Six-Sentence Scenarios: Back-Alleys of Wermspittle

Everything you need to kick off an adventure in six sentences.
No stats. No particular System. No guru, no method, no teacher, no hassle.
Just the raw six-sentence skeleton for you to hang whatever flesh upon it you like.

This time we're taking a look at the Back-alleys of Wermspittle.
Future installments can and will take place just about anywhere...

Six-Sentence Scenarios for the Back-Alleys of Wermspittle

1. Enroute to the Low Marshes on an errand of mercy for a fellow Refugee, you take shelter in a burned-out shop. You've been warned. You know enough to come in from out of the rain. Like the Leech-monger huddled in the corner. You were sent after green-leeches, to drain-off the fever that is killing your friend. Should you wake the parasite-vendor?
2. You've discovered an old coin while scrounging through the ruins of a collapsed building. The way the coin glimmers and ripples oddly, you just know it has to be magic of some sort. Best of all you're fairly certain that it is not a Dread Penny. The old man at Schroedinger & Cave's tells you that it is a Spaug coin. He offers you a stack of musty old bank notes for it. You are tempted, but this coin could be your escape from Wermspittle, after all; Winter is coming.
3. The Oneirist was dead when you got there. Someone had caved-in their head. Massively. Wait--did you hear that? Something is moving over there, behind the rubbish heap. It's a Jaladari, a trinket-peddler, and it is bleeding, but it's still alive.
4. An unlucky Toader dangles from a tangled length of knotted rope. They still desperately clutch a large (wax-sealed) glass jar within which floats a pickled Vilg. The Toader sways back and forth, back and forth as it tries to extricate itself from the ropes. It is growing increasingly anxious. It clearly is fearful of whomever...or whatever...might be pursuing it. Would you care to lend a hand?
5. Gore-Worm sausages may be an acquired taste. Whether you get them by raiding a stall or roughing-up some kid making a delivery, most folks around here don't much care. Just as long as you acquire the sausages. You've been picked. Again. You're to go get some sausages from those Refugees and you best be quick about it.
6. A lucky find today! A student from the Academy. They're in a bad way, some illicit or forged spell they were studying back-fired on them, but they're still marketable. All you have to decide is where you want to take them. The Butchers never pay well, but ask no questions. You might make more of a profit by going to some sorcerer, perhaps someone like that Idvard...

Six-Sentence Scenarios: Aldrin (Lithus Sector)

Everything you need to kick off an adventure in six sentences.
No stats. No particular System. No guru, no method, no teacher, no hassle.
Just the raw six-sentence skeleton for you to hang whatever flesh upon it you like.

This time we're looking at the planet Aldrin from the Telajan System in Lithus Sector.
Future installments can and will take place just about anywhere...

Six-Sentence Mission Briefings for Adventuring on Aldrin

1. A group of xeno-paleontologists are outfitting a mission to the South Pole. Satellite surveys have indicated that there is a large artificial structure deep within the ring of volcanoes at the pole. A preliminary team sent back some incredible samples. Half of them believe it is a Precursor-site. Despite the carvings and markings on the fragments so far recovered not matching anything heretofore attributed to the Pylon-Builders. Could this be evidence of a second Precursor-species?
2. The Masqued Doge of Kalemtrine-Commune has decreed vendetta against all Corprist personnel who remain within his domain after sunset today. That gives Merellon agents and operatives roughly 42 hours to get everyone out. Not everyone wants to go. Armed Response Teams are being readied for a few quick extractions. The other Aerostat-Communes are watching everything. Your job is to make a thorough mess of this effort, as per orders from the chief of counter-corporate espionage.
3. Dome Five has gone offline. All communications are down. This undersea city-state was founded as a scientific utopia devoted to the exploration of the deep-water ecologies of Aldrin. They were fiercely independent and had a mutual-protection pact with two of the larger, more prominent nanoflagellate-fleets. Now the two fleets are scrambling to to find out what happened, but they cannot send in any of their own operatives without violating their respective agreements. Looks like a job for a team of independent contractors.
4. A huge cyst-like bulge of hyper-coral has formed in the Dog Leg Channel off the coast of Samarkis Isle, a major offworld tourist-spot. The object is growing rapidly. Already it is disrupting air traffic in the area and all Aerostat-Communes within a ten mile radius are evacuating. Evidence of a closed-loop nanological sub-system has been reliably confirmed. It is a self-directed starship of some unidentified type. It's leaving.
5. Each year, at either solstice, there is a great race of mat-skippers and similar vehicles on Aldrin. The race begins at Lower Uthrigon, per tradition, and proceeds along a different route each time. The competition is intense and carries a lot of offworld ratings. More than half of all competitors are offworlders. While enjoying lunch with some friends you witness a botched mugging. Only it wasn't really a mugging--the victim was a courier working for the Great Race and you are now in possession of a sealed packet that may or may not have the next race's course contained within it.
6. A small company of young, upstart Achernarians are looking to set-up an exotic bivalve ranching operation somewhere in the outback of Aldrin. There's no regulatory red-tape to stop them. But one of the local busy-bodies, a freelance blogger based out of Duriss-Kadricky Platform in the Sea of Giskay, has taken an interest in this project. A very unwelcome interest. The Achernarians would like for the blogger to go away. Quietly, if possible.

Intro to Lithus (Sector/System/Planet)  |  Guide to Lithus Sector  |  Map of Lithus Sector
Review of Lithus Sector Series at FATEsf

Nightland 1

This is for Pinlighter. I'm still working-out which set of dimensions I like best in going forward with the Series. Starting in January I'll post an update/Work-in-Progress or a link to a finished poster from this series about once a month. Maybe more often. Depending on work schedule and progress.

1155 (Art Every Day Month Challenge 2012)

Here is entry 1155 for the Art Every Day Month Challenge hosted by Leah Piken Kolidas, the instigator behind the Creative Every Day Challenge. This little Twig-dude appeared while I was building a textural background. I think he's a keeper...

Friday Flash: Extractive

Extractive
by Garrisonjames

Mantrimo adjusted the lux-lens. Just a little more to the left. Yes. Perfect. Smoke coiled from the crucible. Three years' wages worth of crushed opals and all the other required ingredients, all his hopes for Linnea, for their future together, were melting into one another. The words came easily, the gestures took a bit of practice. Ritual was not his strong suit. But Mantrimo persevered. Practised until his fingers bled, his brain became slightly addled with persistent fever. Nightmares came regularly now. Waking as often as not. He was becoming accustomed to them. Told himself they were a symptom of impending success. Perhaps they were.

'Nature Abhors a Vacuum.' Whoever wrote the old book he was referencing had placed especial emphasis upon this tired and trite adage. This hoary bit of painfully obvious wisdom. This warning he was far too gone to pay attention to now. He was a scientist, not some dullard shaman or pretentious sorcerer with delusions of artistic merit. He was on a mission. Driven by a mistress far more cruel than ambition or revenge. It was love that spurred Mantrimo through the darkness. Past all reason. Into madness and what lay beyond.

The melting process was successful. He diligently poured the glowing white liquid into the mold. Waited.

Mantrimo harbored no doubts. Indeed he now lacked the capacity for such things. The operation he'd performed by candle-light with the murderer's scalpel and a set of three mirrors ensured that he was as far from doubt as a knife's edge could make a man. He'd cut out his conscience. Or such had been his intent.

'Take what you want. Take it and pay the price.' The book had said that as well. Prices are to be paid. Balk at the cost and you were not committed enough, not serious, unworthy. Mantrimo paid the price. He kept paying every night. It had become his religion. His salvation. Damnation.

In darkness and silence he sat. Waited. Timing was critical.

The opal slid free of the mold. Lustrous. Liquid. Empty.

His penultimate achievement. A stone that other men might have sold their souls to attain. But that would hardly cover the cost.

Part the heavy black drapes. Snuff the candle. She wore the lace-edged gown. Expensive velvet. Form fitting in the classical style. The one he had bought for her on his trip to Nagrothea. The spider-venom paralyzed her body, but let her breathe. Her pulse was faint. But steady.

He placed the opal gently into the setting in her tiara.

The words rumbled and tumbled forth. They would not be held back any longer.

Darkness descended upon Mantrimo.

He never got to see the transfer.

The Inmost Light blossomed within the opal as Linnea passed the scalpel through his throat.

One quick pass and it was done.

She was Soulless now. Immortal. And he...he was a thing of the past. A broken shambles. Thrashing about on the floorboards like a fish out of water. Gasping blindly. Dying.

She only regretted that he hadn't been able to do more for her.

Dread Penny

---

B
ad Coin. Worse Fortune. The copper-pieces from Nagrothea are not welcome in most reputable establishments outside the Burned Over District(s). But, as with most such things, there are of course exceptions. A few private collectors. Aficionados of the outre or the obscurely wicked. Twisted dilettantes looking to add a bit of vaguely-risque darkness to their social cachet. Abdead militants looking for some sort of touchstone or memento or something--anything-- to help them unlock a connection back to the homeland to which none of them have even been.

---

Conservatism is not for the living. In Nagrothea such philosophy is only discussed among the PostMortes. To do otherwise would be to cast pearls before Grunters; a waste of time and sure to produce an annoyed pig-thing. The ancestral Host of Nagrothea do not waste time. Nor pigs.

So-called 'Dread Pennies' were allegedly first minted not as coins, but rather as a way to preserve certain of the increasingly decrepit and failing members of the Established Order, those who were unquietly succumbing to the ruthlessly erosive ravages of time's inexorable passage. Even the mighty ones of Nagrothea cannot completely free themselves of the tyranny of entropy and decay. Already mummified, embalmed, or otherwise preserved, the crumbling venerables were forcibly reduced to a less corruptible state then bound within these tokens of esteem.

To this day one can still hear the faint mutterings and dire imprecations of the spirits lodged within the macabre coinage as they are passed from one illicit vendor to another. It's better to spend these things quickly, before the nightmares and screaming begin.

1154 (Art Every Day Month Challenge 2012)

Here is entry 1154 for the Art Every Day Month Challenge hosted by Leah Piken Kolidas, the instigator behind the Creative Every Day Challenge. Yes. I did a new piece every day so far, but I've been running late and missing the designated time specified for each one of late, at least until tonight. I'll round up all the missing pieces at the end of the process. This is one of a series of Mysterious Locales that might lead to something one of these days...

Bujilli: Episode 53

Previously...
Gonnes broke the delicate silence following a cold, Spring rain. The Rainbeast had moved on. It was time to get back to the Academy. More gonnes. Upstairs. Bujilli and Leeja went to investigate--neither one wanted to leave their temporary refuge with a possible sniper behind them. Upstairs at the Film Repository they met some Street Urchins. The Kids were not alright. They were rifling the place. Looking for something. Whatever it was, they were more than ready to kill to get their grubby little hands on it. An ambush failed. Accomplices abandoned the place. Bujilli and Leeja learned very little from interrogating the burglars. But the Urchins recognized Bujilli and Leeja as 'the ones who drove out the werms.' The Not-Kids panicked. One of the Urchins bit Leeja. A nasty bite. More nasty than she immediately realized. The Urchins escaped. Bujilli and Leeja got out of there. Just as the drums began. They ran for their lives.

Memories, dreams, recollections--they all flowed through Bujilli's mind as they ran along the dirty streets. The air was fresh from the recent rain. They stuck to the clearer sections, avoiding the jumbled piles of trash and rubble. Gang barricades. Burnt-out shells of once fashionable shops. Collapsed buildings. This was a Burned Over District. Hard hit by the Collapse and the chaos that followed and never quite left. Unpatrolled, unmonitored, lawless and wild; these sections of the Old City were cordoned-off and abandoned.

Jog left. Turn right. Go back to the last intersection--the street ahead had ruptured from another gas explosion. Left. They ran.

They stopped. Barnabas Street was sparkling. Leeja shuddered in revulsion...or was it something else? Bujilli reached out to steady her. Counsel showed him a red warning icon. Leeja's wound was more dangerous than either of them had suspected.

He nodded. Quietly asked for his Counsel to examine the wound.

The machine etched into Bujilli's bones revealed three maggoty-teeth slowly burrowing deeply into Leeja's flesh. Each one exuded a powerful anesthetic. She would not suffer. Not immediately. The teeth were working their way towards the bones of her hand. They worked slowly. Leaving no sign of an infection or intrusion. The entry wound would heal over without a trace. No hint of the vile things would be immediately visible.

Until it was too late.

Bujilli looked around. Then he spotted it. He laughed. They had gone in jagged, loopy circles around and around this area for a while now. He was unfamiliar with most of Wermspittle. Leeja was his guide. But she was in a bad way. Her eyes were unfocused. The teeth were affecting her strangely. Dangerously.

He considered his options. this was no place to be lingering about. He might be able to adapt the Green Fire Purge spell to remove the teeth...but it would take time and leave them both vulnerable. They were only four or five blocks out from the Film Repository at best. Maybe not even as far as that. Those Not-Kids would be looking for them both.

They needed to get out of here.

They needed help.

The amulet pulsed.

Bujilli started. Looked down. Touched the hag-gift. Hedrard had given him the amulet as part of their arrangement. That and the Voucher. Fees were to be waived. Access granted. Access.

He closed his hand over the amulet. It was warm again. It pulsed once more.

"Hedrard?" he whispered.

"You were expecting someone else?" cackled the hag.

It was good to hear her scratchy voice, which was in itself slightly disturbing.

"We're in a bit of trouble..."

"Yes. You are. I lost track of you for a while...but everything is working again*. You're not far from one of the old gates. Which is fortunate."

"Which way do we go?"

"Can you fight?"

Bujilli looked at Leeja. She was quiet, staring blankly, just moving as he directed. He spat in disgust. The baby-teeth in her wound were making her delirious.

"Not effectively. Leeja's hurt. Something in the wound--she was bitten--it's affecting her mind..."

"Hmmpph. I won't ask. You'll need to be quick and quiet. Do you see the small square off to the East from your position? It has a statue in the center.

He had no idea which way was East. No compass. His sense of direction was confused. This was an entirely other world from the one were he had grown up. He was still getting used to this place. If one ever could get used to Wermspittle. There. He saw a statue. In a square.

Bujilli led Leeja across the street and rapidly down the alley towards the square.

"We're nearly there."

"The statue faces the main entrance for the old Heldraw Hall. It's technically part of the Campus, but it was shut down and abandoned ages ago. Do Not Touch The Front Gate. Go to the wall, to the right, there's an alcove of sorts, a place for guards to look decorative. Do you still have the voucher I gave you?"

"Yes."

"Press it to the back of the alcove. There should be a spot cleaner than the surrounding tiles."

He dug out the Voucher. Pressed it to the cleanest spot on the back wall.

Click.

An opening appeared. Bujilli led Leeja inside. The opening closed behind them.

They were in a hallway. Richly paneled with dark wood. Dust caked everything like a light drift of colorless snow. Indistinct portraits hung at regular intervals. A few coats-of-arms. Tiny shelves of bric-a-brac festooned specific sections of certain walls. A few display cases for wired-together hominid skeletons, intricately curling masses of pseudo-sea shells or other samples. A suit of armor was mounted on display--the right side was spotless, gleaming, translucent as though transformed into glass by some bizarre mishap. The plaque set before the armor was faded. He didn't feel like brushing off the dust to read it.

Bujilli smiled. This looked like what a museum ought to look like. He'd heard all about such places from a thief in Zandrume. At least he always thought they were a thief. Museums were excellent places for acquiring valuable things...if one knew what to take and whom to take it to...he wondered about old man Schroedinger and his curio shop. Maybe there were other peddlers or dealers who'd be interested in a few items liberated from this dusty, mostly forgotten place. He'd have to ask Leeja if she knew of anyone like that. After they got her wound tended to and those nasty teeth pulled.

A soft golden glow leaked out of a dusty lamp lying next to the wall. It woke up. Responded to the Voucher. Took up position hovering just in front of them both. A self-carrying torch that didn't set things on fire. Bujilli smiled. This was a thoroughly useful thing. His Uncle would have been very pleased to have had him return with such a wondrous thing. Probably wouldn't have beaten him. Might have given him an extra portion of stew. Or not.

"I've sent along Sritta to come collect you and bring you here to my office."

"Thank you." Bujilli led Leeja down the hallway. The wall behind him was blank. Clean. All the dust and cobwebs had fallen away when it had opened to admit them.

The hallway led to a four-way intersection where another hallway crossed this one. Going back was fairly pointless. Boring. The intersection was rounded-out a bit to form a sort of special space. A raised section in the center served as the base for four statues. Four old men in lab coats. Each one situated at a corner of the heavy, precisely-square pedestal. Sharp-edged. Dusty, but obviously all of one piece. It was probably some kind of basalt, or so he guessed. He'd seen more than his fair share of ancient basalt daises and monoliths and the like over the years. The statues were marble. Travertine marble, if he wasn't mistaken. The figures were very realistic, aside from being over-sized.

As they came closer a fountain shimmered into view at the center of the platform. It was positioned so as to be directly overseen by the proprietary scientist-guardians. Water tinkled softly. Bujilli started to look away. Then he noticed. Looking at the fountain. Looking through the water. Everything was different on the other side. Lush green foliage showed through the water. Not in the hallway, but somehow behind the water of the fountain itself. There was a garden over there. Overgrown. Rampant. Ferociously alive.

Not like this place.

Leeja moaned.

She was swaying loosely. Weak. Her eyes were mostly closed. Her skin was waxy. Her hair hung limp and all but lifeless. Merely a twitch along the ends. She was in a bad way.

Bujilli steadied her. Supported her. Turned away from the fountain and the garden that hid behind it. Picked a direction and started walking. Whomever Sritta was, they were following the amulet to locate him and Leeja. So he kept moving. It helped to keep his mind off of what was happening. At least a little.

They walked onward.

Sritta found them an hour or so later.

Leeja was unconscious by then.

Bujilli carried her.

Her hand was turning black...

---

*Idvard temporarily suspended the amulet's functionality in Episode 39.

Previous                                              Next

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Series Indexes

One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six

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Starting Page  |  Central Index

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About Bujilli (What is This?) | Who is Bujilli? | How to Play

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Bujilli's Character Sheet | Leeja's Character Sheet | Cast of Characters

Bujilli's Spells | Little Brown Journals | Loot Tally | House Rules

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Episode Guides
Series One (Episodes 1-19)

Series Two (Episode 20-36)

Series Three (Episodes 37-49)

Series Four (Episodes 50-68)

Series Five (Episodes 69-99)
Series Six(Episodes 100-ongoing)

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Labyrinth Lord   |   Advanced Edition Companion

The Night Mail in Wermspittle

Yorim Balthome is the Post Master General in Wermspittle. The office has been in his family for over two dozen generations, not because of any lingering prestige that might still cling to the title, but more from a profound sense of inertia. There just is not a lot of mail to deliver any more. Not since the last couple of wars disrupted everything that the plagues, pestilences and poxes didn't muck-up first.

By ancient edict, dating back to the Founders, all postal deliveries in Wermspittle are to be made only under cover of darkness. The mail can only be delivered at night.

Likewise, by the same edict, Post Boxes can be mounted just outside any window, at any height, on any floor. To this day one may find Post Boxes nailed firmly into place outside sixth-story windows, leaning precariously from underneath the shutters of attics, jutting lopsidedly from wrought-iron balconies, poking through the blinds of garrets or otherwise secret cells unreachable from inside the buildings they occupy like cysts; even the tall, tall turrets of the ramshackle palaces of long-fled foreign merchant-princesses sport once gaily-painted, even richly sculpted post boxes sticking out from the upper floors like some sort of architectural rash.

Hundreds of years have come and gone, leaving crusty scars and badly-patched bullet holes in their wake, but the Postal Service still endures in Wermspittle. After a fashion. In a kind of half-life.

The airships don't come here any more. Few caravans come to Wermspittle, those that know the way or have made their own maps, and never ever in Winter. The options for getting something sent out from here tend to be slim to non-existent, but the Mail Carriers do their best. Each Autumn riders are sent out in the five directions, one for each of the primary old routes including the Cold Roads. Few, if any ever return. Even fewer come back with replies, parcels or correspondence from elsewhere. But it has happened.

The riders are something of a seasonal rite. A traditional observance. A hold-over from the Old Days before the Military Governor appointed over Occupied Wermspittle by the Franzik Empress Matrimundi more than five hundred years ago instituted a system for the apportational transmission of small parcels, letters and missives. Those systems were smashed by the Anti-Franziker Contra-militants during the so-called Last Uprising (which it wasn't). Over the years each Post Master has attempted to realign, repair and revive the mechanisms ruined by the clog-wearing hypocrites who decried all such forms of 'oppressionist sorcery' until they realized they too could starve like everyone else come Winter. But alas, it remains an unreliable thing on a good day, and there are scant few good days in a place such as this.

Pigeons once threatened to cut into the number of deliveries entrusted to the Postal Service. But that was before the Midwives' Rebellion, and only a fool trusts a bird to deliver a message in the midst of so many starving people. No one takes such things seriously any more.

Ancient, harrowed and hallowed by accumulated experience and the sheer perverse miracle of having survived into the current age, the Postal Service endures, abides, carries on as best it can. For over four hundred years the rates have remained set at one silver coin, as per the old edict...though everyone knows that in the early days a particular denomination of currency was specified, all traces of those details have been expunged and casually disregarded. Any silver coin will do, even a token. It's not about the money. It's about the ritual.

Each night what parcels, packages or pouches have been entrusted to the care and keeping of these stalwart souls go out under cover of darkness, into the night. There are only six or seven certified Mail Carriers left now, besides the Post Master General and his immediate family. They are a dying breed, say some. A thing of the past. But until something better comes along to replace them, most probably by force, the mail, such as it is, still gets delivered each night in Wermspittle.

One after another the fearless Mail Carriers strap into their harnesses, cinch-up their triply-buckled bags and float gracefully, silently out from the Post Master's Tower. Each one in charge of a licensed and bonded flock of highly trained crows, jackdaws and magpies. Each one dangling from beneath a personal aerostat of ancient design. Each one more extensively re-re-re-built and cobbled back together from the remains of defunct aerostats no longer reliably airworthy, no longer suited for continued service.

Yorim Balthome watches over Wermspittle from his decrepit tower, the tower of his family, of his ancestors, and he worries about what will become of the Postal Service once they run out of parts to repair their aerostats...