[ Mechanus ] [ Fumetown | Rusty Conduit | Techno-Shamanists | Rustcatchers Guild | Smog Dragons ]
Fumetown
Location: Mechanus / the depths of the plane
Cutter, if you were under the impression that Mechanus was all pristine gears and spotless cogs, you’ve got a shock coming. See, even in a plane of absolute order, there are places where the gears grind together and the oil is in short supply. Fumetown is one such place, tucked away deep in the recesses of Mechanus’ vast mechanical labyrinth—a festering carbuncle in the bowels of otherwise immaculate machinery.
A dense, choking haze hangs in the air here, thick enough to cut with a blade. The cogwheels move sluggishly, their surfaces tarnished by years of soot and grime. The incessant hiss of steam pipes venting noxious fumes drowns out the usual rhythmic ticking of the gears. It’s dark here, almost perpetually so, with the flickering oil lanterns casting eerie, distorted shadows on the rusted buildings.
Fumetown is where the dregs of Mechanus collect—both the literal and the metaphorical. Pollutants that have no place in the polished upper levels seep down here, and with them, the poor berks who’ve found themselves out of sync with Mechanus’ unyielding order. The atmosphere in Fumetown is oppressive, physically as well as mentally. Even breathing is a challenge, as every lungful brings the acrid taste of burnt oil and metal dust. The air feels heavy, as though the weight of the entire plane’s rejected filth presses down on you.
Lawless—but Not Quite
Now, calling Fumetown “lawless” is a bit of a stretch. You see, even the lowest reaches of Mechanus can’t escape the plane’s intrinsic need for order. But down here, the laws are… different. The modrons don’t patrol these parts; seems they’ve got little interest in a place that doesn’t function smoothly. Instead, the local denizens—disgruntled inevitables with malfunctioning directives, rogue modrons, and miscreant planewalkers—enforce their own crude version of law.
It’s a place where contracts are still honoured, but only if you can enforce them yourself. Here the strong impose their will on the weak, but even then, there’s an underlying respect for the rules—however twisted they’ve become from the Mechanical ideal. A deal is a deal, after all—but in Fumetown, you better be ready to defend your interpretation of the terms with more than just words, cutter.
Why Fumetown Exists
You might wonder how a place like Fumetown came to be in a plane that prides itself on immaculate order, and more importantly, how come it hasn’t slid away from Mechanus to one of the lower or more chaotic planes? The answer, surprisingly, lies in the nature of Mechanus itself. For all its polished perfection, Mechanus is still a vast, complex machine, and like all machines, it produces waste—residual by-products of the plane’s unceasing operation. These by-products have to go somewhere, and due to the plane’s relentless adherence to efficiency, they’re shunted downwards, away from the gears that matter, to collect and fester down below. Welcome to Fumetown.
But it’s not just physical waste that finds its way to Fumetown. It’s the misfits, the damaged, the unwanted. Constructs whose logic cores have corroded over millennia of service, modrons who’ve fallen from their rigid hierarchy, and outsiders who’ve lost their way in the Labyrinthine Portal. These beings have no real place in the perfect order of Mechanus, so they gather here in Fumetown, where the laws are looser, and the plane itself seems to turn a blind eye to them.
Why then do these corrupted cogs not slip out of the plane altogether? Well cutter, that’s because they serve a vital purpose, and the key to that lies in another plane, Acheron’s second layer of Thuldanin.
The Rusty Conduit
See, there’s a symbiotic relationship between Fumetown and Thuldanin. It’s a sordid tale of discarded clockworks and forgotten detritus. In the Great Machine, even the smallest cog must turn in accordance with its purpose. And when those cogs fail to meet the exacting standards of the Standard Operating Protocol, they’re shunted deep down to Fumetown, where the line between refuse and resource becomes blurry.
Beneath the creaking, corroded machinery and layers of grime, surrounded by smoke-choked alleys, lies an ancient gate. Hidden among rusted gearworks and piles of mechnical waste, is Mechanus’ backdoor to the junkyard layer of Acheron. Thuldanin, for those not in the know, is a veritable graveyard of broken war machines, rusting weapons, and the forgotten flotsam of countless battles—a world where the discarded remnants of conflict pile up in endless, bleak junkyards.
The Rusty Conduit is peculiar construct, perfectly aligned with Mechanus’ need for efficiency, yet tainted by the chaos that inevitably comes with entropy. It opens into Thuldanin like a wound in the fabric of the plane, permitting the transfer of the detritus of Mechanus that has been deemed beyond repair. Some say the gate was forged by the axiomites, while others whisper of darker origins, but what’s clear is that the portal forms a crucial part of Fumetown’s grimy economy.
The Industry of Sorting and Salvage
The primary industry of Fumetown revolves around the gate. The inhabitants of this burg—the poor, wretched souls who eke out an existence among the fumes—spend their days sifting through the endless tide of broken mechanisms, malfunctioning constructs, and defective modrons. It’s a laborious process, but is done with the caution of those who know that a misstep might mean an accidental trip to Thuldanin for themselves.
In the maze-like alleys and corroding workshops, communities have formed around the salvaging operations. These groups, often led by the most cunning or strong-willed among them, meticulously sort through the refuse. Anything with even a hint of functionality or value is repaired, repurposed, or reassembled into something new, however crude it might be. Fumetown is a darker reflection of Mechanus’ own perfect order—every part still has a purpose, and sometimes that purpose is to be scavenged from the wreckage of entropy.
The salvage that’s deemed utterly beyond redemption—twisted gears and barmy automata that even the most desperate tinkerer can’t make use of—is flung into the gate with a mechanical trebuchet. Anything sent to Thuldanin will slowly petrify, slowly becoming one with the endless scrap heaps of that desolate plane. But not without a final check, of course, for the denizens of Fumetown are thorough to a fault.
Living in Fumetown is, quite frankly, miserable. The air is foul, the water—if you can find any—is tainted with rust and oil, and light barely penetrates the smog. Disease is rampant, though it’s less biological and more… mechanical. Rustrot eats away at both flesh and metal, and once it sets in, it’s a slow, inevitable degradation until you’re little more than another piece of recycling.
The Techno-Shamanists
A rag-tag bunch of inventors and tinkerers, the sect known as the Techno-Shamanists operates out of Fumetown. They’re more interested in crafting than politics, although their creations are easy to spot throughout the burg—and are probably responsible for more than their fair share of pollution. The most respected of the bunch is a mechanised tinker gnome called Rube Codsworth, and is the closest thing to a sectol these cutters possess. More on the Techno-Shamanists here.
The Rustcatchers’ Guild
The Rustcatchers’ Guild is the last bastion between Mechanus and a relentless, creeping threat. They’re unlikely heroes too, a ragtag assemblage of hardened souls who’ve taken it upon themselves to defend Fumetown, and indeed all of Mechanus, from one of the most insidious dangers the plane faces: rust monsters.
Now, rust monsters are a particular kind of pest, whose existence seems to be a cosmic joke played on the orderly perfection of Mechanus. Drawn to metal like the Fated to gold, rust monsters possess an insatiable appetite for all things ferrous. The chant goes that a single rust monster can reduce a pristine cog to a pile of red dust in hours, and where you see one rust monster, you can bet there are more lurking in the detritus.
Their home plane of Thuldanin is a veritable banquet for the beasts, but the metal of Mechanus is far fresher and more delectable. And so they come, slipping through the gate into Fumetown. Their relentless hunger seems insatiable, and if left unchecked, a pack of rusties can quickly bring a whole section of Mechanus to a grinding halt.
Enter the Rustcatchers’ Guild—a group as grimy as the gears they patrol. They’re a mix of locals, scavengers, and the occasional outsider who’s found a purpose in the filth. Armed with makeshift (non-metallic) weapons and alchemical concoctions, they fight a never-ending battle against the rust monsters, keeping Fumetown, and by extension, Mechanus, safe from corrosion.
The Guild operates under a strict hierarchy. The leader, a grizzled old warforged named Sprocket 7 (planar warforged fighter [they/them] / LN) , is a bit of a legend in Fumetown—partly for their unmatched record of rust monster kills, and partly for the fact that they’ve managed to keep themselves from rusting away despite years of exposure to the grime, and the ‘monsters. They’ve got an uncanny knack for sniffing out rusties before they can do too much damage, and Sprocket’s leadership has kept the Guild alive through some of the worst infestations Fumetown has ever seen.
Over the years, the Rustcatchers have developed a range of strategies that make them formidable opponents for any rust monster foolish enough to wander into Fumetown. One of their primary tools is a concoction known as Anti-Ferrous Alkahest—a blend of alchemical ingredients that, when applied to metal, creates a temporary coating that rust monsters find repellent. The formula is a closely guarded secret, known only to the Guild’s alchemists, although it can be freely purchased in Fumetown. Indeed, it is the main earner that supports the Guild’s activities.
The Guild also employs Lodestone Traps—ingenious devices crafted from the scrap that litters Fumetown. These traps lure rust monsters with a tempting morsel of metal, only to encase them in a field of magnetic energy that immobilises them long enough for a Rustcatcher to dispatch them. The traps are scattered throughout Fumetown, especially near the gate, and are checked regularly by the Guild’s members.
For more direct confrontations, the Rustcatchers favour weapons made of stone, bone, or wood. Even these weapons need to be reinforced with enchantments to protecting them from corrosion from the fumes, however. The Guild also employs trained constructs—salvaged and repurposed from the refuse—programmed specifically to detect rust monsters and raise an alarm. When the klaxon sounds, Rustcatchers around the burg scramble to grab their equipment and assemble a defensive force. It’s an unglamorous job, to say the least. Their battles are fought in the dark, greasy underbelly of the plane, far from the polished gears and spotless cogs of the Modron Empire. They get little recognition for their efforts; indeed most of the plane’s inhabitants are blissfully unaware of the constant threat that lurks deep below. Despite the danger and the filth, the Guild’s members take a stoic kind of pride in their work. They know that they are the thin orange line between Mechanus and chaos, the unsung heroes who keep the great machine running smoothly.
Smog Dragons
While they typically haunt the Prime where they go to breed, occasionally a smog dragon is drawn to the polluted air of Fumetown. Unbeknownst to Sprocket 7, one of the trusted high-ups of the Rustcatcher’s Guild is in fact an adult smog dragon who has taken the form of a smoke genasi called Vicaria Snuff (planar smog dragon [she/her] / CN). Whether Vicaria has always been the smog dragon all along, or whether the dragon put the genasi in the dead-book and assumed her role more recently, is unknown. In any case, Vicaria is working to undermine the Rustcatchers from within, and unleash a horde of rusties into Mechanus the likes of which Fumetown has never seen before. She hopes to use the opportunity to overthrow Sprocket 7 and assume control of the Guild herself, although her real goal is to sow chaos and destruction in Mechanus and spread the pollution of Fumetown to a larger surrounding area.
Source: Jon Winter-Holt. The name Fumetown was inspired by the excellent BBC drama podcast ‘Forest 404‘, which is well worth a listen. I may yet borrow some more ideas from this source for fleshing out Nemausus.
