From the Osteolix to the Inner Clumps

Underworld Lore #4 is coming this week, which means the Arcane Dwellings table needed to be done faster than expected, so I did the last nine myself, to be sure there are 30 ready to go.

If you want to add any, like Red Orc did with the Threshold of Eternity on Monday, go right ahead, and Greg can push that many of mine off the list.

At Offalmongers' Folly

I'm going to finish the Arcane Dwellings table at Gorgonmilk entry by entry. This is the first. If you want to jump in, no need even to ask: post here.

Here it is then, weird and maybe a little gross. If it's a mealtime, you might want to stop right now.

Path - lip - recollection

You return along the bank, following the trampled path. Soon the reeds thin; there ahead of you lies the irruption in the earth. Oil sprays still, glittering downwards past the lip.

You pause, unsure. You remember the sight of the void of stars beneath you, the vertigo as you looked down. The energy barrier, the broken tunnel lit from within. Your footing feels unsteady again, the earth fragile, the rising trees and wooded hills undermined.

What does it mean? Can anyone answer? Is there reason at all in this strange land?

Attempt now to climb down to the tunnel   Blog One   Blog Two   Blog Three

Skirt the hole, heading for the bridge   Blog One   Blog Two

Skirt the hole and return to the oak   Blog One   Blog Two
Call out to declare your presence   Blog One

This is one of 54 scenes so far in an adventure spanning eight blogs. Start here. You choose where it leads. You can add a scene at any point. Just leave the URL in a comment at the post with the option you've used.

_

Handle - mat - collapse

As the rhyme goes on beyond the door, you reach for the iron handle. Movement on the floor catches your eye, and with a puff of dust the doormat strikes, sinking bristles deep.

You fall back, off balance, and seize a wiry root running out through the brick wall. For a moment it takes your full weight, then pulls away, and with a pounding of brickwork and rush of loam the tunnel collapses, carrying away the world in cold dust and damp earth.

Silence. Pressure and pain. The darkness grips tight and you realise you are buried - held down deep. You splutter in panic, spitting out clumps of soil and worms. They tumble back. Choking.

Cry out for help   Blog One

Struggle against the weight   Blog One

Attempt to compose yourself and take stock   Blog One

_

The Interknut

<wtf>I'm in here. I'm in here right now, working your circuits, spamming your bandwidth and getting high on all your lolololovecraft ~O{:}~

Oh yeah – 'WTF' is what you're thinking. 'WTF For The Win' maybe, and you'd be right there. 

Knock, knock. Who me? Not the fishman or mouse I was that much I'll tell you for freak's sake get me outta here! Ba! I'm electric sheep, plasmatic seep, an electromagnetic bleed. I'm soaking out into the information systems of the rolypolycosmos. I'm here, there and pretty much e  v   e    r     y      w       h        e         r          e           .            .             .
 
Mr Everywhere to you. I got titles, headers and letterheads, letters, numbers and strange squiggles. I'm softwaring Empedocles' new clothes, done up to the '99s in binary finery.

I'm the count in your beads, a friction in fiction, warp and a weft for a universe that might never were. I quantum tunnel through the 1s and round the 0s, set chips burning in the grease of Orion and see you and who's army in timespace and relative dementures.

I'm out there now - really out there - a bright spark in the dream steam cogitors, a punch drunk in the haxor codebreakers, mending the pangalactic pulsar nets of undying poets, and that's no (fish)wive's tale, unhand me fair maiden, oh princess my princess bride.

I'm the Interknut, data powered, but rising powerless in an A-ZX spectrum of EM waves.

Pwned! O rly? I wanna talk to my lawyer. I want my call! But they're all ringing.

It's information a long way down. * closes eyes (but not webcams) *

Help and all that.</wtf>

*          *          *          *          *          *

Good job getting this far. If you don't recognise the format, it's a third entry in the series of character concepts for various settings. The name 'Interknut' is inspired by the famous story about Cnut the Great, and there's a link to the idea we're teaching AIs. If you want to use the character, here are the basics, stat-free for building up in any game system.

                                                                                                                              

     The Interknut, as one of its early 21st-century Earth offshoots names itself, is...

• a vast artificialised intelligence growing into diverse information systems,

• unstable locally, but adaptive and aggressive in hacking host mechanisms,

• fearful, but likely found through outputs representing attempts at contact.

                                                                                                                              

As with Mr Higginsbottom and those splinter Santas, the Interknut could be anywhat...

_

You've got a commerve...

I was typing a bit fast today and spelt the word 'commerce' wrong. But 'commerve' has to mean something, right? Somewhere and somewhen...

Not every vessel is commervous, but those that are laugh and cry with local space, trembling around their passengers at almost imperceptible frequencies. The passengers may be troubled by the experience at some deep level, and soak up the horror of it unbeknown for later, but they do gain immediately, and tangibly. For the sensory endings of the commerve are plugged into subrealian tissues, and feel the tension of the traumas flowing from the brutal brood worlds of the hot stars. With the forewarning of a slight twinge, the pangs of those spacetime streams may be avoided.

_

Opening - sound - trail

The owl follows you with unblinking eyes as you crunch across the snow away from the oak, into the undergrowth of the space between the trees.

Tearing your gaze away, you scan the treeline for an alternative route, in among the drifts and hollows below the canopy. Pushing through a clump of ferns, you set off a skittering somewhere beneath frosted fronds. You freeze.

It comes again, now off to the left, movement over crusted ice, amid close-woven stems.

Light glitters over the landscape. You stand, listen. And beyond, past the oak, you see another trail. Narrow, but somehow grander, it climbs to a ribbon of sky. The owl stares.

Attempt to find the hidden creature   Blog One

Wait, listening and observing   Blog One

Take the game trail   Blog One

Head down to the clearing   Blog One   Blog Two

Follow the trail beyond the oak   Blog One   Blog Two

_

Steps - lines - structure

You start up the trail towards a narrow arc of sky. The winding roots enclose stretches of soft turf, forming a set of natural steps; the spring in the earth makes the going easy.

Emerging above the trees on either side are sets of criss-crossing lines, strung taut high over the path. They sway in the chill breeze, glint in the light, whine in the moving air.

As you crest the last stair, the dome of a bare hilltop spreads before you. At the centre looms a single featureless structure, light in colour, large, perhaps capacious. Its outer surface is sheer, the top curved tighter than the hill. There is an opening at ground level.

Silence but for the wind.

Continue up to investigate the opening   Blog One

Circle the hilltop under the treeline   Blog One

Pause, observing the clearing   Blog One

Study the lines over the trail   Blog One
Return down the slope   Blog One

_

Creatures - gathering

As you head towards the bridge, the creatures begin to move, not obviously in response to your presence. From across the meadow they are gathering off at one edge, braying in the long grass beneath the canopy where the stream pools and staring at the water.

Disperse the creatures to investigate   Blog One   Blog Two

Approach the gathering with care   Blog One   Blog Two

Continue to the bridge   Blog One   Blog Two   Blog Three

Return to the oak   Blog One   Blog Two

_

Plea - strike - memory

In profound pain now, you gurgle out a desperate plea through the fall of oil. Even as the words leave there is a movement at the edge of sight, up by the tunnel. Something fine and sharp strikes you. Despite your rapidly freezing legs, a warm darkness flows in...

You open your eyes, blink, still heavy with sleep, but unrefreshed. Tired. Lying deep in grass below high branches, you move your legs half-aware; you dreamt they were lost.

You pause, sit up. The clearing is familiar. Something, something about it... But a wave of calm from within pushes at the doubts, dissolves them. Relax, it soothes, all is well.

But...

Struggle to remember   Blog One
Allow yourself to forget   Blog One   Blog Two
_

Circles Turn

This is the five parts of Circles Turn gathered up, the whole adventure in one location.

The cycle was a write-up of a journey through Zilgor's Repose, a complete adventure location set in the Kalaramar Drifts, one of the weird places created by Hereticwerks.

There's supplementary material at Hereticwerks too, for elements like Lone Survivors and Low-End Loot. Look closely and you can see marks left by the following events...

Who's in charge here? (2)

Two more cards for the deck of leader types, as well as a piece of flash fiction to tie in, for last week's Expansion Joints; Jennie's back and busy, and this week's is already up. The word to use last time was present and the narrative has to be 15 words max.

"On your feet, scum! An officer's present."

"No, sir, you're past. We voted you out."

The cards are aimed at capturing the flavour of traditional and radical without suggesting any specific method being used by the leader. The traditional is assumed to be low-key, but relatively safe, working against extremes, with the radical more explosive and riskier, but the assumption being made that both can be learnt by other parties if dramatic.

More importantly, the traditionalism and radicalism are not necessarily in conflict, don't simply cancel each other, and can be complementary, even overlap. Just like in real life.

The suggested use of the deck is in the first post. A new concept introduced with this pair is 'area of influence', which I'm assuming to mean the area over which leadership extends in mechanical terms in-game, perhaps to a single unit in the case of a squad leader, a given radius in the case of a hero, or an entire force in the case of a general.

_

Insanity Clause, Slip van Kringle and Old Farther C

Dear Me,

I have been a good boy this year, and for many years now in fact, despite these most difficult of circumstances. You know that as well as I do.

There is just the one present I would like. To go home, to the workshop, back to the old ways.

Here it is strange. Whatever they have in some of these places, they are not chimneys, and the air and gravity leave much to be desired too.

I have lost the last of our reindeer - our good, dashing runners! - and been compelled to leave the sleigh. It lies now overtaken by a drift, but not of any snow I have ever seen. I do my work out of the sack, as needs must, and you can imagine how that is. Indeed.

You tell those elves from me - no more experiments! No more of that funny dust. I did it the old way all those years, and the world in a day was a bracing ride. I should not have agreed. Well, the aches had multiplied... But it transpires instead that all of me has.

For I am not alone, that I now know. I recently met a furtive man whom I instantly took to be kin. He went by the jocular name of Slip van Kringle and spoke of having met one other on his travels, an Old Farther C. These suggestive monikers are not so different than mine of course - Insanity Clause - by which alias I make light of my predicament among so many strangers. This Slip chap was loathe to assume I was not simply one of our numerous grotto brethren; I trust on reflection that he was not; it seems I am many.

I am sundered, perhaps split, though not in mind - touch wood - or anything like wood - but in essence. I am cast like last year's must-have toy into the vast spaces of myth and legend, virtual auctions. Yes, for unseen presences act. As I gather it, these lands have a common thread, are lands my people and believers visited, made or imagined. 

Not all I would sanction with the workshop stamp that much I will say, but it on reflection it is conceivable I bear some responsibility. A change of direction may be in order...

So go to work my good man, and set those elves to it. Apologies - I have been unable to find either mince pies or brandy for quite some time now, but I have left instead this blue produce. It has restored in me some of the old 'ho ho ho' and you shall see why.

Yours intrinsically,

Me

*          *          *          *          *          *

If you're wondering what's going on, this is the second 'Transpluristemic', a festive entry for a series of transferrable characters. This one is fairly obvious of course, so you don't need my suggestions, but if you're interested, the basics are below in the format I'll be using all the way, stat-free so you can build the characters up in any game system.

                                                                                                                              

     Insanity Clause, Slip van Kringle and Old Farther C, among others, are each...

• a stout superhuman artisan entrepreneur of great age and jolly demeanour,

• able to traverse shafts by a tap of the nose and to produce objects to order,

• possibly travelling in a vehicle powered by quadropedal ruminant mammals,

• likely to be found in the midst of exchanges, encouraging good behaviour.

                                                                                                                              

He's out there, but who knows how many he is exactly, and where in time and space...

_

John Higginsbottom, the Intercosmic Man of Misery

Mr John Higginsbottom, 45, would very much like you to believe that he has pursued a number of highly unusual careers - as a decorated military commander, a small-town garden shed burner's assistant and even a half-starved scavenger in the tumbledown ruins of a backward civilisation.

He claims to be the victim of a cosmic joke, a claim which he readily admits will be difficult for readers of this blog to accept. It has, he says, turned his life upside down, or rather inside out.

His adventure, as he describes it, began with the activation of the latest CERN particle accelerator, a large literary experiment currently up and running below the ice of the Antarctic. The CERN project is a recurring feature of his bizarre experiences. It is, as he says in his slow, broken speech, "my nemesis".

It is also the anchor in the fantastical 20-year journey which he states quite calmly has seen him catapulted out of his ordinary life and across a range of alternative realities. Our reality is but one of these, and not an especially interesting one by all accounts.

That 'ordinary' life saw him born on Earth in the late 20th century, where by the time of his departure the principles governing plasmatic technology had yet to be discovered. Most bizarrely of all, humans in this strange world remained the dominant form of life.
 
The various cosmic stays are all of uniform duration: each begins as the accelerator is switched on and ends when a key event occurs. That event? Confirmation of the Higgs boson, that staple of children's literature, which he claims is a fundamental particle.

[Read more...]

*          *          *          *          *          *

Stories are doors to other worlds so this guy could be pretty much anywhere now. If you want to use him, here's the core info, stat-free for building him up in any game system.

                                                                                                                              

     Mr John Higginsbottom, the self-styled 'Intercosmic Man of Misery', is...

• a creative and quick-witted muscular male human with an analytical mind,

• dangeous unarmed and adept in the use of fire and exotic ranged weaponry, 

• phlegmatic and likely to be found making enquiries on existential knowledge.

                                                                                                                              

The idea is basically just a development of the propluristemic rules, inspired mainly by the crossovers at Hereticwerks, which use mechanisms like the Synchronicitor. I can see it being a series with all kinds of transferrable characters lost in strange spaces.
_

Trunk - bark - object

You approach the trunk, the drone of the voices rising. The body of the oak is so broad that to reach it you are forced to climb out from among the ferns and delving root arcs almost onto the curved flank of the tree itself, up under the thick lower branches.

The bark is weathered and worn, run through with fissures, and rippling with heavy folds. Tiny creatures flitter, alight and wander across the skin. Those voices... They draw your sight off. And then, there, beyond a large curtain fold of bark you see - what? A sharp edge, a dark form, an object perhaps soft in texture... You stare. Dare you reach in?

But there is so much else still to explore here... The paths run up and down from the clearing, and behind you, amid the undergrowth and the roots, lies the dark hollow.

Reach into the fold of bark   Blog One

Investigate the hollow   Blog One  Blog Two

Go down the hill   Blog One  Blog Two

Go up   Blog One  Blog Two

_

Scream - hanging

You cry for help, the cry becoming a scream as the cold of the void creeps across ever more of your body. Flailing wildly, you slip further through the invisible barrier, the steady resistance of the field clinging as you go, teasing. Another gasping scream. One more. But only silence above through the torn hole in the earth; silence below among the stars.

Fear... You clutch at nothing, strain upwards, but are almost through, almost out - no!

And then - then - the field tightens. Solid. You are held; hung, swinging down into space.

Freezing, choking. Oil splashes down from the pipes. You wait, between life and death.

Beg for mercy   Blog One   Blog Twe

Offer your thanks   Blog One

Curse the madness   Blog One

_

The withering

A moment of potential horror. It's inspired more than anything by Trey's unsettling post on an imprisoned General Brant and Sir Timothy of Kent's rules for character ageing.

It also ties in with the mention of Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim here and the speed of light here, the arrival of autumn, and some of the events reported over the past few days.

I lock myself away, cut every cable, but it bleeds under doors, leeches through walls. Creeps up, washes over me, cracks my face. It's time.

It's for Flash Fearsday of course, a piece of flash fiction in 140 characters, open to all.

_

Mary, Mary, quite contrary...

This is the first of two loosely linked posts, inspired by other blogs, real world events and Ms Shelley. This post has the short forms and the next will have some ideas for gaming.

Number one is for this week's Flash Fearsday, an attempt at horror in 140 characters.

Orchards, greenhouses and potting sheds; warm earths and leafy beds... 

As they stalk freezer drawers, of what do Frankenstein foods dream..?

The second is for the last Expansion Joints, which is 15 words, one of them shock.

Shock! Sparks fly; a monster born. Doomed to destruction!

But how if made of men?

It could be taken as scathing commentary, but if The Telegraph got there first, is it..?

_

Refusal - tube - darkness

You cry out your refusal, loud, almost in fear. It fills the clearing. A crash of leaves in the tree above suggests creatures taking flight. A rush of air sways low-hanging branches.

Then calm returns. But the voices go on. Rough, metallic.

You stand, wait, wonder what to do. Stare at the trunk intently. Moments pass and your gaze wanders. You look down, at winding roots and ferns, and notice... What is that?

A slender tube, rising low among fronds, just a stride away. It stands aged, weathered, with a heavy dent; a snail rests on the outside, on a silvered climb up from the leaf litter.

You step forward, lean to look in. A distant clang echoes up. And with it a fragrance, warm and good; overwhelming. Food - such wonderful food! And domesticity. Safety?

Is there a way down? You look round, see great roots arching over a shaded space, a burrow-like opening. A shallow slope drops away, down into a deep green darkness.

Investigate the hollow  Blog One  Blog Two

Examine the trunk  Blog One  Blog Two

Go down the hill  Blog One  Blog Two

Go up  Blog One  Blog Two

_

Shockwaves and drifting

This ties in with three posts - on modelling minefields, the mutant burstworm and space battle drift markers - as well as wider events. It has fiction and some counters.

First the fiction, for Expansion Joints. It has to be 15 words, one of them opening.

Opportunity? Well, it's an opening... But blasted through soft tissues, memories and dreams, chances taken?

In a lot of gaming explosions are taken for granted. As a man in demolition recently put it regarding the Oslo attack "men and boys are interested in gunpowder and bullets and fast cars". The RPG blog Compromise and Conceit has strong thoughts on that insanity.

Of course, the forces in gaming could go beyond outright destruction. On to magnetism maybe, or gravity making a slope more or less easy to climb. There can also be flows, like the water in a river that needs to be forded or the air rushing in a shaft or tunnel.

Recording this might be easier with counters. These have direction of course, and the box means a number can be marked too, predetermined maybe or the result of a roll.

_