Thursday 4 October 2018

The Wodlands 10 - More, the Maw.

1. The Plains of Anaesthetic Fire.
2. The Antigoblin Empire.
3. The Whetstone Ridge.
4. The Painted Plain.
5. The Vermilion Sea.
6. The Large Goblin Collidor.
7. The Wodlands.
8. The Necropolis of Glass.
9. The Incoherent Isles.


Cut off, Ruined, Black and Burnt.
The Anaesthetic fire is said to come from here, in ages past.
Hence the burning Goblin Ghosts - pay them no mind.
The City of Visible Grief - strange winds that blow from the Maw turn the visible invisible and the invisible visible.
People go there to turn invisible - stand in the visible wind and be transformed as it blasts away your corporeal self and sends you into another world.

The City of Visible Grief been blasted into almost-total invisibility by the wind rushing through it for eons.
As if it were made of glass.
Hurts the eye to be there.
Dust, leaves and marks, and graffiti made by generations have left their mark.
The city is highlighted like a wireframe model, marked by by textures, covered by tags.
In most cases there is enough to make out general stuff.
The Maw slowly draws the Invisible City into itself - spires like the glass teeth of a circular worm.

The Invisible People living in the ruins, reading invisible books.
Poets go there to hang out. Crime gangs also.
The Invisible Ambassadors - teams of puppeteers manipulate a life-sized puppet for you to address.
They ride in chariots pulled by black rotating pangolins rolling like wheels.
And are guarded by invisible dogs in sheaths of armoured spines which run alongside, spines clattering.

More - circular iron doors like carved dead eyes
A black iron harp the wind keens sharply through.
She was sacred to Evening, and this is why her harp was of iron.
It is very different here during the evening.
A lamp in the distance, passing between columns. Columns of signs.
Time ticking away, their eyes falling inwards falling.
Great emanations of circular death bursting from their empty hearts.
Like a magnetic wave that burns the backs of your teeth with acid reflux.

More - Predatory vantablack Geese - hunting in huge and silent pairs.
Yes, the geese will encircle you in sleep - black wings, waddling ever closer, before they begin their black work.
The Geese guard the grim tarns that lie slackly hereabouts.
The pools live a shift but only at plant-speed. The black water oozed through cracks in the earth and looks for things to strangle and drown, but most escape it.
The Tarns carry any treasure they find around in their transparent guts to lure people in.

Maw - A neon, angular wind, lashing through the invisible streets like geometric lightning.
It makes the dogs glow and the Night-Geese cry out.
Wind sometimes shifts so its coming from a 5th direction, but you can sense it. Feel its pressing fingertips upon you from a place your nerves can't sense.
Rain in streaks of burning gold like a gods tears.

Maw - The Maw itself; A tunnel to the Dark Continent.
Glass towers like radial stalactites.
Pulsing roars of unreality. Swarming, boiling blackness from below, there are grat swarms of them.

Maw - Bat-People with Opal wings which, when folded, protect them from the Invisible Wind.
The Bat-Men can be pretty nice but some do hunt them for their wings.
They come out at night and smoke cigars (which are bad for their coughing lungs) in invisible saloons (you can see the lights of the cigars in the night).
The city is easy for them to navigate in flight - hard for everyone else, that's why they came.
They (the Bat-Men) say the Maw leads to the Dreamlands, at least some of the time, when it's in a good mood, and that the Parliament of Orphan Moons, moons without worlds, orbiting each other only, is where they come from - but Do Not Go.
They hunt the dull droning stag beetles that crawl in the fissures - most invisible by now, moving in big invisible bass-not swarms.
They don't say much about the Dark Continent, only that it has Other stars and no sun, but how would they know?

Maw - Mole-Men have tunnelled up from somewhere - up through the invisible earth, its visibility makes no difference to them.
They make up the Maws labouring classes and read braille tabloids, hot off the Goblin Presses which outrage them every day.

Maw - Treasure there; Scrolls of pearl uncurling like a dryads tongue.
Music composed for keys of bone. Hymns to the wind and the stars and the dark.
Spilling curls of blue-black hair.
And a great green moon like alchemists ash, gabbling and cackling over all.

2 comments:

  1. I really like this. It has a melancholy feel that would make me feel bad to wander around it as a murder hobo lusting after loot. Imagine the guilt you'd feel after hunting those nice batmen for example.

    And the Maw appears to lead to a storygame of some kind or other...

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  2. I'd love to see this in play, perhaps in a campaign centered around exploring/studying the Dark Continent.

    Good stuff.

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