The City at the Center, Reprise

Anton Furst

"I live now, only with strangers

I talk to only strangers

I walk with angels that have no place"

- Bruce Springsteen

It is the living (and dying and living again) embodiment of Reality 2.0. A ring and a promise. The strange loop that sustains itself and possibly the entire multiverse. Born out of the last war and the first cause (second iteration), it has no history and is nothing but history.

Its sights. Horizonless urban landscape, sprawling vertiginously upward in two directions to loom overhead, darkened narrow, cobblestone alleys feeding into modern thoroughfares awash in neon, lined with deco skyscrapers and gleaming glass spires, rooftop slums perched on skeletal high-rises, ramshackle mobile markets, the rusted out carapace of dead factories, dutch-angled slabs of never-finished freeway tagged in occult scripts, geodesic domes housing lush gardens, gargoyles that sometimes take flight, the sky gray with spasms of occasional pixelation, a sparking blue-white point instead of a proper sun.

Its sounds. The rattling rumble of an elevated train, the high-pitched invective of angry fairies, the beat drifting from open nightclub doors, the patter of street dealers, the nervous shifting of strange animals and the groan of heavy-laden carts, the growl of engines, the squeak and hiss of arthritic pneumatic joints, the distant crackles and pops of spells met with gunfire, the wail of sirens.

Its smells. Fast food thick with alien spices, stale alcohol and sweat, a hint of ozone, a stray whiff of expensive perfume, burning oil, cigarettes.

(sensory-based format borrowed from Jack Shear)

Zarthoonian City-States

After the z-bombs dropped in the Great War, civilization on the planet Zarthoon was cast into ruin. Only the small continent of Azot, not the home of any of the super-power blocs, had any cities left intact. These became the city-states of the modern era.

Azmaron
The only domed city-state, Azmaron is ruled by triune Zodaracy*. All Azmaronians encountered outside their city are women, indeed no men have every been seen within the city itself by visitors, though the Azmaronians tightly restrict the movement of foreigners. There are persistent rumors that the Azmaronians retain a functional doomsday device of former age, but Azmaron is silent on this point. They do possess greater technological knowledge than their neighbors.

Ptaarna
Ptaarna is a city of tall spires built atop a large mesa in the midst of Azot's central desert. The city is only accessible from the air. The city maintains an impressive fleet of fliers, though mostly they are smaller in size. It's pilots are known as daredevils. The city sponsors a race every year through the desert, and it's pilot's typically take home the Uldran Prize. Ptaarna's sky gardens are considered one of the modern wonders of Zarthoom, but they are not merely decorative. Many rare medicinals derived from their bounty.

Zinjaro
The people of Zinjaro enjoy a life of leisure to a degree not afforded other city-states. This is the happy result of still-functional food and manufacturing automation in the ruins beneath the city. The Zinjaro work in service or entertainment occupations, and the city is very hospitable to visitors, at least in part because they hire from among these visitors to fill their armed forces and some administrated functions. Their zodak (largely a ceremonial post) is even of foreign derivation.

All is not idyllic in Zinjaro, however. It's people are something stricken by a fits of violent madness known as plak omok. This is at least somewhat contagious among the Zinjar, and so one case emerging can lead to widespread outbreak of mayhem. Visitors should beware.

*Zodak/Zodara: the Zarthoonian word for ruler.

Weird Revisited: INFERNO-LAND!

This post first appeared in 2012 and was written for a Bakshian post-apocalyptic setting. it could be used in any number of post-apoc settings, though...

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.

Two Towns

These settlements go in this world, but certainly could be placed elsewhere.

Tuskinth: A village whose primary industry is nonnig husbandry. it specializes in the so-called healing breed of furry nonnig, whose purring and warmth is said to have a calming influence on the nerves which aids in healing, and of course, nonnig of any breed are highly nutritious and flavorful. The nonnig yards are composed of hill-mounds surrounded by small moats (the nonnigs avoid water). The nonnig breeders can be recognized by the mail gauntlets they wear on their left hands, to protect themselves from the sting of the mound wyrms that form a symbiotic relationship with the nonnigs and protect them from predation with the warrens. Some nonnig breeders may keep small mounds of scintilla-sniffers on the side, but the practical folk of Tuskinth look down upon treasure-seekers.

Harfo and Sons is the most prosperous of the breeders, though many in Tuskinth would opine that only the old man, Grenz Harfo has any particular head for nonnig-breeding. His eldest son, Halx, is a handsome dullard, and his youngest. Festeu, is a idler and wastrel. Of note, he does own a rare (outside of the Daor Obdurate) telesthetic hound. The poor beast is quite mad, made so by an over-sensitivity to human anxieties resulting from over-breeding. Its shrew-like snout is has a-quiver and dripping, and it's whip-like tail sways nervously.

Horbizond: Was the name of an ancient city, and also the current modest village that squats in a meager portion of it. The people of Horbizond dress in the decaying finery of the ancients and appoint their over-sized but crumbling homes in an equally ostentatious fashion. They live in holy dread of the Prismatic Man, an angular, crystalline visitant, who materializes at random intervals to isolated folk of the town. The actions of the Prismatic Man are various and strange. He has at times pointed with a glassy finger to hidden treasures. Other times, he has emitted a chiming that the hear perceived as some spiritual wisdom. Then there are the occasions when he has seemed to produce rays of color from his palms that struck an individual dead. If there is any rationale to whom the Prismatic Man favors and whom he destroys, the folk of Horbizond have yet to discern it. In fact, they believe it would be blasphemous to do so. The Hwaopt Library is willing to pay for detailed observations of the Prismatic Man, whose nature and purpose they are eager to discover.

Weird Revisited: Beneath Rock Candy Mountain

This post originally appeared in November of 2010. It's genesis was a comment by Garrisonjim over at Hereticwerks. Jim is back blogging again, so it seemed appropriate:

It’s imparted by the sagacious urban druids that contemplate on street corners and rumored by stoned hobogoblins that pass canned heat ‘round campfires that there is an earthly paradise hidden in the great mountains of the West. The wondrous land’s fame has even spread to the world we know, where balladeers longingly recount the virtues of the Rock Candy Mountain or the Hobo’s Paradise.

The hidden mountain valley (so the tales claim) sits in the benevolent shadow of a mountain of candy (or at least with the appearance of such) and boasts trees which grow cigarettes, whiskey running in streams, and ponds of hearty stew. The inhabitants of the valley comport themselves like those in small towns elsewhere, but they are unfailingly friendly, even deferential, to the lowliest of visitors—perhaps especially the lowliest. No crimes against property are prosecuted; in fact, everything is given freely.

Adventurers, notorious hard cases (or thinking of themselves as such), scoff at those yarns. Calloused to eldritch horrors and exotic treasures alike, they’re disinclined to get misty over vagrants’ fairy tales of a hobotopia. Still, a few have caught the fever and gone looking over the years. As far as is known, none have returned.

Even in the tales, the way to the Hobo’s Paradise isn’t easy. Though the trail’s exact location is unknown, it’s believed to run treacherously through the cold heights of the Stoney Mountains. Mine slavers and road agents haunt the lower parts of the trail, while apemen guard the more remote passes.

These may not be the only dangers. Certain heterodox urban druids believe that this Paradise may not be what it appears from a distance. The air that should be fresh and sweet is instead choked with the stench of an abattoir. The whiskey streams are spiked with methanol and cause blindness, delirium, and death. And the smiling, wooden-legged constables and comic railyard bulls, aren’t benevolent—and aren’t even human behind their skin masks.

Could be that more than teeth rot in the shadow of the Rock Candy Mountain.

Weird Revisted: Hobogoblin Garbage Kings!

This post related to the City and Weird Adventures first appeared on Halloween in 2011. I think I may can coined the term "nyfitsanthropy."

The City generates a lot of garbage, and most of it goes to the expansive Klaw Island landfill. Marshy Klaw Island has always had a sparse human population, but the coming of the landfill with its hills of garbage and pits of refuse has drawn gangs of hobogoblins.

The hobogoblins have divided up into tribes with zealously guarded territories. They mine the garbage for usable (and saleable) items. Hobogoblin “alchemists” have become adepted and making various minor potions with the most dubious of alchemical wastes, and can distill hooch from virtually anything organic.

The hobogoblins must defend their holdings from monsters of various sorts, attracted to the waste. They’ve been able to train giant rats as guard animals to protect their settlements from giant insects, aggressive fungi, or hungry otyughs. In years past, inbred wererat clans sometimes contested the hobogoblin hegemony, but periodic eradication and vaccination campaigns by City sanitation officials seemed to have sharply curtailed (if not eradicated) nyfitsanthropy on the island.

Hobogoblin legends tell of the first and greatest of the landfill kingdoms, Wastenot, a scrap Atlantis now sunk beneath the brackish waters of Lake Zathogua. Hubris of the swells in Wastenot led to neglect of due tribute to the beast of the lake, and all of Wastenot’s “grandeur” was pulled down by pale and vengeful tentacles in a single night.

A Fae Mist O'er Hangs the Ghostlight Fen

The Ghostlight Fen presents a feature common to this world, but a greater danger in this place, the substance the current human inhabitants often call "magic" but their ancient progenitors called "fae." In the parlance of the original human colonists fae is a system, perhaps even a network, that spans the entire planet and can manipulate matter and energy in accordance with the will of the user. The indigenous species are born knowing how to manipulate this system in various ways, but other can learn to control it. Control is the keyword, and the system is psychoactive and will respond to unconscious mind as easily as the conscious.

Indeed, theorists in ancient times speculated that the fae was a created rather than natural phenomena and the demons from the unconscious of its creators destroyed them, leaving only their creations (the ieldri and others) behind.

Fae permeates and surrounds the world, but in some places it collects and goes awry. Some of those bad places were caused by overstressing the system, as the ieldri sorcerers did in their desperate war against the ylthlaxu. Others may be places where it has just broken down with time. The Ghostlight Fen seems to be one of the former type.

This dysfunction manifests itself several ways, but most particularly: peculiars and visitants. Peculiars are small, discrete areas of reality distotions generated using these tables. Visitants are more pseudo-encounters of weirdness using these tables. The chance of coming across these in a given hex in the Fen per day is as follows:

Green Fen Hex: Peculiar - 20%, Visitant 5%
Pink Fen Hex: Peculiar - 60%, Visitant 30%

Spellcasters and Fae: All arcane spellcasters (not just sorcerers) are subject to something akin to a wild magic surge. After casting a 1st level or higher spell, a roll of a 1 on d20 requires a d100 roll on the table in the 5e PHB. In green hexes, this roll is only required for the first spell cast by an individual caster per hex. In the pink hexes it is required for the first spell of each spell level cast by an individual caster. Clerical casting is only affected in pink hexes and in the manner of green hexes for arcane casters.

Inspirations: The concept of the fae was inspired by C.S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy, but also borrows from the some of the rationalizations of magic in Hite's Trail of Cthulhu: Rough Magicks, details of  Forbidden Planet (1958), and Roadside Picnic.

Reskinned Monsters of Ghost Light Fen

Here are some monsters that will likely appear in upcoming posts on the Ghostlight Fen hexmap. Some of those, I'll probably give "official" stats at some point, but they can pretty easily be approximate (or replaced) with some existing monsters.

by Wayne Barlowe

Skarzg
Sometimes they run on four legs, sometimes on two. They are gaunt things, like greyhounds the size of men, if greyhounds had rubbery, scabrous hides, and beaked faces full of nightmare teeth. They are very hard to kill, and they will eat anything. They live like animals, but they have speech and are cunning and cruel. [Treat as a troll.]

Gog
Four-haired, fur-covered savages. Their faces are noseless and their skin hangs somewhat loose, which might have the effect of making them appear a bit comical--to someone unacquainted with their propensity to violence and rumored anthropophagy. The variety found in the Ghostlight Fen have indigo colored pelts. [Treat as orcs, with chiefs like bugbears.]

Matagot
Otherworldly creatures with disturbingly human faces and pantherine bodies. They are not to be trusted. [Treat as a Rakhasa, though on the lower end for hit point.]

by Tom Kidd

Bandaryegs
Arboreal, lemurine creatures whose sneak-thievery is nuisance but whose mockery and incessant whispering has uncanny effects on the minds of humans. [Treat as a monkey or similar small animal, but that have an ability like the 5e spell vicious mockery and a troupe may cause an effect similar to dissonant whispers.]

Hexcrawling Ghostlight Fen - Settlements

These relate to the hexmap presented here.

0503 Draum (pop. 80); no real leader but Godo Shrune is a likely spokesman): Actually an abandoned manor built by a successful treasure-hunter, Draum is haunted by squatters who spend their days in deep reverie brought on by use of the muhrdzu fungus that grows nearby (0505). The mushrooms are eaten directly, made into a snuff and then snorted, or for an even more potent effect, smoked. Some rooms in the manor house and in derelict outbuildings hold bodies with clusters of muhrdzu mushrooms sprouting from them. These are the remains of those who wasted away thinking their bodily thirst could be quenched by dream refreshments or starved disdaining the tastelessness of mundane foods compared with the viands of fancy. The living Draumites trade the muhrdzu for food and other necessities.

0207 Gamory (pop. 325; Glatis Malva, Matriarch of the Malva clan): The old, inbred, and sometimes feuding families of Gamory abide through canny exploitation of the grove of black hroke trees planted by their ancestors (0208). The trees’ blood-red sap is valuable in the manufacture of healing salves and hemostatic poultices. Ironically, the Gamoryites are secret adherents to an outlawed cult of human-ieldra transformation, that of the Night Carapaced Mother, that practices human sacrifice by exsanguination in a secret place amid the trees.

0211 Wollusk (pop. 550): Wollusk was built amid the ruins of an ancient fortification from a more lucent age when humankind still possessed much of its ancient technology. A large portion of a wall of some sort of ceramic stands between the town and the Fen,though the ends of its crescent seem to have been melted by some great heat. The town has a larger inn and better facilities for travelers than might be expected for its size, as it serves as a base for treasure-hunters, but none would be reckoned more than middling quality.

Zeniba by Jason Sholtis

Two factions vie for control of the village. Zeniba “the Shrewd” (Fighter 4) styles herself “Mayor-Prefect,” but was originally hired as a bodyguard for the last person to officially hold that office. Her gang is known as the Medioxumate Devils and is based in the cylindrical keep of the ancient fort. She is opposed by the faction of Sodmos Thalur the Vintner. He owns the inn, the tavern, and the brothel serving the two. No wine is consistently available in Wollusk, but Thalur has a monopoly on the sale of muhrdzu snuff and muhrdzu tea, which he adds to whatever spirits are available (typically the local beetle milk mead). Thalur has more men at his disposal (perhaps 20-25) but Zeniba’s 10-12 soldiers are more skilled (treat as Bandits).

Hexcrawling Ghostlight Fen [Intro]

Features hex graphics courtesy of JDJarvis

Ghostlight Fen had an ominous reputation long before the first human colonists arrived on this world. Something about its metaphysical properties made it the site of an ylthaxu beachhead. Their black metallic obelisks irrupted from astral space in great numbers. The ieldri had encountered the ylthlaxu elsewhere and were swifted in their response. The resulting clash ylthlaxu technology and ieldri magic warped the area beyond repair.

These ancient battles create opportunity for human treasure-seekers today. The only genuine road into the area leads into the town of Wollusk (0211). In truth, it's only a village and a fairly meagre one, but shabby businesses have sprung up to accommodate the treasure-seekers.

A Ylthlaxu by Jason Sholtis

These seekers are few in number, but dedicated. The black obelisks of the ylthaxu are a vexing but seductive conundrum. Those that have been opened have yielded strange, alien wonders, and also, it must be said, sudden death at times. The base of these is only about 5 feet on each side, but the interior is often larger than the exterior. Some have been long ago looted, others continue to resist intrusion. Still others have been opened before, resealed, and now somehow present something new on the inside.

Beyond the obelisks, the fen itself is dangerous. Only ever sparsely populated, it remains a wild and uncivilized place of hunting skarzgs. roaming gog tribes and the like. Then, their are areas where the ambient fae is so dense than reality itself is untrusthworthy.

Wollusk is the largest village on the outskirts of the Fen, but not the only one. Gamory (0207) with it's deformed folk and unsavory cult is just up the one road. Beyond that lies Draum (0503) with its drug-addled populace.

Descriptions for Hypothetical Hexes

In a clearing at a crossroads A Llanowauk warrior, bloody-eyed from overuse of stimulants harvested from Ancient caches, stands atop an overturned, giant, green stone head of a scowling god or demon. He loudly proclaims his strength and puissance at arms and calls for challengers. Despite well-worn state of his other possessions, his sword has an uncanny gleam.

On shores of the Lake of Vermilion Mists nearly naked female divers are inspecting their haul of rare ultramarine scintilla. Here and there their bodies bear what appear to be wave-like, mauve tattoos, darkened to the color of fresh bruises in the lake’s lurid, roiling glow, but are actually scars from the lash of urulu tentacles. The divers become tolerant to the hallucinogenic effects over time but not the pain, so they try to snatch the scintilla when the urulu are lost in courtship combat dances.

A gigantic fallen tree serves as a bridge over a deep ravine, but an arachnoid free manshonyagger makes its lair on the tree's underside and on occasion will catch and devour passersby. It cannot but heed its Ancient deep programming, so a human or humankin may command it, but only with the proper codes. The bottom of the gorge bears the possessions and bones of those who have passed before and not recalled them.

A domed inselberg rising from the forest is reputed to be haunted. Daily at solar noon, two identical angelic combatants, milk-white with prismatic-feathered wings, and large, bird-like eyes, grapple in the air above. Neither is ever able to overcome the other, and though their blows land with such force that onlookers claim they can feel shockwaves from them, there is never any sound. When the hour passes, they shrink and fade like shadows before the moving sun.

These are from this world.

The Strange Lights and Noxious Odors of Murk

A Murkman, likely named Grundy

Murk is a marshy island of scrub and small stands of cypress, frequently shrouded in a malodorous, yellow-gray fog and inhabited by a dour people, aloof from the raucous society of Polychrome and the other inhabited Motley Isles. The people of the island may be one extended clan of pale and course-featured folk.

The Grundys (as they all seem to be named) are not of a piratical inclination, but instead harvest mussels and net fish that they trade with the Motley pirates for practical goods. They are also known for the product of  The disposition of the Grundys discourages visitors, though the ever-present miasma is likely more of a deterrent.

On some nights, variegated illuminations move through the fog, and its dullness is pierced by winking, dancing will-o’wisps. These lights are most prominent on nights of the new moon, when the sharp-eared also claim to hear strange music and other sounds of merriment emanating from the island.

Big Fin & the Prismatic Hole

West of the Land of Azurth in the Boundless Sea, lie the Motley Isles. Polychrome, the pirate haven, is the most famous of the chain, but not the only one that draws visitors.

Art by Bill Peet

Big Fin is a long, narrow isle, but a short distance from Polychrome. The second largest island of the group, it is dominated by a fin-shaped limestone ridge with bands of color going from vermilion to pink to yellow. Few people live here permanently, owing to the difficult terrain, though some exiles from Polychrome squat on its shores. The rocks, however, provide nesting places for the iridescent red-headed gillygaloo, whose square eggs with large speckles are used in dice games and divination, and whose dodecahedral gizzard stones are sought as good-luck charms. The birds themselves are edible, but the superstitious egg-hunters will only do so in the direst of circumstances.

The Lurid Lair of the Froghemoth is a small, roundish cay and the most distant of the chain from the mainland. Its central lagoon is also known as the Prismatic Hole. It is a saltwater sinkhole with rainbow bands of color--indigo in the deep of its center. The legendary froghemoth has long been said to inhabit the depths of the Prismatic Hole, but the beast is seldom sighted. Still, most Motley Pirates avoid the area.

Weird Revisited: Mushrooms, Pigs and Cold Light

This post originally appeared five years ago today. It was one of a few posts looking at the Old World (Ealderde) in Weird Adventures:

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.

Metaborea

In the Sanguine Desert, the tribes revive the ancient war machines with blood sacrifices and whip themselves to frenzy with howling music and liquor made from the half-clotted ichor siphoned from the machines' lines. Sometimes an Iron Warlord rises, making a pact with a fierce machine, and leads the tribes to sack and pillage cities.

One can still traverse the Wastes, but the old astral road becomes ever more Unreal. A fleet matagot is the swiftest and surest way to go, but agree on the price beforehand, for matagot's are always ravenous at the end of a long journey.

Art by Enrique Alcatena.

In the Vicinity of the Unthran Wood

The tents of the traveling Carnival Mirabilis are set up on the outskirts of Worroth town. Its owner, Slytus Ompt (known to authorities in various jurisdictions as Feldsphur Zwand and Archim Greff) purveys the usual shabby wonders: ailing chimerical beasts in cramped cages and faded eidolons from damaged ieldra crystals—but he also boasts a free plasmoid duelist who will engage in a nonlethal prizefight with any takers. The plasmoid (its name is a gurgling something like Gwoothl Ploorl) is a thane of a subterranean freehold captured by Ompt and drugged with injections of thrall slime so that it is too weak-willed to escape, though it yearns to be free. It will promise to reveal the location of underground treasures undercovered by its coalescence for aid in making its escape.

by Wayne Barlowe

A roadside shrine draws more pilgrims than might be expected due to its living statue of the Trell mystic, Agakamunath who is said to have physical ascended to a higher plane from that very spot. The full-size statue depicts the giant at the time of Schizopurgation, wherein he split from the primal chaos burdening his soul. Nonbelievers are more fascinated by the artifice of the  Hohmmkhudhuk craftsmen--and the persistent legend that the motions of the statue's limbs in the performance of the mystery provide a clue as to the location of the sky castle Agakamunath also renounced and its treasures.

Half-ruined Maggot Tower, deep in the forest, is avoided by most folk, and not merely because its rugose and twisted spire appears unpleasantly like its namesake. The tower is a relic of the power of a rogue Ieldri queen with an abiding hatred of humans. The tortures she inflicted on captives and the sacrifices to dark gods are said to have left her tower haunted. Some seekers after the magical secrets of the Ieldra and willing to risk phantom horrors for power.

These locales are in the same world as these two posts.

Further Tales of Vo

There are two human(-ish) tribes dwelling in the Vale of Vo. Both are likely the descendants of the folk who crashed their ship into Vo sometime in the distant past, and both claim the ancestral hero of Liberator-Vo.

The Vozerai are a pious people who live an austere and simple life, rejecting of physical pleasures, that dwell in the nose section of the ship. Even dama-fruit is not to be overly enjoyed, lest it lead one to impiety, and from impiety to death in the jaws of the bugbears. This ultimately serves the wheel of life, true, but it is impious to throw away existence lightly. Vozerai society is somewhat theocratic, ruled by cleric scholars, but theses Learned Ones only wield as much power as the number of folk they can sway to their interpretation of the record of accumulated utterances and noises of the bugbears. One thing all Vozerai Learned Ones agree on, whatever their other doctrinal differences, is that the Voyanki are heretics deserving of devouring by bugbears.

The Vozerai are all invisible as is typical from creatures in the Vale of Vo. They have the cultural habit of murmuring or mumbling to themselves, either their inner thoughts or scraps of prayer, so as to make others of their kind aware of their presence. They try to stifle this habit when bugbears may be in hearing.

The Voyanki live in the former tail section of the ship. They hate the preachy, milksop Vozerai for long-nursed but vaguely-remembered grudges, but it may be that they are also a bit jealous. By some trick of heredity, the Voyanki are not completely invisible but only mostly so. Their flesh is utterly transparent and their bones are a very pale white with a faint pinkish tinge. For this reason, Voyanki are somewhat more likely to be meals for the bugbears. They have become into strong warriors for their own defense--and to raid the better supplied Vozerai. The war chants and cries of the Voyanki sound like an attempt to mimic the bugbear voices. Their greatest warriors claim to wear bugbear skull headdresses, but of course, no one has ever seen them.

A Tale of Vo

The Vale of Vo looks pretty enough, but that is because the carnage is invisible. The valley is a demiplane or pocket dimension bound by two tall mountains and a ring of hills. Its small stands of forest and orchards of fruited tress are divided and crossed by cobbled paths and clear brooks and streams; a bucolic tranquility only visibly marred by the strange craft that has crashed awkwardly across it's middle, leaving a scar in its wake. The vessel, too, was injured in its arrival; its torpedo shape is broken along is width, leaving two colorful, enameled chrome sections: nose and tail.

Art by Al Williamson. The ship before the crash, perhaps.

No inhabitants are visible in the Vale of Vo, because every animal in the valley is invisible. They are made so by eating the fruit of the trees: the dama-fruit. The dama-fruit is roughly tear-drop shaped and a pinkish color striped with yellow-green. It's flesh is like a papaya's in texture and tastes something like a grape mixed with a apple with hints of fond childhood memories and notes idle summer days. Consuming of most of one fruit will make a man-size creature invisible for 2d6 hours. Regular consumption of the fruit (at least 5 days) will lead to invisibility for 2d4 days after the last fruit was eaten.

The inhabitants of the valley have had to adapt to this condition. Bats have filled the niche of birds, and some of these sing eerie songs in the dappled tree canopies. The primary predator, the dread bugbear, uses smell to find its prey--which is an imperfect method, but good enough to make the bugbears a great threat to the vale's human denizens.

The humans call the bears "bugbears" because they are something out of nightmares, but also because they make an at-first-faint hissing, buzzing, rustling, droning sound that reminds one of insects, but in truth sounds more like mostly-static on a radio. If one was the stand near a bugbear for long enough (this would not be advisable) one might come to discern a tone behind the surface noise that swells and subsides, and this might precede a low, warped, and crackling voice or voices that would be near unintelligible (if truly there at all) but might repeat numbers or nonsense phrases before being swallowed again by the tone and the noise. Sometimes the voice (or voices) is said to cut sharply and suddenly into the static and to say something with great insistence but no greater clarity.

The occurrence of the voice has lead one group of humans in the Vale to assume the bears are gods or at least speak for the gods. These are the Vozerai. More on them tomorrow.

[freely adapted from Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum]

The Paper Town of Azurth

Paper Town (it is said) in some sense occupies space in the Uncanny Valley in the west of the Country of Yanth, but the most reliable way to gain entry to the town is via a map. Potentially any map will do, but it must be one noting a nonexistent settlement, street or island. These fictitious entries serve as gates to Paper Town.

As is common with magical places, gaining entrance is not as simple as finding a suitable map. Luckily, the legend regarding Paper Town's creation delineates the necessary procedure. Paper Town, as the story says, was a gift given to Princess Hyacinthia of Azurth on the occasion of her birthday by a mysterious stranger. He informed the Princess that she could not visit Paper Town in person, being compose of something other than paper and possessed of general lack of flatness as she was, but her shadow could—with the proper attire. The stranger traced the outline of the Princess’s shadow on a large sheet of paper and cut around its edge. The cutout was taken to a place where the stranger’s map showed a hamlet to be but was not. The cutout vanished, like a piece of paper slid under an unseen door into an equally unseen room.

The fact Hyacinthia never regain her shadow nor have many who have repeated this ritual might give some pause, but that detail is not frequently repeated.

In Paper Town, the cutouts become paper doll doppelgängers of the person that served as their model. These visitors find unfolding streets of pop-up trees and citizenry and flat facades that elaborate to Escher-architectured structures when entered. The city seems endless, but the clever observer will note that it recycles itself to appear so. As the preceding portion grows, the receding part folds up behind. This can happen in any direction: Tall towers erect themselves when an evil sorcerer flies up to his sanctum. Dungeons unfold like inverted houses of cards when heroes go delving. The ostensible ruler of Paper Town, Princess Seven, paper doll of the long dead Queen Hyacinthia, makes the final decision on how "permanent" a new structure is in her city.

One attractive trait of Paper Town is that it conforms to a visitor's imagination in certain ways. Anything one wishes for may be found there, though anything of value is likely to require a quest or be obtained in a way that makes one not want it after all. In other words, Paper Town adheres to laws of story.

The archons or godlings that truly rule Paper Town enforce this reality zealously. These Great Tall Tailors, or Scissor Men as they are sometime called, will catch paper doll visitors who are ill-fitted for the story the Tall Tailors wish told and snip, snap, snip, reshape them into a more pleasing arrangement. The Tall Tailors are paper themselves (Or perhaps they are the shapes left when slender, lank-limbed manshapes are cut of paper?) save for their gleaming, scissor hands. Their shadows are also Tailors but their shadow-scissors cut the spirit exclusively while their metallic doubles cut the physical.

It is said that the Book of Doors, a book where every page is a portal to another place, originated in Paper Town, but how it came to be in the wider Land of Aurth is unknown.

Heroes of the Islands

art by Herb Kāne

Erene was the most beautiful woman in the world, so beautiful that it was said she was the daughter of the Sky God Tiwo, who had lain with the wife of the Chieftain of Raketaminio. She was married to Mengerao son of Ateru, but stolen by Prince Palitisi of Taloia. Mengerao called upon his brother, Akakamuna, mighty chief of Mukanai, his face tattooed with the likeness of the tusk and whiskers of the boar, for aid, and a great host was assembled and there war canoes made for Taloia, with cunning Uluihi, veteran Nehetoru, and strong Aiwaha among them. Greatest in battle would be the demigod Akirihi, who would dance his war dance before palisades of Taloia and kill its champion E’etolo with his shark-toothed war club.

So, basically: Why not recast the Greek Age of Heroes in a pseudo-Polynesian fantasy Oceania? Here's a list of gods (with name variants):

Tiwo/Kiwe: Sky God
Era/Ela: His wife
Emā: Messanger god
Are/Ale: War god
Tiwonuho/Kiwonuho: God of kava and beer
Apaitio/Apaikio: Volcano god.
Pāwone/Aparanu: God of song
Pohetahone/Pohekao: Sea god.
Atana/Akana: Goddess of Wisdom
Atamito/Akemike: Shark goddess of the hunt
Apatite/Apakiki: Love and fertility goddess
Ehatia/Ehakia: Goddess of the cook fires
Tamate/Kamaki: Goddess of cultivated crops, particularly sweet potato and taro