Shattered Realm, Shattered Tower

Tonight was the fifth session of our Everway game, and the session started with the PCs arriving in a sphere with a mysterious red and gold comet (with moving parts; perhaps an orrery?) in the night sky, as well as a full moon.

The environment was fresh, wet, flat. Green, even in the darkness, with frog and cricket sounds.

The PCs spotted a large, city-sized object in the distance, sort of a bowl below, with a dome overhead. The approach. Human figures dart out of the way, and stay evasive.

The dome is made of a purplish-white material: porcelain. The PCs find a set of gates; the knock. A gatekeeper answers the door, invites them in.

Part of the porcelain dome has cracked, and fallen into the Purple City [this is where Whiskers said he hailed from]. This disaster happened in the last day. The gatekeeper says that the city is dangerous; a rebellion against the Cat Lords is underway. Barricades have formed. Humans have rebelled against their cat masters.

The party encounters a group of rebels, and clamber over the barricades to one of their headquarters. This group of rebels is led by a bloody-handed human named Blood; this is a new name. The rebel humans have renamed themselves that day. 

The rebels have have books and scrolls that have been plundered from various wizards towers of the cats of the Purple City. There are a number of charm and illusion scrolls among the books. One text appears to be about the architecture of the city and its towers, but as Pahoeho spends time with this book, he suspects that it is a magical text about Air magic and teleportation. He later confirms that this text is also about gate magic, specifically air gates. Jumping off towers is one way to spherewalk. At one point the rebels also mention that there are winged cats in the city; some have feathery wings while other have leathery ones.

None of the locals have heard of Everway. Farming is a new concept to them. Pahoeho and Tom strongly suggest they learn how to farm. The Purple City was surrounded by deserts just a day ago, before the comet arrived. Conditions are good for farming now; the surrounding lands are lush. How did the city get food in the past, the PCs ask: from sludge grown below the city, and mushrooms and other fungi. The food is flavored with imported spices from across the desert. It is just OK.

Percy decides to use spirit magic to search for the human No Whiskers. He looks for a low Air person. There are a LOT of them around in the cats' towers. There are still cats in the city. Instead, he searches for other groups of humans who are high Air. Percy finds a group in one of the cat towers. 

The PCs go to that tower. Osbert's magical sword Demonsbane begins pointing the way to the tower - an omen of things to come. The tower gate is closed and no one within responds to Pahoeho's knocking. Tom uses his magic to summon a rebac, and plays a rebel song that stirs up the crowd to bash in the tower gate. 

Detail from "Virgin among Virgins" (1509), by Gerard David

The PCs go in, and ascend the tower. Up, up, up, to a room where a summoning ritual is underway. In the center of the ritual space is a chiming, pulsating mass from which spikes push out in all directions: a demon! Osbert charges the demon with his sword. He strikes well, but the demon is stronger: Osbert takes a wound from the demon's dark energies while his sword, Demonsbane is stuck in the demon. 

Tom uses his musical magic to disrupt the demon's song. Pahoehoe taps on the shoulder of one of the summoners to distract them and hopefully weaken the summoning. Osbert plunges his sword even further into the flesh of the demon, as its pulsating mass forms numerous delightful lips to tempt and distract him. The sword plunges completely through the demon's mass, and into a wall on the opposite side of the tower wall.

Meanwhile, Pahoeho uses his Forge of Earth magic to reshape and ignite some of the stone flooring into a giant flaming glob of Earth. Pahoeho is immune to fire. He hurls the flaming stone glob at the demon, which explodes UP, blowing the top off the tower. Everyone flees.

Osbert heroically saves one of the summoners, pulling them to safety, and leaving Demonsbane behind. The heroes reassemble outside the tower, Tom performs a song about Bad Ideas - like summoning demons as anti-Cat Lord weapons of mass destruction. Such tactics can ruin revolutions. Tom uses Star River magic to teleport Demonsbane out of the tower and back into Osbert's hands.

Osbert discovers that the sword has a new pictograph on it: one which resembles the demon. It is hot to the touch. Apparently Demonsbane has a memory! New information for Osbert!

Osbert relates the story of his order of warriors, and its matriarchal rules of sword inheritance.

There is a BOOM from the outskirts of the city dome, and a huge chunk of porcelain wall comes flying in. Many are injured by flying porcelain shards. Pahoeho uses his healing magic to save many, transforming porcelain into flesh.

In march the dog-warriors, and an uncertain occupation begins. 

Will the adventures of our heroes continue? 

***

A couple of the inspirations for this, and the previous session include the Cat Lords of the Violet City, from Luka Rejec's The Ultraviolet Grasslands, and the magical porcelain dome from Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett's delightful novel, Havemercy.

 

First Session of the New Everway Campaign

 

Snip from "Fire Dance" Vision Card by Janine Johnston

With three characters ready for play (and one more on the way next week), we set out to play Everway. While I have run a few in-person Everway one-shots, all of my previous campaigns as a GM or player have been play-by-post games. So it is great to play my favorite game again after a number of years, this time for my regular Thursday night gaming group!

The action started with Pahoeho Sun, a fire mage, seeking to find what is on the other side of the firewall in the great ocean of Fire's Wall. Too much steam, and turbulent seas, and Pahoeho swims back to his iron dinghy, and goes back aboard the local's much larger wooden fishing boat.

From the deck, the spirit mage Perceives That Which Others Do Not (Percy for short), gazes into the sky and sees an armored figure falling from far above into the sea. The figure goes into the depths, and Percy summons a water spirit to "push" the young warrior up towards the surface. Pahoeho dog paddles back to where the warrior now bobs on the surface, while fishermen follow in the iron boat. Together they pull the warrior, who they soon learn is one Osbert Haukmune, to safety and back to their big fishing boat.

Pahoeho's question to Osbert: "What did you see on the other side of the fire wall?" His answer was unclear [ahem].

The odd thing was that it looked like Osbert fell from a flying mount, but no one saw the mount. In fact, Osbert had lost a flying mount some time ago, and was on his way to Everway to see if he could learn more about how this might happen. One of the PCs had a definite impression that something in the air had been snatched by a fire spirit, just before Osbert fell. Osbert's memory was of taking the "normal" Earth gate route between spheres, but perhaps somehow he fell through an air gate upon arrival at Fire's Wall.

From there, back ashore Pahoeho commences a debauch in the beach bars on the firewall-facing western shore of the island, Nearest the Fire. The island is kind of a tourist trap, since the nighttime view of the firewall is astonishing, and in the daytime, this is the point of departure for boats taking people for a closer look at the firewall.

Everyone is drinking rum, even Osbert has some even though he seems unaccustomed to carousing. As the night goes by, there is some boasting between members of the party, and Pahoeho uses his earth magic to create a "grave" in the beach sand. The party and a number of the locals go out to look in the resulting pit. There are a lot of mussels there. The locals collect them for a clambake!

But suddenly Osbert's sword Demonbane is out of its sheath and pointing at a man carrying a bucket of mussels to the fire. He sets the bucket down. The sword points toward the bucket. The PCs open and inspect the clams. One has a Black Pearl inside. Demonbane is all eyes for it!

The Black Pearl morphs into a dragon, which starts out the size of a large shark, but gradually grows. This dragon is aquamarine. Osbert is "all-in" with trying to kill this thing immediately with Demonbane! Percy summons a spirit of calm to try and cool Osbert's spirits, as well as the dragon's.

Percy hears draconic speech. The dragon speaks its own language, not the Tongue. How odd! He wracks his brain for dragon lore from his studious past, on his rules-bound home realm. He remembers stories that dragons once challenged the gods, made war on them to displace them as the rulers of creation, and were defeated. But are dragons inherently evil? Demonsbane seems to think so. And the priests and scholars of Percy's native realm certainly thought so. One dragon above others, deceitful Alurax, certainly was evil. But Percy's knowledge of the lore of other realms suggests that dragons are viewed with more nuance elsewhere:

• Dragon knots are often found in the designs of clothing and textiles
• Some view dragons as incredibly wise
• Others know of dragons as rare beings who sleep long enough to become mountains

The dragon unfurls butterfly wings, begins to hover like a hummingbird, and begins to rise. 

The spirit of calm loses its grip on Osbert. He (or is it Demonsbane?) lunges, and chops off one of the dragon's paws. 

The dragon quickly rises and flies away to the west. It passes through the firewall, or at least seems to do so. Pahoeho is intrigued: what IS on the other side of the firewall? Could one ride a dragon through the fire? 

After the battle, Osbert is a bit pissed. Maybe embarassed. He doesn't want to be known as the Dragon Wounder... hopefully nobody starts calling him Osbert Dragonscratch! But that evening the PCs are celebrated as heroes. Osbert primly rejects amorous overtures from several locals. More drinking ensues.  

In the bleary morning our heroes arise, and seek out one of the ships of the Sea Traders. They want to go to Everway and seek answers to questions about dragons and missing mounts. 

Art by Jenny Dolfen

There is a long sea journey to a Sea Trader city. In the temple on the hill there is a gate maze, and soon they pass through a gate to the realm of Roundwander. 

[They emerge at gate #22 on the new map of Roundwander in Everway Silver Anniversary Edition Book 1: Players.]

To the north they see the huge orange-red tower mountain that is Phoenix Rock. The gate Keepers inform them that a barge will be along within a couple of hours. They can stretch their legs for a bit and wait for it.

Map by Richard Thames Rowan

The Bear Hill in Xeno-Meso

Bear Butte, SD

To the northeast of the Black Hills, the plains dip into Iron Horse valley, which then begins to rise again into rolling hills. These hills are riddled with gates. Go a bit further to the east, and look north. You will see the Bear Hill.

The Giving Hill rises high above a windswept green plain. Buffalo rest and graze in the mountain's foothills. Pines rise all the way to its top, although much of the mountain looks bare from a distance. Get a glimpse of it, and it will call to you. To arrive is to know you are in a special place.

More than one prophet has found his or her calling here. The different peoples of the plains make their journeys to the Bear Hill to pray, meditate, and leave offerings. Many of these prayer bundles and cloth strips are tied to trees at the base of the mountain; others are left at the mountaintop. Peace treaties can be negotiated here - if the parties are really prepared to make peace.

Photo copyright 2013 John Everett Till.

Aquatic And Marine Hazards In Xeno-Meso

Marines stand ready for a boarding action!*

Yet another picture from the "Saving Serqu's Sisters" Braunstein naval miniatures event last Saturday at Fantasy Flight Games Event Center!  All of that naval action and the various (carnivorous) flora and fauna have gotten me thinking about wildlife in the Xeno-Meso setting, and what aquatic and marine horrors may exist in that world.

In the lake surrounding Xochiquetzatlan, there are a number of giant turtles that look like this:

Black Hills Institute

For the most part the turtles busy themselves feeding on fish. Large fish. In fact, many of the fish in the lake are armored. But wise persons swim with care, and watch their children in the lake.

Any fisherman worth his salt knows the proper baits to attract a number of these large creatures. A few brave (or foolhardy) youth have become popular because they have taken up the sport of shell-hopping. Once baited, the turtles congregate, and youth compete to see who can go the farthest leaping from shell-to-shell.  An accidental slip and fall can easily lead to losing a limb or worse to a hungry turtle.

Many hazards to marine navigation exist in the form of sea creatures that look like this:

Plesiosaur, Museum of Geology,
University of South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

As well as this:

Mosasaur, Museum of Geology, USD-SMT

But things get really bad in the lake surrounding Xochiquetzatlan when you see something like this:

Prehistoric Crocodile, Black Hills Institute

Thanks to Carlos the human and to the Anubian Ambassador who posed to give us a proper size contrast. 

Fortunately, these large crocodillians are quite rare, although the smaller varieties are quite abundant. The presence of large crocodillians is usually the result of sorcerous activity, including improperly dispelled gate castings. Priests and priestesses of Lord Tlaloc and Lady Chalchiuhtlicue have the power to summon these beasts from the watery otherworld of Tlalocan.

Pity the peasant who has the misfortune to have one of these monsters escape their masters and clamber up onto their chinampa.

*All photos copyright 2013 by John Everett Till

Gates In The Xeno-Meso Setting

http://www.americapictures.net/
belize-blue-hole-lighthouse-reef-2.html

There are many kinds of gates leading into and out of the Sixth World of Xeno-Meso:

• The Azteca arrived in the Sixth  World through a Smoking Mirror Engine. It is located in a Mirror Gallery deep inside the Temple of the Netted Jaguar in the long-abandoned city of Teotihuacan. This is their Great Secret, and one they guard jealously.
• The Paddlers arrived through a Water Gate known as the Blue Hole. After their arrival in the Sixth World with three great pyramidal Battle Barges and a hundred great canoes, the contending merchants and princes of the realm known as The Forest of Kings suddenly had the most valuable trade allies they could ever imagine.
• Every cave is potentially a gate to The Underworld. 
• Cenotes are common in The Forest of Kings. Many of them connect to The Underworld or to other spheres entirely through Tidal Pools.
• Many temples and observatories of the Sixth World have gates to other realms and planets. Some gates' thresholds are at the top of temple structures - often the Chac Mool is their very threshold. The priests often also build their temples upon caves or subterranean structures which are gates to The Underworld.
• Vision serpents are summoned using ritual hallucinogens; these sacred beings are often living gates themselves.
• The Olmeca's stone heads are gates to the ancestors' worlds. The heads are Memory Houses for the spirits of warriors, nobles, and kings who crossed the Great Sea in generations past to conquer the lands the Olmeca now rule.

The Sandgates Of The Sixth Kingdom

http://www.mymodernmet.com/photo/
sand-storm-1?context=user

The lands of the Kirsi and the Sixth Kingdom to the east are prone to sandstorms. When these vortices of earth and air reach sufficient intensity, they can become Sandgates which open onto different realms or spheres.  Sandgates are often recurrent, returning again and again to consume a particular piece of land.

Recurrent storm-gates are often given specific names by Spherewalkers and wise-folk. They often create predictable gateways to specific realms. For example, the Sandgate called The Mother of Ruin connects to the realm of Bonekeep, with its fearsome Ghoul Queen.

http://www.annofans.com/archive/plugins/
forum/forum_viewtopic.php?788.10

The legendary Sandgate known as the The Lure of Thieves connects to the sandstorm-wrapped city-realm known as The Blind Place.

Every tower in The Blind Place holds untold riches; but every hoard in the city has also been tampered with by strangers.

The city's inhabitants have been blinded by the permanent sandstorm which shrouds it. This rich realm is ever-plagued by foreign thieves who are only too willing to take advantage of the city's blind inhabitants. Because of this, The Blind Place is also called The City of Grasping Hands.

But more than one too-clever thief has fallen victim to the city's many sand spirits. Some seek this doom, as the brink of death by sand drowning is said to bring revelations and ecstasy.

http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/30700/30716/sandstorm_30716.htm

The Kirsi and the Sixth Kingdom are part of the default setting of Kevin Crawford's medieval African pastiche RPG, Spears of the Dawn. This post expands on that setting  for use with both Everway and Spears of the Dawn, and was written to comply with  the non-commercial usage guidelines on the Sine-Nomine blog. 

The Aleph Pylons

http://reflectionsonfilmandtelevision.blogspot.com/
2012_10_07_archive.html

The Aleph Pylons mark the extremities of The Rust Gate's ancient empire. These structures marked the spheres that were home to the outermost gates radiating outward from the ancient city-state. Most of these structures stand to this day. Only a few have ever fallen; they are almost impossible to pull down.

Sometimes a solitary pylon, sometimes a complex of pylons. Many of the singletons are roughly triangular golden metal shafts some fifteen or twenty hands tall. Some have diamond-shaped doorways, apparently sealed forever, since the emissaries of Aleph are long-gone. Others are conical towers of smooth adobe. These could easily shelter an entire company of warriors, but they have no windows or doors.

The Aleph Pylons sit on the site of ancient gates.  These gates preceded the empire of the Rust Gate. They stopped working when the pylons were built. In the few cases where the pylons have tumbled or been torn down, the surrounding lands have become poisoned with a strange radiance. Gates this close to the Deep Horizon often discharge such energies when they are used.

Strangerside Scholar: Interpolation

http://downloadsourcecodes.com/matlab/
image-interpolation-matlab-code

One conjecture about why the dragons created Mousetrap Realms was to conceal something else behind them. In this sense, the Mousetrap Realm becomes a form of Interpolation, the magical art of creating a new object between two existing ones. At the dawn of history, the Bridgeworlds, the first human intersphere empire, used the art of Interpolation to build a chain of Fortress Realms as center-realms acros a chain of spheres. (This "chain" of course was many different chains of spherepaths that radiated out from a central hub. It is said that the foundations of the Library of All Worlds are drawn out similarly to one of these Fortress Realms.)

What were the dragons up to when they built the Mousetrap Realms? They may have been concealing their own Nest Realms behind fortress walls. They could interpolate Mousetrap Realms between existing worlds on a spherepath.

For example, suppose a certain World A at a certain point in a chain of worlds; let's call World A, the Spider's Web. The adjacent World B might have been the Nest Realm known as The Red Hatchery of the dragons. Through the art of Interpolation, a Mousetrap Realm - No Floor - might have been inserted between World A and World B. No Floor is conjured into existence as the center-real between the other two, a so-called World A-Prime.

Thus a chain of spheres can be broken. The Mousetrap Realm of No Floor becomes a deadly dead-end for  most Spherewalkers going through a gate from there towards No Floor. Meanwhile the dragons cavort or sleep safely in The Red Hatchery beyond. The Red Hatchery no doubt has other gates that go other places. Or it might have not gates. Some dragons can still make their own gates. And they have worked out numerous serpentine paths to get around.

Wooden Figure Of An Oar, Painted White

Glenn Kaino

Some gates open; others explode from one infinity into another. The object is a small white wooden oar, about the length of a little finger. It's a Gate Key. This little white oar can open a Water Gate in any lake, river, or bay. The gate will open in all directions, summoning the White Fleet.

Canoes, funeral rafts, fishing boats, paddle wheels, galleons, gigantic battle barges, the white tar sub, and even a world-ark:  the Whiteoar family's entire fleet will be gathered from every realm and sphere, together again in one body of water.

The Whiteoar family, defeated, destroyed, cast adrift and scattered among the million spheres: suddenly, once again, a great armada.

If you find a little white oar, burn it to ashes immediately.

A Spherepath Map...

http://home.earthlink.net/~lilinah/
Textiles/MEtextiles.html

Embroidered on a fine silk cloth. The most obvious array of linked spheres in the spherepath are arranged in two symmetric arcs: the eye-feathers of each peacock. However, there are also many subsidiary multisphere structures that can be seen here:

• The matrix of spheres directly between the two peacocks' heads; 
• The matrix on spheres on each peacock's back, just behind the neck; and 
• The plant-like structure flanking each peacock, each of which is crowned by a bud of flower comprised of a cluster of spheres.

This particular spherepath is more than a representation of a set of connected spheres. The silk on which the map is embroidered is part of the fabric of the multiverse. In other worlds, this representation of gates and spheres is holographic and real. A normal spherewalker can use this spherepath as a guide.

A spherewalker with the special power and the training required to identify the Silk Portal within the spherepath will be able meditate upon the spherepath and open a gate into the textile. They will be transported directly to the Gateway Sphere within the spherepath. Once they have arrived, the Silk Portalist can use the spherepath's map to find and access gates between the spheres represented on the map. This is a normal spherewalk.

The secondary matrices or clusters of spheres represented on this textile are typically accessed via a different kind of gate. When these gates cannot be located, a desperate spherewalker may take matters into their own hand, suturing folds in the cloth to connect distant spheres directly to each other. This suturing activity creates consequences for both worlds, as well as for other surrounding spheres whose qualities may be distorted or changed by the folds in the fabric of the spherepath.

One question remains: since the silk that makes up this spherepath is truly part of the fabric of the universe, who wove the silk?

The Gate House

"The Castle" by Viktor Titov
http://iririv.deviantart.com/favourites/#/d2aufxx

The Gate House lies in the foothills of the Inland Rise, three day's walk West from the City of Otherway. Also known as the Castle Kingdom, the Gate House has a sovereign of its own, because it preexists Otherway: mthe Gate House was built in ancient times by the Unknown Architects, the first people native to this world.

The Gate House sits on a weak point that connects Otherway's world to the Radiance of the Deep Horizon. The entire Castle Kingdom is a prison. It's walls were purpose-built by the Unknown Architects using sacred geometries. Its very structure creates numerous dimensional sink holes and cellae designed to capture and contain the inimical beings from Beyond. These beings materialize through the weak point and then find that they can go no further into the world.

Of course, the Radiance these beings bring still needs to go somewhere. The walls of the Gate House slowly drain Radiance, channeling it through the Castle Kingdom's miles and miles of stone. This bleed manifests as various new Arcana whose glowing sigils can be seen thoughout the Gate House.

An army of Copyists and Visiting Scholars catalogs these representations of the sublime. The finest are assembled into divinatory decks, each one unique.

Eventually even the most energetic cella grows cold. At that point, the chamber is opened and the bones of a god are harvested to make relics.

The Sultan's Gate

Virginia Frances Sterrett
http://cizgilimasallar.blogspot.com/2011/09/
virginia-frances-sterrett-arabian.html

The Embassy Tower is surrounded by a cast iron fence. It is three men tall. The fence rose from the ground just hours before the Embassy Tower did. The main path to the Tower grounds is ungated.

But directly behind this open path, on the opposite side of the Tower, there is a tall ornate gate of the same design as the fence.

This is The Sultan's Gate.

Touch the gate. Push it. There is no locking mechanism, and yet it remains shut. A closer look reveals two lesser gates on either side of The Sultan's Gate. They are hiding in plain sight. These two are also fixed shut.

One lesser gate leads Below to The Demon Sultan's caverns. The other leads Between, opening on a grave-narrow twisting path between the worlds - a stumbledown path with a thousand branches and dead falls.

The center gate leads to the Beyond. It is the only gate that has never been re-opened. Clever hands and minds have successfully opened the Gate Below and the Gate Between. But no one yet has opened the Gate Beyond.

People do try. An entire clan of assassins waits and watches for them.