Velok the Younger
When I Was A Young Warthog
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: A Whiphid city
- Image Credit: "Metro: Exodus" screencap from PCGamer, found at http://www.pcgamer.com/metro-exodus-takes-the-series-above-ground-for-a-year-long-journey-through-post-apocalypse-russia/
- Canon: N/A
- Links: Toola, Whiphid
- City Name: Rukhearth
- Classification: Urban Centre
- Location: Toola, as linked above
- Affiliation: Rukhearth is ruled by a shifting association of Whiphid tribes.
- Demographics: 99% Whiphids, 1% outlanders
- Wealth: Low. Whiphid culture isn't exactly flush with galactic cash.
- Stability: Low. Whiphid tribes are centred on three to ten core couples apiece, and Rukhearth is run by a few dozen of the strongest. It's not the safest environment, especially if you're an outlander. Offworld traders are welcome, but need to tread lightly and operate with the greatest respect and respectability.
- Description: Rukhearth comprises an extensive network of ice tunnels beneath, and including, frozen outlander ruins. Paths through old buildings and transit nodes lead down into frigid caverns. The whole place smells of freshly slaughtered caraboose. There's technology in evidence - Whiphids are sentient and plenty of them spend long careers offworld - but it's technology incorporated on local terms.
- Deep Hearth - A gathering place, a redoubt, a site for feasts and crucial meetings, a cavern so deep beneath the glacier that it's carved from bedrock.
- Trading Post - A gutted outlander hospital, now home to Whiphid fur-traders and most of Rukhearth's outlanders, accessible by rooftop landing pad or glacier trails.
- Spirit Cavern - A sanctum for elders of various tribes to share stories and record wisdom, kept cold due to local symbolism of preservation.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
Once upon a time, not so long ago, outlanders started coming to Toola in the aftermath of the Dark Age. Some of them were polite, and traded offworld goods for local furs. Some of them were not polite, and their marrow flavoured the soup of the tribes. One of the latter groups built a small city called Port Aderante near the equator, which is slightly less frigid than the rest of Toola. Port Aderante lasted about a year and a half before marrow-bones became soup, etc. As the outlanders had used various technological means to lure herds of caraboose to the neighbourhood, many tribes and packs of tuggles followed the shifting migration patterns. The site became a hub of Toolan economics and ecology - the largest city Toola had ever seen. The Whiphids entrenched passages and caverns beneath the barren, frozen outlander city. They took up residence in the repossessed structures, or used them to house domesticated tuggles and other useful creatures. When certain members of the Whiphid diaspora began bringing starships for the Whiphids to use as their own, ships customized for Whiphid hands, Rukhearth became the next best thing to a spaceport.
