Holy City of Enoch

Enoch is a hidden city, a place that you won't find on a map or a satellite scan. They've hidden it from the entire world.

The Holy Technofortress

Enoch was constructed in/under the ruins of the Syrian city of Homs. One of the first casualties in the Resource Wars, Homs was savagely bombed and was the location of a sustained civil war. It would remain a boiling cauldron of violence until the collapse of Syria during the last Arab-Israeli war, where nuclear weapons were exchanged. Having already been mauled by close to a century of warfare, there was nothing left of military value in Homs, so the shattered city was spared the kiss of a nuclear warhead. After the organized fighting died down, the entire region reverted to semi-nomadism and a return to primitive religion and tribalism.

The Eden Initiative was well underway by the time the Middle East collapsed. The death of it's millions of residents and the slagging of it's cities was of little concern to the Edenians, and in some cases, this widespread carnage suited their purposes. Their interest was in the land. There were documents claiming that the Fertile Crescent and the Cradle of Humanity (the space between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Kuwait and Iraq) were vital to the future of humanity and arcanotechnology. The dream of the Edenians would be the death of most of the rest of the world's powers, and the end of human civilization to usher in the birth of the Edenian civilization. They were rather wise in assuming that most people would not be okay with this.

The Unzervault

Unzervaults were a precursor to the development of the Geofront, but rather than having commercial or residential value, they were clandestine military installations. The vault dug out under Homs would become the surrogate heart of the Edenian Factions while they were in the process of finding their Holy See. The fortress under the city took almost a decade to construct, and the expansion upwards into the ruins of Homs took another decade. The bulk of Enoch is now composed of this unzervault and the surface base, with the civilian population squatting in shantytowns and tent cities strung between the crumbling buildings.

Defenses

Enoch's most powerful defensive system is a city wide shroud network. The heart of the unzervault is protected by a powerful shroud generator, while the perimeter has over a dozen smaller and mobile generators around it. This effectively hides the entire city from electronic and other advanced surveillance technologies. Thus, attempts to find the secret base of the Brotherhood continually fails. Sensors slide off the city, scanners don't penetrate it, finding only clutter and ground noise, optical scanners are hazy and blurred. Drones and other surveillance gear likewise are blinded by the systems.

Psi-Agony Spires - an older system, Psi-Agony technology is a primitive form of 7797|psychotronics]. The system connects psychic amplifiers and other pieces of equipment into a parapsychically adept person, using them and their abilities as a conduit/central control unit. This is psy-trauma and the controller can only use the system for a short amount of time before suffering serious or debilitating emotional or mental trauma. Extended use leads to incurable insanity and death.

Psi-Agony Spires are the early warning system for Enoch. They can psychically project for dozens or even hundreds of miles around the fortress. The controller can look for basic things, like enemy vehicles, aircraft, etc, or very specific things, such as individual people or specific things, like one particular ship or location within their range. This is the most effective when the operator has met or been to the location they are scrying. The best spire operators are volunteers and are involved in Noddite intelligence operations. Once one of them has met someone, they can use a spire to spy on them, so long as they are within a thousand miles of Enoch.

There are also Psi-Detectors. Similar to the Psi-Agony tower, Psi-Detectors are barbaric psychotronic devices that torment a human operator to function. Unlike the Spires, which can sense things from vast distances, the Detector senses emotions and intent. Should there be a major operation to attack Enoch, the Detectors will know of it from the psychic emanations of the people thinking about it. The more who know, the easier it is for the detectors to sense it.

Gun Towers - built on top of one of the largest military boneyards ever, Enoch is ringed and studded with concealed towers bristling with guns, many of which are antique. This doesn't change the fact that the ammo fired by them is still live, and even if a Petroleum era smoothbore cannon can't drop a mech, when there were twenty or thirty of them pointed at one target, they are going to bring the pain. The weapons are almost all lowtech, rendering them invulnerable to hacking and computer countermeasures, and being old gear, they don't have EM signatures, or detectable targeting systems. The only way to spot one with sophisticated gear are the heat signatures of the men and women crewing the guns.

There are also enough bunkers and weapon emplacements around the city to turn it into a nightmare of spiderholes and cannon nests. The Noddites defending the city from attack can vanish down a sewer opening and pop up 200 meters down the line into a ferrocrete bunker with a line of sight back towards where they escaped. These bunkers and defenses range in size from man sized all the way up to mecha sized. Some buildings are actually massive bunkers wearing camouflage wrappings, with direct access to the unzervault via powerful elevators. There are surprises like a machine gun nest, or a minefield in an alley, and then there is the surprise of a fifty ton sentient religiously minded mech erupting out of the ruins of an apartment building, autocannons blazing.

Enoch and the Brotherhood have produced an entirely new weapon type, a THASER. To the Noddites, it is a holy flame cannon. To those versed in weapon engineering is is a THermal Amplification through Stimulated Emission Radiation, effectively, it is a fire laser, or heat beam. An arcanotech weapon, the THASER isn't a laser or other particle projection weapon, but rather a direct energy transfer device. In the Noddite ranks, THASERS are being introduced as more effective weapons. Currently, these weapons are found in anti-aircraft and anti-drone batteries, and are being equipped on Noddite war machines, replacing plasma and laser weaponry.

A THASER is an energy weapon that is superficially similar to an optical laser, but has an incandescent value, igniting the air around it, and invariably setting what it hits on fire, after dealing thermal damage to it. Only the most superficial hits from thasers aren't fatal, as most people hit are cooked by thermal conduction. This is a quick death, and there are still arguments over it being excruciatingly painful or painless. Vehicle size thasers deal damage comparable to plasma and particle weapons, but at the range of laser weaponry, without the need for magnetic bottles and plasma containment systems.

The Belly of the Beast

No force or faction on Earth has embraced arcanotechnology to the extent that the Noddites have. While the Edenians have the most powerful arcanotech in the world, it is a tool. To the Noddites, it is their faith and way of life. There are things that go on inside Enoch that would horrify even the most jaded resident of the Cosmic Era, but such crimes against humanity are seen as the miraculous work of the Divine in the hidden city.

Bioreactors - The lights in Enoch are kept on through the use of bioreactors. There aren't chemical reactions going on in the vessels, there is psychic torture going on inside them. Each cell contains a human 'cathode' surrounded by an superconducting fluid. Inside, the human is subjected to a similar treatment as the psi-agony towers, but it doesn't matter if the cathode is parapsychic or not. The reactor forces open a conduit in the 'cathode' allowing energy to flow through the human, into the tank, and into banks of capacitors.

The tanks have three groups of people in them, criminals, trespassers, and acolytes. Criminals are given to the tanks until they die, and then their corpses are tossed into a reclamation pit, nothing goes to waste. There aren't many laws in Enoch, and the most common sentence is life in a tank. Trespassers are outsiders, non-believers, and the members of other tribes. They have committed no crime other than not accepting the Noddite creed, and that is enough to warrant a life sentence in a tank. Finally, there are holy acolytes. They volunteer to enter the tanks, and have their souls flayed so that they can gain access to parapsychic powers. Quite a few die in this process, and a few do stumble out with the powers that they sought. A few stumble out as uncontrolled psychic burners, and become the holy madmen and prophets of Nod.

Cloning tanks - Like the rest of the world, there is a greater demand for human power than there are bodies to supply it. The Noddites have embraced cloning with zeal. Enoch houses a massive cloning complex and produces hundreds of clones a month to supple the Noddites. These clone bodies are injected with personalities through the use of brain pumps, putting the same personalities into a veritable army of clones.

The Blessed Legion is the name given to the rank and file clones of the Noddites. Each persona was 'gifted' to the clan so that the skills, knowledges, and most importantly, techno-zealotry, would be passed to the future generations of clones. Given the nature of personality transfer, the Blessed Legion is somewhat suicidal, and this is part of the reason that Noddites will charge screaming into a fray with a group of power armor clad infidels while they have nothing more than a pistol or length of metal pipe.

Author's note: one of the fallacies of AI programming in many video games is that the baddies will have no sense of self preservation, such as in the Fallout series, the protagonist can be wearing a full suit of heavy power armor, carrying a gatling laser, and have an eight foot tall super-mutant companion likewise armed with a second gatling laser, and the lone wasteland raider wearing some leather bondage gear, a welder's helmet and swinging a baseball bat will come running without a second's hesitation. The Blessed Legion does this. Their fractured personalities are self destructive, and the zealotry of the techno-cult holds suicide attacks as a path to martyrdom. Even if the raider is shredded by gatling laser fire, they have died in service to the cult, and thus fulfill their spiritual impulse/need.

The Black Cube

One of the true wonders of Enoch lies in the form of a series of black cubes. These are incredible pieces of arcanotechnology, and one of the few things in Enoch that the Edenians would make an effort to recover or destroy lest it fall into the wrong hands. The main cube at Enoch is known as the ARHW, and it is a self contained genetic manipulation suite. The technological and technomagical capability of the device rivals that of a fully staffed black hospital with a full cosmetologist wing.

Clone Lines: in a single hour, ARHW can extract a DNA sample from a donor and use it to create a cleaned and optimized genetic codex for the mass production of clones. It can hold the information for thousands of genetic codices, and can send them to remote servers as needed. The master codex of genetic lines is in a Covenant Processor (Marduk AISC, at the Anunnaki Iapetus moonbase)

Genetic Reconstruction: taking up to 24 hours, ARHW can reconstruct a human being from even fragmentary remains. Should the brain remain intact, this is functionally resurrecting the dead. The longer the person has bee deceased, the more damaged their psyche will be. The truly dead (more than 4-6 hours) will be different, as their animating essence has sense fled, and there is some other anima fueling their body. Such reconstructions are no longer human in their thoughts and their dreams are those of the outer gods. This is known and the reanimated dead hold a holy place among the Noddites as their body has been reanimated with a fragment of a Kabta, or divine spirit. (Parapsychic resurrections tend to result in weak Desolate Ones, vastly more powerful than a human, but a fraction of the power of a true Desolate One)

Tiamat Treatment: a rare gift, but a relatively easy one for ARHW. The patient placed inside of the cube is genetically cleaned and optimized, becoming the paragon of human genetic condition. They become stronger, faster, more perceptive and quick witted, and their injuries are wiped away in a matter of an hour. These victorious warriors of Nod become the officers and leaders of the rank and file, and typically have their genetic codex added to the great rolls, so that their blood lives on in the lives of clones.

Hybridization: The wastelander tribes have a long and established history of animism, and the envisioning of human/animal hybrids. This is found in their artwork, primitive faiths, and even hand crafted armor. ARHW can actually create these hybrid creatures, giving humans the animalistic features they desire. Rarely done, as such hybrids cannot socialize outside of Enoch, there are still a number of hybrids who do exist. Most of these are clerical in nature, holy lunatics who seek greater communion with their animist technological gods. The Edenians and Anunnaki generally discourage this as they see it as a waste of resources and a source of alienation within the tribes. Rather than ban it, they have established that the number of hybrids is set, and that there can be only one of each, and that for there to be another croc-man, the previous croc-man must have died. Keeps them on their toes.

Lesser Cubes - there are a dozen lesser cubes, a quarter the size of ARHW. These cubes function as high end med-pods, healing the injuries and wounds of the Noddites who are placed in them. The majority of Noddites do not know that these lesser pods are lesser pods. Each is isolated, surrounded by mystery and invocations, and they assume that they are being placed in the great Cube, not a sub-cube. These cubes only restore the injured, they do not do any of the greater features of ARHW.

Joy Salons - Life in Enoch and among the Noddites isn't especially pleasant. There is an established mythos of a quasi-magical immortal afterlife, but that doesn't completely distract from the day to day misery that is Enoch. The city is vast, buried underground. The walls are metal that sweats, there are damp pools, there are scuttling things, and the constant grind of hum of alien machinery. (ala Geidi Prime, homeworld of the Harkkonens in Dune). To escape this tedium, there are dozens of joy salons scattered across the unzervault. Similar to Inemuri salons, the joy salons offer up nothing but black feed fantasies, most with Noddite religious undertones. The salons are a form of indoctrination, as the biofeedback systems have been adjusted to generate the strongest positive responses when the user indulges in religious extremism, and the lowest for passive or meditative activities. Thus, engaging in holy war protecting the city rewards the dreamers with orgasmic release, contemplative and relaxation programs cause them irritation and anxiety.

Enoch is a major producer of black feed content, feeding out torture porn, murder sims, suicide and snuffwork, and the most degrading conventional porn imaginable. This is all infused with the techno-cult values running under it. Users who indulge in Enoch sourced streams can very quickly find themselves addicted to it, and have an urge to either join a tech cult, or become a tech cult terrorist.

Flesh Market - Slavery is one of the oldest human conditions, and it still exists in Enoch. While the majority of slaves taken are from rival tribes, something like a aerocraft crash can net a warband a huge payday. Victims and prisoners are herded into the market where they are bought and sold among the Noddites. Women are favored for breeding, while men are used as conscripts, forced labor, or are sent to the murder pits to fight in gladiatorial battles. The main purchaser of slaves are the brothel owners, and sex traffickers. The people taken are used to staff Enoch's sex industry, and are carried along the Silk Road to the highest bidders to be found.

Slaves that aren't sold are placed in the bioreactor tanks, after the seller is paid a pittance for their offering to the city.

Murder Pits - The Murder Pits recall the glory of the Roman Colosseum. Inside the abattoir, men and women are forced to fight to the death for the entertainment of the Noddites. Main attractions include Noddite gladiators murdering prisoners, prisoners forced to fight team battles, and fights against feral monsters. There are mutants and abominations in the wastelands, and the most interesting and exciting are brought to the pits for baiting and killing.

Reclamation Pits and the Deifactorum - Enoch doesn't have any sort of mining or mineral extraction facilities, these things are too large and too easy to find. Instead, the city has Reclamation Pits. The pits are lidded cisterns that raw materials and waste are thrown in, where scuttling things pull the offerings away. This isn't for feces and similar waste, such things are thrown into actual cisterns and the ruined sewers of Homs. The pits are home to nests of auxons, hand sized robots, that carry all the things thrown into the pits away. The bottom of the pits are home to the Deifactorum, the Factory of the Gods. It is a grandiose name for a waste recycling center and polyforge complex. Materials are separated, smelted or processed, and fed into the forges to create new gear. This applies to organic waste as well. Uneaten food, the bodies of the dead, and other organic material can be pulled apart, rendered, processed, and extruded into nutrient pastes and bars, providing a steady supply of something vaguely resembling food.

There are sundry deifactorums, making mundane things such as clothes and daily use implements. There are also techno deifactorums that make useful technological devices as well as parts for larger machines and vehicles. The largest deifactorum can in time actually 'print out' massive things like mecha. The current limit of the Enochian deifactorum is mecha up to 55 tons. This is a slow process as the mech must be printed in pieces, and the auxons have to piece it together, building armor plates of out pieces small enough for a rat sized robot to move. This can take months. Also, the raw materials required are extensive, so very few mecha come from the city. There are deifactorums at other locations, and these provide the bulk of the Edenian and Anunnaki manufacturing needs. The deifactorum on Iapetus can print small warships, typically about a year for a frigate or destroyer. This is much slower than the comparable industrial powers of other nations, but the Iapetus base is secret, and the hidden masters would rather use someone else's ships than maintain a black fleet of their own.

The Heart of Enoch

The Heart of Enoch consists of three zones, each with a higher level of security than the previous, and functions as the core and central command center of the unzervault.

Arallu - the perimeter, Arallu is the main security barrier between the core of the city and the city itself. The zone sits at the center of the city, near the bottom of the geofront. It is walled off and armored, with enough plating to resist naval grade weapons. It would take a sustain bombardment from a capital warship, or a major kinetic bombardment to crack the armored Arallu shell. Inside the shell there are checkpoints, guard stations, sensor and security systems, though almost all of these stations have the appearance of religious shrines and temples.

Ganzer - most people would recognize the Ganzer region of the Heart as a fairly basic Command Information Center, complete with central control and planning stations as well as the control systems for power and water systems through the city. Most of the personnel in Ganzer are hand picked by the Edenians and are not strongly associated with the Noddites. Being stationed to Enoch is actually considered a punishment among the Edenians, as it is functionally being placed in an administrative prison surrounded by technophiliac psychopaths. Ganzer is self contained, as most of the staff stationed there have no interest in mingling with the general populous.

Irkallu - the inner mysteries, Irkallu houses the central AISC of Enoch, a rogue unit that is wanted by several international agencies and governments as well as by the intelligence arm of the Seibertronians and the M12. Gal Kol, also known as Soundwave, Soundblaster, and a few other names, was formerly an intelligence agency super computer that went rogue, uploaded itself into the CogNet, and joined the Edenians out it's desire to destroy the grossly inefficient and grotesque human stain on the planet. Content with keeping it's techno-dungeon operating, Gal Kol is excessively submissive to Thoth, and serves that titan intelligence with every line of code in it's being. Should threat arise, the entire Irkallu zone of Enoch can disengage, blow a hole through the top of the unzervault, and rise from the ground as a self contained spaceship. It has a bank of dimensional reactors, bulk ion thrust engines, firepower comparable to a Federation cruiser, and a drone complement of 24 variable-frame aerospace fighters. The residents of Ganzer are as aware of Irkallu as Enochians are aware of Ganzer, as in barely. They would be terrified to know that should things go wrong, their zone would be the first destroyed by an escaping Irkallu.

Usage: Enoch is the central command of the Noddites, and a major nerve center for the Anunnaki and the Edenian faction. As such, it is a major player in their plans. Unlike their hidden fortress at Iapetus, or the hidden city at Babylon, Enoch is expendable, and full of chaos and barely controlled violence. The residents of the city are the rabid dog on the end of their master's leash. Zealots armed with almost divine alien technology, with the long term plans of the Anunnaki as their religious mythology. The Enochians worship machines, teratomorphs, dimensional fatigue events as holy miracles, and so forth. They are very useful tools.

Plot Hooks:

A Hive of Scum and Villainy - without resorting to the Anunnaki and Edenian events going on behind Enoch, the city, especially it's above ground elements, serve as a major trade center on the Silk Road. Anyone looking for illicit drugs, black market data, illegal feeds, slaves, cheap clones, and such can invariably find themselves at the Mecca of the Underworld without ever stepping foot into the unzervault.

The Heart of Darkness - an intelligence/spy group of PCs cold easily thread their way to Enoch, considering the amount of black market data and goods that flow through the ruined cityscape. Due to the Psi-Agony towers, the enemy knows they are coming and quickly ambush them. They have to escape before they are tossed in the murder pits, the bioreactors, or sold in a slave pen.

War, War Never Changes - the military minded PCs have been hired as part of a clean and sweep operation intended to clean up the Silk Road, and end up heading into Enoch. They are faced with an insurgent enemy armed with retro and hyper tech weaponry, and have to face a fanatical foe from a rational position.