Ugan Zal

    In the golden age of the first crop, the phantasmagorics grew a floral superorganism the size of a planet. This world must have been a paradise. Then it died. It was hit by an unimaginable event that sterilized the planet, leaving only dead wood behind. Now the planet is a thriving Ceclaimer world, as they work tirelessly to bring life to the waste land.

    Ugan Zal is perhaps the oldest continuously inhabited planet in Chunk Space. Ornish spores found the planet millennium ago, before even the signing of the reclaimer accords. For thousands of years Orn deep steaders have been bringing life to the depths. In the last thousand years the other races of the alliance have settled here as well. The scolpendrites have introduced new bugs to the fungal gardens, and humans have started surface homesteads farming and ranching.

    Collectively, the surface of the planet is known as the lichen wastes. It is a dry and desolate place, full of huge expanses of bare wood punctuated by small clumps of lichen. Small human villages are found by the moss oases. They raise herds of flat bugs, large insectile rumminats that eat the wood itself. 

Stump Town

    The largest city on Ugan Zal is built into a huge mesa. On the surface, Stump Town just seems like another quaint herding village. Inside the stump is a different story. Carved into the wood is a dense metropolis. The winding, multi level streets are lined with shops with signs made out of glowing fungus. The star port connects the trade routes coming in from the Lichen Wastes and the Deep Stead with the wider galaxy. The municipal government operates out of the Temple of the Ego of Orn. The Orn gestalt itself appoaints a Burgomaster to oversee affairs. The current Burgomaster is Kildith who is Orn, a meticulous and obsessive planner. They have been reforming Stump Town’s road system for 80 years, much to the consternation of the residents.

    Also underneath Stump Town is a vermin cathedral built by the Church of the Holy Vermin. This heavily fortified complex hosts one of the Church’s precious vermin engines, an ancient bio reactor that produces a constant stream of new life forms. Recent unrest has the church on high alert. Their vermin engine is literally irreplaceable.

    The lowest levels of the city are the Gong Tunnels, a complicated sewer system. A small army of laborers works to turn waste into fertilizer. Here, the brown market runs into the black. Everyone knows that the gong merchants don’t always sell soil. Accessing this market requires frankly baroque subservience to the rituals and superstitious of the Reclaimer underworld. Everyone thinks that those that are not Orn are at the top of the hierarchy, but it’s impossible to know for sure.

Bandits

    Decades ago, the Neo Floozy Empire tried to annex this world, one of the many Reclaimer planets they targeted during the so-called “Grasping War”. Guerilla resistance across the entire front rendered the entire enterprise unsustainable and the Neo Floozies were forced to withdraw. On remote Ugan Zal they couldn’t arrange for enough transports, so they simply abandoned the auxiliary forces assigned to the planet. Left to their own devices, some surrendered, while most fled to the outlands of the planet’s surface where they took up banditry. Now they prey on the isolated homesteads of the Reclaimers, living off the land and hiding from the authorities. While time and the wilds have taken their toll on their numbers, they have new blood in the form of discontent youths and native outlaws. They live in dozens of disparate bands ruled by the most charismatic warlords. The most powerful bandit is Dust Lord Koodoth, the last remaining Ever Snake on the planet. Supposedly a mid level riddle smith before the withdrawal, Koodoth is ruthless and stylish. Rumor has it that he was sent to this planet to search for some hidden treasure and that he is still looking 

Village of the Aphoriods

    At first, it seemed as though the remote village of Selca was developing a strong regional dialect. After a spate of grizzly killings in nearby villages it became clear that it was actually a memetic infection known as Aberrant Aphorism. By that point the village was 100% infected and was launching raiding parties, targeting humans for capture and consumption. The memeplex was transmitted verbally, complicating containment efforts. By the time all the local towns had either evacuated or fallen, the memeplex advanced to the next stage. The infected individuals stopped their sorties and started constructing some sort of hive structure. The risk of infection lead to the Reclaimers taking a passive containment approach. Sniper towers and fencing were erected in the wilderness. As the years passed Selca faded from the public’s view and the guards grew lax. Recently the memeplex has mutated again. The raiding parties have started back up, except now the raiders are mutated and carrying homemade slug rifles with unusual curved bayonetts. In desperation, the locals have turned to outside help. There is a bounty on infected “Aphoriods” as well as on intel about the hive. There is a persistent rumor that the infection was initially caused by some sort of artifact covertly retrieved from the Petrified Forest. This rumor sends many treasure hunters to their death or conversion.

Aberrant Aphorism 

Stage 1 - The infected person begins using nonsensical figures of speech e.g “he’s slipper than an orgothan sandhog”, “That makes me madder than a tristan globox on blursday” “well I’ll be a wexian in slippers''. The infected person will not realize their speech has become disordered, instead believing that their outbursts are common sayings and phrases, despite evidence to the contrary.

Stage 2 - The infected person begins to have perceptual distortions, namely they view uninfected sapaints as game animals. Their metabolism increases along with their appetite. At this point their vocabulary is mostly gibberish, intelligible only to other infected.

Stage 3 - This stage is only reached in large populations of infected individuals. It is marked by physical mutations. The skin thickens and becomes warty. The eyes grow reflective membranes and nails become short claws for climbing.

    The condition is spread through hearing the disordered speech of the infected, particularly by trying to understand or repeat it. The condition progresses each time an aberrant aphorism is used. If the host remains silent, the infection atrophies and disappears. The locals treat aberrant aphorism with a drug that induces verbal aphasia.

The Deep Steads 

    Below the surface there are the verdant fungal gardens of the Orns. Mostly what the Orns grow are Orns but they have a whole constellation of symbiote and satellite species. Currently, they are working with the church of the holy vermin in order to enrich the ecosystem with new species of bugs. This is a chaotic time for the Deep Steads, as species come and go. The local government employs a vast army of rangers and researchers to manage the turmoil but things slip through the cracks and weird things happen in the edges of this underground world. 

Those who are not Orn

    Not every fungal sapient is part of the Orn gestalt. Those that refuse live on the margins of Ornish society, hiding and plotting against the overmind they scorned. Like the Orn they have access to a wide range of metabolic abilities, including many parasitic techniques forbidden by Orn. If there really is a Not Orn presence on Ugan Zal is an open question, but the locals are convinced there is. In the Deep Steads particularly every mishap, every die-off, every unpleasant surprise is blamed on the Not Orn. This can cause entire sections of fungal forests to be abandoned. Forgien mercenaries are often used to resolve these issues, as the locals will simply refuse to risk it.  

The petrified woods

At the center of Ugan Zal is a silent city made of petrified wood. The creators of the planet lived here while Ugan Zal was still green. While the city is a treasure trove of ancient Phantasmagoric technology, it remains mostly unplundered due to the wood geists. These pale formless masses of roots and leaves are believed by the locals to be the spirit of the dead superorganism, come to take out its anger on the living.