To Steal a Sun - Full Adventure

Here you go;

Wiliam Morris I think

To Steal a Sun

 

Glaem

 The Wheel towers over all.

Like any Grey City, Glaem is dominated by its megastructure, a unique form created at an impossible scale, the oldest part of the city, the source of the 'reality field' which keeps Yggsrathaal and Entropy at bay. Gigantic, inexplicable and, as in any Grey City, almost totally ignored by the population.

It has been over 5,0000 years and the Megastructures have not changed. No interaction with them is allowed, or even possible, so they fade into the background.

It is a substantial background though. The Wheel lies over the city like a tilted cartwheel half buried in mud. One half arcs into the sky. It is assumed another, equal half, lies underground, balancing out the sky arc.

Through the city runs the Eisen River, and to each side of the Eisen spread out networks of canals and locks, like tarnished silver wings, carrying goods north and south, for the rivers of Blackwater run East-West to an unnatural degree. Emanating from those like the veins of a leaf are the heavy roads of the city, paved, flagged and fit for the cartwheels of goods and the un-ending stream of high-status visitors.

 Harry Morrison

Less physically imposing than the Wheel, but considered much more deeply by all the people of Glaem is Tower of Infinite Calm. Slender and modest against the Wheel, but one of the largest non-megastructure buildings in Blackwater.

This is the centre of the Tolerance, the grey-clad, supra-governmental, near extra-legal inquisition which, ever since the Treaty of Birch Falls two and half thousand years ago, protects Humanity from itself, watching over all, guarding against both Yggrathaal and unrestrained religious or interethnic conflict.

The Tower of Infinite Calm is perhaps the most feared place in Blackwater. The complex surrounding it is huge, millennia old, the size of a cathedral at least, and the secondary and tertiary sites of the Tolerance, some visible, many not, spread out through the city like the mycelium of a Fungus. Grey-Robed priests ride grey horses, locked and barred grey carriages disappear into backstreet compounds, grey barges arrive bearing grey seals of the shattered serpent and disgorge unknown cargo into grey warehouses.

All seen, and not-seen. Though the Tolerance plays a massive, even dominant part in the cities life and economy, at the same time, everything it does happens as if in another world, as if seen though grey glass. No-one speaks to them in the street. No-one visits them. No-one complains. No-one boasts. It is as if they are not there at all.

 

Giant Castle by Paul Chadeisson

More vibrant are the huge number of Embassies, Hotels, Houses, Compounds and Palaces belonging to every City, Queendom, Corporation, Guild, Society, Conspiracy, Merchant Band, Intelligence Agency and Newsgroup in Blackwater. Safe, connected and with a well-educated populace, Glaem is a city of Embassies. In its central districts few streets are without at least one and its lanes are famously clogged with pompous carriages hauled up by the side of the road and left while their owners attend some vital meeting, (of course, they cannot be moved, the owner has Diplomatic Immunity).

Ambassadors, agents, servants, merchants, clerks, spies, hidden bodyguards and feather-helmeted ceremonial guards, it’s rare to go long in any major street in Glaem without witnessing or bumping into at least one.

Spread out around the borders of Glaem, each equidistant, so that they form a pentangle, are the five Gravatic Slums.

These five districts in particular, Jinwon, Jintuh, Jinfree, Antymat and Mergence, each occupies a strange irregular declivity, a kind of pit in the earth. They are slums because, for as long as the city has existed, these places have experienced magical hauntings, fluxions of natural law, objects floating, falling sidewise or upwards, lenses of light appearing in the air, detritus and even stone material being found ultracompressed or strangely spread about, and many tragic disappearances.

Though such occurrences are uncommon, the slums are not safe, they were built upon last and the poorest and lowest people of Glaem have always made their homes there. It is here that the Theorists and Immunity Gangs wield the greatest power.

The vital centre of the cities deranged civic government, is the Ziggurat of the Tyrant of Glaem. A multi-levelled pyramid full of meeting halls, offices, entryways and always bustling and humming with crowds and chaos.

The Civil authority of Glaem is elected randomly, and at random intervals.

These are the Lottery Lords, the Tyrants of Glaem. As a result of its Great Lottery absolutely any legal citizen of Glaem can be catapulted into the seat of executive power at any time. It is illegal to avoid this service and illegal to leave it (until the lottery decides otherwise).

As an adaption to this state of affairs, Glaem has one of the most politically-educated populaces in Blackwater. Since any random idiot could attain Total Power at any moment, the city culture tries to make sure that there is at least a reasonable chance they might be competent.

Of course, with much of the substance of Glaem being controlled by the Tolerance, who are beyond most law, or by various embassies, guilds or companies, or by the gangs of the Slums, the amount of actual practical power a Tyrant of Glaem actually wields is not necessarily that great, which may be for the best.

Still, the civil affairs of the city do have a lively, hectic, knockabout atmosphere.

Nearly unknown, or at least unconsidered by most, are the estates of the Eld-Kin. Ancient houses of long-lived, wealthy, and very noble Aeth. Secretive, with small numbers, often decadent and strange, the Aeth Houses still wield massive power in the city, through few would realise it.

 

One final curiosity; the ceramic paths.

These corridors, walkways, tunnels and tubes, form a kind of invisible, slight network running all over the city, each emanating from its direct geographic centre.

Guarded and watched over by the Navigators Guard, often called the 'Forgotten Guard' for all the attention anyone pays them, these amount to a series of clean, silent, empty corridors spread over the city like a fine web.

The Ceramic Paths have been there so long, nearly from the beginning of the city, and do so little, that like the Megastrcuture, they call almost no notice.

The 'Forgotten Guard' in their Verdigris stained armour, stand resolute but ignored in minor archways or guarding small stone or stations in the middle of nothing, like forgotten municipal tombs.

The city is so full of intrigue; the silent terror of the Tolerance, the magnificent guards, parties and ceremonies of the various Embassies and Organisations, the violence and debates of the Theorists or Immunity Gangs, the commercial thrum of trade and manufacture and the anarchic chaos of the Lottery Lords, that no-one notices the Forgotten Guard at all.

The players must learn to notice, because they have been hired to rob the Emperor of Glaem, and the 'Forgotten Guard' are the Emperors Guard, and the plays will have to outwit them to reach the Emperor.

Building a Reality

The project I have been doing with Eldritch Foundry has its World Anvil page up and running. Don't know if they have an RSS or how you follow it, but this breakdown of how and why I designed the reality the way I did should be on there and I thought I would give it to you also for something to read over the weekend.

> What was Esh?

Gino Severini, 1912, Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin

I imagine Esh at its height as a kind of multiversal super-civilisation. Think of somewhere a little like Planescape plus Marvel Universe plus Spelljammer plus Ian M. Banks Culture novels plus Star Trek, plus anything else you can think of. All of the tropes and technologies of any science fiction or fantasy cosmos were present and all would be utilised to their finest and highest extent to produce a reality of freedom and meaning.

Esh was probably not a reality, or a 'realm' without evil, opponents or challenge, neither was it a static, unchanging place, but it was somewhere where 'good', of some form, usually, probably won, and where there was always the opportunity for redemption, creation and adventure.

Realms, Worlds, Dimensions and Gates.

Esh was made up of planets, rings, super-ships and dyson-spheres, like a sci-fi universe, but it also included magical realms, dimensional planes, time-travel, parallel realities, worlds inside the dreams of gods, virtual sumulated worlds, pocket-dimensions like the Tardis and simply any and everything else that can reasonably be imagined.

Becuse of their enormous difference in nature, most of these were referred to as 'Realms', meaning a reasonably coherent chunk of space and time where things work by the same rules.

The Optimates

We know relatively little about Esh as its fall and destruction set the scene for the creation of Uud, but one thing we can suppose is the existence of beings called 'Optimates'. We can think of these as hyper-powered or exceptional individual beings of various kinds. A Culture 'Mind' from an Ian M. Banks book could be considered an Optimate, as could Dr Strange, Superman or the Archangel Gabriel.

These Optimates watched over the varied realms of Esh. 'Watched over' was intended to mean, not that they directly ruled any planet or dimension, but that they kept it safe, and as separate as it generally wanted to be from the meta-realm of Esh.

So, if a hyperdimensional predator wants to feed off the life essence of a world, or if a sci-fi megacorp wants to invade a realm with only medieval technology to colonise it, or if a super-magician like Sauron or super-being like Professor X decides to try to build a multiversal empire of their own, the Optimates were meant to stop them.

Generally, the Optimates were meant to protect 'Realms' from things coming from outside that realm, not from creatures or agents from within. Though, since they had a great ability to set their own boundaries, its likely some Optimates did not quite keep to that mission exactly.

Esh fell. Uud is what remains.

The peoples of Uud know very little about what Esh was like, but in the Waste-lands, which includes Zoiterra and Blackwater, they do at least know that Esh existed at one point, though they have quite different legends about what it was.

 

> What is Uud?

There are eventually meant to be multiple different 'layers' or 'versions' of Uud, including a fantasy realm, a Steampunk realm and a science-fiction realm.

Right now, only the fantasy realm has been worked out to any depth, and only a few of the lands within it have been described.

So far I have been calling this Fantasy Realm 'The Waste Land'.

The Waste Land

Russ Nicholson

From the perspective of the people in it, this is a flat, caustic plain of grey ruined stone, oceans of ash, salt flats, memory stealing rain and other awful, largely grey and colourless things.

So far as they know, this is what remains of Esh. All of it. It was leached of meaning, identity, memory and structure by Yggsrathaal and reduced to this horrible fractured plain.

There are various nations adrift in the Waste Land, places where people and culture might survive, so far we only know about two of these, Blackwater and Zoiterra.

Neither of these places really know much about each other, they have perhaps a few fractured legends but little else to confirm that.

As well as that; exactly how the Waste functions, differs slightly around each Realm. Blackwater and Zoiterra are both Islands of meaning and identity in a formless waste, so the way they perceive both it and themselves does leak out somewhat.

Blackwater

By Skullfungus

(all of these have their own descriptions, which will hopefully be linked through the image)

Blackwater is the first place imagined in any depth for Uud and was created specifically in order to host most of the common and well-loved fantasy races, places and adventure types.

Within its own history, Blackwater was created, or preserved, on or around the end of the Fall of Esh as a somewhat stable and self-supporting realm in the growing Waste.

Two things keep Blackwater stable and drive back the Waste.

Towards its Eastern end are the Mountains of Reality, giant eruptions of stone much larger and wilder than any mountain range on earth. The culture of these mountains is protected by the Gloom Queens, who you can read about in their own entry, but the entropic quality of the Waste is driven back somehow by the dense stone of the mountains themselves.

Some legends say the Mountains of Reality were created by a kind of 'folding over' or different mountain rages from different realms, making them somehow 'hyper-real'. Others say the Mountains are the body of the dead God Ark, a primal creator God defeated by Yggsrathaal.

However it works, the Mountains keep back the Waste to a large degree. They provide one of the few sources of heavy metals and minerals in the Waste-Lands (the rest were corroded by Yggsrathaal and their lack keeps technology expensive and low-level). The rivers which run from the mountains carry waters stained black by their eroded stone, the 'Black Waters' which give the continent its name, and these waters also seem to hold back or repress the Waste and its creatures.

Almost all the river systems of Blackwater run East-West, to an unnatural degree, and this is assumed to be due to ancient geo-engineering during Blackwaters creation.

The second, western portion of Blackwater is held in place by its Cities. This whole area, called 'The Grey Cities', is based around crazed, ancient, Cyclopean megastructures which seem to emanate, or re-assert, Reality itself. 

The memory-stealing rains of the Waste lose their powers around the structures and the creatures of the Waste creatures don't like getting close to them.

Around these Megastructures have grown up the Cities themselves, growing now for 5,000 years, most of them know little of how or why the structures work, but they do know that they are sacred.

Within the Megastructures are the Imperial Lines who perform the rituals, magic and actions which keep the structures working. These are largely descended from the Optimates of Esh.

During the Fall, some of the surviving Optimates came to Blackwater and built the cities while some other force or group, possibly the last Deists or Prophets of Esh, created the Mountains of Reality.

With them came refugees from every realm, reality and world of Esh, all mixed together, and it is from them that the current population descends.

Zoiterra

Zoiterra is quite different and was imagined to be a realm or nation, also within the Waste, (so in theory you could walk from Blackwater to Zoiterra, if nothing killed you), but distant from Blackwater.

Zoiterra was created to be a home for the various Animal-People of Dungeons and Dragons.

While Blackwater is very 'Classic Fantasy' with Elves, Dwarves etc, Zoiterra has none of these races, and while Blackwater works very much like a normal continent, with rivers, mountains mines etc, Zoiterra is pretty weird.

As a Realm it exists as ten great nations riding on the back of ten great nation-beasts. 

I never really defined exactly how big each beast is, but I imagined the average to be about the square miles of the United Kingdon mainland. So Zoiterra as a whole is about the size of Europe or the U.S. (Blackwater is I think roughly the size of the U.S.).

While the peoples of Blackwater are permanently at war with Yggsrathaal (in fact this mutual threat and hatred is part of what binds them together) those of Zoiterra are more just, avoiding her notice. (Though they must still suffer through her attacks).

In Blackwater 'Humanity' is defined largely by the majority group; Somon (standard humans), and by the similarity of Aeth, Deoth and other types. The decision on who is and is not human is a political and social one and can be addressed a little bit differently in each polity. To not be part of 'Greater Humanity' is bad, though the line does move, it is still a hard line.

In Zoiterra there is no majority form and, though its peoples all look very very different to each other, it’s clear to them that they are all conscious beings, so definitions and identities work differently there.

Each Zoiterran culture is based on one particular Nation Beast and each Beast is considered to be following a particular Virtue. It is these Virtues which define legitimacy and personhood in Zoiterran culture.

(Not that Zoiterran culture is inherently less prejudiced or more fair that others, only that it works differently. Most Nation-Beasts have majroty ethic/type populations and these almost always wield political power. The Nation-Beasts also differ in how, and how much, they incorporate and allow beings dissimilar to them.)

Most Zoiterran Virtues, and the cultures which spring from them, are based roughly around Daoist concepts. This is intended to fit with Zoiterras fluid and subtle nature. Though there are also pseudo-Bhuddist, Hindu, Confucian and Frog-Fascist cultures.

> Will there be more Realms in the Waste-Land?

I hope so. It will depend on what creatures, beings and cultures are added to the 'Fantasy World' makeup of Uud. 

So far I have vague ideas for continents or Realms for 'Monsters' and Undead, and possibly some kind of Greek-influenced place.

I hope to make them all as different in concept and execution as Blackwater and Marginalia. Each fragment of Esh will have found some particular way to survive and maintain itself, depending on its own nature.

> Where is everything in the Waste-Lands?

Right now its imagined that the continents 'move'. In Blackwaters case it would grind via something like continental drift, and Zoiterra of course, is moving all the time in its eternal escape from Yggsrathaals attention.

My hope is that, in play, people will treat the Waste-Land as largely modular, so continents and realms can essentially be 'picked up' and moved around on the map according to the desires of the game creators.

So if someone wants to tell a story like; "What if Oum, the Black Turtle, carrying the cat-race of Quitt, should crash into the Grey Cities, what would happen?" Then they can simply arrange that to happen.

All of Zoiterra is made like this, with the animals continually racing and changing places and locations, so that each game creator can arrange the pieces of that realm however they wish, so that different places and cultures can be close, in easy contact, or separated.

As more realms are added to the Waste-Land, I would like to try to keep this up so taht ultimately, the Waste-Land became a kind of jigsaw puzzle or lego-set of fantasy ideas, different for each game and story.

> What about 'Sci-Fi' Uud and 'Steampunk' Uud?

https://cosmicwolfstorm.tumblr.com/post/622309165914882049

So far these realities, and the way they relate to Waste-Lands Uud, have not been deeply worked out.

The core concept for 'Steam Punk Uud' is that its been 20,000 to 25,000 years since the fall of Esh. Uud is made up of a kind of bubble of gas around a giant solar system. Intelligent beings inhabit multiple planets and moons. They know little of each other but near simultaneous discovery of similar technology means they develop the ability to explore their giant bubble at about the same time. Their ships are concieved of as being something like iron cylanders or giant wheels. Society is at a pseudo-victorian state and nations and huge corporations are a big deal. Magic is less powerful than in the Waste-Lands and has been de-prioratised, with different forms being predominant. The old strange hyper-tech of Esh is mostly gone or lost, but Sophonts (intelligent self-aware beings)  have a much better and controlled understanding of their own technology. Yggsrathaals 'Grey Waste' still exists, but only as a distance presence on the borders of the big bubble. Many cultures don't even know about her, regarding her as a legend.

'Sci-Fi Uud' takes place roughly 55,000 years since the fall of Esh. No-one knows anything about Esh at all, or about the origins of the spacefaring species. There's quite a bit more but I will save that for later.

> Are these future versions of 'Waste-Lands' Uud or what?

Honestly I don't yet know. My initial idea was that the fall of Esh "fractured" reality into different streams in which time ran at relatively different speeds.

The closest and the fastest running would be Fantasy Uud, the closest to the Vespershard, where Yggsrathaal was most powerful but where magic was also very powerful.

In the different 'time streams' more and more time would have passed since the fall, giving technology more time to develop. Magic would be less powerful, and so would Yggsrathaal, though she would still be a serious, ultimate and long-term threat.

 

> Things Outside 'Reality', 

the Vespershard, the Seraphormer and Marginalia

There are some places and Realms either outside reality, or adjacent to it in some fundamental way. I will describe these in turn.

The Vespershard

In itself, the Vespershard is pretty simple. Not unlike Borges 'Aleph' or the Marvel Universes M'Kraan crystal, its a giant hidden crystal which simultaneously reflects, encapsulates and combines every version of the Udd-verse. A hidden Axis-Mundi or fulcrum of reality which sustains and preserves what is left of causality.

This reasoning behind it is more interesting.

Essentially I didn't want to create a fantasy world where there was only one way it could be and people had to wait around for the company in charge to validate things for them to be "real".

I think that puts a fan community and a company in a negative feedback loop. It’s always easy to sell the nerdiest parts of the community More Details, as they think that’s what they want, but the relentless accumulation of detail makes the world impenetrable to newcomers, raises the lorekeeper mindset over other (and I think we do need that personality just not on its own) and trains people not to think or create for themselves, as they can always go to the company for answers and validation.

And since the company can charge them for that detail and that validation, its almost self-destructive for them not to do so. And that gradually trains the company and the fans to resent each other as they are feeding each others less-meaningful habits and thought patterns.

So the Vespershard is a piece of Uud which explicitly says that every person who plays a game or does fiction in Uud is reflected in the Vespershard, and that every one of those interpretations is valid, and that Uud as a whole, both as an imaginative creation in our world, and as an imagined reality, only persists due to all these different realities in the shard, so everyone who contributes to it is keeping it alive. Though they may be very separate versions of reality, they all show up in the Vespershard.

So whatever game or fan-fic, art, cosplay, whatever, shows up in the Vespershard and plays a part in keeping the Uud-Cosmos alive, both literally, as in if you don't engage with it, or use it, it dies, and diagetically, in the imagined world itself.

While the Vespershard does exist in Uud, beneath Phosphorfall, at the centre of the Wate-Lands, its not meant to be easy to access or even to discover that it exists. 

The Seraphormer

The idea behind the Seraphormer started with the conception of the 'Eldritch Founder' actually existing in the imagined world of Uud, and then slowly grew from there.

The Seraphormer is the Founders 'Soul Machine' and its conception is designed to give the impression of a near-divine technology, scraped together from the detritus of multiple layers of reality, combining magic and technology in order to perform a divine action; the creation of souls.

And of course, just as the Verspershard, looked at one way, is a kind of literalised metaphor for the recording of the lore of Uud and for its relationship with its fans, the Seraphormer is a literalisation of what Eldritch Foundry does, the combination of creating your own mini, having it printed out and delivered, and then incorporated into your own imaginative world. In doing this, you are essentially doing what the Eldritch Founder does, playing the 'role' of the Eldritch Founder before you play the role of your character.

The Seraphomer is imagined as existing in its own "pocket-realm", adjacent to, but outside any realm or layer of Uud.

Physically we can imagine this pocket realm as being roughly the size of Luna, earths moon, with a core about the size of a large city.

Almost the only living beings within the Seraphormer are various versions of the Eldritch Founder, though the Captains of the LicheJammer craft which bring Quileth into the Seraphormer are also present. The Captains are meant to be memory-wiped before being allowed to leave, meaning they do not know what the Seraphormer is, only that they must complete their mission and return. Since the LicheJammer Captains are assumed to have absolute control over their largely mindless undead crew, its assumed no one needs to bother memory-wiping them.

The Zone of the Speraphomer is physically non-existant in the space beyond it, its envelope is invisible to all senses and only the LichJammer Captains have the codes and knowledge to even find its apporximate location and to request access.

As well as that, the Delusion Engine of the Seraphormer infiltrates all of Uud, making it near-impossible for any self-aware being to even imagine that it could exist. Even Founders which leave the Seraphormer can lose any memories of it and not be able to return.

Nevertheless, there does seem to have been at least one incursion of some sort into the Seraphormer and the Founders security arrangements may be less perfect than they assume.

The Founder(s) within the Seraphormer are able to gain access to any 'layer' of Uud, and it seems they can even inject Souls into a variety of timestreams, suggesting that the Seraphormer is not completely fixed in time. Though if the Seraphormer had complete and free access to the time-stream, its mission would be a lot simpler, which suggests that either it is not a fully functioning time machine or that the presence or existence of Yggsrathaal somehow prevents this.

The means by which the Founders gain access to Uud seem to vary and few of them have been made clear, though it seems some combination of manipulating the strands of Marginalia, travel through the Vespershard and possible deep-future Sci-Fi hypertech.

Wherever they Seraphormer "is" in regards to Uud, it always seems to be hidden phsyically in some way, located in some lost and forgotten place, and it seems to have trouble interacting with or being close to a planetary surface, or the surface of the Waste-Land. It is a quasi-astronomical object, most akin to a hidden moon or shrouded space station.

Margenalia

The ultimate series of tubes.

Marginalia was conceived of as a 'connecting realm', a world which spread tendrils of itself to every land, layer, nation, realm and reality of Uud. 

If you need to get anywere in Uud, in theory, the strands of Marginalia can take you there.

Its closest inspiration is something like the 'Webway' of the Warhammer 40k universe, mixed with the 'Otherworld' of Celtic myth, actual Medieval Marginalia and NASA ideas about enclosed cylilndrical environments in space which maintain the illusion of gravity through centrifugal force.

Being inside any part of Margenalia is essentially like being inside a giant cylinder, with gravity equal around the diameter, like being inside a space-born cylinder ship which is rotating.

Rather than just one such tube, Margenalia is a gigantic sprawling, perhaps endless, maze or network. Some tubes are wide enough around to contain whole nations and others are only the size of manhole covers, or even smaller.

Portals or entries to Margenalia can theoretically be found all over Blackwater, Zoiterra, the Waste-Lands and anywhere else in Uud, perhaps even the Pale Courts of Yggsrathaal and the Seraphormer.

In practice, finding and using such a portal is immeasurably difficult. The peoples and cultures of Margenalia keep themselves very secret and obsessively guard any access to their realm.

Most cultures in the Waste-Lands do not even believe that Marginalia exists, assuming it to be simple a legend. Those that do know of it are aware that obsessively and systematically searching for it is unlikely to work. Some people just persistently 'happen across' the Realm, whether they wish to or not, while others will never find it.

In terms of world design, and game design, Marginalia provides the means to connect any imagined place to any other imagined place, temporarily or permanently, with rules or circumstances which can vary according to need or design.

It me

> A New-Age; or, "Why is everything so terrible?"

The whole basis of Uud is a world which starts out as pretty bad, but which you can change through play.

Again I'm trying to re-iterate that Uud is meant to be a world to be played in, to be brought to live through play and through interaction, and that the experience of play and of interaction, whether that be through fan fic, cosplay, art or whatever, is the essential purpose of the world.

So let me highlight two broad moral typse of fantasy reality.

The Grimdark, like Warhammer 40k, Berserk and maybe Dark Souls. This is a reality where everything is screwed and all people can do is resist that for as long as possible. It’s dark, moral choices are harsh and  largely the structure of the world makes the world a tragic one.

Then we have more classic Adventure worlds. This would be like most D&D worlds and like the Marvel Universe. There may be terrible threats and all kinds of apocalyptic events, but usually the good guys can win and a heroic effort will count for something in the end.

Uud, at all its levels and in every realm, especially in Blackwater, is meant to be a reality which is very, very dark, *but in which the players can change that*.

Again this feeds into every game, campaign and story being individually valid and an actual part of Uud.

Every adventure (in classic D&D anyway) starts with a small group of heroes. In Blackwater, they will be oppressed by the conditions of the world, faced on every side by the Waste of Yggsrathaal and be part of a slowly-decaying society which doesn't really believe that anything can change for the better.

The very nature of a classic set of D&D heroes, individuality, anti-authoritarianism, questing for adventure, taking on bad guys, amassing treasure, building a legend, pretty much everything that D&D characters do, specifically re-enforces and sustains exactly the forms of identity, specificity, character, hope, possibility and change which work against the power of Yggsrthaal.

The Waste is Grey, and empty, and drains everything of live and individuality. The world is like this, when the adventure begins.

But the heroes, through their actions and adventures, change the world, and shift it onto one with more colour, life, possibility and hope.

Diagetically, this is why the Eldritch Founder created them, and from our point of view, it is part of why we both run games and play in them.

So, to put it simply, Uud should be "A Dark world, that you can do something about."

Pat Boyette

> What's "Diegetic"?

This is a complicated-sounding term that is actually pretty simple. The concept is taken from film and culture studies and came to RPGs through Emmy Allen. If something is 'Diegetic' then its part of the world of the story, or the world of play.

So, in a Quentin Tarantino film, if we see someone driving their car, accompanied by cool music, it seems like a soundtrack. Then they stop the car, reach down and turn off the radio and the music stops.

We have a little moment of surprise. We thought it was non-diegetic and was actually Diegetic.

Many times I have used the idea of making something Diegetic in the creation of Uud.

Race and Humanity; there are big culture war discussions in D&D-land right now over the construction of 'Humanity' and what should or shouldn't be considered 'inhuman', as well as the concept of Race.

In Blackwater, in particular, people have very similar discussions. The culture has a specific idea of what is an isn't 'Human', and both Players, and Player Characters, can agree or disagree with that. These rules count quite differently even in Blackwater. Some Cities are highly conservative, others, like Yga, have relatively open rules about who is 'valid'.

Zoiterra also has its own ideas about what makes someone a valid person or not. Ones quite different from Blackwater, and even different from beast-to-beast.

The Worghast, or robotic people of Blackwater, have their own laws about what allows them to claim personhood.

This isn't intended to prove any particular point but to allow players to inhabit the world in a contextual complex and interesting way (should they wish to, you can still have a fun game where this stuff doesn't matter). The main idea is that each society has different standards and that these make sense *to that society*. Not that they are absolute truths.

The Eldritch Founder, the Seraphormer and the Vespershard are all, in part, literalised diegetic elements in-world of things which affect and influence the creation of that imagined world.

The Seraphormer is the 3D printing of minis, but also the whole creation of a character and their embedding in the imagined world of Uud. The Eldritch Founder is a little like the company Eldritch Foundry itself, given form and the Vespershard is a hoped-for validation of different peoples creations and desire for a positive feedback loop between Company and Fans, all given form as elements of Uud which could possibly be interacted with.

> Cross-Linking

My hope with the development of the Lore of Uud is that it will never be complete. Leaving some parts of Uud 'open' or undescribed is  deliberate. 

There are some places, people and events that there will never be an 'official' line on - to discover what happened you need to play through those events or do your version of fanfic about it - to actually make something.

I hope that the slow cross-linking and development of entries and lore grows, but always leaves some subjects, events and eras blank, and open to interpretation.

What really happened at the Treaty of Birch Falls? - Play to find out. How did Esh fall? - Play to find out. 

The reason for this is to keep Uud an "active" world, one made real by its use and interpretation, rather than a huge block of dead lore which will sell mainly to people of the 'lore keeper' mindset (which I don't object to, I am one after all) but which becomes so huge, interconnected and dense that it’s impossible to play in.

The existence of the Vespershard is meant to confirm this. Every version of Uud, no matter how the base material is used, is valid and appeared in the Vespershard.

> First-Person in Uud Fiction

What follows represents an original conception for fiction set in the reality of Uud. This shouldn't be considered an absolute rule but I will explain my methodology and the intentions behind it so you can decide for yourselves

My original idea was that every story would be from a specific in-world point of view. 

It could use a literary effect like a diary or letters or an interview. In this case the singular pov character would be the writer or the imaginary compiler of the information would be the writer (like the unseen *whoever* who collects all the letters in Bram Stokers Dracula).

If not using a specific literary effect of this type, the stories would use either a locked-in first person pov or a very close 3rd person pov. 

In close 3rd person, the point of view would be kept entirely on the main character and it would be clear that the described world would be seen from their point of view, literally, but also morally and politically. If the story describes the inside of other peoples heads, or things the main character can’t  witness, it should be clear in the text that this is that characters supposition or imagination about those things.

Each of these pov character would have a specific time, social position, social-moral-religious viewpoint and a particular way of interacting with the world. We see the world as they see it and for the period of the story we see it *only* as they see it, with their moral and social imperative and patterns of thought and behaviour.

So the world as a whole would be a kind of palimpsest, stitched together from these individual stories, and the discontinuities between stories would be part of the world as that is down to the different experiences of the pov characters.

Games Workshop says they do this, but in fact most of their major series are just normal stories with real attempts to maintain standard continuity, they use the "everything is unreliable" schtick to excuse their (understandable) failures in continuity and the shifting nature of the world as it changes under different writers.

But you could actually do what they do, but for real, build this world of individual tales and have different characters and writers encounter and interact with the same imaginary elements, like cities, characters, places and environments, across ranges of imagined time and imagined experience, and the differences between the points of view might be down to the differences in experience or could be actual changes in the imagined world.

So two characters in different stories could meet the same major NPC, but have totally different experiences of that, maybe they met them at different points in life, or just saw them differently, or they are lying or making stuff up.

Same with a place or event, different characters on completely different adventures or narratives can witness or interact with environments and cities or magics and have parallel or different responses and records.

And so the reader is picking their way through all these stories, which they know to be personal and unreliable, and in a state of continually putting together the 'real world' as something that is always slightly beyond direct confirmation. In a way they are like a journalist, researcher or historian of an imaginary world, trying to understand it.

So you still get arguments about 'the lore' and 'who meant what' but instead of being based on undesired discontinuities in what it written they are based on deliberate differences in the record. So everyone reading gets to 'play' in a way.

Click to go there

A Meeting In Marginalia

1.    Cir Talox Blithe

Call me 'Blithe', it was the name of my creator, or so I have written to myself from long ago.

More fully named I am 'Cir Talox Blithe', Knight, made, sworn and chosen for a path of honour and truth. One glance will show you that I am no man of woman born. I was made, long ago, from gears and levers, steel and screws. My eyes are crystal lenses, my guts burn charcoal and my heart is Iron. This gave me my title "The Knight with the Iron Heart", though it has never pleased me for I have always fought to be a Knight of Franchise and of Grace. My mind, I am told is a labyrinth of magic and glass, packed away within my steel skull in directions inaccessible to mortal hands, though I have never seen it.

Why I was made, I cannot say, for no precise instruction remains from that deep time, and even when that was is also lost. I have traced my personal history back near one-thousand years, chasing myths and legends of a knight of steel who likely was myself in former times.

My memory is little better than your own. I can recall perhaps one hundred years in detail. Past that I depend on written records and on this rod of enchanted glass which I carry always with me. This slender wand holds a library of my memories, however much I could retain, sometimes memories of memories of memories, condensed, abstracted and reorganised. This is my record of my deeper self which I can read by sliding it into my skull through a port at its rear. I must do this only when the fullness of my thought is directed entirely upon that act, should my focus slip my consciousness might become lost in memory, or irrevocably and chaotically changed by what it finds. This truly is my greatest treasure for it gives me knowledge of myself, and my place within the world.

Many quests have I undertaken in my long existence, but my current trial is perhaps the strangest I have known, for I must journey to Marginalia, the Hyphos, that uncertain realm of timeless madness, there I must find the Fey prince 'Shadowed-Summer' and bargain with him for the ownership of his Incalculable Palace of Lies.

Impossibility upon impossibility, for many do not believe in Marginalia at all, thinking it fiction, or hallucination. I though, do believe, I sense in the deeper structures of my memories that I have been there many times, though the details escape me, and I suspect that I have been dogged and bothered by the attentions of its residents before.

Still, this is the mission impressed upon me by my obscure yet mighty patron, and it was made clear that, odd though it is, this task is of utmost and absolute importance for the safety of reality itself.

Hence, I come to the Mountains of Reality, for it is here, if anywhere, that access to Marginalia can be found.

SERAPHORMER REBOOT

Good work YOU (by which I mean ME, and all of US). Because Reality is BACK baby!

Since you (we) closed that Reality Breach, the SquidBrawl has stabilised.  Causality has cracked back into place and time has a linear flow! Now we can finally make decisions again.

However, the situation, though stable, is also DISASTROUS!

The Seraphormer, my (our) para-reality and deeply-shrouded engine of souls in a situation that I would describe as borked.

The Demon-Engine is compromised! This is a coagulator of vile supernatural fluid composed of Quileth harvested from the many layers of Uud and brought here by the bone ships of the LichJammer Captains. Now its leaking Demon Fluid everywhere! That's maybe the worst kind of leak you could possibly have.

The Atman-Engines are cold! These Hyper-Future Techno-Cores held in the void outside the central Seraphormer provide the sacred code which allows us to shape souls! The Atman Engines live at vastly accelerated time. The longer they stay cold, the harder they will be to start up again!

The Imaginary Suns are out! Stolen from the minds of dreaming gods long ago, these suns provide power for the whole Seraphormer! We are working on residual power for now, but without them nothing else will work for very long!

And worst of all, the Delusion Engine is off! The Delusion Engine maintains the shroud of unlikelihood around the Pocket-Realm which holds the Seraphormer, AND it sends a cognitive field out into every layer of Uud which prevents any intelligent being from even considering that we might exist!

That means SHE, Yggsrathaal, the mother of Entropic Wyrms, the destroyer of Esh and our, and  I can't emphasise this enough, really extremely NUMBER ONE ENEMY, can deduce and perceive our existence! The longer the Delusion Engine stays down, the more chance there is that she will!

Most of our communal mind is still totally barmy from the Reality Incursion - useless, or even dangerous.

But don't worry! I pulled together literally everyone, and everything, sane and self-aware that I could find. Yes there are only four of them, but arguably this makes them our ELITE TEAM!

Our “Elite” Team!

(Literally anyone we could grab who seemed (relatively) sane).

Fury-Warded

"Deep do I dive into that malign typhoon of the undigested damned."

A Demon-Shielded Quileth-Stoker-Founder inside an engine suit of blackened iron plates etched in pearl with interlocking warding glyphs with a rumbling engine core and a demon-grasping tri-fingered claw hand which opens to reveal a holy Quileth Vacuum trap. Just visible beneath the demon-scarring are the pearl-etched words “Burt do I Burn”. Fury-Warded is arguably slightly morally corroded from their endless bathing in, and wresting with, the raw ichor of trapped demons, but you can't fault them for willpower! Also they are massive and have a combat claw.

Five 60 Six-Six-Six Reoccurring

"Looks like it's time.. for a hyper-fix!"

A massively multiply-armed, gibbon-bodied ULTRA-REPAIRER FOUNDER. 5-60's long and gawky self-built body-suit has wild tool-handed arms, that expand into MORE ARMS, which then expand into EVEN MORE ARMS. Somewhat wild and whacky, 5-60 can climb almost anywhere and repair almost any piece of hyper-tech with anything they can find. Combat capacity - QUESTIONABLE. Mental Stability - DON'T ASK. However, for invention, personal courage and sheer can-do attitude, nothing can beat them!

Grailogos - Multi-Founder Consciousness

"My calculations cannot be comprehended by singular minds."

Grailogos is a supremely crystalline and gracile intellectual Atman-Coder founder. Their robed ceramic body supports a magnificent huge, glowing-blue fishtank head occupied by three individual Founders linked in mutually-supportive group consciousness. Grailogos can "decode" aspects of non-founder reality into glowing multicoloured cubes which float around, and which they can then 're-code' into specific para-reality effects and raw substances. Somewhat abstracted and speaking in a polyphonic chorus-song, Grailogos sometimes disagrees with themselves in times of stress.

Somo-Omos - The Uncertain One

"I am, but know not what I am."

A quantumly-uncertain Founder who guards and operates the Delusion Engine. Somo-Omos occupies a Founder-body which looks as if it were made of mirrors and strange visual projections. Their form is hard to precisely perceive, as if they were a walking Kaleidoscope. Somo-Omos is always shifting their colour and state within the projecting body and these projections are continually flowing across the surfaces of that form like a cubist impression of a technicolour cuttlefish. Somo-Omos can simulate other forms and identities, become near-invisible and even "shift" through perceptually-solid objects. They are also in the middle of a massive, and endlessly-looping identity crisis and must often be reminded of exactly who they are.

 

Lionel Walden

The Missions

(To be handled in whatever order seems best to you).

Fix the Demon-Engine

·        Penetrate into the ruined Demon-Engine.

·        Locate the ruptured seal.

·        Battle the half-Formed Quileth fluid, Corrupted Quileth-Stoker Founders and Possessed Founders who's suits have cracked.

·        To defeat the half-processed Quileth force it into a specific shape. Provide it with Fears. Either your own, or draw raw residual fear matrices from the ATMAN-ENGINES. (Five 60 Six-Six-Six Reoccurring can probably locate some, if you can get an Atman-Engine semi-functional.)

Problem? - using the fear matrices in this way may lead, to some souls without fear, to some with demon-linked fears, and others with their fears replaced or re-coagulated from Quileth - with UNKOWABLE RESULTS.

NEXT? - You Need - MORE QUILETH. And not from a distant source – our only LichJammer Captain is fulfilling a mission which only they can do.

A closer location is available; the Waste around Blackwater

As such, the Soul 'Wreaca' has been instantiated and will begin - A WALK IN THE WASTE.

Re-Start The Delusion Projector, And Fast

The Delusion Engine which keeps the Seraphormer secret and safe is offline.

·        Find your way through the maze of dreams and illusions born from its slow collapse.

·        Fix the umbral shrouding and Mistake-Generators.

·        Kickstart it with some of those INVISIBLE BEASTS from the Outer Void.

·        To process them, you will need to jam them in the Demon-Engine and refine them into Pneumo-Mystification, then pipe that straight to the Delusion Projector!

·        That should get it working, but its like running a petrol engine on raw crude oil.

NEXT?

You need LIES, and not just the ordinary kind. A massive storehouse of pure deception, right from the source. Only a Fae Emperor in the depths of Margenalia commands such Grand Palaces of Lies.

As such, the soul Cir Talox Blithe, the Worghast Knight has been instantiated for - A MEETING IN MARGENALIA.

Missions In The Outer Void

Gerardo Dottori - Burning City

The Atman-Engines and Imaginary Suns are both located in the Void of the Outer-Serpahormer, a zero-g outer-space pocket realm the size of Jupiter.

There is Chaos in the Outer Rings!

A Rocket-Powered rebellion is in process. The huge angel-form Founders set to guard and maintain the GigaTech of the Seraphormer are still in the grip of the SquidBrawl, now also a SpaceBrawl!

Not only that but the Void has been infiltrated by Photon-Negative Hypermutating Bioforms:  INVISIBLE BEASTS!

We think these are low level interstellar predators which slipped into the Seraphormer pocket-dimension during the SquidBrawl. Presumably they came to feed upon the Imaginary Suns. Now, through some strange interaction with the black, dying imaginary suns and the collapsing penumbra of the Delusion Engine, they have Hyper-Evolved!

Anyone venturing out into the Void will have to contend with;

·        Avoiding, or ending, the Rocket-Powered Rebellion.

·        Escaping, or defeating, the Photon-Negative Bioforms!

Void Mission - Restart/Rebuild the Atman-Engines!

·        Find a still-functioning Atman-Engine amongst the chaos of the Outer Void.

·        Re-connect it to the Seraphormer.

·        Transmit yourself inside the digital hyper-reality of the Atman-Engine and see what is needed to get it back online and functioning.

NEXT?

You need WORLD-BUILDING HYPER-DATA. Massive data loss and corruption means the Atman-Engines need a huge input of Raw Data, enough to Shape a World.

This can likely only be found in the layer of the Uud-Reality located 50,000 years in the future, where interstellar Empires bloat and war amidst the prismatic stars. There perhaps some ruined or forgotten god-tier hyper-mind can be located and returned to the Seraphormer.

As such Nebulon Brax, Captain of the LychJammer Tyche's Hand has been recruited for - A MISSION TO GLEAMSPACE.

Void Mission - Re-Ignite the Imaginary Suns!

·        Hop between the darkened suns.

·        Try to find at least one with some ergs of energy in it.

·        Delve into those suns cold cores, explore the cold abandoned Palaces of Fire within and try to discover some means of re-ignition.

NEXT? You need - A STOLEN SUN. A jewel containing the Dream of Hyperion, the solar imaginings of a sleeping god which could, in theory, start a chain reaction to re-ignite the Imaginary Suns.

Its last known location: Possessed by one of the hidden Emperors of the Grey city of Glaem.

As such, the soul 'Lady Amoret' as been instantiated and will begin - TO STEAL A SUN.

The Resulting Quests

Good news! With the Seraphormer (partially) active, we can now send Souls into Uud to grab the resources needed to keep us operational!

Less good news: we have a limited number of souls ready to go, and limited power to send them.

Essentially we had to pick the best three for the missions we have, and give the last one to this Skeleton Dude because he has his own Space Ship.

A Meeting In Margenalia

https://twitter.com/anonamos_701/status/1097650144323895297

Cir Talox Blithe, the Knight with the Iron Heart,  is sent to the Mountains of Reality, there to seek a way to the deepest tendrils of the Eld-Realm of Margenalia to bargain with a Fae Emperor for possession of one of their Palaces of Lies, each one greater than the last, the largest within the smallest, and the key to the last hidden in the first.

To Steal a Sun

Gustav Klimt - Dame mit Fächer

In the Grey Cities of Blackwater, the ridiculous, somewhat-craven, vain and occasionally brilliant Lady Amoret is sent to the Grey City of Glaem, there to penetrate the Hidden Palace at the centre of its Megastructure and perform the greatest theft of the modern age - to steal from the Emperor of Glaem the Frozen Dream of a Sleeping Solar God.

A Mission to Gleamspace

Corey Harris https://www.reddit.com/r/Art/comments/baahqk/space_skeleton_digital_2000_x_2000_px/

Nebulon Brax, the undead Captain of the LichJammer 'Tyche's Hand' must take his bone ship of solar sails, and his skeleton crew, into a realm where his magic will be near-useless. He must travel to GleamSpace, the prismatic realm 50,000 years in the future of Uud, a time dominated by Hypertechnology and decaying utopias and there seem a Loom of Realities; a god-machine powerful enough to restore and renew the Hyper-Data of the Seraphormers Atman-Engines.

A Walk in the Waste

Jab Jira https://www.artstation.com/artwork/6VbWW

'Wreaca' the Half-Orc mother, most solitary of the Waste Walkers, yet most skilled, must venture again into the caustic grey hell which surrounds Blackwater - the Waste of Yggsrathaal. There she must face the untold dangers of that realm, the Orc-Kind who form part of her own bloodline, dark agents of the Teratarchies and the Spawn of Yggsrathaal and her Pale Courts. But simple survival is not enough, for Wreaca hunts not monsters, but Quileth - Demon Kind itself, long sleeping since the fall of Esh, and her mission is not the demons destruction, but it’s capture.

SquidBrawl at the Seraphormer

#1

“You seem confused Agent. Take a blow to the brain in the SquidBrawl maybe?

Hold still while I info-dump you, and concentrate because this will go FAST.

YOU are me, and we, all of us, are expressions of the Eldritch Founder, a meta-reality being who’s thoughts and opinions are literally split into different bodies and factions, all so we can run the Seraphormer.

What’s the Seraphormer?

Its this giant moon-sized stitched-together ultramachine we are in right now! And its FALLING APART!

WHY??? BECAUSE REALITY IS BROKEN and everyone is FIGHTING LIKE HELL!!!

As soon as reality fractured, a titanic SquidBrawl broke out between two factions of us! Look at this mess;

	The	are flailing at the..
1	Hyperintelligent ATMAN encoders	Iron-Chambered Quileth Stokers
2	Deep-Cover Incursion Specialists	Punk Sorcerer Co-Operative
3	LichJammer Ambassador Faction	Timeline Confabulators
4	Penumbral clerks of the Occlusion Engine	Rocket-Suit Space Repair Crew
5	Gene Coder Cubical Drones	Cyber-Tentacle Gang
6	Ectoplasm-Ejaculating Ghost Gang	Post-Singularity fluorescent techno-squid

It’s impossible to get anything done with this brawl going on! And the reality breakdown means I can only communicate with you like this, through a pattern of choices.

What do you want to do?”

Find the Perpetrator – Go to #2

Reassemble Reality!- Go to #3

Meditate – Go to #4

#2

Good idea, time to do some detective work! What’s first?

Track the source of the Reality Breach – Go to #12

Hit the Streets – Go to #7

#3

Its time to FIX REALITY ITSELF!

Nothing will stop you! (For long, probably).

Go to #12

#4

Yes of course, True Understanding was always within you, if you can only settle the waters of your mind and become one with the infinite Dao, the silent darkness beyond all things. Surely the answer lies there.

You undulate softly as your mind drifts down, down down through the subtle enumerations of being, through the illusion of Time, to a point where your answers are already clear within the great oneness…

Go to #19

#5

Somehow you get away, wounded, beaten and dizzy from the violence and from reality shattering all around you, suddenly you hear a voice!

Go to #1

#6

You should never have tried to access meta-reality. Somehow you have become trapped in a time loop!

Go to #16

#7

Ok you don’t actually have streets as this is an interdimensional megastructure, but you can certainly try to shut down this riot! But how?

Use that silver tongue. Go to #8

Fear is the only language they will understand! Go to #10

#8

Yes the fine art of Diplomacy, but which subtle tactic is best for you to take?

	medium	message
1	Table bashing demagoguery	Vague dithering beneficent promises.
2	Soft voiced sympathy	We’ll redistribute resources!
3	Schitzo-cryptic arcane word-labyrinth	Fix their minds on an outside enemy.
4	High toned speechifying	Threats (go to #9)
5	Break into song!	I feel your pain!
6	Crying fit and shaking meltdown	Deep philosophy. What is reality after all?

Did it work?

Yes!  - Go to #11

No?!?!?!

Ok, time to amp up the verbiage - Go to  #10

Or…

Screw that! And screw these nerds! Time for a BEATING. Go to #14

#9

Randomly scanning through eh? Very meta-textual.

Go to #6

#10

THREATS

	Manner	Settle down or…
1	Eye-bugging inner tension and spat words	Eject you into Unspace!
2	False-friendly fatherly manner	Turn you inside out and send you to Marginalia!
3	AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE	Memory wipe and a trip to Uud
4	Crack a few jokes before the threats, why not?	Cortex removal and turned into children’s balloons!
5	Ejaculate ink and scream ATMAN code	Time-loop the lot of you!
6	Hurl things at them between words	Set to dream-delving the darkest Sleeping Gods!

Did it work?

Yes! – Go to #11

If it it didn’t:

To calm things down, go to #8

To ACCELERATE them, go to #13

#11

Yes the place is finally clear and silent, the SquidBrawl is over. Peace reigns!

Oh dreaming gods, its horrible! Look at the bodies! The Carnage! Torn fragments of meta-flesh everywhere and squid-ink staining the walls! What did we do? What did I do?

Are we monsters?

Go to #18

#12

Damn, this place is Cephalopod CHAOS. Tentacles and Meta-Ink graffiti everywhere! Seems like your ultra-personality is having a total meltdown.

You need to find that reality breach, but you have no chance of doing it until you settle this SquidBrawl, but how?

Go BERSERK. Go to #13

Join a Faction and turn them against each other, just like Yojimbo. Go to #15

Get smooth as butter, use that charm. Go to #8

#13

RAAAAGGHHHH!! ITS RAGE O-CLOCK!!

NOW IS THE TIME FOR BLOOD.

Go to #14

#14

A HUGE FIGHT ENSUES!

	You try	They counter with..
1	Wall-bouncing Squid kung fu!	Bear-attack savagery. The teeth! Re-roll!
2	Hyperfocused dimensional mind blasts!	Memory-annihilation flail! (Go to #1)
3	Murder-Apsara Dance Style!	Chronometric labyrinth! (Go to #6)
4	Electrical Tentacle Coil Attack!	Dharma-Bomb! (Go to #15)
5	DUAL-WIELD URANIUM NUNCUCKS!	Illusory mind-palace Inception blow! (Go to #19)
6	JUST CHOKE THE ASSHOLE	Nothing! You defeat them! (Go to #11)

#15

Very cunning. Using the Art of War you aid both groups against each other, secretly leading them into a fruitless attritional conflict.

Of course now both of those groups are united by hated of you..

But whatever! It pretty much kind a worked! Go to #11

#16

Ah ha! Don’t worry, you are pretty sure you have found your way out of this mind-wiping time-loop thing. Just need to try this….

Go to #6

#17

It worked, you stuff this meta-biological stuff into the crack in reality like jamming newspaper into a broken pipe. Yes its probably a horrific botch of a job, but it works!

You wonder for a moment about how exactly this breach was created..

Oh well, this kind of thing is only to be expected in the Seraphormer. You’ll probably never know!

(12# o tog – sdrawkcab siht daer nac uoy sselnU)

On to #19!

#18

Wait, this stuff is itself a meta-material!

It’s a little bit radical, but maybe your could use this stuff to fix the reality breach

Go to #17

#19

The Reality Breach is Fixed!

All is well. You have stabilised the situation and brought balance to the Founders Mind. A deep sense of calm fills you. Congratulations Founder.

(Wait, do you know how you even did this?  – Go to #20)

#20

Of course, you repaired the reality breach with FLEX TAPE.

Wait, that’s completely insane and makes no sense. And this flex-tape actually looks like something disturbingly organic, like the strange textured skin of some being from beyond reality…

What did you do? Who’s skin is this? How was reality broken?

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?

Go to #21

#21

It’s a PARA-REALITY INVADER!

Something from outside the Seraphormer has found its way in! That’s what caused the breach! What even is it?

	Looks like a	and its..
1	Grey crystal angel	Tearing at the reality gap!
2	Caustic shadow trilobite	Doing some kind of ritual!
3	Skeleton ultra-golem	Summoning more of its kind!
4	Post-singularity kill-AI	Meditating.
5	Pain-Armoured Demonform	Feasting on Founder flesh!
6	A radical crazed Founder!	Performing the Kali-Yuga dance!

Go to #22

#22

The Invader notices you!

“So, fragment, somehow you have walked the weave of consequence and choice and detected my presence here. It will not be enough. Do you think your petty mind and weak tentacles can defeat me? COME FORTH AND TRY!”

A Battle is on! Go to #14