In a Dark Place...[A Random Encounter Table for Bujilli]

Currently...
Bujilli has woken in a dark place. These are some of the things that might be prowling about in the darkness around him...

Here are a couple of random tables to help us find out what might be lurking out in the darkness. If multiple readers roll multiple results, we'll either average the die rolls out, or you readers can vote on a most preferred option in the comments below, or I'll just mash things together into some sort of composite situation--they don't all need to be all at once. We could probably manage two or three of some of these encounters, especially if they are things best avoided or whatever...

In the Dark (1d6) [minor things]

1. A small cloud of luminiferous aethyr escapes from a fading aperture that will seal-over in the next three minutes...unless something happens to force it to remain open.
2. Dozens of warped and twisted fruiting bodies flop about in slow motion as their juices form a sticky pool around the edges of a Pesthole that has been colonized by some form of yellowish fungal spores.
3. Roll 1d30 on Damned Things Table One.
4. There's something on the ground there. It looks round and made of metal of some sort, most likely a type of electrum, but with a silver-chased edge. Perhaps it is a type of coin? Yes. It is a Spaug Coin. Go ahead; pick it up if you dare... 
5. Roll 1d30 on Damned things Table Two.
6. Guess it was something more interesting after all, roll again on the next table.

What is That? (1d12) [more interesting things]

1. Thap. thap. Thap. A small, wriggling thing resembling a half-formed embryo with over-large eyes squirms its way through a lingering cloud of displaced aethyr. Just past the agitated creature a smallish Weak Point collapses into oblivion, frustrating the tiny Flidder immensely. Where will it go now? Can it detect another Weak Point nearby? It just noticed you...
2. Dismal, gray light streams through a small grove of petrified un-trees. You recognize a Gloomlight spell and spot the little glyph floating placidly over a small mirror-surfaced pool of some liquified yellow metal. There is a corpse lying at the edge of the pool. A morlock in green-stained chain-mail that has been rent asunder by some sort of explosive weapon from the looks of it...then you spot the Lurm who cast the Gloomlight spell. They appear to be wounded and not doing a very good job of hiding behind one of the petrified un-trees...
3. Black ice. There is a low-lying fog swirling about your ankles and the air grows distinctly colder as you go on. The black ice gets rougher, thicker, more difficult to traverse without slipping or falling. Larger and larger masses of broken stone, rubble and architectural ruins protrude from the black ice, forming an increasingly labyrinthine terrain. In the distance you can just barely catch a glimmer of purple light and hear what sounds like some sort of weird song coming through what appears to be a Weak-Point offering a way to enter a blasted and blackened arctic region where a Quindra contemplates the probabilities of your decision...
4. Jexilon the Jaladari floats over to you from behind a huge ruined pile of broken cyclopean masonry. With a squeal of avaricious glee they launch into a sales-pitch in a rapid succession of dialects until they find one you recognize enough to do business in--they want to sell you a Gloomswallow that they've recently captured. Jexilon discretely avoids mentioning that he has 6 Gronk mercenaries and a freelance eloi umbralist guarding the thing. Of course that turns out to be moot once the thing breaks free after casting Ectoplasmic Expulsion on  the umbralist, incapacitating them and throwing the Gronks into confusion as this unregistered beast does not recognize the efficacy of their swords as mandated by Gronk Central Command....
5. There is a rancid, musty scent in the air. Just ahead the ground or floor appears to glint slightly as if moist with some viscous, organic nastiness. At first you might think it the black oily residue of a Loathsome Mass, but the smell is different, more pungent and there is an impression of tarry, stickiness to the wet stuff that is not at all similar to the usual oiliness you'd expect. The dull, pinkish-mauve worm-like pseudopods give it away--there is a Black Sack ahead and something--several smallish somethings--are hunkered down near what you suspect is the main mass of the Black Sack making scraping noises and muttering to one another just above the level of a cautious whisper. There are some little humanoids rubbing javelins or darts in the toxic slop surrounding the Black Sack...roll again on Table Three below to see what manner of creature they might be.
6. A severely damaged Automaton with Flidder-flesh bonded to its frame lies neglected on a mostly flat toppled menhir of bluegreen stone. A closer look reveals it to be a Pruztian Fyter with three of its original zinn-plated limbs mostly intact, but one of its arms (the left one) having been incompletely repaired and mostly replaced with some sort of insect-limb combined with Flidder-flesh. You can hear someone arguing off in the distance. A demented Pruztian exile is exhorting his few remaining Thumbling retainers to go get him another Flidder immediately. He is running out of time. His left side is slowly turning to stone, a soft and crumbly sort of mineral with the consistency of cheese, and he is convinced that the deactivated Fyter he is trying to repair somehow can help him overcome this latest in a along succession of sorcerous insults and petty attacks by his various enemies who are all jealous of his so far unrecognized genius...
7. More of the petrified un-trees. upon closer inspection you see that they resemble some bizarre form of tentacled coral with a central columnar body and roots to match the writhing limbs above. It's the roots that give you pause. You can sense the hundreds of tiny snapping, gnashing teeth all clicking together in all those little mouths struggling to get at your flesh well before you can actually see them. It might be prudent to avoid getting much closer...
8. A cluster of hissing, flickering Umbral Things wearing masks made form dead people's faces caper and prance around a small gray trapezoid. suddenly the shadowy entities stop in their tracks, make some sort of arcane gesture then silently disband, each one leaving in a different direction. Their ritual failed. They abandon the trapezoidal object as worthless. The gray trapezoid is carved with twenty-eight characters that resemble Ixaxar glyphs, but are more curling and smooth, as though melted into the gray stone by some wriggling werm-thing. Incautious mishandling of this item summons a Yirgao.
9. A small, thirty-foot long fragment of the infamous Arch of Lindraxis protrudes form a Weak-Point. A Were-Shade of Uttonj is intently studying the thing, oblivious to the Gloomshadow that is furtively swirling into place behind them. Will you intervene and attempt to warn the Were-Shade, or will you let nature take its course?
10. At first it appears as though a sword was somehow dancing through the shadows as if by magic. then you glimpse some sort of Polyp wielding the weapon. It could be either a Monodril, or a Hexapodalite, but probably not a Type VI Abomination, since they tend to rely on spells rather that weapons...
11. Three Skeletal Mourners, each one of their bones lovingly wound in tarnished brass wire and draped with rotten red robes carry some sort of three-spoked wooden frame at shoulder height between them. Dangling from a set of three bronze chains is a grimoire bound in some sort of mauve-tinted hide that visibly struggles to break free of the wards imposed upon it. If you look more closely, the skeletons don't seem to mind just looking, then you will notice that there are tiny red flames flickering in the skulls of these skeletons; not in their brass-lined eye-sockets, but at the center of their hollowed-out skulls and somehow partially visible to the naked eye in a most unnatural manner...oh and a small band of four Thysanurians are carefully and quietly sneaking up on the skeleton book-bearers. One of these book devouring insects is carrying a Magical Weapon that you can select from This Table.
12. Rujjomi the Xing-Tian bone-molder and mask-maker squats in the darkness with their broad back up against a section of lichen-crusted masonry. Three dead Blemmyes lie only a scant few feet away with their mid-sections crushed into gory pulp by Rujjomi's powerful fists. These would-be assassins wear distinctive looking studded leather armor fashioned from Xing Tian hide; a deliberate insult and a sign of their master's great displeasure. These killers were sent after Rujjomi by her former patron... 

Little People? Really? (1d6)

1. Four Nirlock children are out on their very first hunt away from the adults. One of them is quite clever and has led them all to a spot where a Black Sack was festering away in the darkness so they could all apply the poison goo to their javelins.
2.  Zindlebarf leads the six remaining members of his tribe of kobolds now that their previous chieftain choked to death after trying to eat a chunk of Black Sack. If this stuff is so nasty, Zindlebarf has decided, it would be a good thing to scrape-up and use on their weapons.
3. A Creeping Baby Doll has gotten mired in the rotting gunk surrounding this patch of Black Sack fungi. The broken toy cries out to you in an eerie, unsettling voice...
4. (1d6+1) Drilg are tending to the (1d4) younglings who managed to step into this rotting fluid without realizing what they were doing. Worst family outing ever.
5. That's not a Black Sack after all, and those aren't little people--its all a ruse by a patch of Mindslime to lure unwary victims into reach.
6. Those aren't kobolds; they're (3d4) Pit Nibblers...but what are they doing?

---

Soulless in Wermspittle

You who will read this when I am dead -- if indeed I allow this record to survive, -- you who have opened the box and have seen what lies there, if you could understand what lies hidden in that opal!

The Inmost Light, by Arthur Machen

---

So Many Secrets...
There are secrets too dangerous to eliminate, too potentially destructive to not hold on to in case they are needed on some dread and distant day. These are indeed dreadful days, by no means distant enough any longer...

Like all such things, it began as a calculated risk. A discrete policy that proved effective. The practice grew over time into something of an unspoken tradition. It became the way things such as these were to be handled.

Some potentially embarrassing or incriminating things cannot be ignored, nor easily destroyed. Other things are best left in obscurity, lest they reveal far more than just their mere existence. In some cases that alone would be enough to ignite scandals, inquisitions, depositions and worse. Such things can always get worse. All things made have makers, and it is sometimes best for those in power to not have their involvement in sordid undertakings or failed experiments known. Reputations are such delicate things. Often in need of repair. Setting aside the detritus of failures most foul and things best not discussed is but one step in this process. Sending such things into the care of mute monks, prisoner-librarians, scribes and archivists locked away in obscurity, out of sight, out of mind, could work wonders.

There are occasions when it is necessary and prudent to retain such unfortunate records and dubious remains, if not for posterity's sake, then for some possible use or advantage in the great game of innuendo and blackmail that goes on underneath the cloaks and the daggers of more conventional forms of espionage and subterfuge. Banned books and the unpleasant evidence and remains of illicit medical experiments, as well as the unexpurgated diaries and journals of the once intrepid experimental investigators who delved into things forbidden, unwholesome, dangerous -- these sorts of things were sent -- discretely and secretly -- to Wermspittle. Things best not discussed, let alone left lying about, have often been secreted away in the depths of various private archives, locked behind the triple-gates of nondescript book depositories, buried in the stacks of obscure libraries open only to a very peculiar elite. Where better to hide such damnable things than in the midst of the damned themselves? Stricken from the record, removed from circulation, all sorts of crates, boxes and bundles of things concealed behind such bland and banal labels as 'books,' 'records,' 'files,' and the like were shipped off to this vague and mysterious place not marked on any of the usual maps. They sent these things away in order to forget. To put some healthy distance between themselves and the unfortunate events, the questionable excesses, the blasphemous digressions best not brought to light any time soon. They sent these things to Wermspittle and left them to fester, rot and ferment in the dark. And good riddance. Or so they thought.

I am no dealer in unproved theories; what I say I have proved for myself, and at a terrible cost. There is a region of knowledge which you will never know, which wise men seeing from afar off shun like the plague, as well they may, but into that region I have gone. If you knew, if you could even dream of what may be done, of what one or two men have done in this quiet world of ours, your very soul would shudder and faint within you. What you have heard from me has been but the merest husk and outer covering of true science -- that science which means death, and that which is more awful than death, to those who gain it. No, when men say that there are strange things in the world, they little know the awe and the terror that dwell always with them and about them...

The Inmost Light, by Arthur Machen

Duplicity and Revelations...
Amid the crowds of curious heretics, unscrupulous skeptics, the condemned exiles, insane geniuses and those who feel themselves beyond the reach of the scathing rebukes of the established faiths, the reach of the so-called Great Powers, or even conventional morals and propriety for that matter, there are those who seek out the deliciously bizarre, the outre, the savory secrets of others. Some do it for personal reasons, others for personal gain. Secrets are a form of currency in this dismal, dreadful place. Secrets are valuable. Some secrets are worth their weight in fresh meat in Winter. Other secrets have a use, a utility; they grant those who know them power. So secrets are much sought after in Wermspittle. Unearthed by desperate spades, lifted out of their sarcophagi-like cases and vaults like the dead plundered from their tombs. You work with what you have at hand.

One such suppressed secret was the formulation of the Opal of the Inmost Light. The so-called 'Gem of Souls.' For many years the secret remained safely ensconced in the storage cellar of a bankrupted private repository that had sat boarded-up and abandoned for decades. The roof had been damaged during the night bombings of the Great War. Red Weeds, specifically a rather unhealthy species of Red Creeper had infiltrated the stones of the back wall and dragged them down into a jumbled pile that blocked the alley behind the place. Hundreds, if not thousands of manuscripts were lost to the ravages of wind, rain, illiterate harpies and the cooking-fires of squatters. Foragers and Scavenger-Scholars picked their way through the mess in a determined competition that was mostly hidden behind muffled knife-fights, though sometimes things escalated, as when a particularly good trove of undamaged books or unopened boxes was uncovered and spells and gonnes took the place of knives and stealth.

A box was discovered. Changed hands five times. Each time through bloodshed and violence. Until it reached the desk of a disreputable scholar, a defrocked professor of galvanic chemistry kicked out of the Academy for his retrograde theories regarding the Violet Ray. An obsessive and a drunkard, the scholar was known to piss away his funds for obscure bits of arcane bric-a-brac no one else knew what to do with. So he ended-up with the box. It sat for several years. Neglected. Ignored. Lost beneath the untidy mound of rat-gnawed scrolls, broken-spined ledgers, oddly stained journals and other esoteric impedimenta accumulated over the wayward course of the scholar's last few years.

Eventually the money ran out. As it always does. One apprentice, his favorite, sold the scholar's blind-drunk body to the Butcher Boys one Winter. The rest of the traitorous apprentices divvied-up the remains of their former master's vast repertoire of scripts, tomes and such. They each carried off as much as they could carry before word got out and looters, scavengers and foragers showed up looking for an easy score.

One apprentice, Dubrezk is the only name they've since allowed to be recorded, wound up with the box that contained the notes, diagrams and details regarding the alchemical formulation of the Opal, and the ways and means of using it to capture and hold the Inmost Light. He, or she, (it is not recorded and indeed it is suspected that they were Eloi, and thus capable of switching genders as they wished), wasted no time in attempting the replicate the process outlined in the papers they had so fortuitously liberated from obscurity. The technique worked. All too well. It was the third subject that turned the tables and extracted Dubrezk's soul. Or so the story goes.

In that work, from which even I doubted to escape with life, life itself must enter; from some human being there must be drawn that essence which men call the soul, and in its place (for in the scheme of the world there is no vacant chamber)--in its place would enter in what the lips can hardly utter, what the mind cannot conceive without a horror more awful than the horror of death...

The Inmost Light, by Arthur Machen

Something too awful, too terrible to be allowed to remain...
Acting quickly, with a confidence and surety that the young apprentice had never demonstrated previously, Dubrezk gathered-up a bare minimum of personal belongings and disappeared. Some say that they were taken by agents of the Comprachicos, or that they fell afoul of the Corruption Trade. It is uncertain, unknown. None who might know about this will speak about it. The matter of the Soulless in Wermspittle is one that is best not discussed openly, especially in public.

Dubrezk may or may not still...live...if one can call the state of being rendered soulless 'living.' What is known, or at least believed by those who have attempted to make a study of the matter, is that Dubrezk had tampered with the original process after their initial success. Emboldened by the results of the first extraction, the former apprentice set about modifying the process. The second extraction had to be destroyed. No records survived that attempt. However the third extraction did succeed, only not in the planned and expected manner. Dubrezk was subjected to the extraction process personally. And they survived. After a fashion. In any case, someone, or something, calling itself Dubrezk is credited with having founded the Soulless.

They may have begun as a small cabal of apprentices, a circle of those who'd undergone the extraction process under Dubrezk's personal oversight. That is one theory. They might have built-up their power-base as a secretive cult operating on the fringes of the Academic community. No one is likely to ever be really certain. But one thing is very clear; the Soulless have become a force unto themselves, a faction that has seized upon a dark and awful power and made themselves the masters of a terrible science that they make available to those they deem worthy...at a horrific cost.

For one night my wife consented to what I asked of her, consented with the tears running down her beautiful face, and hot shame flushing red over her neck and breast, consented to undergo this for me. I threw open the window, and we looked together at the sky and the dark earth for the last time; it was a fine star-light night, and there was a pleasant breeze blowing, and I kissed her on the lips, and her tears ran down upon my face. That night she came down to my laboratory, and there, with shutters bolted and barred down, with curtains drawn thick and close, so that the very stars might be shut out from the sight of that room, while the crucible hissed and boiled over the lamp, I did what had to be done, and led out what was no longer a woman. But on the table the opal flamed and sparkled with such light as no eyes of man have ever gazed on, and the rays of the flame that was within it flashed and glittered, and shone even to my heart. My wife had only asked one thing of me; that when there came at last what I had told her, I would kill her. I have kept that promise...

The Inmost Light, by Arthur Machen

A Shining Path into the Unnameable...
Opals. Gleaming and glittering with internal flame. There is no mistaking the Opals of the Inmost Light. They are unlike any other gem or stone known to lapidary, alchemist or sorcerer.

The elders and leaders of the Soulless collect the Opals of their subordinates. In effect they hold their follower's souls hostage, mounting the Opals in increasingly ornate jewelry, usually circlets, tiaras and elaborate crowns. The Soulless consider themselves to be Lord of the World. And they act accordingly.

Calculating and cruel, the Soulless have forsaken their humanity, sacrificed their own souls to the pursuit of personal power. Worldly power. They reject the afterlife, spurn the doctrines of transmigration and the like. Instead the Soulless have seized upon a process that others leave to blind chance, capricious gods or hungry ghosts and they have made it their own. They have subverted their own souls, uprooted and transplanted their vital essences into the synthetic Opals produced as part of their dark arts, and entered onto paths through darkness and mystery no others can apprehend, let alone ever hope to understand. The Soulless are not like anyone else. Their motivations are inscrutable, unknowable.

They are cunning, these secretive sorcerers. Heedless of bloodshed, immune to the pain they cause, unburdened by the pangs of conscience or morality. They have gazed deeply into the abyss underlying all life and allowed something foul and primordial to enter into the vacated shells of their flesh, to take up residence in the house of life itself. Their brains are remade along devilish lines. Their hearts are hardened, pitiless and inhuman. They despise humanity even as they build their own empire in the very midst of their most hated hosts.

To look into the eyes of the Soulless is to look upon something dreadful and indescribable. They harbor a nameless horror deep within. Something timeless, shapeless, ambiguous and amorphous. A black seething corruption that claims their bodies in time, leaving only the glimmering, gleaming Opals to go on, enduring beacons of wickedness eager to lead the unwary astray, to work their wills upon the lesser intelligences, fiercely unwilling to go quietly into the great good night.

His face was white with terror as he turned away, and for a moment he stood sick and trembling, and then with a start he leapt across the room and steadied himself against the door. There was an angry hiss, as of steam escaping under great pressure, and as he gazed, motionless, a volume of heavy yellow smoke was slowly issuing from the very center of the jewel, and wreathing itself in snakelike coils above it. And then a thin white flame burst forth from the smoke, and shot up into the air and vanished; and on the ground there lay a thing like a cinder, black and crumbling to the touch...

The Inmost Light, by Arthur Machen

Damned Things I (Random Table/Any System)

Damned Things: Table I (D30)

1. Snowflakes (1d20) inches in diameter, (1d6) inches thick fall like cold, sharp whirling bits of ice . (Treat as a Blade Barrier spell.)
2. Orange-flavored hailstones sizzle across the area doing little appreciable damage.
3. (1d100 x10) tons of butter fall from the sky, amazingly, no one is hurt.
4. (1d6) Aeroliths: stones falling from the sky, each one explodes on impact, sending shards across a wide area. Anyone caught out in the open suffers 1d6 damage.
5. Loud noises heard in the sky, but nothing is seen to happen.
6. Thick, inky-black rain that leaves a most disagreeable odor as it drizzles across the area like syrup.
7. Blue hailstones sleet across the region. They seem harmless.
8. Mahogany logs drop across a 3 square mile area.
9. Masses of charred beef and blood crash into a nearby area causing 2d4 damage to anyone caught out in the open.
10. Yellow substance including numerous globules of cobalt blue, also corpuscles of a pearly color that resemble starch falls during light rainfall.
11. Red sand containing 3d10 percent unidentifiable organic matter sifts into place over everything within a 62 mile radius, the sand continues to drizzle into this region for 3d4 hours.
12. (6d10) Tons of red mud falls from out of nowhere, causing landslides and some flooding.
13. Dust that is chocolate-colored and silky to the touch and slightly iridescent blows in from some indeterminate location.
14. Comingled reddish raindrops and gray sand fall for 2d4 turns.
15. Pink Rain falls for 1d4 hours.
16. Dust that is yellow-brown, with a tinge of pink coats everything within a three mile radius.
17. Jet-Black snow falls for 3d6 hours leaving drifts of 2d4 feet in depth across 1d4x100' radius.
18. Minute yellow organisms in the shape of arrows, coffee beans, horns and disks gently flutter to the ground where they wriggle helplessly for 2d6 turns until they shrivel, then melt into a nasty goo that leaves faint reddish stains.
19. Dust of a deep yellow-clay color from another world swirls across the terrain leaving a gritty residue.
20. Rain of blood lasts for 1d6 turns. (30%) chance that it revives 1d4 random vampires from the local dust.
21. Finely divided-up organic matter, a thick, viscous, putrid red matter that leaves stains.
22. Food-supplies from cargoes of super-vessels, wrecked in interplanetary traffic, come tumbling through the air like flaming meteors of questionable nutrition.
23. Orange-red hail of a peculiar substance consisting of red iron ocher, carbonate of lime, and unidentifiable organic matter covers a space roughly 200' square.
24. Red, white and blue hailstones pummel everyone within 600' radius for 1d4 damage/turn for 2d6 turns.
25. A gelatinous fungus, vaguely bowl-shaped object that has upon it a nap, similar to that of milled cloth. Upon removing this nap, a buff-colored, pulpy substance the consistency of soap is found. It has an offensive odor, and, upon exposure to the air, turns to a livid red and absorbs moisture from the air until it liquifies into a sticky mess. This thing was said to have fallen in conjunction with a brilliant light, but that might just have been coincidence.
26. Dead and dry fish that turn to blood when exposed to water.
27. Frothy, gelatinous spawn of frogs and fishes covers everything within a 300'x900' space.
28. Blue-green gelatinous matter that could be nostoc ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostoc ) drapes the surrounding 300' radius.
29. Organic substance with the consistency of beef, in the shape of flakes 1d4 inches in diameter falls like snow for 1d4 hours, leaving a bloody, horribly bad smelling mess once it begins to melt.
30. Grayish, nut-sized masses of a resinous substance that is odorless unless burned, in which case it then produces a sweet smelling gas that causes 1d4 damage to all who come into contact with the cloying pink smoke.

Originally, we developed the Tables of Damned Things for use with the Zalchis setting, but these tables are also pretty useful outside of Zalchis. We intend to adapt them for use in Wermspittle during the long dark nights of deepest winter, when the forces of misrule are at their most powerful. These tables can also be adapted to Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds, Trail of Cthulhu, or whatever you like.

For More on Charles Fort, please see our article at Old School Heretic.

For more ideas about how to integrate anomalous and Fortean phenomena into your game, we highly recommend the incredibly excellet Suppressed Transmission 1 and Suppressed Transmission 2 books by the one and only Ken Hite.

Buy This Book!

And/Or Buy This Book!

Damned Things: Index Page

So, by the damned, I mean the excluded.

But by the excluded I mean that which will some day be the excluding.

Or everything that is, won't be.

And everything that isn't, will be --

But, of course, will be that which won't be --

It is our expression that the flux between that which isn't and that which won't be, or the state that is commonly and absurdly called "existence," is a rhythm of heavens and hells: that the damned won't stay damned; that salvation only precedes perdition. The inference is that some day our accursed tatterdemalions will be sleek angels. Then the sub-inference is that some later day, back they'll go whence they came.

The Book of the Damned

By Charles Fort

Damned Things at Hereticwerks

• Table I
• Table II
• Table III
• Table IV
• Processions of the Damned (Spell)
• Scenario Seeds: Extraordinary & Singular Phenomena I
• Inspirational Reading: Charles Fort (at Old School Heretic)

Orb Cluster (Wermspittle)

Orb Cluster (Type I)
No. Enc.: 1 (0)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 90' (Omnidirectional)
Armor Class: 7 (only take half damage from non-magical weapons)
Hit Dice: 4+1 (Improves)
Attacks: 1
Damage: (Fear, Paralysis, Suffocation or Dissolve)
Save: F3
Morale: 9

Special: Breach Weak Point, Call Damned Things

Orb clusters are strange, viridescent congeries of soap-bubble-like spheres that hover about on the very fringes of consciousness prowling for lost souls, negligent dreamers or arrogant mentalists to prey upon.


Be Afraid
All Orb Clusters (there are other types...) emanate a constant Fear effect in a 20' radius that seeps across planes and into adjacent worlds. This is a constant effect and causes all who come within 20' of the Orb Cluster to make a Save at a penalty of -4 or suffer the effects of a Fear spell. (LL. p.25)

Stopping Power
Orb Clusters attack by extending a portion of the slime-like ectoplasmic material that surrounds them like an aethyric sheath. This corrupted ecto-stuff is a foul, milky green and  causes paralysis on contact for 1d4 turns. Fantomists collect this material for use in some of the illicit substances that they peddle in the back alleys of Wermspittle and other such unsavory locales. It is conjectured that this matter is some sort of residue of those that the Orb Cluster has already digested in the past.

A Nasty Follow-Up 
Orb Clusters that score a successful follow-up attack on an already paralyzed victim will then envelope their prey, either suffocating them for 1d4 damage/turn or saturating them with the weird sorcerous digestive fluids they exude from inside each of their bubble-like segments. This attack inflicts 1d6 damage per turn, but also grants the paralyzed victim a new Save each time they sustain damage. Anyone completely consumed by an Orb Cluster is lost completely and unrecoverable. There is a slight 10% chance per point of INT above 12 of the victim that they might find themself the abiding intelligence of the Orb Cluster that devoured them.

Orb Clusters can innately Detect Ley-Lines, Discern Weak Points and Find Dreamer. They also can Breach Weak Point once per week, allowing them to cross-over from one plane or world at random so long as they have access to a Weak Point. Once per day an Orb Cluster can cast Call Damned Thing, allowing it to summon forth one random effect from any of the Damned Things Tables.

Little Known Facts Regarding Orb Clusters

• Orb Clusters avoid Ordrang at all costs and will automatically flee any location where an Ordrang is present.
• The spell Dispel Ectoplasm causes 1d6 damage per level of the caster when used against one of these things, while Ectoplasmic Wall will effectively trap one for the duration of the spell.
• The Moth-Wing Scrolls of Nildru are reputed to hold the secret of binding Orb Clusters into various sorts of magical items and/or weapons.

Scenario Seeds: Obelisks III

Obelisks III

One
Javver huddled in the dark. Shivering. Bleeding. Praying that that thing snuffling around in the cellar couldn't smell his blood. No one had told him that there were Snouters under the old Apothecary-Shop. No one had warned him that the obelisk was a sending from some sow-queen of Kalkendru. His teachers wanted to see how he handled their little test.


Two
What kind of a person carves an obelisk from the trunk of a tree dragged across the threshold from the Purple Forest? And in an attic no less. Why would they sacrifice all those penguins, bats and pigeons to the thing, smearing it all haphazardly with feathers and blood? Who is that behind you?


Three
Oneiroliths are notoriously unstable. Half-solidified phantasmal residue left behind by inattentive Dreamers or sloppy Oneirists. The Red Watch maintains a watch-list of recently-reported oneiroliths, just like they chalk-up unverified spottings of Black Smoke and keep tabs on any rumors of Red Weed or Scarlet Plague outbreaks. They used to consider such things potentially dangerous. Some academic was concerned that the Red Weeds might latch onto one of these things and somehow grow into the local Dreamspaces. It hasn't happened yet. Not that anyone's reported. These days the Red Watch tends to concern itself with real threats and actual dangers. They just don't have the budget nor the manpower to do much more than maintain a list no one cares about any more. So when the report came in of an oneirolithic obelisk it caused a bit of turmoil back at the Main Office. Suddenly everyone wanted access to the list...


Four
 Zoogruth trotted along leisurely, distracted by contemplation of abstract matters. The Fourth Theorem was troubling the old Phorain. She just couldn't reconcile it to her recent observations. Red dust coated her flanks, covered her taloned feet. It reminded her of dried blood. The old days. Not every mercenary managed to escape the mind-bondage most of the hard-line Zurian clans insisted upon. But then not every Phorain had her talent for sorcery. She turned West at the broken pillars of some ruin no one bothered with. Down the narrow defile behind the canopy of clutchy-thorns. Across the small trickling brook all milky-white with alkali-salts. Down. Around. Down some more. There was no path, save in her memory. No one else knew about this spot. This place. Her refuge. There. The obelisk loomed crookedly in the steep-walled crater. This was where everything changed for her. This was where she had learned her first spells. Each one deciphered and translated from the inscriptions on that obelisk. Her obelisk. She never heard Janeska's killing spell.


Five
The old warlords who ruled over Rushtalm had struggled long and hard to overcome the stigma of having a human taint to their blood. For six generations each of them had waged terrible, costly wars upon all their neighbors. Each one was immortalized by an obelisk commemorating their victories. The seventh obelisk remains unadorned, its upper third broken off in the course of the sacking of Rushtalm following the death of the last warlord. No one will speak his name in Rushtalm. It is considered a terrible curse. A reminder of his failure and their loss and the city's fall from preeminence. There are whispered rumors and muttered prophecies of an Eighth Obelisk, the arrival of some heir to the tainted lineage of the old warlords, a return to the greatness of the old days. The janissaries patrolling the muddy streets of this dismal place just wish whoever it was would get on with things so they could either execute them or leave once and for all.


Six
Here's the map. Like I promised. Thanks for the Black Mead. That'll help me sleep tonight. So look here. There are three islands. South of the third reef. Well past red-walled Viridang. They don't ever patrol this far South, so don't worry about them. Each one of these islands is less than a mile across at its widest. All three have a huge obelisk of heavy blue jade at their centers, surrounded by low-walled mazes and writhing vines and the like. The vines are harmless; the things will grab at your boots but they avoid fire. Don't leave any wounded behind, as the vines will take them. Slowly. The screams will last for hours. The bloat-fish with their massive, toothy maws are considered the worst of the prowling things one must keep on guard against. Especially the farther inland one goes. The waters surrounding these islands are fair infested with fist-sized poisonous crustaceans, green-shelled inedible things with stings and pincers. They'll avoid anything coated with mucous, so maybe you'd best see about making some sort of deal with an Octoscholar; they have a few spells along those lines that might prove useful. Just don't tell them where you're going. Not under any circumstance. Oh, and those trees drooping along the inner lagoons of these islands aren't trees at all. They're some kind of anemone. And they will be watching you every step of the way. Burn them. Or else. Damned things massacred my crew. I only barely escaped, far from unscathed, as you can see. Surgeon won't remove the thing. It is too deeply embedded into my flesh now. It's not a bad replacement-hand, all things considered, but it keeps me up at night with its sing-song warbling...

Obelisks I  Obelisks II  Obelisks III

Damned Things: Table II (D30)

Damned Things: Table II (D30)

1. (1d100x100) Tiny Pink Jellyfish.
2. Four tons of wriggling, worm-like larvae.
3. Fifty-two pounds of inert insect chrysalises so brittle they collapse into papery fragments when touched.
4. 500 pounds of rotting vegetable matter falls like greasy globs of fat. But there is no rain.
5. Hundreds of tiny yellow corpuscles that contain a peculiar form of cobalt.
6. (5d20) off-white spherical masses of some chalky substance.
7. Gelatinous gray masses accumulate within low-spots until reaching a critical mass of volume at which point they become 1HD Gray Oozes.
8. Stinky yellow powder that changes coloration over time, but is otherwise useless.
9. Lumps of gelatinous goo the color and odor of dried, brown varnish.
10. A flurry of lichen-based 'manna,' fully edible and capable of being stored indefinitely, coats everything like a freak snowstorm.
11. 600 pounds of ambergris splatters across the area.
12. A coal-black, leafy mass that falls like snowflakes that are 4d10 inches in diameter, damp and smell disagreeably, like rotten seaweed, but, when dried, the smell wears off. They tear like fibrous paper.
13. Greenish felt-like matter that tears like paper.
14. A burning mass of sulfur and limestone fragments crashes into the vicinity.
15. 4,200 marble-sized balls of some soft and pulpy substance which, upon drying, crumble at the slightest touch.
16. Black rain falls for 1d10 turns. Once it starts to dry, the fluid becomes a wool-like whitish fiber that seems to be possessed of a rudimentary instinct making it squirm and burrow into the closest patch of soil where it wraps around itself until it can form some weird, alien seed of some sort.
17. Red snow that melts into an ochre slop that dries into yellowish scab-like crusts that cause plants covered with it to spontaneously sprout branches, runners and roots that produce completely other kinds of plants.
18. Hundreds upon hundreds of fresh mussels fall out of nowhere--not a cloud to be seen.
19. Black, capillary matter resembling niter, and that tastes like sugar, falls mingled with rain. After 1d4 hours, the black material will generate a horde of hundreds of tarry-black toads.
20. A mass of black leaves, having the appearance of burnt paper, but harder, and cohering, and brittle.
21. (1d100) burned scraps of paper covered in unintelligible hieroglyphics.
22. Thousands of small, white frog-like things fall with a heavy rain. They quickly dry-out and crumble into whitish ashes within 1d6 turns of the rain ending. The ashes are slightly toxic.
23. Rain turns into a hail of hot slag and cinders and ashes doing 2d4 damage to anyone caught out in it.
24. Salt, essentially imperfect cubic crystals of common salt, about 4 tons of it falls over a 6 mile square area.
25. Olive-gray powder made up of an aggregation of hairs of two kinds, black ones and rather thick white ones. They are mineral fibers, and when burned, they give out a powerfully revolting ammonia smell. Three miles of a fibrous substance like blue silk drapes everything within reach for 1d4 hours before it melts into a sticky residue.
26. 400 stunned carp fall from the sky. Most are still alive. For now.
27. Rancid-smelling, yellowish material oozes out of hollow hailstones. This substance is flammable.
28. (1d6) large, smooth, waterworn, gritty sandstone pebbles pelt the area for no good reason.
29. Kernels of some hitherto unknown grain come sleeting down mixed with a light hail.
30. Ragged fragments of a viscous silky/cobweb-like material clutters up anything it can adhere to, including travelers or small animals.

Extraordinary & Singular Phenomena I (Scenario Seeds)

Extraordinary & Singular Phenomena:
Table I (d20)

1. Something with a nucleus, at each end of which is a tail or tail-like tapering structure of some indeterminate kind, has been floating about the local orchards, scaring the day-lights out of the locals. So far it has not harmed anything, but it won't be very long before some bright lad decides to go poke it with a sharp stick or something. It may not be a living creature at all. But what is it?
2. Such tracks in the snow as had never before been heard of, 'clawed footmarks' or 'an unclassifiable form' that seem to alternate across very large but regular intervals with what seemed to be the impression of the point of a stick of some sort, perhaps a cane. All of these tracks are in a single continuous line. The tracks cover an amazing expanse of territory filled with numerous obstacles, such as hedges, walls, houses (the tracks go right over the roof!), and the like, all of which seem to have been absolutely no hindrance to the thing making these tracks at all. The tracks can be followed by huntsmen and hounds, until they had come to a forest—from which the hounds will retreat, baying and terrified, so that none of the hunters and dog-handlers have dared to enter the forest. Do you dare to find out what made all those tracks?
3. Bizarre blue-white crystalline fibers have fallen from the sky on a perfectly clear day. Everything they have come into contact with has begun to slowly turn transparent. The effect seems to stop then slowly reverse itself if the fibers are removed. No one knows where the stuff came from, but a lot of enterprising 'experts' have stepped-up to make wild claims about this new miracle material. There are signs of someone having begun to really make a serious effort at harvesting/collecting this stuff.
4. The corpse of a one-legged kangaroo shod with one horse shoe washes ashore in a near-by fishing village.
5. Strange marks, another sort of foot-print or track very similar to a solitary colt's hoof...only with a faint trace of claws...each spaced almost exactly 8 inches apart and dotting the entire countryside surrounding several villages located within a few miles of one another. No one saw or heard anything. It probably was not a cranky badger or flock of confused geese.
6. A rain of 'variously shaped organic matter' resembling nothing so much as a shower of blood. But it is not blood. Nor is it red dust, sand or powdered gelatin. But it is organic, perhaps some sort of 'vegetable cells.' And this strange sky-matter does seem to grow when left unattended. But only when no one is observing it.
7. Gelatinous cloud-scale sacs of organic goo float far above the surface of the world. They are filled with a sulfurous pseudo-amniotic fluid that supports an autonomous and enclosed ecosystem teeming with various forms of life unique to this peculiar free-floating region. The density within the gelatinous cloud-sacs is so intense that things that fall from them, and thus entering the thinner atmosphere that surround these bizarre aerial bio-masses tend to explode, scattering bits and chunks of unrecognizable flesh and blood across the countryside. Some of these things might be construed as having a cigar-shape, or perhaps resembling super-zeppelins, but others are more like flattened disks or wobbly potatoes. Some of them exhibit strange eerie lights from time to time, but no one knows just what that is all about.
8. Six false 'suns' have been reported out in a stretch of desolate desert. The 'suns' leave behind a thick trail of frost and ice in their wake. The local tribes have take this as a very bad sign and several of them are making preparations to leave. Of course their idea of how to leave their ancestral homeland involves burning, looting and killing their way across the more settled regions bordering on this place until they either come to a new wilderness to claim as theirs, or they manage to drive off the settlers and take over their farmsteads and river towns. The settlers prefer to not go along with this particular plan and are in the process of acquiring some professional help in possibly deterring the tribes' warriors from coming their way. Of course, none of the villages, hamlets or isolated farmsteads are cooperating together, so this defense effort is piece-meal and on a case-by-case basis. A bit of leadership, backed up with a few hundred well-armed troops could make all the difference, were they to make themselves available.
9. Explosive hailstones have leveled a small settlement near here. The local authorities suspect sorcery. The survivors have already stoned or murdered three unfortunate individuals whom they blamed for the hailstorm, but residual hailstones have fallen off and on after each 'civic-minded execution' so things are getting desperate. These folks sure could use some guidance, a calming influence, doughty investigators into abnormalities most profound, or some self-serving sleaze-bags to come take advantage of their situation with fake claims, phony evidence and expensive non-solutions.
10. Huge flakes of flesh-like matter have fallen upon a region of farmland that was abandoned after the last border skirmish with a rival barony. There just weren't enough farmers who ever returned from the disastrous war to make a go of it and so the area was forsaken. The strange flaky-bits of flesh-stuff seem to be wriggling in slow-motion, as though stunned or too cold to move freely. If provided a source of warmth, the bits coagulate and aggregate into what could be construed as limbs or parts of vaguely human bodies. Actually touching the material causes it to bond to the toucher's own flesh where it slowly assimilates into them and they begin to report feeling odd, experiencing nightmares, and developing peculiar personality quirks.
11. A huge ball of green fire has been spotted rolling along just a couple of feet from the still surface of a local river. The fireball moves slowly, as though actually rolling along and is only ever spotted at night and only ever at one specific spot along this river.
12. Enormous, round things have risen from the depths of a near-by lake, loch or inlet. They appear to have a warty and irregular surface, encrusted with muck, weeds and possibly small bivalves or even barnacles. Some witnesses claim that the things gave them the distinct impression of being more like constructed things than natural things.
13. Frogs. Blue frogs speckled with dark, brownish knob-like encrustations all over their backs and very un-froglike talons have fallen all over the country-side. The local Lords would very much like to know why, where these things have come from, and what exactly should be done about them.
14. A meteorite struck a section of river bank just last night. Those who have already gone to take a look have come running back with tales of hundreds if not thousands of dead fish scattered all around the crater gouged into the muddy ground. All of the fish described are distinctly and most definitely not indigenous species. Some may not even be from this world. But did the fishes come from within the meteorite, or from somewhere else?
15. A dim blue-green luminosity has been reported for three nights in a row over a small hamlet. It seems to be drifting in the night sky, but no one has reliably spotted it during the day-time. There are claims that this might be a super-geographical lake. Perhaps it is filled with fish after a sort. The luminosity could be some effect of the fish within the hovering body of water, or perhaps it is caused by some reflection of the moonlight. In any case, quite a few people are concerned as to what this might all mean and there are those who see an opportunity here for anyone bold enough to seize the day and lay claim to this aerial lake. In fact, the various rivals seeking to launch their own expedition to this possibly spurious body of water have been getting in each other's way and tempers have begun to flare. It is something of a race, an armed and dangerous race, to lay claim to a lake that might not even really be there.
16. A large disk of some peculiar greenish quartz-like stone fell from the night sky (1d4) days ago. Several different groups have sent people to investigate. Some of those looking for this thing are not from around these parts.
17. A flock of migratory birds was recently torn to bits in a violent wind that cast their remains all across the streets of a prosperous township on the verge of war with a rival city-state across the sea. There are dark mutterings of this having been some sort of omen. A small group of innovative craftsmen just outside of town have been working on a prototype dirigible within a converted old barn. (It was seriously expanded by some tents and a few small illusions as well as the help of a bemused dryad who raised a dense hedge about the place.) Now is a very bad time to attempt to launch the airship according to some, but the rest of the group wants to pack up their belongings and use the airship to leave both the bickering city-state and harbor town behind and go look for a fresh beginning somewhere else.
18. A set of eight bright lights have swarmed around the high hills surrounding a sleepy village otherwise known only for three kinds of stinky cheese. The lights change color, move as though coordinated, and have appeared on several different occasions.
19. A 'false moon' followed by a train of (2d6) smaller 'moon-like' objects was spotted moving in a Southerly direction away from the site of some cyclopean ruins alleged to have been built by some particularly antagonistic prehuman species. A quick scouting trip to the area described returned with disturbing reports of toppled and uprooted trees, scorched sections of ground, and strange shapes lurking out past the range of the scout's torches and lanterns. A very strange bit of business that someone needs to go and set to rights immediately, before there is any more of a panic than there is already.
20. A strange luminous body, described as being like a wine-sack balanced atop a peculiar tail—has been seen in the local swamps. There is some dispute as to whether the thing has one or four sections and likewise the number of tails switches from four to one, depending on the witness interviewed. The object is described as moving with a deliberate, even majestic sort of levitation-style movement. Over time, as the luminous object moves about, dragging its tail or tails through the muck, the internal structures seem to become increasingly complex, as though it were developing and growing as it moved, sort of after the fashion of a frog's egg, according to one precocious child who claims to have seen one of the things. Whatever the object(s) might be, they seem to disappear after one or two hours.

---

This set of Scenario Seeds was inspired by The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort, first published in 1919. You can download a copy of The Book of the Damned from Sacred Texts, or from Project Gutenberg.  There's a nifty hyper-text version of TBotD that can be accessed via Resologist's site, if that's more your speed. As an aside, the Complete Works of Charles Fort are available from Sacred Texts...which is also very handy. You might also find our series of Tables of Random Damned Things handy.

You might want to check out the post on Two Books That Should  Be in Every GM's Arsenal over at Old School Heretic, or just go get your hands on either/both of Ken Hites' incredibly useful Suppressed Transmission books to see what a really inspired pro can do with Mr. Fort's material.

Weak Points

Sometimes things, even people disappear. Other times things, even people, appear from seemingly nowhere. People sometimes speak of things, or people having mysteriously disappeared into thin air. Thinness might be one way to describe the situation, but it is not simply 'air' into or out of which these things disappear or arrive from elsewhere. The boundaries between worlds are far more porous and permeable than many would like to know. For whatever reason, the boundaries between the various strata of reality grow thin, rupture or get entangled or twisted-up somehow. The geometries describing this phenomena are mind-numbingly abstruse and form the basis of numerous sorcerous arts and sciences. The study of Weak Points has long been a fringe discipline, except in those places where they are far too common to be written-off or ignored.

Wermspittle is such a place. Weak Points are an incredibly common feature both in the immediate area surrounding Wermspittle, and all through the city itself as well. The place is littered with the things. Riddled. Like a worm-eaten bit of wood. It was the preponderance of Weak Points in this particular region that drew the attention of the scholars, sorcerers and their backers. Hundreds of cartogrammic surveyors, dowsers and others have descended upon the area over the years, but their wild accounts and fantastic reports were most often dismissed as faulty, sheer lunacy, or even dangerous propaganda instigated by foreign interests.

Everyone who knows anything about Wermspittle knows that the place is haunted and accursed, a festering den of heretics and outlaws, a birth-place of abominations and worse. But it is also a center of learning, healing and more. When one wants to study the sea, they must go where the sea is, and in the case of Weak Points and similar such phenomena, one goes to Wermspittle.

Meddling and Examining...
Weak Points are permeable regions that allow two or more worlds, universes or other such realms to commingle. Blend. Blur. Become resonantly harmonious, aligned or conjunct for a while. Most of the time this effect is on a very small scale and such regions are almost always temporary. Usually. But there are conditions under which a Weak Point can be 'captured' or affixed to a specific point and even tuned or modified so as to allow continuous access to what lies beyond. At least theoretically. Most of the research into such things is guarded closely by those who have gained some measure of hard-won expertise in such matters, often at serious risk and great trouble.

The body of work surrounding Weak Points, Tunnels and associated phenomena (such as the Cold Roads) has grown large and complex over the centuries since the formal establishment of 'Transitional Studies,' and 'Transplanar Reconnaissance,' as part of the established curriculum of the Academy. The Institute for Apocalyptic Studies was originally formed by a cadre of defrocked and excommunicated priests, but has transformed into an organizational body dedicated to the unraveling of the enigma of the so-called Dead Worlds that seem to flock around Wermspittle like flies, if one is to believe the accounts of some explorers and surveyors.

Scholars have trickled in to Wermspittle from across the farthest reaches of the Three Empires and many of the lesser principalities. Most of them at the end of their careers, whether they realize it or not. The sort of work that takes place in Wermspittle is suspect, often illicit, unsanctioned or worse. The stink of freethinking and open inquiry surrounds this place, provoking the disdain, disregard and even outright contempt of more mainstream authorities. No teachers ever leave Wermspittle for other schools. Other colleges and universities ship the intellectual debris discovered within the collections and corpus of otherwise respectable scientists and scholars to one or another of the archives and private libraries at Wermspittle. There is much Academic interest in the Weak Points and all that they imply, reveal or allow access unto within Wermspittle, but outside this region, such things are more often banned and damned by the Orthodoxies and Hierarchies who feel profoundly threatened by such things. That the majority of the science, research and experimentation being performed takes place in or around Wermspittle, a notorious hot-bed of heresies and discredited thinking only compounds the problem. And now, with the wars raging across the frontiers and plague spreading like wildfire even into the very heart of the Sanctumopolis of the Pontifical Triumvirate itself...these are perilous times...and a place like Wermspittle tends to get overlooked by those with more important matters to attend to, leaving only a few fanatics or zealots to contemplate the political utility of such a place and how it might serve their ambitions. Wermspittle has often been useful to a great many ambitious people, as with any discrete and deniable place of exile.

Who Knows...
But in Wermspittle, it is not only the Scholars vying for recognition and academic standing who delve into such matters as the true nature of the Weak Points. Inventors, dreamers, poets and schemers, and many of their ilk have come to this place to explore, to examine, to experiment upon Weak Points among other things. Some of them have reported spectacular successes, others have experienced terrifying failures. Daredevils and religious fanatics have likewise come to Wermspittle to find the way to fabulous, mythical kingdoms, to unlock the paths to any number of paradises or hells. Some seek out the Weak Points in order to escape, others hunt them down looking for answers to impossible riddles. For centuries the people of Wermspittle have learned how to live with the Weak Points, how to make the most of their situation, to mark the comings and goings of recurring Weak Points, to chart out the cycles of the more regular ones and to map out the Near Places and sometimes offer a few cryptic hints regarding certain of the Far Places, to note the Paths, the Trails and the Tunnels and to leave something of an oral tradition behind to remind those who come after as to what has been already seen or spotted along the Otherside of those Weak Points that have proven useful or dangerous, benign or malevolent.  If someone were to successfully gather up all these fragments, collect all this lore into some sort of comprehensive and organized ephemeris, catalog, or almanac, it would be an incredible achievement. So far all the in-fighting and under-handed rivalries between the various experts who might have some sort of a shot at completing such a work has prevented any such things taking place. So far.

For A Price...
It is rumored that even the Midwives know something of these things. Which comes as no surprise to anyone who has spent more than a fortnight in this place. It is said, that for a small fee they might scratch a small map or diagram into the hearth-ashes that will reveal something of the nature of a particular Weak Point, but they are loathe to divulge their secrets. One might also consider consulting the Sewer System Concordance & Cthonic Ephemeris published every October by the Sewer Militia, as it is said that these indispensable almanacs contain an appendix that deals with Weak Points in a fair bit of detail, from a practical stand-point, as one would expect from the Sewer Militia. There used to be a Ley-Hunter's Guide and Dowser's Digest printed annually around hundred years ago or so, but it suddenly ceased publication and has never been officially replaced or revived. Old back-issues of this venerable almanac are much sought-after by those engaged in the exploration of Weak Points, Tunnels or related phenomena, including various discredited Geomantics, Parasurveyors, Dowsers and the Ley-Hunters. Collectors and book-sellers are known to bribe apprentices out hunting Wet Spots and the like for the Corruption Trade for any old books they might uncover in their work within the various Abandoned Properties of the Burned Over District and other such places. The going rate for a decent copy of a Dowser's Digest has been steadily going up, to the point that certain of the collectors have actively interfered with recent attempts to revive the publication.

Opportunities
Weak Points offer Practical Philosophers a chance to learn about the actual structure of the universe and to acquire first-hand experience of things that have been left in the hands of contentious and squabbling theoreticians for far too long. There are few theoreticians who have survived long enough to achieve any sort of tenure at the Academy in Wermspittle. Those who study and explore the Weak Points tend to be among the best and the brightest, but they still have a high attrition rate. The high turn-over rate does mean that there are always openings and opportunities for those drawn to this sort of thing. If you have what it takes. It is not for the faint-hearted.

Bujilli: Episode 134

Previously...
A wounded Kalidah lurches from behind some bushes with a ferocious roar...

"Scheiss!" Leeja's hair flashed and slashed behind her in agitation. She remembered the last one of these tiger-headed bear-things were brought into the beast cages beneath the main arena at the Academy. Two of her friends had been badly mauled before they could get it properly chained. It never did respond to any of the usual sedatives. Some of the crew were convinced that the beasts were immune to White Powder...but no one ever got to test that theory out.

"Its bleeding..." Bujilli examined the wounded beast. He knew it would not be able to rush him, not with the way it was wobbling, limping.

"Something has nearly ruined its knees...and one elbow..."

"HobYAH. Hobyah-hobyah-hobYah..." A shaggy little thing with a face like a boney cave-fish nodded in solemn agreement. Or perhaps it was mocking him. Bujilli wasn't quite sure.

"Hobyah HOBYAH! hobhobhobhobhob..." giggled the little creature as it danced and pranced and waved its clicking little claws about.

Three. Five. Ten. More than a dozen. Two dozen. Three dozen. More. Many more.

Hobyahs swarmed out of the surrounding bushes and mobbed the Kalidah, biting at it's knees or elbows or any other joint they could reach. Little things. Tiny teeth. Many small wounds.

The Kalidah roared and reared and swatted and swung its formidable claws about, gnashed and snapped its toothy jaws together, but it was to no avail.

The Hobyahs danced in under the Kalidah's claws, bit off a small piece of flesh or fur, then flipped or tumbled back out of the way, and did it all over again and again and again.

Leeja tugged on Bujilli's arm. He shook himself. Looked away from the methodical carnage of the Hobyahs. One look into her gold-green eyes and he nodded.

They withdrew from the small glen, leaving the Hobyahs to their gruesome slaughter.

A slight trail, possibly made by deer or some other creature led them off along a steeply sloping hillside, into the denser brush, into a darker region dominated by thickets. They kept going, not at all inclined to stick around where the Hobyahs might come looking for them.

CRASH!

They both froze in mid-step.

Leeja's eyes went wide in amazement.

She pointed up and to the right. A large tree was toppling in slow-motion.

"What is it?" Bujilli squinted, began to shift his perceptions--

"No!" Leeja hissed; "Do Not Do That!" Her hand grip tightened on his arm. He could feel her claws.

"But..."

"If you do that, it will see you much better than you will ever see it. As it is, I see it too well already, and it can feel, can sense me--we need to go another way. Quickly."

"Is it a Horla?" Bujilli was curious about those unseen malefactors; his uncle had once tried to purchase a live-caught Horla-pup from an old airship captain who it turned out was just a lying fraud. Horlas had some strange abilities and qualities one could make use of if they knew certain secrets...his uncle seemed to know all about that sort of thing. But then he was something of a fraud, himself. Just one with a lot of spell-casting ability and a few imprisoned demons to back him up in his lies and mind-games.

"No. It's a Damned Thing. More of a grazing beast, but about as forgiving as a monocerous or behemoth."

"I've never seen a Damned thing before..."

"And you won't now, either. Not and live. Let's go that way." Leeja struck off through the brambles and thorns, past bristly nettles and flowering plants that shook and wiggled giddily from the heavy clomping steps of the Damned Thing.

Bujilli wasted no time following his partner. He was intensely curious, but knew of no spell that would keep them safe from the wild territorial aggression of a Damned Thing For all he knew it was rutting season; it would not be prudent to stick around to find out.

They passed three deeply weathered, moss-festooned blue-green menhirs; standing stones. One was leaning and the third one had already fallen.

A lighting-blasted oak.

Water gleamed and glittered from behind a tattered veil of leaves waving in the soft breeze. Leeja wordlessly took his hand and led him directly away from that place.

Dark pines pushed up and out from below and between lichen-crusted rocks and boulders. Stunted, twisted little trees grew more straight and tall and massive as they climbed up and up the increasingly rugged incline. Jumbled piles of rocks rose out of the ground like drowning ships caught in a storm at sea, half buried and overgrown with delicate little flowers and ferns and mosses.

Pine needles formed a rusty, fragrant carpet underfoot.

Gnarled, hard roots rose and fell as they swam through the rocky soil, making the going easier in that they offered some hand-holds, but also making progress painful in soft-soled boots.

A cluster of tiny green eggs erupted into a scintillating cascade of sparkly diamond-flies as they passed.

Ferns curled and unfurled in a patient pantomime of everything they noticed.

It started to rain.

Softly.

---pit-pat-pit---

The brush parted, revealing a rutted gravel road.

Thunder boomed and reverberated overhead.

Some sort of lights were approaching from the left.

Creaking. Swearing in some guttural mountain language. Heavy thudding hooves...

---

Meanwhile...
Gnosiomandus laughed. In his hand was a brothel token. One of the really old ones. Ishtyrri's Seeds. Laputan Sovereigns. That's what the Assclowns called these things, from back in the bad old days. Before everything got so damned complicated and convoluted. He closed his eyes. He was so tired. So very tired. But there wasn't time to dawdle, nor to mourn; they had many miles to go before they could rest. He wiped the crust of red grit from his lips and beard. It would be good to finally make it through this dry, deadly red place. He missed the rhododendron and apple trees, the sweet-but-deadly flowers, even the Red Weeds of Wermspittle. He missed a lot of things. But there was no going back. Not yet. He had a mission to carry out. Maybe it was time to share some of what he was up to with his two companions. He wasn't sure how much he could trust them...

---

Lanterns swung madly at the end of looped brass supports on each corner of the black funeral carriage. The driver wore a heavy, multi-layered coachmen's cloak and a voluminous yellow scarf that was not wool. His hand appeared leprous in the encroaching gloom. The horses foamed and struggled in their harness, their eyes empty as boiled eggs.

"This is not the way..." Leeja tugged at Bujilli's sleeve, less forcefully this time, but no less insistent.

Back through the thorns and thistles they went, just as the carriage passed by the spot they had been standing.

The thunder diminished.

That way faded.

Only the trees remained distinct and clear...

...and the rocks...

...and the tumbled-down ruins of some manor or redoubt.

"Want to go check that out? Or should we head along the path in the other direction, away form that place?"

---

What should they do next? Which direction should they go?

You Decide!

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Synchronocitor Status: Fully Recharged.

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Roll for Initiative!

Someone please roll 1d6 for 1) Bujilli, 2) Leeja, 3) Whatever lurks within the strange woods...

Which Direction?
Do you think that they should head towards the ruined redoubt, or away from it? Follow the path, or go cross-country? Try to locate the way back to that place in the rain where the carriage passed? Look for another weak point or soft spot? try to locate a mirror aperture? Something else? It's up to you readers--You Decide!

Roll for Possible Observation.
Please roll 1d6 and let me know the result. If you get a 1, there is a bonus Random Encounter. If you get a 6, then the encounter is from the other side of another mirror-aperture.

Optional Spot Mirror Roll. (1d30)
We'll also need another d30 roll to determine if Bujilli or Leeja spot yet another mirror in the distance. A result of 10 means maybe/it isn't clear, a result of 20 means that there seems to be a mirror in a random direction, but it looks closed/shuttered; and a result of 30 means that they spot a mirror in the distance that might be open and accessible...or at least whatever they are seeing appears that way from a distance. A result of 1 means something else mirror-related happens, possibly some sort of environmental effect or shift in the surrounding terrain...

What Should They Do Next?

You Decide!

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Previous                            Next

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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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Labyrinth Lord   |   Advanced Edition Companion

Bujilli: Episode 25

Previously...
Not trusting the dubious and dangerous methods of the hag Hedrard, Bujilli sought the advice of his Counsel. Thinking that he might be able to save the life of Lemuel, a boy who attacked Bujilli while under the influence of Hard Candy. The boy is dying, his body literally melting away as it undergoes the Vile Transformation brought on by all derivatives of the White Powder. But something has gone wrong...things have gone from bad to worse, much worse. Welcome to Wermspittle...

Red
Everything was red. It reminded Bujilli of the inside of Mazimir's yurt after the demon got loose from its elegant brass cage that he'd brought back all the way from Pao Tharim.

Something spattered Bujilli.Wet. Warm. Viscous. It was a globby fragment of what used to be the boy's left hand. There was a puckering hole distending in what looked like a sickening parody a gargly scream where the boy's mouth should have been. His bones writhed like eels beneath the translucent skin.

Bujilli could feel his skin crawl. It was beginning to move of its own accord. The small bones in his hands began to slide, just enough to cause him discomfort and to give him some idea of what was to come.

He glanced back to the hag and the woman in black. The hag was screaming at him, but he could not hear her screeching voice through the increasingly overwhelming throb of his own blood crashing in his ear drums like surf on jagged rocks. He was hot. Perspiration drenched him. The swollen mass of flesh on the table surged upwards like a gelatinous tide of rancid lard.

In that moment all doubt evaporated. He knew that he could not do this alone. Something was going on here that was still outside his ken, beyond the ability of his Counsel to clearly sort out for him.

Bujilli reached out for the hag's proffered hand.

The fleshy mass enveloped Bujilli's other hand. His left one. Why was it always the left one? He wondered for a brief instant as everything seemed to hang suspended in time.

YYYaaaAAAAAAEEEEEEEEAaaaaaaa!

Someone was screaming.

Bujilli heard it clearly.

System Warning: Unsustainable Feedback

Bujilli felt his flesh begin to melt. Even through the dense red light and the pain. Oh gods and goddesses what pain!

System Warning: Biological Contamination

Bujilli screamed.

Initiating Immunological Counter-Measures

Then it got worse.

System Overload: Fail--

Bujilli ruptured his vocal cords. Blood choked him. Fever burst through him like a terrible sunrise and he saw.

--

He saw terrible things.

The hag interposed herself between him and those things.

She held his hand, even as he held on to Lemuel's hand, paw, tentacle, sloppy mess of protoplasm.

Everything blurred.

She tugged.

Bujilli collapsed to his knees.

The wriggling mass vomited forth a cloud of pink moth-things.

It was pretty. For a moment.

Then the moths began to eat Bujilli's face.

Hedrard tugged again, only much harder this time.

Bujilli felt his muscles turning to jelly. His bones were warping slightly.

The moths were chewing on his face.

Bujilli tugged on what was left of Lemuel.

The hag tugged a third time.

Bujilli sprawled on the dirty floor.

Something twisted in his left hand. A serpent?

No.

"You did what could be done. More. You damned fool." Hedrard crouched beside him and began to wipe off his face with some vaguely clean rags.

"What happened?" Bujilli croaked painfully.

"You've salvaged what can be salvaged from the wreckage of a poor boy's folly and a father's inexcusable stupidity. I'll be having words with him. In due time."

Bujilli struggled to sit up, but couldn't. He was exhausted. Weak. his muscles worked...weirdly...unnaturally. He felt heavy. His skin was tight, hot, swollen like a balloon full of pus. His eyes felt blistered. His face was still bleeding from dozens of small bites.

"Don't try to speak just yet. You're in a bad way. No one does what you did. None that have ever survived. So far. Fool of a boy. Two fools on my floor. Try to lie still. I'll do what I can. For both of you."

The woman in black stared down at Bujilli. Her eyes glistened darkly. Dangerously.

But Bujilli was well past fear. He'd grown up in an abusive environment, survived the worst that his uncle could do to him. He'd confronted terrors in the deep, dark places armed only with his wits and a table knife he'd stolen from the age of three. He'd begun his career as bait for monsters. To his uncle's shame and chagrin, he'd survived. Which made his uncle beat him all the harder. But Bujilli endured. He got through it. Past it. More; he'd thrived. Grown stronger. Better. He learned a great deal about himself. His uncle. His people; no--his Mother's people. He had no people. He was alone. Practically an orphan. Abandoned by his father. Unwanted. Unwelcome. He'd developed determination. He would learn everything he could, master every skill, trick or technique his uncle had to offer so that he could protect himself, provide for himself, defend and take care of himself. He'd risen from the dismal delves again and again after witnessing horrible things, only to return to his uncle's yurt where he was beaten and screamed at and punished even more severely for his successes than his failures. But he got through it. One way or another. The beatings didn't matter. The pain didn't matter. The words carried no weight. Bujilli had grown up absent from much of his own life. Removed from the day-to-day degradation and despair. Even the worst stings of the centipedes didn't mark him, even when they left him poisoned and criss-crossed with violet scars. None of that ever really touched him.

But this...

This touched him.

Hurt him.

Tainted him.

Perhaps she saw this in his eyes.

Maybe she could see it all inscribed on his soul. He imagined her eyes could see right through him. Past all his defenses. His secrets.

He felt stripped bare before her black gaze. Naked. Bereft. Alone.

But that was something that he was used to, something that he knew all too well. If anything that seemed to give him some measure of strength. A bit of his old nature reasserted itself. He'd grown up with everything he ever cared about or tried to hide for himself taken away from him at any moment. If his uncle didn't take things away from him, the other children would steal them, often just because he wasn't really one of them.

Outsider. Half-breed. Bujilli was never welcome. Barely tolerated. Grudgingly accepted.

He'd seen plenty of things before coming to this place. Bad things. Hurtful, hungry, even spiteful and wretched things. Living, dead, distorted or undead. None of it meant a damn any more.

Bujilli teetered on a steep precipice. His soul was shuddering in a cold, empty wind even as his mind attempted to reform itself after being mauled and mutilated nearly as badly as his body had been violated.

"You cannot expect to come out of this unchanged..." rasped the hag's voice from behind his head. she was doing something. His hand flexed painfully. The right one. It spasmed. His left hand jerked. Hard. It was still clenching something soft. Wet. Physically ambiguous.

"Let go." The raven-like Woman in Black nearly whispered; "It's over, as much as it'll ever really be 'over,' for either of you, but it is time to let go now. You've done all you can do. It's time to see to yourself now. You'll have done no one any service if you throw away your own life after all this..."

Bujilli tried to turn his head. To look at the fleshy mass that was once a nervous, desperate boy. But his neck didn't work right. His mouth was bloody. His throat raw and painful. He closed his eyes. Everything felt bruised from the inside out. He let go.

"Damn. It's as I suspected; I'll need to cut them apart now. Damn fools."

"Wait. Bujilli; Hedrard will need to surgically separate you from Lemuel. Do you understand what I'm telling you?" The woman in black scrutinized him even more intently.

"Bujilli tried to say 'cut,' only to have his throat constrict and blood to dribble from his cracked lips. He shook his head.

"Yes. Cut. The only question is where do you end and poor Lemuel begin...and..."

"Tell him."

"Damn fools. Bujilli; I can cut you both apart, but a part of each of you is now inextricably caught-up within each other. You've been co-mingled. In your case, I suspect that the things that dwell in your bones will flush out most of the contamination. You'll have a fever for a while. It'll hurt. but it will pass. However..."

"He needs to know old hag. Tell him. Now."

"Lemuel. He's weak. He won't be able to make it without your help. You've already done so much...but...even if we save his body, rebuild him physically, his mind is broken..."

"He is no longer eligible for admission to the Academy. He forfeited his rather low ranking when he was defeated by you before my door," explained the woman Bujilli now knew had to be Administrator Eberhard;  "Now...he has lost even more than just his chance to undergo the Entrance Exams. He's little more than an animal now. By the old laws, he's yours now. Property. To dispose of as you see fit."

"I can remove his flesh from you with a bit of time and effort, that's demanding enough, but I can manage it well and fine. But what of the boy? Do you wish to dispose of the remains, or do I rebuild his body? And then there's the matter of his fractured mind. Poor Lemuel. I could give him a pen here, in the menagerie. Maybe, eventually...dare any of us hope...he might recover some semblance of his psyche."

Bujilli looked at the hag. There were tears in her eyes. He shuddered, not so much in revulsion, as in realization. Lemuel was her own son. It didn't make sense. He didn't know how he knew it. But he did.

"What is your decision Bujilli? Do you consent to Hedrard attempting to rebuild the boy, or do we let him die once and for all? You've done all that you could do for this child...far more than most would have tried."

"And at a high cost to yourself."

Bujilli nodded. He grunted 'Do It,' which came out garbled, but the two women seemed to understand him well enough.

Hedrard began to slice into the conjoined mass of intertwining flesh.

Beatrice Eberhard looked down on Bujilli with her smooth, unblinking black eyes.

"Welcome to the Academy Bujilli. you've passed your Entrance Exam. Should you survive the next few hours, you'll do well here. If you still intend to pursue your studies as Gnosiomandus outlined to me before he left for his trip to Karmazikan. So. Will you be staying on with us then?"

Should Bujilli stay, or should he go?
If he stays, there will be trouble.
If he goes, it'll be...maybe not double, but maybe dopple?

Does Bujilli still want to spend any more time in this place, or has he had enough?

He has passed the Entrance Exam.
But what will his classes be like?
The homework alone is probably brutal.
Not to mention the pop quizzes.
Though there might be some intriguing extra-curricular activities...

It's wide open from here.

Feel free to make a suggestion or ask a question.

Bujilli never did get to meet with Sprague to arrange for the sale of his dreamsnail shell-fragments.
(see the note from Gnosiomandus in Episode 20).

Thanks to everyone who donated a D20 roll--they all got used-up in this episode. Whew. There was quite a lot of stuff going on, and not all of it went smoothly by any means.

So, we could definitely use a few more new D20 rolls for next time!

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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

---

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