Erik Amundsen's Blog, page 17
March 28, 2013
Beast Fears Fire - Bunyp
Bunyp [Ignorance 3]
Impulse - To Isolate and Kill
No one is really sure if there is more than one bunyp, whether it regenerates from being destroyed or if new ones get dispatched from the mountaintops. What we do know is that there is a monster or monsters in Lahey, they can change their shape, they fear fresh water and everything else fears them and this monster or monsters are referred to as bunyp.
The bunyp serves the sandrisas. The sandrisas are, according to Lahesian legend, nearly perfect, lesser forms of the Mother-who-is-Earth, who is absolutely perfect. Perfection is static and unchanging, so the Mother-who-is-Earth does nothing in order to remain perfect. The sandrisas are her servants, made to do her perfect will without her having to sully herself with action or reaction. In theory. In practice, the sandrisas place a much higher priority on static perfection than on carrying out the will of the Mother, and so they made the bunyp and the dry prophets and who knows what in order to carry out their will. In theory. In practice the bunyp and the prophets and all the rest get very little direction and only the most terse of instructions, as rarely as possible. Bunyp are tasked to kill.
Bunyp are capable of assuming just about any form, including specific forms, down to being able to mimic the brains and minds of specific people, which gives them imperfect access to their memories, personality and abilities. In theory. In practice, these things tend not to always work exactly right - mannerisms and memories might be slightly off, mode and style of doing things might not be quite right, and psychic or magical powers are very hard to mimic. A (or the) bunyp will do what it can, what it must to isolate one person at a time from the group it's been asked (or allowed) to target. Bunyp can be quite clever, even brilliant, depending on who or what they are mimicking, but they cannot mimic patience and foresight; once active, a bunyp needs to kill, as soon as possible, regardless of what might be best for the sandrisas' overall designs. It is this that makes it possible to spot bunyp before things get really bad.
Harm 4 If bunyp gets to be alone with someone, they will assume the closest thing to a natural form, which is an amorphous, usually spheroid mass of metal blades, hooks, awls, nails, screws, and really anything metal, jagged, sharp and pointy. In this form, bunyp can move quickly, with great force and envelop opponents, flensing and flaying and grinding them horribly. They don't really seem able to concentrate on more than one opponent at a time, which makes it very important for them to get a potential victim alone.
SURPRISE! YOU'RE DEAD!
When you think there is a bunyp about, looking to get you alone, face Ignorance
On a Hit, designate one character besides your own as not-the-bunyp.
On a Hard Hit, you know who the bunyp is and can plan accordingly.
On a Miss, you found yourself alone with the bunyp. Whoops. Suffer harm as stated.
Let me see you stripped down to the bone
Bunyp are harmed by water. 500 ml is usually sufficient to send it packing and 3 or more litres in one splash will cause it to discorporate completely into powdery rust. When facing more than one person and revealed, bunyp threshold drops to 2. Also, the ice that chokes most of Lahey destroys bunyp on contact, which is probably why the rest of Crickton knows so little about this/these monster(s). If a bunyp gets killed by other means, it also discorporates into rust and sand, neither substance has proven that interesting upon study.
Impulse - To Isolate and Kill
No one is really sure if there is more than one bunyp, whether it regenerates from being destroyed or if new ones get dispatched from the mountaintops. What we do know is that there is a monster or monsters in Lahey, they can change their shape, they fear fresh water and everything else fears them and this monster or monsters are referred to as bunyp.
The bunyp serves the sandrisas. The sandrisas are, according to Lahesian legend, nearly perfect, lesser forms of the Mother-who-is-Earth, who is absolutely perfect. Perfection is static and unchanging, so the Mother-who-is-Earth does nothing in order to remain perfect. The sandrisas are her servants, made to do her perfect will without her having to sully herself with action or reaction. In theory. In practice, the sandrisas place a much higher priority on static perfection than on carrying out the will of the Mother, and so they made the bunyp and the dry prophets and who knows what in order to carry out their will. In theory. In practice the bunyp and the prophets and all the rest get very little direction and only the most terse of instructions, as rarely as possible. Bunyp are tasked to kill.
Bunyp are capable of assuming just about any form, including specific forms, down to being able to mimic the brains and minds of specific people, which gives them imperfect access to their memories, personality and abilities. In theory. In practice, these things tend not to always work exactly right - mannerisms and memories might be slightly off, mode and style of doing things might not be quite right, and psychic or magical powers are very hard to mimic. A (or the) bunyp will do what it can, what it must to isolate one person at a time from the group it's been asked (or allowed) to target. Bunyp can be quite clever, even brilliant, depending on who or what they are mimicking, but they cannot mimic patience and foresight; once active, a bunyp needs to kill, as soon as possible, regardless of what might be best for the sandrisas' overall designs. It is this that makes it possible to spot bunyp before things get really bad.
Harm 4 If bunyp gets to be alone with someone, they will assume the closest thing to a natural form, which is an amorphous, usually spheroid mass of metal blades, hooks, awls, nails, screws, and really anything metal, jagged, sharp and pointy. In this form, bunyp can move quickly, with great force and envelop opponents, flensing and flaying and grinding them horribly. They don't really seem able to concentrate on more than one opponent at a time, which makes it very important for them to get a potential victim alone.
SURPRISE! YOU'RE DEAD!
When you think there is a bunyp about, looking to get you alone, face Ignorance
On a Hit, designate one character besides your own as not-the-bunyp.
On a Hard Hit, you know who the bunyp is and can plan accordingly.
On a Miss, you found yourself alone with the bunyp. Whoops. Suffer harm as stated.
Let me see you stripped down to the bone
Bunyp are harmed by water. 500 ml is usually sufficient to send it packing and 3 or more litres in one splash will cause it to discorporate completely into powdery rust. When facing more than one person and revealed, bunyp threshold drops to 2. Also, the ice that chokes most of Lahey destroys bunyp on contact, which is probably why the rest of Crickton knows so little about this/these monster(s). If a bunyp gets killed by other means, it also discorporates into rust and sand, neither substance has proven that interesting upon study.
March 27, 2013
The Beast Fears Fire - Trollwives
Trollwives [Hardship 3]
Impulse - To Reach the Peaks
The Lahesians say it happens pretty rarely. Bigger settlements see it happen once a generation at most. One of the girls will start to feel a hunger and a strong sense of distraction. The hunger will grow over the course of a month or two and so will they, becoming big and strange, hard to look at directly, and hard to hear. Then the girl will head off toward the mountain tops and no one will ever see or hear from her again.
The Lahesians blame this phenomenon on the Sandrisas, and on that aspect, they are united. The question of why this happens and what becomes of the girls so taken are issues on which they are split. The older story is that they become strong and tough enough to take trolls as husbands and spend their lives in high caves birthing and rearing new trolls, hence their most commonly used name (this name is independent of belief in that fate). This story doesn't carry a lot of water given that though trolls seem to have deep voices and occasional rooty beards (and usually go by male pronous), they are sexless, and claim that no new trolls have been born in a very long time. Other hypotheses include the girls becoming dry prophets, sandrisas in their own rights, founding their own, undiscovered mountaintop communities or disappearing into the wind.
Whatever they become, by the time a girl has become a trollwife, it is very hard to perceive her directly, let alone interact with her. Trollwives look a lot like young women, big and strange and cloaked in a shimmer like convection currents off a stove. Looking directly at a trollwife causes tremendous eyestrain, dizziness, vomiting and fatigue. Trollwives don't show any interest in communicating with people or, really, much of anything other than heading toward the mountain tops. They are incredibly strong, particularly in the case of jumping and climbing, and have almost inexhaustible supplies of energy.
Harm 2/Peril [Blind] Trollwives don't get aggressive unless you try to impede their progress toward their goal or imprison them, at which point they will waste as little time and energy as they can clearing the impediment and continuing their journey. It is possible to kill a Trollwife, but there's no evidence that their fate is worse than death (unless they do become dry prophets), so attacking one seems like a matter of piling pointless tragedy on pointless tragedy. Also, their eye-stinging aura is strong protection against most things.
Watching You Without Me
When you want to keep your eyes on a trollwife, face Hardship
On a Hit, you can keep knowledge of her location.
On a Hard Hit, you can keep your eyes on her, and get +1 Hit forward on anything you attempt involving her.
On a Miss, you go blind for an hour or two and get the worst headache you have ever had.
Don't bother trying to find her
No one knows how or why this happens. In the early stage of transformation, girls with awareness of what's happening to them find the prospect terrifying. The process takes from 7 to 14 days from when it's first apparent to witnesses. The Lahesians claim there is a way to halt the transformation, early in the process, but the knowledge didn't come out of Lahey with any of its refugees. Anyone who could discover or find this remedy could stand to gain a lot of regard, if nothing else, from the families that live on the lower slopes of the mountain. Also, those who live around its base. Foothill communities have started to lose girls to the mountains as well, as the ice has started to recede and people (and things) come down from the mountain.
Impulse - To Reach the Peaks
The Lahesians say it happens pretty rarely. Bigger settlements see it happen once a generation at most. One of the girls will start to feel a hunger and a strong sense of distraction. The hunger will grow over the course of a month or two and so will they, becoming big and strange, hard to look at directly, and hard to hear. Then the girl will head off toward the mountain tops and no one will ever see or hear from her again.
The Lahesians blame this phenomenon on the Sandrisas, and on that aspect, they are united. The question of why this happens and what becomes of the girls so taken are issues on which they are split. The older story is that they become strong and tough enough to take trolls as husbands and spend their lives in high caves birthing and rearing new trolls, hence their most commonly used name (this name is independent of belief in that fate). This story doesn't carry a lot of water given that though trolls seem to have deep voices and occasional rooty beards (and usually go by male pronous), they are sexless, and claim that no new trolls have been born in a very long time. Other hypotheses include the girls becoming dry prophets, sandrisas in their own rights, founding their own, undiscovered mountaintop communities or disappearing into the wind.
Whatever they become, by the time a girl has become a trollwife, it is very hard to perceive her directly, let alone interact with her. Trollwives look a lot like young women, big and strange and cloaked in a shimmer like convection currents off a stove. Looking directly at a trollwife causes tremendous eyestrain, dizziness, vomiting and fatigue. Trollwives don't show any interest in communicating with people or, really, much of anything other than heading toward the mountain tops. They are incredibly strong, particularly in the case of jumping and climbing, and have almost inexhaustible supplies of energy.
Harm 2/Peril [Blind] Trollwives don't get aggressive unless you try to impede their progress toward their goal or imprison them, at which point they will waste as little time and energy as they can clearing the impediment and continuing their journey. It is possible to kill a Trollwife, but there's no evidence that their fate is worse than death (unless they do become dry prophets), so attacking one seems like a matter of piling pointless tragedy on pointless tragedy. Also, their eye-stinging aura is strong protection against most things.
Watching You Without Me
When you want to keep your eyes on a trollwife, face Hardship
On a Hit, you can keep knowledge of her location.
On a Hard Hit, you can keep your eyes on her, and get +1 Hit forward on anything you attempt involving her.
On a Miss, you go blind for an hour or two and get the worst headache you have ever had.
Don't bother trying to find her
No one knows how or why this happens. In the early stage of transformation, girls with awareness of what's happening to them find the prospect terrifying. The process takes from 7 to 14 days from when it's first apparent to witnesses. The Lahesians claim there is a way to halt the transformation, early in the process, but the knowledge didn't come out of Lahey with any of its refugees. Anyone who could discover or find this remedy could stand to gain a lot of regard, if nothing else, from the families that live on the lower slopes of the mountain. Also, those who live around its base. Foothill communities have started to lose girls to the mountains as well, as the ice has started to recede and people (and things) come down from the mountain.
The Beast Fears Fire - The Ice
Lahesian Mineral Ice [Disaster 2]
Impulse - To Conceal and to Deny Passage
Attempts to traverse and map the central mountains of Crickton are as old as the nation itself, and as far as anyone knows, as old as the mysterious and inexplicably arrived mountains. Until recently, those expeditions always stopped in the lower elevations, having reached abandoned yet intact, sturdy and tall structures choked with dripping bluish ice. Those who pressed further found that what lay beyond ruined towers, walls and ice was more ruined towers, walls and ice, forming a labyrinth that protected the peaks and passes. Accidents and the logistics of traversing a malign glacier with the habit of freezing over unattended items and even sleeping explorers prevented any party from reaching the peaks and returning (some returned, some might have reached a peak, maybe...).
The architecture of Lahey is similar to the other massive, extensive and occasionally pointless Murrenic and Oak-Province public works common throughout Crickton, which has both put off adventurers (seen one Murrenic ruin, seen them all) and drawn them on (because treasure). Since the Lahesians have come down from the mountain, we've learned that the ice kept and still keeps most of the people and other things up in the mountains as it keeps us out. The Lahesians believe that the ice was part of an attack by Father-who-is-Water on the entities who rule Lahey, known by the Lahesians as sandrisas. Apparently, the sandrisas are vulnerable to the touch of water, and cannot approach the ice, let alone cross it. The ice also apparently holds a large number of mountainside and mountaintop settlements in stasis, as well as trolls, the sandrisas' shapeshifting servants and unguessed other things.
Harm - Peril [Stasis] or Moderator Hard Move The ice moves when not observed, and it will cover over anything or anyone not under active watch. Those trapped in the ice have a limited time in which to free themselves before they slip into a frozen stasis. The ice will thicken around anything it's taken very quickly and it is possible that something fallen into stasis can be a meter deep in the course of a single night.
Freezing, Trapped Under Ice
If you lose track of yourself (say by sleeping or going into a ritual trance) in a place where the ice is thick, face Disaster.
On a Hit, you notice the ice while it is thin and hasn't put you in stasis. You can face Disaster, Hardship or Violence to break out.
On a Hard Hit, you avoid the ice entirely.
On a Miss, you fall into Stasis and unless someone else rescues you, the Moderator gets to make a Hard Move, like telling you who wakes you up and when...
I was me, but now he's gone
The ice can take things away from where it got them and will sometimes hide things it wants hidden deep within its mass. The ice will also sometimes haul out things it has kept, occasionally powerful or valuable items to serve as bait or nasty, forgotten monsters. The ice also seems to keep an uncommon number of ghouls within its depths, and has a tendency to let them out in groups. No one is sure why this is (let alone what force animates and directs the ice), but the ghouls disgorged by the ice do not seem to suffer any ghastly censure for being off-schedule.
The ice has a naturally bluish tint from minerals within, and some folks in the central region (as well as a fair number of Lahesians) drink water derived from the ice as a tonic and medicine. There appears to be a lot of silver in the water from this ice which turns the skin of long-term users blue. There are some Lahesians who cultivate this skin tone specifically for the purpose of religious observance and spiritual protection, but it does not seem to have any supernal effects commensurate with the long-term health effects.
Impulse - To Conceal and to Deny Passage
Attempts to traverse and map the central mountains of Crickton are as old as the nation itself, and as far as anyone knows, as old as the mysterious and inexplicably arrived mountains. Until recently, those expeditions always stopped in the lower elevations, having reached abandoned yet intact, sturdy and tall structures choked with dripping bluish ice. Those who pressed further found that what lay beyond ruined towers, walls and ice was more ruined towers, walls and ice, forming a labyrinth that protected the peaks and passes. Accidents and the logistics of traversing a malign glacier with the habit of freezing over unattended items and even sleeping explorers prevented any party from reaching the peaks and returning (some returned, some might have reached a peak, maybe...).
The architecture of Lahey is similar to the other massive, extensive and occasionally pointless Murrenic and Oak-Province public works common throughout Crickton, which has both put off adventurers (seen one Murrenic ruin, seen them all) and drawn them on (because treasure). Since the Lahesians have come down from the mountain, we've learned that the ice kept and still keeps most of the people and other things up in the mountains as it keeps us out. The Lahesians believe that the ice was part of an attack by Father-who-is-Water on the entities who rule Lahey, known by the Lahesians as sandrisas. Apparently, the sandrisas are vulnerable to the touch of water, and cannot approach the ice, let alone cross it. The ice also apparently holds a large number of mountainside and mountaintop settlements in stasis, as well as trolls, the sandrisas' shapeshifting servants and unguessed other things.
Harm - Peril [Stasis] or Moderator Hard Move The ice moves when not observed, and it will cover over anything or anyone not under active watch. Those trapped in the ice have a limited time in which to free themselves before they slip into a frozen stasis. The ice will thicken around anything it's taken very quickly and it is possible that something fallen into stasis can be a meter deep in the course of a single night.
Freezing, Trapped Under Ice
If you lose track of yourself (say by sleeping or going into a ritual trance) in a place where the ice is thick, face Disaster.
On a Hit, you notice the ice while it is thin and hasn't put you in stasis. You can face Disaster, Hardship or Violence to break out.
On a Hard Hit, you avoid the ice entirely.
On a Miss, you fall into Stasis and unless someone else rescues you, the Moderator gets to make a Hard Move, like telling you who wakes you up and when...
I was me, but now he's gone
The ice can take things away from where it got them and will sometimes hide things it wants hidden deep within its mass. The ice will also sometimes haul out things it has kept, occasionally powerful or valuable items to serve as bait or nasty, forgotten monsters. The ice also seems to keep an uncommon number of ghouls within its depths, and has a tendency to let them out in groups. No one is sure why this is (let alone what force animates and directs the ice), but the ghouls disgorged by the ice do not seem to suffer any ghastly censure for being off-schedule.
The ice has a naturally bluish tint from minerals within, and some folks in the central region (as well as a fair number of Lahesians) drink water derived from the ice as a tonic and medicine. There appears to be a lot of silver in the water from this ice which turns the skin of long-term users blue. There are some Lahesians who cultivate this skin tone specifically for the purpose of religious observance and spiritual protection, but it does not seem to have any supernal effects commensurate with the long-term health effects.
March 25, 2013
The Beast Fears Fire - Hidden Lahey
Crickton is smaller than it appears on the map. Much of the central part of the country is locked up in a tiny chain of mountains that might have gotten its start in the creation of the Gulf of Catastrophe and the sinking of the Ketteleye. There are some competing explanations - tales of a mobile mountain range that worms its way through adjacent realities being one of the more plausible of that lot, so for now we'll just go with geological upheaval in the wake of part of the continent collapsing. What we do know for certain is that the central region of Crickton wasn't always mountainous and now it is. Also that it is very difficult to pass through outside of a handful of well known passes.
The higher reaches of the mountains are lined with visible structures, mostly massive, snaking walls, and half collapsed towers, forming a labyrinth protecting some of the higher peaks. Historians assumed that the structures, similar to those all throughout Crickton, if somewhat grander in scale, were some Murrenic make-work project or perhaps some older folly from one of the Oak Oligarchs. In any case, exploring the central mountains was a low priority for the country and surveyors and adventurers found actually gaining access to the areas challenging and much of the structures choked off with drifts of mineral ice which seemed to move and spread in unnatural ways. The whole area is well known to be lousy with ghouls and goblins in any case, so very few went up, some did not return and those who did mostly returned empty-handed and frustrated.
Then the war came and the vampire epidemic followed on. We now know that a group of refugees from several of the settlements in central Crickton fled the vampires into the mountains and lived a generation and a half up in the places beyond. Recently, they returned in much greater numbers, with spouses friends and children from a group of people, thought to be descendents of the Ash and Birch people (light skinned, but having significantly different features than western people) and tales of a tiny country in the mountains, Lahey, ruled by tyrannical crystalline beings and full of trolls, metallic shape changers and stranger things, kept in check by the ice and their fear of water. These refugees speak of frozen villages, tucked between walls, girls taken to the mountaintops by strange forces, and a brutal cult the oversees the day-to-day life of the people of Lahey. The Crick government has no idea, so far, what to do about the existence of Lahey. Their diplomatic envoys do not return, people in the central regions are starting to report raids and monsters, and no other official word has come from the mountain kingdom.
The higher reaches of the mountains are lined with visible structures, mostly massive, snaking walls, and half collapsed towers, forming a labyrinth protecting some of the higher peaks. Historians assumed that the structures, similar to those all throughout Crickton, if somewhat grander in scale, were some Murrenic make-work project or perhaps some older folly from one of the Oak Oligarchs. In any case, exploring the central mountains was a low priority for the country and surveyors and adventurers found actually gaining access to the areas challenging and much of the structures choked off with drifts of mineral ice which seemed to move and spread in unnatural ways. The whole area is well known to be lousy with ghouls and goblins in any case, so very few went up, some did not return and those who did mostly returned empty-handed and frustrated.
Then the war came and the vampire epidemic followed on. We now know that a group of refugees from several of the settlements in central Crickton fled the vampires into the mountains and lived a generation and a half up in the places beyond. Recently, they returned in much greater numbers, with spouses friends and children from a group of people, thought to be descendents of the Ash and Birch people (light skinned, but having significantly different features than western people) and tales of a tiny country in the mountains, Lahey, ruled by tyrannical crystalline beings and full of trolls, metallic shape changers and stranger things, kept in check by the ice and their fear of water. These refugees speak of frozen villages, tucked between walls, girls taken to the mountaintops by strange forces, and a brutal cult the oversees the day-to-day life of the people of Lahey. The Crick government has no idea, so far, what to do about the existence of Lahey. Their diplomatic envoys do not return, people in the central regions are starting to report raids and monsters, and no other official word has come from the mountain kingdom.
The Beast Fears Fire - Teigou Squirrels
Teigou Squirrels [Want 2]
Impulse - To Repel Trespassers Through Theft and Sabotage
There's no shortage of dangerous animals in the Teigou; black and grey striped umbral tigers, lantern apes, arboreal monitor lizards, carnivorous butterflies, giant catfish... Take your pick, there's lots of dangerous things to be found. I've chosen to give only one of the many species of animal in the forest its own entry because it sits at the center of a debate over sentience that's been going on for several generations.
The accepted definition of sentience in civilized lands (in the west, it's tied to fair skin, long noses and the ability to grow a beard, apparently) is the ability to communicate in a language that is comprehensible to other sentient species. The squirrels of the Teigou can't do that, or they won't and have no interest in trying. Fluent speakers of Demersal, which allows some limited communication of meaning between sentient animals and... well, non-communicative ones do report some success in communicating with the squirrels, but it is limited and the squirrels don't seem very interested. There are, also no reports (this being the other method for determining whether a species is sentient or not) of elves being able to inhabit a squirrel, but elves do not feel a difference between not being able to inhabit a creature that can't be their host and one that doesn't want them to be their host. Thought experiments involving trowir have, thankfully, remained entirely in the conceptual realm.
Teigou squirrels resemble the gray squirrels common throughout Murren (Crickton maintains a large population of red squirrels) with black fur and unusually large size - adults weigh in at around 12 kilograms, some specimens managing up to 15. They are arboreal and similar to their smaller cousins in most respects, subsisting on nuts, fruit and seeds, but unusual for a non-predatory animal, Teigou Squirrels are quite aggressive.
Also unusual for any animal considered nonsentient, they build structures, make and wear adornments, carry weapons, and defend their homes and territories with traps, lots and lots of traps. Teigou squirrels are highly social rodents, and band together to drive out predators, including (and especially) humans. They are capable of recognizing weapons and other items of importance among human kit and perform raids to steal or destroy the items they find most threatening or interesting.
Harm - 1 or Peril [Snared] or Moderator Hard Move [Take Their Stuff] Teigou squirrels do possess thumbs and will fight with small bows and slings, which are perhaps less dangerous than weapons sized for humans, but still dangerous. They also use snares and stake traps to capture, injure or drive off intruders. Generally, though, they find the easiest, when facing humans, to wait until dark, raid the camps and make off with anything they can drag away. Teigou Squirrels have fairly weak eyesight, but keen hearing and sense of smell, which gives them some advantage in the dark over sight-dependent opponents.
What Could it be? It's a Mirage!
When you've trespassed on the territory of the Teigou Squirrels and they have decided to do something about it, face Want
On a Hit, you catch them trying to get into your stuff before they've taken much. They have one thing of yours, though, and you must either make the Grabbed by the Goolies move or kiss it goodbye.
On a Hard Hit, you discover and rebuff the squirrels before they get into your things.
On a Miss, you lose an item of my choice and suffer Harm as stated (including losing another item of my choice as per the Hard Move [Take Their Stuff].
In the pines, in the pines where the sun never shines.
The question that usually comes up when talking about the Teigou squirrels is why, given the Murrenic tradition of interspecies recognition of sentience, is there even a debate about this? Two reasons. First is that the historical record places the Teigou squirrels suddenly gaining the ability to build, adorn themselves and use weapons within the last 150 years or so. There's no hint of an event that caused them to develop so quickly, but records from before about a century and a half ago characterize the squirrels as being fairly clever as apes go, let alone rodents. While it is possible that the chroniclers among the Song shaded their accounts, it would be uncharacteristic of what we know of their history to shade it that much. Accounts of the war with the Hemlocks don't shy away from outright war crimes committed in the conquest of the Teigou. That said, they did not eat the hemlocks.
That's the other reason. While the practice has dropped to nearly nonexistent, the squirrels of the teigou used to be a mainstay of the Song diet, and there is some evidence that, in lean winters and isolated areas, some folks still living know the taste of Teigou Squirrel. The spiders and the great wolves who live in the Teigou don't shy away from squirrel flesh like most humans do in modern times, and some folks hypothesize that the relative harmony between humans, wolves and spiders doesn't help the squirrels with overcoming their trepidation toward humans. It's mostly the spiders who lobby against classifying the squirrels as sentient, since they find their allies get upset when they eat things so classified, and Teigou squirrels are a mainstay of their diet, too.
Impulse - To Repel Trespassers Through Theft and Sabotage
There's no shortage of dangerous animals in the Teigou; black and grey striped umbral tigers, lantern apes, arboreal monitor lizards, carnivorous butterflies, giant catfish... Take your pick, there's lots of dangerous things to be found. I've chosen to give only one of the many species of animal in the forest its own entry because it sits at the center of a debate over sentience that's been going on for several generations.
The accepted definition of sentience in civilized lands (in the west, it's tied to fair skin, long noses and the ability to grow a beard, apparently) is the ability to communicate in a language that is comprehensible to other sentient species. The squirrels of the Teigou can't do that, or they won't and have no interest in trying. Fluent speakers of Demersal, which allows some limited communication of meaning between sentient animals and... well, non-communicative ones do report some success in communicating with the squirrels, but it is limited and the squirrels don't seem very interested. There are, also no reports (this being the other method for determining whether a species is sentient or not) of elves being able to inhabit a squirrel, but elves do not feel a difference between not being able to inhabit a creature that can't be their host and one that doesn't want them to be their host. Thought experiments involving trowir have, thankfully, remained entirely in the conceptual realm.
Teigou squirrels resemble the gray squirrels common throughout Murren (Crickton maintains a large population of red squirrels) with black fur and unusually large size - adults weigh in at around 12 kilograms, some specimens managing up to 15. They are arboreal and similar to their smaller cousins in most respects, subsisting on nuts, fruit and seeds, but unusual for a non-predatory animal, Teigou Squirrels are quite aggressive.
Also unusual for any animal considered nonsentient, they build structures, make and wear adornments, carry weapons, and defend their homes and territories with traps, lots and lots of traps. Teigou squirrels are highly social rodents, and band together to drive out predators, including (and especially) humans. They are capable of recognizing weapons and other items of importance among human kit and perform raids to steal or destroy the items they find most threatening or interesting.
Harm - 1 or Peril [Snared] or Moderator Hard Move [Take Their Stuff] Teigou squirrels do possess thumbs and will fight with small bows and slings, which are perhaps less dangerous than weapons sized for humans, but still dangerous. They also use snares and stake traps to capture, injure or drive off intruders. Generally, though, they find the easiest, when facing humans, to wait until dark, raid the camps and make off with anything they can drag away. Teigou Squirrels have fairly weak eyesight, but keen hearing and sense of smell, which gives them some advantage in the dark over sight-dependent opponents.
What Could it be? It's a Mirage!
When you've trespassed on the territory of the Teigou Squirrels and they have decided to do something about it, face Want
On a Hit, you catch them trying to get into your stuff before they've taken much. They have one thing of yours, though, and you must either make the Grabbed by the Goolies move or kiss it goodbye.
On a Hard Hit, you discover and rebuff the squirrels before they get into your things.
On a Miss, you lose an item of my choice and suffer Harm as stated (including losing another item of my choice as per the Hard Move [Take Their Stuff].
In the pines, in the pines where the sun never shines.
The question that usually comes up when talking about the Teigou squirrels is why, given the Murrenic tradition of interspecies recognition of sentience, is there even a debate about this? Two reasons. First is that the historical record places the Teigou squirrels suddenly gaining the ability to build, adorn themselves and use weapons within the last 150 years or so. There's no hint of an event that caused them to develop so quickly, but records from before about a century and a half ago characterize the squirrels as being fairly clever as apes go, let alone rodents. While it is possible that the chroniclers among the Song shaded their accounts, it would be uncharacteristic of what we know of their history to shade it that much. Accounts of the war with the Hemlocks don't shy away from outright war crimes committed in the conquest of the Teigou. That said, they did not eat the hemlocks.
That's the other reason. While the practice has dropped to nearly nonexistent, the squirrels of the teigou used to be a mainstay of the Song diet, and there is some evidence that, in lean winters and isolated areas, some folks still living know the taste of Teigou Squirrel. The spiders and the great wolves who live in the Teigou don't shy away from squirrel flesh like most humans do in modern times, and some folks hypothesize that the relative harmony between humans, wolves and spiders doesn't help the squirrels with overcoming their trepidation toward humans. It's mostly the spiders who lobby against classifying the squirrels as sentient, since they find their allies get upset when they eat things so classified, and Teigou squirrels are a mainstay of their diet, too.
March 23, 2013
The Beast Fears Fire - Forest Killers
Forest Killers [Violence - Varies]
Impulse - To Be the End of your Story
There's some disagreement about the origins of the Forest Killers' techniques; they may have come from an interpretation of the poisoned narratives that float through the Teigou, but the also might have come from the collected lore of the Blackthorns, or they could be something that the last Princess of Pine Province invented from whole cloth. Whatever the case, there remain 19 Forest Killers still known to be active somewhere in the dark of the forest, having written age and infirmity out of the story of their lives.
The origins of the Forest Killers are in the waning days of the Autumn War between Oak and Pine Province. The King of Pine had died in the winter following the first battles of that conflict and just after the emergence of the Queen of Ugly Birds. The King of Pine had been, by all accounts, a hypercompetent ruler, if a paranoid and a tyrant. He died at a ripe old age, with three adult children, fraternal triplets, having left no notion of which one was to be designated heir, and having depopulated his bureaucracy in his paranoia. His three children were born cursed with a different pair of foolish, brutal, and mad. The princess was the one who wasn't a fool.
When the Province inevitably descended into civil war between the Princess and her foolish and brutal brother (mostly his handlers), the Princess learned and trained a group of her followers in the arts of martial storytelling, a method of defeating enemies by controlling the narrative of the battle before it begins. Armed with this secret, her smaller force defeated her brother's followers and took the capital and the crown of the province.
Just in time for her father to rise from the grave as a lich. The Princess' storytellers swore allegiance to him and chased their old mistress. Some say she escaped, some say she didn't, but in the process, she did kill a number of the tale-spinning warriors. Now 19 remain, the Forest Killers, still apparently loyal to the King of Pine, reporting to the lost capital of the old Province, somewhere in the forest.
The Forest Killers prefer to fight with swords, straight or curved, paired or not. These swords are well decorated and personalized, having been taken into hundreds of years worth of fights. They wear masks, each one also very personal. They do not have names; this is not merely a case of not using their names, or having forgotten them, they have told their names out of their stories and they do not exist. They do not age, get hungry or thirsty or sick. They can be killed, but this is not easy to do, each one of the remaining 19 has been honing their craft for longer than Crickton has been a nation, and while physically, they are no more resilient than the next nameless, dedicated killer, that rarely if ever comes into play.
Harm - Weapon, usually. Forest Killers, we assume, still pursue the aims of the King of Pine, which we can assume to be the reuniting of the Pine Province as a Pine Kingdom under his rule, and claiming all the land in the shadow of the forest. How he thinks and they act toward this end is a little hard to fathom (a lich of his age is probably showing sever cognitive breakdown - undead senility), but mostly the Forest Killers appear from the forest, to Kill. Who they meant kill and why is an exercise left to the witnesses to undertake. How is with swords and story.
That Will Be the Story of You
When a Forest Killer seeks to kill you, face Violence.
On a Hit, I dictate one action that you must choose to either take or suffer Harm as stated.
On a Hard Hit, you deny the story and may choose an option for a Hit (not a Hard Hit).
On a Hard Hit, I dictate one action that you must choose to either take or suffer Great Harm.
I know you have some cosmic rationale
There's a possibility that the Princess escaped from the Teigou and made it to Shulcha Kaaren Kal, trading her secrets to the Blackthorns for a key to the city. Since then a handful of people have appeared with similar techniques.
Tell the Story in Blood
When you prepare for a battle with someone you have seen, someone you know or someone you have a chance to observe, face Violence
On a Hit, you get +1 Hit Forward to spend during the fight to dictate an action that your opponent takes during the fight.
On a Hard Hit, you get +3 Hits Forward.
On a Miss, fuck it. I will figure this shit out later. I just watched 3 episodes of 30 Rock trying to get this move written and it's not happening. Stay classy, St. Louis.
Impulse - To Be the End of your Story
There's some disagreement about the origins of the Forest Killers' techniques; they may have come from an interpretation of the poisoned narratives that float through the Teigou, but the also might have come from the collected lore of the Blackthorns, or they could be something that the last Princess of Pine Province invented from whole cloth. Whatever the case, there remain 19 Forest Killers still known to be active somewhere in the dark of the forest, having written age and infirmity out of the story of their lives.
The origins of the Forest Killers are in the waning days of the Autumn War between Oak and Pine Province. The King of Pine had died in the winter following the first battles of that conflict and just after the emergence of the Queen of Ugly Birds. The King of Pine had been, by all accounts, a hypercompetent ruler, if a paranoid and a tyrant. He died at a ripe old age, with three adult children, fraternal triplets, having left no notion of which one was to be designated heir, and having depopulated his bureaucracy in his paranoia. His three children were born cursed with a different pair of foolish, brutal, and mad. The princess was the one who wasn't a fool.
When the Province inevitably descended into civil war between the Princess and her foolish and brutal brother (mostly his handlers), the Princess learned and trained a group of her followers in the arts of martial storytelling, a method of defeating enemies by controlling the narrative of the battle before it begins. Armed with this secret, her smaller force defeated her brother's followers and took the capital and the crown of the province.
Just in time for her father to rise from the grave as a lich. The Princess' storytellers swore allegiance to him and chased their old mistress. Some say she escaped, some say she didn't, but in the process, she did kill a number of the tale-spinning warriors. Now 19 remain, the Forest Killers, still apparently loyal to the King of Pine, reporting to the lost capital of the old Province, somewhere in the forest.
The Forest Killers prefer to fight with swords, straight or curved, paired or not. These swords are well decorated and personalized, having been taken into hundreds of years worth of fights. They wear masks, each one also very personal. They do not have names; this is not merely a case of not using their names, or having forgotten them, they have told their names out of their stories and they do not exist. They do not age, get hungry or thirsty or sick. They can be killed, but this is not easy to do, each one of the remaining 19 has been honing their craft for longer than Crickton has been a nation, and while physically, they are no more resilient than the next nameless, dedicated killer, that rarely if ever comes into play.
Harm - Weapon, usually. Forest Killers, we assume, still pursue the aims of the King of Pine, which we can assume to be the reuniting of the Pine Province as a Pine Kingdom under his rule, and claiming all the land in the shadow of the forest. How he thinks and they act toward this end is a little hard to fathom (a lich of his age is probably showing sever cognitive breakdown - undead senility), but mostly the Forest Killers appear from the forest, to Kill. Who they meant kill and why is an exercise left to the witnesses to undertake. How is with swords and story.
That Will Be the Story of You
When a Forest Killer seeks to kill you, face Violence.
On a Hit, I dictate one action that you must choose to either take or suffer Harm as stated.
On a Hard Hit, you deny the story and may choose an option for a Hit (not a Hard Hit).
On a Hard Hit, I dictate one action that you must choose to either take or suffer Great Harm.
I know you have some cosmic rationale
There's a possibility that the Princess escaped from the Teigou and made it to Shulcha Kaaren Kal, trading her secrets to the Blackthorns for a key to the city. Since then a handful of people have appeared with similar techniques.
Tell the Story in Blood
When you prepare for a battle with someone you have seen, someone you know or someone you have a chance to observe, face Violence
On a Hit, you get +1 Hit Forward to spend during the fight to dictate an action that your opponent takes during the fight.
On a Hard Hit, you get +3 Hits Forward.
On a Miss, fuck it. I will figure this shit out later. I just watched 3 episodes of 30 Rock trying to get this move written and it's not happening. Stay classy, St. Louis.
March 22, 2013
The Beast Fears Fire - Baphometh Stroen
Baphometh Stroen [Malevolence 3]
Impulse - To Drag You to Hell
In the center of the Teigou, there is a region that retains its ancient name of Dim Stroen - a part of the woods that is in darkness so complete that it robs you of all your senses, steals your thoughts and consumes you. A ring of forest monasteries and patrols of lesser monks and nuns guard the area from accidental intrusion - the masters of these places train their lives to be able to accept the oblivion that exists in the heart of the forest and use it to attain enlightenment (it breaks both ways, I'm told. About half of them who emerge do so enlightened and the other half emerge as greayscale, shadowy versions of the Hollow. It's moderately difficult to slip past the monasteries, but most people who experience the dark of the center of the forest don't actually go to the Dim to do so. Dim Stroen can come to you.
Old stories about the original people of the Teigou mention that the Dim Stroen had an umbral region around it, a place of daemons and angry, roaming balls of fire known as Baphometh Stroen, presumably after the boar-riding king of the daemons in the myths of the old forest people. Fact of the matter is that no one has seen any daemons of any kind since the days of reliable record-keeping. A lot of the things they called daemons are more accurately categorized as evil spirits, barghests and all sorts of other malevolent supernatural beings. That's not to say they definitely don't exist. It's hard to rule out much in a place where the books you use to write down observations can bloat with teal eggs and fly around your study trying to kill you. Anyway, though the Baphometh Stroen is no longer (if it ever was) a place you can mark on the map, it is real, and if the daemons it supposedly contains are not, that's not a lot of comfort to any who encounter the place. The angry balls of fire seem to be quite real.
Baphometh Stroen can manifest anywhere in the Teigou, and it warns of its approach with a sudden dimming of extant light, sound of thunder and a sharpening of lines and oversaturation of colors. People who enter Baphometh Stroen experience anxiety, chills, smell ozone and feel unpleasant prickles on their skin. Then the fires roll in. We'd assume that the free-floating balls of fire that wander in Baphometh Stroen were the daemons, but the old accounts are clear to make a distinction between the two.
Those who escape from Baphometh Stroen relate seeing garlands of flowers and strings of flags, hung from the trees or draped on mummified corpses that appear. They also tell of the sound of great drums beating in polyrythms with chanting in a language that is unfamiliar. Most found the music and decorations intimidating but not unpleasant in and of themselves. No accounts of the appearance of the musicians or chanters exist.
Harm 2/Peril [On Fire] or Peril [Hellbound] The main immediate danger of the Baphometh is the touch of the fireballs. They usually move slowly, but can speed up and change direction without warning, and are sometimes attracted to life or movement or something about people who have found themselves in the area. The other danger is getting dragged deeper into the daemon forest. It's not possible to navigate out of or to escape by running, but it is possible to protect yourself until the Baphometh passes you by.
Wallflower
When Baphometh comes for you, face Malevolence.
On a Hit, you do not move further into the Baphometh, but you may have to [on a Moderator Soft Move] face Disaster or suffer 2 Harm/On Fire as one of the fireballs comes for you.
On a Hard Hit, the Baphometh passes you by, leaving you where you were.
On a Miss, you find yourself drawn further in toward the chanting and the drums, and suffer the Peril Hellbound. If you fall while suffering this Peril, you join the party or the darkness beyond and are lost forever.
Oh don't look back to see
The Baphometh contains a few other dangers that can come upon you while you are waiting things out. Dreamhares are mammals that look a lot like large rabbits with feathery, antenna-like ears in sets of two, four or six that are uncommon in the Teigou but very common in Baphometh Stroen. These creatures are actually psychic predators who have been known to attack humans, occasionally, for essence (Threshold 2, 1 Harm).
There are times when an overlay of the Baphometh lasts for several hours or even days (most last less than 30 minutes). In these longer instances, it is possible to explore the altered world and interact with what is there with relatively little danger of being drawn toward the drums and chanting (though the other denizens are usually out in full force). Explorations of he quiet Baphometh are how we know as much as we do about the place, though even the quiet can have flares of activity in which someone exploring will have to protect themselves from becoming Hellbound.
It is not possible to resolve the Hellbound Peril while you are in Baphometh Stroen.
Impulse - To Drag You to Hell
In the center of the Teigou, there is a region that retains its ancient name of Dim Stroen - a part of the woods that is in darkness so complete that it robs you of all your senses, steals your thoughts and consumes you. A ring of forest monasteries and patrols of lesser monks and nuns guard the area from accidental intrusion - the masters of these places train their lives to be able to accept the oblivion that exists in the heart of the forest and use it to attain enlightenment (it breaks both ways, I'm told. About half of them who emerge do so enlightened and the other half emerge as greayscale, shadowy versions of the Hollow. It's moderately difficult to slip past the monasteries, but most people who experience the dark of the center of the forest don't actually go to the Dim to do so. Dim Stroen can come to you.
Old stories about the original people of the Teigou mention that the Dim Stroen had an umbral region around it, a place of daemons and angry, roaming balls of fire known as Baphometh Stroen, presumably after the boar-riding king of the daemons in the myths of the old forest people. Fact of the matter is that no one has seen any daemons of any kind since the days of reliable record-keeping. A lot of the things they called daemons are more accurately categorized as evil spirits, barghests and all sorts of other malevolent supernatural beings. That's not to say they definitely don't exist. It's hard to rule out much in a place where the books you use to write down observations can bloat with teal eggs and fly around your study trying to kill you. Anyway, though the Baphometh Stroen is no longer (if it ever was) a place you can mark on the map, it is real, and if the daemons it supposedly contains are not, that's not a lot of comfort to any who encounter the place. The angry balls of fire seem to be quite real.
Baphometh Stroen can manifest anywhere in the Teigou, and it warns of its approach with a sudden dimming of extant light, sound of thunder and a sharpening of lines and oversaturation of colors. People who enter Baphometh Stroen experience anxiety, chills, smell ozone and feel unpleasant prickles on their skin. Then the fires roll in. We'd assume that the free-floating balls of fire that wander in Baphometh Stroen were the daemons, but the old accounts are clear to make a distinction between the two.
Those who escape from Baphometh Stroen relate seeing garlands of flowers and strings of flags, hung from the trees or draped on mummified corpses that appear. They also tell of the sound of great drums beating in polyrythms with chanting in a language that is unfamiliar. Most found the music and decorations intimidating but not unpleasant in and of themselves. No accounts of the appearance of the musicians or chanters exist.
Harm 2/Peril [On Fire] or Peril [Hellbound] The main immediate danger of the Baphometh is the touch of the fireballs. They usually move slowly, but can speed up and change direction without warning, and are sometimes attracted to life or movement or something about people who have found themselves in the area. The other danger is getting dragged deeper into the daemon forest. It's not possible to navigate out of or to escape by running, but it is possible to protect yourself until the Baphometh passes you by.
Wallflower
When Baphometh comes for you, face Malevolence.
On a Hit, you do not move further into the Baphometh, but you may have to [on a Moderator Soft Move] face Disaster or suffer 2 Harm/On Fire as one of the fireballs comes for you.
On a Hard Hit, the Baphometh passes you by, leaving you where you were.
On a Miss, you find yourself drawn further in toward the chanting and the drums, and suffer the Peril Hellbound. If you fall while suffering this Peril, you join the party or the darkness beyond and are lost forever.
Oh don't look back to see
The Baphometh contains a few other dangers that can come upon you while you are waiting things out. Dreamhares are mammals that look a lot like large rabbits with feathery, antenna-like ears in sets of two, four or six that are uncommon in the Teigou but very common in Baphometh Stroen. These creatures are actually psychic predators who have been known to attack humans, occasionally, for essence (Threshold 2, 1 Harm).
There are times when an overlay of the Baphometh lasts for several hours or even days (most last less than 30 minutes). In these longer instances, it is possible to explore the altered world and interact with what is there with relatively little danger of being drawn toward the drums and chanting (though the other denizens are usually out in full force). Explorations of he quiet Baphometh are how we know as much as we do about the place, though even the quiet can have flares of activity in which someone exploring will have to protect themselves from becoming Hellbound.
It is not possible to resolve the Hellbound Peril while you are in Baphometh Stroen.
The Beast Fears Fire - The Hemlock-Poisoned Narratives
Poisoned Narratives [Ignorance 3]
Impulse - to Repeat.
Sōng have always been a literary people, credited with inventing wood-pulp paper way back in the histories of time before the empire and the resource collapse. Letters, journals, novels; the written word in all its forms, these remain a major part of Sōng life and culture. Storytelling and story are things that a lot of Sōng respect a great deal and Sōng thinkers and scholars often have a lot to say on the power of narrative. It's through them that the east has its notions of memetics, which has it's obvious utility for hunters and scholars of the monstrous.
If someone set out to craft a weapon to use against the Sōng as a culture and a people, poisoned narratives would be an excellent choice. No one is really certain if someone did deliberately craft them; suspects on that account are those who originally inhabited the Teigou (the more popular choice, and thus the occasionally used name of Hemlock-Poisoned Narratives) or their more modern rivals among the Murrenic peoples who populated what had once been the Oak Province. It's equally likely that the narratives are the by-blow of some feral god or some manifestation come through the forest from Dim Stroen.
Whatever the case, the narrative takes time to manifest. It's not a spirit, per se, and no one's ever perceived a poisoned narrative as such. Most of the time, they play out without anyone aware of an external force causing the events that the narrative causes to play out. It's only with hindsight and some literary study that the narrative gets caught at all.
Poisoned narratives are drawn to certain circumstances and relationships and influence the people involved to play out the events that make up the contents of the narrative. Poisoned narratives always end badly for their characters whether tragedies of black comedies (the two most popular literary forms in the Teigou). What's more, they tend to spread the badness around, causing phenomena that seem to be spiritual in nature, and making accidents befall those close to the chosen characters in the narrative. As the narrative picks up power and builds toward its climax, people in the area tend to experience spontaneous, shallow painful cuts, as if they were cut by invisible paper. This is usually the only warning an experienced investigator gets.
Poisoned Narratives do eventually manifest as furtive human figures dressed in many-layered robes made from stitched-together pages of a manuscript in Sōng hand. Their manifestation is the only vulnerable part of the narrative, and is more likely to appear as things start going "wrong" with the narrative, otherwise, they tend to try and remain hidden until the story has played itself out.
Harm - Front A poisoned narrative exists to play itself out and cause ruin through the actions of its chosen actors.
Stage 1 The narrative chooses its characters based on relationships and circumstance. People acquainted with the "characters" chosen might notice a change in behavior or a circumstance that reminds them of a story.
Stage 2 The narrative builds, causing its "characters" to act in ways that suit the narrative and may be wildly different than they usually behave. They will tend to take on the characteristics of the characters they are meant to portray and will behave in oddly dramatic ways otherwise. Those close to them are also in danger of being caught up in the sense of drama or even in roles of minor characters.
Stage 3 The narrative builds to a crisis. The paper-clad figure may manifest independently of things hewing close or not to the narrative. Bystanders will start suffering from paper cuts.
Stage 4 The narrative reaches its climax. The principles definitely die, as do many bystanders, apparent suicides (wrists or throats slit by their own suicide notes, usually...), and the narrative moves on.
The Editor's Brush
If you believe that someone you witness is caught in a poisoned narrative and want to try to break it, face Ignorance.
On a Hit, you're able to identify aspects of the story the poisoned narrative is attempting to bring about and get +1 Hit forward on your next attempt to derail it.
On a Hard Hit, you get the paper-clad figure to appear, somewhere, or, if it's already active, you learn its location and can go do terrible things to it in order to drive it off.
On a Miss, it turns out that your efforts to thwart the narrative only propelled it further. Suffer 1 of the most painful Harm you will ever experience and advance the Front a stage.
I couldn't see the books were on the shelf.
Poisoned narratives tend to be cowardly and try not to co-opt the actions of would-be heroes and adventurers. Whether this is because those folks often possess the skills to ferret out the narrative and break it or whether they are likely as not to generate their own through misadventure and larger-than-life personality. They also tend not to develop around those types of people unless they are already in full swing (that is to say, actually a Front).
The stories behind most of the narratives have been collected by scholars and survivors of the poisoned narratives' actions and collected in a book called the Throat-Cut Swallow, which is disturbing but otherwise safe reading. The book does have one unusual aspect, however, which makes it invaluable to those who study the Other. The presence of one of the stories (any one will do) written in Sōng script in a book will prevent it from becoming a lexicon, no matter what about the Other your write down (and proves a good psychological litmus test for any would-be scholar of the Other. If you can't handle the preface, you are not going to do well with the main body). Also the presence of the book on a shelf of lore about the Other will usually prevent those books from becoming Lexicons.
Some people claim that the book can be used as a weapon or a talisman of protection against creatures of the Other, but details on how this is done are sketchy at best.
Impulse - to Repeat.
Sōng have always been a literary people, credited with inventing wood-pulp paper way back in the histories of time before the empire and the resource collapse. Letters, journals, novels; the written word in all its forms, these remain a major part of Sōng life and culture. Storytelling and story are things that a lot of Sōng respect a great deal and Sōng thinkers and scholars often have a lot to say on the power of narrative. It's through them that the east has its notions of memetics, which has it's obvious utility for hunters and scholars of the monstrous.
If someone set out to craft a weapon to use against the Sōng as a culture and a people, poisoned narratives would be an excellent choice. No one is really certain if someone did deliberately craft them; suspects on that account are those who originally inhabited the Teigou (the more popular choice, and thus the occasionally used name of Hemlock-Poisoned Narratives) or their more modern rivals among the Murrenic peoples who populated what had once been the Oak Province. It's equally likely that the narratives are the by-blow of some feral god or some manifestation come through the forest from Dim Stroen.
Whatever the case, the narrative takes time to manifest. It's not a spirit, per se, and no one's ever perceived a poisoned narrative as such. Most of the time, they play out without anyone aware of an external force causing the events that the narrative causes to play out. It's only with hindsight and some literary study that the narrative gets caught at all.
Poisoned narratives are drawn to certain circumstances and relationships and influence the people involved to play out the events that make up the contents of the narrative. Poisoned narratives always end badly for their characters whether tragedies of black comedies (the two most popular literary forms in the Teigou). What's more, they tend to spread the badness around, causing phenomena that seem to be spiritual in nature, and making accidents befall those close to the chosen characters in the narrative. As the narrative picks up power and builds toward its climax, people in the area tend to experience spontaneous, shallow painful cuts, as if they were cut by invisible paper. This is usually the only warning an experienced investigator gets.
Poisoned Narratives do eventually manifest as furtive human figures dressed in many-layered robes made from stitched-together pages of a manuscript in Sōng hand. Their manifestation is the only vulnerable part of the narrative, and is more likely to appear as things start going "wrong" with the narrative, otherwise, they tend to try and remain hidden until the story has played itself out.
Harm - Front A poisoned narrative exists to play itself out and cause ruin through the actions of its chosen actors.
Stage 1 The narrative chooses its characters based on relationships and circumstance. People acquainted with the "characters" chosen might notice a change in behavior or a circumstance that reminds them of a story.
Stage 2 The narrative builds, causing its "characters" to act in ways that suit the narrative and may be wildly different than they usually behave. They will tend to take on the characteristics of the characters they are meant to portray and will behave in oddly dramatic ways otherwise. Those close to them are also in danger of being caught up in the sense of drama or even in roles of minor characters.
Stage 3 The narrative builds to a crisis. The paper-clad figure may manifest independently of things hewing close or not to the narrative. Bystanders will start suffering from paper cuts.
Stage 4 The narrative reaches its climax. The principles definitely die, as do many bystanders, apparent suicides (wrists or throats slit by their own suicide notes, usually...), and the narrative moves on.
The Editor's Brush
If you believe that someone you witness is caught in a poisoned narrative and want to try to break it, face Ignorance.
On a Hit, you're able to identify aspects of the story the poisoned narrative is attempting to bring about and get +1 Hit forward on your next attempt to derail it.
On a Hard Hit, you get the paper-clad figure to appear, somewhere, or, if it's already active, you learn its location and can go do terrible things to it in order to drive it off.
On a Miss, it turns out that your efforts to thwart the narrative only propelled it further. Suffer 1 of the most painful Harm you will ever experience and advance the Front a stage.
I couldn't see the books were on the shelf.
Poisoned narratives tend to be cowardly and try not to co-opt the actions of would-be heroes and adventurers. Whether this is because those folks often possess the skills to ferret out the narrative and break it or whether they are likely as not to generate their own through misadventure and larger-than-life personality. They also tend not to develop around those types of people unless they are already in full swing (that is to say, actually a Front).
The stories behind most of the narratives have been collected by scholars and survivors of the poisoned narratives' actions and collected in a book called the Throat-Cut Swallow, which is disturbing but otherwise safe reading. The book does have one unusual aspect, however, which makes it invaluable to those who study the Other. The presence of one of the stories (any one will do) written in Sōng script in a book will prevent it from becoming a lexicon, no matter what about the Other your write down (and proves a good psychological litmus test for any would-be scholar of the Other. If you can't handle the preface, you are not going to do well with the main body). Also the presence of the book on a shelf of lore about the Other will usually prevent those books from becoming Lexicons.
Some people claim that the book can be used as a weapon or a talisman of protection against creatures of the Other, but details on how this is done are sketchy at best.
March 20, 2013
The Beast Fears Fire - Red-Eyed Nymphs
Red-Eyed Nymphs [Hardship 3]
Impulse - To Steal your Heart. Also your Liver and your Lights, your Kidneys...
One of the best parts about studying the Teigou is that records are easy to come by. The Song have a very strong and entrenched tradition of writing everything down, and almost universal literacy. They also maintain a fairly well-staffed civil service whose lower clerks are tasked with continually copying and archiving old records. It's a treat in a country where scholarship was understandably suspended for two whole generations, and most of the skills of the scholars lost (along with everyone else). The abundance of records makes it possible to notice some very odd things like how the Red-Eyed Nymphs seemed to spring into being from nothing about 250 years ago. This would not be remarkable in and of itself, the Song recorded the emergence of the servants of the Queen in great detail, as well as new types of ghouls and goblins as they emerged. In those cases, accounts treated newly encountered monsters as novel. Not so the red-eyed ones. Those just seemed to appear in the historical record as if they had been mentioned as often as everything else that the Song found when they first came to the Teigou and stuck around. What's more, it took 150 years for anyone to notice and begin to comment on it.
Since then, some scholars have tried to get at their nature and origins. Similar to bogstalkers and barghests, red-eyed nymphs are spirits whose natural state is embodied. Unlike the other mentioned entities, they aren't gratuitously villainous so much as merely alien and capricious with tendencies toward violence. The difference is mostly academic to those who see their eyes light up in the shadows of the Teigou, as interactions with these beings is almost always violent. Most of the time, the eyes, wide set, round like tarsier eyes and lit up red, are all observers will see of them. It is also possible for sharp eared observers to make out the low moans they make, though most of the time, humans cannot hear them at all, and it requires a spider or a wolf to notice them.
Red-eyed nymphs, despite their name, appear male as often as female and intersex almost as often as either, they maintain two or three appearances, one being that of a slight, preternaturally attractive human with glowing red eyes, a feral and dirty version of the same with long claws and tarsier-shaped eyes (this seems to be their default) and something that looks like a gangly, deranged, human-sized primate with distinctly tarsier-like features.
Harm - 2/Peril (Mesmerized)
Red-eyed nymphs are strong and fierce, and their manifested talons in their latter two forms make short work of unprotected flesh, but, as usual, their true danger is somewhat less obvious. Their moans and vocalizations tend to hang about in the infrasonic range and their eyes actually flash, rather than give off steady light. This causes humans and near-humans to experience sensations of attraction and terror, as if the the forest is especially dangerous and threatening, and the nymph is the only source of comfort and protection. Wolves and Spiders, who can hear the infrasonic moans tend to be affected in the opposite manner, and have to hold steady or flee in terror of the nymphs themselves. The Nymphs tend to look particular humans, usually appearing to examine them by smell, and then either rejecting them and tearing them, carelessly to pieces or accepting them and cutting them carefully to pieces.
See the Red Light Rinsing
When you are confronted by the red-eyed nymphs, face Hardship
On a Hit, you know to fear the nymphs and can act to avoid them.
On a Hard Hit, the infra-sound and blinking lights puts you into a sort of trance over which you have control, and you gain +1 Hit forward for any action you take while the nymphs are present.
On a Miss, you go to cuddle the nymphs, get sniffed and suffer Harm as stated.
Come into this room, come into this gloom
The most common account of how the red-eyed ones came to be is in one of the earlier escapes of a feral god, that the nymphs were what the god left or made of its mortal minders or that they are fragments of a god too long imprisoned to retain coherence after its escape. Though there isn't conclusive evidence to support this story, there aren't any competing stories, either, so who the hell knows.
Red-eyed nymphs do reproduce, or, if not reproduce, recruit. The people they find acceptable, through whatever sense they use to determine this, they carefully dismember and use the organs of the victim in a ritual to summon its spirit out of the shadow and embody it in the form of a red-eyed nymph. Those transformed tend to remember facts and details of their former lives, but are no more attached to it than the spirits of the dead usually are, and appear to be driven by far stronger drives and affections than those they experienced in life. Which is to say, do not expect any fellowship, regard or mercy from a loved one so transformed, however close you were.
Impulse - To Steal your Heart. Also your Liver and your Lights, your Kidneys...
One of the best parts about studying the Teigou is that records are easy to come by. The Song have a very strong and entrenched tradition of writing everything down, and almost universal literacy. They also maintain a fairly well-staffed civil service whose lower clerks are tasked with continually copying and archiving old records. It's a treat in a country where scholarship was understandably suspended for two whole generations, and most of the skills of the scholars lost (along with everyone else). The abundance of records makes it possible to notice some very odd things like how the Red-Eyed Nymphs seemed to spring into being from nothing about 250 years ago. This would not be remarkable in and of itself, the Song recorded the emergence of the servants of the Queen in great detail, as well as new types of ghouls and goblins as they emerged. In those cases, accounts treated newly encountered monsters as novel. Not so the red-eyed ones. Those just seemed to appear in the historical record as if they had been mentioned as often as everything else that the Song found when they first came to the Teigou and stuck around. What's more, it took 150 years for anyone to notice and begin to comment on it.
Since then, some scholars have tried to get at their nature and origins. Similar to bogstalkers and barghests, red-eyed nymphs are spirits whose natural state is embodied. Unlike the other mentioned entities, they aren't gratuitously villainous so much as merely alien and capricious with tendencies toward violence. The difference is mostly academic to those who see their eyes light up in the shadows of the Teigou, as interactions with these beings is almost always violent. Most of the time, the eyes, wide set, round like tarsier eyes and lit up red, are all observers will see of them. It is also possible for sharp eared observers to make out the low moans they make, though most of the time, humans cannot hear them at all, and it requires a spider or a wolf to notice them.
Red-eyed nymphs, despite their name, appear male as often as female and intersex almost as often as either, they maintain two or three appearances, one being that of a slight, preternaturally attractive human with glowing red eyes, a feral and dirty version of the same with long claws and tarsier-shaped eyes (this seems to be their default) and something that looks like a gangly, deranged, human-sized primate with distinctly tarsier-like features.
Harm - 2/Peril (Mesmerized)
Red-eyed nymphs are strong and fierce, and their manifested talons in their latter two forms make short work of unprotected flesh, but, as usual, their true danger is somewhat less obvious. Their moans and vocalizations tend to hang about in the infrasonic range and their eyes actually flash, rather than give off steady light. This causes humans and near-humans to experience sensations of attraction and terror, as if the the forest is especially dangerous and threatening, and the nymph is the only source of comfort and protection. Wolves and Spiders, who can hear the infrasonic moans tend to be affected in the opposite manner, and have to hold steady or flee in terror of the nymphs themselves. The Nymphs tend to look particular humans, usually appearing to examine them by smell, and then either rejecting them and tearing them, carelessly to pieces or accepting them and cutting them carefully to pieces.
See the Red Light Rinsing
When you are confronted by the red-eyed nymphs, face Hardship
On a Hit, you know to fear the nymphs and can act to avoid them.
On a Hard Hit, the infra-sound and blinking lights puts you into a sort of trance over which you have control, and you gain +1 Hit forward for any action you take while the nymphs are present.
On a Miss, you go to cuddle the nymphs, get sniffed and suffer Harm as stated.
Come into this room, come into this gloom
The most common account of how the red-eyed ones came to be is in one of the earlier escapes of a feral god, that the nymphs were what the god left or made of its mortal minders or that they are fragments of a god too long imprisoned to retain coherence after its escape. Though there isn't conclusive evidence to support this story, there aren't any competing stories, either, so who the hell knows.
Red-eyed nymphs do reproduce, or, if not reproduce, recruit. The people they find acceptable, through whatever sense they use to determine this, they carefully dismember and use the organs of the victim in a ritual to summon its spirit out of the shadow and embody it in the form of a red-eyed nymph. Those transformed tend to remember facts and details of their former lives, but are no more attached to it than the spirits of the dead usually are, and appear to be driven by far stronger drives and affections than those they experienced in life. Which is to say, do not expect any fellowship, regard or mercy from a loved one so transformed, however close you were.
March 19, 2013
Things to Say so that they Won't Go Unsaid by Me.
The war is older than my nephews, and is bound to be continuing when they are old enough to be in danger of having to fight in it. I don't expect that it will ever end.
Done by privileged boys who thought they could get away with it.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Alighting from that clunky bitter segue, here's my read on other privileged boys currently in the news, who thought they could get away with it.
1) The only surprise for me in the media coverage of Stuebenville is the fact that this managed to lower my opinion of the institution, the profession and the discipline.
2) As emotionally frustrating as it was to see such light sentences handed down, I still do not believe that there is any call, reason or justification in trying legal children as legal adults. I feel nothing in this case but the desire to see all involved on the side of perpetrating the rape (not just the two convicted rapists) torn apart by hyaenas. This is why I am glad the law, when it works, is better than I am. This is why the world is a better place without me in authority.
3) 1 and 2 years in juvenile detention, respectively, is not going to do a damned thing about rape culture. 10 to 20 years in federal prison would not do a damned thing about rape culture, either.
Yeah, that's about all I've got for today. Back to fun monsters.
Done by privileged boys who thought they could get away with it.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Alighting from that clunky bitter segue, here's my read on other privileged boys currently in the news, who thought they could get away with it.
1) The only surprise for me in the media coverage of Stuebenville is the fact that this managed to lower my opinion of the institution, the profession and the discipline.
2) As emotionally frustrating as it was to see such light sentences handed down, I still do not believe that there is any call, reason or justification in trying legal children as legal adults. I feel nothing in this case but the desire to see all involved on the side of perpetrating the rape (not just the two convicted rapists) torn apart by hyaenas. This is why I am glad the law, when it works, is better than I am. This is why the world is a better place without me in authority.
3) 1 and 2 years in juvenile detention, respectively, is not going to do a damned thing about rape culture. 10 to 20 years in federal prison would not do a damned thing about rape culture, either.
Yeah, that's about all I've got for today. Back to fun monsters.
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