Paperport

Geography

Paperport covers the whole surface of a gargantuan cog. The cog turns in the endless void of Mechanus, though its rotation has no effect on life within. The city is arranged in a strict grid around the Grand Scriptorium, a vast fortress of stone, bronze, and glass where the city’s records are kept.   A deep rift cuts through the city where a river might flow. Instead, the rift reveals the cog’s massive teeth grinding in the machinery of the plane. Bridges and lifts span the gap, while some districts cling to the underside, held in place by reversible gravity permits.  

Law

The laws of physics in Paperport are the laws of the city:  

• Written Reality. Nothing exists unless it is recorded. Citizens file yearly renewals of their being.
• Procedural Cause & Effect. Events resolve only when the paperwork is complete.
• Reversible Gravity. Gravity is a designation, not a direction. Licenses assign orientation.
• Immutable Symmetry. Every change has an equal counterchange elsewhere.

  Breaking law is nearly impossible, for the law is the structure of reality.  

Description

Paperport’s buildings are tall and heavy, shaped from dark stone and reinforced with steel. The style is gothic with baroque detail: pointed arches, spires, statues of quills and seals, and filing towers stacked with endless shelves. Plazas break the grid at set points, each serving as an office square where citizens file daily permits.   Everything in Paperport follows order. Streets adjust themselves to keep the grid aligned. Gravity flips by license. Actions and even objects only take effect once paperwork is filed. Every change creates an equal counterchange elsewhere, keeping symmetry intact.  

General description

Streets

Five great boulevards cut through Paperport like the teeth of a cog. They are named for their function: Petitioners’ Way, Clerks’ March, Advocates’ Walk, Inspectors’ Row, and Archivists’ Avenue. Eeach is broad enough for processions of carts, scribes, and automaton bailiffs to pass without hindrance. Iron lamp posts, inscribed with case numbers, light the roads at night, while grates channel rainwater and ink runoff into hidden reservoirs. All five converge at Ledger Square, the heart of civic business. Lesser streets extend outward in perfect grids, most twelve to eighteen feet wide, lined with brickwork sidewalks marked with numbered tiles. Side passages rarely exceed ten feet, and many reduce to narrow alleys squeezed between tall stone façades. Even the poorest districts follow an imposed order: gravel lanes are still measured, documented, and inspected, so no road strays from its assigned width.  

Buildings

Paperport rises in serried ranks of dark stone and bronze ornament, its architecture a statement of permanence. In the central districts, buildings stand three or four storeys tall, their ground levels fortified with heavy masonry, upper levels ornamented with carved ledgers, scales, and clockwork motifs. Many windows are fitted with thick glass etched in geometric patterns, while tall chimneys release steam from hidden registries and counting-houses. Wealthier residences and guildhalls enjoy luxuries such as pneumatic mail chutes, private archives, and even plumbing subterranean vaults. Across the city, towers rise to Law itself, each crowned with statues of quills, hammers, or blindfolded figures holding tablets. The outer wards, though humbler, are no less ordered: modest stone tenements, workshops, and steel-clad cottages stand in tidy rows, inspected and reinforced to code. Every building, no matter how small, bears a plaque of registration, engraved with its license to exist.  

Inner Ward

Ledger Square

Ledger Square is the city’s grandest open forum, a vast double-plaza divided by stately banks, guildhalls, and chambers of commerce. Elegant townhouses with shopfronts and ledger balconies ring the space, their façades carved with geometric patterns and inscriptions of past transactions.   The plazas are lined with orderly rows of market stalls, kiosks, pavilions, and trading carts. Every merchant’s space is carefully measured and recorded, each stall assigned by charter and marked with etched plates on the paving stones. The air is filled with a constant murmur of voices reading ledgers aloud, punctuated by the chiming of clocks and bells that regulate trade intervals. Rather than chaos, the rhythm of commerce feels like a living mechanism, each deal a cog turning within a greater wheel.   At the center of the eastern plaza stands the Guildhall of Paperport, a soaring hall of marble and bronze. Its council chambers host the assemblies of guild leaders and merchant auditors, while its offices house clerks, notaries, and vault-masters. Beneath its vaulted roof lie secure chambers where trade contracts and civic wealth are recorded and safeguarded. Council debates, though often heated, proceed according to strict speaking orders and ceremonial gong-strikes that ensure every voice is measured in equal time.   The Cosmological Clocktower rises above the square, its shadow falling across both plazas as a reminder that all trade, like time, must move in balance.  

Cosmological CLocktower

At the center of Ledger Square rises the Cosmological Clocktower, a monument to order and precision. Commissioned by the first Magistrate Assembly, its immense brass gears, visible through latticed windows, mark not only the passage of time but also the alignment of planes, the tally of civic cases, and the rotation of the great archive wheels below the city. The clock’s bells strike in measured chords that echo through every district, announcing hearings, filings, and the mandated rest of night.   The tower is crowned with a set of eight rotating arms, each tipped with an orb of stone etched with sigils representing the known planes. These arms shift in constant, perfect motion, reminding every passerby of the balance between realms and the unbroken duty of Paperport to maintain that balance. Clerks, astronomers, and ordinance-keepers work within its chambers, maintaining both its mechanism and the records it produces. To this day, the clock has never faltered, for its workings are said to be wound not by mortal hands, but by the very laws of symmetry and record that govern the city.  

Clerk Square

Clerk Square is one of the busiest crossroads in Paperport. The intersecting avenues lead north toward the Grand Scriptorium, south across the Lotus Bridge, and west to Ledger Square. The square is a civic center where decrees are read and judgments pronounced.   At its heart stands a wide granite fountain shaped like a shallow bowl, its waters spiraling into a grate that feeds the cistern below. Around it rise orderly townhouses with tiled roofs and narrow balconies, their high windows gazing down like solemn officials watching all who pass.   The square today is a place of gathering. Proclamations are held here, and magistrates still hear disputes on the broad steps of the courthouse that overlooks the plaza.  

Old Cistern

Beneath Clerk Square lies a grand underground reservoir, an engineering marvel that supplies Paperport with fresh water. The chamber is a place of civic pride, maintained by the duchess, and serves as both a practical utility and a quiet sanctuary where the flow of water creates a serene, echoing music.   Many citizens believe the cistern holds secrets — forgotten passages, storied treasures, or hidden histories. It is also a place where legends and rumors flourish, drawing the curious and the bold. Some whisper of a mysterious figure known as the Duchess, said to be a wise and otherworldly presence who dwells deep within Paperport’s waterways. Unlike the fearful tales of monsters, Paperporters regard her as a protector of the currents, a benevolent patron who ensures the waters remain pure and the city thrives.  

Queen’s Park

Queen’s Park lies in the northern heart of Paperport, between the Inscrutable Tower and the Grand Scriptorium. Built to honor notable women in history, the park is a place of leisure and contemplation. Visitors stroll along its shaded paths, admire marble statues, and enjoy the fountains and flowerbeds. Both nobles and commonfolk enjoy the park’s beauty, often spending warm afternoons wandering through its terraces and groves.  

Entering Queen’s Park

The park features labyrinthine footpaths winding past geometrically arranged flowerbeds, forested groves, and ornamented bridges crossing gentle streams. Lawns and plazas are decorated with triumphal arches, fountains, statuary gardens, and hedge mazes. The flora is vibrant, with colorful blossoms and fragrant herbs filling the air. Birds and small wildlife are common, and the sound of wind in the trees and water flowing over stonework creates a tranquil atmosphere.  

Navigating the Garden

Characters move through Queen’s Park as they would through streets, following footpaths and garden trails. The park is safe and maintained, with clear markers and signs indicating points of interest such as ponds, groves, and memorials.  

Royal Grotto

The Royal Grotto is a grand subterranean garden beneath Queen’s Park, accessed by an elegant stone staircase from the tiered garden above.  

Grotto Entrance

The circular vaulted chamber is decorated with mosaics depicting aquatic life and leisurely activities of merfolk and nymphs. A central fountain features a nymph-like figure pouring crystal-clear water. Glass collectibles, painted vases, and scattered coins surround the fountain, creating a rich and vibrant display.  

Wellspring

Two stone pipes deliver sweet-smelling water into a small pool, surrounded by roots from the gardens above. The water glows faintly with a soft iridescence, reflecting the light from mosaics and decorative tiles.  

Society

Government

Paperport is run by the Scriptural Assembly, a council of high-ranking automaton clerks who sit within the Grand Scriptorium. They rule by procedure, never by whim. Every decree is issued as a filed document, and power flows down through lesser clerks, registrars, and permit officers who enforce their writ.  

Military

The city is guarded by Compliance Knights, heavy automaton enforcers armed with stamp-hammers. They are backed by record-scribes who carry permits to pre-approve combat actions. Order is kept not through strength but through control of procedure.  

Culture

Valour

• Obedience – follow procedure above all.
• Accuracy – file without error, for error erases reality.
• Continuity – preserve the system so that records may endure forever.

 

Belief

Paperport has no gods of its own. Its people believe in the sanctity of the written word, and in Mechanus itself as the perfect machine.  

Names

Names are functional. Automaton citizens use designations such as Clerk-77, Registrar Delta-4, or Unit 551-B. Visitors are forced to register under their given names, but often receive numerical suffixes to avoid duplication.  

Diplomatie

Relations

Paperport deals with all other planar powers as a neutral ground for contracts and disputes. Angels and devils alike come to its halls to settle matters under strict procedure.  

Defenses

Paperport is defended by its laws. Without the right permits, invaders find their weapons frozen, their supplies erased, and their armies split across mirrored districts. The Compliance Knights strike only when filings are complete.  

Economy

Exchange

Paperport does not use coin. All value is in permits, stamps, and registered documents. To trade is to file.  

Commerce and Fiscality

Merchants exchange goods by filing Transfer Certificates. Taxes are paid as mandatory “renewal fees” that preserve citizens’ existence within the registry.  

Wealth

Wealth is measured in access to permits. Those with higher clearance control what can exist, what can move, and what can act.  

Hazard

Bureaucratic Stasis (Hazard)
Environmental hazard, Plane of Mechanus   When creatures act in Paperport without the required permit, the Law of Procedural Cause & Effect suspends them. They are paralyzed in space until the proper filing is complete.

• Trigger: Any action not backed by documentation.
• Effect: The creature is restrained. A DC 15 Intelligence saving throw allows them to improvise a “makeshift filing” and act, but repeated failures cause exhaustion.
• Countermeasure: Present a valid permit or succeed on three checks to forge one (Arcana, History, or Sleight of Hand, DC 15).

 

Adventure hook

• A building collapsed because its opposite tower was built without a permit. The Assembly hires the party to restore symmetry.
• Forged Gravity Licenses are spreading through the city, tearing districts apart.

 

Notable members