In the M:TBU setting, it is a location much like the Spy's Demise BBS detailed in Digital Web: perhaps the only place in town where the Awakened and Enlightened of any stripe can come together and talk without fear of aggression. By mutual agreement, Technocrats and Traditionalist, hell, even upstart Disparates, can rub shoulders here and chat.
How is that possible?
Location
The waters of the Rudas Thermal Bath are heavily Prime-infused and serves as the basis of an implicit truce - no need to fight when there's plenty of the good stuff for everyone.The Baths are ideal for making plans, diplomatic encounters, trying to ferret out the enemies plans, subtle backstabbing, building up or losing face, or just to lay back & soak up Quintessence in a wondrous environment.
I like to play up the intoxicating nature of this naturally-occurring Quintessence so that getting wet is like having a few beers. You get giddy if you fail your saving throw.
(Mechanically, I give everyone who stays at least an hour in the water d10/2 temporary Quintessence - they only find out how much when they leave, and it's lost if not used up within 24 hours. That's not a tamper proof rule, but what is?)The explanation is that there's a Horizon node with a portal somewhere inside Gellért Hill, where the magickal water springs from. Its location is a secret guarded from everyone, including their Traditionalist peers, by the Monkey King Collective, a small cabal of semi-rogue Budapest mages.
If the spring fell into the wrong hands, the fallout would be devastating.
Though the Technocracy pays lip-service to the agreement that everyone has equal rights to the magick water, they still keep trying to covertly find the Rudas Node - and some would say every single other faction is after the Node too. There is a funicular secretly being built that would carve into the side of the hill - it's an open secret that this is a smokescreen to cover the search for the Node, but no-one is sure who is behind the project.NPC
Everyone who's been to the place more than twice knows Béla ([ˈbeːlɒ]) (and he will definitely know regulars by name), the affable if moody locker room attendant who some think might be an Extraordinary Citizen or a consor. The amount of magickal activity he must have been exposed to in his decades on the job could have affected him, but others think he's actually 'repelling magick and/or Paradox', arguing that he couldn't have survived. Anyways, he's a talking point among bath patrons - an ice-breaker when at a loss for what to say.He's got a no-nonsense attitude and never gets fazed by anything - he sure acts like he's seen it all.
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| Béla, locker room attendant |
In my game he's a decidedly non-magickal ex-con who's got the cushy job in exchange for regular reports to the people in the Szabadság Square bunkers. His job description includes turning a blind eye to the shenanigans of mages high on Quintessence, and taking notes, but he likes bribes, and anyone who helps his daughter (a stunning and bubbly ballerina who tends to get mixed up in trouble) has a place in his heart.
Plot Hook
These are variations on "protect the water", but there's always the Nephandus plot that subtly taints the water to cause strife and overdoses.- Magick is no protection against encroaching bureaucracy - council plans to shut down the place temporarily or to modify its water source (!) must be stopped by hook or by crook. Legal, illegal, or magickal.
- The bath-house is being renovated, and builders find a Wonder or a portal (could it be the sought-after link to the Node?). Technocrats and Mages need to band together to overcome the inevitable pointing of fingers and point-scoring to hush up the discovery.
- The water starts to ebb. What's up? Foul play in Budapest, or some trouble over at the Horizon end?
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