DFRPG Ghosts:The Barathrum

The Barathrum

This neighborhood is set apart from the rest of town by the river meandering around it ... a bit like Chicago's loop, if it were less developed, if the river were much wider, and if there was a forest in place of Lake Michigan. The district is informally known as the Boneyards due to the large number of very old cemeteries in the area. It is regarded as a deeply haunted place by superstitious sorts (probably accurately), and as a boring one by more pragmatic, modern types.

Though not a city in its own right, the Barathrum is frequently compared to the city of San Francisco in at least two ways: The terrain that it occupies is very hilly, and the region is known for thick and frequent fog. There is fog at some point of the day for the majority of the year, especially at night.

The district is largely composed of terraced properties separated by narrow, hilly streets and labyrinthine alleys, except near the shore. The shore is rocky and not really suited to marinas or the like, but there are a few parks, small beaches (none terribly popular) and low-key boardwalks. The peninsula is elevated somewhat above the rest of town (to which the Barathrum is connected by two suspension bridges, to the northwest and southwest). The buildings are old and the infrastructure older.

Thanks to the terracing, nearly every street is walled at some point along its length, and buildings appear to loom overhead and cast the road into deep shadow. This causes the frequent fog to linger near ground level, and even without the fog, its unusual for direct sunlight to reach the streets except for a few of the hours surrounding noon. Characteristic of the region are numerous footbridges and such passing over the street (or neighboring plots of land, or other footbridges) from one terrace to another. Several of the cemeteries border on one another in this manner, like amoebas fighting to absorb each other, and pass over and under one another through bridges and tunnels to reach discontinuous parts of their grounds.

Large portions of the district are registered historic sites and generally well maintained. The most modern building in the area predates the Great Depression. But even places that aren't officially historic are treated by the city as though they were, putting them in a sort of legal limbo where they are hands-off to more modern development. In some cases this means they are being preserved or restored in the hopes of obtaining full recognition, but in others they are neglected or aren't actively maintained at all and are slowly disintegrating, or even abandoned. You are more likely to find a curio shop or cafe than a Starbucks or McDonald's, and far more likely to find a quiet pub than a nightclub.

Tone

The area has a theme of "equal parts stately preservation and sad decay", and there's an almost palpable weight of time here. Nothing seems to move very fast, and nobody really seems to be in a hurry. At times, the Barathrum feels calm and peaceful, and other times it's oppressive and vaguely sinister. Crime is strangely less common than one might expect for this sort of area (by several percentage points), but all the more shocking to residents as a result.

Locations of Note

One place of note in the district is the Spyridon Masquerade, a turn-of-the-century Proscenium theater that has definitely seen better days and hasn't been open to the public in decades. This serves as a sort of shelter for homeless ghosts, mostly a handful of exorcised Haunts and Phantoms, which is operated by my character.

The most notable feature of the Barathrum, however, from which it took its current name, is the ancient sinkhole near its heart. Over a hundred meters deep and twenty wide, the chamber at the bottom connects via a maze of twisty little passages (all alike) to a cave network that runs beneath the river and all through the region beyond. There are persistent (but unconfirmed) rumors that evidence of some sort of sustained habitation were found during early exploration of the hole, but details are scarce. Exploration is currently restricted, due to the number of people that have fallen to their deaths or simply vanished into the cave system, never to be seen again.