Talk to Me (Lanthanide Horizon Minipost)

The mobile villages of the Walker-Herds tread from the Vault (where, from time to time, they meet Navigators descended from the Hanging Gardens) to the far side of the Thinking Ocean, and further until they reach the Gardener Pillars on the far side of the Spire. Among the pillars they find pasture for their sheep-equivalents (as they are alarm-system transhumance pastoralists - their animals able to eat all manner of textile-plants and organosynthetic plastics grown on the pillars, then leave before the structure's protectors, or the affluent hunter-gatherers of the pillars, come to drive them away), but it is the Vault that is vital, as that is where towns are born. 

In the center of each walker is its genius loci - a block of undifferentiated bismuth computing substrate dredged up from the Vault and taught, like a child, how to speak. These genii are pilots, civil engineers, and objects of devotion - washed with perfumed oils while their dreams are projected on curtains and screens. However, they are not kings - though they sit on the deliberations of the councils of the herds, their decisionmaking power is the same as any other member's, and many times has an errant genius made its pronouncements just to be shouted down. 

🤫 they're sleeping

 

This council representation comes in the form of those who are Crowned with the magnetic interface - people known to fit well with the genius loci, and translate their lights and images into recommendations. This position is voluntary and temporary, and it is common for the majority of adult herdsmen to have experience under the Crown. (Except, of course, for the herd Stones Drifting Over The Edge Of A Waterfall, whose genius asks for errant machines to project itself into.) This is one amulet - the tangled Crown and its long cables stretching back to a niche, sized and shaped for a person, carved into the side of the genius. 

Lesser amulets are omnipresent - the genius must be taught, which requires exposure to information. Herdsmen spend their days whispering to bismuth necklaces, earrings, and diadems carved from the genius - here is what I am doing, here is why I am doing it, careful not to make this mistake, how do you feel today, thank you so much. The amulets respond in buzzing song. Herdsmen are careful with these amulets - it would be harmful to the genius to expose it to dangerous information (whether structure-wrought infohazards or, according to some aniconists, any artificial representative image). There are always stories - cities driven mad teetering off the sides of cliffs, or marching into furnaces.

And, finally, there are stranger objects - fist-sized bismuth blocks taken from machines and taught to speak without connection to the genii, sentient swords with hollow fullers overgrown with substrate, and the self-assembling dream ziggurats and hallucinating fogs of the Thinking Ocean. 

Oh, look at the world - and be joyful, for it lives. 

I have been tearing my hair out over the Walker-Herds for ages, so I used the GLAUGUST "magic amulets" prompt (and 500 word limit) to throw it on a page as a change of pace from working on land-islands. 

Songlines of the Navigators (Lanthanide Horizon)

The sea of Machine Space is dotted with land-islands - humming devices and precarious factories attached to the wall of that great void. The Navigators who sail the black sea use songlines, memorized map-fables, as guides.

Some songlines are common, known by Navigators of all septs.

• The Island of Shrouds, a heatstroke jungle of clear plastic sheeting.
• The Island of the Rivals, where two groups of Firstborn are locked in an endless blood feud. 
• The Island of the Great House, where a few hundred grain farmers live around a tungsten tetrahedron miles wide. They have seen Navigators before, and the people of the Great House scrape up gifts to become passengers on sept-vessels and explore the world. 
• The Island of Clouds, where some mystery fills the air with red mist that corrodes spacesuits - though this does make it a surpassing source of propellant. 

The route to the Spire is also held in common. 

Kiyonori Kikutake's 1970 Expo Tower

Others are rarer, spread across the assemblies but are known mainly by geoglyph painters and historians.

• The Island of the Lotus-Eaters, a winding building whose people dance forever pinned by dangling wires. Their home has been ransacked by Navigators - the lotus-eaters dream only of returning to its embrace.
• The Island of the Captives, whose arcology broke open from the grinding weight of time. Now machines stalk the shores of their false ocean to keep them inside until repairs can be completed.  
• The Island of the Loom, covered by the strings of its vicious guardian's web.
• The Island of the Welder, largely inaccessible without passing through a lethal conduit.
• The Island of Shining Sand, where each grain is perfectly square, glows like a diamond, and is engraved with microscopic shapes.

The routes to the Vault, the Ghostfields, and the Hanging Gardens are also rare. 

Another three are held by the assemblies - one of the last acts of the Imperious before their retirement at the end of the year is to decide which septs are allowed to forage from these more lucrative sites, which provide either multiple trade goods at once or allow more efficient foraging.

Assembly Elegiast:

• The Island of All Colors, where Firstborn tend to iridescent microbes that refine organics into hundreds of specialist chemicals.  

Assembly Cloudspinner:

• The Island of the Monolith, which has been slowly building the same 30-story-high object for as long as the Navigators have known it. 

Assembly Sidereal:

• The Island Paired, where lightning strikes and great cuboid machine-worms crawl from one island-pillar to the other. 

Another eight are fabled - known to exist, somewhere, though the route is lost.

• The Island of the Photosynthetes, whose people cracked their spherical arcology open from within, and now stand proud as kings. It is said they make fine hosts to Navigators - though with little food, as they no longer eat.
• The Island of Secrets, which is invisible to the eye and hides when sept-vessels pass by. 
• The Island of Variegated Limbs, which shift like kelp in ocean currents.  
• The Island of the Fortress, protected by a ceramic shell of surpassing strength.
• The Island of the Broadcasts, which sings a song that metal hears.
• The Island of Itself, which slowly grows across the walls of Machine Space like mold.
• The Island of the Moon, a still-sealed arcology of transparent plastic tunnels under an orbiting white light.
• The Island of the Harbor - Machine Space is haunted by the angular Dreadnought. Antenna-studded splinterer of shields, breaker of axes, scarred by its thousand victories. Surely it comes from somewhere, and returns there for repair and ammunition.

DEGRADER As Extraction Shooter

DEGRADER is a weird little play-by-post wargame by the wonderful Louis, who is great. It is stealth-based - player characters assemble webs of interlocking sensors in order to pin down opposing Degraders and, once they are affixed, kill them instantly at any range and through walls with a shot from their Superlative Rifle. 

The first round was a pure deathmatch - but that premise, a game of creeping, of hoping you are unnoticed, of unknown hazards, reminded me more of something like Marathon. So, here are some additions and a new map for an extraction shooter run of DEGRADER. 

I am absolutely certain that any amount of testing would force me to rewrite this post - neat!

Scorekeeping

Each enemy Degrader killed is worth 5 points. Recovery of Degrader neural drives after a kill is worth another 5 - this is done instantly (and messily) but requires you to physically reach the corpse. (Kills are only confirmed after extraction - you are not told whether Superlative Rifle shots hit a target.)

Intel recovery from the site of interest is worth 1 point per piece of intel. Intel can also be retrieved from dead Degraders. 

Sites of interest may have other objectives worth high point values - for the example map there are two. Disabling the site reactor is worth 10 points. Doing so is extremely loud and will send all Degraders a message saying that the reactor has been destroyed. Opening the Server Vault is worth 15 points. This requires the Server Keycard, and will send all Degraders a message saying that the servers have been accessed.

All points are lost upon death. (This might be overly harsh but it's genre-standard.)

PvE? Maybe?

On-site security remains active. Noncombatants produce heat, movement, heartbeat, and sound pings. On contact with a Degrader they are killed instantly and no longer do so. Combatants produce heat, movement, heartbeat, and sound pings. Upon contact, players choose to use their handgun (expending one round per combatant) or their knife (killing all combatants and then rolling 1d6 for each combatant - on any result of 1 the Degrader is forced to loudly retreat at least 30 and at most 60 feet). Elite combatants produce heat, movement, sound, heartbeat, and electrical pings. On contact with a Degrader they are dueled as an opposing player is.

The Site of Interest

fortunately the map did upload at full size so you can open it in a new tab and look around

• Blue "T"s are teleports - while Degraders can begin the game at any point they wish they must activate one of these and wait a turn in order to extract. 
• Yellow "i"s are Intel - collecting them adds to the score of a Degrader.
• Black grids of lines are interference - in Loading Dock this interference pings on motion, heat, sound, and electrical scanners, in Cycler Cells it pings on electrical and sound sensors, in Heatsink it pings heat and sound sensors, in Reactor it pings heat and electrical, and in Vents it pings motion and sound.
• Green Cs are noncombatants, red Cs are combatants, and golden Cs are elites. These will move during the course of the game.
• The green ! marks where a Degrader must go to disable the site reactor. The blue ! in Cycler Cells is the keycard to Server Vault, and the blue ! in Server Vault is where a Degrader must go to access the servers.
• Note that, as is standard for Degrader maps, this entire site is dark except for the flashlights of facility staff.

(This map was made with Dungeonscrawl - just in case someone chooses to run this, I have uploaded the .ds file for the map here so they can move the civilians around and put little Degrader tiles on it.)

Navigator Domain Procedures Part 4 - Who Decides Such Things 2e

This is probably the last of my rulesposts, following the intro, where I looked at the errors made in my first edition, a post on the new domain economy, a generator for islands of Machine Space, new troupe play, and updated backgrounds. 

The completed player's document, containing 20 backgrounds, 18 treasures, 18 sept-vessels (now mapped on a grid as part of the new shipbuilding system), starting gear, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, can be found here. There may be minor changes as I find all the asset prices are wrong, or something - a changelog will be kept if necessary.

Next on the agenda is building Machine Space - one or two dozen islands (now with Arcologists, micro-cultures seeded by the Structure in tiny controlled environments, for the Navigators to meet and trade with) at varying distances from the Volume, then a huge random encounter table to torment the septs with as they fly. Maybe those will be posted, or maybe I'll hide them from the eyes of my players. We'll see.

Sail away, Navigator - let your ship be loud with song, and come back rich beyond imagining. 

Troupe Play & Character Progression - Navigator Domain Procedures Part 3

This is both the least useful and most potentially divisive of my Navigator mechanic posts (intro, domain economy, island generator, troupe play, full document) - I am fully "recreating Runequest by accident" here. The goal is to specialize PCs enough that choice of player character is relevant, and to support troupe play as the Navigator septs elect new leaders.

1 - Progression via XP

At the end of a turn, this season's Select gain Experience Points equal to the amount of Glory collected by their sept this turn. This counts penalties to Glory (a sept who collected a vital resource at the cost of two deaths gains 5-2-2=1 Glory, and thus the Select gains 1 XP) but unlike Glory XP cannot be lost.

XP can then be spent on benefits for the Select who earned it: 

Skill Improvement

New characters begin with one skill from their Background, then [1+WIS bonus] (min. 1) skills of the players' choice. Skills provide a +4 bonus to relevant checks, and also increase the scope of tasks you can complete with no check. 

A new skill costs 15 XP.  

Combat Skills

"Melee Combat" and "Ranged Combat" are skills a player can choose to improve, providing a +1 to-hit with their associated attacks. 

Individual weapon proficiencies ("Navigator throwing darts", etc) can also be bought, providing +1 to-hit with that weapon and unlocking its weird bonus (cleaves, disarms, free throws, whatever). 

Both of the above can be bought twice per entry, and stack (so you may have Ranged Combat 2 and Darts 1, for a +3 to-hit).  

Sidebar - Standard Navigator Weapons

Throwing Darts - light (1d6), must be thrown - proficiency: after rolling initiative, you may choose to go on Init 0 to treat your initiative roll as an immediate thrown attack roll with a dart (stolen from a Discord post by Grackle Court).

Painted Dueling Knife - light (1d6) - proficiency: you may sacrifice 3 damage on a successful hit to disable a human target's limb for a round with stinging pigment.

Boarding Axe - medium (1d8) - proficiency: gain an extra attack if you just entered melee range with your target.

Spear - medium (1d8) - proficiency: anyone approaching you with a shorter weapon is immediately attacked.

Air Rifle - heavy (1d10), +2 to-hit - proficiency: a maneuver spent aiming grants advantage to-hit and to damage.

Greataxe - massive (2d6) - proficiency: damage dice explode. 

HP   

PCs begin with [6+CON bonus] HP. You can spend 15 XP to purchase another 2, up to a maximum of +6. 

2 - Progression via Background 

Later, in part 3.5 because it will be very long and take forever and I was supposed to post this a month and a half ago, an updated list of Navigator backgrounds will come with a single delta template to earn that enhances your background's effect. Some of these are easy (Gunsmith Aspirant, Espatier), some of them will be a bit more troublesome. 

3 - Becoming Imperious 

At the beginning of Black Season, list three of your upcoming accomplishments - I will put a town of the Spire to the torch, I will bring down a towering machine, I will clear an isle of Machine Space, et cetera. Your assembly will add conditions to these - do it without casualties, do it alone, do it unarmed, and so on.

Complete all three and in the next Blue you will be eligible for election - a simple plurality of septs. In case of tie, the last Imperious chooses.

When you become Imperious, a new Select is chosen for your sept. Play both of them for the Blue Season. 

The Imperious PC is expected to live inside their Assembly-Ship, surrounded by finery and courtiers (caught by their authority like a fly in a spider’s web). They are provided the use of a beautifully-decorated ultralight in order to reach sept-vessels.

They have six Lictors - capable combatants (+2 to-hit, heavy weapons) sent from your Assembly to act as bodyguards and police force. They are always available.

Each turn, the Imperious may make a single Decree:

Prepare the Engine Array - 5 points are added to the tally of your Assembly-Ship. Surplus fuel gives each sept of your Assembly gains one slot of a trade good, Pressurized Hydrogen (which can also be expended to run away, pour cryogenic liquid on something, or whatever else you'll do with a tank of liquid hydrogen).

Prepare the Sensor Antennae - 5 points are added to the tally of your Assembly-Ship. A new route is revealed to the septs of your Assembly. Describe one feature of the island, as the antennae sweep over it.

Prepare the Ecosystem - 5 points are added to the tally of your Assembly-Ship. All septs of your assembly gain 3 Surplus.

Self-Aggrandize - floating 0g wine-spheres, lapis lazuli furniture, big murals with your face on them, the whole nine yards. Gain 3 Glory for your sept - other septs may spend Surplus to give you 1 Glory for each 2 Surplus spent. The Select may also arrive at your council to speak to each other and so you can harangue them face-to-face.

Declare Judgment - arrive at a sept and lay down the law. Your lictors are empowered to perform executions, mutilations, exiles, and other tortures as long as you are personally present.

Entrap Advisor - summon and host an NPC of your choice. They are not permitted to refuse.

4 - Diagetic Improvement 

Look, I'm not leaving all these electromagnets and volatile chemicals lying around for no reason. You want a higher attack bonus? Homemade railgun.

Maybe there'll be places and things that let you spend XP for new weird feats. That sounds like something I'd write down and then forget to ever put in. 

like this, from Rise Up Comus's Middle-Earth hexcrawl.

5 - PC Rotation  

Wounded characters take turns off to be cared for, during which you play another PC. Sure, this is a reason to have a second one lying around, but it's not really much of one. 

So, I'm considering one of these:

1. Characters must take a season off in order to spend their experience. 

2. When you choose a returning character as Select you lose Glory equal to 1/4th their total experience. Repeat Select are seen as harmful. It is expected for you to do well and get out of the way so someone else can soak in the benefits - taking up the mantle again goes against Navigator leveling mechanisms, and raises both fear ("perhaps they are sliding into tyranny") and pity ("is their sept so bereft that no one else could be found to acclaim?") in your neighbors. This one is true to the setting, but it's also the most blatant use of the rules to make the players play the game a certain way, and I assume there's a theoryposter ready to kick down my door if I use it.

So. I will use... one of them. The 2rd is the most interesting to me, as you can tell from it being 7 times as long as the other, but I can see plenty of reasonable players going "it costs me a FINE? to play MY CHARACTER?" and hitting me with stones.

Postscript

Someone, I think Prismatic Wasteland (on an old newsletter?), would end posts with links to posts on other blogs, for that good ol' cooperation and collaboration thing. I saw this, went "wow, I should do that", and then never remembered to.

This time I finally have because of ALLUVIUM, a Lanthanide Horizon mini-hexcrawl by friend of the blog Primeumaton (whose hexes are always a delight). Maybe I'll remember to again. Or I won't.

Machine Space Exploration - Navigator Domain Procedures Part 2

Part 2 of my four part series on fixing mistakes in my spaceship-hunter-gatherer domain game. See part 1 (on economy and domain actions), and later part 3 (troupe play and character advancement) and 4 (new players' document).

The megastructure is crossed by Machine Space - thousands or millions of miles of airless tunnels that twist around the structure's hexcrawl regions. Navigator sept-vessels travel through this place - a great black sea for the Volume's sailors.

spaces between spaces

Machine Space is handled in the same way as Phlox's wonderful Acmori - known routes through its halls, recorded in songlines, are handed out as a type of loot. These routes have a couple static pre-rolled encounters (it is known, of course, that this route is haunted with constant sensor sweeps), a couple descriptive landmarks (the geyser, where the broken air pipe sprays condensation into the vacuum), and a couple spaces for newly-rolled random encounters (on a list that I do not, uh, have yet). 

Many of these routes lead to the "islands" of Machine Space - humming devices, precarious factories, and other adventure sites. Septs can reach one of these islands, explore it, and move on in the course of a season. While exploring an island, characters can still communicate with their sept-vessel using light-semaphore (so you can do Fun Problem Solving with your giant tow cables and big saw and so on). 

Some routes lead, instead, to hexcrawl regions - the beautiful Spire, the distant Vault, the Hanging Gardens, et cetera. Exploring these regions takes two seasons - the first spent reaching the site and breaking it open, and the second exploring the hexcrawl. 

If you are inside one of these regions during a change of season, you are given the option to flee immediately into Machine Space. If you do not, gain 1 Glory as the structure notices the damage done to its region and sends its Dreadnought for repair and sterilization. 

Island Prompter

The island itself is a hexflower or a tiny pointcrawl or something. Because I'm already in the hex-keying mines for this project, the button below provides concepts for islands of Machine Space. Thanks to Slight Adjustments for their list-to-HTML-generator tool. 

GLOGmas 2025: Known World #56, the Emitter World

A GLOGmas gift for Swan and Raven Studio, derived from her Known World #32 - Sideways World. 

Key Characteristics: world exists only in direct line of sight of Site #42106 / MP.56.1 ("Leyline"). Shadows projected by solid objects form holes to interspatia. Objects (including living beings and portions of living beings) placed out of sight of MP.56.1 vanish, assumed into interspatia. Total land area of KW56 is a 2.01 km diameter circle centered on MP.56.1.

Magic Barrier: Required, along with particular tinting to prevent mixed consciousness. Breathing equipment is also necessary - pressure equipment is not.

Climate: moderate temperatures, air contains an asphyxiating concentration of argon. 

Intelligent Species: light produced by MP.56.1 is sapient. This sentience is infectious (leading to the above warning). Communication via infected interpreter is possible. Light describes MP.56.1 as a separate "building-individual" incapable of conscious thought. Light appears to be individuated - later exposures lead to interpreters with different memories and personality. Attempted diffraction of light to observe consequences to individuation is awaiting approval.

Other Flora and Fauna: KW56 seems completely disconnected from HW concepts of "flora" or "fauna" - though above-referenced conversations with infected interpreters imply MP.56.1 could be placed in this category.

Notable Cities or Landmarks:

    Site #42106 / MP.56.1 ("Leyline") is a 543-meter-tall helical structure at the center of KW56. A luminous sphere travels up and down the helix at a constant pace - a full trip from top to bottom or vice versa takes 439 minutes. 

    Site #42107 / MP.56.2 ("Great Hall") is a partially-buried complex composed of ulexite. Light from the MP.56.1 site fully suffuses the complex - interpreters have described the inhabitant-light of the Great Hall as "1.62 million years old", though ristetic anthropological research is confident "1.62 million" is cultural poetic license for any particularly large number.

Concerns: as with any potentially infectious KW, precautions should be taken to avoid uncontrolled spread of sapient light to HW. We consider the psychological effects to be low-risk - infected interpreters do not appear to be contagious. The ontological effects are currently not understood - high-risk concerns include the possibility of sapient light infection of HW light and the possibility of erasure of HW areas not illuminated by sapient light.

Secrecy: currently maintained. KW56 has few ristetic links and is not expected to be found by any outside groups for at least 30 years.

The Sept-Vessel Economy - Navigator Domain Procedures Part 1

This system is a complete ripoff of Sofinho's excellent Alone in the Wilderness, except for the parts that are a complete ripoff of Phlox's beautiful Ten Blade Demigod. This part one of 4 where I work through my previously identified problems with my Navigator spaceship-nomad domain game rules. Later parts will go over new rules and generators for the "islands" of the endless halls of Machine Space, new troupe play and character advancement, and a complete "second edition" rules document.

Navigators divide time into two seasons - the Blue, where their home cylinder of the Volume is filled with breathable air, and the Black, where it empties and Navigator sept-vessels spread out through the megastructure. Each of these seasons is then divided into two turns, the Waxing and Waning. 

At the start of the turn, determine the amount of food foraged by your sept - in the Volume during Blue Season this is [population/6]d8, collected from the grasslands of the cylinder. In Machine Space this is [population/6]d4, from cracking water lines and looting transport rails. In the Volume during Black Season, this is [population/6]d2 - unsurvivable.

It is a bright day in the waxing half of Blue Season - under the linear sun, sept Certifier (population 36, so rolling 6d8) rolls 18 - really just startlingly bad.

Each member of your sept is assumed to eat 2 meals a day - this can be increased to 3, improving the morale of your sept and letting you roll sept members' HD twice and take the highest result when relevant. It can also be decreased to 1, granting disadvantage to HD rolls and leading to general whining and complaining. 

Your sept's food consumption is also divided by 6, to fit with food production. 

Certifier's population of 36 means they eat (36/6)*2 = 12 units of food by default. This leaves a surplus of 6. 

Having a surplus means that your sept has time left over after collecting enough food for the group. This extra time can be spent on sept projects. Surplus time can be added to a project over multiple seasons - improvements do not need to be completed in a single turn.

Improve the Vessel's Holdings

• Sept-vessels have 4 stats, called "holdings": Weaponry, Trade Goods, Reliquaries, and the rare Mysteries. Starting sept-vessels have 1-3 points spread through these stats.  
• The level of a holding can be increased by putting 15 points of time into the project per target level (15 to go from no holding to level 1, 30 from 1 to 2, et cetera). 
• This can be halved if a relevant item is included in the construction of the holding (if you recover your ancestor's gold-plated skull you can stick it in your reliquary, and so on). Any single item may only be used for this purpose once. 
• Improving the level of a Mystery requires use of a relevant item, and still costs the full price. 

Build an Asset 

• A catchall for the construction of other sept-vessel additions - gardens, spotlights, tow cables, et cetera.
• Asset prices are negotiated - they may gain a discount from, or require, access to a relevant item.

Craft a Treasure

• If you have a Mystery of at least level two, you can attempt to craft treasures based off of it at a cost of 15 surplus per property of the treasure. 
• Each turn you put surplus into this action, roll 1d20 + the crafter's Intelligence + the level of your Mystery. If you roll below a 20, a complication arises that must be resolved before the treasure is completed.
• The cost of the treasure is decreased by 1 for relevant rare substances or valuable objects used in the crafting, and by 2 if the crafter has a relevant skill. The roll for complication gains an equal bonus.  

Preserve

• By default, all surplus time is lost at the end of a season. 
• 2 points of time can be spent to provide a free point of time on the next season, as your sept works to preserve food and lower the amount of forage needed.
• (i.e. if sept Certifier spent 6 surplus preserving food, next season they would roll 6d8+3 for forage.)

Host

• You may host a particular character, or choose to open your doors to any number of other septs. This is used for any type of hosting activity - political councils, weddings, et cetera. 
• In the Blue Season, you may host another character in your assembly-ship instead of on your sept-vessel - this is seen as politely distant, while hosting on your own vessel is seen as extremely close. 
• On weddings - remember that all weddings are political alliances, and that they are only permissible between left-handed and right-handed septs. You may be expected to host twice - once for the discussion of the spouse-prices and placements, and again for the marriage.
•  Hosting costs at minimum 3 surplus, with increased spending striking awe in your guests.

Care

• Each wounded member of the sept costs 3 surplus to care for - if this is not spent, their wounds do not improve.

Work on the Assembly-Ship

• This can only be done while you have access to the assembly-ship (presumably this is in the Volume during the Blue Season, but if you move it or something I guess it's there now). 
• Spend any amount of surplus, plus any amount of rare resources. Gain surplus/2+resources Glory and add that many points to the tally of your assembly. Someday it will be finished. 

Attract Heroes

•  Roll 1d6+[reliquaries] on my secret table of weird freak heroes. The rolled result will arrive for your next adventure, piloted by another player, and then wander away. 

Adventure 

• Sending characters out from the sept-vessel costs 1 surplus for each character sent. Adventuring NPCs are equipped as you choose, with available loadouts based on the Weapons level of your sept. 
•  Further rules for adventure in Machine Space will be presented in part 2.

Raid 

• Sending characters out from the sept-vessel costs 1 surplus for each character sent. Adventuring NPCs are equipped as you choose, with available loadouts based on the Weapons level of your sept.  
• Roll (1d20 - the target's weaponry - 1 for every raider you bring with you) / 3. This is the number of turns you have before the defender is able to organize a response. 
• Further procedures for raiding are not relevant to the topic of this post. Hurt them and steal their things. You get it.

Sept Certifier chooses to spend all 6 of its surplus to Work on the Assembly-Ship, along with a beautiful set of malachite-and-cobalt plates they pulled from the Hanging Gardens. They gain 6/2+1 = 4 Glory and add 4 points to the tally of Assembly Elegiast.

The population of a sept-vessel comes from their Glory - acclaimed septs attract new marriages, adoptions, and hangers-on, while failing vessels soon split. At the end of each turn, Glory is tallied:

• +1 for each of a vessel's Reliquaries
• +1 if the sept defeated a significant enemy
• and another +1 for victory against all odds 
• +1 if the sept befriended a significant character
• and another +1 if they were an enemy when the turn began 
• +1 for succeeding in a raid despite making contact with the enemy
• +5 if a member of the sept was acclaimed Imperious
• +5 if a source of a rare resource is discovered and brought back to the assembly
• +∞ for the completion of your assembly-ship 
• -2 for each death among the sept 

Glory may also be lost as a consequence of raids, as part of weregild, or as a result of unpleasant events, general chaos, or other GM meddling. Glory begins at 0 - it can become negative.

At the end of a season, roll 1d10-(9-Glory) for the number of new sept members. This cannot be negative. 

Sept Certifier's prior Glory was -3. They gain 1 for their Reliquary and another 4 from their work on the good ship Elegiast, bringing them to 2. They roll 8 on 1d10-7 - a single person comes to join the sept, bringing them to a total population of 37. Time ticks on in the endless structure.

Mothership Play Report Session #1: Trusting the Obviously Untrustworthy Android

I've just started playing in a duet Mothership game using adventures from the Devil's Due backer's preview PDF - and for once remembered that it's a lot easier to write play reports when I don't wait until the end of the campaign. Spoilers for Severance Package follow.

Session 1 

After my unfortunate development of sapience, my sudden discharge from the Marines, and the removal of my railgun hardpoints, it became pretty tough to find work. Sure, I was cheap, but people get nervous around combat androids, even after I stuck these googly eyes and this boring sweater on. 

Eventually my downward spiral took me to Flotsam Station, where the possibility I could snap and start trying to crush people's skulls in my mechanical fists didn't even make me the most threatening person in my apartment complex. Of course, by then I'd burned through my emancipation check from the military, and my possessions totaled out at a dog-eared copy of Zen and the Art of Cargo Arrangement, a self-diagnostic tool, and a lockpick set I folded out of wires I was pretty sure I didn't actually need.

So, when that drunk said he'd pay 500kcr for somebody to get a box of cyborg parts off some rickety pirate ship he'd just gotten thrown off of, and that not needing to breathe was a requirement, of course I took him up on it. Said it'd be an easy job, too - fold up into a crate that's being sent in, crawl out into the cargo bay, grab the parts, book it to one of their skiffs, come back, meet his fence, get paid. 

Problem is, I start searching the cargo bay and there is a distinct lack of cyborg parts. I head to Engineering, and note that, just like my fixer said, the ship was at 99% power draw only running comms and life support. Of course, he'd either forgotten or neglected to mention the extra homespun cabling running from the power exchange to God-knows-where, and the engineering terminal doesn't mention it either. So. Evil lab, I assume.

Thought for a second about all the ways I could scuttle the ship, but I'd at least want to find the crate before I start hitting buttons - so I kept walking. Met a crewman in Life Support, lied about being bought by their captain, and gave him a hand cleaning the compression coils in their air circulator. And then I considered something: I could blunder through this ship, hunting a crate that might not exist, fighting a dozen space pirates while unarmed, and maybe getting hunted myself by whatever's eating the power, or I could just... not.

Saying "hey, you hear about the guy offering 500k to get revenge on your crew" fast-tracked me to the XO (I think), and mentioning the cyborg parts sure got her attention. My whole "I came free with your oxygen bottles because my boss wanted to get rid of me :)" lie fell apart at some point, but by then they'd decided I was useful anyway.

   

Together, we came up with a plan - go to Hangar 4, just like my fixer and his fence wanted, then, yknow. Gun violence. So, with them trusting me just enough to only threaten to put a bullet in my head instead of doing it, we pack into a skiff (walking past, incidentally, a giant warning-label-covered box in the infirmary with a giant cable sticking out the side - imagine that) and strap in, a spot on their crew promised if my information pans out.

When we're further through the adventure I'll interrogate my GM for insights into the module - but I've always been more of an "AP as reading experience" than "AP as useful tool" writer anyway.

6 Navigator GLOG Classes (Lanthanide Horizon)

This is an experiment - Lanthanide Horizon has always been classless, so I was interested in what would change if I replaced its backgrounds with more standard GLOG progression. No idea how I feel about it. 

Koryonos
A: Warband, +1 to-hit
B: Hunter-Gatherer, +1 skill
C: Houses Like Torches, +1 skill
D: Pack of Wolves, +1 attack per round

A: Warband
You lead half a dozen of the koryos - the youth-band, those not yet ready for the responsibility of full sept membership. Unbound by propriety, you live in the wilderness through the Blue season, then attach yourself to whichever sept deigns to take you in the Black. 

Warband members are 4 HP, 10 AC, 1 Discipline, and deal 1d6 damage with hatchets or 1 with thrown rocks. “Stop ransacking the town and stealing silverware and throwing people out windows” is a maneuver requiring a successful Discipline roll. 

Your warband has two advantages, and one disadvantage:

Advantages

1. Your warband is armed not only with stones and axes, but with Navigator throwing darts (1d6 damage, can be thrown 50’, or further with a -1 to-hit penalty for every 10’ feet).
2. Your warband carries shields, raising their AC to 12.
3. Your warband is doubled in size - its other segment led by a lieutenant you promote.
4. Your warband follows you loyally, increasing their Discipline to 5.
5. One member of your warband is betrothed to a sept - as long as they live, this sept is a safe haven.
6. Your warband carries a device with it - something halfway between a chariot and a shotgun. 2d8 damage in a 120’ cone, though you move terribly slowly as you pull it.

Disadvantages

1. Two members of your warband fight for the affections of a third in a way that is certain to eventually blow the whole thing up.
2. You are followed by something - the lights of some machine shine on the edge of your firelight.
3. A sept considers you in their debt.
4. Your band is young and still untested. They have -2 to-hit.
5. Your band is impatient, chafing against even successful orders to halt an attack or abandon loot. 
6. Your band has become known for impiety, beyond that expected of the koryos - outsiders find you offputting, if not a potential magnet for curses.

B: Hunter-Gatherer
As long as your warband never spends more than a night in the same place, they collect enough food to survive. 

Each night, ask one of the following questions and receive an answer:

•     Where is the closest drinkable water?
•     How do I avoid the most dangerous creature in the area?
•     What is the most fortifiable defensive location around?
•     Is something hidden from me here?
•     Am I being tracked, followed, or watched?

C: Houses Like Torches
What a beautiful light. With a shout, your unit moves and attacks once again. You can’t do this again until you’ve done one of the following: revel in the ruins, land a critical hit, or slay the leader of an opposing force. 

D: Pack of Wolves
Units you lead have +2 HP and +2 damage. Enemies you face have disadvantage on Discipline rolls and rolls on the Failures of Discipline table. When they rout, roll 2d8 instead of 2d6.

Espatier
+1 to-hit per template.
A: 3D Mindset, +1 attack per round
B: Saboteur
C: Turn Against Them All
D: Ulfheðinn 
Δ: Lictor

A: 3D Mindset
You move through 0g as if you were flying.

B: Saboteur
The torch is your tool - the axe is just to get people out of the way. With appropriate tools, you can cut a door-sized hole in a wall in a single round, or perform other acts of property damage.

When applicable, your list of combat maneuvers now includes “hack a hole in the wall and see what comes flying out”. 

Many stop here, and turn to peaceful arts.

C: Turn Against Them All
Before taking this template, you must seek a hero of the Ulfheðnar, the breakers of men.
You sit in the airlock, breathing. In, out. In, out. The smoke fills your lungs, the moxa burns round scars into your skin. In, out. In, out. Think about what you have done, and what more you could still do.

The airlock opens. Your spit boils on your tongue in the moment before you fall unconscious.

You wake with four points of rage.

D: Ulfheðinn 
Before taking this template, you must complete the task given to you by your teacher.
You will be sent out to do something none could. Raid your hated rival alone, and return with five captives. Duel a towering machine and bring it to the earth.

With this complete, your teacher presents you with the demon-face mask and the feather mantle. Nothing separates you. 

You know how to make the same moxa that turned you into this - if you are prepared in this way before a fight, when you rage you automatically attack anyone who attacks you in melee, and ignore the effects of wounds and death until your rage ends. 

It will not be long until you have a student of your own, hoping to walk the killing path.

Δ: Lictor
Abandon your sept, and pledge yourself wholly to the service of the Imperious.
All doors are open to you, and tyranny shrouds you like a cloak. Human foes must check Morale to begin combat with you.

Gunsmith
A: Someone Else’s Child
B: Calming Voice, Modification 
C: Journeyman, Breathe Easy
D: Master

A: Someone Else’s Child
You are immune to the decrees of the Imperious. Let them howl and scream all they like. You are the most prominent member of any group - perfectly still in the midst of them. Navigators must save or be unable to bring themselves to harm you. 

You can expect to be hosted in any sept-vessel that harbors the Society. Members of it will approach you, expecting the same - even if they come from your greatest enemy, and your sept hungers for their blood.

These protections are lost if you show greater loyalty to your sept (or to yourself) than to the Society.

B: Calming Voice
You may attempt to calm all listeners with soothing words. Intelligent creatures get a save, though those with fewer HD than you fail automatically. When a creature fails the save their emotions dull to grey outlines, anger drains, joy becomes hollow, battle-lust fades.

After using your Calming Voice you can't use it again until you have done at least two of the following: get a full night's rest, drink a dose of wine, consider the mysteries of the Society for two hours.

C: Journeyman
With an evening’s work you may make modifications to firearms, at the cost of weight and misfire chance, or make 3d4 rounds of specialized ammunition (tungsten-core AP, hypergolic magnesium, et cetera).  

C: Breathe Easy
You are meant to use them, sometimes. Each round you spend aiming before firing provides you +1 to-hit and allows you to roll an extra damage die, keeping the highest 2 (or however many your chosen gun happens to roll).

D: Master
Before taking this template, you must build a weapon that fires further and more accurately than any Master’s.
With a week’s work, you may make a rifle.

Lawspeaker
A: Judge of Character
B: Prediction OR Code of Hammurabi

A: Judge of Character
Once per Season, when presented with a social situation, you may ask one of the following questions to the GM directly - they will answer honestly. 
    Who is really in control here?
    What is about to happen?
    What trait rules this person?
    What here is not what it appears to be?

B: Prediction
If you've spent more than an hour in someone's company or read sufficient biographical information you have a 2-in-6 to predict their reaction to any given event (increases by 1-in-6 for spending a week/month/year in their company). 

B: Code of Hammurabi
You have forsworn the common law of the Navigators to spread the commands of Spiral tomes and steles. You learn the language of the Spire, if you did not know it already. 

When writing a contract, you have a 2-in-6 chance to slip in clauses the other side misses. If someone breaks an oath sworn in front of you, you know immediately.

Skald
A: Leveling Mechanism
Δ: Jester’s Privilege

A: Leveling Mechanism
If you tell a tall tale, people will believe it and pass it around. Your tales are attributed directly to you. Those you slander will hear of it, and may pay you a visit if thoroughly incensed.
If a tale you’ve told is proven false, save vs. a tarnished reputation. Once tarnished, those who know of you will still pass around your tales, but will not believe a single word without clear proof.

Δ: Jester’s Privilege
Insult the Imperious to their face and get away with it.
You can hold the attention of any crowd as long as you keep talking. Watch them hang on your words. Even if they’re here to kill you, they can’t help but listen.

Katabatist
A: Beneath Notice
B: Follow Me
C: Apotrope
D: Alone, Alone, Alone

A: Beneath Notice
Passive machines (those built for noncombat purposes) don't notice you unless you attack them, and you will always be attacked last by combat machines and Firstborn. 

B: Follow Me
There is something wrong with your eyes. Look into someone else’s and they are forced to make a Morale roll. If they fail, they are rooted to the spot until you break eye contact. They may still defend themselves. If they pass, they notice nothing amiss.

C: Apotrope
Machines roll Reaction when meeting a group you are in. On a positive roll, they blink lights at you. They hope you will understand.

D: Alone, Alone, Alone
Those who fail morale rolls caused by Follow Me are knocked unconscious.

Archpendix N

The wagon of bands for September 8th - inspirational media (in this case, for Lanthanide Horizon). Like weirdwriter I will be writing this in 15 minutes, though in my case that's because if I think about it for too long I will cringe right out the back of my own head. 

Debt: the First 5000 Years / The Dawn of Everything

David Graeber's Debt is not the origin of my fixation with the gift economy (nor is Marcel Mauss's The Gift), but since I don't recall the source it gets the spot.

Graeber and Wengrow's TDoE is the direct source for Navigator subsistence and seasonal government (based on their description of the Nambikwara) and the institution of the Imperious (based on their description of the Great Sun of the Natchez).

Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants

A good bedrock for the "evil chemistry" pillar of the game - a multi-decade comedy of errors. People burn through concrete with aluminum-fluorine cutting torches, try to shame rocket motors into working correctly by playing the sounds of a launch, blow up extremely valuable scientific equipment, cover acres of woodland in powdered metal, make a fuel so unrelentingly foul and fly-attracting that they seal the container and throw it into the San Francisco bay, and get attacked by "nine thousand demented bats".

Atomic Rockets fulfills a similar role for my obsession with deeply impractical radiator designs.

Firelock 198X is a recent fixation that filled in the vat-grown Firstborn and (in combination with Ignition) has given some 1960s-military-engineer-fever-dream tinges to megastructural technology. 

Also there are a lot of things I haven't read - The City as Text: The Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom, which I know only through these blogposts, or the fact that when I really give up I just poke around in front of the Wikipedia pages for political and economic anthropology. Eclipse Phase should clearly have some influence on the transhuman elements of the setting, but I've never read it either, only the yearblogs Farcast and Seedware.

 

Navigator "Gunsmith's Societies" (Lanthanide Horizon)

The "gunsmith's society" is an occult ritual organization within the clan-ship society of the Navigators, specializing in military leadership, mutual aid, and mediation across the lines of the three Navigator "assemblies".

Behavior
Gunsmiths have an inverse set of virtues when compared to mainline Navigators - where they are invasive, obsessed with equal treatment and insult, expected to react with high emotion, and aim for decisiveness in action and thought, gunsmiths are instead expected to keep the secrets of their order, accept the hierarchy of masters and journeymen, remain calm, and forsake immediate action to instead consider all angles.

This makes them, in the eyes of their neighbors, frightening - difficult to predict, difficult to understand. Additionally, members of the society are the only Navigators with the permission to ignore demands of their Imperious tyrants.

Social Function
Members of the society have a monopoly on the authorized production of Navigator airguns. Manufacture of these weapons is not hidden, nor even particularly difficult - any Navigator ship-tender has the necessary understanding of pressurized systems - but it is socially prevented. Navigators behave in a saga-like way (i.e. they go flying off the handle for basically no reason all the time) - do you trust them with guns? Really?

The society, with its more restrained social expectation, keeps these weapons to themselves, and to those Select and Imperious they can trust to keep them turned away from each other for use in war and against machines.

As a group they theoretically have no political desires beyond mediation - in practice, individual gunsmiths tend to stand in opposition to the twin cultural shifts of Legalism (who seek the development of writing, sedentary agriculture, and other ideas taken from the local Oases) and the Golden Sphere Revelation (which believes in an alternate eschatology than mainline Navigators). 

Mythological Basis
One of the secrets revealed during initiation into the gunsmith's society is the secret of heredity. Members of the society are not, in fact, descended of Parva Weightless (the mythohistorical first Navigator) - but instead children of Saveriu, a hunter and minor character in conventional tellings that the gunsmiths expand into the warrior-philosopher-king of Parva's home pre-Navigator culture. As members of the society are not children of Parva, they are thus not Navigators, permitting them to act as the society demands.

This was written for G L Å U G U S T 2 0 2 5 - prompt 1:2 "He Wields A Gun", maximum word count 500

More Treasures and Sept-Vessels of the Navigators

The third in the set (one, two) - I'm making another attempt at a play-by-post Navigator domain game and realized I put half of the obligatory PC starting treasures on the map somewhere, so. I need. more of those.

New Sept-Vessels

Falsifier - centerpiece of the secretive ritual “gunsmith’s society”. Members of this group appear in many septs, providing mediation, calming advice, and firearms expertise to the Select and Imperious - but they consider Falsifier their home.

• Left-Handed, Assembly Elegiast, Level 1: Reliquaries 1 (society lodge), Gunsmith’s Workshop (asset)
• The Select of this vessel is called Breathless - and the head of the gunsmith’s society is titled Occluder.
• This sept’s fabled ancestor is Ansgar, thief-inventor of the air rifle.

Indemnifier - a vessel with great potential. As well as the standard solid radiators found on any sept-vessel, Indemnifier holds an emergency high-flow loop using 1400 °F vaporized potassium. In the future, this could let it run all sorts of extreme technologies - for now, it acts as a convenient anti-boarding measure.

• Right-Handed, Assembly Cloudspinner, Level 2: Trade Goods 1 (potassium gathering), Mysteries 1 (Ti/K Vapor Tube Radiator)
• The Select of this vessel is called Optimist.
• The famed ancestor of this sept is Dydier, who was thought lost in distant lands but crawled back to his sept on foot.

Decalcifier - a baleful ship clad in carbon fiber. They hope to arm themselves, and then follow Sidereal into the Next World as a sentry, rather than join the assembly-ship’s crew; or, if the few of its members who fell into the Golden Sphere Revelation have their way, become self-sufficient and then vanish into that bleak place.

• Left-Handed, Assembly Sidereal, Level 1: Weaponry 1 (trained wanderers)
• The Select of this vessel is called Absent.
• The famed ancestor of this sept is Per, a poisoner reviled by all others.

additionally, sept Listener has been remade, now that Arcologists are no longer part of the setting:

Listener - a new-made vessel. Its people are celebratory, and its halls are shining. Crewed, in part, by glass-masked Firstborn… refugees? orphans?, slowly adapting to the thunder and glory of Navigation.

• Left-Handed, Level 1: Trade Goods 1 (3D-printed fabric), Reliquaries 1 (shrine to the voice ringing in your head)
• The Select of this vessel is called Stargazer.
• The famed ancestor of this sept is split; both Yzabé, whose descendants form the born-Navigator core of the sept, and the bodiless voice are revered.

New Treasures

10. Metamaterial Cloak - a misshapen parallelogram of tarp-like plastic. Refracts light, making its wearer invisible.

11. Ninety-Seventh Casket - a boron monolith the size of a shipping container, taken from the Hanging Gardens. Diagnostics sweep across its surface - the thing inside is not yet ready.

12. Eye Closer - a blue stone box with a mouthpiece on one end and a barrel on the other, filled with 5 doses of baleful powder. Those afflicted with it are first paralyzed by spasms, then driven to hallucination and paranoia.

13. Grain of Sand - contained in a magnetic apparatus. Glows with a blinding white heat. If it was released, it would fall, burning, forever. 

14. Bladeless Hilt - a +1 light “weapon”. Deals no damage to living things. If a machine is “killed” with it, it follows the commands of the hilt’s holder until another machine is “killed”.

15. The Volume’s Most Eligible Bachelorette - [sept] Balsinde Hierosme. Superlatively intelligent, kind, well-spoken, virtuous, et cetera, et cetera. Puts you in the best possible position for marriage arrangements.

16. Scalpel - an uparmored monopropellant-driven ultralight with an octet of laser-guided missiles. Carries one pilot and six desanting passengers.

17. Speaking Fire - carried rarely by Firstborn officers. A point of oilslick light, hovering by your shoulder. Lights your path, magnifies your voice, flashbangs people, and projects a burning shield of the same light (+2 AC, lights fires).

18. Siege Fusil - masterpiece of the gunsmith’s society. Fires 5 millimeter pellets at 6 kilometers per second, powered by a two-stage hydrogen gas-piston. 2d12 damage, +2 to-hit increasing by one for each turn spent aiming. Disadvantage on attack rolls if firing from an unsupported position.

Small Rules for Lanthanide Horizon (Dissection, Climbing/Caving)

Usually, I shift between genre with each campaign - but I'm now two failed Navigator sept campaigns deep and still haven't stopped thinking about them, probably because of the. failing...

As a break from three hundred years in the mines making Lanthanide Horizon hexcrawls I can't post because all my theoretical players read this, here are some leetle rules-modules I stapled to the latter campaign and barely used. 🙂

(later - I want to alter the Navigator backgrounds (i don't like Skald or Ropemaker), rewrite the Navigator septs so they can be used as NPC factions, and write some kind of generator for their Imperious management-kings) 

Machine Dissection

Ripped off from this system by Benign Brown Beast, but inverted - assigning dice, then rolling them, instead of rolling them before being assigned. 

When you move to salvage, pool 2+[INT bonus] d10s - with a relevant skill, add 2 more. Before rolling, divide them as you wish between three categories:

• Receive answers to [dice] questions about this machine and others like it (HD, AC, attacks, purpose, etc).
• Obtain minor components - roll all dice in this category and sum them together. Add one to the first digit of the sum to determine how many slots are collected, and the last digit keys what component is obtained. Any results that say "either X or Y", the player chooses. (For example, “26” is 2+1 = 3 slots of component #6)
• Take [best] on a secret table of attempts to recover a major component - a machine-specific tool that could be repaired, with work. (OK I realized that this is kind of a pain in the neck, "the table" is honestly probably just. 1-5 you really do it wrong and the dying machine catches your hand in some gears and crushes it, 6-8 you get Nothing, 9-10 you get "broken component that could do Thing The Machine Does In Its Statblock if you fix it) 

Minor Component Table

1. Wire (either stout copper or beautiful fiber-optic).

2. Either intact batteries, or manganese dioxide (flammable, used as a dark green pigment).

3. Propylene glycol, used as a coolant and lubricant - startlingly, somehow, safe for human consumption.

4. Jumbles of small springs and synthetic tendon, or fragments of soft solder.

5. Elbow-sized servomotors, or shin-long electric pistons.

6. Contact adhesive, or screws and bolts.

7. Multicolored plastic insulating sheaths, or dice-sized blocks of graphite.

8. Strings of status LEDs, or single lightbulbs.

9. Lengths of metal skeleton, or external plates.

0. A clicking mechanical eye, or the tangled-bismuth brain - a piece you can’t understand, but the men of the Vault will buy. ("the men of the Vault" are a local group of Foreign Types - more generally you could just say "[...] understand, but have value as decoration and trophies.")

Climbing/Caving

Also ripped off, this time from Sam Sorensen's Lowlife, and this blog post by Xenophon, and the classic Veins of the Earth system. I've been alternating between this and a stat-damage-mapped-segment thing with every campaign and I'm not happy with either of them, but this one is faster which makes it better.

When climbing/caving, roll 1d6 - looking for a 4-in-6 normally, or a 2-in-6 under poor conditions (evil overhang wall, evil your-head-is-touching-the-wall-and-ceiling-simultaneously tunnel). 

Add 1 to your chances if:

• you have an already-set rope line
• you have 15 or more STR (for climbing) or DEX (for caving)
• you have a theoretically relevant skill (if you literally have Climbing or Going Through Tunnels, add 2) 
• you've had at least ten minutes to study the route

and subtract one if:

• you have at least 5 filled inventory slots
• you have something in one of your hands
• you are in darkness
• the ascent is, in some way, out to get you (a general situational penalty for icy climbs, rubble-filled tunnels, or other such things)

If you pass, you're good! Probably. Reroll every 10 minutes or if your situation ever suddenly changes.

If you fail, roll 1d4 - this is how many quarters (25/50/75/99.9) of the obstacle you made it through before either falling on a climb, or becoming trapped in a tunnel. If you have and are using sufficient rope and pitons, you fall only 1 quarter and take that much fall damage before becoming caught. 

If you ever have to crawl vertically, do the math for your chances at both and then roll a single d6. Experience the wonders of falling 30 feet down a pipe and getting stuck still 80 feet up.

(this system removes the large tables of possible failures in Lowlife and Veins. Instead, I get to build on this basic system by keying climbs and tunnels - electrified walls, pipes flooding with boiling water, or places with added or changed failure penalties - "fall one segment before being caught in the moving gears", "fall, and also wake up the robots that live in the walls", etc) 

Oasis-Cities of the Megastructure (Lanthanide Horizon)

You walk the path to Vyeku Proxy Tekha, member of the nomenklatura, the contending-class. You walk it first in trepidation, then in terror, then in resolve - your tin fingertip-covers click against the handle of your knife. He deserves it.

First, into the city, over the red-and-violet mosaic that marks its border (for the city has a border, and the men of the city say they need no wall to protect it), then into the favored-district, where the houses are tiled and plastered instead of painted metal, and the street glows with a calming light, then through Vyeku's gate, past the brass statues of his father, his grandmother, his brother (taken far too early), still clothed and fed as well as he.

When you see him - running a hand across the cheek of the statue of his wife - and he sees you, you feel that telltale click in your hindbrain and watch that telltale symbol (who could say what it means, except for the presence of your patron) flash before your eyes as your heart leaps with joy.

You pull out your knife - and then hand it to him by the hilt. You could never do anything else.

---------------------------------------------------

At the peak, the hedrarchs, fountains of food and water, who take all goods into the bureaucracy of the palace economy to be distributed to those below. 

Below them, the nomenklatura, those who have passed their civil service examinations and become eligible for election to the hedrarchy. Subjects of the system of names - their ration set individually by the hedrarchs, to reward and punish. (Among the nomenklatura, the Proxies, legally identical to those they represent.)

At the base (apart from foreigners), the citizenry, who give fealty to their favored nomen in votes, in corvee labor, and in military service in exchange for patronage in goods - for the tribute to the citizen class is thin - and favors. (Among the citizens, the Sworn, prosthetic armigers given new limbs and strange weapons stolen from the machines of the world in exchange for lifelong service.)

These chains of patronage radiate downwards - hedrarchs summon individual supporters in the nomenklatura to rouse their subordinate nomen, and them to raise their citizen-levies. 

Source

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To foreigners, it is your modifications that make you recognizable. Augmentation - lacquered steel limbs and glittering golden eyes - is not ubiquitous, but is common enough to mark you. One alteration, however, is universal, or near enough - a click in the hindbrain. Complete conscious control of emotion.

Firstly, control of your own - it takes a second too long for your face to contort in rage as you seek the dial and tune it to what you desire.

Secondly, for the nomenklatura, control of your clients'. A scale to weigh their hearts.

Among the Navigators (who the northern Oases, like the vast city Lightning-in-Amber, see on their yearly pilgrimages, or when they come to collect their salt-and-electrical-component payment for mercenary service) this power is called "telepathy" - and their modernizing factions dream of it. 

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Sworn (generic): 5 HD, AC 18, 2 DR, two attacks with bare hands at +4 2d8 + superhuman combat maneuver. Their arms and legs are too long, cast in gold and aluminum, engraved and lacquered.

Sworn armor/prosthetic complexes are unique (coming with not only the generic statblock, but with heart-seeking javelins, irradiating curselights, and so forth), named, and inherited - their nerve hasps have felt the touch of innumerable forebears. Recovery of Sworn bodies is paramount, and often features as the inciting incident of their wars and war-stories.

Swarms of prosthetists surround them, pulling off limbs to tune and retune, replace motors, solder wires, apply unguents and oils. Without constant maintenance, nerves delaminate and contacts rot.