London is the First and Greatest Traction City (at least according to Londoners), prominantly apearing in Mortal Engines, A Darkling Plain, Fever Crumb, Scrivener's Moon, Night Flights, The Illustrated World Of Mortal Engines, and expectedly in the upcoming Bridge of Storms. It is also discussed in all other books in the series, Predator's Gold, Infernal Devices, A Web of Air, and Thunder City, even when it does not appear directly. It is based on the real world city of the same name.
All inhabitants of the city can be found here.
History[]
Pre-mobilisation[]
London was a large and powerful city before and up to the Sixty Minute War (according to a piece of scrap, up to 2118), but during the Dark Centuries became a hellhole; generally people avoided it due to it being devastated by nuclear strikes and orbital weapons. However, during the transition between the Black Centuries and the Traction Era, London was re-inhabited and became a city of trade, learning and politics.
It was conquered by the Scriven up to the Orbital Moatway (M25 Motorway) during the dawn of the Traction Era; they ruled London for around a hundred years, before being evicted by an uprising by the human population. This was a period of time when London remained static and had yet to be converted into the first Traction City.
Mobilisation[]
After The Movement conquered London, their leader Nikola Quercus oversaw the conversion of the whole city into a colossal mobile construct. Rather forgotten was the fact that in the process more than half of London’s population was abandoned, due to the need to mobilise and because of their apparent lack of skills to maintain the city. This sparked the Second Traction Boom in which many cities followed suit in mobilising. In the ensuing war London eliminated the remaining Nomad Empires of the North. When the Traction Cities adopted the system of Municipal Darwinism London became a predator city, eating hundreds of smaller statics and traction towns alike.
Golden Age of Traction[]
London was a feared predator in the golden days of Municipal Darwinism and eventually built twenty two suburbs to carry her excess population and hunt on London‘s behalf. The most famous was Crawley, although there were several more, including Purley Spokes and Tunbridge Wheels.
Traction War[]
Mortal Engines[]
Many hundreds of years after the golden age, London tried to use an old directed-energy superweapon named MEDUSA to break through the shield wall at Batmunkh Gompa. The computer brain was tampered with by Katherine Valentine and the weapon backfired, destroying London.
A Darkling Plain[]
London was eventually rebuilt as the first hovering mag-lev city, which did not consume other cities. What would become New London was originally developed by the Mag-Lev Engineers inside the gut of the traction city London, known as Experimental Suburb L/M 1. Its creator, Lavinia Childermass, tried to keep funding for the work on the suburb, but the then-Lord Mayor, Magnus Crome, believed that the superweapon MEDUSA was a better solution rather than the suburb. Crome then diverted the fundings for New London to fund MEDUSA, effectively stalling the project. The suburb survived when MEDUSA destroyed most of London due to its overload. New London's construction continued, inside a surviving piece of London's gut. Wren Natsworthy and Wolf Kobold discovered New London while wandering the debris field. After Lavina Childermass explained to them about the suburb, Wolf Kobold ran from London's wreck to go back to his suburb Harrowbarrow with the intention of having his town eat New London. Work on New London continued faster knowing of Wolf's plan. New London's engines were tested, but failed. Tom Natsworthy decided to go to Batmunkh Gompa and ask the Green Storm's leader, General Naga not to turn ODIN onto New London as it leaves the debris fields. Naga believing that New London was actually a secret weapon and that Tom was lying, had Tom imprisoned, reuniting him with Hester Natsworthy. However, Naga and the Green Storm arrived at London's wreck (believing they were the ones controlling ODIN, while in reality the Stalker Anna Fang was, from Erdene Tezh). They found New London, and Naga agreed to help the Londoners get away from Harrowbarrow. The Londoners tested the suburb again, and it worked. As Harrowbarrow chased New London, Wren and Theo Ngoni engaged Wolf in a fight on top of Harrowbarrow. Once Wolf was killed, Naga, having realized his errors, flew his airship into Harrowbarrow and destroyed it and himself, saving New London. In Wren's letter to her friend Angie Peabody, she stated that she and Theo were now citizens of New London.
Infrastructure[]
(All London locations can be found here.)
Click on each tab to view the locations of London.
- Brickwater Marshes (swamps covered with the remains of buildings; and likely the Heathrow Airport)
- Godshawk's Head (the head of a statue of Auric Godshawk)
- Orbital Moatway (the M25 Motorway)
- St Paul's Cathedral (later placed atop London as it's spire)
- The Barbican (a fortress; grounded after the Scriven invaded London)
Culture[]
more coming soon...
Depiction in 2018 film adaptation[]
Many hundreds of years after the Golden Age, London tried to use an old directed-energy superweapon named MEDUSA to break through the shield wall at Batmunkh Gompa. The weapon had been reconstructed in secret within the Saint Paul's Cathedral. During London's attack on the shield wall it was able to fire MEDUSA twice, to which almost all of the wall was destroyed. However, before they could deliver the final blow Hester Shaw was able to sneak in and disable the weapon during it's third launch sequence. This caused it to backfire, breaking and burning, before falling into the Cathedral and the upper parts of London. In a last ditch effort to break through the shield wall Thaddeus Valentine ordered London to drive directly into it, but once again, the plan failed as Tom Natsworthy destroyed The Gut (London's Engine) with the Jenny Haniver causing London to completely break down just short of the wall, but not before crushing Valentine underneath its treads. Most of London's residents fled the city's wreck and took refuge in the Batmunkh Gompa, leaving the city abandoned. Besides the MEDUSA, the biggest difference between both versions of London is it's size, the movie variant is larger and longer, and is heavily armed with a network of anti-air weapons and searchlights, something not present in the novel version of London.
Trivia[]
- In the original version of Mortal Engines, London moved at 15 MPH across the English wasteland and was Christian. (This was for realism and to stay in line with Victorian culture.) When Philip Reeve was modifying the story for Scholastic, he made it move faster and changed its religion to polytheism.[2]
- London was also eyed to be "eaten" by a small, faster, highly-armored traction town known as "Irontown". (This probably evolved into Panzerstadt-Bayreuth.)[2]
- One of the early designs of London was based off of Trafalgar Lions.[3] The final design in the film was inspired by the tiered, wedding cake-like structure in the books, and the lions were made statues like London's "sentinels".[4]
- London fighter ships were supposed to appear in the film.[5][6] They were scrapped from the final product, as the director didn't want the Anti-Traction League to battle airships in the finale because it opposed the group's ideology. They were instead replaced with gun turrets.[5]
Gallery[]
).jpg "London (becoming the death star, mortal engines (2018)).jpg (83 KB)")
References[]
- ↑ A Darkling Plain, Chapter 18: "That Colossal Wreck"
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Mortal Engines: Twenty Years On - Philip Reeve's website
- ↑ Building London feature on the Mortal Engines DVD/Blu-ray features
- ↑ London concept art - Nick Keller's website
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Director's commentary feature on Mortal Engines DVD/Blu-ray
- ↑ Airhaven concept art - Nick Keller's website