Cloister

    

    From space, Cloister is all white, great swirling clouds over endless sheets of ice. Great plumes of steam bely the planet’s secret inner life. Cloister is a living world, a planetary superorganism. It is the magnum opus of ancient Soft Body bio-science, left to grow feral for centuries. Beneath the ice is a complicated ecosystem, all working to grow the whole. If it was given a mission by its creators, it does not act on it. All it does is float through the void and thrive.

Sunburn city

    Some part of the living planet is always dreaming, creating an astral bubble realm within the astral current known as Siren’s Call. The locals call it Sunburn city. It occupies a high vibrational energy band and it’s vertically polarized, meaning that the higher in the city you are, the higher the energy level. The city extends beyond the energy survival threshold for the average sapient, so it's fortunate that most visitors arrive in the lower section. The city is made of chitin and resembles no known architectural style. At the center of the city is the clam gate, an astral conflux that leads to the Captive Sea.


    A pod of illuminated maskforms that call themselves the God Lickers have been studying Cloister. They have a small research camp in Sun Burn city, right outside the Clam Gate. They seek to make contact with the guiding intelligence og Cloister. Some think the secret lies deep below the captive sea, while others search the heights of Sunburn city in special high energy suits. They have decent diplomatic relations with the Esk colony and often coordinate on exploration projects.

Thermal Gardens

    Here the living heat of the planet breaks through the ice in great steaming fumaroles, visible for miles around. The ice is shot through with tunnels carved by the local wildlife. The tunnels are draped with wet green ropes of algae.


Burrowing Snagcaster - a relative of the tongue tyrant. Using heated mucus it carves a hunting hide into the ice, then deploys its tongues in a web. The tongues are green and slimy, mimicking the local algae, and also tipped with a wicked barb. Once a hapless victim wanders into the trap, the tongues retract, hitting the target and snagging it with the barb. A creature hit by multiple tongues risks being torn apart.


Thermal Glooper - Herds of these herbivores carve most of the ice tunnels. Like other forms of Gloopers, they can spew gallons of mucus. These gloopers can inject that mucus with either heating or freezing chemical reactions. When threatened they work together by alternating hot and cold sprays, which causes thermal shock.

Footfall Pathway

    The pathway laid out by the first wave of kaijuist settlers to reach the planet. A radio beacon leads travelers to a crude landing strip in the high mountains. From there, smaller beacons mark the way through the thermal gardens to the nacreous fountains, and from there it goes to the captive sea. The name is not literal but a kaijuist metaphor about witnessing the signs of the divine.

Nacreous fountains

    Warm water bubbles up from the planet’s core. The cave walls are covered with lustrous mineral coating. Bioluminescent crawlers give off liminal, changing lighting. The pools and channels throng with life in all sorts of slimy soft diversity.

Temple of the Shelled One

    A settlement on the shores of a great underground lake. The first inhabitants were kaijuists, coming to live inside a god. Through a process of genetic capture, they were hybridised with the Soft Body ecosystem. Now they are amiable human/slug crosses. Much of their religion and culture has fallen away, replaced with the simple peace of commune with the cloister. Last year the village was discovered and annexed by explorers from the city of Esk (the locals don’t seem to mind). They set up a research lab to study the genetic capture, and a lodge to host trophy hunting Esk nobles.


Horned Witch - A human sized slug with 3 pairs of large sensory antenna. These tentacles give the witch a powerful locus of biokinetic ability in the space between them. It can and will cure injuries and disease, but in turn it will alter forgien genomes to be more in line with the Soft Body ecosystem. In other words, they are a major mechanism of the genetic capture phenomena. If attacked, a horn witch will infect its attacker with a viral phermonal agresion tag that marks the target as an enemy of the entire ecosystem. They travel in packs of three. When encountering new lifeforms for the first time, one will slowly approach to scan while the other two hide nearby and observe, ready to intervene. If allowed to scan they will leave.


Nacreous Saint - A large telekinetic snail. Its shell is made out of a pearly fluid that responds to the saint’s mental commands. They use their powers to repair and maintain this region as well as the captive sea

The Captive Sea

    A subterranean ocean, constrained in whirls and convolutes. Chambers of living shells form a vast labyrinth. The flow of the water is controlled by organic valves. On the edges of strong currents large reefs grow, feeding a teeming multitude. Eyeless hunters lurk in the dark, waiting for the perfect ambush. The Footfall pathway extends into this realm, but not far. The Kaijuist ambition to make a road to the heart of their god was lost with their hybridization. The Esk and the Illuminated have taken up the project, hoping to uncover more of the planet’s secrets.

Madmen’s Monastery

    A city of slug monks deep in the captive sea. The name came from the reaction to the first accounts. Those early divers were not believed at first. Even after the site was confirmed to exist the name stuck. The complex remains mostly unexplored, as the psychic fields emitted by the monks greatly accelerate the genetic capture effect.

The Clam Gate

    This gateway into the astral takes the form of a giant four lobed clam shell. When it closes, anything inside is transported bodily to Sunburn city. The same is true for the Sunburn City side. The Clam opens and closes every eight hours. There is a persistent rumor that in a minority of cases the clam simply eats prospective travelers.


Holo pearl - These gemstones are found in certain bivalves in the captive sea. They contain information grown into their crystalline structure. The theory is that they were used as some sort of long term memory storage by the Soft Bodies. They are considered valuable artifacts. The kaijuists used to harvest them before they were robbed of that ambition by genetic capture.