Constellation Cards
Constellation Cards
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City (Neighborhood)

The Boulevard

A Boulevard is where the city's artistic and aesthetic offerings connect with individual citizens. Shops, eateries, arcades, and more offer visitors chances to spend their money and their time.

A flourishing Boulevard boasts big crowds. The neighborhood attracts tourists and locals alike by offering a variety of sights, sounds, and smells.

  • What are some of the notable sights and attractions?
  • What sort of crowds are found here?
  • Does the crowd change due to time of day, season, etc.?

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The Boulevard

A Boulevard is where the city's artistic and aesthetic offerings connect with individual citizens. Something is lacking, whether a supply of attractions to experience or a demand for them from the populace.

A struggling boulevard lacks a healthy crowd of visitors. Whether fallen from former glories, or built around a nucleus of hope and ambition, it's not giving people a reason to come right now.

  • How new is the Boulevard compared to the rest of the city?
  • What emotions do visitors feel when they see the state of things?
  • Is anyone trying to attract new visitors?
  • Is anyone trying to stop them?

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The Harbor

A Harbor is the home of trade and travel, to and from the city. It is often a visitor's first introduction to the city. Commercial transports, whether caravans, trains, or zeppelins, are found everywhere here.

A flourishing Harbor is the life and breath of a city. Anything people need or want that isn't obtained locally must be brought from somewhere else, and it all comes through the Harbor.

  • What kinds of vehicles or technology move people or cargo here?
  • What is the experience of someone coming here? Of leaving?
  • What are some of the trading partners or destinations represented here?
  • Are other cultures and their visitors mostly found here, or do they inhabit the rest of the city?

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The Harbor

A Harbor is the home of trade and travel, to and from the city. It is often the last sight a regretful traveler sees before leaving. Commercial transports, whether caravans, trains, or zeppelins, are uncommon or sometimes found in states of neglect.

A struggling Harbor is doing its best to keep the city afloat. Whether conditions are bad here, or whether the city's trading partners have fallen on hard times (or abandoned it), all the neighborhood can do is keep moving whatever's left.

  • What kinds of transportation vehicles or technology were or are found here?
  • Did the city let its trading partners down, or the other way around?
  • What is now short supply?
  • Who could help? Why don't they?

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The Marketplace

The Marketplace is the commercial core of the city. It might include a rowdy labyrinth of vendors hawking their wares, a smoke-smothered block of forges and anvils where blacksmiths arm the soldiery. or warehouses full of grain or rice.

A flourishing Marketplace balances supply and demand. The Marketplace produces the bulk of the city's wares, then makes them available to those with money equal to their need. If both seller and buyer exist for something, the Marketplace ensures they will eventually meet.

  • What goods is the neighborhood best known for?
  • What can be found here, but is unknown to most visitors?
  • Who controls what's found here?

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The Marketplace

The Marketplace is the commercial core of the city. The vendors may be few and far between, the fires of the forge may lie extinguished, and farmers' crops may rot in warehouses - or be taken away at insultingly low prices.

A struggling Marketplace lacks either supply or demand. If the wares are not available, or nobody has either the wealth or the interest in obtaining what's there, commerce will wither on the vine.

  • Does the neighborhood have the wrong goods, or the wrong buyers?
  • What hidden assets might still be found here?
  • Who profits from the current situation? Who does not?

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The Sanctuary

The Sanctuary is a city within the city. It might be a walled-off enclave, a culturally distinct community, a gentrified neighborhood, a historical relic, or something else. A sanctuary has its own shops, homes, and infrastructure, enough to sustain its residents and sharing their aesthetic tastes.

A flourishing Sanctuary is self-sufficient. The citizens are healthy and prosperous. The uniqueness of the Sanctuary is maintained and respected.

  • Who lives here? Why do they live here specifically?
  • What is it that separates the Sanctuary from the rest of the city?
  • What sustains the sanctuary and its peoples' lifestyles?

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The Sanctuary

The Sanctuary is a city within the city. It might be an isolated enclave, a brow-beaten borough, a place to abandon the unwanted, or something else. A sanctuary can barely sustain its residents, whether due to lack of goods or intentional deprivation.

A struggling Sanctuary needs support from outside. The inhabitants might ask for, or demand, or beg for assistance. The uniqueness of the Sanctuary is threatened, or seen as a threat.

  • Who lives here? Why do they live in the Sanctuary specifically?
  • Is the Sanctuary keeping the outside out, or the inhabitants in?
  • Who rules here? Who suffers?

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The Temple

The Temple is devoted to the spiritual and religious elements of the city and its inhabitants. It might be a single colossal church, a network of holy places for every faith, or tiny shrines to tiny gods scattered across the city.

A flourishing Temple attracts a faithful flock. Worshippers come to pray, to donate, and to find their inner selves. Priests, wise men, and perhaps actual spirits may intercede to help troubled souls or provide advice.

  • What belief system or systems are practiced here?
  • Are beliefs or practices divided along social lines such as wealth, species, or neighborhood?
  • How has faith affected the city for good? For ill?

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The Temple

The Temple is devoted to the spiritual and religious elements of the city and its inhabitants. It might be a disgraced or amoral mega-church, a collection of squabbling rival churches, or the remnants of an older and forgotten belief system.

A struggling Temple has been abandoned by its flock. The city as a whole might consider faith a dead end or a scam. The priests and leaders may have become corrupt or greedy, or simply have lost faith in their own institutions. If there are real gods, it's even possible they have abandoned the city.

  • What belief system or systems were practiced here?
  • What motive, such as greed, corruption, or apathy, stands against them?
  • How has a lack of faith helped, or hurt?

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The Underground

The Underground is what people don't see about the city. It is actual underground construction, like sewers or burial chambers. It is infrastructure, like aqueducts, that everyone needs but nobody cares about.

A flourishing Underground ensures quality of life for the city's inhabitants. The city's needs, like water and waste, flow where they must.

  • Was the Underground mostly natural to begin with, such as rivers or caves? How much was constructed?
  • How does the Underground physically connect with the rest of the city?
  • Who lives here, and what do they do?

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The Underground

The Underground is what people don't want to see about the city. It is the filthy waterways and skull-strewn tombs. It is the home of the city's underprivileged and forgotten.

A struggling Underground has been abandoned or is being misused. It might provide hideouts for violent criminals, or prove dangerous to visitors through mere neglect.

  • How much of the Underground still functions? What has broken down?
  • What social ills, like disease or poverty, have taken hold?
  • Who lives here, and how are they suffering?

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Uptown

Uptown is the city's crown. It is home to the elite, including skilled creators, wealthy merchants, influential politicians, and beloved performers. Visitors might beseech an Uptown resident to fund their ventures, or seek their attention for some new idea or creation.

A flourishing Uptown can exert its will, for good or ill, on the surrounding city. They say "power is where you say it is", and the city says that social power lives here.

  • What political and social systems support the neighborhood's position?
  • How is that power wielded, and for whom?
  • How does someone become accepted by Uptown?

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Uptown

Uptown is the city's fallen crown. Bourgeoisie merchants with pretentions to greatness, shabby aristocrats fallen from favor, or forgotten influencers might all be found here.

A struggling Uptown is a hollow vessel once filled with power, or a puppet dancing on someone else's strings. Residents might uphold the veneer out of pride, or dream of ways to reclaim real glory.

  • What political or social systems once supported the neighborhood?
  • Do the inhabitants still believe they hold real power?
  • What will they do to get it back?

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The Warren

The Warren is the hidden heart of the city. It is an organic tangle of alleyways, residences, nameless shops, side streets, historical buildings, and more. It is what the city does with itself when no one is looking.

A flourishing Warren keeps the city's heart beating. The things that make the city unique, such as its culture, tastes, and trends, emerge from here unannounced. The city's history is likewise on display for curious visitors.

  • What traditions or styles did the Warren give birth to?
  • What hidden treasures can be found here?
  • How do locals and visitors interact with each other?

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The Warren

The Warren is the hidden heart of the city. It is an impenetrable maze of dark alleys, boarded-up shops, narrow streets, ancient graveyards, and more. It is the city's secret suffering.

A struggling Warren is the city's surrender to despair. Strangers receive furtive looks when they visit this neighborhood, and long-time residents talk wistfully or bitterly about "the way things used to be".

  • Has the city forsaken itself, or fallen prey to outside influence?
  • What secrets do the inhabitants furtively guard?
  • Does the Warren bristle at visitors, or hunker down and wait for them to leave?

Flip to see the flourishing version of this neighborhood