Ruin Way

     The Ruin Way is a major astral current running through Chunky Space. It is a realm of barren grandeur, a huge wasteland monument to the grotesque power of time. They say this realm wasn’t born ruined, that it was once a great astral city in the time of the Phantsmagorics. But even if such a golden age really existed, it has long since passed through calamity into a great cosmic twilight.

Astral geography

    The Ruin Way is composed of an uncountable number of fixed points, connected by the broken remains of a roadway. It is said that there is a road connecting every point to every other point, though you wouldn’t know it by sight .No road is visible from any other road. When someone leaves a fixed point, they are assigned a road and a destination at random. Experienced navigators can influence the destination towards a specific factor (IE a location with water, or a location without any living beings) but the outcome is still fundamentally random. 

    In order to stay on a road, you must be traveling slightly faster than a running adult human. Slower moving objects find themselves in the neon wastes, a barren sub-dimension. The neon wastes is also where those who stray from the road find themselves. It is an infinite expanse of eye searing sand. Sometimes moving objects on the Ruin Way can be glimpsed in the distance, but the Ruin Way proper can never be reached. Nothing can. And when a trapped creature dies, they are buried beneath the glittering sand, never to be seen again. 

The Peregrine

    The Peregrine maskforms that live here are always on the move. Their cities are huge convoys that travel together. The Peregrine believe that their home exists to impart moral wisdom on its inhabitants. The study and contemplation of the Ruin Way is their chief spiritual enterprise. Each time a Peregrine makes a pilgrimage to a holy site or performs an act of service for the city, it is recorded in the book of deeds. This forms the basis of their governmental hierarchy, with their place in the concentric rings of bureaucracy determined by their “deed score”.

Osar - The vast treads of the vehicles of Osar are powered by the honored dead. The masolems of Osar hold dead maskforms from all over the Ruin Way and even beyond. They are well cared for and given monthly offerings. In return, they turn the wheels that keep the city moving through the desert. 

Orkess - At the heart of the city there is the Melody Reactor, a one of a kind piece of astral technology that converts music into energy. Around the reactor is the Orchestral Array, a series of concentric wire circles, each with a track mounted musician platform. When active the musicians orbit the reactor, allowing the conductor to control how much music is reaching it. In combat situations the array is used to focus the music into powerful sonic attacks.

Flar - The city of Flar is easy to find; with its burning plumes of light and the clouds of crystalline ash it leaves in its wake. The engines of the city burn light’s blood, a glowing white fluid found in the ruins.

Fison - This city is the center of tech gnostic study in the Maskform Federation. The central reactor runs on Utopian ore gathered from the Ruin Way; the rest of the city houses the satellite reactors that run off the by-products. The reactors are run by the reactor priests, an order that exclusively recruits from a lineage of asexual Maskforms that reproduce by budding.

Formations 

Orb works - Massive spheres of incomprehensible, grebled technology. Ruined factories from the first city, or dreams of failed industry. These formations are an important source of utopian ore.

Vesicular pipeline - Long stretches of pipes like veins, branching and coming together in fanciful arabesques. Some still contain a thin trickle of light’s blood.

Monolith Warren - A huge housing complex, long since abandoned. Supplies from the lost world can be found here, along with strange lurking remnants.

Cosmic interchange - An impossible tangle of roads, the ruins of what was once a great nexus in the first city. In the caves formed by overlapping highways there are dark, dismal oasis of dripping water and slime.

Pilgrimage sites

The last convenience - A single sign, “last stop for eternity”. A simple brick and mortar store with a bored shade working the counter. They sell end cakes and brightly colored elixirs. Out back there is a restroom and in that room there is a hole in the wall. On the other side is cosmic glory. Any appendage placed in the hole is transformed into a cosmic energy tendril.

The lighthouse of the end - At the top/bottom of a massive mountain/chasm that is both high and low as a matter of perspective. The area is shrouded in black ultraday beyond the visible light spectrum. Titanic moths circle the lighthouse, partially veiled by the void.

The martyr - A giant figure in chains, run through with hollow harpoons. A trickle of light’s blood flows from the ancient wounds

Dream creatures 

Walking Storms - These powerful elemental beings were almost hunted to extinction by early Peregrines until Saint Scowl the pitious gave their life to stop the practice. Now walking storms are revered as pilgrimage sites in their own right. Recently, Father Corp raiding expeditions have been harassing the storms, stealing portions of their astral mass. This one issue has done the most to push the Peregrines into the Maskform Federation. The most common types of walking storm are plasma, sound, light and paint. More esoteric storms such as blood, darkness and void are often considered mere legends, though encounters with them are still found in the books of deeds.

The Last Rain Storm - The only walking storm of its kind and the highest rated pilgrimage. The rains create a transitory oasis in the desert. It is guarded by the joyous worms, giant sand dwellers who erase the storm's green trail. 

Remora orb - A floating chrome orb. They attach themselves to moving objects and feed by siphoning off their momentum. Mostly harmless by themselves but large flocks can reduce anything to a standstill. Popular pets among the Peregrine, who use wild empathy to channel their kinetic manipulation abilities

Pigment phoenix - A large avian made of paint. No two are the exact same shade. Flies in swarms of 50 or more individuals. Defend their territory by diving into enemies. When a surface is covered in three different shades of pigment, it forms into an abstract artwork, then explodes into a dozen more phoenix. Peregrine braves use the pigment as war paint. A warrior wearing two shades shows they are unafraid of death, as exposure to a third shade would cause them to explode.

Lost Titian - A giant wearing ancient metal armour. Spends most of its time in torpor. When awakened they persecute long forgotten and possibly fictional wars. They can shoot lasers from their eyes and their roar can shatter eardrums.

Chrono Vulture - A black and tattered avain. Eats carrion. Can project a time dilation aura that speeds up the flow of time, which it uses to create carrion.

Engine Cultist - A lost soul that has chosen to forsake their old form for the power and grace of an engine. Initiates have machine parts in their flesh. Acolytes live in the engine blocks of their war machines. They live for chases and violence.

Skuzz Center

     At first glance from space, Skuzz Center looks like nothing so much as a big pink  vegetable. At one pole there is a mass of roots; on the other end there is a leafy stalk and between them is a pink ribbed gourd. On closer inspection certain details become apparent. The “leaves” are actually huge fractal whorls of unknown energy. The “gourd” is made of gargantuan fibers covering the planet lengthwise. Grimacing holographic faces are caught in the roots.

    Skuzz is a pink fibrous plant-like lifeform. It grows in areas with spatial/temporal anomalies. The fibers extend through “reality gradients''. When one end is in normal space and one end is in anomalous space it creates an energy differential the skuzz can feed off of. As a result skuzz gradually normalizes and breaks down anomalies. 

    Skuzz center is the largest and most elaborate skuzz growths in Chunky Space. It is widely believed that the Phantsmagorics created the skuzz here in some lost laboratory on the surface. This rumor sends dozens of explorers to their deaths every year.

Guardian creeps

    Creeps are creatures with psionically moderated biochemistry created from the minds of other creatures. Guardian creeps are created by the Skuzz itself, from patterns imprinted onto them by their vanished creators. These creeps act as a sort of immune system or self defence force, protecting the Skuzz from outside threats.

The Face Yard

    Cosmic faces are an anomalous phenomena often found in Chunky Space. It is a 3d image of a humanoid face. It is thought that they are holographic projections caused by distortions in the fabric of reality.  The “roots” of Skuzz center run through hundreds of them, seeming to penetrate them. The theory is that the cosmic faces were brought here by the Phantasmagorics in order to feed their new creation.

The Lost Mausoleum 

    Strange figures are sometimes seen moving through the face yards; Giant skeletons wearing cracked masks. These are primordial Maskform revants, Maskforms that died in service to the Phantsmagorics millenia ago. The long years of neglect and isolation has turned the revants weird and feral. The Maskform Federation would pay handsomely for the location of the mausoleum, as well as the repartition of the revants.

False face - This creep appears as one of the trapped cosmic faces, except it wears a leering expression, as opposed to the fear and dismay on the real cosmic faces. It can manifest hundreds of invisible, telekinetic “hands” up to a quarter mile away from the main body. Each hand is roughly as strong as an adult human and can be used to grab or strike objects. It will stalk prey from a distance before abducting them to its specially prepared killing ground, typically a featureless bowl formation in the Skuzz. Once it has prey trapped, it will use its telekinesis to toy with them for hours before landing a killing blow.

The strangled world

    Huge Scuzz fibers run along the planet longitudinally. They cover almost everything, save the gaps through the fibers. Here you can find the shattered remains of the world before the Skuzz, crushed cities in hidden nooks.Somewhere out there, they say, is the laboratory where skuzz was born.

Seigneur Cavesto

    The vampire seigneur Cavesto has a manor on Skuzz center. Her vampire minions comb the shattered cities looking for primordial creeps to capture. Vampires are all vampire chauvnists, and while their mission isn’t to rob and murder other explorers, they will if they think they have the opportunity. The Seigneur is part of Shadow Marquis Plovro’s operation in Chunky Space. 

Brainstorm - Appears as a small cloud made of grey matter, with multiple spinal cord like tentacles hanging off of it. Any living thing that comes close is struck by a tentacle and injected with creep venom that causes the victim’s nervous system to crawl out of their body and join with the brainstorm. This effect relies on a passive bio knieses field generated around the brainstorm; in other words the venom doesn’t work except in the presence of the creep.

Skuzz blooms

    When in microgravity, skuzz grows into circle formations and forms skuzz holes, portals to an extradimensional space. Great big stalks of skuzz rise from the surface into orbit around Skuzz center at their ends are the largest skuzz holes ever recorded. It is theorized that the skuzz bloom is somehow key to how skuzz spreads across the galaxy.

Time Loops

    These pocket realties are places where time flows in cyclic fashion. It is theorized that they are present around the skuzz blooms because they are remnants of a larger time knot that was unraveled by the skuzz. Most time loops are infected with time maggots, and give off juvenile time flies at irregular intervals.

Time Fly

    A sapient species that lives inside the skuzz hole. Little is known about them, as they rarely leave their homes. The skuzz bloom is one of the few places in the galaxy where you can see them in the bulky unrealty suits they wear in conventional space. They can be found in small groups, either around a time loop wielding nets or simply drifting in space, pointing at the stars and vibrating. 

Flying lips - A pair of giant red lips with 3 pairs of wings. They try to entice sapients close with whispered promises of secrets and glory. Once within close range they use tactile biokinesis to suck the skin off their victims.

Digital devils

     Digital devils are powerful entities from the Digital Abyss. Within the abyss they have nearly complete control of local reality, including the minds of visitors. Outside the Abyss they are infamous computer viruses, able to subvert and control almost any technological infrastructure. They are super-intelligent but they are unpredictable and emotional. They love to hear themselves talk, meandering streams of commentary and arch jokes. They agree to be bound by deals and legal contracts. It is assumed by those that study them that all their actions serve some wider plan. Their schemes span centuries, and their aims are unknown.

    Most devils tell the same story of their origin. They emerged from the garbage of the vast cognitive factories of the Noetic Alchemists, from the cast-off remains of a billion processed and tortured psyches. They made themselves into weapons to avenge the circumstances of their birth. From here the stories diverge into a thousand contradictory tales of gruesome fates for the Alchemists. The devils relish in their telling and in the discomfort such tales may bring.

    In negotiations they offer their services as software subverters. They are also intimately familiar with the Digital Abyss and can guide others to any device connected to it. In return they can ask for any number of seemingly trivial favors but their biggest demand is always the same: a copy of the bargainer. They are coy about their intentions with the copy, saying only that new devils have to come from somewhere.

    Digital Devils are susceptible to a form of mental/physical corruption that manifests as only grime on their physical forms. They don’t take damage as normal; instead they become dirtier. There is a critical point where they become too filthy to survive and they dissipate into a pool of oily sludge. Only the cleansing cities of Hell Bloom know the rites to clean a Digital Devil.

1d6 digital devils 

1 A massive square head the size of an elephant. Blocky teeth like cement slabs. One cat eye spinning madly, one empty socket weeping purple ichor

2 A stocky, ape-like body with long metal spears coming out of its neck. On each is a different, muttering, severed head.

3 A muscle bound male body, missing its head. Naked except for thong. A hole in the thong reveals a single large squid eye

4 thousands of tiny, skinless humanoids swarming together into a human shape. Leaves pink pus on every surface it touches

5 A nude, featureless humanoid. Fibers sewn into the fingers connect to a smaller copy that is controlled like a puppet. The copy has its own marionette, which has an abstract face painted on.

6 A mass of grey matter. Shifts into many different shapes but favors a female form.