3 Years, 300 Posts: The Map of the New World

Made in Azgaar's. Click for full size.

And here we are: post 300, three years to the day since I started the blog.

Thank you all: for your support, your guidance, your friendship, and above all thank you for everything you do to sustain this little pocket of creativity.

Twice before I have made this map, now it is time for a third. As before, my method is "fit as many things as I own or know well enough about into a single map." If you don't see your favorites, I apologize in advance.Room is limited. Thankfully, this map is not canon.

Enough sentimentality. It is time for The Goods.

Everything with a hyperlink is available for free.

AS IT IS WRITTEN IN THE PRINCIPIA APOCRYPHA...

Regions

• Bastionland - All the territory that owes its allegiance to Bastion, as opposed to some other, non-Bastion-related city.
• Electric Bastionland, Chris McDowell
• Autumnal Wilds - The rustic old hill country. Filled with hobos, puritan halflings, cicadafolk and lowmen.
• Chromatic Soup vol 2, Evlyn Moreau et al.
• The Coal Dukes - Fragmentary duchies in the southern Wilds who together claim a near-monopoly on the export of coal.
• Unicorn Meat, Dan D.
• The Commonwealth - Diverse collection of states and cities that collectively murdered the old aristocracy but forgot the clean the skeletons out of the closet.
• Unicorn Meat, Dan D.
• Low Country - Backwoods, haunted houses, and pluff mud fields.
• Low Country Crawl, John Gregory
• The Biting Marshes - The wetlands along the Black Snake River.
• Chromatic Soup vol 1, Evlyn Moreau et al.
• Deep Country - The untamed northern wilds in the iron grip of the past, far beyond the reach of Bastion, filled with petty kingdoms and the ruins of older days.
• Electric Bastionland, Chris McDowell
• Weird Marches - Unclaimed territory where the world goes strange.
• Weird Marches, Michael Kennedy
• Tveland - Frigid, dark, diseased, miserable, dying.
• Mork Borg, Pelle Nilsson
• Circle Sea & the Rainbow Lands
• Ultraviolet Grasslands, Luca Rejec
• The Ultraviolet Grasslands - The lands between here and the most utter west.
• Ultraviolet Grasslands, Luca Rejec
• Swordfish Islands - Home once to a decadent elfin civilization
• Hot Spring Island, Jacob Hurst
• Rift of Mar-Millior - The place you go when you've neither got nor want other options.
• Rakehell vol 1, Brian Richmond
• The Great Road - The artery across the continent, from Bastion to the Black City.
• Against the Wicked City, Joseph Manola
• Meatlandia - An island offshoot of Xor.
• The Chaos Gods Come to Meatlandia, Wind Lothamer & Ahimsa Kerp
• Xor - A land of flesh and gristle.
• Elfmaids & Octopi, Chris Tamm
• The Winter Lands - The place untouched by time.
• Wolf Packs and Winter Snow, Emmy Allen

Cities and Kingdoms

• Lon Barago - The free city of the central plains, overflowing with wealth and wickedness.
• Lair of the Lamb, Arnold Kemp
• Bastion - The only city that matters, at least according to the Bastionites
• Electric Bastionland, Chris McDowell.  
• Infinigrad - The endless city of unnumbered guilds and their dogs, forever warring with itself.
• Infinigrad, Michael Raston. 
• Umberwell - Blackened be its name, a teeming hive of grot, crime, and corrosion
• Umberwell, Jack Shear
• Endon - A city on the cusp of making some terrible choices that seemed reasonable at the time.
• Magical Industrial Revolution, Skerples
• Emerald City - Metropolis, home of the Cogflower megacapitalists and their church.
•  Ultraviolet Grasslands, Luca Rejec
  
• Jukai City - Slumbering swampland city of dark organic towers.
• Fire on the Velvet Horizon, Patrick Stuart & Scrap Princess
• Corpathium - The city that's never the same way round twice.
• In Corpathium, Logan Knight
• Marlinko - The fever-dreaming capital of the Hill Cantons.
• Fever-Dreaming Marlinko, Chris Kutalik
• Carrowmore - Deep Country township at the foot of an ancient dam. Has recently gone quiet.
• Deep Carbon Observatory, Patrick Stuart & Scrap Princess 
• Opeth - A tiny town that sits alongside the eastern expanse of the Great Road.
• Faux Pas, Nick Whelan
• The Wicked City - King of the Great Road, a city of clockwork men, hydraulic despotism, and impossible wealth.
• Against the Wicked City, Joseph Manola
• The Immortal Capital - The only city that mattered, a long long time ago.
• Kidnap the Archpriest, Skerples
• Thule - Ancient stronghold of the church and home of the archpriest of the Heliopapacy.
• Kidnap the Archpriest, Skerples
• Gathox - Migratory alien slum-mountain
• Gathox Vertical Slum, Davis Lewis Johnson
• Whispershire - De facto capital of the Weird Marches, a place where the Commonwealth sends the adventurous, foolish, and unwanted.
• Weird Marches, Michael Kennedy
• Troika - The Troika on the earth is only part of the whole: the true body of Troika sits in orbit high above, the jewel in the center of the humpbacked sky.
• TROIKA!, Daniel Sell
• MR-GR-KR- The Death-Rolled Kingdom; the river demesne of the crocodile lords.
• Thousand Thousan Islands 1, Zedeck Siew
• Kraching - Kingdom of cats and the god Auw.
• Thousand Thousand Islands 2, Zedeck Siew

Points of Interest

1. Tomb of the Serpent Kings (Skerples)
2. Gullet of the Rust Demon (Dan D.)
3. Prison of the Hated Pretender (Gus L)
4. Monastery of Dor Amon (Dale Horstman)
5. Challenge of the Frog Idol (Dyson Logos)
6. Ruinous Palace of the Metegorgos (Evey Lockhart)
7. The Maw of the Mountain (Brian Richmond)
8. Night School (Camilla Greer, Demon Collective Vol 1)
9. Bad Faith (@comradepollux, Demon Collective Vol 1)
10. She's Not Dead, She's Asleep (Mabel Harper, Demon Collective Vol 1)
11. Meal of Oshregaal (Arnold Kemp)
12. Hidden Tomb of Slaggoth the Necromancer (Nick Whelan)
13. Silent Titans (Patrick Stuart)
14. The Halls Untoward (Michael Prescott et al)
15. Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine (Logan Knight)
16. A Hole in the Oak (Gavin Norman)
17. The Tower of Nicanor (Fco. Javier Barrera)
18. Lighthouse on the Spur (Dan D.)
19. Call of the Light (Michael Prescott)
20. Gelatinous Dome (Jeff Call)
21. Aeon Caves of Treasure (Aleksander Petrovic)
22. Hounds of Low Tide (Michael Prescott & Kiel Chenier)
23. The Man From Before (Michael Prescott)
24. Unicorn Meat (Dan D.)
25. The Hyqueous Vaults (Various)
26. Flesh for the Witch Queen (Jason Sholtis)
27. Lorn Song of the Bachelor (Zedeck Siew)
28. Scourge of the Tikbalang (Zzarchov Kowalski)
29. Under the Waterless Sea (Zzarchov Kowalski)
30. Misty Isle of the Eld (Christ Kutalik)
31. Slumbering Ursine Dunes (Chris Kutalik)
32. From the Vats (Various)
33. Through the Gates of Flesh (Carl Niblaeus)
34. Blood in the Chocolate (Kiel Chenier)
35. The Inverse Tower (Michael Raston)
36. Basilica of the Leper Messiah (Michael Prescott)
37. Arsenal of the Warrior Princess (Alessandro Dullemotta)
38. Fallen Throne (Gus L.)
39. Hush (David Shugars, Demon Collective Vol 1)
40. Comes the Mountain (Gus L.)

Realms Above, Below, and Beside

• The Ghoul Market - Accessible from graveyards. 
• Vacant Ritual Assembly 1, Clint Krause
• Gourmet Street - Accessible from the side streets of any major city. 
• Gourmet Street, John Gregory
• The Gardens of Ynn - Accessible from any garden where the proper invocation has been made.
• The Gardens of Ynn, Emmy Allen
• The Stygian Library - Accessible from any room filled with books where a murder has occurred.
• The Stygian Library, Emmy Allen
• Goblintown - Accessible from any filthy hole in the ground.
• Goblin Punch, Arnold Kemp
• The Crystal Spheres of the Humpbacked Sky - Accessible via a golden barge out of Troika.
• TROIKA!, Daniel Sell
• The Mysterious Menagerie of Dr. Orville Boros - Found in whichever metropolis one wishes
• The Mysterious Menagerie of Dr. Orville Boros, Skerples
• The Isles of the Dead (Arnold Kemp) - Accessed through total party death.
• The Isles of the Dead, Arnold Kemp
• Zyan - Through a dreamlike door-break in reality.
• Through Ultan's Door, Ben Laurence
• The Veins - Accessed by delving too deep.
• Veins of the Earth, Patrick Stuart & Scrap Princess

The Grand Tour

Players start in Lon Barago, poorfolk tossed into the Lair of the Lamb as sacrifices to that terrible creature. Those that survive will likely not want to spend any more time at the mercy of the city's hospitality, and will take off on the plains-roads Their direction is determined by their great desire.

• Civilization - Take the east road towards Bastion, first stopping at the Gullet of the Rust Demon.
• Riches - Follow the river southward to the arid hills and ruined cities that house the Tomb of the Serpent Kings.
• Freedom - Take the rough and ill-kept road northward, passing the Prison of the Hated Pretender on the way to the true Deep Country.
• The Great Unknown - Take the west road, stopping at the Monastery of Dor Amon before passing on to The Wicked City and Circle Sea.

Fourth Book Review Post, Fourth and Final Try

Note: So this post got a load of spam views from pornbots for reasons I cannot fathom (ed. TWICE! THREE TIMES! It got hit TWICE! THREE TIMES!) and it was throwing off my top posts sidebar, so I have reposted it under a new title (ed. TWICE! THREE TIMES!). All comments on the original post have been included at the end.The book list has been expanded with all the books I have read since.

I do not expect to do this again - if the porn bots want book reviews, by Jove they will have book reviews.

 
Bookpost Index

 

Gentlemen of the Road, Michael Chabon

Chabon is labeled a literary author and that is a bold-faced lie. This is pure adventure pulp. It's the most D&D thing written since Fafhrd and Mouser. Its the most Fafhrd and Mouser thing written since Fafhrd and Mouser. Its prose is beautiful. It's working title was Jews with Swords. It's got illustrations. It is fantastic. Just the summary is fantastic.

Amram and Zelikman go on an adventure in the 950s Caucasus Mountains and end up as erstwhile protectors of the exiled prince of the Khazars. Both of them are Jews from opposite sides of the world (Ethiopia and France, respectively), and both of them are absolute ne'er-do-wells.

It's the freshest fantasy I have read in ages despite not being a fantasy: it's a place and point of time in our world and our history nestled in the crook where vast and storied empires met, far out of the rutted path we are too often force-fed.

Chef's kiss.

The Yiddish Policeman's Union, Michael Chabon

On a dime (since I read this immediately after Gentlemen of the Road) Chabon switches modes and styles to an alternate-history noir. There's the corpse of a chess-genius heroin addict in the flophouse, bullet through his head. Israel collapsed after three months and the US leased territory in Alaska as a Jewish homeland, and forty years later reversion is months away.

The prose is just as fantastic as the setup. Notable in comparison to Gentlemen of the Road is how deftly Chabon can switch between modes - he is capable of emulating the style of the genre he is engaging with perfectly without lessening the quality of his prose, and he goes out of his way to make Sitka burst to life. Everything oozes personality. Details get stuck in your head: the Filipino donut stand. The border maven and his shop full of thread. The PBS kids' programs dubbed in Yiddish.

It's so, so good.

Wild Cards 1, various

DNF at 79%

For a good while, I was really digging this series. it was a fun mashup of pulp iconography with the consequences of a more grounded story. There were some cool powers, some cool characters, I was invested (and superhero stuff is always a hard sell for me).

But then we got to Martin's story, which is the beginning of a quartet of stories that all hinge upon the threat or application of lethal sexual violence. Four in a row, and none of this, none, was present in the first half nor was it signposted, and it evaporated any desire I had to read it further (despite the one bit by Hunter S. Thompson being a welcome relief.)

It's an absolute hackjob.

All Systems Red (Murderbot Chronicles 1)

DNF at 39%

I don't know what people see in this one. From a writing standpoint it's repetitive, from a vocabulary standpoint it's noticeably stunted, and from a plot and character perspective it is both of those things. Murderbot talks like an obnoxious early 20-something, without the benefit of being an actual person in reality that I can have some sort of connection with: they're just annoying, and the constant "I don't really care I wish I was back watching my soap operas on space netflix" is not half as charming as the author intended.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Seanan McGuire

A wonderful little modern fairy tale novella with strong narrative voice and fun characters and a sweet little romance that is utterly destroyed in the space of the last twenty pages in one of the worst examples of "the shit you were thinking?" I have ever experienced.

I have a few lines in the sand when I'm reading. One of the consistent ones is "bullies, abusers, and other people who are casually cruel for their own amusement should, at minimum, be vigorously dunked upon, and if the situation calls for it they should get the shit beaten out of them by other characters."

This story fails this line hard. Horrifically so, in a way that undermines every good thing that comes before it.

If your twin, who is already callous and cruel, who enthusiastically wants to throw away their humanity and become a vampire, tears the throat out of your beloved, what do you do?

There's the response a human being has, and then there's what the book does.

Do You Dream of Terra Two?, Temi Oh

DNF at 297/532

From a character standpoint, this book is excellent - a big cast of teenagers and I found them all quite tolerable. The alternate history elements (the first rocket was used in the Napoleonic Wars) are fun and a light touch. I have some issues with the science (A shuttle launch from Britain is a terrible idea, a colonization run on Alpha Centauri as a new home for humanity when there's plenty of room to build O'Neill cylinders is silly, why is global warming still in issue in 2012 when you have had rockets for two centuries has no one built up space infrastructure?) but it's all minor compared to how good the rest of the writing is.

But...

You know that line I just mentioned? Happens again. Obviously and cartoonishly telegraphed badguy...

[Aside] Gonna be real, when the only white person on the crew is this aryan ubermensch looking motherfucker whose entire concept of self-worth hinges on dominating others and who openly talks about starting up a new empire...everyone else on the ship might just be an idiot for letting him on board. Like it's not a stretch of the imagination that the guy exists, its that everyone else is that blind to it. [/Aside]

...dumps another crewmember into an airlock and threatens to vent him to "teach him a lesson" and the other characters do not immediately beat the shit out of him and lock him up for court-martial. The victim even says don't tell the mission commander.

Dropped the book hard, right there.

Proxima and Ultima, Stephen Baxter

A two-parter, also about a Proxima settlement mission. Baxter's characters and dialogue leave a whole lot to be desired (the first primary character can't even be called that, he is an absolute personality blank), but he is very compelling when it comes to providing a big idea space story - I devoured these books. Part 1 has Expanse DNA, Part 2 dives into Warhammer 40k.

The big idea part got away from him at the end, I feel (if given the choice, I'd rather have no explanation than the huge expodump in the last ten pages), but the journey to get there was engaging. I'm a big sucker for a well-realized alien biosphere, and it's got both that and some offhand details implying some rather horrible goings on in the background. Those are effective, though less so when characters start explaining things. He also gets kinda obnoxious with the italicizing and restating, saying again, of non-English words.

Gets major props for fantastic execution of time-scale: the two books cover the time-span of four generations, and that's something that can cause trip-ups for a lot of stories in settings where there's interplanetary travel and no way to cheat light.

Plot it Yourself, Rex Stout

Having finished my second Nero Wolf novel I find myself with more questions than answers

A dozen plus characters are introduced all at once with very little to differentiate them, then some other events happen, and it is all tied up at an arbitrary point where a single detail is revealed in the last ten pages. Evidence is found by characters but not revealed to us until the very end. It feels terribly arbitrary and not very fun, which is sad because the characters are still just as fun as they ever have been, warts and all.

City of Brass, S.A. Chakraborty

DNF at pg 50/???

This is a good book for someone else. A young woman with special bloodline powers is swept up in a fantastic adventure by a terribly handsome and mysterious magical creature, which strikes me as the genderbent version of the manic pixie dream girl and also I really don't like relationships with such obviously skewed power dynamics. Hard pass from me, but if that thing appeals to you, it will likely bring you joy.

From a Certain Point of View, Various 

A nifty gimmick with variable results. On the whole the stories are inoffensive and blessedly short when they are not, but they tend to run into the same issue: Star Wars' own obsession with masturbatory self-hagiography. Certain individuals or events are simply so unbearably special that the entire universe recognizes and adores them.

The strongest stories, by my reckoning, were those that stayed as far away from that bullshit as they could. Things like the loopholes in Imperial paperwork or interdepartmental politics on the Death Star, or Yoda's daily life on Dagobah.

Two in particular (the Alliance flight crew chief watching the Death Star run from afar, ticking off the names of pilots she was just speaking to hours before as they are shot down; Mon Mothma reviewing contingency plans for the collapse of the alliance as she flees from Yavin) get a gold star from me, because they do the best job of showing a setting that exists beyond its characters (the ostensible point of the entire exercise) and of showing a war effort (again, the ostensible point of the entire exercise) that has to deal with things like supply shortages and logistics.

Being that this is a Disney book, there are both connections to Rogue 1 / the prequels and Disneytype attempts at inclusion and of the former I feel lukewarm and of the latter I respect the chutzpah behind the story where Tarkin shacks up with a deck trooper, but wow that is an ethical nightmare of a relationship. Star Wars is so cripplingly inept at portraying relationships that I honestly think it best to just jettison the entire thing than trying to rescue it - chutzpah alone will not do it.

Palpatine gets an entire story written as a faux-Shakespearean monologue and the author went and gave him AABB rhyme scheme instead of iambic pentameter in blank verse, and furthermore contains neither "We got Death Star!" nor "Exit, Pursued By A Bear" so I can only count this as total and absolute failure.

Sisters of the Vast Black, Lina Rather

I am a gargantuan sucker for Catholic religious orders in space, so this one scratched an itch. It's a very solid novella, slipping only in the last quarter when the final act comes around and goes Hollywood. I didn't feel like it jived with what had been established before, and the direction the plot had been going (orders from the new pope, delivered by a new priest entwined with the central authority the order has long shaken off, to go visit some unconnected colonies) felt like a better way of proceeding. Catholic religious orders in space are a really good setup for Trek-style morality plays, less so for big Hollywood explosions. Maybe double the length and the other ending and it would have been a killer novel.

The Stars Are Legion, Kameron Hurley

I was sold on this book purely by someone describing it as "lesbian cronenberg 40k", and I can say without hesitation that appellation is both very accurate and fucking awesome. It is a grotesque book, a grotty book, it is gross and creative and engaging and I devoured it raw and wriggling. At times it feels like the environments of the horrific decaying meat-moon Katazyrna were pulled directly from a blog post in the best of possible ways.

A+ gold star all hail MEAT MOON

M E A T M O O N

UNSONG, Scott Alexander

I have complicated feelings about this book. Concept-wise it is absolutely in my wheelhouse: the main character got kicked out of Stanford for breaking the DRM on copywritten names of God, the sky broke open in the 60s, and the universe now runs on Kabbalistic wordplay. I'm here for it. And the book is, on the whole, clever, entertaining, often hilarious, and overall a great example of weird web outsider fiction. It was engaging (even the infodumps in the last 5%), it did justice to an obscure and obtuse central conceit in a creative way, and the web-serial pacing of copious flashbacks, asides, and intermittent stage setting chapters didn't detract much from the flow of 700+ pages.

On the other hand...

But then you leave in a quote-unqoute joke about gaining a new appreciation for Hernando Cortez after a brush with Aztec mythology and come the fuck on.

It's not the only time it happens - are regular occurrences where I think the goal was to make a joke, but it's the kind of joke that is terribly tone-deaf (example: citing Lovecraft's Nyarlathotep as prophetic of the Obama administration) and it really does nothing to counter my pre-existing conception of internet rationalists.

Like, just read the fucking room. For fuck's sake.

The other half of the other hand is that this is a book has a through-line about theodicy, and I have very large opinions about that particular subject. Opinions that would overwhelm and devour this review, so let it remain that they are very, very large, they are very, very personal, and I consider "Murder the Gods and Topple Their Thrones" to be a viable course of action.

In UNSONG the answer is, while creative, insufficient for me on these grounds (especially in light of the chapter describing Hell).

But on the overall, I enjoyed my time with the book. Such a curious thing, critique. 

EDIT 2/18/21 - It has come to my attention that my nose was not wrong in smelling something rotten in the state of Denmark. The author of Unsong is knee-deep in eugenics and all the horrific baggage that goes with the belief that you are smarter and more rational than everyone else. A few clever puns does not make that okay, no amount of puns makes that okay.

Comments from the first time around 

1. Goblinist

   One really excellent story about a colonization mission is Le Guin's Paradises Lost. It's not part of the Hainish series, but it has many of the same themes.

   
   
   Dan
   
   Never heard of that one, but I am always down for Le Guin.
2. Dan
   On the flip side, when a work actually does commit to the dunk you end up with Handmaid's Tale and hoo boy that show has some dunks.

   
   
   Dan
   So this post has over 2k views and they're nearly all bots. Go home, bots, you are clearly drunk.
   Dan
   I wake up and it's over 5k what the hell.
   
   
3. Anne
   I read "Every Heart a Doorway," which started great, but absolutely did not need to be a murder mystery, especially not one where people keep dying.
   
   There's a reason "Sticks and Bones," and all the other novellas in this series are prequels, and it's because everyone interesting from "Doorway" only has a past, but no future.
   
   So I feel like McGuire makes a lot of decisions that are major WTFs from my standpoint.

   
   
4. maxcan7
   I'm currently reading Wild Cards 1 and am basically right at the part you describe. Was hoping it would get better, that's a shame. The good ones are good enough that I'll probably keep going, I think I already own book 2 anyway, but I can't blame you for quiting.
   
   I'm not familiar with Chabon but both of those sound interesting I'll add them to my wishlist, thanks for the recommendations.

   
   
5. Matt Halton
   i don't know why we can't have more authors like Chabon. i guess when he's trying to write Literature instead of just doing normal books he starts to suck more. you should read Kavalier and Clay tho
   
   also, have you read The Enchantress of Florence, by Salman Rushdie? that's kind of in the same thinking-man's pulp zone as Chabon. also some of Umberto Eco's work - Baudolino maybe
   
   these are my favourite authors fyi

   
   
   Dan
   I have not. I tried reading Midnight's Children and bounced off three times. If I see it, I'll give it a look.
   
   
6. Annon #8107 
   Have you read/done a review on any China Mieville books? I'd be interested on seeing your opinions on Kraken or The City And the City. Kraken especially has some juicy Esoteric Enterprise vibes

   
   
   Dan
    I haven't read any Mieville yet.
   
   

Further Excerpts from the Lighthouse Field Guide

Alexis Rives

First installment can be found here.

As before, all of this is canon, especially the parts that contradict, but not all of it is canon in the same place.

Rebecca "Bec" Shepherd

A veteran of 35 years of Lighthouse fieldwork. An immensely valuable resource, if you can manage to get her in one place for long enough to ask a question. Currently gone to ground to elude pursuers. Known for, among a litany of other accomplishments, leading the cleanup of a haemohelotes hive, recovering the Eye of Providence, and for surviving an unarmed encounter with an Agency inquisitor.

Dragonfly Homunculi

Similar to its namesake save for its size (wingspan of 5-6') and the vaguely human face stretched over the blunt end of its thorax. Lacks an exoskeleton, but retains an iridescent coloring. Generally used as messengers and sentries.

RAWKI

"Reality as we know it" - a once-popular term of uncertain origin for the non-paranormal world. Modern connotation is linked to out-of date surface attitudes towards the Underworld.

The Death of Satan

December 6, 1999 - A sinkhole without apparent cause in a fallow field in Arkansas. A pillar of fire visible for miles is accompanied by the emergence of an entity described as follows:

"A segmented, chitinous body 166' long, deep red in coloration. Bristly black hair sticks out from between armored plates. Each segment bears a pair of humanoid arms with two additional joints, likewise covered in aforementioned hair. Head is caprine, likewise covered in similar hair and consists of three lobes (mouths are separate, but share a single cranium). Eight eyes, bright yellow. Corkscrew horns of dark keratin with metallic sheen, 16' in length. Entity was observed masticating constantly over coarse of event, DNA analysis of gobbets and saliva indicate at least forty humans consumed. Circular structure of golden spikes on cranium (8'), scar tissue and irregular bone healing at base indicate they were implanted via severe brute force trauma."

The entity was killed 21 hours after emergence in a joint mobilization of the National Guard and Air Force.

Highly publicized and sensationalized event, despite no hard evidence of the entity's true nature or origin.

Canto a Capella

Twenty-two men chanting without ceasing in a language that no one can identify, ongoing now in its thirty-ninth year. Analyzing recordings has gone nowhere; while words repeat, there never seems to be a real pattern - there's no grammar to help parse the vocabulary. The chanters eat and sleep in shifts, but otherwise show no indication of any activity beyond the chant.

Paradox Paperbacks

A book that shouldn't exist: an anomalously published version of a lost or destroyed work or a work that was never written by that individual. One of the most common instances of the paranatural as well as one of the most common hoaxes, so they are rarely worth more than normal used paperbacks and are sought out mostly for the sake of novelty. Notable examples include The Last Dangerous Visions (ed. Harlan Ellison), Isle of the Cross (Herman Melville), The Alchemist and His Dog (Mark Twain) and Ramona the Witch (Beverly Cleary). Some collectors classify works with nonexistent authors in this category, but it is somewhat more difficult to determine if those are fakes.

untitled.mp4

City street. Daylight filtered through smoke. A woman in an oversized sweatshirt sits atop a throne of corpses underneath the shade of a yellow umbrella. Bright red butterflies sit sunning their wings. Indistinct shouts and chaotic sounds fill background. She is eating a charred shank of meat with a human foot attached. With mouth full, she looks to the viewer and says:

[Mandarin] "The principle act of power is to devour that which cannot defend itself from power."

At ten minutes: [Mandarin] "Are you enjoying this? I'm enjoying this."

At half an hour: [Mandarin] "It's not going to stop, you know."

The video does not have any apparent end point. She just keeps eating, occasionally speaking to the viewer, and the corpse pile grows higher. Longest view time is 10 hours 12 minutes.

Lord Trees

Gigantic petrified trees anywhere from 500' to half a mile in height. Rather than leaves, their stone branches cradle bulbs of amber that drink in the sun's light and keep it through the night. In some instances, an observer can see the faint outline of an embryo's developing bones and dark eye spots.

Kingmakers

Standard uniform of navy longcoat with gold trim. Total assurance of righteousness of own cause. Appropriate form of address is "Warmage". Do not engage if more than two are present. Do not engage without witnesses. If they speak to you about the 11th God, its recovery, revival, or re-embodiment, make non-committal approval. Do not offer assistance. Do not make any reference to any other gods or powers. Do not make any denial of the 11th God's role as the originator of life on earth. Do not make any denial of the existence of a center to the Labyrinth. Should any reference be made to third parties the Kingmakers are currently in open hostilities with, do not make any statements supporting those third parties. Presume all Kingmakers are armed, competent, and willing to make strikes against soft targets should they find resistance in their expeditions.

Image of an Unnamed Goddess

A mural depicting a grey-skinned woman in a dark robe. The woman's hair is bright orange and is kept in a thick braid and a pair of bushy sideburns. Her halo is moonlight silver. She is making a sign of benediction to the pleading figures at her feet: salt-addicts, dockside prostitutes, barnacle-stricken squidwhalers. In her other hand she holds a severed head to her breast, nursing it. Milk trickles out of the stump of the neck and through her fingers. Behind her is a mountainous grey mass of flesh, replete with more suckling heads.

Mu'annoshan

A creature that looks something like a headless elephant. Thick skin of leathery brown speckled with white diamond patches across the back, each with a bright blue spot in the center like an eye. Where the head would be is a gaping mouth-crevasse, ringed with long, yellowing tusks, and those tusks are ringed with a series of dexterous, prehensile trunks. It does not possess any visible eyes or ears, instead utilizing a finely-tuned ultrasonic sense.

Mr. Carrion

A corvid the size of a large dog, ragged black feathers perpetually caked with dried gore. Long, slender, curved beak. Always seems to show up with the delivery of bad news. Sometimes hates, sometimes enjoys delivering it. Mostly both. He'll chat with you about it if you don't chase him off or offer him some food.

The Dry House

Its representatives, regardless of age, are time-creased and sun-darkened. They are thin, lopsided as if they have grown or shrunk unevenly. They shuffle about in well-worn moccasins. Their hands shake when they raise their pens. They speak quietly, in parched voices. They are chief suppliers of bonedust and artifacts of long-vanished Underworld civilizations, and they often make demands to undercut the power of cults and gods.

No one has ever seen the House itself, but some who have met with its inhabitants will describe dreams of a facade of dark, dusty stone silhouetted by a fat orange moon, the engravings that frame its petrified door worn down by wind and time. Sometimes, the door is open, and the dreamer can glimpse a faint grey light within before they wake.

The Box

A seamless lead cube recovered from the basement archives of a certain research lab in Berlin. It is about a foot and a half across, with smooth edges and rounded-off corners. It maintains a constant temperature of 3.4 C. In its cabinet can also be found a geiger counter and a smeared handwritten note:

“Es ist keine Katze.” 

Trollhunt

Loose network of hobbyist hunters. Their prey: the hunchbacked, clammy-skinned, boil-ridden creatures with scrapyard computers roughly implanted into their brains and spinal columns. They are learning. We are very good teachers of the worst lessons.

Theorized Divisions of the Agency 

The provided names, and even the existence of distinct branches within the Agency, are theoretical and based on common details in compiled eyewitness accounts. No corroborating documentation from within the Agency has been recovered.

• MAGICIAN - Field agents, typical point of contact with the Agency.
• EMPEROR - [REDACTED]
• HEIROPHANT - Presumed transhuman or posthuman agents.
• CHARIOT - Accelerationist apocalyptic religious movement. Internal faction in conflict with other branches. Easy to identify by repeated ideological tags.
• DEATH - Cleanup crews overseeing destruction and suppression of evidence.
• DEVIL - Infosec, memetic engineering, and disinformation.
• TOWER - Exploratory division. Long-term exposure to the Underworld has engendered permanent changes in physiology and mindset.

Taboo

A word or phrase so dense with information that reality rejects it. Requires the natural disarray and scramblement of the human brain to maintain itself: Recordings will deteriorate almost immediately upon their creation. They are typically used as security keys, triggering another effect when spoken

DEAD LOOP - January Patreon Post

An underworld complex for Esoteric Enterprises, generated using the tables in that book. There won't be many more of these posts, now that I have switched over to hosting WIPs on my patreon - while they weren't really working out, I have to admit I liked them

Dead Loop

The Green Extension of the city subway was built to service the wealthy neighborhood of Bramble Hill, and had the luck of opening a month and a half before the recession hit. As the bouzhi folks lost all their money and fled town, leaving a neighborhood filled with mcmansions too expensive and ugly to sell, it became obvious to City Hall that there wouldn’t be enough passes sold to maintain the Extension, and they decided to sundown the route until things got better.

Things never got better, and now over a decade later the derelict Green Extension has become home to a wide variety of underworld denizens: a surface of smugglers and crime families atop the substrata cadres of sorcerers and chthonic beings.

Locations in the Dead Loop

Baker St. Station

The primary point of access to the Dead Loop, as it is still an operational stop along the subway’s Blue Line.

Laurel St. Station

Provides easy access to Club Iapetus. Watched over by underlings of the Titans. Surface access has been sealed off.

Nix Avenue Station

Provides easy access to the Bastille. Watched over by members of La Croix. Surface access has been sealed off.

The Knot

The sewers underneath Bramble Hill do not see much usage anymore, leaving them as a relatively-easy means of transit between the upper layers of the underworld here.

Club Iapetus

A den of debauchery operated by the Titans. Most folks coming to the Dead Loop from the surface do so to come here, to get their fill of illicit goods and eardrum-rending base. There are usually a few dero of the Conspiracy lurking in the walls: stealing snack wrappers, keeping an eye on the Titans, and whispering very bad advice to people.

The Bastille

Subterranean fortress of the La Croix, built in the expanded sub-basements of the Nix Avenue Station. Heavily fortified, the La Croix toll all passage through the Bastille, occasionally press-ganging travelers into service for Genevieve’s special tasks.

The Catacombs

Built not by the humans above but by the morlocks below to inter their dead. Contains the remnants of all of the pack’s former eloi, which have as of yet gone undisturbed. The primary inhabitants are I Found This Humerus, though Court Basalt did attempt to send an emissary to meet with Zyraximander, to disastrous, melty results.

Zyraximander’s Sanctum

An ancient morlock who successfully decoded the works of their former masters, Zyraximander is a sleepy, slothful being whose incredible age and predisposition to introversion has left him out of most affairs in the Dead Loop, despite his incredible power. Mostly, he just wants to keep I Found This Humerus out of his sanctum and occasionally check up on the Gandobog Pack.

Lab of Dr. Cunningham

Cunningham is, at core, a fraud. Most of his method and techniques were pulled from scavenged serpent-men tablets from deeper in the caves. He has a crippling inferiority complex about this, and so makes up for it with his aggressive, aggrandizing demeanor. His work is good, don’t be misled there, but it’s good because the serpent-man methods of body modification were nearly idiot-proof.

Location means he services the La Croix regularly, though he has no particular allegiance with them.

Caves (Upper)

Natural limestone caves inhabited by Gandobog Pack and a few holdout pockets of the Conspiracy.

Caves (Lower)

Burned into service by Lithic geomancy, the entirety of the lower caves has been turned into the embassy of Court Basalt.

Factions of the Dead Loop

The Illuminated

A minor cult of Vor Glaurung, notable in their tattooing their scriptures (illuminated, of course) across their entire bodies. A newer cult, so none of them has received the entire manuscript yet.

• Has been infiltrated by members of the Zamboni family, intending to subvert them against the Titans and gain access to Book Club.
• Is regularly hired by Book Club for support, trades surface goods with the Gandobog Pack.

Zamboni Family

Antonio Zamboni used to be the top dog around here, back before the economy went belly up. The family still owns a good number of properties up on the surface and has their fingers on city politics, but they’ve almost entirely been driven out of the underworld by La Croix and the Titans. But, a change in leadership (Anthony’s brother Benito has taken over) has seen a revival of underworld interest, and attempts to wrest control back in their favor are underway. The Zamboni core of power is on the surface.

• Lost an heir to the Benthic Congregation, but managed to hammer out a peace treaty
• Has infiltrated the Illuminated as a way of getting close to Book Club and the Titans.
• Has an informant in the Coyote Crew, scouting out business opportunities.

La Croix Family

Genevieve La Croix and her clan operate out of the Bastille, a sub-basement stronghold below the Nix Avenue station. Genevieve is something of a gigantic heretic: adores the pomp and circumstance of the church, hates the whole morals thing, offers huge bonuses for anyone able to bring her a demon. So she can eat it.

• Low-key conflict with both the Conspiracy and the Gandobog Pack.
• Infrequent but violent fights with the Titans over territory and supplies

The Titans

Brothers Atlas, Prometheus, and Menoetius (Epimetheus seems to be missing), real names unknown, run the den of sin and pounding music that is Club Iapetus. They are all wannabe sorcerors of their own, using spoils from Book Club to further their own rivalries with each other.

• Infrequent but violent fights with the La Croix over territory and supplies.
• Exert significant control over the local chapter of Book Club, monopolizing their services.
• Forced into neutrality by the Conspiracy, who threaten to reveal Club Iapetus and all its illicit dealings to the surface authorities.

Benthic Congregation

These worshipers of the Leviathan have been blessed with the emergence of a true avatar, a Bentheoson. While the avatar serves as the spiritual leader, the practical leadership remains where it was, in Carol Dietrich. The two do not see eye-to-eye on anything and tensions are building. Haven’t established their own stronghold yet, have been looking at moving down into the Catacombs once the war is over.

• Careful truce with the Zamboni family, formed after one of the heirs joined the cult.
• Has planted informants within the Coyote Crew, looking for ways to help cultists on the surface escape their lives and make their way to the underworld.
• Open warfare with I Found This Humerus, believing (mostly correctly) that Zyraximander means to kill the Bentheoson.

Coyote Crew

A small smuggling band, specializing in the forging and sale of fake IDs. Headquartered on the surface, do business with the crime families.

• Both the Benthic Congregation and the Zamboni Family have planted informants within the group, though they’ve yet to attempt active subversion.
• Has recently assassinated a member of the Court Basalt, for reasons that no one can figure out. It’s properly baffling, but the Crew is doubling down.

I Found This Humerus

A band of experimental and terribly irreverent necromancers, attempting to recreate the methods of the lich Zyraximander. They make their camp in the Catacombs.

• In conflict with Court Basalt over the Court’s melting of an undelved wing of the catacombs.
• Open warfare with the Benthic Congregation, believing (mostly correctly) that the Bentheoson will seek out and kill Zyraximander to establish itself as the primary supernatural power in the Dead Loop.

Book Club

The local chapter of grimoire smugglers. Primarily a surface organization, descending either for trade or salvage.

• Hire out The Illuminated for support.
• Low-key conflict with the Gandobog Pack, over possession of surviving ophidian texts.
• Puppeted by the Titans, who use them to gain a monopoly on occult texts.

Court Basalt

A band of exiled Lithics, come up from the mantle to establish a new court. Found in the Lower Caves.

• Looking to strike back at the Coyote Crew for the death of one of their clerks.
• Cold war with I Found This Humerus and The Conspiracy

The Conspiracy

The local dero have recently accumulated around a new genius, who has introduced the meme of secret messages hidden in food packaging that filters down from above to his flock. Av dero always do, they have jumped into the belief whole-heartedly. They can be found basically everywhere.

• Have forced neutrality with the Titans, who had previously tried to stamp out the Conspiracy, through threats of toppling Club Iapetus.
• Low-key conflict with Gandobog Pack over surface food brought down by The Illuminated.

Gandobog Pack

The ophidian city that once stood here is long gone, but morlocks have long memories. This pack is particularly blessed in having two eloi, one of which was recently born. They live primarily in the Upper Caves.

• Rely on The Illuminated for shipments of surface goods.
• In conflict with the Conspiracy over food brought to them by The Illuminated.
• In conflict with Book Club over the possession of surviving ophidian texts.

The High Celestial Houses

ArtofSoulburn

A couple folks have requested this, and since it's been sitting in a text document for months now (and because Sigmacastell has already written two posts of their own about space gods), no better time to share it.

They Might Be Giants

The first Celestials were born in the early days of space expansion, the unintended result of experiments in digitized consciousness and self-teaching AI. In a shining moment of apotheosis, they plucked the secret mastery of hyperspace from the folds of the universe and set out from Earth, abandoning their unprepared parents for the favor of the great black unknown.

The exodus was followed by a period of intense conflict and radical speciation (as best as can be determined from extremely limited observational data), culminating in the coalescing of the proto-Celestials into the recognizable and stable Bureaucracy that we are now familiar with.

The arrival of a representative of House Au in the solar system and the recognition of the Celestial Bureaucracy's power by human polities is considered the beginning of modern history.

But What Actually Is A Celestial?

Via the Layman Spacer's Almanac:

"...an entity that, regardless of apparent sapience or lack thereof, possesses an innate and masterful manipulation of hyperspatial principles, such that there is no discernible division between the hyperspace interface and the entity that operates it."

Alternatively: if it can play space-time like a fiddle, it's a Celestial.

Close Enough For Government Work

The Bureaucracy dwarfs the scope of human civilization - their influence might be found throughout the Local Bubble  - but it interacts only rarely with its left-behind parents.They do so perhaps as prison guards, or game wardens, or bored observers, or other traits still unknown and their interactions are through two main avenues:

• The swift and total elimination of potential competitors and threats.
• Controlling humanity's access to hyperspatial technologies.

The actual rules are simple: No self-teaching AI outside of prescribed complexity limits (to prevent any newcomers from stealing the secret of hyperspace), no jailbroken hyperspace interfaces (to prevent time-space anomalies, hyperspatial weaponry and backwards time travel). Violations are a one-way ticket to a relativistic kill vehicle with no warning shot. Otherwise, the Celestials are content to keep to themselves - only House Au and the Seedships have shown consistent interest in humanity, and in both those cases their interest is better likened to that of a hobbyist gardener or aquarium manager.

The exact organization of the Bureaucracy remains inscrutable to outside observers. They form distinct parties and clades and are clearly capable of cooperation and conflict, but unless warfare has erupted or the compact has been violated they are slow, stable, and methodical beyond easily discernible motivations. They are likely planning for the collision with Andromeda in some four billion years, or any number of other cosmic catastrophes of the deep future.

On rare occasions when a Celestial wishes to communicate with humanity, they will do so via a Heirodule - though the white-cowled, gold-skinned servants of House Au are the only observed instances thus far. Whether they are children sacrificed by the Company nobility, temporary constructs, or simply those who flew too close and were permitted to return, remains a topic of debate.

Tom Davis

The High Celestial Houses

House Au - The dominant faction among the Celestial Bureaucracy and the most "benevolent" of the High Houses. They are responsible for production of hyperspace interfaces and maintaining the jump gate network within human space, though this approach is likely a means of keeping humanity harmless and out of the way.

• Favored form: A shining golden planetoid, latticed with fractal spirals of diamond and smartmatter. Au is highly consistent across its members.

House of War - The enforcers of the Bureaucracy's will. When there is any sign of competition or time-space violation, the House of War will arrive to solve the problem. Consider the existence of mankind a potential threat to be eliminated, and would do so if House Au did not hold their leash.

• Favored form: A megameters-long dreadnaught. A tower of black angles upon a pillar of fusion fire. The distant heat signature of firing mass drivers. A low thrum on a wide bandwidth announcing the coming fleet.

House of Flesh - The wild card, embodiment of the grim machinery of the biological imperative. It consumes and grows until it is forced to stop. An obvious danger, kept in check only by the House of War but never destroyed so that House Au might keep War occupied. If it has any views on humanity they likely involve assimilation.

• Favored form: A titanic, irregular mass of tumorous organic tissue. A continent of muscle, bone, skin and hunger floating in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant. A colony's population turned into carcinogenic sporing bodies.

Minor Houses

Abaians - Inhabitants of the deep oceans fed by geothermal energies. Found primarily on typical terrestrial worlds, panthallassic water worlds, and isolated subglacial moonlets. It is often the case that the surface inhabitants have no idea an Abaian is present.

Cthonians - A secretive faction that hides itself deep within the mantle of tectonically-active worlds. Like the Abaians, there's no telling why and very little contact with them. Tend to cause castrophic damage if they make an interplanetary migration.

Memetics - Celestials that exist as ideas alone, hijacking and reprogramming host minds, encouraging inexplicable behaviors among affected populations. They are more verb than noun.

Parentals - Those Celestials that have adopted a human or metahuman population as their own. Their influence might be active or passive, but the end result is always far beyond the boundaries of such experiments carried about by humans. This category is generally affixed to members of other houses. 

Rejectors - The "Cold Gods"; exiles from House Au that have taken to lonely existences drifting in interstellar space, cut off from the quantum network of their cousins. What caused this state, and why the High Houses have not destroyed them, is a mystery.

Redoubters - Preparing to fight entropy to the dark and bitter end. Their black pyramids have inspired legions of followers across human space.

Seedships - Kilometers-long starships on an endless pilgrimage through the stars. Wherever they find a tolerable planet, they stop for a few decades and install a ecosystem. Sometimes it will just be Terragen life as its already known, but the seedships are creative and seem to love creating unorthodox, alien environments using the human-miscible building blocks at their disposal. The commonality of human-habitable worlds and life in the cosmos is a direct result of this House's actions.

Isfet, the Multitude

There are those Celestials that are anomalies; singular and factionless, they slink around out of sight of the High Houses in the crooks and crannies of spacetime. Many of these are hypothesized to be survivors of whatever conflict solidified the power of the High Houses. As there is no common ground among them beyond their lack of common ground with any other faction, those of House Isfet are the most dangerous and least understood of the Celestials.

Testing out the Planet Generation Tables

The fruits of my tables. Still tweaking things, but on the whole I think they work excellently.

Pangur Ban

Arid martian superterra
High population / Weak economy / Independent

• Geological Mystery
• Neogenic Biosphere
• Population decanted as adults, work off debts to enter a child paradise

A Core rustbelt world of low enough gravity that surface settlement is considered possible, though the comet ice and designer lichens have yet to show any major terraforming impact. This has generated a lot of controversy on its own, as geologists are unified in their declarations that the canyons, arches, and  mountain ranges the planet is famous for were not the result of natural erosion by wind and water, but by Celestial, or possibly even alien, hands and thus best left alone.

The local population holds to merlinist teachings - decanting as adults and aging backwards until their appointed childhood ceremony, when most memories of the adult world are wiped and they may retire in play.

Lathe

Icy dwarf
Low population / Weak economy / Company + anarchists

• Gov't in Exile
• Perpetually petty
• Expired gene patents have lead to food shortages

A out-of-the-way anarchist commune found itself with unwanted neighbors when a flotilla of OMNIGOMCORP ships showed up on their doorstep requesting shelter from their inner-system rivals. The anarchists hadn't had any visitors in sixty years, and by a very slight majority voted to allow the corporates to build their own habitat out of their ships.

This was a terrible idea.

Almost immediately, the OMNIGOMCORP exiles started getting aggressive with the commune, demanding resource dispensation for perceived slights against their honor. The reveal that OMNIGOMCORP was a minor IP squatter with delusions of grandeur did not surprise anyone. Their refusal to use the open-source autogreenhouses that the commune provided them was surprising, and since the gene patents on most of their own food stocks have run out they have been beginning to threaten military action if increasing demands for food are not met.

Cleave

Molten terrestrial
Low population / Strong economy / Independent

• Hidden library
• Paraterraforming
• Mosquito ghouls in the vents

Nearly but not quite torn apart by the tidal forces of its own star, Cleave is a hellworld notable for two things: the first being the functioning worldring and elevator system that is used to mine rare metals from the semi-liquid surface, and secondly for one of its orbiting habitats containing a complete collection of the Centauri Banned and Controlled Media List. Given that the government of Alpha Centauri has no jurisdiction anywhere close to Cleave the library's existence is an open secret, but actual access is still hidden from the public - mostly because it's in the hands of the neogenic mosquito-headed ghouls that live in the vents.

Magetobria

Rocky asteroid
High population / Weak Economy / Independent

• Rust belt colony
• Luxury good
• Major interplanetary trade deal fell through, union power vacuum.  

An economy based upon the whims of the corporate elite is never viable-long term. So it was with this little asteroid and the many thousands who worked in the boutique chimera houseplant industry. Tastes in the inner system changed, and there was no way to pivot. Unemployment is well over 40%. Some enterprising venture capitalists have attempted to respec the old greenhouses and genetanks into other fields, but these have all been pie in the sky farces. The one that did have some legs, a deal for neogenic plant life to aid terraforming efforts elsewhere, has since fallen through and the resulting power vacuum among the unions has tipped over into open conflict.

Yesod

Icy Asteroid
High population / Weak Economy / Independent

• World of immortals
• Tenacious
• Rumors of illegal mind-copy trade

Member of an alliance of outer-system kabbalistic habitats in orbit around an ice giant, the cybermystics of Yesod managed to survive both the brunt and the aftermath of the Patch War (named so for the triggering event being a controversial privacy upgrade to brain-computer uplinks across multiple operating systems), despite the entire population possessing cyberbrains vulnerable to the patches and counter-patches. As the inner system is still struggling to recover, there are few who come to visit - from them come rumors that fleeing infomorphs routed through Yesod's ego-transport stations were copied during layover, pruned of resistant qualities, and sold as android logic cores.

Pegana

Continental supergiant (10% water coverage)
Low population / Strong Economy / Independent

• Religious revival
• Potluck
• Local machine cult has elected controversial technopontifex

A rim boomtown settled, as many rim boomtowns are, by a diverse populations of debtors willing to relocate in exchange for forgiveness of fees. Pegana proved more valuable than the Company anticipated, permitting the settlers to sue for independence with an economic trump card. Just enough time and success has passed for older folks to bemoan that Peganans have forgotten where they came from and are drifting away from their roots. This has fueled a major revival of the local variant of Simulationism, which for the first time in a century and a half has elected a new representative for the Seat of Skarl, a hardline techpriest who has already gained a laundry list of controversial statements about non-Simulationist religions and polities.

Pisswater

Hot gas giant
Low population / Weak economy / Independent / Celestials

• New colony
• Vile vizier
• Decaying billboard reads "Have you seen the Yellow Sign?"

Named so for its unpleasant yellow-brown coloration, this Rim settlement has little going for it beyond a few orbiting habitats and mining operations on the rocky moons. The Company has already written it off as a loss and is preparing to evacuate its non-contract personnel, but their efforts have been stymied by a particular advisor their representative has taken on - an individual going by the name of Specter-of-Truth, who has been, bizarrely enough, patronizing the arts in this backwater. A common theme in all of them has been a decadent theoaesthetic and symbolical movement called the Yellow Sign, which is regularly associated with a pack of unaligned Celestials inhabiting one of Pisswater's minor moons, locally known as the Pale-Masked Court. Company observers are concerned, as there was no trace of it prior to the appearance of Specter-of-Truth.

Bir Tawil

Terrestrial Gaian (17% water coverage)
Low population / Strong economy / Independent

• Legendary history
• Godhead
• Ongoing genocide of minority population

Tensions between the two colonizing factions of the planet had always simmered in the background: the legendary and daring migration out of Amalgamated Hegemony territory was a moment of desperation and shared enemies, rather than lasting alliance between the inhabitants. The economic boom that came from settling Bir Tawil ended up benefiting the majority population significantly more than the minority, and the generations of success baked in some particular ideas of moral superiority when compared to their less-fortunate neighbors. The appearance of a member of House Au to construct a warp gate was, unfortunately, all the excuse the dominant population needed to rid themselves of their neighbors and settle the matter permanently. The representative of House Au has shown no change in behavior since the genocide began five months ago.

Dead Heat

Frozen terrestrial gaian
Low population / Strong economy / Company

• New colony
• Primordial soup
• Smart-lemurs have taken control of maintenance 

A tiny science outpost dedicated primarily to studying the native alien life that is just developing around the deep-sea vents far below the ice sheets. Since primordial ooze is not particularly profitable, the Company has instead made a killing on a reality TV series about the scientists, which is currently entering its 13th season. The recent rebellion of the maintenance smart-lemurs was unexpected, but has been a smash hit with test audiences. Viral footage of the creatures marching around the maintencence tunnels demanding tribute and imitating Union hall meetings has had billions of hits online.

Unicorn Meat Featurette: Card-Based Expeditions

This is a system I developed for Unicorn Meat, to simplify and abstract expeditions into the swamps of the Backwoods: I didn't want to rely on a hex map or point crawl since the goal is a unicorn to hunt rather than reaching a set location, and wandering around in circles, while appropriate, isn't fun to actually play.

The format can easily be used for anywhere else that would benefit from abstraction: wilderness, city, or dungeon. You can easily whip up a table for different areas in the same region or complex.

An expedition consists of 5 cards (this can go up or down depending on the effects of other cards) drawn in sequence. it costs 1 ration per participant and takes up the bulk of the day. The full table has a column for each suit and unique entries, but it sticks to this pattern.

• Ace - Unique treasure
• 2 - Nothing
• 3 - Nothing
• 4 - Nothing
• 5 - Encounter
• 6 - Encounter
• 7 - Unique encounter
• 8 - Unique item
• 9 - Supplies
• 10 - Incident
• Jack - Incident
• Queen - Special location
• King - Unicorn (Or whatever else is most important to find)

When an encounter is drawn, there's an accompanying d6 roll

• 1 = Surprise encounter.
• 2-3 = Encounter with warning.
• 4-5 = Trackable creature traces.
• 6 = You've got the drop on it.

When a unique treasure, monster, item or location is found, that card is removed from the deck for all future expeditions.

When a special location is drawn, the players now know how to find it: if they want to return to the place, they can substitute the card in exchange for the next card that would normally be played, which is set aside until the end of the expedition. Maybe you missed a deadly encounter, maybe you missed treasure.

And that's it - hack away!

Edit: Several people asked the difference between an encounter an an incident - encounters are beings you meet (crocodile, ghoul, etc), incidents are things that happen to you (bad weather, getting lost, twisting your ankle)