Edge Creeper [Wermspittle]

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“Intelligence is the ability of a living creature to perform pointless or unnatural acts."

Roadside Picnic,

Arkady Strugatsky​

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Edge Creeper
No. Enc.: 1d4
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 90' (30')
Armor Class: 7 (as Studded Leather)
Hit Dice: 2 [Advance as Magic-User/Thief Dual-Class]
Attacks: 1
Damage: (by Spell)
Save: MU2
Morale: 8

Special: See in all directions, Immune to Sleep, Use Detect Invisible at will, Move Silently gains bonus of +10%, Find Traps gains +20% bonus however they cannot remove traps, cannot be back-stabbed, ignore all damage rolls of 1 or 2.

Silent, patient, playful...these beings are as much animal as vegetable and yet not quite either. Their tall, central body mass is very flexible and they easily contort themselves to get into tight spaces. Their sturdy four legs allow them to clamber about through rubble, debris, or uneven terrain with the seemingly effortless grace of a deer. Eyes of several types and sizes form apparently at will or at random all over their main body, allowing the Edge Creepers to see in nearly every direction. They have displayed a deep and abiding interest in discovering and uncovering all manner of concealed doors, secret passages, lingering booby-traps, unexploded bombs, mines, and so on. Sometimes they leave markers or Warning Signs, but other times they seem satisfied with merely leaving a formerly hidden thing exposed. So far the Wall Guard have not been able to enlist their help along the Inner Ramparts or the Outer Precincts.

Little more is known about them, aside from the few encountered so far have all been spell-casters with an intense interest in the Black Zones and the Glow Field. They seem to avoid the White Orchard for some reason, but may have some sort of affinity for or connection to the Cold Roads. It is rumored that the Edge Creepers first appeared in Wermspittle by way of the Cold Roads, though there are some who are convinced that they first entered by way of the Glow Field or the White Orchard...so far no one knows, so there is a potentially lucrative opportunity for someone to go forth and discover the answers so many Experts and Academics are arguing about...

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The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

Carl Jung

The White Orchard (Wermspittle)

But it is here that all concerns of men go wrong, when they wish to cure evil with evil.

Sophocles, The Sons of Aleus

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Once it was just another small memorial park, one of those quiet little places wrapped around by a wrought iron fence and with those obligatory stonework gates at each of the three entrances. You know the kind; stout, ponderous and oh so very Pruztian and blocky. Even after the ironwork was stripped away during one of the Occupations or the ornamental statues were broken during the Siege, those heavy stone columns remained steadfastly in place, solemnly marking the boundary of their tiny domain.

Originally it was called 'The Alesian Gardens,' but no one calls it that any more. The old garden beds were overrun by Red Weeds after the Franzikaners abandoned Wermspittle. The Pruztians burned the place to the ground and planted an orchard on the site. The Red Weeds returned, but by then the Pruztians were too busy pulling out of the city to do much about it. Due to an all too common bureaucratic oversight the place was left to its own devices for several decades until an outbreak of the Porcelain Plague forced the local authorities to bury hundreds of unknown, unregistered, unclaimed bodies in the neglected orchard.

Perhaps that was when it all began. Many people think so, but there are other factors to consider, such as the unwholesome influence exerted upon the Orchard by its proximity to the Glowfield. Others like to point out that as part of the original plan for the Memorial Garden there was supposed to be a modest gazebo placed at the center of the place so all the pathways would intersect neatly and all visitors would be confronted by a bronze statue of a warrior holding aloft a glimmering fragment of what is described in the records as 'a fragment of a meteorite's heart.'

It remains altogether unclear whether the statue was ever completed, let alone installed. Despite some measure of curiosity among various academics, not much more is known about this obscure, mostly deserted place.

One minor note; it is said that the trees in this orchard are as restless as the plague-dead tangled up in their roots.

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"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places."

Motto on the Vault of Disreputable Texts

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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...

Six Things That Walk That Ought To Crawl...

Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl...

The Festival
H. P. Lovecraft

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Everyone knows that those who walk into one of the Black Zones don't always come back out again. Many of these places are not only cordoned-off, they often are surrounded by mounds of blackened and blasted bones where gibbering idiots squat who lack the will or the ability to go any farther and who can never really go back either. They are like stunted, botched larval forms of something that will never be...

Those that do return from these strange places are often changed in horrific ways. Some have suffered terrible injuries or are strangely debilitated, others come back prematurely aged or grotesquely disfigured, still others are never quite themselves ever again. Sanity is a fluid, ephemeral quality that tends to evaporate all too readily in these spaces, and one's identity can be damaged, modified, even replaced by the things encountered on the shattered fringes of life and death. But there are other things that come out from the Black Zones...things like these...

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1. It lopes from out of the flickering shadows. Wrapped in soiled and tattered rags...then you realize it isn't alone...
   

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   Raggedy Things (2d4/4d6) [AL C, MV 120' (40'), AC 6[13], HD 3, #AT 2, DG 1d4/1d4, SV F2, ML 12 (mindless), Special: Has a 50% chance to resist Charm or Sleep spells. All slashing/piercing damage is reduced by 50%, blunt weapons do normal damage, all magical weapons actually heal it by 1 hit point. Fire and spells do double normal damage, but also affect a 10' radius around the Raggedy Thing. These things tend to mob one victim at a time.] It's just a bunch of rags...

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2. Click. Clack. Scritch. Something wicked, possibly hoofed, is coming this way...what is that? Furniture?!?
   

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   Vicious Credenza (1) [AL C, MV 90' (30'), AC 4[15], HD 4, #AT 1, DG 3d6, SV F4, ML 12 (Vicious), Special: It slams its victims into the ground and then attempts to crush them into a bloody pulp. It can attack up to three opponents simultaneously, if they are grouped close together. Once it knocks an opponent down it will settle on top of them, gaining a +4 bonus to hit for double damage if it is allowed to remain in place. It requires a combined STR of 26 to overturn the thing, but if it is overturned, it is immobilized for 1d4 hours.] Note: A Vicious Credenza usually contains a mix of trash and loot similar to a typical chest or trunk.

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3. You hear glass breaking. There it is again. And again. It's getting closer...
   

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   Shatterglass Swarm (1) [AL C, MV 90' (30'), AC 6[13], HD 3 to 7, #AT 1, DG 1d6, SV F3 to 7, ML 12 (Implacable), Special: Unaffected by mind influencing effects like Charm, Sleep or visual illusions, sees invisible, light-based attacks do half-damage and have a 30% chance to reflect back at the attacker.] It is a serpentine mass of broken glass shards from one or more mirrors and windows. It slithers towards you leaving a trail of fine grit and needle-sharp bits of glass behind it. The thing tries to bite chunks out of its victims, but lacking any sort of internal digestive system, it leaves the bloody pieces of flesh lying all over the place...

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4. Six Skulls. They appear to be fused together somehow. Moving towards you. As they pass out of the shadows you can see that the skulls are lodged within some sort of translucent slime...
   

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   Skull-bearing Clear-Slime (1d4) [AL C, MV 120' (40'), AC 48[11], HD 6, #AT 1d6*, DG 1d4 per bite, SV F5, ML 12 (Insane), Special: Immune to acid, Charm or Sleep spells. Clerics can Turn/Destroy them as 9HD creatures. The Clear-Slime causes anything affected by it to suffer 2d4 damage per round when exposed to sunlight, requiring a Cure Disease/Remove Curse to eliminate the effect. *The Skulls float freely within the Clear-Slime, but are one unit and can only bring one or two mouths to bear on any one opponent, unless it can somehow squeeze in-between multiple targets. Each attack after the first one incurs a cumulative -1 penalty To Hit, so the sixth skull rarely succeeds, which is a source of some frustration to it...]

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5. Skinless and shameless she strides from out of the Black Zone with a writhing spinal-column staff in her hands, her eyes replaced with bitter iron orbs...and her legs are swirling masses of chittering, snapping undead insect husks...
   

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   Sheedra Miskaan (1) [AL C, MV 120' (40'), AC 7[12], HD 5, #AT 1, DG 1d6 or by spell, SV MU5, ML 10, Special: Sheedra regenerates 1 hit point per every 6 points of non-magical damage inflicted on her. She casts the following spells once per day: Animate Necrotic Tissue, Appreciation of True Weirdness, Assault of Chaos, Black Touch, Breathless and Unexplainable Dread, Cerebral Conception, Ectoplasmic Wall, Literary Incandescence, Malign Thought Emanation, Umbral Maiming, and Vistas of Unplumbed Space. She can be Turned/Destroyed as a 10HD creature.] Sheedra has come far for a once disgraced mercenary with no aptitude for sorcery. Her pact with certain Insectile Horrors she encountered within the Black Zone has changed everything...

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6. The soft sounds of someone crying echo from within the darkness. At first you might be inclined to ignore the sounds. You've probably heard plenty of not-so-clever things try to lure the unwary into the shadows with such a ploy. But there's something different about this...
   

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   Weeping Shadow (1d4) [AL N, MV 90' (30'), AC 7[12], HD 3, #AT 1, DG 1d4 (Special), SV F1, ML 4, Special: A very minor shadow, it is not fully undead, nor is it truly alive either; it is stuck in-between. This thing has a 30% chance to resist Charm or Sleep spells. It drains 1 point of STR on any attack roll of 18 or better To Hit, the drain persists for 1d4 hours. Anyone reduced to zero STR in this manner is left in a coma for 3d6 weeks during which time magical healing has no effect on them, after which they recover normally, but suffer a permanent loss of 1 STR point and have a permanent -1 penalty on all Saves against undead/necromantic effects.] It is elusive, seeking to run away and will only attack if cornered...

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Black Zones

Red Bestiary Index

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Not only is this something of an Invasive Species post, it plays off of a quote used by Moebius Adventures in kicking off last month's RPG Blog Carnival as well...so it's a sort of Lovecraftian two-fer...

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Strange Places: Black Zones

There are black zones of shadow close to our daily paths, and now and then some evil soul breaks a passage through. When that happens, the man who knows must strike before reckoning the consequences...

The Thing on the Doorstep

H.P. Lovecraft

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Not everything that dies necessarily stays dead. If you wander past the ash-encrusted furnaces of the Burned Over District, avoiding the Bleak Houses and those streets fallen to Urban Blight, there are places where the boundaries between life and death have been deliberately weakened and undermined by unpleasant people doing unwholesome things. Some dabble in matters they do not comprehend. Others are driven to commit terrible deeds by the whispered promises of power, glory or immortality. Thankfully, most who succumb to such bitter temptations are weak, stupid or inept and thus likely to fail. But even failure can bear horrific results in the Black Zones as not everyone who enters these spaces comes out quite the same.

In some spots the shadows of old atrocities linger, curdle and slowly turn ever more toxic. These are the Black Zones and they are prohibited by order of the Street Patrol and most other Local Authorities who post warning signs and sputtering galvanic lamps near the most obvious access-ways and leave it at that. No one has the resources to seriously cordon-off any of these places. So they do what they can and let nature take its course.

After all, some of the worst troublemakers often come back from the Black Zones as productive members of society...

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Inspiration: The Thing on the Doorstep by H. P. Lovecraft is not considered his best tale, but it does feature an interesting take on the concept of soul transference as the mind-soul of a deceased wizard attempts to insinuate itself into the minds of  a succession of living victims until finally it is defeated...or is it? This sort of soul-transference is actually fairly commonplace among some of the Old Families of Wermspittle.

Strange Places: Glowfield

The glow gets more intense the closer you get. Quieter, too. The silence is eerie. Unnatural. Colors tend to fade, often permanently, after being exposed to the glow emanating from this abandoned, not-exactly-empty lot. If you approach it carefully, like the Feral Kids and Changelings like to do when they're playing their obscure tricks on those passing through, and if you're lucky not to cross-over the oh-so-delicate threshold, you might catch a brief glimpse of...something. No one is sure what it is. The Nickel Dreadfuls and less savory Pulps are filled with the speculative adventures of creative liars who've never set foot in the place. The Yellow Journalists tend to avoid the place, as its color-deadening effect would end their careers, if not their fetid half-lives. The kids and the misfits and the assorted dregs surrounding this place will egg you on, dare you to take one more step, just to see what happens. It's a game to them. They also stand to make a little money selling the translucent bones they are able to pick from the brittle black weeds and stark white scrub surrounding the Glowfield.

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At 30', if you remain within sight of the Glowfield for more than ten minutes, you must make a Save or lose your perception of color for 1d4 hours. All colors are faded from their person and gear for the next 1d4 days. There is a cumulative 1% chance of the faded coloration remaining permanent. Disorientation due to the strange glow reduces movement by half.

At 20', if you remain within sight of the Glowfield for more than five minutes, you must Save or suffer temporary blindness for 1d4 Turns. Each subsequent exposure at this range incurs a cumulative -1 penalty to the Save, and the duration of the blindness effect doubles each time. Blindfolds, or simply turning one's back to the Glowfield allows you to go for fifteen minutes between Saves. As above, there is a color fading effect, in this case the victim loses all their coloration for 1d4 days, with a cumulative 5% chance of the colorlessness becoming permanent. Disorientation by the glow reduces Movement by 2/3 the normal rate.

At 10', those exposed to the Glowfield for more than five minutes must Save or begin to become transparent. Each failed Save incurs a cumulative -1 penalty on all subsequent Save attempts. The transparency effect is also cumulative, roll a D20 for the % of the victim's body that is now transparent. The effect persists for 1d4 days and there is a cumulative 5% chance per exposure/failed Save of the effect becoming permanent. Those rendered transparent by the Glowfield can sacrifice 1 WIS point to re-roll one failed Save, if they are successful, the loss is temporary, if they fail it is a permanent loss. Those rendered transparent can also sacrifice 1 WIS to overcome the blindness generally caused by the effect. Disorientation reduces movement to 10% normal rate.

Entering the Glowfield for less than five minutes is pretty much like the effect at 10', only with a cumulative 10% chance of the transparency effect becoming permanent. Remaining within the Glowfield for longer than five minutes may or may not have more serious repercussions. No one knows, because no one that has stayed in there for more than five minutes has ever returned, at least that anyone knows...

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Who Goes There?

(1d20) Encounters just outside the 30' limit

1. A lame child with too many fingers and toes laughs at you as you pass by them. They whisper something unintelligible in what sounds suspiciously like Aklo, if you're at all familiar with the language. If questioned, they will hand you a bloated eyeball with a grayed-out iris dangling several inches of optic nerve. If harassed, the child will make a rude gesture, some obscure imprecation, and attempt to run away. If killed, the child collapses into a frothing mass of nearly colorless corruption that remains inert for 1d4 hours before it slithers off as a form of Lesser Jelly.
2. Three dirt-smeared Urchins are poking ahead with sticks as they move step by step towards the Glowfield. They've been promised a few nickels apiece if they can go right up to the edge of the Glowfield without actually crossing the threshold into the glow itself. None of them suspect that they've each one been told the exact same thing by their underhanded patron; they've each been instructed to push one of their companions into the Glow. They are being watched at a distance by a Yellow Journalist using a telescope from a near-by attic garret.
3. (2d4) Refugees have gotten lost and were mis-directed to this place by some drunken locals. The Refugees are most upset that this is not the public pump house. They begin to argue about which way they need to go to get back to their cluster of shacks. They dislike this place intensely. Their chanters have been warning them for months now that their neighbors have been using this place as an unhallowed burial ground.
4. Translucent scapula. Look a little more closely and you'll spot a tibia, femur and a few ribs as well. Each bone is waxy in your hands, pebbly-textured, translucent. If you pick them up, you can gather (3d6) bones. Every bone you pick-up results in another (1d4) Feral Kids taking an interest in what you're doing over there. If you leave the bones alone, the Kids will pretty much leave you alone. There are no skulls in the grass. Never any skulls. No one knows why.
5. You almost trip over a slightly bloated dead body. Some hidden experimenter has staked-out corpses at intervals of ten feet leading up to the very edge of the Glowfield. Each body is tagged with a yellow card bearing its number. Whoever set this up is probably still out there. Watching. Waiting to see if you disturb the Gore Worms wriggling in anticipation of a fresh host.
6. Someone lugged the heavily weathered and stained limestone corner-stone from some ruined manor out into the weeds. You can still see some of the tracks leading back to the burned Over District. Jerver, the Oddling, has been using it as an altar to unspeakable things. He maintains his dominance over a band of Afflicted through fear and frequent sacrifices. Fail a reaction Roll, and he'll designate one or more of your group as the next sacrifice.
7. (3d4) Changelings have trapped a medium-sized Drab Jelly using some purple-lensed lamps and torches. They've been so intent on capturing the jelly, that none of the Changelings have quiet realized how close to the Glowfield they've been led by the thing that they think they've trapped.
8. Balo-deela, an insane morlock ex-sapper with a wooden leg, has dug-out a few shallow tunnels that lead up to the edge of the Glowfield. Every now and then one of the tunnels caves-in. Usually when someone walks over it. There are 3d6 Questionable Trinkets and Trash items scattered about in these crawlspaces. No one has seen the crazy old morlock in weeks. All the locals know about the sapper's gladius he always carried. Get close enough and you might hear it muttering and swearing to itself in the darkness. You'll need to break the old sapper's glass-like fingers to get the thing out of here, if you do find the corpse and the sword.
9. A jagged fragment of a Petrified Colossi's pinky-nail. Some Forager dropped it when they cut through here as a short-cut. There's a blue tag wired to the fragment, but the burlap it was wrapped in has been mostly removed. This thing might be valuable to someone, but it causes 1 point of damage every hour it remains in contact with living flesh. If you pick it up, you might notice that the ground where it has been lying has become very hard, dry and dead-gray due to the low-level petrification effect radiating from the thing.
10. Three-quarters of an elegantly carved bone staff juts from the dirt like a slender tooth. The upper section is not far off. The ivory Flidder-cage has been smashed. There's no sign of the creature that used to be bound into it. The Perdu sorcerer who carried the staff into this place was knocked unconscious by a gang of Feral Children and overlooked due to their innate invisibility. 
11. Rats. Dozens of piebald, hairless, translucent rats scurry around the place pathetically. They are all blind. Some of the locals kill the rats with sling-stones, but so far no one has been in a hurry to eat one. So far.
12. Those brittle black weeds right where you are standing used to be Red Weeds. Being this close to the Glowfield has changed them. Their oily-gray sap causes 2d6 damage on a failed Save due to unstoppable bleeding wherever the stuff has stained a victim's flesh. If dried, or removed from here, the sap goes inert.
13. Two seriously wounded Feral Children run past you. One collapses only a few feet away. Their companion doesn't look back. Abandons them. If you go to the fallen child, they are crying and in a great deal of pain. Right before falling unconscious from severe blood loss, she whispers 'Horla.'
14. Something hard, yet brittle, snaps under foot. It is a small, tapering and twisted cone of highly polished quartz. There are (3d4) more of the things right near where you are now. Most of them are still arranged in a circle. All of the quartz cones contain a strange purplish stain inside. They are also all cracked and crazed as though they have been exposed to intense heat. Each of the cones will melt away into nothingness within (1d4) hours. There is a base 30% chance that a medium-sized Gloomswallow is near-by, having only recently escaped from the circle of containment formed by the quartz cones. The weird beast needs to get farther away from the Glowfield in order to be able to slip back into the Oneirical layers, but it is confused and disoriented.
15. Dozens of bloated white eels wriggle in and about the frizzled grass surrounding this place. The locals are used to it by now. Some of them are busy catching the eels with buckets and make-shift nets. Those that they roast or poach can be eaten, the ones they don't cook fast enough tend to fade away. The eels have nasty bites (inflict 2d4 damage), but don't tend to live very long out of water.
16. Two Eloi Foragers are arguing over which of them discovered a Brazen Scale of Ylantru. They are so caught-up in their disagreement that neither of them notices you, unless or until you do something to attract their attention. 
17. (2d4) Gunpowder Grubs have been left in an old cardboard box underneath a section of moldy plywood. The grubs are mostly translucent. The gunpowder inside them has turned a peculiar milky blue. It may or may not be inert. 
18. Thaddeus Porzimio, a scholar of Opticks, is complaining bitterly to three Urdiz mercenaries. It would appear that the scholar engaged these fellows' services as protection while he studied the Glowfield. They've decided to rob him and go somewhere less disturbing. You've caught them in the act.
19. A mostly transparent zombie stumbles about, flailing their claw-like hands and gnashing their see-through teeth. They cannot see, due to their eyes being transparent, but they can still hear and possibly smell. There are several more of the things in here; one of the Refugee camps has been burying their dead here because they were sure no one would tamper with their bodies in this place. There's a cumulative 20% chance of a Kallittrian burial party showing up with a recently deceased corpse for every zombie destroyed. They will not be pleased by any of this. (-2 Reaction Roll.)
20. (2d4) Abseen have come here to bathe in the glow. They believe that it will give them visions, or improve their ability to shift between visible and invisible states. Some choose to meditate, others to make offerings or to look for some sort of omen. None of them are interested in anyone else, seeing them as a distraction.

(1d10) Things Encountered at 20'

1. (2d4) Transparent bones. Mostly animals like bats, rats and eels. No skulls whatsoever.
2. A mostly colorless corpse. Their skin is peeling, oozing a clear fluid that reeks of corruption. Something is squirming around in their guts. Transparent worms.
3. More bloated White Eels wriggle and thrash about in the grass, gasping for air and quickly dying. They can still bite for (2d4) damage, if someone comes within reach in the next 1d4 minutes.
4. (1d4) Abseen have taken-up meditative positions around a small pool of milky fluid that stinks of rotten cabbages. There is a sulfurous rime around the filmy edges of the pool. The fluid is toxic (Save at -2 or suffer 3d6 damage and lose all sense of taste for 1d4 weeks). There are large, three-eyed catfish just barely visible in the pool. The catfish have poisonous spines protruding from their fins (Save at -3 or suffer double damage from all attacks for next 1d4 days). The Abseen will shift into complete invisibility if disturbed. 
5. (4d4) Transparent penguin bones. Completely stripped of all flesh. A jagged shard of hand-knapped whitish stone is embedded in a vertebrae. At first it appears to be a form of quartz, but no, it's some sort of obsidian. Again, no skulls.
6. (3d6) Colorless gulls flutter past. Their eyes are dead, milky-white, yet they can somehow see. They make no sound. Not even the flapping of their wings can be heard.
7. (6d4) Transparent human bones. Quite an assortment. None of them connected, all of them scattered and most splintered, and again, no skulls.
8. (3d6) Colorless slugs slither through the brittle white weeds. They appear harmless, however, if touched by bare skin, they inject a powerful poison (Save at -4, succeed and take 4d4 damage, fail and take 4d4 damage and lose the ability to speak one language permanently, lose language slot).
9. (10d4) Transparent bones. Penguins, whales, bears, seals, various birds, even humans, but no skulls.
10. (3d6) Huge, colorless worms wriggle and rear up from fresh furrows in the increasingly white soil. They exude a nauseating sweet scent. Their mucous saturates everything within a 10' radius of each worm. Anyone coming into contact with the worm-slime must make a Save, those succeeding suffer 1d4 damage and lose their sense of smell for 1d4 days. Those who fail are blinded for 1d4 hours.

(1d6) Things Encountered at 10'

1. A massively muscled albino penguin stands imperiously atop a jumbled pile of whitish slate. The penguin was completely black (even its blood is black if anyone cares to find out) and it is a man-eater. There is a mound of bones behind the huge malevolent bird, all of them cracked and splintered by its powerful beak.
2. (1d4) Abseen stand vigilant, as though listening to some far off thing that you cannot hear. If you ask them about it, one of them will offer to help you. If you refuse, they will smile and wish you a good journey, then go invisible. If you agree, they will reach out and touch both of your ears; there will be a momentary sensation of gentle heat, followed by the thunderous noise of a massive waterfall very, very close by. Your hearing is so sensitive now that you take 1d4 damage per Turn that you remain this close to the Maelstrom or whatever it is just ahead. 
3. Pillars. Three heavily eroded limestone pillars. Each one more eroded and pitted than the last one, each one spaced about three feet apart. A large, transparent python is coiled atop the third pillar. It is sleeping-off its recent meal and is quite sluggish. If you notice the sleeping serpent, you'll also notice that the pillars are inscribed in crude Tsalalian, however none of the markings are complete. (Just in case, the body within the python is that of a Tsalalian hunter. Perhaps there is a foot poking out of the python's still distended jaws? Her obsidian-tipped spear and war-club are somewhere close by. Not that they did her any good.)
4. Roll a Save. Fail and you lose your hearing for the next 1d4 hours, but if you leave Right Now, you can report having heard the distinctive roar of a massive cataract or thunderous Maelstrom. Take one more step forward and you'll need to roll a Save or lose your footing and go tumbling over the unseen edge into the roaring waters below.
5. A Perdu warrior will appear before you, very briefly, only long enough to startle you. Make a DEX check to remain standing. If you fall, you'll notice that the ground is shaking from an intense vibration that is very close. The Perdu will take turns taunting each of your party. They laugh in great amusement, but you cannot hear them at all. Then they are gone.
6. Bones. Hundreds of colorless and transparent bones litter the uneven, rocky area leading up to a sheer cliff-edge overlooking what appears to be a churning, billowing curtain of fog and mist. If you choose to make your way through the haphazardly strewn bones, you'll need to make a DEX check or Save at -1, then again at -2, then finally at -3 penalty as you go towards the edge. Fail and you lose your footing and the bones begin to shift and slide towards the edge; you'll get one final chance to Save, or go over the edge into the yawning abyss beyond. If you manage to make it to the edge without slipping, you'll find a low wall of skulls erected right at the very edge of the precipitous drop-off. Through the mist you can see what appears to be a vast cataract, a waterfall roaring thunderously down into the dark depths below...but there is no river outside the Glowfield. Careful observation from this vantage point will reveal that the 'low wall' is in fact a sort of sloping walkway leading down around the interior face of the great chasm surrounding the massive waterfall...

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Strange Places: Latterkamp

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A phantasmagoric wilderness lurks far below the cobbled streets of Wermspittle. Old and hoary, dim and only ever hinted at in furtive whispers, Latterkamp is the domain of Goules. It lies across an ancient, nameless abyss known all too well to those dreamers cursed with a knowledge they'd rather forget. One might approach it by way of the Near Deep. Crooked somnambulists and disreputable oneirsts will offer to take you there in your sleep.

You do not want to go there.
But you might get taken.
Especially in the Winter.
When the moon hides her face in shame
and the Butcher Boys roam the alleys in search of easy pickings...

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Behind the Darkness...
Goules are living beings who prey upon the dead. Many of their kind become Ghouls upon achieving a state of undeath, others become Ghuls, should they dare the darkest rites and transitions involved in such things. Those who speak their names make no distinction between the threefold forms. Only the written word reveals the tripartite nature of these beings who hoard whispered secrets and dead languages, capture dreams and nightmares in subtle traps, and devour the flesh of those who come under their unhallowed jurisdiction.

Latterkamp itself is ancient beyond the reckoning of conscious time. It is a place of fossilized shadows, ossified phantasms and petrified dreamers whose imaginings go on and on well past death. When the Three Camps formed the First Compact, the event most scholars accept as the beginning of Wermspittle, there were representatives from Latterkamp present who gave their seal to the Compact. The seals used by the Notaries still bear the inscription and insignia used by the agents of Latterkamp. The First Laws were carved in a slab of violet-veined marble said to have been quarried from deep beneath Latterkamp. There is a good deal of truth to the old saying that Wermspittle was founded upon the catacombs and ossuaries of Latterkamp.

The Red Chair set a little to the left of the Governor's throne has sat vacant, but always present at every official function. Even during the various occupations and invasions, the Red Chair has remained in-place and undisturbed. One does not incur the wrath of Latterkamp lightly. Not in this place.

Strange Places: Low Marshes

Down along the Ertish river, on the Western side, before the great, dark woods swallow everything up beneath their dark, brooding branches, there are the Low Marshes. In the Spring, great clouds of passenger pigeons return from their migration. Every hand that can raise a net, throw a stick or use a bucket-gonne descends into the Low Marshes to reap the desperately needed bounty that flies in from all the different Souths each year.

In the Summer these wetlands are steamy, sultry and rife with clouds of swarming pests. Usually only leech-peddlers seeking to profit from the medical trades (who buy large quantities of nearly every kind of leech) and the worst of the fisherfolk can be found here in the hot times.

Fog-shrouded and treacherous through most of the Autumn, hunters prowl the Low Marshes seeking after waterfowl mostly. The flocks are plentiful for a few weeks. Before Winter falls like a headsman's axe and the waterways freeze-over. A few hunters attempt to go after larger game. Roebucks, Red Bears, moose or elk, even the tuskers , if they're stupid or have a deathwish or they're truly desperate. The worst seek to trap other hunters. Some folks never lose their taste for long-pig, even in the softer seasons.

Through-out the cold, dark Winter; there is little here for the living. Those abandoned to the Low Marshes in the Dark Part of the year are rarely ever seen again. Those that are, probably shouldn't be. The old Goules hold macabre meetings out in the worst parts of the Low Marshes during the Bleak Solstice. Some say they conduct weird, dark rites, but none care to speculate within their hearing. Hungry things prowl the margins of the Low Marshes in the cold months. Things that frighten away the wolves.

The Midwives often recite the adage that 'No one goes down to these places without bad intent or worse reasons.'

For Example...

Butcherboys pass through the Low Marshes on their way to one of the many unmarked Ectobogs where they dump remains they'd prefer were never identified or found again. Fantomists have begun to make use of the supposedly secret by-ways of the Butcherboys, sparking yet more enmity between the groups. A bloody reckoning is in the offing, so warn the Butchers from their abbatoirs, killing floors and slaughter shops. Like Winter Itself, their wrath is inevitable and they will not abide the trespasses of the foreign sorcerers no matter how powerful they might think they are. The Butchers are the Chosen of the Cold Times. They wield terrible power in the dark. They are not afraid of the Fantomists who have flouted the Old Ways, either through arrogance or ignorance. There will be blood, trouble and worse, come the next Winter...

Bandits and river-raiders gather in the Low Marshes at the early onset of Autumn. They come to the sheltered coves and secret lagoons to barter ill-gotten loot, swap prisoners, trade information, choose new leaders. They've been coming here for too many generations to count. They do not welcome eaves-droppers or interlopers. They also leave before the cold winds begin in earnest, before the killing rains, while there is still color in the leaves.

Refugees who don't know any better sometimes get stuck out in the mud. Some get pulled ashore, for an added fee, others sink and are lost. Not a few of the 'guides' who accept foreign coin to direct these sorts of folk through the Low Marshes have made good money luring them to their deaths. The paths through the Low Marshes, such as they are, tend to be misleading to those not raised down along the fetid banks. Those who live down here keep it that way. Signs get shifted about at random. Tracks get filled-in with brush or redirected into the nastiest spots. The locals are a dour, taciturn lot. Even for Wermspittle. Unfriendly, even surly to strangers until paid to be otherwise. Then they're simply unreliable and treacherous. 

The Low Marshes are best avoided. So, of course, they aren't. If you know where to look, where to avoid, who to talk to and who not to speak to under any circumstance, you might be able to locate some buried treasure or chain-weighted trunk of sunken loot. Or maybe you'll just wind up feeding the flukes, the bog-werms or leeches...or some of the other things that lurk just below the scummed-over surface of these foul wet lands...

Strange Places: The Cold Roads (Vignette)

The scholars and students who huddle together in the fetid taverns and smoky tap-rooms and rathskellars of Wermspittle have a saying: 'What's fiction here, isn't necessarily fiction there.' Of course they tend to look at one all knowingly, as though this were one of the profoundest statements anyone could make, especially after imbibing lots of lager, black-stout and bitter with a shot of Dim Ichor. And they rarely bother to clarify what they mean by 'there,' but one is tempted to assume that is would be some place other than what qualifies as being 'here.' One might hope.

Down the mountain and across the main bridge over the Ertish River, past the terraced orchards full of twisted and gnarled apple trees and the burned-out ruins of what once was the village of Nebitesh you can pick up the main route North. Follow the North Road for about twelve miles or so and you'll eventually spot the remains of older, unkept and non-maintained side tracks. These old roads lay upon the stony soil like fossilized remnants of dead empires or forgotten conquerors. The land is thick with the things as you head farther North. But if you make your trip during the coldest part of winter, and you find yourself moving along as the sun is at the funny angle...well...then you'll be able to see the Cold Roads from where you're walking or riding along.

There has been plenty of fancy talk of 'temporal ambiguity,' and 'transplanar transitions' whatever that all actually means. The midwives just shrug and mumble vaguely obscene trivia concerning Weak Points and the dowsers are nearly all convinced that the Cold Roads don't 'really' exist. Unnatural Philosophers have written numerous manuscripts regarding their various theories, but most languish unpublished because none of them are truly quite sure if any of them are even close to being right...and it is a rare author who allows such niggling concerns as accuracy or factual-ness to get in the way of a way to cover their bar tab, at least for a while. There are as many theories as there are cellars and tunnels and crawlspaces in Wermspittle. Or worms. The place is crawling with more questions and mysteries than a gibbet-man has worms under their oily hides.

No one is really sure just what the Cold Roads actually are. But then no one really needs to know, not if they're still sitting warm and snug behind the walls of Wermspittle swilling brews and swapping words with the likes as get caught up in heated discussions or pointless debates. Philosophy is good for business, if you're a bartender, but it never solves anything more than killing time and filling uncomfortable silences with what passes for learned discourse. The Cold Roads are out there, past the perimeter where the patrols used to try to protect travelers. Anyone honestly curious about the things ought to just go and find out for themselves.

And a few do just that; go and take a look for themselves. Some get caught by the roving plague-gangs, or fall afoul of worse sorts. If you're foolish enough, or hell-bent, or whatever, you can make the trip and leave the North Road so you can strike out along one of the Cold Roads. Every year, each winter, some choose that over quietly starving to death. Others seek out the Cold Roads thinking to escape the Plagues, the festering madness that seems to be blowing in from the east like so much bad weather, or the wandering bands of mercenaries and bandits. Others are looking for a better world, for strange adventures, or just some place other than here.

They're all looking for something, though.

Huh.

Like most of us. Maybe.

Perhaps they find what they're looking for. It is possible. When the dead walk up to the walls of Wermspittle looking for tribute and some desperate cook in a shanty-camp figures out how to make sausages from gore worms...well...maybe anything can happen. What's fiction here isn't necessarily fiction there. Or so the drunken students and grumbling professors hiding behind their tankards have been known to say.

Welcome to Wermspittle