239 - Open City

Unnatural Phenomenon: Open City

In war, the concept of declaring an open city is an act of deliberately surrendering it to the enemy. Conspicuously abandoning a location’s defences in the hope that instead of destroying the location and its population in bombings and bloody fighting, that they will instead take it as reason to occupy it in relative peace. Symbolic prostration intended to preserve life and property at your enemies’ mercy. The brush wars of the occult underground are, if anything, less morally constrained than conventional warfare but at least there that symbolism carries real weight.

A tactic employed by beleaguered True Kings and Urbanomancers, declaration of their territory as an open city divorces them from their connection to it but compels others to honour their deference with magnanimity.

First of all, doing so takes effort. As an objective, the encroaching parties must be made properly aware of it and measures to concede that territory to them taken. Fly white flags from the rooftops of every building and weave gutter magick into formal letters of capitulation. For a relatively small territory or one contested by only one or two enemies this can be done as a local objective. For a major metropolitan city a weighty or even cosmic objective is required to magickally encumber a location with your conspicuous withdrawal. In either case a serious claim to it is a prerequisite, a True King or Urbanomancer identity of at least 40%.

As a result, you can no longer gain charges or access your avatar channels but you are not penalized for being outside of the city or tabooed for losing the territory. Instead for every day until you retake it your relevant identity declines by 1% (alternating if you’re one of the rare individuals with both). Retaking territory is its own objective. In return for as long as you are alive and have more than 0% left, any other True King, Urbanomancer or someone acting on their behalf may not damage the territory or its occupants unless directly threatened. If they do it undermines their own powers, tabooing their connection to the statosphere or charges. This includes them using magickal effects which cause incidental harm.