The Gutted Belly & Her Crew.

By now it is somewhat of an open secret that far below the surface of each adventurer-friendly world and all of its drama lies a lightless world of cruelty, brutality, and harsh wonder. Less well known is that this dim land possesses its own seas of unknown breadth and depth, and lesser-known still is that those seas are "sailed" by those who have been rejected even by the alien cultures of that dark below.

Of course it isn't always ruthlessness or dire prophecy that leads to these outcasts taking to the sea. Just as often it is bad luck, or some quirk of the individual. And like moths to an exceptionally dim flame, these freaks band together and find some semblance of fellowship upon the abyssal waves. Because together, they just might find fame, wealth, or glory upon the undersea.

Of course most find a watery grave beneath it, sooner or later. This bunch is probably no exception.

The Gutted Belly

The origins of this ship are as mysterious as the ship herself is ugly, but it is abundantly clear that it is not a normal vessel. While generally shaped like other ships of the Underdark, it is constructed in a manner completely unlike any other. It possesses many organic or non-euclidean elements to its geometry, and rather than being made of wood, its hull has an unsettling resemblance to flesh- though what creature all of that grey-green hide could have been taken from is unknown. And given that the ship's hull is one contiguous piece of material almost 20 fathoms in length, it is something best not thought about for long.

Also unusual for the subterranean world is that it possesses sails.

There is not a lot of weather to be had so far underground, except for faint, constant currents of water or air in or out of the vaults which keep them (relatively) livable. These currents are enough to stir a breeze or set the waves in motion to carry things adrift, but rarely can they be harnessed to move a vessel with purpose. Therefore most ships rely upon manual labor, primitive engines, or magic for propulsion. But, somehow, The Gutted Belly has sailed into port countless times over the years, her membranous airfoils turgid with a strong wind that is only ever felt in the ship's wake.

Notable personalities include...

Istoyn Maerret- Drow, Captain.

"Welcome aboard, lads! We'll be running through a known kraken haunt today, so I hope you've all got your wits about you. We need lively bait! What? No. I said 'bayt'. That's short for "bay technicians".We'll need you down in the cargo bay. Yes, that's what I meant. Hahah. Anyway, welcome aboard!"

The exuberant shepherd of deranged sea-gits himself, Captain Maerret is a living reminder that even the truly hopeless can survive and thrive on the Undersea- for good and ill.

Born to some insignificant piss-ant hill of a non-noble drow family in one of the many dark elf cities dotting the underground, Istoyn Maerret was a sickly child. When debt collectors and Lolth religious hardliners both came down hard upon the clan one day, he was one of several superfluous children given over as sacrifice or sold into slavery. Istoryn found himself on a galley rowing the breadth of the Undersea before long, and remained in that state well into his adulthood. At some point in his past that ship was destroyed in a freak accident, and the dark elf washed ashore alone. Another gulf of mysterious, unaddressed years passed by then, and suddenly the drow was hiring a skeleton crew in a coastal city to bring a ship to port from an undisclosed location. Hours later, the somewhat rattled sailors disembarked from the bizarre Gutted Belly, captained by the cockily grinning former galley slave.

It is no secret or scathing defamation to say that the ship and the crew it has attracted survives on luck. Almost immediately after becoming seaworthy, Captain Maerret and his crew began to pursue high risk, high reward objectives that ranged from legal trading ventures, to piracy and smuggling, to the most heinous of all professions: adventuring. Life is cheap, short, and utterly thrilling to most who sign onto the crew, making the captain's more unique derangements stand out less.

One doesn't live long in the Underdark without cracking a bit, and in Istoyn's case he seems to have developed a very efficient form of mental compartmentalization in order to cope with a myriad of stressors. He exhibits (or mimics) certain symptoms of personality disorders during downtime which make him unpredictable, and just a little uncomfortable to be around. Yet his penchant for brutal, calculated violence reminds everyone that he can be perfectly, horribly sane when needed. He consistently shows competence on the job, leads his crew from the front in times of danger, and cultivates an atmosphere of egalitarianism among his peers that is difficult to find elsewhere in the Underdark. The instances where he has saved a crew member's life, executed a stunning flourish to secure victory, or austerely foregone his own share of booty in order to keep things literally shipshape seem in general to balance out the occasions where he has expended considerable resources to sate his (mediocre) alchemical curiosity, or thrown an unpopular cabin boy to that week's newest beasty "because it seemed like an easy and amusing solution".

If you sign your contract with an honest name and do right by your crew, the captain can be counted on to lead you to the wealth or the exciting end you seek.

... So long as you don't make the mistake of calling his cutlass a scimitar. If you do, he'll simply have to demonstrate their myriad differences to you- at length, and in torturous detail.

Shursh- Quaggoth, Boatswain, 1st & 3rd Mates.

"It is the compact-given right of every last one of you to air your grievances on matters of ship governance. Just as it is my hammer's right to reply."

Most quaggoths exist in a state that one could be forgiven for calling "savage". The ash-furred bear people are necessarily brutal to survive in their environment, xenophobic toward all outsiders thanks to a drow penchant for enslaving them, and occasionally more hateful of any and all technology than even the most misinformed Luddites.

But as evidenced by one quaggoth named Shursh, they can clean up nicely.

Another former oar-slave, Shursh had been the prized catch of one dark elf reaver until he realized one day that the menacing crew actually feared his prodigious strength. He walked off of the boat at port with several torn-out spinal columns thrown over his shoulder that same day, and soon learned how to use his strength to turn a profit. Eventually this landed Shursh in the crew of the Belly, where his resilience and cool head under attack ensured that he began to outlive more and more of his superiors. Captain Maerret, strapped for able bodies, proceeded to pile ranks upon the quaggoth, who seemed not to complain- though he did later split the role of 2nd Mate up into dedicated Navigator and Medical Officer roles, delegating them to others because he simply didn't want to be bothered with that type of work.

Now Shursh is one of the most visible members of the crew, standing heads taller than most and representing the captain when he is away or indisposed of. He also holds the respect of much of the crew, though the fact that he often walks around with a massive carpenter's maul resting on his shoulder might contribute to that.

Letil Idki- Svirfneblin, Navigator.

"Attention crew, we are now approaching a known shipwreck reef site. We will be slowing wind propulsion by five knots in preparation for scavenging. Anchor is on standby for deployment. Shark status is currently unperturbed. And your weather forecast for this evening is whatever the hell I decide it will be."

One would be understandably curious as to how and why a deep gnome came to be part of a pirate crew. One would also be understandably hesitant to ask Letil after she electrocutes someone else for raising that very question.

Deep gnomes are a famously earthy people, if anything can be called "famous" about such a reclusive group. They were born from the earth, live in it, and shape it around themselves. They also tend toward pleasant dispositions, or at least avoid mucking around in other people's lives for the worse. But this society produces weirdos and imperfect fits like any other, and like any other it can do a plain awful job accommodating them.

Letil seems to be a druid, after some fashion. Inborn, intimately tied to aspects of nature, utterly powerless to ignore that power. And it just so happens that her power manifests in the fury of biting winds and churning waves, quite out of place in the tunnels of the Underdark. She was exiled early in life, and ironically became more 'earthy' only after the experience hardened her to be stone-like, body and soul. She never found her way up to the surface world, but she found an acceptable surrogate in the subterranean seas.

Now, Letil Idki is the navigator of the Gutted Belly. She conjured its earth elemental anchor up and bound it with hate and chains in equal measure, and now aids the corsair vessel in propelling itself without need for rowers. Hers is the enchantment which keeps the ship's sails turgid and bloated with conjured winds, and which allows its prow to cut so smoothly through the undersea waves.

Needle Threader- Grimlock, Medical Officer.

"Shh, child. I cannot hear your lacerations with you whimpering like that."

Needle Threader is perhaps the gentlest soul on board the Gutted Belly, not that that's saying much. Surprisingly open about her past, the grimlock explains that she was once a warren-matron for her clan of sightless subterranean humanoids. Children were raised communally, she explains, and it is with bitter fondness that she remarks she was once mother of dozens, despite never producing any of her own.

She doesn't like to recount what happened when routine tunnel renovations disturbed a particularly large nest of gricks. Somehow though, Needle Threader blindly groped her way through the Underdark until she came upon a port city which was cosmopolitan enough not to kill her on sight. Captain Maerret took her aboard as another one of his frivolous "acquisitions", only for her to prove useful after the fact.

The eyeless trogloxene now serves aboard the Belly as an exceptionally hands-on surgeon and medical officer, well known to the crew for her tendency to emit a constant, low humming during examinations or operations while rolling her head from side to side in what looks to an outside observer like a trance-like state. According to Needle Threader, it allows her to 'see' in finer detail, even when she's rooting around in a patient's guts. Surprising recovery rates attest to her competence, but her first-time patients are rarely comfortable around her, nor her vast array of knapped stone tools.

Doolploobdulilb- Kuo-toa, Chaplain.

"Le'suor'bren'sehan'aul'tel’lahr'ath'Blibdoolpoolp!*"
* "I bless this voyage in the name of Blibdoolpoolp!"

It's a common saying aboard the Belly that Letil keeps the wind in check, while Doolploobdulilb manages the waves- best not to piss either one of them off. And there is a considerable amount of truth to this. But while the svirfneblin is a very public and approachable fixture on the crew, the kuo-toa whose name is typically shortened to just "Doolp" for everyone else's sake is rarely so approachable.

Of uncertain age and identity but of absolute conviction in their goddess, this kuo-toa cleric or "whip" is a devotee of The Sea Mother, The Drowning Goddess, The Mistress of the Black Pearl, and Uncomfortably Buxom Lobster-Lady, Blibdoolpoolp. Though vocally hateful toward any and all surface-dwelling species--as well as most other species besides kuo-toa in general--Doolp's actions on board the Belly speak to a milder nature. As the ship's chaplain, the cleric's ministrations are directed at proper observance of ceremonies meant to placate and appease sea deities (such as their own). This keeps the ship from falling prey to the worst of dangers out on the undersea, and allows for the occasional seafood feast in honor of this, that, or the other thing.

Ostensibly Doolp is also tasked with seeing to the spiritual health of each crew member, but the reality is that everyone will say they are just fine and dandy in order to avoid the flabby fishnet-wearer coming around to their bunks one day and asking them if they have a moment of their time to spare for the Drowner of Lands and the Scourge of Sekolah.

Understandably, Doolp is the most vocal opponent of the continued practice of keeping and feeding the frenzy of sahaugin below the ship, but they haven't yet gathered enough votes to do anything about it.

Ulwiss Coaleyes- Duergar, Quartermaster & Accountant.

"Togrysh has not come to collect his bonus for volunteering to lead the boarding party three days ago. What is that? He died in the attack? Well, death is no excuse for tardiness. Tell the kuo-toa to raise him, and then remind him of that. The bonus will go toward his debt for the spell components."

Dwarves often get a bad rap. It seems that wherever one goes, one can always find the same stereotypes in place- that they fill whatever time isn't spent being workaholics with time spent as alcoholics, that they hate elves almost as much as they do goblinoids goblin-speaking peoples, and that every last one of them is given a beard and an axe at birth. And, most regrettably of all, there are just enough individuals who conform to those ideas to perpetuate the hate. Grey dwarves are treated much the same, with the addition of a healthy dose of vitamin D deficiency and totalitarian callousness.

Temperate, impassive, pacifist, and almost clean-shaven, Ulwiss Coaleyes avoids checking off nearly all of those dubious boxes. Unfortunately for Ulwiss the last box on the list was checked, first in pencil, then in charcoal, then signed in red ink, then sealed with wax, branded, circled and underlined a thousand times until the paper tore away and there were scratches on the desk, and then rewritten and copied in triplicate.

Ulwiss in the one who keeps the Gutted Belly financially solvent and ensures a well-ordered list of supplies and individual accounts, but he doesn't appear on any of his own payroll reports. This is because he doesn't accept payment for his work- his payment is the work. The work--or as he would write it, the Work--is an end in and of itself, giving a single all-unifying purpose to the sack of meat he occupies, and to the universe around it. Numbers, ledgers, tables, ink pens, and the hands that use them are all vectors through which Work may flow into something which is for the moment Unworked.

When Captain Maerret and his crew boarded the ship the duergar was on and slaughtered the rest of the crew, Ulwiss Coaleyes hardly looked up from his writing desk. Only the drow's cutlass prodding at his chin lifted his head, and only long enough for him to negotiate a contract with the captain, who was in good spirits after a battle ruthlessly won, so he humored the strange dwarf. No one really doubts that he'd do it again if the Belly is ever overtaken, but then again if the Belly were boarded, no one would really care what the book-balancer was doing.

Tongueless Tizzkar- Derro, Chief Cook.

"Unnyoy!*"
* "Enjoy!"

It's a strange, happy bit of luck that the crazed ramblings of the hereditarily insane derro people sound quite a lot like the humming or muttering of a top chef hard at work.This helps cement the idea that Tongueless Tizzkar knows what he is doing in the galley of the Gutted Belly. Unfortunately this illusion of competence normally dissipates as soon as one gets a taste of the food he prepares back there.

The title of "Tongueless" is not a literal naming- aside from a few teeth or finger joints, Tizzkar is quite physically whole. The nickname comes from his enormously thick accent, coupled with a speech impediment, which makes him sound like what most people might assume a tongueless person to sound like- though most have never actually met one in their lives to be able to make that assumption with any accuracy. It's rather mean, really.

Tizzkar is also tongueless in the sense that there is no way on or below earth that he is able to taste the things he prepares for the crew, or else they'd never leave the kitchen out of culinary shame. But his rates are low, his products and workplace are shockingly hygienic, and it brings a tickle of laughter to even the most dour brute's heart to see the manic little figure running to and fro, grey hair thrusting out in all directions like porcupine spikes from beneath a saggy, ill-fitting chef's hat.

Vashen Skitter- Chitine, Lookout & Sailmaker.

"Land ho, port side! Wait... wait, no. It's just a floater of chuul eggs... Breakfast ho!"

The loudest and most vulgar of the ship's crew is, appropriately enough, its lookout. Hyperactive, neurotic, and always inexplicably greasy, the man-spider makes good of his namesake all day every day, skittering up and down along the ship's masts. Less commonly he can be seen spinning strands of his own resilient web to mend damage in the sails. Most rare and begrudging of all are the times down below deck when he can be spied mending clothing with a needle or four in his dexterous, chitinous claws.

Despite a famous dislike for saltwater, Vashen is one of the few senior crew members with prior experience at sea. Much like Ulwiss, he originated from an opposing vessel, but unlike the work-addicted number-cruncher, Vashen willingly, even eagerly defected from the slaving ship dominated by Lolth faithful. One might think that a religion so centered on spiders and their various permutations would afford a measure of egalitarianism among arthropods. Instead, Vashen Skitter found himself firmly set among the bottom rungs of a strict, pseudo-theological racial hierarchy with nothing but ettercaps beneath him- and only because everyone hates ettercaps, including other ettercaps, he is quick to emphasize.

Scrubs- Scrag, Chief Beakhead Officer & Barnacle Remover.

"Scrubs iz done cleanin' hull, cap'n! Scrubs did a good job today. Scrubs took off twenny-eight new barnies! Twelve on port side 'n' sixteen on, uhm... not port side. Scrubs wuz wundrin', though. Duz cap'n fink if the seasonal meltwater from above ground is lowerin' water salinity to lethal-enough levels to kill off barnie larva, it could be damagin' fish health 'n' reducin' their nutritional value enough to impact crew productivity? Wut'z that? Get back t' work? Yessir!"

One day while coasting along during prescribed bedtime hours, the Gutted Belly struck something that made the crew fear that they had hit a reef or been attacked by some leviathan. But when the alarms and lights were raised, they only found a very stocky, mostly-dead scrag drifting in their wake. Out of curiosity and a desire to harvest some troll blood and/or fat for alchemical experiments, the captain ordered the crew to hoist the troll's body up on board. There they found that the prow of the ship had split its head almost in two, but also that the troll's regeneration was slowly knitting things back together. Fancy struck the captain, as it often does, and he cauterized a seemingly random portion of the aquatic troll's brain before the hole closed up.

When the creature awakened in chains shortly thereafter, it was docile to the point that it resembled a (poorly handled) lobotomy patient. It responded surprisingly well to basic commands given in Undercommon, and hardly tried to eat anyone after a week of impressive labor. Once Needle Threader gave it a clean bill of health (and determined that it was a he), the troll was given a tentative place in the crew as a heavy-lifter, beakhead toilet cleaner, and most famously, barnacle remover. And so he came to be known as Scrubs.

But Scrubs did not remain quite so placid. His job performance and amiability have remained constant throughout, yet his mind seems to have pieced itself together over the years. He reacquired language and complex problem-solving some time ago, and now seems to be working on abstract, conceptual thinking with the enthusiasm of a wide-eyed child who's walked into a library desperately wanting to understand all of the big words around them.

Grakk'ha- Goblin Lacedon, Figurehead.

"Who's that, pretty? Give ol' Grakk'ha a kiss~"

No one in the crew entirely remembers how they ended up with Grakk'ha. She's just always sort of been there. In a rather literal sense, she has become part of the ship. Specifically, she is the prow ornament of the Gutted Belly, lashed in place with just her arms and head free. She doesn't complain overmuch about this, and somewhat enjoys being the unofficial mascot of the crew. She'll even make a show of waving and shouting greetings when they finally sail to port- so long as they continue to feed her.

The small, gangling goblin woman was turned into a lacedon--an aquatic ghoul--long ago, and needs at least a semi-regular diet of carrion to stay what passes for healthy for an undead body. This, the ship's crew is able to supply her with regularly. But it's the rarer treat of live, humanoid flesh which she truly enjoys. As such, "a kissing session with Grakk'ha" has become the final destination for any mutineers or sufficient screw-ups who don't meet their end thrown overboard or at the hands of Istoyn and his unnerving powers.

K'shevash- Sahuagin, Honorary Disposal Officer.

"There is no friend or foe to the frenzy of K'shevash. There are only warmbloods who will or will not be dining with it tonight."

The sahuagin with a name almost as difficult to pronounce as the Chaplain's is not an actual member of the crew. In fact, they would probably eat any member of the crew who tried to parley with them or their tribe at closer than arm's length. (Though, to be fair, a number of proper crew members would also eat their fellows if push came to shove.)

Rather, K'shevash and its band are a bunch of exiles from the depths of one of the surface seas. How they found their way into the undersea, or why they've just sort of latched onto the Gutted Belly for so long, is unknown. But their presence is somewhat of a boon to the corsairs, for several reasons. They provide security from the other, lesser known threats of the deep which might otherwise try to attack the ship. They also eat much of the refuse from the ship's kitchens, in particular any meat scraps and offal to be had. And, as stated earlier, they have no qualms about eating any humanoids who find their way down into the wake of the Belly, with the seemingly sole exception of Scrubs- a compact was established after he ate several of them for making fun of his thoughts on causality one day.

In addition to providing a quick and easy method of disposal for the dead, the "Sharks" as they are affectionately referred to are also quite the deterrent from mutiny. Walking the plank takes on an even more grim character when you know that in addition to drowning, you'll be eaten in a creative fashion, over a period of time. And woe betide anyone who earns a keelhauling.

Anchor- Earth Elemental, Literal Anchor.

"Mmmmmmrrrrrdh...*"
* "A little to the left, Scrubs. There has been a mussel wedged under my shoulder for days now. Ahh, that's it..."

Anchor is, well... the ship's anchor. Summoned and bound in magical chain years ago by Letil, this elemental grabs a hold of features of the sea floor and keeps The Gutted Belly from drifting while at rest. It also acts as a lookout for dangers below the waterline, relying basic information to its mistress through a telepathic link when needed. It otherwise leads a rather solitary existence, content to lay on the seabed or drag along beside the ship's hull, doing little of note while the sahuagin swim past it, mildly annoyed that it isn't more edible. It is known to have an occasional, mostly one-sided conversation with Scrubs while the latter is removing built-up detritus from its craggy form, however.



Lesser-known personalities include...


Admiral Scratch- "Cat", Informant.

"Miaaaooo. Miao, mao, mao- HLGHKSHAULGH! ... Miao."

Whatever this thing is, it isn't a cat, and it does a rather poor job of imitating one. Members of the ship's crew still refer to it as one, however. They ignore the way its body shifts and morphs as it walks around on what might not always add up to four legs. They pretend not to notice when a tendril snakes out from beneath one of its unblinking eyelids. They just try to brush it off when some of its barbed hairs get stuck to a surface and cause mild damage to it as if from acid etching. They smile, call it Admiral Scratch, and make sure to leave treats out for it.

It does possess a rather catlike fondness for hunting rats, however. Perhaps a little too fond.

Admiral Scratch is ostensibly the obese calico longhair belonging to Captain Maerret. While he is the one person the animal spends the most time with, they clearly do not bond like a master and pet. More often, the Admiral leaps up onto his shoulder, sitting weightlessly as he stares unblinking at the dark elf. In turn Captain Maerret cocks his head and gives the cat an ear, at which point it proceeds to whisper to him. At least, it seems like whispering. No purr should sound that lilting, disjointed, or vaguely conspiratorial. Once he's spoken his piece, Scratch leaps back down to the deck and resumes his rodent vigil. Some believe that he is the real brains behind the captain, using him like a puppet. Others think that the Captain uses him as a spy on his own crew. Neither rumor has been substantiated, though the latter has slightly more credence in light of the list of would-be mutineers who have met sudden and messy ends aboard the Belly.

Hilivonsuul- Decapitated Illithilich, "Head" Adviser.

"..."

Anyone who's ever seen the inside of the captain's cabin will have noticed the grizzly trophy mounted on the wall behind his desk: a large, discolored illithid head, mummified into leather with its face tendrils braided together and then pinned together by bronze nails. There is no general consensus as to whether its eyes are milky and lacking pupils, or if it has pupils like an angry cuttlefish.

Captain Maerret is always happy to tell the tale of how he came across it, however.

Supposedly (and that word cannot be emphasized enough when dealing with one of Istoyn's tales), he slew the illithid with his very own hands and cutlass. One day early on in the drow's career of piracy while prowling the shore of one of the more treacherous vault walls, the Belly's crew caught sight of a battle unfolding. It was a chaotic three-way between githyanki, githzerai, and a small cell of mind-flayers trapped in the middle. Doing the only sensible thing, Istoyn ordered the ship to fire upon the melee on the rocks, scattering all parties and allowing for a landing party to loot the battlefield briefly.

Istoyn found a particularly withered-looking brain-eater, certainly not dead but not entirely alive either. He hacked its head off before it could utter a spell or make anyone's head explode, and carried the grizzly trophy back to the ship where he had it embalmed.

The part he leaves out of that story is that the head still isn't entirely dead.

Ensorcelled by dominating magic and kept in a docile state by a little-known source of psionic echoes which interfere with its ability to regenerate, there is little left of the desiccated head once known as Hilivonsuul, former acolyte of a coven of illithids who dabbled in arcane and necromantic magic. All that it can do is obey the will of its new master, who feeds it the names and thoughts of every soul upon the ship, living or dead. Hilivonsuul had known a thing or two about True Names back when its mind belonged to itself- after centuries of feasting on brains, one begins to hone their palette to pick out truly subtle flavors.

Much can be done with a Name like that. From subtly encouraging compliance with a captain in the pliable, to encouraging the sudden, explosive rupture of a dissident's head.


The Gutted Belly Herself- Taxidermied Aboleth Carcass, Marine Vessel.

"The sea, the sea, the sea, the sea, the sea..."

Istoyn definitely couldn't have killed this one. But since he claims to have built the ship himself, it is implied that he knew the creature, or at least its corpse. "Gutted belly" was quite an apt description for the state of the eviscerated aboleth when the dark elf equipped with a hammer, saw, and oscillating sanity ran across it. As distasteful as that is, the story only grows worse the deeper one goes. The Gutted Belly is not the largest ship on the undersea, but it is absolutely massive for an aboleth body, even taking into account the likelihood that all of that loose, flabby skin was stretched and smoothed out as far as it would go during construction. Aboleths never stop growing during their exceedingly long lifespans, so the specimen which became the Gutted Belly must have been old indeed. An aboleth's power also grows with age, raising the eerie question of exactly what could have killed such a being, only to leave it to rot on a scintillating beach somewhere.

The carcass still possessed some of that power when the marooned slave found it, in the form of powerful psionic emanations. They warded off virtually all other denizens of the deep, save for the drow who'd heard them throbbing in his skull ever since the wreck. They were the reverberating echoes leftover from a dying mind laid low and regressing, playing over themselves over and over again like the fever dream of a frightened child.

The sea.

The sea.

Where is the sea?

It wants to swim.

Swim away into the sea.

The sea.

Where is the sea?

The echoes have died down considerably since those lightless days. Only the most sensitive could still detect them, though their influence runs deeper than most might know. Such interference could be enough to prevent a certain head from regenerating, or perhaps stimulate the mental growth of a lumbering, formerly blank slate always clinging to the hull. It could even resemble blind, dumb luck at times, as The Gutted Belly herself strives to "survive" yet more perils in order to enjoy just one more swim across that vast, abyssal sea.

Furt Digs Into The Ultraviolet Grasslands.

The Rusty Arc, by WizardThiefFighter

I like nomads.

If you read my blog even casually, you probably already know that from the amount of attention I've paid to groups like the Fokari, or the ancient Ersuunians.

Despite (but maybe not because of) it being a complete opposite in almost every way to the shut-in, sedentary life that I lead, nomadism and the people who live it have fascinated me since at least the end of my high school years.

Central to nomadism is travel from place to place for resources, and therefore survival. Home is the collapsible shelter you take with you, and your personal life can potentially fit into a saddlebag.

So when a fantasy game comes along that tries to capture the experience of travel beyond rolling on a random monster encounter table, I usually take an interest.

Of course true nomadism is a highly structured, cyclical system of migration following weather, animal patterns, and cultural traditions, while nomads as romanticized wanderers akin to adventurers are what have penetrated the tropes and tales of fiction the most in past years (when they aren't characterized as marauding hordes akin to murderhobos, of course).

Fortunately, the Ultraviolet Grasslands (UVG) by WizardThiefFighter includes both elements.

Supported by fuzzy psychedelic metal themes and the author's own distinctive art style which combines surreal blends of magic and science with an appreciation for desolate beauty, UVG is a game about traveling by caravan into the end of the world- literally.

Beyond the familiar lands of the Rainbowlanders who rule the bulk of the world, all the way at the Left End of the Right Road there is a Violet City- a massive trade hub which is a surreal melange of beings and forces all living together amid bizarre bazaars overseen by stewards who may or may not be the servants of hyper-intelligent house cats.

Beyond the Violet City, are the Ultraviolet Grasslands.

The Grasslands make up a steppe environment of inconceivable vastness stretching out into the west, studded by ruins and pieces of half-functional technology from an enigmatic "Long Ago" time.

And beyond that, long past the point where the laws of reality break down, is the Black City.

But it isn't about what your destination is- it's about the journey.

UVG is a rules-lite game which can be added in parts or as a whole to any existing game, though it works bests most similarly to OSR-type games, since the base rules assume six stats, AC, hit dice, etc.

UVG is also a Pointcrawl, which is a type of game system I only learned the existence of through this same game. For those who don't know, it's a way of organizing points of interest on a campaign map or what have you, but leaving the spaces in between those points vague and undefined. It's economical for DMs who don't have a lot of time or resources to work with, but also highly appropriate for travel across the Grasslands, where I get the sense that time and space are somewhat mutable, and the second trip through an area might not be the same as the first.

The Grasslands are populated by all manner of sub-human, superhuman, energy being, robot, and ghost. Player characters are even weirder, partly because they're actually willing to go on a trip out here. There are a host of reasons offered as to why they want to go into the Grasslands, from being merchants and their guards, to fulfilling destinies or prophecies in the face of the world coming to an end, to simply returning home as one of the Lime Nomads (it's unclear if they are named for the fruit or the color).

To show how vast and empty the Grasslands are, actions are taken according to Weeks, rather than rounds, turns, minutes, etc. In these Weeks, the players can travel, forage for supplies (measured in Sacks), make discoveries, and run into misfortune (one of several reasons not to dump Charisma in this game). Making good use of your Sacks is vital to finishing your job on the Grasslands alive and profitably, while weight allowance on the caravan is enough of a concern that you might prefer to permanently deface beautiful but heavy works of art in order to carry away a few handfuls of precious stones. Gritty realism is assumed for injury and healing, and cannibalism has a slot in the rules right on page 33. I wouldn't be surprised if a rule comes along soon for characters losing sanity from over-stimulation by the constant buzz and glow of the landscape.

I encourage you to give this weird world a shot if any of this has piqued your interest, particularly because the work-in-progress introductory book for the game is offered for free on the creator's Patreon page and through DriveThruRPG. More content pertaining to more locations in depth is available to Patrons, with even more goodies forthcoming.

A Lowlander's Gloss of the Rise & Fall of the Pach-Pah Empire, Part 5.

Click here to view Part 4 on the Pach-Pah Empire



"I call to order the 298th Grand Resolutions Council, and the 2,980th Convening of the Large and Small Workers' Assemblies!"
- Officiator Thonapa Namdol, at the most recent overlap in annual and decennial meetings between the loose governing bodies of the People's Anarcho-Syndicalistic Communes of Pach-Pah Yul, 293 AR

"RECALL DELEGATE SAMTEN TITU! GUAMANSURI FOR LARGE COUNCIL!"
- An election season leaflet from Pansech Province, circa 246 AR.



The last Miqh Pach-Pah was buried without blessing or ceremony (but also without further insult or defamation) in an undisclosed location in one of the gardens of his palace. The bodies of his advisers would hang over the broken gates for some time in cages gilt with all of the precious stones and metals which they had fostered the mining of. The empire without an emperor entered a deep and extended period of mourning and protracted activity. The Pach-Pahs vanished from international commerce and society almost entirely as they attempted to piece their homes and lives back together, to say nothing of the internal struggles of understanding who and what they now were.

With the collapse of the semi-divine cult surrounding the Miqh, those with faith shaken yet unbroken turned in greater numbers and in greater piety toward the other gods of the mountains. They threw themselves upon the mercy of the deities of right conduct and justice, and prayed for those who had been lost to the underworld. A deep, collective sense of grief, guilt, and catharsis kept them united, where once the ties of common government had done the same.

This marked the point in time when the gods of the underworld were also venerated. Prior to that, stretching as far back as the early period of Pach-Pah history, those of the deep and dark places had been feared and warded against. Evil was associated with them, and they were only appeased in an attempt to ward off misfortune. Now, the fear remained truer than ever, but it was laced with a desperate hope that those whom they had taken into their keeping were being treated well. Indeed, the living hoped that the same could be had for themselves, if a buried death awaited them in the end. the practice of digging architecture entirely below the surface was abandoned in the same decade as the Collapse, save for when a temple dedicated to the gods below needed building.

The surviving instances of nobility throughout the provinces remained in the custody of various groups of revolutionaries for some time, but further spilling of blood was out of the question, now that everyone had seemed to finally "wake up" from the illusion of bloated royalty. The memoirs of former governors and their children are well-documented in the following century, as they attempted to reintegrate with those whom they had stayed above and separate from. Progress was slow, and famine was frequent in those regions where infrastructure had been damaged the most heavily. But in their reduced state, the people of the mountains consolidated, and experienced a measure of regrowth.

Eventually the question of "what next?" was difficult to ignore. And unlike the aftermath of our own experiences of disaster, vast gulfs of distance between major players did not prevent the highlanders from achieving greater cooperation once again. In the first of many summits to come, the representatives of each former province met at the base of the peak where the ruined imperial palace once stood. With each was an entourage of representatives of each industry found in that province, for over the course of the empire's history, its people had undergone quite a significant degree of specialization into various disciplines.

The various members of each regimented form of livelihood, whether they were the heads of valley ranches or of stoneworking groups, quickly found themselves in agreement about what their respective peoples needed and wanted for the future. Of course they did not agree so readily with each other group's decisions, and bickering ensued. It was only by taking on a role of arbitration did the representatives of each province at large manage to instill a state of quiet order, from which the first rough agreements on group policy were drawn up. Each industry would work toward both representation and self-regulation, and each regional government would work together to maintain a level of cooperation and public welfare between all moving parts. "Solidarity Without Kings" became something of a rallying mantra for the Pach-Pahs.

It would be a dizzying and frankly impossible task for an indigenous expert on political history of the Pach-Pahs to produce a comprehensive and all-encompassing list of the various changes between that point and now, and being that I have neither the blood ties nor the training to do so, it would be doubly so for me to attempt. But I can say with confidence that, despite nearly three thousand years of time passing, the Pach-Pahs have maintained a remarkable degree of faithfulness to that first council's resolutions. There have been many changes, transformations, and upheavals since, with more than one Trade War or would-be monarch inflicting themselves upon the people of the mountains. But in the spirit of perpetual revolution, each of these challenges has been met, dealt with, and then spun to resemble that old precept.

Before my more aristocratic readers tear this document up in a white-knuckled rage, be aware that though they constantly push against it, hierarchy is difficult to avoid entirely within this patchwork blanket of industry-communities. Furthermore, a continued and heavy emphasis upon family lineage among all Pach-Pah groups maintains a somewhat clannish divide between larger industrial groups, as well as a fairly consistent and conservative outlook on (albeit recently-created) tradition.

This, as well as limited international trade, has occupied our southern neighbors since before our own empire was divided. All things considered, they have done remarkably well for themselves. And I dare say that we have many lessons in adaptation, damage control, and human spirit to learn from them.

On a more scholastic note, I would also like to take the opportunity to push the support for Pach-Pach archaeological research. The discipline has its roots in the mountains, yet has enjoyed relatively little adaptation to the lowlands, even in regions as fixated upon its past as the denizens of Deneroth.

It is with determined optimism that I state my recently-approved budget¹ for an expedition into the mountains to accompany one such archaeological project will generate enough northern interest in the practice that Deneroth or even Nambar may soon host their own departments of history-through-earth-sifting.



¹ The initial offer of ten pounds of electrum is barely enough to cover the costs for equipment and non-university personnel, let alone the need for transportation and lodgings over a four-month period. It was quickly expanded to twenty-five pounds once I pointed out to the treasurers' council that they and everyone else on the University's campus would be free of me for a full quarter of the year if the funding was sufficient.

A Lowlander's Gloss of the Rise & Fall of the Pach-Pah Empire, Part 4.

Click here to view Part 3 on the Pach-Pah Empire
Click here to view Part 5 on the Pach-Pah Empire



"I pity the last emperor. Had he known what the world was like outside of his own guarded existence? What might he have done, if given the opportunity to experience humanity?"
- Gyalchup Inti, offering a revisionist perspective which has gained traction over the past century-and-a-half.

"The champions of the revolution butchered the advisers of the Miqh only because they could not lay their hands upon him personally. Theirs was the crime of denying the just their deserved vengeance; all others laid upon Umaq the Deserter."
- Dema Jortli, offering an opposing view.



It may come as a surprise to my audience to find that the Rupture was not the only horrific event to attack the world in clearly written history. In fact, the lands of the south felt something of much greater magnitude than what would become known to us thousands of years later. This is of course a matter of perspective. This is by no means an attempt to diminish the magnitude of the hardship which our forefathers had faced, and I would sooner be struck dead than dishonor the Eternal Scholar Laizij and the memory of Haraal.¹

Now that the precautions are out of the way, it is time to understand the fundamental difference between north and south when it comes to experience of the Rupture and other Rupture-like Events. In the north, it was a gradual affair, with death and affliction spread out over a great period. Likewise, it was a time of cold, and stillness of the earth. But in the south, past the beginnings of the Pach-Pahs from whence the smoke and ash had first arisen both times, the greatest magnitude of destruction and human suffering came within the first days- nay, hours. And they came in fire, and in a violent animation of the land beneath one's feet. It was a time in which the people of the Pach-Pahs were irreparably damaged in number and in spirit.

Today, the warning signs are obvious. But in that historic moment, the chain of volcanic eruptions which awoke the ancient sleepers of the mountains were quite unexpected. The sacred peaks of their homeland turned into pillars of flame and toxin, spreading mass confusion and collapse of basic functionality across the empire. But the pain in the earth came from much deeper than the reactivated mountains. Earthquakes rent the underworld asunder, grinding the crusts of the world against one another irrespective of the structural integrity of the deep-delved mines or the density of the populations living there. Once again, we have no concrete knowledge of what the mining cities experienced in their final hours, but speculation has been refined over the years. Some tunnels collapsed. Others were rent open and exposed to yawning abysses or lakes of churning, molten earth. Others were taken by the intrusion of noxious fumes from smaller tears on the world around them. All were destroyed.

One million unknown and unknowable lives were snuffed out in the time it took the Miqh Pach-Pah to return from his rudely-interrupted tour of the gardens where imperial chewing leaves were grown. He was immediately evacuated to the gold-foiled, jewel-studded palace which was the home of his family for generations, and the entire area was placed on lockdown by the largest contingent of trained and professional soldiers in the empire. In the scramble to ensure the safety of the royal personage and all other courtly matters, the cadre of senior advisers forgot or neglected to attempt to send messengers across the empire to ascertain the degree of damage and the need for allocation of resources.

This deathly silence was taken as absolute contempt for the people of the empire, and the insignificance of their suffering in the eyes of the elite. The resentment which had festered among them for generations found the only way it could vent at long last, in which the same way that the earth Herself was venting her divine upset. Fury swept up the hearts of those overtaxed farmers and artisans, those underfunded provincial governments not blessed with membership in the "Great Family", and those precious few miners close enough to the surface tunnels to escape the abject destruction faced by their kinfolk. This motley collection of the disaffected and downtrodden joined together, all differences of province or class melting away under the red-hot glare which all affixed to their shared foe.

They took up hammers and wood axes, grain sickles and clubs, shepherd's staves outfitted with spearheads, and the looted weaponry of the countless imperial regiments who either defected from their generals, or simply turned tail and dispersed across the mountainsides. Where order was strongest, the rebels organized themselves into communicating units and overtook the existing administration of a region with its governors placed under house arrest. Where order could not be found, their fellows tore down the opulent capital buildings of their homes and hewed their occupants to pieces. Where imperial order was strongest, these atrocities were met in kind, and often redoubled several times over. The masses had righteous indignation on their side, but the military still had disciplined ranks armed with iron, armor of quilted cloth, and broad shields of wicker and wood. It is said that the imperial guard stationed in the city of Pachuxo were defeated only once "the blood of their victims had ran like a river around their knees, tripping and dislodging them".

Quickly, groups of rebels linked together upon the high, narrow highways between terraced cities following their victories, and the rebellion started to become a revolution.

During all of this the Miqh was limited under guard to his bedchambers, which while several hundred feet in all dimensions, was effectively a prison cell within the complex of the imperial palace. He sat there alone and confused, for he had no wife or children, and over the early years of his rule, he had been divided from his closest relatives. When there came the sounds of many people closing in from a distance, the guards posted at his door told him nothing. When the sounds became a commotion, and thumps could be heard coming from the grand entrance hall, his retainers abandoned him. It was only once the resounding crash of two gates filled the palace, that he was again met with company.

But they were not his guards. And surprisingly, they were not his unexpected visitors, either.

They were his senior advisers.

Langdah Umaq Miqh Pach-Pah was by all accounts a fairly placid Miqh, a product-as-representative of the decay of his empire rather than an active demonstrator of it. While the list of arrests and executions under him were numerous, they were all at the behest of his advisers, and merely had his seal of blindly-given approval for each. Likewise went his decrees, and any amendments to the convoluted first attempt at a codified body of law first attempted by his predecessor five generations earlier. It is known that those quietly opposed to the workings of the royal family belittled and dismissed the man, often deriding his slurred speech and unusually shaped head in private. But it is unknown how badly he was hated by his own empire. That dubious honor is relegated to the chief advisers to the Miqh, and it is telling (in my eyes) that their names were stripped from history, rather than their liege's.

And so it comes as no surprise that, faced with imminent capture by those whom they had wronged for so long, the wizened old men who had raised the Miqh as their ward and puppet fell upon him with rods of oak and ropes of silk. They detained him and strangled him, and then lifted up his body to present to the triumphant invaders mere moments behind. Before they could begin to utter their first false words in support of the revolution, the crowd fell upon them in turn. Each was stripped of his robes and marks of rank and dragged screaming from the ruined gates of the palace, where such detailed punishments as recorded in the Codex of the Revolution are detailed and illustrated.

In a dozen battles, the surviving titles of nobility of the Pach-Pah Yul were reduced by half, either through renunciation or through attrition. In the murder of a single frightened monarch, the second half vanished.

The memory of the final Miqh remains a controversial one today, with each generation of reflective Pach-Pah men and women treating him, his advisers, and the revolutionaries slightly differently. I could not begin to offer an overview of that debate, for it would be an even greater disservice to the topic than this gloss is to the many sources of history which I've attempted to synthesize thus far. But one thing is certain.

While they attempted to wrestle with the possibilities and consequences of their new identity, the people of the former empire had an immense amount of rebuilding to do.



¹ Just as I would never threaten to censor or bar from publication another honest scholar's work simply because it does not lend itself entirely to the established narrative of an institution. I look forward to our next "sanitization" session over brunch, Senior Editor Adelbramp. Do be sure not to misplace your black marker again the next time you █████████ behind the curtains of the ██████████████████.

A Lowlander's Gloss of the Rise & Fall of the Pach-Pah Empire, Part 2.

Click here to view Part 1 on the Pach-Pah Empire.
Click here to view Part 3 on the Pach-Pah Empire.



"Hearken to the braying trumpets of the Miqh Pach-Pah.
His head touches Heaven. His legs straddle the Mountains.
The womb of the Earth adorns Him."¹
- Inscription lining the borders of a marble votive plaque set in the wall of a royal tomb which predates the fall of the Empire by approximately two centuries. All figural images depicted therein have since had a line drawn across their eyes or throat.

"The Benighted Age began when first the people of the earth raised one of their own above others, and named him Miqh."
- Tzo-Ngrub Codex, sheet 18. The inclusion of written text alongside more traditional pictoforms within this folding book is a clear indication of its age, making it no older than the end of the Revolution.



Sociopolitical developments and innovations aside, the way in which the peoples of the Pach-Pah Yul live today is not terribly different from their earliest history. They existed as decentralized tribes with areas of highland and lowland under their loose control, taming the rugged land enough to allow their flocks to flourish. They only dealt with their neighbors occasionally, and aside from references to the mountain people as "all the peoples of the world" in recordings of oral traditions, there are few references to them as a single, unified group. This lifestyle remained unchanged for ages before a great hardship befell each tribe in equal severity, regardless of wealth or position in the mountains.

Some chronicles describe the invasion of a foreign people, or a great monster rising up out of the underworld, or even a blight sent down upon the lands by an astral wind. Regardless of the calamity, the solution was for the Pach-Pah to band together more rigidly, and with greater structure. Outstanding tribal elders became chieftains, who became kings, who began to treat with other kings whom they held in high regard alongside themselves, now separated from the common folk by the confoundingly immaterial quality of nobility which we know so well today.

In these petty-kingdoms developed greater, more efficient ways in which to extract wealth from the land. During this period we also see a flourishing in the record of material culture, when artwork was produced more often and with greater sophistication, often incorporating the styles of other kingdoms. Trade too was established as a norm between settled states, rather than as an infrequent formality used to cement favorable relations between two transient groups which have encountered one another on the mountain slopes. Today it is believed that these trade connections were fostered via the fictive sacral kinship which developed between petty-kings and their quickly-expanding royal families.

Modern scholarship often treats the transition from many states to one as a simple inevitability, but self-reflective (and perhaps somewhat propagandistic) Pach-Pah narratives of the present day see the transformation as a long, slippery slope with countless intervals in which their people fumbled and tripped, not stopping until they had passed what they perceived to be a point of no return. This point where the early age ruptured from the middle period is typically described as being the crowning of the first Miqh Pach-Pah, an emperor of the people of the mountains.² This emperor was mostly symbolic at first, lacking the ability to mobilize every facet of the territory over which it was claimed that he ruled.

But over time, the formation of bloodlines begun by the earliest kings expanded to encompass a diverse range of high administrative and military offices. Each of these offices was hereditary, and in circumstances where members of two differing kingdom-provinces were betrothed, the titles which were descending through them were joined in any children produced by their union as well. So it was that an only child could become the king of one region and the high-priest of its neighbor. And these royal scions typically were only children, as a means of avoiding the nastiest fratricidal or sororicidal conflicts which are alluded to in legend. Of course fertility is not something which we peoples of the world have perfect control over, and for the Pach-Pah this is no different. In the inevitable cases in which multiple children were born to a couple of royal distinction and lucrative inheritance, either titles were split between them and each child was raised to be as accepting of this as possible, or, particularly in the case of brothers and sisters, they were simply married to maintain the family's sovereignty and control over the future.

While it may only be a rough inference based off of popular literature of the time, instances of sibling marriage seemed to occur progressively more and more often than sibling division or conflict throughout the empire.

One begins to see where this is all leading.



¹ Note that this popular translation does not capture the nuances of the final line. Here, "adorns Him" stands in for "has been made to adorn Him in this manner". While somewhat lacking in brevity, it does better to articulate the Miqh's power over all mines in the mountains, such that he could force the Earth to comply and adorn him with the wide variety of jewelry which can be seen in the plaque itself. Note also that what is rendered here as capitalization is the doubling of characters vertically or horizontally alongside the main body of text for emphasis. The codification of written language and adoption of outside influences on grammar did not occur until about three hundred years later.

² There was of course no "crown" to be worn by the first Miqh, because the mining of precious stones and metals did not occur to any significant degree by this point, and so the smithing required to produce an item of such care would come later. The earliest images of the Miqh do depict them with a scepter adorned with a crystal of some sort however, so it is very possible that interest in such materials was present in the culture, even if access to them was limited by whatever was found on or nearest to the surface.

Hylek's Hundreds, Part 1.

"The Hundreds stand high, unbowed and unbreakable!"
- A common rallying chant of the Hundreds.

"Tens of thousands, alike but better, have fallen before us. What chance have you?"
- Acting Commander Fextaenius, to the free-bodied masterminds of the Rioter's Syndrome Rebellion at Ul-Qib. They had precisely no chance at all.

"Hah! You think a knife in the heart will kill me? They tried that already, you churl; it doesn't work!"
- Dornarseh, Breacher-Captain of the Forlorn Heap Hundred.



It would be naive of me to assume that the entirety of my (admittedly limited) readership has not heard at least a handful of the tales passed down from generation to generation about the exploits and deeds of the legendary mercenary company known as Hylek's Hundreds. But I would be remiss not to offer at least a cursory overview of their history for the sake of outsiders, the uninformed, and those who might stumble upon this record in a day when they have passed from memory, inconceivable as that sounds and has sounded for the past four hundred years.

Hylek's Hundreds are said by the archives at both Deneroth and Nambar to have been founded in 124 P.R. by the eponymous Gertisch-Haraalian warrior Hylek. Physical evaluation records recently recovered in Serminwurth support this, giving the names of several high-profile and particularly exquisite specimens among the Hundreds dated to 109 P.R. Hylek drew upon the masses of soldiers left unemployed by the conclusion of the Third and final Trade War, which had escalated to the point of wide-scale mobilization of armed ground forces alongside the more typical naval powers which had more-or-less carried the last two conflicts along. As a result of this, the original composition of each Hundred was culturally and ethnically varied, though most tended to hail from the lower classes of Ersuunian society- independent officers from moneyed families tended to have far easier times landing peacetime careers in many parts of the empire following the War.

Beyond these few concrete facts--Hylek's first decades of activity and the original Hundreds--little else is known that doesn't read like fantasy and propaganda, even coming from the most reputable of sources. The Hundreds, always numbering ten such miniature legions and totaling one thousand soldiers beside captains, adhere to this magic number rigidly. To the point that they give the impression of their members' immortality. Each morning after even a savage battle, the ranks remain perfectly filled with the same number of men as had been preparing to fight the day before. Even in the most inhospitable of environments, bereft of a baggage train or follower camp, these spontaneous reinforcements seem to find a way- if they are reinforcements at all. None of the Hundreds are ever known to suffer disease or malnutrition, both known as sometimes supreme killers of soldiers everywhere. The remarkable physical condition each member of the Hundred showed, even from the earliest days, was what led to those valuable examination files being recorded by the morbidly fascinated bodily experts at Serminwurth.

Only, it is difficult to disprove these heroic myths. Even under the supremely close surveillance of onlookers drawn from miles around to watch the few battles which the Hundreds are contracted for, not a one in his distinctive blue uniform and armor has ever been found among the dead or gravely wounded. They come up clean, year after year, as the victories unfurl before them, and in the history of their entire company, not a single retired member has ever been encountered, or even recognized as a possibility. There are even academics among the much-reduced intellectual class of Meroth who believe that Hylek still leads the company in private, despite necessarily being several centuries old by this point.

Even now, we are to believe that he contributes to the undying legacy of the Hundreds as moral soldiers of fortune, only ever supporting the cause of those whom they deem righteous. According to tradition, the current face of the company, one Fextaenius of Porylus Mons, bluntly refuses each proposal made to them. Then, the perpetually-wandering host departs with all haste, leaving the prospective employer in their dust. In most cases, that is that. But in the rarer instances where one ultimately succeeds, it is only after repeated and spectacular efforts are made to catch up with the Hundreds once more, pleading more dearly each time than the last, until at last the person in question is moved to give a rousing speech which can adequately extol the virtue of their mission and all which it stands for. Only then does the hidden Hylek reveal himself, and give his word. In an unusually large percentage of contract records dug up from the Coin-Keepers of Abbas, the spontaneous omen of three eagles appearing before the would-be hero bearing olives and arrows is recorded no less than fourteen times within the span of forty years.

Everything surrounding Hylek and his men is unnervingly perfect and made for the grandest of narratives and praise-poems, and I cannot find a single piece of evidence to bring these miraculous accomplishments into question.

Which is precisely why I believe them to be miracles.

Magic in the World.

(While many of my posts dedicated to this nebulous and poorly-defined setting have included mysticism or magical elements, I haven't yet gotten around to explaining how it actually works. Or even delving if it does work in a fashion which allows for explanation. It was always present at the edge of my consideration, but finally I decided to do something more with it after I read this post.

The RPG Blog Carnival

Found within is a pretty neat way to advertise oneself while also engaging with others who are interested in the same topics as you, just by writing a specialized blog post. It's a fun community-building mechanic, and I decided I'd throw myself in with the rest of 'em. This month's topic is, of course, "Magic", and the carnival is being hosted by Kobold Press. Check out their published books sometime, if core materials for your game of choice aren't quite cutting it.

Without further ado, here is another manuscript picked up off of the scattered mess of papers found on the desk in Roberick Bertrum Litte's subscalanean abode.)

"Pontificating blowhards, and elitist know-it-alls more arrogant than Ivory Tower alumni alike, will try to tell you that there are sharp divides between different forms of magic, whether they call them "schools" or "domains", or what have you. They will argue which ones come from rigorous arcane study and which ones must be earned from the gods. Which are inherent gifts or curses of the individual, and which are obtained from one's environment. They will exalt the benefits of their own path while belittling or outright demonizing all others. The worst part about it is that they are all right- but only barely."

- Elrusyo, "hedge magician" pen pal & outside contact of Roberick Litte.

A holistic approach to understanding the various forces, practices, and phenomena collectively known as "magic" is about as difficult to formulate as it would be to explain the third dimension to a group of flat pictures who can't stop fighting one another long enough to act as a good audience. But despite these odds, the attempt has still been made, and to a degree, the challenge overcome. It would appear that, even including systems of magic which operate under the belief of one incredibly narrow specificity (i.e., that all of a practitioner's power derives from a single boulder out in a field), all traditions seem to share the concept and acceptance of a plane or similarly distant yet permeating place in which the powers dwell. For some this is the land of the gods, while for others it is a roiling chaos of nondifferentiated cosmic soup. But the act of engaging with it, regardless of medium, seems to be enough to effect some sort of change upon that plane, insofar as some of that energy and potential is siphoned off.

The skeptical reader may now be thinking that this is all beginning to sound very much like a fairtale-esque case of "belief makes it real". And the skeptic would be correct.

(The skeptic should also be wary if they are reading this article within the walls of Deneroth, because the University enforcers can sniff out a curious mind from up to forty yards away.)

Belief is an immensely important element of engaging with magic. Without it there is no magic to speak of, after a fashion, and the mind is like a blank spot- a hole in the tapestry of the universe's mysticism. But belief is not all that is needed. One needs to be dedicated to a form of practice which evokes magic in any of its forms. This is most obvious in the case of rigorous study of the "laws" (more like gentle, self-enforced suggestions) of magic by wizards, or by the equally dedicated and self-effacing devotion of one's body and soul to their deity of choice. But the need for a system and skill is still present elsewhere. Even among those hot-blooded "sorcerers" of the Occident who claim to be able to evoke power by virtue of being themselves, there is a requisite belief in the self, and ability to empower and manifest the self. Much like a braggart about one's own deeds, a sorcerer out of practice is much more bluster than blaster.

This, coupled with the general belief that magic is unique to the sentient mind or things invested with power by the sentient mind*, suggests that all effects are indeed being drawn from the same source. To borrow from the metaphors of oracles, it may very well be that all forms of magic access the same place from which knowledge and godheads may (or may not) arise.

Observing upon the existence or nonexistence of the gods is something for an entirely different article, however. I have only just recently been forgiven by the Tower censors for including in one journal the various unflattering limericks which refer to Laizij, our eternal scholar and university patron.

What I openly wonder now, is how exactly all of these different-yet-similar means of drawing power from this "plane" interact. What would happen if two practitioners tried to draw out the same motes of force? Could they bereave one or the other of that power and leave their evocation wanting? Could they cancel one another out, as the sensationalist talk of "antimagic" from the northeast would suggest? Is the font of magic instead so vast as to make individual magic-users like rafts adrift in a sea, utterly unlikely to ever encounter or ram into one another?

Could this sea ever be drained?

* The recent reports of levitating sheepdogs in the southern reaches of our nearby Akell-Ar Valley are as of yet unsubstantiated. An attempt by one Eneko Sehi to have an expedition and study funded, while demonstrating a promising degree of initiative, has been met with red tape by the Committee for the Preservation of Esgodarran Wildlife.*

* Note that there are no native Esgodarrans present on the Committee at this time, nor have there ever been, nor do any current members of the Committee speak the indigenous dialects.

Beyond the Axebitten Woods.

Click here to read the first post about the Axebite.

"Quickly now, before the abscesses burst. Help me up..."
- Last words of Charcoal-Maker Tald, shortly before mounting an impromptu funeral pyre.

In legend, the Longfolk slay indiscriminately, mutilate the corpses, and burn the remains.

In fact, the Longfolk kill cautiously, neutralize the corpses, and purify the remains with fire.

It is with ages of begrudging duty that they fill the sky with arrows at a moment's notice, taking countless lives and making a blight of the land each season. The dead, from smallest rat to largest draft animal or person, is taken in the night past the Axebite, every limb and extremity removed and then bundled together in order to be burned atop a pyre of at least four different species of hardwood. To do differently would be to break the tradition, and to break a Longfolk tradition would be to court with ever-present and looming disaster.

They have been doing this for so long that they would be excused not to remember why they do it, if they didn't live for many centuries on end. In fact, the same Longfolk who carved the warning stones around their lands are the same ones alive today- and they are a rather young generation of them, at that. Once, long ago, when words did not fail them, they did do their best to communicate with the outside world. They were known to send envoys into the lands of the small folk around them, to establish both a rapport and a clear set of guidelines. For it was, and still is, of the utmost importance that no outsider exposes itself to the heart of that forested realm. For their own good, they must be kept out- the only mercy which can be afforded the non-compliant is a swift death.

This is because the Longfolk do not fight to keep the outside world away from the forest. They fight to keep the forest away from the outside world.

A long time ago, before the glaciers receded from Qeshuut or before the mountain named Asha collapsed upon itself in a storm of fire, the people who would become the Longfolk loved their forests. They built their homes around the tall trunks and harvested the fruits of their canopies. Boughs and branches became the spears and bows used to hunt upon the forest floor, and the practice of tree shaping was elevated to an art form. Songs were sung with the names of every plant stepped on underfoot when they traveled.

The end began with a series of blights, spaced far enough apart at first, but increasingly close together and severe, until an entire generation was exposed to worse famine than had been known in ages. Then the bark began to peel away from their tallwoods, revealing discolored and spongy wood beneath which had been rotting in secret all the while. Entire villages became abandoned as the trees they were built around fell away piece by piece until nothing remained but hollowed old trunks sloughing off a continuous shower of decay each. The forest floor was snarled in all of this fallen debris, and the life was choked from the underbrush over time.

When the first strings of animal attacks came, over-hunting and disturbed territories were blamed as the people desperately tried to readjust to their environment. But then the beasts became more daring and ferocious, mauling folk in broad daylight in the middle of camps as foam churned in their mouths and open sores wept upon their backs. Bears and wolves wandered in cannibalistic droves, elks were sighted with gore and viscera adorning their antlers, hinds and rabbits tore the throats from things with fangs which should not have been. The first few purging expeditions met with limited success, pushing the afflicted wildlife back but finding no source for it. For a time, every tribe hoped in silence that this too would pass.

When the trees themselves rose up, they knew that it would never end.

From somewhere deep in the forests, out from the ancient heart which had long been held as sacred, some befoulment for every living thing had sprung forth. It wasn't clear whether it spread through spores, or in the water, or if even the air itself was tainted with some kind of vapor. All that was known was anything afflicted could and would turn eventually, violent and guided by misintent even as its body rapidly decayed into a new source of corruption- a bloated, festering new beachhead in a war which the folk of the forest were losing. For the first time, they turned to the outside world for assistance.

Through their nascent arts of diplomacy, or through theft and deception, they obtained the arts of metallurgy. They had known and used fire, but this new hell called for greater and hotter infernos than they had ever conceived of before. With long-handled axes and saws backed by hedges of cruel-tipped tridents, spears, and man-catchers, the beleaguered survivors turned back inward at last. The groaning of wood and gnashing of teeth was drowned out by the clash of iron and the crackling of flames. The land was hewed, chopped, torn and picked at until nothing remained standing on legs or roots. The first cleansing fire was said to last six hundred nights.

Back and back they pushed the evil presence, paying for every mile with blood, sweat, and the agonized screams of the burning ringing in every pair of ears. They grew controlled and disciplined in their new craft of war, carving swaths through the blasted hinterlands and setting controlled fires which could be shaped as precisely as their old and beloved woodwork once was. For reasons which only the oldest of them know, but which they are loathe to explain, a standstill was finally reached, far beyond the wooded frontier where corruption had not yet taken root.

In their current incarnation, the Longfolk are dour and relentless in their duty. Their arms and legs stretched over time and with each birth, giving greater reach to their long, hacking weapons and longer pull to their meters-high bows with arrows like spears. The ash of a clean fire is the most adornment a typical one of their number wears, caked upon their skin until their long and gaunt bodies look ashen white, grey, or the same bluish color which haunts the dreams of so many homesteaders outside of the Axebite. It is not lost on them that they now resemble the violent and walking trees which they must ruthlessly cull, and some see it as the burden of their sins, heaped up over the ages like so many bodies on a pyre.

The world has gone on without them, leaving little evidence of its former dealings with them save for the moldering archives of a few long-gone kingdoms. The tongues of men changed overnight, it seemed to the Longfolk, until their sparse ventures out into the land beyond the forest were met with babbling gibberish and complete, mutual misunderstanding. But even bereft of allies, they continue their ceaseless vigil within and without, preventing the corruption from breaking out and keeping the hapless children from beyond the woods from becoming carriers of the blight.

If ever a single mote of rot were to escape, they fear what damage it would do.

They fear what measures they would have to take.

At the edge of the Axebitten Woods.

"Ain't nothin' ever gone in or come out of the deep forest alive in my time. The Longfolk keep it that way."
- Hrith, retired forester of Bluehill.

"Trespassers Will Be Loosed Upon. Survivors Will Be Burned Alongside The Dead."
- Tentative translation of the old script carved into all monolithic boundary stones found along the edge of the Axebite.


The Axebitten Woods are the outskirts of a temperate broadleaf and mixed forest which spans a large part of the Reossos basin and swaths of the hill country beyond. Outposts and frontier towns exist almost equidistantly around the edges of the woods, yet there are no roads or other thoroughfares cutting through the forest, nor are any of the rivers which run through it utilized beyond certain points. The impracticality of this is a well-known fact of the area, and a source of constant frustration for traders and other travelers who must circumnavigate large tracts of forest in order to reach a different market. Attempts have been made in the past to trailblaze through the woods and into the forest beyond. All have ended poorly.

The woods themselves are an area of sparse woodland roughly a mile deep which forms a band around the forest proper. Beyond the woods is the eponymous Axebite, a huge area of flat land which has been stripped, all vegetation completely cut down to the earth save for occasional stumps and heaps of dead plant matter, all of them having a withered or even burned appearance. Occasional hints of animal matter, as well as more humanoid parts, are reported to be visible from the absolute extreme edge of the wood's safety. This borderline is marked by a vast series of deep-set stone markers, each approximately eight feet tall and three feet wide, facing outward with what appears to be a warning not to step beyond this point. Only, the language carved into each stone is so old that many who happen upon it, especially the frontier folk whose tongue is heavily provincialized, cannot read it. Generally however, the mistake is only made once by any given group.

This is because any trespasser, whether they walk on two legs, four, or fly on wings, invariably attract the attention of a very sharp and very large arrow. No one has ever determined what the size threshold is to being noticed, but even large beetles or cicadas have been reported as nailed to a tree at times. Because of the sudden and exponential rise in the denseness of the forest beyond the Axebite, no sight of the archers is ever had. The long-shafted arrows tend to remain for a day, only to vanish alongside their targets sometime in the following night. More rarely, hints of light like bonfires may be seen through the trees at night, or smoke in the air during the day. Thus, very few chances have been afforded to any researchers daring and unhinged enough to desire a closer and safer look at one of these arrows.

The common folk of the area, forced by necessity to eke out a living and too proud to leave their homes, have simply made due. No one walks past a certain point in the woods according to local tradition, and steps to conserve and efficiently utilize what timber is available from the woods have been taken with varying but often remarkable degrees of success. This does not mean that the enigma of the woods does not evoke a strong response from the locals, however. Quite the opposite, as the rich series of legends and myths surrounding it would suggest.

Chief among these myths is that of the Longfolk. Despite there being no credible sources for who or what does the killing past the Axebite, a vivid picture of them has been painted regardless. These beings are approximately humanoid in shape, though with much exaggerated limbs and features. They vary from seven to ten feet tall, with long arms and long fingers which swing far past their knobby knees. Each is nearly emaciated-looking, with irregular bone and sinew visible beneath a tight hide of grey-blue skin. They feast upon everything which they kill by bow, and often they are so gluttonous that when they do not eat something raw, they often take bites out of the meat as it is still roasting upon one of their fires. Thus their stomach is a pit of embers which can be seen glowing through their torsos on dark nights, and their breath is acrid smoke. They have no language and no culture beyond their means of hunting. They have always been there and forever will be.

These fireside tales told by haggard old grandpappies have given generations of children terrible nightmares out on the frontier, and in good form they have grown up to pass that trauma on down to their children, and their children's children at every opportunity, both to make them behave at home, and more seriously to keep them safe if ever they needed to enter the woods.



The truth of the matter is distressingly worse.

Click here to read the second post about the Axebite.

On the Soil-Slaves.

"That these people have such a strong and visceral reaction to large-scale agriculture built into their mythology is uncanny, and suggestive of a long-lost chapter of their history from which they may still derive the lessons of firsthand experience."

- Roberick Bertrum Litte, Associate Undergraduate Scholar of the Department of Natural Philosophies at the Ivory Tower University of Deneroth.



The outside world of mankind is known to the Fokari, at least vaguely, and much of it fills them with a certain existential dread. Chiefly, they fear that one day the people from the lowland green will rise up and consume them like a dust storm raging in the heart of the wastes. But the anxiety extends to certain practices of "neighboring" peoples which tend not to lend themselves in any way to invading like bogeymen.

There exists within the vast Fokari pantheon a singularly reprehensible creature which is bereft of the usual qualities of dualistic positive and negative. He is a deity, after a fashion, for whom the enslavement and debasement of all creatures is His desire. He is also the patron god of farming, making clear the nomads' equation between working the land and hopeless bondage. It is also no surprise that His name, never uttered aloud by any Fokar, shares an etymological root with the most common word used to describe any acts of sexual aggression, making Him (and His vocation) the metaphorical violation of the Mother Earth figure prevalent in much of the rest of the mythos. Rather than invoking this distressing episode, He is referred to sparingly by the equally sinister epithet of "He Who Reaps and Sows".

The slaves of the soil are those beings miserable and unfortunate enough to be ensnared in His seductive lies of full bellies and surplus. Both people and the animals yoked by them are unwitting pawns of His, set to toil away and struggle against the land to the tune of His silent, mocking laughter. Though the power they are beholden to is a terrible one, the slaves of grain and fodder are more to be pitied than reviled. Such desperation has the potential to clutch anyone. While less common, some versions of the myth even suggest that mind control and enchantments play a direct role in keeping them tied to a plot of land, often taking the form of maankhir, or agonizingly tight metal bands set around their skulls in order to crush out all thoughts of tribe or self.

Years of plenty are His means of lulling all into a false sense of security, and crop failures or freak incidents of pests and natural disaster are, at best, His way of testing His servants and reminding them of the uncaring nature of the soil which will one day consume their decomposing bodies. But more often than not it does not carry any such message of warning, and serves only to amuse Him more deeply. The gradual, imperceptible erosion of soil and the degradation of its nutrients over the generations is the grandest of all cruelties engineered by He Who Reaps and Sows, for it forces over-committed populations to uproot themselves in order to seek literal greener pastures, thereby breaking covenant with Him and inviting upon themselves further punishment, according to His warped mind.

That the borderland frontier farmers eking out an existence at the watered edges of the steppe return again and again to that damning livelihood no matter how many hardships they've faced is admittedly a testament to their dedication and hardiness, but it is an even greater testament to the might of the Grain God.

No rites are performed in His name, though very rarely if a tribe's Seer determines that they've somehow earned His ire or the attention of one of His fiendish spiritual servants, a ritual is performed in order to placate and distract Him. Several farmers in effigy are constructed from sticks and sacks and positioned around a patch of tall grass. The grass is then cut close to the base like grain being harvested, and then the farmers themselves are felled one by one, like lives being taken by starvation and disease. While this is all being acted out by one very brave volunteer, the rest of the tribe rapidly breaks camp and flees as far as it can move in a half-day's time. Upon completion, the volunteer sprints to keep up, and undergoes a cleansing ritual once he or she has reunited with their breathless fellows.

Hobs and Hellos.

Well, I guess I better start somewhere.

Hello, all! Or no one. Whoever winds up reading these posts. I am the Furtive Goblin. Call me Furt for short, if you really want to.

I've been a longtime lurker on the internet, avoiding social media as much as I could, but this summer I've been entertaining illusions of grandeur. So I've decided to start up Yet Another Fantasy Gaming Blog (maybe I should have named this joint YAFGaB).

I won't promise a posting schedule, since I've got senior papers and unemployment to worry about. But if you're the type to enjoy twists on standard fantasy settings and the occasional bit of system-agnostic lore, drop by once in a while and see if I've cooked up anything to your liking.

Without further ado, have some horseless steppe nomads.

The Fokari

"We are the People of Clay. We do not crumble. We do not crack. We mold ourselves to the will of our Tribe."

- The Speaker's Oath

Little is known, and even less has been seen, of a group of people said to live upon the boundaries between civilization and the untouched wilds of the Lukran Wastes. While many look upon the pirates and mariners of the southern islands as the least "civilized" people, these waste-dwellers are hardly recognized as a people at all. Indeed, to most bordering tribes and polities they exist only as myths, and as bogeymen for small children. But the peoples of the Taleen borderlands and the camel merchants foolhardy enough to caravan through the steppes surrounding the Lukran Wastes know full well that something--someone--is out there. And that someone knows far more of their neighbors, by comparison. If you were to take and put together all of the stories told of them, one would think the wanders in the wastes are a vicious and savage race who know nothing of society and live only for blood-lust, greed, and the sewing of fear.

The truth, however, is significantly deeper.

In their own tongue, which is a remarkably varied language composed of several dozen regional dialects, they are the Fokari (sing. Fokar). Somewhat shorter than average, but strongly built and mildly bandy-legged, these tawny-skinned, hairy, and snub-nosed people are consummate survivalists who have made their home in a land which gives up nothing easily. While the steppe is green enough at its edges, much of the interior is a vast, cold desert climate with exceptionally little rainfall and no large native animals to speak of.

The Fokar tribes hunt, as well as herd small and hardy livestock, most prominently a stocky breed of long-furred goat called a yuum. They dwell in camps of circular or pointed tents constructed of tough, decorated felt and the few pieces of wood and other plant matter they have access to out on the steppe, turned into poles and segments of latticework for their walls. Rather than wandering aimlessly as some might think, they depart from a region according to a carefully-calculated and surprisingly accurate seasonal calendar, leaving one area before it has been overgrazed or stripped of its other resources, and entering a new area which, while seeming untouched, has likely been part of a tribe's nomadic rotation for generations. Where water is found in natural bodies, they produce durable and practical pieces of claywork which nonetheless exhibit their own subdued, elegant art style. When pasture land becomes too scarce or a feud breaks out between two families, they mediate their disputes so that the issue is brought to as swift and as practical an outcome as possible. Punishment may be corporeal when needed, but exile rather than capital punishment is the most severe ever meted out.

Through it all, the Fokari make do without engagement with distant but lucrative caravan trade routes, nor with access (lawful or otherwise) to the products of agricultural societies. This has proved surprisingly fruitful in the past, as they have avoided the major conflicts which have devastated empires and rearranged huge swaths of the world throughout history. And on the other end of it all, they have come out mostly unscathed and mostly unknown.

Each tribe is led by a council of elders, chief among them being the elected positions of Speaker and Seer. The Speaker is always male, and is the somewhat more public face of the group, announcing decisions as well as officiating tribal and inter-tribal events in the camp. He is also a lore-keeper who commits to memory the entirety of the tribe's oral history, as well as decent swaths of the histories of related tribes. His is the duty of monitoring all youths in a tribe, watching them for any aptitudes as they reveal themselves, and guiding them on the path deemed to be the best compromise between tribal value and individual passion.

The Seer, by contrast, is always female. She is a shaman; the one who looks to the future rather than the past, reading portents and omens in the natural world and in the seemingly random events which befall a tribe. She consults with the grim and collective spirits of the tribe's ancestors, and negotiates with the fickle and capricious spirits of the land. She is also a priestess to the tribe, connecting her people with the vast and rich mythology of the tribes possessed of qualities of animism, totemism, polytheism, and dualistic bitheism. There is a proper and hereditary position of Chieftain as well, but in practice it wields little more power in decision-making than any other elder or respected tribe member with a vote.

Each tribe of Fokari is essentially independent, and they generally only intermingle or confederate with other tribes during extremely important social or religious events, or in times of dire need.

The smaller their numbers, the harder they are to detect, after all.

The less known about their movements, the safer they are from the outsiders and soil-slaves.