Eight Space Stations

MeckanicalMind

 

 The other entries in this unofficial series may be found here:

• Precursor Aliens
• Spacefaring Aliens

Space habitats will outnumber inhabited planets by a ratio of thousands to one, so here are some places to visit on your next trip across the 'Sphere.

House of Precise Thought

The universe is filled with small communities that exist to prove a point. Some are good, some are bad, all of them are started because someone, somewhere, wanted a place where their vision for the human experience could have somewhere to breathe.

The particular peccadillo of the House's founders was an experiment with language - how to render human communication maximally precise, with no opportunity for error, misunderstanding, or loss of nuance between thought and word. To that end the founders instituted a constructed language (descended in a large part from the old philosophical experiment Ithkuil) that is so complex and so precise that it requires computerized assistance via cyberbrain to speak it. As nearly all of the population of the House speaks the Language as their primary and only tongue, visitors will need to either download the translation programming into their own cyberbrains or use a computerized interpreter. This is precisely as aggravating as one might expect, and visitors tend to leave feeling like their brains are melting out of their ears.

Unfortunately, odd little communities with idiosyncratic customs are common targets for conspiracy, and in this too the House has become target. Conspiracy theories abound on the system internet - kidnappings and brainwashings, venturing off into wilder accusations of "language plagues" and and body doubles of famous individuals. The current spotlight is aimed at the children's television program "Ren Atkhla's Wonderful World", which, despite being a sincere, low-budget educational program on a public broadcast channel, has attracted the ire of conservative talking heads across the system and beyond, who decry it as a subversive danger set on undermining civilization.

 

L-Town

A heavy industrial platform harvesting gaseous lithium and other metals from the atmosphere of a brown dwarf via magnetic funnels. Thanks to a complex knot of war and economics unravelling in nearby systems, the station's owners became extraordinarily rich overnight (having found themselves suddenly the main supplier in the middle of a critical rare metals shortage), and this has manifested in blowing it all. L-Town overflows with lavish (gaudy, tacky) decoration over its rough industrial skeleton. Luxuries are imported by the shipping container. Cutting-edge consumer tech sits as scenery, unused. The boss in his whalefur suit still touts "small-corp values", but the workforce are swiftly becoming fed up with the cronyism and unfair distribution of the wealth.

Plus, the good times will not last forever - the war will cool down, the market will stabilize, and L-Town will lose its position as the only game in town. Creditors love to come calling that time of year.

 

21086 Kosmoborgar

An ordinary D-type asteroid that has been colonized by a particularly hardy strain of self-replicating alien fast food restaurant. Around 60% of the surface has been claimed by the restaurants, and preliminary surveys with ground-penetrating radar have indicated certain tower blocks that extend tens of kilometers down. Native bio- or mechanospheres are commonplace, descended from maintenance bots, protein cultures, runaway hydroponic gardens and so on. Roughly 1-in-4 restaurant clusters is inert and unpowered (that is, deceased), with most of these being broken down and repurposed by detritivorous franchises

The site has proven a gold mine for xenologists and adventurers, and the upper levels of several of the more-habitable complexes have been converted into living areas and base camps for delving expeditions. Many of the restaurants are operational, it is not recommended that anyone order due to the high chance of deadly biochemical incompatibilities (this stops no one - it is a sport among delvers to find the strangest looking or tasting foods in hidden holes-in-the-wall)

 

Hodgson Industries M-Series Depot

Wherever you may find yourself in the Expansion Sphere, odds are good that you'll be within hailing distance of a Hodgson. For centuries the M-series depots have offered a cheap place to rest, refuel, and repair, and not much more than that. A skeleton crew of androids is present, but by and large the operation is self-serve. In more populated systems they will quickly be outclassed, but on the frontier there are plenty of lonely places where the Hodgson Depot is the only sign of human civilization.

As the stations are built from template, if you've seen one of them you have likely seen all of them. Age and aftermarket modifications can add some variables into the mix, but barring major renovations everything will be in the same place and look the same way. Most veteran spacers could navigate through one with their eyes closed.

This sameness can be quite uncanny, when you're out on the Rim and have had no contact with humanity outside of the local M-Series. Everything starts blurring together, months and years like water, and sooner or later you'll start thinking that the androids at a station you've never visited before remember your name.

The Gravesphere

The remains of an ancient alien dyson swarm, long since fallen into deterioration. The habitats have been non-operational for an estimated 3-5 million years, and orbital decay over that time frame has caused many to plunge into their sun, collide with each other, or get launched out of system, but that still leaves thousands of intact (if unpowered and unpressurized) habitats. The local population of spacers and 0-G adapts tend to live in smaller habitats that cling barnacle-like to the hulls or interiors of Gravesphere units, built out of scrap or their own ships. A few bands of reclaimers have imported atmosphere and settled in sealed internal segments of the Sphere, but the majority believe this to be a good way to get yourself haunted..

No intact computer data, cultural artifacts, or biological specimens have been found. The Gravesphere is as empty and silent as its name. Delvers keep on going in the hopes that they will find a habitat that still has power, or better yet some clues to the Sphere's builders, but so far there has been nothing.

 

Delphi

A run-of-the-mill superjovian has become one of the biggest moneymakers in the Expansion Sphere thanks to an impressive storm system in its southern hemisphere, a bit of gospel grift, and Delphi station. The planet was already a major trade hub, sitting along multiple high-bandwidth hyperspace routes. Lots of people, lots of wealth, lots of wealthy people coming through. And so a down-and-out office drone in one of the corporate habitats spruced up an unpublished maniscript of his and founded a religion. Two decades later, he's one of the richest single individuals in the Sphere (Great Houses excluded)

Delphi is intended as a temple for the Storm Oracle, a great and ancient alien intelligence that lives in the endless storms above. Pilgrims come from near and far across the space-lanes come to have their auras and futures read in the electromagnetic radiation and the swirls of the orange-cream clouds. Secondary industries - relics, hospitality, meditation retreats, aura cleanses, theological symposiums - have sprung up like mushrooms. Major holostars and heads of state proudly display their membership medallions and trinkets of their visits to Delphi. Skeptics grind their molars to dust in frustration, desperately pointing at falsified proofs and doctored narratives, of the obvious scam of it all.

But somewhere in the back of your mind, you feel some certain kernel of truth, that the Oracle speaks...

 

Standoff Station

The resort world of Taihiji is supposed to be a secluded little paradise. It absolutely is: volcanic atolls dot warm tropical seas, coral reefs that stretch out for thousands of kilometers. The sort of place where you have to scrimp and save for a decade just to afford a weekend at one of the lower-tier resorts.

Complicating matters is the fact that the planet's single space elevator is controlled by the Taihiji Concierge and Porters' Union and is now entering its third year of blockade. There's no infrastructure planetside for shuttle launches (environmental protections), which means that the vacationers and staff of the island resorts have been forced into subsistence fishing to survive. The Union has threatened orbital bombardment (using confiscated luggage shot through a repurposed mass driver) or destruction of the elevator if outside forces intervene. They will permit docking for vessels flying the colors of allied unions for resupplies, but keeps a close watch on such events for corporate infiltrators.

 

Annuaki Tree of Life Ashram

The Tree of Life Ashram is one of countless tiny habitats tucked away in Kuiper Belts across the Sphere - even in the Core, it's easy enough to get a pocket of isolation all to yourself. It's not much more than a small rotating barrel buried in a nondescript icy body, just enough to keep a couple dozen people self-sufficient out in the black end of nowhere, but it is enough.

The cult that makes its home here is not particularly new or exciting: Aliens visited Earth in the ancient past to teach humans secret spiritual wisdom, Jesus of Nazareth (among other luminaries) was one of them, following the teachings of the cult will allow one to unlock their spiritual potential and move up through the stages and a lot more about energy and harmonic resonance and so on. The cult's leader, one Father Elijah Abdullah Ksitigarbha (birth name Maxwell Lee), claims to be a embodied inhabitant of the upper spiritual realms, here to aid the chosen in ascending to perfect communion with the god-head through a haphazard cobbling together of old Earth belief systems. As typical for this kind of thing, the cult preys on vulnerable populations and serves as a mechanism for widespread emotional and sexual abuse among its members. Father Elijah has a great many justifications for why he, a spiritual being beyond the material world, is owed a harem of his favorites among the believers.

He promises that his disciples will receive new, spiritually perfected, deathless bodies once they achieve the highest level of spirit-power - and this promise he can actually fulfill. There is a sapling of [XENOFORMER 01] in the habitat, and with patience and experimentation, Father Elijah is learning how to direct it. Were it not for a breakaway member of the cult sending the message out to inner system authorities, no one would have known.

Lands of the Mare Interregnum Part 1: The Hespermont

Last year, I did a big picture overview of the world of Mother Stole Fire, but the map and location descriptions only covered a chunk of the eastern continent. I've remade that map.

A second post will follow this one with the large world map.

Apologies in advance for the bits I clearly just copy-pasted, and for the details that weren't. 

Also thanks to CosmicOrrery for fixing up my mountains.

All of this is anticanon.

The Dayr 

All land north of the Dayrmonts. Territory west of Urukhá is considered to be both Dayr and Hespermontane, and so tends to be called "The North Country" as differentiation.

**

Wend - An isolationist city-state of gleaming white towers. Its inhabitants have claimed to descend from unknown Atri-Tun in the uttermost north, though no one has ever found such a city.

Tin Jacobstown - Originally a shantytown founded by southern migrants during the Plague Years, now chief of the prospecting and whaling towns in the western Dayr. By offering their bodies and shades in service to Orca after death, the sailors of Tin Jacobstown are granted special dispensation to hunt whales.

Urukhá - One of the Three Sisters of the Dayrdani. Marks the traditional boundary between "The North Country" and the Dayr proper. The mammoth matriarchs have great influence here.

Akká - One of the Three Sisters of the Dayrdani. Sits at the northern end of the Splintered Stair. Home of the Great Forge of Azad.

Hrunná - One of the Three Sisters of the Dayrdani. Sits at the southern end of the Splintered Stair. Culturally distinct from its sister-cities from buruq influence

The Hespermont

All land west of the Attercanths. Territory west of Urukhá is considered to be both Dayr and Hespermontane.

**

Redgate - Entry port to the Mora-Pono. Named so for the twin redwood groves planted either side of the river. Semipermanent dolphin population in the harbor.

Bensael - A city rebuilt by veterans, survivors and refugees of the War of the Bull on top of an obliterated provincial capital. Its location on both east-west and north-south travel routes means that all peoples of the Hespermont (and beyond) will arrive there eventually. At its center is the Old City, Tanniclen - an enclave of wizards and old nobility

Rivershead - Somewhat isolated by its position far up the Mora, its closeness to the Tower and old roads towards Orlei have nonetheless kept it. Significant cultural overlap with the forest peoples, particularly the Wudu-Wasa and the Laurel Hauflin.

The Tower - An enormous prehistoric structure, big as a mountain itself, surrounded by a ruined city of the idaltu.

Lilu-Voya - Largest of the lilu's surface settlements, conveniently located by way of earthquake and luck right in the middle of one of the major passes of the Attercanths. Centerpoint of the lilu diaspora and republican movement.

 **

The Low Country - Very broad term, typically used for "anywhere south of where you are". Properly, the land between the Arivienne and Mora-Pono watersheds. Devastated by the War, and much of it has not recovered since. The customs here are strange, and inexplicable things haunt the backwoods.

Bhyor - "In Bhyor there is the House of Sin" goes the story. A vast iron cube nestled in the branches of the gargantuan petrified tree that sits atop the sharp stone outcropping in the bay. Low whitewashed houses with blue mosaic facades and empty doors. The House had been part of a tradition, where those guilty of heinous crimes would willingly choose to enter and never return, to clean the guilt of the many. Everyone knows now of how the sacrifices grew more and more frequent, until one warm night in late summer the entire population got up from their beds, walked along that narrow bridge, up the thin stone steps, and stepped through the black mouth of the House. No one goes to Bhyor anymore.

Dis - Once the Imperial colony of Coreolana, now Hell itself. A demon-haunted hill of rust and blood and suffering behind cannon-scarred iron walls. Long claws burrow into the poisoned earth, smoke-wreathed towers  belch filth into the sky. Deep at its center, the Furnace Throne is fed a stream of sacrifices. Beyond the walls, miles of blackened fields - craters, trenches, rust-hollowed war machines.

**

The NSR - The Necromantic Socialist Republic was born out of the trauma of the Plague Years and the War of the Bull as an experiment in utopia. If the dead so outnumber the living, and the dead have no use for their bones, let those bones be put to the service of the living.

Di Valeo - Core of the NSR, rebuilt by the hands of the undead after its complete destruction during the war. The city is beautiful, if perhaps a bit macabe, and there is a melancholy that cannot be shaken even with the good humor of its inhabitants. There is a great cathedral here, dedicated to Ama Adimatha in her aspect of the Lady of Sorrows and the Stillborn.

 

The Eostremont

The lands east of the Attercanths, south of the Dayrmonts, and north of the Heartlands.

Rolling hills and great open plains.

**

Draga - The old northern capital of the Second Empire. Still claims Imperial lineage (through the descendants of an exiled bastard), but this is a figurehead and everyone knows it - power resides technically with the Inner Council, and practically with the Solar Church. An austere, grey, often puritanical and rather joyless place. Butts heads often with Bensael.

The Magelands - Magic flows on the breeze, heavy and sweet as honey. suffusing every breath and cell and thought. The grass is greener here, the sky is bluer. Stones are no longer bound by the shackle of gravity, trees pull up their roots. Form and purpose lose their concrete boundaries, time and space unspool their tangled knots. It is intoxicating. It will bind you to itself until you are so filled with the freedom it offers that you are wiped clean of yourself and made a part of it.

Mund - Crumbling city-arcology; a grey wall of grey stone holding back the spread of the chaotic Magelands. A fortress city in the midst of the Magelands. A brutalist arcology packed tight with tens of thousands of people who attempt to resist the power of the Magelands through the mindless repetition of enforced hivelike normalcy. Total denial of the life beyond the walls. Sterile. Eternal.

The Dragon Republics - Fourteen city-states built atop what is, as best as archaeologists can tell, the kernel that first formed Darvatius' empire. An economic powerhouse thanks to their elaborate system of guilds and banks. While on paper the Republics still follow the old Imperial Church, sects of dragon-worship are an open secret among them - even their longtime ally Draga gives them arm's length when the political situation is inflamed (and it often is). There are some who believe that the next emergence of Dis will be here.

Themiskrya - Capital city of the amazons, situated where the mouth of the Thermodon meets the gates of the Blackwine. Triremes with horsehead prows ply the waters of the Blackwine. Cavalry patrols ride up and down the roads to Kara Koren. Children play in the agora under the bronze eyes of the colossal statue of Tabiti Hipparctrix Hodegetria. Old women still tell the story of how the statue stepped off its pedestal, spear in hand, and waded out into the harbor to fight off the Coreolanic navy during the Plague Years. 

**

Kara Koren - Wide open plains stretching off into the horizon. The Buruq make their home here, their semi-nomadic bands cycling between the small cities on the rivers and lakes and the open prairie. Vast herds of bison, antelope, camels, horses and wild boar can be found here, as well to the bulk of the eastern continent's elephant population. 

Twin Lakes - Largest of the permanent settlements of the Buruq and the last city to be found before the long, desolate road to Ghan. It has expanded out from the isthmus onto an archipelago of artificial islands in both lakes.

The Hollowhorn - Sacred mountain of the Buruq, rising alone above the grasslands. Named so for the magnificent cave systems and ancient lava tubes within it. Climbing the slopes or entering the caves is limited only to priests and those granted special dispensation, and access to the summit is barred to even the elders. Deep within its chambers sleeps the Last King, the only true dragon to survive the extinction.

 

The Ostrakeraton 

The Southern Horn, stretching from Olabeth and Dead Quarter to northern Reniriya.

**

The Poison Coast - The land between the Heartlands and Ool.

The Heartlands - As the Second Empire collapsed, the aristocracy made a mad dash to secure their holdings in the east. While some of the governors and generals were able to maintain a sense of order and continuity, disease and famine swiftly ended their attempts. Centuries later, the Heartland is a feral wilderness filled with squabbling warlords and the ruins they inhabit.

Olabeth - The heart of the Second Empire has been reduced to a decaying, sickness-stricken land. The Plague is still here, seeped deep into the soil and water. Impenetrable swamps and dark forest filled with misshapen, monstrous creatures render crossing the territory by land near impossible. There are still human inhabitants, but they have been changed so completely and severed so utterly from the rest of the world that they are left to their own devices.

Tlan - Capital of the Second Empire. A metropolis reclaimed by nature. Some folks will talk of treasure that remains hidden there, but nearly all was looted during the collapse and any that remains is hardly worth the danger of an expedition to the Poison Coast. From the harbor, one can still see the gleaming golden dome of the solar tabernaculum where the sacrifices were held.

Ool - Mangrove swamps and mudflats choked with the thousand-thousand varieties of the bright red panacea flower. Broiling heat. Drowning humidity. Complete isolation. The great ceramic domes and minarets of the Petal Houses are the only signs of habitation along the whole of the river, save for a few desperate villages hiding from the Houses' security forces.

Mouth-of-Ool - The only point in Ool where outsiders are tolerated. Do not tarry long, take your panacea and go. The Houses are watching, and they do not care for guests who overstay their welcome.

**

Acephavara - The "Land of the Headless", named so for its inhabitants (who do possess heads, but also typically have coloration patterns on their torsos that at a glance appear to be faces) and for the shape of their primary god (who does not have a head). Once an empire (Old Acephavara), but after the collapse and War has coalesced into the comfortable confederation common to much of the world.

Janashkut - An ancient, storied city. Unfortunately known best for the potent strain of ghoul-leprosy endemic to it (this is not the variety of ghoulishness that is Red Law in origin). Over the centuries, the oldest sections of the city have been sealed off and abandoned, forming its infamous labyrinthine leper districts, as new, sickness-free districts are built further out.

The Old Capital - A dead zone, thanks to the arcanonuclear weapons deployed here during the collapse of Old Acephavara. The ruins are beautiful.

Vanadiyos - Shining center of the new Acephavara. Martial arts, baroque architecture, loud music, fire-magic. Tropical heavy metal aesthetic.

The City Magpie - When humans returned to the city after the fall of Old Acephavara, they found this city to already have been taken as roost by the Murder of All Crows. It has since become the city of theft and the haven of thieves, where no one is permitted to enter with anything, even names, that trukly belong to them.

** 

I love how, each time, it falls together a little bit different, and a little bit better. Stuff is missing or misplaced, of course, but it's the Bob Ross type joy of setting out all the pieces.

Next insallment will have the world as a whole, and there might be further installments going a deeper dive into the people who actually live here.

(Pen & Tam live about halfway between 7 and 8 on that map)

As for more commentary, it's slipping my mind at the moment.

Adul-Atpah, Undercity of the Corpse

(This was all generated with Michael Raston's Infinigrad tables, for use with Esoteric Enterprises)

Adul-Atpah was one of the cthonic leviathans, those beings who sleep away the eons deep in the underworld and whose dreams seep into the stone and bone around them. Dreams that became a city of narrow streets, leprosy-grey stone veined with scab red.

The inhabitants are human, but they are not the humans who have livedunder the light of the sun for a long, long time.

An ixionic false-sun offers dim light, but the perpetual haze prevents it from ever shining particularly brightly.

I. The Gate of the Thirty-Three Heresies

A misshapen, crumbling ziggurat of red clay whose peak is forever cloaked with clouds. Its tiers and terraces are engraved with layers of bas reliefs, monsters pulled from the nightmares of Adul-Atpah. 

• It is the primary means of entry from upper layers of the underworld and the surface. 
• Its chambers and stairways are covered with desecrated religious iconography. By tradition, new visitors are encouraged to add their own.
• It is infested with small, monkey-like automata made of clay powered by tiny demon liquor engines. They rove in packs and with steal anything that catches their burning eyes, which is anything that they can grab without getting caught. They have a nasty bite and will attempt to lure visitors into a sense of security with seemingly harmless antics. Their nests are troves of stolen items.

II. The Corpus

The war with the White silk Veil was short, but devastating. While the cult of was driven from the city, Adul-Atpah was killed. Now for beings such as leviathans, death is mere interruption, the city has not recovered: The central district surrounding the gate has taken on the aspects of flesh and bone and organ, as if some grand

• Many buildings remain abandoned or half-demolished. Rubble and wreckage remains everywhere. Cleanup and repair efforts never seen to go anywhere, thwarted by the ontological fallout of Adul-Atpah's death.
• The Dreamers of Adul-Atpah have remained here, despite the sharp decrease in their numbers and the loss of their god. The after-effects of the war destabilized them, and their untethered dreams have become chaotic and toxic to those around them. They are still nominally the chief faction of the city, but only by name.

III. The Unclaimed Quarter

A mostly-unpopulated region on the border between the Liquor Farms and the Temple District, leveled during the war and now serving as in-fill for its neighbors.

• Nearly all maps of the city come from before the war, meaning that none of the streets here have been mapped properly and nothing is labeled with an up-to-date name. Most of the shrines here are covers for liquor-farming operations, and most farm operations are hidden temples.
• Runoff from the liquor farms has seeped into the ground, causing native slimes and oozes to grow terribly large and uncomfortably volatile.
• These oozes are cleaned up by egg-shaped creatures with leathery, baggy skins, too-skinny legs, and too-big mouths with too-human teeth. They're horrible and will eat and break anything that isn't an ooze that gets between them and lunch. 

IV. The Demon Liquor Farms

Demon liquor is perfectly fine in a raw state, but proper occultists and gentlebeings of taste demand the refined stuff. It's good money, great money, and so the refineries of the Czapath belch oil and smoke and fire into the shimmering clouds at all hours.

• The excess waste of the refinery process can still be used as fuel. Terribly cheap and dirty-burning. The district is festooned with iron lamps (despite the general flammability of everything else), and the inhabitants will even mix dregs with wax or tallow for candles.
• Most of the main thoroughfares have been overtaken by rail lines, where massive carriages ferry the components and products of the refinery process. Pedestrians will either have to catch a ride, or use the knot of side streets even more tangled than the norm of Adul-Atpah.
• The extraction devices (read: iron maidens) used to procure fresh liquor from living demons have absorbed enough infernal energies to spring to life on their own. They demand sacrifice of fresh / new / unusual bodies and blood, and the servants they procure from themselves are more than happy to carry them to new neighborhoods.

V. District of Feasts

Fog-choked terraces of farmland crawl up the outer slope of the city, taking advantage of the leftover divine vitality of the city's dead patron to supply food for the entire city and regions beyond.

• The fogs are worse here than anywhere else in the city, drifting in from the liquor farms and never dissipating. The light of the false-sun rarely penetrates the sky of this district, leaving it a place of endless night broken only by the lamplight spilling from doors and windows.
• A constant surplus of food gives the district an atmosphere of festivity and excess, despite the constant gloom. Enter any given door and you will find a feast. They have run out of names for the foods crafted here and have fallen back upon inventing languages to fill the gap.
• The distinct is often visited by spotted slug-like beings from deeper in the underworld, come to test their arts and sciences on the populace.

VI. The Leviathan Pits

The dream-larvae of Adul-Atpah and the godling parasites that burrowing in its flanks can be found here, where the ground has opened up into the steaming pits of primal oneiric sludge.Shoddy, leaning shacks and tenements cluster around pit lips, as if hoping to fall.

• The pits are run by a guild of butchers who supplement the stocks of the District of Feasts with meat cut from the larvae. In terms of raw factional power they are tied with their rivals the Czapath at the peak of the city's politics.
• The butchers are fond of publicly displaying prime cuts, aberrant organs, sarkic curiosities in glass boxes hung from eaves, poles, and windows, giving the district the alternative name of "The Street of Curious Cuts".
• The butchers are led by the Union of Knowing Friends, masters of the empathic arts who use their skills to swell the guild's ranks and place moles in other organizations.

VII. The Dead Quarter

Death is strange in the underworld. Sometimes it doesn't stick quite right, and folks have to be careful about what they do. It can't be pushed to the side. Here, as elsewhere, the dead have been given a section of the city of their own, so they cannot be ignored. Blackened columns and markers are pushed together like a jaw with too many teeth.

• The mausoleum-lined streets are a maze (again, even by the standards of Adul-Atpah)
• The few plazas in the district are filled with continuous bonfires, where the dead are reduced to ash and cracked bone, the byproducts of life that can be safely interred.
• The Lightkeepers who tend the bonfires have become so dedicated to their task of keeping the city safe that they have been consumed by a desire to increase the size of the bonfires. Bring them a gift of fuel, or they might get other ideas of how you can pay their toll.

VIII. Ironmonger District

The city's industrial center, exporting crafts and metalworks out into the underworld. Brutalist factories whose flanks bear henna-patterns of rust and bored occultists on lunch break.

• The dead dreams of Adul-Atpah are strongest here. It's not safe to sleep in the district without aid, and the neighborhood watch must keep the nightmares at bay.
• Do not fear the cloaked sentinels you might see on roof peaks or street corners or dead-end alleys. They are not part of the neighborhood watch. Again, do not fear them. If you had done anything that would give you reason to fear them, you would not be here.
• The streets are filled with packs of feral dogs, who with military precision wage their war of domination against the union men and watch. A great Geyr Shepherd wearing a plumed general's cap leads them.

IX. The Market Grounds

The little city, the district of stands stalls and tents. A splash of color and noise against the rest of the city.

• The Market Grounds are also home to the Silver Eye, the city's sole sanctioned gambling house. Here come the high-rollers, the high society of this god's corpse, to play the numbers at the market and go home with their stocks.
• The chaos of the market is managed by the Cult of the Black Serpent, whose cannibals are branded across the face with the wyrm that eats its own tail. They are, all considered, fair in their management, and will only demand body parts as payment for high-severity infractions.
• In the center of the Grounds, filling the fountain that once had the equestrian statue of some man who thought himself more heroic than he was, is a shuddering, oozing mass of fleshy sludge. It cannot die. You are free to try, there's a reward if you can.

X. The Temple District  

Mountains of rubbish fill up the gaps between jutting blades of rock. Where there is space, it is filled up with little temples and shrines to the gods that the city will permit. That they have been relegated to the dumping grounds in the city of the Thirty-Three heresies is not lost upon anyone.

• The upheaval of the region is the remnants of a long-ago conflict with the Lithic Courts. Some members of the expeditionary force have remained behind, and have taken to implanting shards of themselves into those who stumble upon them and inevitably offend them, just to see what happens with such a union of alien chemistries.

Mushrooms

Leviathanart

When a man dies in Llaphedon, he is neither buried nor cremated. He will be wrapped in a white burial shroud, woven from still-living mycelium, and will be taken out into the forest by his family. There, without tears or priest, he will be returned to the earth and live forever.

The practice is well-established in that country. The Llaphedoniks guard their weavers' arts carefully, but are willing to sell their shrouds to outsiders - they certainly do not disapprove of spreading the forest further, nor of whatever gold that comes to their secluded land.

What they do keep to themselves is the fruit.

A variety of different fungi breeds are used in the shrouds, but only for the Llaphedonik dead do the weavers use silk that has been treated with sap of the Milk Cap. (The Milk Cap being a rare mushroom found only in the inner reaches of the Llaphedon forests) The mushrooms that grow from Milk Cap-treated mycelium will develop teardrop-shaped buds as they grow to full size: these are the fruits of the dead.

Each fruit contains within a fragment of the deceased's essence - stronger than the imprint that leaves a ghost, though not as strong as what might be kept through advanced necromancy. Impressions of memories, traces of senses, a presence. Consuming the fruit will impart that essence into whomever consumes it, and they will gain some trait of the departed. Young Llaphedoniks will eat the fruit of beloved ancestors when they come of age, as a means of preserving the virtues of past generations.

Few accounts exist that directly describe it, as the Llaphedoniks keep it closely watched. The best recourse is the account of the explorer Greran Satti, who stated that the experience is similar to that of "being utterly certain that [their] grandfather is sitting out of sight in the next room doing crosswords"

The networked forest means that the trees will share their traces with each other, so a single cap might bear the fruit of a dozen or score different individuals. Specific groves will be tended to to produce unique blends, often arranged by family. Grove-keepers can be picked out from the typical hairless, bluish-skinned Llaphedoniks by virtue of the pale white spore-crust on their hands and faces.

Effects of Eating Fruit of the Dead 

1. Roll d6 to determine the deceased's best stat, and re-roll against your own. If you roll higher than your own ability score, take the higher result.
2. Learn a language known by the deceased.
3. Gain a skill known by the deceased, at the same level of ability.
4. Learn a spell known by the deceased. If you do not know any other magic, you may cast it with 1 spell die or 1/day
5. Gain 1000 XP
6. You hear the soft voice of the dead, babbling softly, for 1d10 hours. It tells you a secret.

artsed

The Mushroom Men

Sometimes, the mushrooms grow in a different manner. The corpse is consumed all the same, but instead of forming the typical tree, the fungi takes the form of a man. This will also occasionally occur when a fruit of the dead is left alone for long enough and falls to the ground.

Mushroom Men carry the memories and knowledge of the deceased - There's no continuity of consciousness, of course, but the effect is far more pronounced than if one just consumes than the fruit of the dead itself. It is almost, but not quite, that the deceased is present - a different voice, a different face, but the same presence. Turn your head and it feels as if they are present.

Needless to say, outsiders will often find mushroom men firmly in the uncanny valley, if they know the truth of matters (and even worse if they knew the deceased). This is a shame, as their slow and peaceful ways lead them to be genial neighbors. The Llaphedoniks revere them as spiritual teachers and givers of guidance, and do not hold to any of the gods of man where their own ancestors provide.

Distant pocket forests will always be watched over by at least one mushroom man caretaker. In some of these groves it is possible, through great respect and care, to gain their favor and receive a Milk Crown burial shroud of your own.

Thankfully, being reborn as a mushroom man is a mechanically simple process. Now in GLOG!

The Great Work

Deep in the fungal forest of Llaphedon, deeper even than the Milk Crown groves, at the very center of that alien landscape, the mushroom men are building. They are raising stones: a fortress, a pyramid. Right atop the very center of the forest, where the colony is the oldest.

The Llaphedoniks know only whispers. Tales of seeing some structure in the distance, rising above far-off cap-tops. And of bands of mushroom men, silently plodding towards the center through the still and spore-filled night.