Predator Cities x 4 and The Traction Codex

by Philip Reeve

  Bounty Hunters

  All too often a villain who had committed crimes aboard a Traction City sought to escape justice simply by moving to a different town, or even fleeing onto the bare earth. Rather than send their own police officers to pursue him, most cities simply issued a reward for the miscreant’s death or capture, and waited for the roving bounty hunters who haunted the Bird Roads to track him down. Some bounty hunters developed fearsome reputations: the Stalker Shrike was so feared that miscreants who heard he was on their trail often killed themselves just to save time and bother. (See Shrike)

  Brighton

  A scruffy fishing town which took to the sea early in the Second Traction Boom. It spent the next few decades creeping around the coasts of the Hunting Ground, avoiding larger rafts, but with the arrival of Traction’s Golden Age it reinvented itself as a pleasure resort and holiday destination. Visitors from other cities flocked to its theatres, concert halls and amusement arcades, and as it grew larger and wealthier it began making long “cruises” into the Middle Sea and down the west coast of Africa. It was home to many legendary artists and entertainers, and was the birthplace of Nimrod Pennyroyal, who was its Mayor at the time of the Traction War.

  Bug

  A small three- or four-wheeled vehicle, used to move around within the larger Traction Cities. These were powered originally by frantic pedalling, but later electric or ethanol engines became the norm.

  Rejected in the early days of Traction as affected or simply silly (“Why do you need a vehicle? The whole city moves!”), bugs became far more popular as the size of cities increased, and are especially popular in northern towns with harsher climates on the streets. Numbers were often limited by law to avoid congestion of the city’s passages.

  Bumper Stickers

  Around 700 TE there was a fad for these large posters, which were pasted on the rearward-facing skirts or “bumpers” of cities, declaring their allegiance to a particular god, announcing their recent catches, or simply saying “Children on Board” or “How’s Our Hunting?”. These soon came to be seen as irredeemably vulgar, and most self-respecting cities preferred to personalize their outer skirts in more tasteful ways, such as hanging giant furry dice from their tier-edges.

  Cairo

  The first North African Traction City, considered the turning of the tide against Zagwa in the African “Traction Spring”, when its inhabitants overthrew their Zagwan masters and rebuilt their city aboard a chassis shipped across the Middle Sea by sympathetic Tractionists from Europe. Somewhat pyramidal in design, it boasted a large figurehead in the shape of a noseless sphinx.

  City Races

  During the Golden Age of Traction it was briefly fashionable for evenly-matched cities to race one another over an agreed course, sometimes stretching for several thousand miles. Occasionally participants would bet their whole future on the outcome of the race, with the loser agreeing to be eaten by the winner. More usually the prize was a symbolic one, such as the famous Lightfoot Cup.

  Cittamotore

  Easily the fastest city ever built. Cittamotore was easily identified by its bright red-and-chrome livery and the fact that 90% of its bulk was engine district. The few actual houses were stuck on top of pistons, crammed in between driveshafts, or clustered around the great dials of the ruling district (informally known as Il Cruscotto.) While Cittamotore’s speed might have made it the terror of the Great Hunting Ground, the inhabitants refused to lumber their city with heavy jaws when they could be putting spoilers and booster rockets on instead, and the city was easily evaded just by turning to the side, as Cittamotoreans were far too proud to slow down to speeds where they could actually steer. It fell on hard times during the fuel and prey shortages of the later Traction Era and was eventually eaten by London.

  Clio

  The Goddess of History. Worshipped by scavengers, archaeologists and all those who make their living digging up or tending to the treasures left behind by the Ancients. Patron Goddess of London’s Guild of Historians.

  Conurbation

  A conurbation (or “Traktionstadtballungsraum”) was a type of city formed by combining a number of smaller towns and cities, a process known as Traktionstadtanschluss. Most common among German speaking cities, which were historically smaller than their neighbours, being more interested in jousting or trading than eating each other, but which began joining together for mutual protection after Traktionturnieren fell out of fashion around 700 TE. (See Traktionturnieren)

  Crawley

  A suburb of London, launched during the Third Traction Boom. It was successful small predator in the northern Hunting Ground for many years, but is now remembered mainly as the source of one of the Hunting Ground’s most grisly legends. In 867 TE it was spotted standing motionless on the edge of the Frost Barrens by Motoropolis. When dragged into the city’s gut it was thought to be deserted, until boarding parties discovered the bodies of the entire population in a warehouse in the bottom deck, all the dead missing their right hands.

  Crome, Magnus (936-1007)

  Crome claimed descent from Gideon Crumb, who was Chief Engineer in the time of Nikolas Quirke. He was himself Chief Engineer for many years, during which he strengthened the power of his Guild and increased the number of seats it controlled in the city council. In 997, following the Big Tilt, he used this power to have himself declared Lord Mayor, leading some people to speculate that Crome had caused the Big Tilt himself (although there is no evidence of this). Typically for an Engineer of that period, he had no family of his own, and was said to care about nothing but the city itself. He was a supporter of Thaddeus Valentine, whom he made Head Historian. (See Engineers, Guild of; Valentine, Thaddeus)

  Dead Continent, The

  Otherwise known as North America, the Dead Continent was once the heartland of a mighty empire, but, blasted by orbit-to-earth atomics, hyper-kinetics and death-rays, and riddled with man-made plagues and neurotoxins, it was rendered uninhabitable during the Sixty Minute War. For many centuries it was believed to have been destroyed by the gods themselves, whose curse would fall upon anyone foolish enough to set foot upon its scorched and shattered shores. Its poisoned plains were thought to be the cradles of the plagues which periodically swept the world during the Black Centuries. In later years a few daring explorers ventured there, and some even came back alive, although most people remained convinced that the place was bad luck and best avoided. Thaddeus Valentine made several expeditions to the south west of the continent, and both Reykjavik’s Snøri Ulvaesson and the Aleutian aviator Daisuke Ishiwara reported seeing wide tracts of forest and grassland in the northern regions, close to the borders with the Ice Waste. Snøri Ulvaesson named this region Vineland. Nimrod Pennyroyal’s account of a journey to the lost city of Detroit, in which he claimed to have met savage Americans and fought bears and wolves, has never been confirmed, although he is not the only traveller to have suggested that the Dead Continent may not be as dead as it once seemed. Raft cities watering on the Pacific Coast have reported seeing camp-fires among the hills inland, and stray aviators have sighted patches of greenery that may be crops. America remains a mystery, its story waiting to be told.

  Dortmund Conurbation

  A large group of small, mainly German-speaking towns which began the process of Traktionanschluss in 1004, but were still linked together only by bridges and walkways when the Traction War broke out in 1012. It was the only conurbation in the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft.

  Dun Laoghaire

  A rather fishy raft city, whose claim to fame is being the birthplace of the aviatrix Orla Twombley. Ruled by powerful herring magnates, Dun Laoghaire travelled from fishing-bank to fishing-bank all over the North Atlantic, sometimes venturing as far as the Newfoundland Banks, shockingly close to the Dead Continent. It engaged in fierce rivalries with other fishing cities, and some dark rumours claim that it was Dun Laoghaire’s saboteurs rather than
pack ice which caused the sinking of Grimsby.

  Electric Empire

  Another of the lost civilizations from the Black Centuries or soon after. Their electrical devices are still sought after and studied by some researchers, who believe they knew the secret of transmitting energy without wires. They are thought to have had a connection with the Stalker-builders of the Arctic.

  Engineers, Guild of (London)

  London’s Guild of Engineers prided themselves on their ability to suppress and ignore emotion and to think rationally at all times. Non-Engineers, however, could always see that they indulged in all sorts of irrational thinking themselves, and that in many ways they were actually a cult, not unlike the technomancer cults of the old nomad empires, although considerably better at understanding Ancient science and technology.

  Their strange appearance – white canvas coats, (replaced with rubberized canvas in the 9th Century) and shaven heads – seems to support the widely held opinion that, despite their fierce atheism, they were an almost religious order. Engineers were not supposed to marry; they lived in communal barracks, ate in communal canteens, and children born to them were removed from their mothers soon after birth and brought up in the Guild’s nurseries. They were the first of London’s Guilds to begin wearing a tattoo or “Guild-mark” on their foreheads – in their case, the stylized image of a red cog-wheel.

  The Guild of Engineers evolved out of an earlier “Order” or “Society” of Engineers, founded by the technologically-curious Scriven nomads during their rule of the old, static London. When Quirke arrived to motorize the city the Engineers proved invaluable to him, and some people have argued that is really his Chief Engineer, Dr Gideon Crumb, who should be credited with making the city move.

  In later years, following the unjust and incompetent rule of Chief Engineer (later Lord Mayor) Charles Shallow, the Guild’s influence dwindled somewhat, and for most of the Golden Age it was content to tend its engines and conduct its experiments on the samples of old technology which the Guild of Historians brought to London. Many Ancient inventions, including radio, cathode-ray screens and even primitive computer brains, were reintroduced to the world thanks to the efforts of the Guild’s careful researchers. Other projects, involving Mag-Lev systems, Stalkers, and experimental foodstuffs, proved more controversial.

  By the 9th Century the Guild was once again playing a major part in London politics. It built a modernistic glass tower called the Engineerium on Top Tier, and operated scores of different departments, including a Security section which was effectively a private army. Certain wild-eyed conspiracy theorists down the centuries have postulated that the Engineers also employ a secret “Suppression Office”, a black-ops unit working to prevent the development of inventions which the Engineers deemed dangerous to London. They point to the unpleasant ends that routinely came to attempted pioneers of heavier-than-air flying machines until the 10th Century, and the impossibility of getting research funding for long-range wireless telegraphy anywhere in the Great Hunting Ground. (See Guilds; Historians, Guild of)

  Flying Ferrets

  The rapid development of small, manoeuvrable and insanely dangerous heavier-than-air flying machines during the Traction War led to the formation of a number of freelance air forces, including the Sisters of Mercy and Richard D’Asterley’s Flying Circus. The Flying Ferrets, commanded by Orla Twombley, were one of the most successful and romantic groups, fighting in turn for the cities of Perfume Harbour, Brighton, Novgorod and Murnau. (See Battle of the Bay of Bengal)

  Fang, Anna (962?-10??)

  Surprisingly little is known about this famous aviatrix and Anti-Tractionist intelligence agent, known as the Wind-Flower in the lands of the League. Her parents are said to have been northern air-traders whose ship was captured by Arkangel. What became of them is unknown, but Anna grew up in the slave-holds of the ice city where, we can assume, she developed a lifelong hatred for Tractionism.

  In the mid-970s, during one of the corporate power-shifts which characterized life in Arkangel, she was moved to the airship-yards of the powerful Kael family. According to legend, the youngest son of the family, Stilton Kael, became besotted with her, and allowed her to start building an airship which they would fly together in the Boreal Regatta air-race. Anna, however, tricked him, and took off alone. How she survived in the high arctic, in a half-completed airship, with little fuel or provisions, is unknown: in later life she sometimes referred to a mysterious “White Lady” who had helped her, but who this could have been is unclear, and some have suggested that she was referring to a hallucination or religious experience. At any rate, she somehow found her way to territory held by the Anti-Traction League, and is believed to have acted as a spy for the League for the next few decades, while also working as an air-trader. Her ship the Jenny Haniver is known to have been present at many of the trouble-spots of the period: Khamchatka in 899, North Australia in 986, and the Hundred Islands in 992. How important she was, and what part she played in deciding League policy, is still unclear, but she is said to have been rewarded with a country estate in Shan Guo, suggesting she had been of great use to them. She is credited with sinking a pirate suburb in the Sea of Khazak in 1007, and after that her story becomes unclear; some say she was killed soon afterwards, others that she went on to lead the Green Storm movement. The only contemporary biography of this curious figure, A True History of the Wind Flower, written by Sathya Kuranath, is generally regarded as unreliable.

  Frost Barrens

  Borderlands between the Ice Wastes and the Great Hunting Ground. Deep under permafrost for much of the year, they burst into bloom in the brief northern summer, when many towns and cities arrived to hunt and trade there. In the more remote parts of this vast region, semi-static Lapp traction villages still followed the migration of their reindeer herds, just as their nomad ancestors had before the dawn of Traction.

  Ghost Crabs

  One of the legends of the north, these mysterious creatures were sometimes glimpsed scuttling across the high ice by lookouts aboard far-wandering ice cities. House-high, spidery things, they were said to emerge through circular holes in the ice-sheet. Seeing them was an omen of bad luck, often heralding the loss of all your valuables. Nimrod Pennyroyal gave a surprising account of them in his book Predator’s Gold.

  Goggle-screens

  Large public screens which the authorities aboard the better-organized Traction Cities used to make announcements, broadcast news bulletins, and remind everyone how lovely life was. Repeated attempts to produce small ones for the private viewer never quite caught on; “If I want moving pictures, I can look out the window!” was a popular response to the launch of the London Electrical Corporation’s “Parlour Goggle-box”.

  Green Storm

  From its earliest beginnings the Anti-Traction League was divided between those who simply wanted to defend their pastures and static cities from aggressive cities and those who wanted to stamp out Tractionism. With the exception of a few local squabbles, the more peaceable, defensive attitude prevailed for centuries, but as Traction’s Golden Age faded into a bitter struggle for survival and more and more hungry cities began snapping at the League’s lands, anger grew.

  In 1009, following London’s attempt on the Shield Wall, the burning of the Northern Air-Fleet and the swallowing of Spitzbergen by Arkangel, a hardline group of young officers called the Green Storm seized power in Shan Guo in a military coup and began radically reorganizing the whole League, driven by a fanatical hatred of the whole idea of moving cities and a dream of “the world made green again”. At first there was resistance from the old League, and much infighting in Shan Guo and other Anti-Tractionist strongholds. The people of the traction cities, hearing rumours of this internecine strife, dismissed the Green Storm as yet more squabbling barbarians. (The Storm’s image was not helped by the unlikely story that they had elected the mummified corpse of a former ATL aviatrix as their
war-leader.) Some traction evangelists, such as Adlai Browne of Manchester, predicted the total collapse of Anti-Tractionism, and looked forward to a day when all the League’s former territories would be open to traction cities. These optimists were as surprised and dismayed as anyone when, in 1012 TE, fleets of white airships bearing the Storm’s green lightning-bolt symbol swept down from the mountains, rocketing cities indiscriminately.

  Greenland

  Known to the navigators of ice cities as “the great North Atlantic speedbump,” this mountainous, impassable region is home only to glaciers and wandering bands of Snowmads. Why it is called “Greenland” has long been a point of contention among historians. (One Ancient tradition tells that it was named after “Green out of Scritti-Politti”, but exactly what this means is unclear.)

  Grimsby

  Biggest and fiercest of the North Atlantic predator-rafts, Grimsby was mourned by absolutely nobody when it was sunk by pack ice during the Iron Winter of 919/20.

  Guilds

  There were many different forms of government among the cities of the Traction Era, but one of the most popular was the Guild system, as practised by London. This involved seats on the city council being assigned to Guilds which represented the city’s most important trades and professions. In most cities this meant that the engineers who designed and maintained the engines and operating systems had the largest say in council, though the navigators who steered it were usually well-represented too.