UIU Location Dossier — "Three Portlands" / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page UIU Location Dossier — "Three Portlands".

page 1 of 212next »

Keep Portland Weird

GreenWolf 18 Jan 2017 18:32

Now that Three Portlands has its own tag, I figured it was time it got its own hub page. Anything tagged with three-portlands will automatically be listed on this page (with tales tagged with unusual-incidents-unit getting listed under Operations).

This page was originally written over 2 months ago, to serve as the eventual hub page for a UIU/Three Portlands series. Since I'm continuing to procrastinate on that particular series, and with the recent addition of the three-portlands tag, I figure this could be repurposed into a general hub for Three Portlands, written as an in-universe UIU dossier¹.

Beyond a handful of establishing details², there is no real style guide or set of rules for writing about Three Portlands. It's not a canon, or a group of interest, or even a character, and so there is no fixed tone or characterization to follow. It's a location, and how you use that location is entirely up to you. See post lower down in this thread for updated info.

Footnotes

1. Not unlike the Secure Facilities Dossiers that directly motivated me to write this piece in the first place.

2. I.e. the entrances being in Portland, OR; Portland, ME; and the Isle of Portland; the city serving as a hub of anomalous activity; the lack of Foundation intervention

Last edited on 17 Feb 2019 01:15 by GreenWolf Show more

Fly the Flag

GreenWolf 15 Nov 2017 22:10

Noting that I've added a Three Portlands flag to the hub, as drawn for me by Zhange. As a derivative work, it automatically falls under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Further Thoughts

GreenWolf 27 Nov 2017 08:29

Three Portlands worldbuilding came up in the Third Law chat, and I figured I'd drop it here. You're free to take it or leave it if you're writing about Three Portlands, but I figured it might prove useful, especially for people working with the "mainstream" version of 3Ports. The transcripts have been lightly edited for spoilers of upcoming Third Law tales.

Some thoughts on geography

<TyGently> worldbuilding thought: all the buildings in three portlands are very slowly moving away from the center of town
<TyGently> creating new space for building near the center and in the gaps formed between buildings
<TyGently> as they near the edge of town they get abandoned, eventually shuffle beyond the habitable border of three portlands, and in the long long term go past the boundary of the dimension and get obliterated
<GreenWolf> huh
<TyGently> this explains how three portlands seems to extend beyond its invisible walls and also explains how places like the abandoned school on the outskirts in austringers can exist
<GreenWolf> and city hall would naturally exist at the center
<GreenWolf> there are probably other dimensional landmarks too
<GreenWolf> like the Shadow of the Portland Observatory
<TyGently> yeah
<TyGently> the timescales are very slow, for obvious reasons
<GreenWolf> and it would fit with what I said in Analog Kid about the geography in three ports being fluid
<GreenWolf> "especially near the peripherary"
<TyGently> maybe two decades for something built on the edge of the center to reach the boundary
<GreenWolf> I was thinking more like 3 to 5
<TyGently> that could work too
<GreenWolf> since, like, the silver hand workshop opens in 1999, is abandoned in 2004, reopens in 2014, and is still operating in 2024
<GreenWolf> and that's already 2 decades
<TyGently> I'd imagine those thaumically or financially gifted enough could have their homes moved to habitable spots every once in a while
<GreenWolf> maybe the rate of movement is slower in different parts of the city
<GreenWolf> anchors like the Shadow of the PO slow it down for stuff in the vicinity, for example
<TyGently> a thought I had a while ago involved the impassable border being basically something imposed by the mayor rather than something inherent
<TyGently> more of a safety thing
<GreenWolf> makes sense
<GreenWolf> ooooh
<GreenWolf> that gives me fun ideas for UIU
<GreenWolf> getting permission from the mayor to go into the far periphery
<GreenWolf> to look for Clues
<TyGently> that would actually be super cool
<TyGently> abandoned portlands buildings, maybe some starting to fade into unreality
<GreenWolf> yes
<GreenWolf> what are you planning to do for the mayor
<GreenWolf> because I still like the idea of the mayor's office being a sort of black box

[Some spoileriffic discussion about the Mayor]

<GreenWolf> oh!
<GreenWolf> other thing that would be anchored against the outward movement
<GreenWolf> ICSUT campus
<GreenWolf> they'd definitely have the raw power to anchor their stuff
<TyGently> the campus is mounted on thousands of tiny caterpillar legs
<GreenWolf> pfft
<TyGently> alternately everything else just flows around it like a boulder in the middle of a river
<GreenWolf> that's what I was thinking
<GreenWolf> god, the street layout must be /amazing/
<GreenWolf> this is also probably why they don't have heavy motor vehicles
<TyGently> it helps that as the buildings spread outwards space appears between them, so there's all sorts of unconventional footpaths

Re: Further Thoughts

T_Kirsansky 25 Jun 2018 11:48

How about, whenever something reaches the periphery, instead of getting destroyed it just gets dumped back onto Baseline? Like some of it still gets disintegrated on "reentry" or whatever you'd call it but a good chunk survives and ends up on the outskirts of some random town somewhere?

Also, how does the sky work in 3P?

Re: Further Thoughts

GreenWolf 27 Jun 2018 03:27

This isn't really a thing that's up for debate, given that it's established in several tales now.

The sky is a sykbox. It gets brighter during the day and darker at night. The sun is a point light on the surface of the skybox. The water cycle is… weird, and probably at the discretion of the Mayor.

Last edited on 15 Sep 2018 01:02 by GreenWolf Show more

Major Hub Overhaul

GreenWolf 17 Feb 2019 01:22

There's been a lot of demand in recent months for more details/clarification on many of the inner workings of Three Portlands, so after a lot of discussion with the other major 3Ports contributors (Conwell, TyGently, Taffeta, ch00bakka), I've gone ahead and pushed this massive, 6000+ word update to the hub that now provides extensive worldbuilding information about the city. A lot of this is stuff that we had already agreed upon for the city but had only referenced in tales, or had never formally codified, although there's a bit of new info here as well.

I know I initially said that there wasn't really a fixed tone or characterization for Three Ports, but the demands of a shared location require a relatively consistent depiction, even if individual details might vary depending on particular canon. What's presented here is meant to establish a "core canon" for the city — individual authors are, of course, free to diverge from this as much as they like, but this page is meant to represent what the essential essence of Three Portlands is. Part of the intent of the "Notable Cases" section is to showcase tales that present this essential Portlands in an effective manner, before listing every page tagged with three-portlands.

Big thanks to TyGently, Conwell, Taffeta, ch00bakka, ARD, NineVolt, and tawny for critique and feedback on this while it was going through drafting. TyGently and Conwell deserve special shoutouts for the extensive amount of worldbuilding they've helped contribute to Three Portlands over the past two years.

Remember, Keep Portland Weird.

Pardon my Celtic

GreenWolf 10 Dec 2021 02:20

Noting that I've gone ahead and added a Celtic language chart to the Demographics and Culture section for the (fake) Sidhe language of Modern Celtic, which was graciously put together by ch00bakka using this chart from Wikimedia as a base. The original chart is licensed under CC-BY-SA, and was created by Wikimedia user "Elevatorrailfan".

A Random Day 18 Jan 2017 18:41

Very nice. It's much more concise, snappier, and more accessible as an actual hub than any of the Site dossiers that were all the rage a couple months ago.

Shaggydredlocks 18 Jan 2017 19:07

Three Portlands first came to the attention of US law enforcement in 1929, when Bureau of Prohibition agents tracked the operations of the bootlegging group known as the Chicago Spirit to the city.

This is something I never knew I wanted, but so desperately need.

Only a tentative upvote, because the tale titles really broke my immersion in a bad way, but I suppose that can't be helped with the module.

GreenWolf 18 Jan 2017 19:14

Yeah, there's only so much I can do with the list pages module. It's a necessary evil if I want the page to auto-update. (And auto-updating is really the only way to ensure that the hub will continue to be updated.)

Jacob Conwell 18 Jan 2017 19:31

Hey hey, trade in the small wigs for a the big wigs, Three Portlands has a hub.

The info presented here really does provide good context for what Three Portlands is, and what the UIU relationship is with the numerous people and anomalous beings that live there. Plenty of worldbuilding to be had.

My personal favorite line, though, would be:

The counter-cultural movement of the 60s and 70s was reflected in Three Portlands, giving rise to a vibrant anart scene. The growth of the city's anart community was further fueled by Foundation efforts to expel anartists from urban areas in North America and Europe, forcing them into pocket dimensions like Three Portlands and Backdoor Soho.

It would be interesting to read a tale about the forced migration of practitioners of the anomalous to these pocket dimensions. I'd be curious what name the anartists and others gave to the movement.

Either way. +1

MrWrong 07 Aug 2017 06:57

Added the tag 'chicago-spirit' since it is now a recognised tag for a minor GoI.

That is a sweet update!

Jacob Conwell 18 Feb 2019 01:40

Hey hey, the update went live.

While this is a lot of info being dumped on the reader at once, the tongue in cheek descriptions, especially in the footnotes, makes it an amusing ride through and through.

Also, the fact that Vincent Anderson is such a big wig in this version of the dossier is another fun bonus.

A+ GW. I'd +1, but I've already given my upvote.

+100

GreenWolf 23 Apr 2019 02:11

That's as many as three 33s… plus one.

Glad you all like the Weird City, and watch this space, because I've got an extremely ambitious Three Portlands project in the pipeline that might be coming out soon^TM.

GuesssWho 19 Aug 2019 21:54

I entirely approve of the J. Edgar Hoover Defamation Fund.

Crookera 29 Oct 2019 14:21

This makes me ecstatic. I'm a big fan of the idea of hidden worlds, so this a great read. +1

Rory Walker 01 Nov 2019 15:16

This sounds like such a vibrant setting, it makes me want to write. It would be such an interesting place to live in.
Plus, the residents sound great.

page 1 of 212next »