Currencies of the Dark

Design concepts for money in VotE: ReDux

Light is the Currency

Light is often only way to find a path and stay alive. Light is a resource that is always being eaten away. Light must be carried, in the form of lamp and fuel. Light is literally a currency; the Lume.

Distance relates to time. There is no solar cycle down below. Seasons and cyclic calendars, are partial, conditional and strange. The most important aspect of travel is how long it takes to get somewhere; this is measured in a loss of Lumes; “eight lumes distant” means you will need eight hours of strong light to find your way there.

Prime Currencies of the Veins

The Lume = 1l

The ghosts of fireflies made extinct in a long-forgotten apocalypse. The pale wraiths are imperishable, distinct, and gather and gust through currents in the Veins, moving in swarms through ocean and stone. Only rarely are they accessible en-masse; the means of capture and containment are particular and queer.

The ghosts are held in little bags made from fine intestine; ‘glow bags’, or in little Lantern-pots of clay or bone. They are transferred with great care; sucked into pipes of silver, bone or reed, held at the end in clumps, or trapped on little honey-dabs held at the ends of sticks, then gentle ‘poofed out’; transferred to another’s ‘Glow Bag’. Merchants and settled peoples have scales for measuring the unweight of a Glow Bag so that the bags themselves can be exchanged.

The massless nature of the ‘Lume’ and the extreme difficulty of forging Lumes, helps to make them the base ‘physical’ currency of the Veins; they can be carried without impediment, but not without care. The fact that ‘Glow Bags’ can be damaged in combat, or opened, and the ‘Lumes’ set free, to float away into the stone, makes them difficult to steal. The slow and ritual nature of exchanging Lumes is favoured in the Veins as, in this careful breathing and depositing, both sides of become vulnerable to the other; to exchange is a matter of trust.

A Glow Bag of Lumes of a little bone or clay Lamp-Pot, gives out its own small ghost-light; a vague glow up to five or ten feet of clarity, if that, but enough to accomplish small tasks or to provide comfort in the dark. Veinslings may sleep, or do small deeds, lit by their purses glow.

The Lume as literal currency is paired with the ‘Lume-as-Concept’. A ‘Lume’ is worth one hour of strong light, in whatever form, though the most usual form of exchange is Whale-Oil. What counts as useful light varies enormously according to the buyer, the seller and local conditions, but the universality of this conception; One Lume = One Hour of Light, forms the pillar of stability in economy of the Veins. All is based on the Lume, counted in Lumes, and reduced back to Lumes. Even distances are given in Lumes as that indicates how many hours of light you will need to reach wherever it is.

Occultum = 10,000l

A massless shadowy disc, its edges blurred, the texture of Occultum is felt by the Soul, rather than material flesh, (Golems, like many Janeen Viziers, cannot use them directly).

No-one really knows exactly where Occultum Coins are made or found. Rumours say they are forged in some hell, or minted in a ‘House of Leaves’ where the substance of reality is strange. They come always from below.

Like ‘Lumes’ they weigh nothing like are impossible to forge. Occultum is magic-neutral, it cannot be picked up, manipulated, scried or otherwise altered via magic. The coin itself resists duplication. The black discs cannot be chopped, melted, cut or ground down; if chipped or ‘snapped’ they simply ‘burst’ collapsing into little static clouds and staining the area nearby with fluctuations in natural chance.

The one danger of owning too many Occultum Coins is that, if kept in large numbers, they are inherently uncertain, meaning the total value and number of the coins may fluctuate. The extent of this fluctuation increases the more you have. Usually if you get into triple digits, you can expect a variation of about 5% over time, with there sometimes being up to 105 coins and sometimes as few as 95. (In rare cases variations can be more extreme). Nevertheless, the variation itself tends to be stable over time, so many wealthy cultures maintain their core currency reserves in Occultum; they can eat the cost of temporary fluctuations, it all evens out over time.

Occultum has a heavy cultural weight which goes beyond the movement of economies and trade routes. Just as in our world, Gold is Gold, and signals and displays wealth, permanence and seriousness, regardless of the fluctuations of the times, in the Veins, Occultum is Occultum. Even the most high-toned merchants or Lords would not refuse payment in the Black Coin. Of all currencies, perhaps only Lumes themselves are more stable and only Cloudcradle silk of equal status.

Occultum is known to, and accepted by, supernatural and extra-planar entities. Demons, Ghosts, and Things from Beyond, all accept its worth and for some rare magical services Occultum is the only coin accepted; a disc equivalent to mortal souls.

Intermediate Currencies

The Veins has a massive and permanent problem with making change. The two most well-known, accepted and strongest currencies, the ‘massless two’; Lumes, and Occultum (which is still ultimately measured in Lumes), occupy the far ends of the value scale. What on earth do you do when you need to buy intermediate things? To some extent ‘Glow Bags’ can make up for this, but the Veins has developed a range of complex intermediate currency-equivalents to make up the difference.

None of these are ‘massless’ in the same manner as Lumes or Occultum, but all are very light and a great many are slightly luminescent themselves. While every culture will accept Lumes, Occultum and Silk, an exchange for these intermediate currencies is not universally guaranteed, you may have to chop and change to work things out.

Gleams = 8l

Also called ‘Gleamers’ or ‘Butane Gleamers’. These gems are blue as the flame. Their edges seem to shiver in the dark. Usually these are bagged up into ‘Bags of Gleams’ worth about 80l each.

Slave-Month Links (or just 'Links') = 31l (varies)

Usually made in chased and engraved silver. Each culture, (often Knotsman, Aelf-Adal and various Janeen Courts), engraves its links in a varied and highly distinct style. Each link represents a nominal month of particular labour owed. Often gathered into great linked chains and worn by potentates. Ray-Men and some other cultures with weird principals might refuse to take these.

Toxolucent Emeralds ('Greens') = 200l

Acidic and slightly poisonous to the touch, its widely thought these are cut from rare bezoars recovered from abyssal creatures of the Nightmare Sea. Olm will almost always refuse these.

Topaz Flames ('Flames') = 500l

These seem to glimmer and flicker slightly in the hand. Though they are utterly cold, when smashed, they reliably produce a burst of pure flame. Undead prefer not to deal in these.

Knotsman Debt-Threads ('Knots') = Variable & Bespoke

Knotsmen record their debts and contracts in what else, but knots? Formed in rare and precious materials depending on the depth of the debt. Neither immaterial nor magical, and sometimes frustratingly bespoke and weird, the strength of the knots as currency comes from the fanatical dedication of Knotsman culture to maintaining them. Knotsmen hate to be in debt to anyone from outside their culture. They are very eager to ‘gain knots’ as this gives them power over others from within their culture. All are utterly deranged in their pursuit of counterfeiters. Though a strong material currency, some cultures or groups just really hate Knotsmen and will refuse to deal with these. Also the nature of the exchange can just be weird; how much is a ‘Thirteenth-level Fundamental Humiliation” worth in real money?

Whale Oil  – Variable

Somewhere between a trade good and a currency, Whale Oil is useful, ubiquitous and has a regular rate of exchange. Compared to most Veins currencies, it is a bit heavy and difficult to use, but it literally burns to make a pure, bright, smokeless (important for Veins cultures who hate waste and staining the rock), flame. Usually sold in ‘day pots’ for 24 hours of clean-burning oil, (24 Lumes) or ‘watch pots’ for eight hours of light (8 Lumes). For some groups, traders or individuals who have solved their light problem by other means, the Oil is just not worth it as a medium of exchange. Olm find it useless but might take it at a reduced rate, Opal-Winged Chiropterae in particular tend not to like it.

Bank Notes = Variable

There are banks in the dark, often associated with the Great Cultures or with one or more of the Grand Coagulations (cities). Usually run by Vampires for their Aelf-Adal overlords, the worth of such a currency will often diminish the further into the Wastes you get. Though, if you can get to another Alef-Adal-run Coagulation, they will often accept these notes, more as a point of pride, since to refuse them would be an insult to another Aelf-Adal, (unless the Byzantine intrigues of that race means these Courts are currently opposed, in which case they may not only refuse, but also take offense.)

The nature of these Notes/Bonds/Certificates can vary from something like an exquisitely handwritten I.O.U, to something like an actual, printed note, though usually hand-printed on soft skin, rather than machine printed on paper. (Aelf-Adal know about various forms of surface money.)

If you are in an Aelf-Adals city-coagulation, it’s hard not to take payment in their bank notes. After all, they have the Aelf-Adals name and perhaps something like a face on them, and are signed by Vampire Banker. A whole sub-skill of ‘ritual excuses’ exists to allow Veinslings to attempt to get out of being paid in local notes.

Silks

Even cheap silk is light, resistant to decay, and compresses down deeply, allowing a large surface area to be transported in a relatively small ‘bale’.

Silk is heavily associated with the Aelf-Adal. A ‘Bale’ of silk is in most cases, much smaller and lighter than that transported on the historical silk Road in our reality. Even for ‘Rough Silk’ like Whipsilk, a ‘bale’ will only be two or three feet square and weigh 40 to 50 kilos. The highest value of silk is sold in ‘hands’; roughly thick envelope or small parcel sized packages, which, due to the incredible density of packed silk, can still weigh quite a lot; 5 to 10 kilos.

Whipsilk = 10c per bale

Silk given as a status symbol to slaves trusted to oversee their fellow slaves. An illusory boon. The silk carries the cultural taint of alien flesh and Aelf-Adal will never touch it once it has been used. A nominal advantage is that Aelf-Adal will tend to assume that anyone wearing Whipsilk is some kind of Slave Overseer, and ritually not-perceive them.

Stormsilk = 25l per bale

Colour of a storm sky and rough to the touch. A perfectly serviceable ‘commoners silk. Worn by the lowest members of a Coagulation, by normie Once-Men out in the sticks or by Aelf-Adal ‘hunting parties’ who want to make a point about getting out of the Spire and ‘roughing it’.

Chainsilk = 50l per bale

If braided can form a strong rope or chain. Practical. Carries a little cultural ‘cool’ as it is standard military gear for many cultures and coagulations.

ClipperSilk = 100l per hand

Tough, noted for its ability to survive long journeys. Not well respected. A bit of a Bourgeois upwardly-mobile low-rent social climber silk. The very top of the ‘middle class’ silks, but the bottom of the ‘upper class’ silks. Does anyone actually wear this stuff?

Maskmaker Silk = 500’ per hand

Valuable enough that if given as tribute one can be considered to have ‘made ones mask’ in Aelf-Adal terms – a sufficient bribe to be someone actually worth talking to. Makes up much of the ‘baseline wear’ for Aelf-Adal and other Volume Lords.

Cloudcradle Silk = 1,000’ per hand

Like folded smoke, flowing wearable steam. In most coagulations, this is either illegal to wear under direct sumptuary laws without being a member of the ruling class, or is simply culturally impossible to wear unless you are so.

Being gifted this silk, or given formal dispensation to wear it, makes you near-officially part of that rulers ‘Court’. Be careful; accepting this means that in a sense, the giver ‘owns’ you, and takes responsibility for you, which can be good or bad in many ways.

Cloudcradle silk is highly valued by traders as light, tough, high-value currency. It is probably used more as currency than as clothes; so few who live and breathe are willing or able to wear it.

Design Notes

Collapsing the concept of the ‘Lume’

In the original VotE, the ‘Lume’ was purely a concept, rather than a material thing, but I thought, people generally won’t understand this or grasp it, and also I thought ‘why not?’. There seemed to be little disadvantage to me in making ‘Lumes’ both a concept and an actual thing you could use in game, that way the concept and the physical item reinforce each other (though of course, in keeping with VotE aesthetic and world-scheme, they are not actually physical.

So now a ‘Lume’ is one of these tiny firefly ghosts you keep in a special little bag or pot. You can exchange one of these ghosts for one hour of strong (really 30 to 50 ft visibility or more, but you can negotiate that), light with most merchants and settled peoples.

The ‘Lumes’ themselves also make a little light eternally, but only enough to do close hand-work with, probably not enough to help you get around (though a last ditch possibility for those severely lost).

The difficulty and slowness of exchanging Lumes, and the kind of ritual behaviour it suggests, seems to me to fit the nature of the Veins, as does their weightless nature and the fact that, if lost or thrown away, they simply disappear into the stone without a trace.

If you think this was a dumb idea you can let me know in the comments.

Finding Treasure/Getting Paid

Generally players really like to find treasure and to get paid in weird, distinct and particular ways.

In most cases its more enlivening to find a curious artefact, or even a bag of jewels or bale of rare silk than just a pile of coins.

This works out more in the low to mid levels of a game, where the value of a particular treasure or gem or something as a trade item still has potency. As you get into the higher levels I have generally found that people stop caring as much.

Likewise, sometimes people actually want a little haggling sub-game where you have to try to get your hands on the kind of currency you want and avoid those less useful, but sometimes you really just want the whole thing over and done with so you can end the session. It depends on taste and circumstance.

This currency pattern is meant to be adaptable to both playstyles if needed. You can enliven and solidify it by giving players a bunch of weird currencies, each desired or disliked by different cultures under different circumstances, or you can just abstract the whole thing to ‘so many lumes’.

Hopefully, finding or being given Occultum should remain deeply interesting and exciting at any level. I wanted it to be, and to feel, special.

[Occultum has always been, and still is, based on the Obol, first invented by Mateo Diaz.]

Mixing Currencies/Using Money

For the silks and intermediate currencies I fell back on a lot of ideas I first used in ‘Deep Carbon Observatory’, though with somewhat altered values.

Most of the Gems are super easy to carry but have things that are slightly wrong with them (Emeralds mildly toxic, Topaz might actually set you on fire if it breaks). Others have moral issues (Slave-Links or Knotsman ‘Humiliations’), some are just a bit awkward (Whale Oil and Bank Notes).

The ‘Bales’ are meant to be fucking annoying to carry around, but still solid currency, better in the early game or perhaps moved en-masse by servants in the later game as part of a trading journey.

…

U.S orders are now open on the False Machine Store

…

I am going to Dragonmeet at the end of November

I don’t have a store or a talk or anything, and so far have no particular plans but I will be there.

Dead-Eyed Dwarves - development for VotE; ReDux

The Dead-Eyed Dwarves are bald and bearded, shorter and stronger than men. They value only work and blood. 

 

Appearance 

STOMP STOMP STOMP – the heavy iron-shod boots of Dwarves passing invisibly but for glaring lamps and lances of light. 

For the Dead-Eyed Dwarves have many magics; cloaks which make the wearer invisible, clicking rings which make their owner large or small, strange insect-lenses which pick up every drop of light and ever stranger eye-wear; pearl-pale cyclopean masks which perceive the flow of ‘dark’ itself and twin-cone faces which turn rebounding clicks and whines into images in the air. Beneath these, often, grills or tubes, breathing apparatus or voice amplifiers, who knows. Beneath those; beards. 

Their lamp are harsh, actinic and directional; itself a near-aggressive act within the Veins. The blinding sharp-edged light turns the Dwarves behind them into silhouettes. The tramping, trudging, armoured and indifferent Dwarves. Few cultures of the Veins dare to wear full-armour underground; none but the Dead-Eyes possess the craft to endlessly clean, amend and fix their metal shell, the brutal endurance to carry metal weight, nor the size-shifting techno-magic which lets them shrink and grow, giving them access to shafts and warrens which others attempt only in extremity. 

They can pass invisibly, but they are loud. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Too big, too small. Disappearing in the blink of an eye. Hooded, armoured, masked, with wild prickling beards. Lights powered by crackling batteries which drip toxic alkali slime. Loaded with crossbow, axe and pick, careful maps and guidance dials, grappling hooks and superlight chains. Walking and moving in unison, grunting to each other in muttered subsonic; a guttural under-speech, as if they resented even, the need to speak, even to each other. 

The most likely encounter is that you are simply ignored. The cost/benefit assessment of enslaving you simply doesn't move the dial. 

 

The Dead Eyes

Things don’t get better when the masks come off. There is just something missing in there; the strange, deep-time, assessing gaze of a Dwarf, but with the humour, honour, boldness; gone, washed away, leaving what? Eyes pale as slate, empty as the letter O. 

They eat, breathe, smell, move like living things, more than many in the Veins, yet a vampire, or a crazed patchwork Gilgamash, can have more 'anima', more individuality, vitality and humour than a Dead-Eye Dwarf. 

They are not pleasant to deal with, but they are reliable, practical and rational, and they think long-term, which makes them an incredible stabilising force. Yet no-one, and nothing 'likes' the Dead-Eyed Dwarves.

 

Abilities

Powerful Lights

Bright white spheres, hanging lanterns and lances of burning white light. Used to blind or disorder seeing foes, or simply to pick out blind enemies.

 

Invisibility Cloaks

Heavy toxic things with pointed hoods, less useful in the Veins than you might think, these are used mainly in raiding other lands. When wrapped around and buttoned up, everything they cover turns translucent. Complex physical movements, like most forms of attack, will make the wearer visible, at least for a moment.

 

Size-Control Rings

Heavy click-clacking bracelets which turn like locks or rings of code. Rapid tactile codes are needed to make use of one, and once that code is known, each ring is still is different, tuned for a particular Dwarf. Worn, usually on the left arm. Move the right hand over and quickly, and loudly, click through the code before carefully carefully carefully clicking through the size-set sequence.

When a Dead-Eyed Dwarf shrinks or grows, its not a smooth transition. Its as if they were an image and each heavy CLACK spun some fresh lens in front of them so that they seemed smaller or larger by leaps. CLACK CLACK CLACK and big, big BIG, as if they were projections, with the ‘real’ dwarf somewhere else.

It takes time and training to accustom oneself to getting bigger and smaller on the regular.

 

Seeing Lenses

They like these, though its questionable how useful they are. Varied masks and lenses, the most common are Light-enhancing eyes, heat-trace Snake-Pit lenses and Sonic Lenses. More rare are the special ‘Dark Vision Lenses’ which literally treat darkness as a substance.

Each Dwarf will only have one set of Lenses, if they have any, and few groups will have more than one set of each kind. They are hard to make, maintain and repair and each Dwarf makes their own.

 

Mouth Masks

The Dead-Eyed Dwarves don’t even use gas that much, purchasing it from the RayMen occasionally, but they like to wear the masks. Some protect from gas, some change the voice to a harsh bark, others alter voices to simulate those heard, still others provide air should the Dwarf go underwater, or into airless spaces.

Again, each Dwarf only has one set and the whole group rarely has more than one of each. Its not a systematised technology.

 

Combat Encounters 

Morale

Morale plays no part in the decisions of the Dead-Eyed Dwarves

Everything is based on their immediate objectives. If violence is required, and they think they will win, it starts at once, without warning.

If victory becomes impossible, or if the situation changes, so that violence no longer serves, they simply stop, again, without warning, usually turning invisible and simply walking away.

If there is no way out, they fight, bitterly, to the emotionless end

 

Combat Tactics

Armoured; the Dwarves can weather most projectiles, and most blows. 

Bright Directional Lights; these can be used to blind many Veins inhabitants. Activating then turning off the lights can be more effective than actual invisibility. 

Invisibility Cloaks; if out-ranged, bottled up or boxed in, a combat team can use their invisibility to close with the enemy, or to escape if needed. 

Size-Change = BIG; The Dwarves can ‘click-click-click’ up to Ogre size. This always takes an action and is loud. All of their equipment changes with them, as if it, too was being projected from somewhere else. A Dwarf might turn huge and fire ballista-sized crossbow bolts, or get close before turning massive and laying into a party from behind its lines. 

Size-Change = small; mainly used for escaping should a situation turn bad, especially by accessing crawl-spaces or similar. Combining this with Invisibility makes them near-impossible to catch. 

The enormous power of their techno-magical abilities, combined with their utter ruthlessness and invincible will, means the Dead-Eyed Dwarves don't need fancy 'tricks', though like many Veins cultures, though they have an expertise in Poison (to which they have a meaningful resistance), and sometimes use various forms of Gas. 

 

Chameleon/Tarantula Cavalry

Mainly used in and around their settlements, due to the enormous costs of keeping them fed, but the Dead-Eyed Dwarves do often use ‘Cavalry’ formations; their favourites are a very chunky form of huge Tarantula, and kind of sticky lizard with some Chameleonic abilities. 

They will usually change size to something smaller in order to comfortably ride these things. The combination of activating their toxic invisibility cloaks, the giant animals, and the glaring lights they carry, creates a truly bizarre appearance. 

 

Non-Combat Encounters

No Pride, No Shame

The Dead-Eyed Dwarves don’t carry resentments around, if they beat you before, or were beaten by you, their attitude will be what it always is - relentlessly practical. 

This makes conflict with them a troubling experience; they will not try violence unless they believe they will win, and they are rarely wrong. 

Non-Combat Encounters

the Dead-Eyed Dwarves will pass invisibly, except for their lanterns. They seem like trudging shadows passing underneath an actinic light which glows like a willow the whisp. 

Did they just walk right past? 

Whatever they are doing, they are doing it. They have a purpose and if the PCs cannot help

or impede them, what do they care? 

 

Goals of the Dead-Eyed Dwarves

[THIS NEEDS WORK BUT HERE IS THE BASIC IDEA 

A simple way to do this might be for there to be three goals; 

One BIG THING that the whole of local Dead-Eye Dwarf culture is currently aiming towards. You roll for this when you are generating the Veins and it remains the same throughout the Campaign. 

Two –a medium scale political or large structural goal that will help them towards the MAIN THING. This can change from session to session and can differ from settlement to settlement. (But it doesn’t have to change). You can roll for this on-encounter, or during the session or just keep it from previous sessions if that make sense. 

 

Three - a current goal for *this particular group*, the mission or thing they are currently trying to fulfil, which will lead towards the second, which will lead towards the third. You roll for this when you encounter these guys. 

Do, whenever you are dealing with Dead-Eyes, just look at this list; they are doing A, to achieve B, to finally achieve C. And all you need to think about, as it is all the Dead-Eyes are thinking about, is ‘how do I achieve the next goal and make sure it connects to the main goal’. ] 

They must always be working 

 

Simple Behaviours For Encounters 

Literal

They do not like metaphor. Things mean one thing. If a thing tries to mean two things then it becomes nothing. 

LITERAL DOESN'T MEAN STUPID  - they do not like metaphors, but they understand them. They know that you or other characters, are not being literal, and they can understand that, but they themselves will do everything they can to avoid it.

 

Taciturn, Concrete, Direct 

Get to the point, get there now and be explicit about what it is. 

Use the minimal number of words to make things clear. 

Do not 'chat'. Every conversation has a clear and concise point towards which they are going.

 

 

Dead-Eye Culture

Long ago the first of them emerged from a distant primal core. He made himself. That work goes on. They believe they are improving. It is their mission to do so. 

Their family trees spring up, not down. Each generation more focused and efficient than the last. This is the Ascent. Dead-Eye heredity. A machine of blood and bone, carrying them into the pre-remembered future. One of only two things in which they truly believe. 

They have statistics, and the graphs all show a clear upward trend. Production, efficiency and development, all increase. 

They imagine the future and the things they will build there. It belongs to them. They want it more. They understand it more. They will become what the future needs them to be. The future is a god to them. A god-above-gods. They know it to be true. 

Even as the race slowly winds itself deeper and deeper into the earth, passing through fretted valves and carved abandoned chambers they have made, falling in its orbit of stone, they map their continual advance. 

Each thing must be built upon another thing. A word, a deed, a thought, each must have its foundation. Arguments over the Ascent are arguments over reality itself. Without its sustaining foundation, the word becomes a gabble of sound, the deed an accident, the thought a dream, the existence a lie.

 

Dull 

One of the most powerful, wide-ranging and transformative of all the cultures of the Veins, the Dead-Eyed Dwarves are dishwater-dull, to deal with. Utterly reliable and quite insane, they are a power second only to the Aelf-Adal, to whom they are almost immune, and with whom they enter irregular war. 

 

Makers Of Ruin

The totality of their physical effect on the Veins of the Earth is enormous. Dead-Eyes never stop working, mining, carving, delving. They are always building, cutting, shaping, and thence always moving. 

They cannot stop working, ever. 

This makes a Dead-Eye city or settlement, more like the cast of a worm than a singular place. They mine and carve EVERYWHERE, continually, they do not stop to inhabit very long. A Dead-Eye settlement is like a time-worm; it’s not located in any particular place but is continually being delved, leaving the carved and developed volumes behind it, like the cast of a worm. 

The Dead-Eyes therefore make the Veins more ‘ruined’ and more ‘empty’ than they would otherwise be, for an empty building can be empty in ways a cave cannot. 

Dead-Eyes do still consider that they 'own' anything that they have worked on, (that they haven't formally agreed to sell or exchange), which means these vast Piranesi-ruins that plunge through the Veins are technically 'theirs'.

 

Neutral, Practical Evil

Dead-Eyes do not torture or psychologically destroy their slaves. Not deliberately at least. They simply kill them when they fail. 

Skilled slaves can appear to rise far in Dead-Eye ownership, and will (any skill at work must be nurtured and sustained so that better work may be done). But it is not the individual that is respected. It is the work. The work passing through the alien flesh. 

They do not really hate their slaves. They do not realise that they are beings at all. Only vectors for work. 

They do not really hate anyone. Because they really don’t know there is anyone there to hate. 

Neutral, ultra-reliable, non-bigoted, they may be the sanest (?) culture in the Veins. 

They are honestly quite boring to encounter and maybe that's ok. Remember it’s not about offending them, it’s unlikely you even could offend them, it’s about getting in their way, and if you do get in their way, they will grind through you and over you with utter ruthless indifference. It’s almost like fighting golem. 

 

Skill Is Meaning

They respect skill. But it is the skill itself they respect, which is work moving through the body, not the body or the person itself, which are just bearers of the skill.

 

Work Is Meaning

The only other thing they understand is work. 

A body and a mind are only useful because of the work they can together do. The soul is the work passing through the flesh. 

No other race grasps this. They might ask “What are the Dead-Eyes working towards? What is their plan?” 

They are working to be working. Work is the plan. Work is the point. 

They will never stop. They can never stop. 

They will cut cities from bare stone, tear up every vein, embellish every surface, then, when there is no unworked spot or unplanned gap, when every single piece and thing has become a channel for planned creation, when even the pebbles stare up from the floor with idly-carved eyes, then they move on. 

Gems mean nothing to them except that they can be cut, or have been cut. 

If one loses the ability to work and if they cannot further the ascent, they simply walk into the dark. Or sit where they are, staring at nothing, waiting to starve. 

if a Dead-Eye is crippled or otherwise prevented from working, they lose any will to live. They must work, they must proceed towards the goal. It is all they are. It is everything they are.

 

Jealous

Yes, ok, perhaps they can be a little irrational. They are still Dwarves after all. They can be jealous of craft and ownership, especially of unique objects and materials. The RayMen and their wonderous tech inspire some of this, but many ethnogroups have a little this or that which really, really, should that not truly belong to the Dwarves?

 

No Dreams

They do not dream, rather they experience a lucid ebony. Its possible they are not even really unconscious, just ‘shut down’. What are the Nightmare-Men going to do? Give them a spook?

 

Fidget Spinners

Since they literally can't stop working, they tend to have a lot of ... odd things they do when they can't physically work, like knitting. If they are waiting, they carve stones or rock where-ever they sit down, leaving tiny faces in pebbles or maps on flat slate. (Although you never actually see them 'waiting’.)

 

DON'T FORGET;

The False Machine sale is STILL ON (I may or may not change it at the end of this Quarter, still thinking about that).

https://falseparcels.bigcartel.com/

A Night at the Golden Duck = £5

Deep-Carbon Observatory = £30 (-£10)

Demon-Bone Sarcophagus = £20 (-£20)

Gackling Moon = £25 (-£5)

Gawain and the Green Knight = £15 (-£20)

Silent Titans = £40

Speak, False Machine = £30 (-£20)

AND! - A FREE HEIST PLAN FOR EVERY (UK-BASED) ORDER - WHETHER YOU WANT IT OR NOT!!!! 

ALSO;

FALSE MACHINE WHOLESALING!

False Machine is now available for wholesale!

If you are interested contact me anywhere to find out more!

 

Go Nuts in Veins of the Earth

 A Nut is an hospitable object - a surprisingly useful thing for those who make their concourse in the Veins of the Earth.

First; it keeps for a long time, is singular, storable, divisible and portable.

Second it comes from Above; few nuts grow below, (except perhaps for the equally-distant Isles of the Imprisoned Moon), and therefore it is rare.

Third; it’s hard to adulterate a nut. They can be cursed or poisoned, but that takes a meaningful investment of rare resources. A nut has good security to it.

Fourth; it is a neat compressed source of calories. Not so much as to place a painful debt on the receiver, but more than, for instance, a seed.

Fifth, finally and most important; it is a thing never before seen and which will never be seen again, lending it a certain poetic aspect in the cultures of the Veins, where secrets are adored.

Clara Peeters, Still life with nuts candy and flowers 1611

Rituals of Greeting

This makes a nut a quite generous (but not too generous) gift with which to open negotiations.

Such is the theatre of the Nut; two groups meet beneath the earth. First they scent or hear each other, then see each others light. Each makes signs of peace and the factions approach slowly until the boundary of their lamplight (roughly 30ft) meets.

One from each company is sent forth, each standing directly beneath the lamp-light of the other, proving no ill intent on either side.

Then the lamps are brought together, making a pool of shared and intensified light where the leaders of each group may sit.

Here comes the nut, (if you have one).

"Allow me please, to give a thing never before seen, and once seen, never to be seen again."

Here one displays the nut upon an open palm. The recipient gently takes the nut. Rolls it between their palms, smells it, examines its texture with hand and eye.

"Truly beautiful, a rare and unique gift."

Then the recipient may break open the nut themselves, or hand it over to one stronger of their own side, (which means something, everything said and done in the nut ceremony means something), who breaks it open for them.

The 'secret' is revealed. All present admire this heretofore unseen thing.

The recipient consumes the nut.

It’s a handshake, but a firm one. Those in poverty might offer, at least, a seed. The wealthy might offer meat, (but to offer too much would be to create a debt, almost an aggressive act). An Aelf-Adal Lord might offer a terrifyingly expensive, unique and impractical gift, this is an act of chaotic and charismatic dominance, which creates a link of fealty. Of course you cannot say “no”. A Knotsman might offer exactly what you need, with no immediate price. This is a trap and an attack on you which it may be hard to resist.

A Nut is a pleasingly minor but substantial, yet elegant, gift. It’s hard not to negotiate reasonably and in good faith with someone who has presented you with a nut.

Corporatism and Hospitality In Veins Of The Earth

The Veins could not exist and if they did you certainly could not easily 'adventure' through them.

Therefore, in the imagined world, the small cultures of the Veins; tribes, villages and pilgrims, are calmer and more corporate than many of their real-world equivalents might have been. Here are some examples of how this works in play and both diegetic and game-design reasons why this is so.

Broad Non-Aggression

It’s a war of all against all but not a lawless war of all against all.

There are 'Civilisations' in the volumes, and though their grip is tenuous and vague, it becomes more vital the slighter it becomes. The signs and symbols of power mean less, the closer to its centre one is. Out in the margins, where the power may or may not exist, its signs, symbols and promises become much more important. Exactly which Lord is everyone in fealty too, and which Coagulation do they serve?

People really do not like or want chaos or disorder. It makes it hard to live.

So there are 'Civilised' people who exist largely or nominally under the 'protection' of say a City or a Group, like perhaps they have a Knotsman Contract, and above them perhaps an Aelf-Adal Terror-Lord who rules maybe thousands of nearly-impenetrable kilometres away.

Let’s say the PCs Murder-Hobo a community, take everything they have, then roll into the next Coagulation, or into a Pilgrim People.

These new-encountered people will almost certainly know exactly what the PCs have done. Resources don't come from anywhere and they will recognise whatever has been taken. They were probably well aware of the Group the PCs murderised. They may have even been in conflict with the same group at points.

They will happily trade for these resources, (keeping a close eye and guard on the PCs this whole time). That's just being practical. If there is a real 'evil' in the Veins, it is; wasting resources.

Nevertheless, word will get back. Via Bat and trader, by psychic dream-signal or forgotten hypertechnology, first one group, then another, will discover the PCs reputation. Word will get back to the City, to the Lord, and the Lord must have Order, of a sort, in their realm.

It’s a war of all against all but it can never be allowed to blossom into chaos. There must be some form of retribution, recompense, penance, punishment or service.

The reach of the Lord is long, slow and inconsistent, but memories last down here and nothing the PCs do will be forgotten. And if the Lord is an Aelf-Adal, then their reach pierces darkness, flesh and stone. There is no escape, ever, anywhere.

Hospitality

“I let you share my light.”

No-one has any duty to keep you alive or give you resources.

However, if a deal is to be made, they should at least offer you an acorn of something drinkable, a few seeds worth of food, some light and warmth, at least until you have talked things out.

Of course you will be expected to return this in kind, even if an agreement is not reached.

In 'ideal' circumstances this leads to a cycle of functional giving, starting with letting someone into your circle of light, and ending with a handshake deal for resource exchange.

Even if things don't work out, its considered civilised to give minor gifts equivalent to the cost of the negotiation before you nope out of there.

Just leaving with no exchange at all, really fucks up your reputation.

Equivalent Exchange

If you stay with a Tribe, Coagulation or Group, for a period, benefitting from their light, their warmth, their food and presumably their ears listening for you in the dark, it’s a nearly iron law that you exchange with them resources at least equivalent to the cost of keeping you.

This can lead to different groups, say a Tribe of Once-Men and the travel caravan of a RayMan trader, occupying different sides of a river or cavern, their lights kept separate with a measurable stretch of darkness between.

They are not dicking each other over, just being very very careful about not implying any obligation or debt between them. It’s a way of keeping the peace.

Likewise, if one of these groups is attacked in the night, the other may refuse to intervene, and this would not necessarily be taken as an insult or aggressive action. Intervening in someone else’s battle creates a debt and that debt may be hard to carry.

Waiting for a group to nearly-win a fight, then charging in to help them finish it off, will not be taken as a positive helpful act. They had nearly won anyway and your intervention has created a debt they cannot deny but do not wish to suffer. Assume malicious compliance hereafter.

Game Design Terms

In terms of actually gaming this means Veins populations are actually more 'corporate' minded than many actual populations encountered during, for example, the European Age of Exploration.

A main problem for a Pith-Helmeted European explorer, apart from the environment and massive cultural differences, is simply the number of tribes you have to deal with. Each of these groups will have its own politics, its own relationships with adjacent groups, its own leaders, mood, attitude to foreigners etc etc. Thats twenty, thirty, fifty individual encounters with fifty different tribes with essentially a random generation engine whirring in the background each time, and you (the explorer) can't afford to be taxed that much with each group, and you can't afford for things to spiral out of control even once, or you die.

Empires solve this problem by simply murdering anyone who disagrees and telling whoever is left that yes actually you all live under the same rules now and no you don't get to take individual taxes or even fight each other without permission.

It was easier for a European traveller to move across the whole expanse of Eurasian Islam, (provided they could match the behavioural codes), or across the gigantic steppe empire of the Khans (provided they had the right disc from the Great Khan), than across much of Central Africa (fifty tribes again).

So the Veins are a 'bit' more 'Imperial' than they could reasonably be expected to be. Simply to make it possible to move through them. Though, there are vast areas of 'wilderness stone' where who knows what might happen, as well as disputed areas, actions and polities, reaving borderlands, unexpectedly desperate or shifty populations, general monsters, Olm, and god knows what else.

'Adventure' like 'Exploration' fundamentally requires a boundary between the more-known, more organised, and the lawless unknown. To 'Adventure' is to move back and forth across these zones, usually from a place of law and organisation, into a place with no, or unrecognised law. Resources are gathered from the margins, but they only become resources if there is somewhere else you can take them where their value is renegotiated.

VotE:Redux – Agriculture

Big lie – agriculture is impossible underground. But of course that makes the whole setting a lie, which it is. Since VotE was originally a ‘more-pseudo-naturalistic’ view of an underground world, accepting and systematising that pseudo-reality just takes me closer and closer to the point of; “this wouldn’t actually work”. 

You could never have enough rope. Never carry enough light. Never find enough to eat. Never stay warm enough. Likewise, you couldn’t grow things underground. In a way it would be more honourable to accept a more highly fictionalised Underverse with lots of light giving mushrooms, flat-floored caves and convenient cities harvesting something or other. 

Still, we have come this far and perhaps it might be interesting to consider possibilities, even just for their own sake. So; 

 

Who Needs to Eat? 

Largely mortals, and those who feed upon them. 

‘Mortal Feeder’ in these terms includes anything broadly like a man which feeds on the kinds of food men need, and also those who feed upon such men. 

Omnivores like Humans, Cambrimen, Chaos Goblins, Dvargir, Knotsmen, Funginids (usually), Olm (though they are Uncivilised), RayMen, and Trilobite Knights. 

Rare obligate civilised predators like Opal-Winged Chiropterae, Soft-Heads, and Vampires. In particular there will usually only be one Soft-Head or Vampire in even a large city. 

‘Non-Mortal’ in this sense means less ‘immortals’, but those who are not part of an easily comprehensible food chain, or who simply require no sustenance, like Golems (many Vizier of Deep Janeen), Aelf-Adal, Archeans, Silichominids, Substratals and the Dead. Though each or all of these may require abstruse or specialised sustenance, for which a complex mortal population is usually a boon. 

Populations 

This is the most made-up part of everything. Cities definitely couldn’t exist underground but we must build an illusory scaffolding to make it feel as if they could. I base my estimations on a very shallow understanding of desert-cities during the vague-medieval world and ancient world. If I want to come up with figures about how many of such and such there should be, then I begin with the idea of places in a vast desert, and with a culture like that of a desert people.  

 

Proportionate Food Needs 

High – 20,000+ mortal feeders 

This many mortal feeders with attract, sustain and be sustained by, complex systems of power which will almost guarantee a substantial non-mortal population. The functional population could be 40 or 50 thousand. 

Likely the seat of an Aelf-Adal Terror-Lord, or a Capital for some more-mortal power, such as Knotsmen or Dvargir. Should be the centrepiece of a Campaign and/or the only or dominating major polity in a large Volume. 

·        Roll two, three or four times on three or four time on ‘Common Systems’

·        Roll once or twice on ‘Rare or Singular’ list. 

 

Medium – 7,000+ mortal feeders 

A small town with a 100% mortal population.

A medium-sized City (10k to 12k) with a large majority-mortal population.

A large city(20k or more with a majority non-mortal population.

 

·        Roll once on ‘Rare & Singular’

·        Roll twice on ‘Common Systems’

·        Or; ignore ‘Rare & Singular’ and three times on ‘Common Systems’

 

 

Low – 500 to 5,000 mortal feeders 

A 100% mortal village or small town.

A large Town (5k to 10k) with a low, (10 to 30%) mortal population.

A City (up to 50k) with a very low (1% to 3%) mortal population. 

·        Roll twice on ‘Common Systems’ 

 

Experimental Agriculture Table 

 

Common Systems (d10) 

1: Natural boon, Vulcanism

2: Natural Boon, Radiation

3: Natural Boon, Migration Route

4: Immaterial Exchange, Gheistoculture

5: Immaterial Exchange, Mnemoculture

6: Immaterial Exchange, Psychoculture

7: Immaterial Exchange, Umbraculture

8: Immaterial Exchange, Somnoculture

9: Dumping Ground

10: Food-Malmukes 

 

Rare & Singular Systems (d8) 

1: Autophagic Urbanism, Heads = Ourouboros, Tails = Looper City

2: Elemental Citizens

3: False Sun

4: Inwardly-Infinite Ontological Harvest

5: Kaiju-Mine

6: ‘Kite’ Nation

7: Predatory Urbanism, Heads = Fisher-City, Tails = Psychic Projecton

8: Stable Gateway, 1 in 6 chance of Sky Hunters 

 

 

Common Systems  

Natural Boons

(Or quasi-natural. At least these are not specifically supernatural systems and are usually related to the environment.) 

 

Vulcanism 

May be no more common in the Veins than on the surface, and much more dangerous, as the gasses produced will have nowhere to go. 

Nevertheless the HEAT would be incredibly useful, feeding all kinds of life, fungal forests indeed. If the runoff could be managed some how (elemental or magical aid?) it might form the base of a valuable nitrate source. 

 

Radiation 

Plutos realm. A long-standing eruption of radioactive basalt, or some strange and complex xenolith still humming with radioactivity. This could even be an Archean or Substratal Keep or Embassy, forming a kind of culture-within-a-culture, or a quarter, while also generating energy for the rest of the settlement. 

Citizens farm black radiation-eating fungi like the mass inside the Chernobyl reactor.  

 

Migration Route 

A huge and regular migration of flying beasts like Lamenters, Micro-Bats, Mega-Moths or some other stranger species that may live largely on the surface, or even exist between realities, but which passes through this chokepoint at predictable and regular intervals. 

Could be something as simple as airborne spores or floating plankton from some higher realm. 

 

Immaterial Exchange Environments 

Rare Energy Exchanges can be the basis of an Underworld food chain; entities that can convert something usually inaccessible to our reality into real and consumable flesh. 

(This helps get rid of all the ghosts and dreams from those endlessly compacted worlds, of which there are simply too many, too much. See Design Commentary below.) 

 

Gheistoculture 

Bee-sized bats with lucent wings, small enough to feast on the ghosts of insects. Perhaps these bats themselves are ‘harvested’ by subtle nets, or perhaps the exploitation of their guano is a saner long-term policy. 

This City then, must lie at some crossroads between afterlives, or be present at the vortex point of some long, slow, maelstrom of souls. 

 

Mnemoculture 

Snails which eat memory. Difficult to harvest or feed, but in theory, a renewable resource. 

Harvesting directly via the individual would be difficult, instead let each pay a memory tax, one teased from their skulls in the manner of Severus Snape, then decanted and mixed into fertiliser and spread into the terraced gardens of Snails, which sustain in their turn, true gardens of fungi. 

 

Psychoculture 

From Above 

City feeds on literalised psychic emanations from above - depends on angst and trouble of surface cultures and works to ensure continuity of supply. May instrumentalise abandoned dErO tech, or similar, to produce crude psycho-slop for the masses and gardens. 

From Below 

City feeds on literalised psychic emanations from below - likely eating the dreams of a mad god or chthulu-esque entity. Reliable supply but drives everyone even more insane than usual. 

(Rare) Autophagy 

City feeds on own literalised psychic emanations. Own culture tuned for maximum sensation & experience to ensure continuity of supply but they must feel or starve and jadedness-famine is an inevitable consequence of high-intensity feeling. 

 

Umbraculture 

Darkness moves through the underworld like semi-sentient weather, harvested by wind-traps woven by hyperdimensional limbs, condensing, perhaps to lucent black mana, scraped and harvested from traps by guilds or bloodlines. 

The pollutant in this case would be Eigengrau. Not the predatory Caterpillar thing, but the colourless ‘back ground grey’ hanging over the city like smog. (Though likely nearby volumes are infested with Eigengrau-the-monster, drawn by the Un-Smog). 

 

Somnoculture 

The devouring of dreams sounds almost too-gentle a method. But of course we don’t even know what dreams do, and so cannot understand their loss. Need the dreams come right from the head? Or could they be harvested from ambient air in the manner of Gheists? 

Passive Somnoculture 

An Aelf-Adal Terror-Lord, (Tyranofictor? Tyranosomnia?), being composed party of dreams, might have a clear idea on the weather of such dreams and where they might go, and might locate their Coagulation-City in just such a place. 

The method might be via fields of pale gape-mouthed orchids like unreal pitcher plants. Harvested they deliver only a queer poisonous sap which must be treated before it becomes a waxy tofu. Another might be the construction of ‘Dream Traps’ in the classical hippy style, but woven by intelligent spiders imbued with a dangerous magical sentience, and employed on an industrial scale. 

Active Somnoculture 

Psycho-Serf Agriculture; City farms in dreams - or forces others to do so - usually children as they have the most fertile dreams and are easy to terrify and control. Generations of surface children secretly made slaves in their own unconscious until they fear to sleep 

Mass Pscho-Raiding; City simply steals food from peoples dreams. If you dream of having a feast, suddenly someone with negative-image black skin or some hideous dwarf/gnome things are stealing your food and won't let you have any. 

 

Dumping Grounds 

Something dumps food, or nitrates, onto the city, either as a direct trade for worship or just by accident. 

Sewage End Point; either hyperdimensionally, or through very long term ad careful engineering, the City has located itself at the outflow for one or more surface-level cultures. Or at the end point for a ‘magical disposal’ mouth, or inescapable maelstrom of some kind. This stuff may wash up in vast beaches of rubbish and shit, along with disposed-of people, to be harvested and picked over by the City Below. 

Offal-God; A divinity of some kind gains worship above, , for ‘consuming’ and disposing of such unpleasantness, and another form of worship below, for delivering mana. 

 

Food-Malmuke Class 

Slave Clerics; raised without eyes, sometimes without tongues or even fingers. Brought up in total ignorance of everything except the one thing they are meant to believe. Ignorant, lobotomised mass-produced holy fools. Cast Food and Water spells en-masse. Like parasites on the love of a merciful God. 

Indentured Mages; created like slave clerics, though more difficult to manage as some intellectual capacity is required. Drug use and superficially high status can be more effective means of soft control. They cast 'Create Light' and Summon creatures regularly, to be eaten. May be depopulating ecologies of some unknown plane like bodiless buffalo hunters, before invisibly moving their attention elsewhere.  

 

Rare, Singular Systems 

Things where, there really shouldn’t be more than one in any particular setting, or it will get boring. 

 

Autophagic Urbanism 

Ouroboros City 

City  feed off their own past, sending forces back along their own loop to take resources and slaves. 

They must keep growing more powerful so they can defeat their own past but the cultural and physical destruction of their own history forms unstable paradoxes and cripples them in many ways. They live in fear as they never know when their own future will arrive to consume them. 

'Looper' city 

Sends forces into their own distant future to do the same. They practice forced cultural decline, creating their own 'Dark Age' so their future selves are not strong enough to defeat their current-selves. Result is more stable and predictable as fewer paradoxes result, but the cities future raiding-point and its current-self are continually creeping closer and closer to each other until inevitable moment of mutual annihilation. 

 

Elemental Citizens 

Elemental citizens create energy just by living there. Like a resort feeding off a high-status 'Tourist' class. Could be Archeans, Silichominids, Substratals or others. 

Stone-eating bacteria or Archea common here, farmed over cycles of millennia with herds of nomadic sonic pigs and cave crickets guided through the volume of the cities agriculture. 

 

False Sun 

A favourite of Aelf-Adal Terror-Lords 

Usually based around a large, open central area with agriculture of some kind taking place on every surface, floor, walls and roof. Golems or slave spider-castes farming the upside-down area above the city. The False Sun held in suspensions of mighty chain in the centre. 

1-3. A 'Ghost Sun' made from the dead souls of deceased citizens. Pale light and you can see the individual souls trapped inside. All citizens must give their soul to the Ghost Sun on death. 

4-5. Imprisoned being - chained light elemental, fire elemental, angel or devil. Held in spiderworks of eternal iron. 

6. Mechanical Sun - rare, often using hyper-dimensional mechanics. Gnonmen Capital has a Futurist Clockwork Uranium Sun fed by rare heavy metals. 

 

Inwardly-infinite Ontological Harvest 

City is inwardly ontologically shattered like a schizophrenics dream. Golems and child slaves sent into its fractured core to scavenge food appearing from 'nowhere' i.e. dropped or created by people who don't exist. 

This has a substantial effect on the cities layout, making it in, effect a ‘ring’ around an infinite inner core, which is treated as a private reaving and pillaging area. (Although, being infinite, may also be supremely dangerous). 

May be related, connected to, or built upon a foundation taken from, the ‘City of Infinite Ruin’, or the ‘Incoherent Isles’. 

 

Kaiju-Mine 

The City is build on, over, under or inside some Hyper-Being, either its corpse, or one somehow still-living. 

This might be some ancient Titan, Arch-Angel or God, or a more prosaic Kaiju. Could even be an Elder-God equivalent. 

The nature of the ‘substrate’ will likely have a significant effect on the character of the city. If people are eating Angel-Jerky, or God-Stew, or gnawing on Shub-Nigguraths bones, it will effect the psyche, culture, rituals, even the religion and behaviour of the citizens. 

This is also a massive singular source of food and will likely be carefully and relentlessly defended from the many raiders and scavengers who would also feed upon it. 

 

'Kite' Nation 

Far, far, up above, a polity which exists purely in order to service the City. 

This polity may drop down food directly, send it by river or via more abstruse magical means. They may send tribute, and/or even their sewage and cast-offs. 

A common method is a culture hidden in high valleys or inaccessible mountaintops, almost impossible to reach from the outside world and live in either terror and/or worship of their underground rulers. They may see the City Below as the afterlife, Dreamland, or simply a source of frightening and/or magical power and authority. 

In essence this would be a little exo-national interruption of the culture of the Veins into the surface world. It would be secret. Its defences would be strange and dangerous; the City Below, would take a deep interest in maintaining their ‘Kite’. Though they could not send large amounts of troops or material ‘Up’, and whatever they did send would function likely only at night, their forces would be potent, magical, unearthly and strange. A good origin for a Lovecraftian story or an entry-point to the Underworld. 

 

Fisher-City 

The City controls a ‘Bermuda Triangle’ type zone of Disappearances. Perhaps related to a storm, a strange moving forest of shadows or similar. Ships, armies, pilgrimages, small towns, caravans and more are know to irregularly disappear in relation to this phenomena, which may be bounded partially or totally by area or circumstance, (only beneath certain stars, or when the moon is thus, or once a decade between the mountains or so-on). 

These things or people may be transported by magic, or even charmed or mind-controlled into feeding themselves into something like the Deep Carbon Observatory. 

(Another Dero favourite as their mind control machines allow them to create powerful giga-conspiracies on the surface.) 

This might be another good entry to a VotE Campaign. 

 

Samaris Economy 

The Lords of the City either project, or have actually built, (i.e. ‘Samaris’), another city above ground. 

Goods consumed by the ‘Samaris’ are simply dropped or transported down to the ‘real’ city. 

Though expensive, and rarely enough for survival on its own, this is actually a relatively fair and sane method of sustainment. The Under-City isn’t supressing, subverting or dominating anyone, their economic exchange is quite real, simply executed through a ‘front’. 

 

Stable Gateway Light Well 

(Another favourite of Aelf-Adal; they like ‘light’ above their dreamlike towers.) 

Often above the city like a false sky, or a moon shining down, this is your classic stable large-scale warp gate to some other plane or dimension. Of course it might be a portal to somewhere no-one wants to go, like one of the Hells. However, many Hells have quite a lot of Firey energy and some light, as well as interesting sulphurous weather that can come through. It could also be to some Realm of Chaos, casting a warping light over the City. 

In most cases the ‘end point’ of the Gateway is either inaccessible or carefully hidden in the other Realm. Sometimes somewhere fortified or simply hanging high up in the air. 

The culture of the City will likely have some kind of exo-settlement in the other realm, and may even have diplomatic relations there. 

 

(Rare) Sky-Hunters 

The City goes full Whale-Hunter via its stable gateway, using complex airships, they rove the skies of the Other Realm, (probably at night, if they have night wherever ‘there’ is), and hunt whatever Megafauna they find. 

These may be asuras, angels, devas, devils or demons. They drag back the corpses and feast. 

 

 

Deep Janeen - VotE Remastered Development

[This will be more of an ‘exploded’ development document as I look through the entry I had for ‘Deep Janeen’ (which were essentially a reskin of AD&D ‘Dao’) and try to find a place for them in the developing cultures of the Veins, which also makes them useful and interesting in a ‘D&D world’, where the purpose of everything is ultimately to interact with adventurers.]

 

origin unknown

The Deep Janeen are spirits of the of the earth. Creatures of timeless, decadent intelligence, they live deliciously in palaces set down within the living stone. (They cannot work their magics on worked stone. The greater the mass of masonry around them, the safer they feel (from other Deep Janeen).) 

Deep Janeen are larger than men, with skin like blue veined marble, an strong, thick-limbed bodies curved like the sides of a vase. Their voices are like water being poured into an upturned bell. 

Voracious and confident, Deep Janeen take pleasure in their rank. Lords of Stone, commanding much submission from the earth by magic Art, these master can grant wishes and, it is said, attain all a soul may dream of, if it pleases them. They might be called half-gods of the Underworld, were they ever to leave their Mazes and the Courts within. But leave they rarely do.

 

Filippo Baratti

[Design Logic

The power of a Dao, or Janeen, over stone itself, combined with their many other powers, makes them astonishingly potent in the volumes of the Veins, where stone is the substance of all things, and where the challenge of transporting ‘stuff’, of feeding, lighting and sustaining, is so all consuming. 

Why then do they not rule the Underworld? And what role might they play in the intrigues of adventurers? 

To answer this; the logic of the Maze-Court; a grand, expensive, eternal and eternally changing folly, or bower-bird nest, of worked stone, within which the Janeen dwells and to which they dedicate almost all of their substantial yet always-perishing wealth. 

Culturally and psychologically, the Deep Janeen are trapped within their mazes and their courts. Economically they are trapped within their status and their culture, for a Deep Janeen seen doing useful work, and getting gain, by other Janeen, would be mocked, ruined, exiled and destroyed (socially), and this is the worst thing that could ever happen to a Deep Janeen. So they must relentlessly gain resources, yet never be seen to do so, and must spend even more relentlessly, on highly visible luxuries and on their Maze. And so they are poor. They have a lot of money and a lot of luxuries, but they have even more expenses and demands.]  

 

Maze Courts 

The Court is a Maze and the Maze is the Court. To reach the Janeen one must pass through the Maze. The Court lies at the centre of the Maze, or beyond it, or above it looking down. But the Court also interlaces with the Maze. One is never certain if one has fully left the Maze. 

The Maze is always under development, always being worked on. (Not directly by the Janeen, that would be abominable), but by slaves, or, for those of a liberal temperament, employees. 

The Maze drifts, moving through the stone ocean of the Veins, both via its eternal and continual building and re-building, and through the magic of the Janeen, whose maze it is, so it is like a magic island which moves slowly about a sea. 

These are not just dungeons. The mazes are works of art - works of status in every sense, works of pride and competition. The Court-Maze is the highest expression of a Janeen’s power, intelligence, style, and an untranslatable form of potency, of class, of virtu, a transmissible energy or spirit which both shapes and displays the vital selfhood of the Janeen. They need not eat, or sleep, and can live for mortal eternities. Their existence is a status game. The opinions of others are the truths of their lives. The mazeworks are like riddles: if everyone can understand them then they are worthless; if no-one can, then the same is true. They are set like palaces, at least in terms of statuary and stone. Water aspects and others will be of a luxurious, (yet lethal), mode, like Turkish baths. Think the Alhambra underground. 

Indeed some Janeen are crowned with Mazes as some surface Gods were crowned with city walls. A Janeen without a maze is not really a Janeen. Maze-loss creates, not a physical transformation, but a psychological and cultural one so total it may as well be. A Janeen with a poor maze is a Poor Janeen, regardless of how much specie they control. A Janeen with a stupid Maze is a stupid Janeen. Or an unfashionable maze, or a simple one, a crude maze or an ugly one… and so on. 

 

Why Seek the Deep Janeen? 

The Janeen can answer wishes. To an extent they can re-make reality, by fair means or foul. And their powers are greatest in the earth, where we are. Even their lesser powers of change and transport, of alteration, creation and exchange, are enough to wipe slates clean. If their favour can be won. 

If that is not enough, consider these lesser, but still practical treasures; a stone-road stave. An iron ring that holds a hero’s soul, bound for seven services. A lantern with a rock-evaporating light. A pet fire spirit which will serve you so long as its golden chain is linked. Songs of Unbecoming. Warping wands. An eye of Lapis Lazuli which terrifies the spirits of the earth. Crowns of mutable stone and sheaths of living Jade. Maelstrom bombs. Tongues of transport. A serpentinite torc that becomes a venom’d sword at your command. Ascension wells. Lithomantic potions. A book of sliver-thin slate with the means to make golems of stone. 

 

origin unknown

  

Pauper Princes  - Why They might meet with You. 

Wreathed in luxury, they are poor. Well.. not exactly. They have resources. However, they are likely in staggering debt. They are in the red, or at least in the black. 

The Maze, the Maze, the Maze costs all, consumes all, absorbs all. The sheer prices involved! You would not believe! The Maze must grow, must breathe. The Maze must live so the Court might thrive and the Court must feed so the Maze might grow. All this requires stone, slaves, food for them, logistics, organisation and so on and so on. And that’s just the unending construction, the Court itself requires servants, entertainers, musicians, dancers, illusionists, poets, cooks of various kinds and so on… 

Worse, nearly as bad as owning an inferior maze; a Janeen can never be seen doing useful work. They must not toil. They are beings of Pure Nobility. 

Yet, somewhere, somehow, work must be done. They do it through shell organisations. They do it in disguise, through other names, through deniable servants. They do it any way but directly and in public view. They all absolutely deny doing it, and they are all doing it, and will mock those seen doing it, while doing it themselves. Such is the toil of the Deep Janeen. 

 

Conflicting Cultures of the Deep Janeen 

Aesthetic Questions rule the scene; Schools on stones and mazes, arguments over treasures, gold and dreams. 

The Two Schools of Shadowed Mass; many Deep Janeen love gloom and the beauty of huge masses of worked stone. The first, Umbral, regards the placement of massy shadows of prime importance and arranges all stonework to produce precise gradations of shadow and depth. The second, the Lithic, regards the placement of shadowed mass to be the true path to beauty and arranges all shadows to highlight masses and arrangements of stone. Few but the Deep Janeen can tell the difference between the two schools, though they loathe each other. 

The Six Schools of Maze-Making; Softling, Towered, Monstrous, Braile, Falling and Fincular. Don’t ask me what these mean. They seem to have some relation to the styles of Mazes, (of which, more below), but how the theory intersects with built object, and what the borders and definitions of each are, is a source of argument amongst all Deep Janeen. A “Fincular Crystal Swam Maze, with Softling influence”? Sure. 

Schools of Dream interpretation and defence. Musical styles. Schools of poetry and aesthetic magic. Argument upon argument. Point upon position. 

Janeen like sculpture but tend to loathe painting, as well as any material that pretends to be what it is not, though the definitions of  what exactly this means, again, vary deeply. Is a Bernini sculpture acceptable? How about a Trompe ‘d Oil painting used as part of a trap to confound rogues in a maze? 

They love beauty but only bound. Free beauty is nothing to them, but lock it in an object or trade it as a service and they love it. 

 

Weeks Edwin Lord

 

To Meet the Janeen 

You do not meet the Janeen. Certainly they are not out and about (unless in disguise), and one does not simply challenge a Janeens Maze (unless invited). 

You meet their Vizier; 

Janeen Viziers 

Their forms are many; beautiful golem factotums, lesser spirits of stone, living statues (of the Janeen themselves obviously). Rug weave and tympanum zoom calls (the rug threads shift and change - you can hear them whispering). A statue of stone containing a caged spirit of air, water or fire. A whisp of salt. A clicking mosaic. A Vampire in Jade. A Mirror Liche – their corpse dead but its reflection still live and subtle. A Corpulent Immortal or Hot Undine. A drifting cobweb golem, its voice that of a certain harp, played by a blind, mute slave. Three stone ladies, one of igneous, one sedimentary and one metamorphic, (they finish each others sentences), or a big intelligent bird, kind of like a very fancy muppet – it’s not clear who or what it is the ‘puppeteer’. 

 

Arclord of Nex - Pathfinder Community

The Vizier - “Behold this value.” 

The Vizier writes down a certain number or total, and shows it to you. 

“This is a value which shall be two parts and two, that is, split into equal thirds, and the last third halved so that the totals are thus; one sixth, one third, one third and one sixth, for a total of four parts in these proportions, and in this order. 

Do you understand? 

The first part, should our speech go well, you shall surrender to me upon its’ end, in any portable form. 

Know this first; The Janeen does not do business. The Janeen does not make deals. The Janeen entertains Right Noble Guests. 

Are you such kind? 

 

The Right Nature of Guests 

A Right noble Guest is any of the following; 

·        They are born of Aristocracy and Nobility.

·        They have notable gifts of Art, Speech, or Music (not Painting).

·        They have great and recognised magical power and skill.

·        They are of great and well-attested Wealth, for one who possesses so vast an accumulation of wealth is no longer like other men.

·        They are of personal beauty or charm.

·        They Amuse. 

Are you such as I have said? If you are not, leave now.” 

 

The Maze-Court 

The Forms of the Mazes are many. Maze-Court stye and aesthetic, as well as its nature as a maze and nest of puzzles etc, is something else that Janeen will argue over and mull over themselves. Some are sever classicists and use one of the below styles only, and that exploited to the maximum effect with every possible Here are some; 

1.      Fromsoft Style - trickly 'looped' mazes where the Janeen’s court is visible almost immediately, but you have to do a lot of fucking about to actually get to the main bit

2.      Knightmare Style - Like a pit dungeon where the Janeen’s court stands above looking down on the party - last part is stairs up, so they join the court and they in turn can look down on others

3.      Tower Style - Court is at the top (though the 'tower' itself may be simply a series of cave or rooms in stone, the 'court' is usually kept somewhat open, in imitation of a real tower, perhaps with a mosaic-view of an imaginary surrounding land

4.      Zzarchov Style - rooms all the same size, linked by visible and invisible dimension doors, locks, keys, riddles and codes. Lots of going back and forth, solving weird problems - fucking annoying!

5.      Gravitational Style - Rather normal dungeon/maze design but in places you walk 'up' the walls and stand on the ceiling. you can look up or down at people or things 'above' you, other than that, this is often a pretty standard dungeon (though in a Janeen style)

6.      Fallingwater - A bathhouse, (artificial) waterfall. Plenty of fountains, a 'water level' with swimming, underwater monsters, mysterious grottoes (artificial),

7.      Maze of Transformations - somewhat Alice in Wonderland style with lots of shrinking, growing, possibly transforming into animals or other things, with seemingly escher-like arrangements and lots of tricky unfair bullshit mixed in, but often without the clear recursive discipline of the 'Zzarchov' style, where, though the answers may be cryptic, there *is* an answer while in 'Alice' mazes, there may be an answer, but the maze itself may be broken, irregular, or just perverse.

8.      Maze of Crystal Swarms - the walls made of some swarm or flocking creatures made of glass or crystal. The actual volume of the maze is not that great but the maze itself reformats around the PCs like the structures of a computer game write themselves into existence as they pass and turn through it, the flock or swarm moving in great clouds and reforming behind. Some Janeen would say this is more a 'method' than a style. Though it demonstrates incredible wealth, skill and magical power, that doesn't necessarily make the form of the maze as-a-maze that good, other Janeen, those who can afford a Crystal Swarm, tell them to go fuck themselves. 

 

Steven Craig Hickman hopefully not slop

 

Meeting the Janeen 

Lets say you actually get through the Maze, and to the Court, (or at least the Court-like parts of the inner maze. This is the Deep Janeen; 

Titles

The

1.      Shaker

2.      Dreamer

3.      Luminator

4.      Judicier

5.      Composer

6.      Navarch

 

of/in 

1.      Knowledge

2.      Tectonics

3.      Sleeping stone

4.      The Mountain Metamorphic

5.      The Flawless Fault

6.      The Stone Wombs Heart

 

Face 

1.      Haughty but smiling often with the dazzle of a diamond tooth.

2.      Alabaster, like a carved youth with the combined cruelties both of youth and of age.

3.      Eyes of starry glass and hair a slow stone river woven with gold boats.

4.      A potter's abortion but delicately repaired with gold.

5.      Flesh, except the eyes and mouth reveal the skin is shallow stretched on perfect stone.

6.      An egg with a cruel crack smile and glittering blue peridot eyes. 

 

Clothes 

1.      Skin marble, dark, and rippled with red. Her robes are black wire, woven subtly enough to shame silk. They draw the gaze toward her crown of ashen tar, stuck stork and bright frozen peacock feather.

2.      Smoke blacked armour, brass cast, etched by vandal artisans with one thousand and one victories of the Deep Janeen.

3.      A hermit's simple robe or a sacred thinker’s cowl, made from one thousand torture-sourced silks in the blues, blacks and bruise violets of the sky’s storms.

4.      Albino furs and pearls carved into linked-up chains. Her shoes, paired slender spires of colourless gem, stabbing the ground with each purposeful stride.

5.      Stone clothes, carved so expertly it’s difficult to tell except by touch. The gems in each of his many rings hold maps, impossibly detailed air bubble depictions of each architectural triumph.

6.      A metal articulated robe discards a trail of scrolls as it scrapes a furrow behind her thundering boots. Lackeys pick and continually re-archive her forgotten plans in the robe’s metallic folds.

  

Manner 

1.      Pauses long and whispers more than yells.

2.      Cruelties are always a little kind but kindnesses are without mercy, reason or restraint.

3.      Gaze is an extension of its grasp; the Janeen studies to own.

4.      Fresh skinned gloves finger lists of plans and inventories.

5.      Each half stroke of the hour everything is stopped, servants scurry forth, teas, meats, and glistening delicacies arrive. Calm and mild pleasantries rule until the last drop of tea.

6.      A small live animal is presented to be crushed with each and every footstep. 

 

Opulence 

1.      Slaves wave slow pennants of black velvet in their shadowed wake to intensify their gloomy majesty.

2.      Kebabs on silver skewers which they use to pick their teeth, then throw away.

3.      A ticking harem of clockwork courtesans in polished ebony and blazing gold.

4.      Every stone and tool and fold of cloth enchanted to whisper their praises with each move, the air fills with a susurrus of quiet adoration.

5.      Zoo of surface animals kept petrified when not in use. Awakened and re-petrified with insanely expensive potions sprayed from golden tubes.

6.      Lamps are petty fire spirits bound in silvered skulls of Ælf-Adal. 

 

Earth_Djinn from Guild Wars

The Vizier Continues; 

“…. Noble Guests who adore and respect the Janeen, and who often bring gifts they hope shall please. Curiosities, which they know the Janeen does not need, and which the Janeen will refuse 

But they shall offer again. 

The Janeen will, again, refuse. 

But, wounded by this, (though not explicitly so), the guest shall offer a third time.

And this time, purely to avoid offence, and out of charity, the Janeen will accept (though a servants hands, they will not touch the gift themselves). 

The value of this gift shall be no less than the value of the second part, which was one third of the total value I have shown you. 

At this time the entertainments shall begin, which shall last for no less than eight hours, and during which, it may please the Janeen to place an idle bet on this thing or that. 

As you know, fortune, at all times, follows virtue, nobility, greatness and courage, and so the luck of the Janeen is uncommonly good. 

Do you understand me? 

Though it may pass in whatever proportions you wish, in the course of entertainment, the total shall not be less than that of the third part, which shall be, again, one third of the total I have given you.” 

 

Activities 

Amusements 

1.      Smashing in their vaulted roof, slowing it in time, having chained-up poets scribe the falling stone.

2.      Naked girls in golden cages locked 1001 times. Each good story earns a key.

3.      Tattooing children’s backs with idle thoughts, making them run around till sentences form.

4.      Collected court of Clerics of each god, Deep Janeen converts to a new religion every hour.

5.      Archean orchestra on toxic instruments, so slow it plays one note each hour.

6.      Forcing scholars to debate the merits of a grain of sand. Winner rewarded, loser killed. 

 

Strange Dreams 

In their endlessly-rebuilt palaces deep beneath the earth, the Deep Janeen are often troubled by strange dreams. Explaining the troubling dream in an effective way, without inadvertently insulting the Deep Janeen, can vastly raise you in their esteem. 

1.      “I stand upon a yellow shore. A silver ship burns. A survivor turns to me and smiles. ‘Is this ever acceptable?’ he asks.”

2.      “I am a Lion (which I know is good) and eat a ghoul (which is bad). I taste cinnamon and sleep for seven days.”

3.      “A city of glass and shadow. I wait. The dawn comes, but not the dawn star. Why?”

4.      “I am speaking to a giant that crawls around my house tying knots in my columns and doors; the giant whispers names I cannot hear.”

5.      “I crystallise, memoryless, in the magma chamber under the hill. It will not let me out.”

6.      “I am a souk in a city of brass, merchants trade in my veins, thieving children run across my golden heart, yet I protect them.” 

Fear of Sleep 

The Janeen fear sleep and the power of the Aelf-Adal. Due to this they avoid sleep and are often insomniac, and some would say, irrational. Many Janeen employ a Dream Guard or Praetorian of Sleep whose purpose is to protect them even while they dream. 

Fear of Plots

The Janeen is convinced everyone around them is plotting against them and while this is never completely true, it is still largely true.

 

Petulant Rages

Intervening in the murderous and easily-triggered rages of the Deep Janeen can be deadly; so can not intervening in them. 

1.      Constructions of anything but stone. The existence of ‘plaster’ and ‘wall-paper’. Deep Janeen has never seen them but hates them.

2.      “There is a forged coin somewhere in this room. Find it! By the stones of the abyss you will bleed fire till it is found!”

3.      “You Ifrit Fuck!” Deep Janeen thinks the fire in a lamp is laughing at them. Hunts and smashes lamps, lights and flames till it is found.

4.      Deep Janeen convinced reflection in a particular pearl exhibits a single flaw. Curses pearls, casts them aside then hunts through them, demands larger and larger pearls.

5.      Deep Janeen stricken by violent self-loathing over inferiority of own mazework. Believes counter-arguments proof of secret contempt.

6.      Universal and malignant incompetence of inferiors. Demands your agreement then turns on you. Demands agreement of others re – your worthlessness, then turns on them.

 

  

Secrets of the Janeen 

Hidden Economic Engines

The Janeen is making money some how, though they do not wish anyone to know exactly how, they do wish everyone to know there is money being made… somewhere.

1.      They are a River Trader

2.      They control and organise transport between Realms of reality.

3.      They are in mining.

4.      They scout mines for other powers.

5.      A mercenary company or similar.

6.      Mass Golem Construction.

7.      Writing saucy novels on the side

8.      Silkweaving sweatshop

9.      Manufacturing dimensional transport which makes underground economy possible -bags of holding etc 

 

Deals They Must Make... Now! (But Must Not Be Seen To....)

The Janeen has a secret, desperate need, but the PCs don’t necessarily know about it, or even know that it exists (the Janeen desperately tries to keep this from them, without also revealing it).

 

The Need

1.      Silk

2.      Gold (its amazingly heavy stuff)

3.      Slaves (they keep dying)

4.      Political cover in some elemental political situation.

5.      End the Tariff!

6.      Dolphins (don’t ask why)

7.      Mining Rights

8.      Migration rights

 

From;

1.      Aelf-Adal

2.      Knotsman Lord

3.      RayMen

4.      dErO

5.      Archeans

6.      Olm Clan

7.      Dvargir

8.      Funginid Mentality

 

Clues/Evidence PCs might stumble into

1.      Singing Fish

2.      Bell Music Notation Code

3.      Wordform shadow elemental

4.      Opal Bat Snitch

5.      Actual Letter from...

6.      Graceful Golem Courtesan

7.      Whistled Code from Bird

8.      Waking Dream 

 

Pathfinder, creator not known

The Vizier Goes On 

“It does, at times, occur, in these hours of intimate diversion, (but never before the fifth hour, or beyond the seventh), that the intimates of the Janeen, in the course of conversation. 

In the course of conversation, you understand? 

May confess to this or that trouble, or disappointment, be it in this thing or that, which afflicts them, and, in the course of conversation, they might discuss with the Janeen, their Intimate Lord and nearly-friend, potential cures and alterations to their sad state, and the Janeen may reply "How terrible! Surely something must be done!" or words to that effect. 

There the matter shall rest, and no more shall be said of it. 

When the entertainments come to a natural close the Intimates of the Janeen will part Joyously with the Janeen. 

Now, after a certain time, it may be that the circumstance or amelioration so desired by you shall be attained, though various means, perhaps obvious or unknown. 

When this should occur, the Intimates shall send via secure and trusted means, another gift, to the value of the total of the fourth part, which was one sixth of the value I have given you - to the Janeen, via myself, with a fulsome and full-hearted written thanks for any efforts the Janeen, may or may not, have taken or ordered to be taken on their behalf in the mater which happened to pass between them as Intimates at that time when they were guests of the Janeen, and if the Janeen themselves took no visible or provable action in the matter, no doubt it was the great fortune which attends to the Janeen and all that they do, which did mark the weave of fate in this matter, in which case even greater thanks are given (though the value of the enclosed git need not be greater, (but should be no smaller) than I have said). 

The matter shall then considered to be closed, and no further contact either accepted or desired"