---- Original Message -----
From: "SMS & Eira" 
To: "Andy Robertson" 
> > So she should not appear as a courtesan.  She may be a girl playing as
> one,
> > however.
>    This is a good image. The issue of her youthfullness needs clarifying.
> Throughout, she is described as young, but I'd assumed this was just a
> respect for elders in an oligarchy. That she's not left home tied in with
> the reference to extended families living together. It nmakes more
> 'Symbolic' sense now you've pointed this out.
> > It's also more interesting if she's a young teenager (Say, 15?) than
what
> I'd assumed was the standard 19-25 year old.
Say 17.
> >
> > Size and shape: very basic points. the Cities are about 22 yards thick
at
> > maximum,
>    'Thick' being height?
Yes
> >so no corridor or room or hall in a City should be massively high.
> > Could be much less.    Of course this does not apply to the Lifts & c
>    22 yards is pretty damn small.
Yes, I agree.   You may twist it a bit, but unfortunately that is a
constraint of the world.   However things like the Lift offer the chance of
much greater spaces.
In the Tower, you can pick any height you like.  That is different.
Also, the passages which the Lift moves through are tied in to the major
ventilation channels of the Redoubt, so it need not simply be in a simple
vertical shaft - it can be a fractal tree shape with  passages splitting off
in all directions
Here is a pasage from "Meyr: Primus", a pending story
****************
Suddenly the channel opened into a space so vast and so dark that it seemed
to explode and spin away from her and made her dizzy. It was like being
inside an enormous hollow tree: vast tubular branches went up and up and in
their deepest, haziest shadows, Meyr could see them branching and branching
again. Below, the channel in which she stood met another and she could hear
a sound like a hissing roar coming up from the depths with the smell of
salt. She had entered one of the main artery junctions of the Redoubt. She
ran across several curiously streamlined bridges that crossed these mighty
airshafts, the great throats of the Redoubt that ran from its green lungs in
the Underground Fields to the highest levels of the Bright Cities. The
manifold sang to her a deep, deep song that trembled in her breastbone.
There were more shafts to cross as she wound her way ever down. In one
shaft, the descending air was cool and damp and became in the centre a great
twisting rope of white fog composed of the moisture exhaled by the millions
above. The villages of the Wind Masters lined its walls like clusters of
barnacles and vast many-vaned turbines turned slowly across its span,
regulating and drawing energy from the natural flow and casting fluttering
columns of shadow through the haze. Valves as great as the floors of drill
halls, but leaning at vertiginous angles, split tributary flows from the
main streams of the air and diverted it to side shafts.
Resting for a moment at the middle of one bridge, she looked up and down for
a while, distracted and entranced by the sight of lit villages spiraling up
in glittering spangles seemingly forever and much, much further down until
at both extremes they merged into milky coronae of scattered light. She
staggered, imagined that she might fall and ran on from this awful place.
Around her, as her footsteps thrummed on the bridge, Mother Redoubt sighed
and moaned with a voice that had suddenly gained in her mind a living soul,
one that seemed to express her own terror.
******************

> >
> I'm assuming that building in the Cities are actually hollow 'Pillars'.
That
> is: it is they that hold the next level up. These 'Pillars' do, of course,
> have complex shapes, many steps and balconies, but their roofs touch the
> ceiling.
That is right.  There are also much bigger pillars which the transport
network (the "arteries") run through.
The Redoubt is a  "monochalkon" -  a single vast ingot **hollowed** out.  In
the region of the lower cities it is perhaps 50% soild metal.   So you can
imagine it as if there was a vast metal solid with a fractal network of
channels driven through it and the cities then cut in levels round it,
feeding off those nets.
We did speculate that the Redoubt should be the ultimate in Feng Shui
I'm unsure as to how this place is lit. Building lights? Ceiling
> lights? Lamps?
There are Lamps, which are unique enough to have names and attributed
personalities, and which stay lit for thousands of years: each is a work of
art.   But there are also more humble illuminations of merely practical
import
> Normal;ly I'd just make this stuff up according towhat seemed most logical
> for the story, but it's obvious that you have very definite visions of
this
> place.
> I'm assuming everything has the look of highly decorated stone in complex
> geometric architectural forms with ornate decoration _on top_ of that...
> with decorated surfaces.
It's metal, and very hard metal, not stone: but it's an utterly ancient
metal, the surfaces polished for millions of years.   A wonderful patina.
In some places it would show wearing like stone does in very ancient
buildings.
> Now: Onto 'Armoured figures'. I'm assuming these chaps have Tek-Armour.
I'm
> assuming helmets and armour with large guns and 'Kit'. I'm also assuming
> that I pattern them on Northern European Armour shapes... but _not_ to
look
> like NEArmour. A good eg of this is the Space Marines of Games Workshop's
> 40k universe.
No guns - they have forgotten projectile weapons (merely a cultural thing).
If you are thinking of the Watchmen at the end scene, they would not be
heavily armoured in the 40K sense because they are not fighting massive
physical attack:  so the armour would be quite light and close fitting.   It
might have an electric pulse of some sort going through it as an extre
protection but it would not be "power armour" in the GW sense.
HOWEVER they would be carrying lots of "thingies".  You can go overboard on
sensory and tracking equipment, portable consoles, whatever.  Fancy helms to
enhance their senses.  They are fighting the Eaters, and basically they are
setting up equipment to clean out the rooms and passages of the Tower one
after the other, pushing the barriers forward by succesive stages, .  They
would be setting Touchpoints (vertical rods reaching the ceiling) to kindle
barriers between, carrying heavy cables as power supplies.   Um . .
referent,  The force field in Forbidden Planet, if you like.
One other artist's attempt for a Nightsuit is
http://home.clara.net/andywrobertson/PaysNuit1Front.jpg
But this is a heavy-duty suit for the Land
> Now trying to avoid making mistakes against what's obviously a well worked
> out universe.
> Best:
> SMS
>