Martian towers in Space 1889
 

Have any of you ever seen any writeups of those 200 story tall towers built by the Martian City Builders and now only occupied at the bottom four or five stories or completely abandoned? Preferrably with floorplans.

I'm trying to work out a small introductory adventure as a prequel to Canal Priests of Mars. The common interest of all the PCs is archeology/exploration, so I started thinking about hunts for lost treasure-filled temples. Then I came across this paragraph in the description of Martian cities:

The spectacular Martian towers still stretch for miles beyond the canal banks. Their towers reach upwards for hundreds of stories. Fabulous rooms filled with unfathomable devices remain even today. But the Martians make use of only a fraction of the assets their cities provide. Rather than climb unending stairs, they restrict themselves to the lower three or four stories of their massive buildings. Rather than travel long roads to the life-giving water of the canals, they restrict themselves to buildings closest to the waterways. Whole sections of Martian cities today lie empty, deserted, and unclaimed except by the local vermin.

And right away I started thinking about one of the few unlooted towers inside the city the PCs are staying in for a different kind of lost 'temple'.

Possible plot elements:

* If the Colonial Building Authority hears about it, they'll lay claim to all the nifty goodies.

* What difficulties are associated with walking up 200 stories worth of stairs? how long would it take?

* Rival archeologist uses a liftwood vessels to get up to the top of the tower.

I'm also wondering what other problems I can throw at the PCs. And, as I implied at the beginning, I'm wondering about how such a tower would be constructed.


Hans

Re: Martian towers in Space 1889
 

• Is tower construction identical for each ?
• Discovery of tower laying on its side (buried or half buried -- even in shows like Ghost in the Shell, they show the ruined cities and buildings laying all a-kilter).
• Escher-esque ? Either false trails or dead-ends or something equally baffling. Could they be filled with water and flooded ? (either up or some sort of cistern from above raining down).
• Significance of layout of X-number of towers in the set ?

More depending on how super-natural the setting is...

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Re: Martian towers in Space 1889
 

What books have you checked for other references?

Re: Martian towers in Space 1889
 

No, the basic principles are the same for all cities, but architectual style is "as varied as on Earth".

It's Steampunk. The cities were build MANY millenia ago, when Mars' oceans began drying up. A lot of the technology is incomprehensible to Earth Science. The City Builders seem to've been ecologically inclined. For instance, all waste material is collected in sewers deep under the city where it is turned into agricultural supplements that is piped into the surrounding countryside, and bio-gas that is used to power the city.

Eventually the cities began to fail, but I'm not sure how much of that was due to actual breakdowns and how much was due to the lessening of resources. Less water, less crops. Less crops, fewer people. Fewer people, less waste. Less waste, not enough power to keep everything runnning (Not enough garbage in, as it were).

Some things that did unequivocably break down were canal pumps and locks. Some canals were completely cut off from water and turned into pure desert.

About 5000 years ago (recent history, as the text calls it ;-), a Martian Alexander conquered a third of Mars (including the part where humans have moved in) and repaired a lot of the canals, albeit with cruder technology. For 3000 years this empire survived and kept the canals in repair. Then there was a civil war and since then some canals have received less maintenance than others. The whole system is slowly decaying.

But the towers built by the City Builders still stand and the cities still work after a fashion, so it would seem that they built to last and to require no maintenance (Steampunk, remember?)


Hans

Re: Martian towers in Space 1889
 

Any chance Mars needed a "beanstalk" type of construct ? (thanks to embargoes or other forms of pressure).

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Re: Martian towers in Space 1889
 

No, they had liftwood (anti-gravity).

Re: Martian towers in Space 1889
 

Assuming approximately 3m per story, that's 6km worth of stairs. Be kind and call it 5895m - that's the height of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Wikipedia claims that it takes 5-9 days to climb Kilimanjaro and return, but the mountain doesn't have a set of stairs going straight up.

So... I'd think it'd take approximately two days to climb to the top of one of these towers (lighter gravity is irrelevant; you still have to put one foot in front of the other), and another two to return to ground level. Pack some oxygen and plenty of fluids with your lunch, and mind the altitude sickness.

Re: Martian towers in Space 1889
 

It's 600 m.

For some mysterious reason, Mars turned out to have a gravity roughly 90% that of Earth. Unexpected, but very handy for running adventures on Mars. ;-).


Hans

Re: Martian towers in Space 1889
 

2,000 feet. I think hikers reckon that each thousand feet change in altitude is as much work as walking a mile.

Re: Martian towers in Space 1889
 

I meant before it grew on trees ;)

That said, I don't know the history/origins of driftwood vs the origins/history of this city. Chicken or the egg?

I could see some sort of Egyptian Pharoah construction, but that might be way off the mark.

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