The Underworld

Few of the Olympians are as feared by humans as the gloomy and sardonic Hades, the Unseen One. They believe him to be the King of the Underworld, but their primitive worldview misunderstands his true roll: Hades is both archivist and warden for his people.

After the Olympian coup against the titans, they found it necessary to imprison some their defeated foes. They placed the titans outside the Cosmos, in the mindspace or thought-body of the primordial Tartarus; One of their progenitors was to be the titans' new prison. The Olympians built an underground fortress to protect the Tartarean Projector (the only means of entering the prison--or letting anything escape) against attack by any of the titans' allies.

The new rulers of the Cosmos also decided to create a library to commemorate their conquest and the world they ruled. It was placed in the same fortress to be kept safe for future generations. The artifice of Olympians and the titans before them had recorded the history of the Cosmos; they had even recorded the experiences and personalities of selected humans and peserved them. These artificial "spirits" were given realms (created in the archive's network) to inhabit: paradises for the favorites of the Olympians and eternal punishments for those that displeased them. These archived records can be accessed in holographic projection at any time; the archive (the Underworld, to the superstitious Greeks who have glimpsed it) is a place full of ghosts.

The saturnine Hades is content among the collection is his charge. He has a companion, Persephone, a pale and beautiful young woman, friendlier than her lord, but with the same dark interests. Hades is mostly annoyed by humans that blunder into his domain, but Persephone's influence tends to lead him to only frighten them, rather than kill them outright. That mercy doesn't extend to those who are disrespectful or interfere with his servitors.

Hades carriers a bident that appears to be made of a black metal, but is actually a sophisticated technological device made of a polymer. He can shoot a beam from it to destructively scan and record all the information about a target. The bident can download this information at a later time. He also wears a black metallic skullcap on occasion, through which me can neurally access the databanks of the archive.

HADES'S BIDENT: 4ft. long (but capable of collapsing to 2 ft.). Once an hour, as per the Mutant Future power disentigration (up to 300 lbs.), except a total digital record of the target is created.

In the Dharwood

Last summer, I did some picture-based riffing on a setting on Google+. Since only part of that ever appeared on the blog (and without pictures), I thought it might be of interest to my readership here. I did more than these three. If there is interest, I might re-post more. I might even if there's not.

Golden Men of Haoun Dhar: The only inhabitants of the ruins which give the Dharwood its name. The men are seen on occasion amid the tall columns (engraved with demonic faces) performing odd, communal rituals or standing like statues on the central ziggurat for hours on end.  At night they are sometimes glimpsed on the ziggurat’s pinnacle, seeming to make observations of the heavens with unusual instruments. Few dare approach the ruins for fear of the strange men, despite the legends of a fabulous treasure within the ziggurat.

Kro One-Eye : Alcoholic (and possibly consumptive) swordmaster. He lost his left eye either to an insurgent in the Dharwood or to an angry whore, depending on how deep into the cups he his when he gets 'round to the tale. He's a fixture in dives along Wine and Tavern Streets, regaling fellow patrons with daring (and dubious) tales of his youthful adventures, and the occasional demonstration of his skills. For a cup of watered wine he'll give a few pointers on swordmanship. For a bottle of good Kael whiskey, he'll take on a student. For a small cask of vintage Trosian Red, he'll fight at your side--as long as it doesn't take him far from the River District for long.

Mystery cult snake priestess: One of many such agitators in the peasant uprising in the Dharwood.  Nobles have been burned alive in giant wicker statues in heretical rites. Lawlessness and banditry are common throughout the region and travelers should take care.

Queen of Diamonds

Like a jewel on the Rim of known space, the Fortuna system and its casino stations beckon. It’s one of the most glamorous destinations in the Strange Stars: Where else can fortunes be won (or lost) on a roll of the dice in view of a planet made of diamond?

The casinos, bordellos, and other pleasure stations are mostly found at lagrange points in the orbit of the gas giant, Fortuna IV. While the gambling houses are independently owned, they all rely on the keen Minds of the Gaming Comission. This ai collaborative ensures no one cheats and monitors all gambling aspects of casino operation as a service to the owners. No one knows the location of the Comissions’ primary minds, but it’s rumored to be deep within the atmosphere of Fortuna IV.

The most famous of the Fortunan casinos is the Wheel--a station designed to look like an Old Earth roulette wheel. It's rumored to be owned by Alys Eldorose, a famous gambler in her own right. Some say Alys was one of the original colonizers, whose mind sailed out on a lightship at 10% of the speed of light back in the Age of Human Expansion. If so, she would be thousands of years old. Alys is never known to have responded to these rumors, one way or the other.

Alys also owns the diamond planet, Solitaire (Fortuna I). She leases parts of it to mining concerns, but mostly uses it for entertainment and gambling. Bot races take place on the planet’s darkside with feeds for teleoperation and telepresence for the casinos' patrons. It’s rumored Alys may also have a data vault buried deep underground along the terminator, where the heat starts to climb to metal-liquefying temperatures.

The Library

The Library of Atoz-Theln is the largest repository of knowledge in the known galaxy. It contains the noospheric archives of many worlds from the time of the Archaic Oikumene (and sometimes even more remote eras), and significant physical media from cultures both human and nonhuman. Built before the Great Collapse in the interior of a dwarf planet, it now lies within the lawless sector known as the Zuran Expanse. Despite its location, it remains an important center for scholarship.

The library is housed on several underground levels, all climate controlled for the particular media they hold. There are rest areas and tranquil spots to peruse information interspersed throughout, and rooms they were once spartan but serviceable quarters for travelers. Animated wall screens depict famous figures from the mythology and history related to the acquisition and preservation of knowledge from many worlds.

The library’s inhabitants and staff are tall, thin, humanoids with narrow skulls called Atozans. While their ancestors have been in the library since before the Great Collapse, their society experienced a dark age and backslid to savagery. Battles were fought between tribes occupying the popular culture mediascape and exobiology specimen sections. Dynastic histories from that time (meticulously carved into crystalline display screens) suggest there was once a bloody chieftain who rose from the recesses of the human evolution virtual displays.

Eventually, the Atozans clawed their way back to civilization and restored the library as best they could to its previous functioning. There are few of them left--only around 200--but their lives are extended by nanotechnology, and they long ago fabered small-scale cloning facilities. The ancient Library Mind never fully recovered its faculties, but the Atozans have managed to kludge a solution to the elaborate classification system used to organize the library's holdings. This encrypted, ceremonial language is known only to the Atozans and not shared with outsiders.

Sights in the Strange Stars

Few galactic sporting events offer the sheer spectacle of the giant robot combats of Gogmagog. The robots are of unique design (but all humanoid) and tower anywhere from around 10 meters to over 80 in the world’s low gravity. Mostly they stand waiting for some signal—or maybe just the right moment. They may not move for years or even decades. Then abruptly, they sally forth to engage one of their fellows in hand to hand combat.

That’s when the motley bot breaker gangs go into action. They race to the location of the latest match on their dilapidated walkers, their howdah shantytowns rattling with the jarring motion and their frantic preparations. They have to work fast to salvage what they can from the defeated giant before the swarms of von Neumann machines skitter and crawl from their underground lairs to repair the fallen gladiator—and dissemble the bot-breakers’ tools and transport for raw materials. What the bot breakers can get away with they can sell to fringe scientists and inventors trying to duplicate exotic alloys or wealthy collectors looking for an alien objet trouvé.

A more transcendent vista can perhaps be found around Altair, the home system of the winged deva. Ten moon-sized artificial worlds are strewn like jewels around the oblate star, their diamondoid coatings glinting and iridescent in its light.  These are said to be huge brains, or perhaps the separate components of one even larger mind. Some appear damaged,  the result of some ancient war. The deva flit between between them, working to repair the spheres and restore the mind.  They let few visitors enter the spheres themselves, though that may be with good reason. Rumors abound that the damaged psyches of the spheres produce dangerous qlippothic demons from deranged code.

Treasure from the Desert

Deshret is a desert world, terraformed in a previous age, but now slowly sliding back into uninhabitability. Its forbidding red sands would have long ago been abandoned to its hostile indigenes and desert monsters, if it weren't for the treasure buried beneath its shifting dunes.

During the Archaic Oecumene, the desert world was the location of a floating metropolis. The city did a thriving business in the preparation and storage of uploaded mind copies in their secure databanks (referred to as “tombs”) buried beneath the planet’s surface. The Great Collapse lead to the city literally disintegrating to dust under assault by rogue disassembler swarms. The stored data facilities were left unguarded and ripe for tomb-robbers.

Shortly after the incorporation of the Radiant Polity, haphazard thievery on Deshret coalesced into a business supporting a new society. The tall, jade-skinned, ectomorphic Ogüptans controlled the exploitation of the past from their capital, the spaceport Moph. Some are sandminers, sifting the red dust for fragments of code and the rare whole artifact left from the Great Collapse. Others are tomb-robbers, wresting the minds of the long dead to sell into slavery, to toil in the infospheres of today. 

Tomb-robbing isn’t without risk. The data is secure, and getting at it often requires overcoming deadly physical and digital intrusion countermeasures. Perhaps even worse, strife around the Great Collapse or soon after, left the desert full of spirits and devils. Wild nanites haunt the wastes: malicious djinn and  body-thief dybbuks. Then there are the masked desert tribes, murderously resentful of intruders into their sacred places.

Despite these risks, there is no shortage of people willing to brave them for a chance at quick money.

Primordial Ooze

Though the ideas advanced by Hamley are still denounced from pulpits, no scientist doubts the truth  of his transmutation theory.  This is in part due to the rediscovery of that wonder of phylogeny, the waggishly named Demiurge Island.

This island of the near antarctic South Tranquil Sea first entered history in the log of the Trysteran explorer, Caproni. Caproni noted the ring of high cliffs around the large isle but was unable to find a way to the island's interior.  The island was subsequently lost--and remains strangely hard to find to this day.  Still, later explorers have visited it and done what Caproni could not.

The unusual nature of the island is immediately apparent.  It’s home to a fantastically diverse array of wildlife, seemingly from all areas of history from primordial times to the advent of man.  While prehistoric survivors are sometimes found in remote places, seldom is the variety of species as great or the populations so small. This hints at the most startling of the island’s mysteries.

At the center of its great inland lake or lagoon, is a partially collapsed caldera.   On one side there’s a cavern which houses the strangest survivor of the dawn of life ever found. A gelatinous pool or mass resides in that cave.  This rippling and quivering gray protoplasmic thing disgorges half-formed, primitive organisms from its surface--both microscopic and macroscopic. These primordial creatures emerge from the slime and fall into the waters nearby and are swept out into the lake.  There they continue to develop and emerge from the water as the immature forms of any animal.  Few if any of the lifeforms on the island are products of the usual reproductive processes: they all emerge from the primordial ooze.

It is though that this mass of protoplasm might represent a remnant mass of what was once perhaps a fecund sea--and the origin of all life on Earth.  Scientists have at times tried to bring back some of this mass for study: to delve into the origins of life and to seek cures for human disease.  The conspiratorially-minded whisper that they have--and some of these samples have escaped (or worse, have been intentionally released) to spawn oozes, slimes, and malformed monsters.

Night at the Capricorn

When visiting Losantiville in the Steel League, one might want to visit the bar at the opulent Capricorn Hotel. It’s two floors with a central bar and a pianist providing entertainment.

Of course, there are--oddities. Sometimes, magically sensitive individuals get a feeling they’re being watched.  This is particularly acute in the vicinity of the ram’s head relief on the wall between the staircases, behind the piano.  This might bring to mind rumors of cults going back to frontier times. The black goat they served (according to some stories) was either a pagan god of fertility, a capo of the Hell Syndicate--or both.

Other stories suggest the goat wasn't a deity--at least not at first.  Instead, the original black goat was a human sacrifice who insured the communities continued prosperity by receiving the weight of its sins.  Over time, the misplaced guilt of Losantiville became an entity unto itself, a grim spectre of retribution.

If one’s alone, it’s best not to drink too much or linger near closing time. Old gods may weaken, but seldom die.

INFERNO-LAND!

Beneath the wilds east of the domain of the dwarves, there is a series of caves and grottoes, lit crimson and cast in flickering shadow by ever-burning fires. This subterranean realm is know as Hell.

Hell’s most famous entrance (though there are rumored to be many) is located in a lonely ruin near the sea. It’s accessible through a door in the mouth of statue of a giant head. Near the head is a runic legend that resists translation: “D NTE’   NFEFNO-L N !” The head’s leering and horned visage is said to be in the likeness of Hell’s sardonic ruler. He names himself Mephisto (though he has other names) and appears as a Man of ancient times, save for the small horns on his brow and the ever present flicker of flame in his eyes.

Lord Mephisto is not confined to his domain. He tends to appear when people are at their most desperate to offer a bargain. And a contract. Souls are typically his price and stories say that he doesn’t wait until a person’s death to collect them. Unwise bargainers and those who blunder into Hell unaware find themselves in the clutches of Mephisto and his minions: snickering fiends with crimson skins, horns, and often, batwings. Smiling, they escort captives to one grotto or another and enthusiastically apply some torture or torment.

There have been a lucky few to escape Hell’s clutches. Their tales are difficult to comprehend, even considering the strange nature of the place. They speak of a room full of copies of Mephisto in repose upon slabs and glimpses of ancient devices of Man behind the torture tableaux.

Dwarf-Land: The Celestial Empire

Here's another mysterious location in Scott's very cool Dwarf-Land that he's leaving for individual DMs to develop.  Given the information presented in Scott's original document, here's my unofficial take:

The Celestial Empire of the China Men is far from Dwarf-Land proper.  It is said to lie a distance farther than from the earth to the moon--which is not so great a distance in Dwarf-Land as in the world we know, but still very far. Merchant caravans from this far-flung empire follow tortuous trails, passing through desert wastes, dessicated seas, and strange-spired cities, and with them they bring the legend and rumor that has formed the total of dwarvish knowledge of this land.

The China Folk are so named because all wear masks of fine porcelain among outsiders--or perhaps (as some travelers’ tales say) their faces are, in fact, made of living porcelain.  Perhaps lending credence to this claim, the skin of high born persons of the China Folk is exceedingly fair and unblemished, often a perfect match for their masks.

The masks are not precisely mobile, but they do change expression. This always happens suddenly.  At one moment, a China Man’s visage man be a mask of joviality, the next, a mask of irritation--but it remains always a mask.  Their aspects change less frequently than the faces of unadorned men, only marking extreme swings of emotion. Canny traders from Dwarf-Land cultivate keen ears for reading Chinese voices.  

The masks tell something of social class.  Those of the peasantry are often grotesque in countenance, with exaggerated grins, outsized noses, or bushy brows.  Their expressions seem to represent the essential character of the person wearing them.  Peasant masks are often chipped or at the very least spider-webbed with fine fractures.

The masks of the upper class are simpler, perhaps more dignified, in mein.  However, even the most  staid among them is not above painting on some brightly colored decoration or swirling pattern for feasts or appearances at court. Courtiers often wear bemused grins beneath shrewdly narrowed eyes; Courtesans favor tiny, puckering bows of crimson painted on fullest swell of their lips. The nobility often sport well-manicured beards and drooping moustaches.

Those of the upper class would die of shame (perhaps literally--Celestial Emperors have been known to order ritual suicide if their serenity is disturbed by unsightliness) if their masks were chipped or cracked.  The palace of their Emperor is said to be filled with cushions and pillows so that the fine china masks of His August Personage and his most beauteous wives and courtesans are never put at risk of damage.

The only exception to the pristine visages of the aristocracy are among the warrior caste. Some ferocious generals have been known to go to battle with the faces of grinning, horned demons.  A certain feared assassin of the Empire is said to wear a mask with a long and prominent crack running from his eye down his cheek, like a deep and unending river of tears.

Real Dungeon, American Style: Burrows Cave

A man just finishing his lunch on a bluff overlooking a valley in southeastern illinois steps on a flat rock and falls into the entrance of a cave. There he found a crypt with skeletons adorned in bronze, armed with swords, and surrounded by gold. This isn’t any pulp story or movie serial, but the account of one Russell Burrows from 1982. The story is, of course, controversial--but a little controversy is hardly unheard of for a dungeon, American-style.

Anyway, this is what Burrows said he found:

“I saw a full human skeleton reposing on a large block of stone. It scared the hell out of me! Then I began to see other things lying there with those bones. I saw ax heads, spear points, and something else—metal! The skeleton was laid out upon a solid block large enough to hold not only the remains but artifacts as well."

"The artifacts include ax heads of marble and other stone material, an ax head of what appears to be bronze, a short sword of what appears to be bronze, and other artifacts which might be considered personal weapons. There were also a set of three bronze spears, the longest being about six feet long and the shortest about three feet... The skeletal remains bear several fine artifacts such as armbands, headbands and other such items, all off gold. "

Quite a haul--and that was presumably just one of the 13 burial crypts. Burrows claimed to have sold the gold (which is probably a crime). Artifacts that supposedly came from the cave appear to show a mismatch of ancient world cultures and a few things reminiscent of Native American designs (See some of them here). In other words, the sort of things that cynical scholarly types would decry as forgeries. Where’s the fun in that, though?

Burrows Cave would make an interesting locale for a pulp game, but it’s map could be used for any sort of setting.

In Arcadia

Astral travelers sometimes finding themselves passing through a veil of mists and arriving in the apotheosis of sylvan settings, the realm of Arcadia. In this plane dwell forgotten woodland spirits and pastoral gods and creatures out of myth.

Arcadia is hyper-real; it seems more vibrant and alive than the material plane. Smells and tastes seem directly drawn from the most vivid examples in memory; everything is in technicolor and imbued with a faint glow. The world itself is alive--with potentially communicative spirits in everything. Night and day and shifts of weather are sentimental things, sensitive to the meaning of events or the mood of powerful beings.

Arcadia borders other related realms. The Land of Faerie emerges from it (though this realm also has tunnels linking it to the Lower Planes). There is also the Land of Beasts, where the iconic animal lords dwell, ruled over by King Lion.

Despite it’s ties to age-old fables, the Land of Beasts keeps up with the expectations of modern visitors. Adventures from the City have found there home mirrored there in a city of anthropomorphic animals who frequent nightclubs and drive cars. The Cat Lord can often be found here, in the swankest of night-spots.

Magical practitioners view Arcadia and its neighboring realms as places to salvage materials and items out of myth and legend, and to parley with powers that--though perhaps consciously forgotten--still retain great mythic resonance in Man's unconscious.  As with all extraplanar dealings, caution is warranted: These primal beings have agendas of their own.

Mushrooms, Pigs, and Cold Light

The thaumaturgic forces unleashed by the Great War have left much of Ealderde strange. For an example of just how weird this transformation can be, one need look no farther than Lumière,the former capital of Neustrie and the Gallian Alliance. Once Lumière’s lights were emblematic of a city that never slept, a place of art and culture. Today, Lumière is a bombed out ruin, and the amber luminescence that crawls or flows through its streets and buildings is something of another world.

The thing is alive; almost everyone agrees on that, but little they agree on little else. Is it matter? Some gelatinous substance similar to the strange denizens of the underground? Or is it pure energy, somehow thickened and held? If it’s the latter, it’s light with no heat.

In the day, it seems to hide in the skeletons of buildings, perhaps fearing the sun. At night it pours forth and spreads out over whole blocks. Rats and vermin flee it. Living things it touches develop strange tumors or growths. When it first rose, victims caught in its path were left rooted to the spot, transformed into masses of cancer.

The glowing touch of the thing seems to have created at least one mutant species. The wild swine that moved into the city to root and scavenge after the devastation of the war have been changed. They've grown large, and bloated and pale as grubs, with eyes that glow with a paler yellow that the thing. Though they can’t speak, they seem to have evolved an evil intelligence. They roam the streets in herds, seeming to take pleasure in spoiling what remains of the works of man, and looking (though they're hardly picky eaters) for their primary form of sustenance: fungal spores.

The Mushrooms, the swines' unrelenting foes, resent their progency being consumed by the swine with a displeasure that's more cold practicality than horror. These fungal sapients likely lived beneath the city even in previous times (certain legends hint at their presence) but when the humans fled they saw an opportunity. From their inhuman alchemical laboratories they create structures from fungal stock and weaponize molds to strike at the swine and keep humans away.

Looters and treasure seekers make forays into the ruin of Lumière, but it's a dangerous undertaking. Even if the poured-honey creeping of the luminescent thing can be avoided, there are the packs of hungry swine to be outwitted, and the silent and dispassionate Mushroom scientists to be dealt with.

Stories from the South Seas

The South Seas is a vaguely defined area of the Tranquil Ocean extending from Pyronesia east and north to unnumbered islands extending south from Southeast Eura and south to the mysterious south polar continent of Australis. The area is a crossroads of trade and a meeting place of exotic cultures that has captured the popular culture imagination of people in the City.

Many of of the islands in the South Seas are inhabited by people called loosely grouped as Oceanians who are believed to be the descendants of ancient Mu. Though this continent long ago disappeared beneath the waves, mysterious ruins attributed to it are sometimes found on isolated isles.

Most Oceanians are friendly--but not all. There are still rumors of strange rites and even cannibalism. Exaggerated sailors’ tales, perhaps.

There are dangers other than humans in the South Seas. Utilizing primitive smoke-belching steamships, the Demon Islanders have claimed a territory in the wake of the Great War. Here it’s hoped they can be contained, but they remain a menace to the region. Also, the Crab-men, ancestral enemies of the Oceanians, still attack settlements and even unwary ships.

Manuscript found in Airship Wreckage, 5877

The journal of geologist Farnsworth Lake, found in the wreckage of the airship Orvendel, is the only hint we have of the fate of the Altamont Arctic Expedition of 5876. Despite it’s undisputed authenticity, the veracity of its account is controversial.
Throughout much of the early voyage, Lake describes the view of the world below as obscured by thick mists. Temperature readings of the rising air are notably higher than typical for northern Borea. Proponents of the “Polar Homeland” theory have suggested this was due to the volcano-surrounded island which was home to the ancestors of the Natives of the New World. Skeptics accept the possibility of volcanoes, but dismiss the idea of lost tribes. No credible land or sea expedition has been able to approach the area thanks to malevolent ice elementals and death frost winds.

When they had flown north of the mists, Lake describes the mountain-ringed Polar Continent, quartered by sea channels. Here, the airship made landfall and managed to make contact with the obsidian-skinned dwarf people who inhabit the ancient, perhaps pre-human cities built into the sides of the mountains. Previous expeditions had painted the dwarves as savages (and possibly) cannibals, but Lake suggests the gifts of gems the expedition brought may have placated them. Lake records that the dwarves recipricated by giving Altamont's group a portion of the tusk of a giant walrus and ancient sculptures (perhaps idols) recovered from the cities. The fact that none of these artifacts were found in the wreckage is made much of by the manuscript's critics.

Soon after leaving the dwarves, Lake records that the radio operator sighted a party of “beautiful but strange-appearing” women. These women were described as having skin like porcelain and being utterly unaffected by the cold. Historic accounts report “amazons” on the Polar Continent, but no other expeditions have ever recorded a sighting.

Altamont had planned to turn back at the edge of the maelstrom at the center of the “ring” of the Polar Continent, but for some reason, the Orendel strayed closer to the imposing spire of the Black Peak. Lake records that they begin to drift in the wind, their propellers pulled off by the mountain's magnetism. Blue fire was seen dancing across the hull. Lake theorized this was the anti-magic field of the Peak interacting with the alchemical coatings.

It was in the second day adrift that Lake describes the moaning sound beginning. All the crew heard it, though it was louder for some than others. At first, they thought it might be a natural phenomena, but soon they discerned that it was more like a chorus of voices. Their sleep was disrupted by the sound. Lake confesses he has a mounting sense of dread as the Bleak Peak filled the horizon in front of them. He reports seening shapes moving beneath the at times almost mirror-smooth surface of the mountain.

At this point Lake’s account becomes more terse and (perhaps) more confused. He mentions two of the crewmen as being “gone” but he does not comment on the particulars of their absence. He records entries he dates earlier than previous entries, but that clearly occur after. He relates Grandon’s (the historian) obsession with “runes” on the Peak that Lake cannot see. Finally, he writes that Altamont plans to extend sails to try to catch the wind and and turn southward.

The Orendel's wreckage was recovered 10 months later from an ice flow. No bodies of the crew were found, but as all the supplies were left aboard, it seems unlikely they abandoned the craft purposely. No further evidence of their fate has ever been found.

The greatest barrier to the acceptance of the manuscript's account is reconciling it with the last radio communication received from the expedition.  Though the journal appears to be written in Lake's own hand, Altamont reported that Lake died during the encounter with the polar dwarves, nearly two weeks before the journal's last entry.

Mystery House

It's most often found at the end of a stretch of dirt road, be it along a lonely bayou in the South, perched precariously on a ridge in the Smaragdines, or rising like a mirage out of the hardpan in the West. Those that seek it seldom find it without magic, but the lost are somehow drawn to it. However visitors arrive, few can forget the sprawling mansion known as the Mystery House.

One story says that Hulysses Mulciber, heir to the Mulciber Repeating Arms Company, was troubled by nightmares of a gaunt gunslinger riding ahead of an army of the ghosts of those who had died due to his family’s rifles. A medium told him that he should build a house designed to confuse and confound the spirits to escape the wrath of the Spectre of the Gun (as she named the gunslinger) and his vengeful army. Another story (more prosaically) holds he began the house as an elaborate gift to his wife who was angry over his philandering. Whatever the reason for its construction, records agree that building originally began in the Smaragdines.

The house even as conceived twisted and turned back on itself--it was almost a maze--and that was before it gained a life of its own. Hulysses didn’t live to see it; he died of blood poisoning following an accidental shooting in a hunting accident. The weapon that did the deed was, of course, one of his own company’s. His wife Ansonia, fervent believer in the reality of the grim Spectre, completed the project and paid numerous thaumaturgists (real and otherwise) to lay all sorts of protections on the house. And construction continued.

Whatever protection conferred to the house didn’t extend to Ansonia. She died of thirst, having gone mad and gotten lost in her own house. It was shortly after her death that the house disappeared from its original lot.

There are some stories of treasures in the house--mostly the mundane riches of the Mulcibers--but most who seek it do so out of curiosity. Most who find it, though, didn’t mean to. Those that have been there and survived report doors to nowhere, hallways that turn back on themselves, and rooms that shift. The stale air is filled with the low, arthritic creaks and groans of the house twisting and rearranging itself, and the distant sound of heavy footsteps--and jangling spurs.

One Night in Thrangbek

(Transcript of the Exotic Ports O’Call travelogue newsreel on the city of Thrangbek):

Bustling and cosmopolitan Thrangbek is the exotic jewel of the Gulf of Khayam. This city of approximately one million is a city of canals: It’s so crisscrossed by waterways that many of it’s citizens choose to live on houseboats. As the capital of the Kingdom of Khayam, home to majestic temples, and a center of trade, Thrangbek gets its share of visitors. Once a year, though, it plays host to an unusual convention. Players, gamblers, and spectators descend on the city in the hopes of winning the prize of enlightenment.

Despite all the magnificent temples dedicated to long-lobed, smiling Bo, the real religion of Thrangbek seems to be shatrang. To call shatrang “chess-like” is to only scratch the surface of this game whose rules are modified by a dizzying array of conditions including the position of the planets and stars, and whose pieces are infused with thaumaturgy. Shatrang players beginning training in childhood and those that can’t memorize its rules nor master the psychic control of it’s willful pieces often wind up beggars along the canals, their minds broken.

It has been theorized by Western thaumatologists that shatrang's complicated rules are actually the formulae of series of spells, disguised.  Shatrang player-adepts are said to absorb psychic energy from their opponents when they defeat them--games are popularly thought to take place not just on the Material Plane, but the Astral, as well.  This accumulation of energy allows players to advance to the next level. Their ultimate goal is the achieve the highest rank possible--a title translated as “Grand Master of Flowers.”

The final match for the ultimate title occurs away from the public. At the endgame, a portal is said to open to a higher plane, and the winner steps through to greet the other Immortals of shatrang and gain the prize of heavenly knowledge and vistas beyond the mortal realm.

As far as Exotic Ports O'Call can determine, no Grand Master has ever returned to let anyone else in on any of those secrets of the universe.

The Walls of Graveston Prison

“Abandon All Hope” reads the blood red graffiti some wag has managed to scrawl on the stone cliff beside the docks. It may well be the first thing most prisoners see when emerging from the department of correction’s ferry at Graveston, the Union’s most notorious maximum security prison.

Graveston looks like a Medieval fortress and seems to rise from a rocky isle in San Tiburon Bay as if it grew from it. Popular stories suggest that sea devils once held pagan rituals on the island before the Natives were finally able to drive the humanoids. Current thaumatological theory considers this unlikely, because of the island's unusual properties: The stone which forms it generates an anti-magic zone that leeches the power from any spell.

This property made the island an ideal spot for a prison to hold thaumaturgists. Though modern Graveston holds dangerous men of all sorts, its lowest levels hold criminal mages and magical entities. Hell Syndicate hitman Charley Rictus and the murderous ventriloquist’s dummy Otto were held here at one time alongside a host of thaumaturgic wrongdoers. All of them are rendered powerless (supposedly) by the island’s stone.

There is some evidence that the current theories island's anti-magic nature are incomplete. Belief has power here, which is why the warden and guards work hard to break the spirits of the inmates. No god or spirit-form can be more powerful than their authority within Graveston’s stone walls. Some have suggested this has had the effect of allowing seepage of the Black Prison into the Material plane--which may have long term consequences.

Also, magically enhanced shivs and shanks are sometimes found among the population. Beyond the power of petty spirits and eikones yet unbroken by the screws’ clubs, life itself carries a thaumaturgic charge. And when that life is wasted in spilled blood, the blood does, too. Blood sacrifices (of their own, or better yet, others) grant prisoners power, but some of this blood power is always lost to the floor, to the walls. What might the stones do with all that power, one might wonder?

McDungeonland

In the proud tradition of the EX series of modules, consider this isolated valley (or maybe a demi-plane) inhabited by strange creatures--some of them with foodstuffs for heads...

Stranglely, despite being part foodstuff themselves, the inhabitants cheerfully consume the talking food that exists ready-made in their environment: There are patches of cheerful "hamburgers," trees that grow apple pies, a lake teeming with breaded and fried fish, and even a small volcano which oozes a frozen chocolate beverage.

The strange land is not without its dangers.  There are small, bespectacled goblins ("gobblins"), shaggy and colorful, who will steal food from the unaware.  A humanoid of piratical dress and demeanor wll menace those who take the fried fish from the lake.  A masked humanoid thief in cloak and stripped outfit likewise steals food, but he favors beef.  Finally, there is a purple blob-like creature that can manifest two or four arms, who is sometimes benign, but other times may attack to steal the "shakes" which emerge from the volcano.  The creature may be some sort of "shake" elemental, himself.

Though not in a overt position of leadership, the secret ruler of the land is a clown in motley with a friendly demeanor--but perhaps less friendly goals.

Which Way to the O.K. Corral?

Over Thanksgiving I found a street map of Tombstone, Arizona, I got on a visit several years ago.  I had the thought of scanning it, but its too large for my scanner.  I did find this decent stand-in online and a map of Old West Deadwood as well.  Next time a black hat in a Wild West game tells a PC "this town ain't big enough for the both of us" these ought to be helpful in determining the veracity of that statement.  They might have a use in other settings, as well.

Tombstone was a silver mining town, though it is, of course, most famous as the site of the O.K. Corral where the gunfight took place in 1881.  Much of historic Tombstone remains to this day, though wikipedia notes the National Park Service as taken the town to task for having a lax approach to historic preservation.

Deadwood, South Dakota, also trades on its historic past.  That and gambling seem to be the town's primary sources of revenue.  Thanks to several fires over the decades, less of Old West Deadwood remains than of Tombstone.  The graves of Wild Bill Hickok, "Calamity" Jane, and Seth Bullock can still be found in the cemetery on Mt. Moriah, however.

Tombstone:

Deadwood: