Culium-Mals

Connecting People

Rail-Based Train City— Speeding through the world of Ald-Amura, the engineering collective of Culium-Mals seeks to link the world.

The People

Culium-Mals is a moving locomotive city that snakes its way through the mountains, over the rivers, and around the fields of Ald-Amura. Its crew of nearly a thousand engineers and their support staff are dedicated to expanding the rail network until every city, village, and town that desires it is linked. This work is tireless, often thankless, but ask anyone aboard the train, and not one of them would rather be anywhere else.

The Culiumian, or the Rail-Riders as they’re known to some, cut a somewhat mythic figure in the wider world of Ald-Amura. People see them as an ultimate expression of freedom, and of wanderlust. Rail Fiction is a popular genre of escapist media, and children can be seen all around Ald-Amura dressing up in the distinctive regalia of a Rail-Rider and playing out legendary adventures in the streets of their villages.

In addition to constructing the railroad, stations, bridges, and infrastructure to support it, the Rail-Riders have acted in a number of alternative roles in their forty years of existence - they’ve been emergency disaster relief, rapid response construction teams, mail carriers, and more.

The train itself, known by many names besides its official title, is a marvel of design and engineering. Over 700 wagons, pulled by ten magnificent engines powered by the most intricate magical sigils ever designed, stretching four and a half miles in length. The city has every amenity you could imagine, from schools and libraries to theaters and a shockingly popular tailors’ section. By all accounts, it is one of the most comfortable places one can spend a night, and many sign up for the three week internships offered by Culium-Mals every year.

Local governance operates on democratic confederalist principles—every populated wagon meets weekly to discuss the business of the week, then appoints one member to attend a train-wide council once per month. These meetings are usually one of the few times the train ceases motion, and tends to be a time for everyone (besides the council members) to get rather silly in whichever field or mountainside clearing the train came to a stop.

Local Monster

Ka-Chew-Ka wasn’t always the Monster of Culium-Mals. The train is too new and the world is too old for that, but by chance the engineers have become wrapped up in the enormous octopus’s inscrutable destiny. The story goes that both Ka-Chew-Ka and the train fell into peril together when the train derailed high in the Ander-Petris mountains, causing an avalanche that shattered Ka-Chew-Ka’s bubble-reality. Both parties scrambled to save the other, even as they each faced extermination. Ever since, the Many-Limbed-One and the Rail-Riders have been an inseparable team.

Ka-Chew-Ka’s abilities are somewhat puzzling, and their very nature makes completely understanding them difficult. Just as a millennium of people living, dreaming, and imagining in one area exerts a certain amount of weight on the local reality, shifting the history and laws to match the stories told, Ka-Chew-Ka appears to be able to exert their own weight on the local reality, and instantly change the laws of reality to suit their impenetrable whims. They very rarely use this ability, and when they do, it’s hard to see why, as the changes tend to be microscopic or obscure.

Notable Sublocations

  • Mary’s Diner—Universally understood to be the best place to order a plate of pancakes or a cheeseburger at 3:00 a.m. after a long night of soul searching, Mary has operated the diner for the entire 40 years the train has been running. Using recipes, techniques, spices, and ingredients from all across the world, Mary is able to create some of the most unique dishes in Ald-Amura. The diner is also a notable meeting spot for just about anyone you might want to meet.
  • The Phantom Rider—A wagon often seen but never found, sightings of this spectral car stretch all the way back to the start of Culium-Mals’s journey through Ald-Amura. It frequently appears between cars 108 and 109, but not always, and it visually calls to mind the ostentatious cars the old kings would ride on their private networks. No one has ever managed to set foot inside the car and its purposes, origins, and potential motives are unknown.
  • The Lightning Rider—When you put a bunch of genius engineers together for a couple decades, they tend to get a little silly. The Lightning Rider is a failed experiment to make the train capable of flight by catching lightning bolts and riding them through the sky. The engine and all of its equipment remains fully functional, but is currently used as a storage wagon near the back of the train.
  • The Mold Room—One of the oldest railcars. A model of Ald-Amura dominates the carriage, sprawling across the walls and ceiling. The map is home to a special fungal mold, which tells the Rail-Riders exactly how to best build their network. The Mold-Minders place small amounts of food on potential villages and cities and watch closely how the mold connects them.

What Happens When You Arrive

  1. An accident has ruined the train’s magical locomotion runes, and it is hurtling toward an unfinished bridge.
  2. Ka-Chew-Ka is going into premature hibernation, and their micro-reality bubble threatens to consume the whole train.
  3. A lightning bolt has hit the train, and apparently transported it 8,000 years into the past.
  4. A village has asked to be added to the rail network, but building a line would require the consent of three other villages along the way.
  5. The farm cars have been vandalized and every animal is running amok around the train.
  6. The annual train cleaning festival has been interrupted by a startling discovery—a glass orb, seemingly containing a tiny world inside.