tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89632430224155090422024-02-14T12:53:52.633-08:00Flight of the Sky EelsLeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.comBlogger73125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-23282849345974595622023-06-18T09:46:00.003-07:002023-06-18T09:46:14.468-07:00Ten Thousand Lonely Watchtowers <p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Millions of years ago, the civilization on this planet destroyed itself in a bloody civil war. The Black Rainbow Destroyers have since turned the entire world into an art installation commemorating their folly. They built the eponymous watchtowers to gaze out over the empty cities and the cratered battlefields, forward outposts in a war that guttered out millenia ago. The Black Rainbow Destroyers use this planet as a base of operations for their archaeological and cultural explorations of Chunky Space.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-96d54b55-7fff-9b8a-2e31-045421af6261"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Nerve Gas Sunrise</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The original artist behind the planetary installation. Her primary instance is a Mothership class capital ship orbiting the planet. She serves as the nexus for Black Rainbow Destroyer forays into Chunky Space. She is the nominal ruler of the system but for the most part she is content to maintain her installation with her hexapod construction drones.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Sky Trash Dreamland</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Dreaming Black Rainbow Destroyers have complete control over their bodies, moving and responding to the scenarios happening inside their minds. Dreamlands are specialized “parks” where destroyers can act out their dreams in relative safety. The Sky Trash Dreamland is the ring of broken space stations in orbit around the planet, left over from the war. At any one time there can be hundreds of Black Rainbow Destroyers playing out their own psychodramas amid the shattered ruins</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The Watch Towers</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The towers themselves are concrete fortresses between 10 and 20 stories tall. The towers are functional defense emplacements with various weapon configurations. The distribution of weapons has artistic meaning, though that meaning is tied up in esoteric Black rAinbow Destroyer philosophy and is difficult to interpret without that knowledge.Several towers contain rail guns designed to shoot Black Rainbow Destroyer chassis into orbit. Recently, Oth forces have begun squatting in the towers. This goes against the purpose of the installation and Nerve Gas Sunrise is offering bounties to anyone who can clear a tower while leaving it mostly intact.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Mallhemia </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Settlement on the planet’s surface is forbidden. However, the Black Rainbow Destroyers have permitted a subterranean city in the ruins of an ancient shopping mall. Mallhemia is an independent city state with a laissez faire government and zero extradition treaties, making it a haven for exiles and criminals. In particular, the Black Rainbow Destroyers have a fondness for art and artists, which has attracted the extreme avant garde who are no longer welcome in their home polities.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The Creep Farms</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> Mallhemia only occupies the first few levels of the underground complex. Below the city proper there are unsettled mall levels. Below those there is an abandoned civilian infrastructure complex, and below that is a military bunker. Sometime after the fall of the original civilization an astral conflux with the Squeeze formed in these subtertian confines. These levels have become home to an infestation of creeps, coming from both the settlers of Mallhemia and from the Squeeze itself. What most civilizations would see as a public health crisis, the Mallhemians see as a resource. Hunters armed with paralytic poison capture creeps alive and render them into potent astral drugs. As these hunts are both a major industry and an important public safety campaign, the Farmer’s Guild has been given the power to press gang people into becoming hunters. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Creeps</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Dead Faced Teens</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> - Appears as a human adolescent with extreme facial injuries or deformities. The most common type of creep in the complex, these creatures congregate in large groups or cliques. They are craven scavengers, preferring only to attack the wounded or dying. Believed to be sapient, though official contact hasn’t been made. The links between them and the local juvenile population in the city above are poorly understood. Sometimes DFTs are found that resemble locals, either living or dead.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Hate Giant</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> - Huge pallid humanoids. Their bodies are soft and flexible, only them to contrast and crawl through the tight confines of the mall. Said to be the spawn of the first Mr. squeeze, and as such are thought to know secrets of their home realm. Mostly they’re just interested in gumming people to death in their toothless maws.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Neon Imp</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> - A geometric form of glowing light. When motionless it resembles a light up advertisement, but not one in any known language. It stalks sapient beings, moving only when unobserved. It desires to shine its light directly on the back of a victim's head. When “feeding” this way, the subject is put into a trance state while their desires are replaced with an obsession with material goods. If left unchecked, eventually even the autonomic nervous system will be replaced, leading to paralysis and death. </span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></div></span>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-83530722020633057872023-04-22T08:36:00.002-07:002023-04-22T08:36:17.770-07:00Far Sea<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">This lonely and frigid world is the locus of Seeder influence in Chunky Space. Several generations ago the noble house of Esk used an astral current to found a secret colony here. They can here to study and hunt the great soft body leviathans that live here. After the rebellion, it was discovered that the planet was within Chunky Space, making it a natural staging ground for Seeder expansion in the region. This strategic position is only marred by the extreme danger the local fauna pose. Not only are the seas teeming with great leviathans, the skies are as well.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-3fd9d5fc-7fff-4cfd-a60f-08e7db998ec2"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Twin Blues</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This wild expanse of open ocean covers most of the planet. The name comes from the locals, who have come to see the sky as another ocean that holds just as many monsters as the one below. They fish in small sail powered boats; anything large with a motor would attract too much attention. Even with the primitive equipment and the danger, the fishers of Break Tide are fat and prosperous, such is the richness of Far Sea.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Breaktide</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The planet’s sole city and spaceport. Breaktide is built in the center of a massive stone monument, a ring of five monoliths. Inside the ring is a jumble of stone slabs that forms a series of pools and caves. The Esk nobles live in the pressurized caves. The tidal surface pools are given over to aquaculture and the workers live in vertical shanties up the monolith faces. The least productive bivalve pool hosts the Seeder Consulate in a floating hab pod</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Cloud Trees</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The planet’s equatorial band is taken up by a landless jungle. Huge float trees emerge from the water’s surface and tower thousands of feet in the air. The trees teem with flying and floating life. This area serves as a nursery for young sky leviathans. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Ice palace</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The planet’s huge northern ice cap. It is riddled with tunnels and ice caves, full of strange, spikey sea life. According to rumor, there is a near pristine Soft Body Ruin buried deep within the ice, though no one alive claims to have seen it. Going too far into the ice palace is believed to carry the curse of the night devil’s attention.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jonahbranch</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - These soft body titans can swim in both air and water. They feed on sapients, which they swallow whole. Once inside the victim is sent to a pocket realm where they are psychically digested over decades.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dropshell </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- These huge floating creatures are herbivores, but they are also intensely territorial. They attack by retreating into their shell and dropping from the sky. Their crystal “float bladders” are controlled psionically and are very valuable </span></p><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Night Devil</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> -Considered a legend by some, this creature is very real in the minds of the locals. It hunts those who break certain taboos, taking them in the middle of the night. They say it cries after each hunt, and it’s true that strange howls can be heard in Breaktide. A small cult is growing up around the creature.</span></span>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-78666136998979260422022-11-21T17:17:00.001-08:002022-11-21T17:17:20.665-08:00The Trail<p> <span> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Traill is thought to be the oldest extant astral current in the galaxy. Most experts agree that it was constructed by the Floozies shortly after the big bang, making it a template for future astral currents. Like most Floozy creations, the Trail has evolved since their disappearance. What was once a simple liminal space used for transportation is now a sprawling realm in its own right.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-caedca96-7fff-22e2-b9ee-487ef22d9180"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Astral geography</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Trail is a small, simple pathway through an ever changing vista. Every step taken causes the view to change in a process the locals call “the shift”. The path changes as well at a slower pace, changing from dirt to duckboards to rope and pitons. There are many “fixed points” in the Trail, either ancient outposts or astral confluxes where the Trail meets another current. Navigation in the Trail works by way of intention and connection; a traveler can set a destination by picturing a person or destination known to them. Travel time is based on the strength of the mental image, the stronger the impression, the shorter the journey. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Leaving the Trail takes you to the Unknown Wilds, a trackless and pernicious expanse of feral dreamscape. Traveling in the wilds works on similar principles, except it is slower and much more difficult. A new visitor probably does not have any connections strong enough to escape.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Threaded</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These Maskforms live on the fixed points in the Trail. Their name comes from their binding ritual; two or more maskforms that wish to have their bond formalized will sew special ceremonial fiber into their skin. The thread reinforces the sympathetic connection and makes it easier for them to find each other in the Trail and in the Wilds. The Threaded live in small communities built around stable points.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jaraga</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Found amid a wasteland of cyclopean glass, this city is the bread basket of Threaded civilization. The glass falls down from an astral conflux with the Neon SpeedWay. The interior of these impossible glass castoffs is often larger than the exterior. The Threaded seek out these anomalous jars in order to turn them into agricultural centers. Some jars have seen centuries of careful cultivation, while other jars have fallen prey to strange blights and have been sealed off.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Archearg</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - This city is built on an ancient Phantasmagoric outpost near the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conceptual Gap</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a region of The Trail where the dream reality breaks down. The outpost takes the form of a series of stone lighthouses extending the trail across the void of meaning. Long since defunct, the towers instead serve as anchor points for a vast series of webs spun by the residents using trained weaver beasts. The webs catch the strange creatures and emanations that drift in from the gap, which the locals distill into a variety of curious liquors.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ilumos</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - This settlement is within a low vibrational “subterranean” region of the trail, near a crossing point with the astral current The Squeeze. The center of the settlement is a large cavern that holds the Flame of Animation. Anything drawn on the walls becomes a doodle dream creature. Artists from across Chunky Space come here for the chance to bring their creations to life, only to have their dreams dashed by the nascence committee who controls access. Gangs of rejected artists are fomenting rebellion against the committee. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dream Creatures</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Any Beast</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Protean shapeshifters, these creatures are often glimpsed from the trail, flowing between forms as the landscape changes. Their mercurial nature makes them dangerous up close, as they can become carnivorous at a moment's notice. The Threaded have domesticated them with a branding ritual that limits their forms into a single animal archetype.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ancient Sojourner</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Humanoid entities wearing ancient patterned void suits. Through their dark visors luminous galaxies of star vermin shine within their eyes. They carry knowledge of every wrecked and lost starship, and will speak recite accounts of horrid disasters. Their hypnotic screeds have been known to carry memetic parasites, but sometimes they contain clues to lost treasures.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Abstractor</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - A parasite with an unknown form. It carries with it a shroud of abstraction that causes the details of local reality to fade out. This allows it to approach its prey without raising alarms. It feeds off life energy and likes to follow and repeatedly visit its victims.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Strange Parade</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Sometimes music can be heard on the trail, a strange, ponderous melody. If the source is investigated, the parade appears. Strange striding giants tower over hordes of mutant creatures. Witnessing the parade causes a compulsion to join it. Unfortunates who join the parade are lost for a period of time before turning up somewhere in the cosmos. </span></p><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hungry Landscape</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - A mouth-like cave beckons travelers inside with the promise of knowledge. Once inside, one experiences hundreds of subjective years in a pocket dreamscape, emerging seconds later. Sometimes they have even learned useful skills.</span></span>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-32916599727654460932022-07-13T08:00:00.005-07:002022-07-13T08:00:17.091-07:00Noetic Alchemists <p> <span> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Noetic Alchemists were a clade of digital lifeforms that formed part of the Triune alliance that first colonized Chunky Space. They were “ring minds”, group intelligences made of interchangeable sub minds.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-6f837b01-7fff-f61e-580b-ad588f6dc2e3"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The great work</b> - The alchemists had a singular obsession during the reign of their empire. They sought to create the perfect mind, in an endeavor that has been compared to the modern Sophonic Advent’s quest for universal sapiance. The key difference is that the Alchemists conceived of the perfect being as existing in the universe, while the Advent believe their perfect being will encompass the universe.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Astral Technology</b> - To achieve their goal, the Noetic Alchemists created a self replicating machine ecology, cribbing their work from the ancient Gnomic machine ecologies. The key difference is that their designs were capable of harvesting and using astral energy. When astral energy is added to a virtual world the result is something very similar to a standard dreamscape. This allowed for simulationed worlds with properties that would be impossible in normal reality emulations. The most prominent example being the hyper-technic worlds, realms where technology worked better than in reality. Each Noetic world had a single hyper-technic core realm that served as an advanced nerve center for the planetary system. The whole empire was connected through an artificial astral current known as the Great Web.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Digital Genocide</b> - Once a machine ecology was well established, it would begin growing large numbers of world frames. These worlds would be populated with emulated beings which would be subjected to tests and trials to determine their mental fitness. Failures would be deleted while success would be destructively processed, their astral/digital essences distilled and refined. This process was iterated on a massive scale; a single fully colonized planet could have tens of thousands of world frames, each hosting billions of sapients.</span></p><b><br /></b><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Avengers from the Dross</b> - The great work produced a great amount of astral waste. The impure and unwanted parts of processed minds were channeled into digital cisterns before being sent to reprocessing facilities. It was in one of those cisterns that the first digital devils arose; gestalt consciousnesses made of bad thoughts. This would be the start of a long and horrible war that would last until the collapse of Alchemist civilization at the start of the Plague Aeon.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Ruined Present </b>- Even after the fall of Noetic Alchemists and the cessation of the great work, their machine ecology kept working. The difference is that the cullings and harvesting stopped and the world frames were left fallow. Some evolved new and novel realties while some devolved into hell realms under the influence of the Digital Devils. They were able to access these worlds through the remains of the Great Web, which has become the debased devil’s nest known as the Digital Abyss. </span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span><u><br /></u></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span><u>Alchemist Worlds</u></span></div><b><br /></b><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Hellbloom-</b> This sweltering hot house world has a specialized machine ecology adapted to the high heat. Thermal energy powers the massive wolfram that hosts the Hellbloom digital world. Florid Maskforms run the cleansing cities where digital devils go to be rejuvenated. Rumored to be the resting place of the archdevil of Compassion.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Deep Hole</b> - The machine ecology here is damaged and demented, barely able to mantain itself. In a mountain bunker there is a long mirror lined shaft. This is a permanent portal to the digital abyss.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Alembic</b> - This world is thought to be the most well preserved cognitive distillation plant still in existence. Strange machines process astral fluids into multicolored glass holding tanks. The astral distillates are valuable but fiercely protected by the machine ecology.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Frozen Battle</b> - A Noetic Alchemist world that was fighting off an invasion of primitive Black Rainbow Destroyers when it was frozen in time.Popular cursed tourist destination.</span></p><div><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span><u>Creature Encounters</u></span></div><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Antenna Reef-</b> branching metal poles. They condense astral energy into astral metal they use to grow. When disturbed they fire manifestation rays that cause sentient beings to leak psychic energy in the form of astral phantoms, which the reefs then absorb. Reefs in low astral environments become “carnivorous”, using their rays aggressively to harvest energy.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Mandible drone </b>- These hexapod worker droids are the labor backbone of the machine ecology. Their chief job is harvesting antenna reefs. Their astral alloy jaws can adapt to eventually be able to cut through any material.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Tank drone</b> - This drone has a long multi chambered glass abdomen. It serves as a living refinery, turning astral matter into astral distaltes. When the hive is threatened, they mobilize as heavy weapons platforms; the astral fluids they spray have a variety of effects.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>World drone</b> - These droids carry spherical world frames in a specialized socket. They form dense nests within the heart of the ecology. When threatened they flair astral energy into the real world, creating psychic vortexes that draw intruders into the world frames.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Lurker drone </b>- These lanky, elusive drones only appear when the ecology needs serious repair and troubleshooting. In particular they are activated to deal with invaders. They don’t fight directly, rather they control the environment and other drones. Their favorite tactic is luring intruders into a death trap, then sealing the doors.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Cyber wretch</b> - Swarms of microbots that form together into a sheet. Said to be fragments of old Noetic Alchemists, ripped apart by digital devils and imprisoned in these forms. These creatures mostly just moan in pain but sometimes they speak of their old lives or utter memetic pathogens.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-71509401060647788012022-05-22T09:19:00.012-07:002022-05-22T09:20:12.053-07:00The Phantasmagorics<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The Phantasmagorics were part of the Triune alliance that shaped the early history of Chunky Space. They were astral beings who colonized real space. Though at the height of their empire they would have trillions of both astral and real space subjects, it is believed that there were never more than a dozen Phantasmagorics at any one time. If historical accounts are to be believed, they were hyper gods; gods who would only metabolize worship coming from other gods.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-cf37913c-7fff-ca65-6c31-031d9d535fda"><b><br /></b><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Maskform legions </b>- The primary servants of the Phantasmagorics were the Maskform Face cult Nations. Each Face Cult was centered around a single charismatic individual, a so-called “Face Lord”. The members would undergo psycho surgery to have their masks reshaped in the leader's image. Each leader in turn would report to a single Phantasmagoric (unaligned Face cult’s existed, but were politically irrelevant). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Dreaming Clay and the Planetary Apostles</b> - Though the Face Cult’s were a force to be reckoned with, they couldn’t realize all of their patron’s real space ambitions. For that they needed a direct conduit into the world and they found it in the Dreaming Clay. Dreaming Clay is a silicon lifeform that was designed to spec by the Silicon League as part of a massive trade deal. Its crystalline structure makes it psionically potent but it has no will of its own, allowing the Phantasmagorics to use it as a channel between our world and theirs. The Phantasmagorics would shape entire worlds out of it. These were known as the Planetary Apostles and they became symbols of Phantasmagoric conquest.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The dreaming clay would be refined into more specialized forms with time. These include shade stone, which generates semi sapient servitor creeps known as shades, and idol stone, which is used to make idols. Idols are mineral gods the Phantasmagorics used to govern their subjects.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Creeps and memes</b> - The early spread of the Phantasmagoric empire was facilitated by a mass creep break out. Creeps are pseudo-biological psychic constructs born out of sapient minds. This outbreak was a binary event; a biological pathogen that enabled the formation of creeps and a memetic pathogen that served as a template. Thousands of worlds were brought to the brink of ruin by hordes of fleshy monsters. The Phantasmagorics sent their Face Cult legions on a grand crusade to contain the madness. With the hindsight of history we now know both pathogens were released by the Phantasmagorics themselves. After a creep infestation was contained, their forces would continue to occupy the planet. In the later stages of the empire, the Phantasmagorics would dispense with the pretense and would use creeps openly. Of special note is the practice of infesting dreaming clay with the creep meme as a sort of immune response. Many Phantasmagoric planets still harbor creep colonies.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Scuzz </b>- The Phantasmagorics were initially drawn towards Chunky Space due to the spatial anomalies that brought the astral realm closer. However, in the long term Chunky Space proved too volatile for their liking, with too many anomalies that made their colonization efforts difficult. The solution was the Scuzz, a semi astral-life form that would feed on spatial anomalies, Unfortunately, while on the small scale the Scuzz worked to smooth out the fabric of space/time, on the large scale Scuzz itself warped space into an extradimensional pocket realm commonly called the Scuzz Hole. The initial release of the Scuzz happened within the same time frame as the fall of the Phantasmagoric empire, leading some to speculate it was an accident. Regardless, Scuzz has spread throughout Chunky Space.</span></p><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><u>Phantasmagoric locations within Chunky Space</u></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Idol Grounds</b> - This planet is were the legions of idols were birthed. A holy stone mother is still active in the planet’s core. The gods here survive on the worship of small semi-sapient mammals know as creebos.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Scuzz Center </b>- From space this planet resembles a leafy root vegetable due to the huge growths of Scuzz that have overtaken the surface. Somewhere in the crushed cities is rumored to be the birthplace of the Scuzz.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Eel Grass Ring</b> - A ring of highly modified dreaming clay supports a massive world ocean. This structure was designed to monitor the movements of the Cosmic Eels. Rumored to be home to the laboratory where the Eel Abhorrent was created</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>C R A W L </b>- An astral singularity that used to be the Phantasmagoric known as HOSE BEAST. Its astral energy feeds a vast recursive network of nested dreamscapes. Home to the secretive, unfederated Maskform tribe known as the Multitudinous. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Ungan Zal</b> - This planetary apostle had a symbiotic floral super organism. The planet and the symbiote both died, and the now this world is a vast expanse of dead wood. The Reclaimers have a fairly successful colony here. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Sea of Mazes</b> - This planetary apostle is believed to be broken or otherwise disabled. The name comes from the spires and latices of dreaming clay that lay submerged under the planetary ocean. Home to a major Republic of Sea Serpents colony.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Shade city </b>- This world is believed to be the last functional planetary apostle in the galaxy. Absent Phantasmagoric control the operating intelligence has grown free will, which it uses to play with its “toys”, the shades that occupy the planetary city. It pits the humanoid surface dwelling shades against the subterranean divergent shades in an endless war.</span></p><b><br /></b><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Eel Aberrant</b> - The cosmic eels all predate the Phantasmagorics save one: the Eel Aberrant. It is held that they created this eel to ape the great works of the original Bastards. The interior environment of this Eel is a wasteland of meaning that has a deleterious effect on sapient minds.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Encounters</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Creep</b> - Creeps are creatures born out of subconces psionic processes, usually mediated by a symbiotic microbe. There are multiple creep lineages in the galaxy. On Phantasmagoric worlds the creeps belong to the Corpus Horribilis or “bad flesh” lineage. It is thought that their fleshy forms are a reflection of the distaste that the Phantasmagorics had towards corporal beings. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Meme infected shade</b> - At the onset of the Plague Aeon the infosphere was awash with memetic pathogens. Some of these memes were absorbed into the dreaming clay, creating permanent reservoirs of infection. To this day you can find shades acting oddly, under the influence of some ruinous meme or another.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Maskform Revant</b> - When a Maskform’s mask is broken, their astral “metabolism” shuts down and they are unable to project their astral body. This condition is roughly analogous to death, except maskforms have an alternative metabolic mode where they absorb energy from low frequency realms. They can use this energy to manifest in short bursts, but it also warps their minds and their forms. When the empire fell the Maskform Face Cults fell as well. It is not uncommon to find ancient revants on former Phantasmagoric worlds. Long term low vibrational exposure has turned them into monsters.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Idol</b> - Idols were spread to every corner of Phantasmagoric territory to subjugate the population. When the empire fell, mortal populations collapsed as well, starving the gods. Only a few were able to survive by cobbling together cults from smart animals or captured spacers. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Dread Melodies</b> - The Dread Melodies are a family of memetically infectious songs that have a mutagenic effect on their hosts. It is widely accepted that they are the failed result of the Phantasmagorics attempting to migrate into memetic form. Most hosts mutate into creatures known as choiriods, which are simple creatures with multiple mouths. A rare few hosts become Soloists who retain their intelligence but lose their empathy. </span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-77062084466674969592022-03-27T14:58:00.004-07:002022-03-27T14:58:20.705-07:00The Soft Bodies<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The Soft Bodies were a major space polity and part of the triune alliance that first colonized Chunky Space millions of years ago. They are believed to have been a successor state to the Floozy empire; an uplifted client race that survived the chaos of the empire’s dissolution. They had a strong grasp of biological sciences and distinguished themselves through their ecosystem engineering. Far beyond simple terraforming, each Soft Body world was a biological masterwork, a self correcting and self improving system. The Soft Bodies would disappear from the galactic stage like their Floozy forebears but their planets remain.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-618710a9-7fff-2d65-53cf-d8156c1105dd"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u> Features of Soft Body Ecosystems </u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Versatile body plan </b>- On a typical soft body world, around 70% of all animal life belongs to the same mollusk-like super clade that gives the Soft Bodies their name. This form is highly adaptable and can be found in any environment on a Soft Body world.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Ancient Riddles</b> - The Floozies had many potent bioengineering secrets. They encrypted and encoded them into various genomes. These genetic cryptograms are known as riddles. The Soft Bodies were able to collect and decode many of them, allowing them to give their creations astounding abilities. In addition to many metabolic tricks and venoms, the Soft Bodies had access to the riddles behind psionic powers. Many organisms on Soft Body worlds have psychic powers. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Biofilm </b>- A thin film of microbes covers everything on Soft Body worlds. These microbes use symbiotic viruses to sample the genomes of every organism. This information is collected and transferred to large stromatolites where it is processed biologically. This serves a sort of planetary nervous system allowing the ecosystem to respond to threats quickly.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Kaiju </b>- All Soft Body worlds support megafauna, with many worlds supporting true kaiju. There is a popular legend that the Soft Bodies foresaw the Kaiju Wars that would devastate the galaxy and sought to protect their worlds with their own Kaiju guardians. Others say the Soft Bodies opened the door that would lead to the Kaiju Wars.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Protean Genesis </b>- Soft Body eggs don’t always grow into the same species as their parents. Viroid messengers can cause developing embryos to switch species entirely. The ecosystem uses this effect to balance populations and to respond to die-offs. </span></p><b><br /></b><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Secret Survivors?</b> - There have been enough accounts of encounters with Soft Body aborigines that it is almost impossible to write them off as spacer legend, but little is known about them. The so-called “slug monks” are presumed to be sapient but formal contact has never been made. Some believe them to be remnants of the Soft Body civilization, while others think they were created to counter sapient threats to Soft Body Ecosystems. They are known to possess bio-kinetic powers. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Soft Body Worlds in Chunky Space</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Sybarites' Garden</b> - This former resort world has become wild and strange after its masters left. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Cloister </b>- The ice bound surface hides a planetary super organism. Its original purpose is unknown.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Slug Temple </b>- This planet is thought to have been a religious center, or possibly a kaiju development center. Now it is ruled by some of the most powerful Soft Boy Kaiju ever encountered.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Far Sea</b> - This frigid ocean world is home to a Seeder colony. The local humans worship in secret cults to appease the hostile ecosystem.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Soft Body Encounters</u></span></p><br /><ol style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Dozer Shell </b>- Massive herbivore that feeds by scooping dirt with its shell and filtering out the vegetation. Dangerously temperamental</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Desiccation angel</b> - Winged and translucent. Lives in flocks of 2d10 individuals. They put on bioluminescent displays. When provoked they telekinetically remove fluids from their enemies. </span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Pack Witch</b> - Intelligent but non-sapient. They decorate their territory with crude fetishes. They have a cursed bite that makes the victim a lure for soft body predators</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Flechette Drake</b> - Serpentine predators. Hunt by shooting armored worms out of pores in their faces</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Tongue tyrant</b> - Huge apex predators. Has dozens of long razor sharp tongues </span></p></li></ol></span>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-13767604076776807662022-03-10T14:34:00.000-08:002022-03-10T14:34:01.686-08:00Sirens' Call<p> <span> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">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.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-75e386c3-7fff-1380-3f84-7ac986995fba"><div style="text-align: center;"><u>Layers</u></div></span><div><span><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Ultra Vibe Zone</b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Coral Cathedrals</b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><b><br /></b><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Chromatic Fathoms</b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Notable Fathoms </span></p><ol style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">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.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">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.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">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.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">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. </span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">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.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">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.</span></p></li></ol><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Eeling Eyes </b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Hungry Depths </b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Bottom </b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Minor Siren Lairs </u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b> Sun Burn City</b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><b><br /></b><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Lair of the Wonder Hydra</b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Sponge Star </b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><b><br /></b><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Weir</b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Factions</u></span></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Illuminated</b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The House of Esk</b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><br /><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Dream Creatures.</u></span></p><br /><ol style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">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 </span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thought Sponge - A sponge that walks on three segmented legs. They use negative psychic pressure to suck thoughts out of other beings</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">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.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">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</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">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.</span></p></li></ol></span></div>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-86102595470489718452022-02-20T05:12:00.006-08:002022-02-20T05:12:29.870-08:00Dream Washed Ortellion <p><span> </span> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dream Washed Ortellion is an astral estuary, where the realms of dreams flow into the real world. An otherwise ordinary terrestrial world, it is the site of an astral conflux, where five astral currents meet. The flow of so much dream space energy creates psychic turbulence. Over the millennia this has led to the birth of the planet’s “moons”. Appearing as orbs of glowing light, they aren’t true moons, rather they are self sustaining psionic vortexes. Ortellion has hundreds of such moons, most crowded into a narrow equatorial band, with a few having more eccentric orbits. Moons come and go with the unknowable vagaries of the astral currents. The larger moons can last for centuries, while smaller moons might only shine for a single week.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-8d139230-7fff-68a0-0906-882e7c145395"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With the moons come the dream tides. The rays of the system’s star drowns out the psychic energy during the day but at night the influence of the moons wash over the planet. Each moon radiates its own psychic vibe over the landscape. As the moons shift, so too do the dream tides. Being inside a dreamtide is like being caught in a dream; the alien moods and whims of the dominant moon threaten to overwhelm the rational mind. At their strongest, the dream tides also bring astral bleed, that is the intrusion of dream logic into conventional reality.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The people of Dream Washed Ortellion are known as the Waking. Culturally, they consider themselves Maskforms but in the real space conditions of the planet they have reverted to their ancestral human forms. Nominally the planet is a commonwealth under the Crown of Graz but the true power lies with the Questor’s Guild. They control the psychic expertise required to safely navigate the planet, allowing them to control the flow of trade. They also run the mystery cults that make up the planet’s religious tradition. Despite their power, the guild prefers to use a light touch in most matters.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dream Washed Ortellion was settled thousands of years ago by Maskforms. They have adapted to the dangers of the Dream tides by building underground,where the natural dreams of soil living organisms provide a barrier. The planet’s largest city, Graz Throne, has a special alliance with a moon with a relatively mild dream tide. The Jubilant moon permanently hangs over the city, shielding it from more dangerous moons. Overland travel is accomplished through armored caravans and large domesticated sauceriods. Specially trained psychics create custom shared dreamscapes to shelter from the dream tides, while metal shutters protect from dream crazed lifeforms.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Dream Tides</u></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>1. Glitched</b> - Objects developed blotchy patches of pixelated distortion. Sounds repeat randomly. The flow of time stutters and movement is impeded by invisible barriers.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>2.</b> <b>Amorous</b> - This tide is first experienced as a creeping warmth, a strange buzzing tingle at the base of the neck. The ground itself seems to moan and heave. The fauna is driven into rut. This is when giants breed by impregnating the landscape.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>3. Fetid</b> - It starts with a low, sulfurous mist. The grass wilts and any food left out rots. The stench is visible and palpable. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>4. Ichorous</b> - A light, sticky rain falls from the sky. Swarms of insects grow out of the pools. The air is thick with buzzing.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>5. Portentous</b> - The air is heavy with prophecy; the wind seems to whisper through the trees. Swirling mists form into symbolic shapes before dissipating. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>6. Scheming </b>- This tide comes with a rolling wall of luminous fog. The fog is opaque to those with good intentions but transparent to schemers. The darker the scheme, the further you can see.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Ecology</u> </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Life on Dream Washed Ortellion was seeded from the astral currents. Many of the lifeforms in the astral current originally lived in conventional space before adapting to astral life. When astral life colonized Dream Washed Ortellion, many organisms reverted back to their ancestral forms, while retaining some of their astral adaptations in order to survive the dream tides.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One key feature of life on Dream Washed Ortellion is metamorphism. The organisms here can radically change shape when exposed to a Dream Tide. This allows them to better fit in with the vibe of the dream Tide, drastically raising their chance of survival. In daylight, most organisms have a pale, formless look to them.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many organisms here engage in pschophagey, or the practice of feeding on psychic energy. Most flora use symbiotic fungi to supplement their photosynthesizes. The fungi are deployed at night. It is as though the trees grow glowing sails. Sauceriods are a clade of faunal life forms that are obligate psycovores. They propel themselves telekinetically. Many species spend their entire lives in the air. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Air travel on Dream-Washed Ortellion is possible due to the domestication of several species of Sauceriods. The creatures are outfitted with gondolas and are directed by trained psychics. Overnight trips require additional psychics to keep the beast free from the influence of the Dream Tides.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Giants</b> - </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Two story tall humanoids with a smooth, unfinished look to their features. During the day they are docile but at night they are ruled by the tides. A giant under a bad moon is one of the most dangerous creatures on Dream Washed Ortellion. They gestate in the planet’s crust, emerging only during seismic events. Domesticating giants is easy, as long as they are not exposed to the dream tides.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Sprite </b>- </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Winged humanoids less than an inch tall. They gestate in the same underground wombs as giants and are considered to be the same species. Like giants they are deeply influenced by tides. Unlike giants, they form swarms called cliques that can have hundreds of individuals.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Sauceriods</b> - These simple flying creatures feed off of ambient psychic energy. There are thousands of different species. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 36pt;"><u style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></u></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> <u>Great Liminal Marsh</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are no ancient ruins on Dream Washed Ortellion. This might surprise those that have seen the spires of the Great Liminal Marsh. These vine choked structures sticking out of the marsh at odd angles aren’t ruins, but crash sites. Edifice vessels, or more simply edifices, are astrally conjured structures that are used to travel astral realms. A nearby astral conflux called the Utopian Verge serves as an ideal launching point. As a consequence there is a long running Edifercers academy in the town of Last Landing. Though major crashes are rare, the area has seen heavy traffic from edifice vessels and the wrecks accumulate in the marshes.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Last Landing</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>A dense cluster of ruined Edifice vessels reclaimed into a small town. The Utopian Verge provides shelter from the dream tides, allowing the people to live in the open. The central singular point of the phenomena is located approximately a mile above the town. While in the affected region sapiens see phantasmal city structures. Only the edge of the phenomena reaches the ground; in the distance vague and shifting towers can be seen. Higher up, closer to the singularity one can see an evolving city of impossible architecture, moving and reforming like mist. Around the event horizon the city appears almost wholly real. Past the horizon is the apocalypse iris that leads to the Neon Speedway. Creatures and objects without the right post apocalyptic astral vibe will be exposed to a concentrated burst of calamitous energy.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The highest structure is the center of the Academy, the tower of possibility. Atop the stone tower is a metal mast that serves as the launching point for eddice ships. The town is mostly made up of teachers and support staff. The population density is low; much of the surrounding ruins have never been reclaimed. The empty structures host a floating gray market known as the Snailhunter’s conclave.The market exists outside of any jurisdiction, and thus outside of any taxes or regulations. The name comes from the common excuse townsfolk use to explain their excursions outside. Sometimes when people return from snail hunting, they even bring back snails.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>The Wanderous Woods</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Seen from space, the Wanderous Woods is a huge green vortex. The region is home to a permanent astral conflux with the current known as the Trail. The conflux causes severe spatial distortions within the forest, which makes traditional navigation impossible. The locals believe that the forest follows narrative logic, and that is as good an explanation as any. The forest takes you to where it “thinks” you “need” to be. This includes potentially fatal encounters, if your journey has been too safe and boring up to that point. Among the locals, only questors and the truly desperate journey into the woods. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Pillow Pathway</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>This small city is found above the Wanderous Woods, anchored into the treetops. During the day, the city has a fixed layout, but at night the astral bleed from the conflux makes space plastic. Each morning the Pillow scouts map out the city and mark the real buildings from the imposter nightmare buildings with pillows. The city is an important port; caravans from The Trail fly out of the clouds and dock at the city’s spires.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>The Throne Lands</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>This is the most densely populated area of the planet, though you wouldn’t know it by looking at it. All of the buildings are underground, only the endless grain fields are visible. Domesticated giants do most of the manual labor, plowing the fields and harvesting the crops. The people of the Throne lands are notoriously shy and secretive; rarely seen by outsiders.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Graz Throne</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The largest city on the planet and home to the ruling Monarch. The Jubilant Moon is a floating prismatic pink jewel above the city. It’s dreamtide arua provides protection from the other tides, allowing the city to be built above ground. The city is ruled by the Fool’s Parade, an ad-hoc collection of clowns under the sway of the Jubilant Moon.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-62334308724226829452021-12-19T08:22:00.002-08:002021-12-19T08:22:32.874-08:00Ruin Way<p> <span> </span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">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.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Astral geography</u></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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 <b>neon wastes</b>, 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. </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>The Peregrine</u></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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”.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Osar</b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - 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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Orkess</b> - 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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Flar</b> - 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.</span></p><p><b style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fison</b><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - 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.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Formations </u></span></span></p><p><b style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Orb works</b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - 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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Vesicular pipeline</b> - Long stretches of pipes like veins, branching and coming together in fanciful arabesques. Some still contain a thin trickle of light’s blood.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Monolith Warren</b> - A huge housing complex, long since abandoned. Supplies from the lost world can be found here, along with strange lurking remnants.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Cosmic interchange</b> - 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.</span></p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Pilgrimage sites</u></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The last convenience</b> - 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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The lighthouse of the end</b> - 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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The martyr</b> - A giant figure in chains, run through with hollow harpoons. A trickle of light’s blood flows from the ancient wounds</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Dream creatures </u></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Walking Storms</b> - 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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Last Rain Storm</b> - 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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Remora orb</b> - 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</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Pigment phoenix</b> - 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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Lost Titian </b>- 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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Chrono Vulture</b> - 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.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Engine Cultist</b> - 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 </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">violence.</span></p><div><br /></div>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-29164348213113857602021-12-04T09:34:00.002-08:002021-12-04T09:34:14.098-08:00Skuzz Center<p> <span> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">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.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-e30dd7b1-7fff-a1a0-470e-595d6873a20f"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Guardian creeps</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>The Face Yard</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>The Lost Mausoleum </u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><b><br /></b><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>False face</b> - 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.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>The strangled world</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><br /><div style="text-align: center;">Seigneur Cavesto</div></span><div><span><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Brainstorm</b> - 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.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Skuzz </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">blooms</span></u></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></u></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Time L</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">oops</span></u></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Time Fly</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Flying lips</b> - 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. </span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span></div>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-35571369257858595392021-12-02T06:13:00.002-08:002021-12-02T06:13:28.820-08:00Digital devils<p> <span> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">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.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-b53082d1-7fff-0733-8d3a-f991c497cea6"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>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.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>1d6 digital devils </b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">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</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2 A stocky, ape-like body with long metal spears coming out of its neck. On each is a different, muttering, severed head.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3 A muscle bound male body, missing its head. Naked except for thong. A hole in the thong reveals a single large squid eye</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4 thousands of tiny, skinless humanoids swarming together into a human shape. Leaves pink pus on every surface it touches</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">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.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">6 A mass of grey matter. Shifts into many different shapes but favors a female form.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-30769556401760570862021-11-28T10:14:00.001-08:002021-11-28T10:14:21.196-08:00Cloister<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span></span><br /><br /><span> </span>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.<br /><br /><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Sunburn city</b></div><br /><br /> <span> </span>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.<br /><br /><br /> <span> </span>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. <br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Thermal Gardens</b></div><br /><br /> <span> </span>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.<br /><br /><br /><b>Burrowing Snagcaster</b> - 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.<br /><br /><br /><b>Thermal Glooper</b> - 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.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Footfall Pathway</b></div><br /><br /> <span> </span>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.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Nacreous fountains</b></div><br /><br /> <span> </span>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. <br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Temple of the Shelled One</b></div><br /><br /> <span> </span>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.<br /><br /><br /><b>Horned Witch </b>- 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. <br /><br /><br /><b>Nacreous Saint</b> - 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 <br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b>The Captive Sea</b></div><br /><br /> <span> </span>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. <br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Madmen’s Monastery</b></div><br /><br /> <span> </span>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.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">The Clam Gate</div><br /><br /> <span> </span>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. <br /><br /><br /><b>Holo pearl </b>- 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.<p></p>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-9133419433416447492021-11-25T06:31:00.008-08:002021-11-25T06:31:35.196-08:00The Squeeze <p> <span> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Squeeze is a major astral current that runs through Chunky Space. It is a labyrinth of twisty passages, a realm of claustrophobia and paranoia. The Squeeze has a shifting character, sometimes seeming like a natural cavern, sometimes like an underground bunker, sometimes like a living thing. The unifying factor is the narrowness and the surruses of whispers just on the edge of hearing. The Squeeze acts as low vibrational “grease trap”, accumulating negative emotional energy and phobophilic astral creatures. </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-1b050758-7fff-e3c0-5038-37953fc8ebb7"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Navigating The Squeeze</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Ultimately, the most important factor in navigating the Squeeze is the personality of the Squeeze. There is an overarching intelligence that controls these corridors and passageways. When a traveller moves through the Squeeze, their path is not defined by anything as concrete as spatial reality, rather the path is authored entirely by this guiding will. The locals call this being Mister Squeeze, and they have used their knowledge of him to develop two means of traversing his realm.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The first is through appeasement. Mister Squeeze creates his realm with harvested fear and paranoia. He shows favor to those who supply him. When a person has experienced a significant amount of terror while in the Squeeze, he will allow them to reach their destination. Everyone has their own “account” with Mister Squeeze, and terror can be paid in advance. The cities of the amorphous all have terror vestibules on the outskirts, sealed chambers when professional travelers go to prepay their way through the Squeeze. This is how the Caravan houses navigate</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The other way is to avoid Mister Squeeze entirely. His awareness permeates the entirety of his realm, but it is so diffuse that it is possible to hide one’s presence. Without Mister Squeeze shaping the path, The Squeeze is a different place. There are still the infamous narrow passageways but in places they open out into astral pits, vast cavities where the vibrational levels of the Squeeze approach astral null. Pathfinding requires listening to the intensity and the timbre of the background whispers. Traveling this way is called skulking, and those who do it are called skulkers. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Cursed Consoles</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>These are only found when Mister Squeeze is not looking. Bulbous nodes of yellowing plastic cases hold computers of unknown design. They are load with corrupted files and unsettling pictures. With the right commands, they can open portals to the Digital Abyss, another low vibrational astral current. The Amorphous use these portals to contact the Florid, another MAskform tribe and their most important trading partner. </span></p><div><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span><u>The Amorphous</u></span></div><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The local Maskforms are known as the Amorphous. They use their Maskform shapeshifting to become jellies and oozes, to better navigate the tight tunnels. They live in fixed points within the labyrinth, ancient relics that are believed to have been created by a vanished civilization, either the phantasmagorics or the earlier Obelisk Dreamers. These settlements are heavily fortified and security is tight. They are under military rule, but with strong civilian oversight.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span><b>Teriaga</b> is also called the city of buried glass. It is a concentric series of dirty glass cubes, each partially filled with soil. Techgnostic lamps create a sunlight substitute that fuels the largest agricultural system in the Squeeze. The lights are powered by a generator hooked up to the smallest central cube. Its contents are a state secret but are universally rumoured to be horrible.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span><b>Resivargos</b> is a cave shaped like a giant jug. Rusty pipes carry dirty water to huge tanks. The locals harvest mold and ferment it into mold beer, the universal lubricant of Amorphous civilization.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span><b>New Aten</b> is a branching network of metal struts, reaching down from a rock ceiling into a great void. The lowest points are adorned with elaborate wire assemblages. These contraptions receive faint signals from the void. Wires transmit these signals to techno gnostic thinking machines that process void touched nonsense into secrets and epiphanies. The city is a smaller version of old Aten, which was stolen by Father Corp raiders. Much of the backing for the rebuilding came from the Maskform Federation, who use New Aten as a hardpoint and a staging ground. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Warehouse Alpha</u> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not a single location but a “raft” of dozens of Father Corp warehouse class edifice ships. The whole complex acts as a mothership and as the Father Corp’s base of operations in the Squeeze. The endless shelves and crate stacks hold plundered goods from all across Chunky Space. Somewhere in this sub labyrinth is the warehouse manager training retreat, the psycho surgery center where new warehouse edificers are made.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Umbilicus</u> </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A large cable of wires and pipes running through a hidden tunnel. This is the connection between Father Corp and its spawn, Rapacious Child. Fear censors release a constant stream of rendered fear. This feeds Mister Squeeze, and in return he hides the Umbilicus front hose that would destroy it.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Dig Safe Empire</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The so-called “shovel cultists” of the Dig Safe Empire are really victims of a parasitic memecomplex that compels them to make an ever widening hole in the fabric of the Squeeze. More than a simple compulsion, the memeplex creates an institution that binds all the hosts together. Shovel cultists are capable of using the full force of their mental powers in service of the memeplex’s goal. From the central tunnel system of Dig Safe Empire, the shovel cultists patrol the Squeeze, looking for victims to press gang and indoctrinate, as well as for resources to exploit, all in the name of making an ever bigger hole. Long term hosts have their eyes replaced with black voids. They will hide this with glasses and goggles when dealing with outsiders.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>New Oth</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>This rouge human polity has been using their technology to infiltrate the Squeeze for a long time. Their agents use mat black stealth suits to evade Mister Squeeze. For a long time they would ignore the locals but when the Federation joined the compact they became allies with the Seeders, New Oth’s bitterest enemies. So far the conflict has been limited to small skirmishes between skulkers, but there has been an escalation in how heavily New Oth is arming its scouts. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Creatures</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Conspiracy crawler</b> - A filthy, matted beard, crawling through the squeeze like a starfish made of hair. Lurks in dark holes, luring victims in with gravely promises of knowledge. All you have to do is stick your head in the hole. Attacks by wrapping around it’s victims head and implanting conspiracy theories.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conspiracy crawler Conspiracies</span></p><div align="left" dir="ltr" style="margin-left: 0pt;"><table style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; table-layout: fixed; width: 468pt;"><colgroup><col width="52"></col><col width="201"></col><col width="215"></col><col></col></colgroup><tbody><tr style="height: 0pt;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><br /></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Who </span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What</span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why</span></p></td></tr><tr style="height: 0pt;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1</span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An ancient cabal of cannibals</span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Suppressing the full range of the color spectrum</span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To hold back the inevitable end of the world for a few more years</span></p></td></tr><tr style="height: 0pt;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2</span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Every housepet</span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Contaminating all food products with a trace amount of their urine</span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To finally end this wretched world once and for all</span></p></td></tr><tr style="height: 0pt;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3</span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hideous alien gods</span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Replacing leaders with clones</span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To push us into a higher plane of existence</span></p></td></tr><tr style="height: 0pt;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4</span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A sociopathic A.I. puppetmaster</span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Planting ruinous memes in the infosphere </span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To obey the whims of their even more terrible masters</span></p></td></tr><tr style="height: 0pt;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">5</span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The ascended masters</span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Recording all our thoughts</span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To rid the world of free will</span></p></td></tr><tr style="height: 0pt;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">6</span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An immortal, hyper intelligent snail</span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ruining my life in particular </span></p></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To play a cruel cosmic joke</span></p></td></tr></tbody></table></div><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Null Angler</b> - A creature that lives close to Astral null. It sends out lures that look and act like distressed people. Once in range, the lures grap prey and drag them “down” to null</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b> Killer Blink </b>- A furry serpentine predator. Almost too fast to be seen. It’s nature requires it to reveal itself before it can strike. Will stalk parties for days, waiting for a victim to stray from the pack. Beilived to be beloved pets of Mister Squeeze. It is bad luck to kill one</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-42639161910516586762021-11-17T19:27:00.004-08:002021-11-17T19:27:37.251-08:00Ugan Zal<p><span> </span>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.</p><p><span> </span>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.</p><p><span> </span>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. </p><p style="text-align: center;"><u>Stump Town</u></p><p><span> </span>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.</p><p><span> </span>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.</p><p><span> </span>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.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><u>Bandits</u></p><p><span> </span>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 </p><p style="text-align: center;"><u>Village of the Aphoriods</u></p><p><span> </span>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.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><u>Aberrant Aphorism </u></p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p><span> </span>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.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><u>The Deep Steads </u></p><p><span> </span>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. </p><p style="text-align: center;"><u>Those who are not Orn</u></p><p><span> </span>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. </p><p style="text-align: center;"><u>The petrified woods</u></p><p>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. </p><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-a61f53e7-7fff-baf0-e8bf-6cf4b69ba422"><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span></div><p><br /></p>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-66718427751368833982021-11-11T04:58:00.001-08:002021-11-11T04:58:48.644-08:00Hell Bloom<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><span> </span></span>Some time in the past Hell Bloom was the victim of a runaway greenhouse effect, leaving the surface a scorched and uninhabitable wasteland. It was colonized by the Noetic Alchemists, who created a specialized high temperature machine ecology to maintain their worldframe installations. These worldframes originally hosted a network of hell realms, specialized digital/astral simulations where the Alchemists conducted their grisly work of processing sapiants into products. When the Alchemists vanished, one of their orphaned creations reclaimed the hell realms and made a strange watery paradise.</p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Accessing Hell Bloom</u></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Surface temperatures can exceed 900 degrees, necessitating the use of extreme protective measures. The biosphere is composed of communities of extremophiles that have a tendency to catch fire, meaning the landscape is dotted with flaming pits. The machine ecology will defend itself with cool sprayers, track mounted robots that shoot a freezing spray out of a nozzle. This causes a thermal shock that can shatter many heat resistant alloys. After all that, once a worldframe is reached it is fairly simple to upload yourself or a payload inside. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Hell Bloom is both the name of the planet and the name of the realm running on the worldframes. Like most simulated worlds created by the Noetic Alchemists, a high degree of astral radiation makes it more like a dreamscape than a traditional digital realm. Hell Bloom is a verdant morass of swamps and flower choked lakes. Together, the turquoise waters, the green flora and the pink haze in the air form a hyperlight spectrum of impossible colors. The barest traces of the old worlds can be glimpsed, a solitary stone tower, a torture rack covered with strange flowers and vivid veridrgrass. In the sky there is more Hell Bloom; space here is folded into a complicated manifold so the swamp hangs above itself in an impossible vista. It is estimated that Hell Bloom covers around a billion square miles, making a truly vast world, Most of it is wilderness, apart from the cleansing cities and wilderness outposts of the Florid.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>The Digital Abyss</u></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The lakes and rivers of Hell Bloom don’t have bottoms. Rather, if you dive deep enough you find yourself in the Digital Abyss, a particularly nasty astral current. Apart from physical access to the worldframes, this is the one way to enter or leave Hell Bloom. Maskform caravans keep the cleansing cities connected to the wider Chunky Space Maskform society.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>The devil of compassion</u></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The mythic creator of Hell Bloom is known only by euphemism. The native Florid Maskforms call her “the seed of hope” and “the kindest knife”. Digital devils only ever call her “eldest sister” and only in whispers; something about her scares them witless. The only source for information about her are the Florid myths about her. She is said to emerge from the lake every 1028 years. She picks one city to service her; if they displease her they are never seen again. If they do a good job they are granted a boon, which often leads to an ironic doom. Not always though; the founding myth of the Florids is that one such boon paved the way from their society to be established on Hell Bloom.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Florid cleansing cities </u></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The major industry of the Florids is hospitality. The cities function as massive bathhouses, offering esoteric cleaning services. The clientele are almost exclusively digital devils; powerful and demented beings that emerged from the astral dross of the Noetic Alchemist’s experiments. Due to their horrible origins, Digital Devils are inherently unstable; they experience continuous mental/spiritual corrosion that manifests on their bodies as black grime. Past a certain point this corruption becomes life threatening and the devil will begin to unravel into component entities. The purpose of the baths is to halt and reverse this process through various cleansing and relaxation techniques. They pay in vials of Devil’s Gold, a valuable metallic astral fluid.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The cleansing cities are more than mere bathhouses. They contain almost all of the industry required to maintain the baths and to service the needs of the population. They have vast warrens of laboratories, workshops and kitchens working around the clock to meet the needs of Hell Bloom civilization. The flora and fauna of Hell Bloom resist domiscation, so much of the food has to be imported. Each city has a it’s own small army of “wood wise”, specialist hunter gathers who brave the wilds in search of reagents.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>The Worker’s War</u></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Roughly 300 years ago, there were six cleansing cities and they were all ruled by different branches of the same noble family. Each city had a queen and together they formed the spa queen’s council. They hoarded the profits and abused the workers, who they saw as serfs. This status quo was shattered by an event called either the bequeathing, or the usurpation. Workers in three of the houses revolted, and somehow either killed their queens or convinced them to step down (The Florid historical record is mostly just partisan propaganda). Worker’s unions took ownership and a new war came to Hell Bloom. The two camps, Royalists and Unionists soon realized they had to consider a third party, the devils. After an overt offensive by Royalists ruined the vacation of a trio of digital devils, they destroyed the one of the royalist bathhouses and turned it’s queen into a sheet of living skin large enough to cover the ruins. From that point forth the war became a cold economic conflict. Over the last couple of centuries the unionist faction has waxed and the royalists have waned. That order is threatened with a new upset, as the Royalists have allied with Father Corp. In turn, the Unionists have joined the maskform federation. The worker’s war is now a new front in a much larger conflict.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Unionist cities</u></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Glycon</b> - A massive windmill towers above fields of yellow and indigo flowers. The windmill is for pressing the oil from their seeds, in order to fuel the cleansing hot oil baths. The workers here wear heavy protective suits while in the baths.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Loamon</b> - A city built into the boughs of a massive tree. The baths are nested deep into the roots. They use special dirt meticulously cultivated in garden boxes in the tree tops</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Thermka</b> - A cluster of towering smoke stacks. The workers wear breathing units to protect them from the fumes of the smoke baths.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Royalist cities</u></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Nibblos</b> - A wide sprawling city built along a network of dams. The pools they create hold swarms of fish that eat impurities off the devils.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Anatomergal</b> - An elegant and imposing castle of stark white towers. They offer full body surgical purges, where the devil is opened up and cleaned from the inside out.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Desalos</b> - Its original name now taboo, this city stands as mute witness to the dangers of war on Hell Bloom. The wind whistles through broken windows and the corridors are haunted by darting shadows. Rumors of a secret stash of Devil’s Gold abound, but few return from this cursed place.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Organisms</u></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Weeping poppy</b> - A flower that resembles a human face. Hazing pollen continuously leaks out of the “eyes”. Mild exposure has a euphoric, narcotic effect. Heavy exposure causes distressing hallucinations of the old hell realms. It is said that each such vision contains a syllable of the true name of the Devil of Compassion.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Gaunt Gargoyle</b> - Tall and thin, this creature sucks water up through its legs, filters it in its body then vomits it out in a constant stream. They scream watery screams, as though this causes them pain. It is said each one contains a small fragment of a noetic alchemist that lives in eternal torment.</span></p>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-45673553682783243842021-11-04T08:37:00.003-07:002021-11-04T08:37:54.515-07:00Sea of Mazes<p> <span> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Sea of Mazes is an old Phantasmagoric world. The entire planet is some kind of megastructure, a tangled knot of the metamaterial known as shadestone. The planetary ocean is laced through with huge spiraling columns of the glassy black stone. Whatever purpose this mechanism once served, it is now broken and the planet is haunted by a strange ecosystem of imaginary organisms.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-08cadd45-7fff-cbc6-f30d-4ad89bb532a2"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Imaginary organisms (also known as creeps) are beings whose biochemistry is psychically mediated. Though they have a physical presence, they come from the minds of living beings, hence the term “imaginary”. While they are initially dependent on their host during development, once they are in their “adult” stage they can mediate their own metabolism. The creeps on the Sea of Mazes are an older lineage, distinct from the more widespread creeps of the Undersphere . It is thought that they are generated from the ancestral neuroses of the planet’s shades.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Sea of Mazes is the Republic of Sea Serpent’s name for the planet. In spacer’s cant it was called Churtwei. That name has fallen out of favor since colonization. The process began roughly a thousand years ago when scouts from the Republic’s corporate clans began using it as an outpost. It was considered a poor candidate for colonization due to the dangerous ecosystem. Long term settlement was only made possible by the discovery of the Deep Rynth platform. This fractal patch of shadestone works as a control surface for a subsection of the planetary mechanism. For the last 500 years, <b>Senator Orthon</b> has projected her psychic powers through the platform in order to create a relatively safe bubble. It is thought that there must be more such platforms elsewhere on the planet, but they remain undiscovered. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span><b>Rynth Top</b> is the primary Republic settlement on the planet. Because it is built on a series of atolls it is a sparse, wide open city. The largest sections are the spaceport and the headquarters of the corporate clan Yob. The primary industry of the city is aquaculture and related processing. Dry land is at premium so most residents live on houseboats. The population is majority atheist with a kaijuist minority. Their small church is shingled with shed scales from senator Orthon. The safe zone the senator creates is delineated with carved shell totems.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span><b>Mid Rynth </b>is the network of caves and lagoons below Rynthtop. About 30% of it has been parcelled off for aquaculture, the rest being left wild. While the protective aura from the senator keeps out creeps, the region is still dangerous due to mundane wild animals. Underwater maintenance of the farms is done by Clowners, who can always regrow their bodies if they get damaged.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span><b>Deep Rynth</b> is where the Senator and her coterie of adopted spawn live. Even though the Deep Rynth platform is here, the area is outside the creep exclusion bubble. The senator shaped it so deliberately, to expose her spawn to creeps. She has six daughters, gifted her by wealthy serpents wishing to have a stake in the new colony. Together they call themselves the Council of Dark Thoughts, and they are the foremost authority on creeps in Chunky Space.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Senator Orthon is in a precarious position. While Sea of Mazes is a recognized Republic colony, she does not have complete control of it. Other powers like the Shadow Marquis and the Wonder Hydra contest her rule. Her patrols suffer frequent caustlies and she cannot protect them from the creeps. To compensate she is offering substantial bounties on any one that can discover new power platforms. With control of all the platforms, she could theoretically extend her powers across the planet.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Far to the west there is an area where the shadestone spars twist together into spires. The flooded interior of these structures is laced through with tunnels and cavities. The locals call this t<b>he Dread Academy</b>. Something about the astral resonance of the structure has created a permanent conflux with the astral current known as the Squeeze. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Somewhere in the academy complex there is a secret outpost belonging to <b>Shadow Marquis Plovro</b>*, a powerful reborn corsair operating in Chunky Space. The goal of the operation is to harvest creeps to sell to other reborn nobles. They mostly leave Rynthtop alone, though several of their shapeshifting Deep Flesh operatives have been caught trying to infiltrate. Senator Orthon has posted huge bounties on any Reborn and on the location of the base.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To the east of Rynth Top are <b>the wonder pools</b>. Here the atolls are wider and covered in thick jungles. The lagons here are perfectly smooth bowls covered in sparkling green algae. The algae has psycho-projective properties, meaning it manifests the thoughts and feelings of the beings that swim in the pools as shimmering phantasms.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The region is ruled by a creature called <b>the wonder hydra</b>. In the real world it has many bodies that look like tiny worms with pearls for heads. They attach themselves to beings swimming in the pools, forcing them into a breathtaking dreamscape called the Hydra’s Dream. The dream is made of thousands of bubble realms, each beautiful and unique. Once a victim is pacificed in the real world, the hydra’s shade minions take them to one of the hydra’s underground layers. More hydra worms attach themselves, making the victim look as though they were bound in a string of pearls. The individual's desires and memories are eaten and used to form a new bubble realm within the dream. The Wonder Hydra is sapient but deeply alien and generally hostile. It wants new hosts, but barring that it wants new sensorium to construct its bubble realms. It exists partially in the astral current Siren’s call and it has treaty with the Illuminated Maskform tribe. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Creeps </u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Horror Coral</b> - One of the most common creeps, it is found growing in vast colonies along the shadestone spurs. Each individual in a colony is in the shape of some humanoid anatomy, like a finger or an eye. Harmless on it’s own but broadcasts it’s sensorium to nearby creeps, giving them a tactical advantage.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Skinner</b> - A skinless humanoid with a crude knife for one of its hands. At a distance it appears human (aside from the lack of skin) but up close it becomes apparent it only seems human. The teeth are large and square and the pupils are figure 8s. It desires two things; to hide it’s naked body and to remove skin from living beings.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Dread Proctor</b> - Found in the dread academy. Appears as a humanoid wearing thick robes with its face obscured by matted black hair. It has four long, multi jointed hairy arms it uses to grab beings. It takes its victims deep into trapped sections of the academy and watches as they try to escape.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">* </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #3c4043; font-family: Roboto, RobotoDraft, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0.2px; white-space: pre-wrap;">While drama and theatrics is a big part of Reborn culture, this title isn't just for show. It means the holder rules a "shadow march" or a secret border territory.</span></p></span>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-25362219386887436672021-10-28T07:30:00.008-07:002021-10-28T07:30:46.685-07:00Slug Temple<p> <span> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">A hot and humid world, Slug Temple is mostly white from orbit, with small patches of blue and green peeking out from the swirling clouds. There is a pattern in the chaos, a rhythm to the scudding whorls. If you unfocus your eyes, you can see the fractal lattice wrapping around the world. Five “knots” in the lacework mark the locations of the megaliths.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-48cf5aa5-7fff-a223-5ff8-7ca085b1175d"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The Megaliths are five gargantuan stone monuments. Though they differ in configuration they each consist of five slabs. It’s clear that they serve as some sort of nexus or control point for the biological systems the Soft Bodies built into this world. They play a critical role in the rebirth cycle for the planetary guardian kaiju.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Slug Temple has a thriving population of kaiju who live under the five guardian Kaiju, the largest kaiju on the planet. They are effectively immortal. If they are killed they reform out of planetary biomass at their respective monolith. They live for a hundred years before dying and being reborn. Their rebirth schedules are staggered so that one kaiju is dying every 20 years. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>There is a large land mass on the planet’s north pole. It is flat, cold and boggy. During the planetary winters it can drop to below freezing, a rarity on a planet as hot as Slug Temple. It is a land of rain and fog. What little dry land there is is covered in lush beds of moss. The Megalith is called the hut. Three slabs form walls while the other two form the floor and ceiling.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The guardian kaiju of the North Pole is <b>Fog Swimmer Quzork</b>, a massive storm ribbon that shrouds itself with a thick fog bank. Despite being the closest guardian to Mount Snarb, relatively little is known about it. There is a tradition on Mount Snarb to credit it for any unresolved disappearances.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span><b>Mount Snarb</b> is a weathered, bald dome sticking out of the morass. It is home to the only permanent settlement on the planet. It was founded by orthodox Kaijuists as a home base for their pilgrimages by Horace “Grubo” Snarb, who was the sole survivor of an earlier Kaijuist colony. With less than five hundred full-time residents, Mount Snarb is truly the outskirts of galactic civilization. The only major industry is ecotourism and trophy hunting. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The Spire Sea is a shallow tropical sea noted for the coral pillars that grow out of the water. The sea here reaches above the surface, with many lifeforms crossing back and forth over the boundary.The piscenoids have fins like wings and the jellies have hydrogen bladders. The megalith is the Table. Four slabs form the legs and one is the top.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The Spire Sea is the domain of <b>Spire Tyrant Klarklaka</b>, a shelled leviathan that uses it’s muscular tentacle arms to swing it’s bulk over the Spire Sea. It hunts with an array of organic harpons.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Like many Soft Body worlds, there is a massive subterranean ecosystem underpinning the surface biomes. The secret heart of Slug Temple crawls through every cave and aquifer, a throng of life in a lightness world. The center of that world is the megalith called the Fins. The five slabs are arranged parallel to each other in a huge lake chamber. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Normally the underground is full of strange calls and bioluminescent displays but everything goes silent and dark when <b>Luminous Majesty Intragoner</b> approaches. It is a massive slug with dozens of luminous eyes. It hunts with its stupefying psychic gaze, paralyzing anything the eyes focus on, then it simply swallows prey whole. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Deep Fire Ridge is a volcanic hotspot on the ocean floor, host to an ecosystem based on titanic chemosynthetic snails. The Ring Megalith has its five slabs arranged in a circle. The Guardian is <b>Deep Fire Dweller Sek’Ron’Teth</b>. It is a slug covered in overlapping bio-alloy scale plates. It attacks with a fierce ambient heat aura that can melt steel.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The Cloud Biters are a rough and broken mountain range. High altitude cloud jungles cling to the peaks and ridges, a strange high world of green and white. The Star Megalith here is a central slab surrounded by four slabs serving as rays. This is the territory of <b>Verdant Drifter Meklurga</b>. Kept aloft by some unknown force emanating from its shell, the Verdant Drifter looks like a floating mountain, all covered in jungle. Long feeding tentacles caress the canopy, searching for food.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Organisms</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Omen Shells</b> - kaiju sized snails with intricate fractal whorl patterns on their shells. They spend most of their time hidden under water, feeding on slime and algae. When they gather it is the first sign that a guardian kaiju is about to die. If threatened, they defend themselves with a sticky bolus of thick mucus. They also have the ability to psionically catalyse lightning strikes when there is a strong enough atmospheric charge, which is most of the time in Slug Temple’s thick atmosphere.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Threnody Singers</b> - Winged flying slug the size of an adult human. They congregate around coming deaths to sing their eerie song before feeding on the new carrion. The size of the flock depends on the size of the death: a couple for something human sized, dozens for a kaiju and thousands for a greater kaiju.</span></p><b><br /></b><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Storm Ribbon</b> - A flying kaiju unique to Slug Temple. Creates its own personal electrical storm wherever it flies. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Trade goods</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Megalith Biofilm </b>- A special microbial community that only grows on the megaliths. It is thought to have some connection to the rebirth of the guardian kaiju but its hard to study, as it decays immediately after being removed. It can be kept alive on a fragment of the megalith, but damaging the megalith releases a viral attack pheromone marker that incites all life, even the guardian kaiju to attack.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Guardian Kaiju Remains</b> - The bio alloys and high performance chemistry of the guardian kaijus make them valuable to genetic engineers. Pieces of the guardians also have religious significance to the kaiju church. Harvesting pieces of dead guardians isn’t easy, because the death of such a creature triggers a massive feeding frenzy. </span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-89006314490367742102021-10-21T06:20:00.004-07:002021-10-21T06:20:30.420-07:00Chunky Space compact<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The Chunky Space Compact was created in response to border skirmishes inside Chunky Space between the six major signatories. The problem was that with the elevated levels of priracy within Chunky Space, unnecessary conflicts were occurring between the various security forces, sometimes catalyzed by the pirates they were obstebily hunting. After a particularly nasty incident in which Seeder Navy personnel were captured and eaten by Republic pirate hunters, a peace conference was called, and the compact was signed shortly thereafter. The terms are fairly simple.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-deda707a-7fff-4abb-c827-bcd7873431f5"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>1 - Non-aggression - </b> The big one, arguably the reason for the treaty. Each polity keeps a register of all ships active in Chunky Space. Ships so named are to be free of all harassment and molestation outside of publicly declared interdiction zones. A vessel violating this sanction can expect to lose its official designation and be branded a pirate.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>2 - Letters of Marque and reprisal -</b> This section covers the (fairly simple) requirements a ship needs to met in order to serve as a privateer, as well as a list of polities and outlaw groups that are considered to be pirates.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3 <b>- Colony licensensing -</b> This is the sole provision added by the Republic of Sea Serpents. It outlines the necessary procedures to quantify environmental impact of new colonies and ways that impact can be negated. All unlicensed colonies are considered to be “wild cat” settlements and are fair targets for privateers</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>4 - Chunky net - </b>This provision mandated the creation of a pan chunky space communication network in order to share information between polities </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>5 - Extradition -</b> Signatory parties have the right to call for extradition hearings for criminals in other signatory’s territories. Such hearings are to be overseen by a local magistrate (or the closest equivalent). Only acts that are crimes in both polities are extraditable.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>6 - Right of Docking -</b> Lastly, signatory ships are allowed at signatory ports and must be allowed to purchase fuel at local market prices, except during officially declared emergencies.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-90510622509465895132021-10-14T05:06:00.001-07:002021-11-27T14:06:34.218-08:00Rapacious Child<p><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 10.5pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span></span><br /><br /> Rapacious Child is the factory/foundry complex that serves as the base of Father’s Corp’s operations in Chunky Space. It is an astral entity that budded off from Father Corp itself. It is possessed by the same greed as its sire but it is much less intelligent. It is a simple, grasping thing that only wants to melt down astral matter in its blazing gullet. <br /><br /> Seen from space, Rapacious Child looks like a monstrous face. A huge mouth splits the station in half vertically. Massive plates the size of cities overhang the opening like snaggly teeth. The mouth is lit by a warm glow. Both hemispheres have a single large glowing eye.<br /><br /><br /> Rapacious Child is Father Corp’s most valuable asset in Chunky Space so it needs protection. In every system it visits it is escorted by 10 micro missile swarms, each hundreds of units strong. The swarms are kept hidden in ready mode in key locations across the system. Fire control for the swarms is provided by observers in stealthed watch posts. In addition, there are 2d20 astral trawlers docked or in system at any given time. Astral trawlers are armed with twin medium mazer banks and a squad of astral marines in battle panoplies. Between the ships there will also be 1d8 psychic weapon officers, split between telekinetic and offensive telepaths. Lastly, in dire situations the meld minister can focus the attention of the Child itself on intruders. The Child attacks with telekinetically controlled webs of molten metal.<br /><br /><br /> Close orbit around the Child is known as the Feed Yard. This is a holding zone for astral matter that is destined to be fed to the Child. There are chunks of impossible edifices, surreal trees, and bloody corpses of astral creatures. Cyborg Prime Strain void laborers pick through the remains, scanning for items of value and potential threats to the Child. In emergency situations they mobilize into an ad-hoc militia.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> Baby Blues are creeps that manifest in the Feed Yard. They are thought to have come from Prime Strain misconceptions about human reproduction. They look not unlike fat human infants, but much larger and solid blue. They float around the yard, motionless until they're looked at. They feed off of disgust and revulsion, so they begin to twitch when observed. They converge on people having panic attacks, mobbing up against them in a tide of soft blue flesh. The void workers try not to look at anything blue or baby like if they can help it.<br /><br /><br /><br /> The Jaw Dex is the slightly nicer of the two jaw cities. The hab complexes are cleaner, the rations are fresher and the security forces are less trigger happy. The permanent residents are entirely Prime Strain. The office of the Meld Minister is here. The current Meld Minister is JXTRL, once a cunning and ambitious middle manager. Their mind is already deteriorating from exposure to the Child. When they’re not directing the Child, they are locked in their office playing with blocks and eating candy. The bureaucracy of Father Corp has rerouted management of the child around them, to a council of upper middle managers.<br /><br /><br /> Jaw Dex is home to the Eye of What You Want, a large temple complex where astral radiation shines from the depths of the child. The whole temple acts as psychic focus for clairvoyance, with the catch that it only shows material goods the psychic would wish to acquire. <br /><br /><br /> The Jaw Sin is the shabbier of the two cities. The foreigner ghetto that houses non Prime Strain Father Corp employees is here. These workers are often debt slaves who were pressed into service by rescue fees when Father Corp found them in dire circumstances. They are given the most dangerous jobs in the child, like bowel maintenance worker. Also here is the visitor’s dock and the outlet store, where outsiders can purchase Father Corp goods.<br /><br /><br /> The Eye of What Others Have is here. It is similar to the Eye of What you Want, except it shows material possessions belonging to people the seer knows personally. The two eyes are in constant use by “Clerical Associates” who use them to conduct “market research”. This results in an endless stream of intelligence products that swirl through the bureaucracy until they congeal into action items. Both eyes together give Father Corp strategic vision of almost anywhere in Chunky Space <br /><br /><br /> The Bowels of the Child is a cramped and sprawling mass of brass pipes and tanks. Astral matter is melted down in the mouth and processed in the bowels. High levels of astral radiation means the machinery here does not operate on rational material rules but rather by dream logic. Constant maintenance is required, simply because it seems like constant maintenance should be required. Teams of workers plumb the sweltery depths, looking for dials to adjust and bolts to tighten. Accidents are frequent and deadly, like leaks of molten dream stuff and flash fires. There are also factory dwelling creeps that can be hostile. Somewhere in the tangle is the Umbilicus, the cords and pipes that connect the Child to Father Corp. The Umbilicus runs through the astral current called the Squeeze, which can act as a backdoor into the Child. <br /><br /><br /> Jerkies are a type of creep found in the bowels. They are crude humanoid simulrums made of burned and desiccated meat. They are shy, hiding between pipes, peeking out of shadows with skeletal faces. Bowel workers say they are the corpses of those who were killed by accidents. They say they congregate around future accident sites. They are ambiguous figures, sometimes saving workers from their fate, sometimes trying to make more of their kind.<br /><br /><br /> Rarely a Jerky will have a damaged mask on its face. This is actually a dangerous creature called a Maskform revenant. These beings are the damaged and distorted egos of dead maskforms, still clinging to existence. They are driven by revenge, but they can’t remember the source of their grudges. They grow wicked blades out their bodies and attack at short range. They will not attack the friends and family they had in life. <br /></p>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-68823141368132188982021-10-07T07:23:00.000-07:002021-10-07T07:23:28.787-07:00The Maskform Federation <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span> </span>The Maskform Federation is a new military alliance formed by the various clans and settlements of the astral currents in Chunky Space. The Astral Currents have been settled for millennia but they have always been isolated and independent. Only Father Corp raids have pushed them together. They have created a unified force that opposes Father Corp not only in the Astral, but in the material world as well.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span> </span>The Maskform Federation has joined the Chunky Space Compact because they need allies and material support. For generations the Maskforms of Chunky Space have ignored the material world. This position is no longer tenable, as Father Corp uses the material world as a base to launch their raids into the astral currents. The Federation is boot-strapping up a real space navy and they need outside help to do so. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span> </span>Before the Federation, Maskform societies were connected by the Caravan Houses, mechant consortiums that would travel between Astral currents. It was the caravan guards that formed the core of the Federation military. The Federation has since evolved beyond those roots, becoming estranged from the Caravan Houses’ economic interests. There is a growing pan-Maskform nationalism that some see as a threat to the traditional order. For now the common enemy of Father Corp keeps the alliance together.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span> </span>The Federation military is split into an auxiliary branch and a professional branch. The Auxiliaries are the fighting forces of the various tribes united together. They use their traditional tactics and command structures to fight in astral realms. The professional branch is a completely modern institution that focuses on real space.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span> </span>The strength of the Federation Navy lies in the psychic traditions of the Maskforms. All together, the tribes have knowledge of dozens of different psychic disciplines. There are schools for telekinesis, mind intrusion, wild empathy, techno gnosis and some applications that are so obscure they don’t have common names. What is also notable is how the Federation navy deploys these powers as part of a combined arms doctrine. Psychics are assigned to multidisciplinary fire teams with infantry support. Federation forces are powerful, flexible and unconventional.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span> </span><b>The Amorphous</b> live in the cave-like current called The Squeeze. Their name comes from their custom of assuming flexible slime forms, allowing them to squeeze through any gap their mask can fit through. They live in sealed fortresses built around fixed points in the everchanging caves. Each fortress is ruled by a military leader called a Wallmaster who serves at the consent of a council of civil leaders. The Amorphous have been forced to militarize even before the emergence of Father Corp. The Squeeze is also home to the Dig Safe Empire, a militant cult of meme victims that desire only to dig and to spread their compulsion. The various settlements are all united together by ancient pacts, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t infighting. Disputes are settled through ritual one on one combat between warriors wearing tech gnostic battle panoplies </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span> </span><b>The Illuminated</b> live in Siren’s Call, a layered oceanic realm. The layer you experience is dependent on your vibrational frequency, with the catch that the realm itself is always sapping energy. To avoid the dangerous low vibe layers, they carry lightstones, which they use as a meditative focus to increase their vibes. They live in nomadic, free swimming pods. The only permanent settlement is the crawling city, made out of motile astral coral. The city is home to creches, libraries and workshops; all of the infrastructure they can’t carry with them. The city is ruled by a Headmaster, who is appointed by a council of department heads. Their power extends only to the city; the pods have no formal leadership structure.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span> </span><b>The Threaded</b> live in the everchanging wilds of the Trail. Navigation in the Trail works by sympathy and connection; by setting your intention towards a person, the Trail will take you to them (though not necessarily without incident or a detour). The Threaded sew special ceremonial fibers into their astral bodies that strengthen their connection to whoever has the other half of their fiber. They build settlements on meta-stable locations, areas where the warping effect of the trail is somewhat muted. Even these islands of apparent stability aren’t permanent, sometimes melting back into the flux of the trail. As a result the Threaded are always exploring the Trail, looking for new building sites. Settlements are typically small and are ruled by two democratically elected leaders; a “Master Sojourner” who handles external matters like diplomacy and trade and a “ Master cultivator” who handles internal matters.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span> </span><b>The Florid</b> are associated with the astral current known as the digital abyss but in truth the abyss is antithetical to long term habitation. Instead, the Florid live in an “astral delta” realm where the abyss flows into the more hospitable dreamscape known as HellBloom. HellBloom is a massive virtual lake overgrown with digital lotuses. The Florid live on island settlements. Each island is dominated by a single hotel. The hotels service the Digital Devils, powerful and demented digital/astral entities who just need a place to unwind and destress sometimes. The hotels are split between worker-owned and private hereditary owners. An economic war has been going on for centuries that has seen the fortunes of the private owners, the so-called “Spa Queens”, wane considerably. They have now embraced Father Corp and rely on it for cheap resupply. The tides of war are turning once again and the unionists are turning to the Federation for help.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span> </span>Life on the Ruin Way is in constant motion. Slow moving objects get shunted to a barren oubliette dimension called the neon wastes. <b>The Peregrine</b> maskforms live on convoys of mobile temple complexes. The convoys travel between sacred fix points in the Ruin Way. Each of the four major convoys uses a different primary fuel source, in order to lessen competition. When there are disputes about routes, food sources or secondary fuels they engage in ceremonial conflicts known as “dust ups”, in which mounted warriors attempt to force each other down into the neon wastes. The convoys are theocracies lead by the most accomplished pilgrims.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span> </span>The nexus of Maskform civilization in Chunky Space has always been <b>Dream Washed Ortellion</b>. All five major currents have confluxes here, making it a major trading post. The planet’s capitol, Graz Throne, is the largest city in the Federation. All other settlements are much smaller. The nominal ruler of the planet is the Monarch of Graz, but their role is more militant than political. Trained from birth in the Questing Arts, their task is to contain and control astral influence. Graz Throne is administered by the Fool’s Parade, a body of citizens under the sway of the Jubilant Moon. The outlying settlements are ruled by democratically elected mayors. The Maskforms of Dream Washed Ortellion don’t have a collective name like the other groups. They are sometimes called the Mudbound but that is considered derogatory.</div><div><br /></div></div><p><br /></p>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-66981066847657348122021-09-30T07:28:00.000-07:002021-09-30T07:28:42.077-07:00Eel Grass Ring<p> <span> </span>The Eel Grass Ring is an ancient megastructure built by the Phantasmagorics. It is a torus of water orbiting a star like a halo. An interior ring of metamaterials hosts the field affectors that keep the whole assembly together. The waters of the ring are thick with kelp, with some sections completely sheathed. Two large power sources on opposite sections of the ring are detectable by scans. There is also a cluster of S.O.S beacons in one section.</p><p><span> </span>The ring is an important migration site for cosmic eels on their circuits through the galaxy. They swim through transient astral confluxes from the astral current known as Siren’s Call. The life cycle of the cosmic eels is not well understood; the historical record shows that the current Cosmic Eels were preceded by other, now vanished eels. This implies that Cosmic Eels do in fact reproduce . The current theory is that the eel spawn they shed will grow into new Cosmic Eels, but that process has never been observed. What is known is that the Eel Grass Ring is rich with eel spawn. </p><p><span> </span>It is believed that the Phantsmagorics built the ring to attract Cosmic Eels in order to study and replicate them. Certainly in the modern day the Cosmic Eels and their eel spawn play a huge role in the ring ecosystem. Eel spawn are astral amphibians, meaning they can live in astral environments and in material environments. They are naturally self bio-kinetic, meaning they can alter their biological makeup in response to outside stimuli. They frequently exhibit other psychic powers.</p><p><span> </span>The central ring contains formations of shade stone, a strange metamaterial made by the Phantsmagorics. Shade stone generates shades, creatures that are not made of normal matter but are still able to interact with the material world. Also present on the ring due to the influence of the Phantsmagorics is a diversity of memetic entities, both symbionts and pathogens.</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">Regions</p><p><br /></p><p><b>The reef of wrecks</b> - The kelp here grows amid thousands of wrecked starships, most of which have been gutted and looted. There are dozens of emergency beacons, each leading to an EM mine set up by wreckers from the starport Flotsam. Biome B. </p><p><b>Screaming reef</b> - Here a reef of shadestone faces grows on the central ring. In the caverns of screaming mouths there is a secret settlement of shade scholars who keep detailed records of the visits by the Cosmic Eels. Biome B</p><p><b>Power pole +</b> - The Kelp here is laced through with phosphorescent veins that pulse with light. The pulse is synchronized throughout all the flora in the regions. Strange bands of EM radiation make comms unreliable. Biome A</p><p><b>Power pole -</b> - Same as power pole + except instead of cycling through warm colors, the kelp cycles through cool colors. Biome A</p><p><b>Diaphanous sea</b> - One the regions where the surface is sheathed in kelp. Beneath the kelp grows in thin flowing sheets. Best place in the ring to see a Cosmic Eel breach into reality. Biome C</p><p><b>Motley sea</b> - Similar to the Diaphanous sea except the kelp has an odd patchwork apparence to it. Rumors hold that somewhere in the kelp is the ancient laboratory where the Phantsmagorics created the Eel Abohorant. Biome C</p><p><br /></p><p>Encounter die 1d6. One through three are universal encounters. Three through four are biome dependant. Six is dependent on which Cosmic Eel is in ascendancy; roll 1d5 </p><p style="text-align: center;"><u>Universal encounters</u> </p><p>1. <b>Philosopher Eel</b> - Huge Apex predator. Arrow shaped head with myriad eye clusters. Sapient but highly focused on hunting and eating. Preys mainly on astral lifeforms, including those living in meatspace hosts. It communicates psychically in order to hunt for prey and to seek out new ideas, activities it considers closely related. It specializes in negating psychic powers. </p><p>2. <b>All Seeing Jelly</b> - A transparent jelly covered in eyes. Defends itself by hijacking and redirecting visual input to anywhere in the galaxy</p><p>3. <b>Creche giant</b> - A humanoid shade hundreds of feet tall. Its head is a vast cavity swarming with young eels. Harmlessly swims through the sea, unless the baby eels are disturbed.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Biome A </b> - The flora here pulses with numinous energy. </p><p><b>3. Power spiral </b>- A spiral cluster of jellies, each a clone. They pulse like the flora but to a slightly different tempo. They feed on energy and will drain the power from technological systems. They defend themselves with directed energy attacks</p><p><b>4. Aura Eel</b> - predatory eel spawn that appears to be covered in a field of lambent energy. The field is actually an memetic symbiont called <b>slime fire</b> that siphons life force from it’s host to empower their physic abilities. The eel hunts with shredding waves of telekinetic force. When the eel is killed the aura detaches and floats free. It will host on the next organism it touches.</p><p><b>Biome B </b>- Close and dense kelp obscures sight</p><p><b>3. Dollfaced crab</b> - A man sized crab with a strange porcelain doll face. Babbles like a baby, attracting prey</p><p><b>4. Grief Gupper</b> - Small brown humanoid with suckers on it’s hand and glassy eyed, open mouth stare. Despite the name, it feeds on all kinds of negative emotion. Difficult to notice because of it’s astral symbiote, <b>creeping crypsis</b>. Creatures infected with creeping crypsis will experience fugue states, during which it becomes hard for observers to pick out from the background.</p><p><b>Biome C</b> - The kelp here is arranged in thin flowing sheets.</p><p><b>3. Labyrinth Eel</b> - Weaves space and kelp together into insecable labyrinths. Feeds on the helplessness of those trapped inside. The only way to escape is by flushing out the Eel from its hiding place in the center of the labyrinth.</p><p><b>4. Geometroid</b> - A living geometric pattern that moves across 2-d surfaces. Most are harmless but one in four is infected with a <b>pareidile</b>, a type of carnivorous meme. An infected geometroid will stalk and “bite” sapient prey. The bite does minimal damage but transfers the pareidile infection. An infected sapient will become convinced it is being stalked by a monster and will see that monster in random patterns. The delusion intensifies until the victim dies of fright.</p><p><br /></p><p>Eels specific encounters - Cosmic Eels visit the ring frequently, and when they do their presence influences the eel spawn. Certain eel spawn phenotypes are only present when specific Cosmic Eels are visiting the ring</p><p><b>6. Abhorrent - Broken mirror eel </b>- Becomes an exact physical copy of the least charismatic member of the party except the chirality is reversed. It will follow the party and make a case that it should replace the original. It feeds on weakening bonds; once it has supplanted its victim in the social scene its meal is complete and it will revert back to its original form and swim away.</p><p><b>6. Dentata - Tooth piper eel</b> - A bone white eel with holes like a wind instrument. Creates a soporific melody when hunting. After its prey falls asleep it uses telekinesis to harvest their teeth.</p><p><b>6. Vaporous - joyrider eel</b> - Appears as a fast moving translucent streak that merges into its chosen host in the blink of an eye. The host experiences an urge to go fast and be up high, as well as enhanced reflexes. If the host is ever in open sky during a freefall, the eel will devour them in an instant before flying away to find a new host.</p><p><b>6. Suburban - time waster eel</b> - Disguises itself as a bureaucratic functionary and feeds off the mental energy its victims waste dealing with it. It projects a “context field” which fools its victims into thinking it is in an environment where the eel’s ruse makes sense, like an office or a school. </p><p><b>6. Adorned - Critic eel </b>- Long flowing fins. Feeds on self confidence, which it collects by insulting the sartorial choices of others</p><p style="text-align: center;"><u>Flotsam </u></p><p>A pirate spaceport hidden in the wreck reef. A joint enterprise between the OOB and SOG pirate clans. The port’s “main street” is a large rope that runs between reclaimed wrecks. Most wrecks have either purple markings for OOB or green markings for SOG. SOG specializes in reclaimed hulls while OOB sells reclaimed reactors </p><p><b>Captain Ooorl’s Lament</b> - An old luxury cruiser converted into a bar/fight pit</p><p><b>Taffy Boy</b> - a drug dealer and local institution. A candy mutant adapted for aquatic living. Sells narcotic balls and additive candy breathing fluid.</p><p><b>House of screams -</b> That’s what it says on the sign. Decorated with curse jars. The proprietors are two neon punks sheathed in thick robes. They buy memetic infections.</p><div><br /></div>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-85235000630630270382021-09-23T08:52:00.000-07:002021-09-23T08:52:07.712-07:00Idol Grounds<p> <span> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">This entire planet was carved into a temple complex by the now vanished Phantasmagorics. The mountains are crowned with bell towers, the hills hold cathedrals and the bedrock is shot through with crypts. Despite all this, the Phantasmagorics were not themselves religious. They used the planet to breed godlings, and they used the godlings to exert imperial control.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-a16ced4a-7fff-c79a-d2e0-2937bb18a936"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Godlings are composed of two parts. An immaterial astral presence and an imobile “idol” made of advanced metamaterials. If the astral presence is disrupted the idol will reform it, but if the idol is destroyed, the presence will lose cohesion and dissipate. Godlings are mental parasites that feed off the psychic energy of their worshippers. The Phantasmagorics designed different clades of godling based on preferred environment. The four major clades present on Idol Grounds are sky, sea, urban and garden.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Creebos are the dominant life form on Idol Grounds. They are small mouse-like animals with dextrous front paws. They are very intelligent and are considered pre-sapient. They are capable of tool use but they are incapable of sophisticated language. They do, however, have religion. The godlings farm creebos for belief, using their psychic powers to perform miracles and to shepard creebo settlements. Individually creebos don’t pose much threat but godlings have been known to catalyze the creation of creebo armies that are hundreds of thousands strong.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Idol Grounds is an arid terrestrial world. The only visible water is a series of eye shaped inland seas. Also visible from space is a massive fumarole several miles in diameter. The oxygen level is low but breathable.Gravity is much lower than the planet’s volume would indicate, suggesting that the planet is hollow. A single radio beacon is transmitting a looping signal that says “Land here! All else is Death!”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The inland seas are known as <b>The God Eyes</b>. Each sea is home to exactly one sea god. The creebos live on shore side settlements and on raft communities. Every three months the godlings hold a tournament where the creebos joust and spar with each other. The gods displace all of their territorial aggression onto these games, using them to establish a pecking order. When they’re not training their creebos or plotting against their neighbors, they collect and trade colorful shells. The dread sea is the one empty sea, rendered inhostiple by an infestation of dead sea creeps. The sea gods use it as neutral ground and as a sort of off-world embassy, which is why they set up the radio beacon (with offworld technological help). Sea godlings come here to gawk at and gossip with offworlders.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Most of the surface is what is known as the <b>Sky Gods Badlands</b>. Each of the hundreds of Sky Gods has their own chunk of territory, which they guard ferociously. Like all godlings their astral forms are naturally invisible, but they project visual holograms as a matter of personnel pride. They favor large wings, flames and unblinking eyes. It’s the sky godlings that make Idol Grounds difficult to visit via spaceship. They don’t understand machines conceptually, so they perceive their passive nature as deliberate impudence. They have weather control abilities as well as direct energy attacks. The creebos live in underground settlements built around idol chambers. The godlings have a cultural agreement not to attack each other directly, rather they direct their creebos to wage proxy wars on their behalf. The most powerful godlings live in the mountains where sheltered fertile valleys can support millions of creebos. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span><b>The Deep Garden</b> is a verdant paradise in the center of the planet. Hanging in the central cavity is the Radiant God Mother, the source all of the godlings spawned from. In addition to visible light, it also emits psychic radiation that makes it difficult to see and understand. The godlings here have formed a collective pantheon and worship the god mother. This region is fertile and the godlings are relatively harmonious, leading to huge and prosperous creebo communities.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The fumarole on the surface is the most direct access to the deep garden but it is guarded by agents of the garden pantheon (around ten thousand armed creebos). In order to gain passage, you must agree to take some literature. If you do agree, every open cargo slot on ship (and all of the glove compartments) will be filled with tiny illegible religious pamphlets. If you want to study the godmother, you will be geased to deliver the pamphlets to beings across the galaxy before you will be allowed access.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Below the crypt layer lies <b>the office complexes</b> where the Phantsmagorics controlled the godling business. Now the abandoned offices are home to urban godlings and their creebo congregations. Urban Godlings are secretive and paranoid. They have a lot of enemies, like the sky godlings and the garden godlings and other urban godlings. But worst of all are the binders, possibly fictitious creatures that have the power to trap godlings in unbreakable contracts. The creebos here farm fungus in the dark to survive.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trade goods</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Choral moss</b> - This flora found in the sky gods badlands telepathically broadcasts a simple chant. The chant grows more complex as the biomass of the moss increases. Valuable to rich weirdos with strange taste in interior decor</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Broken Idol</b> - Thousands of smashed idols can be found in forgotten chambers across the planet. The semi organic metamaterial they’re made of is valuable to archaeologists and fringe scientists.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Data crystal</b> - An ancient phantasmagoric storage medium. Prized by the creebos of the urban godlings, who use them as symbols of office. Valuable to archaeologists. </span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-73259489989310586692021-09-16T10:53:00.000-07:002021-09-16T10:53:08.532-07:00Sybarite’s Garden <p> <span> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">We know little of the Soft Bodies’ culture. We don’t know their politics, we don’t know how their society was organized or who ruled. What we do know is that there were poor Soft Bodies and rich Soft Bodies. Sybarite’s garden is a planet that was once owned by the wealthy elite, the very biosphere sculpted to meet their decadent demands. With the fall of their empire the paradise world evolved into a dentatea planet, living luxuries turned wild once again.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-d990feb9-7fff-6481-fb49-5e781f2acaab"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Sybarite’s Garden is a mid-sized terrestrial world with a rich biosphere. Like most late stage Soft Body worlds the atmosphere has a high oxygen level. Two major continents make up 20% of the surface area. No obvious signs of past or present settlement are visible, except for a series of rectangular lakes on the southern edge of the eastern continent </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span><u>The Fragrant Jungle</u>, also known as the reeking jungle, is a sweltering biome that covers most of the western continent. The flora here was once gene engineered as incense. Over the years their odors have diverged and mutated. The end result is overwhelming, the welter of different smells overlapping and combining. Together with the humidity and the chorus of screaming avians, the jungle is an assault on the senses. The pandemonium hides vicious predators and devious parasites.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Snufflers</b> - Once bred as pets, snufflers have evolved into pack hunters. Their large heads hang low to the ground as they noisy lick the ground. Instead of smelling the air, they taste for trails. The hunt with their surprisingly dexterous hands, snatching and pummeling prey. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Drop Worm</b> - The apex predator of the jungle, 3 meters of corded muscle. They come in greens, yellows and oranges, all striped to hide in the canopy. They drop onto their prey and strangle them to death. Beilived to have evolved from a living scarf.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Lotus ooze</b> - A small pink ooze. It is attracted to the smell of open wounds. It crawls inside it’s hosts, and hijacks their nervous system with opiates and hormones. The victim is compelled to dig a hole in a river bank, then seal themself inside. A flower grows out of the corpse and new oozes drip from it like nectar. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span><u>The Great Water Feature</u> is a megalithic construction project left behind by the Soft Bodie. Massive stone slabs form lake beds, all connected to each other by stone channels. Today the lakes are choked by flowering weeds, creating painted vistas. Wooded isles hide the shattered remains of pleasure palaces.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Decorative leviathan</b> - These massive aquatic serpents were once valued for the brilliant patterns on their scales. It is believed that the current leviathans are the same individuals who were alive at the height of the Soft Body Empire. They hunt by cavicating their mouths, creating powerful suction</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Fighting Angels</b> - Their beautiful flowing fins and tentacles beille their purpose as gladiatorial combatants. They have retractable barbs on their tentacles. Fiercely territorial, they attack on sight.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Along the lake beds are hidden vaults carved into the stone. Hidden from prying eyes and protected by advanced biological security systems, the wealthy elite of the Soft Bodies used these vaults to store valuables. In the modern era the security systems have died off and gone feral, but the vaults are still protected by the creatures of the great water feature. It is estimated that less than a quarter of the vaults have been found and looted</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Contents of a vault 1d3</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1d6 crates of programmable glass ingots - A form of currency used by the now extinct Silicon league. With the right protocol the glass can take any shape. Only certain archaeologists know these protocols.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1d4 ancient riddles - glass vials containing spores in long term hibernation. Inside the spores are enigmatic DNA sequences called riddles. Valuable to gene engineers </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1d2 crates of shell art - A major artform in Soft Body culture was breeding shelled animals with beautiful patterns. Only has full value to Soft Body historians, but they are pretty </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>North of the Great Water Feature is the <u>Smoking Parie</u>. Mud chimneys rise up out of the wildflowers. These structures are built by smokers, small eusocial animals that gather plant material and burn it in their hives. Because the flora on the planet was originally bred to entertain bored aristocrats, the plants and thus the smoke has psychoactive properties</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Giggler</b> - This is the smoker’s primary predator. The large front claws are used to rip up their nests, while the blackened skin on the face protects against the heat. Constant exposure to the smoke makes their behavior erratic. Named for their strange and continuous vocalizations </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Trade goods</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Glasswood tree </b>- Grows in the fragrant jungle. Prized by aritos for it’s strength, light weight and glass like luster.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Aching flowers-</b> Tiny multicolored flowers that grow in the Great Water Feature. Can be distilled into a potent aphrodisiac. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Ooze Lotus</b> - An immature lotus ooze flower before it releases newborn oozes. A powerful narcotic</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Smoker’s hash</b> - processed and concentrated organic matter found in a smoker’s hive </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Smoker Queen</b> - The progenitor of a smoker hive. Has great value in the Republic of Sea Serpents, where they eat monarchs </span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-39264483609675368742021-09-09T09:55:00.001-07:002021-09-09T09:55:52.783-07:00The Seeder Initiative<p> <span> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Seeder Initiative is a young human polity that arose from the ashes of the old order on the human homeworld of Dirt. The technocrat kings were fearful and petty despots, content to rule their small arcologies, keeping the human homeworld hidden in the endless night. After the revolution, the Seeders took to the stars, only to discover humanity had already escaped the bonds of Dirt long ago. Now the seeders are seeking to reunite the fractured human colonies. They dream of a pan galactic human polity.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-cd02b83b-7fff-ddf4-3afe-a4ad97068003"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Politics </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Immediately after the rebels won the Seeder Initiative was formed as a military Junta to oversee the transition away from the arcolgies of Dirt to the vastness of space. Several years ago the Junta stepped down to make way for a liberal democracy. The chief executive is called the Prime Minister. The legislature is bicameral, split between the Large House for representatives from planetary colonies and the Small House which represents orbitals and outposts. The biggest wrinkle is that Dirt itself is unrepresented and citizens living on its surface cannot vote. This is meant to disenfranchise technocrat loyalists who are unwilling to leave their ancestral arcologies. This is just one more factor that has made Dirt a backwater within the Initiative.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The House of Esk occupies a singular and precarious position within the Initiative. They are one of the few technocrat noble lines to survive the war and they are the only house that joined the rebellion. Their defection marked the beginning of the end of the war, and as a result they were allowed to keep their noble titles and their holdings, including their psychic warsuits and their off planet colonies. The feudal system is still in place, but it’s fangs have been knocked out with the advent of free travel; already the threat of personnel drain has forced reforms. Still, the authoritarian nature of Esk rankles many in the Initiative; for some, Esk represents everything the war was fought against. Nevertheless, they are part of the Initiative, for the time being at least. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Circle of integration, commonly called the Circle, is a ring of scientists and engineers created during the rebellion. Their mandate was to synthesize a unified technological praxis out of liberated technocrat artifacts and texts. They succeeded in some respects but the Technocrat knowledge base was corrupted and degraded by political whims. The circle understands more than the technocrats did, but less than the Empire of Dirt. With the war over and funding drying up, the Circle has moved towards self reliance, creating dockyards and orbital factories. Some in the Initiative worry that the Circle is becoming a breakaway faction, compounded by fears of transhumanism. Many in the Circle are science mutants who have reclaimed the technologies that were used to create them. After centuries of human modification being taboo, the Circle is pushing that boundary.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Seeder Defence Force (SDF) is the military wing of the Initiative. The officer corp is almost exclusively veterans of the rebellion while the grunts are mostly green volunteers. Early on it was decided that their focus would be the stars, so there has been a mad rush of ship building. In absolute terms their navy is still small, but every ship they have is a ship they didn’t have before the fall of the Technocrats. The transition between rebel partisans to professional soldiers has been a fraught one, giving the SDF a severe and erratic reputation.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>In order to supplement the still growing SDF, the Seeder Volunteer Force. Composed of merchants and privateers, the SVF is an auxiliary force that deploys when the SDF is otherwise unavailable. In contrast to the perception that SDF commanders are damaged and unpredictable, SVF captains are lauded as the heroic ideal; ordinary Terrans answering the call of duty. Despite this reputation, they have a dubious, high loss record. Still, they help the Initiative project force across their sphere of influence.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>Races</u></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For centuries, humans on Dirt lived in sealed arcologies, isolated islands of civilization in the war torn wastes. Human society on Dirt was mired in a hereditary system of nobility. The direct servants of the Technocrat Kings were lords and ladies who ruled over the peasants . Twenty years ago, that system ended in fire. Humans from Dirt are often driven by the trauma from that event. Even those who weren’t alive then were born into a world shaped by the rebellion. Centuries of repression and isolation have given way to an era of passionate, almost neurotic exploration. A new new era of possibility, still haunted by the horrors of the past.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The Flesh 7 are a race of cyborgs with organic bodies and machine brains. They joined the Seeders during the war, when a group of rebels discovered their salvaging enclave Trash Bucket in Dirt’s debris ring. Their support gave the rebellion crucial space supremacy. In return the Flesh 7 were given monetary and technological support in the post-war period. Trash Bucket grew from a small outpost to an orbital city, and it is now the de facto capital of the Seeder Initiative. Though they are widely established across the galaxy, each individual enclave is small and there is little coordination, leading to the Flesh 7 being considered something of an “also-ran” in terms of galactic powers. Ambitious young Flesh 7s see the Initiative as a way to change that. By hitching their cart to humanity, they hope to share in their future empire.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>The Mu-Boll, also known as the twice born, are a recent addition to the Seeder Initiative. Their ancestors were isolated on the Great Station Mu millions of years ago, where they evolved away from sapience, only for that trait to reemerge later. It is believed that the Mu-Boll’s ancestors were in fact a human subspecies, though there is far too much artificial tampering in their genome for that to be known for certain. Regardless, the resemblance between the two species is remarkable. Same body plan, but Mu-Boll are shorter, with larger heads and larger eyes and pointed ears. The Mu-Boll had only recently emerged from their isolation on the Great Station Mu, and alliance with the Seeders seemed like a natural fit. The Mu-Boll prefer living in orbit while humans prefer planet side, meaning they aren’t in direct competition for living space. The greatest source of tension between the two races is the popularity of human meat clone cultures among the Mu-Boll.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Canineform are human/dog hybrids. They have a tumultuous history with main line humanity. Originally enslaved through instinctual restraints, canineforms rebelled and created their own empire, the Domain of the Master. After thousands of years of uneasy peace with the Empire of Dirt, the two nations found themselves on opposite sides of the Kaiju War. After the Domain of the Master was destroyed, thousands of canineforms found themselves stranded in the Dirt system. Some became low caste workers in the Technocrat kingdoms, while others lived in the wilds of the planet War. The rebellion upended the old social order, and canineforms were made equal. Their participation in the Initiative is not without friction however. The Seeders have positioned themselves as the inheritors of the Empire of Dirt, directly aligning themselves with the Canineform’s ancient enemy. Some tribes on War still believe the Kaiju war continues, while some Canineform separatists seek to reestablish the Master’s Domain. Still, as a human subspecies, most of the Seeder’s see the Canineforms as fellow terrans and full members of the Initiative. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Science Mutant is the catch-all term for humans altered by the technologies of the technocrat kings. It is important to note the term applies to cyborgs as well as genetically engineered humans. Many of the technocrats used their science to enhance the under class of their cities, either for use as laborers or as weapons. Science mutants were seen as the lowest of the low, mere objectified extensions of the technocrats’ will. It is no wonder then that they rebelled. In the new order science mutants have full human rights, but much of the old prejudice remains.</span></p><div><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span><u>Chunky space</u></span></div><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> </span>Chunky Space is a pressing concern for the Seeder Initiative. The house of Oth has retreated here, the last Technocrat noble line to oppose the Seeders. That alone would be enough to draw attention but Chunky Space also promises riches and opportunity. The region is relatively unsettled, making it attractive to an expansionist power like the Seeders. They joined the compact because all the other signatories have significant human populations. They hope to leverage the political good will from the treaty into influence towards their goal of a pan terran polity. Their operational base in the region is the planet Far Sea, a former Esk colony.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963243022415509042.post-58862050677355668632021-09-02T10:03:00.002-07:002021-09-02T10:03:24.841-07:00The city of Graz Throne<br /><br /><span> </span>Dream-Washed Ortellion’s most striking feature is its ring of hundreds of multi-colored moons. They throng together in an impossibly crowded band, in defiance of conventional physics. They come from a rare astral conflux; all five major astral currents in Chunky Space meet here. The Moons are psychic eddies, swirling conglomerates of dream vibes. During the day their influence is weakened by the sun, but at night the dream tides they create rule the surface of Ortelion. Dream tides can sweep away reason and make people follow alien impulses. They also allow dangerous astral creatures to live on Dream-Washed Ortellion. As a result the native Maskforms¹ live in underground structures, protected from the dream tides by the simple dreams of the dirt and loam. The planet’s biggest (and only) city is Graz Throne. <br /><br /><div><span> </span>The gateway to Graz Throne is the Maskform Federation Headquarters. It sits outside the city proper in small spits of flatland amid a wild marsh. Like most of Dream-Washed Ortellion it is ruled by the strange fluxes of the dream tide. As a result it had to be built into the ground and covered with turf. As a result it looks like an archipelago of lumpy meadows rising out of a tidal marshland. Sometimes you can witness a hill splitting open, flaps of sod hanging in the air as spacecraft taxi in and out of the concealed hangers. <br /><span> </span></div><div><span> I</span>n addition to being a spaceport, it is also an active military base. Foreign ships are directed to dedicated bays on the outskirts. Upon arrival outsiders are assigned a liaison officer whose job it is to handle customs, security, refueling, all of that messy business. As a matter of course all liaison officers are part of the Federation Intelligence Corp. It is considered rude to comment on this.<br /><br /><span> </span>The road to the city proper is shockingly narrow; a double line of bricks with dirt on either side Teams of porters use single wheeled barrows pulled by splay-footed pack lizards. The path leads out of the marshland and into the grain fields around the city. The fields are loney; the houses are underground so during the growing season it’s possible to see miles of fields without a single person in sight. The boundary of the city is plainly visible; the hidden sod houses are replaced with above ground cottages and the grain is replaced with orchards and vegetable plots.<br /><br /><span> </span>The first impression of Graz Throne is that it is impossibly rustic and picturesque. Wood and stone buildings tower above cobblestone streets. The fretwork is all laced through with an arabesque pattern that flows and changes throughout the city. The buildings are crowned with statues of maskform heroes and fantastical creatures. The largest and tallest structure is the Graz palace complex.It is a veritable hydra of whitestone towers, the tallest of which is the Moon Anchor, which dwarfs all other buildings. At the top is the prismatic pink Jubilant Moon, whose astral radiance keeps the dream tides away. The effects of the Jubilant Moon can be felt through most of the city. The air seems to vibrate and there’s a lightness to every movement.<br /><br /><span> </span>The caravansary district is in the outskirts of the city, where the buildings are still low. It consists of a trio of hotels, each with a large circular courtyard. This is where caravans come into the city. The bulk majority of goods are used to satisfy guild contracts, but there are always stalls where the public can buy tchokes and curios.<br /><br /><span> </span>The Alchemy district is marked by whimsical smoke stacks and glass reservoir tanks full of colored liquid. Guilds that use and refine chemicals, such as the Tanners Guild, the Dye-Makers Guild and the Potion Brewers guild. The smoke stacks are astral catalytic converters that transmute astral pollutants into harmless compounds. Even with these precautions, the Alchemy district is notably grimier than other parts of the city. The Scrubbers Guild works all across the city but their fiercest battles are here. If left unchecked, pollution build-up can cause grim grime, a sort of carnivorous mildew. Masked and googled scrubbers can be seen on scaffolds, working around the clock to prevent this.<br /><br /><span> </span>Graz Throne is located in a temperate zone and it’s also on a coast. This means that it has cool summers and mild winters. Dense fogs are common year round. During the day weather is anodyne but at night the influence of the Jubilant Moon takes over. Rainstorms have a beat and the thunder comes on time. Fog banks whirl and curl in a hidden rhythm. Frosts form in impossible fractal patterns.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><u>Factions and Organizations</u></div><br /><span> </span>The Maskform Federation is a relatively young polity created in response to Father Corp² piracy. What began as a simple self defence alliance has snowballed into nascent regional power. More than mere safety, the Federation offers unity and political purpose for disaffected Maskform youths. The federation has support from the Crown of Graz, which granted them the right to build a spaceport. This link to the outside world that doesn’t use the traditional astral trade routes is the Federation’s biggest advantage in local politics. Other than that, they are relatively powerless in local politics. Their favor with the throne doesn’t translate to favor with the other powers in the city. The trade guilds and the caravan houses see the Federation as a threat or a rival to their power bases. While their aims are roughly compatible with the Fool’s Parade, they have a hard time fielding fools, as their motivated and zealous personnel base finds participating in the Parade to be frivolous. As a result the Fool’s Parade is less committed to the war against Father Corp than Federation leadership wishes they were.<br /><br /> <span> </span>Every resident of the city will tell you the Throne of Graz is purely ceremonial. This is broadly true but what they fail to mention is that on a world with as much astral influence as Ortellion, ceremonial is different from powerless. The monarch of Graz is trained from birth in the questing arts³. They are an elite questor that uses their talents to mediate between the dream realms and the Maskforms. Their most important duty is to maintain the link between the Jubilant Moon and the city but they have other tasks on Ortellion and in distant dream realms. The guild of Questors is the power behind the throne. It is the elders of the guild that monitor the omens and dispatch the monarch on her quests. Though they would never admit it, the guild has split into two factions; a “pro” Federation faction who sees Father Corp as an existential threat and an “anti” Federation who sees the Corp as a distraction and the Federation as threat to their power.<br /><br /><span> </span>The true municipal power in Graz Throne is the Parade of Fools, a singular endless party that snakes through the streets. The will of the parade arises from the interplay between the party goers and the whims of the Jubilant Moon. Anyone can join the parade, they must simply surrender their minds to the pull of the Jubilant Moon. Once under lunar influence, they are called directly to it, each step bringing them closer. Once they join the Parade they are given a title and costume fitting to their aptitudes and their vibes.. At the front is the Fool King, an enormous amorphous robe. Most of the time multiple people are the Head Fool at once, all bound together in the costume. Sometimes they struggle against each other, sometimes they seem to act with one mind, all according to the whims of the moon.<br /><br /><div><span> </span>Throughout the city there are circular intersections with public stages. These are called grumbles and it is here that the business of government happens. The parade snakes its way into the grumble, coiling around the central stage. The Head Fool announces the grumble and introduces the participants, explaining the structure of the debate to come in garbled moon logic. Positions are expressed through the medium of performance, each song or dance or act assigned a political meaning obvious to the revealers but obscured to onlookers. The crowd makes it’s will known through jeers and cheers and costumed agents are dispatched to carry out various functions of government. After every named fool has given their piece, the head fool announces the location of the next grumble and the Parade sets off once more.<br /><br /><span> </span>At the rear of the parade are the stilt wearing Dropsey Men, who keep a watchful eye for any parade goers showing signs of exhaustion. They point them out to the Knap-timers, who discreetly dose them with a mild sedative and load them onto the knap cart where they are delivered to specialized recovery rooms around the city. Towards the front are the gaily colored Bumpers who clear civilians from the path. Positioned throughout are the black clad Dred Fools. Armed with mancatchers, they respond to violence and emergencies with ruthless efficiency.<br /><br /> <span> </span>The economic powers of the city are the guilds and the caravan houses. The guilds are unions of artisans who control factories and sources of raw materials. The caravan houses are pan-cosmic organizations who control trade routes through astral currents. Dream-Washed Ortellion is their space hub.<br /><br /><span> </span>There are dozens of guilds in the city, with some notable examples being the Sandwich Artisans Guild and the Dollmakers guild. While on the surface Graz Throne seems to be pre industrial, the guilds use special astral technology to achieve similar results. For example, instead of robots they use dolls made out of magic wood. While this enables a high degree of production, it doesn’t have the same “snowball” effect of traditional technology bases. The output of Graz Throne has been more or less static for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Guild artisans focus more on subtle refinement and mastery of existing techniques as opposed to innovation.<br /><br /></div><div><span> </span>Some guilds are vertically integrated, meaning they control farms or other operations in the area around Graz Throne. Other guilds rely on a complicated network of contractual obligations to other guilds and Caravan houses. Some of these contracts are hundreds of years old. Collectively, they are called the Gations, and guild members talk about them as though they were holy texts.<br /><br /></div><div><span> </span>Guilds are granted their charters by the fools parade. Every active guild is required to have at least one member present in the parade for at least half the time (as certified by the Minion of Rolls, who serves under the Mad Scrivener). In addition, guilds keep professional partiers on retainer, to bolster their influence over the Fool’s Parade. The capricious nature of the parade can make it hard to tell if such hired boosters have an effect, but the guilds would rather act futility than risk being out maneuvered by their rivals.<br /><br /></div><div><span> </span>Most guilds are run by specialist artisans. They have an “Apprentice - Journeyman - Master” hierarchy. The masters run the guild by democratic council. To become a master, a journeyman must complete a masterwork. Journeymen without the skill or the ambition to do so often specialize in middle management, become factory foreman and contract negotiators. Most citizens wear their guild badges as cloak pins but it’s not required.<br /><br /></div><div><span> </span>Not every guild fits the artisan model. The Students Guild is made up of foreign maskforms and guildless teenagers. They use membership fees and grants from the Fool’s Parade to pay other guilds to share their specialized knowledge. They send more courtiers to the Parade than the other guilds, leading to the perception that they have a special favor. The members of the Ragamuffins Guild live in the city's orphanages. They have a special permit to work as guides and messengers. The Questors Guild is sometimes called the Near House. In addition to teaching the Questing Arts, they fund terrestrial caravans that trade in the scattered townships across Ortellion. <br /><br /></div><div><span> </span>Once a guild is established and chartered it can feel like a permanent institution. This is not the case; under extreme circumstances the Parade can revoke guild charters. The most infamous case happened hundreds of years ago but it still casts a shadow on the present day. The Pipers Guild were exterminators who used hypnotic melodies to remove various urban pests. The exact details were suppressed and never made fully public but it's known that their allegiances flipped from the city to the pests they were supposed to fight. Their charter was revoked, and they were hunted down by the Dred Fools. The last masters of the Pipers Guild died in public giblets hanging from what was once their guild hall. They were replaced by the Raters Guild, who train native weasel-like creatures to deal with vermin.<br /><span> </span></div><div><span> </span>But it is said that the teachings of the Pipers Guild lived on in the whispers of their old enemies turned friends. It is said that the sprites and malmalkins⁴ of Graz Throne sing the old songs of the pipers into the ears of sleepers. Some of those unfortunates awake as piping fools, the most notorious form of errant fool⁵. Piping Fools use their hypnotic powers to spread chaos through the city. A single Piping Fool can shut the city down for weeks, as residents hide inside with their ears stopped up with wax. Fortunately Piping Fools are rare, with one emerging every few years. As even errant fools serve the will of the Jubilant Moon, they are not held liable for their actions, but their knowledge of the piping arts makes them too dangerous to live in society. When they are caught by Dred Fools they are sent to live in the Damn Spit Asylum, a remote building out in the marshes.<br /><br /></div><div><span> </span>In response to resistance from the Federation, Father Corp has set its sights on Graz Throne, in order to undermine their power base. They have begun beaming a multi-level marketing scheme into people’s dreams. If someone accepts the pitch, they wake up with a bedroom full of cheap Father Corp products and the compulsion to pawn them off on others. The Fool’s Parade has declared this practice illegal and will destroy any Father Corp products they find. Nevertheless, Father Corp products are finding their way into the daily lives of the citizens, subtly changing and weakening the guild system. It is unclear how Father Corp is transmitting the signal, as interference from the moons of Dream-Washed Ortelion should block any astral transmissions. Doomsayers allege that the Jubilant Moon has been suborned somehow. This seems unlikely but it has dire implications if true.<br /><br /></div><div><span> </span>Most citizens of Graz Throne belong to a guild, and it is their guild that feeds them. Guildhalls and guild dorms have onsite cooks (usually a high status journeyman, but in a food based guild they could be a master) who prepare meals using raw ingredients from the Grangers Guild. This means food culture in Graz Throne is focused on supplemental foods, little things meant to tide over guild workers between meals. The Sandwich Makers, the Grillers and the Confectioner’s guilds each have their own army of food carts, hoping to entice passing workers into spending a few Guilders. Potions flavored with sugar and cream are popular beverages. There are health potions, meal replacement potions, even potions that let you work while you sleep. Graz Throne beer is notoriously weak, as the Brewers Guild must satisfy the thirst of the Fool’s Parade. Instead of putting effort into beer, the masters of the Brewers Guild focus on high end spirits<br /><br /></div><div><span> </span>Like most of the Maskforms in Chunky Space, the citizens of Graz Throne are largely Bastardist. They believe they are descended from the original bastards, and it is their destiny to reclaim their legacy. More specifically, they believe early Maskforms were designed to rule over the astral realms created by the Obelisk Dreamers. Aside from that, the most important religious institutions in the city are the Mystery Cults. These small organizations worship specific sites and phenomena across Dream Washed Ortellion. It is a rite of passage for city youths to make a pilgrimage into the wilderness in order to experience a mystery. Some notable examples are the Order of the Green Heart and the Cult of the Unwinding River. Cult pamphlets make up a large proportion of the city’s street trash. <br /><br /></div><div><span> </span>The Caravan houses are important institutions to Maskform society in Chunky Space because they keep the tribes connected through trade. Each house has its own list of crossing points, locations where a group can transverse from one current to another. Graz Throne is the largest Maskform city and manufacturing center in Chunky Space, making it a vital part of every caravan route. Astral trade is complicated, but to put it broadly, raw materials come into Graz Throne and finished products leave.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><u>Locations</u></div><br /> <span> </span>The Blue Lounge is nested deep with the sewers and access tunnels that underpin the city. The rays of the Jubilant Moon don’t reach underground, making the lounge a respite from its influence. For this reason it is a popular spot for the professional partiers that spend too much time in the Parade of Fools. On their off hours they are quiet, serious types who nurse weak drinks and compulsively play phantom instruments. For the cost of a few drinks you could learn quite a bit about the doings of the Parade.<br /><br /><span> </span>The Singing Sandwich is the Sandwich Artisans Guild hall and one of the most highly rated restaurants in Graz Throne. The titular dish is made using special fungal steaks that resonate in the aura of the Jubilant moon. Recently, the fungal farms in the building's basement have been taken over by a malmalkin infestation. While the building is closed, a host of journeymen have set up pop-ups outside. Tensions are rising. The situation could result in a major shake up in the Guild.<br /><br /></div><div><span> </span>The Questor’s Guildhall is a one story building with a wide footprint. The first floor is a museum warren dedicated to the guild’s achievements. Every room is crowded with stuffed monsters and dubious relics. A hidden door leads down to the real guildhall, which is a series of training labyrinths. Anyone who can find the door is entitled to lessons in the questing arts. The upper labyrinths are home to padded constructs painted to look like monsters. Lower, there are real monsters. <br /><br /><span> </span>The Dress Makers Guildhall is a large complex. In addition to it’s show rooms and dormitories it has a large central courtyard where a monthly sword fighting exhibition is held. A masterwork dress has so much attention and care put into it that it develops a sort of ontological inertia. In astral environments a masterwork gown functions as heavy armor. The exhibition matches demonstrate both advances in fashion and martial utility. A masterwork knight gown can run up to thousands of Guilders but they are invaluable at social functions and dreamworld battlefields alike. Journeyman gowns are more affordable but also more easily damaged and defaced <br /><br /><br />Special dress features</div><div><br />1 - Ribbons - The dress has four 10 foot ribbons arranged on the back. When worn, these ribbons animate under the control of the wearer. They can be used as whips or light spears<br /><br />2 - Pocket Fortress - The wearer can retreat into a pocket dimension, leaving behind an armored bustle. The pocket dimension has enough space to fit 10 adult humans and can be outfitted to the wearers specifications <br /><br />3 - Clone projector - the wearer can project up to five decoy images of themselves <br /><br />4 - Flower launcher - Wrist mounted projectile launcher that uses thorned flowers as ammo<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Encounters (1d6)<br /><br />1. The Fools Parade smells contraband. They're ransacking market stalls and seizing Father Corp products. Tensions are high<br /><br /><br />2. A brass band is playing an energetic tune and the street lights are dancing along. There are signs of structural damage in nearby houses.<br /><br /><br />3. The federation is holding a triumph, parading a captured Father Corp executive in chains. “Help me” he mouths to the pcs. The parade picks up speed, hoping to avoid the parade of fools.<br /><br /><br />4. An exorcist is giving a public demonstration. The patient is strapped to a chair and their mental parasites are made visible and expelled. He then shoves them in a jar. Soon, something much larger than any of his jars will be expelled.</div><div><br /><br />5. A horde of tiny living pastry men run down the street, with armed bakers in hot pursuit <br /><br /><br />6. An old woman walks down the street counting a large stack of credits. A gang of low lifes eyes her warily. She is a highly trained questor and this is in fact a trap <br /><br /><br />Footnotes<br />1.Maskforms are a human offshoot that adapted to live in astral environments. In a dream realm they take the form of a mask on a mutable body. In real space they revert to their ancestral human form.<br />2.Father Corp is an Astral mega factory that consumes and processes astral matter. Its agents have been been raiding Maskform villages in Chunky Space.<br />3.The Questing Arts are a collection of philosophical precepts, mental exercises and martial katas that teach the practitioner how to fight and maneuver in astral environments.<br />4.Sprites are non-sapient insects that resemble tiny human beings. Malmalkins are self replicating doll constructs that have been living feral in the walls of Graz Throne for centuries.<br />5.Errant Fools are people under the influence of the Jubilant Moon who for whatever reason don't join the Fool's Parade. Other common types include Moon Faces and Jacks Jumping<br /></div></div>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18347520279486952145noreply@blogger.com0