Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden

1. #1═══════[Setting]═══════constantselective
   The year is 2053. The world is living in the wreckage of the Cyberpocalypse, and basketball has been a capital crime since the Great B-Ball Purge of 2041. Neo New York is a cold, crowded ruin where neo-shekels buy chups, medicine, and silence. Residual b-ball energy still pools in the deep places and mutates whoever stays too long. The events of the 1996 Space Jam are historical fact. A Chaos Dunk has just erased Manhattan and killed on the order of fifteen million people. Charles Barkley, the only living man known to have performed a Chaos Dunk, is the name on every warrant.
2. #2[🌐] The Known Worldconstantselective
   Six continents remain on the maps, and more than two hundred countries are still named, but most of them are rumors, passport stamps, or ruins. The lived world of this age is Neo New York and the layers under it: sewers, Cesspool X, Proto Neo New York, the old catacombs, and the roads outward to Liberty Island, the barren outskirts, the Chup Mines, and the sealed tomb of Cuchulainn. Beyond the sky, the slave ship Necron 5 still runs. A separate realm, the B-Ball Dimension, touches this one through whistles, statues, and the dead. Jickleberg survives in scripture and in the saying that chicken fries are legal there. The Dark places people swear by — Hell, the Deathtemple, the Ghost Dimension — are treated as real destinations, not metaphors.
3. #3[🌐] How This World Feelsconstantselective
   Life is scarce, sarcastic, and religious in the same breath. People freeze in doorways and duck into churches for the heat. Ballers are either dead, hiding, or employed to hunt other ballers. Friendship is real and so is sudden death. Power is technical: a weaker fighter beats a stronger one by reading the jam, the zauber, or the gun. B-ball is spoken of the way other ages speak of lost magic — with jokes, contraband, and terror. Almost nobody is purely righteous. The strong take neo-shekels from the weak, and the Department takes the strong.
4. #4[🌐] The Law of the Banselective

   Keys: illegal, outlawed, ban, sportlover, sportlovers, contraband

   Since 2041, basketball is outlawed worldwide. Owning a b-ball is contraband. Practicing a dribble, keeping a jersey, raising a living ball, or speaking too fondly of the old leagues can bring the B-Ball Removal Department. The public name for the victims of the ban is sportlovers. Enforcement is summary. Former professionals were massacred in the Great B-Ball Purge, also called the B-Ballnacht. What remains of the sport survives in apartments, sewers, tombs, and the B-Ball Dimension.
5. #5[📜] The Cyberpocalypseselective

   Keys: 666, post-cyberpocalypse, Cyberpocalypse, Boston Massacre, post-cyberpocalyptic

   About two thousand years before 2053, the British Empire crucified a Jicklebergian freedom fighter named Clispaeth Ryuji Atuck. The killing is remembered as the Boston Massacre. His disciples raised armies under his name and fought the Empire for 666 years. Both sides were destroyed. The world that remained is the Cyberpocalypse's aftermath: broken cities, surviving cults, and a god who used to be a man. People still live in those consequences. They call the present the post-cyberpocalypse.
6. #6[📜] Jicklebergselective

   Keys: Jicklebergian, Jickleberg

   Jickleberg is the land Clispaeth fought to free from the British Empire. In the present it is half scripture and half rumor: a place one might still hold a passport for, where chicken fries are legal, and where the old war began. Neo New Yorkers invoke it when they want a somewhere-else that is not this city.
7. #7[📜] Space Jamselective

   Keys: Nerdlucks, 1996, Looney Tunes, Space Jam, Nerdluck

   <space_jam> In 1996 the Nerdlucks stole the b-ball energies of Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Shawn Bradley, Larry Johnson, and Muggsy Bogues and became the Monstars, in order to defeat Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes. When the stolen energies were returned to their ballers, residue stayed in the ball. That residue made the ball a power of its own. The negative portion that escaped became Shadow Barkley. The ball is the Ultimate B-Ball. This is not a fable. It is the origin of the weapon B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S. intends to use. </space_jam>

8. #8[📜] The Great B-Ball Purgeselective

   Keys: B-Ballnacht, Purge, Great B-Ball Purge, B-Ball Purge, 2041

   In 2041, during a game, Charles Barkley performed a Chaos Dunk. Nearly everyone in attendance died. His wife Maureen died. Their infant son Hoopz lived, and so did Barkley. Basketball was banned the world over. What followed is the Great B-Ball Purge, or B-Ballnacht: professionals and fans hunted and killed in a sweep of sports bigotry. Shaquille O'Neal, Ron Artest, Hakeem Olajuwon, and many others vanished into that silence. The golden age of b-ball ended. Some survivors say the Purge was not the death of basketball but the death of mankind's last excuse for joy.
9. #9[📜] Spalding and the Prototype Yearsselective

   Keys: prototype program, 2039, 2040, Spalding, Doctor Davis

   <spalding_history> Before the Purge, the Spalding company built b-balls in what is now the buried factory under Proto Neo New York. Between late 2039 and early 2040 its scientists pushed a prototype whose aerodynamics outclassed every ball before it. Doctor Davis trusted manufactured slamicite as a safeguard and called the design foolproof. Doctor Cosby insisted the object was more than a b-ball. A test subject performed a Chaos Dunk inside the program. Cosby died in the accident and did not stay dead. Scott H. Creelman, called the Master, was the company's chief and remains bound to the prototype's unfinished charge. The Purge emptied the building. The records, keys, and the F.I.N.A.L. G.U.N. are still inside. </spalding_history>

10. #10[📜] The Manhattan Catastropheselective

    Keys: fifteen million, Manhattan, 2053, 15 million

    In 2053 a second Chaos Dunk struck Manhattan and killed about fifteen million people. The B-Ball Removal Department treats Charles Barkley as the only possible author, because no other living baller is known to have thrown one. B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S. regards Manhattan as a pre-season warmup for a dunk meant to scour the entire world. The island is a grave. Sirens and blame move through Neo New York in its wake.
11. #11[⚡] Chaos Dunkselective

    Keys: chaos dunk, megaton, Verboten Jam, Chaos Dunk

    <chaos_dunk> The Chaos Dunk is a jam of cosmic force. Street rumor prices it near a hundred and fifty megatons. One throw levels a stadium; a greater one erases a city. It throws the balance of chaos and order out of true. Charles Barkley is the only living human known to have performed it, in 2041. The Ultimate B-Ball can be turned toward a dunk larger still. Spalding's prototype proved a smaller Chaos Dunk could be forced out of a test subject. People also call the art the Verboten Jam. Barkley swore, after Maureen, that no one would suffer it again. </chaos_dunk>

12. #12[⚡] Forbidden Dunksselective

    Keys: forbidden dunk, Hypno Dunk, Verboten, Double Dribble, Holy Dunk

    <forbidden_dunks> Not every banned jam is a Chaos Dunk. The old leagues suppressed dunks that threatened the game's stability. The Hypno Dunk lulls onlookers into sleep; texts describing it still exist, and performing it is forbidden. The Verboten Jam is the name given to the family of dunks that court catastrophe, of which the Chaos Dunk is the apex. A Holy Dunk, by contrast, is a sacred offensive jam tied to Dikembe Mutombo and to Clispaeth, not to massacre. Double Dribble, taught by certain ancient balls, is a technique of two strikes in one possession, not a forbidden apocalypse. </forbidden_dunks>

13. #13[⚡] B-Ball Energyselective

    Keys: residual energy, b-ball energy, mutation, bball energy, mutated

    B-ball energy is a real force. It collects in balls, statues, entrails urns, and the deep stone under the city. Touching a true statue can restore a baller's energy. In high concentrations, as in Proto Neo New York, the loose energy mutates flesh: basketball tumors, whistle-shaped hands, animal features, wire hair. Negative energy, especially from slamicite, curdles into hexes, fog, and Chaos Dunks. The Ultimate B-Ball held the stolen energies of five ballers and then kept a residue of its own. Thunder, some believers say, is the gods playing basketball in the sky.
14. #14[⚡] The Ultimate B-Ballselective

    Keys: the Ultimate Ball, Ultimate B-Ball, Ultimate Bball

    The Ultimate B-Ball is the same ball the Nerdlucks used in 1996. After the stolen energies went home, the ball kept a power that has kept growing until it rivals what it held on the night of the Space Jam. It can restore energy. It can also host a Chaos Dunk large enough to end the species. B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S. holds it aboard Necron 5. Shadow Barkley intends to use it to kill every living person and replace them with clones of Charles Barkley, so that b-ball can "properly evolve." A scale statue of the ball stands in the catacombs; touching the statue restores energy and is not, by itself, the weapon.
15. #15[⚡] The Hell B-Ballselective

    Keys: Hell B-Ball, Hell Ball, demonic b-ball, Hell Bball

    <hell_ball> The Hell B-Ball is a demonic basketball. Nobody reputable will swear to its whole past. It is bound up with jamicite and with negative b-ball energy, and a Chaos Dunk already clings to its history. Seating a prototype ball into jamicite completes it. Paired with the Shimmerglobe it can be double-dribbled, two attacks from one possession. It is not a toy and not a legal ball. It is the kind of object Spalding's dead scientists were afraid they had already built. </hell_ball>

16. #16[⚡] The Prototype B-Ballselective

    Keys: prototype ball, Prototype B-Ball, the prototype

    Spalding's prototype outflew every legal ball of its decade. Its jam capacity was driven toward triple the old standard. Manufactured jamicite was meant to bleed off danger; manufactured slamicite did the opposite and fed negative energy. The test accident produced a Chaos Dunk and killed Doctor Cosby. The prototype still needs a jamicite charge before it will serve. Until it is charged it is a locked door, not a weapon. Creelman believed only one baller was worthy to finish the work.
17. #17[⚡] The Shimmerglobeselective

    Keys: Shimmer Globe, Shimmerglobe, lord of b-ball

    The Shimmerglobe is an ancient b-ball forged by proto-dwarfs with magics that predate the Cyberpocalypse. It pours speed, bounce, range, and accuracy into its chosen bearer, and it does not miss. It is called, by those who have held it, something like the lord of b-balls. It chooses. It can be double-dribbled with the Hell B-Ball. It is not for sale in any mall.
18. #18[⚡] Jamicite and Slamiciteselective

    Keys: Slamicite, manufacted, slamicite, Jamicite, jameticite

    Jamicite, sometimes jammed together in speech as jameticite, is a mystic material of b-ball. Manufactured jamicite emits less negative energy than its rival and is used to charge prototypes, seat the Hell B-Ball, and open certain gates, including the inner gate of Cuchulainn's Tomb. A cache of manufactured jamicite lies in that tomb. Slamicite is the dangerous twin. It vents negative b-ball energy, mutates bystanders, and has already midwifed a Chaos Dunk. Doctor Davis trusted it. The ruins say he was wrong.
19. #19[⚡] Zaubersselective

    Keys: Zauber, Zaubers, zauber tome, Battlers Tome, Zuaber, Zaubermancer, Battler's Tome

    Zaubers are the hereditary magic of the James blood, descending from LeBron James. They are charms and weapons both: a zauber can be held, thrown, and studied. A Zaubermancer trains from tomes — fundamentals of battle, status, and tactics — and from the living art. Known zaubers include Plain, Fire (warm to the touch), Ice (a mystic aura), Thunder (said to be the source of "Mystic" Johnson's power), Time (it uses the space-time continuum), Hell (forged in infernal fires), Bloody (an evil aura off an ancient thing), and Snail (imbued with snails). LeBron told his descendant to master them and never to spend them on an ill purpose. B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S. killed him hunting that legacy. The Monstars themselves strike with zaubers.
20. #20[⚡] Living B-Ballsselective

    Keys: Chamberlain greens, Jordan greens, living b-ball, living basketball, ranch, Gatorade Fierce

    <living_balls> Some b-balls are alive. In the B-Ball Dimension, Matt Guokas keeps a ranch where they are raised like stock, fed, and trained. Their notable traits are strength, wisdom, vigor, and speed. Food and drink move the numbers: Chamberlain greens raise wisdom and strength while cutting vigor; Jordan greens raise strength and wisdom and lower vigor; Gatorade Fierce lifts all of them. A living ball is still contraband on the surface. Types in circulation include the ordinary b-ball, the spiked ancient ball, the mystic ball shot through with old magic, the Hell B-Ball, and the prototype. </living_balls>

21. #21[⚡] The Oneselective

    Keys: the one, The One

    <the_one> "The One" is a title, not a nickname. It attaches to Hoopz Barkley: a child born from an egg that looked like a b-ball, the only infant to survive the 2041 Chaos Dunk, and a boy whose presence can shock a broken cyborg into remembering his orders. Vinceborg 2050 was rebuilt to destroy the One. Whether the title means messiah, weapon, or mistake depends on who is speaking. B-ball priests and terrorists are not speaking about the same future. </the_one>

22. #22[⚡] Combat in This Ageselective

    Keys: VP, guns'braster, Guard, gun'sbraster, Slam Master, Power, Brain

    Fights are martial first and mystical second. A Slam Master jams. A Zaubermancer casts and cuts. A Cyberdwarf strikes with grafted muscle and lost dwarf weapons. A guns'braster shoots, and Hoopz is one. Roles in a real fight fall into attack, healing, and effect. Measure a fighter in VP, BP, Power, Guard, Brain, and Speed. Timed precision matters more than a wild swing; an accurate hit hurts more than a heavy miss. Ken-like full-body reinforcement is not the local art — defense is footwork, Guard, and reading the opponent. Psychological pressure is a legal weapon. Jordan fights ballers at basketball itself when he wants the humiliation to be literate. Equipment is classed: b-balls, zaubers, muscles, and guns. Armor is threads, coats, techgear, robes, jerseys, and sweatbands.
23. #23[⚡] Neo-Shekelsselective

    Keys: neo-shekels, neo-shekel, shekel, NS

    The neo-shekel is the money of Neo New York and the buried cities. It is scarce. Ruffians roll drunks for it. Toll-takers in the sewers demand it. A casino stool might cost twenty-five; a corporate pistol bounty might be quoted in the thousands. There is no honest abundance. People still call them neo-shekels when they are begging.
24. #24[⚡] Vidconsselective

    Keys: Truckpump, vidcon, vidcons, Pump

    Vidcons are video games, still played in the ruins, especially by Hoopz, who is a gifted player and a hacker. A noisy critical tradition — the voice most associated with Truckpump, also called Pump — judges vidcons by harsh private laws: wall scrolls, anime cutscenes, and a contempt for anything that fails those tests. Pocky and Gatorade gum are the snacks of a long session. Vidcons are one of the few inherited pleasures the Purge did not think to ban.
25. #25[⚡] Chups and Street Chemistryselective

    Keys: diabetes, Ecto Cooler, chups, diabeetus, chup, insulin

    Chups are a homegrown substance. They ease glaucoma and they are what ruffians buy after a score. Insulin knocks down the diabeetus condition. Tobacco clears certain status ailments and negative stat twists. Ecto Cooler is wound medicine and also what Chin sells as a remedy. Steroids are for when the going gets tough. B-Ball Juice is the old on-the-go drink of active ballers; expired cans still turn up in Spalding. None of this is licensed. All of it is normal.
26. #26[🏴] B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S.selective

    Keys: BLOODMOSES, B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S, B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S., Blood Moses

    B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S. is a terrorist organization old enough that some accounts give it nearly a century. It kills for tools. It murdered LeBron James to reach the zaubers. It rebuilt Vince Carter as Vinceborg 2050 and aimed him at Hoopz Barkley. It holds the Ultimate B-Ball aboard the slave ship Necron 5. Its true head is Shadow Barkley. The organization's purpose is a final Chaos Dunk that leaves no survivors, followed by a world repopulated with clones of Charles Barkley so basketball can evolve without the rest of humanity in the way. Manhattan was a rehearsal. In public rumor the Ultimate Hellbane is one of theirs. That rumor is useful to them and false.
27. #27[🏴] B-Ball Removal Departmentselective

    Keys: B-Ball Removal Department, Inspector, Department, Removal Department

    The B-Ball Removal Department enforces the worldwide ban. Inspector Michael Jordan commands it. Agents arrest ballers, confiscate balls, and shoot sportlovers. Soldiers and troopers in its service carry guns and, when ordered, self-destruct rigs. Jordan's personal war against Charles Barkley is the Department's sharpest edge: he considers Barkley the author of both the 2041 dunk and Manhattan, and he will take hostages, including a child, to finish the point. The Department is not a secret. It is the law.
28. #28[🏴] The Duergarsselective

    Keys: dwarf, Grysh'tarn, Grysh, Duergars, Duergar

    Duergars are a dwarf-like people of the Chup Mines. They are predisposed to violence and to weapons inscribed with eldritch runes. Two things undo their caution: rubies, and Dunkaroos. They mine under genie masters who despise them, bar them from the sewers, and hoard the gems that Duergars call their essence. A Duergar without a dazzling ruby is, in their proverb, like a genie without a lamp. Their chieftain is Jamal Bloodguzzle. They worship Grysh'tarn. Their highest craft rite is the Awakening of the Artisan, in which a smith makes one work that can never be repeated. They are not the same people as the Cyberdwarf, though he recognizes a kinship. A separate curse can force a man into a rampaging Duergar shape; that is affliction, not citizenship.
29. #29[🏴] The Geniesselective

    Keys: Genies, Geniebane, Genie, Djinni, Djinn

    Genies, also called djinn, hold the Chup Mines and the Duergars in them. Their chief is Mohammed Geniebane, Chief of all Genies Combined. They are contemptuous of Duergar bodies, gems, and claims. A genie in a lamp can still be rubbed into the open and bound to a wish; Kazaam is the famous case, and his lamp is shaped like a boom box. Wishes run to power, wealth, or knowledge, and the knowledge is often a warning. Genies are not allies of the surface. They are masters of a hole in the ground who expect the hole to stay theirs.
30. #30[🏴] The Animal Peopleselective

    Keys: Animalite, Animal People, Animalites, furry, Cesspool

    The Animal People, or Animalites, live in Cesspool X. They paid Dr. Allard to cut them into animal bodies — vulture, kitsune, snail, dog, reindeer, and others — because the surface persecuted what they already were. Guthrie leads them. They would rather not kill. They keep an armory because surface raids taught them that preference is not armor. They call Allard a creator and also a tyrant who charges for freedom. Notable among them: Aethios Silverwind, once Aaron Barber, a vulture; J. Lindsay, who loves animals so completely she became one; Eric, snail-formed and a poet.
31. #31[🏴] The Diabetic Cultselective

    Keys: diabetes cult, cultist, diabetic cult, Liberty cult

    At the foot of the Statue of Liberty a cult keeps the sugar-sick faith. They worship the figure inside the statue and organize life around diabetes, insulin, and devotion. Outsiders call them loonies. Their ground includes cultists such as Mack, the ailing Gerrad Jenkins, and a man of shifting names — Reginald, Richards, Raffleson, Rutherford — who bargains in riddles. The figure they attend is Wilford Brimley, also called Yelmirb. He is lashed to insulin machinery and can aggravate diabeetus in others by drawing it toward himself.
32. #32[🏴] Square-Enix-Goyaselective

    Keys: Goya, Square-Enix-Goya, Square Enix Goya

    Square-Enix-Goya is a corporation that sells guns and leans on mines. It wants the F.I.N.A.L. G.U.N. so it can copy it and sell the copy. Its representatives quote a price, then send muscle if the price is refused. Deals with them are not conversations. They are invoices with consequences. The company is also tangled in the Chup Mines' output and in the quality-control language genie overseers use when they talk about efficiency.
33. #33[🏴] Guns'brastersselective

    Keys: guns'braster, Guns'braster, gun'sbraster, Zaubertech, Gun'sCon

    Guns'brasters are the gun faithful. They collect, grade, and sermonize. Mark is one of them; he won a collection at Gun'sCon 2038 and speaks of the F.I.N.A.L. G.U.N. as the nearest a person can come to the true faith of the weapon. Cheap irons such as the ZX Zaubertech line circulate on the open misery of the city. Hoopz grows up inside this culture as well as inside his father's guilt: a child who can shoot because the ball is illegal and the gun is not.
34. #34[🏴] The Hunter Boardselective

    Keys: hunter board, Ramirez, E-rank, hunter guild

    Proto Neo New York keeps a hunter board. Ranks run from E to S. Ramirez sits the board and treats greenhorns as a renewable resource of questions. The work is monster-killing for pay: fog-things, ghouls, and worse. It is not the Hunter Association of any other world. It is a corkboard in a mutant slum.
35. #35[✝️] Clispaethselective

    Keys: Defy Clispaeth, Clistpaeth, Clispaeth Christ, Clispaeth, Clispeath

    Clispaeth Ryuji Atuck is the god of this age and a man who died at the start of it. He was crucified by the British Empire in the Boston Massacre while leading Jickleberg toward freedom. The 666-year war that followed destroyed the old world. Churches still stand, including the cold church in Neo New York where Father Larry Bird keeps the altar. Believers call him loving and warn that blasphemy temps his wrath. Survivors of the Purge often want nothing from him, on the grounds that he has already taken enough. Oaths sound like "Clispaeth Christ" and "Holy Clispaeth." Dikembe Mutombo credited his game to Clispaeth. Michael Jordan's hatred of the faith is personal enough to have a name when he hardens himself: Defy Clispaeth. Thunder, the pious say, is gods jamming in heaven.
36. #36[✝️] Teresaselective

    Keys: saint of slams, Teresa, patron saint

    Teresa is the patron saint of slams and jams. Statues of her stand in the catacombs and in Dikembe Mutombo's tomb. She was a mistress of b-ball when the game was glory. After the Purge her image reads as a broken promise: hollow memory, not a living league. Some of her statues answer a touch with restored b-ball energy.
37. #37[✝️] Grysh'tarnselective

    Keys: Grysh'tarn, Gryshtarn

    Grysh'tarn is the power the Duergars name when they swear underground. Surface churches do not claim him. He belongs to ruby-dark, hammer-bright devotion, closer to the Awakening of the Artisan than to Clispaeth's crucifixion. Outsiders rarely hear the name pronounced with respect.
38. #38[✝️] The B-Ball Dimensionselective

    Keys: Bball Dimension, B-Ball Dimension, Dimension Whistle

    The B-Ball Dimension is a real otherworld. Dead ballers can watch the living from it. LeBron James does. Souls reach it, or fail to, depending on curses: a hex can pin a ghost in limbo between the tomb and this realm. The living enter by rare tools, above all the Dimension Whistle, which is shaped like a boom box and spends itself in one toot. Inside are Matt Guokas's ranch of living b-balls, a dating service run by Moe, festival arenas, and enough paradise that ballers who lost the surface still try to live a season there. Resonance of a visitor can cling to a portal after they leave.
39. #39[✝️] Ghosts and Limboselective

    Keys: limbo, Ghost Dimension, hex, ghost, Ghost Muscle

    Death is leaky. A ghost may relive the day it died and not know it is dead; Leonard, the Spalding janitor, is in that jeopardy. A curse can chain a baller to his tomb until someone breaks it, as with Dikembe Mutombo, whose shade is forgiven only when the hex lifts and he passes as b-ball mist. The Ghost Dimension is where freed ghosts go. Ghost Dad — Doctor Cosby — haunted Proto Neo New York under a hex, vomiting fog, until the chain was a choice he could drop. He pays the living back with Ghost Muscle, a fortification of the body by ghost power. Canopic urns in the catacombs hold prehistoric ballers' entrails so the souls can rest.
40. #40[✝️] Cuchulainnselective

    Keys: Cuchulainn, Cuchulain, space warlord

    Cuchulainn was a Celtic space warlord whose crimes are so foul that even people who know the name refuse the list. Clispaeth sealed him before the Cyberpocalypse finished. The seal eroded across millennia. He is still bound, but power leaks. That leak shows a person what they want most. Touching the shown desire is how his influence gets a finger into the world. His tomb stands north of Neo New York, full of that bait, and it holds manufactured jamicite behind a gate. He is not a rumor. He is a prisoner with a long reach.
41. #41[✝️] Hell and the Deathtempleselective

    Keys: Deathtemple, hellbound, Hell

    Hell is a place one can reach by dying wrong. The Deathtemple is the myth inside it: a punishment-house for people who lived with no moral regard. Kazaam names it when a wish for knowledge turns sour. The pious treat the myth as a reminder to live straight; the impious treat it as a destination with residents. Among those bound there are shapes and names the surface only meets as curses — steel paladins, odd saints of bad ends, and worse. Hell is not the Ghost Dimension and not the B-Ball Dimension. It is the third door.
42. #42[✝️] Kazaamselective

    Keys: kazaam, Kazaam

    Kazaam is a djinni whose lamp resembles a boom box. Rubbing it entitles the summoner to a wish, after which he returns to the lamp and leaves. A wish for power moves VP, BP, Power, Guard, Brain, and Speed. A wish for knowledge points at the Deathtemple and the fate of the immoral. He is older than the Purge and is recorded in zauber tomes as a known djinni, not a campfire story.
43. #43[✝️] The Columbus Day Curseselective

    Keys: gypsy curse, curse, Columbus Day

    A gypsy curse sits on Balthios James. Every Columbus Day he becomes a rampaging Duergar: bloodlust, no regard for whoever is beside him, and a hunger for rubies and gemstones that eats the rest of the personality. He hates to speak of it. The only release named in the curse itself is the eradication of all gypsies, which is a damnation, not a plan he accepts. On every other day he is a man.
44. #44[📍] Neo New Yorkselective

    Keys: the city, Neo-New York, NNY, Neo New York

    Neo New York is the surviving city, built in the ruins and still colder than the faith. Crime is the weather. Ruffians tax drunks for neo-shekels and go buy chups. Bums sleep on courts where no legal game has been played in twelve years. The B-Ball Removal Department posts soldiers at doors. Barkley and Hoopz keep an apartment in it and try not to be interesting. The mall has been a murder scene. Chin runs a shop that sells medicine, gossip, and the occasional racist courtesy. Heat is a reason to enter buildings. Hope is not.
45. #45[📍] The Church of Clispaethselective

    Keys: church, Father Larry, the altar

    A church of Clispaeth stands in Neo New York. Father Larry Bird is its priest, a Purge survivor who fears he is the last believer because most people come in only to escape the cold. The altar holds a statue. The place has sheltered Hoopz. It is holy, drafty, and watched. Bird and Barkley have history from before the ban, and Bird will tell a grieving man that Maureen was a woman of Clispaeth whether the grieving man can stand the sentence or not.
46. #46[📍] Chin's and the Mallselective

    Keys: NNY Mall, Chin, Eastern Motors, mall

    Chin's shop is a neighborhood constant: remedies, including Ecto Cooler, and news about whoever last got killed. The NNY Mall is a public hall that has already hosted a zauber killing attributed to the Ultimate Hellbane. Forsaken courts, rooftops, and alley dice are the rest of the civic plan. Eastern Motors is another site attached to Hellbane's wanted sheet. None of these places are safe. They are simply known.
47. #47[📍] The B-Ball Catacombsselective

    Keys: Catacombs, catacomb, sarcophagus, B-Ball Catacombs

    Beneath the city the B-Ball Catacombs hold the old dead of the game. They were in use until the Purge. Sarcophagi, canopic urns, reflective pools, and statues of Teresa and of the Ultimate B-Ball fill the stone. Inscriptions talk about slams as if they were scripture. Kobe Bryant lies mummified amid urns of prehistoric entrails. The tomb of LeBron James is here, and from it the dead can still speak. Pools commemorate ballers the Purge erased. Slam phantoms walk the lower halls. This is a cemetery that still functions.
48. #48[📍] Tombs of the Named Deadselective

    Keys: Kobe, Carver, Dikembe, Mutombo, Bogues, Ewing

    Particular graves matter. LeBron James rests where his bloodline can still hear him. Dikembe Mutombo's tomb is a religious machine: pool, two statues of Teresa, urns of his entrails, and a curse that pins his ghost until it is lifted; he then teaches the Holy Dunk and departs. Muggsy Bogues and Patrick Ewing share memory with the Ultimate B-Ball, having been trapped in it during the Space Jam. A G. W. Carver inscription remembers slams from the age of the Cyberpocalypse. These are not decorations. They are how the dead continue to coach.
49. #49[📍] The Sewersselective

    Keys: Suit, Rufus, sewers, sewer, toll

    The sewers under Neo New York are a polity. Dr. Allard rules them with suits and bodyguards and a toll on the way down to Proto Neo New York. Ladders drop through several darknesses. His office is a surgery. Rufus, also called Suit, and a bench of other suits collect neo-shekels and hurt people who argue. Animal People peel off into Cesspool X. Deeper still, the air itself starts to carry b-ball energy. The Underground Railroad's logic begins in this stratum even when the tracks are lower.
50. #50[📍] Cesspool Xselective

    Keys: Cesspool, Cesspool X

    Cesspool X is the sewer town of the Animal People. It has an inn, shops, and an armory. Guthrie speaks for it. The residents were cut into animal shapes and then discovered that Allard's freedom came with a bill and a reputation. Surface norms raid them. They arm, and they would rather not. Dikembe Mutombo's tomb is reached through this layer, absurdly close to a cyberdwarf's house, the way distances work in the buried city. It is the nearest thing to a polite underground.

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