Song of Audacity

 “The Condottieri Stella 

What defined them, more than any single quality was their ever-burning humanity. Strangers to fanaticism and despair, the Contottieri, or ‘Sky Corsairs’ were engaged fully in every aspect of human life. 

These were no bare-hulled mercenaries or joyless Malmukes, nor the more-human, but shaped and regulated, citizen-soldiers of a democratic polity, who might carry sharp personal hearts, yet beneath serial-numbered uniform kit. Call them pirates if you will, and some were purely that, or gangsters, of which; not a few. But they were poets, artists, creatures of business (all), technicians, explorers, adventurers, lovers, highly aggressive assault troops, brave as Lions, as neurotic as cats. Cunning mercenaries all and men of Art. 

Let none say they were not principled men! Only that their principals differed, even within themselves, and were always in direct contact with an immediate material world of staggering danger and opportunity. And how else may a principal be measured, questioned, sharpened or lived with, than through, and by, holding palm-to-palm, the mutable hand of Fate?” – Francis Malledini, ‘Wars of the Centaurus Arm; the Condottieri Stella.

 

 

Models, Painting and Aesthetic 

The core idea that began this was; what if Mechwarrior wasn't fucking ugly? 

The Mechs of Mechwarrior have a battered Ford-Factory boxy midwestern aesthetic which; fine if you like that sort of thing but I have never once fantasised about getting into one, any more than I have wondered what it would be like to get into a bus. 

Added to that was my recent experience with applying decals to miniatures, for the first time, using Microset and Microsol. 

For those unfamiliar with the irregularly curved pauldrons of Space Marines - that is where the symbols go. For which; either git real good at freehand or use decals. And if you do use decals, get ready to suffer, for the decal is small and wants to lie flat, and the surface it goes on to is irregular and curved. And small. 

Various Mythradic mysteries attend this process - the secret of making very fine and small cuts around the radial edge of the decal, avoiding the symbol in its centre, the careful applications of light varnish beforehand, of clear paint solution afterwards to equalise the surface sheen, of very careful staining and weathering to help disguise seams and failures, (without also obscuring the symbol on the decal itself of course). Such labyrinths of near-alchemical fury. 

All, or most, of these were abraded, and in some cases, vanished, by careful applications of micro-set, (which prepares the surface and allows the decal to 'melt' onto it). and Micro-sol, (which does more forcible mutual adhering later). Suddenly my transfers were going on easy, and they looked good! 

This lead me to a thought; what if you designed, or brought into being, a model line, specifically based around the use of decals. The models, and the background, would all be designed for transfers to be applied. 

What transfers though? 

My mind turned immediately to the High Middle Ages/early Modern period. To the Italian Wars, and to the glories of pattern-on-pattern-in-pattern heraldry. Of stripes and stars, heraldic beasts, coats of arms, cheques, dags, trinary hanging ballsacks and geese-rampant, and also a little of the Formula-One ultra-capitalised high-speed racer, their car blazoned with signs and adverts, of that one boxer who took money from a sponsor to have their branding on the bottom of his shoes, so they would be photographed if he was knocked out, and somewhat of Games Workshops post-future heraldry where the iconography of trans-stellar hyper-corps and meta-states melts into a dream of symbols. 

Above all I dreamed of actually-attractive mechs, things designed by Italians rather than by Midwesterners; absolutely slathered in bright, confident, blazing heraldry, of bobbaunce and a vision of outgoing prideful masculinity taken from before the Great Renunciation and the democratic business jacket. 

These machines would be battered and weathered by war, but their flags and pennants would flutter proudly, even if they have to be made of electrostatic material to make them fly when there is no wind, or no air. 

The patterns, signs and symbols on a mechs chassis would be the record of its actions, of allegiances so old the current pilot doesn't know them, of contracts taken, deeds done, of heroism and shame. As in heraldry, each sign or pattern would have some meaning, either obvious or hidden. 

And all of this to be personal; no uniforms, no regulation, instead a culture of fantastic mercenaries, perhaps banding together in 'Companies' long enough to wear similar heraldry, or at least wearing the sign of their current company, but perhaps moving on from that, fighting alone or in loose associations of 'free lances'. 

Mercenaries, but not without honour. That takes us back to the Condottieri Stella.

Tomy Zoids Zeeva Zevle battle vehicle ostrich type NIB 1992

 

The ‘Cultures’ 

Don't call them 'Empires', they wouldn't like that. Think of them as tendencies, or smears of interstellar power. Each powerful enough, in its own way, to provide a sincere threat to the others, and each also desperately vulnerable. 

The Cultures are what might be called transhuman. At least for any that once were human, they are no longer so. Others may be alien, though it’s hard to tell for all seem alien now. Cybernetic hive minds, thinking world-spanning biological substrate, carefully genetically engineered Brave New World Climax Societies, perhaps mildly extra-causal semi-sublimed polities, extradimensional half-gods, swarms. 

None of the 'Cultures' are 'evil', at least in the Warhammer sense. At least no more evil than any other Empire. Sure they might have done a war crime here and there but that is in the past. Nor will they compulsively eat your brain, or turn you into one of them. Though they may make some strong arguments that you should join. They can negotiate. They pay well. 

They have reason to fear each other for each Culture is so different that the magisterium of the others makes them a potential strong, strange and unpredictable threat. Probably the galaxy belongs to one of them but none are eager to start the world-burning  hyperwar that might complete that praxis. They are old. They are maybe a bit too comfortable. They are willing to wait. 

But the Centaurus Arm remains unclaimed, and it is home to strange wonders, secret histories and relics of forgotten time, to the residue of ancient climax-species and the mathematics of unknown philosophies, and the wild evolved residuum of their existence, not to mention all the extremely valuable basic resources that any 'Culture' needs; water, heavy metals, rare materials and so on. 

Each Culture would quite like the Centaurus Arm. They each edge closer, unwilling to commit, fearing the apocalypse. Far from here, across arms of the galaxy, each faces the other, quietly, across a hundred thousand minor volumes. No-one wants it to all kick off. Even the big computers can't predict how it might end. 

Hence; proxies. Fractured tribes of tech-denying humans are moving through the Centaurus Arm at a glacially slow pace, aboard massive generation ships and hollowed out moons jammed with crude fusion drives. They are even fighting each other occasionally, and they have a particular ritualised form of warfare which limits the long-term damage of their conflicts. They don't use nukes, complex A.I. or bioweapons, let alone ontological or reality-scarring weaponry. It’s basically monkeys fistfighting each other in crude machines. 

So use them, employ the humans to stake claims, gain resources, control paths and vectors. They are a deniable, (though everyone knows everyone else is doing it), cats-paw, and they respond well to payment in gold, (as well as other resources). You can buy them off with minor toys. They even set up complex social and economic organisations to arrange their own exploitation! You don't even need to send in agents to hire this or that warband or kin group, instead they self-organise into 'Companies' and even pitch for 'Contracts'! You can just pull them off the shelf. 

From the perspective of the 'Cultures' this has only been going on for half a millennia, so early days yet. As the humans see it, their whole sprawling culture has adapted to one of mercenary service, and many Companies and Capitanos, have grown ridiculously wealthy doing it. Some have even become rulers of moons. This has shaped the whole of human culture into one where the flaws and virtues of the crafty mercenary philosopher king are the dominant ethos of the whole race. In a way they are all Condottieri Stella now, for, though they don't always wield institutional power, these are the heroes and leaders of Man.

 

Moebus I think

 

Humanity and Humanism 

Neither bigots nor fanatics, but not necessarily 'good'. Who are they? They spend their money on libraries and art, on music and display; the culture of the Condottieri Stella is a savage high culture, not a milky democratic one. Pride anneals all, the pride of men and women ready to risk their lives, and combined with this; a love of all that is human; of love, friendship, loyalty and affection, and of human culture and human lives. 

I see them like Renaissance Princes, or at least, aiming to become such; gold gathered from the battlefield spent in the courts of man, owners of libraries, sponsors of artists, of painters, sculptors, musicians, engineers, where the sponsorship of technical art and useful science, goes alongside with that of the fine arts, where corporate power is unsteady, due to the chaos of war and vast distances involved, where the power of science and technology is likewise, potent, but shattered and hard to scale.

In part because the culture of the Condottieri Stella refuses full submission to the machine, in other, the irregular supply of strange resources. In part because the Cultures, the likely-alien backers of the Condottieri, for whom they fight their proxy wars, specifically don't want them to progress past the singularity; that might transform them into a possible competitor, such a powerful agent would require an equivalent response from an opposing 'Culture', which would quickly spiral the Centaurus Arm into the destructive and unpredictable hyperwar the 'Cultures' were trying to avoid. 

So Humanity remains, retained as a useful and limited tool by the Cultures, and by the deliberate refusal of the Condottieri, and their specific orientation of their own piratical high culture around the products of unaltered humanity. 

Since the Condottieri Stella are the highest-status figures in their own societies, and since they are a source of irregular funding, resources, and of martial interest, they shape the ethos of those cultures. 

That the Condottieri Stella have no single fanatical goal, or single grand opposition which justifies and unites them, does not mean they do not have ideals, or dreams of past and future, or questions about the meaning of their lives. 

They have lots of ideas, they throng with them, for a Condottieri Stella is also, as well as being a mercenary, a bandit, a captain, a C.E.O., a Patron of arts, a friend and ally to some and foe to others, is also a philosopher, or at least they read philosophy. They may have written books, or at least hired others to do so. 

While other wargames might dispose the profits of a successful campaign into materiél, or raw status, the Captain of a Condottieri Stella Company, leaves behind them, a trail of books, paintings, sculptures, performances, music, films and poetry, a kind of living library which serves to represent them, their company, and their ethos or philosophy. 

True some Captains might be interested only in propaganda, in forms and stories sufficient to push up their payments and burnish their reputations, but as others would point out, this also is an ethos, though it does not call itself such. 

Others; many, have dreams; ideas about what humanity is or should be, of mans relation to the immensity of time, of the Cultures, of the Centaurus Arm, of God and sorrow. Some are tragic, some positive, some empirical, others abstract. Some tell their story in the blazing of pennants, others speak like funerals, guarding their poems and philosophy like grieving turtles. 

What matters is that their ideas are human and that they have them, and that they matter. Fighters argue over these things, they might even come to blows. Friends might be divided by philosophy, or art, while long-time foes might find themselves united by a common theme, a mutual appreciation of the meaning of a life, or by love for an aesthetic, though they must battle none the less. 

That these are battles of ideas does not mean they are battles of extinction, but arguments via arms. Always the Man has the Idea, not the other way round. Always there is consideration, mulling over of concepts or ideals, thoughts of process and precedence, of final ends against current means. Always questions of virtue and expediency, honour and survival. The very wrestling with these questions is the animating spirit of the game. Two Capitano's might battle on the field of war, then agree in the opera house, two co-philosophers could end a battle with a chess game, or a debate. You might be able to talk them out of it. A man might weep for his enemy and deride his friend. 

What I describe here is an annealing of a culture of deep humanism with one of controlled and ritualised violence. The personal, political, religious and ideal interwoven through the core human experience sharpened and made vivid by the extremity of war, of life and death. 

That such figures care about money is no confirmation of hypocrisy, for money is never, or rarely, all they care about. Always they balance the needs of the day against those of the morrow, the passions of the ideal against survival. A miser might fight to bitter ends if well-resourced and rightly motivated, while an honour-bound hero might retreat, thinking only of the survival of their company and soldiers, unwilling to expend their lives, this time, in too straight and narrow a combat. 

The intermixing and continual balancing of complex multi-layered motivations does not corrode the ideal or produce a scene of gold-gathering hypocrites, but exposes and enlightens humanity by placing controversies of the ideal in the only place they ever really exist; in the hands and hearts of living souls, bound by material condition and limited circumstance. 

In the world-view of this game, high ideals in the hands of those who have only such ideals, who are driven only and entirely by the ideal, are worthless, and would be seen, (by the characters in this game at least*), as a moronic bashing together of toys. 

To risk a final glorious charge, in order to stand by a principal, or hold to ones honour, might be very glorious, but if that charge risks the whole life and future of a company, where then does virtue lie? In standing by principal, or taking a practical path, for the lives one wagers with are not one’s own. Sane people may disagree on this, and even souls disagree within themselves, and that is the kind of choice and turmoil that Song of Audacity is made to express, for the turning over of virtues and deciding of fates, not just once, but over time and long campaigns, and the interweaving of the wisdom of the moment with the wisdom of time, that whole process, is the humanism I am talking about. 

It's not interesting if they are shit people. They might be 'bad'; manipulative, acquisitive, back-stabbing, but such a character can be 'good', to those they ride with; a provider of futures, a shaper of fates, and a magnificent patron of arts which may burn through time, (think the Borgias). Likewise a soul may be craven, calculating, willing to retreat, but should never be a coward exactly, for in this careful weighing of the moment against the future, they preserve not only themselves but their Company, their companies families and futures, as well as the wishes of their patrons.

 

ELF 2 500 1984

 

The Game Itself 

A 28mm wargame based around mechs, and maybe a handful of troops. No more than 30 models per side. The high-status leaders are always in the best mechs. These would be scaled at about the size of the Imperial Sentinel, with some a little bigger and some a little smaller. 

There are only humans in this game and they are always fighting each other for money. This is explicitly a game of contracts and resources, and the contracts are dietetically directly *from* the Cultures which have hired each side in this battle to do particular things. 

Mission objectives would be largely asymmetric and blind. Each side might be there to do a quite different particular thing, and wouldn't immediately know what the other side was there to do. It might be possible for both sides to win, or for both to *lose*, monetarily at least. 

A Company can 'break contract', going off the books, perhaps to escape what they see as a losing situation, or even imbued with the spirit of Ares, swearing vendetta against a rival company, though that may not have been in the contract. 

To avoid a 3rd party playing DM, this would be mediated through smartphone. You would have all your rules online, and a living list of your Company, with its current state and resources. Then you and the friend you want to fight would go to the app, sign in and confirm some rough details of the battlefield, and the app would act as each of your 'contractors', sending mission objectives to each players phone separately. At the end of each turn you would update basic details of what objectives and damage you have taken, and confirm the other players losses and objectives. There may be 'turnarounds' where, in the middle of a battle, your 'Contractor' suddenly changes what they want you to do, and why, perhaps offering increased payment for certain goals. 

The record of your Company would be held online and if people wanted to team up together in larger narrative battles, you could scan each others phones to join an alliance for the day. 

As in Necromunda and Mordheim, the presence of cash earned from battles, and of damage taken, troops lost, repairs made, alliances broken or stood by, disasters, successes, friends and enemies, would make the 'Company' a character of its own. 

The cash sponge that stops super-successful Companies from running away with everything is the funding of arts, artists, libraries, philosophies, music, culture, technology, etc etc. Naturally as a Capitano becomes more and more respected, they become more like a Prince, and as a Prince, they lead not just a warband but a collection of aesthetics and ideas, leaving their print on human culture across the Centaurus Arm. This 'Cultural Victory' effect is the true status symbol for Captain and Player alike; those who are most successful and leave the greatest mark are written into the official history of the game, their aesthetic and ideas becoming a strand of humanities great over-culture, which others may align with, copy or defy in the future.

 

Andrew Stewart Jamieson

 

The Modelling and Roleplaying 

You would have to do this yourself, off the books, but as the game manufacturer, False Machine would sell transfers and symbols for various Contractors, tendencies, alliances, battlefields, achievements, ideas, principals etc, and you would be able to apply these to your mechs to show where they have fought, what for and why. 

Or you could just assemble your mechs and decal them with whatever you think best, and base your Companies philosophy and history on that. 

The subtlety of owning and developing your philosophy is likely too complex for Wargame mechanics, we would have to rely on gamers to think about them and roleplay them, (we could include it in the RPG). The game could provide potential reading lists for people beginning their philosophy.

 

Kallamity 135 scale HDM-07 BRIEGEL I master, 2005

 

Mech Design 

Anything, just not ugly, and it must have wide flat surfaces for decals. 

I dream of mechs influenced by, designers like Kallamity. (But not copying; Kallamaty’s designs are precisely arranged for the scale they are at), and also by early race cars, the more vibrant end of the Japanese robot market, mixed with the neo-industrial style of 40K, especially the Ad Mech, Imperial Guard and, Tau and of course, Knights. 

No antigrav, and a healthy dose of anthropomorphism. 

Kitbashing would be fine and dandy I think. We could even start of selling 3d printed kits to alter or amend GW kits and other into something more ‘Song of Audacity’ 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

* I am not against this in other fictions but it is specifically not what this one is about.

 

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? 

 

 

FALSE MACHINE PRICE DROP!

 For all of Q2 of 2025 at least;

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)

https://falseparcels.bigcartel.com/

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

https://falseparcels.bigcartel.com/