Westcliff (City)

Everway City from the old campaign, designed by Rolfe

Westcliff (City) in the Realm of Opal
See Also: Opal and the Opaline Center for Golemic Studies

Westcliff is a mining community built into one side of the Opal Butte. As the name of the Butte implies, there are numerous viens of irridescent stone within the rockface. Many of the residents here were not originally mining families - with the rise to power of the Opaline Center for Golemic Studies, they found work hard to find in the city atop the Butte, and were slowly pressured into their current settlement and situation.

Usurper Force: Grinding Gears
Normal: Ingenious Progress Inverted: Crushed By Your Own Technology

People & Economy: Westcliff has an interesting mix of dedicated miners, clever artisans, and the dispossessed multitudes of Opal. Most live off the largess of the very same institution that slowly drove them out of the city Above. As such, many are very bitter about the growth of the Opaline Center for Golemic Studies, and while indentured to the University for their current jobs, they more than half wish the college would fail.

Access to the City Above: Westcliff has a single enormous elevator belonging to the Opaline Center, three narrow stair paths up the cliffface, and several ladders from mineshafts up to the cities sewer-level. Just the same, these are all constantly congested and restricted with traffic, so the best way to get from Westcliff to Above is by Golemride.

Golemride: Two enterprising and competing wizards have built several Golems each to facilitate traffic between Westcliff and Above. You have your choice between an enormous vaguely-pteradactyl-shaped flesh golem with overgrown muscles and great patagea stitched to its limbs, or a bulky rock-climbing iron-golem. Both options have built in harnesses to carry riders and storage compartments to stow your belongings. Neither system has ever recorded a fatal accident, but either trip can be very unsettling for first-time riders.

Violent Underground: You can’t spend much time in Westcliff without hearing whispers of a violent underground movement to destroy the city Above which causes such hardship. Nobody you’ve talked too has known for certain if it exists or is merely an urban legend, but the stories say that a small group of terrorist miners work hard to sabotage the mines. So much of the Opal has been drawn forth from the butte, and so much growth has enlarged the city Above... really it would be a small thing to start a chain reaction that would sheer the top off the butte and send it tumbling to the dry plains below. The trick would be making sure it all collapsed to the East and not the populated Western end of the plateau.

Military: Westcliff has an organized Militia, composed mostly of humans with a few golems for support. They lack the financial means and ample golemic support that any militia in Above would be able to field, but the people are hardy and stout.

Ecology: Westcliff has typical desert flora and fauna, plus the Spikefruit Rose described on the page about the Realm of Opal.

Gates & Bordering Realms: There are no Gates in Westcliff. For a full listing of the Gates Above, please see the Opal page of this book.