I mentioned in an earlier post about the potential of Magic being considered Illegal in Basatan. To elaborate: Magic, like human consumption, is seen with caution and heavily regulated.
All visitors who come to Basatan will have to go through security. During this security check, there’s a scanner that pricks your finger and tests you for “Magical Capability”. Those who test positive, are given a very non intrusive, simple seal placed on their arms. The seal becomes invisible and it is weightless and does nothing to dampen an individual’s magical ability.
What is does do is that the seal acts as a beacon. Similar in a way that a metal detector goes off when you pass metal underneath it, there exists machines in Basatan that will alert security when there’s a magic user they’re letting through.
Magic is viewed similarly to the way guns are viewed in the US. You can have them, you can even use it for protection, but break the law and you’ll be fined, face jail time and in certain cases have your powers sealed.
Their three largest nono’s: Enchantment, Runes, Summoning
Break those nono’s and it’s likely your powers can end up getting sealed. If you get caught .
So friends, with the talk of humans earlier, I’d also like to talk about how Basatan deals with monsters who need to live off of human meat to live
Ahuizotls , Wendigos, Vampires, the list goes on and on. We know murder and LIVE humans are illegal. So what is the situation with human consumption in Basatan?
It’s legal, but Human Consumption is Heavily Regulated. Understandably, humans are a hard thing to import into Basatan and some monsters are driven mad through the consumption of humans. To mitigate this issue, Basatan has the option for Monsters to acquire a License to Consume. There are several stages to this license that dictates what care packages you are eligible to receive:
Stage 1: Medical Supervision-
In which you’re only allowed to eat human meat under a Doctor’s orders. These licenses are given to those who only need to eat human meat to regenerate themselves.
Stage 2: Vampirism-
In which you’re only allowed to legally acquire human blood. Pretty self explanatory.
Stage 3: Full Consumption-
In which a qualified individual will DIE unless they eat human meat. Reserved for those who cannot sustain on other diets.
Let’s talk about Live Humans. Living, breathing, humans who want to try to get into Basatan and find themselves being turned away at security.
That’s because Humans are not welcome in this Monster City. To humans it may seem unfair, I mean...what is the worst thing that could happen? Why should their inclusion in a monster city be ILLEGAL?
Well apart from human eating monsters being an immediate danger, there’s a strange occurrence that most city officials noticed whenever live humans were brought into Basatan which ultimately led to the ban of humans in their city.
Most Humans tended to complain of headaches and vertigo, the food having a strange texture/taste. At first, this seemed normal until the complaints progressed to hearing whispers that were not there, seeing creatures that did not and should not exist. Some clawed their eyes out, others screamed for the gods to take their souls. Others simply vanished, never to be seen again.
Basatan, while harmless to Monsters, will drive humans and even certain human hybrids mad.
Luckily this madness stops progressing once you’re out of the city limits, so if you manage to somehow smuggle a human into Basatan, don’t stick around too long.
Wherever a Toll road exists, there’s an extra lane reserved for monsters who want to escape the isolating lives they live on Earth and retreat to a place more suited for them. A place created by monsters, for monsters.
For those with the right means to cross what monsters affectionately call: The Bifrost, you will be taken to a long bridge across a rough sea towards A bright and colorful coastal city of Basatan.
So friends it seems I’ll be opening my City for the general public to use! Throughout the coming weeks I will be converting my blog to host Basatan properly, though it’s more of me changing my aesthetic to Coastal City and renaming my blog to reflect Basatan’s existence. I don’t even really think I’ll be changing my theme.
There will be no rules concerning your characters/what you can do/what you can be, but if you do end up using Basatan as a setting for interaction I’d like to ask to simply either acknowledge or respect a few things:
1. If you’d like to contribute or add something to the city of Basatan (i.e a shop or hospital or business) please let me know so I can add you to my lorebook!
2. This city/world is gonna get mega fleshed out and will include important LORE things like Magic being borderline illegal/controlled so again, be whatever you like/do however you like, but remember the world and the people living in it may react/respond to your character in kind. (i.e, some of my characters may be more fearful of magical characters/wary). I will have a dedicated page/tag to keep track of these lore aspects if you plan on going that far in your narratives: #Basatanlore
3. Let me know if you plan on using Basatan! :D This is more out of my own vanity than anything. I’d really like to make sure I’m following any blogs who are using my setting and perhaps have some interaction. This is open to the public for any monster independant blog to use, you don’t have to be in limbo to use this setting.
With that all said and done, let me tell you about my plans!
Basatan will be a bit of an antithesis of what Limbo was. It will be a bright and colorful city with a little bit of Lovecraftian Horror thrown into the mix. There will be a beach, a tourist trap, fishing piers, waterfront property, mountains, an island that holds the downtown area. It’s a meld between nature and urban aesthetic.Think of places like San Francisco, Halifax, Vancouver, Anchorage, Virginia Beach, Myrtle Beach and Quebec City. The architecture is a mixture of metropolitan and classical structure. There will be certain places with cobblestone roads and brightly colored buildings and brick but also there will be skyscrapers, industrial shipping piers and the like.
You get to Basatan primarily through the Bifrost, which acts as a sort of way for Monsters to travel. You pay for your ticket and you can go to a corresponding toll road in whichever location you bought. They’re primarily run by Trolls cloaking themselves as humans. The system they use to keep track of monsters and prevent humans from getting in is similar to the american toll payment system: EZ pass.
The general climate is cold, but Basatan does get all four seasons. Summers are nice and warm/hot while winters are nice and cold. You get a good fall and spring as well. Given it’s by the water, much of the cold comes from the wind carried in by the sea. There are mountain ranges in the furthest outer reaches of the city towards the north-west.
I named the city after a crustacean eldricht being so the crabs in this world are HUGE AS FUCK and delicious. Enjoy :D
FEEL FREE TO ASK ME QUESTIONS ABOUT BASATAN! I’m getting information done as we speak and am constructing a map that I’ll have posted as soon as I can get it to look neat enough to be visually readable.
