Introducing Gont

You arrive in the morning, filthy, red-eyed, a single donkey and a single days-worth of food left between you. As the sun just begins to reach its fingers above the horrible headache-inducing violet haze which rings the eastern horizon, its first visible EM emissions of the day illuminate your destination –

GONT: The Rainbow confederacy’s westernmost interest of any considerable size, kept alive mainly by passing Hexad-sponsored mule trains and dwarfen die-sel vech convoys, a glorified mountainside truck stop before grander, more profitable locales in the wild west. The township squats inside an ancient earth-toned ringwall of dryland coral, twisting in post-modernist, spike-covered branches, built around a deep natural spring. Before the east-facing gate and arcing left and right are patched and re-patched polytarp hobo tents, the majority abandoned, a few small barrel fires marking continued habitation. Would-be adventurers. A couple of career caravan bodyguards patrol the outskirts on camelback, mostly Bluelanders, escapees from prejudice.

This is a stronghold of Eastern habits and culture in a sea of endless grass and ruined wonders. That Gont is a shithole barely held together by the mutual interests of faraway Rainbowland oligarchs is a secondary detail; they have an IDENTITY, they go to CHURCH, they’re going to make MAD STACKS OF CASH out here in the middle of nowhere, FUCK YOU.

The cold dry season is in full swing, and the desiccating wind carries dust and tiny razors of ice straight into your eyes. The needlegrass lies brown and brittle, close to the cracked earth. Just inside the gate, mudbrick and concrete walls, wooden beams but not many, trees being relatively rare; mud streets, deep tire treads and wagon furrows, only ~90 permanent residents but the population swells by hundreds with the passage of caravans, state officials sent to speak with the khans of the steppe clans, fugitives, members of the Fifth Estate (undocumented ghost people), ETC.


YOU AWAKEN in the room at L’Ultime Motel you had rented the night prior. It was the cheapest one they had so there’s only one bed and a battered tin samovar bolted onto the floor in the middle of the room, a fiberglass basin w/ bucket of cold water, rugs, tapestries, bars on the window. This room’s only 6 sp a night; there’s a two-bed for 12 sp and a four-bed for 20 sp, plus 1 sp per day for taking care of your donkey.

L’ULTIME MOTEL is a three-story pile of shacks on top of a garage. The in-house vech-tech Adipose Jellyguts bangs his articulated porcelain multitool arm around in the depths of some rusted out dwarfen road yacht, screaming at underlings.

The woman who runs the books (Assolta Pistola) and gives you your key (bright brass with a bulky plastic gnome hanging from the keyring) looks like a spider trying to impersonate a human, long and haunting, pregnant pauses, constant calculations, constant activity, but in between bookkeeping she emerges from her administrative web and makes her rounds, checking on boarders, listening at doors, making sure all is well in an accidentally very unnerving way.

The rooms are small with iron bars on the windows, but soft, warm, tapestries and rugs, a samovar each, paper talismans tiled beneath the mattresses, folded into squares, to prevent bad dreams. A nomad custom; when you sleep on new grass every night, next to unfamiliar ghosts, such practices are important.

The attached and jointly-owned public house, Obol’s, is half-underground, serves warm beer with little limes, and boasts a menu of traditional steppe-nomad cuisine altered subtly for the tastes of Rainbowlander caravaneers (more salt and far fewer invertebrates). Pilaf, sausage, lots of horse meat, soft bread. Everything is served by Alka One-Arm, radially-symmetrical nine-armed symbiote-junkie, nervous system replaced by mycelium, smiley, cheerful.

The Plaza Mercat, yurts, always in motion, everything either setting up or tearing down, loading or unloading, surplus goods or trinkets picked up along the route, cherenkov cherries too close to spoiling to make it to the cities; steppelander stalls, marked by the sigil of the Yuzu or the Pomelo, cultural envoys, they’ve got:

    Tinctures for health and enhancement (half-functional nanite slurry drawn up from oldtech reservoirs by crude man-powered pumpjacks, tinctures of yuckwheat)

    Fragile pearls strung on cords and made into bracelets (they form in the bellies of the magical barnacle snail around irritating flashes of half-real cosmic particles as they are caught by the karmic lining of the beasts stomach, crush them to bewilder ghosts)

    Good-luck charms of sparrow skulls and porcelain carvings of the same, alternating, can barely tell one from the other

    Bullets, bullets of every caliber, every shape (each one crafted by the clan gunsmith, or more likely their apprentices, old forge-devices and magics cajol explosive elementals into lead and splintering iron, they are sleeping now, but the spark of the gun-wand is all it takes to begin the reaction and if you listen carefully you can hear them dream as you reload)

    A few expensive guns, locked tight in translucent plaz cases, bound with charmed copper wire and three tiny padlocks each. Their names are written on little slips of paper stuck on the front; “STONE COLD,” “VIOLENT REENTRY,” “WIDE SWATHE” (Rainbow names; the guns are multilingual, and will understand if you cannot pronounce the nom de guerre inscribed in their hearts upon the machining altar)

    Oils and sauces, a thousand spices, a million ingredients, years of quiet slow fermentation produce viscous substances of shocking color, seen through perfectly clear jars of glass; remove the lid and be careful not to faint as the transcendent odor washes over you, meta-umami, the flavor OF flavor

    Strange meat, curlicues of sausage, shelled spring rabbits, skins and furs, the meager bounty of the steppe; nacrepede and sunscarab roasted, sold by the bag; dried yonderpods, lemongrass, ampules of concentrated honey



There is also, always, an ongoing wrestling match happening in the circle of white stones in front of Grandma Soolie, the retrofitted rickety pump system that draws water up from some deep aquifer. The clans have brought their sport of choice to this place: wrestling. Two unadorned human beings enter. No pouches, no kicks, no weapons, nothing but grappling and throwing;  This can go on for hours. Anyone with a score to settle with you (or who just wants to prove themselves more manly) will challenge you to this endurance sport before a more deadly fight.

The pillories lie not far away. Old blood stains the wood in splotches.


The chapel is old, looks like it was carved from a single rock, tessellated polygons like turtleshell plates or fractal geometry, obvious signs of petromancy —

    (in which the provided stone is imbued with animating spirits pre-programmed with mnemonic blueprints and set in motion by the wizard/astral foreman, then directed to produce repeating shapes (more stable generation that way, requiring less attention from the caster, and therefore the mark of a great petromancer is the appearance of complex, non-similar facets in the grain and pattern of the final product), smoothed or textured according to the client’s desire, trimmed and edited at corners, crenelations, buttresses, etc., to finally produce a finished structure, onto which doors, windows, and additional flooring or paneling (if one were so inclined) are added, the entire process taking months or years according to the scope of the project, the skill of the wizard, any alterations made to the design, or any inauspicious astral occurrences which might distract or otherwise hinder the constructive activity of the spirits; to prevent this an active petromantic zone is often guarded by birdskull good luck charms, jadewood totems, notched silver rods driven into the earth, or more commonly (especially in Safranje and Oranje, where the art is most honored) blessed origami strung on white twine.)

Inside is sparse, prayer mats on the floor, fading tapestries on the walls of various scenes from historio-scripture (traditionally the first tapestry is black, for the Forgetting, then the fabrication of the First God of Man, Corpus Mundi (the Needle in the Eye of the World), the creation of the sacral calendar, then various depictions of the saints and their good works).

STONEHELL #3

A pretty good one!!!

THE CAST:

Clariandra, 11 year-old little necromancer girl, looking for her dad, collects thumbs

Krema Affogato, very tall mutated thief, coffee addict, hyper-capitalist

Dave, teen barbarian, dumb as hell, heart of gold

Lucidius, orgish street-preaching lunatic mystic of Mother Silicon, metal jaw

The box canyon in a greener, warmer time of year

1. The group continues their exploration of the canyon. The ruined foundations of guard barracks and administration buildings are bare except for one, in which a small shrine to St. Mohorovicic, He who Sealed the Serious Hells, is set up in the center. Pale blue scraps of ribbon are wound around the statue's fingers and arms; Lucidius explains that this is a folk custom of Omnitheists on the steppe, where each ribbon represents a prayer. Everyone takes a second to partake in the ritual.*

2. Skipping past the visible caves for now, they examine the northern (STONEHELL-facing) side of the gatehouse, read some adventurer graffiti, and peer nervously into the darkened interior. Lucidus hears some snatches of sound from the eastern entrance, lights up his lantern (I guess he did buy lighting? w/e) and quietly ventures in. The rest follow.

3. Little of interest in the first room they search, but the second contains a collapsed writing desk, a pile of rotten cloth and wood that was once a bed, and a spray of ash across one wall with a negative-space handprint in the center. 

4. Lucidius hands his lantern to Clariandra and smashes the ruined bed with his mace. There is a great splortch and two surviving VENEMOUS NACREPEDES squirm outwards, bent on revenge for their slain brothers. Lucidius' orgish physiology resists the sickening effects of their bite but he still suffers a couple of mandible-wounds.

5. He manages to grab one before it gets into his pants, but it takes 3 more full rounds of combat with everyone else involved to kill the remaining centipede. He takes a moment to recover and curse his "detestable carbon body."

6. Krema cautiously investigates the handprint; the ash reforms wherever it is disturbed. Reasoning this is some kind of magical bullshit, potentially involving an invisible man, she drives a dagger into the center of the handprint, finding nothing invisible but depressing a hidden button. A trapdoor grinds partially open, the mechanism quickly snapping in half but revealing a corroded metal ladder.

7. Beneath they find a tiny room subject to an ancient fermentation disaster: Burst glass bottles, dark stains on the walls, broken all-chemy equipment, etc. There is, however, one survivor, the contents of which is sniffed, found to smell fucking amazing, and quickly decanted into a sturdier container. There is also a fine, impossibly well-preserved black leather jacket and a lovely poncho stitched in the Pomelo clan style, the pattern encoding a temperature-regulation enchantment (resist cold).

8. As all four PC cram themselves into this tiny basement-closet, the door to the room they're in creaks open (first random encounter of the campaign). Three ash-streaked double-jointed mutated little freakazoids demand the intruders show themselves, but get a 9 for the reaction roll, which means all they really want is for the party to quietly get out of their hideout (these were the source of the sounds Lucidius caught at the front door). 

9. None of the PCs have a great grasp of steppelander politics, but half-true, three-quarters-racist rumors inform them that without a centralized judicial system, the nomad clans deal with criminals and traitor-gangs by driving them into the middle of the grasslands and abandoning them to dehydration and the vomes; if they make it back alive it means they've proven their worth and can petition the khan for re-entry into the clan, but popular knowledge is that this never ever happens and the banished criminals either die or turn into crazed hyper-violent survivalists. These three, the party assumes from inside their hole, are the latter.

the general vibe

9. Dave shouts that no one is here and that they should go away and look somewhere else. Krema emerges from the nook, draws herself up to her full (7 foot) height, and asks who dares speak to Her, a Very Important Person, in such a way. One of them says they are of the Rebar Clan in a thick steppe patois; another tightens her grip on a long iron rod studded with clinging concrete and starts looking agitated. "Thiz our place. We do it nicen easy, you begone. We hidenout! Begone!"

10. Krema sneers, demands that they put down their primitive weapons and get out of her face, or else they'll be taken to one of her "many successful plantations" in the Violetlands to toil as "unpaid interns." The one with the iron rod grits her teeth, hisses, and without further warning steps forward and smashes it into Krema's shoulder, rolling max damage. Diplomacy has failed; the other Rebar clansmen draw their shitty knives. 

11. The entire party loses their initiative rolls, which means one of their foes runs over to the half-open trapdoor and begins to wrench it closed with everyone else still inside while the other attempts to stab Krema's knees. Dave, on his turn, spiral-jumps out of the narrowing-opening and carves one of the mutants in half like a fucking christmas ham. Lucidius and Krema bludgeon the rod-wielder to death between them, and Clariandra pops her head aboveground, tells the remaining guy to "stop being so impolite," and casts Wernher's Redistribution of Vitality at him. The man seems to age a decade in seconds and runs away in abject terror.

12. Krema, filled with hot wet fury, gives immediate pursuit. The little freak leads her forward down a long dark hallway. As he attempts to clamber up a shoddy ladder and through a partially-open trapdoor in the ceiling, she catches up with him and stabs him to death. They loot the bodies for their silver, and, in Clariandra's case, their eyeballs.

*Mechanically this was meant to give +1 to the first check per character that failed by exactly 1, but my players actually unpromptedly texted me specific prayers, so maybe St Moho will help in a more specific way? 

Kills: 4 Nacrepedes, 3 Rebar Warriors (50 xp)

Loot: Cool leather jacket (10 sp), poncho of resist cold (250 sp), "healing potion," bits of silver worth 24 sp 

STONEHELL #2

Another regrettably short session. We're not in the dungeon yet, so I'm still trying to inch everyone into the highly-systematized, high-lethality jacuzzi, but I feel like maybe I went a little too loosey-goosey with the combat specifically. The Ghost Beggars are now canonically a much less capable and seasoned crew than they perhaps should have been, but on the other hand the party rolled really well for the most part, so it may not have mattered that much.

THE CAST:

Clariandra, 11 year-old little necromancer girl, looking for her dad 

Krema Affogato, very tall mutated thief, coffee addict

Dave, teen barbarian, dumb as hell

Lucidius, street-preaching lunatic mystic of Mother Silicon, metal jaw

Lucidius' donkey, I believe at this point unnamed, who I forgot to mention last writeup

1. Clariandra, realizing she is alone in a dark wet cavern, begins to cry very loudly and pitifully. Three of the remaining seventeen bandits arrive and begin surrounding Lucidius, who is the only one remaining in the stable-cave.

2.  He briefly attempts to convince them he is a simple pilgrim spreading the good word of Our Exalted Mistress of Chrome before picking up a rock and throwing it very hard at one of the boys behind him. He crits and crushes his target's skull, killing him instantly. Lucidius uses this opportunity to run the fuck away. 

3. The bandits arrive in full force. Their leader, a large man with an eyepatch and a big shiny breastplate with a heraldric snail on it, starts screaming orders for a sweep of the hideout. He sends a group of three to investigate the pitiful weeping coming from the direction of the watch post.

4. Meanwhile, Krema, having successfully snuck back into the stables amidst the standoff with Lucidius, emerges from her hiding spot and cuts the remaining (incredibly panicky) horses free, rolling well and escaping back outside as they begin kicking the shit out of the rallying bandits.

5. The three brigands find Clariandra (whose skills include "crocodile tears") sniffling in the dark. They grab her and she asks through very wet eyes if they're going to be her new dads, which I decree forces a morale roll, shaking the confidence of one of her captors ("Don't know about this lads, don't seem right do it").

6. Dave, having shed his armor to appear like more like a civilian and holding his bloody sword behind his back, runs through the watch post shouting about his "lost sister". He thanks the bandits profusely for finding her ("We'll just be on our way, kind sirs. If only more people were like you three"). This succeeds in confusing them further, but they do not relinquish their captive.

7. The boss arrives, having gotten the horse situation mostly under control, and announces that unless the entire party presents themselves and all of their possessions RIGHT NOW, the girl's getting stabbed. 

8. Clariandra is currently being restrained by three dudes, but one of them really doesn't have his heart in it. She succeeds at a heavily penalized roll to break free, and the group sprints out of the cave system down the cliff trail, Lucidius having at this point retrieved his donkey from its hiding place in a bush - and having killed another bandit on his way out. They catch up at the base of the trail, panting and relieved, and, as far as they can tell, unfollowed.

9. The canyon they find themselves in is none other than that legendary murder pit, the shaded entrance to STONEHELL! It's the cold dry season in the UVG, but warm mist issues inexplicably from a spot across the canyon floor, where a large waterfall thunders down the cliff and into a deep, clear pool, ringed by lush ferns and reeds. The group investigates and finds a silver hoop embedded at the bottom of the pool, through which the water seems to somehow be draining. 

10. Krema is a mutant, and as one result of her genetic corruption she enjoys some limited aqualinguistic ability. She attempts to speak to the waterfall (named Walterfall) who doesn't have very much useful to say; he says that he is of two parts, that some of him sees day and night and some of him sees only darkness, and that his heat comes from a narrow place far away. 

11. Lucidius and Dave step into a thicket of enchanted trees that turns you into a tree while you're in there, sliding around like the Chameleon spell in Dark Souls. This freaks Dave very much out.

11. Stock is taken of the rest of the canyon's contents: The ruined gatehouse to the south, a total of 8 natural and manmade tunnels into the cliffs, 5 crumbling foundations, the thicket, the waterfall, and the imposing entrance to STONEHELL itself.

Kills: 1 Ghost Beggar, 1 Highwayman (20 xp)

STONEHELL #1

I began, finally, after not one nor two but THREE false starts and several months-worth of delays due to clashing schedules and various sicknesses -- I began a hopefully long-for-this-world campaign of Stonehell, set in a corner of Luka Rejec's UVG, played in my slightly-customized version of Skerple's iconic Rats on Sticks GLOGhack, with some degree of success, I would say? It went okay. 

THE BACKGROUND:

Stonehell was a ancient prison-experiment of an insane king of a dying city-state on the geographical and cultural line between Rainbowland Civilization and Ultraviolet Grassland Barbarism. Eventually the city-state fell and the prison was cracked open to reveal not a prison after all but an apparently-infinite series of halls and galleries and rooms and cells excavated by the now thoroughly-crazed vitamin D-deficient inmates. Fast forward 120 years and it's a 10-level hive of monsters and freaks and Very Large Jewels, or in other words it has turned (conveniently) into a megadungeon. There's a shitty town 4 hours away from the dungeon called Gont, which despite being the Rainbow Confederacy's western-most interest of any considerable size is essentially a glorified truck stop in the middle of the steppelands full of migrants, mercenaries, fugitives, and caravaneers.

THE CAST:

Clariandra, 11 year-old little necromancer girl, looking for her dad 

Krema Affogato, very tall mutated thief, coffee addict

Dave, teen barbarian, dumb as hell

Lucidius, street-preaching lunatic mystic of Mother Silicon, metal jaw

1. The group waks up in the cheapest room at L'Ultime Motel they could get, one bed, bars on the window, poisonously-strong coffee and soft bread for breakfast. 

2. Onboarded them into action as least-terribly as I could manage; they approach the polytarp yurt of Guapo Pasgeddi, headman of a profit-sharing association of gold-rush-esque merchant suppliers, who is delighted that he has more bodies to throw at the Ghost Beggar problem (Stonehell's "Supplement One," detailing a cave network full of bandits and an alternate entrance to the dungeon). 800 silver is promised for proof of dispersal or proof of the death of the Ghost Beggar leader. A coupon is provided, good for half-off any one shopping trip with the merchants he represented, which the party ignores.

The Brigand Caves

3. Having bought zero supplies (Lucidius had purchased a bottle of cheap wine), they arrive at the poorly-hidden entrance to the bandits' hideout in the cliffs surrounding Stonehell, through which Dave charges into a cave-stable. Two badly-equipped highwaymen yell and run for reinforcements; the horses are unimpressed.

4: One runs to a nearby watch-post (room 5), and is stabbed nearly to death in the narrow preceding tunnel by Dave. Lucidius wins initiative, runs up behind Dave, shoves a chromium femur past his head and casts THE WRATH OF GOD IN ALL ITS GLORY (Cleric Laser) at the three filthy brigands playing bridge in the room beyond. They are left singed and reeling; Dave is left completely blind. Lucidius rolls a 4 on his magic die and is therefore out of divine favor for the day.

5: The bandit captain screams at his underlings to circle around outside the cave complex and get them from the back, then fails his morale roll, pisses his pants, and runs out after him. Dave takes a hit, Clariandra casts Wernher's Redistribution of Vitality at the man in front of him, rolls a 1 for damage, and watches him fall over dead, skin subtly wrinkling.

6: Dave blindly runs through the southern tunnel in an angry haze to look for more things to kill. Clariandra cuts off the thumbs of the dead and puts them in a little bag. The sounds of shouting and commotion reach them from distant caverns as news of the intrusion reaches the rest of the bandits.

7: Krema deals with the two underlings circling around the front of the cave by spooking a couple of the (by now fairly agitated) horses, which charge into their caretakers and launch them off hilariously the edge of the cliff.

8: Clariandra uses her turn to stroll around the back of the complex (room 6), which is the first unlit section anyone had encountered; unfortunate, since, again, no one had bought any supplies (no torches). By feel alone, she is able to find a low tunnel behind some very old crates.

Since this was the first session in months, there was a lot of bullshitting before we could start properly, so that was all we had time for. There are 3 Ghost Beggars in room 3 and 13 more scattered around the cave, so we essentially stopped 1 combat round away from the party getting swarmed; I expect deaths unless they can intelligently weasel their way out of their own stupidity and unpreparedness. Maybe they can lose them in the cramped tunnels in the back (17 and 18) or in the old unused barracks (7, 8, 9), but more likely I expect them to simply run away, maybe explore some of the other caves around Stonehell, and probably get ambushed by angry bandits on their way back to Gont.

Kills: 1 Ghost Beggar, 3 Highwaymen (40 xp)

Campaign Notes Part 3

The series continues. Minimally edited and even less playable. Enjoy?

You douse the fire. Steam and smoke flood the shore and mingle with the mist hanging on the surface of the water.

Plunged into a vault of mist - silence; you can hardly see the rest of the party  - a soft light , the low honk of a horn   - the light resolves; forms a skull in the fog; then you see the lamp  - wrought iron lantern of a edvard munch scream, white electric light pouring from eyes and mouth   - THE BOAT, the chugging of a motor; hull looks like strips of metal wasp-paper curling around a precious cargo, a cabinfull of ghoulish passengers   - a gothic combustion engine and propeller assembly at the stern churns the river into froth  - the cabin is stained glass and metal, can see silhouettes within, murmuring conversation, some passengers lean off the side but all give the ferryman a wide berth   - at the prow stands THE FERRYMAN; raises a hand and the boat pulls to a stop by the shore - two wire thralls slap a sheet metal ramp onto the beach - he is a tall hulk wrapped in fur coats and brass wire   -fishbowl helmet, inside swirling black smoke, two tiny points glowing like stars   - skeletal hands bedecked with rings and bracelets    - wields dire magics, can call the water forth to strangle and restrain, can rise on cold winds, then floats over and blasts you with a sawn off shotgun - controls the boat with one of his rings, opals in a propeller pattern    - silent, polite, stoic. You paid him after all. Doesn’t ask questions visavis being dead, but will boot you if you’re obviously not  - has 800 silver worth of rings and shit, also his eyes fall when killed and roll around inside the fishbowl, eclipsed suns, swallowing one grants CURSED ABMORTALITY

SEVEN “SOULS” RIDE THE FERRY

Outside the cabin: Bok-tet, a kaballist, human leather coat, a shard of obsidian ritual knife hung about the neck. A lucky member of the blue god conspiracy, was granted undeath by his deity before it was annihilated, you’ll find lots of ghouls from around then. The tell-tale rings of the Dead God’s touch. Rebellious, callous, harsh, still dedicated to the tenets that lead him to his forbidden worship – that death is a malfunction, the end of all mourning, etc. Aware this would lead to his starvation, now.

Mollusca Iona, skin like yellow parchment, fat and luxurious, biomechane visor, blinky light bulb jewelry; she is a frequent visitor of the market, murmurs deeply, “hope the band is more lively this year… those princes should be an interesting display… have to remember to finally sample that stew…” 

HISTORY: First bite was at a dark aristocratic dinner in the now-fallen Decapolitan city of Ulkan in the Orangelands, 900 years ago. Red candles, weeping servants. Weeping guests too, once they tasted the meat. Exquisite. Used vast wealth to replace failing organs, eyes, etc, but soon was mostly unnecessary since, like all ghouls if they last long enough, her expanding labyrinthine digestive system does all the work.

Hunder and Yuna, orphan children, skeleton siblings, look out for each other. Hunder has a floppy cap, Yuna has dressed up for the occasion, spell engines grip their spines, escaped from a mad sorcerer’s basement laboratory. Untrusting, dark jokes, Hund is glum, Yuna is a realistic optimist. Not ghouls, but welcome at their Market.

 

Inside the cabin: Ruins-Your-Life, Steppelander ghoul from the lost Tangelo tribe, a wendigo who has acquired a taste for the luxuries of settled civilization that only the Market can provide (century eggs and human pate, specifically, but also fungal cheeses and liquid memories) and is journeying there for the first time. Standoffish and unaccustomed to company. Wears a wide, shadowy sombrero, has three sets of stacked eyes like the pips on a die, very skinny and crooked.

IN THEIR PACK: Some GOLP, skipping stones, locks of kid hair, pouch of gravedirt, teeth, ghoul pants, eyedrops.

Pen name Gunja Teabag, ghoul novellista, producer of penny dreadfuls distributed through underground channels and read mainly by perverts. Maintains a writerly attitude, but in reality she’s never written a word of fiction. Every terrible thing in her books she has done or seen done. First seen by the party wiping away the last of the cocoa face paint she applies to appear human. Has unfinished manuscripts in her luggage, worth a great deal of dangerous money if completed and published. 

And finally Vynn Pozzani, once a die-sel miner, trapped by a cave-in and ate her crewmates to survive, grew twisted and dark and found her way to the Market from above many years ago, keeps their ears on a necklace even now, “Extraction Crew 077”, slipped into solipsism to deal with the event - she moves through the world like an RPG protagonist, no one else is really real. 

Of these, only Bok-Tet and Gunja have weapons other than claws - the first casts rituals that summon choking clouds and decay, the second has a hidden pouch of scalpels, hooks, tweezers, and pins that she can use and throw as daggers.

The cabin and engine are both guarded by a pair of wire thralls, patchy plaz skin sheets, LED eyes, human skeleton wound with thin copper tendons, CPU boxes in chest cavity protected by aluminum spheres bolted to ribs; reprogram or add new instruction by feeding punched cards into slot in the front (scraps of paper around their feet), external speaker visible in neck, just fucking awful to look at. Armed with truncheons, stoles depicting a field of yellow stars on a violet background.

STR: 12 DEX: 6  CON: 12 INT,WIS,CHA: 1   HP: 10 ATK: 12 DEF: 14 DMG: 1d6 MOVE: 25

Robo Scream: As long as speakerbox in throat is not damaged, starts combat by screaming.

Hugs and detonates onboard plastic explosive charge if very low HP (test to resist, else 1d12 damage)

The cabin guards are there just to make sure nothing untoward happens during the trip. The engine guards actively prevent fuckery by drawing their clubs if anyone approaches.

The engine is covered by a tarp-tent stretched over rusted poles (macabre charms hang from the tarp, bundles of chicken bones, little crude dolls, ribbons, strings of teeth, etc). Chugs along, coughs black smoke, chops at the River with a big propeller. Extra jerry cans of guzzolene strapped to the back wall of the cabin.

Campaign Notes Part 2

WHERE MIGHT THE PARTY DISCOVER MORE ABOUT THE PATHS INTO THE GREAT GHOUL MARKET????

ONE: A scuffle in the streets by the university! Two fucking ancient bastards croak and swing at each other with trembling arthritic hands! They are Historians, and these sorts of displays are all-too-common: The Wall of Mist that occludes the past makes archeology a desperately, wincingly sloppy affair. A crowd of hooting students gathers, upperclassmen taking bets.

Here we have a Folklorist of the Close Analysis School in a rage against a Phenomonologist of the Flexible Paradigm. What do they disagree on? Everything, but specifically the ultimate fate of the Kingdoms of the Dead (known only via half-legible copper tablets dredged up from the murky depths of Lago de Kloeken and a strata of compressed marrow/court finery extracted from the surrounding region), the circumstances of their fall, even their geographical placement!

The Folklorist, Hasbint Drennoti, holds that the Kingdoms were dragged beneath the earth by ravens after a lengthy succession crisis (the first of its kind, after the King, Hasbint shouts, “did the first Double Death”), eventually becoming one of the Benign Hells. The Phenomonologist, Kontrast McPoffin, holds that the Kingdoms were obliterated by a vengeful meteor after the Prince launched a curse-engine into space to impress a girl.

Speaking to the Folklorist will reveal more information about the Hells and their occasional contact with the surface. Speaking to Kontrast will be boring and confusing, but will still mention his rival's theories dismissively. The winner of the fight will collapse into a nearby dumpster and fall asleep on a bed of needles and coffee filters.

TWO: Deep within Eigengrau University's library! A book on the Hells explains that, sometimes, beneath a particularly dense concentration of souls, a Hell may extend a questing pseudopod upward from below and graze the underground underbelly of basements and sewers; and that if the enterprising urban explorer ventures deep enough into the stinky depths, they may find a tunnel newly dug, marked upon the roof with an iron ring, or a wooden staircase fresh and clean in the wall of rock, and through these uncanny passages one may pass into the liminal space between the layers of the earth, the Streets Beneath, and from there to any other place within the underworld - but beware! The trip is fraught with danger and hardship, terror and anguish! OOOoooOOOoooOOO!

Zones of The Streets Beneath:

Lit ONLY SOMETIMES by otherworldly orbs or blue fire lanterns, the sickly glow of dreams, there is no earthly way of knowing.

The main road is paved (poorly) with good intentions, snakes through, sometimes is lost; beetle pulled troikas with skeleton nobles, ghoulish backpackers (human jerky, GOLP (good old long pig)), flickering street lights which hop about on chicken legs, flee or curl darkly when startled, eat bugs and rocks.

Upside-down castle hovering above a crater lake of ooze lit from within by stolen moons chained to the bottom like sea mines, giant bats hanging off belfries, love bright sweet things -

             A princess asleep in the basement-attic gently holding a glowing lavender moon, HER CHILD: she fell in love with a passing comet and when he departed on his long orbit, as comets must, she fell into a terrible sadness and with her, her kingdom. Her cries so moved the earth that it opened up and embraced her, pulling her castle down and placing the princess into a slumber. If you take the moon she will sigh and crumble to pale dust, but the comet will return, and he will be looking for his child...

              Guarded by the noble ghosts of her knights, all of whom love her deeply, find their skeletons crumpled inside their platemail and pierce them with their own glaives to dispel the ghosts, maddening chunks of starlight originally given by the comet to his mate as gifts, now roam the inverted halls, they blind and terrify.

The River of Bones also is here snaking through, maybe you'll see the ferry, Huck-Fin steamships chugging (zombie dogs power the waterwheels, motivated by big cartoon steak on a stick), translucent drowned riverfolk in chitin canoes, all on their way to the market, huge corpulent merchants sailing their well-laden barges.

The katamari of lost things, now stuck in a ditch as it sometimes is, little child katamari circling nervously the mother as it tries to heave itself over, forgotten desiccated ape tribe/funginids (fungus is always welcome in the underworld, part of an old deal)/fossil knights compete for resources aboard the rolling trove while it is still.

Dusty dusty desert, easily lost in the storms, gray dust in your teeth and eyes and ass, lost souls travelling in circles. A sandy whirlpool that leads down into one of the real Hells, dire vultures try to fly on featherless wings, stalagmites burst through the dust, smaller ones hide beneath a millimeter of the stuff, razor sharp, meditating damned cross-legged on tall poles on their last step of atonement before reincarnation. Perhaps you will see one open their eyes and rise into the dark roof, sublimating into pure white light. Beetlejuice sandworms?

The Crossroads, a massive rusted draw bridge of sinew and keratin arcs over the river, sometimes rises to let boats past, organic groaning as the ragged barely-flesh caretakers urge the organ-bridge on by poking sensitive bits, going into "the booth" (brainstem zone) and yanking on the medulla oblongata, competing toll-takers before the bridge and after, along the road, along the shore of the river offering fording vessels, gold is pointless down here, all want increasingly bizarre and precious things - memories, senses, names, beliefs and convictions, etc.

Swamplands of the bug warlocks, primordial mosquitos piloting enchanted amber mechsuits through the eons, immortal but trapped, weird bug magic involving blood and time, sucks your blood out from a distance and puts weird diseases in it and shoots it back into you, confused and angry, if you somehow show them evidence of their tiny, much-reduced modern day ancestors they will fall to their knees and weep weird mosquito tears.

Campaign Prep Notes

The lack of content on here is a little like a bruise: I keep forgetting it's there until I bump into it wrong, and then ow, dang. I dunno man. Maybe I'll start just posting my prep notes for my current game, just to have something.

Right now I'm getting my players into Patrick Stuart's GHOUL MARKET now that they've gotten into and out of the Deep Carbon Observatory, in the greater context of Luka Rejec's Ultraviolet Grasslands. They've received a letter from an unknown group asking them to fix the Market beneath the Violet City by any means necessary; the Market is an upward expression of one of the Benign Hells and it moves around underground like a traveling cyst in the earth, stopping beneath various cities every few years like a cursed Olympics. If kept beneath the city, alliance could be made, trade could take place, deals could be brokered, or, failing all that, the Market could be invaded by the Violet Megaduchess's Subterranean Mech Corps and taken by force. Payment is promised in coins of occultum.

 

Two ways are known for the living. The first is through the Deep Streets, buried roads and cellars where the sewage runs, beneath the city. Below those are forgotten colonnades, and under those are caverns, and at the deepest point there will be a stairway cut into the stone which the Market has made. Listen hard, and you will hear the toots of terrible revelry drifting up from deep below!

The second is through the River of Bones, which runs through the Market, so spelled to split and pour and fall into the stone itself! There may be other ways of calling the ferry, but the tales say that you must fill a skull with gold and build round it a fire by the river’s edge. Start when the sun is high, and keep it lit till the night is deep, and when the embers are all out the ferryman will come slipping through the mist.

BUT BEWARE! No mortal human may pass into the Great Ghoul Market. Those who still breathe of who feast not on the flesh of their own kind best go in disguise! 

Where do you get a skull? The crypts beneath the city are well guarded against bone-thieves, a necessity in a city so full of wizards. Dr. Grondor Disophagus’ Medical Surplus Depot (There’s Nothing Grander Than Grondor!) collects all sorts of offcuts from the city’s chop-shops (surplus, as in, all the stuff left over). He’s got a shitload of skulls for sale for a ducat (and other things besides), but FUCK ME is his shop hard to find (he’s actually got an anti-orthogonal obfuscatatron hooked up in the back), and you’ll need directions.

Try those same chop-shops perhaps? Gorpie and Sons Vatworks is a great choice. Office building with a lot more tubes than usual. Classy waiting room but dingy hallways open up onto a basement-level warehouse of glass vats full of nutrient fluid and half-grown parts, overworked biomancer associates with their arms in those rubber glove windows tweaking and shuffling the stem cells around. A few operating rooms, “This won’t hurt a bit!”

Catch one of Gorpie’s titular sons (name of Benedict) smoking a cig in the back alley; he is ratty, stained, shaken, thin, easily intimidated. “The alley between 58 and 60 Looming Street. Just keep turning left!” 33 lefts. Or you can just kill a guy, no need to make things complicated.

For materials to summon the ferry: Grondor’s Medical Surplus, as written. A lingish man with a glitchy robot leg and big eyes. Go on back to Gorp Corp and shake down Benedict for info.

Another avenue of attack: head down into the crypt, but it’s full of fucking lasers and its got headache-patterns all over the walls (can’t concentrate on spells) because a hundred years ago, when the university was expanding, the fucking wizard undergrads kept stealing skeletons (use https://dysonlogos.blog/2021/03/28/ashlords-fall/ - these are the lower human crypts, merely a chunk of the greater complex physically cut off from spiritually-superior humans and the carefully mummified remains of the catlords.)

For information about the ferry: Vidalia Onion the feline librarian can set them up pretty well. The ritual is a human skull, mouth and braincase filled with gold (I don’t know, 100 pieces sounds fine) and build a fire around it, douse it at midnight. This is explained in a rotating projecto-cillynder titled “Index of Pre-Rainbow Order Folklore, Vol. 4” subtitle “That Which Could Be Remembered,” accompanied by gristly diagrams. She will let you look at it but insists that she watch you the entire time.

For information about ghouls: Mrs Onion probably has some stuff for you on that one as well. Living people who eat the dead. Touch causes agony. Tight jaundiced skin, claws, insatiable hunger, sharp, glitter-prick eyes. Might refer you to a colleague if they ask too many complicated questions - Ravishing Tugboat, necroscholar extraordinaire (one vertical half of the dude is just his vascular system, but held in the original shape by occult fields).

 

Ghouls and wendigos are the same thing, just like, one tends to hunt in the wilderness and the other tends to hang around civilization, maybe? Something about eating human flesh fucks up the spirit. Common knowledge holds that the body-soul-personality triad loses integrity like a decaying atom and degrades into something awful and dark when you dig up a guy and eat him. That’s mostly true, but they’re missing the whole part about the astral prions that corpses tend to collect without the protection of their kaba, like mars without its magnetosphere, and how they get into the souls of corpse-cannibals and start refolding their metaphysical proteins into cursed geometries.

People go to one of the Hells when they die if they haven’t cultivated any favor with any of the orbital gods, or none of them want to bother with shepherding their shit to the RECYCLING INFINITY OF NOTHINGNESS - ultimately that’s the deal that people strike with the divine. The Benign Hells are pretty tame, not much more suffering than there is in life, and Saint Mohorovicic blocked off the Serious Hells a long time ago, so no one needs to worry about them. With enough atonement and refinement, people can make it up to RIN themselves, it’s just way more difficult. Far more often they just languish there. Some debased things can come and go from the upper layers; these include ghouls.

For disguises: you’ll either have to eat the consecrated dead, which probably isn’t an option (defo not enough time, although you could I guess splurge and get pure uncut ghoul proteins), or actually disguise yourself. 

 

FOR THE SKIN: You can go to tattoo parlors (L’Ultime, run by Haruna Jebolex. dwarfy lady of great dexterity and color, only spots not inked up are two kidney-shaped bits on her back that she can’t reach) or maybe a carpenter’s for some woodstain (Iosefka the Cabinettress is a good bet, she’s fucking WILD though, farther along in the elf-infection than most halfsies, but until she walks into the Wall of Wood she’s churning out some really incredible work).

 

FOR THE CLAWS: You can always superglue some amatuer scrimshaw to your fingers. You can get some actual implants too (probably 100 silver, 150 if you want anesthetic).

 

FOR THE SMELL: There are some really exciting advances happening in the smell-sector, which tends to grow up along with biomantically-enhanced sensorial implants. To smell like a ghoul, you have to smell a little like old piss, and also gravedirt, bones, meat, all the breath stuff, but ALSO many ghouls perfume themselves with orange peels and tea leaves to better blend in, so a whisper of those. THEY DO NOT SWEAT, and this is the main challenge. Ghouls have excellent noses. 

Go to Pasand the Gland Man for a goopy solution (puts a bioport in your armpits, you can pop in various smell-generators like fucking Glade plugins for a group rate of 100 silver each, custom made smelly puff glands for 25-50 silver depending on specificity), or go a more traditional route: vials of concentrated SMELL FLUID with cotton stuffed in the top, seal up the sweats, paint the teeth, get silly.

 

FOR THE STORY: You’ll need to be prepared; the ghouls will ask questions. They’re wary of interlopers invading their carnival (the only place where maybe, maybe, they can escape the godawful shame of what they’ve done), and are also fucking HUNGRY ALL THE FUCKING TIME, so if they think you’re human they’ll gobble you up. You’ll have to know when and where your first taste was, what graveyard (“Ah, at the lost crypts of Vivex, perchance? Got my start there myself, or might have, might not have been the START, uh, but things really started in EARNEST over in Vivex, you know?”) what era of history (roll on the UVG tables).

 

Then, the Boatman!

               Nothing for a long time. But then a growing guttering, a diffuse white light, resolving into a grotesque lamp artfully smithed in the shape of a long gaping head, light spilling from the open mouth and wide empty eyes. The boatman. He(?) stands tall at the stern of his gondola, the final shape to emerge from the coiling mist, preceded by his boat, a long low vessel of black sheets of metal curled like wasp-paper around the boatman’s bundle of quiet passengers. He is draped with coats and wraps of tin wire, his hands (when you get a glimpse of them) shrunken and pale and bedecked with jewels, his head hidden beneath a matte black gas mask, those great glass bug eyes locked with yours. He drifts to a stop along the shore and beckons you aboard with a practiced, languid gesture.

The boatman grips a long lever, the throttle for the coughing combustion motor that propels his grim conveyance.