Alignment Faiths in Not My Destination

Summer has come and (by the calendar of the local university) gone, and my hypothetically summer game Not My Destination has never arrived. So, now it's a fall game - something to run while I stare miserably at the land-islands. 

The hexcrawl is mostly finished, though the tentpole dungeon is completely blank - both will probably be posted along with play reports when the game begins. 

What I do have, however, is unhelpful lore - the three alignment/faiths of the setting, trapped in their miserable counter-reformation and, somewhere across the horizon from the Sea of Lights, their hideous wars of religion. 

Chaotic Sanctifiers believe that, as the Authority is all-good and all-powerful, They created nothing that was evil. Thus, all actions are ethical and all men are saints, no matter how opposed they seem to human morals.

Neutral Good Men are dualists, believing evil comes from the Adversary, an equal and opposite to the Authority, and that by right conduct one can war against the Adversary in defense of order and good. While popular and state-supported, this is actually a new development of the Neutral religion, and its opponents say the "Adversary" is being projected back into the various evil spirits and foreign gods of the Canon. Inquisitors and so on are assumed to be Good Men. 

Lawful Hostages believe in a bizarre, inhuman cosmology where the world was formed from specks of floating dust, and mankind rose from algae. They say the Authority is a disguise, worn by a horde of cruel demons that set upon man and fooled the pagans into worship and sacrifice. A change of mask and voila, now the Archpriest pays homage to Them as well. The only hope for humanity is enlightenment, and to achieve enlightenment requires the breaking of the chains the demons set upon man: fear, pain, sleep, et cetera. As such, a stringent regime of asceticism and mutilation is common. Hostagehood is common here in the isles of the Sea of Lights.

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. 

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.

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

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. 

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

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.

Mothership Month - Ghost Ship

(for the month, i'm going to throw together a couple short, unedited posts. no scope-crept regional hexcrawls, no 1d20 character classes, no nothing. just sitting in front of an intentionally-uncomfortable setup and hammering out some text)

Back when you could hold orbit over Mars, instead of getting shredded by Kessler or blinded by the ring-sun, back in the days of the intendencies, Colcom wanted to do something about the secessionists. We'd made a couple lucky hits on ground sites, on low-orbits, started a riot or two on the moons, and they decided they needed a show of force. 

So, they took this old destroyer, CCMS something-or-other, rechristened it the CCMS Olympus Mons - a threat, get it? We still own you. Loaded it up with high-altitude neutron bombs, so the infrastructure'd still be around for them to retake. Wanted to make sure we knew about it - staged some photos of the payload bay and then let them leak. Knew they wouldn't have to pull the trigger, just hang the sword over our heads. Didn't want to use them, anyway - things were tense enough between them and... what, they weren't the Leaden Conference yet, they were the... were they still flying that old banner of Fleet Kadzkadzat? 

Doesn't matter, just know that the LC, under whatever name, would've had a tantrum if their rivals made it rain hard neutrons over Noctis Labyrinthus. 

source

Of course, it didn't get that far - the Mons missed its braking burn, sailed right past us. Never closed its orbit. A few days later it popped, in clear view of everybody and God. All hands lost, reactor solidified. Drifted through the Jovians, but the LC wouldn't touch it - didn't want the implication that they did anything, so they just made a couple mocking press releases and painted any Colcom ship who tried to go after it with a targeting laser. 

By now it's dead-cold. Could be anywhere. Every once in a while some out-system tinpot tyrant says they picked it up, but they've always been bad fakes; hauler with a couple PD guns and a hold full of kinetic bombardment rods with "neutron bomb" stenciled on them, you get the idea. 

Colcom and the LC are in a god-forsaken court case about the thing - Colcom's trying to get them strung up on public-endangerment-via-loss-of-radioactive-materials, ignoring distress calls, et cetera. Never tried to blame them for the wreck, though - never said anything about enemy action. I'll choose to believe it was us, somehow. Engine sabotage and a field of magnetic limpets, or something. A bright spot in our history to look back on.

Isotelus Complex (Mothership? Eclipse Phase?)

Isotelus Complex is an in-progress bipartite colony on/over the Jovian moon Callisto, under the purview of the "Regional Authority" (RA), manager/holders of a variety of habitats in the area. Isotelus is largely paid for by a public/private partnership with the Yosef Industrial Concern, who offered startup capital in exchange for a substantial cut of the expected mining profits.

The Complex comprises a orbital habitat, a space elevator, and a groundside colony, currently in progress. The majority of the population lives on the orbital habitat and the surface colony. Simultaneously.

After a 6/5 vote by RA/determination (and months of discussion between RA/consensus and RA/dissent), it was decided that all working citizens of Isotelus would be uploaded and forked. Most work both in orbit (operating their baseline bodies for maintenance, shipping, loading, and administrative tasks) and groundside, loaded into chitinous, bear-sized labor forms.

These labor forms are built to survive the hostile conditions of the Callisto surface; defense against radiation, a hardened exoskeleton to maintain internal pressure, and a set of grown or implanted tools and communication devices. In optimal conditions, a labor form breathes exactly once every 29 hours.

Wide, low homes of labor forms line the northern edge of the planned colony, where construction efforts are at their peak. This subcommunity ("the Bucket", either in reference to its various craters or because "that's where you put crabs") also maintains a minor population of baselines, for supporting tasks - a variety of derogatory terms exist for this population among those in orbit.

Once a year, the orbital habitat doubles in population as the groundsiders are given their vacation hours. Office workers ride to parties on the back of themselves, play a variety of asymmetrical sports, and try not to think about what it means if your counterpart doesn't show up.

Crime, and the Other Thing

Nothing should go up or down the space elevator except for workers and parts for the surface. Of course, there is a booming trade in smuggling absolutely anything else - people creep up or down in boxes to meet their counterpart outside the allotted vacation, send (deeply confused) doctors, (barely helpful) medicine, and (stolen) organs down to provide illicit healthcare to labor bodies, hide illegal drugs in the walls of boxes, and all the other things you'd expect them to do.

Mismanagement of company-provided infrastructure, attempted escape from contracted work, assault, and all other crimes are handled not by the Regional Authority, but directly by ComSec (a franchise of a subsidiary of a subsidiary of the Yosef Industrial Concern), who are free from the upload requirements, and thus nearly all baseline and nearly all wandering the halls of the orbital station in their yellow raincoats.

They are explicitly, entirely, focused on the success of the Concern's investment, and nothing else.

The Ways This Will Go Wrong

Officially, the Regional Authority's 33-person administrative body is entirely in control of the Complex, ensuring measured, representative governance with quotaed sortition and adversarial decisionmaking. In practice, the Concern owns the police, owns the labor bodies, owns the materials used to build the station, and is starting to get nervous about exceeding the budget.

So, despite their required placement in administration, the place of the labor bodies on an inhabited Callisto is, to put it lightly, in flux. It is a common refrain in the literature of dissident groups that every single one of them is certain to have a captive bolt pistol pressed to the back of their shelled heads when the job is done.

That might not be true; it's inefficient, after all. It's more likely that the Concern will treat them like anyone else unemployed - a simple choice of "leave now, or sign another contract". The fact the labor forms couldn't fit on any ship out, don't know anyone who isn't working onboard Isotelus, and have only now paid off their fees for upload is not the Concern's problem. Sign, or leave.

The first wave of groundside colonists is coming soon. Positions from doctrinaire Marxism-Palladeism to leaving the surface purely for labor bodies are sprouting in orbit. The space elevator is hitting its maximum safe stress level with every launch. Six ComSec men spaced a dock worker. The impression contracts are ending soon and not a single person knows how the Concern plans to keep the station staffed.

And it's only going to get worse.

Edit 12/25/2024: Isotelus Complex has become a 28 page zine adventure for Mothership 1e.

Lanthanide Horizon - Tied in the Strings of Dream (Sustainer Cells)

    Within the megastructure, resources are scarce. Water must be tapped from lines, light and heat from stolen electricity, food slowly persuaded to grow in waste pits and cracked panels. So, if you have the tools, why not just wait it out?

    The Sustainer Cells keep the majority of their members in cryosleep, hidden away in tunnels and vaults below, above, and within their villages. The few still awake labor to keep themselves alive and the pods functional. These sleepers wait for the turning of the world, dreaming and speaking between themselves of things hidden from the eyes of the wakeful.

    People transition back and forth from sleep to labor, switching bodies in the untethered land of dreams. The bricklayer Ceyhun, struck dead in a fall, is pulled out of a chamber later that day - next month, they wish to retire, so the body is returned. A week after that, it is brought back with the weaver Binnur inside. Given this disconnection from the body, gender has no cultural relevance among the Sustainers - a person is a person, and the body has a sex in the same way it has an eye color.

    Children are born among the wakeful - raised in batches based on age, uploaded as part of their adulthood, and then sent out on their rites of passage, to meet distant folk and strange monuments. Upon their return, they are members of the community, and given their inheritance (since, hopefully, their parents will never truly die). Rarely, as an alternative to childrearing, bodies will be pulled from sleep with no known Sustainer mind within - these memoryless, confused inducted are sent through childhood like any other, learning the language and ways of the wakeful. However, once brought to adulthood, biological children follow in the caste of their parents, while the inducted are untethered.

    These four castes (those of the Farmer, the Artisan, the Scavenger, and the Diviner) are half of the social hierarchy in the Cells - in general, the Diviners command official social and political power, by reading and interpreting the dreams of the sleepers (to be clear - the Diviners do actually read signs according to a set of rules, and in general they don't just say everything means "give me all your stuff" - people generally believe in their own traditions and act accordingly). Within the castes are jobs themselves - a large landowner and the people working their land are both within the Farmer caste, and everyone from a machinist to a playwright is an Artisan. Under their heavy plastic-and-fur coats and their long, narrow hats, the wakeful wear face paint marking their caste and identity, applied to new bodies as part of the ceremonies of revival.

    The other half of social hierarchy is through goods - the wakeful operate on a barter and gift economy. Needed items are traded directly, or in some cases simply given. This giving is competitive - social norms reward lavish gifts and expect, eventually, an even greater return from the receiver. Winning these competitions of charity by giving the other person more than they could return improves and maintains your social reputation. The ability for a person to provide gifts is, in theory, a mirror of the respect granted their caste: a rich herder can hand out entire animals, a team of artisans clothes and tools, a scavenger brings devices from the megastructure, but the diviners produce nothing to give.

    When a Cell is threatened by war many of the sleepers will be pulled awake - even though they cannot be fed in the long term, and in the short time they cost the Cell greatly, having five, ten, a hundred times as many bodies to hold spears, to fix armor, to continue the harvest, and to read the signs lets them survive - hopefully.

    Similarly, if a Cell's home becomes uninhabitable, a body is conscripted for each of the community's sleepers in preparation for them all to flee - dragging as many chambers as they can keep online behind them as they search for a new home. These flights come with a loosening of social norms - unofficial "debts" of gifts are forgotten, names are changed, and in some cases a person can shift to a new caste before the boundaries solidify again.

    When near the Navigator Houses, Cells often begin to accommodate House ideas of reincarnation and an essential soul. The concept of the soul having a shape that fits with the body leads to an idea of a personal gender, and some of the wakeful believe that remnants of this soul can be contacted - that everyone contains sleepers of their own, who speak clearly.

    Influences from the Oasis Kingdoms and their extractive industries alter the way the Cells think of their economy - barter systems become standardized, then Kingdom coinage is introduced, both to aid in trade with the Kingdoms (and often avoided by all but the elite of the Cells). Less notable Artisans, now creators of trade goods, push for more prestige and power under the new economy.

    Next to the blighted waters and tall towers of the Gardener Clans, the Cells dissolve. With the ease of foraging in the swamp-hydroponics of the megastructure, many of the sleepers can be awoken, and the chambers of the few who cannot are spread across the dry islets. Instead of a single village built with its vault, the Cells live in dozens or hundreds of close-knit groups.

    In Cells that often trade with the Skinborne, reverence for the sleepers becomes more and more specific - the wakeful seek out the voices and the names of their ancestors inside the dream, and great families become a third path to social power.  

   Once met by the machines of the Walker Herds, the wakeful begin to associate the minds of the sleepers with the seed intelligences of the walking cities. They find the Herds' methods of teaching their nascent mind (where it is kept walled away from the world, spoken to only by the members of the royal families) misguided. In response to the Herds, these Cells become more open with access to the sleepers - they are paraded through the cities, instead of left to molder in their vaults. Equality spreads to much of the rest of their social life. Caste boundaries and hierarchies weaken as the Cells begin to view the Herds as an example of all that could be wrong.

Lanthanide Horizon - Food, Water, Shelter

Despite the lack of work on it, Sunless Horizon (now and until later, "Lanthanide Horizon" for the purposes of people not talking about Fallen London anymore) remains my favorite of my settings. Here, I put a little bit of effort into the base layer of worldbuilding - with a setting with these environmental difficulties, how do people actually Live.

Source - this is actually Lanthanide Horizon... fanart, a thing I find startling

Food and Food Preservation

    Agriculture is tenable aboard the megastructure, and its prerequisites tend to determine population patterns among those groups that use it. Soil both exists and conglomerates in dunes solidified by plant growth, and water can be collected from rain (some sections of the structure are doused with water intentionally for unknown reasons, and others are open enough to have to their own "natural" weather - however, it is best to assume this water is nonpotable until proven otherwise) or extracted through taps into intraship water lines.

    These lines often define the size and shape of a settlement and its farms - long, "linear" towns appear along high-pressure pipes that can sustain them, farms and their drainage systems are suspended in midair to make the most of vertical tubes, miles wide, that switch from drought to flood, and large, reliable taps can be siphoned off for ponds and aquaculture.

Digression - Soil Formation, yes i am really writing a paragraph about soil formation on my rpg blog and you can't stop me

    Implacable erosion means various fine metal dusts are common aboard the vessel, as are chemotrophic bacteria, which can augment these dusts into a dry, metallic soil habitable enough for plant life. These soils are moved primarily by wind, prevailing currents collecting them in specific locations where they are solidified by plant root systems. The concepts of "fine metal dusts blowing around wherever they feel like" and "soil comprised heavily of questionable heavy metal residues" may raise Worries among my readers, and they are almost certainly correct.

s o i l     

Source

    Most groups on the worldship are at least semi-agricultural, though some are less standard than the Oasis Kingdoms or those far Houses:

    Skinborne vessels are too small and disconnected to grow food on their own, though it is common for them to supplement rations brought from their ark with onboard herb gardens, small animals, and similar - a bit for practicality, but more for pleasure.

    The Gardener Clans are sedentary hunter-gatherers - their homes in the ship's hydroponics bays not only produce enough food for them, but enough that their pillage goes unnoticed by the bays' alarms. In contrast, the Walker-Herds feed off the same bays, moving their herds between them in a grand, devouring swarm, leaving only when the complex is depleted or the alarms ring. 

    Some groups of the firstborn (those still under the eye of the megastructure's controlling AI) toil in ponds and fields, as the AI leaves them dormant and self-sufficient for future crises. When work stacks up, and the crops are abandoned, the machine promises deliveries of luxuries, hundreds of tons of grain, endless water, all as gifts for the loyal - and, of course, permanent drought, plagues, and hard vacuum for the shirkers. 

Preservation

    Salt is both required for some relevant industrial processes (water treatment, manufacturing of synthetic rubber, etc.) and for biological life - as such, concentrated brine numbers among the substances piped through the megastructure, and available to be tapped. This brine is then dried to create salt or diluted and stored for food preservation.

    Outside of these taps and reservoirs, salt is difficult to find in the concentrations required for preservation, so drying, smoking, and pickling in acids are more common, despite being less effective.

    As one of the many steps in their industrialization and expansion, the Houses have invented the canning machine (though just as on Earth, not yet the can opener), letting them preserve food for extended periods without reliance on rare minerals.         

Source

Shelter & Clothing

    When possible, buildings are repurposed from pre-existing structures - shipping containers, unused facilities, long corridors of empty closets, et cetera. When buildings have to be made, they are generally constructed of ubiquitous metal panels, dry-fit or connected with clay, siphoned industrial sealants, or even welds (as unfortunately, neither lime nor bitumen are present).

    In areas with hostile climates (after all, the central AI cares little about habitable temperatures in the 500-square mile sulfuric acid synthesizer), insulation is harvested from the ship, or ventilating holes and windows are spaced carefully to catch wind. Areas with very hostile climates, such as active furnaces, chambers filled with radioactive waste, and the insides of town-sized wire EDMs, are functionally uninhabitable.

    Clothing is generally synthetic - piles of wiring insulation painstakingly unrolled into wide strips to knit into clothing, or single mats of plastic wrapped around the body. When present, hair, plant fibers, and such are used. Metal is commonly used for jewelry, decoration, and armor.

    Access to electricity for use in heating (and the creation of fire) and light (through common, easily scavenged electric lights) is very common, but fully taking advantage of electricity requires enough layers of concepts, machines, and cultural needs that the majority live in a pre-industrial environment.

Ask The Stars Microsettings

In the recent post containing Chris McDowall's solo RPG, Ask The Stars, he uses the oracle table within to create small 3-point settings. This seems like the most interesting use to me (mostly because of my constant drive to make more settings), so I gave it a try here, creating a few microsettings of my own.

Setting 1: Never Go Home

First roll: Traveller, Exiled (wandering/chance, guilt/autonomy). So, we have a group of people leaving their homes. Our first question is that guilt/autonomy split - were they driven away, or did they choose to leave?

We roll - were they banished? A Hard Yes. But why? Another roll on the symbols and positions gives us Legion, Rooted (unification/identity, stability/plenty). Someone else moved in, trying to subsume their culture. But they wouldn't let go, and they were banished for it. 

Now we know what's happening, but I want to know when. Is this the near future? A Hard No. Is it earlier? A Soft Yes. 1800s imperialism would be the obvious answer, so I want to skip it. Instead, it's a Cold War equivalent. Two superpowers, dragging smaller nations into their proxy wars. Our travelers are the losing side of one of these. 

But what can the exiles do now? I roll Traveller, Twinned (wandering/chance, intimacy/dependency). A pretty easy answer, then. This has happened before - the whole region is up in flames. You could run, taking advantage of your good position with one superpower. Or you could band together, gather up members of other communities, and strike back against your common enemies, pulling your home from their sphere of influence.

Setting 2: What's Mine is Yours

For the first roll, I get Hand, Entombed (creation/misdirection, memory/death). Creation of memory, misdirection of death. Transhumanism? Immortality?

How are they doing it? Is it a science? Hard Yes. Some new technology has made this possible. Is it accessible to all? Another Hard Yes. 

What else is there? I roll Eye, Exiled (judgement/secrets, guilt/autonomy). There's something being hidden here, possibly by the technology's creators. What kind of secret? I roll Elder, Waning (authority/tradition, hunger/decay). No secret of the technology itself, then, but of ideas surrounding it. The powers that be, grasping at it, thinking they can fit the genie back into its bottle. It must be new, then. But are they right?

Hard No. They are only selfish.

Setting 3: Immortal King Anshia

My first roll is Cage, Crowned (protection/obligation, ambition/ruin). A would-be tyrant. I roll again, to get more detail, and get Fang, Entombed (hostility/fear, memory/death). So, he is already a ruler over man, now, hoping to conquer their final fear - death itself. 

Immortality seems to be common in these settings. But how can the tyrant reach it? Is this the past? Hard Yes. This is the furthest past, all the way back to the stone age. Do the players support their rule? Soft Yes. They are ministers of this desperate, dying leader, sent on quests to hunt and deliver the alchemical ingredients the tyrant believes will keep them alive. However, the rest of their time is spent in attempts to scheme their way into a better position when the tyrant dies.

GLoGtober - Week 1

For GLOGtober, I've decided to make a setting, one week at a time. I don't know if this is a good idea, but it's certainly... an idea. 

Note that this is done in sections - I haven't read any of the prompts past week 1, so the setting may shift as I take later prompts into account. Buyer beware, Saturn reigns, etcetera.

Day 1 - Guns

Guns are a modern invention, their use spreading from the Sunset Isles and across the lands of the Empire. Currently, there are only two: heavy, long cannonets, and light single-shot derringers.

These are both wheel-locks, limiting their use by the Empire's military due to their expense. However, this makes them more useful for the few that own them, as armor hasn't advanced enough to protect its wearer.

Both have been made illegal throughout the Empire after a spike in assassination attempts, including one on the Empress herself.

Derringer

4d6 damage, one slot, all enemies and hirelings must make Morale saves. 20' range, advantage to hit. Illegal.

Cannonet

4d6 damage, 3 slots, all enemies and hirelings must make Morale saves. 300' range, disadvantage to-hit within 30', advantage past that. Illegal. 

Day 2 - Blood

Blood is the seat of the soul. Without it, the body is only a husk. When someone dies, their blood pulls itself out of their body and ascends to Heaven, as the body hopefully reduces itself to dust. 

Of course, sometimes the body does not. Then, it reverts, driven only by the base impulses written on humanity's bones. These Geists stalk the wilderness like animals, hunting for humans. (Just stat them as zombies, minus any infection chances.)

Some magicians of the Lamb's Continent have managed to die, releasing their blood, then control it, pulling it from its path to Heaven and using it as a tool before returning it and living again.

Hemopath

Starting equipment: a pendant token of your order, a katar (light), ritual equipment (six candles, a vial of sparrow's blood), a short magnetic bar (used to test the iron content of blood, which is thought to correlate to moral purity)

A: Motility

B: Condensation

C: Blood & Bone

D: Twist the Path

Motility: Through a short ritualized "death", you convince your blood to emerge from your body in an angelic form, bringing your consciousness with it. The blood can move at twice human speed, and fly. While your blood is gone, your body cannot move, and you take 1 damage each minute. The blood is too diffuse to move anything more than a pound, and too condensed to move through walls.

Condensation: You can shift the blood, making more or less condensed. When condensed, it is solid enough to hold as much a person or even attack, but cannot fly. If hit, it will dissolve. When diffused, it can slowly move its droplets through walls, but cannot hold anything. You must choose how dense your blood is when you release it.

Blood & Bone: You have reached inwards, reinforcing the instructions carved on your bones. When you release your blood, you can also raise your body as a Geist.

Twist the Path: When you die, your control continues, counting down from full health. When time runs out, you're dead. You can't return your blood during this time - it won't let you.

Day 3 - Goblins

Goblins do not exist. Despite this, it's normal to see about one a week. They are emanations from the noosphere, said to be responsible for bad luck. They knock over shelves, hide things, trip people, and all the other things that would be caused be random chance.

Hobgoblins and Bugbears are manifestations of even worse luck - a Hobgoblin will break your sword over its knee, then run into the forest. A Bugbear will burn down your house.  

Day 4 - Swirling Rainbow Vortices

Above the world is a gateway. It does not circle the world like the Sun and Moon. It sits, perfectly still. When the sun crosses it around noon, this is the Short Night, where work ends and people return to bed. When the moon crosses it around midnight, this is the Witch Hour, where monsters meet under unnatural darkness.

This is the gate to Heaven, where blood crosses into that prismatic city. The observatories of the Guild of Astronautics have peered through it, and now plan to build a great machine with which they can shuttle themselves (and their patrons) into Heaven without being judged.

Day 5 - Map

Here's an early map of the setting. I have no idea what any of this stuff is, but this'll remind me to figure that out later.

Day 6 - Food

1d4 Foods of the Empire

1. A heavy meat stew served over dumplings - traditional during the winter holidays.
2. Smoked fish, preserved and buried for emergencies.
3. Pickled vegetables.
4. Sweet wine, imported from the Lamb's Continent.

1d4 Foods of the Hive-States

1. Small, bitter berries hardy enough to survive the droughts. Slight stimulants.
2. A thin syrup made of those berries. Strong stimulant, usually mixed with water or wine to weaken the taste.
3. Hard seeds, ground into a paste. Usually served on bread.
4. Clams, pulled from the pools they hide in.

1d4 Foods of the Lamb's Continent

1. Small soft cookies, shaped into spheres and stamped with (usually romantic) messages.
2. A light salad of bitter greens.
3. Raw fish, rubbed with hot herbs.
4. Thinly sliced meat, seared quickly.

7. Adventure

1d6 Reasons to Adventure

1. Your home in the Hive-Cities is suffering a drought. You want to find some way to alleviate it.
2. The Imperial Guild of Astronautics has sent you to map the stars from all the corners of the world. You faintly suspect this is because they wanted to get rid of you.
3. A border skirmish in the Lamb's Continent ended recently. Now you (and hundreds of other soldiers) have no work.
4. You and the rest of your cell were caught on your way from the Bitter East, your assignment burned out of your heads. The Empire has given you a deal - work for us, or die.
5. When your mother died, her blood streamed to the south. No one could tell you what happened to it.
6. You want money. A lot of money.

Religion of the Navigator Houses, Redux (Sunless Horizon)

This is the third post on the religion of the Navigator Houses, and invalidates both previous posts, which will be updated to point here.

Religion is an important part of culture. It connects people, answers questions about the world, and motivates them. This is no different for the Navigator Houses and their religion, Absolutism.

Note: Keter and Pronouns
Keter is referenced with different pronouns depending on the beliefs of the people speaking. To Creationist Heretics, Ghouls, and other groups who believe Keter is an active agent, Keter uses He/Him. To orthodox Absolutists and other groups who see Keter as an unthinking manifestation of the world, Keter uses It/It. Both of these are always capitalized.

Messages From Above

The Creation of the World

First, there was the void.

Next, there was the world, a harsh land of metal. This world is alive - when it is spoken of as a place, it is called Ein Soph. When it is spoken of as a consciousness, it is called Keter.

When the void saw Keter, it became jealous of the new world's light and heat, and began to claw at it. This is why the edges of the world are tattered, and why vacuum is harmful. 

From Keter's body, new life sprang. Plants and animals began to wander through the world, and eventually people joined them. This was the first cycle of Creation.

Eventually, that cycle ended, and the first cycle of Destruction began. The void tore at the world in desperation, and many people walled themselves in vaults, where they still stay to this day. As the cycles turned again, and again, the people who stayed outside changed. This is why people come in so many strange shapes.

The angels appeared later, emerging from Keter's brain. There were two kinds - the angels of Creation, made of flesh, took the reins of civilization, driving it forwards and creating the Houses. These angels are the nobility. The angels of Destruction, made of metal, waited until the next cycle of Destruction, where they began to prune away the mistakes generated during Creation.

Under the guidance of the nobles, the Houses put Keter in chains, restraining Him and keeping his Creation aspect active for far longer than the cycles should last. This let them grow forever, and kept the Disciples docile. This ended with the Retreat, where Keter broke His chains, the cycle turned to Destruction, and the Disciples flowed through the cities of the Houses like water.

Divinity

According to the orthodox form of Absolutism, there are three tiers of divinity - the Saints, the Angels, and the Godhead.

The Saints

There are three saints, each representing one of the Houses' three virtues.

Capra is the first, representing stoicism. Capra was sainted after the destruction of their town - the only two survivors were Capra and the town's Overseer. Capra wandered for 30 days without food or water, surrendering any they found to the Overseer to keep him alive. Capra died, one step from the wall of another city. The Overseer survived.

Ursus is the second, representing sacrifice. Ursus was sainted for killing one of the Seraphim in single combat. Broken and bleeding, they still bowed to his Overseer before their death.

Vulpes is the last, representing vigilance. Vulpes was sainted after reporting a grave discovery - an entire city, under the control of Galatean heretics. The heretics tortured Vulpes, and paraded their flayed body through the city to the joyous screams of all. When the Hierarch's army razed the city, the heretics still cheered.

The Angels

The nobles of the Houses are divine, partially. They are immortal angels, spawned from Keter's brain and sent to be an interface between Keter and the people of the Houses. They hear the desires of the peasants, and whisper guidance to Keter on His path through the void.

The peasant's tithes of money and blood must be harsh because sacrifice is necessary to keep Keter alive and awake. Half the tithe is sent to Keter, so He may rebuild his body. The rest is kept by the nobles - it is needed for them to remake their shells and stay in this material realm.

But they are not the only angels - the nobles spring from the creation aspect of Keter, while the Disciples spring from His destruction aspect. As the aspects trade control, these two groups switch in strength - as the creation aspect takes the throne, the nobles expand, as the destruction aspect takes over, the Disciples become more aggressive. 

The Godhead

Keter is the center of the universe, from which all other things spring. His mind is a lattice of crystal and metal, and His body is the worldship itself. 

He does not think, nor dream. He is empty, and mindless. According to the orthodox, Keter is not a He, but an It. Worthy of care, perhaps, but not of worship. It is the angels who are truly alive.

The Retreat, and Keter's recent violence, are part of a natural cycle. The world goes between Creation (during which the nobles help the Houses grow, and the Disciples wait) and Destruction (during which the nobles help the Houses survive, and the Disciples prune away mistakes). It's not intentional or conscious, it's just the way things are.

The Houses plan to reach the Crown and put Keter in chains, leaving the creation aspect in control permanently. They say they've done this before.

The Soul

Everything has a soul, from the smallest speck of dust to Keter Himself. However, as an object grows more complex, the soul mirrors it - the souls of metal and dust are single, solid forms, unmoving and unchanging. The souls of machines and plants branch and turn. The souls of Disciples, animals, and people are complicated devices, ticking away as they live.

The nobles have grander souls than people - this is why they are immortal. Keter's soul is the grandest of all - it must be, to bear the world itself.

The Shape of the Soul
Everything's soul is the same shape as itself - the soul of a stone is the same shape as the stone, the soul of a person is the same shape as the person. The soul does not want to change - it wants to stay still, inside the body.

This is why you get hurt - when your body changes shape by being cut, or crushed, or burned, the soul cannot change shape to reach it. Some parts of your body, like your heart and brain, are more important to the soul - this is why injuries to them are often fatal, as their changes affect the soul more intensely.

This explains many things to the people of the Houses.

Prosthetics work because they are the same shape as the body part they replace, so the soul enters the prosthetic and moves it like the limb it had before.

You get sick because of wandering fragments of soul, left over from the process of refraction. They attach to yours, desperate to regain their old forms. Your body tries to change its shape to fit this gestalt, and fails, hurting itself. To cure yourself, you must drive away these fragments.

Refraction
Service is rewarded. When you die, the nobles weigh all your deeds. If you have followed the virtues of the Saints, your soul is sent through Keter, emerging from that glass maze changed and shifted, like an image seen through water.

This is refraction - a gift from the nobles, to people who have proved themselves. Every life, you must be found useful, or your soul will be abandoned, lost in the void. There is no room for weakness.

The Void

Outside of the world, there is the void. It is, in a way, alive.

It is nothing but staring eyes and hungering mouths, tearing at the flesh of the world. If it touches you, it will pull the heat and life out of your body in a desperate attempt to feel the life it has been denied. If you fail to be refracted, your soul will be trapped here, forever.

Messages From Within

While the above section is the orthodox way of thinking, it is rarely practiced. The people of the Houses make their own changes, and have their own odd beliefs. These are split into superstitions (small, usually practical ideas, accepted by authority) and heresies (large, spiritual concepts, persecuted by authority).

1d6 Superstitions

1. The ashes of a great hero will drive away Disciples, as the hero's soul assaults them. 
2. Search the red salt that grows near some fuel lines, and rub it in wounds. The soul will be tricked into thinking the paste that this creates is your flesh.
3. A copper spiral will prevent illness - the invading spirits will wander through the spiral and become trapped.
4. If someone dies in a vacuum, turn them towards the world, or they will never be refracted.
5. If you touch a noble, they will curse you, and your bones will twist inside your skin until they shatter.
6. Wear a small figurine of yourself before you go to war. Your soul will be confused, and hide inside the figure. Until your soul returns, you will not feel pain.

1d4 Heresies

Note: it is both possible and common to support multiple heresies at once. This is not a comprehensive list.

1. The Creationist Heresy - Keter is an active, living agent. He is not a representation of the world, He created it, and all things that live within it.
2. The Influence Heresy - Keter is an active, living agent. He contacts people to give them commands.
3. The Embodiment Heresy - Keter is an active, living agent. He exists both as the world and in a discrete, physical body.
4. The 4th Saint Heresy - There is a fourth saint; what that saint represents varies between different groups.

Messages From Elsewhere

Of course, that is not the only religion of the Houses. As they spread and conquered, they absorbed other peoples, and other religions. Over time, the specifics have melted away, leaving only vague, half-remembered traditions under the umbrella of the Old Ways.

The one reliable fact about the Old Ways is their belief in immanent, non-physical deities - while Absolutism states that the only difference between an object, a person, and a deity is the size of the soul, the Old Ways see hard borders between the three.

Rituals

Rituals, not gods, are the core of the Old Ways. Few people can even agree on which gods exist, and their names, personalities, and myths are fluid and variable. The one thing that stays the same are rituals.

Ritual Generator

Note: Just like the heresies list, neither of these are comprehensive, just options.
1. What does this ritual do?

1. Assist in the growth of crops.
2. Protect against diseases and infohazards.
3. Ward away Disciples.
4. Guide you home.
5. Curse someone.
6. Guarantee Success in war.

2. What does this ritual require?

1. A staged replication of the event (for a ritual of war, someone may be dressed in the uniform of the enemy, then defeated in mock combat).
2. A sacrifice of something similar (for a ritual of farming, some of last year's harvest may be burned).
3. A sacrifice of something different (for a ritual of farming, tokens of metal may be spread throughout the soil).
4. Roll 1d3, except the action must be far larger (a complex replication, a tremendous sacrifice) and is promised to occur in the future.

Gods

Practitioners of the Old Ways tend to be very syncretic with their gods - if you talk about Lucretia, and it sounds vaguely like someone else's Mondus, the two of you will eventually agree that you're talking about the same god (more or less).

Groups of practitioners tend to come together in communities, which have more particular notions about pantheons and myths.

Generally, there are six, matching with these six focuses.

1. The void, on the outside of the ship.
2. Farming and weather.
3. Engineering and architecture.
4. Infohazards.
5. The wilderness and Disciples.
6. War.

However, this is not always true. If you believe in the gods of the Old Ways, the names, myths, and focuses of your community pantheon are entirely yours to create. 

What Do You Believe?

A single person's religious beliefs are often a synthesis of all three of these categories. When creating a player character or in any situation where a character's religion may be important, consider rolling on the following 1d10 table.

1-6. Orthodox Absolutist.
7. Heretical Absolutist - choose or roll 2 Heresies.
8. Orthodox Ritualistic - believe in no Heresies, but trust in the rituals of the Old Ways.
9. Heretical Ritualistic - choose or roll 2 Heresies, and trust in the rituals of the Old Ways.
10. Paganist - believe entirely in the gods and rituals of the Old Ways.

Oasis Kingdoms (Sunless Horizon)

A Sudden Turn

The Oasis Kingdoms are named for their placement - each one stands atop a resource, whether it's water, power, farmland, or rare metals.

Before the Retreat dragged the Navigator Houses to their door, the Oasis Kingdoms were unquestioned in their dominance. Everything they could see was their domain, and they had peace.

Their golden age has lasted for centuries, but with the death of their last ruler, Grand Patron Hetu, and the arrival of the violent, expansionist Houses, the decline has begun. 

One Long Bright Day

The Golden Age of the Kingdoms was marked by an intense focus on scholarship, philosophy, and the arts. The government sponsored painters, writers, and sculptors, built schools, and starting the Record - a full written history of the Oasis Kingdoms.

During the Golden Age, even the poorest farmer owned sculptures and paintings.

Trade between the Kingdoms was lucrative and constant. The literacy rate had spiked.

But all days end. 

Dusk

The death of Grand Patron Hetu is accepted as the start of the decline of the Kingdoms. As the Houses arrived and the new Grand Patron took office, the imperious nature of the Kingdoms was shaken.

They watched the Houses become a new power - far from the slow, peaceful Kingdoms, the Navigator Houses expanded violently, clearing land of threats before sealing themselves in walled cities and sending their armies out into the worldship.

The mood in the Kingdoms has started to change. While life is still good, and people still have food, art, and learning, the government's eye has shifted toward a darker pursuit - war.

War has been absent in the Kingdoms for centuries. The last remnants of the army are ceremonial, armed with long ribbon-covered spears and armored in thin, shining gold and copper. The leaders of the Kingdoms are desperate to move forwards, replacing their aging cavalry with modern machines.

Until then, the Kingdoms trade with the Navigators, giving away their wealth and art for guns and peace.

The Beliefs of the Kingdoms

The Kingdoms say all things are made of the 3 Perfect Shapes.

• The Cube, which is solid, unchanging, and unmoving. The metal walls of Ein Sof are made of the Cube.
• The Sphere, which is mercurial, agile, and distracted. Water dancing in the pipes that cross the ship are made of the Sphere.
• The Tetrahedron, which is destructive, energetic, and consuming. Fire is made of the Tetrahedron, but so is electricity.

Most things are made of combinations of the shapes. Animals are made of the Tetrahedron and the Sphere, while Disciples are made of the Cube and Tetrahedron.

Only people are made of all 3 Perfect Shapes, and in them, the Shapes must be kept in balance. If you are made out of the Cube, you will become a hermit, never leaving your home or changing your ways. If you are made out of the Sphere, you will never be able to focus, and die early as your blood races in all directions. If you are made out of the Tetrahedron, you will be consumed by it, becoming violent.

Elves Rusted Your Sword, Made You Age, and Die Every Day

What Are Elves?

They are immortal, strange creatures, far older than Man and his ilk. They live far from the cities and roads, hidden in forests and other unmarred parts of nature. According to folk tales, they fear the touch of iron, delight in trickery, and hold mastery of illusions.

But this is the wrong question.

don't you just want to punch him in the face

Why are Elves?

That's much closer.

The properties of Elves lead many to say that they are spirits of nature, enraged at Man thanks to his callous and destructive ways. Others say they are simply an old race, more knowledgeable than Man, but the same in their core.

All of these people are wrong.

Elves are pure, elemental chaos, and that is what drives their actions.

Why are elves immortal? It is because life drives more chaos than the cold stillness of death, so they have chosen not to die. Despite this, they can be seen to age, as aging causes more change than not. As the sun rises, all the world's elves are newly born. When it sets, they are ancient.

They do not hate iron because of its smell, its taste, or its appearance. They hate it because it is a symbol of that most abominable thing - civilization, and the order that comes with it. Thus, they have laid a curse upon all metals - once they are touched by human hands, they begin to tarnish and rot. This curse was laid on all metals but gold, as all gold is owned by dwarves, those bastions of perfect order. They can bring this curse to bear against anything they deem opposed to them, crumbling stone, curling trees, and rotting flesh.

But this is not the only curse they have brought. There is another, far more subtle magic woven through everything and everyone you've ever seen. This curse is reproduction. Elves are why you have children - it leads to more mutations and alterations than replication. In a time long ago, they tricked all life into using this method, except for bacteria. As revenge, the elves shrank the bacteria and hid them, so no one could follow their example.

Elves hope to return the universe to its original, perfect state - a pile of atoms flying around a tiny box at incomprehensible speed. They know this goal would require them to die. 

They do not care.

Walker-Tribes (Sunless Horizon)

No Place Like Home

Where the Navigator Houses survive through defense, covering themselves in a metal cocoon of walls and guns, the Walker-Tribes are more subtle, protecting themselves through stealth and movement. Their cities stagger across Ein Soph on metal legs, never stopping.

These cities are small, holding only the tribe's noble leaders, their families, and their slaves. Most free citizens will never leave the city, to keep themselves pure - the Tribes say there is something out there, something worse than Keter's machines or the marching armies of the Navigator Houses. They say the air can poison your mind, turning you into someone else. 

To protect themselves from the air, the cities are fully enclosed. The only air inside has been inside for as long as the Tribe can remember, and has been slowly tinged with the breath of the city. Anyone entering is purified by burning steam and chanted prayer. Public areas are hung with lanterns and holy scrolls.

All this effort is for a reason - not just to protect the people of the city, but to protect the city's mind.

kinnas

It Takes a Village

Deep within the cities of the Tribes is a growing mind - a seed AI, gained through means unknown. Perhaps they built them, under the instruction of some unknown entity. Perhaps they stole them, running from Keter's home with pieces of His brain.

The Tribes want to raise these minds as weapons - beings of scale equal to Keter's, able to topple Him from His throne. But to do this, they must keep the seed AIs safe as they grow, and ensure they are kept away from poisonous ideas. Every Tribe has heard stories of newborn minds catching a glimpse of something they shouldn't see, then throwing the city off a ledge in their possessed state.

Leadership

The seed AIs do not run the cities. They are simply tools, used to help stabilize the mech's stumbling footsteps or calibrate its cannons. The Tribes are lead by a King and Queen, with titles passed down by birth and marriage.

After the monarchs' eldest child turns 20, the monarchs vacate the throne and become Handlers - the only people trusted to speak to the nascent AI. Their wisdom and knowledge is undoubted by the Tribe, who trust the Handlers to pass these qualities to the seed mind.

Class Structure

The Walker-Tribes are divided into three social classes - the nobles, the citizens, and the slaves. The noble class is made up of the monarchs and their families, who serve as ambassadors to the outside, hidden behind oxygen tanks to protect themselves from the air.

The citizens work in jobs requiring communication and thought - they are artists, managers, and architects. Many work as engineers, piloting the dozens of heavy machines tethered to the city itself.

The slaves are made incapable of speech so they cannot spread the cursed air. As well as labor work, some serve in the retinues of ambassadors, giving them glimpses of an outside world they can rarely enter.

Resource Acquisition

A tribe's city is nearly self-sufficient: is produced within the walker, to make sure that the city doesn't have to wait for long cycles of planting and harvest. Water is collected from the outside in massive reservoirs, and air is recycled.

Nonrenewable resources like metal are harvested by the engineers' machines. When more precision is needed (such as pulling copper wire out of a larger structure), groups of slaves are led out under the supervision of these machines.

To War

The Walker-Tribes rarely march to war - it takes time and resources they can't lose. However, they are far from unprepared. Their cities are the largest mobile artillery outside of the Seraphim, able to crack through even the walls of the Navigator Houses. When the walls are breached, the city's doors open, and armed slaves are thrown out to kill and die. Once the city is empty, ambassadors take their retinues through the rubble to loot whatever remains.

The Birth-Cursed Ghouls (Sunless Horizon)

The Ghouls were never meant to exist. They are a byproduct of Keter's biolabs, misshapen mutants grown from human stock meant for the Empyreans (I should probably rewrite that article, but here's the simple changes - they are no longer a dystopia, there are a load of them spread through the ship, and it's built to be an area found very late in a campaign, that leads into finding out Keter's goals) or modified genes built for His Seraphim.

When they are found by the Disciples, they are removed, and left in Ein Soph to die.

Their Society

Batches of Ghouls tend to stick together, forming small groups. Once they move to safety, they create encampments of tiny metal shacks and communal fires. Their technology is nearly nonexistent - they hammer together dull glass-tipped spears and small metal shields for hunting, set simple mechanical traps to defend their camps, and fill the halls of Ein Soph with firelight.

These tribes are very local, rarely ranging more than a mile from their camps. They are also very small, with about 50 people at the most.

Strangely, Disciples tend not to react to the presence of Ghouls, a fact they are happy to take advantage of. Many tribes keep a few Acolytes or other low-level Disciples tied down somewhere in their camps, to use as weapons and labor. According to the Navigator Houses, this means Ghouls are intrinsically evil - look at how these dark spirits follow them!

Alone in the Firelight

Ghoul nests are spread throughout the worldship - some were found by the Navigator Houses before the Retreat, where they were treated like pests. Jackals would be sent to kill them, wiping out entire nests in a day with incendiary weapons and mass gunfire.

The Houses feel no different after the Retreat, but they have had unexpected difficulty with these Ghouls. 

Even before the Retreat, the Ghouls here were hunted by the many Oasis Kingdoms, and each survivor teaches new nests ways to protect themselves. Older nests are not the simple villages Jackals are used to - they are fortified complexes webbed with thin tunnels the unencumbered Ghouls slip through with ease as Jackals are trapped by the bulk of their equipment.

Some nests are even larger threats - so dangerous that they are either destroyed at all costs or carefully avoided. These nests are those gifted with a broken Seraph. Ghouls call these crawling, mewling creatures Hanged Kings, and idolize them as the last remnants of their pasts. They are only spoken of in the past tense - they are only fragments. They are already dead.

Their Stories

The Ghouls say that once, in the past, the world was beautiful. They were tall and strong; they built cities under a benevolent god, and ruled over all they surveyed.

But slowly, painfully, that god died. Its body calcified into a maze of impervious walls, all without the light it used to radiate. Its spasms threw the world into disarray, shattering the utopia the Ghouls once had.

Some pieces of it still survive. Fragments, hidden in metal shells. These are servant-angels, left by their god to help them. Its heart still beats, and with every pulse more Ghouls rise from its blood. This heart is suffering, forever. It must be killed, so it can be at peace.

They say their god was not the only one who died. All the strange peoples of the worldship come from their own gods, entangled with this one. If you could dig your way out into the void, you could float among an infinite plane of frozen corpses.

The Skinborne (Sunless Horizon)

Sail Into the Light

The Skinborne are rarely seen by Ein Soph's inhabitants - they eschew the worldship's internals to cling to its metal Skin, safe from the threats of that inner world. The rare times they breach the Skin, it's for sudden, violent raids that gather as many resources as they can in the space of hours.

Their technology is incredibly advanced - not only do they have spaceflight, hydrogen from Ein Soph is harvested to power generators and weapons far beyond what the Navigator Houses have achieved. 

They live nomadically, drifting across the Skin in small voidcraft. These crews stay on their voidcraft for months at a time; despite this, they are nearly empty, with no frivolous items onboard except for a single seemingly random object in each person's quarters, kept atop an altar. Once their voyages are complete, they return to the Ark to refuel.

They are confused by the other societies of Ein Soph - can they not see they are failing their test? How do they expect to leave this hateful place when the Garden World arrives?

Their Exodus

According to their religion, Ein Soph is the Iron World, a test from a stern, silent god. Every ten thousand years, this Iron World passes by the Garden World, a paradise of nature and abundance. 

But the Iron World never reaches it. Even at its closest point, they are millions of miles away. This is the test their god has given them - to escape. The vessels they use to skip across the Skin like a stone over water are children's toys compared to their true project - a city-sized starship pointed out from Ein Soph, into the void. 

Soon, they say, they will escape this world forever.

Their Ancestors

The Iron World's orbits have gone on since the beginning of time - entire generations of people have escaped from its grasp, and passed their test. The spirits of these ancestors are revered, and their knowledge is treasured and collected into the Skinborne's holy books - somewhere between Bible and technical manual.

These ancestor spirits are spoken to through objects, passed down through generations and once owned by the spirit in question.

Their Ark

An entire engine of Ein Soph, uncountable stories high, slowly turned to face at a shallow angle. Titanic battery banks, leeching power from the worldship to keep this parasite alive. The Ark is the culmination of generations of work - the answer to the test the Skinborne have been given. Now they wait, until the Garden World comes into view and they can sail away into the light.