On Entering Veystasa

Slaves worked their substance into the earth. It was is if the crops were made of them, not the rain and wind. Every year they shrank as the crops grew, their bodies bending like weathered wheat. Harvested from distant shores, withering on the vine. Hulking figures striding heartlessly between them. Small men sitting in wide wicker chairs, whips coiled metaphorically like snakes by their sides.

Their stories were ending. They had begun in love, conflict, and hardship, plans, dreams, wonder, and bitterness near foreign shores or amber groves in the endless forest. Then, like someone cast from a cliff, their lives had taken a new, final trajectory and were hurtling towards the conclusion, unremarked by fate. How many would escape their silent, anonymous, unknown deaths here? One in a hundred? How many might have their names burned into memory's fate, carried beyond their lifetime in any way? One in ten-thousand?

It was a ghastly thing, like witnessing plague victims. A fate that was hard to contemplate when one still controlled one's own. Life had betrayed them, like someone waking to find himself riven by tumors.

The horror of bondage. You will rot before I do. In these lands, nobody who can help it works his farm without slaves. To be chained to the earth is to be half-drowning. To be nothing but a watcher of cows. To be a filer of metal, or a peddler affixed to his little rug. These things are living death. They're ameliorated by- what? A bit of cheese? A bit of honey? Sex with a woman who will take you rather than starve? To be drunk on a little beer, weeping over what's to come? 

We will force others into fatal destruction before we will endure this. We will force others into the soil before we spend our lives gazing at it. We look to the sun, to the horizon, to the fearsome warrior screaming and rushing at us before we endure the soil, or its chthonic extremity, the mines. 

In this life I have been carved like scrimshaw by swords, daggers, fists, falls, bites, and the sweet claws of women. I have suffered blows and gone to my death, yet still I've returned. I have seen many more maimed, their legs cut away, eyes cut out, fingers sawed aloft, guts out, faces off, blood pooling across halls and holy places. Like the slaves, most of them go into the ground unremarked, unnoticed, lost to their families, remembered only by their companions for the breadth of their lives. Ending beneath the soil, but a little better than working it. Beaten down, betrayed by fate. I know what this is, but life has never left me.

My betrayal has never been complete; always there has been a final respite. But fate, the great black gravity that draws men into the earth, I have seen it, and I have sent men there. This is the life of a warrior: your focus is less on treading men into the soil, day in, day out, like a farm proprietor. Instead you endure their blows, their snarling words, and you strike, laying them low or sending them sprinting, sometimes by perfect design, sometimes almost by accident. In your greatest deeds you're possessed by the god of war. You could not have done that if you'd tried. It happened. 

This is the warrior's covenant. His gamble. You are dice placed in a cup. It is shaken and spilled. Some come up low and are removed. New dice are added. The process goes on. 

There is joy in destroying someone. Joy in smiting them and seeing them lie. The joy of a secret fuck, the joy of a new sack of gold. A dangerous addiction, because every time you're just rolling the die. How many sides does yours have?

Mine has had many, or so it seems. Why? I've learned to blow on it as it falls, that's my only explanation. Why I'm here when so many are in the soil, or have left half their bodies in the soil. I am no great warrior, yet here I am. 

I was a wildcat, then. A hellion. I rolled the die more than most, and my sides are damned shaven down now. If you rolled me, you'd be hard-pressed to see what number came up. I've tumbled in many cups, and what I can tell you is why men take this bargain. Everything the withering man dreams of, sleeping in his shack, is found in the world of flashing blades. In the destroyer's realm. The price is the fatal cut. Mortal terror. Horrific visions, anguish and regret. A body deformed by wounds. Its rewards are beyond the ken of the man bound to the field, like heaven to a damned man. The property, the sex, the beauty of distant places, the joy of gold and destruction. He is shut out of it and will die unless he can slither through lock and key. Why do you think men would rather die than be captured? Why do you think it is called a blaze of glory? Why do exiled lords and dethroned princes vie till their dying day to reclaim their positions? Why are they not content as courtiers in some foreign fort? Why not retire as monastics and eat carrots? 

Why is the earth a slave pen and churning melee? 

The soil is the shadow of the underworld. It is the outer glow of Gehenna. It drinks your soul while your body works, an automaton.

I had my fill of that as a boy. I knew what my days would be, day in, day out, until my mind followed my body into the earth. No, no, no. 

I have carried my sword to foreign courts; as I saw the slaves, the first ones I hadn't grown up around, I saw what this world was made of. What the soil of the earth was. I swore I would not spend my days half-mired in it until I could no longer see the sun. I would have a little, real life and then go down kicking and screaming like so many, many had. Things have not gone wholly to plan, and now I know what it is to care about things beyond my own skin. 

I found my way into the grandest dice games on this earth. I will tell you of the tournament. Take what you can from me. 

Skyhold - Annals of Opal

Deepbull - Cavern Lily - A Cat - The Serpentine - Massacring Hordes by Fire - Annelidman Invasion - A Captive's Story - Tyranny of Composite Lifeforms - Memory Runes - The Heart of Skyhold

I have taken to roasting deepbull over the open fire. This is the most delicious thing on or below the earth; I defy you to defy me, and invite you to test your theory. Come upon my weepingwood door and I will roast deepbull for you; bring ten friends and there will be unanimous agreement. 

But surely you serve it as part of a meal? In some thin stew, or baked hard as plaster to be served with oodles of watercress in a great mound of honeyed sweet potato? Ahhh, no. I add one thing: refined rock salt. That is enough, and it isn’t what makes the meat. Proper sizing, turning, and timing makes the meat! 

There are, however, several addendums that I may proffer in the indulgence. The first is butter, every bit of deepbull accompanied by soft, cool butter, as much as half the size of the piece of meat, up to matching it if you have a powerful lust for butter.

The second is a particular cavern lily I’ve discovered, one that grows only in mucous of mercury (a rare natural reagent found in pools in absolutely lightless caverns). Mucous of mercury is itself very useful, and beloved by beasts of rock and metal, which is how I discovered this lily in the first place (picture a spined, many-limbed starfish made of moonlight). I bit it to test the texture and found it imparted a curious effect that I’ve since utilized in my cooking. A piquant flavor that almost stabs the tongue, accompanied by a twisting of the mouth and a watering inside the cheeks; a slight burn all around the mouth and in the chest when you’ve eaten it, followed by an amusing numbness across the face which makes it a great pleasure to rub one’s own forehead. The combination of the savory beef, the richness of the fat and butter, and the curious piquancy of the garnished lily make for an experience more simply delicious than any frippery cooked up by the coatimen.

It also may impart extreme lust, but I haven’t been able to tell if this is a symptom of the lily or of a very-needed side of deepbull.

—

A cat has been coming to my door lately. He doesn’t meow or scratch at the lacquerwood, which would see him ending up in the fire, but simply sits upright so that when I open it, he is peering coldly into my face. 

At first I tried to please him with bits of melon, which are grown at Saunasea Meadow by a friend of mine (who shades them using little straw hats). The cat loved the melon so much that he would wait quietly for me to check the door, but then grow animated as a botfly and begin jumping up and down, literally screaming as soon as I begun to cut the melon, so consumed he was with lust for the fruit. He would devour it, purring while eating like a mechanical buzzsaw on the other side of a water aperture.

Well, this lasted until I was testing my deepbull recipe for a dozen runescribes and initiates, when I got a premonition and decided to check the door. There was the cat, eyes more animated than I had ever seen them before. You can guess the rest. I put down a dish of roast, fatty deepbull beside a dish of diced melon. He went straight for the deepbull and didn’t let up till the remnants were slathered across my tiles. He licked his own face for… thirty minutes?

Nature has rendered judgement. 

Several of the initiates roasted melon over the fire after our deepbull. The coatimen would be prouder of that than the ancestors, I can tell you that! 

—

The serpentine has bought our civilization another thousand years of artisanry and delving. The physical and psychological effect it has on invaders has to be seen to be believed, particularly when they’re targeted across a relatively steep slope.

Once, a bunch of goatmen came to raze our surface crops (using their mouths) and were caught by guards in an idyllic crevice with a standing pool; they were all poised on a cliff face, standing on little cracks and protrusion, hopping down slowly as they do, and the team carted out a serpentine loaded with grapeshot and blew the goatmen off the rockwall.

I’m told that the echoing from the steep walls of the crevice, combined with the mighty bleating of the goatmen, gave the impression of being carried by a divine mosquito; a hair-raising beast-chorus that gradually grew more melodious as the goatmen died away, with spikes here and there when a guard stuck his bill threw a less-wounded goatman. Finally there was breathing, hissing, like the pool was a hot spring, and then there was nothing.

A horde of well-armed goatmen, dispatched with a single blast of a serpentine. Obviously they were caught at a disadvantage, but in my grandfather’s time it wouldn’t have gone that way; he couldn’t have hidden a trebuchet in the crevice even though a giant square stone would have squished plenty of them. A bolt-repeater could have picked them off, but the best ammunition would have been alchemical glassball starshot, which is unreliable and far more resource-intensive than the powder needed to discharge a serpentine.

Deep hordes make a fine meal for a serpentine as well, though less-so than a whole bunch of enemies on a hillside. When you blast an oncoming horde, the ones up front are turned to sauerkraut, and their bones become munitions, razoring through people behind them; you can see them spiking out of bodies like little stalagmites, all painted red by the front rows; you get a very good mowing effect along the front of the horde, which tends to arrest its impetus.

Goblins don’t care if their companions get mulched, but an animalman attack can be bent in half by a single good blast, assuming they aren’t antmen or something else unholy. The first ones get obliterated, and then the balls that went high fall all over the horde behind them, knocking them down in a nice teardrop; alas, if enemies are fighting in shallow ranks, a lot of the blast is going to go into the ground in front of and behind them (though it’s something to see a shieldwall after a blast and the survivors are staggering their with their shields splintered all through their bodies).

That’s to say nothing of the bombard; we need to get it so that we can target big, mobile beasts with a bombard, but so far they’re more lobbers than point-targeters. Bolt-throwers are still the weapon of choice for many kinds of engagements, such as when you’re shooting it out with goblins on distant gorgebridges or cardinalmen are trying to surround you in a canopy.

—

The annelidmen have established a toehold in one of our subsurface river pumping outstations; I’m not sure what they expect to achieve. Our rangers haven’t seen them attempting to use the pumps or wheels. They’re attempting to fortify the station with ichor-bile, but so far the guardpost personnel who’ve converged on them have handily kept them from fortifying by pouring warm caulking oil down the nearest stairwells. The annelidman gut resin melts quite easily, and I’m told that the annelidmen who are sent to re-establish it are blackened and curled up by the invisible heat of the purple-burning caulking solution.

A few annelidman teams have tried to ascend the stairs to attack the caulking positions, but have been killed without a fight when they encountered the poison fumes and choking smoke. An engineering force is on its way, and they’ll have to determine whether they’ll be able to redirect the local riverbranch network to flush out the annelidmen, their ichor, and the smoke damage, or whether we’ll have to march in on them.

The concept of having a shorter life than we dwarves do is ghastly to me, because it seems to beckon people into the kind of sacrifice the annelidmen are undergoing, when they should be savoring what little life they have.

—

An annelidman was captured by crafty rangers; they set up a complex trap with aid of their runescribe, catching the lead annelidmen in a force matrix while dumping and igniting the caulking solution on those that followed, though I’m told it was a hair-raising flight to get back up the stairwell network before the force bands were undone by the heat and poison smoke.

Despite their apparent fanaticism, the annelidman was more or less immediately willing to talk if we agreed to dispatch any annelidman witnesses; whether to believe his narrative is an open question, but at the very least, perhaps we can infer something from his story.

The annelidmen of the Twelve Teeth (twelve holds in stalactites and stalagmites) recently excavated statue-pylons thought to have been erected by their ancestors, representing forgotten gods of a bloodier era. These were, in fact, either shapeshifters or colonial forms of life that had been congealed from all of the varied antediluvian advisors in the three-thousand year history of a precursor, non-annelidman civilization that inhabited the same zone, forming, essentially, three averaged antediluvian potentates embodying the most extreme traits of their composite forms, both physical and mental.

The first was the extremed average of a sphinx, a wraith, and a sentient wicker man.

The second was the extremed average of mudbull phytogore, a great volcano worm, and a brain accumulator.

The third was the extremed average of a polymana gembrain dead, a dryad, and a yehwe zogbanu.

These three quickly co-opted the Twelve Teeth and their annelidman subjects with the wicker sphinx wraith taking five, the mudbull brain worm taking six, and the gembrain dryad zogbanu taking just one. The wicker sphinx wraith has been fighting an apocalyptic war with the mudbull brainworm while the gembrain dryad zogbanu has sealed the Twelfth Tooth off from the rest of the civilization; no one has been able to penetrate the confines, which are defended by tendrils breaking through the rock itself, sucking the moisture out of interlopers, but the starved corpses of annelidmen have been observed at the outskirts.

Most of our captured annelidman’s friends swore themselves to the mudbull brain worm immediately, respecting strength, and he went along with them, but was horrified by the carnage incurred in their internecine war. He was a member of the petit bourgeois and had neither an interest in a radical change of status quo, nor of selling services and power to the mudbull brain worm’s regime, and so he sent his family out in a refugee exodus caravan that was attacked and destroyed by annelidmen in service to the mudbull brain worm, who then added the neural tissue of the entire caravan to their master’s body.

Our captive survived by simply not talking about what had happened, but grew to hate his civilization. When his band of assignment (marked by mandatory anal tattoos) was ordered to launch a probing attack on our underbelly, he knew he was doomed and simply sprung on the only sliver of daylight when he was captured.

Is it true? If there is a mudbull brain worm, it would be clever enough to send in a mole to help destroy us; what is certain is that we can’t allow any dwarf brain to fall into the segments of the annelidmen or their cat’s paws, lest it reveal anything about Skyhold. For now, the captured annelidman has been moved to a heavily-trapped outstation in case he’s serving as some kind of beacon for his forces.

He’s been provisioned with furs, cheese, and a book of tablets containing the stories of dwarven heroes to keep him occupied, but I have a friend who’s a maintainer for some of the runic traps, and he says the annelidman is so bent up about his family’s brains being added to the tyrant, about his suicide mission, and about betraying his comrades, that he’s practically catatonic. 

—

Runes can pour forth memories of places. It’s like opening up a spigot to what’s welling up in the walls, the past that’s flowed through the room. Spirits pour forth, or their hallucinated echoes. Sounds, screams, secrets dying to unbind themselves like ethereal kidney stones. You can paint them anywhere but a remote fissure might give you something unintelligible, mixing a passing conversation between colony-bodied magiforms from 15,000 years ago with the sounds of fifty types of claw, pseudopod, and snailfoot. A room will tend to give you the most lurid details first. Prepare for illicit lovemaking, blackhearted deals, demented rambling, and every kind of death.

The good news is that among all this unearthing, what you need to know will tend to present itself to you with a degree of urgency; that’s what it’s been waiting for. I once needed the code for a very eccentric runescribe’s vault, and I went to a walkway where he would meet with his fiancé, the temple of the Sleeper’s Guardian on one side, a great chasm on the other. I deployed the rune and of all the memories the runescribe and his beloved had made there, the first that came out was him reading a love poem to her. This contained the encoded solution to his vault. He’d put away both jewels, and tablets enumerating some of his misdeeds, for her to find after his death. 

We had to listen to the poem very closely, because in the spectral background, the Seventh Vault Quarryguard was hurling a goblin raiding force into the abyss.

—

The runes are like the music in the heart of Skyhold. 

Everywhere there are stories, admonitions, litanies of warding; a child is never alone, always in the presence of heroes, goddesses, and avuncular runescribes like yours truly. Our messages pour down the columns and soar on the vaults. Our poems are in the least of places. Move a crate and find a three-part limerick in the corner. Clean out a latrine and find a thank-you note that’s dirtier than what came before. A calligraphy poem etched in the outline of a split-up fallen foe.

Not all nonmagical runes are trivial.

Walk down an embarkation tunnel and see warnings and deeds in ceiling-steps, annals of the monsters that have been seen that way and the heroes who have slain them. See great formulas encased in single characters on the lead-shod walls of an alembic reagent refinery. And the ever-present grave sigils; look none-too-closely and see an etched drawing of a scene of valor, or love, or invention. Look closer and see the tiny lines are runes tracing the history of a dwarven life, forming the scene of a crowning moment or place of duty for the memorialized one.

We runescribes live close to death, in our battles, in our experiments, and in our responsibility to immortalize the dead. We see the ways they go and the things that made their lives. There is great care and honor written into the walls of this place, and when parts of it are crushed, it is like part of our bodies have been scratched away, and yet it is growing, adding souls, expanding all the time, like a living thing in flower. 

Skyhold - Annals of Moonstone

I am the envy of warriors.

Eyes, tongues, skins, bones, noses, hands, and teeth have fallen at my blow.

The edge of my ax is adamantine, steel-blue, as glossy as gemstone, burning the eyes like lightning when it flashes amongst fire. The head is sinew-steel, wrought with images of heroes graven down to their last hair, as if I held a mausoleum on the flat of my ax. They bathe in blood, and witness my deeds. 

There is Alangar, he pulled the tentacle-tongue from the beast at Blasphemer’s Barrow.

Here’s Granjar, he twisted off the Poacher Lord’s head and ensured one of his stolen bulls defecated it in the morning.

And Assandin, who cut the tensioned sphinxgut of Earthsever, a trebuchet which stood half our mountain’s height. It was the centerpiece of a skinkman invasion, and when Assandin cut the cord it bisected, decapitated, or eviscerated three hundred skinkmen. We could see the guts in great pools like green and purple alchemy.

The haft of my ax is bound in spiderskin, and the shaft is a stone so light and strong it was a blessing, and not a work of nature; I found it in a trance and have never been able to locate it again. I have engraved every surface with runes, falling into the spiderskin in the manner of cascading magma, and when I rub my thumb along them I hear poems, chants of courage, and sullen, brutal, iron-hard spite-verse to gall a universe which has levied so many hordes against our domain. 

It is the month of Moonstone. I am Ineth-Solam Gostzugob-Allaseror, runescribe of Skyhold, and these are my annals.

Doors of Weeping Wood - Accidental Explosion Runes - An Adderman Kingdom - The Living Roots of Skyhold - Torturers in the Deep - Giant Geodes - Illuminated Chasms - On Splitting Skulls - At War with the Annelidmen - Our Bombard Makes Slick Slopes - My Golden Wounds - Aping Annelidman Art - My Love Sasanna - Wine-Thief - Punishment: Lubricator - Lubrication: Goblins vs Mothmen - A Most Peculiar Human - Not His King, but His Thing - A List of Conquered Beasts - Reciprocity with the Mushroom Men - Dwarven Armor - The Flesh Fortress Rune

My domicile stands behind two doors made of lacquered wood. I wrought the planks by the river-pools at the hem of the mountain and carried them up to the Gates of Cave Ivory, camping beneath them at night. When I cut the trees they wept and almost moaned, and their natural lacquer still shines, guiding guests to my door in the darkness of the purplestone, even in times of lean resin.

I see this gleam when I walk to my workshop, a circular chamber I built so tall that I cannot see its upper boundaries. I channel, channel in silence and noise. I believe that something swirls in my chamber like a dowsing rod, a magnetstone, a stellar body. Things are born in the heart of a storm, and this is the room where my finest runes come into being.

My most practical runes arise from necessity. Like many runescribes before me, I invented my first explosive rune by corrupting another one.

Skyhold has its roots at the bottom of the earth, outstations where pressure and heat force a sojourner to call upon the might of heroes to go on. These hells cleanse the soul, they bring seasons of dew and melody into your bones just by dint of transcending their agony.

I was once called to go with the fire-aligners to one of these depths and make sure the ley was not spasming under our newest pressure forge.

As it happens, fissures had broken into the rock, great flat kingdoms where addermen basked in permanent ecstasy, isolated from all existence. They baked in a fissure-oven a meter tall and a thousand leagues in width, but when they smelled us on the wind of the sulphuric flues, they came on in numbers comparable to the grains of a pulverized rock.

The stairs up to Skyhold were narrow. I bade the fire-aligners pull the magma up through the rock to us and they did. The addermen in front were pushed on by the surge behind them no matter how they tried to stop and were roasted with the most delicious scent and a sound that still makes me smile to this day. The burning addermen fell so thick and fast across the magma that the rest were able to push across them to us.

The fire-aligners prepared for self-immolation, but I sent them up behind me, drawing runes of the welcoming song on the walls; a missed note or two in my inscription might have simply given them bad dreams, but I made it so discordant I thought it would drive them to devour each other. In fact, it blew up so irately, razored adderman bones danced across the chamber in both directions and left very few capable of slithering before the ceiling collapsed.

We drew ranks and hewed down those who remained on our side of the cave-in, and then headed back to Skyhold, savoring the thought of the addermen roasting like chasmtrout on a hot stone as the magma wept up into their little kingdom.

We were, however, chased by the dust of pulverized rock, which I blew out whenever I sneezed for a few weeks after

This stairwell was one tiny branch of a vast venous body of walkway chambers that dangle beneath Skyhold. These things go unpatrolled for aeons, for the most part, allowing all kinds of oddities to wander through or take root.

There are psychiatric beasts that grow like vent-fed fungus on the nightmares of monsters and the zealots and anchorites of the underworld fastnesses.

I believe that channeling by sapient ore gives birth to such beasts, fed into existence as a defense mechanism, or perhaps as an actualization of their highest purpose.

Our enemies in the deep visit tortures upon their captives far worse than those on the surface. Finding the aftermath of their deeds might blind you, or drive you into a berserk that you will never leave. Expeditions intended to deal with such things must be led by dwarves who are old, hard, and grimmer than stone. This is the use of sullen, unspeaking old tyrants.

Not all minerals are taciturn or filled with evil thoughts. Giant geodes make for wonderful chambers. Their exteriors can be surfaced with engraved or polished tile, but the roof of such a dome maintains its patina of natural expression, a reminder that you are not witnessing an artifice but something transcendent, given meaning by its presentation.

There is little of that in the vast chambers of natural night, unless they are illuminated by beastfat, for example. Then they shine like a heaven of prisms. This is a sight that cannot be replicated, and any time a new gulf is to be analyzed for harvesting, you must go and bear witness if you haven’t seen such a thing before. Ten thousand colors and as many textures, upright skeletal fossils, spines of crystal, dripping liquid gemstone, dripping life from the flues transforming whatever it touches, oceans of metal, silver or copper, standing rods of titanium or plutonium; the majesty of things cloaked from the eye can defy description. Of course, it is also a riot of skittering, starving things, which elucidates the loveliness of a polished geode; it presents the unstructured expression of nature without the aspect that must be destroyed. 

There are good things in the deep besides minerals and fungus, of course, good things even in dangerous places. At some point I will tell you of my molluscman torc, or the giant gharial cloak that I brined, gilded, and wore for many years… and the associated toothmarks that I wear to this day (also gilded).

Ah… I have split the skulls of so many creatures.

Ravenmen stick their tongues out sideways when you cleave their skulls in twain and make an electrifying squawk, even after you’ve already chopped their brains. How they fall over with their legs sticking awry is comical, and makes them easy to hurl into their oncoming comrades. Goblin skulls tend to collapse when you cleave them, and the brains often do come out the ears, even when the head is cloven and not struck through with a mace or some such. Their red eyes bulge out like meadow cherries and their purple brains spill from their ears with streams of blood, and if you cut their heads off after, the split halves will often drop on either side of the body.

Goblin helms are cast iron, and can be dented by fissuremetal warheads, more rarely by steel. My ax, of course, can cleave them like I’m hacking at salmon. Goblins often present themselves to you in full armor as if to say, “So there!” They then carry themselves back to their lines limping once you give them a swat through their breastplates, and their comrades hiss and throw things at them before they fall and perish.

Avianmen are cleverer, much flightier, and will skirmish you to death if you don’t have a way to reach them. I have seen great-hearted dwarves bleed out their lifeblood out under tiny darts and stars of metal, and it is a criminal waste if there ever was one. Any expedition to the surface, or to caverns with even a hint of wind, must be equipped with bolt-throwers and serpentines, ideally with naphtha gas. You can crush avianmen with your bare hands, but not if you can’t reach them. 

Serpentmen tend to lose their eyes and stick their tongues way out when you chop their heads, but other creatures just go blank and sort of gape at you. I once cut a pangolinman, of all things, and he just looked as if he’d been hypnotized. No sign of blood, just my ax standing a hand’s breadth deep in his head. I don’t know if he was a mercenary or an auxiliary, but he was with a motley group at the bottom of the mountain. That was the first time I was dropkicked by a hareman and I do not recommend it; that was also the first and only time I tumbled uphill. A worthy memory, though I couldn’t laugh without agony for a month.

—

I’ve just returned from an encounter with the annelidmen. it’s impossible to tell them apart from their pack animals except by their size. The whole affair of witnessing them emerge from a cavern is like seeing parasites come out of a goat after it’s been treated with skyrwort. Bundles of twisting rope hanging and pouring from an overburdened portal.

The annelidmen create works of ravishing beauty, intricate three-dimensional maps of their domains that are like golden trees lacking definite trunks, apples of moonstone and quartz marking their fortifications and nurseries, but the creatures themselves writhe and wave around like newborn pupae. Their significant personalities wear golden and azure armor which lessens the effect, but the common infantrymen wear segmented bands of mail that slide across themselves, adding to the impression of seeing severed tendons or flatworms emerging from a creature’s biology.

The fact that they are so close to the ground when in motion presents a tactical problem. I laid down a blasting rune, and the shrapnel of their bones and armor maimed or slew a few who ran along the ceiling, but by and large the impetus of the blast was lost in the open air.

On the upside, a warrior can wind up for a mighty slash before the annelidman can get upright, retrieve their weapons, and cut him. I was summoned from a bath in a mineral stream and fought wearing only sandals and salts in my hair, but whenever a foe reared up before me I chopped him and and generally cut his weapons in half along with his body.

I was so covered in their blasted ichor that I nearly lost my ax, but the spiderskin gives wonderful traction. One of them wrapped me up, hoping to bind me and stop my ax-work, and he had iron barbs on his legs that cut me in two hundred places and made me rain blood, but Uzzazaz laid a pole serpentine across my shoulder and blew my compressor’s head off (nearly deafening me in the process!). His smokepowder held troglodyte bile and the annelidmen bundling up in front of me melted like overburnt candles, armor and all; they still tried to wave when they were almost flat, all and then they held their peace.

By the end you couldn't differentiate them; perhaps this is how new layers of flesh naphtha are born in the earth? 

The annelidmen didn’t last much longer; when they tried to retreat, the great mass bound up in the cavern got stuck (reminding me of myself after too much pupacheese), and we gave them some help with a bombard some dwarves had hauled from a nearby chasmbridge; when the thing went off I thought the blast had broken my jaw, but the giant glossy globe we fired punched a hole the size of the Graingate through the trapped annelidmen and rolled down across the ones behind, who’d been trying to pull their comrades free; it created such a slick of squished corpses that a bunch of the young dwarves went and slid down the tunnel over and over until one cut himself badly on a piece of armor or a weapon. He had to be sealed up with trundler paste, which was unfortunate, because you can do better than that; I’ve been sewn up with so much silver thread that I’m beginning to look like part of the decoration. Gilded wounds, silvered stitches, sapphires in my earlobes; if I run into opal men they’ll think I’m a long-lost cousin.

There is a place beneath the Morningwatch Shoulder Bakeries where we’re working on a project similar to the tree-maps of the annelidmen. Surfacers make globes of the earth, but we are refining a vast square of pure marble into a map of the underworld at its seventh depth.

You see, the milky night in the rest of the marble makes for a wonderful no-man’s land, and it is being refined away as we discover new features that branch out from our outstations and expeditionary redoubts; already, the Sea of Twelve-Winged Bats has been molded in burnt emerald, and the Ice Spire of the Marrowdrinkers has been tapped in with a long shard of quartz. The Fissures of Gloaming, which is the habitat of the Burrowdock Fireflymen, has been painted using polysolvent and resurfaced in amber, and the fortress of the Bridgecutter Goblins has been dutifully rendered in a big lump of cast iron with some flutes carved onto it. Hopefully we can remove that before too long...

My love Sasanna died in the collapse of the Tremarian Echo; something spoke into the Tremarian cavern, and the force of the echo dropped bedrock onto whole metropoles of Skyhold. Mining that realm out again will take ages, as fallen constructions are more prone to collapse than almost any natural rock. Treasures can be recovered, adamant weapons, but how much gild would it take to fill the broken walls and restore them to beauty? Yet we clear it out, length by length. We cannot discard works of the heart, let alone those belonging to the dwarves who were crushed in the echo. 

I go for mushroom wine.

—

Wine, wine like berries. It drenches me when it flows. When I was a lad I had a caper. I snuck into a distillery, past the giant basins and alembics of rotgut (like copper snailshells), past the beer barrels (though when our beer is young it's wonderfully sweet, tender newborn stuff like drinking veal) and on to a great plain of round stone pits where wine was making ready.

There are many such pitfields in Skyhold, some for brewing solvents and reagents and lubricants, (though our finest ingredients tend to come from the wilds, for example we cannot replicate the naphtha pits of the blacksand desert that lies beneath Chasmarix Volcano, nor the astral-pearl dyes belched by the Cloudmallow Slugmen, bless their hearts). I was looking at more wine than I could possibly drink even if I were given months to just lay in it, gulping, a prospect which even to this day makes my mouth water. I stood by each pool and smelled it until I found the ripest; can you imagine blackberry preserves made into the smoothest liquor? That was the scent of this wine, like it was buttering my nose with it.

I lay on my belly and drank, drank, drank. The pool was vast, but I swear to you I lowered the level a bit. I felt as if I was wrapped up by the fire, blessed by a goddess, filled with oracle, and fed with the finest fruit all at once, but there's no hiding a beard dipped in wine. On my way out, I was caught by the larder wards- you can imagine some caution had fled me- and I spent the next few months seconded to a lubrication crew as their gofer.

Do you know how they used to grease the gears and axles under the Forges of Grath? They had a technique... at that time, we were at war with the mothmen of the Seer's Cobweb. Now, mothmen produce a certain natural resource. Music, you say? They do, I know a ranger who would go out just to listen to them at night, but I’m not talking about the music. It was their cutworms!

Mothmen are not fatty creatures relative to, say, a pig, but their larvae are quivering with it. Seething with it! If you see a cutworm split, you can't believe that it had so much of mucous inside it! They make tempting companions for a nap, I tell you, just to lay down with your head and shoulders on it... but anyways, the mothmen would often get away when we hit their roosts, but they couldn't get all of their cutworms out, so we had a surplus.

The lubrication crew were lazy bastards, but cunning. To lubricate the machines, they just... dropped the cutworms into them. Pllssh! It was a real waste because half the fat would just drip down onto the floor, and who do you suppose had to bucket it up? Nasty stuff, not delicious like most fat, it smelled as though grass could rot badly, and their skins were damned difficult to pick up after they'd been squished between two giant gears or wrapped around a spindle fifty or sixty times; you'd haul it up and it would rip in a dozen places, delicate as gossamer but not quite as pleasant.

By the end of my service, the campaign against the mothmen was over and they had to switch to using goblins for lubrication; they're much easier to pick up after being run through a gear assembly, and it was a good way to get introduced to their insides before my first battle with them (I was in the viscera smiling away while some of my companions were turning green), but of course goblins can’t compare to cutworms as lubrication.

—

We had a human come to visit us once, and he told me something very curious. This man was a renowned swordsman and had a very long voulge that could reach the organs of gigantic beasts and hew up gangs of smaller foes. I thought, he must be fighting for his king, his country, his people, his gold. How could he be so talented without those causes at his heels?

Well, he told me something that he might not have admitted to his own people, or even to me if we hadn’t been buckets deep in fluefungus rakia: he lived to fuck supernatural creatures, especially ones of a feminine persuasion. That was all he wanted to do; go about and lay with magical creatures, assuming there was some avenue of making it happen.

I said, “Why?”

I don't think he could exactly explain it, but he told me of a single aspect, the reason he was a master swordsman; once he could defend himself, one might think his time would be better spent learning forgotten languages, or the lore of fallen empires, or of hidden fae and fairies, or of the gods and their wayward, monstrous children- or at least honing his poetry! But the thing he'd learned early on that magical beasts are not necessarily impressed by poesy and elegance alone; what they want (more often at least) are the ability to destroy magical beasts. If the warrior is also a poet, all the better, but being a warrior is the anchoring principle. So, he'd found his reason to become a mighty warrior. It wasn't his king, but his thing, as he put it to me.

Among the magical beasts he'd enumerated having sex with:

-A giant butterfly with no humanoid features (had he been able to communicate with it? He didn't say)

-A sphinx (taking it from behind while unable to see its face seems like bestiality to me)

-A dryad (splinters?)

-A ghost (he’d found a glade where the moonlight, reflecting off particular flowers, made all things ethereal, even the trees and grass)

-An icewyrm (I suspect he did it for the story rather than because he really wanted to)

-A gang of naiads who subsequently stole everything he had, even his clothes (naturally he proclaimed that it had been worth it)

-A mermaid (she simply sucked him off because it seemed she had no other suitable orifice)

-A serpent-bodied medusa-woman (unlike the mermaid, she did have at least a suitable orifice, but he said it was very awkward; they couldn't make love in missionary position because if the gaze didn't get him, the snake-hairs would)

-A female minotaur; apparently finding her had been the real problem

-A tentacle beast in a deep cavern; more of a tugjob

-A harpy; he showed me scars 

-A golem (outercourse)

-A kind of giant spider woman. He talked her into mummifying him with webs, leaving just a single part of him exposed.

I asked him if he'd ever been with a dwarf maiden, and he was very polite but said he had not had the pleasure but would of course not presume that such a thing was in the cards during his visit; honestly I don't think he was interested, which somehow both irks and relieves me. 

—

There are many things that I don't even speak of, even to other dwarves. Being a runescribe involves much introspection, attunement to things that are outside of oneself and flowing through oneself at once. Moreover it involves delving into places guided only by intuition, which is easily disrupted by companions. It's common knowledge that certain mushrooms can induce a berserker state, etc, etc, but it is less known that some mushrooms may plant mycelium in the flesh when touched, so that if you hold one for long enough, it may meld into your body and disappear.

It becomes a part of you, and suddenly your survival becomes more important to fungal entities. I have walked among them and spoken to them. They do not begrudge our mushroom wine more than we begrudge fungus beneath our toenails; just a little, and such is life. Nor do not begrudge our presence beneath the earth any more than we begrudge fungus on cheese; a genesis of useful things. 

—

One of the most important qualities in a suit of dwarven armor is that it be able to resist pressure.

The darkness is like an ether that will kill you if you breathe it in long enough. There are whole kingdoms, living and dead, in the fissures, caverns, gorges, and seas. Both living and dead kingdoms are sources of danger; danger when we mine beneath them, danger when our fingers hunger for ancient gold, danger when our shining halls burn the minds of the dead and spite the souls of the living. They come for our gems and relics so they can hide them in the dark, diminishing them to a level that they can stand.

There are creatures that were bred to be weapons of terror, bred by nature or by masters too weak for the battleline. A weapon is dangerous in the hands of a warrior, but even the twitch of a beast’s body can carry enough power to liquefy a dwarf. I have seen a potent hammerdwarf in chainmail slapped by the tail of a cholerawyrm. The next I saw of him was his heart beating free upon the stones, three dwarfs’ lengths from where he’d been hit, among his other organs. His body was made limp, limbs broken, turned inside out with all his fat chained in shattered links like the torn flesh of a fatty fish. This is a fate all too common in the darkness; while armies might march beneath banners and torches, the absolute dark is the domain of the true predators.

True dwarven battle armor is sealed and braced so that a dwarf cannot be flattened by a blow. Bones broken? Yes. Limbs twisted? Yes. Burned, acidized, gassed, powdered, drowned, mind-controlled, teleported, disintegrated? Yes. But preventing the flick of a great beast’s body from turning you into pâté opens routes of reprisal; suddenly, your adamantine ax can sever a tail, shiver a limb, or cut open a soft belly and let you climb inside, cutting and biting your way through alien guts and organs. More importantly, warrior-masters like the hammerdwarf I saw spilled like a slit bag can live, slightly brain-damaged, but wily and cautious in treating with things in the dark compared to greenhorns. A party led by a veteran that slays a great beast can spare us decades of casualties.

—

I tested a new rune today, in principle the transmission of the concept of a fortress into the skin.

We are familiar with armoring the outside, but what of pouring armor within, so that a portion of flesh becomes a fastness, a place of operations, and perhaps the source of attack and observation all at once?

The first thing to do is fuse, burn flesh, cauterize it that it is carbonized, ready for re-latticing into new forms that are flexible and porous yet strong, so that the living sinew and its motes might re-permeate the transmuted flesh, afflicted though it may be in the imposition.

This fastness-in-flesh must be shaped for its purpose, lest the body and its humours mistake the fortress for a blade being driven in, or a latrine or abattoir or bordelo-to-be. Once the rune has been shaped with bastions and ports, it is riven in, hot as fire, and its gates are opened, allowing the flow of flesh and its infinite souls into the structure. Fires are lit within, burning torches that glow from the rune and the wound, and this is how one knows that the graft has been successful.

Should a sword blow strike the top of this structure, it may crack, but it will likely hold, the flesh around it mere dirt to be plowed in comparison. A dwarf permeated by fortress runes may feel like a kingdom unto himself, his body a temple, his mind a torture chamber and where he boils up death-plans to wreak upon the enemy in his bloodily-impervious state.

But is a fortress complete if it has no means of attack? I have installed micro-runes betwixt the crenellations and found that these are apt launchers of every kind of hell-dart and evisceration-blast. Tiny shards of a metal that devours the soul across years? Yes. Heatmetal that grows in a foreign body? I tested it upon a pig, and when the tines had grown in a star throughout its flesh, I picked it up and set it upon my fireplace (though my yetiskin rug was ruined). A squirt of universal solvent? This was challenging and I began by accidentally dissolving myself to the bone just above my elbow, but I managed to capture it in a matrix of magnets running along the inside of the tower keep, and by installing a repulsion rune masked by the shielding rune at the bottom of the superstructure, I was able to create a launching mechanism by dissolving the shielding rune (and my prized alembic for making toad garum in the initial squirt, but such sacrifices are levied upon every runescribe). 

The true challenge was the automating of these runetop weapons! There is an ancient rune, from times when disease-laden fungus inched throughout the surface of the world, that when stood upon, sent the body into a lather of self-defense. No disease may touch a dwarf when stands upon the rune, though alas, protracted exposure may cause his body to devour himself until the rune is disrupted by his weeping blood. However, I found that upon standing on this rune, the fortress-fixtures in my body could be induced to target poison frogs that I had unleashed across the room. We only had a few of these since our last macawman caravan, but it was proof enough that true threats would be targeted, even outside of the body. Now how to mobilize this principle so that it can be carried in the runes of my flesh fortress…

The Shaper of the Isle + Feedback

"I write for myself for other people." I've set up an anonymous feedback form; please feel free to use it for anything I've ever written, as I would like to hear your thoughts and recommendations.

---

The boat hung still in a bower of golden apples. Its passage was presaged by moonlit ripples arcing like feathered electricity across the coffee-colored water. It was beyond the horizon of the imperial locks burnished with steel and purple with curtains. It was upon the glade riverlands where green grass peered from shallow water.

Cypress rowed alone. He was a Shaper, born to the goddess of the sea and the god of serpents, an imperial foundling from a nest of snakes. A transmuter and a transmutee. In his natural form he was a bloody, maimed thing who could not remain beneath the sky for long, but it was his to wear the image of any man or woman whom he had somewhat comprehended. He now wore the simulacrum flesh of a wanderer, a comer and goer and hedonist, who had left the imperial canal amidst swollen bellies and warrants of remand. Nothing was lost by adopting this man's flesh; where Cypress went, his face was irrelevant. 

He sought an oracle beyond the reeds of the trickling waters. A seer of demigods, a baptizer of spirits. A footnote upon an eelskin scroll in a wooden crawlspace fissure of a honeycomb scriptorium. Little to go on, yet he was compelled. He felt himself falling towards the character of those whose flesh he’d copied.  He’d been given men of honor and wisdom, but also terrible bores and liars. A molding by imperial decree. As he’d aged, his own selections began to play upon him, as he explored the imperial underbelly and lifestealing wilds. 

But to wear no flesh dried him, called his attention to the sea, salt winds whipping him like he was tearing paper, fangs aching for another man’s flesh. The anguish of his eschewed parentage, the power of the sea and the primordial serpent wending through his blood and bones to drown his nascent conscience, his individuation. Destruction beckoned him, then death. Even caged in such a form he would die, desiccated, scales falling from his bones. 

He sought balance with this oracle, balance on the edge of a knife. A way to be as he was born in his moments between the skybridges, subcanals, and cataphracted catacombs of the sun-temple’s sea-gate. 

Sable-furred amphibians wove like a living tapestry beneath the boat. Cypress slipped into the water and felt them fly beneath his fingertips, and then he reached down and grasped the glossy sea-grass like the fur of a sea-monster, pulling himself to the waterline. 

He touched down on the sodden bank and gazed into the trees that rose a few feet overhead. They gathered thick and fast in bundles with varicocele vines woven sashlike across the accumulated trunks. He espied a gap like the mouth of a tiny cavern and unshod his cape, using it to tie his boat to a bough before his ascension. 

He slipped through the crevice and slid down a dusty slope into a hollow of black trees demarcated in blades of moonlight, lit from within by a tiny glowing gourd which was fed by their roots, reaching inward in unison. The hollow’s boundaries were broken by twin pits of shadow, passages of pooled darkness on either side of the abode, and Cypress froze as a vibration of umbral subtlety rose dust motes into the honeycolored light around the golden gourd. Something was coming from the rightmost passage and Cypress froze, hands ready to reach for one of two treasures. 

In a scabbard pooled and formed from the welterspring of an unmade astral portal, Cypress wore a four-hundred-year-old saber, black ripples darting along its body like a blade emerging from the shadows. In a black lockbox made from the beaks of four piston crows, he carried a garland of peachmoon irises, an alchemical petal prized by the half-corporeal. This was a gift for the Oracle. 

There came a breath so deep it sucked wind through the chamber. Cypress pushed one foot out as a great spined shadow caught glimmers as if along the shouldered spears of marching warriors. It was a vast boar with an iron skeleton, its spines shimmering, gleaming tusks razored and catching light as if polished for an execution. 

The thing turned to him, yellow cat’s eyes narrowing. It would charge him, and he would be carved as surely as if he faced the glaives of warrior monks. He had the space of one breath to draw. He grasped the lily case, squeezed it, and cast it to the side.

It sprang apart in midair, flecks of the casing catching light like a shattered mollusk. A harmonious, teasing aroma like a tea of honeydew crept across the hollow, falling upon Cypress and the boar like a gentle, peacemaking spirit. The boar turned towards the garland and narrowed its eyes. Cypress had his hands on the lacquerlatticed handle of his blade. The boar strode gracefully to the garland and began to eat it, and Cypress darted batlike down the corridor it had come from.

He emerged adjacent to a moonlit plain of grass in the center of a ring of woods, limbs rising like sapphire specters around something gleaming in a height at the center. Cypress approached it, hand fallen from his blade, grass growing darker around the hem of the gentle hill. 

A figure as tall and slender as the trees stepped forward from between them, and Cypress almost fell on his back, but stood fast, knees soft, vision darkening around the figure. It was a woman of blue treeflesh as if freshly stripped of bark, hoofs glossy black, hands like a harpy’s claws. Her eyes were black and glossy as obsidian crystals, her hair like absinthe lichen. 

Barely moving her legs, she ascended to the height of the hill and gazed down at him with her head cocked to one side. 

“Lost one, where swam you like a wanton minnow? Furred beasts circle water and oak.”

“I minced from the city, my lady,” said Cypress with a wavering breath, “From the imperium on yonder.”

“You are not a landling, are you? No thing of cog and twine. I can smell the sssserpent’s breath on you, and the rime of distant waves. A changeling.”

“A Shaper, as we are called.”

“By who, your mother and father? You are a polymorphic fetus, a thing waiting to be. Your lordling can offer no true name. You are an acid that will bend the empire. Does he know he rubs solvent betwixt his fingers? Your heart is afire with bile and thorns.”

“I am at no peace in the sheath of another man, nor when in my bloody bones. I came with death at my doorstep, murder growing within me like a cancer on the conscience. I have no place but degradation in this cosmos or in the constellations of man’s polities. My mother is a silent roar, my father a beast of the hunt. But I have the mind of a man, and perhaps by dint a soul. Yet this is being reclaimed by older aethers. Where is a place on earth I can be?”

“Let us see if you deserve one. What do you feel when you shed your flesh?”

“The city-crushing breadth of the sea, a leviathan in my bones coursing me towards hurling down the realms of man.”

“And?”

“The poison of the grandfather wyrm, corrosion that cannot create. Boiling blood, melting bones, bursting veins and arteries. Drinking what has been destroyed.”

“And what would your empire have you do?”

“Burn the innards of men abroad. A killer and counterspy. An eavesdropper and seducer.”

“And why are you so crestfallen at this delightful prospect?”

“For now you know just what I am. Now you will never help me.”

The Oracle smiled and her teeth were the beaks of birds. 

“Come here,” she said.

He advanced up the hill towards her, head falling, ready to be torn apart and devoured.

He reached the top. There was a small dais of sapphire-colored stone set into the apex of the hill. A wind brushed the leaves and they quivered like beetle shells in flight, the sapphire platform gleaming across them and the jet-black hooves of the oracle. 

“Motherless, skinless murderer, that is what you are?” said the Oracle.

He looked up at her.

“Torturer, betrayer, lapdog of tyranny, that is what you are?” she said. 

Tears began to run down his foreign face. Another’s cheeks were burning.

“Is that what you are?”

“Not if I chose my birth.”

“No one can choose their birth. But one can still choose.”

He noticed that his calfskin calcei shoes were growing soaked. He looked down and saw that the sapphire dais was spreading outwards, deepening, becoming a crystal pool of warm water. It was darkening with galactic tendrils of misty blood.

“What is this?”

“Repose,” she said, “When you bathe here you will shed all pretense, as you have with me, and the voices in your blood will be still and silent. You will be unmade, that you may make yourself.”

The doppelgänger flesh was falling away as the water deepened. He fell back and the pseudoskin sloughed around him, and he shook it free, pushed his clothes away. The skin dissolved into sediment, became crystalline as ground glass, and then disappeared as the water cleansed itself. The blood remained, washing off him as his heart beat it along his scales and bones. 

He felt calm and still, a consciousness in space, not harrowed or hemmed in by calls to atavism. 

“This is your pool, now. I am off to find another. Do not forget who you are when you are here. Do not do what you would not do here. Let this be the center of your world.”

“Thank you,” said Cypress.

“You are a seed who was planted by the Fates. I have merely replanted you. We shall see whose handiwork is brought to fruition.” 

And with that, she was gone. 

Cypress lay in the pool for a long time. When he rose, instead of burning his flesh, the wind seemed to balm him. He closed his eyes, and chose an ancient sage whose words suddenly came to him in sharp relief. He cloaked himself in the old man’s body and gazed down the aquiline nose into the wood break. He would not be returning to the imperial locks and sea-gate. He would pass the second horizon and find his way among people of a different provenance, a differing charter. And then, perhaps, he would return to the seat of the world with the forms he’d gained.

The Hands of Lacquermere

This is an adventure for Investigating Censor, my dark rules-light RPG wargame. The core game is set amidst a campaign by oracular warrior monks to eliminate​ a sect of human-sacrificing pirates, but this adventure concerns the secondary enemies of the Investigating Censors: the Secret Societies that plague the newly-destabilized south coast region.

This adventure is intended to provide concrete examples of all speculative content for the Investigating Censor core rulebook, which covers adventures of a much broader scale; The Hands of Lacquermere concerns a single settlement and its outlying reaches. 

It is also intended to serve as an introductory adventure, and contains all appendices needed for play.

Before we begin, I'd like to direct you to Solomon VK's recent adventure for Investigating Censor, The Cape of Four Pleasances, which blends his campaign setting, The Rest of All Possible Worlds, with Investigating Censor's world and system for laying out the key players in settlements and their retinues. It contains excellent ideas and some beautiful prose. 

The Hands of Lacquermere

The Monastery of the Inner Orchard has proven unable to deal with the Secret Society in the township of Lacquermere.

This Society, the Hands of the Trembling Filament, are arsonists par excellence. They resist monastic rule.

A foreign caravan was destroyed by the Hand, who placed subtly-burning fibers in the lacquer-laden carts of the caravan. The lacquer detonated just as the caravan was leaving Lacquermere.

The High Dreaming Citadel has dispatched Investigating Censors to root out the Hands of the Trembling Filament.

    Index

Lacquermere

The Streets

The Garden

The Lacquerwell

The Caravansary

The Regime Manor

The Outlying Reaches

-Teahouse

-Wilderness

The Hall of Hands

The Monastery

Appendix: Potential Allies

-20 Townspeople

-20 Visitors to the Caravansary

-12 Potential Allies

-6 Regional Concentrations of Desirable Retinue Members 

Appendix: Sentiment

Appendix: High Dreaming Citadel Cachet

CRB (Core Rulebook) Appendix: The Search for Allies

CRB Appendix: Corruption, Loyalty, or Resolve

CRB Appendix: Skills

CRB Appendix: The Uses of Alchemy

CRB Appendix: The Uses of Fetches and Fetishes 

CRB Appendix: Combat

Lacquermere

The town is nestled in a bower of ridges. The red-tiled houses encircle a green garden. To the south there are the variegated roofs a tall caravansary. A track made of bright hardwood has been laid on either side for drovers and their carts. Veinous smears in the earth run into the wilderness. 

There is a cliff-face monastery in the town’s northern crags. The Monks of the Inner Orchard walk the streets armed with trident bladespears, their black, green-hemmed robes gathered around them. They do not smile at Investigating Censors, but greet them with welcoming resignation. The monks have never petitioned the Citadel nor walked with its masters, and the Citadel’s intervention humiliates them.

The rocky crags that surround the town have little black holes in them. One can see a crawlspace in each hole, just large enough for a man to worm his way in with the stone pressing him on all sides. Prisoners were once jammed in these crawlspaces so that their cries could be heard throughout the town.

The High Dreaming Citadel asked the Monks of the Inner Orchard to cease this practice. Now, the holes are occupied by self-starved monks observing the town, their eyes huge in drawn heads, cheeks hollow, faces grim and livid.

The holes are reached by passages inside the rock.

The Streets

The houses are made of unpainted wood and have round portals in their faces. They are dark inside, as is the preference in this fire-prone town.

Tiger-striped kittens are draped along the tiled walls. Postal stations stand at crossroads, brown cabinets on lacquered poles.

The morning dew comes so heavy in Lacquermere that rivers slide like scaled glass down the slopes at dawn. Dew clings to the trees so thickly that rain comes from the boughs even when the sky is blue. The streets are ceilinged with low-hanging foliage, bark striped along its length. The branches are draped with snails like opalescent condensation. 

(Flute Check) Casually playing the flute while resting in a public area of Lacquermere will give a one-time +1 Sentiment increase assuming the streets are not deserted. Check vs d4. 

A Ghost Whisperer, a Silk Saturator, and a Flusoother can be noticed walking through the streets of Lacquermere. From Appendix: Potential Allies:

Ghost Whisperer

Her tragedy is written in her bloodless face and dark unwavering eyes. She has moved past it in mind, but her spirit is half torn between realms. She soothes the haunters, soothes the souls of men and of spirits who were never human, and makes them her champions. She can use Poetry to craft Fetches and Fetishes. Only a 25% chance of being affected by a spirit attendant to a Fetch or Fetish.

Location: Drafty, lightless house on the hill

Acuity: d6

Flute: d6

Impersonation: d6

Prophecy: d6

Poetry (F&F): d12

Silk Saturator (can create highly-effective but 1-use armor)

There is a use of the snails unknown to monk, Hand, or townsman. This woman supplies a distant rebellion with inconspicuous armor, their political wing (orators in swathes of silk) and their insurgents (hinterland rangers in wraps of black). Her silks are powerful armor, but brittle; one blow will almost certainly be stopped, but the ingeniously concentrated weave will be undone and fall away. She is no friend of the Hand and suspects the Inner Orchard of malfeasance. If the Investigating Censors prove at least superior to the other centers of power in honor, she may share her secret with them. If they do not, not even a Writ of Purpose will compel her.

Location: Weaving shed adjacent to a sheer face of silkrock

Acuity: d6

Alchemy: d8

Impersonation: d8

Poetry: d6

Flusoother (can do some Alchemy, but also elicit lies through conversation using Impersonation instead of Acuity)

She visits the sick and hypochondriac at home. She is a good healer and a master listener. One may suspect her decoctions, but they will be looking in the wrong place. She has a masterful ability to gather accurate impressions of truth and fiction in the proclamations of those whom she tends to; she may not be able to tell you the truth of their intentions, but she can tell you where they are lying. Beware; you may be similarly transparent.

1/4 chance of Disloyalty (agent of (50/50) Hand or Monks)

Location: Wherever someone is ill; lives in a small, nondescript house in town 

Acuity: d8

Alchemy: d8

Fetches and Fetishes: d6

Flute: d6

Impersonation: d10

Prophecy: d4

The Garden

Pears hang unpicked in the polity's central garden, a square space bounded by an unworked wooden fence. Green lanterns hang in the trees so that the pears are incandescent by night and double the lanternshine through the boughs and shadows.

A Garden Maiden is here. From Appendix: Potential Allies:

She appraises the pears with affection, pink robe flowing, flute tucked in a red silk band, her voulge in the garden shed.

Acuity: d8

Alchemy: d8

Archery: d8

Fetches and Fetishes: d6

Flute: d8

Horsemanship: d8

Poetry: d6

Prowess: d6

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d8

If issued a Writ of Purpose, she will prefer to accompany an IC rather than remain at the garden until needed. People dragooned by ICs fear the consequences of missing a further summons. 

A Vitriolaged Seer can occasionally be found taking little snippets from the garden. From Appendix: Potential Allies:

Vitriolaged Seer

Her pronouncements were foul to the ears of liars, and so they doused her with alchemical solvent to cut her off from the divine. Her power did not inhere to her eyes, and despite being blind she has lost no insight, though she has become more selective with whom she shares it. She shapes her abode with many plants, creating rooms and hallways by snipping them as she walks, collecting sprigs and shoots for cuisine and alchemy.

Location: Disused counting house with greenery spilling from the doors and windows; adjacent to the Garden.

Acuity: d8 (can perceive local environment similar to Revealing alchemical effect)

Alchemy: d8

Fetches and Fetishes: d6

Flute: d6

Impersonation: d8

Poetry: d8

Prophecy: d8

The Lacquerwell

Mercurial lacquer pools in sanded-out stone gourds.

Every day, the people of the township troupe into the forest with baskets on their carrying poles. They return laden with snails to be crushed.

The snails are stepped on in great casks like grapes and their seep is harvested for lacquer. The snailflesh itself is extracted and fired into amber meatloaves.

The Investigating Censors are invited to gloss their scabbards and scroll cases with the mercurial lacquer. Items so treated hold a dusky glow that becomes diamond-bright when meeting firelight.

The snail harvest feeds the people, but is otherwise a ruse. The snail extract is superfluous to the lacquer, which originates in the depths of the monastery.

Lacquermere's Headman

He knows the Monks have a secret, but he remembers the days when they would put their prisoners in the hillside oubliettes, and is silent. He is grimly and brutally resigned to monastic rule, and focuses on organizing the people in their task of collecting snails each morning. He is willing to help the party against the Hand, who will assassinate him if he is seen talking at length with the ICs.

Archery: d6

Flute: d6

Gambling: d6

Horsemanship: d6

Poetry: d6 

Prowess: d6

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d6

A Lacquerbinder can be found at work here. From Appendix: Potential Allies:

Lacquerbinder (can instill alchemical effects into Fetches and Fetishes)

The lacquer is more than physical. Its source is otherworldly and it echoes through realms as if penetrating them with radiance. Somewhere along the line it will shine through ghosts and spirits and can lace new elements into their fabric such that they reflect back to us.

He discovered this while lacquering his fetches. His lacquer had been corrupted by his brushes and tools, and he lacquered his secret Euphoria tincture into the Hanging Nocturne of a Whisperer. The voice of the spirit brought him unparalleled pleasure, and he has become its confidante and champion. Next, he guarded his cottage door with a Transfiguring Proscription that Cursed a repeat burglar before turning his flesh into gelatin; the Lacquerbinder keeps this bone-filled humanoid figure in his closet, now. 

He is losing touch with reality and is considering summoning a Banshee into the gelatin corpse after treating it with Sexually Arousing and Life Containing tinctures, and his Whisperer is egging him on.

Location: Lacquerwell while working, a cottage surrounded by lavender while at home

Alchemy: d8

Fetches and Fetishes: d8

Poetry: d6

The Caravansary

A narrow, seven-storied inn overlooks the Caravansary. There is a common room for performances at the bottom. A stone staircase makes up the tower’s backbone and leads to sleeping rooms.

There is an undisguised tension between two men in the inn. They drink but make veiled references to one another’s failures and derelictions. They are Hands who represent schismatic tendencies in the organization.

Consequences of Failure: d4 Hands are murdered by their fellows and disappear. The Weaver of Trembling Filaments gets a burst of sacrificial clarity and may make an insanity-free Prophecy check about the ICs.

(Flute Check) An argument between visitors arises at the caravansary inn; it will lead to bloody clash 

and possible burning of the caravansary without a Flute check. The player will be expected to speak his piece after finishing his air. A matched result calms the situation enough to prevent violence; Success also adds +1 Sentiment (See Appendix: Sentiment).

The caravansary inn has a continual stream of new visitors, but two long-term residents, a Threadplayer and a Cattle Raider from a western realm. From Appendix: Potential Allies:

Threadplayer (she can lull people to sleep using Flute)

She sees patterns in people's thoughts and has an inexplainable, irreplicable ability to play tunes that will lull them to sleep after a few moments' conversation, eliciting sleep cues in their memories. This is not infallible and the listeners must not already suspect her of malfeasance or be in a hurry to do something. She has been co-opted by the Monks of the Inner Orchard. She is very occasionally required to perform for guests that the Monks suspect of malfeasance; plainclothes Monks of the Inner Orchard then search them and their effects.

Fetches and Fetishes: d6

Flute: d12

Gambling: d6

Impersonation: d6

Poetry: d6

Cattle Raider

A cattle rustler driven from a western empire, he can maneuver his black hobilar pony with incredible stealth, even at a canter. He and his gang served in border wars in exchange for rights to captured livestock, but he was left behind in a feint and brutally branded by a cattle baron. His men broke him from the dungeon in a daring attack, but were forced to scatter when overtaken by shrine maiden light horse archers responding to the fires in the baron’s battlements. He has made it here alone. He would be usefully dragooned by a Writ of Purpose, but will be Corrupt unless occasionally provisioned with livestock as his personal property.

Acuity: d8

Archery: d8

Gambling: d10

Horsemanship: d10

Poetry: d6

Prowess: d10

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d8

See the Caravansary Visitor table in Appendix: Potential Allies for more.

The Regime Manor

The Monks of the Inner Orchard greet the Investigating Censors with an undisguised tension. They make clear that this is due to their loss of face at the Citadel’s intervention. Nevertheless, they do what they can to aid the Investigating Censors against the Hand.

The Monks of the Inner Orchard host the Investigating Censors in the empty manor of a Former Regime Official. His fruit larders are empty except for leathern peels. His sitting rooms and fireplaces are like spideryards of crystalline dust.

The Outlying Reaches

Teahouse

(Resolve Situation) There is a teahouse in the wooded hills near the village. The proprietor acts as loan shark, and several villagers have disappeared over the years after failing to pay him on time. No normal horseman can fight on the steep, leafy hill around the teahouse.

Proprietor and 3d6 hangers-on.

Resolving the situation adds d4+1 Sentiment if resolved without any death and +2 Sentiment if resolved with deaths. In the latter case, townsfolk from Lacquermere will burn the teahouse and its provisions to ritually cleanse the place of blood.

There are a Courtesan of the Spiral Smoke and a Scarred Gambler here. From Appendix: Potential Allies:

Courtesan of the Spiral Smoke

A trafficker with dark green nails, off-black jade lipstick, dark curling hair, and scars across her sumptuous face. She has little thin containers made of fragrant, oiled cedar hanging around her conspicuously soft body, and their contents can be bought for gold. She will prepare them for you. She will light the pipe. Oil the razor. Put the powder on a pastel leaf. And when you are amidst it, more is offered, for much more gold.

There is ecstasy in her nails, and when she rakes them down your back you are filled with their narcotic flow. All except her left little finger. She never presses the tip into anyone she does not intend to kill.

Location: Teahouse outside Lacquermere, though she is not a hanger-on of the loan shark; he knows better than to try and co-opt her.

Acuity: d8

Alchemy: d10

Archery: d6

Fetches and Fetishes: d6

Flute: d8

Gambling: d8

Horsemanship: d6

Impersonation: d8

Poetry: d6

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d6

Scarred Gambler

His robe hangs open, hairy chest and cut face conspicuous, catching the moonlight through a window. He weathers losses with iron fortitude and takes his winnings with a smile like a snarling cat. He is sardonic but not sadistic and might make enemies with the Hands of the Trembling Filament, or the monks if he knew their true charter. He is, after all, a gambler in many things.

Location: Teahouse outside Lacquermere. The Gambler’s swordplay was witnessed once in this place, and the loan shark has since never attempted to co-opt his guest. 

Acuity: d8

Archery: d6

Flute: d6

Gambling: d12

Horsemanship: d6

Poetry: d6

Prowess: d10

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d6

Wilderness

There is an Elixirbulb Seer in a camp near Lacquermere. From Appendix: Potential Allies:

The gleaming green cup in the remotest forest bower, a place of moss made warm by the presence of the bulb. Cotton and pollen turn to gold in the air, losing none of their lightness. The sun is attracted to this place from the dim boughs, as if it has leapt down from the canopy. He seeks it for the purest insight, embodied wisdom at the confluence of many biomes. Drinking it will allow a Prophecy check at d20 with no risk of madness.

Location: Small, personal camp outside Lacquermere. The ICs will encounter him if they or their retinue gather Alchemical reagents.

Acuity: d10

Alchemy: d10

Archery: d6

Flute: d6

Gambling: d6

Horsemanship: d6

Impersonation: d6

Poetry: d6

Prophecy: d4

Prowess: d6

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d6

There is a Woad Hermit near the bogs. From Appendix: Potential Allies:

Blue clay smeared in rings around his eyes, flecks of dirt in his thin white hair. He is shirtless, wears nothing but a tied-up brown garment and mud around his knees. He wears the woad like spectacles and sees clearly, sees past conventions, sees straight into the radioactive core of things, and so he has become an exile of containment, a psychiatric leprosy.

Location: Edge of the Lowland Bog

Acuity: d6

Alchemy: d8

Archery: d6

Fetches and Fetishes: d8

Prophecy: d8

(Resolve Situation) There is a creature in the bogs that reaches from below to superheat bog sludge to the point of bursting; those caught in the blast have horrible infections set into their burns within hours. This prevents both the harvesting of the largest, juiciest snails, and also the gathering of herbs necessary for lay medicine. The ICs can benefit in the short term by providing medical aid to the people of Lacquermere using their own Alchemy, adding +1 Sentiment for conspicuously providing medical care (and likely gaining information as well) assuming an Alchemical product is spent, but slaying the Sepsizer will fix Sentiment at a minimum of 1 (preventing Night Militias) permanently in Lacquermere.

In truth, this is a creature in a cave of mulch beneath the bog, a glossy black shell with a hundred little white limbs and a pair of crystalline blue eyes beneath it. Spines rise from beneath flaring segments in its shell, slithering through the earth to superheat portions of bog when humans come near. It kills people to prevent them from removing Alchemically-charged herbs that it eats, though it could survive in a weakened state upon other fare. 

The players will be attacked with these while traversing the swamp, with Acuity checks vs d8 made to find the confluence of rotten stumps that form the chasm mouth to its cavern, and Prowess checks vs d6 to get to cover when the bog begins to boil.

When the players reach the Sepsizer, it will be defenseless against them, as it will take the creature too long to withdraw its tendrils from the muck and move into a defensive curl. It can only be communicated with using Prophecy vs d4; both the delver and the Sepsizer must succeed at their Prophecy checks to communicate.

The Hall of Hands

(Poetry Check) With the arrival of the Investigating Censors, the Hand of the Trembling Filament puts out poetry highlighting the strangeness of monastic rule, hardening the locals against the ICs. After this poetry is disseminated, Sentiment is reduced by 3. The Investigating Censors may disseminate countervailing poetry. A matched result neutralizes the Hand’s effect on Sentiment; a success further increases Sentiment by 1.

In the streets, a man may give a surreptitious signal to another within sight of an IC or retinue member. This is a signal for a Hands meeting.

Consequence of Failure: An outlying Inner Orchard shrine is arsonized, causing a forest fire. The next time the ICs make a check to find a source of recruits in the wilderness, they roll vs d12.

When Hands of the Trembling Filament discuss their meeting place, they always refer to “the old man’s house”. The house of the oldest man in the village (now deceased) stands vacant in a hollow to the east; it is boarded up and members of the Hand have bound hideous-sounding Whisperers to Hanging Nocturnes near the property to dissuade children from approaching. The doors and windows themselves, however, have Thunder Reeds (d6 at 5’) placed behind the windows and doors, so that if these are forced they will detonate on whoever comes through and warn the Hand that their security measures have been inadequate. 

Their actual meeting place is in an underground chamber fed by several blind alleys with hidden passageways, so that the conspirators don’t have to gather on the surface to enter and so that there are several avenues of escape should the underhall be invaded.

One passageway is to be used only if being tailed. There is a corner, and then a Hanging Nocturne that binds a banshee to the sudden turn. The scream is likely to kill people all the way on the nearest road.

Hands of the Trembling Filament wrap themselves in loose black bands when embarking on missions of murder. They wield short sabers acid-etched with serpents climbing houses towards people sleeping by their windows.

Their organizer is an alchemist whose skin has been cured to paper by the fumes of his decoctions. His eyes are blood red as a god-cursed baby and his fingers are inhumanly thin. Rawhide bandoliers soft with deer down hang loose from his empty frame, but are heavy with the fruit of his techniques. 

The leader of the Hand enters his domicile through a false door in the foyer; his main door is set with a Malediction Proscription.

The Weaver of Trembling Filaments

Acuity: d12

Alchemy: d12

Archery: d12

Fetches and Fetishes: d10

Flute: d8 

Horsemanship: d8

Impersonation: d10

Poetry: d10

Prophecy: d4

Prowess: d10

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d8

Three-Stage Blast Poultice (d4 Applications): Explosive effect finished by Dissolving mist that becomes Arsonizing after melting-down the local environment.

Bog Beast Necrotization Poison: Insta-rots the victim’s circulatory system. 

Details: Three-Stage Blast Poultice

Explosive: Base strength of d8. An alchemical explosion affects d4 opponents within a 10’ radius. Those not maimed or killed are knocked over. A fist-size quantity can put a 2’ radius hole through a 1’ thick stone wall. When attempting to employ this explosive (either as a thrown or slung missile, or as a static emplacement, for example inside a lock or in a trap), roll a d4 vs your Alchemy. If you lose, it explodes right next to you. 

Dissolving: Hyperacidic liquid or universal solvent, generally with exceptions, such as whatever the container is made out of. Vitriolage is a d4 attack vs Prowess and generally defaces the individual even in case of survival. If the d4 and Prowess are equal, the victim is permanently blinded (or loses the use of other sensory organs if applicable).

Arsonizing: Generally takes the form of an infernal goo.

Hand of the Trembling Filament

Acuity: d6

Alchemy: d6

Archery: d8

Fetches and Fetishes: d6

Impersonation: d8

Prowess: d8

Arson Decoction

Climbing Claws (special training in use, d10 Prowess when climbing)

(Poetry Check) The Hand of the Trembling Filament will continue piecemeal with their attacks even if their leader is eliminated, unless the monks compose a powerful eulogy for him and his ideals. The Hand will permanently lay down arms if the ICs eliminate the leader, overthrow the Monks of the Inner Orchard, and compose a moving eulogy. Otherwise they will operate as small groups of bandits and lone wolves for the foreseeable future. Check vs d6.

The Monastery

The black eaves of the temple extend from the stone itself. They are frosted with a filigree of gold that ripples like a dragon's passing at night.

The windows are latticed with sharp half-cut bamboo, and the walkways sag with every footfall; a profoundly light step is required for silent movement.

Monk of the Inner Orchard

Acuity: d6 (d8 if embedded in rock)

Alchemy: d6

Archery: d6

Horsemanship: d6

Prowess: d8

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d6

Monastic Champion

The Abbott’s finest pupil will pose as a wandering mercenary and will repeatedly make himself conspicuous to the Investigating Censors, not offering to work for free but instead making himself a tempting target for a Writ of Purpose. He is heavily scarred and will play the charismatic hard man, pretending to be too proud to talk to commoners. This is because if he were not scarred, and if he spoke too freely to the people of Lacquermere, they would recognize him from his youth as a promising initiate of the Inner Orchard. He is, naturally, Disloyal to the ICs.

Acuity: d10

Alchemy: d6

Archery: d10

Fetches and Fetishes: d8

Flute: d8

Gambling: d8

Horsemanship: d10

Impersonation: d12

Poetry: d8

Prowess: d10

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d10

1/4 Armor

Battle Psychosis Cataplasm: Temporarily increases Prowess die size by two steps, and d10 increases to d12+2. d12 increases to d20. Usually fatal and taken in desperation; after the battle, the user must roll base Prowess vs d20 to survive. The Monastic Champion will take it immediately before launching a surprise attack on the party, if possible, ideally when assaulting the Monastery.

Abbott

This monk sought to rid the southern coast of its pirate lords even before the Poison War. The monasteries were too scattered, too lacking in common purpose to bring down the pirates as they were. He sought to imbue his monks with a supernatural blessing so that they might have a chance in their crusade against the human sacrificers. 

He and his closest companions traveled down a dry, dusty chasm in the lowland bog to a fissure lit by natural gas fires. They called upon the enemies of the dark ocean to bless them in their campaign against the pirates. Spirits that were like angles of shadow arced from the fires and prised themselves into the bodies of the Abbott’s companions.

Voices spoke through the flames. The Abbott would have miraculous treasure from human bodies inhabited by these umbralithic shadows. If he provided the bodies, he would be rich enough to outfit armies.

Mercurial lacquer bled from the Abbott’s companions. Aggrieved, he brought them one by one to the monastery.

Those impregnated with the umbraliths gradually die. As his companions perished, the Abbott sought a permanent host for the otherworldly lacquerers. Risking the use of his incipient Prophecy, he espied a forest demigod.

The Abbott

Acuity: d10

Alchemy: d8

Archery: d12

Fetches and Fetishes: d20

Flute: d8

Impersonation: d8

Poetry: d10

Prophecy: d8

Prowess: d12

Coin of the Junction (See Appendix: The Uses of Alchemy. His allies will attempt to give it to him)

Substrate Disruptor: His final sanction against the umbraliths, he will deploy it in the doorway of the Monastery and then flee far away if he feels they will compel him away from his hoped-for campaign against the pirates; this is the only thing that can redeem his situation in his own eyes.

Inner Sanctum

The monks have trapped a demigod beast of the forest here. This forest father wandered in a den of false leaves with a welter of mercurial lacquer hidden below. The beast fell into the pit and monks suffering from umbralithic impregnation were cast in with it.

It is coated in bloody white shag, its light blue skin cold and slackened in places over muscle burrowed by angled shadows. It lays on a great low platform.

The umbraliths weep mercurial lacquer down the sides of the parasitized demigod. Its electric blue flesh wells with weeping ichor as supernatural infection follows in the shadows’ wake. The gloss spreads across the demigod’s platform and is pushed into casks by monks with toothless rakes.

The demigod gutters and its fifty pearlescent fangs gleam by the brazier's glow. It cannot say a thing without the permission of the collective, for an umbralith has replaced its tongue.

Before the acquisition of the demigod, the monks made the sacrifice themselves. Brothers with the shadows inside them still lay around the twenty-legged predator. Some still have the umbraliths protruding from their mouths, gauged open by pronged extrusions. Other shadows jut from their necks, flesh taut around them, beckoning exsanguination should the creature be withdrawn. 

A shadow-host monk makes a divinatory dive into the Realm of White and Gold each day, clandestinely observing the Investigating Censors through the channels of their exoastral handlers.

If the monastery discovers that the ICs have learned the truth about the lacquer, the monks will gather in the crags around the manor that night. Fountains of fire will pour from the crags onto the manor as the monks unleash a torrent of fire arrows. Those escaping from the inferno will be targeted by shooters hidden in the hills.

Those who dash into the shadows beyond the hellfire will be subjected to d4-1 d4-skill Archery attacks. Those who stand still will suffer d20 such attacks.

A wary sentry may notice the monks moving into position with their braziers emitting a downward glow, Acuity vs d8.

A collection of angled shadows creates an aetheric blank. The forest father could not perceive them through Prophecy. Those scrying on the inner sanctum roll against d20.

If the ICs go to the place where the umbraliths first emerged, an easy Fetches and Fetishes (or Prophecy) check will reveal that something existentially befouling has emerged from the fire flues. 

Attacking the Monastary: Three Stages

Stage 1: Outlying Promenades

Polearm and bow monks defend alongside allied townsmen.

There are figures on the doors; those touching it without permission will have their souls trapped and made figures on the doors. There are already many warriors, thieves, squirrels, and birds plying their trades through bas relief cities on the doors. There is no trivial way to bring trapped souls back into human form, through seriously damaging the figures on the doors will at least free their souls. Fetches & Fetishes vs d8 neutralizes this function by bracing a correct quantity of dead flesh against the door, precluding further entrapment until it is removed.

The ICs will need to find some way to breach the doors. Alchemical applications will work, as will a sufficient quantity of lacquer detonated by the doors.

3d8 Monks of the Inner Orchard, 3d4 aligned townsmen (d4 sans Prophecy)

 

Stage 2: Gathering Hall

The monks release any bretheren who have been made insane by failing scrying checks upon the Investigating Censors. The afflicted madmen are hung with searing alchemical braziers whose plates are joined by the burning off of incense to activate their effects when among the enemy. The sane monks fire from a distance.

d4 brazier madmen + however many were created attempting to scry on the ICs

3d4 Monks of the Inner Orchard

Alchemical distillate on an individual mad monk:

d4

1 Transfiguration: A mutagenic mist that turns the human body into inert fishflesh, so that portion of an attacked individual’s body will become silvery and disconnected from the rest. The individual may die instantly or very, very slowly. 10’ radius, Alacrity vs d8 to evade.

2 Arsonizing: Sprays a flaming gelatin in a disc around the monk. 10’ radius, Alacrity vs d8 to evade.

3 Suppressing: Those caught by this blast of herbal embers will be drawn into a brain-sapping mental chasm; involuntary sleep is likely. 15’ radius, Alacrity vs d10 to evade.

4 Life-Containing: Those caught in this burst of warmth-seeking steam will have their essences drawn into the cloud, which will riot with consciousness for a moment before dispersing. 10’ radius, Alacrity vs d8 to evade.

Stage 3: Demigod Flesh Hive

The forest demigod lays on a platform of pure steel with umbralith-bewormed brothers scattered around as if paralyzed by pregnancy. Monks rake lacquer into casks, their faces double-wrapped against the tear-inducing alkaline reek of newborn umbralith-lacquer.

When the ICs enter, the monks will charge to melee with bladed spades while the angled shadows gush lacquer down the sides of the godbeast.

d20+d8 Monks of the Inner Orchard

2d4 umbralith-bearing bretheren

2d4 umbraliths in the Godbeast

The umbraliths will add to the chaos should the monks clearly be failing in their defense. As the ICs near the godbeast, the umbraliths will inject their precious lacquer with an irascible gall. This biological tincture is black until ignited by prolonged contact with the air. Flame will blast from the umbraliths’ sphinctertips, and when an umbralith is attacked at close range it will burst and inundate its surroundings with a magma of incandescent flesh.

25% of umbraliths killed: Umbraliths begin to beat around and emit an ear-piercing piping

50% of umbraliths killed: Umbraliths begin to gout fulminating lacquer at interlopers

75% of umbraliths killed: Umbraliths detonate at the approach of enemies

The last surviving umbralith will streak for the nearest cluster of enemies, attempting to detonate in their midst.

Pyrocoli furiosis, or alkaliphilic umbralith

Angles of shadow shaped like a gyrobifastigium when compacted in a wound, but unfurling into a clawed intestine when springing towards a new host.

Acuity: d8

Alchemy: d12

Archery: d8 (fulminating lacquer)

Flute: d8 (eerie piping)

Prophecy: d8

A missed ranged attack on an umbralith inhabiting the forest creature attacks the forest creature instead, target d12. A hit slays the creature.

If the godbeast survives the battle, it will be too weak to escape immediately. It will warn the ICs to not be near when it recovers, for it will not be able to resist devouring them. It will offer to engage its d20 Prophecy on behalf of the ICs at least once before they leave.

Godbeast

Acuity: d12

Fetches and Fetishes: d20

Poetry: d12 (spoken only)

Prophecy: d20

Prowess: d20

Appendix: Potential Allies

20 Townspeople

Note: The most common Townsman of Lacquermere is a picker and presser of snails with d4 in all skills sans Prophecy, which is 0. NPCs on this table have these same stats unless otherwise noted. 

People issued a Writ of Purpose have a chance of being Corrupt and/or Disloyal. A GM can make this check for an NPC right away or wait until he thinks it is relevant. Roll a d8. On a 1, roll a d6.

1-2: Corrupt

3-4: Disloyal

5-6: Both

1 Mushroomknower: Alchemy d6, Impersonation d6

2 Moondrinker: Prophecy d4

3 Wheelwright: Prowess d6

4 Bogcreeper: Acuity d6, Archery d6

5 Crier: Poetry d6, Impersonation d6

6 Midwife: Alchemy d6

7 Escrowman: Acuity d6, Poetry d6, Prowess d6

8 Groom: Flute d6, Horsemanship d6

9 Framer: Prowess d6

10 Millet Wine Drinkard: Gambling d8, Poetry d8, Prophecy d6

11 Grove Piper: Flute d8

12 Kennelkeeper: Impersonation d6

13 Keenman: Fetches and Fetishes d6

14 Rivery Fishwife: Flute d6, Gambling d6

15 Aged Lawsage: d8 Poetry

16 Militia Marshal: Archery d6, Impersonation d6, Prowess d6

17 Branchcat Shepherd: Acuity d6, Flute d6

18 Acorn Grinder: Acuity d6

19 Sprogfinder: Acuity d8

20 Frogboiler: Acuity d6

20 Visitors to the Caravansary

1 Independent Courtesan

Otherworldy Art specialization

Acuity: d8

Alchemy: d6

Fetches and Fetishes: d10

Flute: d8

Horsemanship: d6

Impersonation: d10

Poetry: d8

Prophecy: d4

2 Agitator 

Samesoulist

Impersonation: d8

Poetry: d6

3 Prophet 

Haruspicist

Acuity: d6

Alchemy: d6

Fetches and Fetishes: d6

Flute: d6

Impersonation: d6

Poetry: d6

Prophecy: d6

4 Exiled Desert Tribesman 

Foreign, Disloyal if issued a Writ of Purpose

Acuity: d8

Archery: d8

Fetches and Fetishes: d6

Flute: d6

Horsemanship: d10

Poetry: d8

Prowess: d8

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d8

5 Caravaneer

Acuity: d6

Archery: d6

Flute: d6

Gambling: d6

Horsemanship: d6

Impersonation: d6

Prowess: d6

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d6

6 Deserter

From the Poison River Library Guards; he hoped to find more of a welcome in these lands. Foreign, Disloyal if issued a Writ of Purpose.

Alchemy: d6

Archery: d10

Fetches and Fetishes: d10

Flute: d6

Impersonation: d6 

Prophecy: d4

7 Manbuyer 

Simply traveling through; the Monks of the Inner Orchard aren’t slavers.

Acuity: d8

Alchemy: d6

Archery: d6

Gambling: d8

Horsemanship: d6

Prowess: d8

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d6

8 Mendicant of the Silver Caverns

Acuity: d10 (though blind)

Fetches and Fetishes: d8

Flute: d8

Poetry: d8

Prophecy: d6

9 Imperial Ethnologist 

Foreign, Disloyal if issued a Writ of Purpose

Horsemanship: d8

Impersonation: d8

Poetry: d8

10 Salt Smuggler 

Posing as wandering florist.

Acuity: d8

Gambling: d8

Horsemanship: d10

Impersonation: d8

Prowess: d6

11 Shrine Maiden Initiator 

Sexual initiation of shrine maidens by itinerant medicine men is a corrupt practice in certain extreme hinterlands. The initiators claim that this places shrine maidens under the protection of certain primordial spirits.

Alchemy: d6

Fetches and Fetishes: d6

Flute: d6

Gambling: d8

Impersonation: d10

Prowess: d6

12 Wandering John

Gambling: d6

Horsemanship: d6

13 Undercover Pamphleteer 

Tenant Farmer Republicanism

Acuity: d6

Impersonation: d8

Poetry: d8

14 Unemployed Bodyguard

Acuity: d8

Archery: d6

Flute: d8

Gambling: d8

Horsemanship: d6

Impersonation: d6

Poetry: d8

Prowess: d10

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d6

15 Lettucemonger 

d4 sans Prophecy

16 Lost Diplomat

Foreign, Disloyal if issued a Writ of Purpose

Acuity: d6

Alchemy: d6

Archery: d6

Fetches and Fetishes: d6

Flute: d6

Gambling: d6

Horsemanship: d8

Impersonation: d10

Poetry: d8

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d6

17 Coifshearer

Impersonation: d6

18 Penitent Pirate

25% chance of not actually being penitent, instead being Corrupt and Disloyal

Acuity: d6

Archery: d6

Gambling: d6

Impersonation: d6

Prowess: d6

19 Noblewoman Exiled from Tower of Sea Glass (actually a ceramic revenant; thin as eggshell and empty inside, skin is hard and ice cold. Entity, disloyal if issued a Writ of Purpose)

Acuity: d12

Alchemy: d8

Fetches and Fetishes: d12

Flute: d12 (doesn’t actually require a flute)

Horsemanship: 0 (horse will not allow itself to be mounted by her)

Impersonation: d10

Poetry: d10

Prophecy: d10, no madness on failure, but subject inaccessible for time being

20 Master Thief

Always Corrupt

Acuity: d10

Alchemy: d8

Archery: d8

Fetches and Fetishes: d12

Gambling: d10

Horsemanship: d8

Impersonation: d10

Prowess: d10

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d8

12 Potential Allies

1 Grove Maiden

She appraises the pears with affection, pink robe flowing, flute tucked in a red silk band, her voulge in the garden shed.

Location: Central Grove

Acuity: d8

Alchemy: d8

Archery: d8

Fetches and Fetishes: d6

Flute: d8

Horsemanship: d8

Poetry: d6

Prowess: d6

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d8

2 Woad Hermit

Blue clay smeared in rings around his eyes, flecks of dirt in his thin white hair. He is shirtless, wears nothing but a tied-up brown garment and mud around his knees. He wears the woad like spectacles and sees clearly, sees past conventions, sees straight into the radioactive core of things, and so he has become an exile of containment, a psychiatric leprosy.

Location: Edge of the Lowland Bog

Acuity: d6

Alchemy: d8

Archery: d6

Fetches and Fetishes: d8

Prophecy: d8

3 Ghost Whisperer

Her tragedy is written in her bloodless face and dark unwavering eyes. She has moved past it in mind, but her spirit is half torn between realms. She soothes the haunters, soothes the souls of men and of spirits who were never human, and makes them her champions. She can use Poetry to craft Fetches and Fetishes. Only a 25% chance of being affected by a spirit attendant to a Fetch or Fetish.

Location: Drafty, lightless house on the hill

Acuity: d6

Flute: d6

Impersonation: d6

Prophecy: d6

Poetry (F&F): d12

4 Courtesan of the Spiral Smoke

A trafficker with dark green nails, off-black dark jade lipstick, dark curling hair, and scars across her sumptuous face. She has little thin containers made of fragrant, oiled cedar hanging around her conspicuously soft body, and their contents can be bought for gold. She will prepare them for you. She will light the pipe. Oil the razor. Put the powder on a pastel leaf. And when you are amidst it, more is offered, for much more gold.

There is ecstasy in her nails, and when she rakes them down your back you are filled with their narcotic flow. All except her left little finger. She never presses the tip into anyone she does not intend to kill.

Location: Teahouse outside Lacquermere, though she is not a hanger-on of the loan shark; he knows better than to try and co-opt her.

Acuity: d8

Alchemy: d10

Archery: d6

Fetches and Fetishes: d6

Flute: d8

Gambling: d8

Horsemanship: d6

Impersonation: d8

Poetry: d6

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d6

5 Scarred Gambler

His robe hangs open, hairy chest and cut face conspicuous, catching the moonlight through a window. He weathers losses with iron fortitude and takes his winnings with a smile like a snarling cat. He is sardonic but not sadistic and might make enemies with the Hands of the Trembling Filament, or the monks if he knew their true charter. He is, after all, a gambler in many things.

Location: Teahouse outside Lacquermere. The Gambler’s swordplay was witnessed once in this place, and the loan shark has since never attempted to co-opt his guest. 

Acuity: d8

Archery: d6

Flute: d6

Gambling: d12

Horsemanship: d6

Poetry: d6

Prowess: d10

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d6

6 Elixerbulb Seeker

The gleaming green cup in the remotest forest bower, a place of moss made warm by the presence of the bulb. Cotton and pollen turn to gold in the air, losing none of their lightness. The sun is attracted to this place from the dim boughs, as if it has leapt down from the canopy. He seeks it for the purest insight, embodied wisdom at the confluence of many biomes. Drinking it will allow a Prophecy check at d20 with no risk of madness.

Location: Small, personal camp outside Lacquermere. The ICs will encounter him if they or their retinue gather Alchemical reagents.

Acuity: d10

Alchemy: d10

Archery: d6

Flute: d6

Gambling: d6

Horsemanship: d6

Impersonation: d6

Poetry: d6

Prophecy: d4

Prowess: d6

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d6

7 Vitriolaged Seer

Her pronouncements were foul to the ears of liars, and so they doused her with alchemical solvent to cut her off from the divine. Her power did not inhere to her eyes, and despite being blind she has lost no insight, though she has become more selective with whom she shares it. She shapes her abode with many plants, creating rooms and hallways by snipping them as she walks, collecting sprigs and shoots for cuisine and alchemy.

Location: Disused counting house with greenery spilling from the doors and windows; adjacent to the Central Grove

Acuity: d8 (can perceive local environment similar to Revealing alchemical effect)

Alchemy: d8

Fetches and Fetishes: d6

Flute: d6

Impersonation: d8

Poetry: d8

Prophecy: d8

8 Silk Saturator (can create highly-effective but 1-use armor)

There is a use of the snails unknown to monk, Hand, or townsman. This woman supplies a distant rebellion with inconspicuous armor, their political wing (orators in swathes of silk) and their insurgents (hinterland rangers in wraps of black). Her silks are powerful armor, but brittle; one blow will almost certainly be stopped, but the ingeniously concentrated weave will be undone and fall away. She is no friend of the Hand and suspects the Inner Orchard of malfeasance. If the Investigating Censors prove at least superior to the other centers of power in honor, she may share her secret with them. If they do not, not even a Writ of Purpose will compel her.

Location: Weaving shed adjacent to a sheer face of silkrock

Acuity: d6

Alchemy: d8

Impersonation: d8

Poetry: d6

9 Lacquerbinder (can instil alchemical effects into Fetches and Fetishes)

The lacquer is more than physical. Its source is otherwordly and it echoes through realms as if penetrating them with radiance. Somewhere along the line it will shine through ghosts and spirits and can lace new elements into their fabric such that they reflect back to us.

He discovered this while lacquering his fetches. His lacquer had been corrupted by his brushes and tools, and he lacquered his secret Euphoria tincture into the Hanging Nocturne of a Whisperer. The voice of the spirit brought him unparalleled pleasure, and he has become its confidante and champion. Next, he guarded his cottage door with a Transfiguring Proscription that Cursed a repeat burglar before turning his flesh into gelatin; the Lacquerbinder keeps this bone-filled humanoid figure in his closet, now. 

He is losing touch with reality and is considering summoning a Banshee into the gelatin corpse after treating it with Sexually Arousing and Life Containing tinctures, and his Whisperer is egging him on.

Location: Lacquerwell while working, a cottage surrounded by lavender when at home

Alchemy: d8

Fetches and Fetishes: d8

Poetry: d6

10 Threadplayer (she can lull people to sleep using Flute)

She sees patterns in people's thoughts and has an inexplainable, irreplicable ability to play tunes that will lull them to sleep after a few moments' conversation, eliciting sleep cues in their memories. This is not infallible and the listeners must not already suspect her of malfeasance or be in a hurry to do something. She has been co-opted by the Monks of the Inner Orchard. She is very occasionally required to perform for guests that the Monks suspect of malfeasance; plainclothes Monks of the Inner Orchard then search them and their effects.

Location: Caravansary Inn

Fetches and Fetishes: d6

Flute: d12

Gambling: d6

Impersonation: d6

Poetry: d6

11 Flusoother (can do some Alchemy, but also elicit lies through conversation using Impersonation instead of Acuity)

She visits the sick and hypochondriac at home. She is a good healer and a master listener. One may suspect her decoctions, but they will be looking in the wrong place. She has a masterful ability to gather accurate impressions of truth and fiction in the proclamations of those whom she tends to; she may not be able to tell you the truth of their intentions, but she can tell you where they are lying. Beware; you may be similarly transparent.

1/4 chance of Disloyalty (agent of (50/50) Hand or Monks)

Location: Wherever someone is ill; lives in a small, nondescript house in town 

Acuity: d8

Alchemy: d8

Fetches and Fetishes: d6

Flute: d6

Impersonation: d10

Prophecy: d4

12 Cattle Raider

A cattle rustler driven from a western empire, he can maneuver his black hobilar pony with incredible stealth, even at a canter. He and his gang served in border wars in exchange for rights to captured livestock, but he was left behind in a feint and brutally branded by a cattle baron. His men broke him from the dungeon in a daring attack, but were forced to scatter when overtaken by shrine maiden light horse archers responding to the fires in the baron’s battlements. He has made it here alone. He would be usefully dragooned by a Writ of Purpose, but will be Corrupt unless occasionally provisioned with livestock as his personal property.

Location: Caravansary

Acuity: d8

Archery: d8

Gambling: d10

Horsemanship: d10

Poetry: d6

Prowess: d10

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d8

Investigating Censors can "catch and release" NPCs, issuing and rescinding Writs of Purpose to cycle needed NPCs through their band. However, NPCs who feel unduly trapped or abused can head off on a journey away from the operational zone, and if they cannot be found to be served a Writ of Purpose, they cannot be outlawed for dereliction or refusal. 

6 Regional Concentrations of Desirable Retinue Members 

Acuity vs d8 to find near Lacquermere:

d6

1 A Camp: 3d6 hunters (d6 Acuity, d6 Archery)

2 A Mine: 3d6 miners (d6 Prowess, d6 Gambling)

3 A Lodge: 3d6 lumberjacks (d8 Prowess)

4 A Pavilion: 3d6 troubadours (d6 Flute, d6 Impersonation)

5 A Fort: 3d6 filibusters or sympathetic rebels (d6 Archery, d6 Prowess)

6 A Caravan: 3d6 caravan guards (d6 Horsemanship, d6 Prowess)

Appendix: Sentiment

Local Hostility Causes

The Sentiment of the people of Lacquermere begins at 6.

Repeatedly harvesting a population of its able-bodied members will arouse resentment.

Repeatedly recruiting from the same Regional Concentration: -1 Sentiment

Recruiting multiple townsfolk of Lacquermere after a conspicuous and avoidable decimation of the retinue: -2 Sentiment

Treating the Monks of the Inner Orchard with conspicuous disrespect: -2 Sentiment

Failing any Alchemical Interrogation or performing it on an innocent: -2 Sentiment

Ending the Activities of the Tea House Loan Shark: +2 Sentiment

Rooting out the Hand of the Trembling Filament: +2 Sentiment

Ending the Bog Beast: +4 Sentiment

Local Hostility Effects

Sentiment begins at 6. If it goes below 6, the ICs suffer the following effects:

5: Code of Silence: Practically all locals refuse to speak to the IC and his retinue. 

4: Hail of Rocks: d4 retinue members chosen by the GM have rocks cast at them by locals who then rush away into crowds, markets, rookeries, or the wilderness as is appropriate. Each targeted retinue member has a 1/20 chance of being killed.

3: People stay camped out in the wilderness rather than come near the ICs.

2: The Monks cease cooperation with the party against the Hand.

1: NPCs from the Potential Allies table begin cooperating with the Hand and/or the Monks.

0 or below: Locals aid the Hand in getting effective attacks or arsonizations on the ICs.

Appendix: High Dreaming Citadel Cachet

When you defeat certain enemies, you gain Cachet with the High Dreaming Citadel.

Destroying the bog beast: 2 Cachet

Rooting out the Hand of the Trembling Filament: 3 Cachet

Ripping the unnatural heart out of the Monastery of the Inner Orchard: 6 Cachet

Cachet can be spent to request support from the High Dreaming Citadel. The requestor writes a missive using Poetry. Cachet is only spent if the request is accepted. 

For a full list of what the HDC can provide, see Appendix H: Cachet and Skill Investment in Investigating Censor. 

Here are four example Cachet rewards available to the Investigating Censors at Lacquermere: 

Sachet of Guardian Boluses: Herbal wads kept in the cheek by sentries. They combine Hypervigilance and Revealing Effects, so that the sentry has a bonus to Alacrity and can see the outline of things even in the darkness, and should a battle begin, the sentry will enter Battle Psychosis. Cachet Cost: 2. Poetry vs d4. The HDC will provide as many Boluses as the Poet went over victory.

Seconded Nomad Team: Cachet Cost: 2. Poetry vs d6

Deployment of a High Dreaming Citadel Special Advisor: Cachet Cost: 2. Poetry vs d6

Oracular Delve: Costs a large amount of Cachet because the executing monk risks insanity. Cachet Cost: 4. Poetry vs d10

When you gain Cachet, each IC gains an equal number of Skill Investments. This allows them to increase die sizes of any characters in their retinues, to include the IC. One Skill Investment increases a die size by 1, e.g. from d6 to d8. Die sizes cannot normally go higher than d12.

Guardian Bolus effects

Hypervigilance: +1 when using Alacrity to notice a surprise attack before it happens. Can kickstart a subject from cardiac arrest, or lead to heart attack in sensitive recipients. Extended use will tend to lead to paranoia.

Revealing: The vapors of this trace out invisible things and give glint to solid objects they pass over, so that shimmering clearly reveals the outlines of all things in sight.

Battle Psychosis: Temporarily increases Prowess die size by two steps, and d10 increases to d12+2. d12 increases to d20. Usually fatal and taken in desperation; after the battle, the user must roll base Prowess vs d20 to survive.

Special Advisor

Poetess-oracle nuns of the Lowland Path. Having them write and disseminate poetry in a region can bend sentiment towards the monastic community; they can also improve sentiment by acting as lawspeakers. 

Acuity: d8

Archery: d8

Horsemanship: d8

Poetry: d12

Prophecy: d6

Prowess: d6

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d8

High Dreaming Citadel Nomad Team

Four templar terminators deployed to fight for the Investigating Censors:

The Unraveller

He cut the lightning bonds of a storm hag when her cloudbank came near enough a mountaintop for boarding; a number of beasts she had kept alive through leashes of electricity immediately died, some at the climax of futile battles against them.

Later, he killed his seven sons in an hag-instantiated fit of madness. He took the vows of a monk, then killed seven awful beasts in repentance. Now that he has killed the seven, he is philosophical about his chances of slaying an eighth.

His lance is tipped with the living beak of the Sapphire Egret and it springs open with a scream when he plunges it into flesh.

Acuity: d10

Alchemy: d6

Archery: d12

Fetches and Fetishes: d8

Horsemanship: d12 

Poetry: d8

Prophecy: d4

Prowess: d12

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d12

1/4 Armor

The Burier of Reagents

He was the reformer of a curse-blessed swamp whose poisonous produce was a boon to assassins and date rapists. He is armored in fortification cedar cut from the last groves of sepsiswood in the swamp before they died, and wields a black, living-serpent greatbow that he must dismount to fire. He is armed with a greatsword so heavy he must kick it from the ground after an attack

Acuity: d12

Alchemy: d10

Archery: d12

Fetches and Fetishes: d8

Flute: d8

Horsemanship: d8

Poetry: d6

Prowess: d12

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d8

1/2 Armor

The Medusa Seducer

Known for his torrid love affair with an entity in the Gardens of Hanging. They have sworn a mutual oath; she will destroy no men, and he will never go beneath the surface of the earth. They visit each other once every several years. So far, this pact has not elicited concern from the Realm of White and Gold. He was later propositioned by the onyx scalesphinx but slew it instead.

He is armed with the Chisel, a dirk that turns entities to stone. This has a 50% chance of happening if he loses and is killed.

Acuity: d10

Alchemy: d8

Archery: d10

Fetches and Fetishes: d12

Flute: d8

Horsemanship: d10

Impersonation: d10

Poetry: d10

Prophecy: d6

Prowess: d12

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d10

The One who Debones Kings

Led a secret unconventional warfare campaign against a king in the iceberg steppes. At one point, he was captured and then fought his way out of the Prison of the Thousand-Mount Nexus, taking the warden hostage and riding him down a five-story fall. He later led whalers and sealers against the king’s ice trenches and placed a particularly sensitive Permanent One on the throne.

He has the ability to map local interiors with his hum, including detecting hidden spaces, an ability taught to him by a prisonsage of the Nexus. 

Acuity: d12

Alchemy: d8

Archery: d10

Fetches and Fetishes: d10

Flute: d8

Gambling: d10

Horsemanship: d10

Impersonation: d10

Poetry: d10

Prophecy: d6

Prowess: d10

Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d10

CRB Appendix: The Search for Allies

If the Investigating Censors look specifically for allies who are likely to become dedicated to their cause, they can search out a few categories of individuals who are powerful, but only rarely co-opted by regional centers of gravity.

Seek Allies: Takes a day in the target location. Roll Acuity vs d12.

On a success, roll a d20. The result will determine who you discover.

Common allies have a 1/8 chance of being Disloyal and/or Corrupt. Uncommon ones have a 1/12 chance of each.

To check for corruption: People issued a Writ of Purpose have a chance of being Corrupt and/or Disloyal. A GM can make this check for an NPC right away or wait until he thinks it is relevant. Roll a d8. On a 1, roll a d6.

1-2: Corrupt

3-4: Disloyal

5-6: Both

Loyal allies will not resent being issued a Writ of Purpose, but will not stay with the retinue for an extended period without one.

CRB Appendix: Corruption, Loyalty, or Resolve

Most characters have a 1/4 chance of being Disloyal and a 1/4 chance of being Corrupt. The GM secretly rolls and records the result. The GM doesn’t have to do this immediately and can wait until he wants to know whether a character is Corrupt or Disloyal. 

Corruption

Corrupt characters may steal from locals, commit violence, attempt to extort sexual favors, or even sell Retinue artifacts on the black market. Corrupt officials can generally be dealt with as the IC sees fit, but corrupt retinue members will cost the IC legitimacy and harden resistance where the IC is unwelcome.

Corruption cannot be mechanically ascertained by any means except Prophecy. 

Loyalty

Disloyal characters are not bound to follow the dictates of the one they serve. The exact way this manifests is up to the GM. A Disloyal character may be amenable to betraying their supervisor to the IC; they may be a spy; they may simply be ready to run at the first sign of danger.

Disloyal retinue members may appear to follow the IC’s orders, but might stop at any time. Disloyal retinue members can act as they please.

Loyalty cannot be mechanically ascertained by any means except Prophecy.

Loyal retinue members will follow their IC’s orders while the retinue is Resolved.

Paid hirelings who have not received Writs of Purpose are always Disloyal.

Resolve

Pain of outlawry is a terrifying prospect in these lands; relocating to a distant community is a dangerous and potentially impoverishing affair. Most people issued a Writ of Purpose will attempt to do as the IC orders, but they can still be pushed to their breaking point.

Resolve is the collective measurement of the ICs’ retinue’s willingness to follow. Retinue members talk to each other continuously. Because of this, Resolve among Loyal Retinue members is determined collectively.

A retinue’s level of Resolve begins at 4. It is capped at 12 and bottoms out at -12. 

The GM may freely add or subtract Resolve based on in game events:

Example Causes of Increases in Resolve

Flute session (rolled vs d4): +1 (max once per week when relaxing together)

IC fights in melee: +1

Feast: +2 (max biweekly)

IC personally defeats leader of enemy force in melee: +3

Retinue given significant monetary reward (or is allowed to plunder): +3

Prostitution organized (max biweekly): +3

Visiting sacred temple for purposes of veneration (once per temple): +3

Winning challenging-but-not-pyrrhic victory: +3

Celebration of victories by the general public: +4

Example Causes of Decreases in Resolve

IC behaves beneath his station: -1

Retinue away from farms/families for an extended period: -2

IC known for engaging in corruption and/or malfeasance: -3

Defeated in battle, retreated with significant losses: -3

Retinue members are starving: -4

IC orders people into fruitlessly suicidal actions: -4

IC arbitrarily murders underling: -5

While Resolve is negative, all retinue characters are treated as Disloyal.

Inherently Disloyal characters are never subject to Resolve. The GM can have them leave or betray the ICs at any time, as is narratively and/or dramatically appropriate. 

CRB Appendix: Skills

    Skill Shortlist

Acuity

Alchemy

Archery

Fetches and Fetishes

Flute

Gambling

Horsemanship

Impersonation

Poetry

Prophecy

Prowess

Horse Archery (Derived Stat)

Skills are rolled when directed, or when the GM perceives a challenge where there is a chance of failure, and the outcome is important. The GM can set a target difficulty die to roll against, but most such checks should be against d4.

Acuity: Alertness, attention to detail, and accuracy of intuition. Used to spot things (traps, ambushes, hidden compartments, gaps in an enemy’s line), ascertain the level of honesty in a statement, sniff out fakes, and execute other perception-based checks.

Alchemy: See Appendix J: The Uses of Alchemy.

Archery: Roll for any challenge involving archery, except Horse Archery, which is listed below.

Fetches and Fetishes: Detecting spirits, soothing and sedating them, calling them to your aid. NPCs are especially likely to use this to set diabolical traps for you; your characters will use F&F to detect and disarm or bypass these traps. See Appendix K: The Uses of Fetches and Fetishes.

Flute: Monks in general are famed flutists, and Monks of the Lowland Path have their own ephemeral style, more likely to impart chills than a desire to dance. Flute-playing can arrest brewing tensions and conflicts within your retinue or other NPCs; when you begin playing your flute during a dispute which you are removed from, people will assume you are calling attention to yourself for a subsequent speech. You can also use it to increase the disposition of people who hear you play in an appropriate setting. All such checks are Flute vs Alacrity.

Gambling: Gambling is a relentless social force. Despite the chaos and impoverishment associated with it, gamblers and their organizers can be useful as informants (and swordsmen) 

Horsemanship: Roll for any challenge involving horses, except Horse Archery, which is covered at the end of this section.

Impersonation: Roll for any challenge involving seeming to be someone you’re not or feigning an emotional or psychological state.

Capped at d8 if you lack credible accouterments (say, claiming to be a famous bard but are in ragged clothes)

Capped at d6 if you appear contradictory (claiming to be a scullion but are dressed as a rich courtesan)

Poetry: Monks of the Lowland Path practice poetry. A powerful poem spoken by an IC and heard by a local bard, minstrel, or soothsayer can affect the sentiments of a regional population. 

Pirates disseminate folk stories repurposed with piratical and Cult of Protection themes. Countering these requires superior Poetry. 

In such a case, roll IC Poetry vs Pirate Leader/FRO Poetry vs a target die depending on local receptiveness to this kind of messaging, e.g. d4 for an undecided but receptive poplace.

Poetry is also used for lawgiving (knowing the ancestral poems which illustrate civilizationally-agreed-upon standards of conduct) and for writing important messages to the High Dreaming Citadel or other centers of gravity.

Prophecy: This is the coin of the realm for doctrinal legitimacy, though there is a chance of losing touch with reality when you commune beyond it; noise and signal may become indistinguishable. Failing a Prophecy check drives a character into a state of permanent debilitating psychosis. However, if you succeed, you automatically gain a die size in Prophecy. Prophecy is how people predict the projected course of events from the moment of divination, and how they scry on people and places. It always begins at 0 until an individual has a catalytic experience that brings it to d4. NPCs may use Prophecy behind the scenes to scry and predict events, but must roll and face the danger like any other character.

Prowess: Used for close combat and raw physical tasks, including physical stealth. When launching a surprise attack, the attacker cannot be Cut Down on that roll.

Derived Stat: Horse Archery: Can never be higher than your horsemanship or your archery, whichever is lower. Monks of the Lowland Path are distinguished by being horse archers, as are Former Regime Officials, who ruled large tracts of land as well as being pirates.

Unless otherwise noted, NPCs have a d4 in all skills, except for Prophecy, which is always 0 until an individual has a catalytic experience that brings it to d4.

Supernatural monsters and heroes who have been blessed by divinities can have skills at d20.

CRB Appendix: The Uses of Alchemy

1. Healing: Sealing wounds and treating disease.

When you apply this solution to one who has been severely injured, roll Alchemy again. If you fail or match the target number, the subject loses a level of Prowess as their body heals in on itself. If reduced to 0 Prowess, the subject is a hobbling wreck who can barely speak.

If further reduced somehow, the subject’s circulatory system fuses in on itself in places and he dies.

2. Poisoning: Subjects who ingest this substance roll Prowess vs d12 or perish (how it happens depends on the poison). Subjects subcutaneously subjected to this substance (blade, needle) roll Prowess vs d6 or perish. Only the latter form of poisoning can be treated (by an antidote tailored to the poison).

3. Hypervigilance: +1 when using Alacrity to notice a surprise attack before it happens. Can kickstart a subject from cardiac arrest, or lead to heart attack in sensitive recipients. Extended use will tend to lead to paranoia.

4. Sexual Arousal: High function, guaranteed. Satisfaction not actually achievable until it wears off.

5. Suppressing: Causes the subject to fall into a corpse-like sleep. Extended use (to keep someone out for longer than 6 hours) induces a Prowess vs d4 check per additional 6 hours. Failure means heart failure.

6. Bodily Stasis: You will stay alive. The variations on what will happen to your body (and your mind) are nearly endless. You will be very, very lucky if you regard the byproducts as desirable. In particular, using this for those who have suffered fatal physical trauma will induce a state worse than death.

7. Euphoria: No more, no less, with all that comes with it. There is also an herb that amplifies all sensations, an antianesthetic. Administered before meals, sex, and torture.

8. Transfiguration: What it can transform into what depends on the intent of the alchemist, and will necessitate the gathering of specific ingredients. Generally, objects resulting from deep geological processes (gold, diamonds, coal, crude oil) are not replicable with lay alchemy; the best outcome one can hope for in this respect is petrification.

9. Dissolving: Hyperacidic liquid or universal solvent, generally with exceptions, such as whatever the container is made out of. Vitriolage is a d4 attack vs Prowess and generally defaces the individual even in case of survival. If the d4 and Prowess are equal, the victim is permanently blinded (or loses the use of other sensory organs if applicable).

10. Explosive: Base strength of d8. An alchemical explosion affects d4 opponents within a 10’ radius. Those not maimed or killed are knocked over. A fist-size quantity can put a 2’ radius hole through a 1’ thick stone wall. When attempting to employ this explosive (either as a thrown or slung missile, or as a static emplacement, for example inside a lock or in a trap), roll a d4 vs your Alchemy. If you lose, it explodes right next to you. 

11. Arsonizing: Generally takes the form of an infernal goo.

12. Revealing: The vapors of this trace out invisible things and give glint to solid objects they pass over, so that shimmering clearly reveals the outlines of all things in sight.

13. Entheogen: There are many types; some act as a solvent for psychological rigidity, others recompose the subject’s perception (or body) to apprehend elements of this cosmos (or others), and some make the subject a beacon for the entities to reach through the aether (specific entities, or any entity).

14. Solidifying: The tincture takes a semi-rigid or perfectly rigid shape when removed from its container or combined with another substance, allowing for the quick creation of single-substance objects. Oftentimes (but not always) these objects begin to degrade (anywhere from a few hours to a few days after their creation). Rope and weapons are common.

15. Suppression of Fertility: More or less what it says on the reagent bottle. Depending on the make, may last a little longer than intended, or vice versa.

16. Interrogation: See the Interrogation subheading below.

17. Temporary Scarab Sand Immune System: Suppresses retrovirus while active, eliminates other viral infections.

18. Battle Psychosis: Temporarily increases Prowess die size by two steps, and d10 increases to d12+2. d12 increases to d20. Usually fatal and taken in desperation; after the battle, the user must roll base Prowess vs d20 to survive.

19. Psychostabilization: Suppresses mania, may reduce (or increase) depression, stabilizes certain forms of schizophrenia. Some warriors take it before battle, some gamblers keep it for when they get a winning streak, others acquire it as a practical matter due to their humours.

20. Life-Containing: Becomes capable of hosting sapience, abiogenetically or by fettering an entity, depending on the type.

Working Alchemy

Must be in an area that has sufficient reagents, either a developed city or a lush wilderness. Must have time to acquire what you need.

Roll your Alchemy vs d12

Failure: Roll d20 on the above; that is what you have produced.

Natural 1: Roll on the above and immediately suffer the effect.

Hit your skill exactly: You create the base effect you are looking for. Roll d20 on the above table and add second effect (radically heightened effect if same) - yes, you can create sapient explosive this way. The conditions that lead to these combinations are highly contingent and generally cannot be intentionally replicated.

NPCs can attempt to produce these substances behind the scenes, and then apply them in play. 

Master alchemists with ancient secrets can extend the effect of these tinctures almost indefinitely, so that solvent will cut its way to the center of the earth, bodily stasis will last for centuries no matter how the body is deformed, and healing will turn a man into a divinity and then into a cancer. 

Coin of the Junction: An alchemical substance that can only be produced if someone dies of starvation with a prerequisite poultice under his tongue. Evil authorities have forced its production in the past, but nowadays it’s created as a self-sacrifice by monks who are ready to transcend this sphere. One such death produces a single dose. This substance has a 2/3 chance of bringing an individual back from being killed if used immediately after combat. Forms of death that inflict massive brain disruption such as falling off a cliff into rocks or having one’s head split in two are not eligible for spiritual reintegration and will produce horrible results if the corpse is given a Coin.

Alchemical Interrogation

Interrogator rolls Alchemy vs victim Acuity.

If the interrogator rolls a natural 1, the victim suffers:

d4

1. Agrypnia excitata with subsequent dementia and death

2. Permanent, maximum-strength psychosis

3. Permanent catatonic dissociation

4. Death from endless epileptic seizure

On a success:

Hands of the Trembling Filament reveal the secrets of their meeting places and leader

Monks of the Inner Orchard reveal the Secret of the Lacquer

Using Interrogation on somebody who turns out to not have been an enemy raises Local Hostility (see Appendix O: Local Hostility). Most people don’t WANT to rebel against the monks because the retribution is so harsh, but if Investigating Censors repeatedly visit this potentially brutal and transformative alchemical interrogation on their family members, people will attack rather than live with their shame and rage. This is why an IC should generally perform a thorough investigation before alchemically Interrogating somebody.

CRB Appendix: The Uses of Fetches and Fetishes 

Five Examples

Hanging Nocturne

A set of wind chimes that attract ghosts and spirits to come and hazard passersby. The emplacer rolls F&F vs the following difficulties, depending on what kind of entity he or she wishes to summon:

-Whisperer: d4

-Poltergeist: d6

-Specter (follows those present, levying d8 attacks on them. It cannot leave earshot of the Nocturne): d8 

-Banshee (d8 attack on all within earshot when it appears): d10 

A failed F&F check creates a soundless ethereal wail which will immediately draw the desired entity.

Thunder Reed

The creator of the thunder reed places a single hollow reed upright in the earth, surrounded by sticks of incense or burning herbs, and plays it a flute song. Sonic energy is supersaturated in the reed so that a mighty thunderclap will be released when it is broken.

The reed is first prepared with F&F vs d4. A failed check galls the winds of music and the flutist cannot attempt to create another thunder reed until the next daybreak. 

After the reed is prepared, the creator stands by the reed and makes his or her Flute check.

The difficulty of the Flute check will reflect the desired effect. 

-Distraction: d4 Flute check

-Stunning, 10’ radius: d6 Flute check

-Rupturing Organs, causing a d6 attack in a 5’ radius: d8 Flute check

-Liquefying Flesh, causing a d8 attack in a 10’ radius: d10 Flute check

-Disintegrating Matter, causing d10 attack in a 15’ radius: d12 Flute check

After the Flute check, the reed can then be removed, albeit in a very brittle state. It will dry with time and become more and more subject to activation from minor disruptions.

A failed Flute check will immediately break the reed, unleashing the intended effect on the flutist.

Second Skin

This is a section of fresh skin, animal or otherwise, that raises the hackles of the emplacer whenever somebody comes within 15’ of it. It lasts until it has undergone significant rot.

Emplacing is F&F vs d6. Failure makes the emplacers skin crawl continuously, imparting a -d4 to all checks until the next sunrise.

Vitaegen Aspergil

This brazier randomizes the effect of Alchemical substances applied within its range, which is about a 30’ radius if outdoors or across several small rooms if indoors. It lasts until its herbs burn out, though it may smolder for days.

Emplacing is F&F vs d6; failure wastes the herbal poultice, which may require a few hours to regather assuming the emplacer is in an appropriate environment. 

Substrate Disruptor

A music box that, when triggered, can arrest the progress of any supernatural entity (ie one that is not entirely biological) touched by its sound. When the music box activates, the entity rolls its Prophecy vs the emplacer’s F&F; if it is defeated, it cannot continue until the sound comes to an end.

Proscription

A piece of paper with a ritually-formulaic message that warns against disturbing it. These words anchor its power; they do not need to be read by a victim for the Proscription to be activated. Should the paper be ripped or freed from its moorings, a shadow will fall over the fate of the trespasser. It can only be removed by receiving a blessing at a shrine or temple.

The emplacer rolls F&F vs d4 to affix the Proscription, and then Poetry to create an effect. The difficulty die will reflect the effect desired. 

-Jinx: -1 to all Skill rolls. d4 Poetry check

-Hex: -d4 to all Skill rolls. d6 Poetry check

-Curse: GM chooses whenever the victim would roll on a table of outcomes. May be comorbid with the shakes, paranoia, amnesia, and impotence. d8 Poetry check

-Malediction: Immediate massive heart attack, bystander can attempt Alchemy check vs d8 or the victim dies. d10 Poetry check

A failed F&F check imparts maximum-strength dyslexia until the next sunset, precluding further attempts to establish a Proscription.

A failed Poetry check results in the emplacer immediately suffering the Proscription.

CRB Appendix: Combat

Combat plays out on a grid of 5’ squares. Starting locations for characters are based on their diegetic locations when hostilities commence. 

Progression of Combat

------------------------------------------

Initiative

Round A

Shooting (Initiative winner opens fire, Initiative loser returns fire)

Movement (Initiative winner nonfirers move)

Melee (Fighters in melee range are assigned to Fights, player who moved assigning)

Round B

Shooting (Initiative winner fires, Initiative loser returns fire)

Movement (Initiative loser nonfirers move)

Melee (Fighters in melee range are assigned to Fights, player who moved assigning)

Round A

Round B

Round A 

Round B

[...]

End of Combat

------------------------------------------

Initiative

Initiative is rolled at the commencement of hostilities. Each side picks a character to roll Acuity against the other.

If the Results are equal, two other characters roll Acuity vs Acuity.

Cycle until one side has Initiative.

Phases

Shooting

Movement

Melee

Shooting

Side with Initiative shoots first.

Targets must be assigned before die resolution.

Each shooter rolls Archery vs target Acuity.

Beyond 60', the shooter rolls twice and takes the lower result.

Defeated fighter is Cut Down.

After the side with Initiative fires, the side that lost Initiative may return fire.

This game uses the corner-to-corner rule of shooting; if there is a line from the corner of one character's square to an open corner of the target, then the target can be hit.

Allies, enemies, neutrals, and objects all block shots.

Firing at targets who are adjacent to allies has a 50/50 chance of hitting a friendly target regardless of success or failure. GM assigns numbers and rolls to see who's struck. 

Movement

Characters who shoot cannot move.

In the first round the side that won Initiative moves. In the second round, the side that won Initiative still shoots first, but only the losing side moves. This cycles until combat is over.

Infantry move 6 spaces, diagonals count as 1.5, can max at 6.5

Severely wounded, sick, or heavy-burdened characters move 3 spaces, max 3.5

Disengaging from Melee: Roll a Melee round with enemies you are engaged with. You cannot inflict casualties, but can run if you win.

(Foot chases after a battle are resolved with Prowess vs Prowess.)

Melee

Adjacent opponents are paired off. Once all have been paired, extra fighters who are adjacent to enemies can be stacked on enemies.

Each discrete group of fighters, whether paired or stacked, is in a Fight.

Fight: All fighters roll Prowess.

Outmatched fighters are Cut Down, or Thrown Down if the winner is unarmed.

If results are matched, the fighters clash; blood may flow, but no one is Cut Down.

        Stacking multiple fighters on an enemy

If just one of your fighters wins, the enemy is Cut Down before having a chance to do anything.

However, if some of your fighters match results with the enemy and others are defeated, the defeated fighters are Cut Down.

If all are defeated, all are Cut Down.

A Sword Saint (d12) is in melee with Pirates A, B, and C (d6).

Three example result spreads:

1. Sword Saint rolls 8, all pirates are Cut Down, victory being impossible.

2. Sword Saint rolls 6, Pirate A rolls 6, Pirate B rolls 5, Pirate C rolls 4. Pirate A clashes with Sword Saint, Pirates B and C are Cut Down.

3. Sword Saint rolls 2, Pirate A rolls 6, Pirate B rolls 5, Pirate C rolls 1. Sword Saint is Cut Down before having a chance to Cut Down Pirate C.

Diegetically, combat results execute simultaneously.

Soldier 1 has been assigned to fight Pirate 1, but is also adjacent to Pirate 2 who is fighting Soldier 2 in another space.

Soldier 1's combat resolves first. He Cuts Down Pirate 1.

He does not affect the combat between Soldier 2 and Pirate 2.

The side that Moved determines assignments if there are options available. In this image, the Pirates Moved; PA could have been assigned to Soldier 2 or Sword Saint.

Equipment

Armor has Deflection. An armored character who is defeated has a chance of having the incoming attack negated. 1/4 deflection means a 25% chance of avoiding being Cut Down on a defeat.

Horses: Riders move 12 spaces, diagonal count as 1.5, can max at 12.5. First movement can be into any square, next movement must continue or 45 degrees from that heading unless you make a Horsemanship check vs d6 to suddenly move at a greater angle. Failed checks take up 1 space of movement, natural 1s throw the rider.

A horseman who moves at least 6 squares in a straight line and ends adjacent to an enemy can reroll his subsequent melee Prowess.

Horse archers can fire and move, but not defeat an enemy in melee if they fired.

Throwing fire-pots uses Prowess vs target die. Within 10': vs d4. 15': vs d6. 20': vs d8. 25': vs d10. 30': vs d12

Skilled slinging can increase ranges by 10’ at each step.

Partial Lamellar: Common infantry armor with 1/4 deflection

Glaive and Shortsword or Bow and Shortsword: Common infantry weapon profiles

Two-handed falchion: Common weapon for headsman's attendants

Healing

A character who has prepared panacea can move to a character who has just been cut down and attempt to seal their wounds using a second Alchemy check.

From Appendix I: Skills: “When you apply this solution to one who has been severely injured, roll Alchemy again. If you fail or match the target number, the subject loses a level of Prowess as their body heals in on itself. If reduced to 0 Prowess, the subject is a hobbling wreck who can barely speak. If further reduced somehow, the subject’s circulatory system fuses in on itself in places and he dies.”

One dose of panacea can be prepared per character per week; it is generally not available for purchase, and spoils after a week.

Optional Rule: being cut down in battle is almost invariably fatal given the level of development in this region. However, at the GM's discretion, a character who has been cut down in battle can linger on until the wound proves fatal of infection, shock, or blood loss, with a 0 to all skills in the meanwhile.

Escape, Surrender, and Morale

A character who runs out of shooting range is regarded as having escaped, though can be pursued after the battle using:

Prowess vs Prowess (if a foot chase)

Horsemanship vs Horsemanship (if horseman vs horseman)

Alacrity vs Alacrity (if a horseman is pursuing a footman; only if a runner has been able to hide; if the horseman pursues the footman in the open, the footman will be caught)

Surrenders occur at GM discretion.

If a system for surrender is desired, here are two.

Pride: Make a morale check whenever the enemy is leaderless and has lost 50% strength or is outnumbered 3 to 1. Each enemy rolls Prowess vs d4. Failure means the enemy attempts to escape, matched results means the enemy surrenders, and success means the enemy fights on. 

Psychological Warfare: Or when a morale check is made, roll a single round of speculative combat. It does not actually occur, but it represents the odds affecting the morale of the losers, who run or surrender if Cut Down.