Monday, 31 March 2025

Opal-Winged Chiropterae - VotE Remastered Development

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

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

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

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

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



A (Rare) Feral Chiropterean Attack

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


Smithsonian

Dropping Scorpions, Dousing Lights

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


The Bone Flutes Play

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

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

Hyperborean-Owl

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

False Wall

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

Hail Spears.

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

Shatter

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


Armour of Smoke, Knives like Leaves


Rick the Demogorgon

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

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

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


Vulnerable



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

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

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


Their Opal Wings




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

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

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

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

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


Roosts


Scientific American Vampire Bats

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

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


Guano Pollution

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

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

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

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


Web Dogs




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

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

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


Cauldron and Moieties



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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Civilised Encounters


Civilised Bat by poordogfarm from etsy

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

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

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

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

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

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


Gas Addicts



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

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


Role-Play Guidance

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

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

Looking to manoeuvre some advantage from this interaction.

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

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


Tuesday, 18 March 2025

A Review of 'Appendix N: Weird Tales From The Roots Of Dungeons & Dragons'



Weird Tales From The Roots Of Dungeons & Dragons
Revised and Expanded Edition
Edited by Peter Bebergal

(Disclosure - Strange Attractor Press sent me this for free, and I sped up the review because they are one of the groups behind the exhibition I am attending on Saturday. In other respects, I think and hope my review is accurate and indifferent.) (Also I don't usually do this and have too many books, please do not send me books).



Mark Schultz



The Fiction Of The Body And The Now

 "'Then you are after the gem, too?' 

'What else? I've had my plans laid for months, but you, I think, have acted on a sudden impulse, my friend." 

- Tower of the Elephant 

Intelligence, impulsivity and the language of immediate action; even pairs of heroes don’t discuss much what they have done, what they are doing or will do. A handful of words are all that’s required and the stories are short, and are better for it. All of a character must vibrate in a fist of paragraphs, a cupful of deeds, and spring from the page, immediate and clear. 

In longer stories the same souls might feel like fools. They would need.. background, complex long-term relationships, god forbid, a socio-political viewpoint? (Some have a bit of this). 

In a short story that only has enough room for immediate actions, those actions become the moral truth of the tale, something oddly similar to the opening games of a D&D group, where the 'Characters' barely exist yet, and the only real truths about them are; who will stick their hand in this jar, and who refuse? Who will be the first through the door and who will be right behind them? (and who will carefully be a long way behind them?). Who will be the first to suggest torturing that goblin, who first to provoke a foe and who first to negotiate? Who will run and who stand, should the day go awry? Action is the axis of a character, everything else just spins around their deeds. 

Impulsivity, immediacy and atavism, but always with intelligence, sharp wits and keen senses. These stories are about things happening now. Too late! In the time it took you to read this sentence the Barbarian has killed a man and moved to another scene. 

And they are of the body. These heroes have no extra-material powers and less manipulations. (Cugel, Elric and some others are a counterpoint). They are their bodies, which makes thought and action one. A strong strand of the genre, (if this is one), is the pleasure of having a body and doing things with it. The first and most precious object of a galaxy of things.

 

Mignola

 

Good Because They Are Great, Not Great Because They Are Good

"Suddenly the Mouser began to feel frightened, not for himself at all, but for the girl. Her terror was obviously intense, and yet she must be doing what she was doing - braving her "queer and fearesome grey giant" - for his sake and Fafhrd's. At all costs, he thought, she must be prevented from coming closer. It was wrong the she be subjected for one moment longer to such horribly intese terror." – Fritz Lieber, the Jewels in the Forest. 

It surprised me how relatively 'good' many of the heroes are. In large part these are self-interested thieves that defeat evil. The Grey Mouser enters the Tomb of Urgaan to steal its jewels, but, on witnessing a girl in danger, leaps out to aid her. In Tower of the Elephant, Conan’s emblematic tale and a holograph of the genre,  he only kills one man, and the foe draws first. For the rest he fights animals, and the villain dies through magic power, delivered by the hero, but the vengeance of a slave. Conan climbs the tower ready to rob, to murder, a sorcerer, discovers what he thinks a demon, fears it, hears its tale, weeps for its sorrow and delivers its revenge. It’s not that he is 'good', but good results. Paul Andersons Hauk is a Dane, but not a murderey Viking, he fears the Ghoul his father has become, but ends up saving the community, with BRAWN, (the body! the body!). Tanith Lees Cyrion adventures for the pleasure of it, but defeats multiple evils and frees a city from terror. He has been promised jewels and there are tonnes for the taking; 

"Cyrion opened the leather bag, and released the treasure on the square, for adults and children alike to play with. 

Empty-handed as he came, Cyrion went away into the desert, under the stars." – Tanith Lee, a Hero at the Gates 

In 'The Tower of Darkness', David Masons Marcus and Diana, (the only functional couple in these tales, and nearly the only sexual and romantic relationship), enter a city wearing the results of their last robbery, laden with ill gotten gains they are waylaid by vampires, defeat them and free the city. Manly Wade Wellmans Kardios washes up in a community of Giants, punches one in the face, then fights a cosmic horror in a cave to save them all. Why? For the adventure. Ramsey Campbells Ryre has too much sympathy for slaves and too much hatred for slavers, there would be no story if he didn't. Turjan of Miir is an amoral sorcerer, and barely the protagonist of his own tale, Vance was ever-cold to the touch, but the end of his tale is that a mis-made woman breaks out of her self-confinement and sets of to tell her own story. C.L. Moores Jiriel of Joiry comes the closest to having a complicated motivation and it leads her to victory and doom. 

Elric really stands out as being a little shit. Instead of doing, he manipulates others, instead of doing directly, he schemes, instead of the (rare), but even-handed sexual relations of the others, he wants to bang his drugged up sister. He abandons allies, calls up demons. Worst of all, he bleats and complains(!) He is not even being wry and sardonic about it, he is actually whining. Astonishing. (Really Elrics life-story should have ended with him building a huge dungeon full of perverse traps and twisted moral lessons, then going into it, burying it for a few millennia and dying in it. He is the type for it.) Moorcock did set out to subvert our expectations and he does. His Elric is a perfect mirror in morality, relations and most importantly of all, in attitude of action, the way he lives in the world, to the real heroes. For if one thing defines a Sword and Sorcery hero, it is their willingness to take a BIG risk, right now, for a reward which may not be there - in doing so they often lose treasure, but some great evil is defeated and the world made safer. (Apart from Elric who is a whiney villain). 

A touch of Beowulf; these tales are pseudo-stories of an imagined Pagan ethic, told by slippery types born into an urban world and a post-Christian morality. The heroes do not dream of 'good' and 'evil', but the soul of the story often does despite them. After all, who is likely to have blazing gems? Usually bad people. Well, they are written for us after all, and if we saw the morals of Antiquity in full, I do not think we would like them. Or buy the next issue. Fake Pagan Tales! Many such cases!

 

 

A World Of Things And Of The Tales Of Things 

"It was woven from the tresses of dead women, which I took from their tombs at midnight, and steeped in the deadly wine of the upas tree, to give it strength." - Tower of the Elephant

 

It’s never just a rope. Or just a sword, (so many swords), or a gem, tower, mysterious powder, seeing-lens, magical orb, curious ring and more - it is where they come from. Yes there is an element of Flaubert; 

"One who possesses so vast an accumulation of wealth is no longer like other men. While handling his riches he knows that he controls the total result of innumerable human efforts - as it were the life of nations drained by him and stored up, which he can pour forth at will." 

But these objects are stories too, they are nearly words or poems of their own. Like the rope of Taurus the Nemedian, (and who knows if that story, or any of his stories, were true, but he had one for everything he used), they are like the threads of a multicoloured woolly jumper, and if you pull on the thread, the whole jumper tenses and shifts. So these little tales become windows into vast worlds, disposed with a sprinking of phrases. Always do greater mysteries loom and stranger adventures link, told not in general but through the substance of things. And Things are things we need in games. Especially in the verbal-near-infinity of natural language and immediate coherent use that makes up both the tools and tricks of Fairy Tales and the encyclopedialike engine of Dungeons and Dragons. 

"'This meat is excellent,' said Kardios. 'What is it, Enek?' 

'The hind foot of an elephant, if you know what elephants are.' 

'We had them in Atlantis, for parades and for hauling stones and timbers, but I never ate elephant before.' Kardios took another mouthful. 'It’s as tender and juicy as fine pork.” - Manly Wade Wellman, Straggler from Atlantis. 

If there was a map of these rare connected places, it would be different, so again the game must differ from the tale. For the world of a game must be systematised, with concrete places, and things between those places. In truth the world of sword and sorcery, even of the big sagas of linked tales, tends to be of hidden cubism, which is what these artefacts, actually are; little windows, pleasing fragments of a larger reality, calling you ever-on, but seen only through these tiny gaps. The act of going ever-on, belongs to the game, not the tale. In that and that alone are we alike the heroes. 

 

Strangeness 

Lovecraft and the Uknown

Good god there is a lot of Lovecraft. I mean there is a lot of Lovecraft even beyond his own stories. He exploded over the scene like a slime-volcano. Never again will we have just an ancient city or mysterious elf-land, now it is to be an ELDRITCH city EONS (not millennia) old, and a DREAMLIKE OTHERWORLD. 

While always inventive, relatively few of the writers can manage Peak Strangeness, and indeed if we crossed over only a little more into surrealism, fairytale or impressionism, the tales would become unworkable, no longer moving through the gateways between a known and unknown world, where the logic and experience of one can be taken into the other, and thence make it actionable, but would become only dreams, which can be experienced, but not used. 

Lovecraft’s epochal, cyclopean supers-strange mega-millennia old cities are actually pretty hard to explore in-game. They can be explored in a story because in that story the sheer weight and streamlike bubbling intensity of the flowing visions of sculptures, buildings, half-seen horrors, vapours, lights, sounds and wild imaginings, makes the procedure of exploration more a poem-of-things. (I do not say it’s impossible, only that it is hard and likely less rewarding, over time, than you might imagine. After seeing and experiencing six or seven unutterably strange visions, glancing over three or four globs of greenish tarnished gold that might or might not be tools or treasures of a forgotten eon, running from one squamous blob into a winged tentacle thing; it can get uninteresting.) 

We generally don't want to, and perhaps can't "explore" the true-unknown. If we knew about it, it wouldn’t be unknown for a start. But more; human exploration is driven by human needs from the known and understood human world. You explore to get stuff or knowledge that means something in the world you know. If there is nothing human where you are going, exploration will be limited, and more an expression of existential will than anything else. 

We explore the Antarctic, and we explore the moon, and via probe, the planets, but there is as-yet, nothing human there, so we don't actually explore that much or with great intensity. As we learn more, and go more, slowly, over time, we might discover not the places, but ways of seeing and using them that make them fungible to human culture. Then, we will accelerate, going more and more, learning more and leaving more human residuum behind in those strange places, till they become just places, not boundaries or wonders. The true frontier will have moved on, to the edge of our sight, where it fades into black. 

But really when we explore, in the cool fun way that everyone thinks of when they want to play 'explorer' we actually want to go to places humanity has already been, and where humans have done a lot of human things, (like mining gold, building giant stone heads, setting up the recruitment of hot priestesses, etc), and we want to 'discover' those places - places full of human stuff. (And then possibly steal it and take it home). 

As Rumsfeld said; there is the known unknown and then the unknown unknown. Or as the meme sayeth;

 

 

Dusanay and the Super-Real 

Dunsanay is perhaps the most brilliant and inventive of all the writers shown and his tale 'The Fortress Unvanquishable Save for Sacnoth', begins with a primal alliance of folktale and epic; a moving fortress sending forth evil dreams, its only counter, a blade hidden in the spine of a dragon-crocodile. The only way to defeat the crocodile is to bait it for three days straight, smacking its vulnerable nose, without being eaten, till it starves. Then to melt the beast, draw forth the steel, and sharpen in upon one of its eyes, the other eye being affixed to the pommel, where it will watch for dangers. 

It's almost too good to be D&D. 

Then a march through a wonderous nightmare castle, meeting layers and layers and layers of fairytale guardians and satanic inhabitants. Like most of these tales the journey is too linear to make a good dungeon on its own, but that's easy to adapt, in concept at least, it is also vastly and beautifully strange, surreal, heightened. A potent blend of hyper-theatre, opera, and perhaps awareness of very early film and photography? Perhaps early animation? 

"Thereat the black hair that hung over the face of the spider parted to left and right, and the spider frowned; then the hair fell back into place, and hid everything except the sin of the little eyes which went on gleaming lustfully in the dark. But before Leothric could reach him, he climbed away with his hands, going up by one of his ropes to a lofty rafter, and there sat, growling." 

This, surely is a Silly Symphonies spider?

 


 

C.L. Moore - A Map Of Hell. 

"She crossed a brook that talked to itself in darkness with that queer murmuring that came so near to speech ..   she paused suddenly, feeling the ground tremble with the rolling thunder of hoofbeats approaching  .... a white blur flung wide across the dimness to her left, and the sound of hoof-beats deepened and grew. Then out of the night swept a herd of snow-white horses. Magnificently they ran, manes tossing, tails streaming, feet pounding a rhythmic, heart-stirring roll along the ground. She caught her breath at the beauty of their motion... 

But as they came abreast of her she saw one blunder and stumble against the next, and that one shook his head bewilderingly; and suddenly she realised that they were blind ... and she saw too their coats were roughened with sweat and foam dripped from their lips, and their nostrils were flaring pools of scarlet.  Now and again one stumbled from pure exhaustion. Yet they ran, frantically, blindly through the dark, driven by something outside their comprehension. 

As the last one swept past her, sweat-crusted and staggering, she saw him toss his head high, spattering foam, and whinny shrilly to the stars. And it seemed to her that the sound was strangely articulate. Almost she heard the echoes of a name - "Julienne! - Julienne!"." - C.L. Moore from 'Black Gods Kiss. 

All this within a dreamlike otherworld accessed through a dimensional corkscrew, not perceivable to one still wearing the cross of christ. Is it fairyland? Nightmare? Hell or one of Lovecrafts pocket realms? Wherever it is, it is a near-mappable point crawl with particular distinct locations, routes between them, particular modes of access, residents within and random shifting encounters without. Something surprisingly rare to find in full amidst these tales of inspiration

 


  

The Unlikeness Of The Inspiration And The Game 

These stories which provide the impulse or drive to play D&D are very deeply unlike the experience of playing D&D in some interesting ways. 

No groups or protagonist gangs. (Would make zero sense in a short story, even Elrics long tale has a few too many in it) The most we get is a pair. It speaks to something slightly charming in humanity that one of our most developed and pleasurable ways of experiencing imagined worlds takes place through the medium of a conversation - because we not only want to bring our friends along, but doing it in a group makes the imagination more real to us. Because we are a social species, and the living presence of a complex group is to us really another kind of meta sensing organ, like a super-eye. 

There are few dead-ends; some mazes happen (I only remember one; the harbour maze of the Elrics Dreaming City), but they are solved in one go. There is no back-tracking, no finding of keys, making maps, none of what's grown to be the baseline of a procedural culture of dungeon exploration - again fun to do (sometimes), not to read about. Most dungeons in these stories are sequences of rooms. Others are small closed spaces. 

There is no advancement really. Characters might get a bit better at things, get some cool items, then if the tales go on long enough, age and get a bit worse, but generally people occupy a gentle curve of capacity. Neither is there much specialisation-by-profession or by type - anyone can attempt anything. You got yourself a body don’t you buddy? 

All these changes are adaptations between two forms of art, the narrative and the game, and even between two experiences of time; One is linear, though containing twists and turns, it has no branching paths and cannot be explored. There are no choices to make except for when and where to put down the book or pick it up, for the whole world can be held in one hand, paused, reversed, stored, forgotten and re-experienced whenever you wish. The other; multiplex in experience yet bound in real-time. Here you can genuinely go one way or another, or even just leave the dungeon. (But you may not be able to return. You need your friends to play this game, and a DM, and a bunch of other crap, and they are not infinitely or eternally available. Your access to this world is much more bound by material circumstances in our own). Need Conan truly kill that goblin? It is a reality made of decisions, its substance being choices, and what seems to be its substance, in truth, merely curtains and theatre scenery. 

Though linked by the human imagination, by a desire for adventure and to see new lands, and by a love of Things, and of heroes, and many other things, the sheer chasm between a narrative and a game is very great, and greater still because an illusion lies over it, so that few see it for what it is.  

 

Milk On A Warm Day 

The Sword and Sorcery exemplified by Conan and 'Tower of the Elephant', (and the best Conan stories really are very good), and by Lovecraft, goes off quickly, even instantly, like cheese in summer or yoghourt in a sauna, when taken from the hands of its Masters. Like a clay pot, its relatively easy to make something that holds water, and rare grace to make true beauty. 

These are such tender confections. And they don’t seem like it. Because the tales are atavistic, heroic, inventive and quick, many lesser writers think they can do them, and because the basic costuming and appearance are so fungible, it’s easy to dress as them. 

Kind of like, if you remember the Summer after 'The Dark Knight' came out, Heath Ledgers Joker appeared in photographs in every party, festival, cosplay thing, the guy was fucking everywhere - edgelord and theatre kid combined to make Joker-pressions the substance of the age. Because, like Howard, and Lovecraft, the outward expression is easy to simulate. But all of those theatre kids and edgelords were about as much the Joker as many later writers were and are Lovecraft and Howard, or as much as 'Wheel of Time' is like Lord of the Rings, which is; it isn't at all, it’s merely convergent evolution, like penguins and dolphins being the same shape underwater. One in ten writers seem to understand that Conan is a relatively psychologically subtle character who just doesn't introspect much and does things with immediacy, or that Lovecraft thinks this shit is genuinely terrifying and you should be genuinely scared of Infinite Things

 

Vandermeers Afterword 

"What if the Gnoles were non-binary?" 

Is an actual line from this. From this you likely know if you want to read it. 

 

Thence The Text 

In substance, merely stories, and such stories as the 'true heads' amongst you have probably already read and read the Grognardia review of, and the RPG.NET thread of complaints about, I mean you are likely five layers deep on most of this stuff already, if I know you are all. 

Yet you ‘Heads’ are still the most likely to actually buy this thing. Because they are good stories, with a few rarities, and the book is a pleasant object, and its particular arrangement, and point of view, splaying forth the paelo-dreams of Dungeons and Dragons and arranging them nicely, in a little Wunderkammer, may amuse.

Friday, 7 March 2025

News - Weird Hope Engines

An art exhibition/presentation is happening and I will be there! Along with much art from the world of RPGs!

Andrew Walter


So if you want to come and see me in 3D and tell me what you really think of me, or shoot me, now is your chance!

Weird Hope Engines is the name of the exhibition. It will be taking place in Bonington Gallery in Nottingham on Saturday 22 Mar 2025, and running till Saturday 10 May 2025.


A lot of people from the RPG art world will be there on Saturday the 22nd; Amanda Lee Franck (who had some art in 'Speak, False Machine), Tom K Kemp, (the artist of Gackling Moon), Zedeck Siew (of Thousand Thousand Islands and more, Scrap Princess and me Patrick Stuart.

Tom and I will be signing and selling copies of 'Gackling Moon', and I will have hardcopies of most False Parcels books to sell also.

It would like this to be a success, partly because if it is, they might do a second exhibition and there are more artists I would like to see included.

Sunday, 2 March 2025

Deep Janeen - VotE Remastered Development

[This will be more of an ‘exploded’ development document as I look through the entry I had for ‘Deep Janeen’ (which were essentially a reskin of AD&D ‘Dao’) and try to find a place for them in the developing cultures of the Veins, which also makes them useful and interesting in a ‘D&D world’, where the purpose of everything is ultimately to interact with adventurers.]

 

origin unknown

The Deep Janeen are spirits of the of the earth. Creatures of timeless, decadent intelligence, they live deliciously in palaces set down within the living stone. (They cannot work their magics on worked stone. The greater the mass of masonry around them, the safer they feel (from other Deep Janeen).) 

Deep Janeen are larger than men, with skin like blue veined marble, an strong, thick-limbed bodies curved like the sides of a vase. Their voices are like water being poured into an upturned bell. 

Voracious and confident, Deep Janeen take pleasure in their rank. Lords of Stone, commanding much submission from the earth by magic Art, these master can grant wishes and, it is said, attain all a soul may dream of, if it pleases them. They might be called half-gods of the Underworld, were they ever to leave their Mazes and the Courts within. But leave they rarely do.

 

Filippo Baratti

[Design Logic

The power of a Dao, or Janeen, over stone itself, combined with their many other powers, makes them astonishingly potent in the volumes of the Veins, where stone is the substance of all things, and where the challenge of transporting ‘stuff’, of feeding, lighting and sustaining, is so all consuming. 

Why then do they not rule the Underworld? And what role might they play in the intrigues of adventurers? 

To answer this; the logic of the Maze-Court; a grand, expensive, eternal and eternally changing folly, or bower-bird nest, of worked stone, within which the Janeen dwells and to which they dedicate almost all of their substantial yet always-perishing wealth. 

Culturally and psychologically, the Deep Janeen are trapped within their mazes and their courts. Economically they are trapped within their status and their culture, for a Deep Janeen seen doing useful work, and getting gain, by other Janeen, would be mocked, ruined, exiled and destroyed (socially), and this is the worst thing that could ever happen to a Deep Janeen. So they must relentlessly gain resources, yet never be seen to do so, and must spend even more relentlessly, on highly visible luxuries and on their Maze. And so they are poor. They have a lot of money and a lot of luxuries, but they have even more expenses and demands.]  

 

Maze Courts 

The Court is a Maze and the Maze is the Court. To reach the Janeen one must pass through the Maze. The Court lies at the centre of the Maze, or beyond it, or above it looking down. But the Court also interlaces with the Maze. One is never certain if one has fully left the Maze. 

The Maze is always under development, always being worked on. (Not directly by the Janeen, that would be abominable), but by slaves, or, for those of a liberal temperament, employees. 

The Maze drifts, moving through the stone ocean of the Veins, both via its eternal and continual building and re-building, and through the magic of the Janeen, whose maze it is, so it is like a magic island which moves slowly about a sea. 

These are not just dungeons. The mazes are works of art - works of status in every sense, works of pride and competition. The Court-Maze is the highest expression of a Janeen’s power, intelligence, style, and an untranslatable form of potency, of class, of virtu, a transmissible energy or spirit which both shapes and displays the vital selfhood of the Janeen. They need not eat, or sleep, and can live for mortal eternities. Their existence is a status game. The opinions of others are the truths of their lives. The mazeworks are like riddles: if everyone can understand them then they are worthless; if no-one can, then the same is true. They are set like palaces, at least in terms of statuary and stone. Water aspects and others will be of a luxurious, (yet lethal), mode, like Turkish baths. Think the Alhambra underground. 

Indeed some Janeen are crowned with Mazes as some surface Gods were crowned with city walls. A Janeen without a maze is not really a Janeen. Maze-loss creates, not a physical transformation, but a psychological and cultural one so total it may as well be. A Janeen with a poor maze is a Poor Janeen, regardless of how much specie they control. A Janeen with a stupid Maze is a stupid Janeen. Or an unfashionable maze, or a simple one, a crude maze or an ugly one… and so on. 

 

Why Seek the Deep Janeen? 

The Janeen can answer wishes. To an extent they can re-make reality, by fair means or foul. And their powers are greatest in the earth, where we are. Even their lesser powers of change and transport, of alteration, creation and exchange, are enough to wipe slates clean. If their favour can be won. 

If that is not enough, consider these lesser, but still practical treasures; a stone-road stave. An iron ring that holds a hero’s soul, bound for seven services. A lantern with a rock-evaporating light. A pet fire spirit which will serve you so long as its golden chain is linked. Songs of Unbecoming. Warping wands. An eye of Lapis Lazuli which terrifies the spirits of the earth. Crowns of mutable stone and sheaths of living Jade. Maelstrom bombs. Tongues of transport. A serpentinite torc that becomes a venom’d sword at your command. Ascension wells. Lithomantic potions. A book of sliver-thin slate with the means to make golems of stone. 

 

origin unknown

  

Pauper Princes  - Why They might meet with You. 

Wreathed in luxury, they are poor. Well.. not exactly. They have resources. However, they are likely in staggering debt. They are in the red, or at least in the black. 

The Maze, the Maze, the Maze costs all, consumes all, absorbs all. The sheer prices involved! You would not believe! The Maze must grow, must breathe. The Maze must live so the Court might thrive and the Court must feed so the Maze might grow. All this requires stone, slaves, food for them, logistics, organisation and so on and so on. And that’s just the unending construction, the Court itself requires servants, entertainers, musicians, dancers, illusionists, poets, cooks of various kinds and so on… 

Worse, nearly as bad as owning an inferior maze; a Janeen can never be seen doing useful work. They must not toil. They are beings of Pure Nobility

Yet, somewhere, somehow, work must be done. They do it through shell organisations. They do it in disguise, through other names, through deniable servants. They do it any way but directly and in public view. They all absolutely deny doing it, and they are all doing it, and will mock those seen doing it, while doing it themselves. Such is the toil of the Deep Janeen. 

 

Conflicting Cultures of the Deep Janeen 

Aesthetic Questions rule the scene; Schools on stones and mazes, arguments over treasures, gold and dreams. 

The Two Schools of Shadowed Mass; many Deep Janeen love gloom and the beauty of huge masses of worked stone. The first, Umbral, regards the placement of massy shadows of prime importance and arranges all stonework to produce precise gradations of shadow and depth. The second, the Lithic, regards the placement of shadowed mass to be the true path to beauty and arranges all shadows to highlight masses and arrangements of stone. Few but the Deep Janeen can tell the difference between the two schools, though they loathe each other. 

The Six Schools of Maze-Making; Softling, Towered, Monstrous, Braile, Falling and Fincular. Don’t ask me what these mean. They seem to have some relation to the styles of Mazes, (of which, more below), but how the theory intersects with built object, and what the borders and definitions of each are, is a source of argument amongst all Deep Janeen. A “Fincular Crystal Swam Maze, with Softling influence”? Sure. 

Schools of Dream interpretation and defence. Musical styles. Schools of poetry and aesthetic magic. Argument upon argument. Point upon position. 

Janeen like sculpture but tend to loathe painting, as well as any material that pretends to be what it is not, though the definitions of  what exactly this means, again, vary deeply. Is a Bernini sculpture acceptable? How about a Trompe ‘d Oil painting used as part of a trap to confound rogues in a maze? 

They love beauty but only bound. Free beauty is nothing to them, but lock it in an object or trade it as a service and they love it. 

 

Weeks Edwin Lord

 

To Meet the Janeen 

You do not meet the Janeen. Certainly they are not out and about (unless in disguise), and one does not simply challenge a Janeens Maze (unless invited). 

You meet their Vizier; 

Janeen Viziers 

Their forms are many; beautiful golem factotums, lesser spirits of stone, living statues (of the Janeen themselves obviously). Rug weave and tympanum zoom calls (the rug threads shift and change - you can hear them whispering). A statue of stone containing a caged spirit of air, water or fire. A whisp of salt. A clicking mosaic. A Vampire in Jade. A Mirror Liche – their corpse dead but its reflection still live and subtle. A Corpulent Immortal or Hot Undine. A drifting cobweb golem, its voice that of a certain harp, played by a blind, mute slave. Three stone ladies, one of igneous, one sedimentary and one metamorphic, (they finish each others sentences), or a big intelligent bird, kind of like a very fancy muppet – it’s not clear who or what it is the ‘puppeteer’. 

 

Arclord of Nex - Pathfinder Community

The Vizier - “Behold this value.” 

The Vizier writes down a certain number or total, and shows it to you. 

“This is a value which shall be two parts and two, that is, split into equal thirds, and the last third halved so that the totals are thus; one sixth, one third, one third and one sixth, for a total of four parts in these proportions, and in this order. 

Do you understand? 

The first part, should our speech go well, you shall surrender to me upon its’ end, in any portable form. 

Know this first; The Janeen does not do business. The Janeen does not make deals. The Janeen entertains Right Noble Guests

Are you such kind? 

 

The Right Nature of Guests 

A Right noble Guest is any of the following; 

·        They are born of Aristocracy and Nobility.

·        They have notable gifts of Art, Speech, or Music (not Painting).

·        They have great and recognised magical power and skill.

·        They are of great and well-attested Wealth, for one who possesses so vast an accumulation of wealth is no longer like other men.

·        They are of personal beauty or charm.

·        They Amuse. 

Are you such as I have said? If you are not, leave now.” 

 

The Maze-Court 

The Forms of the Mazes are many. Maze-Court stye and aesthetic, as well as its nature as a maze and nest of puzzles etc, is something else that Janeen will argue over and mull over themselves. Some are sever classicists and use one of the below styles only, and that exploited to the maximum effect with every possible Here are some; 

1.      Fromsoft Style - trickly 'looped' mazes where the Janeen’s court is visible almost immediately, but you have to do a lot of fucking about to actually get to the main bit

2.      Knightmare Style - Like a pit dungeon where the Janeen’s court stands above looking down on the party - last part is stairs up, so they join the court and they in turn can look down on others

3.      Tower Style - Court is at the top (though the 'tower' itself may be simply a series of cave or rooms in stone, the 'court' is usually kept somewhat open, in imitation of a real tower, perhaps with a mosaic-view of an imaginary surrounding land

4.      Zzarchov Style - rooms all the same size, linked by visible and invisible dimension doors, locks, keys, riddles and codes. Lots of going back and forth, solving weird problems - fucking annoying!

5.      Gravitational Style - Rather normal dungeon/maze design but in places you walk 'up' the walls and stand on the ceiling. you can look up or down at people or things 'above' you, other than that, this is often a pretty standard dungeon (though in a Janeen style)

6.      Fallingwater - A bathhouse, (artificial) waterfall. Plenty of fountains, a 'water level' with swimming, underwater monsters, mysterious grottoes (artificial),

7.      Maze of Transformations - somewhat Alice in Wonderland style with lots of shrinking, growing, possibly transforming into animals or other things, with seemingly escher-like arrangements and lots of tricky unfair bullshit mixed in, but often without the clear recursive discipline of the 'Zzarchov' style, where, though the answers may be cryptic, there *is* an answer while in 'Alice' mazes, there may be an answer, but the maze itself may be broken, irregular, or just perverse.

8.      Maze of Crystal Swarms - the walls made of some swarm or flocking creatures made of glass or crystal. The actual volume of the maze is not that great but the maze itself reformats around the PCs like the structures of a computer game write themselves into existence as they pass and turn through it, the flock or swarm moving in great clouds and reforming behind. Some Janeen would say this is more a 'method' than a style. Though it demonstrates incredible wealth, skill and magical power, that doesn't necessarily make the form of the maze as-a-maze that good, other Janeen, those who can afford a Crystal Swarm, tell them to go fuck themselves. 

 

Steven Craig Hickman hopefully not slop

 

Meeting the Janeen 

Lets say you actually get through the Maze, and to the Court, (or at least the Court-like parts of the inner maze. This is the Deep Janeen; 

Titles

The

1.      Shaker

2.      Dreamer

3.      Luminator

4.      Judicier

5.      Composer

6.      Navarch

 

of/in 

1.      Knowledge

2.      Tectonics

3.      Sleeping stone

4.      The Mountain Metamorphic

5.      The Flawless Fault

6.      The Stone Wombs Heart

 

Face 

1.      Haughty but smiling often with the dazzle of a diamond tooth.

2.      Alabaster, like a carved youth with the combined cruelties both of youth and of age.

3.      Eyes of starry glass and hair a slow stone river woven with gold boats.

4.      A potter's abortion but delicately repaired with gold.

5.      Flesh, except the eyes and mouth reveal the skin is shallow stretched on perfect stone.

6.      An egg with a cruel crack smile and glittering blue peridot eyes. 

 

Clothes 

1.      Skin marble, dark, and rippled with red. Her robes are black wire, woven subtly enough to shame silk. They draw the gaze toward her crown of ashen tar, stuck stork and bright frozen peacock feather.

2.      Smoke blacked armour, brass cast, etched by vandal artisans with one thousand and one victories of the Deep Janeen.

3.      A hermit's simple robe or a sacred thinker’s cowl, made from one thousand torture-sourced silks in the blues, blacks and bruise violets of the sky’s storms.

4.      Albino furs and pearls carved into linked-up chains. Her shoes, paired slender spires of colourless gem, stabbing the ground with each purposeful stride.

5.      Stone clothes, carved so expertly it’s difficult to tell except by touch. The gems in each of his many rings hold maps, impossibly detailed air bubble depictions of each architectural triumph.

6.      A metal articulated robe discards a trail of scrolls as it scrapes a furrow behind her thundering boots. Lackeys pick and continually re-archive her forgotten plans in the robe’s metallic folds.

  

Manner 

1.      Pauses long and whispers more than yells.

2.      Cruelties are always a little kind but kindnesses are without mercy, reason or restraint.

3.      Gaze is an extension of its grasp; the Janeen studies to own.

4.      Fresh skinned gloves finger lists of plans and inventories.

5.      Each half stroke of the hour everything is stopped, servants scurry forth, teas, meats, and glistening delicacies arrive. Calm and mild pleasantries rule until the last drop of tea.

6.      A small live animal is presented to be crushed with each and every footstep. 

 

Opulence 

1.      Slaves wave slow pennants of black velvet in their shadowed wake to intensify their gloomy majesty.

2.      Kebabs on silver skewers which they use to pick their teeth, then throw away.

3.      A ticking harem of clockwork courtesans in polished ebony and blazing gold.

4.      Every stone and tool and fold of cloth enchanted to whisper their praises with each move, the air fills with a susurrus of quiet adoration.

5.      Zoo of surface animals kept petrified when not in use. Awakened and re-petrified with insanely expensive potions sprayed from golden tubes.

6.      Lamps are petty fire spirits bound in silvered skulls of Ælf-Adal. 

 

Earth_Djinn from Guild Wars

The Vizier Continues; 

“…. Noble Guests who adore and respect the Janeen, and who often bring gifts they hope shall please. Curiosities, which they know the Janeen does not need, and which the Janeen will refuse 

But they shall offer again. 

The Janeen will, again, refuse. 

But, wounded by this, (though not explicitly so), the guest shall offer a third time.

And this time, purely to avoid offence, and out of charity, the Janeen will accept (though a servants hands, they will not touch the gift themselves). 

The value of this gift shall be no less than the value of the second part, which was one third of the total value I have shown you. 

At this time the entertainments shall begin, which shall last for no less than eight hours, and during which, it may please the Janeen to place an idle bet on this thing or that. 

As you know, fortune, at all times, follows virtue, nobility, greatness and courage, and so the luck of the Janeen is uncommonly good. 

Do you understand me? 

Though it may pass in whatever proportions you wish, in the course of entertainment, the total shall not be less than that of the third part, which shall be, again, one third of the total I have given you.” 

 

Activities 

Amusements 

1.      Smashing in their vaulted roof, slowing it in time, having chained-up poets scribe the falling stone.

2.      Naked girls in golden cages locked 1001 times. Each good story earns a key.

3.      Tattooing children’s backs with idle thoughts, making them run around till sentences form.

4.      Collected court of Clerics of each god, Deep Janeen converts to a new religion every hour.

5.      Archean orchestra on toxic instruments, so slow it plays one note each hour.

6.      Forcing scholars to debate the merits of a grain of sand. Winner rewarded, loser killed. 

 

Strange Dreams 

In their endlessly-rebuilt palaces deep beneath the earth, the Deep Janeen are often troubled by strange dreams. Explaining the troubling dream in an effective way, without inadvertently insulting the Deep Janeen, can vastly raise you in their esteem. 

1.      “I stand upon a yellow shore. A silver ship burns. A survivor turns to me and smiles. ‘Is this ever acceptable?’ he asks.”

2.      “I am a Lion (which I know is good) and eat a ghoul (which is bad). I taste cinnamon and sleep for seven days.”

3.      “A city of glass and shadow. I wait. The dawn comes, but not the dawn star. Why?”

4.      “I am speaking to a giant that crawls around my house tying knots in my columns and doors; the giant whispers names I cannot hear.”

5.      “I crystallise, memoryless, in the magma chamber under the hill. It will not let me out.”

6.      “I am a souk in a city of brass, merchants trade in my veins, thieving children run across my golden heart, yet I protect them.” 

Fear of Sleep 

The Janeen fear sleep and the power of the Aelf-Adal. Due to this they avoid sleep and are often insomniac, and some would say, irrational. Many Janeen employ a Dream Guard or Praetorian of Sleep whose purpose is to protect them even while they dream. 

Fear of Plots

The Janeen is convinced everyone around them is plotting against them and while this is never completely true, it is still largely true.

 

Petulant Rages

Intervening in the murderous and easily-triggered rages of the Deep Janeen can be deadly; so can not intervening in them. 

1.      Constructions of anything but stone. The existence of ‘plaster’ and ‘wall-paper’. Deep Janeen has never seen them but hates them.

2.      “There is a forged coin somewhere in this room. Find it! By the stones of the abyss you will bleed fire till it is found!”

3.      “You Ifrit Fuck!” Deep Janeen thinks the fire in a lamp is laughing at them. Hunts and smashes lamps, lights and flames till it is found.

4.      Deep Janeen convinced reflection in a particular pearl exhibits a single flaw. Curses pearls, casts them aside then hunts through them, demands larger and larger pearls.

5.      Deep Janeen stricken by violent self-loathing over inferiority of own mazework. Believes counter-arguments proof of secret contempt.

6.      Universal and malignant incompetence of inferiors. Demands your agreement then turns on you. Demands agreement of others re – your worthlessness, then turns on them.

 

  

Secrets of the Janeen 

Hidden Economic Engines

The Janeen is making money some how, though they do not wish anyone to know exactly how, they do wish everyone to know there is money being made… somewhere.

1.      They are a River Trader

2.      They control and organise transport between Realms of reality.

3.      They are in mining.

4.      They scout mines for other powers.

5.      A mercenary company or similar.

6.      Mass Golem Construction.

7.      Writing saucy novels on the side

8.      Silkweaving sweatshop

9.      Manufacturing dimensional transport which makes underground economy possible -bags of holding etc 

 

Deals They Must Make... Now! (But Must Not Be Seen To....)

The Janeen has a secret, desperate need, but the PCs don’t necessarily know about it, or even know that it exists (the Janeen desperately tries to keep this from them, without also revealing it).

 

The Need

1.      Silk

2.      Gold (its amazingly heavy stuff)

3.      Slaves (they keep dying)

4.      Political cover in some elemental political situation.

5.      End the Tariff!

6.      Dolphins (don’t ask why)

7.      Mining Rights

8.      Migration rights

 

From;

1.      Aelf-Adal

2.      Knotsman Lord

3.      RayMen

4.      dErO

5.      Archeans

6.      Olm Clan

7.      Dvargir

8.      Funginid Mentality

 

Clues/Evidence PCs might stumble into

1.      Singing Fish

2.      Bell Music Notation Code

3.      Wordform shadow elemental

4.      Opal Bat Snitch

5.      Actual Letter from...

6.      Graceful Golem Courtesan

7.      Whistled Code from Bird

8.      Waking Dream 

 

Pathfinder, creator not known

The Vizier Goes On 

“It does, at times, occur, in these hours of intimate diversion, (but never before the fifth hour, or beyond the seventh), that the intimates of the Janeen, in the course of conversation. 

In the course of conversation, you understand? 

May confess to this or that trouble, or disappointment, be it in this thing or that, which afflicts them, and, in the course of conversation, they might discuss with the Janeen, their Intimate Lord and nearly-friend, potential cures and alterations to their sad state, and the Janeen may reply "How terrible! Surely something must be done!" or words to that effect. 

There the matter shall rest, and no more shall be said of it. 

When the entertainments come to a natural close the Intimates of the Janeen will part Joyously with the Janeen. 

Now, after a certain time, it may be that the circumstance or amelioration so desired by you shall be attained, though various means, perhaps obvious or unknown. 

When this should occur, the Intimates shall send via secure and trusted means, another gift, to the value of the total of the fourth part, which was one sixth of the value I have given you - to the Janeen, via myself, with a fulsome and full-hearted written thanks for any efforts the Janeen, may or may not, have taken or ordered to be taken on their behalf in the mater which happened to pass between them as Intimates at that time when they were guests of the Janeen, and if the Janeen themselves took no visible or provable action in the matter, no doubt it was the great fortune which attends to the Janeen and all that they do, which did mark the weave of fate in this matter, in which case even greater thanks are given (though the value of the enclosed git need not be greater, (but should be no smaller) than I have said). 

The matter shall then considered to be closed, and no further contact either accepted or desired"