The CADAVEROUS Earth

The brows of men by the despairing light Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits The flashes fell upon them; some lay down And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd; And others hurried to and fro, and fed hurried Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up With mad disquietude on the dull sky, The pall of a past world; and then again With curses cast them down upon the dust, And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd terrified, And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd And twin'd themselves among the multitude, stingless---they Hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food. And War, which for a moment was no more, Did glut himself again: a meal was bought With blood, and each sate sullenly apart Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left; thought---and All earth was but one thought--and that was death Immediate and inglorious; and the pang entrails---men Of famine fed upon all entrails--men Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devour'd. - Lord Byron, from Darkness

Setting by: Steerpike

Table of Contents
Earth a dim place, ancient beyond knowledge. Once it was a tall world of cloudy mountains mountains and bright rivers, and the sun was a white blazing ball. Ages of rain and wind have beaten and rounded the granite, and the sun is feeble and red. The continents have sunk and risen. A million cities have lifted towers, have fallen to dust. In place of the old peoples a few thousand strange souls live. There is evil on Earth, evil distilled by time Earth is dying and in its twilight - Jack Vance, from The Dying Earth Themes ..................................................................................................................................................... 8 Grotesquerie .......................................................................................................................................... 8 Transformation ...................................................................................................................................... 8 Addiction and Appetite ......................................................................................................................... 9 Adventure .............................................................................................................................................. 9 The Quick, the Dead, and the Inhuman ................................................................................................ 9 The Cadaverous Earth - Beginners Guide and FAQ ........................................................................11 World Synopsis ....................................................................................................................................11 General Themes .................................................................................................................................. 12 Map......................................................................................................................................................... 13 The Twilight Cities ................................................................................................................................ 14 Somnambulon, The Sleepwalkers City.............................................................................................. 18 Crepuscle, The Mottled City, The City of Red and Black .................................................................. 18 Skein, City of Silk, The Clockwork City ............................................................................................ 18 Macellaria, City of Bodysnatchers, The Maggot City ........................................................................ 19 Dolmen, City of Spiders ..................................................................................................................... 20 Moroi, The Gaunt City, City of the Elder Tree ................................................................................... 20 Lophius, The Corsair City, City of the Lamprey ................................................................................ 21 Erebh, City of Abysm, City of Basalt Towers, City of the Fell Breath............................................... 21 Marainein, City of the Wasting God ................................................................................................... 22 The Slaughter-lands .............................................................................................................................. 23 Grave-Spawn ......................................................................................................................................... 35 Bricoleur ............................................................................................................................................. 35 Eidolons .............................................................................................................................................. 36 Geists................................................................................................................................................... 36 Ghilan .................................................................................................................................................. 38 Haunts ................................................................................................................................................. 39 Shades ................................................................................................................................................. 40 Zehrer .................................................................................................................................................. 41 Zombies............................................................................................................................................... 42 Inhumans ............................................................................................................................................... 43 Hagmen ............................................................................................................................................... 44

Gorgons ............................................................................................................................................... 45 Jatayi ................................................................................................................................................... 45 Jinni ..................................................................................................................................................... 46 Leechkin .............................................................................................................................................. 47 Lilix ..................................................................................................................................................... 48 Mantids ............................................................................................................................................... 49 Naghini ................................................................................................................................................ 50 Waxborn .............................................................................................................................................. 51 Zerda ................................................................................................................................................... 52 Bestiary .................................................................................................................................................. 54 Bloodwood Tree .................................................................................................................................. 54 Gorgefly .............................................................................................................................................. 54 Ingurgitatrix ........................................................................................................................................ 56 Marrowmoth ....................................................................................................................................... 56 Piranha Rat .......................................................................................................................................... 57 Shaik-toruch (Sand-rays) .................................................................................................................... 57 Warworm ............................................................................................................................................. 59 Xsur ..................................................................................................................................................... 60 Oneiroi.................................................................................................................................................... 61 Gobble and Slake ................................................................................................................................ 61 The Goremother .................................................................................................................................. 61 Icelus ................................................................................................................................................... 62 Characters ............................................................................................................................................. 64 Lucius and Tormbolge ........................................................................................................................ 64 Felix Rhadcuth .................................................................................................................................... 64 The Scarred Gentlemen....................................................................................................................... 65 Vortenza .............................................................................................................................................. 66 Ezekiel Khaan ..................................................................................................................................... 67 Old Gran Corpse ................................................................................................................................. 68 Mr. Rasp .............................................................................................................................................. 69 Diseases .................................................................................................................................................. 71 Blanchphage ........................................................................................................................................ 71 Eyeblight ............................................................................................................................................. 71 Geist Infection ..................................................................................................................................... 72 Harrowflux .......................................................................................................................................... 72 Spectre-plague..................................................................................................................................... 73 Gods and Religion ................................................................................................................................. 74 Baubo .................................................................................................................................................. 74 The Bloodletter ................................................................................................................................... 76 Melmoth the Wanderer ........................................................................................................................ 76 Verlum ................................................................................................................................................. 77 The Beast Gods ................................................................................................................................... 77 Hirud ................................................................................................................................................... 78 The Star-Gods ..................................................................................................................................... 78 The Leering God ................................................................................................................................. 78 Witchcraft .............................................................................................................................................. 80 Eldritch Theory ................................................................................................................................... 81 Nectar .................................................................................................................................................. 82 Hexes................................................................................................................................................... 82

Glyphs ................................................................................................................................................. 82 Demons ............................................................................................................................................... 83 The Membrane Wars and the Great Fettering ..................................................................................... 84 Languages .............................................................................................................................................. 86 The Occident.......................................................................................................................................... 88 The Slouching-devil Mountains .......................................................................................................... 88 The Tallow Plains................................................................................................................................ 91 The Serrated Coast .............................................................................................................................. 92 The Southern Swamps ........................................................................................................................ 93 The Aurelian Tundra ........................................................................................................................... 95 Moroi ...................................................................................................................................................... 98 The Three Arbours ............................................................................................................................ 100 Ambery ............................................................................................................................................. 101 Suckle-town ...................................................................................................................................... 102 The Boil ............................................................................................................................................ 105 Lophius................................................................................................................................................. 107 The Teeth............................................................................................................................................110 Greenfang ........................................................................................................................................... 111 Crooked-Finger ..................................................................................................................................112 The Vipers Head ...............................................................................................................................113 Crucible ..............................................................................................................................................114 The Talon ...........................................................................................................................................115 Murmur Isle .......................................................................................................................................116 Hunger Rock ......................................................................................................................................117 Corsairs, Caverns, Drugs, and Demons: Adventure in the City of the Lamprey ..........................117 Premises and Hooks ...........................................................................................................................118 Investigations .................................................................................................................................... 121 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................................... 127 Macellaria ............................................................................................................................................ 135 Blood, Bodies, Madness, and Monsters: Adventure in the Maggot City ....................................... 144 Premises and Hooks .......................................................................................................................... 144 Investigations .................................................................................................................................... 147 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................................... 151 Skein ..................................................................................................................................................... 156 Fiends, Flesh, Clockwork, and Corpses: Adventure in the City of Silk ......................................... 165 Premises and Hooks .......................................................................................................................... 165 Investigations .................................................................................................................................... 169 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................................... 174 Dolmen ................................................................................................................................................. 179 Glossary ............................................................................................................................................... 189 Authors Remarks ............................................................................................................................... 200 Back Page Reviews .............................................................................................................................. 205

MEMORY
The adventurer is old, grizzled, with dark scars and hair turned prematurely gray. Pistols hang from his belt in leather holsters, and a notched sword leans against the wall, pitted with use, spattered with old stains. His eyes are hardened from a lifetime in the wastes. He draws in a mouthful of smoke from his carved wooden pipe and fills his mind with memories. He has seen a gruesome myriad of sights, gazed upon vistas of mutilated grandeur, hunted hideous and sometimes eerily beautiful monstrosities across the thousand twisted landscapes of the Slaughter lands, conversed with corpses and things whose ancestors might once have been men. The Twilight Cities, those vast monuments that reared to stab at the rent and mottled skies, were the most stunning and the most horrifying, in their sheer density of life and death ramshackle Lophius with its briny canals and its many malformed little gods; Erebh, poised over the pit, at the end of the world; Marainein with its thousand faded towers and its leprous god king; Crepuscle with its carnival confusion of peoples and its bustling thoroughfares; the crazed clockwork and quivering spires of Skein; Moroi with its great tree and its blighted slums, teeming with the mad; the winding market streets of Baranauskas, ancient beyond reckoning, air thick with the cloy of blood and perfume; the black silence and discordant laughter of Somnambulon; the grim, alien hive of Dolmen with buildings like stony cobwebs. He has tasted each of them in turn and wandered far beyond their walls, from the shores the Fevered Ocean to the wailing rupture of the Suppuration. His career was long, full of violence and strangeness. With a shade who fought in a suit of enamelled armour and a pair of witches, lovers, whose books brimmed with dark sigils a catalogue of death, each eldritch vivisection or evisceration more exotic than the last the mercenary had plundered the tombs of the Gengrymar, wiped out in the harrowflux plagues in the final centuries of the Desiccation, before turning to the cliffside mansions of the Uzull along the Serrated Coast, their bejewelled cities long claimed by the tides, leaving only a few seaweed clad spires and derelict palaces along the broken shores, their marble faades yellowed and eroded. After one of the hexers was snatched by a roaming xsur carried off to some distant eyrie to have her bones added to the barbed, leathery creatures nest and the other was devoured by a predatory fungus on the outskirts of the southern fens, he and the shade had traveled north, joined the caravan of some blind seeress on her way to the Gaunt City. Theyd trekked through the mutable randomness of the Tallow Plains evading the aggressive, feral architecture, grown wild in that fragmented space, haggling with the half mad nomads of the region and repelling the occasional waxborn before arriving, at last, at the iron clad and glyph etched gates of the city, a place of asylums and vampire machines. He and the shade had parted and hed headed north with a band of pilgrims bound for the Shrine of Sighing Winds. On their way theyd passed through a village with huts fashioned from manskin and human bones, ruled by merciless ghilan elders grown corpulent with the flesh of their mortal tribes sacrifices, sitting in the dark of their macabre hall and gnawing on the remnants of their periodic carrion feasts. Later, aboard a clockwork train heading towards Skein, hed helped defend their carriage from a group of brigands armed with kukri knives and flintlocks and poisoned scimitars, cruel faced men in the employ of Red Gregory himself, a gunslinger warlord and a living legend. At the Shrine, awed by the daeva that resided there, hed briefly become a neophyte, shaved his head and devoted himself to the Mysteries of Shaaltelathiel, learned herbcraft and meditated in the whispering stone gardens for a few months before growing bored with asceticism. Then, in the shadow of the Slouching devil Mountains, hed chased bounties in the

narrow gorges and scabrous badlands of the foothills, fought off wolves with tentacled maws and screeching harpy crows with cherubic human faces, delved into the dank tunnels built by gigantic and long dead architects. With a trio of hunters a droll axeman with brooding eyes, a lilix pistolier, and a sarcastic swordsmen from the City of the Lamprey hed wandered eastwards towards the lands around the Sinew River, then north into Barrow Scrub. Here, in one of the subterranean ruins of the defunct cestoid Imperium, a surreal maze like the bowels of some enormous nightmare creature, theyd joined a party of zealous Striga worshippers to eradicate a cult of the wormfolk and their foolish human followers whod been gutting the kidnapped children of a nearby settlement, spilling blood on the foul altar of the Ravager Worm. Later, pallid and weary with the sapping blanchphage of Etiolation, hed glimpsed the petrified god itself, the great stone corpse of the god leech Hirud or so some claimed. His travels brought him south, eventually, towards the frontier of Dour Erg. In an impromptu duel over a hand of cards in some dilapidated saloon hed killed three men in cold blood and fled the justice of the thugs who ran the town, was caught, escaped, nearly died of thirst before crawling through the Butchers Gate of the Maggot City. After recovering from his ordeal he became a thief, picking pockets and breaking into storehouses with a rookery of men and women in Resurrection Row. Later, jaded with such petty parasitism, hed signed on with a Robber Guild and, for a time, worked with a callous ghul cutthroat antiquarian and his hulking, stitch work servitor, an obedient hunchbacked horror with piston driven limbs and the grafted tail of a giant scorpion. Together theyd plumbed the ruins of the Second Tsathii Republic, drowned in the Red Ravishing, and the old, shattered kingdoms of Voldanc, destroyed by the Scourge Armies during the Membrane Wars, their castle cities of Scrutatos and Vertegrazze left to crumble slowly into dust. Only the servants of the Voldanc masters remained, elementals bound to eternal servitude, endlessly repeating now meaningless chores in the empty manors of their creators, ignoring the mercenary and his companions as they gathered those few artefacts untouched by prior looters. A pack of fetch had torn the ghul limb from limb on the lonely trail back to Baranauskas, the murderfolk swarming over the grave spawns creation. The adventurer ran into the glowering dusk and killed all that pursued him, clutching the grimoire of a court warlock to his chest. He returned to thieving, took up with the leader of the rookery, an icy and ruthless woman who broke his heart and cast him out of the city. He headed further south, back towards the swamps, fleeing love and death and memories, though all followed him as doggedly as Screamwood hounds. He sought comfort first with the courtesans of Per Bashti, then with the gods of the Driftwood District. He became a priest again, this time to an aspirant insect headed godling, but the deitys shrine was ransacked by rival fanatics and he returned to his former profession. Briefly he ran with a swordsman poet, a hagman outcast, and a warrior monk, tracking down leechkin whod succumbed to the thirst in the sweltering, demon haunted murk of the swamps. They dispersed when work grew infrequent and he joined the Pale Legion, a mercenary company based in Crepuscle drawn south by skirmishes between merchants selling to the zerda and the voracious mantid tribes of the Firesong Marches. He fought in a dozen battles and rose to the rank of corporal before being discharged for drunkenness in the City of Red and Black. He exhales. The memories blur together, but one disjointed chapter of a long and bloody story..

(Wolf with Tentacled Maw)

Themes
Grotesquerie
Dead men shuffle alongside the living, while creatures once-human and otherwordly cavort in the shadows of twisted ornate towers or ruinous temples. This is a world of casual cannibalism and mutilation, stalked by demons and predatory nightmares, by vampiric and unwholesome things. Deformity and madness are commonplace, murder is a frequent necessity, and ugliness is everywhere. Here are the irrational and chimerical oneiroi, the aberrant hagmen, the bizarre leechkin, the morbific shades, and the conniving, many-armed lilix. An ungainly, repellant cestoid pulls a rickshaw through the streets of Lophius; a corsair king unfurls patchwork sails fashioned from flayed human faces; a homunculus spreads its clotted wings and shrieks in longing for its Hellish homeland. But though it holds the capacity to repulse and disgust, the grotesque can also fascinate and compel. There is a paradoxical beauty in ugliness, an aestheticism to the morbid and macabre. A crumbling city can be beautiful, as can the scummed surface of a putrid lake, or the necrotic flesh of a rotting corpse. There is a decadent glory in degeneration, liberation in damnation, apotheosis through degradation, and purity in filth.

Transformation
In the innermost chambers of Somnambulon, a pale and frightened Childe merges with an aeons-old parasite, offered up as the latest incarnation of an eternally recurrent entity. In Dolmen a newly freed slave-woman has two pairs of bulbous red eyes tattooed on her forehead, her own eyelids fluttering with the heady pleasure of her liberation. In the tissueshops and glyph parlors of Baranauskas men and women pay to be refashioned, their bodies cut and stitched and hexed, their flesh fused and inked and cauterized, grafted with alien appendages, with slabs of muscle, with bony plates, with arcane sigils. Yet not all transformation is transcendental. The Cadaverous Earth is a world poisoned with bizarre and virulent toxins. A starving man who ate the flesh of the dead wakes up as a sliteyed ghul; a miner descends from the Slouching-devil Mountains clutching an eldritch fossil with elongated and talon-tipped fingers, the left side of his face withered with Slow Plague. Those that drink the Red Rain devolve into dark-eyed murderfolk, the grinning, malignant fetch; those that bathe in Lesion Sea degenerate into scaled and membranous icthoi; those that gaze into a gorgons eyes are afflicted with the madness of the abyss. The ancient words graven on the walls of Crepuscles sprawling labyrinth spawn the babbling maze-born, while

cacklegeists spread their horrifically infectious laughter and a hundred diseases wrack the teeming slums of the Twilight Cities.

Addiction and Appetite

Some lust for blood, some for coin, some for drugs or sex or youth or power or death. Witch-addicts daily inject themselves with the throbbing golden sap known as nectar, and daily they go mad in droves, or burn from the inside out from overdose. Leechkin moan for blood from their rasping mouths or rampage through the southern swamps in thirsty rage, while lilix and wealthy ghilan libertines drink it from overflowing and antique chalices. Hideous and gray-skinned eidolons garb themselves in youthful glamers sustained through the vitality of their prey, while demons sup on more abstract energies. Everyone wants something. Everyone must feed. Even as it rots this world hungers and consumes.

Adventure
Adventurers come in many varieties. One might play as an exiled baron of the Lords Revenant, a vampiric aristocrat possessed by an heirloom spirit; or a member of one of the Robber Guilds of Baranauskas, a grizzled tomb raider contending with malevolencies and the elements in the Slaughterlands, questing for lost technology; or a sneak from Lophius, some tattooed, moustachioed footpad or duelist dealing death with knife and pistol; or an arachnoid assassin, a male lilix courtier with a wit to match his deadliness; or a magister attended by a homunculus leashed with a warded silver chain; or a half-mad witch-savant, an ichor-junkie hurling drug-fueled hexes; or even a misshapen graftpunk with stitches or inked sigils still raw from the augmentations of the tissue-shop or the glyph parlor. Adventures tend to oscillate between survival in an unforgiving and hazardous wilderness and gritty urban intrigue. Adventurers might loot haunted tomb-cities in the Slaughter-lands or mount expeditions to retrieve lost secrets from abandoned libraries where the dead walk. They might pursue bounties on brigands and savage leechkin and nameless demons in the clotted swamplands of Lophius, or escort caravans for the Resin Merchants across the disconcerting amorphousness of the Tallow Plains where the waxborn roam. They might become prospectors in the Slouching-devil Mountains in search of urfossils, or scholars seeking the lost poetic incantations of Vurlu, or street-fighters for hire in the chaotic markets of Baransauskas, or perhaps gentleman burglars preying on the aristocracy of Somnambulon. They could converse with sentient automata clothing themselves in flayed human skins, forge contracts with demons, hunt creatures born of the Suppuration, attend grand masques in alien spires, drink blood and whiskey with grave-spawn in riverside ghul-bars and saloons, battle nests of fettergeists in the undercity of Skein, or poach tenebrals in the shadowy hunting grounds of magister-princes.

The Quick, the Dead, and the Inhuman

The Cadaverous Earth is home to many sapient entities that aren't human. Living humans are known as the quick; grave-spawn, the heliophobic undead of this world, make up nearly a third of its population, strains of creatures afflicted by eldritch parasites or psychic domination. Then there are inhumans, "monstrous" and often bizarre creatures with sometimes bestial features. A very few of this last group are "daevas" - immortals, ageless but distinct from the undead. Finally there are the demons and the oneiroi, alien beings from beyond the Cadaverous Earth, visitors from the otherworldly Hells or

manifestations of the Aether, nightmares made flesh.

The Cadaverous Earth - Beginners Guide and FAQ

Following Luminous Crayons setting primer tactic for the (brilliant) Jade Stage, heres a relatively brief introduction for the Cadaverous Earth: its now developed pretty substantially (over 60 000 words, roughly 135 pages, at the time of writing, including the stories and adventure outlines), far beyond what I initially expected. While Im striving for a very detailed setting, it does make for the dread wall o text, and while the introduction does serve as a decent opening to the setting it isnt intended as a synopsis per se. Ill likely update this thread every now and then, especially if CE undergoes any significant transformations. Please feel free to post questions and comments here and on the main

thread. Here also is an IRC Q&A for the Cadaverous Earth. World Synopsis
The World Is Old; Very Old - The Cadaverous Earth riffs off the Dying Earth subgenre, which itself might be seen as an outgrowth of post-apocalyptic fiction. There have been dozens upon dozens of cataclysms, wars, empires, etc. Continents have sunk and risen; species died out or evolved. A vast palimpsest of civilizations lies beneath the surface of the world - an endless, largely forgotten history. As a result motifs of the setting include decay, death, and ruin. Technology and Magic Are Nearly Indistinguishable, Ubiquitous, and Largely Misunderstood - Clockwork, biotechnology, eldritch experimentation, grafting, necromancy, diabolism, steam-power, arcane tattooing, electricity, gas-power, divination, mysticism, and psionics are all present to one degree or another and often mingle, merge, and conflate. Undead Are People Too - Many of the undead, or grave-spawn, of the Cadaverous Earth are sentient and relatively non-malevolent: while some city-states classify them as second-class citizens or even abominations, most accept them as valid members of society. Ghouls - or ghilan - are a playable race; vampiric industrialists control vast territories; rotting corpses made animate by extra planar parasites, ancient incubi masquerading as handsome young men, and shuffling, psychically dominated zombies rub shoulders with living humans on a day-to-day basis. Because grave-spawn are largely nocturnal (with a few notable exceptions), this leads to the development of cities that never truly sleep - Twilight Cities. Carrion Crawlers Were a Major Cultural Force - The now-defunct cestoid Imperium, an incredibly powerful regime of horrifying wormfolk very roughly analogous to carrion crawlers in the Cadaverous Earth, once reigned over the majority of the known earth. Their bizarre, hideous, non-Euclidean subterranean cities still exist, slowly collapsing under the weight of the world above; many of the races that populate the world may be former slave-

species of the cestoids. Now the cestoids are a pariah race, barely tolerated in the Twilight Cities, driven into the sewers. The Bizarre and the Macabre Are Commonplace - Anthropomorphic eels, spiders, and leeches; mercenaries with stitched-on limbs from otherworldly monstrosities; walking corpses, clockwork androids, and leashed demons; psychic rifts into the collective unconscious, portals to Hell-dimensions, and a plain whose geography flows like molten wax.

General Themes
Strange Shit - The Cadaverous Earth is decidedly non-Tolkienian. It aims for an aura of weirdness, horror, nausea, and baroque grandeur. Its creatures are chimerical, its denizens decadent and often outright depraved, its aesthetic grotesque in the extreme. Urban Space - The nine Twilight Cities form hubs for the setting, loci for adventure and exploration. Most people live in the cities - Somnambulon, Dolmen, Crepuscle, Skein, Erebh, Marainein, Macellaria, Lophius, and Moroi. The cities are ancient, titanic, and often dystopian, or at least violent and unsettling. Cloak-and-dagger intrigue, back alley scuffling, political manoeuvring, and similarly urban interactions abound. The cities themselves are dark, Gothic, and brooding, though often colourful and carnival as well. The Huge Wasteland - Beyond the Twilight Cities are the Slaughter-lands, a vast, unforgiving waste thats been devastated by natural, arcane, and technological disasters innumerable times. Its an enormous graveyard, haunted by demons, nightmares, hostile undead, and similar monsters. The only rain is red as blood and turns people into murderous horrors. The only oases are cancerous forests that consume any who venture within. Life Continues - For all its darkness and despair, the Cadaverous Earth remains a(n) (un)living world. Its inhabitants fight, fuck, feed, and fall in love. Life continue to thrive, consume, and perpetuate itself in an increasingly diverse array of forms.

Map

Map rendered by Nomadic

The Twilight Cities

The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms In this last of meeting places We grope together and avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men. - T.S. Eliot, from The Hollow Men

A Wanderer
For years the wanderer had shadows, dust, and haze looking thing, lost in its own dark, delirious passages. Only his most outlandish encounters had been burnt more vividly into his mind these would take much drown in the sewers of his known only silence and the banal interrupted infrequently by a umber endlessness of the vague tombstone or a monolith or a wasteland. He had been traveling meeting with some surreal so long that hed forgotten where creature. The few human (or invented a new reason each day, had seen were reduced to a banishment or exile or quest, but as time went on the past along with him. His was a grey existence, a world of blurred memory, grown faceless and inevitably away and his brain became a mottled, inward carapace plated man like a giant praying mantis, riding a wagon

hed started, or why. At first hes human like) beings the vagabondlonger to scab over and scar, or distorted figures scrawled in his subconscious.

dwindled and his mind wandered sinister as remembrance slipped Once hed met a six armed and

drawn by four mechanical horses slaughter land. There was that breathed smoke and flame. him oddities: a skull with bloodstone eyes, an embalmed something of the desert to it, and The insect man had tried to sell of the library, and of a dull, meandering dream verging

came from his own mouth. Suspicions circled vulture like in the musty air before swooping

occasionally on a nightmare. The down to gnaw at him. Was the delusion of an unhinged mind? He knew that he was mad, had long been mad, perhaps always.

foot, a fob watch with too many sun and moon seemed only to riseCity merely a mirage, the hands, a live, bottled spider, a tinyand set out of habit. To speak gilt statuette of a winged infant. took great effort. A desiccated limbo a place of droning, half with a troupe of dancers, each tattooed in garish colours and garbed in diaphanous silks, cavorting and cartwheeling through the waste. Their lips were sewn shut, each mouth stitched into a different expression; they wore jeweled of their faces. It crept up upon him wolfishly, predator brooding on the horizon, like a robed stone Yet another time hed passed by a colossus or a prowling weeping chimera, a queasy, pitiful, raving monster that constantly changed its shape, flickering through different now it had three limbs and a hairy visage, now a segmented tail, now a cluster of horns or extra eyes or wailing mouths, now a glistening chitin shell. could hold. The vagabond was brute repudiation of the masks that covered the top halves like some huge, ineluctable City.

Another time hed crossed paths heard echoes where time and size He knew that his eyes were often and sound seemed somehow soft, untrustworthy, though never and moments ran together and dissolved. before had they conceived a vision of such lurid and convincing imagination. Or was And then, without warning, the the City something more dangerous than a mere phantasm? Was it was something subtler, more sinister an illusion sent by cruel and whimsical deities to torment him, taunting him with the promise of civilization, of escape, of change, away, forever just out of reach? terrified. Had he finally died? Was this the underworld, this of seeking, never to arrive? Had he been dead for years?

monstrosity larger than the mind while always growing further overwhelmed by its defiance, its He looked around, suddenly

bodies like a fleshy kaleidoscope horizontal waste. After the appearance of such sublime, audacious verticality seemed obscene, even horrific. Tears streamed down the wanderers

omnipresent flatness, the sudden City his punishment an eternity

thin cheeks, and a sound cracked As he carried onwards the City But mostly the waste was simply and then shattered the glassy mute, carpeted with bones, with part sob and part laughter. He drew closer, assuaging his fears marked his approach: bent signs emptiness, flat and ceaseless and silence, a fragile, eggshell sound, somewhat. Detritus and ruins the remnants of past violence a was surprised to discover that it in dead languages, the rusting

husks of ancient vehicles, more bones of humans and unlikely and there a solitary wall might its edges jagged and burnt.

man thing shambled on clawed fungi, houses with beams like legs like a birds, stitched crudely fragile bones and black sockets in a dusty white cloak and cowl collapsing under their own along beside him, his face hidden creepers, planks sloughing off beneath his hood. There was a into clouds of orange wood dust. Huge ravens and raven like things infested these cadaverous places, picking at the dead. Later, the plantations began to

beasts, always more bones. Here to his thighs; a melancholy figure for windows, with roofs emerge from the blasted ground, dragged an enormous iron sword weight and walls torn apart by

After another eternity of walking cart of corpses and a tattooed the wanderer found a road, a the wasteland, impossibly old. The City grew larger with excruciating slowness, looming in the distance, quivering with and the City quickly became woman with a tentacled hand leaning on a copper staff, a gun toting fox man and a dyad of decaying path half subsumed by and a goggle clad madman

blue skinned imps and a yellow show signs of habitation, and eyed child who rode a chittering leather skinned farmhands would stare at the wanderer while they fed ugly pigs with long, black cigarillos, puffing

waves of heat. He was a pilgrim, mechanical spider and smoked

something sacred. It was his God tendrils of smoke into the bruised matted hair or milked emaciated and his doom, though whether it twilight, a lumbering giant with aurochs or queasy bovine shaped would redeem or damn him he iron skin plodding behind him. darknesses. Here the shadow of the City grew oppressive, and the sky swirled with a constant pall of smog. He could make out the shapes of gargantuan chimneys, sprouting out from the main bulk He met others on the road, mostly Shuddering machines appeared of the towers, which now he solitary but a few in pairs or groups, heading in the opposite behind him. It seemed that he had met them before, or others in the far distance of his past. A a whirring mechanical arm in the distance, and cracked domes like huge boils on some seemed an aeon of walking the first plantations sprung up on scrap fashioned farms with fissured hardpan earth. At first could see were actually clusters, conglomerations of buildings apparent design or artistry. The hiss of those great chimneys rose up from the City over the murmur of lowing cattle and the yowls of the feline things like hairless cats that haunted the hinterland in packs. A thrumming beat like the tread of did not yet know; but as he came Some of these fellow travelers nearer a veil seemed to lift from spoke to him (or themselves) in his mind, a new clarity replacing alien tongues, though the the numbness of the desert. wanderer never answered.

direction out into the emptiness behemoth fleshscape. After what piled atop each other without any

like them, in dreams or perhaps either side of the road: rough, pretty, raven haired woman with withered crops and fields of traveled with a slimy beast with the farms were abandoned, the mouths on its palms whose toad bones of livestock and farmers

like skin blistered in the dry air; a alike overgrown with weeds and a million footsteps or the

syncopation of a demoniac machine could be felt through the ground. As the wanderer walked the road towards the City he began to delineate its details, its endless intricacies. Towers thrust themselves skyward in a

and brick and belching pipe. cracked marble gleamed wetly like broken skin. Soon he came to the shanties. They coalesced from the ruins and farmland in patchwork

night the shanties wallowed in towers and seethed with a rustic vitality. Here and there a distant suggestion of movement in the City itself broke the statuesque stillness momentarily.

Neon signs winked and domes of the buzzing artificial light of the

aggregations, coagulating out of At night the City was ablaze with by its luminescence. The sky glowed about the horizon,

thousand needling points, spined the dust and debris and rising up light. The stars faded, consumed skeletons of glass and grey stone. in ramshackle layers a Structures slumped rust red and mishmash second city of wood in the sunlight; conglomerates beneath its stony parent,

variegated, shimmering crimson and rope and mud spreading out softening into twilight. were wreathed in smoke, all brasstumorous and uninhibited. At

The Twilight Cities are incredibly ancient: even the youngest is built on ruins many millennia old. Tombstones of sublime and faded ages long since decomposed by a series of half-forgotten cataclysms* and the gnawing erasures of time, only nine of the once-great metropolises remain inhabited, and even these are largely empty, their streets dusty and silent, their labyrinthine undercities crumbling and hollow. They fall roughly into two broad types: some, like Dolmen and Somnambulon, are ruthlessly authoritarian, oppressive city-states, while others, like Macellaria and Lophius, are chaotic and unstable, held together with more occult codes and coherencies. They writhe, devour, rut, seethe with moribund energy: putrid and hideous, like chancres on a diseased fleshscape. The Twilight Cities cling to the fringe of the so-called Slaughter-lands, a wild waste where prowling clouds of sentient eldritch radiation cause the dead to walk, otherworldly horrors from the Membrane Wars lurk in dark lairs and ruins, and the Red Rains metamorphose those who sip of them into murderous doppelgangers of their former selves. This is a world no longer merely dwindling, no longer dying, but rather become a great corpse peopled by maggots and worms, the fester-spawned parasites of a Cadaverous Earth. Though some semblance of life and animation - even happiness - still lingers within the walls of the Twilight Cities, the world seems to hover on the very lip of the abyss, teetering on the edge of final destruction. Yet even as the world spasms its last breath, sloughs free the shredded vestiges of history, bloats with corpse-gas and grins with the shriveling onset of rigor mortis, a phoenixian ember flickers in some black and cyclopean socket. Pink new flesh squirms beneath the scabbed

surface, and long-chained entities await the Great Unfettering. * The Membrane Wars, the Pallid Decimation, the dementia epidemics, the Suppuration, the Red Ravishing, the Fecundity

Somnambulon, The Sleepwalkers City

Thronged by a zombie proletariat condemned to brute psychic vassalage, Somnambulon is ruled by a ruthless clan of industrialist nobles, the so-called Lords Revenant. Existing symbiotically with a cadre of numinous parasites (the zehrer) passed down from generation to generation, the nobility possess unnaturally long lives and a variety of eldritch abilities which they use alongside their advanced technological warmachine to maintain power. Cutthroat mercantilists of the first order, the Lords Revenant enjoy the spoils of their success from their mausoleum-palaces, manses part temple, part tomb, part keep; sprawling about these ornate megaliths are the smoke-clotted factory districts, the vicious waterfront along the Sinew River, and the vast, rude, lawless shanties of the Unbound, a ragtag but defiantly lively lot whose music and carnival antics contrast harshly with the black grimness of the Lords and their shambolic subjects.

Crepuscle, The Mottled City, The City of Red and Black

Crepuscle lies at the intersection of the Radula and the Sinew Rivers, and as such is a major trading port, principally dealing with Skein, Moroi, and Somnambulon. Its streets are colourful and pastiche, cosmopolitan in the extreme: here are soul-tinkers and mechanoapes and dyadic naghini, hagmen from the south, graft peddlers and arcanists and sigil-scribes, yapping zerda foxfolk seers, mantid costermongers, ghilan of every breed and quick humans of every race. Justice is administered in stylized gladiatorial courts, wherein the defendant must defeat a pantheon of combatants (including the Blind Man, Guilt, and Reason) to secure his or her innocence. Apart from its bustling markets Crepuscle is distinguished by its labyrinth, a huge maze at the center of the city which few dare enter despite the legends of unfathomable treasure and wisdom to be found within; its walls are scriven with runes in some long-forgotten language, a tongue which those who spend too long wandering the endless passages begin to inexplicably babble in. These lost souls, the so-called mazeborn, are chained to the walls of shrines in the temples of the Gibbering Goddess, where robed neophytes record their rambling glossolalia, tending to the mutilated vocal cords and bloody tongues of their mad, decrepit charges.

Skein, City of Silk, The Clockwork City

A shuddering, iridescent carnival of a city, the snarled urban sprawl called Skein juts with a hundred cyborg spires against the bruised and hazy sky. In the clockwork factories at the citys

industrial center, a verdigris-riddled army of automaton limbs peel and unravel the delicate casements of silkworm moths. The silk is cut and dyed and woven by a horde of arthritic and ink-spotted workers in the warrens of the Sepia, Indigo, and Damask Wards. From here it is loaded by spidery iron cranes and hulking docklaborers, muscles squirming with symbiotic grafts, onto submersibles equal parts gearwork and crustacean or leathery dirigibles. These vessels clot the sluggish coils of the Radula River or ride on dry winds from the glowering Slouching-devil Mountains (winds that bring thunderstorms and murders of predatory imps and bouts of disturbing erotic nightmares). The citys other boasts: a long tradition in the crafting of expensive (but efficient) automata and a mastery of the centuries old, carefully cultivated practice of demoniac husbandry. Blurring the lines between puppets and puppeteers are the five supreme rulers of Skein, the MothKings, wizened scholar-husks who traded flesh and memory and essence to arcane entities beyond human fathoming in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aerial_house3.jpg distant past, perhaps as far back as the Membrane Wars. They brood in their shadowy, palatial spire, queasy shapes somewhere between men and corpses and diabolic phantoms; they rely on less overtly otherworldly mouthpieces to deliver their rare but irresistible commands.

Macellaria, City of Bodysnatchers, The Maggot City

The Skin Markets of Macellaria are famous across the Cadaverous Earth. Guilds of tomb raiders and grave robbers of every stripe daily plunder the nearby Slaughter-lands and even the ruinous Hecatomb Cities of the deep waste, returning with the musty relics of bygone aeons and with scores of bodies. The relics are pawned in the scabrous little Curio Bazaars, but the bulk of goods traded in Macellaria take the form of carved bones, flayed flesh, blood,

and bodies, though there are also large sections of the Markets dedicated to the trade of slaves or the solicitations of prostitutes. Here also are the glyph parlors, the graft peddlers, and the tissue-shops, where libertines, mercenaries, thugs, and adventurers purchase flesh-hexes or augment themselves with extra limbs, poison glands, or squirming cosmetic tattoos. Even the human citizens (a sizeable minority) are practicing cannibals, but the leechkin, the cestoids, the ghilan, and innumerable other grave-spawn depend on the citys grisly produce for subsistence. One will also find mercantile agents of the Lords Revenant in search of fresh bodies for labor purposes. Though superficially a liberal, even anarchic city, Macellaria is essentially ruled by a loose oligarchy composed of high-ranking members of the Robber Guilds and wealthy merchants.

Dolmen, City of Spiders

Xenophobic and isolationist in the extreme, the city of Dolmen is the domain of the lilix, spidery and matriarchal, ruling through a rigid caste-system. Below the city are the vast breeding caves, where a near-blind, colourless race of subhumans are bred as livestock and slaves, to work new tunnels into the unyielding earth or be consumed in the gory meals of their mistresses. Above these vast stone pens the citys core thrusts upwards in tiered levels, a bizarre geometric radiation of temples and armories and dwellings, trading halls and factories and torturerooms. Here the citys mortal gentry live a penumbral existence: chalky-skinned freedwomen dressed in black and red lace who tattoo extra eyes on their foreheads and keep cadres of male slaves. At the center of the upper city are the harems, banquet halls, council Courts, and living quarters for the lilix themselves, where the males are kept as footmen, concubines, and bodyguards while the women drink marrow-wines and sanguine cordials. Beyond the limits of the city is the foreigners quarter, a trading hub and center of exchange where the normally unyielding web of etiquette, taboos, and laws is relaxed and the lilix reluctantly deal with outsiders; here the Sinew River flows down from its point of origin in the nearby Chelicerae Mountains.

Moroi, The Gaunt City, City of the Elder Tree

At the center of Moroi, towering over the baroque intricacy of its rambling streets, the Elder Tree claws at the sky with gnarled fingers. Sublime, incomprehensibly huge, and old beyond all remembrance, the Elder Tree remains magnificent even as the Resin Merchants despoil its ancient grandeur. The tree is penetrated, ravished, ensnared in a vampire-machine, a twisted complexity of tubes and gears and churning pipework that invades its withered bark and sucks the god-tree dry. Two more of its brethren loom over the city like headstones, ossified and empty, the machinery entangling them turning slowly to rust.

The Resin Merchants of Moroi drain the Elder Tree of its puissant sap, the substance dubbed ichor or nectar: a potent arcane catalyst which, when ingested (usually via injection) infuses the user with eldritch energy. Those with latent power are tracked down by the citys recruiters, chained and injected with heavy doses of the drug and converted into babbling living weapons, till they burn from the inside out or go mad completely. Large amounts of the drug also finds it way into the marketplaces of Skein, Crepuscle, and Baransauskas.

Lophius, The Corsair City, City of the Lamprey

Straddling the Maw, the swampy delta where the Gland River empties itself into the Sallow Seas, Lophius is a considerably younger city than its brethren to the north and east, though still centuries old. Though predominantly human, Lophius teems with other creatures as well, many of them amphibious: leechkin, hagmen, and certain wetland strains of ghilan. Though certainly a hub for commerce, Lophius became rich through piracy and other activities generally regarded as illicit in the other Twilight Cities, acting as a haven for thieves, smugglers, and corsairs; its only government is an informal kleptocracy comprised of whatever particular clan of cutthroats last seized power. The other principle faction within Lophius is religious, as the city is a major point of pilgrimage. Idols dredged from the fens by scavengers or from the briny depths by daring submariners are erected in the ramshackle shrines of the Driftwood District, attended by a priests with seaweed in their hair and shells for holy symbols; each upstart deity competes with the others for petitioners, a thousand bickering godlings in a maze of skeletal shipwreckscum-churches and barnacled wooden fanes. Quite distinct from the carven deities of Lophius are the true gods of the swamp, nameless elemental demons of stagnation and wasting illness, brooding in the brackish waters. These fey, muttering entities are kin to the mad, primordial beast-gods of salt and nacre that slumber in the deeps of the Sallow Seas.

Erebh, City of Abysm, City of Basalt Towers, City of the Fell Breath
Far to the south, beyond even the Shadowglass Steppes where the elementals wage their unfathomable wars, teetering precariously on the lip of the Great Rictus Abysm, the Hungry Void, the World-Wound lies Erebh, City of the Fell Breath, a place of narrow, rambling buildings perched on the edge of the chasm and spilling over, clinging to the cliff-face, windows shuttered against the endless, unplumbed black below. Tall, basalt towers of unknown construction tower over the city grim monoliths presiding like featureless sentinels, their doors sealed shut, their featureless walls presenting no clue as to their purpose. The citys economy is centered around the mushroom farms that zigzag down the cliffsides, on

the quarries of obsidian, onyx, and basalt, and on the alchemical gases collected by the miasma-harvesters. Glowing crystals of eldritch power are mined from the lower depths by adventurous souls in scuttling or fluttering vessels like iron insects; these forays are dangerous, leading to frequent encounters with feral phetorii or the pale, abhuman gloomkind who haunt the lower reaches and raid the fungus farms. Abysm itself is a subject of speculation, of wonder, of religious inspiration. Scholars gaze upon it with their glyph-graved instruments; priests offer it sacrifices, hoping to appease whatever deity they claim resides in its fathomless depths Apollyon the angel of destruction, or the Leering Beast, or Yaggathoth with her million flickering tongues. Some claim that the jinni the mystical vulnerae woundfolk first emerged from the pit, others that the Great Rictus is a portal to one of the Hells, or a gateway to the prison of the Chained Ones. Whether or not gods or demonkind truly reside in Abysms deepest reaches, it is widely believed that something does there are too many reports of gigantic appendages glimpsed in the black, or of glimmering, cyclopean eyes peering up from the darkness, to wholly discount such legendry.

Marainein, City of the Wasting God

Once one of many prosperous city-states of the Gloom Coast in the far south of the Cadaverous Earth, Mareinein is even more decrepit than the other Twilight Cities, its manses decaying, its monuments eroded, its once bustling marketplaces lethargic. The thousand towers in their multitudinous colours have faded and peeled; the flames in the lighthouses have grown dim and sickly. The city is ruled, nominally, by the being called Yzsch, more commonly known as the Wasting God a once powerful entity worshipped as a deity incarnate, now grown leprous and diseased, confined to his prodigious temple-palace, babbling senile, nonsensical edicts, the rantings of a demented mind. Unfathomably old, the decaying god is attended by a retinue of priests, the true rulers of Marainein, who interpret his deranged ramblings as they please. The priests of Yzsch attend the Wasting God with enamelled goblets, with which they catch the putrid excretions of his hideous sores. From this rancid issue they derive a puissant alchemical elixir, a quasi-divine draught which endows them with unnaturally long life: the most powerful priests are many centuries old, some well over a thousand, though they scheme constantly against one another, employing eunuch assassins and esoteric curses in a brutal, baroque power-game.

The SlaughterThe Slaughter-lands

The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what looked like eternity in all directions. - Stephen King, from Gunslinger. Just A Squall It started with a smell in the air. You could taste it on the wind a metallic tang, like copper. The sky began to dim. A distant thunderclap echoed across the endless dusty plain. Some thrice-damned fool gawping at the gathering darkness muttered that it looked like rain. Then, in the distance, the mist. Not normal fog, thick and gray or gray-green or sallow, nor black like smoke, nor the brown haze of a dust-storm, but red. Abattoir red; a seething, roiling crimson. We took cover as it drew closer, threw tarpaulins over the caravan, the damn horses neighing and pawing the hardpan. Already you could hear it, that steady roar, pounding the desert, mingling with the crackle of the storm-clouds, getting nearer. It churned the ground to viscous mud and the cracked, thirsty plains sighed like a lover and drank in the downpour. And then it was upon us, out of clear sky, a torrent of it the Red Rain. It fell in dense sheets, covering everything with its sanguine slick, like some enormous beast had been slaughtered overtop us, or the godsdamned sky itself was bleeding. Some idiot hireling wed picked up back in Macellaria got caught out in the thick of it. They say the change is supposed to be invisible, but Id swear you could see something happen a hunching of the shoulders, a sudden cruelness about the eyes, a smirk stealing across the things red-streaked face, mouth dribbling the stuff. Every hand went to his gun, tore the fetch in half a dozen different directions, like a puppet being wrenched about, staggering in the muck, clutching his steaming guts and then falling in a twitching heap. It lay there hissing for nearly a minute while we reloaded, crawling towards us with one hand cradling its entrails and its teeth bared and its eyes full of evil till someone put a bullet between them and spattered its brains out the back of its skull. Like thatd been a cue the Rain let up, moved westwards. We were lucky; we only had a squall. Sometimes the Rainll last for hours, even days. They say during the Ravishing whole cities got drowned, streets swimming with red, those that survived the first downpour murdered by family and friends. Puts it in perspective for you. One lousy sellsword doesnt seem so bad.

Excerpt from County of Bad Dreams

Five Huge, calloused fists curl and uncurl; massive boots stir up sallow clouds. Yx prefers to kill with his bare hands. No gentle giant, this one. Then Oor-Kesh, the shade, an expert marksman, reeking of incense, an old and deadly thing. Oor-Kesh has a mans body so Klet thinks of him as male. Flesh tanned to a kind of dark ochre colour, dyed in places, stitched in others. The grave-spawn moves mummified limbs as if directed by an unseen puppetmaster, but this jerking, staccato motion does not impair the things aim. He tells esoteric or simply unwholesome jokes Whats the best time to eat human flesh? When youre hungry! and laughs an unnerving, withered laugh that sounds like a man choking. Hellsteeth seems to respect the shade; they speak in dry murmurs to each other, nod knowingly. Oor-Kesh must walk beneath a heavy black umbrella and garb itself in a black leather suit, or the sunlight will expel it from its host. Klet is the most callow, a barely blooded youth, pugnacious and eager for notoriety. His body is unaugmented. He has only a vague understanding of their mission. A gnawing fear eats at his innards, as mean and tightly coiled as a parasite. He fights it with cheap rum and posturing and garrulous, pretended nonchalance, hefting his borrowed weapons with unearned bravado. He strives desperately for the detached ennui of Hellsteeth, cultivates the mans seemingly effortless melancholy with fervent emulations, hoping to

They are in badlands. Wastelands, broken lands. A desert place of dust and demons, stranger things. Ravaged-lands, Slaughterlands. There are five of them, the travelers, led by a scavenger prince, a king amongst thieves, a lord of tomb-robbers. Hellsteeth, they call him; an affectation of such naked braggadocio it would be absurd were it not for the mans reputation. Hard eyes peer from a weatherbeaten face, features like chiseled, porous rock-slabs, thin-lipped mouth fixed in a rigid line that twitches at the corners, the ghost of a smile. He coughs, growls, presses onwards into the desolation. Klet at first found it hard to reconcile the scope of legendry surrounding the man with the grizzled, leathery creature that leads them. His incredulity has given way to a near-reverent awe. The others are less illustrious. There is Somija the hagman, androgynous and green-skinned. His (her? its?) dreadlocks swing in the parched wind. A hex purrs and pulses about its body, moistening, keeping the amphibious witch-warrior hydrated. Once Klet saw it kill an errant fetch with no more than a glottal articulation that left the once-human an empty skin-sac, blue smoke leaking out of mouth and ears and nostrils. Beside the hagman lumbers Yx, ponderous with muscle-grafts, his head comically undersized atop a gruesomely rippling physique, puckered with odd piercings, with ornate and sometimes quivering tattoos.

somehow mimic that unstudied calm. They stay close together, these five, traveling along obscure roads, across the world which the Lamenters of the Weeping Lady call the Cadaverous Earth, leaving the bodies of abominations and unlikely predators in their wake. They make their way deep into the Slaughter-lands, into a country of bad dreams. Tallow Plains

bone-spur. Its rotund belly (now, scaled, now feathered) dangles with ropy things that might be entrails or genitals or perhaps merely a nest of writhing tails. They attack it with bullets, with fire-arrows, with a barrage of tissue-melting spells, dancing out of range of its windmilling, multifarious arms. The waxborns body cleaves and reforms beneath their assaults. Finally Yx lobs a round bomb towards it, a dull-looking grenade that explodes in a yellowish blast. The waxborn ignites, incandescent and flailing. It smells like a kitchen-full of roasting meats. Klet is sickened by his own salivation, until the smell of burning hair nearly makes him gag. He suppresses the urge to vomit, terrified that his companions might think him weak. They press on. The light from the bloated morning sun warbles. Still Growing

For awhile they skirt the Tallow Plains, at the edge of the frontier. The landscape is unstuck, moves in sudden eructations, mottled with feral architecture, with rogue topography gained some unfathomable sentience. Shift is weak here, Somija says with authority. Pretty stable. Klet blinks. The Plains make him nauseous, buttes and mesas bubbling into one another, gentle hills oozing like quicksand. Space here has grown viscous, malleable. The mutancy of the place is retch-inducing. They fight a waxborn. It gibbers from many maws, speaks a polygot of curses from mouths human and hag and leechkin. It ejaculates a babbling verse of nonsensepoetry from one pair of plump, manicured lips Spiderwalking mudeater!/ Gloamblooded shadowman!/ What kind of thing are you? till the lips close and reopen as eyelids for a slitted, reptile orb. Its limb rearrange themselves in a fluid analogue to the miscible scenery scorpion-claw, taloned fingers, tentacle,

They pass through a tangled field that seems to sprout corpses like demented plants, or scarecrows. The stench is horrible. The earth is spattered with their secretions. Body-farm, Hellsteeth comments. Cultivar serfs. Surprised theyre still growing, Oor-Kesh says. He fondles a rotting limb and the owner twitches and moans. The shade twirls his umbrella daintily, like a parasol, picks his way across the leprous field. Theyre alive? Klet, who has grown up surrounded by the nightfolk, is aghast.

 Theyre wilting, says Hellsteeth, as if this explains things. Theyre still healthy enough to reproduce. He points out fetal saplings, making Klet shudder. The fieldll be barren in a few years. Didnt know they got this far north, Yx grunts. The graftpunk is unperturbed by the foulness around them. Thought the Technocracy got pushed back by the cestoids. Could be just an outpost, says Hellsteeth. Probably a Spire round here somewhere. Klet is lost. He is constantly bewildered by

the depth of historical knowledge possessed by even the most brutish scavengers, like Yx. Hiding his ignorance is difficult. He suspects that sometimes they mock him in secret, speaking in a flurry of ancient names and battle sites as if in Alley-speak or some other cant-tongue, their references beyond him. Theres nothing here, says Hellsteeth. Smellll attract things. Lets keep moving. The others grumble their agreement. They move out, as the dusk begins its glowering descent, sky yellowing and then purpling like a bruise in reverse, deepening into black.

Beyond the moribund Twilight Cities, those last and lonely bastions of civilization persisting with idiot tenacity in this necrotic world, lie the yawning wilds of the Slaughter-lands, vast beyond all measure, a variegated waste peopled with nightmares and corpses, demons and inhuman things, bestial terrors and bastard gods and raving wraiths without names. From the queasy rupture of the Suppuration to the stony husks of the Hecatomb Cities to the unhallowed battlefields of Etiolation the Slaughter-lands are thick with the dead, the alien, and the un-living. On the fissured obsidian plains of the Shadowglass Steppes vitreous elementals battle clannish beings of clay and steam; lonely demons wander the Shatters, brooding amidst the shards of forgotten empires and pining for their Hells; bloodthirsty fetch and shambling haunts, the hungry grave-spawn of the Slaughter-lands, lurk in the corridors of ruined palaces or hunt along the stygian waters of Lesion Sea; strange beasts prowl the moist oases of the cancer-forest known as the Fecundity. Yet for all their deadliness the Slaughter-lands are not without their riches. The iron chests of once-terrible colossi echo with the beats of ingenious arcane heart-engines. The mythic library of Gloam-Tor is said to hold within its near-endless archives arcane secrets and tomes of power written by the magi of elder aeons, though only accessible to those who bypass the towers possessed clockwork guardians. The skeletal commanders of now-broken armies piled in irreverent heaps still clutch runeswords and stranger weapons in their bony hands. Glyphscribed coins, eldritch stones, hexed relics, and mountains of jewels clot the treasure-vaults of mummified emperors.

Daily the plunderers come, the scavenger bands, ragtag parties armed with blades and bows and rude guns, eyes gleaming with greed. Some stick to the fringe within sight of their sprawling homes, picking through the detritus left by less thorough looters. Others are more adventurous, leading caravans into the deep waste, expeditions bristling with charms and weaponry. The Robber Guildsmen of Macellaria are the best organized, but there are many others. Gentlemen-adventurers of the Lords Revenant with zombie retinues set out from Somnambulon, contending with their rival Houses for the strangest or most powerful treasures. Lilix males seek the favor of their matriarchs, driving subhuman slaves mewling in the unfamiliar sun before them into Barrow Scrub and the icy northern deserts to plumb frozen temples and tombs. Hunters from Skein seek to capture rogue demons, returning to the Clockwork City with iron cages containing otherworldly monsters. Freelancers aggregate in Crepuscle, Moroi, and Lophius, haphazard mercenary groups of quick, ghilan, hagmen, and half a hundred others. Dour Erg The largest single region of the Slaughter-lands, Dour Erg is a hard-baked, mean-spirited desert full of desiccated ghost-towns, angry spirits, and clutches of the fetch, or murderfolk. Moistureless save for the dubious inseminations of the Red Rain, Dour Erg is an abandoned land given over to grave-spawn and empty buildings. This is a place of blurred shadows, dust, and haze, interrupted infrequently by a tombstone or a monolith or a meeting with some surreal creature. Gloam-Tor thrusts itself up from the cracked earth somewhere in Dour Erg, as do the ruins of Yutteril, Vertegrazze, and Scrutatos. One might walk the streets of one of Dour Ergs many little ruins and stumble across an eyeless woman with a swarm of lampreys for her mouth or a pair of faceless children whose hands are crabs claws or a headless man with a mouth gaping hungrily on his belly oneiroi whove stumbled across the Slaughter-lands from the far-off Suppuration. Or perhaps one might encounter the husk-demon Zaa-Bul, a sentient swarm of maggots and flies inhabiting the bloated shell of a corpse; or the Muttering One, many-mouthed and perpetually cursing; or a nest of cacklegeists, grave-spawn with tongues shriveled and raw from ceaseless laughter. There are things that look like men or might claim to be men lurking in the shadows of low dunes or broken buildings, eidolons and fetch and wild ghilan. There are a few of the quick here, genuinely, nomads and barbarians grown leathered and weather-beaten by the bloated sun, but these people are elusive and unfriendly. The Hecatomb Cities In the deep waste of the Slaughter-lands are the so-called Hecatomb Cities: ruined metropolises that have been burnt nearly to the ground. Once proud capitols of worldspanning empires now stand empty, their citadels scorched, their courtyards charred and their avenues strewn with ashes and blackened bones. They lie to the east of Etiolation, south of the

Shatters but north of Screamwood and Lesion Sea. Unlike the other ruins dotting the Slaughter-lands, brought down by disasters or the whimpering depredations of history, the Hecatomb Cities were destroyed quite deliberately some time in the very distant past as mass-sacrifices, a great holocaust whose ultimate purpose has been lost. Some suggest the sacrifice was an appeasement to black and insatiable gods, others that it formed part of some incomprehensible ritual. A very few speak in whispers of the Fettering and its unspeakable cost. Whatever the cause, the Hecatomb Cities were burnt with their citizenry trapped inside them, pharmakoi in a grandiose and utterly horrific orgy of flame and destruction. Now only fuliginous smears remain: even the names of the cities have been eradicated. Yet still, despite the thoroughness of their annihilation, the Hecatomb Cities still harbor a few glints of treasure. Brave scavengers occasionally enter the Cities in search of these glimmers, indestructible relics that withstood the firestorms and the toll of millennia. Few reemerge most are claimed by the Cities, or something that now dwells within them The Shatters A rust-red desert of dead machines and wandering terrors, the Shatters can be found north and east of Etiolation, in the deep waste. The huge automata called the Behemoths slumber in the Shatters, their limbs broken, immensely prolix clockwork brains inert. Engines of mass destruction said to have been used in the Membrane Wars, the Behemoths are incredibly ornate constructs complete with balconies, living quarters for crew, barracks, armouries, and a hundred other chambers. They carried whole armies into battle while laying into enemy forces with their titanic guns, huge shoulder and chest-mounted cannons. Now they molder, their baroque armour mottled with rust, their furnaces ashen. Generations of scavengers have picked several clean, leaving only huge steel skeletons; others are more intact. There are other machines half-buried in the Shatters, along with the Cullys and Suchol, sister-cities of bronze and chrome grown spotted with rust, their walls collapsed, machine gods broken or insane. Berserk automata, swarms of the fetch, and a handful of bitter demons call these cities home, fallen places of smashed cogs and glyph-graved monoliths and maniacal deities of brass and steam, grown twisted and senile in the lightless gloom of the now-deserted temples. Scoured by the Red Rain, the Shatters few human inhabitants are either infected by the Rain or brutal barbarians, nomadic savages who strip the ruins of valuables and revere the Behemoths as the Dead Gods of the waste. Etiolation The great gray battlefield known as Etiolation is many miles wide, a huge swathe of the Slaughter-lands drained of all vitality. Depleted even of colour, Etiolation is a mute, hazy

graveyard heaped with countless bodies, all of them perfectly preserved no insect, maggot, fungus, or vegetation grows in the silent barrenness, the plant-life that once thrived in the region blackened and lifeless. The only creatures that stir are scavengers and bodysnatchers picking their way through the unnumbered dead and the slain themselves, former soldiers transformed into haunts by the clouds of eldritch energy that still plague the region, residues of some arcane cataclysm. Legend says that these energies are the result of an ancient ritual that petrified the Ravager-Worm Hirud at the center of Etiolation; a huge stone figure with the semblance of a giant leech does rise up from the scores of bodies near the middle of the battleground, though if this is truly Hirud none can say for certain. The sterility of Etiolation is usually blamed on the Worm itself, though which force slew the innumerable soldiers remains a mystery. Those that enter Etiolation experience an immediate numbing, nauseous sensation. Though they retain their essence and colour, explorers experience increasingly severe feelings of misery and apathy, and their colour eventually begins to fade away. Plants wilt and die, flesh becomes unfeeling, and those who spend too long in Etiolation will eventually waste away, consumed with despair, their skin and clothing colourless, their minds without will, their voices silenced. This sickness, known as blanchphage, can only be cured by removing the afflicted from Etiolation. Despite its hazards, Etiolation is a very popular destination for those who venture into the Slaughter-lands. Fresh bodies from Etiolation daily renew the Skin Markets of Macellaria, their weapons and armour pawned in the Curio Bazaars. There are also numerous war-machines and other devices scattered amidst the carnage, drawing the attention of salvage gangs. In addition to these secular pilgrims members of the Order of the Weeping Lady have been known to travel from the monasteries in the Chelicerae Mountains in order to behold the awesome sorrow of Etiolation and feel its creeping despair. Flense Veldt Plagued by haunts and oneiroi, Flense Veldt is the domain of the warlord Hereku the Flagellator, commander of a piecemeal army of barbarians, feral ghilan, and demoniac mercenaries not to mention an elite platoon of the fetch, kept caged until needed in battle. A cruel, effective raider of great ambitions, Hereku preys on caravans and adventuring parties in the Slaughter-lands, and has even ventured beyond the fringe into more civilized territory, harassing merchants of Crepuscle and Macellaria. Lesion Sea An inland sea fed by a tributary of the Radula River, Lesion Sea is a pestilential expanse of filthy water from which decaying towers and obelisks emerge, mossy headstones to civilizations long drowned in the murky depths. Tainted with some flux or eldritch influence,

Lesion Seas waters warp those who drink of them, afflicting them with illness or wreaking more alarming changes on their forms, turning them into malformed chimerae, mutant, misshapen things that slip into the bubbling deep or wander the shores, multifarious and deformed. Grave-spawn have been known to linger on the shores also, writhing on the embankments like ghosts from some mythological underworld. The mysterious entity called Icthoi whether ur-fish or water-demon none know dwells in the gloom of Lesion Sea, along with the rough tribes of misshapen once-men metamorphosed by the water. Screamwood One of the few truly fertile regions remaining on the Cadaverous Earth and certainly the lushest part of the Slaughter-lands with the exception of the scattered oases of the Fecundity, Screamwood is nonetheless a shunned and avoided place. An ominous forest of white trees with crimson sap, many of them carved with leering faces, Screamwood is home to the dreaded creatures called the blightings. With a reputation for extreme sadism, the blightings put even the excesses of the lilix to shame: with tough, pale hides, oozing red eyes, jagged fingers, and fanged maws, blightings are vaguely humanoid but possess some characteristics of plants. Dwelling in the roots of the largest trees, they are primitive but powerful, adept at hunting the shadowed arboreal corridors of Screamwood and ambushing their prey. They breed and train a species of huge white wolves as mounts and hunting beasts, vicious albinos with horribly human hands and bony, hairless faces, fed on a diet of raw flesh. The Shadowglass Steppes Leagues of volcanic glass veined with cracks of livid magma, the Shadowglass Steppes consist of a series of shimmering obsidian plateaus interrupted by huge, splintered monoliths, calderas, and sluggish magma rivers. The air is polluted with toxins and super-heated vapors; the ground boils with lava just beneath the surface, and eruptions are commonplace. Though extremely inhospitable to humans, the Shadowglass Steppes are home to several sentient creatures, primarily clans of elementals. Ranging from the slender, sharp-angled glass elementals to the squat, simple-minded clay elementals, the haughty, maniacal steam elementals, and the barely-sentient, thoughtlessly malignant magma elementals, these beings wage bizarre wars on the Steppes, contending for territory in a ceaseless exchange of advantages and allegiances too abstract and complex for even the lilix to fathom. Barrow Scrub A cold, scabrous badland at the northern edge of the Slaughter-lands near the Chelicerae Mountains, Barrow Scrub is a desolate and rugged region littered with extensive tombs, catacombs, and enigmatic monuments. Inhabited by various barbarian tribes who make their

homes in caves and desecrated crypts, Barrow Scrub is an unforgiving wilderness. These savages are moon-worshipers and skinchangers who shun grave-spawn and shelter underground during the Red Rains that sweep the region intermittently. They are very wary of the lilix of Dolmen who sometimes venture into Barrow Scrub, raiding barbarian shrines and villages for slaves. The primitives fight a guerilla war against the spiderfolk, avoiding any direct conflict. The demon Morrghu, called the Rancid Angel or Rot-shadow, sometimes roams the skies of Barrow Scrub a gaunt, putrescent fiend with near-skeletal, leathery wings and a horned, skull-like visage whose shadow inflicts hideous sickness and whose blazing eyes can enflame with a glance. Also in Barrow Scrub is an entrance to the subterranean city of Riqius-Erebu, requiring the would-be scavenger to navigate a maze of caves and hewn corridors in the bowels of the Chelicerae Mountains before reaching the chthonic maze that was once the capitol of the cestoid Imperium. The Suppuration Most of the various apocalypses that wracked the Cadaverous Earth in aeons past have dwindled into myth and legend, alluded to only in the footnotes of moldering texts or in the distorted narratives of jatayi fablers. The lingering effects of such disasters still haunt the present the Red Ravishing, when the earth flooded with blood, still persists in the Red Rains, the demoniac scourge-armies of the Membrane Wars have scattered across the land while old war-engines are slowly subsumed by rust, and a slew of plagues still recur with devastating frequency but the origins of the worlds current afflictions have largely been forgotten. The Suppuration, however, cannot be so easily expunged from memory, as it continues to seep clots of destabilizing unreality, bearing new litters of alien monstrosities on the far side of the Slaughter-lands. Few have seen the Suppuration itself (and returned with their sanity intact), but those who have describe an unimaginable chasm or wound, a reality sore dribbling unseemly accretions of the uncanny and whining with a kind of keening wail. Though the exact nature of the Suppuration is far from understood, it seems evident that it is more than a mere dimensional orifice or portal like those used by invaders during the Membrane Wars. Rather, the Suppuration seems to be a kind of chaotic womb, a cesspool of diseased imaginings. The beings that emerge from the tempestuous swirl of the Suppuration are not demons or daevas, are not visitors from some otherworld or alternate plane, though such creatures do exist in abundance across the Cadaverous Earth. Rather, the things that crawl and slither forth from the gushing lips of that ghastly birth canal, licking the pus of the Suppurations afterbirth from their flickering forms, possess an unplaced but undeniable familiarity, made twisted by their hideousness. They are like the nightmares of the worlds collective subconscious, welling

up through the rift in a shadowy, dissonant headbirth the oneiroi. A few scholars have suggested that the Suppuration is the result of widespread nectar overdose. The collective channeling of thousands of witches over the centuries has worn a hole in the Aether, ripping open a rift to the collective unconscious; the dementia epidemics are another, less cataclysmic symptom of this mass-invocation. The Fetch At the end of the epoch known as the Aeon of Dust (dubbed The Desiccation by some historians) the Cadaverous Earth was inundated with an enormous flood called the Red Ravishing, a cataclysm whose origins and details are long lost but whose echoes still reverberate in the present. Ushering in the current era, the Aeon of Putrefaction (or The Festering), the Red Ravishing was essentially a more pervasive and persistent incarnation of the Red Rains which still plague the world today, particularly in the Slaughter-lands: a downpour not of water but of a crimson liquid with at least the appearance of blood. The Red Ravishing caused more than mere flooding, however it gave birth to the sinister creatures called the fetch. The fetch are the malevolent husks of those who drink the Red Rain. Even a single drop, if imbibed, will provoke the transformation, an invisible and poorly understood process in which the victims mind becomes corrupted, unhinged in some radical and almost invariably permanent fashion. The Red Rain destroys any feelings of remorse, pity, kinship, love, affection, or conscience: it eradicates morality, obliterates the super-ego, unchains the inhibitions, and plunges the consciousness into a state of distortion, psychosis, and intense hatred for everyone around them. Despite this fundamental psychic disordering, however, the fetch are not possessed by all-encompassing rage, at least not at first. Although filled with dreadful sadistic hunger, the fetch are still fundamentally the same individuals they always were, and can speak, plan, and bide their time until opportunity presents itself. They will masquerade as their former selves, lulling their companions into a false sense of security and then turning on them when they least expect, slowly and torturously killing all living beings they can find while grinning with horrific pleasure. The fetch are not grave-spawn (and indeed some grave-spawn and other creatures with psychic models intrinsically different than a humans are unaffected by the Red Rain); as such, they are subject to the same frailties and vulnerabilities previous to their metamorphosis. Most fetch in the Slaughter-lands persist only a short while after the Rain that created them; after murdering their companions and any other living creatures nearby they become roving monstrosities, degenerating into ravenous, snarling killers and eventually resorting to autocannibalism and subsequent death by infection, blood-loss, or starvation. The Fecundity

It grows; it spreads; it devours. A deadly, ineluctable, terribly beautiful thing, the phenomenon known as the Fecundity is considered by some to herald a new dawn and by others to be the greatest single threat to the Twilight Cities. The Fecundity is speculated by many to signify the death-knell of the world, the final blow that will consume it only to recreate it. Only a very few ecologists a dwindling field have linked the Fecundity with the Red Rain. The Fecundity manifests itself in dense, voracious, hyper-aggressive patches of vegetation which appear seemingly spontaneously, at random. In actual fact it is the ultimate result of the Red Ravishing: after centuries of irrigation via the Red Rains, the Fecundity the goal of the incredibly secretive group of arcanists who engineered the Ravishing over an Aeon ago is finally manifesting. Most outbreaks of the cancerHow advanced or wide-spread to make forest are strewn across the Slaughter-lands, but the Fecundity is a decision the gameothers have been sighted in the far Occident along master should make before beginning a campaign. In some campaigns the the western edge of the Firesong Marches and Fecundity might be just appearing and along the Serrated Coast. widely unknown, only a few scattered The Fecundity is qualitatively different oases, the first shoots of new life; in than the withered southern swamps, the others, it might already be hellish Screamwood, or even the mutant jungles encroaching on civilized lands, of the Bluebottle Archipelago where the covering substantial portions of the snake-men dwell. Its pristine emerald depths Slaughter-lands (though probably still not yet subsuming the "bleak glisten with moisture, like the sweat of some ferocious, bestial thing; it swelters with intoxicating and primeval energy. Enormous ferns and vast trees form a shadowy canopy, while the undergrowth below is thick with mushrooms and verdant creepers. Huge ur-beasts and insects have been reported lurking in the deep forest, though the truth of such rumors is unknown. The appearance of the Fecundity has helped to revitalize dying economies with an influx of lumber, fruit, and water. Small towns and camps spring up alongside the oases, though these are quickly abandoned as the cancer-forest grows, uncontrolled and unrestrained. Though it remains very thinly scattered across the Cadaverous Earth it is growing, and within a few decades may encroach on the Twilight Cities themselves. Thus, while many have greeted the Fecundity as a blessing, others have expressed deep concern over its seemingly unstoppable spread. Though it has been slowed through the deliberate introduction of disease, intentional forest fires, logging, and defoliation, the Fecundity always grows back. A few have taken to actively worshiping the Fecundity. These druidic Luddites scorn the Twilight Cities and choose to lead pseudo-tribal existences on the edges and even within the forest. Most such groups go missing, claimed either by wild beasts or by the Fecundity itself. The only humans who appear to be able to survive in the Fecundity for any period of time are the fetch, though the link between the so-called murderfolk, the Red Rain, and the

Fecundity has yet to be drawn. Possibly the fetch were conceived by the architects of the Fecundity as a return to a kind of primitive purity for humanity an atavistic regression into a race better suited than the corpulent and diseased men and women of the Twilight Cities, with their vices and their misguided technology, to survive in the new world. Additionally the Fecundity, which normally devours humans as it does settlements - with crushing vines and grasping, quasi-sentient creepers, smothering boughs and invasive fungi - seems to ignore the fetch completely. The apocalyptic Cult of the Great Unfettering (of which the Cult of Hirud, god-leech and Ravager-Worm, is a chapter), a clandestine society whose cells are embedded in all of the Twilight Cities, dismisses the Fecundity as a false rapture. According to their cryptic codexes only the absolute power of the Chained Ones, the primordial sleepers, will repair the corruption that wracks the Cadaverous Earth. Though recognizing that they too would be claimed in the cataclysmic and all-encompassing destruction that would accompany the Great Unfettering the cultists believe that following such a purge would come the Remaking, in which their souls would be reborn on a fresh, clean earth free from disease and evil, and that their own spirits would be purified. To hasten the Unfettering the cultists scheme to unshackle the Chained Ones and to facilitate the purification: when the time comes they will step out from the shadows with steel and cleansing fire, to wipe away the stained and sinful inhabitants of this broken world and usher in a new and glorious era, unleashing their elemental colossi, their primordial saviors, embracing their own deaths and subsequent reincarnations. All will be erased and washed away in an ecstatic inundation. Only a few schism-sects of the Cult have welcomed the Fecundity, interpreting it as a harbinger of the Unfettering, a clearing-of-the-way, forerunning the final apocalypse; the rest disparage it as a false hope, insisting that the Fecundity would not succeed in restoring the Cadaverous Earth but rather would transform into a different sort of wasteland, verdurous but spiritually as barren as the Slaughter-lands.

GraveGrave-Spawn
The Unmen, The Halfmen, The Nightfolk, The Undead

Grave-spawn are the animated corpses of the quick, or living, inhabitants of the Cadaverous Earth (a term usually applied to humans). They come in numerous varieties, retaining varying degrees of intelligence or personality. Ultimately, the designation "grave-spawn" is an inadequate blanket term used to describe a diverse array of undead creatures with varying physiologies.

Bricoleur
The bricoleur is a variety of relatively rare and unusual grave-spawn known for their intense devotion to aesthetics and their complete amorality: bricoleurs will do anything to advance their art, even if their actions directly contravene social or legal customs. For the bricoleur, the aim of life is selfdevelopment, self-making, with the body as a canvas on which to display the outpouring of the soul. Bricoleurs intensely resent any attempt to impinge on or restrict their so-called artistic freedom but do welcome criticism concerning their art-bodies. Even by the standards of the Cadaverous Earth, bricoleur aesthetics are macabre in the extreme. The bricoleur itself is an amorphous parasite with limited mobility which many speculate is related at least distantly to the shade, though instead of a pool of liquid shadow bricoleurs are mottled, sanguineous beings equipped with numerous tendrils, which they can extend or retract at will. Bricoleur bodies disguise and protect their protoplasmic consciousnesses, however. Again like the shade, bricoleurs create bodies out of corpse-matter, but unlike the shade bricoleurs compose themselves out of mismatched or scavenged bits and pieces rather than whole corpses. The shade squirms into a corpses brain and assumes control of it: the bricoleur extends itself throughout a skeleton or cadaver and picks it apart, taking only those pieces it sees as aesthetically pleasing and abandoning the rest. Bricoleurs prefer bones to flesh, because they are easier to work with. Bricoleurs are rarely humanoid; if they are, their body is usually a caricature or parody of the human form, a kind of walking satire. Usually bricoleurs cultivate fancifully shaped, outrageous bodies without any resemblances to other species. One might harvest a dozen human legs, fuse them to a central torso with armor plates constructed out of hip-bones layered like scales. Another might fuse spinal columns together to create a huge, serpentine body. There is an upper limit on a bricoleurs size, but many bricoleurs can amass bodies much larger than those of most humanoids. They frequently discard or rearrange parts of their bodies, constantly changing in shape. Each bricoleur is unique, a pastiche of morbid components. Scavenged tongues and lungs allow the bricoleur to speak; scavenged eyes allow it to see, though in its raw form it can sense vibrations and has incredible tactile sensitivity, allowing it to perceive textures and gradients. Because of their intense artistic devotions bricoleurs sometimes have trouble integrating themselves into communities. While most realize that their art is best served in the long run by maintaining positive relationships with other sentient beings beings that can supply them with the raw materials for their art a few radical bricoleurs become underground, predatory things, lurking in sewers and

catacombs and the back-alleys of the Twilight Cities, stalking their carefully selected, fetishized prey before killing them and taking their bones.

Eidolons
Consumed by satyriasis, the insatiable incubi known as eidolons are a cambion race, an allmale breed of grave-spawn with the ability to drain youth and vitality in order to rejuvenate their physical bodies. Narcissistic in the extreme, eidolons are tall, exquisitely handsome men with bloodless, alabaster complexions, green eyes, and shimmering black hair (frequently worn very long) that becomes grey and eventually white if the eidolon fails to feed. Sunlight does not destroy them but it does strip them of their glamer, revealing their true bodies twisted, malformed old men bloated with tumorous growths and dispelling the aura of hypersexuality they usually emanate. One of the few grave-spawn races regarded with near universal loathing, eidolons lead clandestine un-lives, blending in with the quick, often in the upper levels of mortal hierarchy. Having infiltrated human society eidolons begin to feed on young men and women in order to sustain themselves. Most are hundreds of years old, their true manifestations resembling walking corpses. To forestall deterioration eidolons seduce beautiful youths and feed off their desire, beauty, and vitality through copulation. In doing so, eidolons physically age their victims several years while restoring their own youth in the process. Insufferably vain, eidolons find fresh prey frequently, lest their own beauty begin to ebb; eidolons who perish the thought discover silver hairs in their usually immaculate black manes immediately seek out a new victim, often coupling with the unfortunate individual until they are little more than a desiccated husk. While rape can suffice to regenerate an eidolons glamer, they consider the act vulgar and unsophisticated in the extreme. Eidolons are aesthetes with a great appreciation for beauty. Sadistic, self-serving sociopaths without conscience, they are adept at feigning passionate love for their prey and are usually highly accomplished poets, artists, or musicians, as well as being superb conversationalists and beings with exceptional taste for the finer things in life. Eidolons reproduce by impregnating human women, siring male stillborn children who frequently kill their mothers during birth, then revivify as newly spawned eidolons.

Geists
Geists are manifestations of infection, a strain of dangerous and only pseudo-sentient gravespawn who share a number of bizarre and highly communicable contagions. Geists reproduce by spreading their particular contagion, transforming those infected into copies of themselves. They tend to lurk in out-of-the-way areas where people once congregated but have later abandoned. They display no real motivations, rather wandering more or less randomly, though they do make attempts to spread their virulent afflictions when they encounter uninfected

individuals. Their contagions affect only certain humanoids: demons, oneiroi, and animals are immune, as are some grave-spawn such as shades and zombies, though ghilan seem to be affected as readily as the quick. There are several distinct types of geist, each with their own characteristics and physiology; some of the more common types, though by no means an exhaustive list, are detailed below. All geists share the ability to hover a few feet above the ground, their feet almost brushing the floor; all also have eyes glazed milky white, save the blind sorrowgeists whose eyes have been eaten away by acidic tears. Gibbergeists and cacklegeists are amongst the most insidious of grave-spawn: merely hearing their insane babbling or laughter can lead to contamination. Physically they resemble gaunt, decomposing, floating figures, often garbed in the tattered remnants of whatever clothing they once wore. Their mouths and tongues have grown bloody from overuse, and their throats and chests pulse with black veins. Gibbergeists and cacklegeists usually have long, frayed hair and curled, overgrown fingernails. It is possible that cacklegeists originate in the tunnels of the Slouching-devil Mountains, originally created by the roving phenomenon called the Deep Laughter, a sinister echo that seems to wander the tunnels and afflict all who hear it. Fettergeists are covered in writhing chains from head to foot, with only their faces (turned black from strangulation) and clawing hands revealed. They can control their chains at will (or else the chains move with a life all their own) and will attempt to subsume their victims in these chains: if the target is overcome the chains detach from the geist and seem to propagate, slithering around their new hosts body. The previous geist retains their own chains and feeds the new geist with fresh links seemingly generated from the grave-spawns own body. The chains are all-invasive, forcing their way down a victims throat and curling round their necks to throttle them. Often fettergeists limbs bend at strange angles, their bones shattered during the transformation. A possibly related but less common variant of the fettergiest is the bramblegeist, covered in thorns and vines rather than chains (these fell spirits are found in the Screamwood and in the southern swamps). Sorrowgeists are a strange breed of grave-spawn whose searing tears can transform any who taste them - pitifully sobbing horrors who lure victims to them with their plaintive cries only to seize their faces with cold, white hands and forcibly weep upon them. Their cheeks are carved with hideous scars their tears are acidic and their eyes are eaten away; their bodies are pocked with burn-marks. A few particularly zealous members of the Order of the Weeping Lady have been known to keep sorrowgeists bound in the lower levels of their temples as avatars of their patron: those who ascend to the highest levels of the Order expose themselves willingly to the geists in order to be transformed into the purest expression of grief. Geists are even more reviled than eidolons and are much less crafty than the incubi; most are killed on sight. A few have been known to be kept by crime-lords or similarly brutal individuals as punishments for traitors or enemies, sick pets kept in carefully designed cells to minimize the possibility of infection. Outbreaks of geist infection are relatively uncommon in

the Twilight Cities but can be very dangerous when they do occur; while it is possible to resist infection for a time, prolonged exposure will almost inevitably result in transformation. Interestingly, geists tend to ignore other grave-spawn when live targets are present, and gravespawn are much more resistant to geist infection than the quick. While large areas of the Slaughter-lands have been overrun completely with geists the malignant creatures are for the most part kept (tenuously) contained underground in the Twilight Cities, dettered from venturing topside by sunlight, which they loathe (though they are not actually damaged by it, only disoriented). Common defences against cacklegeists and gibbergeists include silencing or deafening hexes; fettergeists and bramblegeists must concentrate their efforts on a single individual, leaving them open to attacks; sorrowgeists must close in to infect their prey, meaning that they can be picked off at a distance. Geists are not especially invulnerable, though they are unworried by pain. As with plagues or inundations of the Red Rain, citizens of the Twilight Cities will torch thoroughly infected areas rather than risk an epidemic. Since fires are very dangerous in urban centers, however, this tactic is used only when absolutely necessary; ideally, geists are herded into an abandoned building and simply locked in; the door will then be warded and marked as haunted.

Ghilan
The origins of the ghilan (singular: ghul) are clouded in mystery, remaining a subject of major scholarly speculation. Some claim they were born during the Pallid Decimation, when (legend has it) the Ravager-Worm Hirud ruptured the world, the dead arose, and the earth was alight with funeral pyres; others claim they are the dilute offspring of some elder demon race. Whatever their genesis, ghilan have become the principle grave-spawned race on the Cadaverous Earth, and can be found in all of the Twilight Cities. They resemble the quick in most respects, but have chalky, leper-gray skin, sharp teeth, claw-like nails, and cat-slitted eyes. Their life-spans are theoretically unlimited, and few diseases affect them; though gravespawn (or undead, a term that has passed from the status of racial slur into a kind of quaint archaicism), they do not decompose, and they are far from the mindless zombies of Somnambulon or the hunger-obsessed shades of the Slaughter-lands. Some grave-spawn live for hundreds of years, though most die of hunger, thirst, violence, or accident before they reach a hundred. They are carnivorous creatures, ingesting only raw meat, and are shamelessly cannibalistic, eating both humans and other ghilan (they tend to dislike seafood and so find the flavor of leechkin or hagmen distasteful). They can and do drink blood but do not depend on it as the leechkin do. Ghul reproduction is surrounded by such a haze of mythology that their true method of procreation seems disappointingly mundane. Like most grave-spawn, ghilan are the hosts to parasites, in this case to a strain that survives in necrotic human flesh. Those that eat uncooked human meat infested with a ghul-worm or fluke may potentially be transformed from a normal human into a ghul. The parasite essentially kills its host, then revivifies it after making

several alterations, using the brief period of clinical death as a kind of liminal space, a cocoonstate in which the host is metamorphosed into a ghul. The newly reborn ghul will be afflicted with moderate to complete amnesia but suffers no other damage apart from sterility though rumors persist of half-ghul children, they are thought to be merely the imaginings of grotesque minds. Sexual intercourse between ghilan and the quick remains possible and is quite common despite vague taboos surrounding such couplings. Self-infection with a ghulworm is not unheard of, but the invariable memory loss involving the change deters most who would seek to transcend death in this manner. Ghilan culture resembles that of the quick closely. On the whole, ghilan tend to be more solemn and ritualistic in contrast with the frenetic quick, who seem to the ghilan a loud and reckless breed (though many ghilan profess a certain nostalgia, only half remembered, for the heady, frenzied days of life). They are a nocturnal race and abhor direct sunlight, though it does them no actual harm. Because of their longevity many ghilan eventually obtain enough wealth and power to live relatively luxurious lives. Some become decadent, macabre libertines who savor meals of the softest flesh, attend theaters, gambling halls, drug dens, and orgies with regularity, and spend their nights in hedonistic debauchery. Others prefer a more staid living, becoming administrators, priests, and even monks there are more than a few ghilan in the Order of the Weeping Lady, cloistered in the monasteries of the Chelicerae Mountains. Many ghilan become converts of the Church of the Star-Gods, an institution with chapters in several of the Twilight Cities which worships the now ancient light of long-dead stars only now reaching the earth - stars that have long since expired, exploding or dwindling or merely transforming but leaving a ghost-light behind to travel across space for many years. The Church believes that the stars are the pupa-state of deities, and that in their deaths they sublime beyond the material, apotheosizing into transcendental entities.

Haunts
The Slaughter-lands are subject to many extreme weather conditions intense droughts beneath the searing desert sun, huge dust storms, and inundations of the Red Rain but these are the mindless ravages of nature or ancient cataclysm. The clouds of arcane radiation that roam the waste, or tempestas mali as scholars dub them, are a different phenomenon entirely. Residues of whatever unfathomable battle created the sterile, colourless desert in the Slaughter-lands known as Etiolation, the clouds seem to possess some form of primitive consciousness, complete with a twisted, malevolent sense of humour: arcanists speculate that they may be a form of elemental with unusually long eldritch half-lives. Whatever the case, the tempestas mali exhibit a variety of arcane effects, most prominently their ability to animate dead bodies to create the voracious variety of grave-spawn known as haunts. Utterances, the psychic echoes of the slumbering beast-gods of the seas, have also been known to create haunts, though these are usually un-imprinted and thus non-violent. The principle type of grave-spawn encountered in the Slaughter-lands, particularly around

Etiolation (where corpses are plentiful), haunts are shambling and often psychotic, imprinted with whatever impulse their parent-cloud infuses them with usually mindless and indiscriminate violence. Physically they appear just as they did in life, save that their eyes glow eerily green and their bodies tend to be in some stage of decomposition. Some gaunts are nearskeletal, though without any flesh or muscle to give them cohesion completely decomposed haunts will collapse into piles of bones. Haunts are, essentially, similar to zombies, but seem to possess a greater capacity for independent thought than the drudge-workers of Somnambulon. Zombies carry out specifically phrased orders relayed to them psychically via their symbiotic masters, the zehrer of the Lords Revenant: they will follow those instructions to the letter until their link to the hive-mind is severed. Haunts are not issued instructions but rather broad, animal urges; while just as powerless to disobey these imperatives as zombies are to carry out orders, haunts retain (or perhaps rather are granted) a rudimentary consciousness beyond the mechanical register of their grave-spawn brethren in the Sleepwalkers City.

Shades
Shades are sentient parasites capable of possessing corpses to create grave-spawn. Unlike the ghul-worm, which is essentially brainless, or a zehrer, which coexists symbiotically with a stillliving mind, shades completely dominate their already dead hosts bodies, though unlike zombies they are highly intelligent. In their raw form shades look like pools of liquid shadow, capable of slithering and adhering to walls or ceilings; they enter a host through the mouth, then invade the creatures brain and skin. Those possessed by shades walk stiffly, like demented puppets, fleshy marionettes being jerked by unseen strings; beneath their hosts skins shades will pulsate and quiver with unnerving subcutaneous rhythms, covering their forms with rippling gooseflesh. The eyes of a shade are clouded black. Because shades possess only the dead, their hosts eventually decompose, requiring a shade to seek a new corpse to inhabit. It is common to see shades preserving themselves with embalming oils and bandages; some have skins that have been tanned into a kind of leather, and others remove their hosts now unneeded organs. Like most grave-spawn shades are intolerant of sunlight, which forces them from their host bodies and causes them great pain. As a result they are entirely nocturnal and usually live underground during the day. Despite their unwholesome nature shades are quite civilized and coexist peacefully with other organisms in cities and settlements which tolerate grave-spawn, which includes most of the Cadaverous Earth. They are very difficult to kill; only prolonged sunlight or extreme amounts of damage can disperse a shade in its true form, and shades can always find new bodies to inhabit if their host is destroyed. As a result they can endure for centuries, watching

generations of the quick grow up and die. Because of their abilities shades make amazing spies and assassins: after killing a target a shade assassin can then enter the newly-dead corpse and impersonate their victim, though of course such a grisly disguise does not weather close inspection.

Zehrer
Symbiotic companions to the grave-spawn Lords Revenant of Somnambulon, the zehrer are a race of psychic overlords of likely otherworldly origin, quite possibly one of the demon dimensions that once intruded onto the Cadaverous Earth during the Membrane Wars. Powerful entities with innate eldritch ability, the zehrer merge with their human hosts much like shades, though unlike that breed of grave-spawn they can only exist for any prolonged period within a living host rather than a mindless corpse. Zehrer must devour mortal souls in order to survive; though they can extend the lifetime of their host's soul by consuming the souls of others they still eventually sap their hosts of vital energy. The zehrer do not utterly dominate the minds of their chosen hosts, rather mingling their consciousness with that of their Lord of Lady. So complete is this coupling of minds that the Revenants have become almost indistinguishable from the zehrer over the centuries. They prolong the natural life-spans of the Lords to up to a thousand years and also gift them with an arsenal of arcane talents. Flight, pyrokinesis and telekinesis, telepathy (both with zehrer and with other sentient beings), preternaturally rapid healing and immunity to disease, incredible strength and agility, the capability to glimpse memories through drinking blood or eating flesh, sharpened senses, and millennia of experience are conferred to the host of the zehrer, who in return allows the parasite a body to dwell in and sustains the spirit. Though possessing a great deal of individuality the zehrer are all bound within a hive-mind: they feel the experiences of other zehrer as dull resonances, sensing when one dies (an incredibly traumatic event), when ones host dies (considerably less so), and other extremities of emotion as well as communicating telepathically across their communal psychic network. In addition the zehrer hive-mind allows for the control of Somnambulons zombies, puppets to the will of the Lord Revenants. These psychic slaves are utterly denied their individuality and are completely overwhelmed by the instructions of the Lords, obeying any and all directions with total obedience. The Lords Revenant are divided into thirteen Houses or Families which interbreed exclusively with one another, scorning petty taboos against incest as the narrow rules of small minds. When one of the Revenants dies their body is carefully preserved with its zehrer still inside, whenever such preservation is possible. One of the Houses few young usually the direct heir of the dead Revenant is then chosen to receive the zehrer. Designated a Childe, this youth will be inducted into the zehrer hive-mind during a formal ritual wherein the zehrer transfers hosts, bringing with it the memories and experiences of all its previous hosts as well as its

eldritch abilities. The ordeal is very trying and physically kills the Childe at the moment of their joining with the zehrer, much as a ghul is killed by their own parasite only to be revivified as grave-spawn.

Zombies
The thralls of the Lords Revenant, zombies make up most of the citizenry of Somnambulon, a mute and uncomplaining workforce. Most of those employed by the Lords are either purchased from slavers, seized as taxes from the Baronies over which the city-state holds sway, or bred in the eerie Nurseries, fortified installations somewhere between prisons and farms where silent, gray matrons hold sway and children are raised like cattle in a world without language until they are able-bodied. When they are deemed fit for labor would-be zombies are herded into the Indoctrination Plants to be brought under the psychic control of a zehrer hivemind. The last vestiges of their individual consciousness are erased during the closely-guarded eldritch process in which they are mechanically, almost gently lulled into a sleep-like, mesmeric trance, at which point their minds become vulnerable to the hive-minds domination. Their bodies die and their minds are replaced with the unadulterated will of their overseers. Zombies are the perfect workers. They do not need to eat, drink, or sleep. They do not require pay or rest. They are incapable of independent thought and collapse into inert, brain-dead corpses if severed from the hive-mind. The average zombie can work for several decades before decomposing past the point of utility. They can be directed en masse through telepathic instruction. They are relatively easy to produce in contrast with clockwork automata or fleshcrafted servitors. They cannot rise up against their masters as the albino subhumans of Dolmen sometimes do (though such insurrections are always brutally quelled). They cannot argue, organize, or oppose; they know only the will of their masters. Zombie strengths are also their weaknesses. They completely lack imagination, creativity, and memory. They cannot be trained and ignore obvious threats to their safety unless instructed to avoid danger; many zombies lose limbs or sustain crippling injuries in the factories of the Sleepwalkers City. Despite their relentlessness they make poor soldiers, suitable only for fodder and unwieldy rushes; they possess none of the subtlety of thought, the ability to improvise, essential to combat, lacking even the rudimentary impulses that dictate the hyperaggression of haunts. A small group of quick soldiers with swords or axes can make short work of a zombie platoon (firearms are less effective unless they destroy those parts of a zombies brain linked to the hive-mind). Zombies are merely marionettes; blunt instruments; cogs in a machine, bound to eternal drudgery. It has been speculated that not all of a zombies former consciousness is ever eradicated. Some have suggested that behind a zombies wide, staring eyes an imprisoned mind perpertually watches, its control usurped by the zehrer.

Inhumans
The category inhuman loosely comprises those intelligent creatures indigenous to the Cadaverous Earth that are neither human nor grave-spawn. Many resemble anthropomorphic animals: xenologists theorize that creatures such as the hagmen or leechkin may be the evolved forms of more primitive animal species. Others have suggested that inhumans are in fact the descendants of true humans rather than animals, warped through eldritch experimentation or cataclysm. Whatever the case, the creatures presented here all possess roughly the same mental capacity as humans, albeit sometimes with different psychic models and radically different cultures.

Cestoids
Possibly the ugliest living creatures on the Cadaverous Earth, cestoids resemble hybrids of giant centipedes and tapeworms, with long, segmented bodies, many legs, chitin exoskeletons, and soft underbellies. Their heads are little more than mouths, circular and many-fanged. Ringing a cestoids maw is a clutch of many-jointed, hairy limbs which they use to manipulate tools and shovel food (rotting flesh, preferably offal) into their mouths. Their eyes are rudimentary, their vocalizations bestial; they communicate mostly through pheromones and touch, and can understand human speech. Despite their monstrous appearances cestoids once ruled a vicious and expansive empire established by the hideous entity called Hirud the Ravager-Worm, a dark, animalistic god and possibly sire of the entire race. For nearly a millennia after the Pallid Decimation the cestoids held power over much of the Cadaverous Earth, enslaving lesser races for their o wn purposes, ruling from the subterranean city of Riquis-Erebu, capitol of their Imperium. They communicated their desires through human interpreters trained in comprehending their opaque language and devoured all who resisted them. After Riquis-Erebu fell brought down by an alliance of rebel states spearheaded by the Witch Army of Moroi during the height of that citys power the Imperium collapsed and the cestoids were scattered. Many were killed in a genocidal scouring campaign, hunted to near extinction. Though still distrusted today, the remaining cestoids have reintegrated somewhat over the long ages as the world died and history withered. They are a dwindling, pariah race tolerated in the Twilight Cities but pushed to the margins, usually underground. They often dwell in
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sewers, or the maze-like tunnel systems that riddle most of the old cities, subsisting on garbage and filth. Those few who rise above this degradation are usually merchants of some variety or mercenary warriors cestoids are incredibly terrifying combatants, wielding numerous melee weapons at once, gnashing at enemies with their maws while blows bounce off their armoured hides.

Hagmen
The hermaphroditic hagmen predominate in the southern regions of the Cadaverous Earth. Somewhat resembling anthropomorphic eels, hagmen are vermiform, with slimy, elongated tails, lacking legs. Their upper bodies are more humanoid, including a pair of long, bony arms and vaguely human heads, albeit with vertical mouths with many teeth, beady eyes (though not blind, hagmen have poor eyesight), and whisker-like barbs; they often sport a mane of shaggy hair that looks like swampy vegetation, especially if a hagman submerges itself in water, a common hunting tactic. Hagmen possess both testes and ovaries and so have interchangeable sexes; they have developed complex cultural gender constructs unfathomable to most humans that reflect their intersexed natures. The name hagman was chosen for its androgynous implications, but many hagmen consider the name crude. Most civilized hagmen can be found in cities such as Lophius, Crepuscle, and Macellaria, where they tend to congregate in amphibious ghetto districts with communal dwelling places somewhere between bathhouses and residences. Other major structures include the hatcheries and temple-brothels, where hagmen that have chosen to become female ritualistically mate with males in honour of Myx, an aspect of the nebulous, multiply natured hagman deity representing fertility, lust, and creativity. Hagmen have integrated into urban society as fishermen, agriculturalists (farming seaweed and marine livestock), submariners, amphibious warriors, dockworkers, artisans, and even scholars. There are many less urbanized hagman communities, most of which conform to a tribal structure; these savage hagmen are hunter-gatherers with some primitive farming techniques, and are known for their deep racial prejudice for the leechkin with whom they compete for territory and food. The hagmen denounce the leechkin as the unclean spawn of an amorphous devil figure, a vampiric adversary-demon representing parasitism and degradation. Vestiges of this race-hatred linger even in metropolitan centers, though many progressive hagmen and leechkin have learned to set aside their differences. Apart from their prejudices, the hagmen of the Twilight Cities have inherited their tribal cousins religious beliefs, albeit adapted to a less primeval cultural landscape. They worship a monotheistic deity with a myriad of different aspects, and their system of arcana or witchcraft is integrated directly into their religion. Each aspect of the Aeon-Worm (a rarely-used epithet of the gestalt of the hagman deitys personalities) is attended by a cult, with rituals and ceremonies tailored to the venerated aspects portfolio.

Gorgons
There are very few gorgons left on the Cadaverous Earth, but they are long lived creatures and a few linger still. Probably the descendents of an elder demoness who mingled her blood with that of humans, or perhaps the offspring of humans who slew and drank the demoness blood, gorgons are daevas, immortals occupying an ontological schema fundamentally different than that of the quick, grave-spawn, or oneiroi: though they can be slain (a difficult but not impossible feat), they are living, breathing, ageless beings. At first glance gorgons appear as impossibly beautiful women emanating unearthly sensuality and voluptuousness, veritably oozing with seductive charm. Their skin is porcelain white, their lips and nails vivid green, their eyes shimmering black. Crowning a gorgons head, however, is a nest of entangled black serpents which burst from its scalp in hissing profusion, a writhing brood of venomous snakes moving as if with minds of their own. Those who look too long into a gorgons fathomless black eyes glimpse something illimitable and terrifying, some abyssal space beyond human comprehension: invariably such individuals are driven hopelessly mad, and some are actually paralyzed with fear and despair. Gorgons usually wear veils to prevent those who look upon them from degenerating into gibbering madmen. Those wishing to disguise themselves more thoroughly incorporate a full headdress to conceal their serpentine hair. Gorgons often become the focus of snake-cults in primitive communities. In urban locales they are usually well entrenched, installed as power-brokers of one variety or another, such as Nyssa in Lophius, matriarch of the Ophidian gang who rule the isle of Serpentside. Their motivations are quite opaque, and gorgons often lead at least superficially epicurean lives, indulging their appetites while maintaining their power with ruthless intelligence.

Jatayi
The avian jatayi (singular: jatayu) are a dwindling race of fablers who roam the skies of the Cadaverous Earth. Once many tribes of this species are said to have flown the skies: now only one tribe remains, a few hundred winged humanoids passing from settlement to settlement, singing for their suppers. They shun the southern cliffs of the Serrated Coast where the sirae dwell, beings they condemn as degenerate abominations corrupted by malevolent forces - their notorious sing-song hex is seen by the jatayi as the embodiment of evil. Physically jatayi resemble humans with enormous feathered wings emerging from their shoulder blades, similar in shape and colouration to a vultures. They also have avian eyes, allowing them to see at great distances and to detect ultraviolet light and magnetic fields ("the earthsong"), the perception of which influences the tribe's cyclic migratory patterns. They are necrophagic, eating carrion they find in the waste and what food they can buy or earn in the towns and cities of other creatures.

Jatayi speak a dialect of Shambles that incorporates numerous bird-sounds such as clicks, chirps, and caws, as well as loanwords from a much older tongue, a secret, sung language known completely only by the tribes small cadre of draconian elders. Jatayi culture is oral; the jatayi possess incredible memories, though whether this trait is biological or wholly learned is unknown. Whatever the case, all jatayi are vivid storytellers who incorporate elaborate dances, songs, and poems into complex mythological narratives that commonly take the form of plays, spoken tales, and more abstract performances. These stories are governed by highly traditional structures but do allow for and encourage a measure of creative fluidity. Transciribing a story is forbidden, however, as is learning any written language: jatayi are uniformly illiterate, save for a very few lonely outcasts found in odd corners of the world. Because of their detritovorous diet jatayi are skilled scavengers as well as storytellers. Jatayi lore holds that humans are the descendents of a kindred tribe who lost their wings after sacrificing themselves to preserve the greater race. As a result they regard humans with a mixture of great respect and great pity, an attitude some humans find patronizing or chauvinistic. Most human scholars hold that the jatayi may be the results of eldritch experimentation, a notion that revolts the jatayi themselves and which is considered blasphemous by the elders. It is unknown how long the jatayi have existed, but their oral history contains legends that suggest they may considerably predate the Pallid Decimation, and perhaps even the Membrane Wars.

Jinni
The jinni also called the vulnerae or woundfolk are a strain of daeva said to have issued forth from a wound in the earth itself, released from an unfathomable oubliette with walls of stone, or perhaps of glyph-graven steel, or possibly of unthinkable and inhuman flesh; some say that this wound festered, and became the Suppuration (making the jinni forerunners or somehow kin to the oneiroi), others that the wound stands for an otherworldly portal (making the jinni demoniac), still others that the jinni are simply terrestrial troglodytes who were forced from their underground homeland in a mass-exodus by disaster or by some unknown, subterranean war. Whether born of aether, Hell, or cavern-kingdom the mysterious jinni have scattered themselves across the Cadaverous Earth over the aeons, ageless but apparently infertile, banding together in loose clans of opaque organization. Jinni skins are stained mottled shades of red, as if by gore; otherwise they resemble tall, powerfully built humans of androgynous sex. Their crude features are scrawled across their faces like a childs depiction of a nightmare: slit-like mouths, miniscule black eyes, almost porcine nostrils. Their flesh is hot to the touch, as if feverish, and through some quasi-eldritch means they can breathe gouts of sulphurous green flame. Most have some degree of talent with witchcraft, particularly skinchanging: many jinni have been known to use the forms of hyena (carrion-jinni epseically), owls, bats, ibises, and jackals.

Some jinni have a taste for human flesh, particularly when partially decomposed; these macabre creatures have been dubbed carrion-jinni. Most of the vulnerae dwell outside the Twilight Cities, reveling in the wild, lawless spaces of the world, but a few have spent centuries as decadents in the more cosmopolitan cities, such as Crepuscle. They are an arrogant, haughty people, typically, considering themselves the natural superiors to all mortal creatures; their codes are very rigid and utterly incomprehensible to outsiders, who often find themselves in breach of jinni creeds without realizing their error, though they are still (inevitably) punished for transgressions with typical jinni ruthlessness. However, jinni scorn the laws and codes of other species as beneath them, the rude artifices of lesser beings. Jinni wisdom is legendary, because of their longevity, but they are a notoriously secretive race, guarding their histories jealously; occasionally certain parcels of information have been traded in exchange for land, weaponry, or large amounts of coin, but for the most part the jinni refuse to disclose share their knowledge with non-jinni. Despite their reticence in divulging their racial history some details concerning the jinni Diaspora have been collected. It seems clear that they have never been an excessively populous race, and the harsh toll of apocalypses that wracked the Cadaverous Earth during the Immolation and the Desiccation thinned their numbers harshly. The imprecise documentation on the Membrane Wars suggests that the still powerful jinni clans fought as mercenaries in the conflict, though on which side is unclear; this titanic battle seems to have claimed many jinni lives, but also marks their peak of influence, with jinni commanders passing into the ever-glorious realm of myth, attaining true immortality. Some encounters between demons and jinni have been noted, with the jinni frequently exhibiting fervent hostility, but others have spoken of less belligerent meetings. During the cestoid Imperium they seem to have almost vanished, retreating into far corners of the world, realizing, perhaps, that they possessed insufficient strength to face the wormfolk head-on, but simultaneously refusing to bend the knee and submit to cestoid rule.

Leechkin
Often deeply disturbing to humans first encountering them, leechkin are hairless humanoids with green or black skins, bloated torsos (which shrivel if the leechkin hasnt fed), and long, spindly limbs. Their faces are rudimentary: leechkin have almost no neck, their ears are mere holes, and they have no mouths on their faces only three pairs of small yellow eyes and a set of nostrils. Instead, they possess two individual mouths on their palms, each resembling a lampreys maw with many serrated teeth. While hermaphroditic like the hagmen, leechkin do not possess the shifting mutability of gender of that species: instead they are essentially sexless, with individuals assuming the role of male or female in a temporary fashion during procreation (the male grows a sperm-sac which the "female consumes, impregnating

herself ). Leechkin are consuming a diet many creatures on are cannibals of dependency on lilix, has led to their cultures, and regarded as especially by the conception is bands of tribal months without to a bloodthirsty degenerating into not uncommon to drifting aimlessly its crew bloodless, circles like haematophagic, entirely of blood. While the Cadaverous Earth necessity, the leechkin blood, like that of the demonization in other leechkin are often unclean or monstrous, hagmen. This exacerbated by certain leechkin who after proper feeding succumb psychopathy, murderous animals. It is find a steamboat in the southern swamps, covered in small red gruesome love-bites. While the bulk of the leechkin population dwells in the swamps themselves, some leechkin communities can be found in the Twilight Cities, particularly in Lophius. The leechkin mindset is inherently parasitic, and leechkin culture denigrates the very idea of work, scorning the lofty accomplishments of men as mere frivolity; thus, Leechkin sketch by Salacious Angel the bulk of urban leechkin are simply beggars seeking enough coin to purchase their next fix of blood. As leechkin tend to be regarded as untrustworthy rogues, some find employment as enforcers, torturers, and other underworld figures, which hardly helps their species reputation. The leechkin religion is animistic, with shamans serving as healers and sorcerers. The leechkin have some traffic with the nameless gods of the swamp, whom they seem to regard as avatars of the natural environment.

Lilix
Rulers of the city-state of Dolmen, the lilix are spiderfolk, a race of anthropomorphized

arachnids, each possessing eight limbs and eight eyes. Other than these obvious differences the lilix are essentially humans with grayish, sometimes hairy skins. They are further distinguished by their ruthlessly matriarchal culture, their appetite for blood, and their capacity for artistic, political, and intellectual intricacy. Those few lilix that live in cities other than Dolmen tend to be advisors, architects, artists, and spymasters. The lilix political structure is a kind of gynocratic fascism, a caste system placing the pallid subhumans at the bottom (humans bred for centuries for slave labor), with human freedwomen and their male concubines above (a kind of lower middle class), then lilix males, the courtier caste, and finally lilix females, the queen caste. The males tend to be taut and strong, bred as they are for their sexual appeal, their obedience, and their fighting ability. Lilix females are leisured and so tend towards softness and roundness, with elder females achieving a heavily fetishized obesity. A rigidly conceived and highly ritualized state religion closer to a dogmatic bureaucracy than a living faith codifies and attempts to legitimize the stratifications of Dolmen. The holy texts of the religion are embedded in ancient tapestries reputed to be spun by the creeds central mother deity, an elder spider-goddess called Verlum. The tapestries are hung in the inner sanctums of official temples; any reproduction or facsimile would instantly be declared blasphemous. As such the all-female priesthood is able to keep the religion under firm state control, reserving the right to interpret the tapestries and so maintain power. Like the primitive leechkin of the swamps the lilix are haematophagic, subsisting on the blood and liquefied bodies of humans and other creatures. At a lilix feast all the food is liquid: bowls and sauciers of half-coagulate blood jellies, marrow juice, and pulped, runny meat, washed down with goblets of thinned arterial blood they drink like wine or xocolatl. A carrion perfume cloys the upper levels of Dolmen, raw and coppery, mingling with the fecund pheromones of the lilix and the sour tang of the flesh-castings carpeting the black marble floors.

Mantids
Possibly distant relatives of the lilix, the mantids are not (as some portray them) a race of ravenous insectoid monsters. Anatomically they are more human than insect, with green flesh of varying shades and an additional pair of arms that terminate in chitinous, scissor-like claws. After entering puberty all mantids develop large wings that extend from their backs, allowing for limited flight. Mantid faces are the most insect, with a pair of glistening mandibles - they are a carnivorous race - and bulbous compound eyes, usually a shade of vivid crimson. Mantid compound eyesight, for whatever reason, endows the species with a natural talent for mechanical construction, particularly clockwork; while not nearly as comprehensive as the intuitive skills of a mechanoape, mantids make excellent technicians and toymakers. Some speculate that mantids (along with the lilix) were bred through eldritch means by the cestoid Imperium as a slave-species of warrior-mechanists. The mantids themselves notably reject this theory as typical human-chauvinism: where humans view mantids as hybrids of human and

insect, mantids view humans as hybrids of mantid and ape. Mantids dwell now in their greatest numbers in the Firesong Marches, a region they share with the gypsy foxfolk, the zerda. Like the zerda they are predominantly nomadic, traveling in extended family caravans. Many caravans spend long periods outside of the Marches, traveling between the Twilight Cities and selling their services as mercenaries, tinkers, and peddlers. The warrior culture within mantid caravans is duel-oriented, with a combat style focused around use of the blade-like mantid limbs in addition to daggers, hand-crossbows, wheellock pistols (mantid wheellocks are comparable in quality even to those of Skeins artificers), and throwing stars. A strict, honour-based code surrounds duelling practices, and only males become duellists; females tend to occupy the position of elder and priestess. The mantid pantheon is variegated, with some deities appearing almost entirely insect, others more human; serpents, foxes, and fire-spirits also figure prominently in their mythology. Most mantids can manage at least a few phrases in Shambles, speaking with a sibilant, hissed accent. Their native tongue is nearly impossible for humans to speak and sounds similar to Spiderchatter; it is sometimes derisively referred to as Bug-talk. Though much is made of the carnivorous mantid diet, most mantid families engage in only periodic hunting, subsisting mostly through scavenging; they are also notably one of the few species of the Cadaverous Earth whose culture actively rejects cannibalism (though they have been known to consume dead zerda and other humanoids if necessary).

Naghini
A reptilian race strange even by the standards of the Cadaverous Earth, the naghini are dyadic: each individual naghini consists of two conjoined twins, a bifurcating and double-headed pair who must share a single body. Like hagmen naghini are vermiform, their lower bodies resembling the tail of an oversized snake, with colouration ranging from emerald green to vivid black and red to dusty brown, depending on tribe, caste, gender, age, and moiety. Their upper bodies are pseudo-humanoid, dividing partway up the torso - each individual has a pair of arms and the associated musculature. Their heads combine human and reptile features, with flat, scaled faces, fangs (sometimes poisonous), and narrow, slitted eyes. Naghini predominate in the Bluebottle Archipelago and the more tropical regions south and east of Lophius, but some have wandered as far north as Crepuscle. The complex naghini political structure is by no means uniform, and within the confines of the Twilight Cities their myriad distinctions are often shrugged off. Roughly speaking, naghini are divided into large, racially segregated tribes, each with their own distinctive scale-patterns, gods, territory, and idiosyncratic customs. Within each tribe are two moieties, sister-units who take it in generational turns to share tribal duties; most settlements are divided equally between the two moieties, though specialized moiety and caste specific settlements do exist. Tribal duties are defined by the naghini caste system, which alternates between the moieties:

the priestly caste, the builder caste, the hunter caste, the warrior caste, the artist caste, and the merchant caste are but a few. Naghini reproduce in moiety-exclusive ritualistic orgies and raise their children communally, marking individuals at birth for their caste (determined via astrological alignment). New caste-members will be fostered in the tribes sister moiety, allowing them to learn their duties from the previous caste-members. This keeps the two moieties tightly knit rather than dividing them. Essentially the naghini practice a kind of rigid, tribal communism, stressing the union of binary halves both on the level of individuals and on the level of moiety. The naghini religious structure mirrors their political one, with symmetrical sets of dualistic gods embodying dichotomized concepts. Rather than stressing the differences or oppositions between such deities, however, the naghini religion encourages worshippers to see their gods as two halves of a single whole, a unified totality with two different faces. The exception can be found in those renegade tribes that dedicate themselves to gorgon worship, shunned as infidels by the mainstream naghini populace. Those naghini that do leave their tribal settlements often abandon their old gods for foreign ones, taking perverse delight in the monism or plurality found in other faiths.

Waxborn
A mysterious race of daevas inhabiting the mutable chaos of the Tallow Plains, the waxborn are shapeshifters trapped in a state of constant flux, unable to achieve any coherency of form. Their bodies flow constantly into new shapes, occasionally flickering with startling rapidity: flesh sloughs off to reveal chitin or scales beneath, which in turn molts to expose feathers or bone. Their forms are never static, even for a moment. Organs become transient things, constantly being rearranged: an eye might drift from some face-like protrusion down to a horn-plated chest, where it blinks and reopens as a fanged mouth, while a new socket opens on a shoulder or flank and gazes out with a slitted pupil. Such are the regenerative capacities of the waxborn that they are almost impossible to destroy or even injure: wounds are subsumed by the shifting mass of limbs, skin, and other body parts. The waxborn do not age, but they do reproduce in a peculiarly sinister manner. Waxborn are not in fact singular creatures: they are composites, chimerae, pastiche, the fused bodies and consciousnesses of a variety of once individual creatures. A waxborn will often attempt to engulf living creatures that it comes across, flesh slithering like a viscous liquid or malleable solid, pulling an organic organism inwards, covering them with its flowing, changing body. If absorbed in this manner the features and body parts of the victim will then begin to appear amidst the palimpsest of shapes of the waxborn: an isolated ear or hand or leg for example, in the case of humanoids. As it subsumes more living matter a waxborn grows, until it reaches a critical mass, roughly double the size of a human a towering confusion of parts. At this point the waxborn splits through a fission process, becoming two new, individual

waxborn. The waxborn consciousness is mysterious, made up of the individual minds of its constituent parts, a maddening melting-pot of competing, contradictory impulses, culled from different species and individuals. This consciousness, though multiple and incoherent, is not wholly fragmented: the different processes and instincts congeal into a gestalt, great than the sum of its parts, guided by an urge to consume, to add more to itself. Waxborn rarely speak, but when they do, they utilize a garbled mishmash of languages, wholly intelligible only to comprehensive linguists. If they possess a culture it is opaque to outsiders; most are solitary, though some drift in pairs or packs.

Zerda
Considerably less intelligent or at least less comprehensible than humans, though substantially more so than beasts, the miniature foxfolk called the zerda are native to the Firesong Marches, one of the many variegated desert regions of the Cadaverous Earth a land where the jinni and the mantids roam, where witches with skin black as ink and staves of human skulls smoke their ornate hookahs and purr their strange hexes into the reddish dusk, to summon scarab-golems and bejeweled incubi and older entities that still linger in that barren, inhospitable place. Physically the zerda resemble small, anthropomorphic foxes with oversized ears (to help cool themselves) and orange-brown fur. They wear little clothing, though females occasionally garb themselves in colourful scarves, and both genders wear jewelry, particularly earrings, gleaned more often than not through commerce with the jinni. Males usually carry at least one weapon, usually a long bone knife equivalent to a longsword to the small-statured creatures. A nocturnal species, the zerda travel at night in gaudy, ramshackle caravans considerably larger than those of the mantids. Though they use some wagons most of their homes are built atop the shells of huge desert tortoises, with which the zerda have a symbiotic relationship, being experts in their breeding and care. The tortoises a typical adult is several times larger than a large cow are lumbering, docile creatures who trudge uncomplainingly through the Marches by night, while the zerda swarm atop and around them, employing rope ladders and carven handholds (etched into the very shells of the tortoises) to reach their mishmash, hastily assembled palanquins. Zerda have a taste for trade, and some venture west into the Occident into the shanty-towns and markets of the Twilight Cities, selling everything from mantid firearms to bound fireelementals trapped in gemstones by cunning foxfolk magi. Though quick to flee if threatened they are vicious combatants, employing teeth and claws as well as their bone blades, with which some are exceptionally skilled. They are ominvorous and are certainly not above the consumption of human flesh, though they are not generally speaking cannibals, leaving their dead as offerings to the gods of flame, sun, and sand that they revere, an elemental and ill-

defined pantheon without formal priests or temples.

Bestiary
Bloodwood Tree
Native to the fetid swamplands around Lophius, Bloodwood Trees, also called Cannibal Trees or Molekh-Trees, are a much-dreaded species of carnivorous plant distinguished by their pulsing crimson leaves and lashing tendrils, vines that they use to manoeuvre food living or dead into their slit-like maws, lined with barbs that act like teeth, tearing the trees meat to shreds so that it can be more easily digested. Bloodwood Trees do not, however, use their vines as their principle mode of predation, favouring a radically more disturbing method of securing prey which relies on their unique capability of absorbing a creatures genetic makeup. Upon devouring a creature preferably effective predators, such as humanoids the Bloodwood Tree somehow reads its body through the process of digestion. It then uses gleaned information to produce a copy of its meal, a hybrid of plant and animal that begins as an embryonic bud on one of the trees many limbs and gradually matures. The Bloodwood Tree bears a kind of foetal fruit, its young developing inside hard, translucent cocoons until they grow too heavy and drop off. The trees children perverse reincarnations of their parents, but with reddish skins, bloodshot eyes, and feral dispositions hatch from their chrysalises and immediately recognize the Bloodwood Tree that spawned them as their mother and mistress. Displaying remarkable intuitive abilities for such young creatures the trees children immediately begin the hunt, tackling larger and larger prey as they grow in size, beginning with birds and rodents (which Bloodwood Trees only consume, scorning replication) and working their way up to larger prey, particularly members of their parent race. After killing or subduing their victims the tree-children bring back their prizes to the Bloodwood Tree and present them for consumption. In exchange, the Bloodwood Tree offers up a tendril which secretes a nutrient-rich, sap-like ichor consumed by the hungry offspring. The bond between a Bloodwood Tree and its progeny is intimate, quite possibly even psychic; if a Bloodwood Tree is killed its offspring return to its remains, sing a brief and bestial song of lament, and then stand inert until they succumb to starvation. Bloodwood Trees are highly prized by the leechkin, who have been known to swarm them, penetrate their bark, and suck up their bloody sap with relish. Leechkin can smell Bloodwood Trees from a great distance and unless recently sated will enter a state of near-mindless hunger, drawn inexorably towards the delicious scent that the trees exude.

Gorgefly

One of the most feared creatures of the Cadaverous Earth, the gorgefly is an enormous, bestial fiend resembling a horrific hybrid of obese giant and flesh-fly. Similar to normal flies the gorgefly undergoes an extensive larval stage. After hatching from an egg laid by an adult gorgefly in a suitably large carcass, the larva a horse-size thing sometimes called a dire maggot slowly develops, feeding off carrion and enlarging itself many times over: some gorgefly larva reach titanic sizes, often well over a hundred feet in length. They are detritovores, feeding exclusively on carrion, including grave-spawn, who they differentiate easily from the quick; despite their taste for decomposing matter, however, dire maggots are not scrupulous in their diets and have been known to attack smaller living prey. They are also powerful burrowers, tunnelling through soft earth as if through necrotic flesh. Most live in the Slaughter-lands, feeding off old battlefields; a few have even been sighted in Etiolation, where they feast gorily until blanchphage cripples them with apathy. A few have also found their way to Macellaria, where they must be dispatched by the Watchdogs. Those that survive and grow to a critical size eventually moult and pupate into the adult gorgefly, sloughing off the husk of their maggot-stage and emerging, tenebrous and triumphant, from their larval husk. Gorgefly imagos are considerably smaller than the largest dire-maggots, though still impressive in size. Towering well over forty feet in height, gorgeflies appear as humanoid figures with oily, putrescent flesh, seemingly composed out of congealed carrion - a mass of greasy, reeking skin and muscle, mottled black and green, slick with ulcerous sores; coarse hair juts from the creature's body, a corpulent, bloated form equipped with an extra pair of arms. The gorgefly's head is a disturbing mixture of insect and human - bulbous compound eyes and a toothy human mouth, with two small, hairy limbs bristling from the jaw to help shovel food into the gorgefly's maw. Emerging from the horror's back are a pair of massive, veined wings, much like a fly's, with a wingspan of nearly a hundred feet - usually these wings are kept partially folded, spread to their full span only when the gorgefly takes off. With their wings fully spread gorgeflies are truly magnificent to behold, like titanic, gruesome seraphs surrounded by a filthy aura of smaller flies like vile cherubim and a writhing profusion of maggots squirming and rustling beneath its lesion-covered flesh. Like the dire maggot imago gorgeflies feed on carrion of all sorts. They also possess the ability to vomit forth a stream of eldritch fluid that rapidly decomposes anything it touches, greatly accelerating bacterial growth, decaying any organic matter that it contacts - the so-called "mortifying breath." Those that escape the gorgefly's jaws but not its pestilential vomit are left gangrenous and mutilated. Because of their ability to rapidly decay any living substance, gorgefly imagos do not hesitate to attack the quick - they simply putrefy them first. Female gorgelfies, after glutting themselves on a particularly substantial feast, will lay fertilized eggs amongst the remains of their meal, ensuring a food source for the maggots that will hatch weeks later. Gorgefly intelligence, lifespan, and population sizes are unknown. They do seem to live comparatively much longer than regular flies, but seem to mate less frequently, keeping their

numbers low (fortunately) - additionally, most dire maggots die before they can moult. The presence of an adult gorgelfy is inevitably announced by the immense droning of their wings, a sound that strikes terror into the hearts of any that hear it.

Ingurgitatrix
The ingurgitatrix is a vile species of parasitoid that makes its nest in the entrails of humanoid creatures. Possibly some malign cousin of the tapeworm, the ingurgitatrix resembles a vaguely serpentine, cartilaginous worm with a small fanged maw at one end and rudimentary eyes on the other. It possesses animal cunning and a level of predatory intelligence; rather than hatching inside the bowels of its victims (as the tapeworm does, or the ghul-worm) an ingurgitatrix must force its way down its hosts throat, usually slithering through the mouths of sleeping victims. It quickly makes its way tail first through the digestive tract where it installs itself comfortably, nestling in amongst the intestines; its thick, membranous hide protects it against stomach acids en route. Once comfortable the ingurgitatrix begins secreting arcano-chemical substances into its host to induce appetite. The host will be greatly invigorated and insatiably hungry, immediately seeking out as much food as they can and glutting themselves upon it. If no food is available the victim will become greatly agitated and will attack other living creatures; unable to resist the fiend within the host will slough off social taboos and feast on former friends or family, as well as corpses and other typically detestable or repulsive substances. As a last resort the host will resort to auto-cannibalism. Whatever the case, the ingurgitatrix consumes all of the food its host ingests, quickly growing to prodigious size such that its victims belly becomes distended as if pregnant. Once it reaches its maximum size it bursts free, killing its host. It then lays its eggs in the corpse of its former host, persisting long enough to watch them hatch before abruptly dying. The newly hatched ingurgitatrixes consume the corpse and their parent before moving on to find hosts of their own. Inguritatrixes were created by the cestoid Imperium as biological weapons, designed to decimate food supplies as well as military of civilian populations. Now the hideous parasitoids roam free, though some are trapped and used for assassinations slipped into a bedchamber through a window or under a door.

Marrowmoth
These large, bulbous insects look eerily beautiful from a distance with their expansive, sallow wings (veined with crimson) glowing in the moonlight, but their enthralling appearance belies their macabre natures. Uninterested in flesh or vital organs, the carnivorous marrowmoth greatly prizes bone marrow, particularly red marrow. Like the vampire bat marrowmoths seek

out large creatures to prey on, especially when sleeping. To extract sustenance they unfurl a powerful proboscis which they thrust deep into their preys tissue, penetrating layers of skin and muscle to burrow directly into bone. They then suck up the victims marrow at a tremendous rate, detaching swiftly if their prey attempts to physically harm them. Dangerous enough individually, marrowmoths often dwell in colonies, usually in hollow trees or in old tombs whose occupants they have despoiled. Though usually these colonies are quite small, marrowmoths can swarm prey, quickly reducing them to hollowed-out, fleshy husks scored with puncture-wounds, their bone marrow sucked out like nectar. When they cant find live prey marrowmoths subsist on carrion. Marrowmoths can be deterred with certain pungent oils, but the best defense against them is a large, bright fire or strong eldritch light. Like other moths marrowmoths have evolved to use the moon an object which for all intents and purposes is optically infinite to navigate and fly in a straight line. A similarly luminous light source will attract marrowmoths, who mistake it for the moon; since the light source is not at ocular infinity, of course, they will fly directly towards it until they reach it, immolating them if the light is a fire. Marrowmoth caterpillars are fat, glistening things that feed on rotting flesh. Marrowmoths do not nurse their young but often lay their eggs in or near dead prey. The cocoons of marrowmoths are hardy and durable. Their silk, though not as smooth or shimmeringly beautiful as that of Skein, is highly prized for use as bow strings.

Piranha Rat
A malignant and ubiquitous species of rodent encountered across the Cadaverous Earth - most commonly in ancient sewer-systems and other urban environments - the piranha rat is a pest that becomes dangerous in large numbers. Physically, piranha rats look like large, hairless rats with oversized heads and nimble, elongated limbs. They are distinguished from other rats by their jaws and teeth: the piranha rat jaw is larger and more jutting than a normal rats, and is filled with a row of interlocking, blade-like teeth. Unlike their aquatic namesakes, whose legendary reputation for savagery is often exaggerated, piranha rats are efficient and bloodthirsty killers so gluttonous that they will literally eat themselves to death if given the chance. They tend to travel in swarms, attacking any and all prey that they happen across: unlike piranhas or rats they are strictly carnivorous, and prefer living prey. Packs unable to find enough food to sustain themselves will degenerate into cannibalism, devouring one another until most or all of the swarm is dead.

Shaik-toruch (Sand-rays)
Thought to be distant relatives of the xsur, the shaik-toruch also called sand-rays are a species of huge, cartilaginous creatures who roam the southern and eastern regions of the Cadaverous Earth such as the Firesong Marches, Dour Erg, and Flense Veldt, though rogue

specimens have been spotted as far west as the Tallow Plains, drifting unperturbed over that eructating entropy with their characteristic placidity. Like many beasts of Earths gloaming aeons they are the warped result of unguided evolution, bioengineering, and eldritch experimentation. Vaguely resembling a gigantic scaly ray swimming through air or loose earth instead of water, the batoid shaik-toruch can reach enormous sizes: some have wingspans well over fifty feet. How exactly they achieve their remarkable buoyancy is not known; they appear to glide through the air, but also possess inflatable sacs on their underbellies, underneath their sawshaped mouths, and may possess eldritch levitation abilities as well. Perhaps the most distinctive features of the shaik-toruch, however, are the small, round orifices that line their backs alongside their spined vertebrae. These sphincter-like openings (which can be clenched shut) lead to a series of organic chambers inside their bodies that form the dwellings and incubators for goreflies, a symbiotic species that breed and live inside shaik-toruch. Goreflies not to be confused with the considerably more terrible creatures known as gorgeflies are a vicious, nocturnal species of blood-drinking insect somewhat similar to prodigiously oversized assassin bugs or kissing bugs. During daylight hours they roost inside their shaik-toruch hosts, during which time the sand-ray contracts its orifices shut, sealing them inside. As the sun sets these orifices dilate and the goreflies awaken and swarm out in search of prey. Haematophagic, goreflies feed on land-animals (including humans), sometimes draining smaller prey dry; swarms of goreflies have been known to decimate human and zerda communities or herds of grazing animals, leaving a trail of desiccated husks in their wake. On returning to their hosts at dawn the bloated goreflies regurgitate a portion of their meal into a central trough inside their shaik-toruch, supplementing the sand-rays usual diet of carrion and smaller insects. In return for this sustenance and the protection goreflies provide shaiktoruch sandrays offer goreflies shelter and a place to lay their eggs. A unique chemical in shaik-toruch blood deters goreflies from feeding on their own host; as a result, sand-ray blood, when slathered on skin, can protect against gorefly attacks. Like their gorefly symbionts shaik-toruch are predominantly nocturnal. During the day they spend most of their time buried under the sand, emerging at night to search for food and release their goreflies. Shaik-toruch are oviparous, laying their eggs in membranous sacs they bury in the waste, sometimes called jinnis purses. Themselves tranquil, dull-minded creatures, shaik-toruch have on occasion been domesticated by humans and other sapient beings (especially jinni and mantids) and used as mounts; mantids have been known to assemble elaborate palanquins atop their backs. Typically the goreflies inside them have to be killed first typically by sealing shut the sand-rays orifices until the insects within starve to death. Domesticated shaik-toruch have to have blood poured into their gorefly orifices to keep them properly hydrated and nourished. The zerda both respect and fear the shaik-toruch with a near religious awe. When a sandray is sighted

approaching a zerda caravan freshly killed game and a cauldron of blood are left on a divergent path from the caravans intended route so as to avoid confrontation. Shaik-toruch teeth are used as ceremonial daggers by the foxfolk, preserved with oils and then carved with glyphs. Because of their size and symbiotic protectors sand-rays are rarely bothered by predators, but humanoids have been known to hunt them, slathering themselves with shaik-toruch blood to ward off the goreflies; a single shaik-toruch can feed a settlement for weeks. Like dire maggots shaik-toruch sometimes wander into Etiolation, glutting themselves on the bodies they find there until claimed by blanchphage.

Warworm
Warworms are ancient constructs created in ages past by the cestoids for use in their extensive Imperial wars with other powers. Most have been destroyed but a few of these armored hulks have been found nearly intact in the Shatters and in Etiolation, and others are scattered about the Cadaverous Earth, particularly in and around ruinous wormfolk cities. Warworms vaguely resemble cestoids, with long, metameric bodies and hundreds of tiny legs. Powered by eldritch batteries and puissant clockwork, these enormous machines were built to various specifications, some several hundred feet in length. They were designed principally to carry troops, slaves, and military hardware, but also supplies; as such all have very thick armor plates like chitin, often etched with the alien glyphs of the cestoids, for whom symbol-magic was the dominant form of witchcraft. Bristling from the front or face of some warworms is a selection of weaponry, typically acidspurting or incendiary cannons. Others seem to be fitted with burrowing equipment likewise relying on powerful acids (stored in huge tanks within the warworm), or on front-mounted drills. Behind this deadly faade is the cockpit, where either cestoids or as some speculate a race of specially bred pilot-slaves (possibly mantids) would be seated. Then come the various segments of the warworm, some equipped with weapons themselves. These segments are jointed and flexible, allowing a warworm some degree of maneuverability on a battlefield. Today, warworms are rarely seen in operational condition, but occasionally gangs of scavengerbandits restore them to roughly working order (often holding them together with spit and string) and harass small settlements with them. At least one warworm was destroyed by a Watchdog at Macellaria, reputedly piloted by deranged wormfolk fanatics. One warworm, Scuttling Eternity, has been rehabilitated by mantids and now roams the world, crewed by a mongrel band of nomads: mantids, zerda, humans, and renegades of various stripes, working principally as scrap-dealers. Another inactive warworm forms the home of the hermit and mechanical savant Leopold Maximilian and his swarm of mechanoape companions and auatomaton pets.

Xsur
A thing all barbs, serrated fangs, and membranous wings, the xsur is a strange combination of bat, lizard, and manta ray. A solitary beast by nature (occasionally forming mated pairs), xsur tend to haunt the western coasts, subsisting on seabirds, dolphins, and gullfolk; they tend to nest atop the tall pinnacles of rock found in the island chains of the Fevered Ocean, or in the upper levels of the rotting, organic palaces of the Cultivar Technocracy. A few have been sighted further east, ranging as far as the frontier of the Slaughter-lands, though rarely into the waste itself. Xsur anatomy is disturbing and complex. Its bat-like, leathery wings are equipped with barbed talons, and a sinuous tail terminates in a sucker-like orifice with a radula within, lined with tiny, saw-like teeth. A second organ sometimes mistaken for the xsurs mouth is positioned closer to its head, near its beady, vestigial eyes: this toothless, puckering sphincter allows the xsur to echolocate and to emit a sound-wave inducing physical pain on all who hear it a mewling, alien wail while also attacking with its mouth-tipped tail, allowing it to feed without sacrificing its sonic weapon. Occasionally sirae and xsur have been known to enter into bizarre acoustic duels, the xsurs screech pitted against the siraes hypnotic hex, each trying to paralyse or lull the other. A xsurs wings radiate out from a central torso, scaled and vaguely serpentine; two clumsy appendages allow it to manoeuvre on the ground, using its pinions as forelimbs. These limbs also allow xsur to snatch up their prey and carry them beck to their nests to be properly devoured. In practice most who encounter a xsur recall only a blur of wings, claws, and teeth. Xsur lay eggs which they keep in nests fashioned principally from the bones of their prey, used like macabre twigs. They feed their young the protein-rich marrow of these bones after they hatch, usually in broods of six or more (though only one or two xsur in a brood will likely survive to adulthood, succumbing to boilwinds, predators, or starvation first).

Oneiroi
AetherDreamspawn, Nightmare Seed, Aether-Progeny, The Suppuration's Children

Gobble and Slake

Gobble and Slake are a pair of incestuous twin lovers and wandering horrors who plague the Twilight Cities, having strayed across the Slaughter-lands to better satiate their voracious appetites. Gobble is female, Slake male; both are humanoid creatures and in fact resemble normal humans very closely, save when about to feed. Gobble appears as a tall, vivacious woman with violet, doe-like eyes, flushed creamy skin, buxom charms, and curly auburn hair. She habitually wears a choker of some sort, usually a silk scarf bound round her neck: this disguises huge stretch marks on her throat. Gobble can dislocate her jaw like a serpent, revealing a wolfish maw complete with huge fangs, a lolling purple tongue, and breath that reeks of dead flesh. She possesses long, envenomed talons which paralyze her victims. Slake is very similar to his sister, though gaunter and less ruddy, with a handsome porcelain complexion and dark red hair and eyes. His lips are stained dark crimson, standing out against his sharp white face, and he moves his thin limbs like those of a preying mantis or hunting spider. When the feed is upon him he opens his mouth to reveal a cartilaginous proboscis juddering like an obscene tongue from his head, which he uses to penetrate his prey and drain their blood. Gobble and Slake are highly sophisticated entities and often pose as courtesans or society folk. They delight in mesmerizing their prey with their beauty, independent of one another, then bringing their victims back to an agreed-on meeting place, at which time they exchange their conquests as morbid gifts. Other times they share their food: Slake only sucks blood, while Gobble prizes raw meat, devouring those first drained by Slake.

The Goremother
The oneiroi called the Goremother sometimes called Mother Carrion is a grotesque amalgamation of woman and oversized crow. Tall and statuesque with a taut, scarred body (invariably unclothed) the Goremother is usually hunched over when on the ground, a tangled mane of long, black, knotted hair hanging round her face in ragged clumps. Her face has a savage beauty to it; her eyes are huge, black, and idiotic, and her full lips are usually smeared with blood, dribbling down over her neck and breasts. In place of arms the Goremother has enormous wings as of a crow or raven with filthy, matted feathers. She often uses these wings as a kind of cloak when she isnt flying.

Born of the Suppuration, the Goremother now hunts in the Slouching-devil Mountains and the badlands to the south. She constantly maintains a brood of monstrous progeny, a race of huge crows with human faces, much despised by the people of Skein; these she spawns by first coupling with mortal men, captive prey she mates with before devouring. Her squawking offspring clamour incessantly for food, and so the Goremother spends most of her time hunting. Usually she selects mountainous goats or other animals, but she particularly prizes human meat. Whatever her prey, the Goremother will usually fly high above the ground in search of victims before swooping down with a hideous wail and consuming them on the spot. Her belly glutted with a gross surfeit of food, the Goremother then returns to her eyrie in the mountains. To appease her whining, cacophonous children she retches up her half-digested last meal into their open mouths. Unlike some oneiroi the Goremother is not a highly intelligent creature, though she compensates with a great deal of predatory cunning and intuition. She cannot speak more than a few words, and these she utters rarely usually they are instructions and threats to her mates or cooing endearments she whispers to her brood, though she can also sing mellifluously, an ability she uses to lure some victims close to her. Once grown to maturity her harpy-crow children abandon their progenitor, haunting the hills and passes of the Slouchingdevil Mountains and surrounds, subsisting principally on carrion but occasionally harassing travelers and prospectors. Though some foolish hunters and adventurers have attempted to slay the Goremother, all have fallen before her considerable power. It is said that she can be mesmerized by mirrors or brightly shining objects and slain by penetrating her heart with a silver arrow fletched with one of the feathers of her own children.

Icelus
A sly, sinewy creature who has crept from the Suppuration across the jagged plains and deserts of the Slaughter-lands to prowl the murky wastes north of the swamplands, Icelus resembles a kind of satyr. With blue-black flesh and long, coarse hair the colour of a new bruise Icelus blends into shadows easily, creeping about on two cloven feet, his barbed, vaguely leonine tail twitching, snapping scorpion-claws glimmering in the moonlight, under which he prefers to stalk the lonely landscapes of the frontier. His most distinctive feature is his head, long and gaunt and menacing a horses head with black, abysmal eyes and an obscene pink tongue, lolling from a saw-toothed and slavering maw more like a sharks than an equines, probing the air, tasting it, dribbling viscous black spittle, a corrosive poison that also drips from the oneirois tail-sting. Like most oneiroi Icelus intelligence is debatable. It is a humourless and cunning creature known for its depraved lust and brutality. It seems to kill for pleasure as well as for food,

savouring the hunt, tormenting its victims before striking, slithering out of the shadows with those snickering, scissoring claws and that whip-like tail flickering as frenetic and eager as a cruel, excited cats, twitching with unwholesome arousal.

Characters
Lucius and Tormbolge
Mercenary partners, adventurers, and occasional brigands, Lucius and Tormbolge can most often be found doing contract work in the ganglands of Lophius, scrapping in the Pulsetown pits of the Maggot City, or freebooting along the southern fringe. Atypical amongst their rough kindred, the veritable armies of sellswords, hired guns and hexers, and other scum that roam from city to city in search of coin and blood, the pair are unforgettable: Lucius at first glance resembles a sickly nine year old boy, while Tormbolge towers seven feet tall with a prodigious girth to match his height. Lucius is a ghul, having transformed when he was but a child; now slightly over two hundred, he has acquired a surfeit of combat experience to compensate for his size and slight frame. He purchased Tormbolge from slavers and granted him his freedom after witnessing the huge man fight in a small-town circus, killing a cestoid with his bare hands. A eunuch and a mute, Tormbolge grew up touring arenas and gladiatorial pits, becoming a peerless fighter, his body augmented by his masters with drug-secreting implants and ugly metal plates, fused to his flesh like chitin. While Lucius favors knives Tormbolge wields a huge halberd in combat, though he is also an accomplished pugilist. Though immune to the temptations of the flesh so many mercenaries expend their earnings on, the two are not without their vices. Tormbolge has an insatiable appetite, particularly for seafood, savoring pickled lampreys and eels, caviar, and fried fish; he is also addicted to several drugs, including the intense stimulant thrum, although his body synthesizes most of the chemicals he craves. Lucius has a fondness for fine cigars and is a compulsive gambler, regularly losing whole bagfuls of coin in card games and other contests. A dreadful cheat with a talent for prestidigitation and a whole collection of loaded bone dice, Lucius has been banned from innumerable chance-houses and has a small bounty on his head in certain regions. Priding himself on his wry wit and his quick fingers he is an infamous braggart and frequent pickpocket, often requiring Tormbolge to wrest him out of trouble he either talked or stole his way into.

Felix Rhadcuth
A hexer with tattooed arms who looks older than his thirty-seven years with his shock of prematurely whitened hair, Felix Rhadcuth hails from Moroi originally, but fled the city in years past when his name came up in the conscription lottery and the Chirurgeons came looking for him. Since then he has traveled widely as an adventurer and mercenary witch and now lives in semi-retirement as a professor in Skein at the Collegia Tho-Lladrim, one of the five universities in that citys Viridian Ward, the so-called thinkers quarter. He spends most of his time marking term papers and teaching classes on advanced pan-demonological theory, known by the students for his rambling lectures on the fluctuations of aether-currents and the

vital distinctions between a summoning circle, a triangle, and a hexagram. In his spare time he plays Imbroglio, chain-smokes, drinks tea laced with rum or asherat petals, attends plays (only burlesque comedies) in the Saffron Ward, shoots nectar, performs a few eldritch experiments, and maintains a well-tended garden of carnivorous plants, which he feeds regularly. He is also known to have underworld connections from his adventuring days, and can get his hands on certain arcane items that the authorities of Skein might disapprove of. When he is drunk or deep in a nectar-trance he occasionally raves about a vague, unfulfilled love. Physically Felix is striking, with bushy eyebrows and startling blue eyes, staring out from behind a gold-rimmed pince-nez; his face is pale and unlined, but his long, curly hair (usually worn in a loose ponytail) is completely white. His left hand was lost years ago to a litter of wild piranha-rats in a dusty ruin in the Deep Waste; a clockwork prosthetic clicks and whirrs in its place, the silver fingers stained yellow from cigarettes. He has many other scars all over his body, each of them with a story. His familiar, Oriaxes, usually perches on his shoulder in the form of a crimson-furred, horned monkey with three rows of razor teeth and a barbed tail, the collar round its neck running to the gauntlet on Felixs wrist (though not nobility, Felix is afforded some formal status as a tenured professor). The tattoos on Felixs arms were obtained in various places, including Macellarias Hexwarren and a mystic in Shoi-Tann; they allow him to effect several eldritch manifestations if he activates them, mostly protective in nature, though one allows him to animate shadow-matter into a tenebral and another spontaneous generates a small swarm of poisonous insects which he can command through whistling (an old spell he found in a grimiore in Lophius Crooked-Finger reputedly stolen from Gloam-Tor, though Felix himself snorted at the likelihood of the booksellers claim). Felix has been known to venture out of retirement on very rare occasions for research expeditions and the like, and to travel to retrieve artifacts integral to his experiments, usually texts; as such he is sometimes seen in the other Twilight Cities, accompanied by a hired escort and several researchers, in search of some footnote in an obscure folio or something similar. He refuses to return to Moroi under any conditions, unwilling even now to risk conscription into the remnants of the Witch Army.

The Scarred Gentlemen

The trio known as the Scarred Gentlemen are the most notorious duellists and contract killers in Skein. Rakes and villains of the first order, the Gentlemen take lodgings in The Jeweled Monstrance, a disreputable establishment in the Indigo Ward known as a fencing house and a thieves haven. In appearance the three are much alike. All wear masks at once grotesque and beautiful, leering visages suggesting dark whimsy and fey, elfin cruelty, leaving only their lips tinted yellow with madwine visible; all dress in shabby-genteel clothing, frock coats and silk shirts with ruffled cravats and immaculately powdered wigs. They habitually wear gloves and silk scarves round their necks as well, covering most of their bodies. The little flesh they do expose is horrendously scarred, thus earning them their nicknames. When they speak they

do so in rasping, wounded voices. There is little way to differentiate the three: they are of slightly different heights and builds, but all are long and lean. Their eyes may be their most distinguishing features one has venomous green, another tawny yellow, and a third has a mismatched pair of bruise-purple and reddish-brown. The Scarred Gentlemen are reliable and efficient killers and have never failed to claim their mark, tracking their prey out of Skein if need be (though they rarely get far); only the assassins of the Shroud of the House of Shadows in Lophius are considered their superiors. The Gentlemen are all incredibly competent fighters, preferring their braces of antique wheellock pistols hexed for accuracy when stealth isnt required and poisoned stiletto-knives or sabres when discretion is necessary, though they are also especially skilled with crossbows, rapiers, throwing daggers, and rifles. Though some of their equipment bears glyphs none of the Gentlemen possess any overt augmentation and none seem to practice any witchcraft. Though they cultivate a deliberate air of decadent nobility especially through their masks the three are certainly not magisters, lacking familiars; any pretension of bluebloodedness is pure illusion, though the Gentlemen command more respect amongst the syndicates of Skein than the magisters do. The Gentlemen are known for their relentlessness and cunning. Often they will watch a mark for days before executing their attack, carefully coordinating themselves to block off their target's every path of escape before closing in for the kill, three masked, terrifying figures converging with guns or blades at ready. They are responsible for innumerable murders within and without the city limits, bringing down anyone from magisters to merchant princes to emissaries to religious officials. Several vigilantes have tried to eliminate the Gentlemen without success; the City Watch, long on the take of the five syndicates, largely ingores the three, attempting only the most cursory of investigations. The Scarred Gentlemen are incredibly expensive, however, spending most of their coin on liquor and other vices.

Vortenza
The most infamous gunfighter and bounty hunter of the north, the lilix woman Vortenza roams the frontier lands around the Sinew River and the foothills of the Slouching-devil Mountains, operating primarily out of Crepuscle, Skein, and the Unbound shanties of Somnambulon. She is a renegade from Dolmen, having fled the claustrophobic dogma of the priest-queens, their sexist castes and restrictive preconceptions. The second daughter of a powerful lilix theocrat (infanta-archoness of a second-tier diocese), Vortenza was destined for a luxurious if insipid life as a pawn in the elaborate and often ruthless political games of the matriarchy, the so-called Great Web, likely to grow fat, indolent, and callous. Her elder sister was swiftly married to three obedient and carefully selected males; she herself was subsequently betrothed to her first would-be husband. Rejecting the future set out before her Vortenza chose to leave the city secretly, knowing full well that her family would disown her completely and that if she ever returned to the City of Spiders he would be shunned as traitor

to her caste, sex, and city. The exact circumstances of her decision to leave have become the stuff of legend and speculation, as Vortenza herself prefers not to dwell on the particulars; embellishments often include a forbidden lover or a villainous betrothed. Whatever the specifics, Vortenza lost her family name of Ysholob after becoming an outcast. Life outside of the perfumed city chambers was not easy. Her gender and race, which had privileged her even as they restricted her within Dolmen, now became disadvantageous in the extreme. In human settlements she was either treated as monstrous or as freakishly appealing, a bizarre and hideous novelty. It was after a period of aimless wandering and increasing desperation that Vortenza fell in with the vagabond Lao-Urc, a gunfighter-monk and a kind of tramp warrior who made his limited living bringing criminals to justice. She became the monks pupil, learning quickly under his tutelage. The standard education shed endured in Dolmen had taught her marksmanship as well as mathematics, theology, and rhetoric: the exclusively female officers in the military were trained in the use of multiple pistols in combat, and the techniques had long transcended their origins in battle to become sport. LaoUrc, impressed with the already well-honed techniques of his student, strove to teach Vortenza the Thirteen Precepts of the so-called Way of the Gun, an ancient and much mythologized set of quasi-ascetic principles. She learned quickly, and her spiderfolk anatomy allowed her to expand and extrapolate the forms her mentor taught her. She swiftly surpassed Lao-Urc as a pistolier, developing an intricate style involving the use of up to six pistols simultaneously, allowing her to eliminate targets with astonishing rapidity. Together the pair tracked down bandits, thieves, and monstrosities throughout the northern Occident and the fringe of the Slaughter-lands near Flense Veldt and Barrow Scrub, clearing out den after den of brigands until Lao-Urc was slain by a moon-crazed reaver in the cold hills of the Chelicerae Mountains, his head hewn in two by a hurled hatchet. Vortenzas vengeance was swift and merciless, leaving none of the marauders tribe alive. Since the monks death she has worked exclusively alone, becoming a living legend and a terror to behold in combat, a blur of limbs and blazing weaponry. Physically, Vortenza is atypical for a lilix female, who tend towards voluptuousness. She is thin and sinewy to the point of androgyny, and characteristically garbed in weather-stained furs and leathers allowing for great flexibility, as well as fingerless gloves and manskin boots. She usually displays her six pistols and ammunition strapped to her compact, elegant torso. Sometimes her weapons (and her species) are obscured by a tattered and bullet-holed black cloak, possibly once belonging to Lao-Urc, which she wears when traveling in colder climes.

Ezekiel Khaan
An eccentric (some would say deranged) witch who lives on the outskirts of Macellaria, Ezekiel Khaan is a wealthy and obsessive individual. Outwardly he appears human, though rumors persist that he has forged infernal contracts or else preserved himself with alchemical treatments, unnaturally prolonging his life. His physical semblance is chameleonic, to say the

least. Round and excited eyes peer out from his ageless face, often adorned with elaborately sculpted whiskers Ezekiel is prone to growing long, gaudily dyed beards (usually blue, green, or violent orange) and then shaving them without warning. He wears a shifting garment with sewn-in sigils that fluctuates in hue according to some inscrutable pattern, possibly its wearers own whims, possibly at random. A hunched familiar something like a hairless monkey and something like a giant toad, addressed by Ezekiel as the Primeval Warbler, can constantly be found in the witchs company, usually perched on his shoulder and babbling obscure and nonsensical gibberish that sounds sometimes like poetry and sometimes like a complex mathematical theorem. Ezekiels manse is located on a hill southeast of the Eels Gate, ringed by a tall, solid wall of writhing maggots, constantly squirming, erupting from the ground in a quivering profusion of pallid larval flesh. The gate of the manse only parts for welcome visitors, those who can prove that they have an appointment with Ezekiel to the demon gatekeeper Nybias a tall, svelte figure with a beard of tentacles, a nest of red insectile eyes, and a barbed tail, habitually clad in a pristine white suit, Ezekiels chosen livery, paid for his services rather than compelled into subjugation (though the terms of this arrangement are known only to Ezekiel and Nybias). Most of these visitors are outlandish themselves: mysterious men and women with odd grafts or lurid garb, adventurers and scoundrels and fellow hexers with stitched servitors or chained familiars or hulking bodyguards armed with unwieldy weapons. The manse itself is visible beyond the hideous living walls, a rambling and whimsically constructed edifice with many unlikely cupolas, spires, and wings, lavishly ornate and adorned with faceless statues like spindly mannequins, carved in animalistic and often sexual postures. Few reliable descriptions of the manses interior have emerged. Reports have mentioned a mad chaos of clockwork and steam, furnaces and crucibles wreathed in sulphurous fumes, glass forests of beakers and testtubes; an array of living furniture fashioned from monstrous limbs and skins; a room whose walls are covered in murmuring wallpaper that speaks with a thousand loquacious mouths. Ezekiels income is generated principally from his ingenious inventions and his alchemical concoctions, sold in the Hexwarren district of the City of Bodysnatchers. The Splicing Guild considers the witch a threat to their business but have been unable to infiltrate his manse; they would pay a small fortune to any willing to do so and return with Ezekiels secrets.

Old Gran Corpse

Old Gran Corpse is a ghul vagrant and mystic who lives on the streets of Moroi, wandering the alleyways of Wasp-Hole and Manikin-Slump. No one knows exactly how old Old Gran Corpse actually is - she herself claims to have forgotten - but she has disjointed recollections of the Conflagration and even the dementia epidemics, which means she must be well over seven hundred at least, incredibly long-lived for a ghul of such poor economic status. Physically Old Gran Corpse appears to be of late middle age, swathed perpetually in a scuffed,

oversized leather jacket, with a crazed shock of iron gray hair and bright golden eyes, peering out from a haggard but vaguely cheerful visage. A charm with the image of an unknown deity hangs around her neck on a piece of twine. Like most street-people in Moroi Old Gran Corpse is an addict, both to nectar and to several other substances, predominantly alcohol and mind wrack; however, she seems to have developed an intense tolerance to most chemical and alchemical drugs or toxins. While addled and sometimes visibly mad in a quiet, muttering sort of way, Old Gran Corpse is much more coherent than many vagrants, and a few have suggested that her insanity may be an act, based on the ancient wisdom that gleams in her nectar-jaundiced eyes. Subsisting primarily on rats, pigeons, and spiders, Old Gran Corpse makes a bare subsistence living for herself reading fortunes, primarily using a faded set of tarot cards. She also interprets dreams, casts the bones, reads auguries in entrails, and has been known to dabble a as a soul tinker, channelling spirits from the aether with a few chalk glyphs scrawled on brick walls or cobbled streets. She possesses several books of varying sizes which she stows in her enormous pockets, along with her cards, bones, and other oddments.

Mr. Rasp
A charismatic figure completely atypical for its race, the enigmatic Mr. Rasp is one of the few leechkin to have utterly transcended or at any rate discarded all vestiges of its native culture. Though of course just as sexless as all members of its species Mr. Rasp has selfidentified as male, perhaps as part of its (his) overarching business strategy. Certainly he cultivates an aura of ostentation and power virtually unknown amongst the leechkin: where most of his ilk go unclothed Mr. Rasp wears immaculately tailored suits, tunics of Skein-made silk, and shoes of the finest manskin leather (he also carries an immense gold pocketwatch, also of Skein manufacture). Mr. Rasp is a merchant, and a very successful one. Having risen from obscure origins in the City of the Lamprey, sired by a leechkin shaman, he clawed his way up from the gutters, quickly finding employ with a mongrel street-gang along the Street of Mists in Vespergate He quickly proved himself capable and rose through the ranks with ruthless tenacity, becoming noted not only for his grim determination and a talent for persuasion but also, surprisingly, for his mathematical skills. He worked for a time as an accountant and bookkeeper for one of Lophius major gangs, eventually coming to handle the majority of the gangs financial interests. When his employers were slaughtered en masse by the ghilan gang called the Devourers Mr. Rasp fled Lophius by ship, at this time assuming his current moniker allegedly inspired by the leader of the Devourers, the notorious grave-spawn gangster Mr. Gray. Since his departure from Lophius Mr. Rasp has built a small financial empire based out of Macellaria, the City of Bodysnatchers, heading one of the Robber Guilds, the House of Crimson Shadows. Now he dwells in a veritable palace in the old city, attended by a horde of

servants, supping daily on fresh blood from enormous silver chalices. He is seen frequently in the city streets, accompanied by four strikingly unique bodyguards Yesheleb with his plethora of unlikely limbs and his fluid pugilism, the cloaked, mercenary thing that merely calls itself The Cowl, the lilix swordsman Illiszan, and red-masked Chaa-Ibl, witch-priestess of the Bloodletter and sometimes travels abroad for meetings with other important merchants, preferring to meet with people face to face probably to intimidate them with his six-eyed, yellow stare. He speaks polished Shambles, Jangle, Hagspeech, and even Hellspeak from his two palm-mouths, and has perfected a technique unknown amongst other leechkin for speaking in two distinct languages simultaneously.

Diseases
Blanchphage
Exposure to the great, desiccated battlefield of Etiolation leads to the inevitable contraction of this condition, a sapping, energy-draining affliction that sucks out vitality and colour from an individual, leaving them without pigmentation or will. Blanchphage victims look like colourless husks, often becoming gaunt or emaciated as a result of their near complete loss of appetite. Nihilistic despair and a depressed torpor not violent or suicidal, but a paralyzing absence of willpower or interest eventually overcomes even the hardiest of minds. No cure is known, but most who manage to escape Etiolation before the final stages of the disease eventually recover. Blanchphage does linger, however, even after departure from the battlefield: dissipation is not immediate. Because of blanchphage, vegetation, fungi, detritovores, and all other living organisms are virtually absent from Etiolation. This means that the scores of bodies in the battlefield never fully decay. Some are animated by the temporus mali to become haunts, but most simply lie unblinking in the gray emptiness, skins dried-out and pallid, hair white and brittle. Because of their preservation, however, these corpses have become a resource for the Twilight Cities, particularly Macellaria: their flesh is consumed, their limbs sold to the tissue shops, their bones carved into weapons and tools.

Eyeblight
A bizarre disease even by the standards of the Cadaverous Earth, eyeblight, also called peacock syndrome, is a progressive and potentially debilitating contagion whose methods of transmission are sinister, to say the least. Through some mysterious eldritch process eyeblight pathogens are transmitted not through air, spores, contaminated food or water, or even physical contact, but through eye contact. The gaze alone appears to be insufficient: an eyeblight sufferer who merely looks upon another will not transmit the disease, but at the moment of contact, when the viewed returns the gaze, a pathway is made and the door for infection is opened. The infection travels through the pupil and along the optic nerve into the victims brain. Once contracted, eyeblight symptoms can manifest anywhere, but they usually begin on the face, neck, or shoulders, spreading slowly down the victims body. The disease causes the appearance of small cysts or lesions that grow rapidly over the course of a few days before suppurating, exposing a fully grown and apparently operational eye, usually of the same type as that of the sufferers normal eyes, complete with lids and eyelashes (though not eyebrows). The eye-lesions begin in small clusters and gradually spread, typically progressing down the arms, hands, back, and chest first, then to the victims abdomen, legs, and feet. Newly grown optic nerves run from each lesion-cluster in dense cables up to the brain, where the infection

began. This allows the sufferer to use all of the eyes at once. The experience of suddenly being able to see in many directions is incredibly disorienting, especially in the final stages. There is no medicinal cure for eyeblight, and though surgery can remove the eye-lesions they inevitably grow back. As eyeblight runs its course the sufferer often finds it difficult to walk or holds objects because of the pressure on eyes on their soles or palms. Those who live with the condition eventually master the technique of closing all of their extra eyes, and keeping them closed, as desired. Some consider the disease a blessing in disguise because it allows them to see in ways they never would have otherwise been capable. Extreme treatments for the disease include the intentional blinding of all the lesions of an eyeblight sufferer an often painful but ultimately effective remedy. Eyeblight is never directly fatal, but secondary eye infections are not uncommon in eyeblight victims. Some have suggested that eyeblight may belong to the same family as harrowflux because of similar progression patterns, though the latter disease is considerably deadlier. Eyeblight lesions are capable of spreading the disease. Bizarrely, eyeblight sufferers seem incredibly resistant to geist infection, even immune, and so are often employed as geist exterminators. Why this is, pathologists can only speculate: some have suggested that in fact eyeblight is a more benign form of slow-growing geist infection that doesn't rob the subject of free will but does act as a kind of "vaccine" against geist transformation, since geists can't infect other geists, even of different types.

Geist Infection
See the entry on Geists, under Grave-Spawn, above.

Harrowflux
A deadly disease that decimated many of the port cities that once glittered like jewels along the now desolate shores of the Serrated Coast, harrowflux is a grotesque and virulent contagion that has claimed thousands, perhaps millions. Chief symptoms include the development of vicious horny growths that begin under the skin like cysts and then burst through in spiky clusters, radiating outwards from sites of initial infection. As the spikes spread the victim experiences agonizing pain; eventually, terminal cases are literally covered in spikes from head to foot, often acquiring a number of secondary infections from their many small wounds. Harrowflux is caused by a malignant, nigh-invisible parasite that legend purports was created as a biological weapon in one of the Cadaverous Earths many terrible and near-forgotten wars. Harrowflux epidemics occasionally break out in poor districts of the Twilight Cities where hygiene is poor. Lax quarantine procedures often help spread the disease. However, many

individuals seem to be genetically immune to the condition. So long as the illness is caught quickly and immediate antibiotic medicines are administered harrowflux can be treated, but most who contract the disease suffer a horrific and excruciating death within a month or two of initial infection.

Spectre-plague
Victims of spectre-plague first feel a period of cold and numbness, and appear pale and anemic. As the condition worsens their skin becomes increasingly translucent, until they appear as if flayed, their flesh completely intact but totally transparent. If the disease continues to progress the musculature and even organs become less opaque as well, until eventually the individual looks like a walking skeleton. Spectre-plague progresses much like gangrene, beginning in a single area (the site of initial infection) and spreading gradually and progressively, so that some victims almost resemble partially decomposed corpses. Besides this strange effect, spectre-plague is innocuous. Some have suggested links to the condition called blanchphage, but this seems unlikely: spectre-plague victims may be horrified at their transformations but do not suffer from the apathy or depression of blanchphage victims, and also unlike blanchphage sufferers they can never recover. Most learn to live with the condition. Certain eldritch treatments can slow but not halt the diseases progression, but the most common cure requires the grafting of fresh flesh over the infected individuals transparent epidermis. The grafted tissue inevitably becomes infected itself over time, and of course will shed as all skin does, but a series of (admittedly expensive) skin-grafts, at least in areas such as the face and hands, can partially restore a sufferers appearance. Less expensive options include body-painting or tatooing, or simply wearing lots of clothing to hide the affliction. Spectre-plague is mildly contagious but hardly virulent, and spreads as often as not through injury (though it can be spread through other forms of contact). Deliberate infection, though rare, is not unheard of amongst those with patricularly perverse aesthetic tastes, particularly quick who find themselves attracted to grave-spawn. Interestingly, ghilan and eidilons seem totally immune to the disease, but the host-bodies of shades are still susceptible.

Gods and Religion

A myriad of faiths compete for dominance in the Cadaverous Earth, from the harsh theocracy of the lilix to the loose pantheism of Lophius to the terrible cults of the Unfettering. Many of these religions are contradictory or mutually exclusive, maintaining radically divergent philosophical and spiritual perspectives or enforcing different codes upon their practitioners.

Baubo
Goddess of obscenities, profanities, filth, drunkenness, joy, and abjection, Baubo is a very old deity whose origins are said to be rooted in the nascent aeons of human history. Appearing as a naked, aging, obese woman, often riding a pig or hog and sometimes equipped with a rickety wooden ladder leaning against one fleshy shoulder, Baubo is not a mainstream goddess but is nonetheless a popular one. Her scripture, the so-called Principia Obscena, is an index of curse-words, dirty jokes, and lewd gestures, with long, lavishly illustrated appendixes dedicated to erotic instruction in unlikely sexual positions and pornographic psalms. With a major temple in Crepuscle, two smaller ones in Lophius (in the Driftwood District) and Macellaria (at the border of Velveteen Circus and the Skin Markets), and a smattering of shrines across the Cadaverous Earth, Baubo has a substantial if somewhat fringe following. It is more common to invoke her name or one of her innumerable curses than to pray formally to Baubo, but those who do dedicate themselves to her tend to truly revel in the indecency and repulsiveness of her rites, wanton ceremonies recorded in the Principia Obscena which frequently have orgiastic components and involve the consumption of unwholesome substances.

The Weeping Lady

Those who heed the Lament of the Weeping Lady and become members of the Mourning Flock cast aside their past lives in favor of sublime monastic asceticism. Cloistering themselves in fortified and reclusive monasteries scattered across the Cadaverous Earth (with a particularly dense constellation in the Chelicerae Mountains) members of the Order of the Weeping Lady dedicate themselves to the funerary rites of the entire world, having pronounced it beyond salvation. Their hymns are great dirges; their meditations, macabre and often nihilistic musings on the blank horror of oblivion. Though some sects hold that in mourning the Cadaverous Earth a term for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Perelachaise-p1000391.jpg the world that Order itself invented and continues to use they will usher it and its residents into an afterworld or new paradise, most believe that existence itself will soon end, that the final eschatology is upon the world and that all that remains is to reflect on realitys tragic destruction. They offer a swan-song: a final tribute. The Weeping Lady herself is generally portrayed as a deathly white female figure constantly weeping crystalline tears, and is garbed in a black dress, sometimes tattered. Rank within her Order is denoted through teardrop tattoos and minutiae of apparel, which consist of black, gray, and white robes and habits. The Lady is connected to concepts such as fatality, endings, sadness, song, and linearity. The Order sustains itself by conducting services such as funerary rights (burial, cremation,

and more exotic funerals) for those that wish them, by collecting donations in their shrines, by selling relics, and by tending to graveyards and tombs. Of course, many inhabitants of the Twilight Cities eat or sell their dead, which limits the funerary functionality of the Order. They are widely believed to possess extensive stockpiles of wealth stored away in past centuries, though the truth of these mysterious funds are known only to the upper-level clergy members.

The Bloodletter
Revered by warriors, assassins, mercenaries, and similarly murderous folk, the entity known only as the Bloodletter is a mad and lustful battle-god. Those who venerate the Bloodletter proffer the spilt blood of their enemies to their god in return for his divine aid in combat. Legend has that once the Bloodletter was a mortal, but through the red self-baptism of carnage he ascended to godhood. He appears as a brutishly muscled and hulking figure wearing a dented and red-plumed helmet. His massive body is scarred and blood-spattered, and he wears piecemeal armour of metal or leather. Often he is depicted wielding a great axe or sword, other times a pair of smoking pistols (in which guise he often swaps his helmet for a broadbrimmed hat). Shrines to the Bloodletter are rare and his formal priesthood nearly nonexistent, but nonetheless he remains a popular deity amongst superstitious men and women who make their business in killing, which describes a substantial portion of the worlds ragtag and amoral population. The Church of Striga holds that the Bloodletter is a perverse abomination, a devil spawned from the spurt of tainted blood that flowed from the punctured body of Hirud, who they claim Striga personally dispatched as such he is occasionally identified as an avatar of Hirud. For Striga, blood is sacred and should only be spilled as part of religious ceremony; for the Bloodletter, random bloodshed is encouraged, with obscenity or transgression linked to apotheosis. Few individuals hold solely to the Bloodletter, recognizing him as a kind of divine lunatic; despite his universally recognized psychopathy he is thought by some to possess true divine power. Like Melmoth the Wanderer the Bloodletter is sometimes conflated with the god-murderer Kain in esoteric texts. Some claim the Bloodletter and the Wanderer are twins, others that they are dual aspects of a single deity. He is associated with chaos or randomness, madness, war, battle, appetite, excess, brute strength, and uninhibited will.

Melmoth the Wanderer

Patron god of travelers, vagabonds, peddlers and other merchants, sailors, aeronauts, and kindred wanderers of every stripe, Melmoth has few formal temples apart from small roadside altars and shrines at the gates of the Twilight Cities. Nonetheless he is a popular deity amongst those who spend any time traveling the vast and lawless wastes of the Cadaverous Earth. Melmoth is a solitary and melancholy figure usually depicted as a robed man whose face is

obscured by a cowl. He is sometimes conflated with Kain, a legendary murderer marked by some long-forgotten elder power to forever wander the earth, though this connection is extremely archaic. Some iconography of the deity depict him with two faces or with an oroborus ring. Melmoth counts roads, winds, waves, doorways, circularity, stories, journeys, error, order and chaos-in-order, gnosis, eternity, rebirth, and the ecstatic sensation of pure wanderlust as part of his portfolio. Those who believe in the Wanderer mutter prayers to him before setting out on a journey or when they arrive at a destination, leave coins at wayside shrines, and thank the deity if they evade trouble on the road. He is invoked by those who are lost or unsure, who are physically or metaphysically confused. Melmoth is opposed to concepts of mortality, finality, eschatology, or true purpose. Particularly devout worshipers of Melmoth often claim to have met the god passing down the roadside. They report an enigmatic encounter in which all feelings of burden are lightened and their sense of worry is resolved. The see the purity of the road, an expression of a sublimely meaningless existential pattern, a grand cycle in which birth and death are mere punctuation marks, illusory moments of end or beginning on an unending series of paths.

Verlum
Bloated Spider-Goddess of the lilix, the matriarchal deity Verlum presides over the Twilight City of Dolmen, served by her all-female clergy. Deriving their scriptures from an ancient tapestry purportedly woven by the Goddess herself, the priestesses administer law and justice through a theocratic system of authoritarian controls that make governmental and religious structures in the city virtually inextricable. Only a few individuals are permitted to gaze upon the tapestry and interpret its meaning, ensuring that authority never leaves the spindly hands of the elder priestesses.

The Beast Gods

Nameless, innumerable, and inhuman, the ravenous Beast Gods of the deep are mythical beings said to half-slumber at the bottom of the ocean, awaiting the fulfillment of some unfathomable prophecy or mysterious celestial event before they awaken. Sometimes identified as servitors or kindred to the Chained Ones or the swamp demons of the south, the Beast Gods are not formally worshipped save by the most depraved of corsairs. Sailors do frequently give blood offerings to the Beast Gods, though many hold to Melmoth instead (or in addition). The Beast Gods themselves are described variously as chimerae of crustacean, giant squid, and whale, and supposedly possess vast, animal intellects and enormous appetites. The phenomena known as Utterances ripples in the Aether confined to the Occidental Seas and Oceans are

often ascribed to the Beast Gods half-slumbering groans, their sleepy rumblings. While many deities are connected with an array of abstract concepts the Beast Gods are less metaphysically constructed, associated only with raw, monstrous power, elements of salt and water and polished nacre, with the basest, most essential impulses: breed, sleep, dream, devour.

Hirud
The god-leech and Ravager-Worm, instigator of the Pallid Decimation, patron of the cestoid Imperium and fabled source of Etiolation, the dark god Hirud is portrayed as a gargantuan parasite, a leech or worm or lamprey bent on sucking out the life from the world and devouring its essence to sate his (or its) diabolic thirst. A forbidden deity, taboo in almost all cultures, Hirud is worshipped only by a few outlandish, underground cults, often with links to those who work towards the Great Unfettering Hirud is identified in certain esoteric texts as one of the Chained Ones, the elemental beings who ended the Membrane Wars and were then bound at horrific cost, released from bondage before the rest of his siblings only to be petrified at the climax of the apocalyptic battle preserved in the cursed waste at the gray, desiccated heart of the Slaughter-lands.

The Star-Gods
Primarily worshiped by grave-spawn, the Star-Gods are deities composed of the light from dead stars that has only now reached the Cadaverous Earth, having traveled for millennia across the cold oblivion of space. Those who worship the Star-Gods believe that this ghostly light is the final expression of the inchoate divine power potential in all stars. Stars are larvae, the fiery eggs of deities not yet fully manifest. Only through their death, through novae, can the deities pupate, transcending their flaming, material bodies and thus entering a purer, more perfect phase of existence. This process is aligned with the transformation of the quick into grave-spawn, the transmutation of living clay into dust, a process considered a sacred blessing by those who hold to the Star-Gods. The Gods themselves are thought to care little if at all for the denizens of Earth. In contrast with the superstitious astrology of petty seers and gutter-witches those who believe in the StarGods are deistic at best, their reverence for starlight an abstract and largely metaphorical thing. Certain chapters of the faith do believe in the Mysteries of Dead Light, that is, that within the Star-Gods death-light are encoded secret revelations; to this end their astronomersacerdos continually compile stellar data and search for hidden patterns, in an attempt to decipher the Language of Stardust and so unravel the Mysteries.

The Leering God

- by Ghostman

Certain nomadic tribes whose caravans ply the eastern portions of the treacherous Tallow Plains - those parts nearest the dreaded Slaughter-lands - have through the course of uncount generations worshiped an odd entity entrapped within a stone idol hidden in that wasteland. Dubbed the Leering Colossus or the Leering God, this obscure divinity is almost completely unknown outside the small cult that venerates it. Though it's origin and history is an enigma even to those with the most intimate familiarity with it, one thing seems certain: the Colossus is somehow able to resist the chaotic shifts of the Tallow Plains, never eroding nor disintegrating, and never drifting far from the Slaughter Lands. Physically, it appears as a gigantic statue of a humanoid, yet obviously inhuman figure, seated on a queer throne that looks curiously organic in shape. Formed from unidentified red stone and possessing the sublime yet somewhat disturbing touch of mystique that is common to many ancient idols and fetishes, the cult image bears astoundingly lifelike features, with a definite suggestion of masculinity despite it's alien figure. The most striking feature is the vivid expression upon it's broad face, one that human tongues can only describe as a subtly perverse, yet strangely reassuring leer. This enigmatic idol is inhabited by a spiritual entity of eldritch power and intelligence. Though unmoving and lifeless, it is capable of communing with it's worshipers through prophetic dreams. True followers of the Leering Colossus are inexplicably able to locate it simply by treading the eastern Tallow Plains, as if they were fated to stumble upon it. The cultists and the Colossus exist in a symbiotic relationship, willingly benefiting one another. When a caravan of the faithful stops by the object of their reverence, they set camp for the night and prepare for an elaborate ceremony. Under the leering gaze of the idol and the myriad stars of the naked sky, the eldritch din of tom-toms and reed pipes sets tone to an ecstatic ritual dance. Gradually it turns into a climactic orgy, the dancers casting off their clothes and all pretenses of restraint, giving in fully to the primal pleasures of the flesh. The Colossus feeds off the latent sexual energy thusly released, revitalizing itself - so teach the elderly mystics heading the informal cult hierarchy. Though this ritual is shamelessly debaucherous, it is never forced - every participant must act of their own will, lest the purity of the ceremony be tainted, invoking the wrathful aspect of the usually benevolent Leering God. In return for the surges of vitality it craves, the Colossus bestows upon the faithful a blissful spell granting them visions that guide them on their journeys, forewarning of the many dangers upon their path. So it has been for many generations, and while the guidance of the Leering God is not infallible, the initiates of the cult have escaped many a certain doom thanks to their passionate tribute.

Witchcraft

Artistry
The thing in the vat regarded its creator with the vacuous stare of an infant. The fleshcrafter did not meet this dull, wet gaze but fiddled instead with the complex controls of a nearby console, tapping at keys and swearing beneath his breath. A moment later a hissing sound filled the large, domed chamber; and then fire erupted in the vat, and the creature screamed, flailing its limbs for a moment before the flame consumed it. Only a skeleton remained, charred and malformed, scraps of burnt flesh still clinging to the blackened bones. The witch sighed. Another failure another day wasted. Rowan Moray was not registered with the Splicing Guild near the Witchs Gate. He was a freelancer, and if the Guildsmen ever noticed him, they would burn his studio to the ground with him still in it. That he ate into their profit margins was enough to invite their hostility; that he operated beyond the pale of Guild protocol and regulation, refusing their arbitrary restrictions and small-minded narrowness of scope. Fortunately, his business was small-scale, a back alley tissue-shop on the outskirts of the Skin Markets near the border between Wormhive and Velveteen Circus in downtown Macellaria, far from the Guild Citadel in Hexwarren and its chambers of slick, echoing stone. Rowans studio was expansive and manychambered. Space was far from precious in the City of Bodysnatchers: hundreds of rooms were deserted, whole streets and sectors inhabited only by rats and spiders. He had selected a three-leveled complex in a confusing block of musty streets, in the shadow of a Wormhive spire. A pair of bronze titans, sibling fire-bringers and obscure trickster gods, supported the arched entranceway, crowned with a buzzing neon sign: Body Modification Grafts, Fleshsculpting & Augmentation. A narrow antechamber followed, lit with the sepia glow of a fitful, naked bulb; through a hexagonal door (magnetically sealed while the shop was closed) was the shop level, its high ceiling lost in darkness, its wares displayed under lamps filtered yellow or crimson, like exhibits in a museum or, perhaps, sideshow attractions as befitting their grotesquerie. One display case held a hand with seven fingers and bruise-purple flesh, with long talons black as obsidian, wires feeding it liquids or draining them out; beside it, another case held a mask of pale, living skin, a beautiful womans visage placed over a mannequin head. In a larger tank a selection of newly-assembled creations bickered over a rats carcass, while a twoheaded snake with a pair of human faces hissed in its cage and uncoiled its iridescent, bifurcating body, a piece inspired by the naghini of the Bluebottle Archipelago. There was a selection of limbs and organic weapons, fangs and bony spurs and stinging tendrils. There were lungs that could breathe smoke or water, hearts that could beat faster, de-tox implants and

glandular batteries of drugs all perfectly preserved, kept alive through an ingenious system of tubes and electric stimulations. The lamplight shone through the thin layers of flesh, dappling the domino-tiled floor with sallow illumination. He catered to two distinct demographics. The first was composed of street-level thugs and toughs looking for an advantage in a brawl or bar-fight a bit of grafted muscle, an extra limb, steel claws and the like. Rowan considered this hack-work, the necessary toil to keep his establishment running scum of the sort he dealt with paid in cash, and their jobs were quick, crude, and simple. This sort of augmentation would be ignored by even the most vigilant Guild agent: it was simply

too commonplace, too ubiquitous, the work of common graft peddlers in back-alleys or Tatterdemalion Court. The second clientele base he maintained was considerably smaller and a great deal more affluent, the sort that would attract the ire of his larger, more powerful competitors if discovered. This second class of customers foreigners, aficionados, even some Fleshmongers looking to acquire some particular perversion on the cheap ordered strictly by commission, and their requests took weeks if not months to complete. But these commissions, while invariably strange to the point of grotesquerie, were far from hack-work. They were, at least in Rowans mind, his masterpieces they were works of art.

Eldritch Theory
Witchcraft is the practice of imbuing a sigil, phrase, or other symbol with arcane power. Words, glyphs, and incantations have no power in and of themselves: were I to simply scrawl the apotropaic Sigil of Arcane Abhorrence on my door, I would not ward off malignant eldritch creatures and spells, as that mark is intended. Rather, a witch must empower or infuse his or her symbols with psychic potency, interpreting the symbol and understanding it as an object of artifice, a semiotic shadow giving the symbol meaning. This interpretive or critical act is at the core of witchcraft, thus allowing the shamanism of the leechkin, the ritualism of the hagmen, the sigil system of fleshcraft, the ornate mysticism of the lilix, the baroque incantatory nigromancy of Moroi, and other forms of arcana to all coexist: while all of these competing systems utilize different symbols, they rely on the same mechanism to imbue those symbols with power. The process sometimes dubbed invocation in technical terms requires the mind to saturate itself in the chaotic juices of the collective unconscious, a kind of aether-realm from which all images emerge. The more complex the spell, the deeper the witch must penetrate this mindscape, and such sojourns are not without difficulties and hazards. Only those with strong psychic potential who have trained their minds to withstand the whirling entropy of the aether can draw on it to cast the more powerful or intricate spells; those who attempt to channel eldritch energy into a sigil or phrase who lack the proper control or have taxed their abilities too vigorously may succumb to the nightmarish intoxications of the aether and lose

their individual coherency. These wretched souls become mad, dangerous things, channeling raw numina haphazardly.

Nectar
The puissant sap of the Elder Trees of Moroi quickens and catalyses invocation by breaking down barriers between the individual mind and the collective unconscious, allowing a witch to tap into the aether with much greater facility. The sap itself, known as nectar or ichor, takes the form of a pale golden serum, and is usually injected. It is highly addictive and can cause hallucinations, euphoria, night-terrors, and other side effects as well as supercharging a witch with numina. Prolonged use, however, can eventually wear down all distinctions between an individuals mind and the aether, plunging the user into madness. It has been speculated by arcane scholars that the dementia epidemics that contributed to the decline of Moroi during the middle of the Aeon of Dust may have been linked to the overuse of nectar. The vast number of active witches in the city at the time may have created a cloud of psychic effluvia as a result of their mass channeling and invocation, resulting in the bouts of madness and dysfunction that debilitated the once-great city-state. Although evidence is inconclusive, it has also been suggested that the Suppuration itself is in fact a larger-scale symptom of collective invocation, a kind of psychic bleed as the collective unconscious oozes into the material world in other words, the practice of witchcraft may have worn away at the fabric between realities, perforating the aether and allowing it to intrude onto the physical.

Hexes
Hexes are spells that can be invoked through incantation. Hexes can transform the caster or someone else, curse, augment, heal, or harm the witch or another individual, or evoke some effect on the environment. Common battle-hexes include Eldreds Excellent Exsanguination (which boils the targets blood), Catskulls Green Corruption (which manifests a voracious fungus that devours the target from the inside out, then uses them as a grisly, mushroomcovered thrall), and Vorls Black Dismemberment (which causes loss of limb), Moriths Nine Mortifications (a series of hexes that can numb, paralyze, maim, or cause complete muscle death), and the anonymous Withering Gaze (which hexes the eyes of the witch so that his or her stare has a desiccating effect, turning opponents to dust). Hexes can also be employed in order to graft new limbs or flesh.

Glyphs
Also called sigils or wards, glyphs are ideograms physically inscribed on some surface, be it wood, stone, paper, metal, glass, bone, flesh (sometimes called a flesh-hex), or a similar substance. They tend to express permanent effects rather than ephemeral eldritch events. For example, a hex might invoke a pair of leathery bat-wings or a gout of eldritch flame, but a

glyph might bind a rogue shadow elemental into a lead phylactery, ward against poisons and toxins, or blind anyone who read it. They are instrumental in controlling otherwise dangerous entities such as demons. Glyphs of this sort are most commonly used in fleshcraft to bind spirits into dead flesh, revivifying it (for example, the servitors and Watchdogs of Macellaria), or in diabolism to protect a witch from a demon. The magisters of Skein utilize silver collars etched with tiny sigils to keep fully manifested demons as pets, bodyguards, and servants (such bound demons are called familiars).

Demons
The word demon signifies an otherworldly entity, an alien being foreign to the Cadaverous Earth. Demons are sometimes confused with oneiroi (subconscious emanations in the Aether made manifest through the Suppuration) and daevas (indigenous immortals, though possibly with otherworldly lineage), largely due to their chimerical, nightmarish appearance. Existing as they do on planes with fundamentally different rules, demons have bewildering physical forms and often possess shapeshifting abilities, choosing to appear in certain guises. They also universally feed off non-corporeal substances: numina, souls, vitality, pleasure, pain, fear, and the like. Demons can enter the Cadaverous Earth in several ways. The overwhelming majority are summoned by mortal diabolists, conjured and then bound using glyphs of power and similar witchcraft, either trapped in a physical vessel or in an eldritch circle. Some escape, overcoming or circumventing such wards and running wild; others are kept as familiars, the fiendish pets, bodyguards, servants, or concubines of accomplished spellcasters. Most other demons are refugees or deserters from the near-forgotten Membrane Wars, a series of apocalyptic conflicts in the distant past in which demoniac forces invaded the Cadaverous Earth and were eventually repelled, the rifts they used for their incursion sealed. These wretched creatures are trapped in this realm, unable to return to their Hells. There are several distinct tribes or clades of demons, obsessively categorized by diabolists in their convoluted demonologies. Lowest amongst them are the imps, otherworldly pests with little intelligence or power, small in size and in intelligence, often winged miniature demons frequently kept as pets or familiars. The bestial demons inhabiting the southlands and the Sallow Seas are utterly unfathomable, primordial creatures sometimes identified as elemental demigods or the like (some speculate they may not be otherworldly demons at all, but simply powerful idigenous spirits). These beings whose presence predates the Membrane Wars are irrational and enigmatic, incapable of forming allegiances with mortals; their intelligence is hotly debated, with some maintaining that they possess sublime but glacial consciousness, others insisting that they are little more than terrifyingly puissant animals. In contrast are the hierarchical, politically minded demons sometimes dubbed True Fiends or seirim, their bodies variegated and mismatched, their minds prolix and cunning in the extreme. Their powerstructures are incredibly complex, with a confusion of Dukes, Archdukes, Marquises, Earls, and

Princes vying against one another for position. Finally there are the demons sometimes called mazikin, mutilated and horrific Morrghu the Rot Angel, Ahemaat Heart-Ripper, Fornus the Flayed, Haagi the Twisted, and thousands of others, each a warped phantom. Though they do not possess the incomprehensible, chaotic purity of mind of the demons of swamp and sea, their psyches are fragmented and wounded, murkier and less stable than the conniving, calculating consciousness of the seirim.

The Membrane Wars and the Great Fettering

Though the details of the Membrane Wars are lost, their echoes can still be felt across the Cadaverous Earth. Erupting climactically at the end of the blood-spattered Aeon of Immolation, the Wars were precipitated by a single arcane event, possibly even an accident. It is unknown whether the witches who first tore open the world-pore were curious but nave thaumaturge-scientists or crazed diabolists bent on unleashing the apocalypse that followed, but whoever they were they bore through the normally semi-permeable skin between planes, the eponymous Membranes, and ripped open a permanent portal to one of the terrifying Helldimensions. The portal propagated, like a torn seam in fabric, unraveling normally immutable boundaries. Sensing the relative weakness of the mortal inhabitants of the alien world that had suddenly manifested at their doorstep the demoniac forces of the Hells were quick to attack. What followed was a brutal, centuries-long state of warfare in which demon-clans fought each other as well as mortal armies across the battlefields of the Cadaverous Earth, with a death toll of billions. The end of the Membrane Wars is fraught with uncertainty, but a few speak of the Awakening and the subsequent Fettering. It is speculated that the last great arcane civilizations of the ailing mortal world invoked latent elemental powers that had long slumbered deep within the earth, primordial guardian spirits of god-like power. These wrathful, indigenous entities were terrible to behold, and brought their unfathomable power to bear on the scourge-armies of the Hells, killing hundreds of thousands, banishing thousands more back to their native dimensions, and scattering the rest across the earth before repairing the eldritch rifts that allowed the demons access to their world (though in the aftermath of the Membrane Wars the pores-between-worlds are still more easily breached through witchcraft). But once awakened the sleepers could not easily be quieted. Though they had been used as weapons, they proved double-edged, wreaking their own cataclysmic destruction upon the world to purge it of its uncleanliness. To prevent this all-encompassing desolation the sorcerers of the old world devised a ritual of unspeakable power, requiring some tremendous sacrifice, that would seal away the ravaging elemental entities they had unleashed. Thus came about the Great Fettering in which the sublime world-spirits were chained, forced into exile and back into their endless slumber. It is theoretically possible to undo the Great Fettering, to Unfetter the beings bound within the earth. Some have speculated that Hirud, the Ravager Worm, the god-leech who gave rise to the

Pallid Decimation and the cestoid Imperium, was one such entity, stopped only by the awesome spell that created the region of the Slaughter-lands called Etiolation. The beast-gods of the sea are thought by some to be harbingers or servants of the dreaming elder-beings, as may certain daevas or other creatures of the Cadaverous Earth.

Languages
The closest thing the Cadaverous Earth has to a common tongue is Shambles sometimes Shambles, called Magpie a pastiche language derived from half a dozen long-dead parent languages. Magpie, Spoken in all of the Twilight Cities but most commonly in Lophius, Macellaria, and Crepuscle, Shambles has a plethora of regional dialects. It forms the basis for the traders cant called Jangle, Jangle a stripped-down version of the tongue with added hand signals used by merchants during complicated transactions. Jangle is practically the official language in the overwhelmingly commercial city of Crepuscle. An encrypted, modified form of Shambles is used in Filchspeak (also called Alleyspeak a thieves cant also used in official parleys between Alleyspeak), gangs in Lophius. A hand-sign based derivative of this cant used to communicate silently is called Flicker or Fingerspeak Shambles itself is a coarsely hybrid language with a rather Fingerspeak. mishmash grammar and morphology. Almost all grave-spawn speak Shambles or the language native to their city of origin (usually doing so in half-whispers), but a near-defunct language called Corpserattle rarely known as Corpserattle, Tongue, Morbis or the Carrion Tongue is used by the aristocracy of Somnambulon and in all-ghul churches. It is an eerie language to hear, raising hairs and causing gooseflesh, and is noted for its thirteen noun classes expressing various levels of animacy, life, death, and un-death. Hextongue Witchtongue) Hextongue (sometimes called Witchtongue is the language of Moroi and also of witchcraft and incantation, and so is used by arcane practioners, scholars, and intellectuals across the Cadaverous Earth. It is derived from a number of archaic technical languages but can broadly be described as a hybrid of Shambles and Hellspeak the demoniac language, from which it Hellspeak, derives its alphabet. Hellspeak is a fiendishly complex and diabolically difficult language, as many a smirking linguist will tell you. In its true form it is spoken not only by demons but also by the magisters of Skein, and in a bastardized form by the common people of Skein. A highly analytic language with incredibly ornate characters (forming the basis for most glyphs), Hellspeak has a kind of mechanical precision to it, with each word expressing a single concept (compare to Glatch, below, with its myriad declensions). The hagmen of the south can learn human speech but suffer from a wet, thick accent due to their uniquely shaped mouths. More commonly they speak Glatch or Hagspeech a guttural, Glatch, Hagspeech, fluid language which can be learned with difficulty by humans, though many find the more extreme uvular sounds impossible to reproduce correctly. Glatch has a bewildering spectrum of genders and pronouns and has a highly agglutinative, polysynthetic morphology allowing for very long compounds words used to express very subtle concepts; it has eight declensions and six conjugations. Glatch has a flowing, cursive script, with characters blending into one another. Southern dialects of Shambles, such as the one spoken in Lophius, utilize many loanwards from Glatch.

The lilix can also learn human speech but invariably speaking with a clicking, sibilant accent quite unnerving to unaccustomed ears. Their own language is a composed of a kind of chittering, quite incomprehensible to almost all humans. Usually called Lilix or Spiderchatter Spiderchatter, this language is highly unique and has many untranslatable concepts. Tone and frequency are as important if not more so than the actual words, long strings of almost indistinguishable syllables. Divided brutally between masculine and feminine genders, Lilix also has welldefined systems of etiquette and hierarchized modes of address. A radically simplified form of the language is used to command the human slaves of Dolmen Chattelchatter This variant Chattelchatter. is usually used by visiting merchants (often via interpreter) to address the lilix, showing deference. Forcing a lilix female to speak in Shambles is considered gravely insulting, as they deem that tongue uncouth and unsophisticated. Leechkin have their own primitive language consisting largely of gestures and animalistic noises, called Leechdance In urban communities they use a mongrel smattering of tongues Leechdance. without regard to their respective languages, either incapable or unwilling to distinguish between languages. The result is usually a garbled form of Shambles with phrases borrowed from Glatch, Hellspeak, Hextongue, or whatever other language was being spoken around them. A myriad of minor languages can be heard across the Cadaverous Earth. Serpentine is the language of the naghini, a hissing, sibilant language that can be mastered by humans; naghini can speak Shambles with relative ease, though they hiss s sounds excessively. Zerda is the yapping quasi-language of the western foxfolk. The cestoids have a bizarre, almost totally incomprehensible language based mostly on smell and motion, although during the time of the great cestoid Imperium there were a select few humans used as interpreters for the wormlords. Cestoids cannot produce anything resembling human speech, crippling their species socially in conjunction with their unseemly appearance. Their bestial gargling, gesturing, and pheromone-based language is usually simply dubbed Cestoid by humans.

The Occident
The Slouching-devil Mountains
Jagged and brooding, the sinister crags of the Slouching-devil Mountains loom darkly on the horizon north of Skein, the City of Silk and Clockwork where the Moth-Kings reign. Unlike the pinnacles of obsidian and basalt of the Chelicerae Mountains the Slouching-devil range is overwhelmingly sedimentary, composed prominently of limestone. While a smattering of mines and quarries can be found near the base of the Mountains the greatest attraction for prospectors are the fossils bound within the ancient, weathered rock. The foothills and valleys of the range are littered with camps, villages, and havens well-warded against the malevolencies that lurk in the shadowy defiles and caves. These flash-in-the-pan settlements often dwindle in ghost-towns after a nearby area has been depleted of fossils. The Fossils The fossils of the Slouching-devil Mountains are mysterious in origin but seem to universally belong to some breed of huge beasts or giants who long ago dwelt in the region, perhaps the same beings who carved the vast tunnel networks into the Mountains underside. The ur-bones, black and glossy as ebony, possess the residues of some enigmatic eldritch energy: they are literally infused with numina, imbued with arcane radiation. Those exposed to such bones for long periods of time can become subject to strange afflictions and metamorphoses, collectively called the Slow Plague due to its frequently delayed effects, which can range from abnormal growths to creeping transformations. Many a prospector has stumbled down from the peaks with a bagful of ur-fossils and a nest of tentacles sprouting from his navel, or a whorl of tiny, starry lights beneath his skin, or irises permanently clouded black. Others have their flesh gradually transmogrify into leather or slough away to reveal subcutaneous chitin beneath, or develop horny jags and tusks, or dissolve into a swarm of quivering maggots. While the Slow Plague is not always deadly it is usually irreversible save through the interventions of fleshcraft, and those infected who fail to treat their condition sometimes devolve into inhuman, chaotic beasts. Some whose exposure was limited may develop only minor, even benign manifestations of the Plague, though these individuals are sometimes shunned. Fell winds sometimes blow south over Skein bringing storms and strange dreams; it has been speculated that they are charged with residual eldritch resonances of the Slouching-devil Mountains fossils. Despite the considerable hazards surrounding the collection of ur-fossils, they remain

incredibly valuable objects for witchcraft, particularly in the creation of arcane constructs such as the six-legged steed of the infamous gunslinger and brigand-king Red Edward or the huge, misshapen Watchdogs of Macellaria. Specialized witches can carve the bone and inscribe it with glyphs that channel and harness its latent puissance, diverting its otherwise chaotic, dangerous power and creating deadly hexed weapons or suits of armor such as the legendary blade Black Cruelty, the Dark Sisters (a pair of daggers wielded by the shade assassin Quiescence, a single nick from which causes instant death), or the Umbral Cuirass once worn by the long-dead hero Tyton the Revenger (reputedly buried with the fallen warrior in his lost tomb). The (properly treated) fossils can primarily be found for sale in the marketplaces of the Crimson Ward in Skein, the Hexwarren district of Macellaria, and in Chimera Plaza in Crepuscle. The Tunnels Tunnels riddle the Slouching-devil Mountains, an entire network of cavernous halls, eviscerating the depths of the range in a mad confusion of intersecting byways and chambers, like the twisted entrails of some colossal god of stone. At their center, some inscrutable eldritch machine slumbers, inert, protected by senile automata of impossibly ancient make. All of the main tunnel entrances are surrounded by grotesquely carved, inhuman faces whose gaping mouths form archways in which cyclopean doorways are set. Though many sections of the tunnels are shunned and dreaded for the dangerous creatures that lurk within, others are used by daring travelers to traverse the range rather than daring the high passes, where imps and the harpy-oneiroi known as the Goremother lurk. Certain merchants from Skein traveling to Dolmen or Somnambulon sometimes utilize these passages, though invariably they bring heavy escorts. Human bandits often make camps in the mountains and in the tunnels themselves, using the subterranean corridors as bases from which to launch their raids. Periodically the Moth-Kings send army detachments of foot soldiers and war-trained familiars to deal with particularly troublesome brigands, and bounty hunters flock to the foothill settlements in search of coin. Many of these blood-price bondsmen have become local legends: the slant-eyed Xar-Quy with his whips and bolas and patchwork coat, Sharp Jasper with his orange beard and his unlikely hexes, Usha the tattooed northern skinchanger, Oroch with his cursed axe, the lilix she-bravo Vortenza toting six pistols. The mines along the lower hills of the Slouching-devil Mountains sometimes accidentally intrude on the older tunnels, allowing the chthonic things that lair in the Mountains roots access to the excavations. Most plentiful of these are the marrowgaunts, a species of spindly and shadow-skinned creatures that may be the remnants of humans who were trapped in the tunnels and succumbed to the Slow Plague, though some argue that the horned, leatheryfleshed things were once the servitors or slaves of whatever elder race built the tunnels in the first place.

Other beings who dwell in the stony darkness include the renegade elder demon Nisroch, who escaped servitude in Skein centuries ago; the quasi-sapient fungi of the Spore-Groves, a mythical forest of mushrooms fabled to lie somewhere below the Mountains in a series of caves beneath even the tunnels themselves; wandering geists; and an entity or perhaps more properly phenomenon known as the Deep Laughter, a sepulchral echo rumored to be the mad tittering of a deranged trickster god who destroyed the civilization that constructed tunnels. The Laughter resounds seemingly at random throughout the caverns and can claim all that hear it for its own, transforming them into cacklegeists (it is possible that the Laughter is the sire of all such grave-spawn). This is of course to say nothing of the many strange, often unique beasts that use the tunnels closer to the surface as dens or burrows, all of them normal animals mutated by the Slow Plague. Settlements Dozens of villages dot the rugged foothills of the Slouching-devil Mountains, many of them little more than glorified camps or rude clusters of wooden buildings, transient tent-towns and haphazard walled settlements. A few have attained a greater degree of permanency, though all seem tiny in contrast with the immense Twilight Cities. The largest of the mountainous settlements is Mulcatra, the end of the line for the Clockwork Rail that extends north and south from Skein. An ugly, greasy, violent town dependent on various iron mines and stone quarries nearby, Mulcatra is known for its huge automaton laborers, steam-belching mechanical giants who haul raw rock and ore from the mines to the trains or assist in excavations. Apart from the sooty dwellings and warehouses Mulcatra mostly consists of saloons and dice-halls. East of Mulcatra where the Radula River flows out from the Mountains lies the town of Drollery-Bridge, named for the ancient, heavily ornamented bridge of white stone that spans the Radula. Though built on an old ruin of the same white stone as the bridge, the rest of the town is architecturally incongruous, consisting of small buildings of wood and rough-hewn dull gray stone. Apart from its huge waterwheel and its ruins, Drollery-Bridge is an unremarkable place, though rumors persist of catacombs that lie beneath its dirty streets, a honeycomb of chambers and corridors larger than the town itself, perhaps even extending to the huge tunnels below the Mountains. Further north, nestled at the mouth of Hells-teeth Pass, the trapper-town Shoi-Tann bristles up out of the scrofulous forest, its walls festooned with wards, a glorified haven and a hub for the petty commerce of the region - apart from the tunnels, Hells-teeth pass serves as one of the only major navigable ways across the Slouching-devil Mountains. Bounty hunters often use Shoi-Tann as a base of operations, scarred and dark-eyed men and women with a myriad of weapons. Here alien pelts and unfamiliar skins are traded alongside nuggets of gold, ur-fossils, and scavenged tech plundered from the machines of the inner tunnels. There is ubiquitous a reek of piss, leather, and cheap beer, emanating from the tanneries and alehouses, a stench

unsuccessfully covered by the pungent, perfumed steam of the towns prominent bathhouses. The settlement of Highspire can be found at an even greater altitude, a stopping-off point and refueling station for dirigibles crossing back and forth between Skein and Somnambulon. Small and snowy, Highspire contains a smattering of inns, shops, and drinking holes for aeronauts and passengers. It is well known for its gunsmith, Val Corvan, whose firearms have defended many a balloon from a murder of imps or harpy-crows. Highspire is marked by the flock of bulbous leathery shapes constantly clustered above it. Deep within the range, northeast of Mulcatra, seven hundred carven steps wind up from a ragged, impromptu settlement to the Shrine of the Sighing Wind, where the leonine, manywinged, human faced daeva Shaaltelathiel coos its sibilant riddle-prophecies. Cared for by mute monks, the dove-feathered and soft-voiced creature possibly the last of the shedim sleeps for nearly twenty hours a day. In exchange for offerings of milk and raw meat Shaaltelathiel bestows upon petitioners a single revelation, a cryptic poem murmured in an antique mode of High Cerulean, which must be translated using the Shrines extensive library. The temple itself is a beautiful and ancient structure smelling of incense and herbs from the alpine garden. Many of its corridors are carved into the Slouching-devil Mountains themselves, though in their elegance and delicacy they are a far cry from the brutish, brooding tunnels that riddle the Mountains bowels; carved stones trap the wind and turn it into ethereal, chaotic music that haunts the halls. The town at the base of the staircase is little more than a camp for petitioners, though there are some quasi-permanent buildings that sell provisions and supplies, and traders occasionally set up booths peddling talismans and charms to the superstitious, particularly white feathers they claim to belong to the daeva. West of Shoi-Tann where the Mountains begin to curve towards the Serrated Coast and the Sea of Whispers the Baron Phtannoc, a Lord Revenant temporarily severed from the zehrer hivemind of Somnambulon, waits out his century-long exile in the black spires of Castle Carnificus, a half-ruinous fortress that looks out over the bleak sublimity of the ocean. Attended by a small retinue of zombie thralls, Phtannoc is rumored to traffic with the lunatic, half-slumbering entities of the deep, gods or elemental demons, though whether he seeks revenge or possesses some more obscure motive none know.

The Tallow Plains

A strange and dangerous region in the Occident of the Cadaverous Earth, north of the southern swamps and south of the Sinew River, the twisting badlands known as the Tallow Plains are afflicted with a phenomenon classified scientifically as topographic fluctuationdissonance, commonly known as the Shifting. Some eldritch effect has rendered the Plains local spatiality unstable in the extreme: essentially, the physical landscape has become transient, mobile, mutable and perhaps intelligent. Hills, buttes, gorges, bodies of water, vegetation all melt and flow, roaming, reconfiguring the Plains constantly, never staying still.

A feature that might once have been located on the south bank of the Sinew might over time migrate towards the Twilight City of Moroi, itself moored in place only through arcane means. The changes are visible: undulations and miscibilities quivering like heat-waves, making nonsense of the horizon. The Shifting is not a tectonic phenomenon, not a series of gentle earthquakes. Physical reality itself has lost its cohesion: the normal rules do not apply. Compasses and celestial objects offer the only fixed lines along which to travel, and even these are of erratic utility. Mapping the Tallow Plains is impossible, navigating them maddening, though daily caravans forge through the unstuck chaos, carting the precious drug called nectar the puissant sap of the Elder Tree to Crepuscle, Skein, and Macellaria. These merchant expeditions must not only negotiate the changeable terrain, they must also fend off the Plains inhabitants, the feral shapeshifters known as the waxborn. A few deranged souls humans, not waxborn do manage to survive in the Tallow Plains. These enigmatic nomads are highly valued as guides, well-versed as they are with the perpetually degenerating and reforming landscape. There were once several great cities built on the Tallow Plains, but in the aftermath of the Shift they too have been rendered spatially mutable. The result has been a discordant fragmentation of urban space: a street here, a tower there, sometimes so much as a market square or a dried-up canal. These wild architectural splinters roam as surely as the other features of the landscape, solitary and uncoordinated, no longer part of a greater design but aloof, wandering. Like the natural landscape, the fractured cities themselves are always visibly mutating: a window might melt slowly into a door, while a buttressed church oozes into a manor-house or a workshop, flagstones and fitted tiles running viscously into wooden planks with peeling paint. Those few souls experienced in traveling through the Tallow Plains know many of these vagabond structures quite well: some are to be avoided, while others offer limited sanctuary.

The Serrated Coast

The huge far-western coastline of the Cadaverous Earths last remaining supercontinent (if others exist they are long-lost to all but the most esoteric maps), the Serrated Coast stretches jaggedly from the oft-icy Sea of Whispers in the north to the humid Sallow Seas around Lophius: a multifarious vastness continually bordering the immense Fevered Ocean. Though the southern city-states that once flourished along the coast as thriving commercial ports are long abandoned some maritime trade does persist: vessels from Crepuscle and Skein, mostly, and even some from the more distant cities of Somnambulon and Dolmen, cling to the coastline on the long, dangerous journey to Lophius far to the south, the last major, active seaport. As such, corsairs increasingly tattered and ill-fed clans of them still linger as well, particularly in amongst the southern archipelagos. Despite this limited activity the region is nonetheless a ghost of its former self, littered with ruins, flotsam and jetsam of countless cultures that once dwelt here, now home only to xsur, sirae, and lonely things that sob and

gnash their teeth in the night. Ruins Dozens of empty cities can be found along the coast. Some of the oldest are those of the Uzull, claimed in ages past by the waves, leaving only a few barnacle-covered spires and rooftops emerging like stony fish from the water. The Gengrymar and the Tsaathii Empire also once flourished to the south, old civilizations whose realms extended deep into the swamplands around Lophius; of particular note are whole systems of tombs carved by the Gengrymar into the southeastern cliffs, now become the lairs of gullfolk, yhlei, and worse. Following the once jewel-like remnants of these southern cities the Serrated Coast segues into blurred chaos as it borders the Tallow Plains, where Shift has debilitated spatial consistency; though not as severely mutable as the Plains themselves the coast here is profoundly uneven, its contours flowing gradually into new shapes, the cities here dissected by topographic flux. Ships give the coast here a wider birth: close to the shore the currents are as mad and nonsensical as the mutant landscape, and careless pilots have had their vessels torn in two by sudden perturbations in space. Further north can be found a few pillars, graven with Hellspeak runes, that might once have been part of portal-complexes or infernal palaces of the aeons-old Hell-Dukes, one of the socalled Demon Dynasties that scholars speculate ruled swathes of the Cadaverous Earth during the otherworldly invasions of the Membrane Wars. Those that dare decipher and speak the incantatory phrases etched on these old monuments rarely go unchanged by their utterances. More intact (though sometimes marginally so) are the grotesque, decomposing edifices of the Cultivar Technocracy, whose vile living architecture has grown putrid over the centuries and now bakes like rotten seaweed in the sun, covered in weeping sores, chitin walls peeling and fibrous tissues atrophying. Few can stand their stench, and old, warped things (beasts? servants? the Technocrats themselves?) still sometimes stalk the ruins, growing savage and senile in the reeking dark; some have established breeding populations and venture beyond the coast to molest other corners of the world.

The Southern Swamps

Nameless and enormous, stretching from the shores of the Fevered Ocean and the Sallow Seas to the borders of the Firesong Marches, the southern swamps surrounding the Twilight City of Lophius are a dread place, laced with murky rivers and treacherous bogs. Bloodwood groves, crazed leechkin, xenophobic hagmen, and hungry demons lurk in the blighted undergrowth. Mossy ruins rise from the black and bubbling depths of hidden pools; hideous idols grin at the bottom of muddy lakes. Most of the ruins are those of the Tsathii and the Gengrymar, though the cestoids also maintained a few Imperial forts in amongst the stagnant marshlands. Many other ruins are those of unknown civilizations whose names and histories have been wholly

obscured by time, subsumed by fungus, flooded by swamp-water. Demons Though demoniac entities can be found in all corners of the wastes, the brooding eaves and moist shadows of the swamps offer a haven to such creatures, who stalk the fens and the banks of the Gland in constant search of prey. Elemental and unfathomable, of inscrutable intelligence, the swampland demons are brethren of the primal beast-gods of the sea and their lesser ilk; some say they are not otherworldly at all, but spirits of the Earth itself, stirred from some long repose in the apocalyptic dusk of the world. The swamp-demons are mostly solitary beings. When they encounter one another they sometimes fight, though usually they simply ignore one another. They come in a wide variety of forms, but all are exceedingly inhuman, at least in their natural states: many have amorphous bodies, exoskeletons, or similarly aberrant physiologies. A few have shapeshifting abilities and can assume different guises, often the forms of those they consumed, masquerading as beasts or humanoids. Such doppelgangers are usually betrayed by a subtle squirming evident beneath the flesh of their simulacra. Settlements The swamps are in fact one of the more densely populated regions of the Cadaverous Earth, riddled with the settlements of the hagmen, with some naghini outposts in the southeast and a smattering of human towns as well. Most of these are tiny villages, ragged bayou shanties or clusters of rude huts, but a few are considerably larger. Apart from Lophius itself the largest human settlement in the swamps is Gryss, a violent, oily port along the Gland. Skinks and tarantulas festoon the crumbling yellow walls of the place like living ornaments, and vibrant speckled mushrooms grow from every crack and crevice. A much older city lies ruinous beneath the ramshackle wooden constructions of the modern town: here and there a glyph-carved flagstone stares up out of the lichen-covered ground, or an obelisk thrusts itself rain-worn and mossy from a street corner. The younger town is rawer, greasier, sensual and ruthless. Carved succubae leer from the corners of buildings, indicating brothels; shop windows display machete-swords and cruel kukris. Witches smoke ornate hookahs on dilapidated patios and balconies peeling with strips of paint, while bravos and riverport scum swagger in and out of bars and gaming houses with knives and pistols openly displayed. Most of the humans in Gryss are living, but grave-spawn are evident too, including a nest of eidolons scattered about the town who have long preyed on the populace, undetected. The most important hagman settlement is concealed deep in the swamp, a secret city and a holy place Naresch. Built entirely below the surface of a scum-topped lake, Naresch is nowhere near the size of the Twilight Cities but it nonetheless represents one of the largest

hagman settlements. Here the hagman cults venerate their deity, while daily droves of pilgrims and refugees seeking sanctuary slip below the putrid surface of the lake and descend into the greenish murk of the sunken city. The priests and priestesses sternly police Naresch, and any non-hagmen who enters is slain on the spot. Leechkin Unlike the hagmen, the leechkin do not build: their culture vilifies labour, holding the purity of the parasite as its strongest creed. Instead they roam the swamps in tribal bands, each led by a shaman. Sexless, the tribes are untroubled by gendered hierarchy; indeed, the leechkin know almost no elitism, save that they accept the wisdom of the shamans. New shamans are chosen during infancy, preferably by the current shaman or one of its apprentices, in accordance with certain omens. A leechkin child whose hand-mouths do not cry but only feeds, whose birth heralds the finding of a bloodwood tree or a similar feast of plenty, and who kills before its first birthday is considered eligible to become a shaman apprentice. The shamans do not lead a tribe but do provide herbcraft, medical aid, and spiritual guidance to a band. They also deal with any demons the tribe encounters during its travels, using rituals to either deter or attract the swamp-spirits as desired. Leechkin tribes have no chiefs or leaders, selecting their routes by a process of nebulous democracy. They are guided predominantly by the smell of prey or by natural landmarks such as rivers. They have no formal laws, but disagreements are settled through the ritual of zullwrogosh which few non-leechkin ever witness: the two contending leechkin approach one another and lay their hand-mouths on their opponents bodies simultaneously, then both begin to feed. Whoever can drain his opponent faster is considered the victor: the first to tire of sucking or to fall unconscious or dead loses. The leechkin actively hunt animals but will ignore humanoids unless driven into bloodthirsty psychosis from want of feeding. They do skirmish with the hagmen, though they are rarely the aggressors and generally avoid hagmen territories unless something lures them in.

The Aurelian Tundra

The cold and haunted north of the Cadaverous Earth consists largely of the Aurelian Tundra or Golden Plain so named for the near perpetual sunlight of its uppermost regions. Beneath the midnight sun of the Tundra stretches a desert every bit as barren and desolate as the sunbaked vastness of the Slaughter-lands. Subject to the warped, unstable energies of the Skyscar a sickly, lurid aurora that shimmers with a ghastly luminescence over the frigid plateaus and gleaming glaciers the north is a place of alien ruins and frozen mysteries. As the swollen sun continues to bloat the glaciers slowly thaw, revealing long obscured secrets, the primordial monuments of now distant aeons.

Cities of the Golden Plain Buried amidst snow drifts or tunnelled into the living rock, or else cloistered amongst the austere, angular mountains of the region (the Murmuring Mountains, so named for the weird winds that whistle through them) are the bizarre, gargantuan cities of the Golden Plains forsaken places of ice and cyclopean towers, where naught but beasts and hungry spirits dwell. Uncanny statues of inhuman creatures are here evident: the heroes of the long-forgotten Polyp Dominion before even the Cestoid Imperium, when humanity was enslaved by now extinct fungi-overlords, and of demoniac warlords who led their hordes through the ruptures where the Skyscar now glimmers, and of inscrutable elder gods. Treasure-hunters occasionally venture into these abandoned cities in search of artefacts left over from the long defunct civilizations of the north, but few return. Thawing Monstrosities Deep within the heart of the northlands, encased in thick layers of ice, odd and strangely nebulous forms can be glimpsed, obfuscated by panes of frost. Long sealed and occluded in their glacial tombs, these vague forms now begin slowly to thaw, as the huge and sickly sun overhead beats mercilessly down. Long locked in stasis, the beings trapped within the ice begin to stir for, despite their deathly cast, these entities have merely slumbered in a millennialong hibernation. They groan and flex their enigmatic, amorphous limbs, and blink with clustered eyes blinded by the searing white of the tundra, glowing with horrible brightness beneath the unsetting sun. The true nature of these beasts remains mysterious. Demons? Daevas? Servant-creatures of whatever alien architects dwelt in the ruinous cities of the tundra? Whatever their origins, those creatures that have emerged from their icy tombs have proved themselves highly dangerous. Men are found gorily disembowelled, or flensed of skin and muscle; others have had less comprehensible things done to them, their corpses found with their flesh liquefied or with rasping wounds as from barbed radula, or missing neat, bloodless chunks, cleanly removed to expose bone and viscera beneath. Some who wander into the frozen waste return deranged and giddy with a lunatic fervour, until their brains burst and their skulls split open, giving birth to shadowy, mewling larvae. The Skyscar Glistening like a bloody gash across the bleached sky of the far north, the Skyscar is a dimensional weakness, a place where the space between spaces has been ruptured, where otherworldly and entropic realities are bleeding through. It was here, possibly, that the original breach between the Earth and the Hells was made, the rift that began the Membrane Wars in antiquated aeons. Though the breach has been patched sutured the Skyscar remains: a malignant, shimmering aurora from which Hellish energy seeps.

Demons can no longer cross physically through the Skyscar, but their essences swirl malevolently in the chill air, half-present and invisible, flickering in and out of quasi-existence. Any who ventures into the Skyscar will be subjected to its soul-corroding fluctuations, will be assaulted by hungry spirits looking for doorways into the world. Some of these demoniac entities manage to inveigle their way through the thinned boundaries of reality and into mortal vessels: these horrific beings are at first bound to the flesh of their hosts, gradually asserting more and more control until they can manifest completely, bursting free from their victims fleshly husks like grotesque butterflies from chrysalises. The Tundrafolk A hard-bitten, grim-faced, weatherbeaten people, the tundrafolk of the Aurelian Plain are coldtoughened savages made brutal by the harshness of the north. Fur-clad cannibals of a hundred bickering clans, they roam the blank, desolate places between the Skyscar and the Northern Baronies, the southern edges of the Aurelian Tundra, hunting aurochs, herding yaks, and descending in ragged hordes to raid the fortified settlements that dot the largely temperature north. Skilled in the shamanistic arts of skinchanging, augury, and weather-whispering, the cunning, flesh-eating witches of these northern tundrafolk aid their warriors on their jaunts, summoning fog to hide their approach or blizzards to harass or delay enemy forces, or assuming the shapes of wolves and wolverines, running and fighting alongside human clansmen in battle. They are skilled also with the elements of blood and ice; some worship the mad, dreaming gods of the sea, while others revere the abominations that roam the northernmost wastes. Further north, clustered in peculiar communes along the icy coasts, lurk the crustacean philosophers called the Oorls, whose esoteric wisdom is much coveted. They crawl about in the glyph-etched shells of giant nautili, like hermit crabs, chittering to one another in their complex, staccato tongue. A few half-mad scholars occasionally make the long pilgrimage to the Tundra to seek counsel with the Oorls, though few know of their existence at all.

Moroi
The Gaunt City, City of the Elder Tree Inchoate The celestial sap of the Elder Tree pulsed in his veins, filling him with eldritch light, a suffusion of divine nectar, throbbing in time to his heartbeat primordial, transcendent, eternal. Sketching an arcane character in the air with the articulated finger of his clockwork gauntlet sigil scribed, twined with cabalistic wires feeding into his bloodstream the aspiring witch Magnus Shacklebane muttered the invocation fervently, his eyes clouded with tenebrous puissance, the bloodstone in his right fist sizzling, scorching his leather glove. Laboriously he pronounced the prolix syllables of the incantation, giving each torturous, convoluted phrase of the formula its proper weight, affecting the serpentine sibilance appropriate for the ritual. The air before him shimmered. Behind his square glasses Magnus eyes widened, glowing with sepulchral light. The distortion intensified as the adolescent witch continued the invocation, gesturing with his gauntlet and holding forth the bloodstone. There was a queasy smell brimstone, copper, burning blood, the syrupy reek of nectar. A vague manifestation halfsolidified: a grotesque but monstrously charismatic visage, at once gibberingly mad and unfathomably wise, its eyes sublime voids. For one ephemeral moment those abyssal eyes stared back into Magnus own; but then, as the bloodstone singed through his impskin glove to burn bare flesh, the would-be witchs tongue stumbled over a single whispered syllable. The face flickered; the bloodstone slipped from Mangus hand and fell to the floor, where it shattered into a thousand iridescent shards. The face, only a hazy insinuation, melted into a wisp of red smoke. Gaolor The witch unlocked the door to the cellar and began his descent, one hand trailing along the decaying brick wall, the other grasping a glossy black taper for light. Flesh-colored boots padded down the slime-slick stone steps. In the candles flicker the witchs face was thrown into unnerving chiaroscuro, its hard lines sharpened, violet-stained smirk made crueler, wolfish yellow eyes more predatory. The trailing hand tapped at the crumbling brickwork with long, black nails. At the bottom of the stairs the candlelight bloated to fill the high corners and skeletal vaulted curves of the basement with a swollen gothic glow. A legion of shadows sprung forth from the dim recesses to cavort along the walls, caressing the grotesque marble gargoyles with lithe, black fingers. The witch used his taper to light other candles about the room; the shadowdancers withered and diminished. In the center of the floor, surrounded by a chaos of scrawled inscriptions, engraved wards, and

circles of red powder, the creature squatted in a cage of black iron, peering at the witch through the bars with coldly hateful eyes. It stroked its wrist with a seven-fingered hand and hissed. Hello, Marquis Naberius, the witch said, revealing a mouth full of sharp white teeth. I have questions for you. The creature shifted its weight in its cage before venturing forth into the light. A huge black ravens head sat on a slender body with dark purple skin etched with livid orange tattoos, like lines of flame. The lower half was coarse and hairy, with canine paws and tail. Music! The creature demanded, its voice welling with weird echoes, as if it were speaking across a long distance, or from deep underground. How ill-mannered of me, the witch apologized. One moment, my good Marquis. He crossed the Court careful not to break the protective markings on the floor and withdrew a small wax cylinder from a pocket of his long coat, which he inserted into a polished phonograph. A strange, haunting music something like a nocturne began to play, filling the room with spectral voices and the spindly plucking of strings. Ahhh The raven-headed thing sighed. Its long digits traveled up and down one sinewy arm, lingering at the shoulder where black feathers segued into smooth humanoid flesh. And now then, my excellent Hush! The creature commanded, eyes squeezed shut, listening. The witchs mouth twitched in irritation, but he allowed his captive several minutes to savor the lush macabre textures of the music. While he waited he smoked a long cigarillo plucked with splendidly manicured fingers from an enameled ebony case. Soon the air was filled with wraiths of pungent blue smoke. The Marquis was making shadowpuppets on the wall, its fourteen spidery fingers contorted into fanciful configurations lion, three-headed wolf, winged serpent, a man and woman copulating. A tremor of disgust and, beneath, quiet fear traveled down the witchs spine. He twirled a black ringlet of his wig, and reminded himself of the wards hed placed, the sigils hed spent days laboring over before binding the creature to a corporeal manifestation. Were a stray rat to evade the clutches of his vermin-catching homunculi and break even one of the circles He dismissed his anxieties as the Marquis stirred. Very well, it consented. Ask your precious questions, mortal. Demographics

Ghilan 10% Hagmen 1% Human 87% Other 2%

Not including the inhabitants of The Boil.

Architecture With the exception of the baroque homes in the Marble Quarter and the crystalline mass of the Glass Quarter the architecture of Moroi is bleak and industrial. Even the heavily ornamented Ministry of Ambrosia, a huge secular cathedral, is austere in the extreme, consisting largely of brute concrete. The sanatoria, factories, marketplaces, and towerblocks of the Gaunt City are built principally of brick or concrete, meshed incongruously with naked machinery exposed pistons and gears, pneumatic pumps, smokestacks, iron grills, portcullises, catwalks, whirring clockwork instruments, furnaces and boilers. Row upon row of claustrophobic, soot-stained tenements languish beneath palls of smoke, their walls scrawled with graffiti. The streets are cobbled stone, overgrown with weeds, filled with steam rising from sewer-grates and the chimneys of chthonic workshops. Fashion Morois citizenry favour dark clothing with occasional bursts of vivid, psychedelic colour. Top hats, bowler hats, berets, broad-brimmed hats, and bandanas are very common headgear. Leather dusters, jackets, cloaks, and trenchcoats are worn by both men and women, as are frock coats or dark suits for slightly more wealthy men. Women tend to wear corsets, black lace dresses, stockings, and long gloves (often fingerless fishnet gloves). Chokers and spiked collars are worn by both sexes, and one occasionally sees black face-masks. Footwear often takes the form of heavy black boots. Many wear round glasses and sunglasses. Amongst the lower classes studded leather vests are often worn, sometimes with brightly coloured shirts beneath. Weapons are proudly displayed, usually long knives or firearms, and the wealthy tend to use swordcanes. Tattoos and piercings are ubiquitous and often have minor eldritch properties. Hair is worn quite long and is often spiked, dyed, and elaborately styled; dreadlocks are sometimes also worn. Beards are common, particularly muttonchop sideburns and dyed, forked beards. Makeup and nail polish tends to be heavily applied by both sexes usually black and white, though occasionally more vibrant.

The Three Arbours

Lacking the strictly demarcated wards of Skein, the islands of Lophius, or the tiered levels of

Dolmen, Moroi is a rambling city, but three broad districts can be described from is otherwise bewildering chaos of streets. Called the Arbours, each has grown up around one of the Elder Trees, the mythic, gargantuan trees sometimes invoked as living gods from which the substance known as nectar is harvested. Only one remains living: the other two have been either drained dry or destroyed. Around their vast bulks Moroi has grown haphazardly, buildings clustered about the aeons-old trunks like worshippers, dwarfed by the Trees immensity. Today the three Arbours are known as Ambery, Suckle-town, and The Boil.

Ambery
Beneath the spreading canopy of the last remaining Elder Tree lies Ambery, seat of the Resin Merchants and source of the nectar, the lifeblood of witchcraft across the Cadaverous Earth. Hulking stone structures somewhere between fortresses and secular cathedrals loom darkly in the shadow of wilting leaves, the many ministries and opulent palaces of the ichor-dealers. Ambery is divided into four quarters, the official bureaus of the ebbing elite. Ambery is patrolled extensively by the city`s militia, who are altogether absent from The Boil and who make only cursory raids in Suckle-town save in Fat-Wolf-Furrow. Consisting of hardened mercenary warriors in black leather armour, the militia is supplemented by witches recruited by the Order of Chirurgeons and rendered susceptible to suggestion in the Iron Quarter`s laboratories, then pumped full of nectar. Collared and shackled, these witches are directed by expertly trained handlers, prodded into channelling eldritch power. There are other forms of surveillance in Ambery nests of eyes that can manifest on the walls of hexed buildings, for example, allowing the Resin Merchants to keep a constant watch over their city. The Aurelian Quarter Containing the Elder Tree itself, the Aurelian quarter also houses the militia barracks, the colossal Ministry of Ambrosia headquarters of the Resin Merchants Moroi`s central marketplace, and the silo-fields where Moroi`s nectar supply is held. The Ministry is the most imposing and impressive structure in the district and indeed in all Moroi, a bulbous domed monstrosity of gilt, marble, concrete, and stone, festooned with wards and gargoyles and guarded by a small army. The marketplace is far less colourful than those of Macellaria or Crepuscle, dominated almost entirely by the huge queues leading up the Dispensaries, the official dealers of the Resin Merchants who sell nectar to the addicted populace. Dwarfing everything, however, is the Elder Tree itself, entangled with machinery, its nectar constantly siphoned from its aeons-old veins and pumped into the well-guarded silos. Slowly the Elder Tree wanes; its leaves grow paler, drier, its bark begins to rot; it withers and desiccates, even as the sucking proboscii that penetrate it suck more fervently at its ancient flesh. The Marble Quarter

Arrayed on Canopy Hill beneath the huge leaves of the Elder Tree are the palaces of the Marble Quarter, lavish gated mansions sequestered away from the grime and grot of Suckletown and the scream-haunted halls of the sanatoria. Here are manicured parklands and clean squares with brass statues or fountains, tree-lined avenues and rows of baroque homes, each walled with warded stones to deter intruders. Moroi`s impressive library and its legendary University divided into nine colleges, each with their own grandiose hall can also be found in the Marble Quarter, bringing many traveling scholars to the district, hungry for knowledge. The Iron Quarter The imposing edifices of stone and black metal at the center of the Iron Quarter are Morois sanatoria, asylums for the citys veritable legions of madmen. Echoing with the screams and raving gibberish of the insane, the sanatoria are administered by the Order of Chirurgeons, an organization of surgeons and fleshcrafters known for their lurid experimentations. Sanctioned by the Resin Merchants, the Chirurgeons roam the streets of Suckle-town with warded cages seeking prime specimens of the insane, who they incarcerate in the sanatoria. Lobotomies, bloodletting, and electroshock therapies are the mildest of their methods, and those deemed incurable are condemned to become fodder for the High Chirurgeons subterranean laboratories, the vats of eldritch liquid and the stained stone slabs where unlikely things are fashioned. The rehabilitated patients, their minds dulled with drugs and surgery, their bodies warped with chemicals and exotic grafts, join bound witches and mercenaries as agents of the city militia. These creations are far from the servitors of Macellaria, those piecemeal vessels of stitched flesh, dead flesh made animate, nor are they zombies, the mindless psychic puppets of Somnambulon rather, the thralls of the Chirurgeons are living men and women subjugated into docility and twisted into chimerical shapes, refashioned in accordance with often perverse aesthetics. The Glass Quarter The crystalline mass of the Glass Quarter comprises the many glasshouses of Moroi where the bulk of the city`s food is grown. Positioned as it is on the edge of the Tallow Plains, agriculture is limited in Moroi, and unlike cities such as Lophius, Crepuscle, and Skein, there are no major rivers allowing for fishing. As such the Gaunt City relies on the glasshouses to produce fresh fruit, grain, and vegetables; specially hexed lights provide the illumination, and susurrating wardens, all of them trained witches, tend the gardens, whispering spells of encouragement to the plants, causing them to grow to prodigious sizes.

Suckle-town
Become a flea-bitten and mongrel sprawl packed tightly with junkies, beggars, and criminals,

the Arbour called Suckle-town clings to Ambery like a hungry cub to its mothers bruised teat. Its Elder Tree has long been exhausted, the sap within drained dry. Without the vital nectar the god-tree quickly withered and petrified, becoming a great and ruinous fossil. In the centuries since its death the wretched inhabitants of Suckle-town have invaded its once-sacred bark in a second ravishing, digging caves and tunnels into its marrow and pilfering bits of its rusted machinery to pawn for more nectar. The sanatoria of Ambery are laughably, woefully inadequate to contain the hordes of the deranged in Suckle-town, afflicted either by the ichor itself or second-hand through one of the wide-spread endemics of insanity, little echoes of the dementia epidemics of long ago. Everyone is mad here, or at the very least unhinged, and the many ugly districts bear names only the mad might coin. CorkscrewCorkscrew-Slough A mushroom-covered maze reeking of mildew and rot, the damp district of Corkscrew-Slough is lined with opium dens, shadowmilk cafes, bars, and tawdry brothels lit with lurid paper lamps. Though nectar is the drug of choice for all of Morois residents, many of its libertine or simply desperate denizens are lured to other drugs and pleasures, seeking to sample new sensations or stave off misery for a few hours. Lethe-tea drinkers wander across the catwalks and intersecting stone bridges high above the streets like drowsy children or deranged tightrope walkers, blissfully amnesiac, tripping over the slumped, white-eyed bodies of mindwrack and asherat users, junkies strung out on jabber or buzzing with diluted doses of thrum or raving with lips stained sallow from madwine. The Phantasmagorian Bazaar, sometimes called the Market of Dreams, panders to Suckle-towns myriad addicts, ringed by the whorehouses and drug-dens a rickety place where pallid men sell pouches of powder or glossy hallucinogenic eggs or phials of shimmering liquid. Moroi's small hagman population only a few hundred also make their homes in Corkscrew-Slough, dwelling in half-flooded basements and burrows. Fat-WolfFat-Wolf-Furrow The industrial section of Suckle-town and indeed the principle factory district of Moroi, FatWolf-Furrow consists of block after block of warehouses and factories, a cauldron of vapours and noxious smoke, wreathing the steel girders and brickwork tumors and tangles of pipes with ghosts of smog. Here those goods not grown in the Glass Quarter of Ambery or imported from one of the other Twilight Cities are synthesized. The printing presses also run here, churning out cheap newspapers and books to feed Moroi's bibliophilia. Most of the factory workers also make their homes in the Furrow, though some trudge to the slums of Wasp-Hole and Abscess-Weft. AbscessAbscess-Weft

The largest residential district in Moroi, Abscess-Weft is also the most destitute. Row after row of dilapidated tenements, shacks, and communal halls of ancient stone are packed with the poor, most of them quite mad. Mingling amongst them are predators and prostitutes and pedlars hawking cheap goods, coal and food and knives and drugs. Rogue eidolons unable to penetrate the exclusive upper crust of the Gaunt City are forced to feed on the damned of Abscess-Weft, and a hundred different diseases wrack the addicted populace harrowflux, spectre-plague, and spontaneous dementia and others more mundane, syphilis and dysentery and malaria, tuberculosis and cholera and influenza. It is this slew of debilitations and infections that give the district its name, for they seem concentrated here in greater profusion than the rest of the city, a veritable encyclopaedia of illness. WaspWasp-Hole Arcane graffiti covers the brick walls of Wasp-Holes intoxicant, falling-down architecture where gutter-witches and soul tinkers and a score of two-bit hexers with dull sparks of talent and a few syllables of spells crammed into their crania hawk stained manskin scrolls or henna sigils in back-alley glyph parlors. The petrified Tree hunkers hugely above the mean, pissdappled and blood-smeared faades. Inside the rough-hewn corridors carved from the stony bark addicts and madmen wander or collapse in catatonic clumps, and the floor is carpeted with a glass patina of empty syringes still crusty with blood or pus. Over time the residents have built a whole network of rickety homes and shops in the branches of the dead tree, accessible via spiraling wooden steps and swaying bridges. Also in Wasp-Hole are dozens of small bookstores and decomposing libraries heavy with must, their volumes slowly being devoured by worms. While demon worshippers and those seeking their fortunes told flock to Grease-Welter, the patrons of Wasp-Hole are those seeking charms, warded items, spells, and similar ensorcellements. Alchemists peddle potions and curatives and aphrodisiacs from gargoyleguarded shops; wiry bravoes with rudimentary witchcraft and veins dark with nectar sell their services for coin or ichor, eldritch mercenaries and thugs with enough puissance to invoke a crude sigil or channel some second-hand hex. ManikinManikin-Slump Sordid and mangy in the extreme, the slums of Manikin-Slump are populated largely by Morois grave-spawn, a minority in the Gaunt City mostly consisting of ghilan. The slums here have windows shrouded black with tattered curtains; others are boarded up entirely or smeared with pitch or black paint. At night the grave-spawn come out, walking in lightless streets whereas the rest of Moroi (save The Boil) is stained sepia by eldritch lampposts come dusk, Manikin-Slump remains gloomy; only the smattering of ghul-bars small and thinly spread compared to the thick-on-the-ground cannibal eateries of Macellaria or Crepuscle

have any light at all, and this shed only by crimson-tinted lanterns. A few derelict shrines to stellar deities subsist with meagre congregations, muttering sermons in Corpserattle. A murderer is on the loose in Manikin-Slump, killing only grave-spawn. Dubbed the Undertaker, this shadowy figure has yet to be seen, leaving taunting messages carved into the bodies of his victims. In the penny dreadfuls printed en masse in Fat-Wolf-Furrow he is portrayed as a masked, top-hatted aristocrat with a black cape and a swordcane, though the veracity of this image is dubious at best. GreaseGrease-Welter Though demonolatry is hardy as pervasive in Moroi as in Skein, where the magisters estates contain whole breeding populations of hellspawn and a familiar is a mark of social status, the City of the Elder Tree has its share of infernal traffickers. The diabolists of Grease-Welter have erected have a hundred squalid shrines to discordian deities and demon-lords, worshipping pastiche idols of wood and flesh and rusted metal, scrap-fashioned effigies to whom they make unwholesome sacrifices of incense, salt, raw meat, blood and other bodily fluids. It is here one goes to attend profane congregations, to have entrails read or a demon truth-sayer interrogated, or to forge contracts with fiends in rundown temples and basement sanctums. Rising above the other wretched shrines is the Hall of Black Bile where the swollen creature Phelaegor is bound, chained with warded silver fetters in a vaulted tomb below the Halls main chambers. An obese, gray-skinned, tusked demon with curled rams horns and four elephantine arms each shackled with a warded chain Phelaegor can sleep for months but periodically awakes in a bestial rage, quieted only by still-living food. He supplies the members of his cult with certain substances drawn from his huge body and with spells and eldritch secrets culled from his alien mind in exchange for sacrifices.

The Boil
Unlike the ossified Elder Tree of Suckle-town, the charnel corpse that towers with blackened limbs over the ruinous Arbour dubbed The Boil was not merely drained dry. In the distant past some disaster caused the Tree to ignite, the nectar within boiling beneath the bark, splitting the Trees flesh and spilling out into the streets in steaming gouts of eldritch vapour and seething golden liquid. This catastrophe, known as the Conflagration or the Boiling, laid waste to the part of Moroi now called The Boil. Fire swept the streets, burning homes and citizens; yet even after the eldritch flames had died and the last embers faded, The Boil remained a shunned, forbidden place. Strange creatures stirred in the cinders perhaps the former residents, perhaps things invoked through the chaotic arcane tempest of the Conflagration itself. Those who ventured into the charred wreckage in hope of looting the ruins returned with stories of shifting streets, watching eyes, and unspeakable terrors lurking in the ashes if they returned at all. It was as if the district itself assumed a kind of sentience, becoming a faceless but malevolent presence with vengeful appetites.

Today the Boil is walled off with stern battlements of brick and iron heavily warded to contain whatever entities, curses, or creatures were spawned in the fires. Only a handful of scavengers, universally deemed insane, dare enter The Boil, and most fall victim to whatever dwells within. Blistermaze The oozing walls of Blistermaze are afflicted with a roving pestilence, an architectural leprosy: patches of peeling plaster or crumbling brick will suddenly develop weeping sores and pustules that eventually worsen into membranous cysts. The cysts swell and grow, incubating the hideous denizens of Blistermaze: scuttling, quadruped beasts somewhere between degenerate humans, hairless dogs, and spiders, hunchbacked, mandibled, flesh-hungry creatures with tremendous agility and poisonous bites, the pox-dogs of Blistermaze. After having birthed a brood of these chittering monstrosities the cysts and pustules will rapidly close, scab, and heal, leaving only shredded castings and scars. Manglespur A tribe of humanoid things resembling naked, emaciated men and women from the neck down infest Manglespur; their heads are cut off halfway up their faces, just before their eyes, giving way to an incongruous and squirming array of tightly clustered insect limbs. Their appearance is often preceded by a roving mist, tainted slaughterhouse red and reeking of burnt flesh; this unearthly fog cloaks their arrival, allowing them to draw close to their prey on silent, spindly limbs. Doors have become gnashing mouths and the black sockets of windows are filled with watching eyes in the claustrophobic alleys of Manglespur. Here the Grasping Darkness oozes from building to building, a crawling death; here the bricks or flagstones can become cackling faces with cruel, biting teeth. Huge flapping things somewhere between birds and bats with rotting bodies and protruding bones nest in the attics and atop the roofs, fluttering their leathery feathers and cawing hideously. Blackenburgh The physical center of The Boil, Blackenburgh is a scorched, desolate ruin whose buildings are little more than burnt-out shells. The incinerated remains of the Elder Tree tower above the ruins, branches twisted, trunk warped, bark scalded. Ashes still rain upon Blackenburgh, stirred up by whispering winds that echo with the screams of the burning citizenry. A few globs of solidified metal melted during the Conflagration litter the ground, once parts of the machine that drained the Tree and whose possible malfunction is theorized to have precipitated the Boiling itself. Ashen wraiths speculated to be some form of soot elemental have congealed out of the destruction of Blackenburgh, ghostly manifestations of the Conflagration that are dispersed only with difficulty.

Lophius
The Corsair City, City of the Lamprey HUBRIS The sickly sky above Lophius glowered and spat, swollen rainclouds fit to burst, threatening to engulf the disjointed streets with a torrential downpour. The canals were already flooding, the mossy bridges of granite and marble lapped at by the murky waters, the feet of their decorative statues immersed. Out over the Sallow Seas distant thunder cackled, promising a storm. No ships would sail from the docks of Bile-Mire or Chainwater tonight, lest they join the wooden carcasses in the Driftwood District. The Gland River battered the pillars of the Bridge of Bravoes, swirling about the huge statues supporting the ancient bridge before rushing out to the open sea. In the midst of the worsening downpour two men regarded each other while the crowds behind them jeered and shouted, humans shivering in the rain, hagmen turning their greenish faces upwards, exulting, black-clad ghilan mute and motionless. Draw steel, wormfood, Iccelus sneered. The graftpunk moved with predatory grace, brandishing the glyph-etched rapier Red Laughter and an evil-looking dagger, crooked backwards in his off-hand. He twirled the curved knife and snarled taunts at his opponent. Corpse-fucker. Halfman. You should scuttle off to Bad-Fen where you belong, or go back to whatever hole you crawled out of. There were cheers from the crowd. The young mans black eyes flashed as he walked forwards, blade held out before him, grafted muscles taut beneath tattooed flesh. You heard me. Haul your maggoty arse off or Ill send you back to the pit what spawned you. The other figure said nothing but favoured the youth with a sharp-toothed and yellowed grin. He removed his tinted spectacles and drew his sword from its scabbard with deliberate slowness, rasping the blade against the tough manskin sheath and assuming a creeping sidelong stance. A broad-brimmed black hat slouched across his features, shading his face and warding off the rain and the hateful sun; drops of water beaded on his brown leather outfit and pattered off the sewn-in steel disks. Behind the pale fighter were more of his ilk gray-skinned, dour spectators with mocking amber eyes. Iccelus shaved head gleamed wetly. His many earrings jangled as he advanced, drunk with rage and fear. With a wordless howl he hurled his dagger; it spun through the air in a silvery arc, thudded into the living mans adversary. The ghul wrenched it from his chest with a smirk and licked the naked blade clean. Thrice-damned unman freak! Iccelus face contorted with a paroxysm of raw hate. He danced forward and lunged in a spasm of grafted muscle, his augmented calves writhing. Red

Laughter darted out, impossibly fast, bathed in a crimson aura of eldritch energy and then spun from its wielders grasp, knocked aside by the ghul's own blade. It clattered on the flagstones of the bridge and shattered, the demoniac spirit bound within dissipating in a brief ghost of brimstone smoke. Its sigils, previously a blazing red, grew dull. There was a shimmering blur as the grave-spawn duellist riposted, and Iccelus shout of frustration turned to a choked gasp. He clawed at the sword now skewering his throat, gurgling; blood dribbled from his mouth. The ghul swordsman chuckled and wrenched his sword from the graftpunks neck. Iccelus fell to the ground and lay still, the pool of blood spreading beneath him already being washed away by the rain. The crowds yells died with the youth. They began to back away with suddenly fearful looks. Ah, the heady confidence of the young and the living, the ghul rasped, his voice like snakeskin. He twitched his head and two of his men walked forward, seizing Iccelus body by the ankles. Dinners on me tonight, boys.

Demographics Ghilan 22% Hagmen 24% Human 40% Leechkin 9% Naghini 2% Other 3% Architecture Starved for space on the cramped islands, the builders of Lophius have constructed the city in layers; as a previous level sinks into the swamp, another is built atop it. The lowest levels of the city are either naked rock, slimy and barnacle studded, or foundations formed from now partially sunken ruins. These early ruins are of fitted flagstone, pieced together without mortar each piece unique, painstakingly carved and inserted. Tiered stairs, triangular arches, mosaic courtyards, and bestial carvings characterize this first layer. A layer above are newer (but still centuries-old) buildings. These are baroque monstrosities of white and gold, cracked marble and mossy granite and chipping gilt, rococo and lavishly ornamented, crowded with statuettes, circular columns, rounded arches, intricate friezes, lurid basilicas, and opulent sculptures. Finally there is a rude, recent layer of wooden and brick buildings. The gantries and wrought-iron bridges of the lower level are supplanted by swaying rope-bridges and catwalks, the precision of the foundation layer and the overblown excesses of the middle layer replaced with glorified shacks and ramshackle, unornamented halls.

Fashion Lophius is hot, so clothing tends to be light and loose. White tunics and colourful doublets are the usual uniform, with loose pants tucked into high leather boots. Broad-brimmed hats providing shade are frequently worn, as are bandanas. Long, loose coats and jackets are popular, as colourful as possible, cut at knee or waist length. By and large there are few gender differentiations in terms of clothing. Hair is usually worn very long, and beards are popular, with both frequently being braided; dreadlocks are also quite popular. Duellists (known as bravoes) wear long moustaches without beards which they shave as a sign of shame if they yield in a duel (it is considered an honour to die unshaven). As in Macellaria most individuals go armed, usually with knife (or two, or six) and a slender sword or a pistol at the very least. A few additional weapons are often secreted beneath clothing (such as stiletto knives or a holdout pistol). Tattoos are more common in Lophius than in any other city, and usually denote family, gang or corsair affiliation. Many incorporate glyphs and squirm, flicker, or transform beneath the skins of their bearers. Most people also have at least two or three piercings, and some have innumerable piercings in their ears, noses, lips, eyebrows, nipples, navels, and every other place imaginable. Henna is also worn very often, and decorative scarification (again, often with gang or pirate symbolism) is sometimes undertaken. Attitudes towards nudity or partial nudity are also considerably more relaxed in Lophius than in the other Twilight Cities, often to better display tattoos, henna, piercings, or scars. Other jewellery includes bangles, anklets, bracelets, bracers, chokers, necklaces, and rings, and sometimes jewellery incorporates shells or coral. Particularly hardened individuals may display a necklace of ears or teeth, trophies from duels. Leechkin Beggary Of all the Twilight Cities, Lophius plays the greatest host to the leechkin, a race of slickskinned, androgynous, haematophagic humanoids more commonly found in tribal groupings in the surrounding swamps. A substantial population of leechkin, however, have since emigrated to the City of the Lamprey, shedding their traditional ways and embracing an urban lifestyle. While a few individual leechkin have found employ within the anarchic citys nebulous, quasi-feudal hierarchy of gangs as mercenary fighters, hitmen, torturers, and enforcers, and a very small, highly unorthodox number have seen success in other arenas such as the bizarre and strikingly well-spoken leechkin businessman Mr. Rasp the vast majority of leechkin in Lophius are beggars. It is a great error to think of the leechkin as stupid creatures, as animals, ruled wholly by their drives. Indeed, leechkin intelligence ahs been demonstrated to be comparable to human intelligence. However, save for a few freak cases, leechkin seem culturally even, perhaps, biologically incapable of proper ambition. They covet little save blood, and have no

compunction against begging for it, no sense of shame; work, and pride in that work, is alien to the typical leechkin mindset, sign of hubris and folly, of unnecessary and wasteful effort. Thus the leechkin persist in Lophius: beseeching passersby in a mishmash polyglot of tongues, till some citizen throw them a few coins or, more commonly, obligingly offers their wrist to the hungry creature. Yet the question inevitably arises: why give blood or coin to the leechkin at all? The folk of Lophius, and indeed all of the Cadaverous Earth, are not noted for their sense of compassion; some scholars have even suggested that humanity is losing its charitable impulses altogether, as the result of a long process of acclimatization to the harshness of this dark and merciless world, so close to the end of things. The answer is that the people of Lophius do not give out of charity: they do so out of fear. Nearly one in ten sentient creatures in Lophius is leechkin. It would be, to put it mildly, an enormous undertaking to drive the entire leechkin population out of the city by force, a project that would additionally require the cooperation of the citys many competitive factions, a thing unheard of in Lophius. Leechkin who do not feed regularly quickly lose their fleshly paunch and shrivel up, becoming gaunt, emaciated creatures. Additionally they become possessed with a psychopathic bloodlust which consumes their minds utterly, such that they can think of nothing but blood. Leechkin reduced to this state will stalk and kill any they come across, sometimes in mobs; in the past, poorly-fed leechkin suffering from the crimson thirst have drained dozens and even hundreds dry before recovering their wits. Thus the nonleechkin populace of Lophius is held at ransom by the citys beggars: give, and give generously, or suffer the consequences.

The Teeth
Most of old Lophius is submerged, stone corridors flooded, vaults and halls overgrown with barnacles and seaweed, temples and tombs and marketplaces haunted by lampreys, cuttlefish, and eels. Only a few daring submariners, reckless men and women clad in steam-sealed suits and accompanied by hagmen guides, brave the treacherous underwater city, returning to the surface with briny treasures; the rest of Lophius residents dwell on the Teeth, seven protrusions of rock and architecture which form the canal-ridden islands on which the new city is built. The islands are named the Talon, Crucible, the Vipers Head, Crooked-Finger, Hunger Rock, Greenfang, and Murmur Isle. The gangs of Lophius are not criminal per se: rather, they represent rough factions controlling a given section of the city through force and fear, protecting the district but extracting taxes from their citizenry as well. Only Shellhome and parts of Crucible, Hunger Rock, and Murmur Isle are free from their presence. Shellhome The only district not located on an island, Shellhome is a suburban shantytown, a spatter of

buildings clustered round the Brooding Bridge that leads to the Vespergate district on Greenfang. Here fishermen lower wicker cages into the greenish waters, while their wives prepare meals of crayfish or terrapin in houses formed from the empty shells of some extinct lineage of colossal snails or nautilus.

Greenfang
The large island of Greenfang is crisscrossed with canals, and allows access to the rest of Lophius via three prominent bridges (not including the Brooding Bridge connecting Lophius to the mainland): the Iron Bridge (to Crucibles Foundries), Devils Arch (to the Vipers Heads Coil), and the Bridge of Bravoes (to the Talon). Water-taxis and gondolas are the predominant form of transportation, as opposed to the rickshaws and carriages prominent elsewhere in Lophius. Vespergate Past the Brooding Bridge a huge, gargoyle-guarded edifice smeared with grime and covered in moss lies Vespergate, the largest district on Greenfang and the entrance to Lophius, City of the Lamprey. Foggy and crowded, Vespergate is one of the central residential districts of Lophius, principally inhabited by the quick, though leechkin beggars plead for blood and coin in the gutters and various other races can be seen, especially on the central Street of Mists, a winding avenue that runs from the Brooding Bridge to Devils Arch. Snailsump The major hagman ghetto in Lophius is Snailsump, an amphibious district which merges with the Gland River. Large hatchery towers loom above the communal dwellings and mud baths, while cultists do service to the divine aspects and temple prostitutes moan in the sacred pleasure-houses. Stairways carved into the sides of canals lead to the underwater portions of the district, which includes the prominent submarine bay where many of Skeins submersibles dock. The hagmen do not conform to the usual gang structure, rather being ruled by a cadre of elders, most of them religious leaders. BadBad-Fen The less-moneyed grave-spawn district in Lophius, Bad-Fen is populated by ghilan, shades, and a few other miscellaneous undead not rich enough to afford the clifftop manses of Groanward but neither so poor as to seek refuge in the caves of Skullford on the Talon. Ghul-bars are common here, and there is a small corpse-bazaar nothing close to the Skin Markets of Macellaria, of course, but a sizeable marketplace nonetheless selling various bits and pieces for food and eldritch purposes. Leechkin and cestoids (of which there are very few in Lophius) linger in this district as well.

Most of the buildings are damp and mildewed, with a morbid, eerily quiet atmosphere punctuated only by the muttered half-whispers of ghul speech. Two gangs contend the district: the grim all-shade gang called the Silent Ghosts every member save a handful of speakers has their lips sewn shut and the ghilan gang the Devourers run by the so-called Mr. Gray from the ghul-bar The Sepulcher. Chainwater Greenfangs major dockland, Chainwater is a murky maze crowded with steamboats from Skein and Crepuscle, grim galleons from Somnambulon, and even the macabre vessels of the lilix, far from their northern berth in Dolmen. It is comprised principally of warehouses, shipwrights, and offices, but the gang called the Chain-Warders is a major presence here, taking a docking fee from all ships and boats. They contend with the Silent Ghosts of Bad-Fen and the Ophidians of the Vipers Head looking to expand onto Greenfang for territory.

Crooked-Finger
A tall pinnacle of stone and wood, Crooked-Finger rears up out of the water like some ancient obelisk, a monolithic spire with tiered layers, each a self-contained district. The tiers bear fanciful names culled from some elder tongue, quite distinct from the usual naming conventions predominate in Lophius. Built vertically rather than horizontally, Crooked-Finger spirals upwards through a series of stairways and ramps with gates separating the various wards, each marked with that wards name. The oldest, largest bridge in Lophius, the Elder Bridge, links Crooked-Finger to the Vipers Head in Serpentside. Bregm Bregm is an incredibly important district in Lophius, and the bottom tier of Crooked-Finger. It contains the citys largest slave market, one of the cornerstones of the citys economy: captives brought in from raids from the Bluebottle Archipelago, the settlements of the Serrated Coast, the swamplands surrounding Lophius, and elsewhere are bartered in the myriad auction houses of Bregm, sold off by pock-marked and mean-smiled auctioneers to industrial overseers for use in the Foundries or the factory districts of other cities, to captains looking for cheap oarsmen, to leering fops as fancy-boys and girls, or to wealthy merchants as servants. The gang called the Shacklers hold sway here, keeping a take from every auction house from the lowliest platform selling malformed laborers and old women to the high-scale bidding places where the clientele sip absinthe, madwine, blood, and sherry while eunuch warriors and voluptuous concubines are dearly purchased. Skaumn

The pleasure district, Skaumn is filled with brothels, drug dens, and bars. Most of the establishments here cater to the quick the majority of ghul-bars can be found on Greenfang in the shabby district of Bad-Fen. Run by the opportunistic pimp styling himself as the Vermillion Prince, Skaumn is a highly lucrative tier held tenaciously by the Crimson Cloaks, the Princes gang of red-caped bravoes, foppish knife-fighters and pistoliers. Unlike the pleasure houses of Per-Bashti, the brothels in Skaumn tend to be cheap and greasy, and the girls and boys who work there are treated poorly. Nonetheless it is amongst the most popular wards in Lophius, often the first stop for sailors after docking in Chainwater or Bile-Mire. Pelloch Casinos and chance-houses of every sort line the winding streets of Pelloch, a profitable tier of Crooked-Finger held by the gang called the Drakes, led by a masked, mysterious woman calling herself Dame Fortune and renowned for her business sense, her velvet dresses, and her two bodyguards, a pair of sleek, androgynous fighters who wield razored war-fans. Making her base of operations in The Laughing Eye chance-house, Dame Fortune keeps control of Pelloch ruthlessly and enforces strict rules against cheats: her enforcers maintain a very active presence in all establishments in Pelloch, preserving a high standard of fairness, unlike most of the other gambling places in Lophius such as the rough corsair card-halls of Bile-Mire on Crucible. Pelloch is distinguished by its variety of games as well as by its fairness. Here one can play games with hexed cards that can curse another player; games with sigil-scribed, multi-faceted dice; games where the board is composed of interlocking clockwork pieces; where the pieces are tiny homunculi, spattering the board with black blood; where players assume elemental positions, playing in partnerships and building chains of cards with names like the Gallows Tree and the Thorn-man; where the loser forfeits fingers or slaves or blood or more arcane properties. Here are tea-houses where one can play the convoluted game of Imbroglio with ivory pieces, boxing clubs and knife-fighters circles, and fighting pits where slaves are forced to fight crocodiles, swarms of spiders, or blood-crazed leechkin captured from the swamps (though these arenas do not compare to the pits of Macellarias Pulsetown). Chelke The alchemists tier, Chelke is held by a band of cutthroat-scholars called the Sons of the Peacock, witches and nectar-junkies who tattoo themselves with hundreds of colourful eyes. Here are a smattering of glyph parlors and other tattooists, as well as booksellers and herbalists. Most prominent are the nectar-dealers from Moroi, the alchemical shops, and the laboratories where various eldritch and technical thinkers live and work, making Chelke something of an intellectuals quarter.

The Vipers Head

The gang known as the Ophidians rule the Vipers Head, human toughs with scaly tattoos and sharpened teeth, led by the gorgon Nyssa and her lieutenant Shaar-Illys. As human Ophidians rise in rank they undergo a series of ritual mutilations. First they are shaved bald and receive full-body tattoos resembling snake scales; then their tongues are split, forking like serpents; next their teeth are sharpened into fangs; and finally their ears are removed. Many of the citys naghini are members of the gang. Serpentside Headquarters of the Ophidians, Serpentside is best known for its venom markets which deal in poisons and combat drugs. Here casual hitmen and bravoes looking for the edge in a duel can purchase vials of demon-blood, shadowmilk harvested from tenebrals, madwine, thrum from the Bluebottle Archipelago, jabber, mescaline, hundreds of snake venoms, and even bottles of the Red Rain. Clandestine sales of ichor are also conducted in Serpentside, daring the considerable wrath of the Resin Merchants. The Coil Renowned for its eateries, the Coil is accessible from Greenfang across Devils Arch. In the lavish and often expensive restaurants of the Coil one can sup on turtle soup, caviars, eel or lamprey pies, fried squid, raw oysters, and a hundred different types of fish, to name a few of the plethora of dishes to try. The Coil is the largest commercial district in Lophius outside of Mandrake Market: a huge fish market does business here, hawkers selling the daily catches of Snailsump and Shellhome.

Crucible
The market island, Crucible is a broad, flat expanse dominated by the Foundries to the south and Mandrake Market to the north and east with the unkempt dockland called Bile-Mire along its western edge. It is connected to Greenfang, Hunger Rock, and Murmur Isle to the south, west, and north respectively, and is one of the few islands without a major gang presence. The Foundries The principle industrial district of Lophius, the Foundries are a series of hulking factories and smaller workshops, seething with the smoldering orange glow of furnaces, clotting the air with thick black smoke. Also serving as the gateway to Crucible from Greenfang (in Bad-Fen) via Iron Bridge, an ugly modern construction of girders and wrought iron constantly teeming with carriages and caravans, the Foundries are owned by merchant consortiums with links to the cartels of Macellaria and the vicious guilds of Crepuscle.

BileBile-Mire A ragged dock district, Bile-Mire consists of a series of large wharves jetties along the western side of Crucible, lined with seedy waterfront taverns and bloated warehouses. Not for accident is Lophius called the Corsairs City: pirates and reavers of every clan and fleet dock regularly in Bile-Mire in between raids along the Serrated Coast, selling off slaves and treasure before returning to their bases in the Sallow Seas or the Fevered Ocean, hidden fortresses nestled amongst the darkness-shrouded Midnight Isles or the deadly maze of the Razor-Chain. Mandrake Market The central commercial district of Lophius is Mandrake Market, an eclectic confusion of winding streets and booths, with various streets dedicated to certain products food, textiles, weaponry, jewelry, books, and countless other goods. No one gang holds sway here, abiding instead by the loosely defined principles of Market Truce there is no bloodshed in the market, and the well-heeled mercenary warriors who guard the streets will make swift work of offenders.

The Talon
Named for the huge ivory obelisk at its center in the district of Per-Bashti, the Talon is a medium-sized island noted for its glassworks and its flea-bitten residential district of Skullford. The obelisk was probably once the tusk or claw of a great beast, though the rest of the creature is absent; carved into its white bulk are numerous winding corridors and chambers. Shardwall The glassblowers district, Shardwall is contended by the equally brutal Argentines and Tainsiders, a pair of gangs who vie for control of the ward and thus the right to collect protection money from the profitable tradesmen of Shardwall. Here one can purchase mirrors, silverware, pots, lamps, and all other sorts of glassware, including intricately crafted glass throwing knives and other weapons, fragile but deadly. PerPer-Bashti Headquarters of the Iron Tygers, Per-Bashti is a high class pleasure district quite distinct from the seedy brothel-ward of Skaumn on Crooked-Finger. The Iron Tygers are a matriarchal gang based in the Talon itself. Tattooing themselves with stripes, spots, and other markings and implanting barbed whiskers in their faces, the Tygers are loyal to the ex-corsair Mistress Jade. The women who work the establishments of Per-Bashti are well compensated profession courtesans protected from abuse by the Tygers, and the district has become something of an enclave for battered women.

Skullford The Bridge of Bravoes, infamous across the Cadaverous Earth as a notorious dueling site, links Skullford to Greenfang via Chainwater. A plague-ridden sprawl of shacks, tenements, and dilapidated housing, Skullford is the dwelling place of the citys destitute. Built atop barnaclestudded cliffs, Skullford is riddled with tunnels and catacombs, an intricate cave-system that was once a network of barrows, with individual tombs and entranceways carved into the cliffside and accessible via roughly hewn stone steps. Those who do not live in the rickety structures of Skullford itself reside in these caves, alongside the citys impoverished gravespawn, penniless creatures who cannot afford to dwell in Groanward or even the rougher district of Bad-Fen. Some of these entities are amongst the less wholesome grave-spawn: thinning eidolons with shrunken faces and emaciated ghilan cutthroats. There are also rumors of underwater tunnels through which daggols and other deep-dwellers are said to use to infiltrate the city for their own sinister ends.

Murmur Isle
A medium-sized island to the far north of Lophius, Murmur Isle is connected only to Crucible. It contains three very important areas: the Driftwood District, the religious quarter of the City of the Lamprey and site of major pilgrimage, Gloomwell, location of the House of Shadows, and Groanward, the cliffside residential district of the citys grave-spawn. The Driftwood District Perhaps the most famous district in Lophius, the Driftwood District is accessible from Crucibles Mandrake Market via the Whisperbridge, a very long, very ornate bridge lit with candles at night by robed acolytes. Named for its idiosyncratic architecture, the buildings in the Driftwood District are piecemeal conglomerations of scrap wood and metal thrown seemingly at random onto the skeletons of sunken ships, pulled from the depths and interred on the south side of Murmur Isle. In contrast with the hubbub of nearby Mandrake Market, the Driftwood District is filled with mystic moans, men and women babbling in tongues, and ceremonial chants. Stone idols pulled from the muck of the swamps or rescued from the briny depths are all interred in the wooden wasteland of the Driftwood District, each with their own candle-lit shrines attended by tiny priesthoods. The District is a highly competitive environment in which the various micro-congregations contend for worshippers and thus tithes and donations. Currently the most popular deities in the Driftwood District include the insectoid god called the Divine Mantis (attended by a mantid priest, of course) aboard the good ship Belligerence, the entity referred to as Waadjat aboard the Mastication, and the turtle-god Draukyr aboard the Umbrageous Archon. Gloomwell

Gloomwell is built at the base of the Black Stair, a small, narrow district between the rickety chaos of the Driftwood District and the macabre pomposity of Groanward. Mostly consisting of housing for clergy and petitioners in the Driftwood District, Gloomwell is distinguished by the House of Shadows, a huge and imposing edifice carved from the obsidian cliffs atop which Groanward perches. Presenting a menacing black faade, the House of Shadows is built mostly into the obsidian itself, consisting of a series of windowless corridors and cells. It serves as the guildhouse of the Shroud, an organization of professional, deadly assassins who operate openly in Lophius. Expensive in the extreme, the Shroud maintains a roster of expert killers, including the rogue lilix courtier Xaverius Mazzari, the notorious shade assassin known only as Quiescence, and the quick twin brothers Gaspar and Vetruvion. Known only to induct a select few members, the Shroud are major power-brokers in Lophius and have been known to step into the tumult of shifting allegiances and betrayals if any one faction seizes too much control. Their origins are highly secret, but rumors persist of demonic or grave-spawn founders, or that the Shroud are a cult dedicated to a death god, a twisted aspect of the goddess Striga, or a daeva of annihilation. Groanward The district of the dead, the Groanward is where the citys wealthier ghilan, shades, and other grave-spawn tend to congregate. It is a somber district along the north side of Murmur Isle with austere stone houses overlooking the river and the Sallow Seas beyond, rambling manses and baroque faades built atop huge slabs of obsidian, battered with spray. The Black Stair, a winding path cut into this foundation, leads up from the ramshackle Driftwood District and the eerie streets of Gloomwell below; the chants, choruses, and babbling voices gradually grow mute as one climbs the Black Stair into darkness the grave-spawn need no light to see by and so the streets are perpetually dim. Though there are a few shops and restaurants here catering to grave-spawn most of the ghul-bars in Lophius are located in Bad-Fen on Greenfang and the Skaumn tier of Crooked-Finger. There is also a large cathedral in Groanward dedicated to the star-gods.

Hunger Rock
Hunger Rock is the smallest of the Teeth, and doesnt have any distinct districts; its most salient feature is its colossal lighthouse, now dimmed and dark. Once a bright beacon lighting the way to Lophius, the lighthouse has fallen into disuse due to the presence of a mysterious and hungry spirit dubbed the Ravener, possibly some variety of swamp-demon that has chosen to haunt the island for its own incomprehensible reasons.

Corsairs, Caverns, Drugs, and Demons: Adventure in the City of the Lamprey

Premises and Hooks

The following adventures are all set at least partially in the city of Lophius, a den of vice and violence and religious frenzy. Though varied in tone and approach the adventures are less about solving mysteries (though there are investigations) or surviving in a harsh environment as they are about swashbuckling action, persuasion and intimidation, and exploring a lush, colorful world of depravity and decadence. Two of the adventures take the players outside of the city, one involving a voyage across the Sallow Seas to the Midnight Isles to steal back a clutch of eldritch gems, the other requiring a trip into the swamps to an overgrown ruin to retrieve an ancient puzzle-box. The other two require the players to explore the city in depth, one exploring the intersections between the religious and secular elements of Lophius, the other involving the players in the gang turmoil that perpetually seethes in the narrow, bloody streets (and below them). While the adventures outside of the city limits appear to be longer, those taking place within Lophius should drip with atmosphere and require extensive exploration. Lophius size and complexity should be made very clear: if the players proclaim that they want to go to Serpentside they should not simply appear there. They must either find their way themselves, navigating the confusing intricacy of streets and districts plagued by cutthroats and pickpockets, or hire a guide or rickshaw, which still entails a twisted journey through the city. As such, walking around Lophius is something of an adventure in itself. Small encounters should be improvised and details provided as abundantly as possible.

(1) The infamous corsair Captain Flay, one of the elders of the pirate-clan of Mnemnoch sometimes known as the Insatiable Thousand, the Moonchildren, or the Drinkers-of-Dark-Delights has stolen an object of considerable value from Thay-QuorlHaan, a merchant prince from Crepuscle. Rather than making the laborious and time-consuming journey along the Radula and later the Gland River on his way to Lophius, Thay-QuorlHaan opted to sail down the Sinew and out into the Fevered Ocean, a faster but more dangerous route. With his large trading cog The Cenotaph and two freebooter frigates for escorts the organic-clockwork vessel Broodsire, crewed by a pastiche crew of graftpunks and slaves, and the well-armed, steel-hulled, glyph-graven Bones of Adamant Haan set out onto the storm-wracked seas, evading the notorious Boilwinds and other hazards with the aid of his augur, the weather-witch Beyth, a hunchbacked woman native to the Firesong Marches. Careful to hug the Serrated Coast, the triad of ships made their way south without incident, until one night when a gibbous, pock-marked moon hung half-obscured by cloud in the sky and Captain Flays flagship, the monstrous vessel Vivisection with its sails of human faces, materialized out of the night and attacked. Bones of Adamant was destroyed completely and both Broodsire and The Cenotaph suffered heavy damage before the pirates were repelled. Unfortunately they had already stolen some of Haans treasure, mostly shadowmilk and spices; but amongst their plunder was a clutch of arcane gems in a lacquered case, six lapis lazuli statuettes carved into fanciful forms: a six-legged basilisk, a naghini priestess, a scorpion with a human face, an anthropomorphic elephant, a seraph with insect wings, and a panther with a lotus-flower for a head. Into these gemstones are bound six powerful elemental spirits which can be summoned using an incantation, properly invoked of course, inscribed in Hextongue on the bottom of each statue. Thay-Quorl-Haan had an arrangement with a witch-savant in Lophius Lartez Quillskins, a high-ranking Son of the Peacock of Chelke on Crooked Finger to exchange the six statuettes for a very valuable spear, Shadowtongue, with a head of hexed

--Steerpike

ur-bone from the Slouching-devil Mountains, which he plans to sell to a dealer of eldritch antiquities back in Crepuscle. Unfortunately, he cant make good on the deal, and the Sons of the Peacock are not known for their forgiving natures. The witch certainly wont give him Shadowtongue and may decide to extract further compensation from the merchant simply to sate his frustration. Understandably, Haan is panicking. He needs someone to retrieve the six statuettes, and quickly, and is prepared to offer a thousand drachmi for each returned, for a total of six thousand drachmi (equal roughly to four thousand Macellaria obeloi). The adventurers might hear about the merchants job at any number of the drinking holes and dockside taverns in Lophius, or may run into Haan himself with his bodyguards, two huge tattooed barbarians from Barrow Scrub, Cromnos and Drell, and a lithe ghul gunfighter, Feilah, talking to uninterested thugs in some dive reeking of brine, tar, and strong liquor. If they frequent pirate bars, such as those in Bile-Mire, they may hear rumors of the fight, told by greasy men with dreadlocks and earrings and ugly cutlasses over the hookah-pipe or pints of ale or cheap wine, stories of how Captain Flay lost his touch and let some flabby coin-pusher and his hirelings run him off. (2) Many things other than money can be lost in the dim chance-houses of Pelloch, smoky halls where pirates and thieves and other gamblers the breadth of the Cadaverous Earth rub shoulders under the watchful eyes of Dame Fortunes Drakes, with their painted fingernails and porcelain masks and exotic weapons poison-needled rings, punching daggers, bladed bracers, serrated sabres, venom-glands, curved double-swords. The seventeen year-old rake and young magister who prefers only the name Gis has lost his familiar in a high-stakes Imbroglio match: after betting away his entire allowance (supplied to him by his father, who he refuses to name lest he taint his family honour), his jewelled duelling pistol, and his rings, Gis recklessly continued playing in a desperate bid to win back some of his belongings and so put his ward-bound demon, the imp Botys, into the pot. The small, rat-headed demoness was won in the final game by a hagman elder called Pelquefesch, the high-pontifex of Namoch in Lophius, an aspect whose portfolio includes concepts of death, luck, change, and transformation. If he returns to Skein without his familiar Gis will be disowned and cast out into the world without support he will have forfeited the right to call himself nobility. He needs to retrieve his familiar somehow, but lacks funds to continue gambling and dares not try to steal Botys back. Thus, he is looking very desperately for help. Gis cannot offer an immediate monetary reward for the return of Botys simply because he gambled away all of his money, but he promises his eternal gratitude and a substantial reward (a thousand Skein crowns, equivalent to five thousand drachmi) which he will procure as soon as he returns to Skein and regains access to his fathers funds; he also hints that he may find a place for anyone who serves him well in his familys personal retinue, if they wish it. To locate likely individuals to aid his cause Gis has his men prowling mercenary dens and casinos, but he can also be introduced directly a distraught-looking and disheveled wretch in stained finery, wringing his hands and

muttering half-sobbed curses, attended by an imposing eunuch bodyguard with a huge scimitar. He is staying at The Wanton Cuttlefish, a disreputable inn in Skaumn, also on Crooked Finger. The adventurers can alternatively hear about Gis misfortunes from other gamblers or similar folk. Tales of the game between the stripling magister from Skein and Pelquefesch (himself an infamous gambler and Imbroglio player, a vice not forbidden him by his religious position) quickly become common gossip in Crooked Finger and elsewhere in Lophius. It is worth noting that most gossip in Lophius is circulated via Filchspeak and even Flicker, while Gis babbles desperately in heavily accented Shambles (anyone who speaks Hellspeak will be greeted with profound relief). (3) The tomb raider Gnomoth Zaum has returned from the swamps from an expedition, minus the half a dozen companions he set out with and without anything to show for his trouble. He does, however, bring an account of fabulous treasure within a ruin deep within the fen. Originally hired by a man calling himself Siahab a shadowy figure reputedly from Moroi to retrieve an intricate puzzle-box from a subterranean level of the dungeon, Gnomoth set out with several other adventurers, using a map supplied by their employer. They found the ruins and delved within, but encountered a cadre of powerful guardians, ancient automata of clockwork and glyph-graven stone made animate. The sentinels pulverized four of the explorers; another was claimed by a rotting phage in the swamp, and the last consumed by some tentacled demon that hounded them on their journey back to Lophius. Unperturbed by the loss of his entire company, Gnomoth wants to assemble a second expedition and return to the ruins to retrieve both the puzzle box and the other treasures they reputedly found within, artifacts from an ancient and highly advanced culture probably the Tsathii Empire of the early Aeon of Dust that will fetch hundreds of drachmi with collectors. To this end, he is plumbing Lophius in search of anyone daring enough to return to the ruin with him. Gnomoth is a swarthy, charismatic individual with an exaggerated swagger and a handlebar moustache. He carries a large blunderbuss but prefers his rapier, and is equipped with a collection of other exotic gear, such as alchemical glow-globes, a clear gemstone like an opal that glows green in the presence of those who wish him harm, a tiny lockpicking automaton of Skein make, a pair of goggles that perceive eldritch auras, and a selection of hexed ammunition. He usually wears a crimson frock coat, a ruffled silk shirt, hose, and high boots of blue leather, and carries his rapier in an ebony swordcane. (4) The numerous factions that form most of Lophius secular political landscape the gangs, the thief-clans, the pickpocket squads, the racketeers, the assassin consortiums, the dealers, the gambler-coteries, the freebooter bands all are held together through a series of allegiances and fealties almost feudal in nature. While the pirate-clans have their own hierarchies (tied to

but distinct from the power structures of Lophius) and the Shroud maintains detachment and neutrality, the other groups are part of a shifting weft of oaths and betrayals. There are several large, rival gangs which either openly oppose one another or at least maintain an uneasy peace, while most of the other, smaller gangs pay tribute to the larger ones. While gang warfare is very common, it usually occurs between rivals sworn to these larger gangs like the Iron Tygers, the gangs of Crooked Finger, or the Ophidians of Vipers Head rather than between gangs sworn to the same overlord. Occasionally, though, someone fails to pay tribute, or switches sides. If retribution isnt swift, it can make the ruling gang seem weak. Other vassal-gangs start eying the competition and whispering about how their masters are growing soft. More than one major faction has been brought down through the petty betrayals of a few thugs or murderers, felled by their own complacency: the power structure, while intricate, is fragile. The Ophidians of the Vipers Head have a problem. One of their vassal-gangs, the White Scorpions, appear to have turned rogue. They have failed to deliver their tribute to Nyssa in Serpentside for several weeks, and the gorgon is furious. She has commanded Shaar-Illys, her naghini lieutenant, to have someone track the Scorpions down and make examples of them. Unfortunately, the Shroud are refusing to intervene in this situation for their own opaque reasons probably they believe the Ophidians too powerful, and do not wish to help them consolidate their hold. Most of the Ophidian troops are held up in a three way turf-war with the Chain-Warders and Silent Ghosts in Greenfang, contesting the south side of the Chainwater docks. As such, outsiders need to be brought in to deal with the Scorpions, and quickly. Nyssa is offering three thousand drachmi for the heads of the gang, although she wants the leader, Morgan Sheb, alive, and will deduct five hundred drachmi from the reward if Morgan is killed.

Investigations
(1) Anyone who wants to retrieve the statuettes must first ascertain two things: who took them, and where to. The first is relatively easy to uncover, thanks to the singular appearance of Vivisection. Though Thay-Quorl-Haan does not know of Lord Flay he can describe the hideous sails, and the Mnemnoch Clans most bloodthirsty captain is well-known in Lophius, especially amongst the citys many corsairs. The location of the pirates fortress may take some more digging, but asking the right people especially in Bile-Mire will eventually yield its whereabouts. The Mnemnoch Clan makes its lairs on the Midnight Isles on the outer edge of the Fevered Ocean, near the northwestern edge of the Sallow Seas. The Midnight Isles are known to be eternally covered in an eldritch night; they are said to be a place where men and things that were once men act as beasts, where those captured in raids are used to gratify perverse lusts, where the caverns echo with screams as the helpless are sacrificed to the dread beast-gods of the Deep. Seven of the thirteen great pirate clans dwell in the Isles: the Mnemnoch Clan are situated on the Gnawed Isle, one of the larger islands of the chain, in a half-ruinous stronghold of basalt.

Having ascertained the location of the statuettes, the adventurers must find a captain crazy or desperate enough to take them to the Midnight Isles. Fortunately, there are more than a few reckless or simply impoverished captains in Lophius. Freebooters (sometime-corsairs not affiliated with the pirate-clans) might be hired, or even members of a rival clan Clan Ysrasc is currently feuding with Clan Mnemnoch, for example, though an encounter with pirates of another clan might best be reserved for the journey itself. A selection of vessels and crews is provided below; a substantial part of this adventure should revolve around selecting a ship and crew and planning and preparing for the voyage (unless the players already possess a ship). Note that Broodsire is unavailable because of its heavy damage, although if it could be repaired in time its captain, the graftpunk Icuno, might agree to take the job. Rabid John, the Mad Dog of the Sea, a freebooter legend, might be daring enough to accept the mission, though hed expect at least fifteen hundred drachmi just to take the players to the Isles, two thousand to help them storm the fortress, half of it upfront he might be haggled down, especially if promised free pick of other treasure in the clan stronghold. He owns the impressive if somewhat battered ship Evil Temper, a heavily patched though still formidable gunship, light enough for maneuverability but with a thick oak hull and an extensive battery of warded cannons. The ship is austere and unornamented and bears many scars from previous encounters, much like its cantankerous, perpetually cursing crew. Father Skelter of the steamship Gunpowder Saint is even more unhinged than Rabid John. His somewhat unwieldy vessel resembles a floating cathedral, its cannons carved into vomiting gargoyles, its stern and pilot house fitted out with stained glass windows, its figurehead a grinning skeleton, its bulk a monstrous conglomeration of carved wood and sculpted black iron. His crew are fanatics, attending a daily sermon in the chapel of the ship where Skelter drones on about the bloody will of his patron, the sacred reek of sulphur and the ecstasy of holy flame. He can be hired for somewhat less than Rabid John a thousand drachmi if the job is presented correctly, but he must be promised proper bloodshed and may become a liability later in the adventure: he can get somewhat carried away in his zeal for wanton violence. The Carrion Serpent docks in Chainwater, a yellowing bone-ship crafted from the skeleton of some colossal sea-beast, strung with hides and paddle-wheels and crude architectural extrusions. The grave-spawn crew are mostly shades, muttering to each other in Corpserattle. Captain Ull runs the boat with quiet authority, a figure who commands unquestionable respect even in his tattered black coat and slightly overblown tricorne hat. Business-like and efficient, Ull is one of the most reliable captains in the City of the Lamprey but will charge adventurers twenty-five hundred drachmi for his services. The good ship Troubled Dreamer docks in Bile-Mire, a ragged freebooter vessel that might once have been a dread galleon of Somnambulon, now barely recognizable beneath the patina of armour-plates, wooden planks, trophies, barnacles, flaking paint, and etched glyphs that

covers its mottled bulk. The zombies that once would have manned the sweeps have been replaced with slaves, though mostly Troubled Dreamer makes do with sails, crimson and pocked with holes. Captain Faeros Llewin, a flamboyant and swashbuckling individual, is a figure both feared and ridiculed, with his outrageous forked beard (dyed blue and orange), his gaudy talismans, his colourful hexed tattoos, and his lurid bird-feather cape. He will take the mission if it is described with sufficient verve and detail but demands seventeen hundred drachmi, at least at first. Less reliable than the other captains but with a flare for style and a devious strategic mind, Captain Llewin is opportunistic and fickle (and somewhat cowardly) and may turn on the players if things go south. Finally, the players might resort to someone like Captain Russet of the Supple Fiend, a small and poorly armed little frigate flying the scarlet flag of a freebooter. Russet only charges five hundred drachmi and is willing to collect most of it after the job hes desperate for custom, languishing in Bile-Mire and nursing his sorrows with his addled crew, spending his remaining coins on whores, bad ale, and lethe-tea. Drunken, diseased, disorderly, and poorly disciplined, the Supple Fiends crew will mutiny if things go badly much sooner than any of the other crews and are generally unreliable. The above ships and crews are intended as examples only; more can be added or improvised as needed. In order to secure passage aboard a vessel the players will probably have to earn some cash, unless they are already financially secure. This is a good excuse to send them on odd jobs around the city or involve them in one of the other adventure arcs. (2) Unfortunately, tracking down the familiar wont be easy. Pelquefesch has no interest in keeping a pet imp, and will promptly sell the diminutive demon to one of the Sons of the Peacock, the arcane gang of the top tier of Crooked Finger, scholar-thugs and junkies. The witch, Lartez Quillskins (the same individual who Thay-Quorl-Haan has a deal with in arc 1), in turn will pawn Botys off to Nya-of-the-Black-Lips, a shadowmancer in Serpentside. She keeps the imp for study purposes and then sells it to one of the petty priests of the Driftwood District, where it will serve as a kind of mascot, a living ornament to one of the many godlings of that wooden waste, the leering bat-god Gromalech, aboard the boat-temple Grinning Darkness. The priest, Padre Demetrius, will have no interest in selling the imp it attracts petitioners, and more petitioners means more donations. The first stop for the adventurers should be Snailsump, the hagman ghetto on Greenfang. The exoticism of this district should be emphasized: the coiled green-stone architecture, the ubiquitous fungi, the tall hatchery towers and ornate temple-brothels, the long, low mudbaths with their mist of humid, earthy steam. Hagmen casually slip in and out of the canals, fishmongers hawk fresh catches, and submersibles, crude ironclads hissing steam and chitinous vessels from Skein, dock in the underwater bays. After discovering Pelquefeschs identity (Gis cannot pronounce the hagmans name, but describes him as old and stern, with gray-green hair, and the elder is well-known on Crooked Finger and Greenfang), the players

must seek out Nemochs temple. The mutable god-aspect is portrayed as a flickering, amorphous male hagman with extra limbs and faces, emphasizing his constant transformation. The large, columned temple is attended by the cult of Nemoch, and gaining an audience with the elder-pontifex is no easy task. He sleeps during much of the day and rises near dusk, breaking his fast on raw eels before officiating a service at gloaming before heading over to Crooked Finger or one of the other more opulent district of the Corsairs City. Once the adventurers do secure an audience with Pelquefesch, they must take care not to offend the curmudgeonly elder. If they find the hagman quickly enough, he may not yet have sold off Botys. He will play Imbroglio a game with five phases and a tiered, shifting board for the creature at a place in Pelloch (a high-ceilinged tea-house with a huge clockwork board) or will sell it for twenty-five hundred drachmi. However, if the adventurers dawdle in tracking the elder down (or if you just want to make them hunt some more and further explore the city), he will refer them to Lartez in Chelke. Getting to Chelke takes some time, since Crooked Finger is essentially a tiered tower: to get to the Sons of the Peacock the players must pass through Bregm (the slave-sellers district), Skaumn (a pleasure district), and Pelloch (the casino district). Though its very top levels are ragged most of the buildings in Chelke have a gaudy lavishness to them. Merchants in the street will try to sell them nectar, scrolls, books, hexed bullets, beetles with painted wingcasings, knives carved from ur-bone (which may actually be cheap ebony counterfeits), shrunken heads with jewels for eyes, mummified fingers or whole hands, grotesque wooden masks, impskin cloaks, live tortoises and snakes, pickled lizard fetuses, foul-smelling amulets to ward off disease, dung, blood, red powder, colourful candles, alien limbs available for grafting in back-alley workshops, and any number of other articles of arcana. Lartez himself can be found in a sordid drug den wedged between a glyph parlor and a bookshop selling pornography and eldritch grimoires. He is strung out on nectar, his eyes filled with golden light, babbling disjointed incantations in a half-whisper not a fatal overdose but enough to send him into a rapturous, near-oblivious state. The witch himself is a scrawny, long-haired man with a split nose and long fingernails, his whole body tattooed with eyes (the mark of the Sons of the Peacock). Two nude concubines lounge beside him on the bench, one a voluptuous redhead with her tongue removed and chains strung between her body-piercings (Shaal), the other a tawny, tattooed woman smoking using a jade cigarette holder (Glestra). A hulking tough, Jakkin, with a shaved head and an extra pair of scaled, meaty arms grafted to his torso stands guard, twirling two pistols and a switchblade; when (inevitably) the players give up trying to talk to the drug-addled Lartez they will probably turn to either the concubines or Jakkin for information: either will direct them to Nya-of-the-Black-Lips in Serpenstide A fortunate-teller and shadowmancer, Nya-of-the-Black-Lips runs a glyph parlor and tarot reading business above the shadowmilk cafe Cream of the Void in the Serpentside district of the the Vipers Head, an island ruthlessly ruled by the Ophidian gang (this is a good place to introduce arc 4). Her shop is a somewhat rickety set of chambers accessible via a series of slick stone steps, its door lit with swamp-gas globes; inside, vellum scrolls nailed to the walls display

various eldritch tattoos (some of them shifting subtly, squirming with subcutaneous motion), while cluttered work-benches and tables display tools, inks, several texts, and other arcane paraphernalia. A worn red-leather chair and a round table set with a black tallow candle dominate the shop, where Nya-of-the-Black-Lips plies her trade; a frayed purple curtain covers the doorway leading to her private chambers. She keeps a runty albino alligator as a sort of familiar though there is nothing mystic in their connection, at least to meet the eye. Nya herself is a large, pale woman with huge moist eyes ringed by dark mascara, and plump lips smeared with black lipstick. She tries to sell the players her services and agrees to tell them who she sold the imp to if they purchase a flesh-hex or have their fortunes read. She is not very susceptible to intimidation and will become stubborn if pressed, but she is good to her word and sends the adventurers on to Padre Demetrius if they patronize her shop. If the primarily investigatory adventure starts to lag, an encounter with a band of thugs or thieves looking for easy marks should be engineered. Lophius is far from a safe town, and those exploring its murky streets should be on their guard against ruffians and cutthroats. (3) The journey through the swamps should not be without incident. After setting out from Lophius the would-be plunderers must take a steamboat along the Gland northeast for two days before diverting into the swamp itself. From here the ruin is a three day trek on foot through mosquito-ridden bog and dense undergrowth. Numerous ships head north along the Gland, and booking passage on one is relatively easy. While at the docks of Chainwater or even Bile-Mire either Thay-Quorl-Haan or Gis from adventures 1 and 2 can be introduced, combing dockside taverns in search of men. Some of the captains listed above in arc 1 could also be hired to take the players north, but the larger ships are designed for sea-travel and cannot navigate the treacherous bayou waterways; chartering a ship specifically for this journey is also unnecessarily expensive, since so many ships head up the Gland anyway to trade with the other Twilight Cities, and booking passage on one would be much less costly. Several example ships are listed below, along with their crews.

The Gentleman Caller is a mid-sized trawler that has been used as a fishing vessel, a gunboat
for river-pirates, a cargo ship, and finally as a passenger ship although she still takes on freight, most of her custom comes from men and women looking to travel along the Gland. The enigmatic Captain Vask and his well-disciplined crew run a tight ship with stringently enforced rules: there is as curfew, rough-housers, brawlers, or duelists will be put ashore (or tossed in the river for the leeches, piranhas, and alligators), along with stowaways and thieves. The Gentleman Caller has a well-stocked saloon fitted out with fine silverware and expansive mirrors, and the bar serves high-quality drinks such as absinthe and sherry. The standard rate is thirty drachmi per cabin, or fifty for a luxury cabin.

Lucidity is a small, somewhat rickety vessel captained by Baz The Skunk Noland, a notorious
smuggler who takes advantage of Lophius relaxed, laissez-faire trade laws and runs weapons,

drugs, spices, and various other cargo up to the other Twilight Cities, principally Skein and Crepuscle, evading tariffs, taxes, and restrictions and so turning a tidy profit. A sinewy, rat-like man with a wispy moustache, scarred lips, a broad-brimmed hat, and an oversized revolver, Skunk charges twenty drachmi for a cabin aboard Lucidity but is also on the lookout for guards and will actually hire the players on for a drachma a day. The steamer Jilted Lover is run by the fierce Captain Kaala, one of the few female Captains of any notoriety in Lophius. Cutting a distinct figure with her runesword, her hawk (Dervish), and her glossy prosthetic eye, Kaala has a mostly female crew, and all men onboard know to respect them. Kaala has been known to do a spot of freelance piracy on the river and by the coast and has made her share of enemies, making a voyage with her a somewhat risky proposition, though the players may not know it; nonetheless Jilted Lover can handle itself well in a fight with a similarly sized vessel, and its rooms are relatively comfortable, with a rate of twenty-five drachmi per cabin. Setting out onto the Gland, the players should have emphasized to them the sweltering heat and humidity, the irritation of the mosquitoes, and the tedium of the murky swamp to either side. A couple of small bayou shanty-towns, huts on stilts inhabited by ragged humans and ghilan, can be scattered down the river to punctuate the boredom of the journey, rough little places with cheap taverns or chance-houses where the boat will stop to take on lumber or drop off cargo. Small hagman villages are also prominent along the Gland, less squalid though somewhat muddier places where somber, dark-eyed elders talk sternly in Glatch while hagman children slither and frolic and make faces at the passengers. Most of these settlements should simply be passed by. It may be a good idea to scope out one of these settlements to make for on the journey back, a place to hole up while the adventurers wait for a boat heading south back to the city. At night, the boat could be attacked by a tribe of leechkin possessed by the blood-thirst. Crazed, starving, naked humanoids with hissing hand-mouths and shimmering yellow eyes, the leechkin appear out of the water, clambering over the side and attacking any in sight. The players may be the first to find their victims, sailors lying ashen-faced with hideous red circles covering their necks or faces. The leechkin may well have a shaman or two with them, marked by daubs of crude paint, muttering and gesturing, flinging hexes designed to stun or subdue rather than kill too much precious blood to waste. Other encounters might include fights with human brigands who jam the river with logs and then attempt to hold up the boat, demanding that all valuables aboard be given over: rough, probably diseased men whove been living in the swamp for weeks but are made dangerous through desperation, clutching shoddy firearms or crossbows or rusted swords, spitting curses and scratching their bug-bites and sores, some of them sporting grafts or a bit of puissance. While they probably arent a match for well-equipped adventurers they may do some damage before theyre taken care of.

Once theyre put ashore the swamp should only become more oppressive. Huge ur-tapirs, snakes, alligators, and panthers can all molest the adventurers. While more swamp encounters can be placed here on the trek to the ruins, some can be saved for the journey back to Lophius. As they draw closer to the ruins they can catch sight of flagstones peeking through the ferns, obelisks half-sunk in the black bogs, or crumbling walls overgrown with creepers. (4) Shaar-Illys, the scarred and hard-bitten naghini second of the Ophidians, will brief the players in a backroom of a restaurant in the Coil, the doors guarded by earless, tattooed men with forked tongues and sharpened teeth wielding scimitars and huge flintlocks. The White Scorpions are a Skullford gang on the Talon, which is primarily Iron Tyger territory. Nyssa suspects that the Scorpions have defected and joined the Tygers, though this is speculation. If they were killed for some reason, their bodies havent been found yet, so the Ophidians are assuming theyre traitors unless further evidence contradicts this theory. Whatever the case, the White Scorpions are perceived as having gone rogue, and must be made an example of. The gang make their layer in the cave-system below Skullford, a maze where the city's destitute dwell in communal squalor, fending off grave-spawn and predators, competing with each other for space. The White Scorpions are basically a low-level gang of protection artists and thugs who squeeze what little can be extracted from the poor residents of Skullford, as well as dealing Ophidian-supplied drugs to the local populace. They also occasionally make things difficult for the Tygers when called upon to and have some limited stakes in Shardwall. Their den is supposed to be a set of rough-hewn chambers, always guarded, where they hole up on their downtime and stash their ill-gotten gains.

Conclusions
(1) The voyage itself should be arduous: the players should not step onto the ship and then arrive at the Midnight Isles without at least a few encounters along the way. Before setting off from Lophius most captains and crews will perform a ritual known as the Libation: all of those aboard must prick or cut themselves and allow one drop of blood to fall into the sea and another to stain the deck. This is an offering to the beast-gods of the sea; only Father Skelter and Captain Ull will abstain from the ceremonial sacrifice, intended to appease the ravenous leviathans below and bring good luck to the voyage. Storms, strong, winds, and doldrums pose fairly mundane hazards to any sea-voyage, testing the crew and the ship. To makes things more dangerous a Boilwind can blow in from the northern Fevered Ocean, a scorching gale forcing all crew indoors and literally boiling the ocean and sending up clouds of searing steam; hiring a reliable weather-witch or augur (such as Beyth, Thay-Quorl-Haans witch) can prevent such an occurrence, allowing the ship to avoid an oncoming Boilwind by detecting it and navigating round it, or in the case of a very powerful caster, calming the storm altogether.

The voyagers might also encounter an Utterance, a rippling echo through the Aether as one of the beast-gods stirs in its slumber deep beneath the sea. Anyone with puissance will hear the Utterance in their head like a titanic, deafening roar a hundred times louder than a thunderclap (though of course it doesnt affect their ears, being a purely psychic phenomenon). Anyone casting will almost certainly lose their invocation immediately, and may be stunned or may even seize or be rendered temporarily catatonic. The Utterance will cause wild brine elementals to manifest, saltwater ondines which will stalk the ship through the sea like playful cats before materializing in flickering, wraith-like spray-bodies, gnawing on hulls and masts with idiot predation. They can be deterred through force (though resistant to many types of attack) while in their fully manifested forms or can be dispersed via witchcraft. Dead bodies may also rise as benign haunts for a time before collapsing again. The ship might also be attacked by a band of sirae, or gullfolk, gray-feathered bird people with avian heads and talons. The tribal primitives lair in aeries along the cliffs of the Serrated Coast and will venture out from their cave-homes with bone spears, knives, and bows, singing their cawing spellsong in a communal act of shamanistic witchcraft, a hypnotic hex designed to mesmerize or lull their prey before the gullfolk swoop down. Fortunately the sirae can be routed after a few of them die, and their spellsong loses potency with the death of each singer. Finally, the adventurers may encounter a pirate vessel, preferably from another clan, possibly even Clan Ysrasc. Although this encounter may well end violently, escalating from threats to an all-out naval battle where ships trade cannon-shots and corsairs swing from ropes to board the players vessel, it could also be diverted if the adventurers are savvy enough and knowledgeable of Clan politics. If suitably persuaded a Ysrasc Captain could be convinced to join the adventurers and their crew in an assault on Captain Flays fortress. The Midnight Isles themselves are an ominous sight: a cloud of pitch darkness, hovering on the horizon. Once inside the perimeter of the effect the sun will be blotted out and the sea will turn black; the only light sources are artificial ones. Locating the Gnawed Isle within the darkness wont be easy if the adventurers didnt purchase a very reliable map of the area. Several Mnemnoch patrols sweep the island ever few hours, on guard against rivals. If they are careful, the players should be able to dock without being noticed in an out-of-the-way cove or bay just off the coast again, research back in Lophius, particularly talking with corsairs who know the Isles, can prove invaluable here. The Gnawed Isle is formed from the exposed edge of a caldera. Nothing grows on the barren black rock due to the perpetual night. Captain Flays fortress is mostly situated in the natural caverns of the island, but two pinnacles of rock have been carved into towers (not by Clan Mnemnoch but by some much earlier, now forgotten builders), guarding the stone steps that lead up to the main entrance; riflemen keep watch here, sniping any who climb the steps without accompaniment. A second major entrance is evident near the base of the cliffs, a great

crack from out of which Vivisection sails. There are two other entrances, one of them an underwater tunnel, the other a semi-secret sally port known only to a few pirates who have spent time on the Isles. Without knowledge of the two other entrances, a stealthy approach becomes difficult at best. The best bet for infiltration would be to wait for Vivisection and the rest of the fleet to leave and then attempt to swim in via the crack. This is also the wisest approach for a direct assault, since only a skeleton guard is left while Captain Flay is out raiding: the feud with Clan Ysrasc, while venomous, is at something of a lull, and the Insatiable Thousand do not suspect an attack. Even with the entire clan out pirating, however, a good hundred and fifty corsairs remain behind, along with at least one ship. It is rare, however, for all four Clan Mnemnoch elders to be out at the same time; usually two or three are present in the fortress, meaning that between two and six hundred men can be found spread throughout the caverns, drinking, sleeping, carousing, and indulging their basest appetites. Capturing a pirate and interrogating him isnt a bad idea. There are few land patrols, but the sea patrols are relatively weak. If they are decisive, the players could capture one of the Mnemnoch frigates quickly, take prisoners, then scuttle the ship. A little coercion may be necessary on their part to ascertain the whereabouts of any secret entrances, but the crew of their vessel may prove helpful in this regard, supplying suggestions or even taking a more active role in the interrogation. Another option might be to create a diversion in order to draw the bulk of the Clans fleet out of the fortress, but persuading their Captain to stretch out his neck may be very difficult money will probably have to change hands. In any case, while gaining entrance to the fortress should be difficult, the caverns themselves should be even more challenging. They are regularly patrolled by groups of two to five men, well armed, usually with firearms. Fortunately the caves are quite vast and large sections are uninhabited. Very few maps exist of the Gnawed Isle caves so the intruders will likely get quite lost if they dont keep track of their location. An atmosphere of infernal gloom should permeate the stronghold; corridors echo with screams, and slaves are kept in impromptu cells and cages fashioned from steel bars (to which only a few wardens have keys). Chambers in the caves are rarely specialized: while there are some storage rooms and a few areas aside for armories, cells, guard-rooms, and latrines, most rough chambers are amorphous. Corsairs sleep, eat, and drink wherever they please, or use their captives to gratify their sadistic desires. Scenes of casual torture, either implied or directly enacted according to taste, should be common. The statuettes themselves are kept in the strongholds shrine to the beast-gods, a large cavern adjacent to the elders rooms and their extensive harems. Though much of the pirates booty is circulated at random throughout the cave system the most valuable items are kept in the temple area under the purview of the High Captains, the four elders of Clan Mnemnoch. The shrine features a bizarre obsidian idol to a kraken-like entity, with a blood-stained altar set before it. The statuettes are in their lacquered case, along with a collection of other treasures

that should be tailored to reflect the partys wealth. Coins from all of the Twilight Cities, the figureheads of captured boats, art objects, and obviously eldritch weapons or other artifacts are all kept here, watched carefully by at least half a dozen guards at all times. The elders officiate dark rituals in the sanctum frequently, offering up their captives as sacrifices to the nebulous beast-gods of the deep. As an added complication, some of the statuettes may be missing. They can be scattered about the caves, or some might even have been sold. Tracking them might be aided through the shiplogs of the elders or through an inventory of treasures kept in one of their chambers. After procuring whatever treasure they can the players must make their escape and then return to Lophius, where Thay-Quorl-Haan eagerly awaits. If they were delayed or took too long in securing the statuettes the merchant prince may have been murdered by Shroud assassins hired by Quillskins; they can then perform the trade themselves, if they wish, and thus come to possess the weapon Shadowtongue (of course they could already do a deal with Quillskins even if Haan is still alive, but doing so would be betraying the merchant and so earning his wrath). If still alive, Haan will probably ask the players to accompany him to the deal in Chelke (he will pay them fifty drachmi apiece for the escort). As an additional option, Quillskins can betray the players (or Haan) once he gets hold of the statuettes. Eyes blazing with nectar, the witch will recite the incantations inscribed on the lapis lazuli gems and release the elementals bound within. If the adventurers fail to kill him quickly, he will continue summoning the elementals until all six are released, making the combat progressively more difficult. Whoever holds the statuette of an elemental can control it: the fight may turn into a struggle for possession of the carved gems. While the elementals can be customized according to taste and party strength, varying their types will make for an interesting encounter. Consider a set of shadow, glass, ash, wood, smoke, and moonlight elementals as a suitably variegated array. (2) The Driftwood District is a bewildering place, and its maze-like qualities should be emphasized. The boats and ships are multifarious and half decomposing, connected by a confusing array of bridges and walkways. Further up the hill of Murmur Isle are Gloomwell and the Black Stair that winds up to the clifftop manses of the wealthy dead in Groanward, a somber backdrop. Some time should be spent in the district itself in an attempt to actually find Grinning Darkness. They will pass through throngs of pilgrims, some of them proffering sacrifices at the shrines of Striga, Kain, Belus, Melmoth the Wanderer, the Weeping Lady, and the Gibbering Goddess of Crepuscle, others to more exotic idols, some of them totemic, others merely grotesque Waadjat, the Divine Mantis, Draukyr the turtle-god, Basatan the Lord of Crabs, Thoggu the Slimy, Ghisguth, Shuddegoth the Barnacle-God, as well as the bat-god Gromalech. The air reeks of incense, burnt flesh, brine, and sweat, and chanting echoes off the worn wooden hulls.

Grinning Darkness is a very large and very old boat with three decks, each dedicated to a
different deity. On the first deck men with shaved heads and yellow robes prostrate themselves before a stone cuttlefish called Yob-Sut; on the second floor, a naked congregation sniff bowls of hallucinogenic green smoke (which fills the room, possibly affecting the players) and writhe before a pair of intertwined snakes, the godling Erze-Tsa; on the third is the shrine of Gromalech, where Padre Demetrius, a corpulent, barefooted man in black robes with a long braid of greasy black hair and a shaggy black beard raves his bizarre screeching sermons while Botys flutters on her leathery wings and chitters in Hellspeak, her chain tied to a hook on the wall beside the altar (itself set before a gray stone idol of a horned bat) in front of a small crowd. The atmosphere is somewhere between a church and a sideshow, but when the collection plate is circulated it comes back piled with coins. Demetrius is not easily separated from Botys. Since purchasing her donations have been higher and petitioners more numerable. Soon he will be able to afford a new shrine and attract an even larger congregation. A very substantial offer, in the region of five thousand drachmi, might convince the priest to sell the familiar. Otherwise, the adventurers will have to steal the imp or take her back by force. If they opt for the former they will have to sneak past the Padres guards, six toughs with similarly shaggy beards, hair, and robes who wield poisoned bone knives and guard the shrine, taking four hour shifts of three guards each. If they decide to take the imp by violence they will also have to face the guards, as well as any worshipers in the shrine at the time. More creative solutions such as another trade are also possible, but will depend on the resources of the players. Incidentally, Gis other articles his rings and jeweled dueling wheel-lock, will turn up in Mandrake Market in a few days. If they manage to steal, seize, or purchase Botys, the players must then collect payment from Gis. This could be an adventure in and of itself, possibly requiring a sea-journey to Skein with the young nobleman. They could get embroiled in the politics of the magisters and the MothKings, drawn into the intrigue of the Clockwork City; or they could simply take their reward and leave, of course. Unless further complications are desired, Gis is essentially good to his word and will pay the adventurers as soon as he can. Over the course of the adventure they will hopefully have made some allies and enemies in Lophius, opening up the possibility of further adventures. (3) The ruin is a fairly expansive series of structures that might be the remnant of a much larger complex, such as a city, but now the swamp has subsumed most of the buildings. The ground is of fitted stone tile, but grass, reeds, water, and fungi cover the stones in a patina of vegetation and scum. Walls and columns emerge from brackish pools, stars lead down into blackish-green water, and foliage consumes old statues and monoliths in snares of vines and moss. Gnomoth leads the players through the surface ruins with confidence, remarking that the guardians were further inwards: he holds a map in front of him as he picks his way across the uneven ground, stepping over puddles and fallen pillars. He eventually leads the players to

a flight of worn stone steps that spiral down into the moist earth; he strikes a glow-globe and sets down the steps, urging the adventurers to follow. Unfortunately for the duped players, Gnomoth has not been telling the whole truth. In actual fact, his party easily defeated the clockwork guardians, which were all but consumed with rust, their arcane glyphs flickering feebly, most of their puissance drained. The party was hired to find the puzzle-box for Siahab but they were also warned not to attempt to open it under any circumstances. Overcome by his foolish bravado and flushed with success, however, Gnomoth played with the intricate controls on the surface of the box while the rest of the party slumbered. He opened the box, releasing the fiend trapped inside a demon, Cimaris, bound for thousands of years within the confines of the phylactery. After manifesting the creature feasted on the souls of the other party members and then broke into Gnomoths mind, subduing him to its horrible will. It sent the adventurer, now a puppet to its will, back to Lophius to bring it more sustenance. Once it has regained its strength it will leave the ruins and wreak its inconsolable wrath upon the world, so great is its rage at being trapped within the box. The ruin itself is conspicuously devoid of challenges; Gnomoth leads the party on through the gloomy corridors with increasingly feverish excitement, snarling angrily at anyone who cautions greater care at navigating the apparently trap-filled and well-guarded dungeon. Anyone paying careful attention to the walls, however, will notice a series of murals depicting the capture and entrapment of Cimaris, first depicting a three-headed creature rampaging across the countryside, then being pierced with spears and arrows, and finally being sucked into a tiny box. The hieroglyphic captions, in the High Tsathii script, describe the spells used to bind the demon, although only a scholar of antiquities could read the writing without eldritch aid. Upon reaching a large, domed chamber deep within the earth, the adventurers come upon the broken bodies of the clockwork guardians, before an arched stone doorway leading into blackness. Gnomoth urges the players on into the portal; if pressed about the guardians, he will mutter that something else must have destroyed them, or perhaps they wound down after over-exerting their ancient gears in the fight. What does it matter? The treasure lies just beyond! In fact, of course, Cimaris lies just beyond. The demon resembles something between a serpentine hydra, a huge toad, and a madmans nightmare, lashing the air with three muscular tendrils each terminating in a slavering maw lined with rows of needlelike teeth. Its skin is slimy and membranous, slick like a frogs, pale and spotted; its bulk is supported by three squat, almost elephantine legs. Red eyes are arrayed around its body in a circular pattern, so that it can see in all directions at once. The puzzle-box lies open on the floor. Quick-thinking adventurers will seize it quickly, but only

someone who has read the formulae on the walls (or is a very skilled witch already well-versed in the operation of Tsathii artifacts, or else a mathematical prodigy) can use the item to successfully suck Cimaris back in. Gnomoth will burst into hideous laughter at the sight of the demon and abase himself, alternatively weeping and cackling, dancing away from attacks and cowering behind the demons grotesque form. It is unlikely that the players will be able to reason with the demon: only a very tempting bribe will stop it from attempting to devour them on the spot. A fight with Cimaris will be difficult but not impossible, and good use of cover (the pillars that support the roof, for example) will aid in the creatures destruction its dissolves into a puddle of greasy, brown mucus if destroyed. There is some other treasure in the ruins, though nothing as extensive as Gnomoth described. If the players return with the puzzle-box, Siahab will pay them five thousand drachmi, but this will be cut to only five hundred drachmi if the box obviously does not contain the demon (for example, if it is open). If the players successfully con Siahab into buying the empty puzzle-box for its full price then the witch will be enraged once he attempts to open it he was planning on conversing with the demon about the Tsathii amongst other things, and had a circle of protection prepared to keep the creature bound. He will do all in his power to track the players down if they do manage to trick him. (4) The White Scorpions can be found on the lower level of the caves below Skullford, the ragged slum of Lophius. Finding their lair should be a substantial part of the adventure: the tunnels are bewildering, filled with the wretched and the monstrous. Passages loop back on themselves or terminate in dead-ends, and others are flooded during high-tide, only becoming accessible at certain times of day. Artificial light will be necessary to explore most of the caves. Giant, aggressive barnacles with prehensile pseudopod tongues and huge crustaceans haunt the lowest levels, along with poisonous fungi and deep-dwellers, with whom the White Scorpions ran afoul. A tribe of the creatures known as the yhlei has long dwelt in the lower reaches of the Talon island. The servants of a horrific being they call Mother in their clicking, glottal tongue, the yhlei resemble grotesque hybrids of fish, frog, and human. Yhlei have webbed hands and feet and often walk like quadrupeds, finned limbs and backs, wide slits for mouths, and lumpy, hunchbacked bodies mottled blue and green and covered in mucus and symbiotic algae. They are amphibious, absolutely zealous in their reverence of Mother, and unfathomable to human minds. This particular tribe has captured the White Scorpions and plans to sacrifice them to Mother in a profane, unspeakable ritual deep within their cave-complex, which is only accessible during low tides unless the adventurers are amphibious (hagmen, leechkin, those with gill grafts or water-breathing hexes, or those with steam-sealed diving suits, clumsy but often well-armoured).

The White Scorpion lair is in complete disarray. It is unguarded and splattered with blood, both red and greenish-yellow; objects are smashed and the curtains covering doorways ripped. In the store-room, where the Scorpions kept their drug supply (mostly thrum) and tribute and equipment coin, stolen goods, and weaponry lies a dead yhlei, its body punctured in three places with bullet wounds. It has been dead for quite some time. A trail of blood-spots eventually leads the players deep into the caverns, until a certain point is reached where the tide will have flooded the tunnels and washed the blood away. Here the adventurers must wait before descending into the usually submerged caves. The various vagrants of the upper levels do know of the deep-dwellers' presence in the lower tunnels, speaking of the yhlei in frightened whispers: for a few coins, a bottle of beer, or some drugs, one of the half-mad bums might lead the players to the creatures` lair, if they are having trouble finding it on their own. Once they start exploring the lowest levels of the caves, the adventurers should realize that the yhlei are not the only things making their homes in the caverns. A group of rival deepdwellers, the crustacean daggols, are competing with the horrible mermen for control of the lower caves. The daggols, hulking, ogre-like things somewhere between lobsters and crayfish, have skirmished several times with the yhlei, and the aftermath of one of these battles should be the first thing the players find yhlei snipped in half, daggol bodies pierced with huge spears, their carapaces split and seeping. Although it is unlikely that the players will be able to communicate with the daggols and convince them to help them fight the yhlei, they may be able to lure the daggols into the yhlei lair and use the resulting combat as a diversion, slipping away to investigate the whereabouts of the White Scorpions. The yhlei lair is essentially unfurnished, consisting of caves set aside for living quarters, breeding dens and hatcheries rows and rows of eggs like frogspawn in a semi-viscous pool of liquid and the temple area, where the Scorpions are being kept in cages made from human bones. Several of them have already been sacrificed to Mother; the others are being fed raw fish and the remains of their own comrades, kept alive until it is their turn to be gutted under the serrated knife of the yhlei priestess. Fortunately, Morgan Sheb is alive, though frightened out of his wits. It is up to the players what to do with the Scorpions. If they free them, Nyssa will be displeased at best and enraged at worst: she doesn`t care whether the gang defected or not, since the appearance of weakness is just as damning as if the gang actually turned traitor. Certainly if they deliver her Morgan she will put the man`s head on public display after driving him mad with her gorgon`s gaze, unless convinced very persuasively otherwise.

Macellaria
City of Bodysnatchers, The Maggot City

BRUTALITY
Nhars gauntleted first smashed for the final time into his opponents mouth and applause burst into the air around him as if some intangible caul had been ripped asunder, inundating the arena with noise. He stood there, allowing the after-fight euphoria to suffuse him, bolstered by the spectators approval. He let the steely glow in his eyes fade, ushered the unthinking animal part of himself, relieved and uncomplaining, back into its cage. Below him the pulverized remnants of the other combatant twitched in an eerie dance macabre, thrumming its many limbs. Its face was a pulpy, spurting ruin. Nhar breathed deep, inhaled the heady smells of the Pulsetown pits: the sourness of cheap drink, the faint smolder of smoke from the Temples chimneys, and beneath it all that omnipresent, primeval smell of blood, blood, blood, fresh and red and steaming in the arid air, the smell of birth and death and struggle, the quintessence of life, conflict, victory... He spat triumphantly, a glob of saliva and his own blood spattering contemptuously into the spreading puddle saturating the sands. His dripping fists unclenched.

C e l e r i t y
It was hot hot like the world had caught a fever, was sweating it out in the quivering air. Everything was twisted with that queasy, shimmery haze, like you were looking at the reflection of the world in a warped mirror. People were black shapes like childrens drawings, undulating, jerking in and out of focus, faceless and faintly menacing; buildings writhed and loomed out over the steaming street, looking somehow hungry, coiling and uncoiling as you drew nearer; the corpulent sun snarled down out of the bleached and raw-blue sky. You couldnt think, in heat like that your thoughts seemed to boil and your mind was like sludge, your memories flowing together wet and slippery as runny eggs, yolks popping in the heat, bursting in your brain, frothing out of your ears and nose and bubbling through your pores. Time got thick and tarry; seconds stuck together. Anything black burnt to touch. High above a Hexwarren street a window shattered and rained down shards of glass even as a figure tore out of the hole like a bullet. The thin, grinning man landed on heavy-booted feet and dashed down the street with uncanny quickness, almost too fast for the eye to follow. In the sloweddown crawl of moments made viscous by the heat his hexed speed became a kind of

violence, bruising the air with after-images as the man ducked around carriages and carts, weaving in and out of the motley crowd, round a whip-stitched servitor reeking of formaldehyde, a blind gutter witch who conjured a feeble dust-elemental before a crowd of gawkers, a ghul in a white suit buying books from a street-seller, shading himself from the sun with a frayed umbrella. The running man grasped something tightly to his chest. Half a breath after the building had spat the quick man out of its upper storey a blast of green, eldritch flame blew the rest of the wall away and spewed sulphurous smoke into the street. A second figure emerged with a roar from the green pall, hulking and heavy, shoving passersby out of the way as he stomped after his quarry. A huge man in a brown leather coat, his lips and hands singed from his spell, already growling some fresh incantation. Round a corner, down a back-alley, over a rotting wooden fence, up a flight of worn stone steps Cythos laughed as he wound his way deeper into Macellaria, revelling in his own agility. Only have to make it to Resurrection Row. He heard, vaguely, the pound of the bounty-hunters footsteps behind him, an echoing boom as the thieftaker blew through the fence. With simian dexterity Cythos swung up onto a low balcony and then shimmied up to the slate rooftop, digging grafted climbingnails into the plaster and hauling himself up, then scurrying across the tiled expanse of roof and leaping to the next building. He made it half a block before he heard the thud of his pursuer on the tiled roof behind him. He glanced back but kept running; the

hunter was moving fast, channelling as he made his huge, ungainly jumps between buildings. Cythos ducked as the witch sent a swirling hex like a nest of effervescent serpents towards him; the spell struck a chimney and reduced it to a pile of corroded, molten slag. Cythos jackknifed across a narrow alleyway and whipped out his pistol as the assassin gained on him. Even as the end of the block drew closer the wiry thief squeezed off three shots, swore as a hastily invoked shield of force incinerated the bullets a few feet from his enemys body. Cythos skidded to a halt and scrambled down from the roofs, into Murrain Square, still, impossibly, holding the bundle to his chest; the imposing spires of the Fane of Dust rose up in the distance. Graft pedlars scattered and clutched at their gruesome wares as Cythos ran across the square, followed closely by the giant man behind him. A stray hex caught one merchant square in the chest, dissolving his flesh and leaving only a blackened skeleton behind. Through the square, down another flight of steps, into a side-street to a dead end. Cythos swore, turned even as a massive fist hurtled towards his head. He dodged, wrenching his neck to the side, felt the mans arm sail just past him. He tumbled backwards and brought up his foot behind him, kicking the man in the chest, then spun round and jabbed two fingers into the brutish witchs eyes. The assassin stumbled back, stunned, and Cythos brought up his pistol, emptied his last three shots into his would-be killers face. Breathing hard and wrinkling his nose at

the stench of burning flesh Cythos quickly checked his assailants body, cursed when he found the tattoo on the back of the mans hand a black heart, wreathed in green fire. He shivered. Well fuck me, he whispered to his prize, the polished-black skull that stared up at Demographics Cestoid 10% Ghilan 32% Hagmen 12% Human 33% Leechkin 6 % Shades 5% Other 2% Architecture

him with empty sockets. You must be bleeding priceless for someone to hire the fucking Shroud to get you back. Drawing a cloak around him despite the heat he slunk out from the alley and dissolved into the chaos of the city, clinging to the cool and obfuscating shadows.

Like most of the Twilight Cities Macellaria has a pastiche, variegated architecture. The shanties and the crude houses of Resurrection Row are raw, unornamented structures of wooden planks, hastily mortared brick, wattle, and daub, small and poorly built habitations and businesses with rickety upper floors; often the windows are boarded up and holes or imperfections in the walls are patched with other material, such as scrap metal or plaster. The rest of the city is considerably more opulent, the buildings that rise in clusters or sprawl in rambling warrens mixing arabesque domes, arches, and narrow towers with skeletal, buttressed halls and spiked spires. Pinnacles and minarets rise up above bulbous cupolas; columned arcades overlook broad courtyards; stained glass, gargoyles, ribbed vaults, and ornate facades clash and mingle with quadrangles of glazed tile, gaudily coloured semi-domes, and tapering hexagonal monoliths. Red sandstone is a common material for these older buildings, and many bear the remnants of frescoes or murals, now chipped and mutilated. A layer of dust and grime adheres to the walls and the winding stone streets. Fashion Fashion in Macellaria is incredibly eclectic. Many of its inhabitants are garbed in apocalyptic rags; boiled leathers and scavenger gear, dust-goggles and dusters are ubiquitous. Most individuals in Macellaria have hand-me-down clothes inherited from hundreds of different cultures and time periods. Very often outfits are formed out of scraps stitched together, tattered patchwork shirts and trousers, cloaks and coats, a bewildering array of colours and

patterns. Ancient military uniforms are the most common, totally depleted of their original symbolic meanings. More morbidly, burial garb looted from old tombs forms a major part of most citizens wardrobes. People walk through the streets wearing loose-fitting shrouds, funerary masks, and dour, flowing robes. More than any other city, the inhabitants of Macellaria modify themselves with fleshcraft. Extra appendages are a frequent sight, and clothing modified to accommodate unusual anatomies is sold in the Curio Bazaars or in the streets of Hexwarren, outside of the tissue shops. Often these augmentations are purely cosmetic, forming a part of fashion themselves; the most outlandish and ostentatious modifications are the most lauded. Almost everyone in the city goes armed with scavenged weapons unusual firearms, curved blades, exotic polearms, strange clockwork contraptions, combat gloves, and a diverse array of others. The Watchdogs The three colossi known as the Watchdogs (or just the Dogs) of Macellaria are huge, venerable creatures that guard the three gates of the walled inner city the Witchs Gate, leading to Moroi, the Eels Gate, leading to Lophius, and the Butchers Gate, leading to the Slaughterlands. The Watchdogs were created four hundred years ago, commissioned by the Robber Guilds and the Rag-and-Bones cartels from the mad magister Orlando Petrifax, renegade of Skein and specialist in fleshcraft; though many of their constituent parts have been replaced over the centuries, they remain at the three gates of the Maggot City, motley sentinels easily capable of dispatching any wandering horror or band of mutant brigands that might dare approach Macellaria from the Slaughter-lands or elsewhere. In times of war the Dogs have very rarely been unleashed upon the battlefield to aid in the destruction of some particularly malignant foe. The Watchdogs are gigantic, only vaguely canine creatures formed from innumerable scraps of glyph-scribed, hairless flesh grafted irreverently atop the puissant bones of malformed direbeasts or giants dug from the Slouching-devil Mountains. Petrifax apparently conjoined these bones without respect for their previous owners anatomy, resulting in strange, unwieldy configurations of limbs, odd protrusions, and unlikely skeletal structures: instead of arranging the bones in their original composition, Petrifax mixed and matched to his own bizarre design, crafting three roughly dog-like guardians. As a result the Watchdogs are misshapen and monstrous, their deformed skeletons clothed in a grisly patchwork, a palimpsest of stitched skins. Within their sigil covered bodies strange presences squirm and rustle, pressing against their fleshly prison the animating spirits the magister bound within the Dogs warded skin, to give his creations life. The Dogs are chained to their gates but can wander a fair distance, though they are well trained and so spend most of their time dozing in the shade of the walls, the terrific stench of their breath and the sickening quantities of formaldehyde used to preserve their bodies

assailing those who approach the gates of the Bodysnatchers City. They are fed every three days, glutted on huge bowls of raw meat a spectacle which draws large crowds of visitors who havent witnessed the Feeding before. An elite unit of the city guard comprised of witches and beast-masters tends to the Watchdogs, called the Kennel Masters. Walls The Walls The walls of the Maggot City are thick and extremely tall, built of ruddy stone with wooden battlements constantly being replaced along the top. In addition to the gun emplacements, trebuchets, and soldiers who man the walls, Macellaria maintains a legion of specialized archers and crossbowmen. The obscene number of bodies in the city attracts hordes of ravens, vultures, and crows to the City of Bodysnatchers, and were such carrion-feeders to descend upon the Skin Markets the citys economy would be devastated. To ward off unwanted aerial intrusions a band of mercenary archers called the Black Arrows (after their fletching) defends the city walls (alongside a series of leering straw scarecrows, though these do considerably less to deter would-be scavengers). Though these defenses are effective, many birds still enter the city limits, and there is an obelus reward for any crow corpse brought to the city bounty office in Resurrection Row. Hexwarren (The Witchs Gate) The arcane district of Macellaria is Hexwarren, by the eastern Witchs Gate. A commercial district, Hexwarren is composed of glyph parlors, tissue-shops, alchemists, and booksellers. Eldritch texts, scrolls, charms, amulets, pendants, talismans, potions, and all other sorts of arcane bric-a-brac can be purchased here, but most come to Hexwarren looking to augment themselves with biomechanical and bio-eldritch implants or purchase glyph-born servitors, fleshcrafted creatures like organic automata not dissimilar to the zombies of Somnambulon or the clockwork automata of Skein, though somewhat less pervasive. In Hexwarren one might have an orison or sigil of power tattooed on a limb or torso, turning ones body into a living hex to poison or enflame with a touch, manipulate objects with pure thought, or conjure some transformative effect scales, fur, wings, horns, fangs. Toughs and mercenaries have slabs of muscle grafted to their bodies, while adventurers buy extra limbs from unlikely beasts. The citys supply of nectar, the sap of the Elder Tree in Moroi, can be found in Hexwarren, and junkies clamor constantly at the few dealers, all agents of the Resin Merchants who sell the highly addictive drug at a greatly marked up price. Hexwarren itself is a rambling, tangled district of stone and wood with many narrow streets and lanes, interspersed with larger plazas or quadrangles, notably Murrain Square (where various venoms and antitoxins are sold) and Tatterdemalion Court (where graft peddlers

congregate). Major buildings include the citys moldering but incredibly extensive library, the so-called Vellum Citadel; the glowering, gargoyle-encrusted Fane of Dust, an all-ghul temple dedicated to distant star-gods; and the small Academy of Witchcraft, where would-be spellcasters can seek professional training for exorbitant tuition rates. Slimesquallor (The Eels Gate) The hagman ghetto of Slimesquallor smells of stagnant water and the mucus excretions of its occupants, sticky trails that leave the streets slick. Here the architecture is mottled with fungus and moss, as a result of the dampness peculiar to the district; some hagman additions have also been erected next to the brown stone structures that make up the bulk of Macellaria. The hagman buildings are coiled, undulating edifices with many pillars, open spaces, and large Courts rather than honeycombs of smaller rooms. Apart from the enormous residential buildings there are hot mud-baths (distinct from the usual slimy pools hagmen bathe in), numerous shrines to the plethora of hagman god-aspects, and an indoor fish market. Resurrection Row (The Butchers Gate) Resurrection Row is a rather ragged district named for its central street, a winding, crooked lane leading from the Butchers Gate to the inner city. A poor, shabby district, Resurrection Row is distinguished from the shanties only by its position within the walls of Macellaria and the old stone edifices which rear up above the tightly packed rows of tenement housing. Though there are a few shops here, most bodysnatchers and tomb raiders returning with a haul from the Slaughter-lands make for the Curio Bazaars and the Skin Markets rather than lingering in this dilapidated district. As a result of its impoverishment Resurrection Row has become a haven for thieves, pickpockets, and cutthroats, who gather in rookeries when theyre not plying the markets or the back-alleys of Hexwarren, Pulsetown, and Velveteen Circus. The citys bounty office is located in Resurrection Row, as well as a large number of warehouses and rough taverns, most of them geared towards the quick. The Skin Markets The Skin Markets reek of carrion and continuously bustle with thousands of merchants and customers, especially at night when the citys ghilan wake. The Skin Markets are roughly divided into four huge, open-air Courts or atria, not including Velveteen Circus which is more properly a district in its own right. The atria are bounded by huge, ancient buildings, the lower floors of which are occupied with shops and storerooms; passage between the market quadrants is achieved through a series of corridors accessible via tall, arched doorways. The upper floors of the Market buildings are given over largely to the offices of the multifarious Rag-and-Bones cartels. The atria themselves have a transient, constantly shifting architecture composed of booths, tents, stalls, and ramshackle wooden buildings, labyrinthine even to the initiated.

The first atrium is the Court-of-Flesh where whole bodies can be purchased, typically from large wagons piled high with the dead. Flayed skins, leather, vellum, candles, and slaves are also for sale here. Numerous eateries sell fried or boiled meat from various species, predominantly that of humans, pigs, dogs, and lizards, though a few booths sell bowls of mealworms, broth with noodles, and deep-fried spiders. The chief buyers one sees in this atrium are quick humans and ghilan, with a smattering of hagmen and cestoids. There are a few ghul-bars here, though fewer than the Court-of-Blood, and there is also usually an array of embalming fluids and preservatives available as well. The second atrium is the Court-of-Bones. Here are crates and wagons full of skeletons, but also carved bone trinkets, bone weapons (much more common than metal ones in the City of Bodysnatchers), bonemeal, and marrow. The Court-of-Bones also has many fortune-tellers and gutter witches who cast the bones for a few coins, supposedly to glimpse the future. Though there are fewer eateries in the Court-of-Bones than in the other atria there are several dice halls, notably Deaths Gambit, The Reapers Luck, and The Ribcage. The Court-of-Blood is the third atrium, dealing exclusively with fluids. It is common to see merchants here displaying several barrels full of liquid, variously labeled: arterial, venous, plasma, etcetera. Blood sausage and half-coagulate jellies (a lilix delicacy) can be purchased here. The Maggot Citys population of leechkin and lilix, though fairly small, can be found here in inordinate numbers. The Court-of-Blood contains numerous ghul-bars around its edges, taverns catering to ghilan serving hot and chilled blood (sometimes sweetened or with added alcohol) in skull cups, in addition to various foodstuffs; the best known of these are the establishments Sanguine Bliss and Porphyria. Finally, the Court-of-Innards sells viscera, offal, and organs of all sorts. Some graft peddlers do business here, though most of them are concentrated in Hexwarren; the fourth atrium deals mostly in raw materials for consumption and fleshcraft. Pickled brains, hearts, and spleens are displayed in jars; bowls of freshly plucked eyes stare at passersby; barrels full of intestines glisten with briny preservatives. Here one might snack on sweetbreads or a shish-kebab of eyes, sip chitterling stew or brain soup with head cheese, chew on boiled tongues, or munch on stuffed gizzards and kidney pies. A crowd consisting of a large number of cestoids adds to the grotesquerie of the place. Though most oracles do business in the Court-of-Bones, a few soothsayers look through piles of steaming organs in the Court-of-Innards to predict the future. Velveteen Circus The red-light district of Macellaria, Velveteen Circus is close to the Skin Markets, hovering near the edge of the Court-of-Blood. Low class brothels and higher quality pleasure houses do business here, alongside opium dens, ghul-bars, taverns, and restaurants. The brothels cater to

both quick and grave-spawn, though the seedier places pay little heed to such niceties as living or undead. The more expensive establishments cater to fetishes and peccadilloes, and many of the girls and boys have been modified in tissue-shops to better suit the often perverse preferences of the clientele everything from full body tattoos and extra limbs, heads, and orifices to more surreal augmentations and mutilations, bestial xenografts, radical anatomical alterations, or grotesque enlargements. The Curio Bazaars Although named for the collections of relics and scavenged miscellanea found in its many pawn shops and junk-dealers, the Curio Bazaars comprise essentially all merchants not found in the Skin Markets or Hexwarren. Interspersed with the shops selling lost technology and the detritus of the past are hawkers with carts of fruit, cabinet-makers, knife merchants, blacksmiths, armorers, clothiers, tanneries, and dozens of other businesses. In the Curio Bazaars one might find a mangy ghul street-seller with a booth full of pocketwatches, or a booth with piles of porcelain and silverware, or an ancient idol of some chthonic deity inscribed with mantras in dead languages. A shop window might display an impossibly old runesword, or mannequins garbed in silk dresses from Skein, or a selection of fresh produce, or the crown of a long dead sorcerer-king. The Robber Guilds have their headquarters here, half a dozen prominent structures with a certain faded grandeur where the innumerable tomb raiders and scavengers who plumb the Slaughter-lands congregate. Pulsetown The main residential district for the quick in Macellaria, Pulsetown is louder and more energetic than the Worm-Hive, though smaller in size. Apart from its sprawling housing blocks Pulsetown is distinguished by several prominent landmarks: the Temple of Striga, the fighting pits, and the Hollow Skull playhouse. Striga is a goddess of blood, life, and vitality and has a congregation almost entirely of the quick. She demands sacrifices, and the temple chimneys constantly smolder, the burnt offerings filling the sanctum with the aroma of cooking meat. Cannibal funerary rites apotheosize members of the faith, and diluted blood is usually consumed at sermons. The religion has strict dietary laws and other requirements and forbids the consumption of inhuman meat (unclean). Worshippers of Striga believe that the Red Ravishing was a kind of tribulation from the goddess, and that soon a day of judgment will come and the faithful those pure of blood will ascend to become divine vampire-seraphs, ruling a newly ordered and revitalized earth. The fighting pits are a series of small arenas close to the Skin Markets, dedicated to combat sports and other spectacles. Gladiatorial competitions, beast-baiting, and other bloodsports are held in the pits, which draw large crowds of gamblers and simple spectators. Macellaria's few

cestoids of any wealth are all gladiators, deadly fighters who feast on their dead opponents. The current Grand Champion of the pits is the five hundred year old shade gladiator called the Rotten King, a supremely skilled swordsman who has worn many different bodies over the course of his career. The Hollow Skull playhouse is the largest and most popular playhouse in Macellaria, known especially for its revenge tragedies. A huge domed structure converted into a theater, the Hollow Skull attracts the wealthy and the poor alike. Many spend the day at the fighting pits before visiting the Hollow Skull in the evening, then heading to Velveteen Circus for a night of pleasure. WormThe Worm-Hive The grave-spawn district of Macellaria, the Worm-Hive is a conglomeration of spires and tower-blocks that looms darkly above the seething Skin Markets. Its many windows are universally shrouded with black curtains during the day, warding off the much-loathed sun while its residents slumber. The lower levels are dedicated to ghul-bars, a smattering of shops, and cheap honeycombs of housing, each room a narrow cell. The upper levels are progressively more lavish, and the towers of Worm-Hive are crowned with ornate manses often with attached chapels and courtyards. A series of covered bridges link the spires together in dense, claustrophobic clusters. Large portions of the Worm-Hive remain empty, whole spires given over to dust and cobwebs, though most have long been looted of anything of value. Squatters and animals have moved in, and one of the spires is rumored to be infected with a cluster of gibbergeists, floating horrors who babble an eerie sing-song jinx incessantly; those who hear this twisted song can be lulled into a trance-like state in which they too may begin to babble, eventually degenerating into gibbergeists themselves. The Catacombs The catacombs of Macellaria are incredibly extensive and largely unexplored, but they are far from uninhabited. Most of the citys cestoid population and its few leechkin make their homes underground, along with the poorer ghilan and other heliophobic grave-spawn such as shades, eidolons, haunts, and predatory geists. The Maggot Citys sewer system bleeds into the catacombs in numerous places, and the two are often indistinguishable. Whole clans of wiry sewer-scavengers or toshers, equipped with lanterns and caged canaries, make a living plundering the sewers of lost valuables and accretions of coin, bones, and metal. The sewers are hazardous, the air polluted, the tunnels sometimes flooding during the short rainy season; disease and even cave-ins are also major dangers. In addition, the runoff and other waste pumped into the sewers from Hexwarren is

tainted with a number of eldritch substances. The result is a population of warped, unlikely creatures: quasi-sentient giant rats, monstrous fish-like things, and other, less recognizable beasts. There are older, stranger things deep in the bowels of the city. Rumors persist of shrines dedicated to Hirud dating back to the times of the cestoid Imperium; of rogue demons and renegade servitors, gruesome sigil-scribed horrors; of tribal, bloodthirsty men, skinchangers capable of transforming themselves into bats or hyenas or huge spiders. The Shanties In contrast with the grim stone structures of the city proper, the shanties of Macellaria are built of mud, wood, adobe, and brick, huddling close to the towering stone walls. The shanties are low, unplanned, and filthy, consisting mostly of shacks, cheap alehouses and brothels, tanneries, and second rate shops. Freelance tomb raiders and merchants deal here instead of the city proper, and the few black-market items banned in Macellaria itself can sometimes be found here.

Blood, Bodies, Madness, and Monsters: Adventure in the Maggot City

Here are some sample adventure outlines, set in Macellaria. The first is a fairly typical dungeon crawl taking the adventurers out into the Slaughterlands; the second deals with a mysterious plague; the third requires the players to recapture an escaped beast; and the fourth calls for them to investigate a series of grisly murders. Im a believer in offering multiple paths and options for players to create a feel of verisimilitude whenever possible. These adventures could be presented one at a time, but introducing them simultaneously could allow for some interesting intersections and would highlight some of the ironic twists at their respective ends. A lead the players pick up for one investigation may give them the answer to a different one.

Premises and Hooks

(1) A wealthy collector one Ulric Valentine has posted a contract at the Robber Guildhouse in the Curio Bazaar. He is looking for a series of artifacts for his gallery in Skeins Viridian Quarter and so has contacted the Robbers in hopes of procuring it. The items in question are the embalmed remains and canopic jars or phylacteries of the PriestKing Balgol. They are reportedly interred in a necropolis somewhere in the vicinity of Yutteril, a ruin in Dour Erg. The exact location of the necropolis is unknown. All of this information is

provided along with the contract. Several groups have expressed interest in finding the artifacts and so claiming Valentines

three thousand obeloi reward. The band called the Blacktongue Brothers, a trio of leather-clad witch scavengers with demonic pets and bad attitudes, have already set off with a caravan expedition, and the legendary scavenger Harrick Hellsteeth is reported to have mentioned an interest in the contract. Anyone searching for the sarcophagus and jars will face some stiff competition. If the players are Guildsmen they will hear about the contract through the Guild. If they are freelancers they may find out about it through rumor and gossip in scavenger drinking holes and the like, or they may even witness the Blacktongue Brothers riding out via the Butchers Gate in Resurrection Row, shooting off firearms and swearing vile oaths in Hextongue and Shambles to bring back the corpse and claim their prize. (2) A sickness is sweeping Hexwarren, affecting only witches. Hexers are being found afflicted by raving madness, wandering the alleyways and scrawling gibberish glyphs on walls. The symptoms closely resemble nectar overdose. Rumor has that the local Resin Merchants nectar supply is tainted. The dealers from Moroi are panicking, and their usually prosperous traffic with the drug is hurting. They insist that the nectar is pure, but more and more witches are trying to go cold turkey on the drug, with varying levels of success. The Resin Merchants might well reward someone handsomely who presents them with a cure for the mysterious illness. Some are whispering of the return of the dreaded dementia epidemics that brought Moroi to it knees centuries ago. Witchcraft is being practiced more sparingly and with greater caution in Macellaria, which is impacting the citys substantial fleshcraft-based economy. The victims are being kept in the asylum ward of the basement levels of the Academy of Witchcraft, restrained and pacified with drugs, in the care of warders with arcane ability. Any witch players may be interested in solving the mystery of the sickness simply for their own self-preservation. They may hear rumors of a reward being offered by the Resin Merchants, though none has yet been posted in the bounty office or elsewhere. Finally, they might encounter one of the victims themselves, some wild-eyed and jabbering witch wandering Hexwarren or a nearby district, alternatively crying, laughing hysterically, screaming, or simply muttering incessantly. The witch may run away if followed, leading to a chase through the maze-like streets. (3) A carnival has come to Macellaria, setting up shop in the shanties outside of the Witchs gate. It features rickety mechanical rides, salty snacks, tattooists, acrobats, contests, a sideshow, and a menagerie from which one of the many exotic beasts has escaped. The carnival management, headed by the ringmaster Mr. Jarvis, is trying to keep the escape hushed up to prevent a panic, worried that the carnival might be driven out of town. Simultaneously he is discretely inquiring in taverns in the Skin Markets, Resurrection Row, and other establishments catering to mercenaries: he is looking for professionals to recapture the beast,

and will pay fifteen hundred obeloi for its return. The players might be contacted by one of the carnival staff members, or they might be drawn to the carnival itself, a colourful and diverting setting with many contests with rewards. There are archery and shooting competitions; a cage-wrestling match with Grull the Gargantuan, a burly man reputed to be a savage from Barrow Scrub (no cestoids!); Imbroglio games with a clockwork automaton; riddling and fencing contests; fortune-telling with Kyra the Seeress; eating contests with live spiders. Here also are the Syzygy Twins, one tattooed black, the other white; Glass Jack who eats ceramic vases and shards of crystal; Raq the Summoner, a skilled elementalist; motley-clad mimes with masked faces and sewn-shut lips; a sword-swallower, a fire-breather, a mantid, a mechanoape, a sketch artist, a knife-thrower, a lilix juggler, an array of stitched graftpunks with their every feature obscured with alien body parts. The menagerie is full of truly bizarre if rather ill-treated creatures, tended by the Beastmaster Yagruch, a surly, moustachioed southlander. An oneiroi called the Swan-Man peers through the bars on its elongated neck and snaps its serrated bill; a fetch paces back and forth in its cage and glowers murderously at spectators; a fish-thing from Lesion Sea swims in a tank of dirty water. There is a giant crab from the Bluebottle Archipelago, a pair of cacklegiests in a soundproof glass box, a tusked, spiny creature equal parts wolf and boar from the Slouchingdevil Mountains, a waxborn shapeshifter from the Tallow Plains, a carnivorous tree Yagruch claims to have grown from a seed from the Screamwood. And an empty cage, aloof, covered with a black cloth (4) Someone or something is preying on streetwalkers in the rougher parts of Velveteen Circus. The Circus pimps the Fleshmongers are getting agitated at the economic loss: many of the victims were expensively augmented. Business is suffering as the girls are frightened, many refusing to ply their trade outside of secure brothels. The Fleshmongers have posted a two thousand obeloi reward at the bounty office in Resurrection Row and have plastered wanted posters in the shanties, Skin Markets, and the fighting pits at Pulsetown. The city authorities a nebulous and corrupt force mostly consisting of mercenaries have proved incapable of dealing with the murders. Three women and an adolescent catamite have been killed so far, all of them completely exsanguinated, found in a pool of their own blood, their corpses utterly drained. The manner of the prostitutes deaths has led most to blame the citys leechkin population, exacerbating the usual racial distrust prevalent around the creatures. Lynch mobs have raided the catacombs, rampaging through the tunnels with lanterns and knives, carving up any leechkin they find seven have been slain so far in the tunnels, and another was publicly murdered in the Court-of-Blood. All but a compassionate few cityfolk are refusing to give coins or blood to leechkin beggars. The elder council of hagmen in Slimesquallor are urging a purge to cleanse the city of these repulsive parasites.

Other candidates for the murder persist after all, there are many creatures besides the leechkin who are haematophagic (zehrer, ghilan and lilix drink blood even if they do not utterly subsist on it, and the notorious oneiroi Slake is purported to drain his victims dry). Rumors that the bodies were mutilated as well as exsanguinated have led to claims that the murders are ritual killings, with many pointing to the Church of Striga (who disdain augmentations as impurities of form and are obsessed with blood) or rambling about cestoid cultists of Hirud operating from out of the catacombs. Others have suggested that local merchants have taken to harvesting organs from streetwalkers for sale in the Court of Innards, though few give such talk any real credence. Most who dont pin the crimes on leechkin, however, insist that the killings must be the work of an eidolon due to the murders sexual overtones. The players might hear about the murders in a bar, saloon, brothel, or other establishment, or might overhear a snatch of conversation in the street. They might see one of the wanted posters or find out about the killings at the bounty office. If they already have a relationship with Macellarias authorities or the Fleshmongers they may be contacted specifically and brought in to investigate. If any of the players are leechkin they will be embroiled in the adventure almost without a choice, subject to harassment and violence wherever they go. If all else fails the players can hear a gurgling scream in a back-alley and arrive a moment too late, finding the victim sprawled against a wall although this scene is perhaps best reserved for later in the adventure.

Investigations
(1) Locating the necropolis will be the first challenge. Good sources of information are the Vellum Citadel library in Hexwarren (a good place to introduce arc 2) and the Guild Archives, musty rows of shelves in the cobwebbed corridors below the Robber Guild headquarters. Extensive research into the Balgol dynasty will yield a map or at least a description of the necropolis location. Known as Tza-Xellim, the necropolis is supposed to be close to the border of Etiolation several leagues northeast of Yutteril. Tza-Xellim is huge, a sprawling graveyard city with countless tombs, monoliths, and ziggurat temples honouring the apotheosized PriestKings, all of them heavily warded to deter tomb-robbers. Balgols ziggurat can be found near the center of the necropolis, surrounded by a series of smaller mausoleums housing the PriestKings dead servants and mistresses; it is marked by a pair of triple-headed eagle statues, the despots personal symbol. The players must now prepare for their journey into Dour Erg, which will take nearly a week by horse of llama. They will need to have some means of transporting the body itself, which is encased in a heavy stone sarcophagus. A wagon is a distinct possibility, though this could be expensive to buy or even rent and would slow the group down. Eldritch means of transportation for the haul might be pursued in Hexwarren, though finding a witch willing to help them through arcane means might be more difficult than usual in wake of the recent

sickness. There are wheelwrights and stables in the shanties and in the Curio Bazaars. The journey should not be easy. The old roads through the Slaughter-lands have largely been subsumed or eroded, making navigation difficult. While the details of the journey can be customized and changed on the fly, the adventurers should feel harassed and oppressed by the wasteland. A dust-storm or the treacherous Red Rain may force them to find shelter in a nearby ghosttown. Once inside the desiccated ruin they find that the place is infested with fetch or oneiroi a man-shaped thing whose belly is split open, its intestines grotesque tentacles that grasp and strangle a voluptuous woman with an insect head who climbs on walls and attacks with venomous mandibles a skull-visaged specter with rotting wings. There may, however, be old treasures moldering in the gloom, clockwork puzzle-boxes clutched by skeletons in grimy cellars or runeswords hung on walls to slowly rust. A band of haunts that have wandered out of Etiolation might also attack the adventurers. Walking corpses in broken armor clutching notched weapons, bleached of colour but preserved almost perfectly from decay, the haunts are the remains of soldiers animated by the prowling arcane resonances of the ancient battlefield, and they retain their war-like inclinations in undeath. They will be difficult to distinguish from normal humans unless one draws close to them at which time it will be too late to avoid the near mindless grave-spawn. Or perhaps the adventurers will be ambushed by raiders, some gang of brigands attached to Hereku the Flagellator, bandits with rusty rifles and scimitars and dust-smeared robes riding reptilian dune-runners or misshapen horses. They will lie in wait near an oasis or gorge in the badlands before attacking, fleeing quickly with what loot they can if repelled, returning again at night, vanishing into the desert if they sustain too many losses. They may also encounter caravans of other scavengers or nomadic waste-dwellers, potential trading partners and allies. Such folk will be hardened and wary of strangers, so the adventurers must prove themselves trustworthy or else face hostility. (2) There are sixteen victims in total, all of them raving, kept in straightjackets in cramped, warded cells below the Academy of Witchcraft. After stating their intentions the players will be led to the cells to view the mad witches. Nine of the witches are men, six women, and all spout a constant stream of gibberish in various languages, save for one ghul witch who chewed his own tongue off. One man with a matted mane of gray hair and needle-marks on his arms jabbers on about the Dragon and its black breath, undulating in his straightjacket like a dancer, or a snake being charmed. A woman tattooed with eldritch sigils (all of which, under closer inspection, have been disempowered) mutters about the black filth. Another witch with pierced ears and nose,

broken spectacles, and a pair of small, lithe arms grafted to his chest screams incessantly about the hideous Tongue. The ghul, provided with a piece of chalk to communicate, has covered the walls of his cell with drawings. Some of these are garbled eldritch formulae which he has utterly failed to invoke, despite frequent attempts to do so. Others are less coherent, scribbled words and scrawled pictograms. One depicts a fearsome snake with a long, probing tentacle menacing a small, frightened stick figure. If the players subject the witches to any test of arcane potential, they will find that all of the hexers can no longer channel numina. It is as if their arcane talents have been stripped from them completely. This is inconsistent with nectar-overdose, since junkies who overdose actually become dangerously powerful, channeling raw eldritch energy without regard to those around them, invoking hexes and even summoning demons with haphazard imprecision. If nectar played a part in the plague of madness, it was not due to overdose. (3) Once they have agreed to find the escaped creature Beastmaster Yagruch will admit to the players that he did not know exactly what it was only that they found it in the southern swamps on their way north from a stint in Lophius, and that it drew large crowds along their tour. He describes it as an amorphous, translucent blackish protoplasm with coils like a serpent and dark shapes that might be organs suspending in its fluidic body, a cluster of glossy eyes almost floating on its slick, membranous skin, and a writhing pseudopod tongue. Despite numerous attempts to feed it Yagruch was unable to find anything to agree with its palate. It would occasionally swallow live meat but would promptly spit these offerings out, and it would sometimes also attempt to devour inanimate objects, though again it would regurgitate them quickly. Once it engulfed a talisman from a crewmans neck and refused to relinquish it, though they found it later on the floor of the cage in a puddle of black mucus. The troupe had captured the beast in the wetlands, having found it preying on a leechkin shaman, engulfing the creature into its vaguely serpentine bulk. While the creature was digesting the struggling shaman who seemed to have been trying to hex or bind the beast based on the scrawled markings in the mud they found near the creature Yagruch and his crew managed to capture it. It vomited forth the shaman, who seemed dazed but otherwise unharmed by the ordeal. The shaman gestured wildly and stumbled around, raving from its mouths; unable to interpret its speech, Yagruch had the creature shot, fearing it might be afflicted by the mad thirst and therefore potentially murderous. Though its cage the beast was interred in was locked and warded the creature managed to squeeze its body between the bars, and the protective glyphs scribed into the metal were ineffective. Closer inspection of the glyphs by a trained witch will show that they have been deactivated, their eldritch energy drained. If the players track down the crewman with the talisman a rakish youth with red hair and a crooked smile called Farle, mucking out the wolf-boars cage they will find that his charm has also been deactivated (it used to glow when rubbed, emitting a soft glow of light and supposedly warding against sickly miasmas; now it

fails to function). The cage has not been broken and the lock has not been tampered with. There is a slick of tar-like fluid on the floor of the cage which if properly analyzed will be found to radiate residues of numina. A careful inspection of the carnival grounds will reveal several more splotches of black mucus, which if followed eventually lead to a culvert in the city walls, too small and low for a human to enter though perhaps not for the soft-bodied creature. (4) The Fleshmongers have preserved and daguerreotyped the bodies, posting some of the sepia daguerreotypes in the bounty office. The bodies themselves are being kept in the mortuary of a rundown hospital in Resurrection Row. If the murders are not solved in another week they will be dismembered and sold for food or parts. The first victim was named Zari Etcheye, a young courtesan found in an alley off Blackrose Street between an opium den and the ghul-bar and grave-spawn fleshpot Wormflesh near the western edge of Velveteen Circus, in a puddle of drying blood. Like most prostitutes in Macellaria she was augmented, sporting an extra pair of oversized, absurdly lush breasts and implanted black talons, under which some skin can be found. There are no marks on her body save for a small bite on her upper left breast, made with sharp teeth. She did, however, bleed out of her eyes, nose, ears, and mouth, leaving crusted stains around those orifices, and her whole body is covered in smaller streaks of blood as if she bled out of her pores. Someone trained in xenoanatomy, fleshcraft, or a similar discipline might be able to identify the bite as definitively not belonging to a leechkin the teeth are too large and the bite isnt circular enough. The second victim was only known as Jabeela. Like Zari she was augmented, with a feline tail and implanted whiskers in addition to leopard-print tattoos; she was wearing a cat-mask when she was found, now badly bloodstained also like Zari, she bled out of her pores, mouth, eyes, and nose, splattering her corset and stockings. Save for a few old bruises and her complete lack of blood she is unmarked no bite marks, no sign of trauma. She was found behind a hookah bar in the northern part of the Circus, five days after Zari was found. The third victim was a boy of seventeen, Perek Curille, a transvestite with an augmented phallus and blood-smeared makeup found a week after Jabeela in an empty building, again in the westernmost part of Velveteen Circus. His petticoats and frock are torn, frayed, and bloodstained, possibly suggesting a struggle, though not necessarily. His manner of death was identical to the two previous victims. The fourth body belongs to Shelkie Illdefonse, an older and unaugmented prostitute found in a small courtyard off Ganglion Avenue three days after Perek was found, lit by the red sputter of the sign of the pleasure house Crimson Joy. Scrawled above her corpse in her blood are the words Ware the Worm! which have been interpreted as the signature of her killer, variously ascribed to a leechkin or cultist of Hirud. She was killed in the same manner as the others, but

also sustained a wound on her breast, where her dress was ripped a circular wound, like a vicious love-bite. Anyone skilled at all in forensics will note that this wound did not bleed and thus must have been inflicted after her death, and that it appears to have been made with a knife rather than by teeth (the one responsible for the wound is in actual fact also the author of the gruesome note, and is not the murderer at all, though the players must deduce this themselves). Based on an inspection of the bodies or daguerreotypes the players can deduce several important facts. Firstly, whatever killed the streetwalkers was unlikely to be a haematophage, or if they were they were uninterested in drinking their victims blood: the murder scenes were splattered with blood, and the victims appeared to have lost their blood via their mouths, ears, nostrils, and eyes. As such any rituals or spells involving large quantities of blood can also be ruled out, doubly so since blood can easily be purchased in the Skin Markets. Secondly, the victims were not killed through any kind of exterior physical trauma such as a bite, nor were they mutilated in any immediately obvious way, with the possible exception of Shelkie. An autopsy reveals extensive desiccation and massive hemorrhaging of the internal organs.

Conclusions
(1) The final leg of this adventure should consist of two central elements: delving into TzaXellim and retrieving the artifacts, and contending with the Blacktongue Brothers, who will not easily give up their prize. The necropolis should have a haunted, brooding quality. At night it is grim and frightening; during the day the streets are defined in stark chiaroscuro, the sandy earth and pale flagstones contrasting with the darker stone of the buildings and the dense shadows thrown by the dwindling sun. Tza-Xellims walls are largely collapsed, and its obelisks have been eroded into deformed stumps. A vast cemetery resembling a ruined city, Tza-Xellim is confusing to navigate: high bridges connect weather-worn obelisk-towers accessible via spiraling steps, huge monoliths packed tightly with the dead, while winding flagstone streets meander between low tombs and ziggurats. There are statue gardens disfigured by dust-storms, arches and tunnels and musty quadrangles, and everywhere a charged, oppressive silence. Buzzards black the sky, circling constantly. Eyes watch from the harsh black gloom. In the centuries since its construction many foul things have crept into the ruins. A group of quasi-feral ghilan, nomads and brigands transformed into grave-spawn in the Slaughter-lands, inhabit the southern quadrant, gnawing on bones and mummified flesh and occasionally trading baubles and relics from some of the more poorly protected tombs with scavengers; they can lead the adventurers to Balgols tomb for a price, if they describe the three-headed eagle statues. Other inhabitants of the necropolis are less civilized. Packs of hyenas roam the streets at night, yapping with maniac laughter, and mutant spiders with too many limbs and eyes lurk in many of the smaller tombs and passages, cracking open bones and sucking out

their marrow for sustenance. Worst of all are a brood of wild tenebrals attracted to the claustrophobic spaces of Tza-Xellim. The shadow elementals can merge with the darkness and travel along it, impervious to attack, before suddenly manifesting, engulfing their prey with their flickering black bodies. Balgols tomb itself comprises a fairly large area, surrounded by a high wall. The lesser tombs can be looted for minor valuables and contain few protections of any note, save perhaps for beasts that might have burrowed or broken into them and made them their lairs. The central ziggurat five-tiered and menacing poses the true challenge. The door itself is warded, as the adventurers research should have revealed; the players must deal with the glyphs themselves archaic pictograms that infect any who enter the ziggurat with a wasting, rotting illness or hire a witch to counter-hex the door, or they must find some other way of circumventing the door or the wards (talismans that protect them against disease, for example). Only grave-spawn can enter the ziggurat without fear: as the inscription above the door reads, the ziggurat is a House of the Dead. Note that the other ziggurats in Tza-Xellim are similarly warded and protected. The interior of the ziggurat is labyrinthine, designed to deter intruders, turning them around and back on themselves. In place of mechanical traps that could rust with time a guardian demon called Ahemaat was sealed in the ziggurat when it was erected. Enraged and soulstarved after centuries of entombment, Ahemaat will stalk and then devour any foolish enough to enter the ziggurat; it appears as a massively muscled humanoid with a horned, reptilian visage and a second gaping mouth on its chest with many needle-like teeth, a maw into which it feeds the hearts of its victims. Although mad from its long captivity Ahemaat could be bargained with, especially if the wards on the door have been deactivated, in which case it is free to leave the ziggurat. It may even bring the tomb-raiders through the maze if offered a suitable sacrifice or contract. At the center of the ziggurat is the burial chamber itself, containing the sarcophagus and the canopic jars, as well as several valueless artifacts and a few jeweled cups and similar treasures that can be pawned in the Curio Bazaar. After leaving the ziggurat the adventurers will be ambushed by the Blacktongue Brothers, either within Tza-Xellim itself or once they leave the necropolis. The witch-scavengers will attempt to intimidate the players and threaten them with eldritch destruction unless they hand over the treasure. The tomb-robbers must either talk or fight their way out of this predicament; if they opt for the latter, they will find the Brothers formidable foes skilled in witchcraft. Alternatively, if they delayed too long in reaching Tza-Xellim, the players could find the ziggurat already looted, the wards on the door already deactivated. They will find one of the Blacktongue Brothers dead, his heart ripped from his chest; Ahemaat has left the ziggurat and now hunts the ghilan of the southern quadrant. The adventurers must catch up with the two remaining Blacktongue Brothers before they reach Macellaria if they want to steal the prize.

The ghilan, incidentally, will reward the players for slaying Ahemaat if the demon escapes. (2)(2)-(3) The strange sickness afflicting witches is actually the work of the escaped creature from the carnival, one of the swamp demons of the south the creature was sucking the shaman dry when the carnival found it. Research may turn up a few references to numinafeeders like gelatinous black serpents, entities sometimes dubbed Aether-Worms capable of drawing sustenance from glyphs and other arcane energy, including nectar and the eldritch potential of spellcasters, subsequently leaving the victim deranged by the unwholesome experience. The escaped Worm has taken up residence under Hexwarren, venturing topside to snack on the citys witches and leaving them as wandering madmen. The final portion of the adventure takes place in the catacombs below Macellaria. Finding the Aether-Worm may be difficult, and the tunnels form something of a maze. Here the players should encounter a variety of undercity denizens and hazards before tracking down their quarry. Those below Hexwarren are particularly bizarre, filled with mutant creatures and homeless nectar-junkies willing to murder for a fix. Toshers will greet adventurers with suspicion if not outright hostility, perceiving them as rivals and defending their turf with knives, cudgels, and crude firearms; some are also skinchangers. Other encounters might include battles with rogue geists or ghilan cutthroats, a decaying eidolon looking to rejuvenate his glamer, psychopathic leechkin possessed by blood-madness, or simply sewer fauna giant rats and spiders, poisonous fungi, and other troglodytic dangers. Cave-ins, pockets of gas, floods, slippery catwalks, pitfalls, and the like will plague excursions into the catacombs. This section of the adventure could be partly improvised or it could be rigidly mapped and plotted. Occasional streaks of blackish mucus will eventually lead the adventurers to the Worm. The catacombs should have a liminal, hybrid feel to them, like a cross between a dungeon and a city. Drunks and junkies sprawl in gloomy corners while grave-spawn slumber, awaiting nightfall; mushrooms and molds devour the variegated, rat-holed architecture. There are prostitutes, poison-sellers, hitmen, drug dealers, thugs, and thieves here, and also dwellings, rickety drinking establishments, and seedy subterranean markets. Escaped slaves and fugitives many of them with wanted posters at the bounty office seek refuge in the depths. Under Hexwarren are all manner of strange beings swarms of hairless piranha-rats, mad servitors and other escaped necromantic experiments, glowing toads that vomit acid, mephitic vapors given elemental sentience, and even a few lone fetch, hiding beneath the city and preying on vagrants to sate their homicidal inclinations. If the adventurers have not solved the string of deaths in Velveteen Circus (arc 4), then they should have an encounter with a group of hagmen all males, all equipped with curved knives and barbed spears hunting leechkin through the catacombs on a genocidal crusade. They may encounter the hagmen already torturing a leechkin, and be faced with the dilemma of whether to involve themselves or pass on through the tunnels.

The Aether-Worm lairs in a cobweb-shrouded cluster of chambers deep in the catacombs, part of some long-abandoned fanum or shrine full of rusted candelabra, chipped gilt idols, the musty fingerbones of forgotten saints, and similar religious bric-a-brac. The Worm itself may be slumbering contentedly in an eerie coiled heap, or digesting some vagrant witch. Its bulk contains several eldritch artifacts not yet drained of their puissance. Finding a way of capturing the Worm without killing it will be difficult, since the entity resist traditional forms of demonbinding and will eventually devour any glyph or incarceration spell. Slaying it provides an alternative, and if the players are able to prove the Worm was causing the sickness then the Resin Merchants may reward them for taking care of the beast. It is strengthened by numina, however, so casting hexes on it will only augment its power; it must be killed with pure brute force. However, they will forfeit their reward from Yagruch the Beastmaster if they kill the Aether-Worm. (4) The true culprit behind the murders, is, in fact, a sickness. A venereal disease that wracked the Cadaverous Earth epidemically four hundred years ago at the beginning of the Festering (the Aeon of Putrefaction), the Sanguine Dissolution was once widespread and deadly. Transmitted through blood or sexual contact the disease causes internal hemorrhaging and bleeding out of the orifices and pores. Though for a while it caused untold devastation in major cities, the Sanguine Dissolution rapidly ran its course, mutating into progressively more virulent and aggressive forms which ironically inhibited outbreaks: while the initial incubation period was a month or more, allowing an infected individual to spread the disease, the Sanguine Dissolution became so deadly that the rapid onset of symptoms and then death (within minutes) ensured that it could not be spread before the infected succumbed. The outbreak of the Sanguine Dissolution in Macellaria is the unwitting doing of one Darvik Tracynth, a ghul with a preference for living sexual partners. A poor grave-spawn with unsteady employment mostly as a cleaner, street-scavenger, or manual laborer Darvik lives in the catacombs below Worm-Hive, venturing out at night to work, returning to his squalid chambers below the city streets come daybreak. Before retiring, however, Darvik often wanders the streets, especially Velveteen Circus; unable to afford the rates of upscale courtesans or even the brothel workers of the districts seedier fleshpots, he resorts to streetwalkers. Unknowingly, however, he recently contracted the Sanguine Dissolution after cutting himself on a very ancient and very rusted knife contaminated with the disease. As a ghul Darvik is immune to the diseases effects but he carries the Sanguine Dissolution in his body. He does not know that he has been infecting prostitutes with the disease, though all have died within a few minutes of copulation. There are several ways the adventurers might discover the truth behind the killings. Diligent research is certainly one avenue, and talking with prostitutes, madams, pimps, and even clientele in Velveteen Circus will reveal that most streetwalkers in the district are fairly desperate for custom and so will accept the money of grave-spawn and inhumans. Specific rumors of Darvik a ghul exclusively interested in the quick can also be extracted. Certainly

any extensive investigation should allow the players to rule out most of the commonly assumed suspects (leechkin, eidolons, etc). A scene in which the players stumble upon the dying body of another streetwalker is also a possibility, perhaps already engaged with another client the investigators may jump to the false conclusion that he is the murderer. The streetwalker might even write the beginning of a clue in her own blood before she dies the word ghul, for example though she might bleed out before she can finish her message. Darvik, of course, will be close by, probably on his way back to his dwelling. He can be identified by the scratches on his back from Zaris long fingernails. If the players are unable to solve the murders, additional clues can be provided as more bodies are found. Perhaps Darvik tears a piece of clothing near the scene of the crime, or perhaps he is spotted by someone leaving the alley moments before the body is discovered a tall, thin ghul in a shabby black coat and top hat, with his hands thrust into his pockets and a vaguely satisfied smile on his face. Meanwhile, the violence against the leechkin will only escalate, with the hagman community rising up against them unless someone intervenes. What the players will do if they do discover Darviks affliction is up to them. If they turn him in they will receive a reward, but the wretched ghul will plead with them, bribing them with what little coin and treasure he possesses, promising them favors, and even potentially trying to kill them out of fear. He will swear to celibacy if he must, though whether the players trust his oath is another matter. Finding a cure for the Sanguine Dissolution is another option, albeit a very challenging one no cure has been recorded, and discovering it would be a separate adventure in and of itself.

Skein
The City of Silk, The Clockwork City Vanity With its chitin-plated, iridescent walls, its nacreous floor, and the cavernous sweep of its ceiling, the great ballroom of magister Pyrach-Quin achieved a glistening resplendence. Lamps and tallow candles filled the room with a rich green gloom; lush, lively music echoed about the curving organic walls. The masked guests revolved around the ballroom in languid circles, or else lingered on the balconies outside. Belphora sipped her drink and gazed at the crowd, taken aback by the strange spectacle. Beside the magistras she felt a grey and tawdry thing even in her best finery. Each had a dress more vivid and luxurious than the last, silk gowns cut in a hundred styles and dyed a vibrant myriad of colours, blood reds and midnight blues and soft ebon blacks, golds and greens and purples layered with lace and satin, bejeweled with sewn-in opals and pearls and carnelians. Many had necklines swooping lower than Belphora might have considered seemly, but the magistras wore them without shame, draping themselves with silver and enjoying the effect their naked flesh had on those around them. The men were equally magnificent in coats of red and black and dark green, with ivory buttons and ringleted curls though they inspired selfconsciousness rather than jealousy. And all of them had their familiars, monstrous and sometimes beautiful things somewhere between pets and status symbols. Each was unique, sharing only the sigil-etched collars and silver chains with their brethren, led in elegant configurations around their owners during the dances, taking care not to entangle the dancers with their chains. A shadowy thing whose limbs blurred when it walked paced about its magister like a well-trained hound; a hulking, muscular creature with a ferrets head and crimson skin stood with its arms crossed beside its owner; an eyeless, gray-skinned demon whose fingernails were knives muttered from a mouth crowded with tusks; a plump imp with bulbous compound eyes and a babys pudgy limbs fluttered on oversized dragonfly wings by its magistras shoulder, whining and mewling until it was fed from a tray of sweetmeats. Some more wine, milady? The voice was gentle and urbane, but Belphora nearly screamed when she turned to its owner, a tall, flayed figure whose face was a horned skull, holding out a silver pitcher in one skinless hand. A purple tongue flicked out from between the grinning teeth. She stuttered the beginning of a reply and the familiar's magister turned, eyes dark behind his half-mask. Fornus, you are scaring the young lady, the man said. Behave yourself. His familiar bowed demurely and turned away. No, no, its all right. Belphora could feel blood rushing to her face. I was just startled.

I apologize for my demon. Some find his appearance alarming. The magister was tall and spare, perhaps a bit older than she was, based on the silvering hair at his temples. You can call me Sorn. Its much easier to pronounce than my formal name. Belphora. My father is Lord Vlesnk of the Northern Baronies. Ah of course. You speak our tongue well. He smiled as her blush deepened, his painted lips curling at the corners. Your father a liegeman of the Revenants, yes? Have you seen the Sleepwalkers City? Once. It was quiet. Not what I expected from a city so large. Mmm. I trust youll find Skein a bit livelier. Would you care to dance? She nodded shyly, then abandoning her drink to Fornus took Sorns arm and let herself be led into the next dance. The familiar followed at a distance, a discrete if somewhat macabre shadow. The dance was intricate; more than once Belphora nearly stumbled, but Sorn merely smiled and pulled her onwards, ignoring her missteps. You are here with your fathers retinue? His eyes she saw now that they were dark green, rather than black as shed thought at first gleamed in the masks sockets as he raised his arm to twirl her, placing one gloved hand in the small of her back to help turn her round. N-no he is conducting business. In the Saffron Ward, I think. We were given invitations, but But your father disapproves of this sort of revelry. You are here without his permission. Sorn chuckled and shook his head as she turned again. I suppose he thinks us a pack of debauchees, drinking madwine and corrupting innocent young women. She stammered and blushed again; Sorn laughed and pulled her back into position. Do not fret, Belphora. Your secret is safe with me. They crossed the room, turned again, switched positions, crossed back and then the music stopped. The players took up a new tune, dark and heady a nocturne. Shall we get some air? Sorn gestured to an arched doorway where a sultry blue-haired magistra and her many-armed familiar chatted with a long-haired ghul in the black robes of a sacerdos. Belphora found herself obeying Sorn without thinking. Each time their eyes met she felt a strange sensation, a kind of pleasant drowning, as if her fears and anxieties were being washed away, or sucked

from her body like bad blood by a leech. Suddenly she felt as bold as the magistras, shedding her worries like a shawl. How dare her father forbid her to come? She would not be treated like a child anymore, would not have to slink away like a thief, guilty and furtive. When Fornus handed her back her glass she drank deeply. The doorway led to a curved balcony; the city spread itself below, glittering in the night, the factory Wards steaming, the gaudily lit pleasure districts alive with tiny milling figures, the occasional spurt of fireworks. They stood silently and drank in the midnight panorama, listening to the nocturnes velvet melodies. Out on the black surface of the Radula she could see the lights of distant ships. Behind the river rose mountains, craggy and sinister. Belphora shivered. The mountains have an ominous look to them, she said, wrapping her arms about herself. Sorn placed a warm hand on her bare shoulder, caressed it almost imperceptibly; Belphora did not seem to notice. The Slouching-devil Mountains are often grim at night. They are full of monsters but you are safe from them here. They make me uneasy. You should see the view from my own tower. It is taller than this one, and faces south across the plains. He drew back her hair with one strong, white hand, exposing her neck. Her eyes half closed; she found his voice hypnotic. Behind the, Fornus stood in the shadows Belphora had forgotten him entirely. Sorns voice was close to her ear; she could feel his breath on her neck. You cannot see the mountains at all. Would you like that, Belphora? Her eyes were closed, her head tilted; she murmured something, vaguely, and then his lips were on her neck. Hours later as the night sky began to pale the man who called himself Sorn slipped from his bed and dressed quickly. He crossed his bedchamber to the large mirror in the corner and inspected himself, brushing out his long, black hair, checking meticulously for the mar of silver. He squinted at the arched window, where the first rays of sunlight were stealing over the city walls. Muttering curses he paced over to window to tug at the thick curtains; as he did so his hand was transfixed in a wan shaft of the early morning light. His eyes flickered momentarily to the gray and age-spotted claw that clutched the curtain; his brow wrinkled with vexation, and then he flung the curtains shut, blocking out the seeping dawn. He stopped by the solar on his way to the undercroft to find Fornus gnawing at a lump of bone, its chains piled unceremoniously on the floor.

I trust you had a rejuvenating night? The demon said, turning its skeletal visage towards him. You certainly looked considerably improved. If you dont mind me saying you were starting to look a bit frayed around the edges. Youll find whats left of her in my bedchamber, Sorn replied, ignoring the jibe. She's unconscious. An old woman, to look at her, but you'll find her soul palatable enough, I'd wager. Make sure youre thorough. And have the servants clean up afterwards she was eager at first but there was some mess towards the end. The creature nodded. Its purple tongue flicked out, licking sharp and yellow teeth.

Mimesis Lichens writhed through its frame, colonizing its limbs, its crevices. Rust gnawed at exposed parts. It picked its way towards them with spidery marionette motion, one spindly limb at a time. With almost avian movements it cocked its head from side to side, unblinking eyes gleaming. It scuttled into the circle of flickering gaslight. The automaton wore a ghastly mask of dirt-smeared skin stretched over its visage, its metal cheekbones poking through the scrap of flesh, its beady optics the glossy black of an insects staring out from rents streaked with scabrous tears. The rest of its body was similarly garbed, its elongated limbs and torso fit with a flayed suit, a demented parody of the human form. Through the inevitable tears and rips, most prominent about the things joints, its brass and iron exoskeleton was visible; beneath the shredded outer layer inner mechanisms clicked and chittered with clockwork vitality. There was something pathetic about the hideous flesh-rags of the automaton, something tragic in its failed imitation, its wretched longing, its ultimate and unavoidable numbness. For a moment a glimmer of melancholy alienated, desperate, human flickered in the black depths of its eyes, the ephemeral suggestion of a soul.

Demographics Demon - 7% Human - 87% Other - 6%

Not including automata.

Architecture

Using secrets torn from the minds of demoniac architect-cultivators captured during the now obscure Membrane Wars the denizens of Skein grew the citys hundred towers, huge organic edifices with walls of scintillating chitin. Living things somewhere between alien trees and colossal crustaceans the towers are sustained through the clockwork machines integrated into their walls and curved corridors, complicated networks of tubing, pneumatic pipe, meshing gears, and coiled springs that constantly pump liquid sustenance into the towers, a fetid alchemical mixture cultured in automated laboratories. Serving as the living places of Skeins nobility, the enigmatic Moth-Kings and the magisters, the towers stand as a testament to Skeins technological supremacy, its unsurpassed mastery of diabolism and mechanical innovation: only the witches of Moroi can challenge them in the arcane arts, and though the Lords Revenant command greater industrial prowess they lack the subtlety of craft possessed by Skeins technocrats. The elaborate stone buildings of Skein mimic the towers flowing curves and extrusions, achieving an aesthetic that many find disturbingly beautiful. Most of the towers are clustered in the Violet, Viridian, Azure, and Saffron Wards, where the wealthier class lives. On the east side of the Radula are the industrial Wards of the city. Most lavish of these is the Copper Ward, a chrome-and-brass marvel of engineering. The bulk of the east side, however, is taken up by ugly slums and brutal industrial wasteland. The buildings here are low and nondescript, mottled with fungus and decay; no towers rise from the gloomy streets, though tendrils of cloying black smoke rise like wraiths over the slums of the Ebon Ward and the churning dyers' and cutters' workshops. Fashion Fashion is Skein is strictly stratified between the social classes. The proletariat tend to wear very simple clothes tunics and loose robes, usually white, grey, or brown. Conical hats are common for those that work outdoors, while smaller cloth caps are worn by factory workers. Hair tends to be cropped very close to the skull or tied back into a bun. Buckled shoes and wooden sandals are common footwear. Jewellery tends to be very spare, consisting of glass beads, wooden talismans, and copper rings or necklaces. Earrings are common for both men and women, but tattoos are rare and usually indicate a foreigner. Men usually go clean-shaven. The nobility are distinguished first and foremost by the clothing. Silk is the most common material for clothing, although velvet, fur, cloth-of-gold, lace, and satin are also worn. In contrast with the dull colours of the lower classes the wealthy wear clothing in as vibrant and scintillating hues as possible, frequently with very ornate patterning and embroidering. Silk shirts with leather vests, breeches, and high leather boots are common for men, often worn under a flaring knee-length coat. For women, long gowns are the norm, often with low necklines and clinging fabrics (though gowns are usually still ankle-length). Both sexes wear their hair long or else wear powdered wigs. The upper class are also distinguished by their

distinctive masks or veils of fine silk, which are always worn in public as a mark of status; they also wear large hats, often tricornes for men. Magisters and magistra the true nobility and a few individuals of equivalent status all bear the traditional glyph-graven silver manacle around their wrist (usually the left) with a silver chain running from the shackle to the collar of his familiar, a demon he or she has summoned themselves. Jewellery is often lavish and is worn by both men and women, often incorporating precious gems such as bloodstones, carnelians, opals, sapphires, emeralds, and rubies. Young men always go clean-shaven, and older men very occasionally sport well-trimmed goatees. The middle classes of Skein imitate the upper classes in terms of fashion, though none have familiars. A few particularly wealthy merchants do wear masks, a habit which more conservative nobles take great affront to. Middle class clothing tends to resemble the finery of the magisters but is more understated, with less jewellery and decoration. Silk is worn as much as possible, but only the well-heeled can wear it everyday. Showing one's face in public is considered indecent in Skein. Those who don't wear masks wear simple gauze veils to hide their features. The Violet Ward Perched above the west bank of the Radula River with petal-strewn and ivy strangled balconies of wrought iron overlooking the traffic of the steamships and submersibles and paddlewheeled water taxis are the bathhouses, shadowmilk cafes, saloons, and perfumed harems of the Violet Ward. In contrast with the tawdry pleasure quarters of Velveteen Circus in Macellaria or Skaumn in Lophius, Skeins Violet Ward has a refined air to it. The voluptuous, often exotic courtesans are expensive, as are the many recreational drugs available for consumption, all of them of the highest quality. The establishments here are closer to private clubs than public shops, maintaining exclusive circles of only the most refined and socially elite clientele. High stakes card games and banned bloodsports now forbidden in the coliseum can be found here, though only a select few would be granted access to them. The highly popular nectar-dealers of Morois Resin Merchants have set up shop in the Violet Ward as well, turning the southern section of the district into a bustling drug-market. The Viridian Ward The philosophers quarter, the Viridian Ward consists of libraries, art galleries, museums, teahouses, Imbroglio parlors (the intricate clockwork game is said to have been conceived in Skein), and carefully manicured gardens and hedge mazes through which the citys thinkers endlessly tread. In the twelve towers that rise up from the clean, lavish streets magistra hold elaborate salons, where the citys finest thinkers congregate to sip sherry (or madwine at the more libertine gatherings) and discuss politics, metaphysics, demonology, xenobiology, and witchcraft, though in practice most salons consist primarily of gossip-mongering.

The Viridian Ward also contains the five Collegia Arcana et Mechanica, universities that specialize in witchcraft and engineering, though literature, philosophy, history, mathematics, astronomy, and biology are also taught. The Collegia have small but incredibly lavish selfcontained campuses including dormitories and residencies for the professors; they charge obscene tuition rates, ensuring that only the rich can gain entrance (though a very, very few with truly meteoric talent might secure one of the Collegias highly prized scholarships). Far surpassing the Academy of Witchcraft in Macellarias Hexwarren, the Collegia are challenged only by the University of Moroi, and there only in witchcraft. Many wealthier individuals from the other Twilight Cities send their sons and daughters to Skein to study at one of the Collegia, though foreign students are often met with scorn and hazing by the native brats, especially inhumans and grave-spawn. The Collegia themselves have deep-seated rivalries, with students and faculty striving to outdo one another at every opportunity. More than a few moonlit duels have been fought in the backstreets and courtyards of the Viridian Ward. The Saffron Ward A district of luxury shops, cafes, theatres, and opera houses, the Saffron Ward is popular amongst the magisters and magistra of Skein. The masked noblemen can often be seen in their frock coats and hooped skirts perambulating the clean and well-lit streets, attended by eunuchs and clockwork familiars and, of course, their familiars, beautiful horrors that can be pets or bodyguards or concubines, servants and symbols intertwined, their eyes blazing with rage at their forced servitude. Boutiques, tailors, florists, joiners, artisans, artists, and merchants selling various high-quality goods can be found in the Saffron Ward. Also in the Saffron Ward is the coliseum of Skein, an elliptical arena used principally for sporting competitions and races. In past centuries the arena was used for gladiatorial combat but in recent years bloodsports such as those practiced in Macellaria and Lophius have been banned from the coliseum precincts. Races generally involve augmented dogs and horses; while the upper-crust of Skein tend to scorn personal augmentation as disfiguring and coarse, they hold no such prejudice against fleshcraft with regards to animals. The Azure Ward The huge palace of the Moth-Kings towers over the Azure Ward, the largest of Skeins towers, a monolithic edifice of chitin and metal with innumerable offshoot-spires and extrusions, dwarfing the other towers of the district. The five themselves are almost never seen; they remain closeted in their council chambers at all times, conversing only with the most powerful magister-princes of the city, and even then very rarely. Most actual administration is carried out at the City Hall across from the palace, a more mundane but still imposing structure from which the twelve Stewards conduct Skeins affairs, from law and punishment to economic regulation to foreign policy. The twelve are elected every decade by those with

enough wealth and property to qualify for as eligible to vote. They are checked by a largely puppet parliament likewise drawn from the nobility of Skein. Many other civic buildings are found in the Azure Ward, including the imposing Watch headquarters, various regulatory institutions and guildhouses, and Skeins prominent courthouses, a whole complex of old stone buildings adorned with innumerable staring statues, the effigies of long-forgotten justicar-saints. The Crimson Ward One of Skeins larger trade districts, a substantial portion of Crimson Ward is dedicated to the sale of arms, armour, and ammunition (concentrated in the Brimstone Market, so named for the sulphurous smell of gunpowder), making it particularly popular with mercenaries and adventurers. Some of the finest weapons on the Cadaverous Earth can be found here, from swords and axes smithed from the black bones of the Slouching-devil Mountains to intricate clockwork revolvers and crossbows to splayed volley-guns and hexed ordinance that can fire blasts of acid, flame, lightning, or transmogrifying energy. Here also are shirts of chitin-mail, suits of gear-powered, glyph graven armour with servos at the joints, and vampiric carapace plate, a symbiotic organism that flows across the body and implants its roots into its hosts veins before hardening into near impenetrable armour. The Copper Ward Filled with the whirr and tick of thousands of tiny gears the Copper Ward is the artificers district of Skein, the center for the citys scientific community. It also serves as the closest thing Skein has to a religious quarter the atheistic (or at the very least deist) citizenry scorn religion, but in their fetishization of Reason they have infused empiricism with a mystic ornamentation and mythology all its own. Brass statues mounted on the eaves or roofs of buildings sing mechanically recorded melodies; automaton guards and servants are caressed like angels; secular pilgrims gaze in awe at the innumerable clocktowers, the orrery in the temple-like Palace of Chimes, the mechanized statues in the Garden of Gears, and the sigilscribed, eldritch calculating machine called the Sortilege Engine, from which priest-like attendants extract auguries from the chaos of cogs and pistons. The Copper Ward is also the industrial center of Skein, containing both the silk-factories that form the citys economic lifeblood and the enormous sericulture-colonies, huge domed structures where silkworms are farmed. The cocoons are transported from the colonies to the factories where they are unraveled, before being cut and dyed and then shipped out across the Cadaverous Earth. The silk monopoly of Skein has lasted for hundreds of years, ensuring the citys survival as an economic power. The North Station of the Clockwork Rail runs out of the Copper Ward and towards the Slouching-devil Mountains.

The Tangerine Ward A commercial district, the Tangerine Ward deals largely in foodstuffs: fruit and wines from the western orchards, grain from the plains, game from the foothills to the north, fish and eels and freshwater crabs from the Radula. There are more exotic dishes here, too candied wasps and ants, ostrich eggs, imp-meat, caviar, calf s brains. Blood and human flesh are banned in Skein: those few cestoids and ghilan who dwell in the city are forced to eat raw pork or else obtain their food illegally. The Sepia Ward The central dyers district of Skein, the Sepia Ward squats on the east bank of the Radula. In contrast with the beautiful architecture of marble, gilt, and chitin pervasive along the west-side of the city in the Saffron, Violet, Viridian, and Azure Wards, the buildings in the Sepia Ward and nearby districts is are nakedly industrial. Brick warehouses slouch against factories crowned by nests of belching smokestacks; cranes and scaffolds sprawl about towers not of chitin but of iron girders. Slavery is technically illegal in Skein, but the workers who tend the vast factories are functionally chattel, owned in all but technicality by the noblemen and merchants who own the factories, paying their laborers a pitiful subsistence wage. The Indigo Ward The docklands of the Indigo Ward are greasy and tar-smeared, crowded with riverboats and steamships and submersibles. Though the dyers workshops of the Sepia Ward spill over into this district, the Indigo Ward consists mostly of ramshackle drinking establishments, shipwrights, foundries, and hostels. The men and women here are either dockworkers or crewmen for the vessels that crowd the dark waters, roustabouts and overseers and barking captains, slaves from Macellaria and Lophius (though slavery is illegal in Skein, foreign slaves are tolerated for visitors), navigators and pilots and passengers. The Indigo Ward and the section of the undercity below is a stronghold for Skeins criminal element, four ruthless crime syndicates who deal mostly in smuggling, slaves, murder-for-hire, and black-market commerce: the Nine-Eyes, the Brass Skulls, the Orchid-Eaters, and the Yellow Dragons (reputedly led by the maverick demon Prince Byleth). The Damask Ward The raw silk processed in the automaton factories of the Copper Ward is cut in the workshops of the Damask Ward. The citys large Silk Market can also be found here, along with a string of streets full of artisans and curio-sellers, making it a very popular spot for visiting merchants, though large deals are usually conducted in private homes or clubs in the Saffron, Azure, or Violet Wards. Huge blocks of warehouses, mostly containing crates of silk-bolts, can be found to the eastern edge of the Damask Ward. The Clockwork Rails Southern Station can be found

near the Silk Market, a complex full of steam and ticking gears where the trains are rewound and filled with goods before departing the city. Ebon The Ebon Ward The great slum of Skein, the Ebon Ward overflows with a veritable army of bedraggled workers. The buildings here are wretched tenements, endless and uniform, degenerating into a ragged maze of buildings near the edges, whole block rotting away. Here along the fringe most of the citys small grave-spawn population dwell, shunned and reviled by the majority of Skeins human citizenry. Only a very few visiting undead of considerable wealth or power are afforded any kind of respect within the city limits; most are treated with fear and disgust. On the edge of the Ebon Ward amongst these haunted, half-abandoned city blocks is the citys prison, a windowless stone tower surrounded by a high wall and guarded by a small army of Watchmen. Cemetery The Eastern Cemetery Since cannibalism is illegal in Skein, the bodies of the dead are interred in the earth. Most of the nobility prefer to house their dead in lavish crypts below the towers of the city proper, organic vaults with clockwork defenses and guardian demons. The poor, on the other hand, bury their dead in the Eastern Cemetery, a huge, unkempt boneyard at the easternmost fringe of the city, sprawling larger than many of Skeins wards. Here are rows and rows of wooden stakes and occasional gravestones, and a warren of tunnels in the decrepit hills of the cemetery where ghilan vagabonds lurk. The Watch maintain quasi-regular patrols throughout the cemetery in order to deter grave-robbers and bodysnatchers, but the boneyard is vast and they are largely unable to deter the numerous squatters and corpse-eaters who live and feed amongst the barrow mounds. The Sewers Skein has a very extensive undercity, consisting mostly of an intricate sewer system. The wellplanned grid of the modern sewers overlays a much older and more chaotic network of tunnels underneath, now half-flooded and treacherous. As in most of the Twilight Cities the underground is a haven for rejects and refugees in the case of Skein, rogue automata and renegade demons that have escaped from their servitude, as well as grave-spawn and human vagrants and older, stranger things that wander the deeper corridors.

Fiends, Flesh, Clockwork, and Corpses: Adventure in the City of Silk

Premises and Hooks

Following are rough sketches of four adventures set in Skein, the City of Silk. Unlike some of the other adventures posed; many of the adventures set in Skein emphasize persuasion, subtlety, and social networking; the theme of enslavement recurs throughout. The first adventure deals with the recapture of a rogue automaton turned serial killer; the second draws the players into the criminal politics of Skein using grave-robberies as a catalyst; the third takes the adventurers to the Slouching-devil Mountains to investigate a missing caravan and culminates in a raid on a nest of bizarre and troglodytic beings; and the fourth enacts a strange kidnapping involving dreams, giant cyborg insects, and a journey across the Slaughter-lands to the broken region called the Shatters. -Steerpike

(1) A clockwork automaton fashioned by the artificers of the Copper Ward has somehow defied its gear-driven programming and gone rogue. Built by the renowned craftsman Gerard Xasch a professor at one of the Collegia in the Viridian Ward the unusually advanced automaton codenamed MXVII turned on its master, decapitating the old witch and slashing three other technicians to ribbons with its murderous bladed arms before vanishing into the night. Since its disappearance there have been a slew of grisly killings throughout the east-side mostly factory workers and stevedores that have been attributed to the deranged machine because of the long gashes found on the bodies, similar to those found on the corpses of the slain technicians. Gruesome rumours have begun to proliferate: some say the bodies were not merely slashed but also horrendously mutilated, that the machine is taking trophies or buildings itself some hideous fleshly sibling out of scavenged parts. Gerards sole living apprentice and protg, the elegant noblewoman magistra Jeanne Phan-Luru, wants the automaton apprehended and returned, intact but deactivated. She is offering a very substantial reward of two thousand Skein crowns to any who bring MXVII back relatively unharmed. If the construct is damaged significantly buts its clockwork brain is intact she will only decrease the reward by five hundred crowns; if the brain is seriously damaged but the rest of the body is undamaged she will pay a thousand crowns; if presented with a mangled metal corpse she will merely sneer and shrug, tossing a small purse of perhaps two hundred crowns in lieu of a larger reward. She can be found in her fathers tower, one of the chitinous spires of Skeins magisters in amongst the Saffron Wards perfumed streets. Jeanne herself is a magistra of twenty-three, a thin, blond woman with a razor-edged stare, a cold disposition, and a stern porcelain half-mask set with orange stones. She will be wearing a vivid dress of blood-red silk and black lace, with enormous flowing skirts and a plunging neckline; her iceblond hair is adorned with an exotic green blossom. Her familiar, a spindly thing somewhere between a raven, a spider, and a corporeal shadow lurks on her shoulder, its black wings

folded and its crimson eyes gleaming, its collar-chain running from its neck to Jeannes perfectly manicured fingers. She will, during an audience with would-be adventurers, be writing a program for the Sortilege Engine (a project Gerard contributed to greatly) she does not sully her hands with menial metalworking. A pair of footmen in the red and black livery of the Phan-Luru family with wheellock revolvers and heavy halberds will attend the audience, held in Jeannes study and workroom on the fourth floor of the spire, a chamber with shimmering living walls lined with bookshelves and esoteric machines, including a book-stand with scuttling metal legs. If they agree to accept her mission, the adventurers will receive a letter bearing Jeannes family seal (a double-headed raven) that will greatly aid information gathering throughout Skein. The reward is widely publicized: posters are plastered to walls and pasted to lampposts, and stories of Jeannes reward are circulating throughout the marketplaces and alehouses of the City of Silk. (2) Bodysnatchers have been plundering the tombs of the wealthy in Skein. Most citizens have been quick to blame the citys small grave-spawn population, who are well known to lurk about the Eastern Cemetery to dig up newly buried bodies to consume. As a result gangs of rich brats, masked and armed with wheellocks and sabers, have taken to roaming the city limits, lynching unsuspecting ghilan and other nightfolk: several have been found strung up near the gates with obscenities and warnings carved into their grey flesh. There have, in fact, been a rash of grave-robbery in the Eastern Cemetery as well: it has simply gone largely unnoticed by those with power. While the bodies themselves appear to have been the targets, some of the vaults have also been stripped of valuables. Heirlooms and funerary furnishings will have been absconded with. Noble and merchant families will offer rewards for these stolen goods and for the apprehension of the grave-robbers (and the return of their dead relatives). The City Watch, like the rest of the general populace, have assumed the bodysnatching to be the work of gravespawn and have incarcerated a number of ghilan vagrants. Their arrests have done nothing to prevent the grave-robberies, however. Grave-spawn adventurers, already mistreated and sneered at (if not outright shunned) in Skein, will begin to feel directly threatened and may be attacked by one of these fop-gangs a good active hook to draw them into the adventure. Alternatively they might be contracted by the small Church of the Star-Gods, a dilapidated temple on the edge of the Ebon Ward, by the local sacerdos, Matron Giselle, a scrawny ghul woman with an iron-grey ponytail and an evangelical bent she is a devout believer in the Mysteries of Dead Light. They could also hear about one of the many rewards being offered for the return of jewellery or other artefacts buried with the dead. Perhaps the Phan-Luru family have also been targeted by the graverobbers the perfect opportunity to introduce arc 1.

(3) A caravan expected to arrive in Skein has gone missing in the foothills of the Slouchingdevil Mountains. It was supposed to unload in Mulcatra, from which its cargo of fossils and rare minerals would be conveyed by rail to Skein; somewhere along the road from Shoi-Tann the caravan was lost. The Hells-teeth Merchant Company is looking for mercenaries to investigate the vanished caravan and reclaim the cargo. They will pay the party five hundred crowns to investigate the caravans disappearance, provided they bring back concrete information relating to its location, with a hefty bonus of one thousand crowns for the cargos full return; in particular they are interested in a large claw or talon unearthed by lucky prospectors. The Hells-teeth Merchant Company headquarters can be found on the edge of the Crimson Ward; the sulphurous emanations of the Brimstone Market waft down the clamorous streets to the structure, a bulky edifice of mottled marble resembling some run-down palace more than a mercantile organizations base of operations. (4) The professor of pan-demonological theory at Collegia Tho-Lladrim none other than the white-haired ex-adventurer Felix Rhadcuth is looking to hire a group of experienced explorers to retrieve a strange artefact for him: the brain of an ancient sorceress, one Ulaaya the Unclean, reputedly preserved through elaborate arcane and technological means and interred within a lavishly crafted sanctum guarded by her now millennia-old servants. Here she lives out a painstakingly programmed solipsistic dream, a phantasmagorical afterlife of her own devising fed into her withered grey-matter by a baroque machine she spent her final living years crafting. Felix would have the players remove Ulaayas still-living mind, unharmed, from her sealed tomb so that he can literally pick her brains of eldritch secrets. Being a man of modest means with limited funding from the university he is offering only seven hundred crowns for the brains retrieval, but he possesses many warded items, some of them quite powerful, which he would be willing to trade for Ulaayas brain. Felix has a map leading to Ulaayas fortress-tomb, a subterranean structure buried beneath the waste at the westernmost edge of the Shatters, a region of the Slaughter-lands where the iron skeletons of broken colossi form a jagged, rust-eaten skyline. He has a little information on the layout, as well, gleaned from second-hand descriptions and bygone legends. He also has a small scrap of a blueprint torn from the half-burned journal of an architect hired to construct the tomb itself that reveals some of the structures layout. He has tracked down references that suggest the tomb has been breached before by a party of looters from Macellaria perhaps three hundred years ago. An scribbled account of the raiders venture, possibly recorded by the sole surviving member, indicates the presence of bizarre hybrid creatures half flesh half machine, cultivated in vats and then modified with deadly technological enhancements, who patrol the old hallways like monstrous prison warders, devouring any who penetrate the inner vaults. Since Felix has numerous contacts in the adventuring community (and a few in the criminal

underworld) the players should hear about his request quite quickly, perhaps even in another city. When they go to visit Felix (he keeps office hours in the Viridian Ward at the Collegia) they will find him tending to a large pitcher plant, feeding it small insects and watching enraptured as the plant digests them, while his familiar, Oriaxes, looks up some esoteric article or other in a spellbooks index, leafing through the yellowed pages with gnarled fingers. Here some arrangement could be reached regarding payment: Felix assures the adventurers that the tomb will contain many other valuable objects, and if pressed will offer forth such artefacts as the Mask of Pharegos, which allows its wearer to vomit forth a profusion of fanged black beetles that will devour any the wearer directs them to (or perform other tasks), the possessed sword Shadow-Grin, which whispers coos of pleasure and wreathes itself in black flame when its serrated teeth taste blood, or a suit of demon-bone armour, stronger than steel or ur-fossil, etched with fell glyphs. Felix also gives the adventurers a specially designed mechanical receptacle that will keep Ulaayas brain alive while they transport her back to Skein. Alternatively, the entire adventure can be moved to take place completely in Skein: Ulaayas tomb could be deep in the undercity, and Felix himself might join the adventurers as they delve into the depths. This way the adventure could also be tied into arc 1.

Investigations
(1) A good first step in the investigation would be to examine the crime scenes and bodies. The remains of the technicians are at the Collegia Shann-Irim; the other victims are at the morgue in the Eastern Cemetery out by the city limits, and will soon be buried in the unkempt graveyard. The adventurers will have a difficult time getting into the inner sanctum of the Collegia without Jeannes seal, but once they flash the letter the normally pompous university administrators will become much more pliable. The bodies, located in a preparation room where they will be cleaned and embalmed before internment in the Collegias crypts, have been sewn back together: stitch-marks reveal the locations of vicious slashes that dismembered, decapitated, and otherwise brutalized the technicians. Other than these hideous wounds the bodies are untouched. The bodies in the Eastern Cemetery morgue a squalid, low building looking out over the endless rows of shabby graves tell a different story. These have been carefully killed with a single slash, leaving the bodies themselves almost completely intact. Their skins, however, have been flayed off completely, leaving the victims muscles totally bare. The work is careful and precise. All of the bodies were found washed up on the shores of the Radula; if not viewed very quickly they will be buried in the Cemetery after two days time, and will have to be exhumed for examination (again, Jeannes seal will prove invaluable here).

Xaschs workshop, a mid-sized structure of marble and brass in the Copper Ward, is still a chaotic mess. Blood stains the tiled floors, and the forest of glassware beakers, test-tubes, and vats of alchemical liquids, some of them containing odd, vaguely demoniac growths is in disarray. Broken glass is everywhere, along with stray cogs and gears and other bits and pieces, tiny springs, pneumatic pistons, and more esoteric devices. A nervous-looking assistant will show the adventurers around, navigating through the trashed laboratory (darting nervous glances at the still-operational automata that guard the doors or stand in corners, their functions less overt) towards a central hexagonal chamber where MXVII was kept. Little can be found in the workshop of immediate use save for MXVIIs blueprints, which will inform the adventurers of the automatons vaguely humanoid form and (for those with suitably impressive technical skills) its vulnerability to extreme cold the perfect method of immobilizing it without actively damaging its delicate clockwork brain or its perfectly sculpted metal body. A journal reveals part of the automatons purpose: it was intended as an assistant, capable of creative design and active participation in the construction of other automata, a trait unprecedented amongst automata. There are also a few daguerrotypes of the construct from a variety of poses. While the players continue their investigation the attacks can continue. There are no known crime scenes, apart from Xaschs workshop: the bodies simply appear in the mornings, bobbing in the river. A careful cross-referencing of the locations at which the bodies were found information that can be gleaned from the City Watchs official reports will reveal that all the flayed corpses were discovered floating near storm drain entrances, where excess floodwater is dumped into the river. They might also track down relatives or coworkers of the victims and to get a better sense of where the crimes were committed: thorough searching of the back-alleys of the Ebon Ward, the docklands, or the factory districts will turn up bloodstains at or near manhole covers that lead down into the undercity. (2) The adventurers could begin by examining the crime scenes. As a way of tying the adventures together and further complicating them, some of the stolen bodies might include those of technicians, and even Gerard Xasch himself, stolen straight from the Collegia ShannIrim; the flayed bodies of the Eastern Cemetery, however, would not be likely targets. Those bodies that have been taken from the Eastern Cemetery will have been roughly exhumed from the rough, overgrown graves. A close examination of these graves, or even better an interrogation of the grave-digger, will reveal that the majority of recently stolen corpses were still relatively fresh buried only in the last fortnight. Alternatively, the players might note the names on the robbed graves and use them to track down the families of the deceased, who are still in mourning of their lost loved ones: mostly factory workers who live in the slums of the Ebon Ward and work in the Sepia and Indigo Wards. Those corpses taken from the wealthy were mostly robbed from mausoleums and vaults on noble estates both inside the city limits and in the surrounding hinterlands. The defences of these tombs are intricate: clockwork locks and traps are implemented precisely to deter tomb

raiders. A careful inspection of the emptied vaults by anyone with lockpicking, locksmithing, or mechanical skills will reveal that the traps and locks were deactivated by professionals: only skilled thieves could have accomplished such burglaries, and the tool marks and broken lockpicks that would betray more amateur grave-robbers are notably absent. Within the tombs themselves, funerary goods have been taken along with the bodies, though notably not the canopic jars in which the organs of the wealthy dead are interred: only the bodies themselves were taken. Getting access to these mausoleums will be very difficult: the adventurers must either employ all of their persuasive capabilities or utilize some official seal, such as Lady Jeanne Phan-Lurus letter from arc 1 or an official City Watch warrant. Forging or stealing such documentation could prove an adventure in and of itself. Based on the crime scenes the players should be able to determine that the graves were robbed not by amateurs but by skilled professionals, and that they were more interested in fresh bodies than old ones. Those with any knowledge of Skein burial practices, or those who converse with the owners of the vaults, will also realize that the bodies of the noble dead are embalmed: hence the canopic jars. Thus, the grave-robbers are most interested in bodies whose decay has not yet progressed too far. This would seem to count against the grave-spawn theory, since ghilan and the like actively prefer half-rotten meat and often savour organs in particular. Most of the grave-spawn in Skein are vagrants and vagabonds or else very wealthy visitors, neither of which would be likely to possess high-calibre thieving skills or be particularly inclined to rob the vaults of the nobility. Some of the funerary gods will eventually show up in a pawnshop called The Midden Heap in the Damask Ward owned by a curmudgeonly hunchback with a mechanical eye called Queros. If asked as to who sold him the goods Queros will at first be reticent, but if properly intimidated or bribed he will reveal that a fence called Yorian sold him the goods, directly the adventurers to a tavern called The Foetid Crocodile in the Indigo Ward. At night they can find Yorian with a prostitute in his lap and a tankard of ale in his hand, carousing; they may also see (and will certainly be seen by) Ngo-Shenn, a small-time con artist, pickpocket, and occasional cutthroat well known throughout the Skein underworld. If interrogated properly or bribed fifty crowns will suffice, though Yorian will demand more the fence indicates a pair of thieves, Uri and Shai-Qor, as those who brought him the goods. This pair of professional burglars have a long association with the Orchid-Eaters, one of the four prominent crime syndicates of the Clockwork City. To track down the stolen bodies the players must investigate the Orchid-Eaters, but by this time they have already been noticed by the crime syndicate (if theyre particularly perceptive the players will have noticed them noticing). In truth, the Orchid-Eaters are using the bodies as troops in a turf-war with the Yellow Dragons waged largely in the undercity of Skein. They have hired a witch native to Macellaria one Namirizin, a specialist in fleshcraft and servitor-construction. He has been reanimating the bodies with glyphs, transforming them into obedient servants, ideal as fodder in the turf-war, a conflict in which the Yellow Dragons had the edge due to the capabilities of their demoniac

leader, Prince Byleth. The more advanced a bodys decay, the less suitable it is for reanimation: skeletons and mostly decomposed corpses simply lack structural stability and are far more fragile in combat. Thus, the Orchid-Eaters dispatched grave-robbers to retrieve fresh bodies from the Eastern Cemetery; after demand exceeded supply, they turned to the vaults of the wealthy and the preserved corpses found therein. Unfortunately, two of the thieves they hired Uri and Shai-Qor got greedy, snatching some of the other objects in these tombs and selling them to Yorian, who sold them to Queros. Tracking down this pair of rogues is a good first step to locating the bodies themselves: Yorian will sell them out, again if properly motivated, indicating one of their safehouses, an abandoned mansion on the edge of the Ebon Ward. (3) After securing their contract the adventurers must travel north towards the Slouching-devil Mountains. The fastest but most expensive way (fifteen crowns at least) is via the Clockwork Rail, a train route leading through the orchard-lands and vineries of Skeins northern hinterlands and into the foothills, to the rowdy, dirty town of Mulcatra. Alternatively they might take one of the winding roads that meander northwards into the moors and foothills: illtended and bandit-ridden paths that wind round mouldering barrows and the foundations of ruinous stone spires. The regions here are littered with the bones of demoniac war-beasts grown green and mottled with vines and lichens. Fortunately there are few dangers other than thieves and highwaymen along these paths, save for packs of wild and rabid dogs and some nameless, chameleonic horror, perhaps otherworldly in origin, said to prowl the desolate moors on moonless nights, preying on travelers. Mulcatra itself is squalid, violent, and unpleasant, a town of thugs and bounty hunters. From here the rail stops, giving way to an old highway zigzagging up into the glowering mountains. Some distance into the foothills the adventurers will find the remnants of a battle: corpses strewn across the ancient road, some of them garbed in black cloaks and masks, others in the red and yellow livery of the Hells-teeth Merchant Company, still others in less uniform garb mercenary escorts hired by the Company to fend off bandits. There is no sign of the caravan itself or any of its goods, but a set of wheel-tracks and hoofprints leads off the road and into the jagged, overgrown foothills. The tracks winds through the foothills on what must have been an aggravatingly slow journey. Here the players might be beset by some of the mutant beasts of the Slouching-devil Mountains, warped by the Slow Plague endemic in the region, the by-product of the eldritch radiation emanating from the fossils of the progenitor race that once dwelt under the mountains themselves. The Goremother herself, an oneiroi spawned from the Suppuration, is often seen near the higher passes, occasionally descending from her eyrie to prey on the lowlands; her children, the foul harpy-crows, infest the region, a dangerous nuisance. Eventually, the rough path leads up to a cavern-entrance, the camp of the bandits who ambushed the caravan and stole the goods inside.

(4) The journey to the tomb of Ulaaya the Unclean will, of course, be a dangerous one. The first stretch perhaps a week by horse, past the Sinew River and into Flense Veldt will be the most uneventful, consisting of Skeins eastern hinterlands and then a chain of mostly agricultural settlements, giving way to parched plains country and meagre, twisted woodlands and bogs where feral imps, canopy-fiends, jaculi, and spiny, toad-like zhugg lurk, languishing on the edges of stagnant pools or perching amidst the gnarled and palsied boughs of malformed trees. Past the murky flow of the Sinew the land becomes the drier and more nakedly inhospitable Veldt: a barren, patchy region of yellow and ochre grass interspersed with half-rotting cacti-forests, haunted by the brigands of Herreku the Flagellator. The adventurers will likely face at least one band of the warlords men, ruthless and likely starving gangs of motley warriors (quick and grave-spawn both) armed with shoddy flintlocks, spears, and ungainly crossbows; usually at least one member of such a group usually an officer is a petty witch able to channel a few basic hexes. These bands are usually mounted and sometimes drag oneiroi, shackled fetch, or exotic battle-beats with them to unleash on their foes. They generally carry little of value and will show no mercy, though they may take captives if the adventurers surrender (transporting the players to one of Herrekus camps to be enslaved, eaten, or even recruited). They may encounter other creatures in the Veldt: wandering geists, carrion-jinni, fetch, dust elementals, rogue demons, and a few scattered tribes of (mostly peaceable) cockroach-like inhumans have been spotted on the plains. As they near Etiolation they may find evidence of dire maggots tunnels, for example and might even face one of the hideous beasts; they might also battle small groups of haunts that have left Etiolation, pallid warriors still gripping the rusted husks of weapons. Of course, the Red Rain is a constant threat in the Slaughterlands. Patches of the Fecundity can be scattered throughout the waste to punctuate the otherwise dry and dusty landscape. Not all of these encounters need result in violence: jinn, demons, and inhumans can all be reasoned with or even traded with, and the warlords men can be deterred through intimidation or other persuasion. The party might also find scavengers from Crepuscle, demon-hunters returning to Skein with caged horrors, pilgrims in the Order of the Weeping Lady seeking to sing their lament in the pale emptiness of Etiolation, crazed nature-worshippers searching for the Fecundity, or lepers huddling amidst long-dead cities reduced to mossy flagstones and a few crumbling walls. If they manage to make their way through Flense Veldt the party must next face the bleakness of Etiolation, unless they choose to skirt the dread battlefield and so add at least a week to their journey. The waste is still filled with bodies, perfectly preserved forces of natural decay are halted almost completely in Etiolation, where no fungi, fly, or detritovore can survive for long, leaving withered, desiccated mummies wholly intact. Even sticking to the edges of Etiolation the adventurers will inevitably be inflicted with blanchphage. Colours will begin to fade from their skin and clothing, and a feeling of apathy and cold numbness will steal over them. Here they may find the tempestas mali and whole legions of haunts, some of whom they may have to flee from.

Beyond the grey vastness of Etiolation the adventurers will enter the Shatters, a region stained red with rust and scattered with the husks of dead machines. It is here, amidst the brooding iron colossi, that the tomb of Ulaaya the Unclean can be found, carved into the cliff-face in a jagged canyon like a wound in the raw, necrotic earth. A band of barbarians dwell in the canyon, sinewy men and women tanned dark bronze from the ember-red sun, wielding ancient guns like clubs, led by tattooed shamans. They shun the tomb itself as a forbidden place and a den of devils, but might be bribed with treasure to lead the players to the entrance (a mishandling of an encounter with the primitives could easily end in bloodshed, however).

Conclusions
(1) The undercity of Skein consists of a layer of relatively modern sewers and storm drains that connect to much older tunnels below. Past the utilitarian grid of the citys plumbing lie roughhewn passages favoured by smugglers and low-lives; below these one comes upon a convoluted snarl of ancient halls, cavernous chambers deep below the earth with gear-driven doors, filled with old and curious machines whose purposes have long been forgotten, given over to rust and cobwebs. The inert sentinels that once kept these halls slump against the brass walls like abandoned marionettes, metal skeletons whose arcane batteries sputtered and died. Lower down the halls are flooded, their sublime grandeur marred with verdigris. The upper levels of the undercity are relatively safe, inhabited mostly by homeless, both human and grave-spawn. For a few coins one of these desperate souls might tell the players about an encounter with the automaton a glimpse, perhaps, of a spindly metal figure dragging a dead body down into the lower tunnels, its servos clicking like mad, mechanistic laughter. A careful search of the upper tunnels will reveal recent bloodstains on the storm drain floors that lead down into the lower tunnels. These are more dangerous: a population of fettergeists abounds below Skein, and the adventurers will almost certainly encounter at least one of the malignant grave-spawn. They can follow the fresh bloodstains even deeper into the undercity to the old vaults below the city, and eventually to MXVIIs den, a domed sanctum with grimy walls and flickering lights, its walls and ceiling etched with unintelligible arcane formulae. If the players have not completed arc 2 yet, they should encounter evidence of a battle in the underworld between two of Skeins warring crime syndicates. Bullet-ridden bodies might clot an intersection of tunnels: some of the bodies will have been mummified, and will be distinguished by the glyphs etched into their skins. One or two may also have signet rings on their fingers and will be clad in the tattered remnants of funerary wrappings. The lair of MXVII is a morbid spectacle. Deactivated, ancient automata stand like mannequins about the chamber, each wearing a suit fashioned crudely from human skin; a work-table with blood-stained implements and scraps can be seen in the corner, atop which lies a half-flayed,

headless cadaver. MXVII itself stands before a cracked mirror, illuminated by an overhead gaslight. It models one of the stitched suits for itself, admiring the tailoring and making periodic adjustment with its sharp claws. MXVII has not, as rumours suggest, been building itself an organic sibling: it has been trying to refashion its own body, garbing itself in the skins of its victims in an effort to resemble a human being. Its grotesque skin-suits constantly rip and tear, however, so ineffective are they in obscuring the metal body beneath. As such the automaton is forced to find fresh flesh on a regular basis; it has taken to amassing a collection of extras, now displayed on the mannequins. A flaw in its programming led it to invert its intended functionality. Instead of designing new automata, it fixated on the human forms of those around it and developed a kind of anxiety surrounding its own body, a kind of body dysmorphic disorder. Frustrated and despairing at its perceived freakishness it entered a psychotic state and slaughtered its creators in a mad rage. After escaping its psychosis entered a new phase: now it would seek to alter its appearance, using human flesh as its medium of transformation. Defeating MXVII will be difficult, especially if the adventurers refuse to damage the automaton. As mentioned above, extreme cold likely eldritch in nature is the least risky option. Others might include nets some extremely strong material (the automaton will simply slash through ropes), or some form of arcane containment. If attacked directly the automatons flesh-suit acts as armour, absorbing most blows until it falls apart. It is unlikely that MXVII can be persuaded to return voluntarily, though particularly eloquent characters who come to understand the machines psychosis might potentially be able to convince the automaton to ascend with them of its own accord. 2 Several events can transpire at this point. If the players track down the two grave-robbers, Uri and Shai-Qor, they can investigate their safehouse, a dilapidated mansion on the edge of the Ebon Ward, where the ramshackle husks of buildings dwindle into the scrub beyond. The thieves will likely be counting their newly-gotten money and will not be suspecting an attack: the adventurers can get the drop on them if they exercise sufficient stealth in approaching and navigating the creaky, rain-swollen corridors of the house. The thieves will finger the OrchidEaters syndicate and can be persuaded to betray the location of one of their hideouts in the undercity. At this point the players may feel a little over their heads, but if theyre still determined to retrieve the bodies they can attempt to break into the Orchid-Eater hideout. To provide them with additional motivation, the Orchid-Eaters, informed of the players investigations by NgoShenn, send an assassin to take care of them: a servitor, one of the mummified magisters themselves, flesh carved with glyphs for celerity and acrobatic ability, infused with a restless, bloodthirsty spirit by Namirizin. If they dispatch this creature the Orchid-Eaters will send a succession of other hitmen after them, culminating in their contracting of the Scarred Gentlemen, a trio of infamous killers with pretensions of romantic nobility.

The endgame of this increasingly intricate web of events depends largely on the players actions. It may climax in a frenetic raid on the adventurers parts on the Orchid-Eater hideout, a series of chambers on the middle layers of Skeins undercity in which Namirizin reanimates the stolen bodies. It may lead to the players alliance with the Yellow Dragons, who could contact them, realizing their common enemy. Perhaps the most promising ending to this arc might in fact be a stalemate, in which the Orchid-Eaters become long-term enemies of the players all manner of other plots can be born out of the resulting conflict. (3) The caverns are not overly large, but they are notably uninhabited. A few blood spatters, some embers, shredded cots, and splinters of wood are all that seem to remain of the bandit camp; some of the caravans cargo does remain, but the claw itself is gone. Near the back of the caves, a mysterious, clearly unnatural passage can be discerned one of many entrances to the tunnel-system of the Slouching-devil Mountains. A red smear mars the threshold, indicating that whatever attacked the bandits dragged them into the tunnels. The adventurers can follow the catacombs deep into the mountains. Occasional bloodstains or severed limbs provide a meagre trail, but it is easy to get lost in the winding, echoing dark of these cyclopean halls. Cacklegeists and the roaming Deep Laughter itself haunt the cobwebbed corridors; parts of the ancient machines of the elder race corrode in corners and odd chambers, some still tended by mysterious mechanical servants grown senile and sometimes berserk over the aeons. Fell things dwell in the ruinous halls of the mountains: forgotten creatures and otherworldly monsters grown tired of the bleak sunlight of the Cadaverous Earth, to them an unfamiliar prison. The voyage into the tunnels provides the perfect opportunity to introduce other subterranean adventures and side-treks. If they follow the trail of blood of body parts through the labyrinth the players will eventually come upon the nest of marrowgaunts, the creatures that attacked the bandits, unsealing an old doorway and hungrily setting upon the sleeping brigands. These vile creatures resemble hybrids of man and shadowy fiend, with oily, penumbral skins and recurved horns like those of an ibex, jutting from their ridged and eyeless faces. The marrowguants have devoured the bandits (save perhaps for a few corpses and perhaps a half-mad man or two, raving himself raw in the black) and are currently savouring their newly acquired treasures, running their hands lovingly over the fossils, caressing them with disturbing sentiment. The marrowgaunt queen an enormous bloated creature, and the only female of the brood, who suckles half a hundred fresh-spawned young at her leathery teats squats in the central breeding chamber: here the ur-fossil claw can be found, placed on a black slab of rock like a relic. Clearly the marrowgaunts prize the fossils for some reason, but ultimately their culture is so alien as to be incomprehensible: they do not appear to possess any formal language or writing, yet clearly they are intelligent in some inscrutable way. The players will leave with more questions than answers, if they leave at all.

(4) Ulaaya the Uncleans tomb, formerly her manse, should be a disturbing but fascinating place. The first series of sealed doors have been breached: the bodies of the former tombraiders should be found scattered amongst the opening chambers, their skeletons badly dismembered and perhaps tooth-marked. There are obscure and unsettling rooms a chamber with a huge, roving eye, filmy with cataracts, set in a well-like vat of putrid liquid (used for scrying skilled witches might even activate it, though its visions have dimmed over the millennia); a conservatory with enormous, vampiric flowers like pale lotuses that blush crimson when the feed using their fibrous psuedopods (the seeds of which, incidentally, Felix Rhadcuth will pay upwards of two hundred crowns for); a room with a black, iron-bound door standing apparently without purpose at its center, set with a gigantic lock and graven with red runes (a sealed portal to a Hell-dimension, the key to which has fortunately enough been lost, unless you wish to inflict the otherworldly horrors of a realm beyond even the diseased imaginings of the Cadaverous Earth upon your players); a pool of screaming liquid metal that flows with a thousand agonized faces. The corridors are vaulted and echoing, sleek and strangely organic, chittering with a susurrus that might be clockwork or insects, pulsating with a curious, throbbing heat. The doors resembled pinched sphincters like mouths puckered in distaste which dilate when the appropriate pressure-plate is depressed. The inner chambers are locked and warded, and must be forced or dispelled in order for the would-be brain-thieves to proceed. The patchwork warders of the tomb form the main challenge leading up to Ulaaya herself. These vat-grown, biomechanoid creatures slither through the halls, monstrous hybrids of serpent, insect, man, and machine, with half a dozen arms (one pair equipped with scything metal claws), ophidian fangs, squirming coils, and steel armour. These creatures are not immortal: they die periodically and are reclaimed by the tombs cleaning constructs, taken to a recycling chamber in the inner sanctum where their carefully programmed clockwork brains are removed and cleaned while new bodies are grown in the chambers spawning pits. The adventurers can witness the foul births of some of the tombs guardians if they penetrate the tombs innermost chambers: the meat-husk creature is born, a vacant-eyed and lustreless shell whose basic organic brain is quickly extracted by the midwife-machines and replaced with the refurbished and rewound clockwork one; then the mewling newborn is fitted with its additional machine parts in a blur of blood, sinew, and whirring metal arms. Mechanical or arcane traps should also be incorporated into the tomb as defences. Ulaayas chamber itself is protected by a pair of her grotesque footmen and by a locked, warded door that can only be unlocked and deactivated via a control chamber on a lower level of the tomb. Here a many-limbed and corpulent surveillance-beast, a mass of bloated flesh and hammering pistons, operates the myriad gearworks and tends to the scrying lens scattered throughout the complex, monitoring corridors for intruders. This obese, scuttling thing has been infused with greater intellect than most of the warders and thus might conceivably be reasoned with: its programming has grown slowly corrupt over the centuries, corroding such that the beast has become dissatisfied with its tedious task. With some convincing (and

someone who can speak Hextongue, the beasts only language) the creature could become an ally, showing the adventurers the proper methods of bypassing the final seals and deactivating the mechanical traps. If they slay the beast they will be hard pressed to unlock the final door on their own only someone with prodigious technical talents could hope to understand the bewildering array of dials, levers, and conduits, and any tampering with the machines is more likely to make matters worse, summoning additional warders and sealing off key sections of the tomb. Once they penetrate the final door the adventurers will be confronted with Ulaayas brain itself: wired into an amazingly complex machine, a mass of wires and churning gears. Before they can detach the brain, however, Ulaaya will play her final trump, utilizing her arcane prowess to draw the players into her dream-world: a flash of eldritch light and the players are transported there. Here they must defeat her phantasmal avatar and escape the sorceresss afterlife in order to return to the real world. Ulaayas dream can be as surreal and insensible as you desire, and might take any number of bizarre forms. One possibility is a grandly baroque fleshscape, a seething, breathing, pulsating edifice of flesh and bone and chitin. The adventurers must wander labyrinths with walls like flayed muscles and courtyards with knotted ganglia instead of statues or fountains; they must delve into subcutaneous tunnels and avoid swamp-like pools of caustic fluids, fighting off parasites, climbing bony stairs through cavernous living chambers. Ulaaya herself could take the form of a terribly beautiful titan garbed in some squirming organic dress, attended by oddly proportioned concubines of both sexes. Although at first she will be enraged at the violation of her tomb, Ulaaya in truth has grown tired of her afterlife. With careful convincing she could be persuaded to leave voluntarily. Otherwise the players must defeat her and so break free from her dreamscape: from here they can transfer the brain to the device provided by Felix.

Dolmen
Cobweb City, City of Spiders

Piety Far below the palaces of obsidian and black marble of the tower-citys upper tiers Talviir stirred from his rude repose in a lavishly carved niche, a forgotten sepulcher in the necropolitan slum of Chenzirr, Dolmens lowest and poorest level. It was almost like awakening in a cave, in some troglodytic warren. Above him the early morning sky was dulled with a film of cobwebs and cables and brown smoke from the factories of Xelschemyr, a tier above. The worn stone streets of Chenzirr were perpetually clad in shadow: from the citys high stone walls, from the tall, narrow buildings, from the spires that rose above, from the jagged Chelicerae Mountains that loomed oppressively behind the city. Even at noon most of the districts light was artificial, derived from strings of lamps hung high above the streets or from the hellish glow of the cavernous furnaces below, visible through the occasional grates and spiral stairways leading to the slave-pens and flesh kitchens beneath the city. Talviir stretched his seven limbs, his phantom arm (middle, left) itching, as it always did when he first arose. It marked him as a spider-killer, a criminal. Next to the ugly scar on his torso, his missing hand (upper, left) taken for thieving in the opulent markets of Juszyryn seemed a petty absence, a common stigma dwarfed by the enormous blasphemy that a missing arm signified. Both mutilations placed him firmly in the bottom caste of the lilix, reserved for heretics, traitors, sexual deviants, and similar transgressors. He was gholmuz. Unsightly. Abject. Polluted One. Shame-Bearer. Few of the spiderfolk bore such a designation: the lilix were an aristocratic race who knew little of poverty, served as they were by swarms of human slaves. Those who were truly poor were mostly outcasts like him, shunned from the higher levels. If he wandered into the well-lit, luxurious dioceses of Malofneshee or even Illhillisz he would be beaten away by the liveried footmen of the matriarchs, or the masked neophyte guardswomen of Verlums more impressive temples. He moved now using only his legs; there were no priestesses or high-bloods in this part of the diocese, whose presence would force him to adopt the formal scuttling posture appropriate to his caste, emphasizing his shame, the awkwardness of his severed limb. He looked about for something to scrounge, eight crimson eyes squinting in the thick grey gloom. Though the citys intricate sewers deposited most of Dolmens filth to be incinerated in some unseen oubliette or emptied into a subterranean river far below, much of the upper tiers waste found its way to Chenzirr instead, sluiced through broken pipes to slosh into the gutters; as a result the entire tier was infested with rats and flies and similar creatures. One such scavenger scurried down a side-alley an albino rat, scrawny but large, creeping along in the narrow gap between two tall structures, tombs-cum-warehouses, grown shabby over the centuries of lilix

occupation. Talviir summoned as much speed as his aching body could muster and darted forwards, his remaining hands flickering out with nimbleness acquired from his former profession. Gone were the days of sparring and shooting in the martial academies of Chaulaxna, teaching pupils even women the ways of blade and pistol; but some of his former agility remained, diminished through years of hard living. Two of his hands closed about the rat, the others landing on the flagstone street to steady him. The rodent squealed; he twisted its neck, merciless, and the rat went limp. Famished he began his meal, sucking foul-tasting blood from the corpse. Meager nourishment, but enough to sustain him. As Talviir drank he noticed a huge, stray spider picking its way daintily across a massive, silvery web above him. He threw the rat into the webbing; there wasnt much blood left, but the spider would turn its flesh and bones to fluid with its venomous enzymes, and Verlum would look favorably on such a sacrifice. The goddess could be merciful, if you appeased her children perhaps even to one such as him.
Demographics Lilix 61% Human 38% Other 1% Architecture Before it became the City of Spiders, Dolmen (whose current name means tomb) was the necropolis Llech-Urgol, also called Barrow City or the City of Crypts, final resting place of the aristocratic families of the Cromnites, whose descendents are said to be the marauders of the north-east scrub, a noble lineage reduced to savagery. Escaped lilix slaves colonized the city, fleeing thralldom in the cestoid Imperium; Dolmen formed a base for the alliance that brought down the cestoids, spear-headed by the Witch Army of Moroi. As such much of Dolmens architecture reflects its original purpose. The lower tiers of the city are grim and skeletal with buttressed mausoleums and vaulted chambers, many of them adorned with grotesque apotropes; crypts have been gutted and converted into housing, shops, and shrines. Ancient halls carved with niches for the shrouded dead or piles of skulls the remains of faithful servants, preserved alongside their masters have been refashioned as marketplaces and warehouses. Above these dreary edifices are the fanciful structures of the lilix themselves, stone like spun spidersilk, built in the style of the so-called Cobweb-Baroque. These buildings surmount and append the original necropolis, rising in tiers above it the palatial homes, harems, banquet halls, and temples of the citys elites. Below, in the troglodytic depths of the city, are the great cavern-pens of the lilixs albino slaves; mingling with these

rough-hewn chambers are crypts of Llech-Urgol left unplundered. Below even these are the citys sewers, which deposit Dolmens waste into the subterranean reaches of the Chelicerae Mountains, to be consumed b y the lonely cestoid tribes that still linger deep below amongst the shattered ruins of the old Imperium. Fashion In accordance with the precepts of the Great Web the complex game of hierarchy, power, and manipulation that lilix savor fashion in Dolmen is strictly stratified. At the bottom of the hierarchy, human slaves are garbed in dull black clothes, often little more than a loincloth. Freedwomen those few exclusively female slaves that have gained their freedom through dint of especially god service (or simple whim) are allowed to wear dresses of black and red lace, and have a pair of extra eyes (red, like those of the lilix) tattooed onto their foreheads as a marker of their liberty. Paradoxically they are required to wear more clothing than slaves: whereas slaves are considered merely as sources of food and labor, freedwomen have attained a degree of individuality and some civil rights, even if they are still second-class citizens; since the human body is seen as unappealing by the lilix freedwomen are required to conceal themselves from the public view. Lilix males generally wear official livery if they are footmen black, silver, and red, often in velvets and carry pistols or long, curved swords, or highly revealing, sexualized costumes of leather and transparent silk if they are concubines. Upper-class males courtiers wear tightfitting black hose and tunics or vests of black man-skin leather, usually with silver jewelry and accents. Females wear elaborate outfits of black and red lace and leather, much like those of the freedwomen, though unlike the freedwomen they are allowed to wear silver signet rings (denoting rank) and other jewelry, often set with diamonds, rubies, and bloodstones. They can display more flesh than freedwomen, reveling in their sensuality; often their garments emphasize their impressive bulk, as rotundity is considered highly appealing in lilix culture, particularly a well-rounded posterior or abdomen. Stockings, corsets, stiletto heeled boots, and translucent gowns are all common; military officers wear full-body leather suits, complete with six arms. Official priestesses of Verlum also wear mask-like habits to signify their devotion. Lilix armor and weapons are of steel, damascened with swirling gray and silver patterns. Curves, jags, overlapping plates, and serrated edges are common, as are small bucklers, sword-catchers, and parrying daggers. Curved swords and pistols are the favored weapons of lilix fighters. The upper class wardrobe is very extensive, with females in particular sporting numerous outfits for different occasions. Because of the inevitable overlap between secular and religious politics in Dolmen most noblewomen possess at the very miniumum a set of elaborate ecclesiastical robes, usually with a small mask or habit, and a substantially larger array of gowns for a variety of occasions. Noble males tend to wear very little clothing within the manses of their wives - typically translucent garments of black silk cut to emphasize their

musculature, which they work tirelessly to perfect. Spiders Spiders: sacred animal of the lilix, who are themselves called the spiderfolk, and worship the arachnid spinner-goddess Verlum. In Dolmen, spider iconography predominates, suffusing every aspect of culture: religious, mathematical, martial, artistic, literary. The elite gaurds of the gynocrat herself wear spidersilk armour; tapestries of spidersilk, meticulously dyed by subhuman slaves, adorn the palaces of the wealthy lilix noblewomen. They are bred, through careful selection and through witchcraft, in caverns beneath the city as war-beasts, as labourers, as pets. Many of these specially bred spiders reach truly astonishing sizes, some nearly the size of a human any larger and the spiders legs would collapse under its own weight. Lilix legends still maintain that larger spiders once roamed the earth, primordial creatures of truly vast proportions. There are innumerable breeds of spiders within Dolmen, all of them worshipped to one degree or another as the holy creatures of Verlum. If a slave or freedwoman kills a spider, they are put to death; a lilix who kills one loses a limb. Breaking their webs is not in itself a crime but it is considered a minor blasphemy against Verlum, and penitence is demanded after such a transgression at a temple to the spider-goddess. As such wild spiders of various sizes are everywhere within the city, as are their webs. Even some of the specially bred giant spiders have grown wild, establishing breeding populations in the city. With no one to keep them in check these populations have grown rampant, feeding one each other and on morsels of blood doled out by the clergy of Verlum, or by any lilix hoping to incur the favour of the deity giving food to a spider is the most common way of invoking the goddess blessing. Though spiders are sacred, some do valuable work for the lilix. Only male spiders are used for industrial purposes, most commonly to repair damaged structures: many older buildings are shored up extensively with spidersilk additions. Tapestries and similar ornaments, as well as armour, are also spun by male spiders, directed by expertly trained lilix mystics who use hexes to tap into the arachnids primitive brains. Male spiders are also used as war-beasts, bred for their size and ferocity. Riding a spider is impractical in the extreme so they are never used for mounts, but they are released in hunting packs, often preceding a main lilix assault. Because of their ability to scale walls easily they are the perfect shock troops to storm large fortifications, though they lack the discipline of slave-troops and tend to become utterly disorganized after the initial attack. Female spiders are kept as pets by the lilix and the freedwomen of Dolmen. Though larger spiders (dog-sized) are kept by some families as humans keep hounds (especially by poorer lilix looking for home security), most pet spiders are smaller, roughly the size of a human head. They are encouraged to scuttle about the bodies of their owners but are often seen clinging motionless to a limb, their limbs and thoraxes caressed lovingly. Venomous spiders of

both sexes are occasionally used for assassination, placed in the room of a would-be target and then directed through eldritch means to attack. If the target awakens they are placed in an exceedingly awkward position either kill the spider and thus suffer the consequent penalty for their blasphemous actions, or attempt to escape without killing the spider, a potentially difficult prospect, especially if the cunning assassin has blocked their chamber door. The Tiers and the Dioceses Dolmen is unique amongst the Twilight Cities in that it was built almost entirely vertically rather than sprawling horizontally. It rises in eight tiers in the shadow of the Chelicerae Mountains, the first three part of the original necropolis, the latter seven of solely lilix construction. Each tier is divided into a number of dioceses: the diocese is the standard religious-administrative district of Dolmen, each being ruled by an infanta-archoness from a temple to Verlum doubling as a governmental center. Most tiers have between four and eight dioceses, though Tier Four has seven dioceses, an unlucky number for the lilix (along with nine, or eight-plus-one in the lilix counting system). The tiers are named after the eight letters of the Spiderchatter counting system, but here will generally be reffered to as Tiers One through Eight. The Foreigners Quarter The exotic, vaguely taboo shanty-town of Dolmen, the Foreigners Quarter is a large district just outside the huge gate to Tier One, the only entrance to the city. A sprawling, dirty district, the Foreigners Quarter includes the substantial docklands along the west bank of the Sinew River, which flows out from a valley deep in the Chelicerae Mountains; here the dark lilix galleons set sail for the other Twilight Cities, manned by albino oarsmen, carrying blood and slaves and weapons of damascened steel for trade. Rough taverns with mostly non-lilix patrons line the waterfront, rough-and-tumble establishments selling ale and lethe-tea and madwine, where sailors come to gamble, drink, and wench. Here also are brothels, shipwrights, and warehouses. Further north and west from the river, closer to the city itself, the docklands give way to a slew of marketplaces. Here almost anything can be bought or sold; unlike the strictly controlled markets of Tiers Two and Three the ramshackle mishmash of stalls and pavilions of the Foreigners Quarter lacks any regulations at all. Here the Resin Merchants have set up their outpost, selling nectar to the citys witches; non-human slaves, textiles, solid food, grafts, eldritch artifacts, forbidden texts, and a whole host of other goods can also be found here, provided one is patient enough to sift through the morass of junk, the chaos of buying and selling. On the east side of the Sinew, can be found the small grave-spawn shanty of Shadowbank, a

Kiss (Light Dragon) black... bitter... death... cold... the spiderwalker moves with spindly legs in and out and around the walls. i watch and smile; a wolf-one crawls between my lip. i climbed to the top, on web of silk thin emaciated i moved, 'gainst wall i was in the caverns often i looked up wanting like the spider to climb i was a spider i scurried hence had others squeeze me till i was thin backs turned, i slithered up chains fall loose when flesh does sag up i climb hard to see hard to sense up i go hear spiderchatter curse up i go hear humanslicer clang up i go like a spider so i climb arch my back hiss and tssssssiiikkk then i fall black... bitter... death... cold... until i wake, now i lie in spider web with my breed. covered in silken cocoon i do rest close my eyes as spider-mate tucks me in. romance this is. i feel her kiss. and ... ... i s l e e p .

dreary, somber place of shuffling shades and ghilan, shunned by the lilix and regarded with suspicion by most of the human inhabitants. Occasionally, marauders from Barrow Scrub, who revile all nightfolk, will raid the district, murdering many grave-spawn. An ancient stone bridge built by the Cromnites connects Shadowbank with the rest of the Foreigners Quarter; the Deadroad runs through both districts up to Dolmen, named before the colonization of the city by the lilix. The Caverns Nearly a third of Dolmens population live underground, penned in like cattle in the gigantic caverns below the city, rough-hewn caves that intermingle with the half-forgotten catacombs of Llech-Urgol. The citys human (or subhuman) slaves dwell here, muttering in Chattelchatter, a bastardized version of Spiderchatter, the complex lilix tongue. As a race the slaves of Dolmen are barely human, having been bred in the darkness for many centuries for obedience and physical hardiness. They are uniformly albinos, with chalky white skin and hair a few shades paler than that of the lilix themselves, with pale pink eyes (again, only a few shades paler than the crimson or violet eyes of the spiderfolk); they have little hair, and that which they do have is white. The slaves have poor eyesight and find direct sunlight uncomfortable, but they do possess superlative stamina and endurance despite their abominable upbringing. Most work in the factories of Tier Two; luckier slaves are placed in the households of the wealthy and so escape nightly imprisonment in the pens. Still others are kept merely as livestock, to be slaughtered at a moments notice, their delicious blood drained and the rest of their bodies pulverized and then melted into a boiling broth; huge, simmering cauldrons of the hideous mixture can also be found underground. Above the pens themselves are a network of offices and living quarters occupied by the overseers, who tend to be lower class lilix, the second or third daughters of poorer merchant families, or those without talent for espionage, assassination, torture, art, or fighting the traditional pursuits of the lilix. The breeding chambers of lilix magi can also be found here, where chimerical war-beasts are bred through eldritch

manipulation. Tier One - Chenzirr The first tier of Dolmen is predominantly a residential district, occupied largely by freedwomen. Male widowers and lower-class families also make their homes here in the gutted crypts and funerary halls of the former necropolis. Some of these are little more than slums, packed with families of poor lilix; as a whole, however, the lilix are a wealthy race, and few members of the species are truly impoverished. There are eight dioceses in total, six of which are almost purely residential. The citys mid-sized standing army is garrisoned mostly in Tier One in large barracks that were formerly mausoleums for dead servants. Most of the army is male, though officers are usually female, with commanders drawn from the most influential families. Official army brothels with male prostitutes are kept for the officers here, though on occasion regular soldiers are permitted patronage as well, homosexuality being fairly common amongst males, seen by the ruling authorities as harmless, pointless, amusing, and even erotic (amongst women it is considered a perversion). Tier Two - Xelschemyr The mercantile hub of the city, Tier Two contains most of Dolmens banks, moneychangers, marketplaces, and factories. In general the second tier is cramped, smoky, and squalid. There are few residences, since the factory workforce consist almost entirely of human slaves kept penned in the caverns when they arent being flogged at the assembly lines by their pudgy, sadistic overseers. The most prominent structure is the vast slave-market. Subhuman cattle and laborers led up from the caverns below are prodded blinking and naked onto stony platforms to be auctioned off to factory owners, merchants, and nobles. Also of note is the Sanguine Bazaar, where blood and liquid flesh can be purchased to sate the vampiric appetites of the lilix. There are eight dioceses, each dedicated to a different area of trade. Tier Tier Three - Juszyryn Luxury goods such as jewels, fine clothes, high-quality weaponry, poisons, furniture, spices, and gourmet drink can be found for sale in the upscale markets of Tier Three. A world apart from the smoggy streets and filthy bazaars of Tier Two, Tier Three mingles the old-style tomb architecture of Llech-Urgol with lilix styles, particularly inchoate, prototypical versions of the aesthetic that would evolve into the refined Cobweb-Baroque mode popular amongst the higher tiers. The original Cathedral of Verlum can be found here, the oldest temple of the spider-godess in the city, long since superseded by the larger temples of upper tiers, most

notably the enormous structure that surmounts the whole city at the very pinnacle of Tier Eight. It has eight dioceses; like Tier Two each specializes in a different commodity. Tier Four - Nlezzeroth Artisans, artists, philosophers, and high-class courtesans (male) work and live in the bohemian fourth tier, one of the most politically radical areas of Dolmen where upper-class lilix go to slum it and experience a more liberal side of the usually draconian city. Many taverns selling liquor-laced blood and other drinks do business here, some of them operated by males and freedwomen. Most infamous are the brothels, public harems of a significantly more high-class variety than the army whorehouses of Tier One; some are rumored to pander to more exotic tastes, containing human or even lilix female courtesans, though most lilix inclined to the sexually non-traditional must venture into the Foreigners Quarter to satisfy their deviant desires. It is unique in Dolmen for having seven dioceses, odd numbers being unlucky in lilix numerology, particularly seven, which signifies mutilation or loss, and eight-plus-one (nine the lilix number system is base eight), which signifies mutancy or abomination. The seditious underground newspaper Twisted Weave is rumored to be published here behind some front business. Tier Five - Illhillisz Tier Five consist of the residences of well-heeled merchants and minor nobility, as well as the wealthiest freedwomen. It has six dioceses, mostly comprised of rows of spacious townhouses with some larger manses as well, though none near the size of the enormous palaces of the highest tiers. These homes are usually between four and six stories (sometimes as many as eight), incorporating a large bedroom on the top floor, a dining hall, kitchen, bathing room (quite large), larder, parlor, and slaves quarters; some also include a small harem, if the matriarch of the house has any concubines. The Guild of Spies keeps its largest chapterhouse in Tier Five, and the Assassins Guild has a chapterhouse here as well. Unlike the Assassins Guild the Guild of Spies generally do not take their members from the upper levels of nobility, although they do nonetheless insist on female membership. Like the Assassins Guild the Guild of Spies operates openly, its agents proving useful tools in the machinations of the Great Web. Tier Six - Chaulaxna Between the middle class residences and marketplaces of Tiers Four and Five and the opulent palaces of the upper tiers, Tier Six is dedicated mostly to academies and universities, with six dioceses, each dedicated to one of the six major areas of study or arts typical for upper class lilix to pursue: the mystic or eldritch arts (i.e. witchcraft), the fine arts (especially sewing), the martial arts, the scholarly arts (history, literature, anthropology, foreign languages), the

political arts (including espionage, law, and torture), and the mercantile arts. The six academies are, to a certain extent, rivals, as much a part of the Great Web as the other institutions of Dolmen. All lilix of higher breeding attend one or several of the academies during their youth, except those who are trained by the Assassins Guild. Men of the courtier caste are admitted into the academies, but women of any caste can be admitted provided they pay the requisite tuition. The Council Courts can be found in Tier Six, the judiciary structures of the lilix imposing and grim, bereft of the usual ornamentation typical to upper-tier buildings. Here criminals are tried and punished by vicious Inquisitors. Adjoined to the Courts is the largest chapterhouse of the Torturers Guild. Unlike the Assassins Guild or the Guild of Spies the Torturers Guild takes male members (though the Inquisitors who oversee all trials are still exclusively female). Guild operatives perform all official interrogations, punishments, mutilations, and executions, the lilix justice system generally dealing out dismemberments, branding, and exile rather than imprisonment. Torturers can also be openly hired for private use. Tier Seven - Mhalofneshee Dedicated primarily to the homes of the wealthiest lilix, the seventh tier contains four dioceses. Tier Seven contains twenty four massive palaces, each with their own private chapels, gardens, banquet halls, harems, and armories; male footmen and slaves throng the homes of the wealthy, where lushly garbed and heavy-limbed noblewomen roam their luxurious homes, dining on blood and liquefied flesh, attended by dozens of male concubines, husbands, and courtiers, interrupting their hedonistic pursuits only to pray to their goddess or play the political games of the citys elite, entangling themselves in the Great Web, each attempting to out-maneuver her rivals. The Assassins Guild, a formally recognized and official institution, has its largest chapterhouse on Tier Seven, a stable of highly-trained and incredibly expensive killers comparable in quality and efficiency to the dread Shroud of Lophius. Almost all female lilix die of assassination, far more than from disease or warfare: this helps to keep the large families typical of the lilix in check and perpetuates the intricacies of the Great Web. It is traditional for the ninth daughter of a noble family, or an illegitimate daughter (those bastards are almost never acknowledged as such), to be inducted into the Assassins Guild, usually on her ninth birthday. Men are never assassins, the male gender being considered adequate only as a blunt instrument (as soldiers or footmen, for example) or for sexual purposes. Tier Eight - Zaamzscesoth At the top of the city is the Cathedral of Verlum, a huge temple dedicated to the bloated spider-goddess herself, said to contain the scriptural tapestry of the mother-deity herself, spun from her sublime spinnerets to instruct her children a jealously guarded artifact kept under

lock and key by the ruthless, masked priestesses of the sanctum, ruled over of course by the High-Archoness and Gynocrat herself, the merciless and coldly beautiful Tatzel Schizom. The Cathedral is a huge, ornate structure, the ultimate manifestation of the Cobweb-Baroque style: spires and minarets rising up from a central, circular structure, connected by slender gantries and bridges, and all of it draped in fine, elegant buttresses like strands of webbing. The eighth tier has but a single diocese. Apart from the Cathedral it contains various palaces for the elder priestesses, a series of smaller shrines to the goddess and the ascendant Gynocrats of the past, and numerous governmental and administrative structures. The Cathedral Library is also prominent; though appended to the central temple via a large bridge this seven-towered structure is notable in its own right. Though many of its manuscripts are essentially religious tracts, vast amounts of literature, political commentary, military theory, and arcane texts line its shelves, usually in scroll form. Though not as comprehensive as the collection of scavenged texts in the Vellum Citadel in Macellaria or Morois arcane library, the Cathedral Library is nonetheless one of the largest collections of texts in the Cadaverous Earth.

Glossary
Abysm the Great Rictus, the Hungry Void, the World-Wound: Massive canyon in the extreme south of the Cadaverous Earth, home to unfathomable monstrosities. the: Aether, the Psychic energy-well from which all witchcraft draws its power; the collective unconscious. the: Aurelian Tundra, the Icy northern region of crustacean philosophers, thawing monstrosities, and frozen ruins.

(Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hieronymus_Bosch_003.jpg) Automata: Semi-sentient clockwork robots. Automata Scrub: Barrow Scrub Northerly region of tombs and cold hills, inhabited by moon-worshipping skinchangers. Gods: Beast Gods Nameless, elemental deities of salt and nacre slumbering beneath the waves of the Fevered Ocean. Behemoth: Behemoth Ancient war-machines now found rusting in the Shatters.

Blanchphage: Blanchphage Condition of apathy and wasting sickness created by the eldritch fallout from Etiolation. Blightings: Blightings Sadistic savages that dwell in the Screamwood and hunt alongside albino wolves. Bloodletter, the: Bloodletter, the Mad god of battle and slaughter; patron of assassins, murderers, and warriors. Tree: Bloodwood Tree Vampiric tree with sap for blood and sentient, psychopathic fruit. Archipelago: Bluebottle Archipelago Fetid jungle islands in the extreme south. Boilwinds: Boilwinds Super-heated maritime storms that cause the sea to boil. Bricoleurs: Bricoleurs Morbidly artistic grave-spawn who build their bodies out of bones and viscera, like macabre hermit crabs. Cestoids: Cestoids Hideous wormfolk, former masters of the known world, and builders of huge subterranean cities; now a pariah race. the: Cestoid Imperium, the The mighty empire of the wormfolk, brought low by the fabled Witch Army of Moroi at the close of the last aeon. the: Chained Ones, the God-like entities of immense power who were sealed away in a ritual called the Great Fettering and who may be stirring in their prison... Chattelchatter: Chattelchatter The human form of Spiderchatter, used by the slaves and overseers of Dolmen, as well as visiting merchants and dignitaries. Mountains: Chelicerae Mountains Northern mountain-range near Dolmen, riddled with ruinous cestoid cities. Crepuscle The Mottled City, City of Red and Black: Anarcho-capitalist trading hub with an enormous, possibly haunted maze at its center. the: Cultivar Technocracy, the A defunct empire of arcanists renowned for their eldritch bioengineering abilities; their living cities rot along the Serrated Coast. Daeva: Daeva An immortal creature native to the Cadaverous Earth. Epidemics: Dementia Epidemics Bouts of mental illness that break out in Moroi. Demon: Demon Any one of a number of different creatures not native to this universe.

Maggot: Dire Maggot Gorgefly larva. Dolmen City of Spiders: Tiered necropolis-cum-capitol of the lilix gynocracy. Erg: Dour Erg Vast wasteland and part of the Slaughter-lands; the location of many mythic ruins. Eidolons: Eidolons Malformed grave-spawn incubi who maintain facades of youth and vitality through sexual parasitism. Elder Tree, the the God-Tree: A massive, primordial tree with arcane sap, punctured and penetrated by the vampiric machines of the Resin Merchants of Moroi. Erebh City of Abysm, City of the Basalt Towers, City of the Fell Breath: Ragged, precariously situated city in the extreme south, renowned for its alchemists and archaeologists. Esurience, the the World's Navel, the Sea's Gullet, the Eternal Maelstrom, the Perpetual Tempest: Gargantuan whirlpool and unending anticyclonic storm in the middle of the Fevered Ocean, caused by either a hole in the seafloor or a portal to some other dimension. Etiolation: Etiolation Slaughter-lands region and former battlefield drained of all life and colour. Eyeblight: Eyeblight A strange disease that results in eye-like lesions and is transferred by eye contact; oddly, provides immunity from geist infection. Fecundity, the the Cancer-forest: Malignant, overgrown oases cropping up across the wasteland. Fetch the Murderfolk: Psychopathic creatures who live only to kill; created by the Red Rain. Ocean: Fevered Ocean Boundless western ocean, subject to Boilwinds and home of dreaming horrors. Filchspeak - Alleyspeak: A thieves' cant composed mostly of Shambles; spoken as the formal tongue of Lophius. Marches: Firesong Marches Southern desert roamed by sand-rays and nomads. Fleshmongers: Fleshmongers A guild of slavers and brothel-keepers in Macellaria. Flicker Fingerspeak: A hand-sign version of Filchspeak used by thieves to deliver silent messages.

Geist: Geist A form of imbecilic but dangerous grave-spawn able to levitate a few feet from the ground that can infect others with its condition; includes gibbergeists (constantly babbling), cacklegeists (laughing), sorrowgeists (who weep tainted tears), bramblegeists (covered in thorns), and fettergeists (covered in chains), among others. Ghilan: Ghilan Common grave-spawn strain caused by the consumption of parasite-infested human meat; noted for their yellow, slitted eyes and sensitivity to sunlight. Ghul-bar Ghul-bar: A bar tailored specifically to grave-spawn, serving raw meat and blood as well as alcohol - typically closed during the day. River: Gland River Major river that empties into the Sallow Seas. Glatch - Hagspeech: The guttural, agglutinative language of the hagmen, noted for its many pronouns. Coast: Gloom Coast The south-western coast of the Cadaverous Earth. Glyph: Glyph Any eldritch symbol. Parlor: Glyph Parlor An eldritch tattooist's shop; found prominently in the Skin Markets of Macellaria. Gorefly: Large bloodsucking insect similar to a giant assassin bug; breeds and dwells inside Gorefly sand-rays in a mutualistic relationship. Gorgefly: Gorgefly A putrid fiend resembling a grotesque hybrid of obese giant and flesh-fly able to vomit forth a stream of eldritch fluid that rapidly decomposes living flesh. Gorgon: Gorgon A snake-haired, female race of beings whose black-eyed gaze drives men mad. Graft: Graft Tissue from another creature fused by eldritch means to a body. Graft-peddlar Graft-peddlar: A dealer in raw materials for grafts. Graftpunk: Graftpunk A heavily grafted individual. GraveGrave-spawn the Nightfolk, the Unmen, the Halfmen: Undead of the Cadaverous Earth. Hagmen: Hagmen Amphibious, hermaphroditic creatures of the southern swamps known for their many gods and hatred for the leechkin.

Haunt: Haunt Shambolic corpse revivified by one of the tempestas mali. Hells: Hells Nightmarish otherworldly dimensions. Hellspeak: Hellspeak Language of demons; spoken as the common tongue in Skein. Hex: Hex A spoken spell, as opposed to a glyph. Hextongue Hextongue Witchtongue: The language of witchcraft and incantation, a pidgin of Shambles and Hellspeak; spoken as the common tongue in Moroi. Hirud the Ravager Worm: Dark godling and ur-deity of the cestoids; fossilized corpse visible at the center of Etiolation. Homunculi: Homunculi Demonic pets of the magisters of Skein, bound by warded silver chains and glyphetched collars. the: House of Shadows, the Guildhouse of the Shroud in the Gloomwell district of Murmur Isle, on Lophius Ingurgitatrix: Ingurgitatrix A worm-like parisatoid whose host is driven to eat voraciously, feeding the creature; occasionally employed as an unusual means of assassination or execution. Invocation: The process through which symbols are imbued with puissance in witchcraft. Invocation Jangle: Jangle A stripped-down version of Shambles with added hand-signals; used by merchants for conducting business efficiently. Jatayi: Jatayi A near-extinct tribe of vulturine humanoids with a taste for rotting flesh who make their livings telling tales and singing songs. Jinni: Jinni A race of fiery spirits from the depths of the earth who served as mercenaries during the Membrane Wars. Leechdance: Leechdance The bizarre, gestural "language" of the leechkin. Leechkin: Leechkin Monstrous and apathetic race of vampiric, hermaphrodite beggars and savages with mouths on their palms, known to become enraged when deprived of blood. Sea: Lesion Sea Inland sea and home to various aquatic abominations Lilix: Lilix Fanatical matriarchal spiderfolk known for their extreme sadism, taste for blood, and

convoluted politics. Lophius the Corsair City, City of the Lamprey: Bayou city of canals and shipwrecks-turnedchurches infested by pirates, gangsters, and slave-traders. Revenant: Lords Revenant The wealthy human industrialists who rule Somnambulon, having bound themselves long ago to the zehrer. Macellaria the City of Bodysnatchers, the Maggot City: Walled desert scavenger-city known for its Skin Markets, abundant catacombs, and giant watchdogs. Madwine: Madwine A hallucinogenic yellow liquor with a tendency to drive its drinkers permanantly mad if imbibed too heavily; the favored drink of decadents and libertines. Magister: Magister Nobleman of Skein marked by their masks, their homunculi, and their living towers; noblewomen are known as magistra. Mantids: Mantids Vaguely insectoid nomads of the Firesong Marches and elsewhere known as skilled duellists and tinkers. Marainein City of the Wasting God: Gloomy theocracy ruled by immortal cultists of a leprous, senile deity. Marrowmoth: A species of gigantic insect with sallow, red-veined wings that feeds on bone Marrowmoth marrow.

(Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tweemonsters.jpg) Wanderer: Melmoth the Wanderer Enigmatic deity of travel, roads, and doorways.

the: Membrane Wars, the Very ancient transdimensional war that lasted many centuries. Isles: Midnight Isles Chain of islands shrouded in eternal darkness. Morbis - the Carrion Tongue: Language of the dead noted for its thirteen noun classes expressing various levels of animacy, life, death, and un-death. Moroi the Gaunt City, City of the Elder Tree: City of junkies and witches built around the variously fossilized, burnt, or exploited husks of gigantic trees whose sap is an arcane drug. Moth-Kings Moth-Kings: The five sorcerous, demon-possessed rulers of Skein; rarely seen outside of their palace. Naghini: Naghini Race of conjoined twin snakefolk native to the Bluebottle Archipelago, noted for the dualistic religious and political structures. Nectar Ichor, Resin: An eldritch drug that expands a witchs mind; the sap of the Elder Tree in Moroi. Oneiroi Dreamspawn: Bizarre manifestations of mortal nightmares spawned by the Suppuration. Oorls: Curious crustacean philosophers of the Aurelian Tundra. Oorls the: Ophidians, the A gang of the Serpentside district in Lophius who tattoo themselves with scales, split their tongues, sharpen their teeth, and remove their ears; ruled by the gorgon Nyssa. the: Pallid Decimation, the Ancient cataclysm when the dead first rose from their graves and the cestoids seized power; possibly connected to Hirud. Rat: Piranha Rat Large, hairless rat with razor-sharp teeth; known to travel in swarms. the: Quick, the Living creatures; usually used in reference to humans. River: Radula River A prominent river that runs from the Slouching-devil Mountains to Lesion Sea, passing through Crepuscle and Skein. Ravener: Ravener A flesh-eating spirit that haunts Hunger Rock in Lophius. the: Red Rain, the Eldritch precipitation that transforms all who drink it into the murderous fetch.

Merchants: Resin Merchants Ruthless merchant-rulers of Moroi and dealers of Nectar. Guilds: Robber Guilds Scavenger bands based out of Macellaria. the: Sallow Seas, the Corsair-infested waters near Lophius. the: Sea of Whispers, the Cold northern sea, frozen for much of the year. Screamwood: Screamwood Blighted woodland of pallid trees in the northeast of the Cadaverous Earth. Coast: Serrated Coast Jagged western coastline haunted by xsur and sirae. Serpentine: Serpentine The hissed language of the naghini. Shaaltalethiel: Shaaltalethiel Oracular, many-winged daeva fed on blood and milk in the Shrine of the Sighing Winds. Shades: Shades Sapient, immortal corpse-parasites destroyed by sunlight. Shadowmancer: Shadowmancer A witch specializing in shadow-witchcraft, such as the summoning of tenebrals. Shadowmilk: A liquor obtained from tenebrals that tints the tongue, lips, and eyes of the Shadowmilk drinker black and grants the ability to see in the dark (even in perfect lightlessness). ShaikShaik-toruch - Sand-rays: Huge, hovering carrion-feeders whose bodies are home to vampiric, symbiotic insects. Shambles - Magpie: A pastiche language spoken across the Cadaverous Earth the: Shatters, the Slaughter-lands region filled with rusting war-machines worshipped as deities by primitive tribesmen. the: Shrine of the Sighing Winds, the A community of ascetics in the Slouching-devil Mountains. the: Shroud, the Elite assassins guild that operates openly in Lophius. the: Skyscar, the Soul-corroding aurora borealis and poorly sutured portal to the Hells. River: Sinew River A major river passing from the Chelicerae Mountains to the Fevered Ocean, passing through Dolmen, Somnambulon, and Crepuscle.

Sirae: Sirae Vicious gullfolk raiders of the Serrated Coast known for their sonic hexcraft and insatiable appetities. Skein City of Silk, the Clockwork City: Scientific and economic power known for its living towers and its demonsummoning aristocrats. SlouchingMountains: Slouching-devil Mountains Brooding mountain range full of ancient machines, arcane fossils, and warped beasts. Somnambulon The Sleepwalkers City: Grim industrial city of zombie factory-workers ruled by vampiric nobles, with a carnival shanty-town at its edge. the: Sons of the Peacock, the A gang of cutthroat scholars and nectar-junkies who rule Chelke in Lophius; tattoo their bodies with hundreds of vividly colourful eyes. Tinker: Soul Tinker A minor arcanist who deals in summoning and binding incorporeal spirits; a type of gutterwitch. Swamps: Southern Swamps Putrid marshland inhabited by demons, leechkin, hagmen, and worse. Spectre-plague Spectre-plague: A strange disease that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TheHearingForestAnd slowly turns the flesh and organs (though not bones) of its sufferers transparent; otherwise benign. Spiderchatter - Lilix: Language of the lilix, composed mostly of chittering; unspeakable by humans.

Star-Gods Star-Gods: Gods said to dwell in the light of dead stars; worshiped primarily by grave-spawn. Striga: Striga Goddess of blood and vitality; her largest temple is in the Pulsetown district of Macellaria. the: Suppuration, the Mysterious rupture in physical reality in the extreme east; gives birth to chimerical, often bloodthirsty monstrosities. Plains: Tallow Plains Unstable region near Moroi where geography flows like molten wax.

Tempestas Mali "Evil Storms": Clouds of sentient arcane radiation that roam the Slaughterlands, reanimating the dead and ravaging the environment. Tenebral: Tenebral An elemental formed from the shadow of a living creature. Thrum: Thrum A powerful stimulant that endows the user with near-superhuman speed; high doses cause the skin to ripple and quiver with gooseflesh. Tissue-Shop Tissue-Shop: A graft workshop. Cities: Twilight Cities The nine remaining cities of the Cadaverous Earth, built mostly along the eastern fringe of the Slaughter-lands, though some dot the western coasts. Vampire Plate: A symbiotic organism that feeds off the nutrients in a host's blood via small Vampire Plate tendrils while providing protection in the form of a viscous carapace that flows over the host's body before hardening into tough armour. Verlum: Verlum Bloated spider-goddess of the lilix. Warworm: Warworm Cestoid war-machine resembling a huge armored centipede bristling with weapons. the: Watchdogs of Macellaria, the Three colossal undead hounds created by the mad magister Orlando Petrifax that guard the three gates of Macellaria. Waxborn: Waxborn Amorphous shapeshifters of the Tallow Plains that subsume other creatures and reproduce by fission. the: Weeping Lady, the Goddess of sorrow and mourning whose acolytes provide funerary services and sing a lament for the dying world. Witch: Witch Any practitioner of witchcraft (male or female).

Witchcraft: Witchcraft The semiotic spellcraft of the Cadaverous Earth, based on symbolism. Xsur: Xsur A hideous and bestial cross between bat, manta ray, and reptile able to paralyze its prey with pain-inducing screams. Yzsch the Wasting God: The demented, diseased deity of Marainein whose pus endows extended life. Zehrer: Zehrer Extradimensional, symbiotic soulsucks who grant their hosts long life, flight, strength, telepathy with other zehrer-bonded individuals, and pyrokinesis (amongst other powers) in exchange for the eventual consumption of their souls; zehrer exist in a hive-mind. Zerda: Zerda Nomadic, tortoise-riding, large-eared foxfolk of the Firesong Marches.

Authors Remarks
Dystopia was a pretty substantial influence on the Cadaverous Earth, particularly in some of its imagery. I think that CE aims lower than Dystopia: it doesn't capture the feel of unfathomably epic or arcane scope that seems to me inherent to Dystopia (the reality-transforming technologies, the quasi-abstract cosmology, and similarly mind-boggling stuff) but it does provide a lot of very nitty-gritty details about neighborhood composition, geography, etc. I don't trust myself to work too much with abstract or intellectually radical forces in the same way that SA clearly can, so I tend to focus on the visceral and concrete and on pouring as much detail into the world as possible. This might make a CE game easier to run; I think Dystopia asks more form its players and GM, though it might ultimately be more rewarding. Steerpike
Witchcraft (Old Design) Lots of different groups of spellcasters have developed systems of glyphs, runes, sigils, incantations, or other symbols that describe and evoke magic. These are akin to "magical languages" or scientific systems. The idea is that these systems create a kind of "magical text" that can then be interpreted or "read." It doesn't matter what the system/language is so long as its internally consistent and cohesive. This is similar to the theory that scientific knowledge is never discovered but only described; that in a sense we create scientific knowledge, and various metaphors for it. It's like in M. John Harrison's novel Light, in which various different engines can all produce FTL travel even though they assume competing and even contradictory systems of physics: some assume a Newtonian base, others run on quantum logic, others assume string theory, some that space is a foam and "waves" must be caught and ridden, some that its smooth and must be glided along, etc. Even if that's nonsense in terms of real scientific knowledge, that's how magical systems work in CE. They're all equally valid, in the same way that all languages

are equally valid - its not possible to say, for example, that French is a "truer" language than Russian, anymore than you can say that Moroi's nigromancy is truer than leechkin shamanism. What matters, then, is a set of symbols. Some are spells (hexes) which use incantations; others are more ritualistic (wards) and use glyphs. The next step is to invoke arcane energy into the set of symbols you've selected. This involves channeling "numina" (mana, basically) from the aether, which is sort of the realm of the imagination or the collective unconscious (the Suppuration being a bleed from the aether into the physical world). This is akin to giving the symbol meaning, interpreting it. It doesn't have magical meaning until you've "read" it. Nectar facilitates the channeling of numina. Therefore as presented right now, witchcraft combines some basically Vancian concepts (forumlaic, systematic magic with discrete spells rather than sorcerous channeling of nameless magical energy; systems of magic must be learned and cannot simply be intuited) and a mana system (you need numina to power your symbols). Why Geists Have Not Yet Taken Over A few reasons... 1) Really, the geists (and the fetch, and the oneiroi, and the demons leftover from the Membrane Wars) have taken over the Cadaverous Earth - probably around 99% of it. Apart from a few isolated settlements the Twilight Cities are the only places left where civilization endures. 2) Infection isn't instant. Exposure does not necessitate automatic transformation. 3) Like most diseases geist infections can be quarantined and contained. The infection is not airborn. Within the cities, geist activity is usually confined effectively to the lower levels of the undercities. Geists aren't disciplined so they'd tend to wander upwards singly, and so most can be eliminated quickly before they spread their infections. That said, geist outbreaks can occur, and they're very dangerous when they do. 4) Geists aren't invulnerable. So far I wasn't planning on giving them any special weaknesses, but bullets would always work, as would hexes. If anyone has any suggestions for geist weaknesses, that'd be awesome... 5) There are lots of ways to defend against geists. For cacklegeists/gibbergeists, magical silence

would basically neutralize them (or alternatively, a hex that'd deafen someone). Sorrowgeists have to get in very close to infect others and so can be neutralized at a distance. Fettergeist chains could be fought off, grappled, sundered, and otherwise deflected. Armour would probably also help greatly against them. EDIT: on further reflection, I decided to make other grave-spawn more resistant to geist infection. I kind of think of geists as idiots, like zombies are usually presented. They don't start smashing windows unless they get really riled up. I imagine windows would be boarded up and the buildings would be selected to be as soundproof as possible in the case of cacklegeists/gibbergeists to prevent accidental infection. I think geists would ideally be destroyed altogether but since its difficult to get close to them without risking infection, and lighting fires in the middle of cities is usually a very, very bad plan, locking them up would be the most preferable alternative to destroying them. All grave-spawn don't like sunlight, which is one reason geists tend to stay underground and why they tend to be encountered either at night or in ghost-towns and the like in the Slaughter-lands, rather than simply roaming the desert. They're not destroyed by sunlight, though - they just won't venture into it voluntarily if they can avoid it. Fashion Added sections on Fashion to all of the Twilight Cities so far. Basically, people from Moroi tend to dress somewhere between Victorian Goths and punks. Those from Baranauskas dress in motley patchworks, old military uniforms, and typical post-apocalyptic scavenger duds - real ragamuffin types - plus they're all whacky cyborgs anyway. Those in Lophius dress like typical pirates and also tend to have lots and lots of tattoos and piercings. In Skein, they dress more or less like Restoration libertines, though the nobility all wear Venetian-style masks and have a definite touch of Aubrey Beardsley exoticism to them. Some more images (without Johnny Depp): Moroi: Neo-Victorian. Skein: a masque, a magistra (actually Ada Lovelace, Byron's daughter). Baranauskas: a graftpunk, a servitor. Magic Schools For magic schools, I haven't totally decided yet, and will probably write up detailed school

descriptions, but basically I was thinking something like these: fleshcraft: grafting, animation/reanimation, some necromantic effects, etc - mostly for construct creation or augmentation, slow and ritual-based. diabolism/demonaltry/demonism: demon-summoning and similar conjuration stuff, like circles of protection or binding - again mostly quite slow. elementalism: simialr to Mieville's elementalism in some respects; conjuration, basically, or giving animacy to normally inanimate phenomena, rather than previously animate phenomena. nigromancy: mostly offense hex-based witchcraft and curses; "black magic." glyph-graving: mostly defensive glyph-based witchcraft. shamanism: variants practiced by tribal individuals, with a smattering of healing/offensive spells and basically whatever'd be useful for a medicine man/elder figure. Auguries and entrail reading a must. mysticism: lilix system, mostly about divinations and voodoo-esque assassin witchcraft. soul-tinkering: like fleshcraft, but less material. gutter-witchcraft: the most common sort - petty magic and cobbled-together glyphs and hexes stolen from many sources. Mongrel occultism. I don't think these "schools" will be nearly as discrete as DnD schools but as in DnD, in pratice most witches would probably borrow from a number of traditions. So a magister of Skein might specialize in diabolism but would probably know a handful of battle-hexes as well, perhaps...

Cadaverous Earth Threads

http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?56772.0 (main thread) (main http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?64554.last (FAQ) http://thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?78017.0 (Glossary)

Back Page Reviews

What do I picture? How do I put it best? When I read these stories I envision a decrepit world festering with the boils of catastrophe and chaos. A realm falling apart, dead though it doesn't yet know it. Everything seems overly gaudy. Like a corpse touched up with makeup or an zombie clown. Like it refuses to acknowledge its sorry state and instead covers up with a false show of color and beauty. I don't know if that is what you were hoping for but that is the feeling it generates with me.

Nomadic

A truly brilliant setting, Steerpike. I think you've created a new category of fantasy roleplaying - Visceral Barroque. Wrexham3