What the PCs know.
Once a respected and sought-after Choreographer, frequently appearing at the funerals of the most prestigious and wealthy residents of Gnomon, Cynop Scincidae found their contracts quickly severed once Inquisitor Shemwell used his terrible informatics to expose Cynop's Cacogenic heritage. They then connected with other disgraced Cacogen poets and politicos to deliver their own brand of justice to Shemwell, who fled into the wastes south of Gnomon after the Cacogen faction retaliated. Though penniless and hungry, Cynop and their Cacogen comrades are educated in several delicate arts and supple skills, and have offered a reward of rich knowledge to the party if Shemwell is brought to them alive.
What they don't know.
Since fleeing Gnomon, the richly-attired and -equipped Shemwell was captured by a horde of psychedelically uplifted myconid bandits, who, cackling, stripped him of his riches and forced him to crawl on all fours, nude as a common pack animal, carrying panniers heavy with supplies. The bandits rove occasionally from their hideout for fresh plunder, often taking Shemwell with them, leashed and grovelling, to assist in verbally smoothing transactions with those plundered. This has been going on for months, and Shemwell, docile, disoriented, and nursing an acute case of Stockholm syndrome, has plum forgot all about the inquisition or those he harmed in the process.
Ayyoha's Paradox.
A broad, winding terrain of tall mesas and salt pan, where the hypergeometrician Ayyosha conducted his failed experiments A While Ago. In so doing, he created and was consumed by a slowly-growing Paradox which has now infected the entire terrain, making passage through its centre difficult if not impossible. Weird sightings of both landscape and fauna abound in the Paradox, driving even the most sound of mind into looping thought patterns and often permanent distortions of perspective.
In an effort to contain the Paradox, Hegemony Special Ops were stationed on the perimeter for three generations, with mixed results. In recent years they've suffered high losses, leading Hegemony Central Council to internally decommission the project, though the legionnaires on the ground, largely forgotten, have not been informed.
If the party chooses to travel through the Paradox, roll a d20 and consult the table.
1 Points of light begin to appear over the surface of a random member's form. The rest of the party looks on in horror as the points begin to merge, stitching three dimensions into two, then one, then none at all, the final point blipping out into nothingness.
2-4 Bizarre geometric ruptures spawn a vicious Planey Doppelgeller. Its strikes generate planeyfolk doppelgangers from PCs, forcing them to eternally question the solidity of their being.
5-7 Massive crowds of monochromatic Planeyfolk emerge, pulling the PCs toward every possible vanishing point for what they call "the last conversion."
8-12 Shock waves of dimensional distortion wash over d4 of the PCs. A random limb loses all depth, becoming useless in three dimensions.
13-16 The potpourri of impossible shapes and equations is too much for a stereoscopic mind to bear. All PCs are terrified, disoriented, and unable to sleep for d6 days.
17-19 Dodging streams of oddly-twisting grids and paper-thin mesas, they arrive at their destination.
20 An oasis, linear and formless. Streams of meditating Numbers float near its rim. Those who drink of its liquids slowly become Planeyfolk over d4 weeks — roll for appearance and gain all associated benefits & drawbacks. Upon emerging from the Paradox, they arrive at their destination.
Locations around the paradox.
1. Wreck of the Kiteship Scandulata.
Enormous and ancient gleaming silver kiteship with a placid yak's-head prow. The Synth-Archivists of Turris Godfrey destroyed the vessel Some Time Ago, due to a minor dispute over the ethics of taxidermying cattle. A giant rent in the hull, encrusted with crystalline carbonic staining, is a signature of the conflict. The silver hull is valuable, though bonded in a tight alloy unbreakable by simple means.
In its heyday, the kiteship was piloted by the Order of the Bovine Motion — a starcult who believed the celestial bodies were great Cosmic Cows grazing in the ether. The Order communed with the Cows via masked scrying, gaining insight into the Vaarn's future. The cargo bay contains many dozens of these heavy concrete masks, their once-vibrant paint now chipped and faded.
Poltergeists haunt the ship, all that remain of the Order, communicating with the PCs and each other via telekinesis. Lonely, frustrated, and vengeful, the geists are bound to the ships' location and desperately seek revenge on the Synth-Archivists of Turris Godfrey.
2. Turris Godfrey Lyceum-Chronicle.
This ex-museum of natural history and reeducation centre for young and misguided anti-Autarchists once boasted an extensive archive of Vaarnish flora and fauna. The installations of mutant cacti, taxidermied phthalo-jackals, leemie skeletons, and the beaks of chrome-feathered sailbacks have been largely consumed by an infestation of Tiger Flies.
Twenty-five data-corrupted Synths, all sharing the name Turris Godfrey, go through the motions of tending the archive and dusting the installations. Their brain-drives are distorted by the LogLang virus M3LANiE, causing the slow decay of memory slots, crossed wires, and misremembered identity. M3LANiE lives on the Base Chronicle Server; and any Synth who logs into the server may become infected.
One Turris Godfrey has yet retained enough consciousness to maintain a minor sense of leadership and fleeting sense of identity; their vibe is "distracted and grandfatherly." Turris Godfrey wants the Stevedore Limerick Microfiche — so named for the way it "unloads" rhyming limerick lines into new sectors to "unpack" memories suppressed by M3LANiE.
The Stevedore Limerick Microfiche will indeed restore memory to the Synths; however, their atrophied taxidermy infobanks will go berserk, thrown immediately into overdrive as Turris Godfrey scours the area for any matter, living or dead, to taxidermy.
3. ACHESICK Observatory.
The Augural Chimaeric Hospice for Ego Software, Innocence Caching, and Karyoplasty is usually called ACHESICK Observatory by the impatient and those short on time. The remarkable, seven-petal-Clematis-shaped building perches on a high mesa, offering a good view of the surrounding regions. Walls of purple one-way glass, shattered and ruined in many places. Ascending the mesa is facilitated by haphazardly-strung rope ladders.
Prior to the Great Collapse, Synths and cyberneticists ran ACHESICK as a psychic training facility, activating and reprogramming personality data cards in accordance with Autarchian decree. For the last several decades it has served as a Faa Nomad encampment, its laboratories repurposed as pottery kilns, dry storage, smithies, electronics salvage, and celestial surveillance.
The seven petals are connected via a workmanlike hub room.
Petal One: Main entry leads to trapped foyer. Worthless decorative trinkets look expensive to the untrained eye.
Petal Two: Cold and dry storage. Extra rope ladders.
Petal Three. Broken and shattered glass, open to the foul winds. Telescopes point in all directions. Doors to the hub have been melted shut.
Petal Four. Secret entryway concealed behind twisted statue leads to Faa dormitories and kitchen.
Petal Five. Lab rooms repurposed as pottery kilns and smithies.
Petal Six. Electronics salvage and old personality cards.
Petal Seven. Temple of the Serpent-Crone Arjuna. A Faa Congregation observes the rituals here, worshipping an ornate urn of purple ashes. Brother Karmanor — the sentient ginkgo biloba tree — presides.
4. Pavilion Rock.
Half a day out in all directions, occasional crude bone idols begin to appear, depicting many creatures and characters of all ages. The rock itself is a great domed mesa, eroded at the base to form a tripedal, pavilion-like structure.
Inside, hundreds of carvings mark the site as a major migratory landmark. Graffiti marking arrival and departure dates, identities, drawings of strange creatures met on the journey, drawings made in an alien hand at a level of detail and gesture not possible by natural means. A visitation and a warning. This coalescence of flows, both migratory and mystic, engenders fertile ground for ritual mathemagics.
Pavilion is currently occupied by an Alzabo named Butterfly, who wants to sing with the voice of all creatures that come her way. This song begins to melt the identity of the target, sublimating it into localised physical objects. Effigies of the self, sculpted from organic matter, may be built to deflect Butterfly's song, standing-in for the target's identity and preventing ID melt.
5. The Great Paw of Yamburg.
A molten wreck of a hand sculpture scrapes the firmament with long, cracked fingernails. Though the comms array is nonfunctional, its pre-Collapse security systems are still active. A hidden water weep beneath the structure provides refreshment and nutrition to the camp of Myconid Bandits stationed nearby.
Lycoperdon, crude of mouth and gesture, claims leadership over the Myconid network. Within that empathic lattice, the leader's desires bubble to the forefront: entheogens and fermented beverages. Lycoperdon's ego-dominance does not preclude dissent, however. The sprightly youths Agaricus and Semilanceata quarrel; upon which half of Shemwell's corpse will each be permitted to propagate once the ex-Inquisitor meets his eventual demise? (Both fancy the posterior half.)
For entertainment, the madcap Myconids play chicken with the Paw's security lasers. Desiccated mushrooms generously pepper the sands surrounding the Paw.
Within the Paw — and as-yet undiscovered by the Myconids — is concealed an extensive Limerick Microfiche library. In a time Way Back When, the Truekin encrypted their communications via these Limericks, harnessing the tonal music of rhyme to confuse parsing sockets.
6. Camp Jabber.
The last bastion of civilization in Ayyosha's Paradox is a Hegemony outpost, populated by Corporal Fang-Lung and her paranoid legionnaires. Moneflower yurts, patched with moth-eaten uniforms and twisted metal sheets, sway in the breeze.
A fortnight ago, Commander Zilch led a party of seven legionnaires into the Planey Wastes to track a monster they call the Perspectopus; they have not been seen since. The Perspectopus returns nightly to hunt: a slow attrition of soldiers turned mad or cowardly, gone AWOL, or simply consumed by the strange clashes of light and angle.
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