTS OF ICAR

Assembly Row

Assembly Row is a chunk of blocks mid-city of businesses and offices but with some apartment blocks and stores. The district is home to the middle-class professionals; artisans, trades/crafts workers, business managers. The Row used to be a heavily contested area for real estate but the infrastructure revamp has lead to upwards growth, literally, by building nascent skyscrapers and towers that threaten the classical pre-INZ historical architecture. Traditional city law stating that any business that wishes to work on the city itself must be stationed in Assembly Row as a working office has made the district the heart of business.

Corkpine

Corkpine was previously home to the old Imperial Academy and assorted academic interests. The Academy’s building has remained since, aged into the country’s oldest college, with other smaller schools and training academies dotting the district, breaking up the residential homes. All neighborhoods have their own local schools, but Corkpine College of Icar (CCI) is where higher education is found. Thanks to the brain drain, a lot of former schools are sprawling residential enclaves confined to one or two blocks or chopped up into budding shopping centers and strip malls.

Delta District

Formerly UCC, the seat of Icar’s power hasn’t had a renaissance as much as it’s had a repurposing. INZ buildings have been reclaimed and re-established, creating housing for Icar City Council (ICC) functionaries, bureaucrats, diplomats and officials. No more living in Westanchor; Icar For Icar means you live where you work so you give more of a shit. The above-ground rivers remain, acting as defenses, transit and local color. Gardens and greenery blossom amidst the drab earth tones of the previous occupation.

Fogreach

North of Westanchor and on the seaside cliffs, Fogreach used to be the seat of Imperial aristocracy. The former estates are now old money holdings with titles no longer having any meaning, storied houses above a choppy sea. Gated and monitored, Fogreach got through the change fairly unaltered, with new money or the quickest hands snapping up houses abandoned by foreign interests and fleeing homeowners. It remains a town unto itself to this very day, but the isolation can’t hold forever with the city on its own.

The Icar Underground

The Underground contains every dirty little secret the years have decided to keep from the light of day. Originally caves that led to the seas and rivers, eventually turned into dungeons, facilities to breed monsters, make weapons, hide research and creep around the city unseen. When the Empire fell they became catacombs, tombs, storage and the beginning of the great public works projects. Today the Icar Underground is home to public transit, low income/free housing, sewers, smuggling dens…and everything else they’ve already been host to. The Underground is a living monument to the entire history of the land and knows the score.

Ticketton

Ticketton used to be home to myriad factories and Imperial sprawl before the rise of Icarus. It was a test-bed for architectural experiments, building up, tearing down and renovating all sorts of buildings. It then became home to a budding bohemian and artistic scene when impoverished creators started squatting in abandoned buildings, occupying them and eventually securing the land. Now Ticketton is in a strange spot between genuine and gentrified. Undiscovered artists, pornographers, sex workers and underground musicians jockey with budding film directors, established theater managers, revue halls and tourist traps for funding and space.

The Top

When the Pyrophites became the ascendant religious force within Icar, people began to refer to “The Temple District” as the “Temple of the Pyrophite” as if it was the sole defining feature of the area. Today that’s been abbreviated to “The TOP” and simply called “The Top”. Centuries-old religious sites chronicle the city’s history in stone, interring the ashes of the dead and provide religious education, in addition to supporting Orcish transformation and public outreach projects. The religions of Icar do their best to be good neighbors, but they’re one of the few safety nets and certainly overworked and overlooked.

Tower Hill

Tower Hill continues to absorb the sins of industry with reckless abandon. There is a tangible filth to the district as you cross borders, other neighborhoods starting to enforce strict environmental and cleanliness statues to try and keep it contained. The city dump, slag processing, hazardous containment and myriad competing factories dot the landscape, all of it seething and teeming with workers and budding labor struggles with low income row-houses and high-rise block estates dedicated to holding them and raising the next generation of worker.

Walltown

One foot in the city, one foot in the wider world, all of it constrained within the new border that’s been established by the former nations of the UCC. Walltown’s had a severe makeover, going from wrecked slums and toppled infrastructure to low-income prefab housing surrounding the old buildings, resulting in walkable, close-knit coalitions of neighborhoods on the outskirts of Icar. There’s a designated line that runs here but many consider it to be too far to really consider part of Icar. Walltown is also home to assorted ethnic neighborhoods like The Little Republic (Kathe), Tanville (Tanyavan nations) and Cathedral Green (Isenveld).

Westanchor

Ah, Westanchor! A lovely land of contrasts. The oldest and most secure district in Icar, its history well-documented, home to museums and galleries, the families old, the grudges running deep. The heart that pumps commerce and goods through the city, where the rich have only continued to find new dizzying heights of wealth and labor advances across the city never seem to migrate west to help the poor. If you could point to the ideal expression of Icar For Icar, you would find Westanchor…for better or worse. Many wonder what the city would do without Westanchor. Not enough question if it needs to change.

Listen to Eyes of Icar here.

Badminton and Lena’s art by NeonTapirGuts.