Myths that are Spoken of the Islands where the Sun Dies

 

The Sea People

Large, well-formed humans, with bright red skin and bright blue hair, which they wear long and wild. They have a single eye in the centre of their foreheads - a sign of their oracular powers - and long, sharp teeth. They wear thick armour of mother of pearl, and fight with bolas, spears, nets, and hammers. They make their homes in tall, shimmering, white stone castles of great beauty, which rise above the foam of the sea, pale and luminescent, in the pink light of the dawn. 

The Sea People drink nectar and eat honey, and, lacking nothing, spend their days in idleness when not at war. They play music, enjoy games of skill and chance, and compose poetry which is incomprehensible to outsiders. They are easily insulted, but also easily befriended. 

Their faces are frightening in battle, but kind, virtuous, and smiling in friendship. The wise among them are very wise, and they live for a long time. They say that they have seen the future of the world, and, fearing it, taken the islands where they live out from the flow of time. 

The islanders of the Lantern Berth tell stories about the Sea People, with whom they trade when the islands can be seen. Intermarriage is unheard in the present day, but there are old, old stories of courtships and even children. Those of unusually large stature born on the Lantern Berth are still called 'Westerners'. 

The Flower of Life, the Fruit of the Invincible Heroes

On the furthest island, so far West that you find yourself walking not on solid earth but in dream, or nightmare, or the past and the future, or the world as it should have been, it is said that there is a flower of indescribable beauty, that grows above a pool that is still, cold, deep, green, dark, and utterly clear. To see this flower is to know tranquility and the end of striving. Each year, it weeps a single drop of golden nectar into the pool. If you can catch it and drink it, before it disappears forever into the shadowy green depths, your body will be made whole, and you will live as the immortals do. 

On that same island, where only the virtuous may tread, there is a mountain of sheer rocks and precipices. It stretches up to heaven, and the gods sit at its crown, amusing themselves by sending down fortunes and sorrows like javelins. At the peak of the mountain is a pear tree that was there when the gods arrived. Its fruit are green like precious jewels, and the gods guard them jealously, but if a human is very lucky and very brave, they might be able to steal one. To eat the fruit is to be strong like a summer hurricane, terrible as the sea in anger, quick as time passing, clever, light-hearted, loved and crowned with victory. 

The Serpents and their Poisons

On the Western Isles there are great serpents that swim in the sea, and that whisper poison into the ears of the unwary. Those that heed them grow sick and inward-looking, and shutter themselves indoors, counting their misfortunes until they die. The serpents sometimes walk about in the forms of people. They have a special fondness for wearing the faces of priests and magistrates, such that their poisonous words may spread further and do more harm. Those that live on the Western Isles will council you to stay polite with those who preach sermons, but to check theirs eyes, their tongues, their faces, and to know them well before you heed them. 

Once in each generation, the populations of the Isles will lead a great pogrom against the serpents who walk like people. They say that they have a simple test, infallible, to pick out their quarries. It is a word, they say - a word that the humans tell their children, and that the serpents do not know and cannot pronounce. What is the word? Do not ask them - once and they will insult you as a dangerous fool; twice, and they will kill you and hang your body from a scaffold, for the rest to beat to pieces with sticks. 

The King of the Isles

A man who wears a cloak of shimmering fish scales, and who travels the islands in a thin, proud boat that moves swiftly, without sail or oar. He carries royal weapons, a terrible, heavy mace, and a knife of bronze, wave-bladed, like the sea, and he commands loyalty from all the lesser kings and queens of this place. He rules in truth, where others claim to rule. He is mostly content to accept the hospitality of the island courts, but sometimes, when he is angered, he will demand a child from his hosts. None dare defy him - he is beloved by the sea, and holds within himself its awful strength. 

What happens to the children none can say. It is said that you can see them sometimes, staring up at you from the water where the sea is deep and wide - thousands of their faces, of children who did not grow old, swimming up to see you, and catch a fleeting glimpse of the land of air and sun and sky that they were stolen from centuries ago. Some of them are armed as though for battle; some bears the marks of violence. All watch you, with an expression impossible to read, and then disappear back into the depths.  

The king has a pleasant singing voice, and he loves to sing. You will hear him before you see him. Be polite, and grudge him not his royal share in your wealth. 

The Observatory of the Apes

The apes of the Isles are not like the apes of the mainland - they do not live beneath the earth, or drink petrol, or dream of black stars and burning seas of iron. The apes of the isles are astronomers and philosophers, and they live in a walled city that they call University. They speak all languages, and collect texts on all topics from around the world in their great library. The largest building in University is the observatory, with its hundred telescopes, and its single Great Lens, which the apes say can look through time. It is not yet ready, but it soon will be - then the mysteries of the past and future will finally be laid bare.

In the meantime, the apes debate and practice rhetoric. They are beloved by the other islanders, and University is sacred, neutral ground, never to be disturbed or warred on. The apes themselves have a great fondness for fanciful dress and flowery language. The laws of University are strict - the only capital crime is to tell a lie. If you are found to have lied you will be stripped in court, beaten (to tenderise you), and eaten alive by your monkey judge and monkey jurors. 

How to get there...

You can't, the islands don't exist. Or maybe they exist on certain days, or beneath certain stars. Those that live on the Lantern Berth will laugh at you for asking, and if you press them will tell you - it was possible once, but no longer. Those that try are never seen again, and the Western seas boil and smoke and writhe with monsters. Maybe, maybe, you might get there if you can see them when you set out. But to see the islands is a thing that happens only once in a lifetime, if that. 

Give up on this idea, you will throw away your life, and the lives of your companions.

Night Time

Imagine the public spaces of the hotel— most clearly the lobby, gym, and restaurant areas— as a type of stage; a series of strictly bounded spaces through which various bodies enter and exit, and where some of them perform. The lobby is the largest by area but also the most sparse. There are pale, polished stone floors, dark timber walls with false inset frames spaced along their length at regular intervals, and a ceiling almost three stories high from which hang four small and tasteful electric chandeliers. In the night these clusters of cut glass and aluminium (pale metal, almost white) throw a soft grey light into the huge room— at night the business of checking in is slower but more intimate. There are tired faces of professionals pulling suitcases, taxis and international accents, and no children anywhere. The smells of cigarettes cling to jackets and gusts of cold air blow in from the wide front doors, which open onto frigid nights with no clouds where the cold and the clarity of the air draws haloes around the moon and the street lamps and the bright electric signage that covers the darkened city outside. The lobby is quiet. There are leather lounges placed along the walls but these do not impose themselves in any way on the openness of the room; in fact they recede almost into invisibility. The space stretches back almost thirty metres until it finally meets the three tall receptionist desks that are the point where official activity converges. They are made from the same dark timber as the walls. The bodies that arrive at nighttime and in the early mornings play for no audience and they are eager to partake in that strict discretion that is the rule that governs this space. There are slippages around entrances and exits. In the day things are different. In the day the space is lit by the sunlight that floods in through the plate glass wall that faces the high street, and makes every surface glow. People come and go in groups, day workers in business dress, families and couples on holiday, speaking over one another and the growing general noise of the place. The uniforms worn by the staff are bright with gold threading. There are conspicuous displays of wealth from the patrons who are on their way out, into the city, or who move across the wide floor towards the gym or the restaurant. The lobby takes the central position on the ground level, such that it is impossible to reach either of these other spaces except by traversing its width in full view of all of the others.


Through the eastward doors of the lobby is the gym complex, which is less open and more intricate— it is in reality a series of interconnected rooms and areas, each with a specialist function. There is the gym itself with its banks of steel equipment, the lap pool and sauna, changing rooms, a suite of alcoves for private massages, and the VIP spa area. Each of these rooms and corridors has walls and floors covered in brilliant white tile (barring the gym, which has a dark rubber floor and plainly painted walls). These tiles are heavily glazed to a gloss finish and the effect is classical, severe, controlled and tasteful, like a tuberculosis ward in a prestige period drama. The gym is open all night and is always fixed in the same white hard fluorescent light, which gleams off the machines that stand inert in rows like frozen cavalry. There are usually one or two people working themselves on treadmills, insomniacs or bored professionals. The heavier setups, the bench and leg presses and the free weights, are generally occupied only in the rush hours of the day, in the morning around nine and again after lunch and before dinner. Now and then an attendant in sports gear very unlike the uniforms of the rest of the staff will move from aisle to aisle with a cloth and a white spray bottle of disinfectant, making sure that the surfaces are wiped clean after each use. The bottles are also provided to patrons on entry, and most apply them judiciously. The air is recycled but still smells of alcohol and iron and sweat. There is only one television installed in the space, in a distant corner in front of one of the exercise bikes, as a something like a concession or an apology. Some patrons on entry eye it nervously, wonder if they can afford to take this risk in public, not knowing fully what the result could be, not knowing who would form the judgement if it came. But many more are totally impervious to this almost-imperceptible feeling and lay claim to the position whenever possible, fixing their attention on the twenty four hour news stations that cycle across the screen.


At the far edge of the gym, past the mirrored walls and the racks of dumbbells, are two exits. Neither has a door fitted, and both open onto corridors where the white tiling begins and marks the boundary to the rest of the complex. The demarcation is severe. Through the left entrance is the swimming pool, a fifty metre heated lap pool with eight lanes and neon blue water. The floors, walls, and the inside of the pool itself are all tiled uniformly and without discrimination. They continue over the lip of the pool without even rubber panels installed to mark the edge. The lights here are the same harsh fluorescents that are in use in the gym, and the hot air and the clouds of steam smell strongly of chlorine. The water is heated to thirty degrees. The pool is less popular than the gym but its patrons are more consistent and come to swim here at the same times each day and night. A bored lifeguard patrols the edge. Off to one side are the wooden doors of the sauna, which is dark and small and panelled with wood, like a pagan chapel or an antechamber in a hunting lodge, and next to this are the two changing rooms (the gym has its own separate set), marked for gender and also without doors but opening onto blind, tiled corridors. There are showers and wooden benches and towel racks, and several toilet cubicles set back from the main space. A series of clever runnels and angled surfaces direct the flow of water into discreet drains in the centre of each area. The cleaning staff are instructed to take extra care disinfecting and bleaching these channels, and also the showers, since over time and without proper maintenance they can build up accumulations of limescale and the other hard impurities in the city's water, which can discolour the edges of the tiles and cause them to degrade. The grout is dark and does not require the same level of attention.


Through the right entrance are the massage rooms. These must be booked in advance with one of the hotel’s in-house physical therapists, and offer several packages catering to different needs and means. Each is a small tiled cubical with a single large window and a bed with a tubular steel frame, like you would find in a hospital. In the day they are lit naturally with the sunlight, and after dark with a small warm globe lamp that is set into the wall. Unlike the other facilities, which are accessible at all hours, the massage rooms have strict opening times, and are generally booked weeks in advance.


Past the cubicles and further down the corridor are the double doors that lead to the spa, which are always closed and barred to casual access.


Back across the lobby towards the opposite end of the hotel are the double doors that lead to the restaurant, where there is a waiter standing ready to welcome guests and seat them. The atmosphere inside is generally subdued, but gets louder later in the evening when the families have left and office workers begin to congregate around the bar and the private booths. The ceiling carries on from the lobby and so is almost twelve metres high, and the designers of the restaurant took advantage of this to install a kind of interior arcade that bisects the room and forms a second story over half of the space. The columns that support the platform are thin dark iron with decorative arches that stretch between them, and they are ornamented with cast iron figures; roses, fruits, twisting vines, and figures posed in dramatic conflict and mischief; demons, sprites, and satyrs. The room and its flows of guests and workers have been organised around the arcade, and there are tables for diners arranged in the space beneath the platform, as well as in the open part of the floor. On top of the arcade is another dining area, accessed by a narrow iron stairwell placed near the centre of the room, bordered by iron guardrails, and housing two huge oak tables. Normally these are used individually for large group bookings and events, but once or twice a year on special occasions a team of kitchen hands and waiters (each one requires at least six people to move) will be bought in to shift them together lengthways, and set up this way the platform area can seat forty comfortably. Along the back wall of the lower area are the bar and dining booths, and besides these are the entrances to the kitchens, which service the restaurant and also the rest of the hotel with room-service orders at all hours of the day and night. All of the productions and working schedules in the kitchens are designed to continue uninterrupted— the cooks and chefs and waiters and cleaners all work on rotating eight hour shifts with covers for breaks, during which they disappear into hidden access tunnels to sit and relax and text partners and children, smoke from small windows, wipe hands scarred by work across pressed white uniforms, bitch about management, about their pay, small jokes to pass the time before they will be called in again, hair tied back from faces that are oddly still, fixed in small moments, small reprieves. Their fatigue is the proof of their labour among the steam and fire and the flashing blades of knives, and they are contained in this professionalism, that comes with the discipline of schedules learned over years. The pragmatics of twenty four hour activity mean that the kitchens and their storage areas are much larger than all of the dining spaces of the restaurant combined, and this vast volume and humming activity unfold invisibly back from the rear wall. The staff enter using entrances that are not visible or available to the dining public, and their movements cannot be tracked using vision. On the other end of the room the glass front that lights the lobby continues along the building’s facade and makes up one entire wall of the dining space. The tables set closest to the glass look like architects’ drawings from mid-century design magazines— they are sized in reference to bodies and small groups and are dwarfed by the humanist Modern architectural features that enclose them inside a world of form and surface, where buildings and their pristine interiors are sketched out in light. A world where you might find yourself (finally) welcomed by the anonymous community that understand the goodness of your small domestic order. They will watch for you by the entrance, the one that marks your coming back into the necessary commerce of the city. And the city is the world. It is dimmer now outside. They wait for you without judgement; without vulgarity or sentimentality or any facile kindness that would let you be again the individual. You will come into their loving and their common grace, and you will be faceless like the rest in the darkness, caught up in the great and secular choir. It is nighttime. The rooms that have been locked away behind these great transparencies are unlit and devoid of movement. Further inside there are the quiet sounds of others, small groups unknown to you, still eating and working, still making their time as best they can (survival). But even though you can hear them, from this perspective you cannot see another living creature moving, not one in this entire city, and the empty rooms that unfold from you in blank series are as still and silent as black tunnels that stretch away forever into the obscurity and stillness at the frozen dead centre of the earth.

-

When they wake it is in darkness. The air is hot and stale. They perform a quick verbal check of those present, and, finding the group intact, move together to feel out the contours of their immediate environment— stone floors and walls, shelves with plastic bottles, a mop and bucket, probably cleaning storage of some kind, but a storage room with stone floors and walls? Eventually someone locates a box of matches and lights one. The four of them are standing inside a cleaning room, proportioned like a corridor, about two metres by six. The walls, floor, and ceiling are heavy stone masonry, and double rows of white plastic shelving line both walls at just below head height. The shelves hold brightly coloured plastic bottles, oven cleaners, glass cleaners, mould sprays, four five-litre bottles of bleach, sponges and scourers in shiny plastic packaging. There is a door at the end of the room; a strangely ornate and ancient door made from dark antique wood with black iron hinges and filigree. The match burns out and the room is plunged back into darkness. They light another and move to open the door, which is locked from the outside, so they beat and kick it down, which takes over a minute, and which they do in total blackness to conserve matches. When the barrier finally splinters open they can see that the wide open space on the other side of the door frame is as pitch black as the inside of the room. The ground outside the room is packed dark earth. They set one of the shattered door timbers alight and use it like a torch, and then they begin to move out from the room, following along the wall that extends off in both direction from the door frame, and which is made from the same stone masonry as the storage space. Whatever this stone wall is it is tall enough that the ceiling it supports is lost in the darkness at the edge of the flickering circle of their makeshift illumination.


After several minutes of tracking along the base of the wall they come across a broad flight of stone stairs set into the structure. When they climb these they discover that the stairs lead up onto broad battlements at the top of the wall, and also that there is no ceiling containing this structure, only the endless blackness stretching upwards and out from the wall in all directions, as though the moon, stars and sun had been put out or permanently banished from the sky. From the battlements they can smell salt water like the sea, but they cannot hear any waves or anything at all. They decide to explore along the battlements. After an hour or so they have mapped out the structure in which they find themselves— a small stone star fort, with thick low walls arranged into five points that jut out into a black void that their torches cannot illuminate from the top of the wall. Every twenty minutes or so they must return to the smashed door frame and make another torch, since without the firelight the darkness is so total that they cannot see their own hands held to their faces. They make contingencies— to save matches, and there are now only seven matches left, they light a small campfire by the door. This will consume fuel faster than they would like, but they realise exploring the space that there is plenty of wooden furniture around and as yet no more matches. They leave one of their number with the fire at all times while the others track out and away from the circle of light carrying burning pieces of wood, in an effort to more quickly explore the space and see if there might be something they could use to effect an escape. But an escape to where? Where is it that they have come from?


Eventually the floor plan of the fortress is mapped comprehensively. Inside the walls are three stone buildings— a barracks full of bunks and cots, a kitchen and mess, and a small stone church with an iron bell built into its tiled roof in Spanish colonial style. There is also a tiny gate house at the entrance of the fort, which houses an electric motor and control box that appears to control the raising and lowering of a steel car bridge from the island fortress down to some invisible mainland. The bridge is raised, and the mechanisms are unpowered. One of them has the idea of following the power cables from the control box and gate mechanism back to their source. This is not easy, as some effort has gone into concealing the cables and blending them into their environment with a relative seamlessness. At two points the cables track directly into bore holes drilled into the stone masonry and it takes them almost twenty minutes the first time, and several hours the second, to locate the emergence points. Everything shifts and moves in the torch light. Nonetheless they are eventually able to follow them all the way back to a small room next to the cleaning supply storage where they woke up, a room with a trap door that leads down into a concrete basement that houses a generator and seven ancient steel jerry cans sitting on a rack. Five contain fuel. They fill the generator and switch it on and at once banks of searchlights clustered around the floorpan of the fortress blaze into illumination. The lights have been hidden with professional skill, in blind corners and mounted high on walls, sometimes in small boxes that have been textured and painted in camouflage to match the stone masonry. When switched on they light up the fortress strategically— not to provide easy illumination for walking or day to day tasks, but to present the stone architecture as beautifully as possible.


Still, the light is welcome, and even when it is not aimed directly at the courtyards and walkways the ambient illumination allows the group to explore the space without smashing up any more furniture. They quickly realise that on the other side of the ramparts there is a large body of water, maybe an ocean, certainly the smell is salt, but an ocean without any movement at all, no waves and no tides, flat as an endless sheet of glass. The water is opaque and glossy and has the feeling of profound depth. The surface is like a precious stone, a green so dark it is like black. They throw down torches that are extinguished immediately. They imagine the ripples from the disturbance distributing across that perfect surface for vast distances, silently, and unseen in the darkness. The generator also powers the mechanism that lowers the car bridge, and they are able to work the controls without any trouble at all.


The lighting installed in the fort does not extend out past the battlements, but one of them has the idea of unscrewing the brackets and other fixings and repositioning the lights, as far as their wiring will allow. They use a knife to work the screws loose, and pull up the cables as far as they are able, being extremely careful not to snap or break them since they do not have the equipment necessary for repairs. It is while they are moving one of the larger spotlights up on to the ramparts and trying to angle it down to illuminate the far side of the lowered bridge that they notice the sheet of etched dark metal that has been fixed to the exterior of the stone walls with large bolts at its four corners. It is clearly ornamental— an addition to the architecture, similar in feeling to a mosaic or bas relief. The etching on the surface is light, but the cuts in the metal show up brilliantly under the illumination of the spotlight. It shows an animal or a human-animal hybrid of some kind, obscure and twisted over itself, in a confusing landscape of clouds and steam and eruptions of earth. It is not clear what is sky and what is solid or liquid; everything has been mixed and twisted together, or reduced back down into something fundamental and obscure. The body seems held in place in this semi-permeable medium, or it is clawing its way through or perhaps being birthed— it is really difficult to tell exactly what is being represented. There is no visible face or head, but the neck that is visible is elongated and strange. It thrusts upwards and into the top of the metal sheet and is lost by the crop of the frame. An odd choice of composition. They wonder if perhaps the original panel was larger and included a head, maybe a face; if maybe this crucial missing element might have provided the image with something concrete to relay or communicate. If the cropping was some deliberate act of containment or neutering. One of the group realises that there is no way this strange object, which they realise after several minutes is made from a single enormous sheet of lead, could be seen from the inside of the fortress hidden away in the dark like this. None of the many lights installed around the complex hits this patch of the outer wall. And then they come to the conclusion that actually this strange icon was installed intentionally between the illuminated spaces, and that it must be something best suited to obscurity.


On the other side of the car bridge is a city that sits abandoned in the darkness. There are other lead panels and other fortresses, other figures that they cannot understand. Over time, it could be months, they are able to map them these spaces and to know them. Eventually they realise that their search will lead them inevitably to the ancient and massive cathedral that dominates the centre of the city— they find tourist maps and road signs everywhere that point to it, and they read about its history and its public use from the time before the city was reduced to its current chthonic state. They begin to think that they know this building too, even as every attempt that they make to penetrate further into the interior, into the dense urban fabric, fails. They scavenge supplies, which are plentiful in the abandoned supermarkets. One day they run out of timber to burn and are forced to tie themselves together with rope and search by touch for something flammable, for anything that might bring them light. The cathedral holds the key to their escape. They fantasise that the great gothic stone building houses a power station hidden beneath the areas of worship, that it will light the whole of the city again if only they can access it. There are barrels of oil in the underground room and corridors, fountains of oil that collect darkly in stone basins and that stain the stone floors, and that will bring them a final, perfect illumination. But exploration is agonisingly slow. There are strange road blocks, and fences of steel and razor wire, and sinkholes that have swallowed whole sections of the city, and every path that seems like it should lead straightforwardly to the cathedral turns them back eventually to the silent beach and to the fortress that is still lit up under its spotlights, and that from a distance looks like an architectural model or a children’s toy. They are able to find opiates and other drugs in old pharmacies, and use these to pass the time with one another when they lose hope of reaching their goal. A group of them get high on the beach beneath the panel of lead and speak with the headless long-limbed figure that boils in its obscurity of cloud and smoke. Then finally one day they are successful and they break down the doors of the cathedral. The vaulted ceilings are forty metres high, and the walls are covered in gilt gold; there are reliquaries and a treasury where the bones of saints are kept as proof against evil. They smash everything apart, every piece of the alter, every single painting, the dais, they strip the walls, they burn what will burn. They flood the floor with black oil and set the building alight. The stone walls do not burn but the flames and the smoke deform them, stain them with rippling curtains of soot thirty metres tall. Paintings for giants or monsters. In the tunnels bellow they find the banks of machines that have kept this world in darkness. They find the bodies of the citizens stripped naked and stacked in rows, covered in the black oil that shines thickly in the flashing light of the torches. They destroy the machines with true hatred and with the frustration of denial or rejection. From the broken components they are able to construct their own contraption, one that will send them back, and they work quickly to do so before the rivers of oil are set alight and the catacombs are smothered in choking smoke and dirty black fire.


-


When she gets back to their room and realises that M isn’t there she is very still for a few minutes, and then she sits down on the edge of the bed and waits in the darkness, thinking. She is still drunk, and the emotions and thoughts that well up from inside her are dull and muted. She sits that way for a long time, and in the darkness of the room she is silhouetted in the reflected light of the city that spills in from the window. She looks like a statue. Then she takes off her shoes and lies back in bed and turns on the television, searching for a movie to watch. In the light from the screen her face is neutral. Eventually she finds something and turns the sound down low enough that the voices are difficult to understand. Then she gets up and moves to the bathroom and starts to run a bath, without switching on the light. She runs her hand beneath the jets of water and feels for the right temperature. Steam rises up. She returns to the bed to watch the film and after a few minutes the steam begins to leak into the hotel bedroom through the open door. As it moves into the room it is cut into by the light from the city that comes in at the window, and also by the brighter illumination from the television screen. She is lying on the bed, heavy and unmoving. She is like some ancient stone decoration, a funerary idol or a demon set at the entrance to ward against lesser evils. Steam fills the room slowly but completely. The picture on the screen begins to soften and fade. There are muted sounds of female laughter, murmured conversation. When she can hear the bath getting full she gets up again and turns off the taps. Then she returns to the bed to watch.


After another half an hour she feels that if she watches even one more second of this film she might try to throw the television through the plate glass window. Then she realises, with some surprise, that she is really hurt by M’s absence, and this realisation comes with a restlessness and a vicious, vindictive boredom. She turns the television off and drains the bath, finds her swimwear, and exits the room, laking care to lock the door, taking care not to make too much noise, aware of her clumsiness, aware of the thickness in her movements, finds the lifts, rides one down to the ground floor, and makes her way over towards the gym complex and the sauna. As she passes by the restaurant she tries peeking in to see if the conference goers are still celebrating at the bar but the angle of her passage across the lobby cuts that space off from her view. She enters the gym and breathes in the familiar scents and feels herself relax. With confidence swelling she begins to walk towards the sauna, but when she gets to the two exits she stops and thinks that perhaps she will see what the spa room is like instead, since she has not had a chance to visit it yet. The tiled corridor is unlit, which is so unusual in the twenty four hour atmosphere of the hotel that she almost stops and retreats back into the light. But then she sees the double doors up at the end of the dark corridor and makes towards them. The white tiles are blue in the shadow, and the openings for the individual massage rooms branch off the side of the corridor like cells in an isolation ward. The doors are marked ‘spa’ with a brass plaque, and they are roped off with an actual red velvet rope, complete with polished brass loops and fittings. She tries the doors and when she finds that they are locked she gives the lock mechanism a short push, cracking outwards with the full strength of her chest and shoulders and breaking the mechanism open, forcing the white painted doors first just a crack and then fully open with a soft squealing of metal. There are two metal bolts at the top and bottom of the door that have also been forced inwards and she can see that one of them has scored a shallow groove into the stone or faux stone floor in the interior. In the darkness this fresh damage stands out slightly whiter than the rest of the white marble. Then she steps over the rope and into the pitch blackness of the spa, closing the doors behind her and squatting down to find and pick up the broken pieces of brass and mechanism that her violent entry has scattered across the marble floor interior with blind hands and fingers.


Once she has pushed the doors closed again she switches on the torch on her phone, and sees that the room is actually quite small, and that it is dominated by the massive tub, sunken into the centre of the floor. She is standing quite close to the porcelain edge and would have fallen in if she had taken a few more steps in the blackness. The walls and floor are white marble and the spa itself is porcelain and brass. It is deep and wide, easily big enough for five or six people to bathe together. It is empty, and she can see a narrow band of brown residue along its bottom. She sweeps the light across the space and sees that as well as the spa itself, the room includes a champagne bar with a freezer and counter, and also a small open section at the far end of the room that houses a table and six chairs, presumably for private dining. The room is not being heated and the air is freezing cold. She watches her exhalations light up in the white light of the phone. She realises that the table and chairs are of a different style from the rest of the room, with its white marble and brass fittings, and that actually they must have been made by the same people who designed the arcade in the restaurant since they are made from the same dark cast iron and decorated with the same Art Nouveau motifs of vines and curling leaves. The tabletop is a single sheet of thick transparent glass supported by decorative cast iron legs. In the high contrast light the iron looks black against its pale surroundings of white stone. The torch is reflected in the glass of the table and the glare difficult to look at directly. She moves to the spa and quickly strips naked, shivering, but registering the cold distantly. She watches with interest as the the skin on her chest and arms puckers with goosebumps, then she climbs down into the great hollow space of the tub. The spa mechanisms seem to be automated. After trying several of the buttons on a grey plastic console, she notices that the system can be activated with a switch at the side, which illuminates the controls immediately when she tries it. She sees a display for temperature, and another that starts the flow of water. She sets the temperature to forty five degrees and switches the unit on. Heated water begins to flow into the huge tub from four jets spaced around its rim, and the chilly room is filled immediately with sheets of boiling steam. She realises that she is still holding her phone which could be damaged by the water, so she sets it down on the floor beside the tub. The directional torch now lights the ceiling only, and the billowing clouds of moisture that fill the empty room. Then she splashes her shivering body (shivering which has now become intense and uncontrollable) with the hot water that is collecting quickly in the bottom of the tub and that scalds her skin. It is almost too much to bear. Her feet and buttocks are covered quickly, and then her legs, her belly. The water burns on contact. She thinks that the water is too hot but does not make a move for the console. After a minute or two her skin acclimatises and the burning stops and she can feel her heart rate quicken and hear the blood roaring and pumping in her throat and temples. When the water fills up past a certain point the spa jets activate automatically and fill the room with the rumbling sound of the disturbed water. Steam is still rising violently up into the room, and she thinks that by now it must be escaping out through the broken doors, into the dark corridor and the massage rooms, maybe even out into the gym. She thinks of geological movements, of vast pressures, explosions of hot mud and oil from between curtains of rock kilometres deep, of buried lakes and rivers, saline and dead, crystals of salt forming on black granite shores over centuries of darkness and unending heat. Her chest would contain the oil and the boiling mud and her heart would pump it through all of her internal systems of tubes and valves. Teeth and bones and hair are extruded out from these subterranean workings over centuries. The outer layers of the skin calcify and crack apart under the stresses of movement. She breathes the way a furnace breathes. She realises suddenly that there is another person standing in the room, looking down at her from just inside the doorway. She cannot figure out how this person, a middle aged woman in a dark uniform who she realises must be a cleaner at the hotel, can have entered the room, opened the broken door, and then closed it again, without her realising. But this must be exactly what happened because the woman is standing there and staring down at her through the steam. She says that she must get out of the spa immediately, and then she says, with a quick look towards the door, that she has already called the hotel security. She stares up at the woman for an extended instant thinking about what to do and then collects herself and says yes of course, of course I’m sorry, and stands to her full height glistening wet and sheeting steam and climbs out over the porcelain lip with boiling water cascading from her body. Her muscles are swollen and her skin is deep red. For some reason the cleaner has not turned on the lights and is simply standing and watching as she retrieves her gym clothes and, because she has no towel with her, begins to sluice the water from herself with her hands, and then dry herself down using the nylon fabric. Then she puts on her underwear and the two women wait in the semi-darkness for the hotel security to arrive. While they are waiting she feels an irresistible urge to laugh, which she is nonetheless able to resist. She wonders how it is possible that she is still drunk after all of this time; how the cold and the small drama of her discovery have not sobered her up; how on the contrary she feels more wasted now than she did an hour ago on the steps of the hotel, or after that in her room, watching tv and letting the rest of the night spin away into obscurity. She sees suddenly that her phone, which she keeps switched to silent, is lighting itself up, which means that it must be receiving messages. The light pulses on for a couple of seconds and then winks out, and then it comes back, again and again.

Quixotic Pursuits - Part 2

Following on from here. 

If you are accompanied by the White City Genocide Squad, they will take all Old Capital artefacts and technology for themselves, and try to kill you if you have a problem with this. If you make it out together, they will try to kill you anyway, because you know the location of the facility. 

If you are accompanied by the Old Errant, he will follow you down into the earth - he is still an adventurer at heart after all. He will be visibly appalled by what you find down there, especially the plight of the Pilots-in-Dreaming, and, if he makes it out, will advocate for spending a week or two burying the entrance in earth, as much as your are able. 

The Facility

The Approach

North of the Hide is a square, black stone shaft leads into the earth at a 30 degree angle. It is 10ft at a side, and around 100ft long. Eventually the shaft terminates in a set of iron doors. They are closed but not locked. Standing in front of them is Kyton, the perimeter guard. 

She is a tall, rangy, lean-muscled woman whose face is oddly impossible to focus on or remember. This is really unsettling. She is quiet, and polite, and will tell you that you cannot pass. At her feet and pushed to the sides of the corridor are five desiccated human corpses - the remains of past would-be thieves. She wears clothing unlike anything you have seen, vaguely similar to White City harnessing. If you brandish weapons or show hostility, she will draw a strange looking knife from a chest sheath, perform a duelists' salute (any Bravo will recognise it as such), and attempt to kill you. 

Kyton, the Perimeter Guard

HD3, skinsuit (as light armour), ablative knife +2, movement: as human, disposition: dreamlike, courteous, diligent, professional, incorruptible and unpersuadable. She has forgotten everything about what is actually behind the doors that she guards. 

As a Pilot-in-Dreaming, Kyton cannot be killed. If you kill her she will WAKE UP as she was ten seconds before the killing blow. This doesn't protect her for being restrained or badly wounded. Every time she dies and WAKES UP, she loses slightly more of herself. After one death she will become confused and fearful; after two, angry; after three and thereafter, animalistic. 

Kyton has two suicide pills in her chest harness, and will attempt to swallow one of these (they work immediately) if she thinks she is going to be restrained or wounded such that she cannot stop you entering the complex. 

Ablative Knife: as a +2 knife with a further +2 expanded crit range. If it crits, all of these bonuses become +1. If it crits again, it is a normal knife. A third crit breaks the weapon permanently. 

Inside

Once through the doors, you enter the facility proper. A central shaft runs between all floors, and walls facing onto it are open, fenced with rusted cast-iron railings. They will give way on a 1 in 4 chance if someone is thrown against them, or other significant force is applied. 

There are no wandering monsters in the facility, and no sources of light that the PCs have not brought with them. 

Level One

Rooms - Level One

1. Entry. Guarded by Kyton. Heavy iron doors, rusty but unlocked. The passage north leads to the surface. 
2. Shaft Walkway. The central shaft is open space. The circle in the centre is a heavy iron chain mechanism that hangs from the ceiling of the chamber, and descends straight down into the shaft. The walls facing into the shaft are open, but guarded with rusted iron railings. The northeast corner is a set of iron stars (like a NYC fire escape) that descends down to level two. 
3. Bedroom One. Iron door, unlocked. A simple iron bed frame, and rotted wooden furniture - a night stand, a wardrobe. Small insects and other vermin scurry around, disturbed by the light. There are 16 glass vials in the room, arrayed neatly on the floor against on wall, filled with clear liquid. If tasted, they will be found to be sugary water. 
4. Bedroom Two. Iron door, locked. Bacchon (see bellow) holds the key. A simple room furnished identically to the first, but also containing a small iron lockbox full of 4d6 glazed ceramic tokens: the currency of the Old Capital, each worth 20s. There is also a board game with small ceramic pieces. If you show it to a Pilot-in-Dreaming who is still sane (there are none in this dungeon), they can explain the rules to you - something like chess, but involving pieces that can move backwards and forwards in temporal space. Bluffing, and the expenditure of resources to facilitate this travel, are the key skills in play. 
5. Armoury. Iron doors, locked. Bacchon holds the keys. On the walls hang 4 spears and 2 swords, and two helmets that are much too large to be wielded by a human. There are also 2 intact ablative knives +3, a suit of ceramic light armour +2. These are each worth 800s and 2000s respectively, to collectors in the capital. Stacked into iron shelving on the walls are 43 of the glass vials containing sugar water. 
6. Mess and Recreation. Iron door, unlocked (the southern door to the armoury is locked). Iron furnishings, a table, stove, chairs, and a cleared area with the rotten remains of matts and soft furnishings on them. Smells of dust and ancient decay. Nothing moves, and the air is stagnant. 

Level Two

Rooms - Level Two

1. Shaft Walkway. Identical to the first level, but with small, brightly-coloured growths and lichens that spread across the iron railings. These patches respond to light, 'rippling' towards it. If you touch one of them with bare skin, you can a single point of acid damage. 
2. Storage. Iron door, unlocked. Dense racks of iron shelving, now rusted and covered in the same neon-bright growths as the railing around the pit. The contents of the shelves have mostly rotted into dust, but a dedicated search will reveal three sealed iron boxes throughout the room. Each contains even chances of 2d10 imperishable rations, a strange, apparently spring loaded pistol (fires once and is then useless as a weapon, worth 2000s loaded or 1500 unloaded to a collector), 4d10 ceramic coins, or a Manipulator Helm (see below). Along the south wall, the brightly coloured growths have accreted into two solid forms: one of human size and shape, and one of human shape but nearly 10ft tall. Both are inanimate, and would be easy to pull to pieces, although touching the stuff will ruin gloves and inflict 1 acid damage to bare skin. 
3. Hazards Room. Iron doors, locked, Bacchon holds the key. A long, central iron table houses various iron tools: hammers, vices, knives, etc., a single spring-loaded pistol, and a Manipulator Helm. Iron shelving units along the eastern wall holds three glass spheres on iron stands. Each sphere houses a white orb at its centre - absolutely white, like a void in space, obviously unnatural. Any adventurer will know that these are Exterminator Orbs, and that to go near them means death. They hum loudly, like fluorescent lighting. The orbs are spatially fixed - moving the glass containers does not move the orbs that they contain - the glass is in place to stop someone carelessly moving too close to the orb. If any part of you comes within range (range is equal to diameter of the orb - in this case 10 inches), you die without a save. This is true of anything living. Also lying on the shelving unit are 2 glass vials containing samples of biological matter infected with the Anathema. They are not contagious if the glass is not broken. The iron door to the west is locked, and leads into a small, box-like cell. A fourth exterminator orb hovers in space at the far edge of the room, and another human-shaped mass of the brightly-coloured growths has grown up around it, such that the orb forms the 'head' of the figure. The 10 inch space around the orb is completely empty. Like the others in Storage, the lichen-mass is inanimate and acidic.

Level Three

Rooms - Level Three

1. Shaft Walkway. Identical to the upper two levels, but now entirely grown over with a thick mat of acidic lichen and coral-like growths. The growths will bend towards light sources - not fast enough to be a threat to an adventurer who is being careful, but enough to engulf someone unawares or pushed into them. Being attacked this way deals d4 acid damage, and has a 1 in 3 chance of ruining your armour, shield, or weapon (your choice). 
2. Air Controls. An ancient mechanism with a single, large iron lever built into the north wall. It is covered in acidic lichen, like all other iron surfaces down here. The lever is currently in the down position, which pumps all air out of the corridors in the Quarantine Vents. If moved to the up position, these pumps will stop functioning. They can be turned on and off this way, although every time you grab the lever you take 1 acid damage. Otherwise this room is bare stone. 
3. Quarantine Vents. Bare stone corridor. All doors leading into it are iron, sealed, and unlocked. If all doors are closed, and the pumps are working, it take about 20 seconds for the air to be pumped out of the corridor. The doors are designed to close themselves after you open them and step through, but they can be propped open to allow airflow. 
4. Testing Room. A large, rifle or cannon-like contraption is built into the floor, pointed directly into the mouth of the corridor to the east. The whole machine is made from iron, and completely grown over by acidic lichen and coral growths (they attack light in the same way as the ones in the Shaft Walkway). Clearing it off would expose you to 6 instances of d4 acid damage, but if you do so you can see that it is clearly a type of cannon. In the alcove to the north, there are four glass vats of acid. At the end of the corridor to the east is the Wounded Extremophile.

Level Four

Rooms - Level Four

1. Landing. Stone room, dominated by the Turbine. Immediately in front of you as you descend the stairs, you can see a ten foot tall human figure frozen in the Sisyphean act of holding the turbine blades in place and preventing their turning. Beyond that, a second ten foot tall human squats on all fours, staring hatefully at you. The first warbody, stopping the turbine, is Kyton's, and the second is what remains of Bacchon.
2. The Second Extremophile. The stone walls have been haphazardly eaten away by the acidic coral growths. In this room they form a gigantic human figure, sitting cross-legged, its blind face turned towards the turbine. It is inanimate, but will responds to light like the growths further up. The acid-bitten stone walls have been engraved with text - what looks like your name, in minuscule characters, over and over. Other characters will see their own name. It feels like evil does in a dream. Time cuts together. If you read your the writing, make INT saves with disadvantage until you pass. For each failure you lose one point of WIS, and take d2 slashing damage. You don't know how you have been cut - it could have been you, or one of your companions. 
3. The Turbine. A monstrous iron engine, totally covered in acidic coral, that moves the chain and brings up matter from below. It is currently immobile thanks to the eternal labour of Kyton - if her warbody is slain, the great turbine will being turning again. If this happens, then every hour of the chain moving has a one in three chance of bringing a Deep Thing up from the depths into the Level Four Landing. Bacchon, if he is alive, will ignore all other threats to kill a Deep Thing, and, once killed, dump its body into the Lower Quarantine Vents. 
4. Lower Quarantine Vents. The pumps from the third level also suck the oxygen from this one. If they are working, and all doors are closed (as above, they are unlocked but designed to close after you), then it takes 20 seconds for the air to be completely sucked out of the corridor. There are probably a thousand dead Deep Things in the corridor; the result of Bacchon's labours. Not all of them have stayed dead, and not all of them require oxygen to live. 2d10 Anaerobic Worms infest these corridors, and will stir to life when they sense your presence. Halfway down the northmost corridor, the Unknown Husk sits, trying make its throat form words. 

Bestiary and Dramatis Personae

Bacchon

A Pilot-in-Dreaming, slain and revived so many times that he is now entirely incapable of complex thought. Protects the fourth floor landing and Kyton's Warbody, and is mindlessly hostile to interlopers. Bacchon is currently inside his own Warbody, which benefits from his WAKE UP ressurection while he is inside it. If you can restrain it or cut him out of the chest, the body will deactivate, and may even be useable by another. 

HD8 (HD1 for Bacchon himself)), Iron Gauntlets (2x d10 damage, can make melee attacks at a range of 15ft), armoured as chain, speed: twice human, disposition: animalistic guardian. 

Kyton's Warbody

Fixed forever into its labour of keeping the turbine from turning. Will not defend itself, and, since Kyton is not inside it, will not resurrect by WAKING UP. 

HD8, no attacks, armour as chain. 

Unknown Husk

The corpse of a thief that somehow made it to the very bottom decades ago. It has been colonised completely by spores from below, which have hijacked the nervous system and believe themselves to be the original human. In reality nothing of the original body remains. Will try to shake your hand and be friendly (it is truly awful to listen to), and will defend itself in a confused way if attacked. 

HD4, x2 unarmed attacks (-2 to hit due to clumsiness, each deal an additional d4 acid damage and have a 1 in 3 three of ruining a piece of gear), armour as chain (rotten leather armour over a spongy mass devoid of organs), speed: as shambling zombie, disposition: cheerful, curious, lonely. 

Deep Things

The things from below. Every time one comes up the chain, roll a d3.

1. 2d4 Anaerobic Worms. Thin, black, whipping, barbed things about three feet long, which store energy chemically inside their bodies. They are blind but attracted to heat and movement. HD1, barbed body (d6, or d10 if it grapples you), armour as leather, speed: human, quicker than you'd think, disposition: mindless, heat-seeking. 
2. Spore Mass. Everyone in the room takes d3 acid damage, and must make a CON save. On a failure, you lose control of a random limb for d6 minutes. While the spores control your limb, it will attempt to kill you however it can, so that they can spread through the rest of your body.
3. Anomalous Entity. A mind from below, brought up in a sticky slurry of tar and primordial soup, very old, very strange. Looks like a tar-black slime, and will attempt to read your thoughts in order to communicate. This does d6 psychic damage to everyone in the room per turn, with the dice size shrinking each time it ticks (d6 > d4 > d3 > d2 > 1 > 0). If you are still alive when it hits zero, you will find that the Anomalous Entity can speak common psychically, although it is only interested in the poetics of pressure, heat, time, and gravity, and will bore of you quickly. HD2, takes maximum 1 damage from individual physical attack, unarmoured, speed: as slime, disposition: curious. 

The Wounded Extremophile

Looks a bit like a gigantic nautilus shell on the back of an enormous, armoured insect body. A cluster of bright eyes stare out from above its finger-like mouth parts. It bears an obvious puncture mark in its shell, stained with dark ichor. It is actually dying, but this will take centuries - if you enter the Testing Room it will crawl slowly down the shaft and attempt to devour you. 

HD20 (only attacks at +5), x4 barbed feeding tendrils (range 30ft, d4 piercing damage, each hit will draw you 10ft closer to the thing), mouth parts (2d12), armour: as plate +2, speed: 10ft per round, disposition: implacable and hungry.

Items

Manipulator Helm

A circlet worn instead of a helmet. If you concentrate while wearing it, you can pick things up psychically (INT check to use as mage hand for one minute. If you fail the check, you cannot try again for one hour).

If you try to use a Manipulator Helm on an Exterminator Orb, you will find that you can sacrifice d3 max hp to give the orb a direction and speed of movement. It will never deviate from this course. 

The Southern Nomads

 

I just posted a new class called the Star Seed, but forgot to write up any context for it. This post aims to rectify that grievous error. 

The Southern Nomads

The Southern Nomad kingdoms are culturally distinct from the more familiar (to Baronials) nomads of the North. The Northern Kingdoms practice chivalric errantry, animal husbandry, and horse archery. Their contact with the Star People is via their smiths, who make their terrible weapons for elite young errants to take on great wandering pilgrimages. 

In the South, the land is icebound much of the year, and not suitable for horses or other herd animals. The Southern Nomads live in smaller communities, called houses, and each house is infamously self-sufficient, pragmatic, and mobile. The Southern houses exist within a complex and ever-shifting political map of alliance, resource management, feud, and (very rarely), warfare with one another. These relations are impenetrable to outsiders - the Northern Nomads nearly universally consider the southerners frightening cannibals, with a culturally enshrined tradition of raiding and terror warfare.

A Southern Nomad house is made up of family groups, usually between 30 and 150 people. Every adult member of the house is expected to be able to hunt, and to be ready to fight in raids or inter-band warfare. The favoured weapons are the bow, the machete, and the spear, and armour is usually made from leather and cloth, and incorporated into cold weather gear. Whalebone sun goggles are mandatory kit - without them, the southern sun does strange things to the mind.

The Southerners do not have star smiths like their northern kin. Their connection to the Star People is more direct. 

Every house is organised around a single Star Seed, who performs the roles of raiding champion, conduit to the night sky, and spiritual leader. Star Seeds are not political leaders (the houses elect their kings and queens), and they do not manage the survival of their fellows. They can kill people if they feel they need to - they are exempt from all terrestrial law, with the exception (hard learned) they can never marry or reproduce. They are expected to fight against the enemies of the house in battle, but that is where their duty to their extended family ends. 

Often, Star Seeds come into possession of their own Star Weapons, by methods obscure. Sometimes they are lead to strange machines in the ice (the walking fortresses of the ice floe houses are an example), which their fellows will excavate, and which they may, night after freezing night, prostrate beneath the stars that burn like cold bonfires, be taught to pilot. Most often they are simply shadows in the shape of people, twisted and broken, eating the bodies of the slain and dismembering them for parts. 

If another Star Seed takes root (this happens in early adulthood - young fighters spend a night staring into the aurora storms, hoping to be chosen), a house will split. There can never be two in close proximity. Where splitting is not possible, the two will fight, and the victor will eat the vanquished, and (it is thought) take ownership their prowess and property.

Star Seeds are a horror story for the Northern Nomads, a disease, an indescribable and obscene fanaticism that pervert what they consider to be sacred truths. 

What the Southerners think of their Northern neighbours is not recorded. 

Class: Star Seed

 

NB: In the far south, the winters bring a 3 month night and the summers bring a three month day. The time of year has repercussions for your access to your templates.

Gear: Cold weather gear, a medium cleaver and 3 sharp light knives, sun goggles, either snow shoes or skis, 10 doses of stimulants (dried human amygdalas, mechanically identical), and one roll on the Southern Gear table.

Skills: Astronomy, anatomy, five languages of your choice (one of which is always The Language of the Stars), and two of: history, geometry, architecture, engineering, animal husbandry, ballistics, chemistry, medicine, acute hearing, 2x normal human vision, the ability to ignore pain.

A - Astral Carnivore, Clarity

B - Numen, Offal

C - Starlight

D - Host

Astral Carnivore: You can only eat meat, other food is indigestible to you. You can eat raw or spoiled meat without ill effects (literally rotting meat effects you as usual), and human meat counts as double rations for its weight. You have a mental inventory, which currently has a single slot, filled with the gift Clear Vision. If Clear Vision is ever not in your mental inventory, you immediately lose all your class templates and skills, but can now eat normally.

Clarity: Every point of exhaustion in your inventory grants you +1 INT, and otherwise affects you as normal.

Numen: Your mental inventory now holds [templates]x2 slots. You may spend a night without sleep, staring at the stars, to make an INT save. If you succeed, you gain a random gift from the table. If you fail, you get no sleep that night and additionally take d3 psychic damage from the poorly managed contact with the invisible things in the burning night sky. You may consume a dose of stimulants to reroll your INT save, and may do this as many times as you like taking dx psychic damage, where x is the number of doses consumed past the first. Gifts are stored in your mental inventory, and you can overload this inventory and accumulate parasites, as detailed below. Once gained, gifts are usually permanent.

Offal: You can make one dose of sedatives from a human heart, one dose of curatives from a human liver, and one dose of stimulants from a human brain. Preparing a single dose of any of these takes a full night without sleep. The stars must be able to see you. You can consume a dose of stimulants to prepare an additional dose - do this as many times as you like, taking dx psychic damage each time you do so, where x is the number of doses you consume past the first.

Starlight: When beneath starlight you add one point of temporary HP per gift in your mental inventory, and add 5ft to the range of your melee attacks per parasite. These effects disappear if you leave the starlight. The temporary HP replenishes at a rate of 1 per hour, back to its maximum.

Host: You benefit from the following:

• For every gift in your mental inventory you gain +1 INT, and for every parasite you gain +1 CON.
• When you die you will not leave a corpse - your body is stolen away by barbed limbs and shunted into the invisible corners of the world.
• You can use your own organs and limbs to replace other people's, and can replace your own with anyone else's. It takes one sleepless night under starlight for any foreign organ or limb to naturalise to your body and become 'donatable' this way.
• You may swallow an organ whole, and regurgitate it after 24 hours, transformed into any other organ you choose. If this organ is put inside someone (including yourself), they gain a parasite, rolled below. If the organ is a brain, then whoever you put it into immediately starts screaming terrible curses against all sentient life in the language of the stars. They become actively homicidal to everyone around them, immune to pain or fear, and capable of pushing their body in ways humans cannot (STR 18, +10 HP).

Gifts

• 1 - 4: Hyperfocus. 1 mental inventory slot. Choose one of your skills. You may now consume a dose of stimulants to perform a superhuman feat with it. A feat of superhuman ballistics might give you a roll to hit a particular person on a castle wall with a cannon. A superhuman feat of engineering might allow you to identify load bearing points in a structure, or calculate fluid dynamics accurately and immediately. A superhuman feat of pain suppression might let you fight on for a minute or two after losing your limbs or dropping to 0 hp. You take dx psychic damage, where x is the number of times past the first (per day) you have used this gift.
• 5 - 8: Parallel. 1 mental inventory slot. Choose two skills from the list above (or come up with some applicable alternatives with your DM). You may consume a dose of stimulants to gain access to them as normal for one hour. You may stack multiple instances of this skill, but each will require a separate dose of stimulants to unlock. You take dx psychic damage, where x is the number of times past the first (per day) you have used this gift.
• 9 - 10: Recall. 1 mental inventory slot. You have an imaginary room in your head, which you can populate with items that you touch in the real world. The room is 10ft x 10ft, and can be filled with as many items as you wish - however, once something is in the room, it will never leave. You can mentally enter the room yourself by meditating, and interact with these copied items. Books, maps, plans, schedules, etc. are completely intact. Weapons or other tools can be practiced with. Living things appear in the room as friendly, emotionless, docile NPCs with no memories, personality, or curiosity. Additional instances of this gift give you access to additional 10ft x 10 ft rooms.
• 11: Imago. 2 mental inventory slots. Your unarmed attacks deal an additional d4 cold damage and d4 fear damage, and require one fifth of the usual rations. Your face can no longer naturally express emotion - you must do this consciously, and it's never very convincing. You have -1 on reaction rolls. Each multiple increases the dice size by one.
• 12: Focussing Array. 2 mental inventory slots. You gain a gaze attack, which deals d6 cold and d6 fear damage to a single target who can see you. They may test DEX (with disadvantage the first time you do it) to close their eyes and avoid it - if they do so they are functionally blind. Disconcertingly, it originates in your open mouth. When you use it, your jaw unhinges slightly. Each multiple increase the dice size by one.
• 13 Additive. 2 mental inventory slots. Your blood turns clear as water, and burns like gasoline. It smells vaguely of sugar syrup if it burns. Small amounts can be bled without issue (to light tinder or soak a rag), but for a cup full you take 1 point of damage, and for a bottle full d3 points. Multiple results give you +1 CON, and extremely high blood pressure.
• 14 Security. 2 mental inventory slots. You are gifted a medium +1 machete which is completely invisible - it appears in your clasped together hands as your star watch ends. No one else can perceive it or pick it up. In your hands it does everything a machete does, and the corpses of intelligent beings slain with it count as double rations for anyone, not just you (even if eaten raw). The meat has an oddly sweet and synthetic taste. On each multiple roll you may transform this weapon into an invisible +1 weapon of your choice.
• 15: Navigator. 2 mental inventory slots. You may meditate to gain vision of yourself from directly above, provided the stars can see you. You can choose the height you wish to see from, up to 100ft. You are completely immune to cold damage. Additional rolls give you +1 CHAR, -1 WIS, and -1 to reaction rolls. Your eyes are completely wrong.
• 16: Captain Espatier. 3 mental inventory slots. You count as wearing plate, and hover about 10 inches from the ground, at all times. Blows are turned by solid air. You cannot stop smiling. Every day you spend with someone gives them a cumulative -1 to their reaction roll, to a maximum of -3. Multiples each add +1 to your AC.
• 17: Type Glorious. 3 mental inventory slots. You are gifted a permanently invisible Star Weapon. Roll it up here. It has no name. Multiples fully reload your star weapon, and give it an additional trait, if applicable.
• 18: Void Ghoul. 3 mental inventory slots. You no longer need to breathe. If you grapple someone, they take d12 cold damage per turn they spend grappled. You grow about a head taller, and twice as bulky - armour will need to be refitted. Multiples grant you +2 CON.
• 19: The Shout. 3 mental inventory slots. First, suck in air for as many turns as you wish - your jaw hyperextends as you do so. Then you begin to SCREAM, for as many turns as you sucked in air. Enemies who are capable of breaking immediately flee from you while the scream lasts, and take d2 psychic damage per turn they are exposed to it. Multiples grow the psychic damage dice by one. 
• 20: Uncounted Aeons of Our Simulated Trajectory: 4 mental inventory slots. You pass all INT checks - your INT stat is effectively infinite. Ranged attacks miss you on anything but a crit. You become immune to psychic and cold damage. All reaction rolls are at -4. There are rushing corridors of darkness at your shoulder. All entities will flee from your presence. Begin a countdown, starting at 100. Every time you slay an intelligent foe, tick it down by one. if it ever reaches 0, you are pulled jerkily into the air by invisible forces, accompanied by the blaring of strange horns and trumpets. You will never be seen again. Multiples add 100 to this score. Your character is aware of their own number at all times.

Parasites

For every slot that your mental inventory becomes overburdened, you gain a parasite, rolled below. Regardless of which parasites you host, you always take psychic damage equal to your current parasites if you fail an INT, WIS, or CHAR check.

• 1-5: Benign. Small tumours that grow on the inside of the brain. No additional effect.
• 6-7: Mind Tearers. Strange, black, hooked worms, that tunnel through flesh and organs without discrimination. For each Mind Tearer that you host, you additionally take d3 torn organ damage when you fail a mental check.
• 8-9: This Terrestrial Hell. Fear breeds in you. For each hosted Hell your threshold for panic is reduced by 2. You also suffer d3 psychic damage if you panic. Your organs darken over time, and take on the consistency of tar.
• 10-11: Sunworms. Tiny, live in your eyes, where they lay their eggs. One your first result, one eye is blinded, but emits light as a torch unless you cover it. You have -2 to hit with ranged weapons. On your second result you are blinded, and both eyes emit light this way. Consider retiring. One your third result you die. Your mouth, eyes and nose (and your skull, if cut open) radiate light.
• 12: Eaters. Every time you fail a mental check, you have a 1 in 2 chance that each Eater will devour one of your mental slots, starting with the highest, and working backwards. Gifts function normally until they are completely devoured. Slots opened up this way can be filled as normal. No effect on those without mental inventories.

Southern Gear

1. A large, well-trained, and very handsome dog with a winter coat. HD2, d8 bite, unarmoured but takes half damage from cold, unbreakable, will protect your body to the death if you fall.
2. A preserver, a small glass orb that outputs light (like a torch) and heat (like a hot stone in a blanket) indefinitely. With one of these you can protect someone from exposure - if you have a shelter built, you can protect up to ten people as long as they fit inside.
3. 2d3 shrunken heads. Each will absorb a single instance of psychic damage in your place.
4. Moon Goggles. Distinct from your sun goggles (you wear both at once), and made from smoked glass lenses instead of carved whalebone. Allow you to see as clearly in moonlight and starlight as you would in bright sunlight.
5. A trepanning drill. Use it to trepan someone (not yourself) - this takes an hour, and you must save DEX. On a success, the trepanned subject gains a single gift from the gift table, and loses a point of CON (note that since they do not possess a mental inventory, they will also need to roll parasites equal to the slots their gift takes up). On a failure, they still gain a gift but suffer -2 on all stats as you damage the brain. No one can be trepanned more than once.
6. A Star Pistol, rolled from these tables. It doesn't have a name. Unlike most star weapons, your pistol holds a single shot (or three shots, if you roll the Repeater trait). It can be reloaded by submerging it in a bucket of human blood for 10 hours. This spends the blood.

White City Facing

I wrote here about food, including food in the White City. 

Writing about food and the pleasures of eating and drinking (and coffee, and alcohol, and smoking) was, I think, the earliest version of an imagist-literary obsession of mine - trying to capture something specific and beautiful, and hard to do proper justice to, in language. Since then, other obsessions - light, architecture, art and art's function, 'perfected' bodies - have come and gone, but food and the pleasures of eating are the OG for me (complicated by illness later in life, but still keenly felt).

In the White City, they play the image game. This is the face. You play well (most people play well), and you have the respect of those around you, and you can be considered the right type of person. This is a more volatile security than similar positions in most cultures, and this is by design - the volatility is thought to keep people sharp, and makes room for dramatic reversals of fortune for individual players. This formally-encoded drama feeds into the game, provides it fuel, etc.

The people who live in the White City are strange, but they are still people. Not many of them (there are celebrated exceptions) can handle the idea of playing at literally all times, although there is a polite understanding that people should act as though everyone does do this. There are several culturally enshrined pressure release valves for Citizens. 

One (actually the biggest one, at least in the White City proper) is swimming in the sea. When the sea is mentioned in the game, it is with a sort of coy deferral - what could possibly be brought into relation with the sea? It is excessive to its place in the game, it contains too much; far, far more than cruelty and the future and the destiny of the emperor and the total hostility of the White City's great and terrible machine of war. To invoke the image of the sea is to provide another player with a neutral avenue for deescalation, should they wish to take it. Let's go for a swim together, and lie on the rocks and watch the sun grow red above us. We can get back to this tomorrow. 

Another is brunch. I had a chat with some of the lovely people on Phlox's discord about brunch the other day, and was surprised to learn that it still has a sort of ridiculous and middle class (derogatory) reputation. I grew up in Melbourne, which is a city where the institution of brunch is celebrated (I own, probably also in ridiculous and middle class (derogatory) ways) - a way of spending three or four hours of empty time with a friend or a small group, eating good food together, drinking stimulants (good coffee), catching up, all while the sun is working into its hottest period of the day. You don't (usually) get drunk, and you don't (usually) spend more than 25 dollars.

In the White City, this is the time where you don't have to maintain face. Most apartments in the city have a dedicated room for this (it will have stained-but-unpainted wooden shades, unembellished with images - these are moved around as the meal continues and the sun shifts in the sky, to allow for different 'room and sunlight' configurations. Guests usually take it in turns to set the shades in their favourite and most comfortable positions), and there are public eating houses where hundreds of citizens can sit together at vast communal tables and relax with the food and coffee and company. 

With great civic labour there must also be periods of rest - the exhalation after exertion, after trying for glory and after your success or your failure. Success and failure are strangely equivalent; they look like work, like striving. Rest is neither. Eat together, and swim in the sea. Tomorrow your service may begin anew. 

Room and sunlight configurations. Still from the (excellent) artist film SLOW ACTION, Ben Rivers, 2013, which can be found here.