You wake up … nowhere.
Timeless City is a sort of Limbo between Incarnations. Picture a town from 1930s America, or medieval England, or imperial China; it’s like none of them, or all of them. It’s what you want it to be. It’s what you fear it to be.
Places
The Diner
People eat at the Diner – food tastes exactly the way you remember – but mostly they talk. Rival factions of Timeless, Handlers conferring with their clients, old friends catching up … they’re all there. If anyone tries to stir up trouble, the Chef sends in some bouncers.
The Hotel
People sleep at the Hotel, when they sleep. They also talk to the Concierge who knows a guy who knows a guy who can get you anything you need. It’ll cost you … but you never run out of money, not the black coins with the disturbing designs that passes for money here.
The Library
While not a lending library, the Library is comfortable and mostly empty. It is a perfect and perfectly comfortable place to peruse one of the largest collections in the Uncounted Worlds. That said, even the Library and its helpful reference librarians have limits. Sometimes curious limits, as if someone does not want the information known …
The Park
By day, the park is full of flowers and Phantoms of children and their parents. At night the local gangs hold a drinking party and a Fight Club. Nobody talks about Fight Club. Everybody cleans up after Fight Club.
The Streets
The streets are full of Phantoms, and the locked ornate front doors of residences, and shops. You could pace the streets for hours and hours.
Funny thing, though: you can buy anything you want, but if you don’t keep an eye on it, if you stop thinking about it, it’s gone. One jittery guy blamed gremlins, but here’s the secret: they’re not real. Nothing here is real. It’s all an illusion to keep us going crazy while we undisperse or whatever and can go back to some crazy Quest.
Missing Things
This looks like a town from 1930s America, at least to me. So where are the cars? The telephones? The guns? Any weapons? You can use a knife to slice your food, but as soon as you try to use it on a guy it might as well be tinfoil. Yeah, a lot of things should be here that ain’t.
But stuff still gets done. You want a message sent? You tell the Concierge. You want to go somewhere, you walk, but boom you’re there. You wanna fight you use your fists or the Power, but boy it’s effective.
Except nobody gets hurt, not really. You get knocked out in a fight, you’re back in action next day. Even if you’re dispersed you come back in a week or a month or something. There’s no diseases, not even a broken bone or common cold. It’s uncanny.
The Underground
Oh, yeah, there’s an Underground. It’s under the ground.
There’s no subways here, no basements. All the power lines, if you see the power lines, are over our heads. The trains run above the streets too. That leaves sewers, and nothing’s real here, so …
You go down there to fight. Pure and simple. Things live down there, awful things. They’ll swarm you if – what’s that? Where? See that hole in the street, looks like a subway station. OK, to me it looks like a subway station. Anyway, go down there, they’ll rent you some weapons – everything’s a racket – and YOU can go into a maze of twisty passages to hunt gods know what.
People
The Arbiter
The Arbiter runs Timeless City, and many things besides. Nobody has ever met them save the Handlers.
The Chef
Behind the stove in the Diner stands the Chef. He appears to be in his late 50s or early 60s and ex-army. He bellows orders at the waitresses who stop chatting and start working. At any sign of trouble he calls his bouncers, one for each troublemaker plus one. All without leaving that stove.
The Concierge
At the front desk of the Hotel you’ll find the Concierge. Always. He has no other job, name, or life. If you need something, he can get it. If you have a question that needs answering or a task that needs doing, he knows a guy. A Handler will meet with you at the Diner later with specifics.
Handlers
Whenever someone needs something done in the Timeless City, they call a Handler. Handlers are anonymous, forgettable. They will tell you their name, but you will forget it as soon as the Handler leaves, and remember it if you meet again regarding the same matter. If you try to follow one they will elude you.
Handlers are the only way to relay messages to others, find answers to questions, or arrange meetings with other people.
Ordinaries
A small number of people provide common services: cops, librarians, waitresses, and the like. They make polite conversation about their jobs but inevitably turn aside conversations about their personal lives. They all have common working-class names, whatever the observer thinks of as a working-class name. Like the Handlers, once they leave the room they disappear.
Phantoms
Throngs of people live in the city, but unlike ordinaries they never talk to anyone, just murmur among themselves. Approaching one of them earns you a shake of the head and a cold shoulder. Persistence only brings out the cops.
Other Timeless
You recognize them instantly. Even without the strange period garb or their characteristic arrogance, you would sense the connection between them anyway. They’re creatures like you, sampling mortal lives yet far from mortal.