Procedural Generation Demonstration - Box Full of Boxes' Subdimension, Hive, and Bastion

Box Full of Boxes is a relatively new blog on the scene, but they've already written several interesting random generators, including one to create a small extradimensional space to use as an adventuring site, one to create a criminal meeting place, and one to create a law-enforcement organization. Let's make all three, and see if we can determine how they're connected.
 

Illustration by Rockwell Kent for Moby Dick

 
Subdimension - The Vault of the Hesperus
Rolls: 4/2, 5/2, 8/2, 6/4

On the Second Day, God made the oceans and the sky; on the Fifth, God made all the great creatures of the sea, and every living thing that teems within the waters. On the Seventh Day, God rested, and took His pleasure yacht out onto the seas, and He saw that they were good.

And then came the War in Heaven, and the pleasure ship was made a ship of war. The angel Ismael captained the ship, christened the Hesperus, and Ishmael sailed the Hesperus across the seas, and there fought the great worm Leviathan. Every angel aboard perished, save for Ismael, who was rescued by the archangel Rachel. Together the two angels locked the Hesperus in a vault, still littered with the unburied dead and the detritus of battle, and they returned to the heavens together to await the outcome of the War.

God opened the vault only once, to instruct Noah on the building of the Ark, and to collect the bodies of the angels to await the eventual resurrection of their bodies, but on that day, God left the door ajar.

Today, it is possible to enter the vault where the Hesperus is kept in drydock. When the eye of a hurricane is centered over the spot where God slew the Leviathan, the same spot where Noah released the dove, a ship within the eye that plots a course toward the Evening Star will sail through the open door and enter the vault of heaven where the Hesperus still waits. It is strewn with the debris of war, but seaworthy, and able to sail across the sky and cross the celestial spheres, to go anywhere its captain wishes to take it.

The tale of the Hesperus is told in Melville's recent novel The Leviathan, in the apocryphal Book of Ismael, in The Collected Expurgated Cantos of Paradise Lost, and in tall tales told during storms at a certain seaside bar.
 

Illustration by Rockwell Kent for Moby Dick

 
Hive of Scum & Villainy - The Anchor & Saucers
Rolls: 1, 7, 3, 3

Amidst the overcrowded seaside streets of the Wharf District is a bar marked only by the sign of a fat lizard with a morning-star flail where its tail should be. On rainy days it fills up with shop owners and fishing-ship captains, who gather to trade stock and drink rum served with tea. Although the place is always full of the murmur of conversation, it's impossible to eavesdrop on anyone in there, which makes it ideal for conducting business without fear of the competitors sitting at the next table.

The proprietor, Ismael, looks barely more than a boy, and though battle-scarred, is quite beautiful. The regulars call him "the old man" and "the dinosaur". During particularly harsh storms, he entertains the bar with raucous tales of the hunt for a great whale or sea serpent.

Ismael enforces only two rules that outsiders find strange. First, none of the business conducted may be illegal - indeed, those who try discuss crimes find that not only eavesdroppers, but no one at all can hear them speak. Second, no members of the royal navy are allowed inside.
 

Illustration by Rockwell Kent for Moby Dick

 
Bastion of Law & Order - Seventh Fleet of the Royal Navy
Rolls: 5, 1, 4, 6

The largest building in the Wharf District is the urban base for the Royal Navy, home to the infamous Seventh Fleet, led by the notorious Admiral Abrahad and his right-hand man, Fleet Captain Isaiah. The fleet captain is always impeccably dressed and marches preening through the streets several times a day, his uniform made from much finer fabrics than are standard in the navy. Abrahad is withdrawn and rarely seen, except peering through the windows of the Admiralty Building, or standing atop its roof, staring down at the wharf. The sailors of the seventh fleet follow the fleet captain's neat example in their habiliment, but give off the unsavory impression of being a pack of murderous thugs disguised in the Queen's uniforms.

Ostensibly the Seventh Fleet is responsible for enforcing all maritime laws in the Wharf District, but the sailors mostly only ever seem to collect "taxes" from all the local merchants, ship captains, and anyone new passing through the district. Anyone attempting to report a crime or seek compensation from the fleet office is likely to subjected to an interminable stack of forms and "filing fees" in order to make their case, and the outcome is equally likely to be a summary dismissal, a back-alley ambush and beating for the plaintiff, or an over-the-top show of "justice" as the Navy executes the accused and confiscates all their effects.

Admiral Abrahad is extremely interested in any information about the interior of the Anchor & Saucer. He might attempt to pressgang newcomers into going inside as his spies, or may send sailors to waylay out-of-towners as they leave the bar. Once Abrahad has heard the final detail he needs (which will sound totally innocuous to the teller), he'll try to recruit any adventurers who are onhand to sail to a particular spot in the ocean, and he'll seem maniacally pleased that there's a hurricane pressing down on his expedition. A group of regulars from the Anchor & Saucer will likely seek recruits and mount a counter-strike to disrupt Abrahad's plans.


All Moby Dick graphics were found at the Book Graphics blog.