#albinoch

[midnight-illustrator]

The Shiprat

Rat is a character from my queer cybernoir story, Our Lady Albinoch. He's a vampire hunter with amnesia.

This was a really fun challenge!! I'm trying to get better at backgrounds and landscapes, and this was my first time putting something painted like this together without one direct photo reference to work from.

[midnight-scrivener]

🖊🖊🖊!!!

You've sent 3 pens, and by sheer coincidence, my current Big Project has 3 main characters! So I'm taking this as permission. Buckle up :3

Ziggy Holiday

Zachary Carmen Holiday is, in theory, a private investigator. In actuality he's someone who will do just about anything anyone is willing to pay him for. Once upon a time, Zig believed in the system, believed that it was designed to help the people living inside of it. He joined the Albinoch Municipal Police Department; he wanted to serve the public, and he figured, what was a better way to do that than to become a public servant? He figured out pretty quick that the cops are public servants in name only, and when he realized he was being asked to hurt people more than help them, he quit to try and do better somewhere else.

His biggest flaw was always his naivete.

Ziggy quit lots of other things over the years too. For different reasons than the cops, of course. He quit playing piano, he quit trying to keep a stable boyfriend. Not because he didn't think they were worth it. He just stopped believing he was.

His PI business started out pretty much the same as his time with the police. He wanted to help people that had been failed by an uncaring world. He wanted to make a Difference.

It, uh. Hasn't really worked out that way.

Oh, and then. And THEN there was that whole business with the vampire attack. That really made things complicated, which was ironic. Usually, getting jumped by a Lazarine vampire really simplified stuff. Either you die and come back as an empty, mindless husk driven by bottomless thirst to hunt human beings for fuel; or you die and don't come back at all.

But Ziggy died and came back… different.

So now, not only does he have to work for pocket lint as the last dregs of his faith in humanity are slowly siphoned away by the inexorable passage of time, he also has to fight off the urge to, you know… eat them all.

Makes paying rent more difficult, is all I'm saying.

Margaret Navarro

Maggie is Ziggy’s best (read:only) friend. She lives across the hall from him, on the top floor of their walk-up apartment building. She’s also the only person in the world who knows his secret, but she’s had plenty of training keeping secrets.

Maggie, once upon a time, was a priest in the Catholic Church. Until, that is, she realized that was better suited to being a woman of… anything than she was to being a man of God. She left the church to transition, and has since grappled with her queerness, its place in her faith, and what kind of person she has to become to balance both. She’ll be the first to tell you, it’s been a journey.

These days, Maggie makes her money splitting her time between working as a call center representative for the Voida Nestor Corp media conglomerate, and working at a secondhand tech co-op.

She sees herself in Ziggy, sees what would happen if she allowed herself to pull back from the world. So, she doesn’t. She hangs out with folks from the co-op after work. She collects old boardgames, the kind that you have to summon a small village to play. She’s determined to convince Zig to play piano for her.

She loves him. But not enough to let herself become him.

The Shiprat

It was supposed to be a temporary name. It wasn’t supposed to stick. When the people on the Fisher boat spotted Rat wandering along the banks of one of Albinoch’s many canals, drenched in blood, with a microchip jammed into his brain and not a memory left in his head, they took him in. Just until he got better, they said.

Years came and went. His memory didn't. The name stuck.

Rat is so called because in the days after he was taken in by the Fisher People, he looked like nothing so much as a drowned rat: thin, glassy-eyed, and shaking, and also because in those early days, despite his impressive height, his hosts kept finding him in increasingly unlikely places all over their narrow, compact canal boat.

He doesn't squeeze himself into cabinets to hide anymore. The feelings of being hunted by an unknown assailant have largely ebbed. He has his own boat now, a boat that he's earned. A boat that's finally beginning to feel like home.

The chip in Rat's brain is called a RABIT, a rare, expensive neural implant that's supposed to record sensory experiences and enable the user to broadcast thoughts like radio waves. Theoretically. But whoever shoved this particular hunk of silicon into Rat's brain hadn't done it particularly well, and aside from the lingering amnesia, actually using the chip for anything more complicated than brief radio chatter tends to be more trouble than it's worth.

Trying to discover what happened to him is a priority, of course. But there are two things that rank higher. He has to keep the lights on in his very own boat, which he does using a knack for programming and coding to work on custom LogPADs, wearable, modular computers that have become an integral part of Albinoch's day to day life.

He's also on a one-man tear to completely exterminate Lazarine vampires from Albinoch. Rat hates vampires. He hates them with an intensity that burns hot enough to make him wonder what sort of person he used to be, if he hated like this back then, too. He's watched one too many people dragged into the dark by slavering monsters wearing the faces of people they loved. If the people in power won't do anything to curb the bloodsucking plague, then it's down to him.

And a couple of his friends.

These days Rat, Sailor (a nineteen year old Fisher with a gleam in their eye and a dream of making a difference) and Bernadette (Bernie, an engineer and munitions expert), are the only thing standing between the defenseless children of Albinoch and a grisly fate.

These are my babies!! Please love them like I do 😭

(a final and slight disclaimer, these character models are almost accurate, but due to the limitations of the program I used, Ziggy is missing a scar across his face, and Rat is missing a pair of big, round-frame glasses. Maggie's perfect because she is.)

[cityofalbinoch]

This blog is no longer only a repository for my Albinoch worldbuilding project, it's also where I'll talk mostly about my NaNoWriMo project, a queer cyber-noir crime thriller. With Vampires.

Our Lady Albinoch.

Here's the pitch:

Ziggy Holiday is a private eye trying to make ends meet and balance his life with his undeath in the city at the end of the world. He has a professional policy not to care about the jobs he takes. He can't afford to get invested. But a mysterious knock at his door in the dead of night and a rash of grisly, bloodless murders will force him to re-evaluate the line between caring too much, and not caring enough.

The Shiprat is a man with no name, living with the Canal-boat dwelling nomads who found him bleeding out on the banks. He's looking for his identity, the answer to who gave him a janky brain chip and why they left him alone to die. But a missing friend and a growing sense of dread raise the question of whether chasing the past is worth it.

It's got Gay!

It's got Trans!

It's got Vampirism As A Metaphor For Capitalism!

It's got Detective!

What more could you need? So this November, come along with me while I kill myself writing Our Lady Albinoch, a journey into the deepest parts of what makes me tick. Let's discover how fucked up I am together!

[cityofalbinoch]

Art by Jakub Rebelka

[cityofalbinoch]

Who are the people that call Albinoch home? What do they contribute to the landscape of this massive, sprawling city?

ALLERCORPS

The Allied Earth Remainder Corporations is a corporate alliance made between a few huge megaconglomerates. This alliance governs Albinoch through appointees to the Corporate-Municipal Legislative Council, as well as working together to ensure that their profit margins keep growing, and their investors both on and off-world remain pleased.  * The CMLC (“Cumlicks,” if you will) is a governing body, made up of appointed representatives of each member of the Allercorps, charged with the care and keeping of Albinoch’s citizenry. They handle law creation and legislature, budgeting, infrastructure plans, and the social welfare of the city. Some people might argue that they do a bad job at this, as they are so influenced by the corporate, profit-driven interests of their employers that they can’t make fair, even-headed decisions in favor of the people. Their response to this criticism has been to pass another tax break for the top income bracket.

A.M.P.D

Albinoch Municipal Police Department (or Asshole Military Police Douchebags, depending on how civic-minded you are). A highly militarized entity paid by the Corporate-Municipal Legislative Council to enforce Albinoch’s laws and protect the interest of the Allercorps at all costs.  * the A.M.P.D’s ace in the hole, aside from all of their standard military police, bloated-budget, skull-bashing bullshit, are the Weres. W.E.R.E. officers (Warrant Escapee Retrieval Expert) are genetically modified to have enhanced senses and physical strength, speed, and stamina. They have superb night vision, and are capable of tracking an individual’s scent trail or sniffing out hidden contraband. For that reason, Weres often work with K-9 officers, or in some divisions of the AMPD have replaced K-9 units completely. Weres can also undergo a physical transformation that for a short time allows them to become even stronger and faster than before, though this leaves the officer in question drained after an episode. When this happens, their features become bestial, almost lupine. When a prisoner or detainee escapes custody, spotlights are lit, and can paint the clouds with pale circles that look almost like a full moon. People joke that when a full moon is out, you have to be wary of wolves. As the Lazarine problem has encroached further and further into the city, it’s become a part of Were officers’ duties to hunt down nests and exterminate them.

CASEY FAMILY

A brutal organized crime family. Irish transplants. The Caseys run Kismet, the biggest gambling district in Albinoch. If you place a bet anywhere in the city, at some point your money will pass through a Casey’s hand. They run casinos, race tracks, fight rings, you name it. If you can gamble on it, they own it. Well connected, but not seen as valid members of high society, the higher tiers of the family live a pale reflection of the Delta District lifestyle, lording over their own enterprise. Because gambling is tied to other vices, they also have a big hand in the drugs, liquor, and sex trades, though they aren’t the only ones by far.

FISHER PEOPLE

Permanent residents of the canals, the Fisher People live on long, narrow riverboats and remain constantly on the move. Due to some contract signed decades ago, Fisher People are technically sovereign, with their own (elected and impeachable) queen and council of elders—though they do live and work in Albinoch. As a result, they have a reputation for sheltering criminals and undesirables, since the police can’t legally enter their boats. They’re very private and insular, but they also have a reputation for helping those truly in need.  * Market: when a collection of private and public Fisher Ships link up at a mooring site to make an impromptu town. The process of linking the boats up is called Going To Market, and the communities are impermanent and shifting, though one or two of the larger boats tend to be more or less permanent figures ** Court: kind of like Market but much more temporary. When boats Go To Court, it’s because the Queen and the council have decided to meet about official business with important community figures. 

FOUNDRYMEN

Smelters, smiths, and other refiner tradesmen. A lot of their solidarity comes from looking down on Moles and Slabs. There’s a culture in the foundries of thinking that the other workers are less skilled—after all, they only pull things out of the ground, they don’t make anything. Though recently some people have begun to wonder whether that point of view was grown naturally, or if it was seeded by corporate interests afraid of worker solidarity between industries. 

MOLES

Miners. Miners have a very low life expectancy, comparatively, and are also comparatively likely to be infected with Lazarine Vampirism. As a result, Moles all contribute to a shared medical fund that can be used to pay for treatment for illness, but also support a miner’s family in the event of their death. 

RIGGERS

Oil rig workers and their families. Since actual Rig work takes employees away for months at a time, Riggers provide each other with a social safety net, looking after each other while part of their families are away. This includes childcare, communal meals, and just going to check on each other. 

SLABS

Quarry workers. Slabs tend to live near the edges of Albinoch, because their workplace is the farthest away from the city. As a result, they see a lot of attacks from Lazarine Vamps, and have fortified their neighborhoods accordingly. Their relationship with their other slabs is close to that of a comrade-in-arms.

[midnight-illustrator]

The Femme Fatales

These gals (gender neutral) are the bad bitch squad of my cybernoir world, the City of Albinoch. From left to right, Ailbhe Casey, violent party girl and heir to the Casey Crime Empire; Esmerelde Marcone, wealthy, razor-sharp creature of the night; and Liam Shay, professionally known as Sara Femme, the drag darling of Albinoch and Esme's favorite midnight snack. They're terrible! I love them!

[cityofalbinoch]

What makes up a world?

We don't create in a vacuum, and lately I've been thinking about why Albinoch is shaping up the way it is. Below I've compiled a list of various stories and songs that I think have molded a critical part of what I'm putting out into the world. I sincerely recommend you check all of these out, if you haven't already (with one glaring exception oops). The nuances of Cyberpunk, and Vampires, and Speculative Noir fiction are all so fun to explore on their own, and I've really enjoyed figuring out how to mesh.

FILM/TV

Strange Days (1995)*

Blade Runner (1982)

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Near Dark (1987)

Lost Boys (1987)

Johnny Mnemonic (1995) (affectionate)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2004)

Angel (1999-2005)

Life on Mars (UK) (2006-2007)

Dresden Files (2007) (derogatory-affectionate)

Midnight Mass (2021)

Mute (2013) (DEROGATORY)**

MUSIC

Princess Goes To The Butterfly Museum

David Bowie (especially Lazarus)

Lanulos by HereComeHere

MCR

The Clash

Death

X-Ray Specs

Jhariah

Bauhaus

LITERATURE

"Johnny Mnemonic" (Gibson, 1981)

Fetch Phillips novels (Luke Arnold, 2020-2023)

Dresden Files novels (Jim Butcher, 2000-ongoing)

Interview with a Vampire (Anne Rice)

GAMES

Vampire: the Masquerade (TTRPG)

Cyberpunk series (little derogatory)

All of these works are found in fragments and little pieces all through Albinoch, in her setting, her technology, and her people. I've really enjoyed taking an inventory of parts of this city and asking, "okay, where did you come from?" I think it's important to recognize that even original creative works are a patchwork of the things their makers love. And this city more than anything has helped me recognize how much I make stories for and because of the stories I love.

*Strange Days is truly one of my favorite movies of all time. Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett are fantastic in this, and it somehow even feels more prescient and applicable now that it's almost 30 years old. HOWEVER. In between the noir buddy dynamics and pathetic poor little meow meows, it's an incredibly heavy movie with some serious potential triggers. The heaviness is, I think, merited for what the film attempts to deal with. More than any other title on this list, I'd check the doesthedogdie for this film before watching it, just in case.

** Don't watch this movie. Don't. It's not even fun to watch going in knowing it's bad. This is ABSOLUTELY NOT an endorsement for this movie. It was three fucking hours of my life I'll never get back. Thinking about it is raising my blood pressure. But it felt intellectually dishonest not to include this movie on the list, because a lot of the reason Albinoch even exists is because I got so mad about the way Mute murders cyberpunk and wears its skin like a cheap suit to cover for how dogshit it actually is that I resolved to singlehandedly do better. This movie is also incredibly triggering. But instead of dealing with heavy topics in horrific but respectful ways to interrogate failings in society, it goes "hoohoo wouldn't this be fucked up" and then does it. It sets up some interesting worldbuilding and then shits all over it for shock value because fuck you for trying to engage with its story or characters in any meaningful way. Fuck this movie.

[midnight-scrivener]

Updates! They've come!

I ponied up and did a lot of development work on Albinoch, a cyberpunk city where corporate oligarchies rule, and immortality is readily available to the rich and famous--with some... Minor side effects. 🧛

Here's the opening scene of a story I'm working on, a queer noir story featuring the sad, sweaty little man that I built this whole world for in the first place. Most of this will be under a read more :) thanks again for helping me figure this out!

CHAPTER 1

There wasn’t much space to spare in the drag queens’ dressing room, but the weather outside had acquired an attitude since the start of my work, so the ladies had crammed me just inside the doorframe on a little folding stool. I sat leaned back against the flimsy wall, foot braced on the door jam. My leg made a barrier between the warm, smoky interior and the cold, peeling-paint facade of Albinoch, the last, best, biggest factory town that Earth had to offer.

Even in spite of the damp, the open door was doing the ladies and fellas of Rhythm Palace a world of good. The hot, stuffy air was circulating now, exhaling the various smokes, smells, and vapors out into the outside world, curling wisps euthanized by the pissing rain.

I smoked a cigarette. After all, what was the tobacco gonna do? Kill me?

It was getting to be the time of night where most functional human beings look for a comfy place to collapse. The show had just ended, and the performers were counting tips and touching up their makeup at the uneven counter and cracked mirror with vanity lighting, bulbs half-burnt out, before re-emerging through the beaded curtains and mingling with the other clubgoers.

A figure in a hooded, waterproofed windbreaker approached the doorway. He was big enough that had I been a worse doorman, I would have told him to duck as he entered. But as it happened, I didn’t move. “Hey pal,” I said, playing like this man was a stranger and hoping that he was smarter than my client had implied. “This door’s for staff only.”

He looked down at me.

“If you head around the block to the front of the building, security can get you squared away,” I said, cheerfully. Right into a canal somewhere, I did not add.

“He in there?” the man asked, ignoring my helpful advice.

“Specificity really is a lost art.” My voice rasped from the smoke, but I could never tell if when that happened I sounded tough, or ill. “There’s about a dozen ‘he’s in here, bud, and most of them are presently ‘she’s, so I think you should probably look elsewhere.”

“You know the one I want,” he said. “Else you wouldn’t be here.”

The chatter died away behind me. I didn’t look back. I took my cigarette out of my mouth and pulled the mask back up over my nose so I could enunciate more clearly. “I’m here because you shouldn’t be, Greg. I’ve asked you twice to leave this doorway. Don’t make me make it three.”

“The last guy was bigger. He still can’t walk right.” Greg reached out to grab my tie. “If you won’t move, I’ll move you, tiny.”

I let him. I also let my coat fall away from my side, revealing that my free hand was hovering very close to a battered-but-functional static-charge revolver (standard AMPD issue). “Greg,” I admonished. “This is three.”

He paused, looking at me hard and cold. “Pussy,” he said, like harsh words would be enough to make me cast my licensed and registered insurance aside and fight him man to man.

“Probably,” I agreed brightly. “But an armed one.”

Greg eyed the gun like someone who’d never had the pleasure of having a superheated nugget of electrically charged heat and light bore a hole in him, but had a healthy nervousness about the idea anyway.

I shooed him with my cigarette hand. “Hello?” I said. “You’re wrinkling my tie, here. Either leave or give me an excuse to shoot you, idiot.”

Greg hesitated for another moment, but released my shirt. “Bitch is dead,” he said. “And you’re dead too.”

Ah, Greg. So close. Half credit.

He vanished into the night like a big, melodramatic baby vanishes into… whatever one of those would vanish into. The city of Albinoch continued to spit on whichever of her unlucky children happened to be on the streets.

Slowly, the talk started up behind me again. I allowed myself to relax. I straightened my tie, trying not to show how grateful I was that it hadn’t actually come to blows.

“Hey.” A voice at my shoulder. My client. I held up the cigarette for him, still scanning the dark.

“Think he’ll come back?” asked Liam Shay, professionally known as Sara Femme, Angel of Albinoch. He took the cigarette, holding it in a plum, painted pout as he dragged.

“Probably not tonight,” I said. “In future, no promises.”

He dragged a delicate hand across my shoulder blades. “You’re real for this, Zig. Thank you.”

“Thank me in cash,” I said. But I reached back and squeezed his hand.

“The restraining order should be in effect day after tomorrow,” Liam said, coming around to lean on the door frame next to my foot. Sara’s face always surprised me with how delicate it was. Liam was a beautiful man, but a… manly one. Protruding brow, square jaw, the whole deal. But with a sponge and a brush and a hell of a lot of glue, he could create Sara’s ephemeral mask. She had an openness, a welcoming innocence that lured audiences in. When she danced, the stage lights turning her hair into a halo and the rhinestones glittering on her costumes like liquid diamond, any man could fall in love with her. Hell, I had, once upon a time.

Liam smiled, and I nearly did again. “Studying me, detective?” he asked.

“How do you get your eyebrows so flat?” I asked, like that was what I’d been thinking about.

He laughed. “You gotta lick the glue before the last layer.”

“Ah.”

“One day I’m gonna get you in my chair, you know.”

“God help us all when you do,” I said. I chuckled. “I don’t think even you could pretty me up.” I looked out into the rain. “So,” I said. “Greg, huh?”

Liam sighed. He hugged himself. “Greg.”

“How long did you let that happen to you?”

“Don’t be an asshole,” he said. “He was sweet at first. And it’s not like you ever come around anymore.”

“No, well, I got dangerously close to developing feelings,” I said, shrugging like that was the only reason.

“Would that be such a bad thing?” Liam asked, straightening half-indignantly. But then he sagged back against the doorframe, hand pressing into his immaculately made-up eye.

I sat up on my stool. “You okay?”

“Fine,” he said. “Just dizzy all of a sudden.”

I stood and took him by the arm and the small of his back, guiding him to my seat. When he settled, I said, “Now don’t move, I’ll get you a water.” I squeezed his shoulder.

Liam winced, flinching away from me.

I smelled blood in the air, hard like iron and sweet like crimson. My mouth flooded with saliva. I swallowed, harder than I meant to. “You’re hurt.”

He shrugged the shoulder I hadn’t squeezed. “It’s nothing; I’m fine.”

Apparently I didn’t look reassured enough, because he pulled down the sleeve of his costume, exposing a bandage that bloomed red where my thumb had made contact with the wound. “See?”

“That doesn’t look like nothing,” I said, eyes trained on the red.

The red the red the red.

“It’s really not bad. These things just take forever to dry out,” Liam said. I could hear his heartbeat, and I couldn’t ignore it anymore, not with the red red red right in front of me. The splotch was growing. I’d opened it back up. Liam’s heart was fast, and though I couldn’t see the color of his cheeks under his makeup, his neck was flushed with… embarrassment? Shame?

“Maybe we should cover that again,” I said, voice dry and cracked.

Liam looked from it to me. “Are you scared of blood, Ziggy?”

“Don’t… like looking at it,” I lied. My stomach was doing backflips, but for other reasons.

“That’s a little weird for a cop, isn’t it?”

“Former cop,” I managed. I swallowed again and tore my eyes away. I grabbed a first aid kit where it hung from a half-sunk screw in the plywood wall and held it out.

Liam took it, and I saw that flash again, some private ugly emotion as he peeled the old gauze away, revealing a neat semicircle of punctures that welled with more crimson. “Fuck,” I breathed. “You’re Bleeding again? I thought you were off that!”

“Money’s money,” Liam said. He wiped the wound with an antiseptic patch and peeled the adhesive back off a new bandage. “Lots of the girls are doing it. Things are tight, and the bloodbars pay.”

I looked back over my shoulder. The other queens had turned away from the mirror, not even hiding that they were listening in. I could hear all their hearts, all their lives, beating the inside of my skull like timpani drums. It made me want to scream.

Liam eyed me. “Are you judging us, Ziggy Holiday?”

“No,” I said. Then, more firmly, “No, of course not. I’m worrying about you. Those Delta District fangers aren’t like normal johns. They don’t see you like a person, they see you like food. What if something goes wrong? What if one of them gets too hungry to control himself, or if he’s too rich to care about pesky things like homicide charges?”

“Nothing’s gone wrong yet,” Liam said, voice cool. Sara’s painted face was blank, an impeccable mask. “And I can worry about myself.”

“I’m sure you can,” I said, wrestling the animal inside me down now that the blood was out of sight. “But until the day after tomorrow, that is literally my job, so cut a guy some slack.”

“Thanks, Zig.” Liam stood up. “You should head home, get some shuteye. One of the bouncers is giving me a ride.”

I’d never been a shining beacon of professionalism, but I could recognize a dismissal when one walked up and slapped me. I nodded. “Night, then,” I said.

“Night.”

I had to pass him to get out the door. For a moment, it seemed like we would hug, break the tension, and go back to our easy conversation.

But as I got close I caught a whiff of the blood, and for a moment my mind’s eye was overwhelmed with the image of me sinking my teeth into Liam’s throat, tearing his flesh, and following his twitching body to the cracked cement floor. Drinking my fill as the pristine white of his costume bled red red red red red.

I ducked around him and stepped into the cold rain. Albinoch spit on me too, and I was grateful that to her at least, I was just another faceless child in her anonymous womb.

My stomach twisted, hungry, and beneath my mask I bared my teeth against the sensation of it.

I made it home in a haze. It wasn’t all that far to walk, and I stuck to well lit areas. No reason to mess with anything hiding in the shadows.

Albinoch had a vampire problem. And I was part of it.

AH I've just discovered I have Polls okay I need. Help

Creatively speaking I've had ants in my brain, and I need Strangers and Internet Friends to tell me what to do because I can't make myself focus on anything of my own free will :)

I need. To do Something, or I shall Die. But decision paralysis has gripped me in its unproductive vise and I'm Struggling

(I'm also happy to talk more about these in depth if it helps folks make a decision)

(this absolutely does not matter and is not important but I appreciate it anyway ❤️)

[cityofalbinoch]

Welcome to Albinoch, the last, best, biggest factory town that Earth has to offer.

Humanity has always found it easier to run away from its problems than to fix them. So it should come as no surprise that interplanetary space travel was prioritized over unfucking our own environment. Terraformers deployed to Mars and Venus and the Moons of Jupiter wouldn’t work at home because of the way they made things worse before they made them better. So the Earth, our Earth, was dying. And we were running away. 

And that’s where Albinoch comes in.

Albinoch is a megacity founded around resource extraction. Humanity may be fleeing our planet in massive spaceships, but someone has to stick around and fucking. Build the massive spaceships, yaknow? So while most of the world was being left barren and derelict, several of these megatropolises dotted across the globe, spreading outward like concrete cold sores. 

Our dear Albinoch in particular was focused on extracting and refining the raw materials needed for building (though some ambitious businesses are trying to break into industrial machining and manufacture). The city is sandwiched between several mines for coal, various ores, and minerals; a huge quarry that spirals into the ground like the mouth of a titanic deep sea suckerfish, and an offshore oil rig whose lights we can see more clearly than the stars most nights, bobbing and rocking in the swells. As a result of all this bustling industry, the land got unstable. The whole damn city *settled,* sinking below sea level and flooding the streets. These days narrow canals are everywhere, almost as plentiful as the streets and back-alleys, populated by gondolas and riverboats, for living on and for taking people where they need to go.

The Allercorps mined deep for the fleeing colonists, and when they did, they discovered a dormant, prehistoric amoeba that colonized infected people's bodies, turning them into strong, fast, sensitive corpses with a hunter's mind and an insatiable craving for human blood. 

Scientists all over Albinoch immediately set about looking for a cure, but what they found instead is that by manipulating the Amoeba's genetic code, they could essentially manufacture a treatment for eternal life, youth, and beauty...... With a few side effects.

Of course this treatment was only available to a select few. The upper echelons of society's best and brightest. 

Meanwhile the infectious amoeba, transferring in the blood and saliva of its hosts, continued to ravage Albinoch's faceless masses. 

So, bringing us up to speed—the people of the city are ruled by beautiful, charismatic, wealthy vampires, both loathing them and longing to become one of them, while being haunted in their nighttimes and nightmares by the bloodthirsty faces of their dead loved ones, calling out in the mimicked voices of those they've killed. The UV Lamps along the more populated streets feel like a bandaid, and just because you’re scared to go out at night doesn’t mean you always have a choice. If the wind turns right, the parties from the wealthy quarter are audible, reminding folks of the gulf between their lives and ours. Never go out alone if you can help it, unless you want to become another stolen voice in a dead man’s chest.

[cityofalbinoch]

This blog is for my cyberpunk vampire worldbuilding project, Albinoch. In this rainy, flooded city, the rich are literal bloodsuckers, and corporate interest reigns over the last dregs of humanity trying to survive as the people who can afford it leave Earth behind entirely.

The intent of this blog is to be a repository for the world of Albinoch as a whole, and also to serve as a way to get to know the people that populate it. I'm building this mostly to house a novel project I'm developing, but figuring out the world and her people was so much fun that I didn't want to wait to share it with anyone.

Thanks for coming to Albinoch! Hope you stay a while.

I'm keeping this post updated with a running table of contents for all relevant curiosities! Lore, characters, inspirations, and ongoing projects can all be found here.

Overview: What is Albinoch? What do you mean it's underwater? Why are there vampires here? Answers enclosed within!

Inspirations: a curated list of media recommendations (and one HARD nonrecommendation), Movies, TV, Music, Books, and Games that have added bits and pieces to the tapestry of the city.

Our Lady Albinoch: a pitch and overview for the NaNoWriMo (2023) project slowly consuming my soul from the inside out.

LORE

Factions: Who's who and who are they connected to? In a city like Albinoch, you need people watching your back, but who can you really trust? Decide for yourself, using this helpful guide!