Tales Of The Death City Metro
The Concept
Centuries ago, a long-forgotten goddess, grieving the destruction of created artworks - the very things by which sentient beings transcend their evolutionary origins - conceived a trans-dimensional rescue system: the Death City Metropolitan Railway. When civilisations fall to war and chaos, the network arrives in the shattered ruins at the liminal instant before everything is lost. In that frozen moment, its crews load freight trains with the last surviving works and carry them to the great metropolis of Death City, where they are preserved until the end of time, when the universe will be renewed.
Crewed from the beginning by waifs and strays whom the goddess had saved from evil fates, the railway gradually gathered more of the lost and the wanderers - those who had slipped through the cracks of the proper order of things. Everyone encountered in its travels is offered the same choice: passage across the rainbow bridge to the Elysian fields and rest, or service among the train crews to join the Great Work. While most choose the fields, a steady number enlist, and so the work goes on.
This EP explores the railway, the people who drive and maintain it, and the rescues they undertake for those whose last hope stands on the edge of oblivion.
Audio
Welcome Aboard!
This was the first track generated based on the Death City Metro idea, and acts as a kind of overture to the whole EP.
Lyrics
Underneath the stars cold bones,
Tracks are carved through time and stone,
Through the rift through shivered glass,
Engines roar dimensions crash,
Every scream that cracks the dark,
Lights a coal in heaven's heart,
Goddess spins the iron wheel,
Judgement burns in tempered steel.
Death City Metropolitan Railway,
Thundering across the fractured night,
Terror to the cruel to the heartless,
Home to every soul that lost the fight,
Racing through the void the broken and betrayed,
Rise when they hear that engine's blaze,
Death City Metropolitan Railway,
Storm of steel and grace!
Shadow platforms nameless halls,
Echoes of forgotten calls,
Children clutching paper maps,
Lines of tears and stardust tracks,
Violent kings in crystal towers,
Feel the quake of judgement's power,
Sirens howl, the heavens shake,
Iron jaws of mercy wake.
Death City Metropolitan Railway,
Thundering across the fractured night,
Terror to the cruel to the heartless,
Home to every soul that lost the fight,
Racing through the void the broken and betrayed,
Rise when they hear that engine's blaze,
Death City Metropolitan Railway,
Storm of steel and grace!
All aboard! The cast away and cursed,
All aboard! The last the lost the hurt,
When monsters wear a human face,
She shields the trains with burning grace.
Goddess in the smoke and flame.
Carve a sigil through their names.
Cities crumble tyrants fall.
When the rolling thunder calls.
Solo
Death City Metropolitan Railway,
Thundering across the fractured night,
Terror to the cruel to the heartless,
Home to every soul that lost the fight,
Racing through the void the broken and betrayed,
Rise when they hear that engine's blaze,
Death City Metropolitan Railway,
Storm of steel and grace!
Every railway needs its engineers...
Even a goddess-created magical system still needs the skills and knowlege of dedicated engineering staff to keep the trains rolling through thick and thin. This track features one of the many dedicated folk, an older woman, originally rescued by a passing train after her family and homestead was destroyed in a demon attack, who chose to sign on and studied mechanical engineering, rising to a very senior rank but by her own choice working the physical night-shift in the Haven Street locomotive yards, both directing and helping with the hard and heavy physical work of maintaining equipment that runs at high speed and full power throgh dark and demon-haunted dimensions, through the greater void, as well as rolling on the smooth and peaceful tracks of the inner Death City network.
Known by her nickname, Keeper of the Iron Dawn, with the sunrise she can be seen, relaxing after her night's work, knowing that day by day she's building her own slow and subtle vengance on those who would have destroyed her, and ensuring the trains will continue to roll to the rescue of others like her, as well as continuing the Great Work.
With Pride and Sorrow
Both a celebration and a lament, this track explores the feelings of the train crews, rescuing those they can, but grieving for those they'll never be able to save. They know this is the reality of the universe, there can be no deus ex machina for everyone, they are constrained by the cause they were called to do and accept that this is so, but still feel for those who they cannot reach.
Ride the Death City Metropolitan Railway,
Where the platforms bloom in flame and snow,
We gather every shattered heart we can carry,
and we grieve for all the ones we'll never know,
Proud of every life we pull from the fire,
Still we choke on every name we cannot say,
Mercy has a timetable carved into iron,
On the Death City Metropolitan Railway.
Work hard, play harder, We Are The Track Gang!
It takes a special kind of worker to maintain the tracks of a system that runs through demon realms and the star-haunted sky, but the track gangs of the Death City Metro are a breed apart, men, women, enbys, all bound together by sworn oaths to the system and each other, doing work many would think impossible, demons and monsters only just held at bay by their goddess's protective magic and their own skill and determination.
An upbeat, cheerful track, celebrating a life hard but rewarding.
Taking a break:
Cards on a crate and a coat for a pillow,
Boots in a circle, stories told,
Our little realm where the wolves stop howling,
Soft silver light on the steel so cold.
The chorus:
We are the gangs of the Death City line,
Keeping the rails through the dark and design,
Over the chasms and the skin of the world,
Torches alight as the banners unfurl,
Hunted by monsters, haunted by fate,
Still we align every spike every plate,
Through demon realms and the star-broken sky,
We hold the tracks where the trains must fly.
Last Hope of the Lost and the Desperate
Most of the time the work of the Death City Metro is rescuing created work from destruction. But just occasionally, they get to change the fates of those for whom all other hope is lost. In this song, a group of forgotten refugees from a broken world have gathered together for shelter from the oncoming dark forces in the ruins of a central city station, the buildings and tracks already smashed and broken, expecting nothing but death, when out of the gloom rolls a miracle, an impossible train running smoothly over the remains of a shattered system, gliding to a halt at a half-ruined platform, the crew calling everyone to bring what still matters but leave their ghosts and all dispair.
Children clutching much-loved toys, old folks helping each other, all find places on the train, and fragile hope begins to grow - is this rescue?
To rescue rides the Iron Phantom!
In "At The End Of The Line" the last survivors boarded, but they still must escape - nothing can hold back the Iron Phantom, driven by a woman who grew up forging iron, and absolutely will not stop for anything, running on goddess-warded tracks, all of Hell unleashed against them yet unbowed and charging onwards, speed rising with every mile, and hope growing in every broken heart as the legions of evil are run down and smashed aside by thundering engines and unstoppable steel.
Ride, Iron Phantom, onwards to the void!
Salvation rides this Cannonball
Another take on a rescue mission, once again riding free and wild against all who would do their passengers harm, regulator open wide, smashing through evil, salvation by steam locomotive.
This was an earlier take on what eventually became Ride Iron Phantom, included as a bonus track in the audio version of the EP.
