Week 5 was a wild week, coming off The Onus in Week 4. My sense of 'television station' has blurred and my focus became decidedly on the creatures and mechanisms, rather than the -game-. I will correct for this in subsequent weeks, and saying so now.
Obviously all this can be adjusted for in subsquent drafts but the more, better work I do upfront now, the less I will shy from the process of return.
Too, obviously, we are in the Z-wave of completers of this particular marathon, but who knows, I've been known to play catch-up. Most important is simply to round out everything appropriately and to walk the same race as the others.
I'd also like to post a 'Project Page' to organize the various elements in a different way than reverse chronologically, which is intimidating for me when I land on others' blogs; wagering its the same for those others when they come here.
Regardless: the week.
- items
- encounterable creatures / sentient elements
- relationships with other rooms in the building
- traps & triggers & dmgy things
- trouble for me
- major story arcs
•
LEVEL 2 GENERAL NOTES & A MAJOR STORY POINT FOR THE FLOOR —
This guy will show up in 2/25:
Thex Pe'Chan, Whose Brain Was Dispersed to Level 1 - arms cast out in front of it like it were in penitence, the huge body of what could be human only too large and not of flesh is bent in a locked and permanent position of supplication before an idol, a small, round cherubic and nude man with a smirk of contentment, permanently setting its smile to wry, as if the enforced worship tickled him to no end.
Huge cubes of gleaming metal the thickness of railroad ties each are paired and locked by an unseeable mechanism on wrist and ankle apiece, and the drool falling from the prisoner's mouth audibly hits the carpeted floor, along with a residual, resonant unhh which it lets out, as if periodically calling for help, but having been doing it for so long as to've lost the punch of any consonant.
Two small holes have been drilled behind its ears and the faint dust of what had been inside its skull rest on its shoulders—its clothes are tattered and unearthly, once a deep purple, but eaten through by scavengers to leave its glistening grey body—slack, weak, huge in disuse—exposed to be touched, kicked or comforted. Thex Pe'Chan, the betrayer, whose brain has been scattered so it could never plot again and whose body has been trapped so it will never love, either.
The image of the Ascendant Soiya is a candle that was to be lit, that is lit in front of any prisoner of the Tall King's prisons, whose sputtering-through-its-wax is equivalent to sand in a timer; that when melted through to its final inches, signals the prisoners release.
But Thex Pe'Chan's candle was never lit.
•
2/1 THE BUOYANCE IS A GREAT BIG MELTING MACHINE — Sat and sketched The Buoyance, whose massive bulk fills the common space made by the demolition of a wall between two offices. Both entry doors have been maintained, but are rimed with aflx, the byproduct of the great machine's manufacture.
Much the appearance of a knight's helm and visor, The Buoyance is suspended from the ceiling and propped from the floor both so that the incredible heat coming off its massive metal underbelly doesn't torch its way down to the third floor. Several smaller exhaust pipes dribble aflx in liquid form into an angled trough that lets them slide down to where they've piled and are carted off using the wheelbarrows left and propped mostly against the wall.
Notes on the Day:
Two prongs of questions immediately arise:
- if aflx is a by-product of manufacture, what is the -product-;
- who is it for;
- who is making it.
- what is the fuel for such a machine,
- where does the aflx go,
- and what does it do.
Again, if we consider this level, rather than an entry-level point for adventures and instead the lowest space in a small kingdom's purview, the presence of this place as a mine's furnace or smelter has some logic. Deep down (though actually high-up) underworlders have access to certain elements that deeper underground they wouldn't—water, lighter particulate (calciums, salts, life-matter).
The gridslop farm in 2/8 provides the alien nutrition necessary to make glass as pliant as shrink wrap in extreme temperatures and under incredible force. This near the coast, the saline in the sand engorges those pulpy worms, which are then harvested and kept in casks, dried, not far from here—perhaps a heat-proof area near here [2/7] and then in 2/10 in much more significant quantities.
As to the who...
•
2/2 MEET THE TREKNIDS — Of a wavey consistency when abed (small ovuloid coves heat-blown into the plaster and sand hold dozens of these little guys), treknids are quite active in their off-time. There is a storytelling every third hour where one of the elders tells the quiet story of how they came to be. An important ritual as over the next three hours they will feed, mate, work, split, and perish.
The hell? Split? When treknids go to 'work' The Buoyance, reaching such ferocious heats causes them to replicate, growing a black nodular tumescence not unlike an edamame pod that eventually grows from what I suppose you and I would call the shoulder and the hip (though the treknids have neither, shaped as they are a bit like an elongated turnip). They also fly.
Of ur-glass, two-ply windows dot the wall between hallway and treknid living quarters, with hundreds of the flying creatures constantly at them focused intently on thin tubes punched into the interior pane. Trapped in these 'windows' (actually feeder sacs or 'schvineskins' more locally)—the ur-glass proves its miraculous ability to trap gas at incredible density, remaining vastly more pliant than glass-glass, almost like sheet-liquid in appearance, with constant, minute contractions and expansions. These schvineskins hold -a huge volume- of pure helium which the hundreds of quick-lived and high-voiced treknids have fed on via one-way valves they call 'stro' ('pass me the stro'). Each little worker takes in ten dentists worth of the gas, before going into The Buoyance to do their valorous duty, 'working' (throwing themselves onto the fire), splitting, and returning anew to suck up more helium as a fresh version of themself.
The storyteller though?
•
2/3 THE VERANDA WHERE THE STORYTELLER TELLS ABOUT THE FOUR POTS AND THE GOD WHO DOESN'T SPEAK — A long vacant corridor runs along two tremendous panes of glass, leaving behind the living quarters towards a bend, away from a veranda.
The hallway is noteable for being splintered by the huge black bulk of a sparkling mineral deposit. Its stone is wildly foreign to abovegrounders and its strata reflect light with the myriad twinkle of mica. Some dry micro-crab infest.
As for the veranda, angled plates give its roof a touch of the carnival tent, green and white, which must be awful dark—the treknids don't need light, though have no problem with it, either. There's tons of light in 2/1 (and heat, too) but that only gets down the hall here every so often, and echoes its blue and orange glow through the ur-glass windows which each wave as if in a sea current.
It all takes the shape of an ampitheatre built for sitting and watching the sunset out a beautiful hemisphere of windows that are now drowned in dark clay. It is also, every three hours, an ampitheatre of a different kind.
The fed treknids gather around the stairwell at the veranda's center to listen to the story of their people. From the stairwell comes the incredibly frail voice of the Storyteller who speaks from the darkness the story of the four pots and the god who doesn't speak, and then, after flying up out of the stairwell at the story's conclusion, leads spectators to The Buoyance where they fling themselves into the fire, and send their new reborn selves back to the living quarters to feed, grow, and listen to the story again.
However, one treknid is taken aside. This one is told they will not work. They will go into the stairwell and they will starve and when the three-hour alarm sounds, they will wait for the other treknids to gather, and then they will tell this story of the four pots and the god who doesn't speak exactly as it was told, and then they will lead the others to The Buoyance, choosing among those they lead one who will take their place.
•
2/4 TOILETS, AGAIN — It's a joy to have what would be the least interesting room in most institutions be a place to reconnect with, to-date and in-writing, the most likely PC-inclined NPC in Tessa Horn, the glay'id from Level 1. Her passage through the tubes gets her to most bathrooms and this set on the second floor is no exception.
There's an odd spill passing from bathroom to the hallway outside, a quarter-inch thick, viscous as oil or a well-reduced balsamic vinegar and just as sweet. It's a gran ooze that has been working its way from the mineral spar at hallway's middle towards the source of water and heat for years.
Tessa won't go near it, respects it as one would a spider in the corner of the room, if she's here.
It could be bottled up though, with bold, thick-skinned hands.
Notes on the Day:
But this didn't get at any of my questions! And where is all the treasure!?
(I just needed a toilet tonight.)
•
Brief Sidenote - THE TOMB OF FLESH
Napping, I've been granted an image of the body of some enormous creature pressed against the wall of CTV9 whose side has been dug into (probably in death) and, as if passing into a cave, can be walked into by those with a good pinched nose.
It would take some draw—say the bones were caked in an inch of gold—and the thing itself would need to be massive—the buried hulk of an ancient sand-dragon whose body has been prevented from decomposition by the god that slew it, or whose friend it was—ah—perhaps, as in Viking myth, the body of a rider is actually entombed in the dragon mount that bore it into battle and across the world and through some act of mummification, the whole being and burial has been preserved.
Woh: Ohan and Bos, the Holy Hero of Bin'Irk
Pretty wild.
Let's put that pressed down against the walls on level 7.
•
2/5 INTERLUDE / CRAKES — As we crawl past the toilets and see the ooze gathering the heat from the cast-offs of The Buoyance's flames, we might also run into the wan and gental crakes who number only thirty and who tend and harvest the dark fuel that permits the crafting of the ur-glass.
The crakes are a waifish semi-humanoid species (ignoring antennae and a vestigial third-eye which is still being grown over in this current generation of the tiny clan) and actively cart shipments of the harvested material every third or fourth week. Infrequent, but they also do an occasional check on the portage between 2/9 and the dry delivered goods at the entry of The Buoyance (2/7).
PCs will likely pass by the set of risers that descend to a pair of long arched couches caked in the black soot that seems pervasive so near The Buoyance's entrance. The couches face a webwork of glass and plaster columns containing sculptures that themselves can easily be walked amongst, appearing from the hallway not unlike a wide-spaced row of baleen.
Notes from the Day: I must admit today how tired I am of this. How far off course I feel.
However:
Failed art is art that is constrained by shame.
I make these things because they are the things of my making. I intend as much as I intend. No foreign rubric holds me in a pact of any kind. I live and make because I live with the stuff I have lived. It is so simple as to seem obscenely easy. It is not. Clear living and clarity in art is, my God, riddled with discontinuity and marring. So we go on doing it, us and The Onus.
•
2/6 THE SLIZER GLASS COLLECTION — The pair of couches sit in observation of a long diagonal hall, the Slizer Glass Collection, an art thing into itself, a series of pillared display cases, untouched by denizens for how long; unlit now (though the display lights at least in form still exist).
The columns run at an odd slanting pattern down a grey-tiled floor, each holding a unique creation of one 'Dane Slizer', though only one of the brass plaques screwed into the display cases says his full name. The others all say Slizer, #3, 4, whatever. There's 11 in the collection, wobbles of glass of varied hues, bubbling with internal pocket-air
Deliberate? Sure. Someone made it. Slizer and his team. And CTV9, proud supporters of the arts supported Mr. Slizer and his efforts.
•
2/7 HEAT-PROOF STORAGE OF THE UPCOMING BATCH OF GRIDSLOP, DRIED —Beyond 2/6 is the storage space of 2/7, relatively open-air (high-ceilings). The most proximal gridslop storage to The Buoyance, a series of barrels of salvaged wood are set in racks. Yes, you could open each and get gusted by a scent not far gone from the depths of an unclean chicken house, particularly there at the western edge of the storage where the barrels are most recently dropped and still drying, but the casks (big old boys) are stacked two high in metal racks of six apiece, so you won't open all of them.
It also seems that the storage racks have been pieced together rather —haphazardly? In that there's not a clear line in the mix—some press against each other, some press down on those below them. A mess. And here's Peeresh, official storage advisor who—it's a healthy warehouse, okay?—moves back and forth between his various racks, confirming contents, shoveling his outgoing cart full of the driest, oldest gridslop (when it dries, its something like a puce flour, after he's ground it in the foot pedal grinder built from the old parts of an exercise bike).
Good old Peeresh. The PC's will no doubt surprise him, wherever he is, however he is. His claws are a bit rakish but he rubs his more dangerous points to nubs doing the work that he does. Grateful for it, is Peeresh, don't get him wrong. He has a good place to sleep in 2/21, and Kila makes him happy—a blessing she is.
He keeps busy, his old body still just glad to be serviceable after all those repairs.
•
Notes on the Week
Since this both public document and effort at creative venture, I'm allowed to admit the thrill of my first guest feature, friend and poet Joseph Spece who 'requires the macabre', and has a bouncing screensaver with the word ZUGGTMOY bouncing from corner to corner. She [ZUGGTMOY] is, in old lore, Queen of the Slimes and Oozes, which is just perfect. He said levels 5 & 6, with the possibility of a fractious mineral deposit that has -really- managed to seal away some rudimetary types would suit him. (Thus this week's black metal spear of rock through a wall)
I think we'll all let out a collective gasp as we enter May and June.
A sample of the character he ran in my train-bound campaign in 2020, for the quality and step of his prose:
Zay-Luc Dax, 31, is a mysterious figure come to small repute for his skill as a beekeeper. There is abiding bourgeois interest in harvests of the so-called ‘filigree honey,’ regarded for its rich flavour and apparent immune benefits. Filigree is scarce—only Africanized (‘killer’) bees produce it, & few raise the species. Even fewer risk the hives for produce. To date, Dax never considered marketing his stock, but is moved to play waresman after word of the Bison Massacre reached the hot scrub lands past Rustaz. He’d know details: how 100 bison manage to antagonize a train, and how well-to-do passengers debark to repel them.The rate for filigree honey is 19 gp/oz; Dax is equipped with three 32-oz jars for sale, stored securely in a drop-base sac. His contact is ‘a Parliamentary’ who has traded an audience with Dax for a few days’ secret, out-of-the-way passage. Dax boarded at a station a full day before his arranged pickup, however, paying full fare for a private (double-locked) booking so to ‘overhear the players’ anonymously for a night; his contact doesn’t know him by sight, therefore, but neither does he know the man. They are set to order mezcals mid-afternoon tomorrow.Dax will not sell for less than 30 gp/oz; he’s keen to construct a lean complex of plein-air rooms on the mesa, and employ a few of his nomad friends in the process. He is on the La Creme mainly for information, however; the marketing is, by-and-large, subterfuge.He’ll do his deal before Yonks, where he plans to engage Granier, Sr, to inquire about the massacre in person.Dax cut teeth as an adventurer in a masked posse that ran through a few dozen of Yosir’s orc-and-soldier troop in the valley of what’s now Barter-Hamm Pass. He was hunted, but found the desert quickly enough to outmaneuver Yosir’s depleted retinue. Dax recognizes he’s not fit to challenge the lieutenant, but has a druid’s long-term designs; mention of Yosir or Harrad on the train will drag his ear.Dax is 6’0,” with cropped dark hair & a visible scar on his left temple. His movements are long, balanced, and very sure, with a whiff of the predator about them—like a cat or a mantis. He is dryly charming, good-looking, & well-spoken—fit for this little intrigue. Fit, but not adjusted. He will tire of niceties and drawn-out exchanges, the meat-and-drink of these socialites, and is loath to take a planner’s position amongst the ‘big bellies.’ Nor is his estimation of what counts as ‘big bellied’ clear enough to serve him. Dax is shrewd though, and will sniff out the information he seeks, even if he must circle the carcass twice to do so.He dresses in interesting cuts that serve mobility, preferring blacks, greens, tans, whites. For this trip, it has pleased him to coat his rondel and machete in pricey matte weaponblack, on chance he might wield them—though not even he can put together a circumstance. He carries the rondel discreetly in a coat slip-pocket when walking the cars.
•
Some Inspiration Gathered Through the Week:
- The story of an Arctic or Antarctic explorer who when frozen in the pack told every other man stranded with him, he would never speak to them, only write. He did this to save his own life, because it was in his aloneness he could do things that he could not. Title: "With Others"
- A sailor, Tollefsen for whom the word 'chose' (French for thing, pronounced 'shows', roughly) he has taken to mean 'kill', suspecting his Belgian crew mates are out to kill him, are planning to—he sleeps in the freezing hold with the rats and no bedclothes or sheets, and keeps to the darker spaces of the ship as did Nantes the Cat before he died.
- mesothelioma
- "You are welcome in my home, so long as you bring cheer."
- [29.518 synodic days]
- dark colors associated with Life and light whitish colors with death, absence
- some canescent indigenous substance
- albescent warriors
- breadfruit
- syles
- thanatophilic
- papillot
- supernatural entelechy
- ptotic
- "the mythopoeic narratives very structure itself moves from initial unity to epitatic trinity to reconciliation and unity again in the falling action"
- "clothed in the bark of trees, feed on nuts, and drink water from their hands."
- the wildcatting era
- literary critic H.L. Mencken
- "I hate to see you here. Guard your health. Put in writing all your memories and notes. You and I have been in hell many times before. Hell is a cold place, but the sunshine will be better because of the darkness there when you come out." Roald Amundsen to F. Cook, imprisoned.
- Eucratites
- "It's called art, friend and the fact that it has any utility gives it even wider appeal."
- "the sleeping vanity which we all once possessed"
- a vengeful elan
- the embouchure of the treacherous Cockburn Channel
- the disappearance of the Swedish balloonist and Polar explorer S.A. Andree over the Arctic
- deictic antecdent
- prenominate
- Protasis
- adjudge
- paleolithic vs. mesolithic
- ideomatic names
- prelection
- heuristic evolution
- Coleridge - esemplasy
- putative
- the village exarchs
- catechetical school
•
Final Notes — clearly I've shifted from active consideration of actual PC's into something like storytelling. I will be correcting this, as I'm not here trying to write a story. That was largely due to becoming over-consumed with ecological features rather than interactable elements and not disguising the work of my mind in trying to understand the how of this week's particular features.
But that's what these little re-collections are good for. Understanding how to proceed!
On we go!
No comments:
Post a Comment