THE WORLD was shaken to its core by the final victory, subsequent impotent ennui, and eventual explosive suicide of the Dark Lord. Many lands are ephemeral and transitory, rising up out of the sea of dust and discordant music of creation to meet living eyes, only to sink back down into oblivion after their passing. Stable islands stand out in the dust, but they are few and far between.
Because of this, the world cannot be mapped with grids or tiles. You can only know specific points, and their approximate locations relative to one another. Fortunately for goblins, they haven’t invented maps yet, and they lack the specialized language to talk in exact units of measure.
EXPLORATION is the main thrust of the game. Goblin expeditions venture out from recently discovered openings onto the surface to see what the wide, ruined world has in store for them.
The expedition begins on the Home point. This is where cracks in the earth lead down to the goblin vaults. Home is almost always a safe place to rest or resupply, compared to the wilderness. With luck, Home is the beginning and end point of every expedition.
From here, you can Visit Home, Quit and end the expedition, or move Outward to a new Point.
When moving Outward, the referee rolls d6. That is the number of times the referee rolls on the Encounters table. The Encounters can be rolled all at once and ordered how the referee chooses, or they can be rolled one at a time as the goblins overcome them. Every 3 Encounters is a full day of travel. After you navigate all Encounters, roll once on the Points table for a destination.
After arriving at a new Point, you may Explore the Point, move Outward to another Point, or move Homeward to travel back to older Points. All moves may involve Encounters.
Home can have up to 6 Points directly connected to it, like spokes on a wheel, but each of those “spokes” can lead infinitely Outward… or at least as close to infinite as goblins can count.
The sample Encounters below are more like evocative phrases meant to get an idea going. They are open-ended, and should always have multiple different paths to overcoming them. Goblins are encouraged to think of something and roll with it.
Each Point should have a full day or more worth of content if they are delved into. They should also be able to be bypassed if the goblins can't handle it, or if they just really would rather not.
The World-Spider came, and those who heard its approach were the first to go.
It started off as a distant scratching at the door, or the rustling of thick, bristly hairs over cloth. They tried their best to ignore them.
But the sounds came closer, and grew louder, until they proved too difficult to ignore- or to deny.
Soon they entered those ill-fated minds, and took up scratching and bristling against the backs of their brains. The sounds reverberated outward across their nerves like vibrations on strands. Actions ceased to be of their own volition, and thoughts of alien origin became the norm. With time, even the frantic undercurrent wishing for those scratching, skittering sounds to stop was subsumed.
What was leftover was a vessel.
For some time, they managed to look outwardly normal- at least at a glance. Speech became halting and unnatural, and virtually all daily routines were abandoned. But they retained their shape, and general knowledge possessed by the people who once were. And these qualities were used to their advantage. Few could hold themselves together long enough to infiltrate high and mighty places, but a body with only two legs was good enough when seen from a distance. No time could be wasted in their attempts to prepare the way.
Soon they were drawn together by strands of silk that only they could see, led to empty and desolate places where they could unsheathe themselves and work unobstructed. They tapped into the underlying web beneath all things, and sent such a tremor through it that the location of the world was impossible for the World-Spider to miss. They also kept abreast of anyone or anything that has heard the scratching at the door, but has managed to resist- or worse, work against it.
Once all legitimate threats are eliminated, and the World-Spider has been summoned irrevocably, its extensions may finally know the end. When the sky is wreathed in its silky cocoon, and the soft cries of reality itself can be heard, they are the first to be unmade. All becomes twitching legs and needle-like hairs for one moment of awful exultation, but just as suddenly the writhing mass dissolves into liquid potential.
They are spared the sight of fangs piercing the heavens as the world dies, though few of their many eyes would even be functional enough to see.
Of course, even that end would be welcomed, after so long spent under the direction of Mr. Sticks.
A nest of skittering signs and rumors
The World-Spider came, and only dregs were left amid the riven strands of silk.
The cocoon closed the world off from everything. Nothing--no ghost, god, or spirit--could get in or out.
Not even the prayers of the desperate fodder could escape it. While the world dissolved, the gods in their heavens starved.
Lean times set in. Having grown used to the sustenance of prayer, the gods found their withdrawal symptoms sudden and agonizing. Even the mightiest deities withered into emaciated husks.
All of them had a breaking point.
Ravenous hunger alike to that of the Enemy gripped them, and in their frenzy they tore down and devoured the essence of their own planes and servants.
When the World-Spider moved on, as it always did and always would, the gods descended on the scraps it left behind. They devoured the emptied lands before them, for matter was naught but spirit-stuff of their own contrivance, once upon a time. They drank of the lakes of liquified thought and potential. They huffed the clouds of dust and dismay that yet clung to the ruins.
And still they hungered.
Their bloodshot eyes turned toward one another before long. The smallest and feeblest among them were the first to go. Land-spirits, tutelary deities, and the odd surviving demi-god were snapped up like morsels. But they did not satisfy. A food chain shrank as rapidly as it came into existence. "Eat or be eaten" soon became "eat and be eaten", which further devolved into the mindless mantra of "e a t".
Roiling, half-digested spirit-stuff spilled from opened bellies until the selfsame feast came to a grizzly conclusion, and the last of the gods were consumed by an encircling sea of chaotic juices.
Only, not all of the gods destroyed one another like that.
Perhaps it had once been a god of sneaking and opportunism. Perhaps it had just adapted very quickly. It couldn't remember, and frankly it didn't matter. What mattered was the work it had put in before all the other gods spilled themselves.
The last god cobbled together all of the wretched castoffs of its kin and the Enemy. With skeletal fingers it sculped an island, and with spit, glue, and hope it held it together. It even managed to scoop up a few overlooked creatures who had been floating adrift since the World-Spider's coming.
It nurtured these half-dead, maddened beings until they could scratch an existence out of the rocks, at which point the last god turned from savior to jailor. Even as it raised new shreds of land from the roiling sea, it jealously guarded and browbeat all within its domain. All formality was abandoned, and the intercession of religion was done away with. The true nature of the relationship between god and mortal was laid plain, bare, and raw: one is the reaper, and the other is its harvest; flesh and prayer are just different mediums for the same outcome.
The mortals slipped down from the jagged, hollow breast of their god. They died. They spread, multiplied, and mourned. They died. They looked out upon the sea of chaos and recoiled with fear. They died. They bowed their heads beneath the lurid, bloodshot gaze of their titanic keeper. They died. They expressed their anguish by acting in the god's image and enslaving the beasts and briars of the earth. They died.
Ages passed. The god's name was forgotten, even by itself. In its place it took the title of the Last God.
Centuries more dragged by. The title became its name, spoken in anxious, placating tones by every soul with a voice in that realm.
The Lastgod is jealously protective of its scraps, castoffs, and orts. Dismal wealth and mighty doom await.
Rumors on the Orts
