Showing posts with label Blackwater. Show all posts

Tuesday, 12 January 2021

Song of the Ash-Sea Pirates

Many say the Great Ash Sea which spreads westwards from the furthest shore is impassable and empty, barren as a frozen heart, yet consider this song sung by the Pirates of that Sea, raiders of Blackwaters coast who ply the endless ash-ocean in sledge-ships with tattered sails, memoryless and waste-mad;

Its farewell to night and farewell to day,
Goodbye to Blackwater, into the Grey!
Its over the edge and into the ash,
Where the ghost-gulls wheel and the wyrm-winds lash.
Out beyond Sintel and Scaedwealds black storm,
Where the wind steals the memory and monsters are born,
It's there we'll go roving, long for to search,
For the rocks and the ruins where the ash-birds perch.
Aye its there we'll go searching, long for to rove,
'Neath burning black coal-trees in petrified groves,
Through Courts of Pale Princes who live without flesh,
It's there we'll go seeking to search for old Esh.
The old land is calling, the old land is there,
Where the sky becomes stone and the ash becomes air.
Yes the old land is looking, the old land is ours,
She holds still the memories of mankinds lost hours.
For this be our treasure, these be the gold,
The truth and the wisdom that man had of old.
So its farewell to night and farewell to day,
Goodbye to Blackwater, into the Grey!"

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Hey, remember the Mariners Song of the Nightmare Sea?

Have I done any other songs on here I've forgotten about?

Thursday, 20 August 2020

To Steal a Sun

Glaem

The Wheel towers over all.

Like any Grey City, Glaem is dominated by its megastructure, a unique form created at an impossible scale, the oldest part of the city, the source of the 'reality field' which keeps Yggsrathaal and Entropy at bay. Gigantic, inexplicable and, as in any Grey City, almost totally ignored by the population.

It has been over 5,0000 years and the Megastructures have not changed. No interaction with them is allowed, or even possible, so they fade into the background.

It is a substantial background though. The Wheel lies over the city like a tilted cartwheel half buried in mud. One half arcs into the sky. It is assumed another, equal half, lies underground, balancing out the sky arc.

Through the city runs the Eisen River, and to each side of the Eisen spread out networks of canals and locks, like tarnished silver wings, carrying goods north and south, for the rivers of Blackwater run East-West to an unnatural degree. Emanating from those like the veins of a leaf are the heavy roads of the city, paved, flagged and fit for the cartwheels of goods and the un-ending stream of high-status visitors.

Harry Morrison

Less physically imposing than the Wheel, but considered much more deeply by all the people of Glaem is Tower of Infinite Calm. Slender and modest against the Wheel, but one of the largest non-megastructure buildings in Blackwater.

This is the centre of the Tolerance, the grey-clad, supra-governmental, near extra-legal inquisition which, ever since the Treaty of Birch Falls two and half thousand years ago, protects Humanity from itself, watching over all, guarding against both Yggrathaal and unrestrained religious or interethnic conflict.

The Tower of Infinite Calm is perhaps the most feared place in Blackwater. The complex surrounding it is huge, millennia old, the size of a cathedral at least, and the secondary and tertiary sites of the Tolerance, some visible, many not, spread out through the city like the mycelium of a Fungus. Grey-Robed priests ride grey horses, locked and barred grey carriages disappear into backstreet compounds, grey barges arrive bearing grey seals of the shattered serpent and disgorge unknown cargo into grey warehouses.

All seen, and not-seen. Though the Tolerance plays a massive, even dominant part in the cities life and economy, at the same time, everything it does happens as if in another world, as if seen though grey glass. No-one speaks to them in the street. No-one visits them. No-one complains. No-one boasts. It is as if they are not there at all.

Giant Castle by Paul Chadeisson

More vibrant are the huge number of Embassies, Hotels, Houses, Compounds and Palaces belonging to every City, Queendom, Corporation, Guild, Society, Conspiracy, Merchant Band, Intelligence Agency and Newsgroup in Blackwater. Safe, connected and with a well-educated populace, Glaem is a city of Embassies. In its central districts few streets are without at least one and its lanes are famously clogged with pompous carriages hauled up by the side of the road and left while their owners attend some vital meeting, (of course, they cannot be moved, the owner has Diplomatic Immunity).

Ambassadors, agents, servants, merchants, clerks, spies, hidden bodyguards and feather-helmeted ceremonial guards, it’s rare to go long in any major street in Glaem without witnessing or bumping into at least one.

Spread out around the borders of Glaem, each equidistant, so that they form a pentangle, are the five Gravatic Slums.

These five districts in particular, Jinwon, Jintuh, Jinfree, Antymat and Mergence, each occupies a strange irregular declivity, a kind of pit in the earth. They are slums because, for as long as the city has existed, these places have experienced magical hauntings, fluxions of natural law, objects floating, falling sidewise or upwards, lenses of light appearing in the air, detritus and even stone material being found ultracompressed or strangely spread about, and many tragic disappearances.

Though such occurrences are uncommon, the slums are not safe, they were built upon last and the poorest and lowest people of Glaem have always made their homes there. It is here that the Theorists and Immunity Gangs wield the greatest power.

The vital centre of the cities deranged civic government, is the Ziggurat of the Tyrant of Glaem. A multi-levelled pyramid full of meeting halls, offices, entryways and always bustling and humming with crowds and chaos.

The Civil authority of Glaem is elected randomly, and at random intervals.

These are the Lottery Lords, the Tyrants of Glaem. As a result of its Great Lottery absolutely any legal citizen of Glaem can be catapulted into the seat of executive power at any time. It is illegal to avoid this service and illegal to leave it (until the lottery decides otherwise).

As an adaption to this state of affairs, Glaem has one of the most politically-educated populaces in Blackwater. Since any random idiot could attain Total Power at any moment, the city culture tries to make sure that there is at least a reasonable chance they might be competent.

Of course, with much of the substance of Glaem being controlled by the Tolerance, who are beyond most law, or by various embassies, guilds or companies, or by the gangs of the Slums, the amount of actual practical power a Tyrant of Glaem actually wields is not necessarily that great, which may be for the best.

Still, the civil affairs of the city do have a lively, hectic, knockabout atmosphere.

Nearly unknown, or at least unconsidered by most, are the estates of the Eld-Kin. Ancient houses of long-lived, wealthy, and very noble Aeth. Secretive, with small numbers, often decadent and strange, the Aeth Houses still wield massive power in the city, through few would realise it.

One final curiosity; the ceramic paths.

These corridors, walkways, tunnels and tubes, form a kind of invisible, slight network running all over the city, each emanating from its direct geographic centre.

Guarded and watched over by the Navigators Guard, often called the 'Forgotten Guard' for all the attention anyone pays them, these amount to a series of clean, silent, empty corridors spread over the city like a fine web.

The Ceramic Paths have been there so long, nearly from the beginning of the city, and do so little, that like the Megastrcuture, they call almost no notice.

The 'Forgotten Guard' in their Verdigris stained armour, stand resolute but ignored in minor archways or guarding small stone or stations in the middle of nothing, like forgotten municipal tombs.

The city is so full of intrigue; the silent terror of the Tolerance, the magnificent guards, parties and ceremonies of the various Embassies and Organisations, the violence and debates of the Theorists or Immunity Gangs, the commercial thrum of trade and manufacture and the anarchic chaos of the Lottery Lords, that no-one notices the Forgotten Guard at all.

The players must learn to notice, because they have been hired to rob the Emperor of Glaem, and the 'Forgotten Guard' are the Emperors Guard, and the plays will have to outwit them to reach the Emperor.

Tuesday, 14 July 2020

A Meeting In Marginalia

1. Cir Talox Blithe

Call me 'Blithe', it was the name of my creator, or so I have written to myself from long ago.

More fully named I am 'Cir Talox Blithe', Knight, made, sworn and chosen for a path of honour and truth. One glance will show you that I am no man of woman born. I was made, long ago, from gears and levers, steel and screws. My eyes are crystal lenses, my guts burn charcoal and my heart is Iron. This gave me my title "The Knight with the Iron Heart", though it has never pleased me for I have always fought to be a Knight of Franchise and of Grace. My mind, I am told is a labyrinth of magic and glass, packed away within my steel skull in directions inaccessible to mortal hands, though I have never seen it.

Why I was made, I cannot say, for no precise instruction remains from that deep time, and even when that was is also lost. I have traced my personal history back near one-thousand years, chasing myths and legends of a knight of steel who likely was myself in former times.

My memory is little better than your own. I can recall perhaps one hundred years in detail. Past that I depend on written records and on this rod of enchanted glass which I carry always with me. This slender wand holds a library of my memories, however much I could retain, sometimes memories of memories of memories, condensed, abstracted and reorganised. This is my record of my deeper self which I can read by sliding it into my skull through a port at its rear. I must do this only when the fullness of my thought is directed entirely upon that act, should my focus slip my consciousness might become lost in memory, or irrevocably and chaotically changed by what it finds. This truly is my greatest treasure for it gives me knowledge of myself, and my place within the world.

Many quests have I undertaken in my long existence, but my current trial is perhaps the strangest I have known, for I must journey to Marginalia, the Hyphos, that uncertain realm of timeless madness, there I must find the Fey prince 'Shadowed-Summer' and bargain with him for the ownership of his Incalculable Palace of Lies.

Impossibility upon impossibility, for many do not believe in Marginalia at all, thinking it fiction, or hallucination. I though, do believe, I sense in the deeper structures of my memories that I have been there many times, though the details escape me, and I suspect that I have been dogged and bothered by the attentions of its residents before.

Still, this is the mission impressed upon me by my obscure yet mighty patron, and it was made clear that, odd though it is, this task is of utmost and absolute importance for the safety of reality itself.

Hence, I come to the Mountains of Reality, for it is here, if anywhere, that access to Marginalia can be found.

The Blatant Bards of the Black-Tongued Harp

The Bardic tradition, strong in the Mountains of Reality and still found almost everywhere in Blackwater, carries its own strange legends. Bards tell stories, but there are stories only Bards are told.

One such story is that of the Black-Tongued Harp.

https://www.deviantart.com/shaamash

For those Bards of a mischievous spirit, an ill temper and a cunning mind, for those who, through bitterness or malice, delight in shaping words of harm, not for any gain but for the pleasure of the thing itself, there is a music only they can hear.

An unusually-specific point; the stories all agree on where it is heard; around Nightspyre*, the most Westerly of the Queendoms of the Mountains of Reality. (Since Nightspyre looks over the Rust Red Road between the Mountains and the Grey Cities, almost all Bards will pass through there at least once in their lives, and likely many times.)

Each Bard who hears this dark, low tone, has a choice; they can see now, fully, the path that they are on, turn back, change their lives and their art and hopefully return to good, or they may follow the sad music.

Sometimes the music leads them to a cave, sometimes into a cellar in the New Town, or even a dungeon of the blue-black palace of the Sapphire Queen. On this the stories differ.

Then they come upon a white harp with black cords, played by a woman veiled down to her smile. Her mouth opens in a half-gasp of silent pleasure, and delicately, multiple black tongues reach out to lick her lips. Around her, listening in rapture, is the secret society of the Blatant Bards.

The mythic origin of the Harp is well known. A Quileth or Daemon of Old Esh, named 'The Blatant Beast' existed purely to degrade reality with rumour, calumny and lies.

Agnes Miller Parker

See! And you all said reading the whole of the Faerie Queene would do me no good!

(Nobody actually said that)

A dark angel of discord and suspicion, it grew larger with every soul lost to the suicides, murders or penury brought by the lies it told. The annihilation of the spirit through deceit was its purview. The Quileth had many forms but it always had a hundred or more writhing tongues, and its voice could speak a thousand lies at once.

This creature was destroyed by unknown heroes, but its servants came upon its remains and cut the tongues from its mouth and the bones from its jaw. The tongues, cured and now black, became the strings of the Black-Tongued Harp, and the jawbones made its ivory frame.

Whomever hears and chimes inwardly with the music of the Black-Tongued Harp is imbued with a shadow of its power, which grows greater the more deeply it is used. Their charm is amplified, their lies are believed more often the more often they are told, they gain insight into mortal hearts and can see and sense what lies will harm the most.

They become vampires of reputation, for every name destroyed they grow more gilded, more shimmering, beautifully, charismatic and believable. The more lives they destroy they more innocent they seem. For every life lost to suicide caused by their lies, they gain life and youth and strength.

If they go on long enough, their tongues split. Perhaps ultimately it is they who will play the Black-Tongued Harp in some hidden vault beneath Nightspyre.

Many Bards believe this story metaphor; a lesson about the dangers of malice and power, and the fate of those who feed on lies. An insult amongst their kind; "Damn Sir you are a Blatant Bard!".

Of course, the only ones who really know are those who hear the lilting, moaning music of the Harp as they pass beneath the black mountain of the Sapphire Throne. Of those who turn back, how many can there be? And of those who go on, and listen to the music of the woman in the veil… well, how could anyone suspect them? The most charming Bards of all?

The Bears Tongue

The Axe has many names, and hundreds have been forgotten over that wise hafts long half-life;

"Bears Tongue"

"Hewer of the Word-Hive"

"Feeder on the Iron Flower"

"Axe of the Final Survivor"

"The Last Axe Standing"

"The Tomb of the Bear"

Description

A heavy-headed Greataxe with a single blade.

Every part holds a story, for it is said that this was once the weapon of a God, and that every piece of it was won by force or cunning from one who did not wish to give it up.

(Though True Sophonts label this 'tap room talk' and say no evidence for any of it has come forth.)

The Haft is dense black wood, said to be the limb of an endlessly-reincarnating Karmic Dryad from the borders of a celestial realm, who still lives, and still seeks her lost limb.

The pommel claw, it is claimed, is that of a King of Bears, a lord of Skin-Shifters, first and greatest of the Bear-kind, and that this King still lives with one paw missing, and likewise, wants the axe.

(Though it’s pretty obvious that the pommel was constructed from similar materials, and at roughly the same time, as the rest of the Axe.)

The Amber gem set in the pommel is meant to be the stolen heart of an Eld-Queen of Margenalia, who, of course, also wants it back.

Even the wrapping on the haft has its own ridiculous story, that it is the skin of a mad emperor of psychic frogs from a distant island built on the back of a giant lizard, and that he resents its loss.

The Bit though, truly special, does seem to hold the imprint of a Deoth hand. Fine, shining steel formed into the head of a bear, its tongue lashing forth along the bite of the blade as if it seeks to lick upon the wounds it makes.

In the tap-room tales about the Axe, this part was stolen from a Deoth master-craftsman without fair payment. This Craft-Master then dedicated the remainder of their life to building a Worghast, or Golem, of great intelligence and power, which would repair and renew itself eternally, and who's only overriding directive was to ensure fair payment for the Axes head.

So much for the blather of the boozing-hall. All, or none of it could be true. Academic theory says that stories of the Axes stolen construction and the many potent beings who seek it out is a fairly recent popular addition to the tale, only a few hundred years old.

by Ilya Salnikov https://twitter.com/rhunstoryteller

The Story of Bjorn

There is a simpler, older tale. Of a man, call him 'Bjorn', or simply 'Bear'.

Bjorn was of the Aboriginal people of what would one day become Blackwater. This was long before the Grey Cities, before the Fall of Esh. Who knows, it may even have been before Esh itself. Time fades like parchment in these long-related legends and one eon passes into another without too much trouble.

Of his origins, they said Bjorn was found in the ruins of a village, amidst the ash of burnt homes, a baby, unscarred by fire, the last survivor of an unknown people.

Those who found Bjorn took pity on him and adopted him, and they were fortunate to do so, for he was the strongest of his people and he killed many monsters. A long-lived man, he became first the leader of his tribe, and then the leader of a great tribe-of-tribes. The People of Bjorn.

Bjorn wanted Sons. This he came to desire more than anything for he wished to pass on all that he knew. But though he had many daughters, he never had a son, and people said that this was a curse of a Monster, or Quileth or an Eld he had killed in the construction of his famous Axe with the amber gem.

Bjorn truly loved that Axe for had had had great difficulty in constructing it and had slain many with it.

It came about that Bjorn one day found a boy, a baby wrapped in leaves floating in the waters of a river which lead down from the mountain where lived his God, whos name was Fire. The eyes of this child were fire-bright, like the eyes of that God to whom Bjorn prayed when he made his war-work.

"It may be", said Bjorn, "that this child is intended for me and is the answer to my prayers. And in any case, I shall not abandon him here."

So Bjorn took the boy and called him Reed, for he had found him among reeds, and he raised Reed as his son, and though the child grew into a young man who was somewhat wild and dangerous, still Bjorn did what he could to temper the fires of youth with his wisdom.

Then it came about time for the end of days.

In some versions of the story a horde of Daemons or Quileth, invade the lands of the Tribes of Bjorn. In others the invasion is from the first civilised peoples and Bjorn fights against the first of the Grey Cities during the settlement of Blackwater. In others his war is against Yggsrathaal and Her Legions.

However it comes, there is war.

Bjorn was old then, and tired of killing, but Reed was mad for battle and Bjorn knew that the war could not be avoided and that there was no way he could keep Reed from it. So the old man sat on a stone and carefully sharpened his axe in the light of the sun and the sound of a stream.

"At least this and I may still serve to protect my Son", thought Bjorn, "for he is bound to his own doom."

Then a shadow passed across his sight and Bjorn looked up, for there were few in those days who would dare approach him without announcing themselves or begging his leave.

The figure before him was cloaked in rags and their face was shadowed. But Bjorn knew men well and he saw that this was someone strong and tall. He saw their red beard and sandals with obsidian soles so that their bare feet did not touch the green earth. He saw the shimmer of heat in the air above them and the steam rising from the stream where they had crossed. And he saw the fire-bright eyes in the shadow of the cloak and he knew who this was.

The stranger offered greetings, which Bjorn returned.

Then, unprompted, the stranger said;

"I go to the great war which comes and which will be the last of this Age."

"Is it so large a thing?" asked Bjorn, "that it requires your presence also?"

"I am only a wanderer," said the stranger, "and have no blade to make the war-work."

"That is unfortunate." Said Bjorn.

"I once had a Son," said the stranger, sadly, "who might have aided me in battle."

"This also is unfortunate," said Bjorn, "I have but one son myself and he is grown precious to me."

The stranger opened their mouth to speak but, seeing where this was going, for even in those days the tales of Gods were already old, Bjorn stood up quickly and said;

"Here," he offered the haft of his axe, "take this axe, which hews well enough, as compensation for your Son. It will aid you in battle more than a boy."

And seeing that the strangers hands were very hot he said;

"First I will wrap it in this frog-skin, which has a tale behind it."

But the stranger was already grinning with a mouth like the door of a burning hut and said;

"Thank you Bjorn! Not false are those words which speak of your greatness!"

And the stranger laughed and stalked away still laughing, with Bjorns famous Axe over his shoulder.

Then came the End of Days, when all that Bjorn knew and fought for was destroyed.

Many great battles there were, and each day died heroes whos’ stories would have choked all the books of Uud, but all are forgotten now. Bjorn led his people to war and held ever by the side of his Son, using whatever weapon came to hand. And it came about that the whole of the tribes of his tribe-of-tribes were laid down in the earth, and on the last day Reed himself died, and Bjorn was wounded unto death and fell finally in a field of corpses of enemies and friends with hot blood running from his many wounds over the body of his son which was cooling in his arms.

"So it is," said Bjorn, "and if I had with me my Axe, would things have gone so?"

But a shadow passed before his eyes and, with some effort, Bjorn raised his head and saw the stranger, still with Bjorns axe over his shoulder, though both man and axe were thick with blood, and the blood hissed and steamed, and the strangers eyes were fire-bright.

"It was a good Axe Bjorn," said the stranger, who yawned, "and hews well-enough, as you said. I thank you for it. But now I am tired and must sleep."

"Give me back my Son," said Bjorn.

"That I cannot do." Said the stranger. "But rest here for a while."

And he laid the Axe across Bjorns body, and so Bjorn slept.

The Bears-Tongue

It is known in Blackwater that the artefact, or Curia called the 'Bears Tongue' is associated with some of the most famous and savage heroes of Legend. And also with a handful of the most dangerous and murderous reavers of Civilisation.

Always it is held by a walker of the wilds, one who lives by their own law.

So it is that many young, dangerous and violent individuals have at one time or another, sought out the Bears-Tongue, hoping to become part of its Legend. Usually they find it in the bone-pile in the den of a great bear.

When they pick it up, they are invariably disappointed as, due to its reputation, they were expecting something a bit more magically 'smashy' and the axe has few destructive enchantments, though it is eternally sharp and almost imperishable.

Instead the shaft is noted for its wise advice, most useful to the stupid man, for the axe carries the tongue of an old man - call him Bear, one crafty in battle whos’ words are most of aid to those who rush in. Many wielders of the Tongue have been extremely stupid. But they did not remain so for long.

Powers

Bear sleeps within the axe - the amber in the pommel is his eye, it’s how he spots things;

"I'm in here upside down!"

The voice within the Axe aims to help its bearer become a Man, and a leader of a great tribe.

This is regardless of what gender they are, and regardless of whether becoming a tribal leader is either feasible or desired in current circumstances.

Still, those lessons can be pretty useful regardless.

The Axe knows a lot. To hold it is to carry the gift of knowledge. The voice within has all the knowledge of a great chief, a warrior, a hero and a survivor.

It has solid political skills and a keen awareness of human relations. Bear knows what men (he is much better with men than women), desire, which hearts are true or false, who is more ambitious than they seem and who is secretly weak.

Bear knows the ways of the wild, stalking and being stalked, to know where to go and where another is likely to be, and the choices men make in the wild, how to hide and to find what is hidden. Orienteering, pathfinding, climbing, hunting, building shelter, making fire, finding food, appeasing nature spirits, Lifian and Shadow Aeth, all of that Bear knows.

In battle Bear can read well a warrior, spot in their stance those weaknesses they would rather keep secret.

Bear is calm and knows how to see what is there to be seen. He has, and can teach, with time, the skills of observation, preservation and self-control. Wise strategy - when to be calm and how to be so, when to be still - frozen like ice, and when to push forward like the river in thaw.

Bear knows about most natural animals, and a great deal about common monster types - powers, tactics, behaviours, vulnerabilities, treasure and, crucially edibility.

Bear really likes cooking and eating monsters. The voice is a really excellent cook and will provide recipes, make grandiose promises and be incredibly happy if monsters are consistently cooked and consumed.

If monsters go uneaten, Bear will become silent and morose.

Bear can be thrown pretty accurately for quite a long way, but he does not like this;

"I don't fly back you know!"

And does not magically return to the hand. Instead you will have to go and get him.

A last curious quality of the Axe is that any enchantment or thaumaturgy which controls the mind or deludes the senses, if it is aimed at the wielder, instead affects the Axe itself. It is the personality in the object which resists the enchantment, and if it fails due to strong magic, it is that personality, and not that of the wielder, which is deluded.

which can still be bad as instead of freaking out you have an intelligent Axe in your hand which is freaking out.

Weaknesses

Bear is better with less 'civilised' people, groups and situations, not that much help with logistics or mathematics, and is illiterate. Bear cannot read at all, though he knows many major spoken languages.

Bear does not understand women, and his ability to read the hearts of men, to tell and to know who is truly strong, who lies with words or actions and who is false, goes completely out the window when dealing with women, or more accurately, with anyone who can convincingly pass as a woman.

Bear claims to dislike and distrust 'magic' and says he can smell a Wizard a hundred paces upwind, though he does not consider the many rituals he knows to commune with spirits to be 'magic', and the smelling ability has never been tested.

Bear has enemies. For some the Axe is evil, a force for destruction, a weapon held over burning cities, a destroyer of order and safety wielded by criminals, reavers and raiders from the wastes, the Terror from the Gloom, fire bright in its steel bears face.

Bear also loves honey, and can space out a bit when his wielder eats some, but fears and hates Bees, considering them an ancestral foe. He claims to have an enemy, the Bee Blade, a shortsword with the soul or spirit of some Lifian or Quileth within it named the Queen of Bees.

Since neither this artefact, or soul have ever been sighted by literate minds, it’s entirely possible their existence is a very long-term, very dry joke on the part of the Axe.

..........................................

ALSO (Whoredom mode activate) did you know that you can now buy my version of Gawain and the Green Knight, AND a Night a the Golden Duck from the same store?

"The links lie upon the top of the right rail."

Monday, 3 February 2020

The Vespershard

Attend, and hold your thoughts within the moment, for the second your attention drifts from what I say, the memory of these secrets will evaporate inside your mind like smoke

It is the nature of this treasure that knowledge of it will rest neither within memory nor record, but pass on, disappearing as a traveller, lately come, stopping for a moment in some lonely spot then moving off, into the mist, proceeding to some destination unknown.

Any word describing it will erase itself, or re-combine, breeding with adjacent words to describe disguising forms; some power, quest or treasure which is not the Vespershard, and which is not where the Vespershard is.

The Vespershards greatest defence is that, for those who walk the facets; (which accounts for all that are, except perhaps the Dreaming Gods, the Eldritch Founder and Ygsrathaal herself) it cannot be consciously sought. All who come upon it must do so via a diagonal path, by happenstance, pursuing some other goal, driven by dreams and intuition or guided by madness.

It cannot be described within the worlds of Uud, and knowledge of it cannot be directly communicated.

There are legends without a core, heroes whose story did not end but only petered out and seemed to coil away into nothing. There are books with blank pages, or unreadable passages, whole chapters which wipe themselves from the mind, word-by-word and which reach into nearby descriptions, colonising, adapting and mutating story structures, covering and camouflaging themselves with a shroud of unreal semi-truth.

There are spells that cannot be taught, but only learned, and which, after use, not only erase themselves from the mind but which wipe out any knowledge that they can be used, or that they were used; filling in the minds of all who experienced their effects with substantive, but unreal memories.

There are hidden monasteries full of golems or blind monks endlessly translating and re-translating reams of core data so that, always in the act of translation, the information is never still and so can never be lost.

Neither, in that state, can it be truly read.

Where?

There are other realms or scales of Uud; para-realities linked to, or emanating from, the Waste-Lands in which Blackwater rests, accessible only through the shifting realm Marginalia, or through High Thaumaturgy.

In all these realms, and all these realities, the Vespershard exists, just as it does in the Waste-Lands, right at the hidden or secret centre.

In the Great Wheel and its Parliament of Orphan Moons, it lies within Agn - the great solar engine at the heart of that realm.

In ancient, vast and distant GreySpace, the Shard is hidden within the Angle-Adversarial, a fearful dimension of metacosmic smoke from the ruins of burning galaxies, there it lies within a nebulae, itself lost within that desolate realm, and is guarded by the Jewel-Swarms of the Carnivore Thought, yet even that terrible sentinel does not know what it truly protects.

In the Waste-Lands, the traveller must first reach Phosphorfall, the Turquoise City, which lies in the deepest Waste within unending whirling circles of annihilating storms.

Even reaching Phosphorfall is a feat of which few are capable, and of those who have gone there, none have returned.

The survivors make up the Cults of Phosphorfall; cryptic societies of cunning immortals, each following some hidden fate or secret cause, and guarding with magic and force, a city strewn with wonders collected and guarded over the long fall of Uud, the claiming of even the least of which might end a Saga in itself. But even these incredible artefacts are little but distraction and even these beings of great potency simply act as inadvertent guards for something they do not fully understand is there.

Hidden within Phosphorfall by the most subtle of illusions, is the Turning Palace. The greatest palace of creation, a place of veined marble floors and moon-bronze domes, guarded by illusions, the infinite recombinations of its corridors and by terrors drawn from the minds of those who would invade it so that to enter it is to step into living Nightmare.

At the centre of the Turning Palace is said to be the Hearts Desire of whomever reaches it.

And even this is nothing but a distraction.

For beneath the Palace is the Iron Web - a writhing web-work labyrinth of oven-hot black iron tunnels. The heat is do great that the air vibrates and the black surface smokes. So burning hot that for ordinary flesh to touch them once would adhere it to the iron and cook it to a steaming chunk.

The Iron Web is guarded by Annihilation Golems and Terror-Fey drawn from this realities Apocalyptic End.

At the centre of the Iron Web, beneath the Turning Palace, hidden in storm-guarded Phosphorfall at the worlds axial centre, impossible to remember and impossible to find for anyone who actively seeks it out, is the Vespershard.

The Shard

A simple thing, at first sight.

A crystal with crystals within it, the facets glow glowing like noctilucent cloud or like smoke beneath glass, flickering with a pale light, shifting from bright to dark, casting strange shadows on the black iron walls made strangely cool by its slow turning.

But look too long and too thoughtlessly and the boundaries of the crystal invisibly expand, crawling and curling wall-wise, trickling round the vision-rim, the slight black exit to the web of iron closing like an eye, trapping you in an endless maze of silent images.

Within each facet, images shiver like the reflections in street-water. Look deeper into an image, send you mind questing, the grey-white pictures fluctuating according to your deepest unspoken desire

Exert will, decision and supreme focus, and the image can shift and skip, deepen into colour, emanate sound and smell, even expand until it seems like a portal to the scene beyond. Until it is a portal.

This is the realest and most unreal place in Uud.

A Cornucopia of Being. The Great Resonator, the Infinite Mirror, the Palace of Doors, the Hidden Axis of Reality and Sustained of the Cosmos.

Every single image is an individual reality. Not simply a world or 'Realm', but an entire, separate causality.

All are recognisably Uud in some sense. Many are similar - it would be hard to tell them apart. Others are truly wild, with different histories, geographies, aesthetics, languages, and populations. But more fundamentally, the texture of reality is slightly different in each. As if, in each strand of causality, some impossible meta-being had recreated the very substance of reality itself into an entirely individual form, with its own beginning and end, its own meaning and its own governing rules

In some the structure of probability swings widely back and forth between unlikely results. In some causality seems to ease events into neat comprehensible strands of cause and effect - like stories. In others it produces sprawling and chaotic histories the meanings of which are cryptic and unclear.

In some the world has ended. In some it never will.

For the shard, all that matters is that the adventures never end. Life and death, triumph and disaster, victorious peace or annihilating doom. Even an apocalypse can simply be another thread.

This is the power and movement and axis of Uud, The cosmic fulcrum upon which it turns. A Gem lit from within, itself sustained by the will, invention, empathy and courage of those who walk the facets.

Waves of reality emanate out from the Vespershard in coherent forms no sophont will ever measure, or even suspect. For these are the very substance of being, the blood of reality thrumming outwards like the beating of a great heart.

Its Creation

Who, or what, did this?

It could be the hidden weave of the Norns, of Fate herself, conspiring to re-weave and alter causality, re-knotting it strange new configurations as quickly as Yggsrathaal can unwind it. For fate is a spider with infinite limbs, each weaving in a different stream of time.

Perhaps the Shard itself is made from the vitrified ruins of heavens and hells and each path of time and strand of causality springs from the substance of a dreaming god. Is this why the gods sleep in Uud? And if a god dreams of dreaming gods, so those gods dream? A dream within a dream?

Or perhaps the Vespershard itself is made from the frozen substance of some silent and distant Meta-Creator, the birth of a hidden multiverse, an act of infinite meta-creation.

Yet, the shard itself is but a Golem Cosmos, something awaiting the breath of life and which cannot truly exist unless filled with the animating spirit of decision, action, emotion and adventure.

For each reality born from the substance of Uud exists somewhere in the Vespershard, and at the centre of each Uud is the Vespershard, or one accessible aspect of it, through which all the rest may be perceived and, perhaps, reached.

And for every facet of the shard which gleams with life, action and adventure, the power of the shard as a whole grows, secret and invisible at the heart of reality, strengthening and deepening what-is.

Its Powers

Mortal minds can only perceive what their own nature will allow them to understand so the powers of anyone standing in the direct, physical substance of the Vespershard are limited by their own nature.

But, given access to the fulcrum of reality itself, even a complete idiot can have substantial effects

(quite possibly unintended effects). And since the shard cannot be discovered by those who are looking for it, idiots, lunatics and the lost, are surprisingly likely to find it.

Before the Vespershard, an individual can scry all realities, searching for one with the qualities they desire, or focus only on a single one, looking for a single, individual aspect.

Powerful beings may even be able to shift the history of those images, turning time back and forth, witnessing the evolution of circumstance, or comparing and contrasting the fates of different worlds, or those of similar beings across multiple realities.

It may be possible to pull things, powers, or even individuals through the shard or even for an adventurer to pass through the shard themselves to a different table of existence.

(The spells and magical effects which move individuals between these fundamentally different causalities are thought to access the shard in some way, which explains why they erase knowledge of their own use, or even existance.)

Those of a deep intelligence and supremely focused will, could alter their own reality, or multiple realities. They could braid realities together so that they become linked and mutually responsive. They could possibly end realities.

Or even start their own.

Monday, 20 January 2020

A "Puritanical Instrument"

The Lictor

The Lictor, a flail of stained brass carrying twin morningstars said to be the petrified eyes of a sleeping god, carries a mixed reputation in Blackwater.

For Somon, especially for the great masses for whom holding a pike in formation is the closest they will come to adventure, and for whom getting a month ahead in their rent is the closest they will come to freedom, the Lictor represents a force of near-revolutionary possibility.

For this is the Flail of Judgement, carrying the eyes of the Sleeping God who's nature was Justice, and whomsoever wields the Lictor carries also the right, and the duty, to Judge both high and low. From the Frogsnatchers to Fyrdmen to walkers of the Waste and Sustainers of Reality, no-one is beyond the Lictors power. For a mass of Humanity often crushed by debt, ritual and fear, the idea of those with power being punished and held to account should they prove false, is deeply inspiring.

Perhaps regrettably, functional governments are rarely entirely "fair" or even "just". For those in power, who regard themselves as having the duty and the burden to make the best possible decisions in difficult circumstances and with limited resources, a bunch of angry Somon proles hopped up on justice juice, and lead by some lunatic swinging a magic flail, are not well set-up to percieve and enact a complex version of Justice.

For the minority races of Blackwater, especially the Aeth, the Lictor is seen often as a tool of Somon dominance, a "Prejudicial, Puritanical Instrument", or them may simply give the flail its somewhat degrading Aeth-name; "The Somons Balls".

In many cases the Lictor has been carried at the head of some Judgement Crusade or Penitent Parade. Supported by great masses of the poorer Somon, and empowered by their belief. For those rural and urban poor, victims of injustice, taxation and repression, the Lictor is a source of rare, impartial judgement.

For urban elites, Aethm and some other minority groups, the sight of a great mass of poor Somon, empowered by an overwhelming belief in what they consider to be "justice", is not reassuring.

Through exactly who's eyes, and with who's mind and temperament, will this 'justice' be perceived?

Who's interests will it serve?

The Aspect Of The Flail

The staff and crossbars of heavy, dark, gleaming brass worked in the style of the early diaspora, mark the haft of the Lictor as being clearly a creation of early Blackwater, after the chaos of the Great Flight, but long before the treaty of Birch Falls.

Though this makes the Lictor thousands of years old at least, compared to other Curia it is young. Not something fallen from Old Esh or drawn into Uud from some collapsing Parallel, but a creation of this world, this time and this age, shaped by its people and dedicated to its cause.

The morningstars though are a different matter.

Most Somon believe these spiked, black balls to be the petrified eyes of a dead or sleeping God. Formerly the God of Justice in Old Esh.

Esh had an myriad of Gods, of different qualities, hierarchies and dispensations, and probably several hundred of these were either dedicated to Justice or at least had the concept under their purview, so it’s not clear exactly which God the crowd is thinking of when they speak of the Lictors eyes.

But this is the kind of tiresomely accurate but essentially incomprehending detail atheists tend to fixate on. Whether it makes "rational" sense or not, and no matter how it is accounted, for the masses, the Eyes of the Lictor are the Eyes of Justice, either prised from the Gods bleeding sockets during the fall of Esh, or spontaneously bursting out in spikes like some defensive sea creature, in horror at the sights they were forced to witness, and rolling from the Gods sockets themselves.

Clearly the Morningstars are not of the same substance at the flail. In theory they could be removed from it, (though no-one on record has done this). They are currently soot-black, but their edges and the gleaming tips of their spikes suggest that beneath this may lie some stranger and more lucid substance.

(The Aeth covertly refer to the stars of the Lictor as petrified whale testicles ensorcelled by some ancient Thaumaturge.)

Practically, the flail is heavy to the point of being near-unwieldy. In combat its morningstars swing in an unpredictable, looping orbit, curving on their carrying chains like bound snakes and crashing violently into the most strongly-armoured opponents.

The Powers Of The Lictor

Common Powers

Like many Curia, the Lictor seems to have a range of expression which differs both according to the individual who wields it, the cause in which it is used and the Age in which it swings.

And, again like many Curia, the ability and understanding to express and use those powers can grow with time and experience, deepening with use.

In battle the pointed stars of the flail swing with irreducible force, batting aside guarding weapons, crashing through shields and crunching through armour as if it were paper.

The stars themselves are reputed to execute vengeful destruction on other items of magical power. They are considered so destructive to other artefacts that those wise in knowledge of such things will often refuse to take the field against the Lictor.

One blow from those black stars can shatter magical blades and annihilate long-deepened enchantments, especially those Thaumaturgies of illusion and the alteration of minds. Illusions, charms, unreal vistas and shadow creatures, all waver and fracture before those black, spiked eyes.

Should the day go ill for those opposing it, there is little chance of magical escape from the Lictors swing. Like a judge in court, it enforces the coherency of reality around it. Attempts to teleport, to slide into alter-realms, to change shape, to fly or become invisible, all become more and more difficult the closer comes the flail.

And the strength of this effect deepens the longer and the stronger is the bond between the Lictor and its wielder.

Though these powers are considerable on their own, they matter little when compared to the one, key power which the Flail bestows;

The Power Of Judgement

When the bearer of the Lictor closes their eyes, they see twin realities, one etched in black, the other engraved in silver.

One orb, or "eye" of the Lictor, sees the Truth. Not the believed truth, or the arguable truth, but the simple cold, hard fact of what-is.

That which is not True will not be seen by the Lictors black eye.

But Justice is not only about seeing what is true, but about deciding what is right. It is action, perception and understanding combined.

The second orb, and according to Somon myth, the second eye of the Dreaming God, sees Justice. An image of what should be, in a Just world, engraved in silver. For some this is a tenuous silver thread, for others a shifting maze, a path or an altered image of the world. For others the image itself is clear, but so hard to reach, always just a handful of actions and a fingertip away.

Each wielder of the Lictor sees a subtly different reality when they close their eyes.

For average individuals, the world perceived through the eyes of a sleeping god is so hypnagogic, surreal and strange that they can barely comprehend it. Even some remarkable individuals have only been able to functionally see through one or the other Eye of the Lictor at a time, closing first one eye, then another, and attempting to understand what they perceive sequentially.

TRUTH is vast, and Justice is both deep and wide. A mortal mind can only 'see' those fragments or elements of it which its nature allows it to perceive.

The flail responds to its wielder, with the nature of its judgement shifting in its intensity and action according to the empathy, intelligence, willpower and perception of the person who wields it

The wiser and calmer and deeper the wielder, then the wiser and calmer the nature of justice perceived and desposed.

If the wielder of the Lictor is wilful and intelligent, but ruthless and cold, then the image of Truth and Justice which they see will be that of a cold, ruthless and calculating God.

In a way, justice is itself a kind of power, one that must be understood and comprehended in order to be controlled.

The History Of The Lictor

A surprising amount of knowledge of its origins survives.

The creators of the Lictor are said to be 'The Judges of the Fall'.

It is written that after the Fall of Esh and the great flight and escape to Uud, a group of intelligent Theists dedicated themselves to investigating the reasons for the Fall. Their original purpose was that, only once those weaknesses to Yggsrathaal were identified and understood, only once Humanity fully understood why it had failed, only then could they truly begin to fight back. They were the first to recover the Eyes and to create the Lictor.

Over the centuries though, the Judges of the Fall decayed (or evolved) into a cult of repentance and penance. Instead of simply seeking for the weaknesses in Humanity in order to record and correct them, they slowly fell into a fetish of despair and purposeless, narcissistic repentance.

This change was neither unnoticed or accepted by the entirety of the group. Over time, as the more despairing and ritualistic elements of the Judges played a part in the rising tensions that lead to the Great Theistic War, the movement splintered.

One faction dove headfirst into self-flagellation, hyper-religiosity and mass ritual, while the other increasingly began attempting to retrain and prevent what they considered the mad excesses of the Theists; crusades, pogroms, mystery cults and unrestricted warfare.

Strangely, over time this second faction of Theists ended up having more in common with the ruthlessly atheistic mechanists and the 'greater humanity' survival-based near-humanitarians (and allegedly, the 'Wise Undead'). Ultimately, during the disaster of the Great Theistic War, the Judges, with these other groups ended up forming a the nucleus of the Tolerance, a group dedicated absolutely to the survival of Humanity and the reasoned suppression of any vast societal forces which might threaten that survival - whatever the cost might be.

Allegedly the Tolerance still carries in its hierarchies, rituals and processes, the ghost of the substance of the old Judges of the Fall.

After the treaty of Birch Falls, the creation of the Tolerance, and the birth of 'modern' Blackwater, the Eyes of the Lictor have come forth on many notable occasions;

The Lictors 'Crusades'

The Purge of the Invisible Kings

When the Cult of the Grand Illusionist attempted to re-create the seeming of Esh in Fallen Uud; spreading a great veil of magic over much of the land in which life seemed simply 'better', more free, fulfilling luxurious and kind than it truly was, and in which many of the sights and sounds of Old Esh (or at least as much as could be recalled in this ruined age) were re-created, it was the Lictor, at the head of a great procession of commoners, which penetrated the illusion and restored cold, unfeeling reality, breaking the power of the Invisible Kings, just in time to avoid a mass invasion from the Waste.

The Breaking of the Crystal Crown

When the insidious invasion of a dark, curled reality into Blackwater lead to a plague of hallucinations, madness and the entrapment of people in loops of Fey imaginings, adults acting like children and animals speaking in riddle and rhyme, castles of Black Glass rising up from the shadows of burning forests, filled with mirror-people who served the Eld King, it was the Lictor which smashed the Eld Kings Crystal Crown.

(Aeth histories of this incident are quite different and the situation only deepened the Aeth belief that the "Somon Balls" are essentially racist.)

The Emperors Second Death

When the Imperial Line of the Grey City of Nelvana seemed to come close to dying out, then returned in great power, with the megastructure of that city vibrating to unearthly frequencies, shifting reality instead of preserving it, creating streets like dreams and towers like pillars of sleep, realms of soft silence and warped, quiet carnivals of faceless fear, it was the Wielder of the Lictor who penetrated the Forbidden City at the Megastructures heart and discovered the Emperors were, not ageless or renewed, but un-dead, and totally mad.

The Judgement of Mad Queen Orgula

When Orgulas precognitive fear of her own future judgement drove her to try to transform her entire Queendom into one great argument for her own innocence, using magic, torture, transformation, propaganda and direct law to create a land of 'perfect purity', it was the Lictor which lead the brutal, and attritional war against her. (As any war against a Precognitive must be - pursued relentlessly until every alternative and escape is exhausted.)

The Entropy Cults of Yga

When Yga's noted tolerance came close to being its undoing and the City became infested with covert Cults of Entropy. ("Not only evil, but extremely dull" - Vosis Fail). Even that bastion of liberal humanism called for the Lictor to be Wielded, believing that only its cold, ruthless, but exact judgement, could fairly separate the guilty from the deceived.

THE FATE OF THE LICTOR

Ultimately, the vast majority of those beings capable of using the Lictor to some meaningful end, without being corrupted by it, and without going utterly mad from its black and silver visions of truth and justice, invariably leave the Flail to be, after a time.

For these individuals, their gradually increasing comprehension of Justice and its meaning, as seen through the eyes of a Dreaming God, leads them to a too-great understanding of their own limitations. They come to believe or that they are not wise enough to wield the Lictor for too long. And perhaps that no-one is.

Thursday, 9 January 2020

Adventures On The Margins

Here are ten very basic adventure seeds for Uud, specifically for the Margins of Blackwater.

1. The Memory Thief

I imagine this as maybe the classic or essential Blackwater adventure. PCs are villagers in some marginal and forgotten place. One day they discover that something from the surrounding swamp has been through the village and stolen many of the important memories of the people they love. (Maybe even the memories of their parents, lovers or children). They work out what happened and then the mission is to go into the swamp and track this thing down, kill it, (or trick it somehow) and get back those memories and be - HEROES OF THE VILLAGE

Stuff - need generator for stolen memory relationships. Clues around village telling what happened but also contextual stuff telling what kind of creature and *how it works*, maybe a mild loremaster character. Then swamp generator. Maybe a goblin PC or "enemy" group after the same thing because the Goblin tribes memories got stolen too and maybe you could team up? Hmmm.

Creature itself needs highly deductible as in, you can work out what it is, strength which makes it seriously dangerous - probably too dangerous for just the party alone, and a weakness which can be discovered and exploited.

Then the surveillance/fight/trickery at the end.

2. The Waste Wanderer

Lets see.. This feels like its built around a single, strong central character. Someone like a high powered adventurer. A Wanderer who knows the Waste and who goes out there into danger and comes back alive a lot. But the Waste has fucked them up and the people of civilisation fear and hate them.

Something happens which brings the PCs into contact with the Wanderer, maybe some Orcs or something, the 'main threat' isn't really the main adventure. The real thing is that the PCs have to go off into, or end up in, danger with the Wanderer, and this is someone powerful and dangerous that you really can't work out. And it may be that they are the main monster at the end. Maybe the Wanderer has a thing where they are doing a deal with the Orcs, so it seems like they are a traitor, but it could be for the Right Reasons. Maybe they are a Half-Orc themselves?

This might seem like a doomed mission but could be instead it’s a situation the PCs can peacefully resolve - if they perceive that they should or could.

3. The Monsters Dream

Another swamp and/or desert situation. There is a super-dangerous Hyperpredator in the wilderness hunting people from the local culture. Seems impossible to beat. Maybe some high-level adventurers try and all they find is their corpses.

One (or more?) of the PCs is swapping dreams with the Monster. Once they work out this is what's happening, they can try to use this knowledge to track the beast, but the monster is smart and since its dreaming of their life it can use the same process to try to find them. Hunter/Hunted.

Possibly the monster isn't the real villain and there's a cackling wizard or something behind things or some other conspiratal stuff about the dream swapping. Maybe it lairs in a fallen voidship or its a transformed human or something.

4. The Bandit Knight

This is another dominant complex character situation. In this case the antagonist is a bandit threatening the PCs culture or home, but they are a former (or current) knight, and are known to have an iron-shod sense of honour (though also being unforgiving and super ruthless).

The PCs end up captured by this person (maybe there's a captured Princess or high-status vulnerable there as well) and to get out and/or get the Bandit knight away from the village, they need to make a promise or oath to do something either super-dangerous or somewhat immoral.

Will they give their word? And if they do, will they keep it? There's a lawman and his posse about who's job is meant to be protecting the village, but this is one Gaston motherfucker, just a gross, deceptive lying scumbag. Will the PCs sell out the honourable baddy to the dishonourable "good guy"?

5. The Inquisitors Bequest

A PC inherits a super-dangerous thing from a strange relative. Maybe this is an uncle or something they didn't know about or who disappeared. This person apparently joined the Tolerance and became a High Agent and a bit of a scary badass. Now they are dead, and they have left their effects to their closest living relative, which is you.

But, as they were a badass secret agent Inquisitor, these effects include some scary stuff, some Tolerance stuff that young people really shouldn't have, and possibly information about their last investigation.

So now the PCs have to work out what they are going to so with the secret agents cool stuff, while the subjects of their last case are coming at the PCs because there's some evidence or a tool or artefact or something disguised in there, and the Tolerance themselves are doing the same thing. Because Inquisitor X wouldn't just leave that stuff to some rando would they? There would have to be some special reason....

6. The Armour of the Sun - The Stolen Hope

A village on the margins has been slowly and painstakingly assembling a suit of plate armour. This has been patched together from bits and pieces, some found, some bought over years, or even generations. The Suit occupied a central place in the village and just stood there like the shell of an invisible hero, growing slowly over the years.

Like a lottery ticket really, the Armour was probably more important for the possibilities it presented; freedom from corrupt power, from predators and Orcs coming in from the Waste, the idea that one of them might be the hero they were waiting for.

Then someone steals the suit?

It disappears one day, the PCs are asked to do what they can to find it and bring it back. Not much to offer, but the PCs are lvl 1 anyway.

Aaand, it turns out the Suit was taken by someone from the village, to do something really heroic?

Or the fact that it could be divided up makes a fetch-quest relatively simple, with say a den of thieves and monsters who split it up with each taking their part to a different place, and the PCs will have to trick, steal, persuade or just kill a whole range of local baddies in order to get the suit back together.

I am still not sure what this one *means*.. There's more there than the fetch quest itself I think.

7. The Small, Strange Hole

This one seems pretty simple. A small strange hole has been found, or has opened up, somewhere nearby, and everyone is quietly terrified about it, though no-one can say why. Every time someone tries to block or obstruct it, by the next day, the blockage has gone, and the hole is a little bigger.

Then some children disappear and everyone thinks they went down the hole.

So the PCs are asked to squeeeze themselves into the hole to bring back those kids, and, if possible, to find a way to make it close up.

Think this one would be a good introduction to Marginalia. Whats inside the hole is not a dungeon but a different realm, like a Labyrinth/Fairyland situation, and what the PCs will have to do in order to get back these kids and shut the whole will be more like Dream Logic, or an Alice in Wonderland thing than a standard D&D challenge.

The place is under the control of a sad goblin King and threatened Cheese-Wyrm - a Cheese-obsessed hyperdimensional Cheshire-cat dragonish thing, but thin and slender. The Wyrm insists on being paid in cheese and since there is none to be had it has become aggressive and unpredictable, boring holes in reality and letting all kinds of random crap drop through.

The Goblin King has these children endlessly stirring milk in a effort to make cheese for the Wyrm, but the milk curdles beneath a green gackling goblin moon which flies about unpredictably. The moon itself has some thing that it wants and something it is scared of, etc etc.

Ok this one got weird. And 'Realm of the Cheese-Wyrm' is a better title but gives away faaar too much of the contents.

Could do this one almost as a series of personal encounters; The Goblin King, the Moon, the Cheese-Wyrm and others, with say two or three strong desires and strong fears/weaknesses and some randomisation to decide how they will relate to the PCs. You can get bits and pieces of info about each NPC from different encounters and the play-area has a range of strange elements which could be re-purposed in order to start solving the web of interlinked problems (i.e. the Goblin town has huge pots of unsellable yellow paint for sale and the PC's could use this to paint a huge sun on the ground to convince the Moon it is trespassing at the wrong time etc etc.

8. The Tax Collectors Crime

This is more of a 'real world' one where the village or small polity is threatened economically by an evil Worghast Tax Collector. This individual is slowly crushing the people out here with unjust taxes (the government would be crushing them anyway the same way, but much slower, this person is really pushing it).

The PCs are hired, or asked, to 'do something about it'.

If they investigate they may discover that the Tax collector has actually done something illegal, like made a deal with Orcs from the Waste, broken the Worghast Laws, or something else. In that case thier challenge might be - do they do things 'right' and try to gather evidence and prove the Tax Collector is guilty and get them removed? Or do they get edgy and decide to be bandits, effectively and take them out? And if they break bad, are they now outside the law?

Problem here is dealing with someone who has a LOT more institutional power than you, and who is seriously corrupt, willing to lie and manipulate, so doing the right thing becomes very difficult and risky indeed.

Elements - the villages the Tax Collector visits, the Collectors personal security, the Collectors connections and a map of the legal stuff that would need to be done to bring them down. Also some kind of external foe, maybe the Orcs they are dealing with or an illegally made Worghast gang.

9. The Shape of Fear

Here the threat is a very mediocre individual, like a Goblin or a very poor bandit or wastrel, someone who would barely be dangerous on their own and who is very clearly driven by fear, rage and low self-esteem.

So they have this thing, maybe its a magic mind-control ring, a lantern which brings nightmares to life, some demon sword which is clearly piloting them around, a false eye which sees lies and fires lasers or something.

Anyway, its made them super-dangerous, much too much to challenge them directly, so the only way to win is to get close to them and work out the patterns and weaknesses of the Thing, and the psychology of the person in question in order to trick or defeat them.

Or, make this a larger problem - maybe some kind of demon box has been opened or some dark traveller is going around handing these things out to low-level scumbags, and someone wants the PCs to deal with it. Possibly an Agent of the Tolerance, like and Inquisitor, is on the case but can't give away their involvement as the mind behind this whole thing is a Major Power? And you can't (or shouldn't) use the things because they get you mind controlled, or mutate you or are obviously radioactive in some way obvious to anyone not using them. (Though PC's will of course be tempted to take them and use them).

10. The Silence in the Ash

Another "real life"-ish situation. Out on the Margins, the great Ash dunes blowing in from the Waste have sent fingers deeper into Blackwater, separating two villages where communication used to be relatively stable.

Now the road between them leads over the Ash Dunes, and with the dunes have come bandits. Now anyone travelling between the villages is preyed upon. (Maybe the Bandits have some kind of ‘silence engine’ which stops anyone calling for help so all their attacks take place in a creepy silence). Calls for help have been either ignored, or someone from the polity has gone in with 'big battalions' and the bandits have simply fallen back into the Waste, only to return once the heat dies down.

How will the PCs find the Bandits? Tracing their intel source in the villages? Tracking them in the Waste? Using trickery to get themselves attacked? Pretending to join them?

And how will they fight them? Openly using terrain and cunning tactics? Set them up to be attacked by something even more dangerous? Lead them into a trap? Use scheming to set them against each other? And if they stop the bandits, will the dunes start to recede? Is there something even worse either puppeting the Bandits, using them or simply so dangerous that it drove them to this position?

Only three major elements, the Villages, the Dunes and the Bandits, though each would be pretty complex. The villages would be mainly social and political networks, the Dunes largely a map and generator and the Bandits a complex Tactical/Social matrix with their plans, habits, methods and social and other weaknesses coded in.