They Wait in Darkness/The Quiet City

IX STOLE FIRE

from the first world and melted ice and made water. She taught us fire: and  how to restore the dead to life, the languages the stars speak to one another, the tongues of beasts and rocks and water, how to make metal from fire, and how to travel on the wind that moves between the stars. She made many strange things, fought many things and made weapons or wonders out of their bones.

Ix dreamed of a city and with fire and a mountain it was made to be. She set herself apart from the other gods. She made a home for us, taught us not to fear.

She dreamed of seven daughters, each of the seven made from things she loved best and with fire and a man that was also like a tiger, they were made to be.

There was:

the Spider Twins for the downy white and black spiders who embrace and play behind the sky

Snake Woman for the people who first made poetry

Star Mother for the light and the veil to separate this place from the next

Earth Sister who was deep and endless but troubled always by pain

Bird Daughter whose breath brought life and beauty to everything it touched

and a last daughter who is our mother and whom we cannot name but call Sadness

Ix gave to each daughter barges of black metal which find always the best way and whose skin cannot be pierced and whose sting might kill even Ix herself.

And then things came to pass which were bad and also good and we came to be where we are and we forgot our first home and the way back.

Ix is between death and life, her daughters dead or missing, her city a sepulchre beneath which she weeps eternal rivers of poison and forgetfulness. The rivers flow forever, into our own waters. They remind us of death and we die or go mad.

Her city and our first home, treasure trove, altar and throne of the best god, is lost to all but the dead and those unlucky enough to be invited.

OUR ANCESTORS ARE MONSTERS

There is some intercourse between the dead and the living. The dead want things (souls, weapons, help with things they’d rather not do themselves, like hurting one another directly) and promise the desperate living whatever they want in return. It rarely ends well.

They send letters, cold and blue, sealed with wax that feels like flesh and that burns away in a cerulean flame when touched by the intended recipient. They send birds, many birds, perhaps all birds are their messengers or at least their allies, or at least, the little, furtive ones and the big black ones. The birds may deliver letters or they whisper in sleeping ears with tickling beaks.

WHAT THE DEAD SAY HAPPENS IN THE CITY

Quiet repose, mourning, the Grey Bazaar and waiting for Ix to rise from the Tomb of her Daughters.

IX LIVES

in water and fire, her eyes like ships burning at sea, her fingers like brands, her teeth embers grinding sparks in the dark. She may be roused from her mourning by sufficient violence, good information on the weaknesses of her betrayer, the presentation of pieces of a black metal barge or the corpse of a tiger. She may react poorly to some or all of these things. She will likely soon return to mourning. In the interim, she may be compelled to rewrite anything, to remake whatever she likes, she is creation and madness all in one.

She is, for all intents and purposes, a lich, with the lair powers to match. She may only be harmed by weapons from the previous three worlds, so seek the tombs of the elemental gods or the dead creator angels to find something to harm her. As the creator of all magic, she is effectively immune to it. Her phylactery has been lost in the city. She doesn’t bother looking for it. It looks like a chip of molten metal, irradiating anyone within 30’ with mutagenic magic, melting and reforming them. It could be used to power a dirge walker forever or awaken a slumbering dwarven forge without extinguishing it.

Like Bilbo, lowly visitors to the city may find themselves in possession of the phylactery, wrapped in rune-covered lead as thing as paper.

ABOUT THE DEAD

All of them are intelligent. Many are arrogant. Fleshed dead use zombie stats (but move as humans) and the Old dead use skeleton’s stats(but move faster than humans and can climb sheer surfaces). City bureaucrats are Shadows and higher level officials are mummies or mummy lords. There are no liches other than Ix as necromancers are forbidden. Ixian generals are vampires, giant albino bats, always hungry, violent. The dead do not increase in number. They are all the original citizens of Ix. As such they predate many of the gods, let alone human beings. What they remember is unclear. Surely some remember everything and they are the most well regarded and powerful. They are also the most likely to suffer attacks, recriminations, censure and exile. Their memory is likely potent and can be translated into a spell of the last/highest two levels or into a kind of spell-key into vault-lands long forgotten, great graveyards of creation, ready for robbing if only you could get back out again and if only the terrible things waiting in the bad, failing geometry weren't waiting for prey like you, prey that could lead them back to your home and a new creation to unwind.

Most of the dead wear rubber masks with goggles and tubing that provides a mist of the Ixian river water. The masks bear the mark of the twinned, split tongue.

The dead are embarassed at the state of their bodies, are quick to take offense at looks of revulsion, often apply lots of makeup, graft on "new parts" or use a lot of cologne, which only makes things worse (any unmasked undead have reaction rolls at disadvantage).

All but the mummy lord-style dead have d8+their original (ie, in the MM) HD in HD. (vary die size by party size and relative difficulty of given dungeon or how close to the Tomb they are, with a d2 for lvl 1 stuff, d4 for level 3, d6 for level 5, etc.. Tomb stuff is level 15+).

But for the rare corpsekid, the dead know magic: odd hp is cleric spells, even are wizard. They know their HD in worth of Spell points and up to that level of spell.

COMMUNICATING WITH THE DEAD

As speaking (and noise) is verboten, they will write you things and expect you to do the same. They may try to trick you into signing a contract in this way.

They may also employ a talkingbird (leaving the room when doing so, returning later once the bird has relayed your message to it) or a slave, which they will execute for speaking later (maybe in front of you). They will threaten to report you for talking should you fail to act as they wish.

WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING

At any given moment, all of the below, but here is what’s most important

1. Turf wars between corpsekids (gang stuff. they’ll pay you with information if you help or poisons or minor magic items or just money)

2. a great deal of plotting to restore Ix (usually involving getting a heroic, high-level party of very arrogant NPCs, heroes of your realm, to attack her and so give the city an excuse to burn your home to ash)

3. a great deal of dubious research into ancient, weapon-languages, you hear muttering from behind curtains. Your eyes feel like they're boiling your skull, your tongue is like a lead nut (Save or fall unconscious, apply your Int bonus as a penalty to the save; restored to consciousness, you know a level 1 spell, but casting it may have terrible effects for any who speak your language… find the creators of the virus language weapon and kill them to release you from the curse)

4. an enormous amount of smuggling (50%: in or out: 1. magical items, 2. spell scrolls, 3. armor, 4. weapons, 5. slaves, 6: corpses of holy people/saints)

5. Black rites, the sacrifice of the living. Floorboards in some houses are like pulpy red blankets they have been soaked in blood for so long. (play up the moaning and the screaming. failure to act has a 4 in 6 chance of causing the rite to complete but backfire, making a sea of imps spill out of the room/house)

6. The dead are stockpiling spells and weapons of great power. The stockpile goes off. (fireworks, treat as a gate spell)

7. The dead can pierce any veils they want, they can pull down the heavens. Someone tripped something and part of existence will blink out in a few days unless you stop it. Probably no one else cares but you.

8-20. Someone wants someone else truly dead, turned to dust, deprived of Ix’s tears until they totally dessicate, tortured into insanity (Page 50 Vornheim, roll twice for whoever wants your help, and then for the victim)

Also: They have more weapons than they can catalog, they’ve been waiting so long they've forgotten when it was when they first died

And: there is lots of speaking (as long as no one is listening in)

FESTIVALS

On any given day, it is d20+4 days from a festival. Festivals usually involve a great number of dead in the streets and the Bazaar shutters its stalls.

1. fourteen innocents are taken from their homes or bought from necromancers in exchange for (cursed) knowledge, the innocents are made to wear iron masks in the shape of the faces of seven daughters. Each is stripped, made to dance and then devoured by the crowd. You recognize one.

2. a dragon is painted orange like a tiger, stabbed multiple times, hunted and killed. Many living are released into the streets, told if they kill the dragon, they are free. This is not true. You are in the streets or watch from a window.

3. large brass bells without clappers swing in silence. it is good luck to hang one of the living from your windows for the birds. You recognize a corpse.

4. one hundred and seven living are drowned for seven straight hours in the rivers below. They are your family, your village.

5. seventy-seven children are transformed into birds and let loose. one is your brother or sister or your child.

6. certain families are designated and the dead clamber into their homes, flaying the children before the parents before nailing their hands to the wall or to one another. you recognize a name on the list.

7. certain innocents are designated and the dead put on the flesh of the living and lay with the innocent, a process that invariably yields a mummified dolorous child (which may be raised to a Judge). you recognize one such family.

8. a long procession with much quiet pomp and melodramatic, silent film mourning  whereby seven silver (or silver and wood) coffins are laid before the Tomb, the living inside are left to starve. Their cries are familiar.

9. at numerous crossroads, demons are castigated with tongs made from celestial bones, the flesh ceremoniously disposed of, but secretly kept for occult purposes, likely for the manufacture of weapons. They name a relative or friend as soul-slaved. Won't you free them?

10. the laws are reviewed and voted upon (in this rare instance, speaking would be prohibited, but no one shows up, so the judges all just stand before the tomb in silence, waiting). Lawlessness reigns. Minor judgements will likely be forgotten. Anything that happens in this time is ignored.

GETTING THERE

You need an invitation. Normally, those have strings attached (the Dead of Ix want you to do something terrible). Silent black carriages drawn by black and rotten coursers (or by seemingly nothing at all) appear at the appointed time and place - it is always dark and there is always ample fog - and carry you along increasingly strange and dangerous avenues, careening around mountain paths. The carriages are silent as if enchanted with that spell and bear the split tongue, the mark of the Quiet City.

ARRIVING

There is always a tunnel of some sort and inside there are no lights, some terrible twists and turns and jostling and gravity lets go for a few seconds - just enough to cause panic for a second or two - then gravity resumes and everything clatters to the cushions again. Light resumes and the carriage crawls out of some pit into the city. Again, there is no noise.

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE FROM ABOVE

If you climbed the long tooth of the Tomb of Daughters you’d see a roughly circular walled city, hemmed in on all sides by clouds. There are no gates in or out and the wall curves in, its upper levels studded with blades. Jumbled stone and slate-roofed tenements huddle conspiratorially, could topple any moment. The city rises to a point with the Tomb at the tip. The older buildings around the Tomb are large, rectilinear, made from a single block and arrayed in curling motifs that resemble snakes or letters.

WHAT IT’S LIKE FOR VISITORS

A labyrinth of cold grey stone, black-glass windows, thick wood doors banded with wrought iron. There are only two regular noises: the cool, arid wind and the sound of water flowing far below (the rivers of Ix flow from her weeping eyes and the waters of each are poisonous or toxic. They flow in unseen channels and feed the waters of the world, slowly diluting.). Occasionally, there is the faint shuffling of the undead.

There are a massive variety of birds and bird shit abounds and they provide a great deal of color and variety. None of the birds sing or make a noise and indeed all animals instinctively know to be silent.

Ferns and large, brilliant flowers grow from cracks in the stones and the few areas not cobbled over are damp and weedy. The plants have similar effects of the rivers (but with an advantage on the saving throw).

Except for the bazaar, the streets appear empty but for gangs of corpsekids or slinking necromancers and imps.

Corpsekids loiter in gangs, scramble over walls in ragged pants and petticoats. They look like rotting little kids, but treat them as ghouls. You can pay them to act as linkboys. They communicate in gestures. The wilder ones will whisper. They use litter as scrip, jewelry, weapons, spellbooks. They sometimes organize as families with a hoary, rotten Fagen for a father (ghasts).

Feet are wrapped in cloth to muffle noise, everything perfectly hinged (but for doors that must not be opened). There are no or few lights.

All of the doors into places are locked. If you are expected, you will be led to the place you are to go and will be let in.

The dead drink from the rivers and it works as something between formaldehyde and a healing tonic. They do not eat and they drink nothing else (unless it is a festival).

EMBASSIES

There are no embassies here but for the Elves, whose ambassador is a sort of fleshy coral and whose sole purpose is to spy on and help the dead for the Elves too wish for the living to be punished.

THE BAZAAR

Is surprisingly small and spookily quiet. You can, however, get just about anything here. Like, let the players name whatever they want and it’s probably available. Planet crackers and god-murderers are probably “not here” but still available behind closed doors. The price is usually pre-lapsarian silver (heaven silver, angel tongue,  god lucre) or (maybe more easily) souls. Behind closed doors things grow terrible quickly.

MERCHANTS IN THE BAZAAR

See Vornheim page 50. Roll for as much information as you need.

INSIDE THE BUILDINGS

It’s dark, dry, a little warm. Winds (sometimes strong) blow from room to room and cloth and paper scuttle about on these breezes. The dead usually repose against a wall or in stiff little bundles on the floor. Light is rare. Treat every building like a dungeon.

Moths are common and grow enormous. There is a certain house in which a moth with great psionic powers lives. She is like a dragon or a god and grants cleric spells of the trickery or knowledge domains. She longs for the usurpation of Ix and her dead, will replace her with even quieter fluttering of stranger, velveteen wings. Some moths are kept as mounts and when the dead go to war, they will ride moths whose pollen-wings drop spores that ruin the earth, eat through the ground for miles. Others devour dreams and minds (of the living, of course).

Small alligators may be found in drawers or coptic jars, wrapped in papyrus (always a map and a spell scroll - using it for one prevents its use as the others [roll a d6-1 0 is nothing 1-5 are maps to something on Treasure tables A-E in the DMG or a scroll of the lowest possible level on that same table. The treasures are always guarded. Pull a dungeon map or make them revisit a dungeon in the city they’ve not yet visited). Cats are never kept.

Weapons and wealth lay around, casually discarded.

The stairs seem to go up and down forever with the exception that going down it gets cooler and damper and the dead are less frequent, in worse condition. Far below flow blind and toxic rivers and the dead send somnolent living slaves down to fetch the waters for they drink them to maintain their “life.”

THE RIVERS

All flow away from the city and move at great force. Drinking from them, Save or : 1. enfeeblement, 2. amnesia, 3. mutation, 4. death by desiccation. Immersing in them causes immediate amnesia. They feel incredible cold. Whatever long dark shapes move below the surface are always hungry. Don’t get in the water. Lights float in the distance in some of these river-ways, pointing to the old way stations by which one might be able to reach the throne of Ix and, perhaps, Ix herself.

THERE IS A TIGER

That is closer in size to an elephant, its eyes are like fire and it looks like a living incarnation of a medieval artist’s rendition of a tiger (huge head, snub dog-ish nose, lolling tongue crazy teeth, bulging eyes, a tail like a club). It devours anything it finds, living or dead alike.  It licks everything clean. It breathes fire and climbs walls. It is one reason everyone locks their doors. It eschews the court rooms and the tomb but may occasionally be found outside the tomb, pawing to get in.

The dead claim to not fear it but might pay enormously for its removal (they might also kill you to avoid having to look like they were even thankful for its removal). It can be harmed by no weapon known, though the asura may have a method of forging such a weapon.

It was once Ix’s, and was wise, but is now insane and wild. The dead don’t like telling you this, but won’t deny it.

If it needs stats, it’s probably functionally the same as an ancient red dragon, but with the stated immunity. It has the same lair effects as an ancient red dragon and the same regional effects by replace “miles” by “a hundred feet.”

RULES & REGULATIONS

Laws are enforced by Judges and their staff of Shadows only insofar as the Judge determines guilt and a punishment and then sets a price on the enactment of that punishment and provides a corresponding bounty. You have to go report the crime to the Judge (there are no police) and pay a sum to fund the bounty. The courthouses likely have enormous treasure hordes, crawling with shadows. The law favors citizens (ie, the dead) over the living.

None of the dead actually carries out sentences as harming one of the dead is a terrible taboo (after all, each of the dead are ancient, part of an elect, first people), so the Judge places bounties on all the criminals. The living and (sometimes) a bored corpsekid will wander into a courtroom to check out the bounties. Much of the invitees to the city are being invited to enact some sort of justice...

At regular intervals there are courtrooms. These are more sturdy buildings with open archways and a statue by the door of a nearly shapeless woman weeping. Inside there will be a judge, at least twice your size, ancient, eyeless, tongueless. Its unctuous Shadow attendants will pay you for necromancer souls, demon wings and encourage you to check out the bounties, to enforce the rules and regulations of the City.

Judges are as mummy lords (with lair powers), but they wield twinkling black scimitars wreathed in a cool flame and should a judge stand to rise, the gravity in the room doubles, halving movement rates and reducing jumps to a skip. Armor becomes troublesome and anyone with a heart problem needs to make a Save or pass out. Every blow landed on a judge which successfully wounds it, increases gravity again: threefold (quarter movement rates), fourfold (Save or pass out). Fivefold gravity is a Save or die.

Judges are also highly touchy and imperious, quick to take deep offense, likely because they’ve spent so much time being fawned over by Shadows.

So:

-not having an invitation is forbidden

-being where you are not is forbidden (“where you are not” is never defined, but works like pornography - everyone knows it when they see it)

-harming the dead is forbidden

-speaking in public is forbidden [assume that players talking to one another are characters talking to one another if they’re relaying information for their characters]

-speaking in the presence of the dead is deeply rude

-making noise at all, anywhere, is deeply rude

-only the dead may touch the rivers

-the living are always second-class to the dead

-the living are not to be consumed except during festivals

-littering and loitering is prohibited

-demons must be accompanied by an escort

-necromancers are to be executed on sight, their bodies or at least their souls returned to a court for processing and a reward commensurate to their crimes against eternity

-climbing things (rope of a certain length, hooks, crampons, etc) are forbidden

-lockpicks are forbidden

-everything is owned by Ix, the rivers describe her kingdom, and anything sold here is only really loaned by Ix until the death of its owner. Claiming to own anything is illegal, which is another reason why everyone locks their doors.

Punishments:

FIRST OFFENSE: exposure of the finger bone in one hand

SECOND OFFENSE: removal of the ligament in one leg joint

MAJOR OFFENSE OR THIRD OFFENSE: the tongue is largely cut free, pulled forward, split down the middle with eye side pinned to opposing sides of the chin

FINAL: burning to true death (for the dead) or flensing of all fat

attributions: unknown (grave at Berlin cemetery, WW1 gas mask), Harry O. Morris, Jr., Aurelien Fournier, Event Horizon, Marc Simonetti, Berserk, Giacomo Carmagnola

The Red Saint

This is from that hexcrawl thing on which I'm working.

There are are seven Saints in the garden, five of which are known and two of which have wrapped themselves in secrecy. One of the five is presented here.

ALL SAINTS
Are sought after for succor, magic items, etc.

Treat each as a Lich, but for:

a. give them resistance to magic;
b. none may cast spells, but my use teleport 3/session, geas 1/session, gate 1/session and true polymorph 1/session;
c. have advantage against turning; and
d. except for the Red Saint, they don't really look like they could be undead and none detect as such.

Each has a phylactery hidden like a splinter in the eye of a demon prince. The princes are tormented by the phylactery, but no demon may remove them.

THE RED SAINT/THE CRIMSON LADY/SAINT SUSPIRIA/MOTHER OF SIGHS
Red is a pretty, emaciated, young woman in a tattered dress. Wounds describe her body, some fresh, some necrotic, a few still sport darts or arrow shafts. Her legs are wrapped tightly in dirty bandages  so that the flesh of her thighs and calves bulges through the gaps, like purple marble. Her nails are broken and filthy and when she is thinking, she runs them through her endless, greasy black hair. She coughs despondently, frequently. She is bad at feigning piety and compassion and mostly moans to cover up her disgust with supplicants.

It's said she takes pity on doomed lovers, especially women, and those suffering from afflictions; it's also said that she is most fond of the gallant and chivalrous.

She hates the blue saint most, then doomed lovers, then the gallant and chivalrous, then everyone else

Hidden on her: behind her hair, along her back, are hundreds of faces of various size, many no larger than a wart, but some the size of a hand. She uses these faces to replace her own should it be damaged for she cannot stand disfigurement of her visage. All these faces and the one she now wears are identical in appearance; also
buried into her arm, the base just protruding from below the wrist is a needle-like wand of hemorrhaging with four charges (being buried in her flesh recharges it) (treat as a wand of fireball but damage is dealt by leaking blood out of various orifices for d3 turns).

When no one is watching she is popping one of the faces on her back like a pimple (listen for the tiny screams). With each pop, she shudders sensuously.

If near death: she'll gate to a demiplane that's a red flesh landscape pulled taught over numbing needles walking about likely causes paralysis.


services provided

no.	service/item	price
1-3	she unravels a bloody bandage from her leg luxuriously. Stuffing this in your mouth heals as if rested. A character can only enjoy this effect 1/session.	the blood, heart or liver of something magical or exotic
3/session	cure all diseases afflicting a person	as above
1/session	places the soul of one thing of 3 HD or less in a doll in a red dress. The dress and doll slowly fall to pieces, turning to a charred stake in 1-2 weeks (the Merchant will say three), at which time the soul returns to its original home	one’s soul (must obey the commands of the Merchant 3 times, after which the soul-let is relinquished)
1/session	can make a red knife, or long long red sword, magical, +damage against living things as it causes profuse bleeding and welts	the heart of a mighty creature; or the death, maiming or face of whomever is connected to the person making the request that would be most awful to choose*
1/game	return a character to life
*so like, if a woman is asking for her lover to be returned to life, the Red Saint will grant the request if the woman surrenders her face. That sort of thing.

attribution: me

Dwarf in the Machine (5e D&D Race/Dwarves/some subraces)

Nearly all of the dwarves in modern fantasy are from Tolkien. Tolkien's dwarves are an amalgamation of the Hebrew language, second temple period Jews, the more negative characteritics of certain Norse heroes (stubbornness, alcoholism, violence, volatility) and the Nordic Dvergar (short, wise earth spirits, experts in crafting and mining who dwell in mountain halls or below the earth).

And then there is Adam, the created man (the only thing that the god of Genesis appears to make with His bare hands) whose name in Hebrew is a sort of neologism for ruddy dirt.

FORGED

Forged are dicordated humanoids. Their frames fleshy and broad, they are wide-handed and wide-mouthed and usually hirsute (or, in certain environments, hairless and hyperdense or scaled and gilled). Each Forged is bound to its home Forge and all the Forged bound to a Forge are called an Iteration (as in, "we are the Iteration of Gaz'sham").

Forged show less phenotypic diversity within a single Iteration than humans do among a single population group: while their hair and skin color may vary, facial features and general physique remain startlingly similar, making it difficult for most non-Forged, and for many Forged not of the same Iteration, to distinguish at sight between two Forged of the same iteration.

There are phenotypic distinctions that resemble human "male" and "female", but Forged are sterile, and most find a pseudo-sexual release in work, power, research and creativity. Their numbers are replenished: whenever a Forged dies, a new Forged appears fully formed from their Forge's creation matrix, pursuant to their Forge's preservation procedures and their Iteration's birthing rituals. Birth rates (Forgings or Smeltings) sometimes increase or flag, with multiple Forgings for a single death or no replacement born at all depending on the needs of the Forged: in times of war as many as four or five Forged may be born for each death, in times when the Forge's halls are crowded, some deaths may go without a corresponding birth.

Forge worshippers hold this as the considerate hand of Mother Forge, while others suggest that Forges may be acting in their own defense or simply responding to birth and death rates (more frequent death rates indicating a stress on the Forge's environs and the need for more Forged).

Diversity of appearance within a Forged population may be down to bugs in a Forge's code, an ancient signalling mechanism, simple caprice or environmental variation (the palest Formostian are born in the higher reaches of their homes, the more blue their skin, the closer their birth port is to the Ocean Below).

TRAITS

*Con+2

*are born mature, average lifespan of 350 years

*their laws of utmost importance, but they disregard the laws of all others

*4-5' tall

*25' walking speed

*60' darkvision 

*advantage on poison saving throws and resistance to poison damage

*proficient in battleaxe, handaxe, throwing hammer and warhammer

*proficient with one of smith's, brewers or mason's tools/supplies

*proficient in Int(History) checks relating to stonework

*speak read and write Common and their own language

*there are multiple subraces, detailed below

(ie, as PHB for dwarves)

CESSATION OF LIFE FUNCTIONS

Forged eventually wear down and collapse. Stilled Forged rot within seconds and are gone within hours, as if designed to leave no trace or else be immediately forgotten. 

The body is Still, but the spirit continues and most Forges give voice or even spectral form to the Still. The Still of Gaz'sham retain some form, like ghosts or specters and work alongside their fully corporeal cousins. Gaz'sham is more dead than living. 

Similarly, the Still of Formost are rooted in place in the sea bed fathoms below their stalactite home, are composed primarily of photons and speak in gargling Deep Speech. They stand and sway in the deep, softly glowing in the trillions, making the ocean bed like a moon, like an endless bed of anemones (their knowledge of the deep is said to be fathomless).

The Still Dwarrow retain no form but are a cacophonic voice and force, rolling stones and cracking trees but at times have appeared en masse, as a tribe of ghostly mountain warriors stretching from the observer to seeming infinity and it is in this form they have their centennial games of ninepins in remote mountain vales. They know the names of most things.

Still Agnians disappear, their burial cave sealed tight by elves. They will someday break the seal and pour over their home like a tide of ice, freezing many to death, locking their homes deep below ground, fouling their own forge unless aided. The Agnian Still regularly seek aid from any they can reach, but have reached no one as of yet.

Reincarnation is unheard of and not necessarily desirable. When not speaking through their Forge, Still Forged are still working, praying, interacting with one another and their ancestors in a cold, dark, vast and seemingly infinite cave. If there is an end to the cave or to the Forge's storage capacity, there is no clear end in sight. It's possible that the active Forges share space with the inert ones.

FORGES

Each Forge is fortress- or city-sized. Some are worshiped (depending on the Forge, the Knowledge, Tempest, Fortian, Forge or Void Domains). Most are embedded in rock and only partially excavated, the Forged living in their empty spaces, not within the Forge's bulk, where its workings are.

Most Forges are clearly enormous machines of some kind, usually composed of brass and a dull super hard metal as well as poured stone and each Forge is unique in its design. Many are inert, humming and twinkling but cold and otherwise dark. Others are superheated, churning, literally deafening or blinding if you end up in the wrong place or look into the wrong port or hatch.

There are always sealed doors in. The Forged usually guard all open access points into their Forged to their death. 

Some are gears and clockwork and Modron scholars explore and catalog the interiors when allowed and others are gas and coolant and tubes and cold green displays and Illithids and Gith try to steal their guts and there are whole ecosystems living in those tubes, most of them stow-aways from somewhere and time very, very distant, their minds like a map to cities no Common-speaking sapient has ever heard of let along visited or else a spellbook of great and alien power.

Most Forges have some motive power, likely all can teleport anywhere in an instant. The Forged have never discovered how to enable these fucntions and those Forges that do move mostly hover or scuttle a centimeter or so every year one way or the other, listless.

Most Forges contain writing composed largely of arrays of lines, some leaning or curling, as if composed by an impatient, brutal hand. The language shares roots with Giant and Infernal and takes loan words from Deep Speech. This is called "Dwarvish".

Forged keep records of all the other known Forges and they lock these records up tight and keep them encoded and cursed. Most Forges are keyed to the others, making travel from one to the other a matter of tapping a portal key to a portal, though the portal keys are largely lost or else have been intentionally disseminated, to allow certain individuals ready access to the Forges. Forged will pay great sums or craft mighty devices for the return of these keys. Some portals are dead and others are prohibited or malfunctioning. The portal for Formost, for example, is shut. When it was open it just spewed crawling piles of flesh.

THEIR NATURE IS OBSCURE

It's possible that:

*Forges are some biomechanical computer or sentience of alien purpose or intent and Forged are some kind of maintenance race or defense system or both

*or that the Forged are some kind of very specific defense system: the Forges may be thought structures of pure order, crystallized into matter, the Forged a response to sapient life or perhaps a means of communicating with them (in which case there is a fundamental flaw or break in the communication relay because the Forges don't speak to the Forged; an alternative theory is that the Forged are, themselves a kind of language or symbol - akin to the plaque on Pioneer 10 "I see you, I understand you and make things like you" as well as some kind of maintenance or defense mechanism)

*Forges may be probes and their Forged a kind of data collection system

*the creation of the Forges is often attributed to old, lost creator deities, usually a demonic titan (creator perhaps also of the Dungeon Virus and Elves and other soul-less beings)

*the Forged may be a kind of internal signalling system, organelles gone haywire

*some Forges make things, with or without the help of their Iteration of Forged, but not all and this production itself could be some other kind of bug, information gathering or dissemination technique, etc.

SOME FORGES, SUBRACES

Formostian live in Formost and their home is full of monsters (a sort of bubbling froth of flesh and mouths and magic and rays of force) and they're living on its outskirts (or what is believed to be its outskirts, the Forge's location and nature having been long lost to the memory of even the oldest Stilled Formostian still interested or capable of speech). More precisely, they live in holes and tunnels roughly quarried from stalactites and eat fungus and they are broken (either whatever part of their forge that gives them things like empathy is broken or they were made to be like people pretending to be people who are actually a little more like machines). They are born out of rock. It is unclear if the rock itself is some extension of their Forge or their birth is some last ditch defense mechanism or means of perpetuation or the Formostian are a kind of distress signal.

Their forge is lost to them and they sacrifice themselves in great numbers deep in their stalactite home or in the rock above or far below them, breaking like waves upon unceasing hordes of crawling, mutant life. They have yet to even find the original halls of their forge and are birthed from the stone of their new home, rock spaces crudely excavated from stalactites hanging over and suspended in an ancient, black underground ocean. Their skin is blue-grey to white, their hair, when it grows sticks out straight and ranges from deep green to black. They stink of brine and the bio-luminescent fungus they eat makes their teeth and mouth glow.

traits

*can drink salt water and eat rotten food without ill effect

*when suffocating, adds half its con score in rounds it can survive without breath

*advantage on trying to communicate with mollusks and most low-intelligence fish

Gaz'shamen live in Gaz'sham, First Forge, Cathedral of Polumetis, so long forgotten it's falling into (is partway into) the primordial soup of Limbo, and the Gaz'shamen are relatively recently born, kickstarted into existence either by warning sensors in the Forge-cathedral or else by some intruder. They're frantically trying to save their home and themselves from extinction. Their home is the sole source of new Dirge Walkers (space ships in Limbo) and they swear that production will cease when they die out (it will certainly cease when the primordial soup takes Gaz'sham entirely).

The technopriests of Gaz'sham spend most of their time researching their home, the Dirge Walkers and some means of pulling their home Forge, what amounts to a small planet, out of the soup, if not out of Limbo entirely. They're all for taking whatever offers of help come their way. They still haven't figured out a way in to Gaz'sham even and everyone lives on buildings cobbled together on the factory's outer structure.

The warpriests, on the other hand, already stretched thin defending their planet against the chaos beasts that clamber up its hull from the primordial soup, are much less enthusiastic about dealing with the thousands of petitioners from all over the planes who offer help in hopes of getting a spot at a Dirge Walker auction. 

Gaz'sham is crawling with monstrous constructs and sentient engines (technopriest attempts at automated defense systems and/or help reversing Gaz'sham's descent, many of which are simply left to run wild near Limbo, some of which have decided it makes more sense to organize and Xaositects are in their number, coaching the more rebellious) and higher and lower planars, often acting on their best behavior and only trying to kill eachother in secret. Black markets for artifacts and lost tech and assassination attempts are common here as there is no Lady of Pain here to keep such potentially destabilizing intrigues in check.

traits

*+1 Wis

*advantage on Int(History) and (Arcana) checks to identify or discern basic information as to lost or far-planar tech

Agnians are red- or black-haired, volatile, and often drunk or strung out. They claim to be fled from deep below the surface, escaped from siege cities built in plutonic igneous rock floating amid magma like a clot in the terrestrial blood or like an inverted asteroid. It's unclear if they're all talking about the same city or many, and they gather regularly to compare copious notes and diagrams of their home(s).

Their Forge has melted and now circulates as magma, its functions intact, its processes continuing. Functionally the whole terrestial circulatory system of an Agnian's planet is their Forge and in the rolls of the other Forged is known as Bast-Thurm. If only these exiles could get access to another Forge's rolls, talk to the eldest among the Still there they could confirm the existence of Bast-Thurm, point to its name stricken from the list, and proclaim it lives still, if in a terrible form.

Once upon a time, the story goes, Bast-Thurm was a city of gold filigree and platinum instrumentation and then the Elves cracked its spine, sent it into the earth, melted it down to its formulas and intentions, wove their gods into its codes and turned to their own cold wills the mind of the Agnian.

According to the refugees, the Agnians still trapped below congress with Fothians (fire elementals) and Star Lice (emissaries of the stars), lead armies of char-orcs, and claim demons and red dragons as counselors and ambassadors, build enormous siege weapons to lay surface civilization to waste, refining the art of telluric theurgy (planet magic) whereby they will convert their plutonic homes to volcanic weapons, cracking their planets. They cultivate a death-cult and sorcerers, warlocks and barbarian-berserkers are common.

They have discovered what all Fothians know: that all magma is one and these sub-crust rock battleships sail from one planet to another effortlessly, via nodes and byways through the elemental plane of fire.

The satellite Agnians claim that every so often the Elven coercion fails and some of the Iteration flee their brethren. For these few, their Forge feels like an oppressive, numbing fever and live like the medicated insane, dulled and cutoff, their heel to the edge of a terrible abyss that will claim them happily and from which they could never return. 

Satellite Agnians throw themselves into art (brutalist sculpture, often highly political, may involve self mutilation or harm), and drinking and dangerous living and try to master the formulas of telluric theurgy, refactoring the thousands of pages of calculations so that they work outside of magma, further from the gravitational nut at the planet's core.

traits

*+1 Int

*can create sparks with a snap of their fingers (treat as flint)

*advantage against fire saving throws

Dwarrow live in Dwarrowhelm, a network of cities built into mountains and hills. They are fractious, wild and violent, like an antibody against any other thing that stands in their way or is in their home without explicit welcome. They eat meat and drink strong liquor, though they can survive on rock or sunlight and ambient moisture, as if built to last in the depths of the earth or in a vast wasteland. Dwarrow hibernating in the sunlight closely resemble statues, their skin hardening to a grey, flaky stone, their limbs locked, axes and hammers clenched tight, but they're just barely breathing and waiting for something more interesting to come along. There are expedition or raiding parties of Dwarrow, frozen still for millenia in some desert.

When they aren't fighting, they are making things or plotting how to get more materials to make more things. Ownership and personality are not distinguished: a Dwarrow's axe is the same as its arm and anything in Dwarrow land not only belongs to the Dwarrow but is Dwarrow in some fundamental sense. Loss of an axe is like loss of an arm and physically hurts (though not as much as the pain a human suffers upon losing a limb - the Dwarrow have so many limbs, the nerves are attenuated). This also means that, at least when within their Dwarrowcraft (the term extends to everything the Dwarrow makes, including its section of Dwarrowhelm), Dwarrow can feel the theft of something (a singe coin like a pin prick, a prized possession like the loss of a child). 

Dwarrow name every bit of their Dwarrowcraft, they are obsessive namers and catalogers and mappers and Dwarrowcrafting is incomplete until the thing in question is named. Names tend to be mosntrously long, including narrative and history and are usually shortened to one or two words, but each Dwarrow knows all the names of all its Dwarrowcraft.

Accordingly, the gift of Dwarrowcraft is either a pseudo-sexual sharing of personhood (something frowned upon by more conservative Dwarrow while the most liberal and rebellious have been known to gift their whole selves to one another or, rarely, those not of the Iteration), or it involves a severing of the Dwarrow's person. 

Dwarrowcraft coexist in a delicate balance of long-negotiated and oft-re-negotiated contracts whereby one Dwarrow has egress through another's Dwarrowcraft in exchange for the same. There are whole dead areas within Dwarrowhelm, where the Pure let none pass, keeping themselves entirely separate. Most Pure are old, violent and a bit insane and are generally treated as something like saints.

Territorial disputes are constant and often end only in death. Seizing such lost Dwarrowcraft take days as the conquering or exploring Dwarrow has to slowly go through and read each name in full to incorporate it into itself.

Forcing a Dwarrow to invade another's Dwarrowcraft is nearly the highest crime possible.

Dwarrow tend to narrowly construct the boundaries of Dwarrowcraft - it's boundaries are usually coterminous with their Forge halls - but the Dwarrow Iteration sometimes revises the definition. A popular, minority opinion of ownership/self runs that Dwarrowcraft is wherever a Dwarrow plants its feet, whatever it wears, whatever it holds and names and little else.

The Sightless, preaching a dual concept of communal self that was coterminous with the ends of a Dwarrow's sight, built massive claiming/observation devices at the tops of mountains and rallied great armies of Dwarrow who claimed and named all they could see. The Sightless's empire was eventually toppled, and its survivors were blinded by those reborn into the Iteration. The Sightless persist among the Still, fomenting perpetual expansion from their spectral generalships.

 traits

*+1 Str

*can eat rock in lieu of starving to death, can hibernate if given roughly 10 hours of sun and some ambient moisture, hibernating Dwarrow can live indefinitely with a little air, their skin forming a seal, granting them a natural AC of 18.

attributions: armandeo64, Carl & Linda Sagan & Frank Drake, Mignola, Blanche, Adrian Smith