VotE:Redux – Agriculture

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

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

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

 

Who Needs to Eat? 

Largely mortals, and those who feed upon them. 

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

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

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

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

Populations 

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

 

Proportionate Food Needs 

High – 20,000+ mortal feeders 

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

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

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

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

 

Medium – 7,000+ mortal feeders 

A small town with a 100% mortal population.

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

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

 

·        Roll once on ‘Rare & Singular’

·        Roll twice on ‘Common Systems’

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

 

 

Low – 500 to 5,000 mortal feeders 

A 100% mortal village or small town.

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

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

·        Roll twice on ‘Common Systems’ 

 

Experimental Agriculture Table 

 

Common Systems (d10) 

1: Natural boon, Vulcanism

2: Natural Boon, Radiation

3: Natural Boon, Migration Route

4: Immaterial Exchange, Gheistoculture

5: Immaterial Exchange, Mnemoculture

6: Immaterial Exchange, Psychoculture

7: Immaterial Exchange, Umbraculture

8: Immaterial Exchange, Somnoculture

9: Dumping Ground

10: Food-Malmukes 

 

Rare & Singular Systems (d8) 

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

2: Elemental Citizens

3: False Sun

4: Inwardly-Infinite Ontological Harvest

5: Kaiju-Mine

6: ‘Kite’ Nation

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

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

 

 

Common Systems  

Natural Boons

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

 

Vulcanism 

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

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

 

Radiation 

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

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

 

Migration Route 

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

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

 

Immaterial Exchange Environments 

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

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

 

Gheistoculture 

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

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

 

Mnemoculture 

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

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

 

Psychoculture 

From Above 

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

From Below 

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

(Rare) Autophagy 

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

 

Umbraculture 

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

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

 

Somnoculture 

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

Passive Somnoculture 

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

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

Active Somnoculture 

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

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

 

Dumping Grounds 

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

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

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

 

Food-Malmuke Class 

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

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

 

Rare, Singular Systems 

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

 

Autophagic Urbanism 

Ouroboros City 

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

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

'Looper' city 

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

 

Elemental Citizens 

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

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

 

False Sun 

A favourite of Aelf-Adal Terror-Lords 

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

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

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

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

 

Inwardly-infinite Ontological Harvest 

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

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

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

 

Kaiju-Mine 

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

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

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

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

 

'Kite' Nation 

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

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

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

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

 

Fisher-City 

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

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

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

This might be another good entry to a VotE Campaign. 

 

Samaris Economy 

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

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

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

 

Stable Gateway Light Well 

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

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

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

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

 

(Rare) Sky-Hunters 

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

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

 

 

Are Artists Even Human? (False Machine News!!)

Ordinary humans have literally zero idea of what it takes to develop and create an image, meaning they treat it as a kind of magic, and adopt towards it the same attitude they would have towards superior magicians, one of envy and disdain, (A WISE POLICY), but, what if an Artist (traditionally entirely mute beasts) could be trained somehow to take, to explicate and take apart its art, showing its as a product of effort, concentration, iteration and time? Could this possibly lead ordinary decent humans to have more sympathy both with this art and its creator?

Consider then the following words, from the artist of ‘Queen Mab’s Palace’ (due hopefully at the end of the year), the often-storied August Lake Cartland, or ‘Alcopopstar’;

………………

“Hello humble and beloved benefactors,

Today I have an update for you, not slope for swine but delicately prepared delicacies for the petite porcine prince/esse/s among us, for all of us to enjoy.

So, ART.

I have been working hard on new illustrations. I thought today, to waste the wanting hours, I might describe to you the process of bringing about an illustration for the book to full fruition.

The first step for me is to take myself to some pleasant place (usually a cafe) with a sketchbook or notepad and actually read what Patrick has written, which to my pleasant surprise, is actually quite good! At this point I start to sketch..

For this example we are using the section of the book on the Hydraulic Monks.

At this stage of image making I am only trying to draw out concepts from words and get a general idea of what things could look like. The sketch itself here is not meant to look pretty! it's very utilitarian in fact. I just put down basic information that I can pick up at a later stage so there is less cognitive load happening all at once.

After this stage is complete I amble blindly home and, within a day or two of that first sketch usually put down some rough lines as shown below.

Once again, not designed yet to look pretty, the aim at this moment is to architect an image based off of information in the first sketch. I often take a few attempts at this stage, as we can see with the kneeling figure. In this Image I resolve that I would like the front of the altar visible to give it its due reverence, and so turn the monks to face it.

Finally with this done I begin the fun part of adding and retracting blacks. Which I can only describe a little like pushing and pulling. I tend to work only on one layer and so work the white and black back and forth until content.

As this is happening I usually grab the picture, or work in progress, and send it off to my partner; the oil painter who will be doing our lovely cover, who tells me everything is wrong and how to fix it.

After a bit more back and forth the final image appears!

I try to leave things a little loose to let a slight sketchy feeling through, as I don't want to compete too much with interpretation of the lovely words Patrick has put down on the page.

There is one more secret stage after this fact, where I neurotically edit the image with minor invisible changes that only I can see and never hand anything back to Patrick like a dragon hoarding treasure. But eventually, presumably, the system works :).

I hope that little art morsel has been interesting! I prepared it just for you.. and maybe nourished us all enough for the long wait until October. Wish me luck!"

False Machine News! In Three Parts!

ONE - MALUSTRIOUS BROOD - from Scrap Princess

Long-term art-brute of the False Machine nobility, Scrap Princess has released an entirely self-produced monster art book; Malustrious Brood!

https://monstermanualsewnfrompants.blogspot.com/p/malustrious-brood.html

"I've been meaning to have a print on demand book available of original drawings of mine and now this deed is done!

MALUSTRIOUS BROOD!!!

In this 102 page tome I have taken 12 iconic monsters from the pastiche swirl of d&d's fantasy pool and done a bunch of takes of them. Each monster gets 7 pages , and a range of approaches.

The monsters being : The classic elemental spirits of Gnome, Nereid, Salamander, Sylph. Ogres, Hags, Dragons, Basilisk/Cockatrice, Orc, Manticore. And two Very Much d&d , the Catawhere and Eye Tyrant."

https://www.peecho.com/print/en/1750387

TWO - FALSE MACHINE WHOLESALING!

False Machine is now available for wholesale!

Held in the U.S.A.

• Silent Titans

Held in the U.K.

• Deep-Carbon Observatory

• Demon-Bone Sarcophagus

• Gackling Moon

• Gawain and the Green Knight

• Speak, False Machine

Contact me if you want to know more!

THREE - FALSE MACHINE PRICE DROP! THIS ISN'T REALLY NEWS!

This is still on!

https://falseparcels.bigcartel.com/

• A Night at the Golden Duck = £5

• Deep-Carbon Observatory = £30 (-£10)

• Demon-Bone Sarcophagus = £20 (-£20)

• Gackling Moon = £25 (-£5)

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

• Silent Titans = £40

• Speak, False Machine = £40 (-£20)

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

FOUR YES THERE WERE ACTUALLY FOUR I JUST FORGOT THIS ONE! -  ANOTHER 3D APPEARANCE! - LEICESTER 17TH MAY!

Dying Earth Catalogue, the people behind my recent adventure to Nottingham, have invited me to another thing

Called Campaign, the day-long event consisting of talks, live game play sessions and stalls will run from 11am - 9pm at Leicester Gallery and Leicester Castle, on Saturday 17th May 2025, with 250 people expected to attend.

I will be there, running a False Machine stall, selling signing and singing, until 6pm at least.

dErO - VotE: Re Development

the mysterious Stephan Poag did a comic about them!

The dErO Do Not Exist 

You do not believe in dErO. The Player Characters cannot believe in dErO. 

If the PCs act, or talk, or behave as if they believe dErO - DIRECTLY CONTRADICT THEM. Warp reality around them. 

…… 

If they converse with others, alter their words; 

PC - “I ask the NPC for any evidence of technological mind-controlling monsters.” 

DM - "You agree with the NPC that there is no evidence for such monsters and that they are merely a rumour of the Veins.” 

PC – “No, I directly ask about them. I’m standing right there!” 

DM – “After a fulfilling conversation you go about your business. Its now several hours later.” 

…. 

If they take actions, re-write those actions; 

PC - "I scry for the dErO" 

(Ask for no roll, no further decisions or any other investigation). 

DM - "Your scrying goes well, a complete success, and after a gruelling but certain search you end your session utterly convinced that the dErO are simply a fictional construct of the Chaos Goblins." 

…. 

While the dErO ability to alter memory, perception and reality, is active, you, the DM, are an agent of that power. 

The Dero do have limits on their ability to do this. Some of these are discussed below, but, to sum up, some PCs and NPCs (Resistants) can believe in them, some unusual minds, (Golems, some Paladins, Aelf-Adal) can as well, and the Air looms by which they maintain this power, can break, or a dErO can be betrayed in using them. 

The party, and the players, and the PCs can have utterly different beliefs and perceptions of the dErO, depending on circumstance, which means you, the DM, speak to and about them utterly differently. 

If one PC is 'Resistant' - talk to that player, and that PC ONLY, directly and truthfully – “Yes the dErO are real, they have mind controlling machines, you have seen evidence of them. It all seems so obvious now.” 

Likewise, if the PC's have, or use, a golem mind, or have a strong paladin, do the same for those points of view. 

But for everyone else, speak to them as if the dErO are not real, are utterly fictional, in game and out, and acknowledge no difference between the two kinds of statement you are making; the true, and the false.

 

 

 

Detrimental Robots 

Ruined remnant of an ancient race, or perhaps, revolted servitors. Or degenerate descendants of survivors of a psychic war. Or men-from-Qlipoth; creatures of a spiritual antiverse, transplanted into this one. Ancient aliens, inbred monsters, castoffs of spiralling post-apocalyptic eugenics, foul tulpa, Fomorian invaders. Imaginary beings. Of course, they are not real. No-one can remember them. No-one believes.

a Fomorian from 5e

 

Appearance 

Something like a man. Near ogre-sized, but withered, twisted. Skinny-fat, without a hearty butchers solid bulge, or a workers firm core. Always asymmetric, never clean. Manky fat things, stained and dribbling, grimy prints left on everything. Eczema, dandruff, scabies; wrinkled and flaking, red rashed-skin runs down their face like tears and collects round their mouths. 

Bale-Eyed; one eye bulges big. Milky and piercing. From here they emanate psychic violations. 

Even crippled, distorted as they are, dErO are as strong as a strong man. They can pick up others, slam and squash them. Their proportions hint they were perhaps meant to be something else. Echoes of lost nobility, Vitruvian creatures. 

Half-born Siamese-twins are common, reaching out through dErO flesh. If intelligent, these are usually trepanned and lobotomised, (no dErO would trust even their flesh-twin). Twitching open teratomas dot the body, hair and teeth within. 

This often (thankfully), hidden by a Mu-Mu, tent-dress, or a crackpot simulation of a Priests or Wizards robe, (they like long white coats). Under that, most dErO wear dirty stained undergarments like jockey pants. Perhaps a belt or something with pockets to carry patched-up tools of psychic warfare. They rarely wear much else; dErO don’t get out much. (Don’t leave the cave.) 

Posh dErO float like Baron Harkonnen; bits of tech jammed into their meat and bones to make it happen. These form pussy never-healing sores.

One of Shavers ‘Rock Books’. Only he could reveal their messages.

Culture 

dErO live through mass mind-control and the farming of Sha Chi, Anti-Orgone, Xenu-Viril, in a word, negative energy. They condense this psychic field to ‘globs’; spheroids of physicalised psychic potentia which fuels all dErO tech. The dErO have incredible technology, though they did not create it, and, perhaps, do not understand it. 

The purpose of the dErO is to discover the conspiracy. 

Their very existence is a conspiracy against all sentient life and they are all utterly insane, (if there is even more than one dErO). This leads inevitably to the concept of a of a meta-mega super conspiracy, a conspiracy against the dErO themselves. Once a dErO conceives of this idea, they cannot stop; any failure in the idea is evidence for it. Just ad dErO remove all thought of their existence from the minds of lesser beings, so the Ultra-Conspirators try to suppress knowledge of the Meta-Conspiracy. Yes, it’s all a trick somehow, all a game, a game played against them by some ever-hidden hand. 

Such is life for the dErO. 

 

Drinkers of Tears 

The dErO command vast psychic devices; the Air Looms, with which they harvest negative energy from the surface world, (or worlds). 

The dErO cannot make anything, but they can make anything worse. They foment war, corruption, moral and cultural decay. The power of their Air Looms stretches over multiple realities. They play the souls of civilisations like choirs of pain. 

Some theorists imagine (briefly before the Dero alter them), that Civilisations have no natural cycle and would naturally form a single 'climax civilisation' covering the whole world, and all realities - if not for the dErO carefully ruining everything all of the time. 

Leaders in the meta-real economy of pain, the dErO are in conflict, (and co-operation) with various entities; Demons, Devils, Aelf-Adal and debatable Aberrant things. All have an interest in the psyche and the soul, though rarely the same interest. Together they make a kind of Cartel. There are agreements in place. They even have meetings about it, though they do not get on at all.

 

Violators 

Clever hikikomori (don’t leave the cave), the dErO have eliminated the female gender from their species. Perhaps they never had it, and have always reproduced through dark and unknown methods. They have no positive instinct to create more of themselves but do so out of necessity. Even reluctantly. 

They Violate. 

Via their Bale-Eye, the dErO puts themselves inside the target. This feels physically intimate, overwhelming, tactile, disgusting. At the same time, they enter mentally, gaining control over, in this sequence; simple physical acts, immediate senses, short term memory, complex physical acts, long term memory and finally meta-personality aspects. 

They can them damage, alter, mutate and in some cases, re-make the target. Who or whatever comes out of this process will bear the taint of the dErO, though they may not know it; the dErO can remove any conscious memory of the event. (But the soul remembers). 

The strength of this ability depends on age, distance and familiarity. (If,indeed, there is more than one dErO). Most dErO can only do it in direct line of sight of their Bale Eye, and they need you to meet its gaze. 

Older, stronger dErO can violate those they can imagine precisely or even those they are familiar with, at a distance, and perhaps at any range. 

Intra-dErO hierarchies, government and culture, (such as it is), is made up of these violations. Whichever dErO can violate the other is superior, and must be obeyed. The greatest dErO of a clade, (or perhaps of all dErO, even they do not know how many dErO there are), is the Grand Violator. 

They barely even talk to each other, issuing commands through, screens, messages and violation – psychically raping the necessary knowledge into each other’s brains. And yes, this does do damage, as it would for any being. The dErO are not immune to the horrible psychic trauma they happily inflict on others, in fact it’s the substance of their culture. 

They actively enjoy it too. Or at least they enjoy doing it to others. 

 

Only One? 

Every dErO lives in the midst of a hierarchy of other, brutal dErO, who they may never have seen directly, or know personally. They trade amongst themselves in Globs, technology, information, coverage, slaves and anything else useful, though usually at a remove. Their ‘society’  has few rules outside domination, submission, maintaining the Air Looms and other machines, and the core rule of always maintaining the non-existence of dErO in as many minds as possible. 

Because they hate and fear each other, communicating via glowing screens, cryptic codes and psychic mind rape, because they, in a sense, have no true society, its hard to know how many dErO there actually are. 

There are stronger dErO they fear, who command them to do things under threat of instant horrific psychic assault, and other dErO, whom they themselves can violate at will, (if they stay stronger). 

But are these dErO actually real? It is possible they are simulations? Fantasies? Disassociated personality fragments? Could there, actually, be only one, single, dErO, in the whole of all possible worlds? Is it actually just them, alone? 

No. Impossible. 

 

The Air Looms

 

from our correspondent Mr Matthews

Huge machines with the power to alter minds. Even to remove the very knowledge of their own existence. (Of course, all this is fiction). 

Where did they come from? Who made them and why? Not the dErO; the Air-Looms are cavern-filling complexes, not single things. Like great rotted pipe organs, metropolis megastructures, once of gleaming metal and pale lucent ceramic. Now fractured, melted, ruined in a thousand places in an hundred ways. 

Where things are broken, the re-engineered sections are of a very different character; bizarre rube-Goldberg coagulations of wheezing gaskets, crude plumbing, clicking engines and buzzing cables, drugged-spider basket-weaves of schizophrenic scrap-work clearly doing badly what a single component used to do well. So many additions and replacements, and then, perhaps a hundred, or a thousand years later, replacements for those replacements,  until the coagulations erupt and surround the original devices like teratoma erupting from a body, fungi bursting the chitin of an infected ant. 

The dErO cannot make them. There will be no more Air-Looms. 

Slow and limited, they swing in their targets like Radio Telescopes. Can be set to play over Empires, Nations, Cities or single individual lonely souls. The Air Loom can have a powerful effect on small groups, even fully change perceived reality for a single target, or can have vague less-specific effects on larger groups. 

Of course, all this is variable, these things are more craft than science, more art than craft. There are settings within settings, waves and counter-points, hidden programmes within the programmes. Everything is always being re-set, re-tasked, and they are always breaking down. The degenerate dErO all(?) fear each other and find it hard to co-operate. Their only willing servants are Chaos Goblins, who are already utterly insane, or creatures they have re-written for the purpose, making them, inevitably, either rebellious, or just a bit shit; end results of too many Violations and Air Loom choirs. 

dErO servants start to look and act quite dErO themselves after a while… They may even start having ideas. Ideas about replacing the true, real, dErO, and taking over the Air-Loom. (Could this have already happened? No, impossible.) 

 

dErO Items

Beyond Lemuria by Poke Runyon

 

Most dErO tools and  weapons are of malignant psychic kind. Many might be Air-Loom parts; either based on their technology, or just pieces dErO have ripped off and re-engineered. Some may be waste products of the Air-Looms; its not clear that ‘globs’ are meant to exist, to be either products or, or fuel for, technology, but that’s what dErO use them for. 

 

Congruity Knots

Added directly to sentient brains, Congruity Knots change minds, making them more sympathetic, and useful, to dErO uses and ideas. 

They might be a bit too useful. Escaped humanoids with partial congruity knots have exhibited dErO qualities and tried to build their own Influencing Machines. It might even be that the Knots are part of how dErO make more dErO. It is possible these ultra-humanoid escapees act now from the surface to Influence dErO culture. Is possible they Influence dErO to make greater use of Congruity Knots. They must be destroyed. More humanoids must be Knotted and sent above to destroy the ultra-humanoids. 

Conspiracy Pills

Conspiracy pills allow the user to hear the voices of the players (not the characters) as they speak round the table. Any direct acknowledgment of this results in death. THE VOICES MUST NOT HEAR YOU HEARING THEM. 

Globs

A damp, oblate spheroid of greasy nicotine, or sick egg yolk colour. A glob of condensed suffering. dErO form and harvest these, snort, inject, eat, insert them. Trade in Globs, and use them to power technology. A Glob can lie in your palm like a big marble, or quiver delectably in both hands. Any larger and the surface tension might burst. 

Globs can be as common or rare as coins, as specific as specific wines. All dErO have some Globs on them somewhere. Touching one makes mortals very sad. Eating one would kill via grief and despair. Throwing them like grenades can disrupt, and sometimes kill and injure foes (psychically, though they could always fall off a wall while experiencing a dark night of the soul.) 

Great Glass Elevators

dErO reach the surface, (surfaces?), in these. The ‘glass’ is horribly pitted and stained to a greased opacity. Like great tubes or shafts, but where they go, and how, is hard to see. Some plunge into the stone, but in vast dErO caves they rise into the dark and dingy air, their paths warping, waving and twisting like melted corkscrew straws. Where are they going? Where do they come out? The dErO bring people back down these stained shafts; often very normal people. They even send some back up – now agents for the dErO. Seeking the conspiracy. 

Hooks

Nothing special. Like any good Knotsman, the dErO just like grabbing and hurting people. Hooks are good for this and that is where the dErO get theirs; bought, bartered or just taken from the Knotsman stores. 

Insanity Guns

Dirty, ancient tea-stained ceramic weapons, (in fact 'tea stained' pretty much defines the dErO). Once cranked up and loaded with hot Globs, they vomit adhesive veils of corrosive madness like Greek Fire. 

Kyro-Condensers

Gloomed, chundering vaguely-placental mega milkers summoning fouled Orgone energy from the crackling air and condensing it to crude-glob, later to be refined into useable Globs. Reality nearby is manic and bipolar as winds of condensing negativity drain such emotion from nearby zones in elaborate three dimensional spirals of corruptive mood-weather. 

Lighting Spears

Spark-spitting lances. Old dErO tech. Good for herding human cattle and jabbing animals. 

Moulderspheres

A kind of don’t-see-me exception-field. Looks like a huge compacted ball of dirty veils or old rags, all slowly rotting and revealing only more within. dErO forced to move between caves oft use moulderspheres, but are as likely to put them aside to chase conspirators as they are to flee from them if frightened. 

Revelation Engines

Truth-devouring hyper-computers, (now much altered by dErO tech). Engines made to unearth secrets and discover lies. Their use is addictive and corruptive. Displacement in the Logosphere forces the user to create secret plans and hidden structures of power. Meaning more secrets result after use than existed before. Using a Revelation Engine to analyse a Revelation Engine results in FEEDBACK LOOP. 

Suspicion Wands

Transmit suspicion through solid rock to affect unsuspecting minds. Suspicion machines sometimes backfire and infect the user with unlikely suspicions. It is impossible to know that this has happened. It is impossible to know that this has not happened. 

Thought Exploders

Deliver a blast which substantially increases operative intelligence, at the expense of increasing paranoia and conspiratorial behaviour to the same degree. Often results in the unwitting germination of ‘hidden selves’ which plot and scheme against the ‘main self’ and each other. dErO use these to gain the intelligence repair and maintain their Air-Looms and other technology, and whenever they run into a challenging problem.  

 

dErO vulnerabilities 

Resistants  

A rare proportion of moral souls are 'Resistants' with an innate or developed, resistance to dErO tech. Unfortunately, this ‘resistance’ often goes along with substantial mental damage, making ‘resistants’ seemingly chaotic, dangerous and unreliable. 

Resistants can sense the Violations and reality alterations and will try to protect and warn others. dErO-controlled systems will try to isolate and destroy them. They are often imprisoned as lunatics or live as exiles in hidden corners of the world. 

In some cases the overuse of dErO tech and Air-Loom waves provokes a natural ‘resistant’ development in the target psyche, making them not only less vulnerable to dErO tech and methods, but more and more resistant with each attempt to suborn them. 

(dErO are fascinated by, but terrified of, ‘Resistants’.) 

Some unusual beings are either immune to dErO effects, or have methods of subverting or altering them. dErO will often avoid and evade such creatures; 

·        Golem or non-sentient minds.

·        Some Paladins.

·        Chaos Goblins, and some general Goblins.

·        Aelf-Adal.

·        High-ranking angelic forms. 

 

Cowardice 

While superficially, manically, confident dErO are utter personal and physical cowards. 

If they get hurt they will shit themselves, (literally), and run, or float, away, getting to an Air Loom as quickly as possible and then wiping any memory of the encounter from the minds of those present. 

While they will resent anyone capable of hurting them, they will also fear such individuals. 

 

Betrayal and Incompetence 

dErO betray each other, (if there is really more than one), constantly and their unstable patchwork technology fails unpredictably. Neither can all of the interlayered realities, or the whole of the Veins, be fully covered by Air-Looms all of the time. Coverage fluctuates, and often drops out at the worst possible time for a particular dErO. 

If dErO 'coverage' goes down (their local Air Looms have broken or shut down), tell the truth to all the players and PCs - at least about what they can see, what they can think about, and any evidence that might lead them to the dErO. Even admit you were lying before - "I was probably under Dero control" 

If dErO 'coverage' is returned (the Air Loom goes back on, or another is tasked), begin lying again, and acknowledge no difference in what you said before and are saying now (except to any Resistant PC’s).

 

Staffing Issues 

dErO are singular. They don’t like each other. Their only servants are mortal souls who have been specifically Congruity Knotted, Violated and re-written to be so. The dErO cannot make anything, they can only make things worse. Anyone they have ‘worked over’ for a long period of time, will have adopted many dErO characteristics, especially a tendency to power-hunger, conspiracy and betrayal. 

So, in a sense, the dErO have no ‘loyal’ and competent servants Its one or the other, and usually not much of either. 

The only other beings who will willingly spend time around the dErO, are the Chaos Goblins, who are utterly mental and don’t care about anything.

 

 

dErO Encounters 

They do not like to leave the Caves. It’s more likely they will send out dErO-ified servants and Chaos Goblins to do things, especially to investigate the numerous, complex, multileveled, and perhaps.. singular, (is it all just one great scheme?) conspiracies against them. 

But they do need to leave sometimes. 

 

Travel Methods 

Some travel in closed howdahs or huge sedan chairs carried by chaos goblins. The goblins are not really 'carrying' the chair, which is actually a Mouldersphere with sticks sticking out. Instead the dErO antigrav carries the weight and the Chaos Goblins hands are glued or nailed, to the arms of the ‘chair’ . (There might be a dead goblin or two being carried along). The orb can move by itself, the sticks are attached to the orb, and the goblins attached to the sticks, as camouflage. 

Others go on their own, on foot, if poor. All that really matters is that they have 'coverage' from an Air-Loom - if they do, they will not even be perceived, but might fall prey to mindless foes. If they need aid they may use their mental technology or Violations to compel others to assist them. 

 

Coverage 

if a dErO can afford it or is powerful enough, (and they usually won't travel without it), they will be tracked in their movements by an air-loom operated by another dErO (if there is another dErO). 

This can make the experiential reality of all sentient things in the right area broadly whatever the operator wants them to be. So - usually locals won't even perceive the dErO, at all, they are invisible in a way more powerful than the spell Invisibility can provide, sentient minds will work themselves to excuse explain or ignore away any evidence of the dErO’s presence. 

Or the dErO’s procession can appear as nearly anything else; a high status Knotsmen, an Aelf-Adal procession (which none would dare to fuck with), some unknown hyper-predator moving through the volume, or simply a deep sense of formless terror. 

Unfortunately (or fortunately), - dErO are nasty, lazy, don't like each other , betray each other and fuck things up. (Assuming there are multiple dErO). The machine may go wrong, or service cut out, or a deliberate mistake! 

Suddenly the nature of reality shifts again. What you believed ten seconds ago, that there was a 'cave dragon' or something moving, or that you saw a Terror-Lord palanquin, or that someone told you or you learned, why did you think that? you can't imagine why... 

Theres a bunch of chaos goblins hopping and a huge mouldering half-sphere. Are those rags? Or rips and tears in something else? 

 

 

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Opal-Winged Chiropterae - VotE Remastered Development

Wraiths with opal wings. Messengers, dipolmats and chatterers. Navigators of realities. Hunters, predators. Gas-addicts and maximal guano-pollutors. The Bat-Men, or Opal Winged Chiropterae. Subtle, vulnerable, savage and discursive creatures.

The White-Winged Bat-Men hunt the grand vaults of the Veins; supermassive chasms or oceanic holes in the stone. Think the Grand Canyon, with a roof. Only here can their inherent advantage of natural flight be exploited to the full. If brought to ground, or confined above, they are slight creatures, their slender wingfingers simple to snap, and when that happens its over for a Chiropterae, dying by their own hand, or ritually un-personed and extinguished by their kin.

When Opal-Winged Chiropterae hunt for food, they focus first on small, airborne prey, which they catch in-flight. With ground animals they focus on smaller creatures which can bring down in a group and cut to pieces before winging away with the nutritious bits. A second tactic is to parasitise titanic beasts, creatures large enough for the Chiropterae to nestle into, latching to their flanks in groups, subtly sucking the Titans blood while it carries them along.

They rarely hunt anything man-sized and simple combat encounters with the Chiropterae are rare; they are more likely to descend in on travellers in packs demanding newspapers, but they do happen. Chiropterae may be starving from one of their transversal migrations, might be carrying out some complex black-operation, could be criminals exiled from their Cauldron, or low-status males acting outside cultural norms.

The Chiropterae hunt Olm, and are hunted in return, for the peoples loathe each other, though they find it hard to actually get at one another, each occupying realms near-intangible to the other, the one water, the other, air.

A (Rare) Feral Chiropterean Attack

Wind on wings. Shifts in the piling mass of air above. The gentle taps of phalange-tips meeting as wings beat. A little keening. Up in the far reaches of the lanterns light; flitting glimpses of a white-winged bat. It’s not small, just far away. Focus closer on that momentary glimpse; it carries javelins in its gnarled dexterous feet. It may be wearing spectacles. Is that a pipe?

Smithsonian

Dropping Scorpions, Dousing Lights

Chiropterae can see, though not exceptionally well. In darkness they echolocate. If they hunt a sighted group, the Chiropterae will begin combat by flinging Scorpions amongst their foe, making sure they are seen before the lights go out, to ensure the greatest confusion. Then they shit on lanterns from above, squirting Alkali guano from a great hight, with surprising accuracy.

The Bone Flutes Play

From their perspective, sound is a form of sight, and their magic is all done by a musician/hunter class, who play their ultrasonic spells through pipes of slender bone. (Often made by the femurs of Olm). A Chiropterean Piper will need to perch or land to cast a complex spell, making them the only member of their group not a-wing, (and therefore easier to target).

A Piper can only cast a single effect at a time;

Hyperborean-Owl

Creates the vivid sense that in the air above the targets, of a gigantic, even demonic, prehistoric Owl. Though most targets are not especially afraid of Owls, Chiropterae are, and this fear will communicate itself to their targets in a rough equivalence to the spell 'Fear'. This will drive off and scatter any beasts of burden, uncertain allies, or weak group members.

False Wall

Creates the tactile illusion of a stone wall which cuts off roughly a third of the battlefield. This can divide groups or bottle them in. If perceived by the eyes, the illusion disappears.

Hail Spears.

A rain of spears over the battlefield. Not especially accurate but can sometimes kill, and supress groups if not. This effect works only in the dark, if perceived by sight, it disappears.

Shatter

If concentrated upon a single, drawn weapon which is exposed to the air, and is made of a brittle material, over two rounds this will shatter that weapon. The vibrations in the blade build over the first round and if the weapons is stowed, dampened, or otherwise hidden, the effect will end.

Armour of Smoke, Knives like Leaves

Rick the Demogorgon

Hunting Chiropterae are armoured in marvellous kind. Like no other craft known below, this armour is made from the lightest substances imaginable; from spiderwebs linked by mist, or feathers bound by smoke*. This armour is always fitted to the Bat in question. It can be removed and crudely adapted to some uses, but it will not fit a non-Bat frame.

Once the foe are divided and demoralised, the Chiropterae will use their flight and mobility to focus on one target after another, beginning with spellcasters, healers or the most vulnerable. They hurl light javelins from the air. But each Chiropterae only has one or two of these, and a hit is not guaranteed.

If they think they have downed or suppressed a target, they will descend to finish the job with flint and obsidian blades of incredible sharpness, slenderness and workmanship. As sharp as scalpels and nearly as light as paper, they are honed and polished till the light, (if there were any), glows through them like leaves. With these they descend to earth and, hopping closer, try to cut the throat, or to hamstring or finish prey

Vulnerable

Chiropterae are about the size of twelve year-olds, with slender limbs. They have only wings and dexterous feet, with no third set of limbs. Knife-Killing is done with a foot-hand while they hop closer on the other, balancing and supporting themselves with their marvellous wings.

But they are light creatures, and their wing-bones are horrifically vulnerable, easily snapped by simple blows, after which a still-living Chiropterae will often fall into despair and kill themselves. They will no longer be considered a 'true' member of their species and may be killed on sight if they encounter a non-related Cauldron of their kin, or even by their own immediate family.

Therefore they are careful, for the careless do not live long. This attitude to risk carries over to their culture which, despite its apparent verbosity, is calculating, observant and never commits everything. The Bat-Men are no fanatics.

Their Opal Wings

The Opal Wings of the Bat-Men reflect magic and fly upon dimensional winds.

Spells fired directly at Chiropterae will usually bounce off their wings. Area-effect spells might refract, depending on their nature. Those that produce a clearly physical second order effect, (i.e. a blast of rock chips from a concussive spell), will usually have some result.

They are hunted for them. Olm braves claim cloaks of Opal wing, just as Chiropterae make their greatest pipes and flutes from an Olms femurs and ribs. Lords of the Aelf-Adal wear beautiful capes of layered opal wings. They wear them even in front of their Chiropterean heralds and messengers. It’s not even clear that they are trying to frighten them, that’s just how the Aelf-Adal roll.

Theory; because the wings feel extra-natural force, this allows the Chiropterae to 'fly twice', using the resistance of both ordinary air, and also whatever winds of magic may be blowing in the local zone.

Their opal wings protect them from abyssal and aberrant effects, from the winds of chaos and the storms of heaven, from demonic glance and magicians orb. By these they fly the winds empyric, heralds of strangeness and woe that pass between real and unreal realms. Near these gates they roost their Cauldrons; protected by the gift of flight, but also because most creatures from both sides of such marginal zones can't live there - the emissions and reality of one place being lethal to the creatures of the other, except for the bats, who hang happily wrapped in opal cloaks, dwellers in polluted zones.

Roosts

Scientific American Vampire Bats

High up in the stone sky hang the lamplit multicoloured tents of the Chiropterean Cauldron. Wreathed in smoke they are, and surrounded by spiderwebs. The greatest hang the lowest and irritate their kin with the smoke which rises upward from their pipes. Nearby may be a hell-gate, or something similar. The Bats always know where they are.

Not that you will have much time to look, as, right under the roost, you will be up to your knees, maybe even your waist, in brutal acrid alkali batshit. The wet layers sticking to you, the composted underlayer sending up puffs of horrifically infectious dust and spores, the whole thing riddled with violent myconids and poisonous scorpions.

Guano Pollution

'The gift of life', as the Bat-Men would put it, and also the gift of polluting runoff, as many others would.

Fertiliser is rare in the Veins and many Coagulations (Townships and Villages), benefit from regular access to batshit, which fuels their fungal farms. On this basis the Chiropterae regard themselves as gift-givers, bringers of life, and make their guano deposition part of their negotiations for roosting rights in volumes near Coagulations and farms.

Yet the Veins are curiously environmentalist. At least, cultures tend to loathe 'mess' and adulteration. Active weather underground is rare and environmental systems are closely interrelated. It’s a zero-sum kind of place. What is left behind remains in place - not washed or worn away. If it is washed away, the river-dwellers and water-drinkers will soon know about it. Which usually means the Olm.

The Chiropterae themselves are eternal migrants, only staying in one roost for a certain time before the Cauldron moves on. Or, in the opinion of the Olm, until they have totally fucked up the local volume with Guano and Smoke emissions, making it un-liveable, when they then escape into holes in the air.

Web Dogs

The Bats have a cultivated relationship with specialised semi-tame, co-evolved spiderkin. The Web-Dogs build fences, or gardens, of web on the cavern roof around the Cauldrons Roost. There is no 'way in', the Bats fly in and out and the webs exist to stop, or impede, spider-climbing roof-raiders from clambering inverse and upside-down to invade and murder the otherwise ill-defended bats. Successfully performing such a raid can catapult an Olm into high status within their tribe.

The Web Dogs are fed directly by the Bats and feed also on the insects which rise from the Guano pile below. Each settlements sub-species is a bit different; they are often altered and mutated by the energies of strange realities which the Chiropterae fly through and over in their great migrations, carrying the next generation of Web Dogs as eggs in their armpits. Some may be a little bit intelligent, others a little demonic, or a little whatever.

(Feral populations of Web-Dogs left behind by the Cauldron as they migrate are another reason the Chiropterae are despised by many. Of course the Bat-Men only carry eggs between realms. They have to travel light.)

Cauldron and Moieties

They move and migrate in 'Cauldrons', extended semi-tribal mixed-kin groups made up of families and organisations. Not everyone is interrelated and a Cauldron will always be gaining and losing Bats from various places and for various reasons.

The Cauldrons hang together in 'Roosts', and not every bat in a Roost is always part of the Cauldron. Smaller visiting groups, traders, travellers, male kin-bands, perhaps wreaca or outlaws. There is always a degree of deniability as to who is or is not present and who is responsible for what, for reasons we shall see.

Cauldrons are governed by twin Moieties; Talkers and Movers, or we might say, Diplomats and Navigators. Talkers are the high-status public face of Chiropterae society and are what most think of when someone talks about the Bat-Men. Civilised, chatty, spectacle-wearing, multi-lingual, Pipe-Smoking, (possibly gas addicted), ambassadors, messengers, translators, occasional traders, middle-men and cosmopolitans. These are the bats that have their tents at the lowest part of the roost, right in the middle. (Their pungent pipe smoke rises up and makes their inferiors cough, and their pipe music drowns out the others).

The Movers are Navigators of realities. For the Chiropterae live on the boundaries of the Real, and migrate through the tears and gateways between realms, ghosting over burning cities, elysian fields and impossible arcologies alike. The Veins are one of many places that they dwell. The Movers are taciturn, intelligent and obsessed with maintaining the Chiropteraes' complex multi-dimensional maps of stacked and shifting realities, these things maintained largely as an intensive oral culture, with tools and "maps" so strange, abstruse and dependant on context that most would take them for art-pieces or decoration.

Quiet as they are, once a Cauldron reaches its Roost, and settles in, the 'Movers' fade into the background, recovering, learning what they can from pilgrims and travellers, and planning the next great migration. When the Cauldron does move, it will be they, and not the Talkers, who decide who lives and dies.

There are lesser informal groupings. Most Bats have some skill with gathering, hunting and Pipe-Music Spellcraft, but these, though utterly vital, are low-status occupations and older Bats who specialise in them and teach others will only ever be a low professional class. Likewise there are specialised traders and various clades of medium to high status long-distance messengers, as well as bands of young males, and 'Wreaca', outsider Bats who may be one thing or another.

A Roost will usually hang around long enough for a new generation of Bats to 'get their wings'; be capable of the next long-distance transversal migration under their own power. (While mother Bats can fly a little with small children attached, trying a long distance flight like this, or while heavily pregnant, would kill mother and young together.) Some Roosts, often those near major Coagulations, or substantial Lords, who must be served, are semi-permanent, though these Super-Roosts usually hold two or more Cauldrons, each of which is in a different stage of preparation to move on, and which will be replaced when they do.

Civilised Encounters

Civilised Bat by poordogfarm from etsy

Vulnerable as they are, Chiropterae prefer to meet others in Coagulations, under the protection of some Lord, (Knotsmen, Aelf-Adal or Deep Janeen, all reliable in their own way). In the wilds they will carefully scout and observe before making contact. They cannot risk their wings. And their wings are much desired.

Once they have confidence in their safety, they are utterly civilised, verbose, cultured and mildly eldritch creatures. (Of course, the 'face' of Chiropterae society is the 'Talkers', which is who PC's are likely to be speaking to.) They love to chat, smoke, exchange news and gossip, complain about Olm, inquire, snoop etc.

The Chiropterae travel light and carry messages. Their reliability as a long-distance, (sometimes very long distance, for the right price they can sometimes carry messages to the dead, or to beings from other realities), messengers is absolute. Their prices are high, their discretion total. They may blather overmuch but they do not read or ever disclose the content of their bestowed messages.

(In fact the highest ranked Talker will read all the messages they can, but to be fair, almost never actually uses this knowledge for anything other than to very gently strategically locate their Cauldron in positions of relative safety and security between major power groups, and perhaps if there was some great threat to the whole Chiropterean race. So it’s not like they really read the messages, only that the messages may have been read.)

Sometimes the Bat-Men must transit the 'low ways'; the 'normal' paths of the Veins outside or between the Great Chasms; low-roofed, complex caves where flight is a danger. In this case they will pay well for reliable mercenary guides and protectors. (And will relentlessly avenge any betrayal by such protectors.) When the great spaces are reached once again, the Bat simply flies away, with a promise of payment in credit with a nearby Knotesman, Soft-Head or a Deep Janeens Vizier.

Their credit is always good and payment will be waiting. The financial promises and exactitude of the Bat-Men are well known. They maintain financial flows within the Veins, and beyond, and form the informational sub-strata of its economy.

Gas Addicts

Terminal smokers and low-key depraved gas addicts, the Bat-Men cannot say no to a strange inhalation. Or the Talker class can't at least. Being light, winged creatures who must fly unspeakably long distances, this addiction to smoking is incredibly, unbelievably, bad for them and utterly ruins their lungs. (It also generally pisses off Veins residents as moving without a trace is a polite cultural norm and reasonable method of self protection, while the Bat-Men flap about leaving stinking smoke behind them.)

The (very tragic, but continual), deaths from the combination of smoking, inhaling things they shouldn't, and having to fly long distance marathons, are a main form of social advancement in Chiropterean society. Gaps in the Hierarchy are always opening up.

Role-Play Guidance

Encountered either in the Great Vaults, or in a Coagulation, in which case they will be an advisor, translator, merchant or middle-man.

Civilised, cosmopolitan, high-pitched hobbits. Pipe-Smokers. May be there to deliver a message, or translate. An advisor or hanger on. Careful in the wilds. Keeps their distance.

Looking to manoeuvre some advantage from this interaction.

If the PC’s are involved in intra-planar politics, or a travellers between realities, the Chiropterae will be surprisingly well-informed about this.

Low-key, bourgeoise drug addicts, (vapours only). Racist against Olm.