Siren's call is one of the major astral currents running through Chunky Space. It is an Oceanic realm composed of a thick, breathable fluid. It is also vibrationally fractioned, meaning its reality manifests differently according to the observer’s vibrational frequency. It can be thought of as a four dimensional space, with the fourth dimension being frequency. As a being’s mood lowers or rises, they find themselves in a new layer of reality. Lower vibes correspond to “deeper” and darker environments. The realm itself drains vibrational energy from visiting sapients at a slow but steady rate, continuously pulling them into “deeper” layers.
Ultra Vibe Zone
This region exists beyond the energy threshold for most sophonts. It is experienced as pure burning light, too bright to behold. The light children have a city here, in some unknown and presumed unknowable lair.
Coral Cathedrals
This is the most hospitable layer and the closest to conventional reality. Dreamers pulled into the current emerge here and are given a welcoming view. The arcing pillars of coral mark out vast interior cavities. The pillars are made of thousands of different coral growths, their varied shapes and colors coming together into a grand design just on the edge of comprehension. Schools of rainbow colored fish play and flow through the columns. The current is like a gentle caress. Dreamers that have been pulled into the call emerge here, into relative safety.
Chromatic Fathoms
A series of interlocking biomes, each named after their characteristic hue. While Esk explorers recognize 11 different hues, Illuminated records list 144 fathoms. The fathoms exist as three dimensional volumes, meaning you can swim from one fathom to the next. According to the Illuminated, the fathoms are shaped like fish and are tessellated together into one vast school. This region is the most densely claimed by Illuminated pods.
Notable Fathoms
Scarlet Serpent Fathom - This fathom is full of the coils of a massive serpent clad in black and red scales. If the head exists, no one has seen it and lived to tell the tale.
Starlight Fathom - millions of bioluminescent jellies light this dark fathom, creating a beautiful nightscape. The movements of the living stars are said to hold portents of the future.
Gast Green Fathom - This fathom is home to thin sheet shaped creatures with holes that make them look like horrible caricatures of human faces. This place has a cursed reputation.
Animorphos Orange Fathom - The orange jellies here flow and morph into each other like living fluid. There is a guiding intelligence behind the liquid ballet; a gestalt intelligence the locals call the Flow.
Foggy Fathom - The dense gray of this fathom limits visibility. Massive leviathans can just barely be glimpsed in the distance. They can be heard singing, their alien voices full of melancholy.
Stained Glass Fathom - A vast school of fish made of living glass, each individual a sparkling jewel. This is one of the more dangerous fathoms, because of the gallery shark, an apex predator whose every tooth is a masterwork. The Illuminated use recovered shark teeth as spearheads.
Eeling Eyes
This region is the transition point between the “surface” layers and the “deep” layers. The twilight gloom here is home to an uncountably vast school of eel spawn. The finger sized fish form into swirling patterns that look like staring eyes. This effect can cause panic, pushing people even further into the depths of the Call
The Hungry Depths
In the dark, the trap of Siren’s Call is sprung. It is thought that the nightmarish creatures that live here are the feeding appendages of the greater Sirens. Those that lose their minds or their lives to their predation ultimately feed the realm itself. Entering this region unprepared is certain death, but the natives have devised methods to mask their presence, allowing pods to explore the toothy deep unharmed.
The Bottom
This deep, low vibe region is a gargantuan barran plane of mud, broken only by tumbled stone towers. According to local legend, the mud is home to a race of sapient isopods.
Minor Siren Lairs
Minor sirens are powerful psychic creatures that have projected their dreamscapes into Siren’s Call, forming their own pocket realms. They do this to access the energy and potential prey of the call. Illuminated neophytes often ask if the minor sirens have lairs, then do the major sirens have them as well? The orthodox answer is that the call itself is the lair of the major sirens. A less accepted answer is that there are major siren lairs, just that no one has returned from them alive.
Sun Burn City
This lair is the dream of the planetary superorganism known as the Cloister. It dreams of the architecture of its long dead creators; the faded memories of their empire forming the towers and arcades of an empty city. The lair exists on a vibrational band extending from the coral castles into the ultra vibe zone. Inside, the vibrational gradient collapses from the fourth dimension into the third, meaning energy levels rise as you ascend. This takes the form of a massive burning sun. The open spaces are bathed in a painful light that makes the very astral fluid glow hot. In the dark crevices of the city, astral life from the call has found a creeping toehold. The house of Esk has established a research station in the upper reaches. Known as Radiance Garden, this outpost is dedicated to studying high energy life forms.
Lair of the Wonder Hydra
This lair is actually a meta realm composed of millions of bubble worlds. Each bubble is a unique vision of paradise. In the real world the Hydra is a parasitic superorganism that has hundreds of hosts. The hydra uses their minds as inspiration for the bubble realms, accessing their desires, aesthetic sense, even fear and anxiety. It is driven solely by artistic ambition, or so it claims. The hydra superorganism is sapient, and also a lucid dreamer. In the astral it appears as a collection of glowing orbs. It likes to show off its realm to visitors but it is quick to take offense.
The Sponge Star
This lair is home to the only permanent Illuminated city, Poriregia. The Sponge star gets its name from its shape; it is an orb with massive protruding sponge siphons. The star migrates around the upper layers of the call, mostly traveling between the Chromatic Fathoms, but sometimes “rising” to the Coral Cathedrals or “sinking” to the Eeling Eyes. According to theirself history, the Illuminated have an ancient compact with the dreamer of the Sponge Star that lets them safely live inside the lair. The exact details of the treaty are not public, but what is known is that it mandates the creation of the wormshell library. Liberians psychically control the growth of worms across the interior of the sponge in order to transcribe books and other texts. The library holds the collected works of all the Chunky Space Maskform tribes.
The Weir
A collaborative shared dream of a coterie of Senators of the Republic Of Sea Serpents. It is a massive stone complex in the Eeling Eyes. It’s maze-like passages channel the eel fry into capture channels.The senators use the patterns of captive eels through the structure to divine the paths of the Cosmic Eels through the Cosmos. This lair has come under attack by Gather Corp, who wishes to use that intel for their own ends.
Factions
The Illuminated
These Maskforms have lived in Siren’s Call for generations. They use special lightstones as meditative focuses to increase their vibrational energy, allowing them to move “up” and “down” at will. According to their mythology they learned these techniques from the light children. Their bond with the light children is part of their larger predilection towards treaties and diplomacy. They have a system of treaties and compacts with many entities both within Sirens’ Call and without.
The Illuminated have a single city within the Call. Known as Poriregia, it is ruled by a merit based hierarchy of librarians. It is a center of knowledge and learning within the larger Chunky Space Maskform community. Outside of the city, the Illuminated organize into small (10 to 20 individuals) affinity groups known as pods. Each pod is an autonomous group that has a self given mission within its area of expertise. There are diplomat pods, explorer pods, warrior pods and some that are even more specialized. Operating within the Call over extended periods requires skill and awareness. Pods return to Poriregia when the stress of free living becomes too great. The city serves as a unifying symbol; even though pods can develop rivalries and bitter ideological disputes, ultimately they all serve the city.
The House of Esk
One of the few surviving Technocrat lines that used to rule the human homeworld of Dirt. For hundreds of years they have been using astral translation technology to explore the Call. By using the Call as a staging ground, they have started several realspace colonies. They have a fairly warm diplomatic relationship with the Illuminated, though it did suffer a blow after the rebellion during the ensuing truth and reconciliation meetings. The Illuminated felt as though the Esk weren’t honest about the political situation on Dirt and were shocked at some of measures the house took early in the rebellion, before their defection. Still, the Esk/Illuminated partnership was too useful to both sides to let a few crimes against humanity sour it. The Esk were instrumental in getting the Maskform Federation a seat in the discussions that would create the Chunky Space Compact.
Dream Creatures.
Light child - A being made of shimmering light patterns.Very intelligent but their alien thought patterns make them difficult to communicate with. They attack dreamers falling into the deeps in order to wake them up and save them. According to the Maskforms, they used to be MAskform children that underwent some sort of metamorphosis
Thought Sponge - A sponge that walks on three segmented legs. They use negative psychic pressure to suck thoughts out of other beings
Symphony school - A swarm of pisciform dream creatures, each different. Together their calls create complex songs. Usually they sing cheerful, upbeat songs, but they hunt by creating discordant melodies that push their prey deeper into the call.
Last-rest weed- Glowing seaweed that grows in large. On contact it induces paralyzing euphoria. Paralyzed creatures are grabbed by the weed and drawn into the center of the mass where they feed new growth. Used by the native maskforms to bury their dead
Petty star king swarm - Brightly colored starfish with elaborate crown growths. In tiny voices they demand tribute and worship. They have venomous bites that induce muscle weakness and simple mindedness.
Vaguely annoyed that I didn't think of the idea of sapient isopods first...
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