![]() ![]() You cannot tell, and so the once great NeoAmerican cities lie empty. It is all too easy to ignore its growth, for in a world of City, what is one more skyscraper under construction that gets completed, without warning, all too quickly? What is one more road being blocked off for urban development, one more sunny park falling into perpetual shadow, one more dark alley adorned with endless glistering light?Īre the words upon the new billboard gibberish, or are they a dialect of multiversal Tengrii carried by refugees from the Steppes? Is that illogical intersection a tendril of the Neon God, or is it merely the result of contradictory zoning laws? Was that street a one-way road yesterday, or is this an infrastructural reform that was relegated to a byline on the thirtieth page of a newspaper? When the Neon God comes to these worlds, it does so silently, unnoticed until it can no longer be ignored. Refugees, fleeing the endless growth of the Neon God, stop in the cities but rarely stay long - to them, these worlds are uncannily similar to the cancer they flee. There will always be American patriots dreaming of imagined glory days, but ever since the Neon God was discovered these cities have grown more uncanny, more unnerving. Many of the NeoAmerican megacities are abandoned now, and more are fast becoming husks. Traffic jams, from congestion or from gawking at accidents. These universes are best avoided by travelers seeking to go swiftly and safely, for they are too prone to the whims of others - other drivers that may be too cautious or reckless, too demanding to follow safety rules and too morbidly curious when another meets their doom. But in these worlds, the routes between doors often traverse the bewildering webs of highways between vibrant urban nodes. Let go of a zipline once you pass a certain tree on a certain trail at a certain hour. Usually, it can be traversed under one's own power - enter an unmarked door, or turn left at a right-only sign. The Lampeter network is unreliable in these worlds. ![]() These megacities sprout from poisoned seed: cities already crumbling upon their own weight, whether they be Los Angeles or American Peking. ![]() These universes require automobiles to traverse the sole conduits between sparse islands of civilization are highways, which coil upon themselves, labyrinthine knots of transport that enmesh the beating hearts of human civilization, like eggs in nests woven of thorns. The least navigable universes are those without mass transportation, not even the ubiquitous subway train or zeppelin ferry. Each is unique in its own way, yet jumping from City to City one could be forgiven for thinking one had barely journeyed at all. All are ultimately similar, marching arrays of urban spires. In Universe ChicagIllinoi-89B, the American NorthMidWestern Megacity spans from former New York to Chicago to Washington D.C., connected by millions of crisscrossing subway charnel tunnels, through which the Chicago Revenants, the Sons of Liberty, and the Old Yorkers politic their eternal war. In Universe Eastboard-12A, the American Eastern Seaboard Megacity stretches from former Boston to Atlanta, and the cobbled streets of old Boston, the silver spires of old New York, and the art deco towers of old Atlanta are cast in permanent neon twilight by the sky-spanning tracks of the Maglev of '89. No multiversal sojourner has truly seen a city until they have seen a NeoAmerican megacity. Every one of these cities is unique and magical, replete with nooks and crannies, stuffed with secrets stolen from other cities, other worlds. The megacities of NeoAmerica lie among the furthest reaches of the Lampeter network, like a ring of distant mountains shrouded in smog. ![]()
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