Warning Signs (Wermspittle)

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"The uncertain bridge now before me was posted with a warning sign, but I took the risk and crossed again to the south bank where traces of life reappeared. Furtive, shambling creatures stared cryptically in my direction, and more normal faces eyed me coldly and curiously."

The Shadow Over Innsmouth

H. P. Lovecraft

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Whether they are stamped out of cheap sheet-metal by the hundred according to exacting Pruztian specifications, molded from zinn by hand by the apprentices of master craftsmen in the traditional Franzikaner style, or are simply peel-and-stick decals issued by the Registrar of Transitional, Transgressive or Invasive Spaces, the yellow diamond-shaped Warning Signs are a very familiar sight to anyone who has been in Wermspittle for more than a few hours.

Scavengers, Foragers and others of their ilk post these signs wherever they discover a Weak Point, Soft Spot or similar such site of intraspatial bleedthrough. They warn of nearby Maelstroms, Vortices, Black Zones, and locations where Transitions and/or Transpositions are more likely to happen, such as around the perimeter of the Glowfield, along the fringes of Abingdon Grove, or at every known entrance to the Jumbles where Sickly Yellow Phantoms watch over the fallen monuments and rampantly overgrown Sybelline Grottoes as they perform endless series of unasked for divinations and unheeded oracles in eerie silence.

Under no circumstances should the Six Yellow Signs known to the Phantoms ever be mistaken for the Warning Signs designating dangerous, strange spaces. Yes, they are yellow, but that is the fault of some nameless faceless bureaucrat and despite the best efforts of well-meaning civic-minded mobs and delegations this has not changed in over six hundred years, nor is it likely to ever change.

The Warning Signs placed about the Inner Ramparts are all much more sturdily-constructed than the civilian versions found elsewhere, in order to withstand frequent exposure to Black Smoke and other forms of eldritch ordnance.

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Watch Out For Snails (Wermspittle)

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“`Will you walk a little faster?' said a whiting to a snail,

`There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail.'”

​ 
Lewis Carroll

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland​

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Snails are subversive little helically-shelled molluscs that have demonstrated a pronounced tendency to congregate on the periphery of Soft Spots and Weak Points, so long as they impinge upon or access a space that the snails consider habitable. They will not be found clustered about an aperture leading to some hellish place, nor are they fond of frozen wastelands or inundated or airless spaces.

In fact, it is this tendency of the various types of snails to designate livable, breathable, bearable places on the other-side of these mutable junctures that has endeared them to Foragers, Scavengers and other explorers. And it is for this reason that few, if any, of these sorts of people will ever willingly eat a snail, even in the worst parts of winter.

There are rumored to be a species of translucent green snails that can be gathered from underneath the eaves of certain disreputable houses in the Burned Over District that are acutely sensitive to the flow of time and can be used to gauge the aging effects of those Soft Spots that have become unhinged or unfixed in time. One merely places a few of the little snails in close proximity to the Soft Spot and watches their progress. If they slither off into the unseen vortex before the count of ten...you really don't want to go there.

Another very helpful species of snail is the red-banded snails one finds fairly abundantly in the Purple Glow beneath the Red Weed canopies of the boulevards. These flabby little things will spontaneously melt into a horrid-smelling pink ichor when brought within twenty feet of most types of undead. The sticky syrup they leave behind in their sudden demise has been known to dissolve the subtle bonds that hold all but the most heavily reinforced animated skeletons together, making it a useful commodity in its own right. Small wicker baskets and tin cages holding a handful of these snails can be purchased extremely cheaply just outside most bars, taverns or toll-outhouses.

Of course, not all snails are quite as helpful as others. Carnivorous Snails often prowl the crumbling ruins of abandoned Walled Gardens in search of tasty morsels they might catch unawares upon the many forking paths. Dreamsnails lurk furtively along the shallow reaches of the Oneiropelagic zones to prey upon incautious dreamers and dissolute sleepers alike. The dreaded blood-sucking snails of Liboor seem to be extinct, but one never knows when some enterprising debris-picker or rubble-sifter might come across a degenerate swarm of the things in some dilapidated and half-demolished museum or zoological supply house. Packsnails are sometimes used by those headed down into the Near Dark, but they have become much more expensive since they seem to have gone sterile from constant exposure to unwholesome influences such as delvers are prone to encounter. Similarly, the Ridingsnails raised by various and sundry Little People have become increasingly rare as their numbers have been massively depleted by the recent outbreak of Creeping Crud brought back from Zilesia by several dozen Pruztian deserters. The zombified dire-snails said to infest the less well-mapped sections of the Jumbles scarcely bear mentioning...

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Cthonospheric Compass (Exploring Lovecraftian Zones)

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Truly, there are terrible primal arcana of earth which had better be left unknown and unevoked; dread secrets which have nothing to do with man, and which man may learn only in exchange for peace and sanity; cryptic truths which make the knower evermore an alien among his kind, and cause him to walk alone on earth.

The Diary of Alonso Typer

by H.P. Lovecraft & William Lumley

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Seventeen of this particular type of infernal device have been recovered from the ruins surrounding Wermspittle's third and fourth parallels. The Bureau of Progressive Reclamation forecasts that there could be more than a hundred of them out there for the taking. The Sewer Militia has announced a bounty of seven hundred pound-marks for each of these pseudo-geomantic mechanisms that get turned over to them voluntarily. Verifying the contraband devices has been difficult, as no two look quite alike. At least three fakes are known to have turned-up at the usual places. The Antiquarian's Council is up in arms over this fresh insult to their cherished institutions, leading some to speculate that several more fakes were able to pass through their hands before they were able to properly distinguish the actual from the spurious. But despite all this hub-bub and activity, no one knows where these things come from, or who made them...or why...

Foragers down along Aungier Street who frequent the Tea Swilling Monkey Tavern, many of whom recovered the majority of the documented Compasses, have avoided speculating openly about their findings. Some believe this is because these Foragers are using the Compasses to delve into hitherto unsuspected and hence unplundered spaces, no matter how dangerous or dire they might be.

Perhaps unrelated, a small pamphlet printed on fast yellowing pulp-print has come into circulation within the ranks of the various Foragers, Scavengers, Toshers and the like regardless of their affiliation or level of certification. The pamphlet, simply titled 'Ye Limnally Stratified Stages of Ye Cthonospheric Congeries,' shows a crude illustration of one of the newfound Compasses, a small schematic that purports to display the inner workings of the thing (curiously, this diagram is labelled in an obscure low-dialect of Aklo), and a brief, cryptic explanation of six zones not included in the Common Registry.

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The Six Cthonospheric Zones noted in the pamphlet are as follows...

1. Blue Yan: Possibly a corruption of Yian and suspected of being a subterranean adjunct to the Yianic Peripheries, a theory supported by the confirmed presence of Y'm Bhi and Gyaa-types within the ruins explored by no fewer than three gangs. Seven peculiar rusted metal tablets incised with looping hieroglyphs have been brought back from these preliminary investigations. Each of these tablets reverberate with intense telepathic impressions and warn of some sort of 'Forbidden Zone,' which no one has been able to locate at this time. The metal of these tablets is remarkably similar to the alloy used in the notorious Hound Talismans...
2. Violet Abyss of Vooric Twilight: Actually several fragmented and disharmonious interstitial transitional zones where sound is distorted into a baffling cacophony, matter takes on a variety of new and heretofore un-examined states, and gravity is essentially meaningless. By no means vacant, these vague twilit regions are crowded with indescribable angled masses of substances that are simultaneously organic and inorganic and yet neither. Horrid Hues and Dread Colors have been reported, as have Orb Clusters and Nebulous Blurs, so it is suggested one proceed with extreme caution. Scholars speculate that this region could provide the means to access any number of incredibly remote locations, if the necessary mathematics can be worked-out.
3. Red Yoth: A lurid and cavernous region where three deserted cities have been spotted by the initial surveyor-teams. Two Ixaxar Seal-Stones were claimed to have been recovered from one of these ruins by Mondrikus Larim, but due to a sequence of unfortunate events, he has been unavailable for further comment and the Black Seals have gone missing. The survivors of the second surveyor-team returned with the body of a degenerate ophidian creature that has since been turned over to the anatomists at the Medical College for further study.
4. Black N'Kai: Also listed as "N'keth," "N'Gred," "N'thon/N'Thon/N'Thaan," and "N'Kir." Somewhat lower in overall vibrational frequency to Yoth above, this region is rich in mineralogical oddities and rife with bizarre geological formations that defy conventional expectations and theories. Little is actually known about this region, though it is suspected it might connect to, or somehow be co-terminus with the so-called Vaults of Zin, at least according to one interpretation of the Ghoulscript Codex and the so-called 'transpositional map of the endless black river' that supposedly somehow opens the way to someplace noted as the Gravelands.
5. Gray Y'Qaa: Interdicted by heavily-armed patrols of the Sewer Militia, this region is designated unclean and all access is by the discretion of the Kommandant. The patrols are equipped with powerful dessiccators, burners and planar-lenses and they have been ordered to kill first and ask questions later. A cryptic Tsalalian scroll has surfaced recently that alludes to this region as being somehow linked to the Polar Ruins of more than a dozen Dead Worlds that have fallen to the Purple Clouds. The Pallid Masters of Aman Utal also have taken an interest in these gray regions below and are rumored to be mounting their own expeditions, regardless of any prohibitions or declarations of the Sewer Militia, which may well lead to another potentially ruinous underground struggle...

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The designations of these spaces seems to be somewhat arbitrary and may prove to be inaccurate as it appears to have been copied-over from one or more proscribed manuscripts currently in circulation despite the best efforts of the Ministry of Truth and Understanding...

Grumblings of the Encyclopedians (Wermspittle)

Not everything that glitters is necessarily golden. Most children, whether they are very good or very bad, or simply something other, learn that early in life; those that survive.

A penny saved is not always earned, especially if it happens to be a Dread Penny.

Nothing is ever really free. Good deeds rarely go unpunished. Blah, blah, blah...there are a lot of that sort of moralistic drivel packed into the gaps and crevices of any particular issue of The Whisperer or one of the other scandalsheets, tabloids or whatever else the Yellow Journalists are cranking out from their basement presses and print-shops. The cautionary posters and broadsheets tend to be more strident, less restrained than the pamphlets of propaganda and the obscure rantings of demented editors or publishers, but then those posters are pasted-up all over the alley walls and tenement halls for free, so one shouldn't expect quite so much form them perhaps...