Chay:wonnoj

Place of Interest

Description:

Sophonts Trapped in Hell Inside a Toroidal Cavern

Stand atop one of the dodecagonal pillars of Chay:wonnoj, look above you, and you will find a similar pillar descending from the ceiling like an oddly regular stalactite. A brief glance to either side will show you countless other stalagmite-stalactite pairs throughout this cavern, each one perfectly oriented in the vertical. Look below and you will find a two- to four-story drop to the sienna-colored muck called ket which serves as the lower bounds of this place.

You would be forgiven for thinking the only boundaries keeping you within Chay:wonnoj lay above and below you—a quick glance seems to show stalagmites and stalactites stretching on forever no matter which way you turn. This vast expanse is merely an illusion, however—though your course may be level and your heading straight, you’d only travel a few kilometers before coming back to your starting point. Thus, the name “Chay:wonnoj,” one given to this place by those who are forced to suffer here, a name that means, “Hell of Many Pillars.” Chay:wonnoj is not a place for hope, or helpfulness, or kindness. It is a place of suffering, of surviving, of looking certain death in the eye and spitting in its face.

Welcome.

Pillar-top Villages, Farms, Treasure Hoards and Battlegrounds

The “stalagmites” of Chay:wonnoj measure an acre across on average and stretch anywhere from two to four acres above the floor of the cavern. Made from a pale blue material (ironically, one known to surface-dwellers as “sky blue”) of unknown composition, the pillars are topped by everything from clean sources of water and fertile earth to powerful weapon emplacements and hidden caches of Wonders that can only be opened (safely, anyway) by the clever.

It is upon these squat spires that the inhabitants of Chay:wonnoj hang on—the crafty Leapupons, the ambitious Emptybellies, the twisted Tusked Children—all eternally struggling to survive attacks by one another, as well as the depredations of the bestial sudkets who dwell among the sienna-colored ket below.

Quirks:

Tusks and Trunks, Muck and Malice

Even if the sienna-colored ket didn’t cling like tar and reek of rotten fruit, the hordes of sudket that swarm within it would be reason enough for the Chay:wonnoji to stay atop their pillars. If standing completely upright, a sudket would measure nearly a meter from the tips of its crustacean-like limbs to the leathery hide of its muscular trunk. However, the creatures primarily hunch over as they scuttle around, the better to blend in with the treacly mass of goop which seems to compose their primary diet, building material, and weapon.

This last note is exceedingly important. Ket is unpleasant all on its own, due to its glutinous texture and foul smell, but when sprayed through the trunk of a sudket, its properties change considerably, metamorphosing from a dense sludge to a light foam that slowly sublimates. In and of itself, this transformation isn’t threatening—if sprayed in the face, for example, the Chay:wonnoji would be more concerned about the foam’s opaque nature blinding them to more dangerous threats nearby)—however, as the material sublimates, it reduces the material of the stalagmites to mush. If found quickly enough, it can be washed away with clean water (which neutralizes it completely), but if not, the negative effects are dire.

Foamed ket threatens the structural stability of the pillars the Chay:wonnoji call home. The loss of the stalagmite material may expose whatever internal mechanisms lie within the damaged pillar (those that generate fresh water, for example, or medicine, or useful raw materials), and in extreme cases, pillars have been known to collapse completely, sometimes damaging other ones near enough to strike. Even worse, when a sudket consumes enough of this foamed ket-stalagmite mush, it buds off smaller copies of itself, increasing the size of the swarm, (and the threat posed to all those who dwell atop the spires).

Pillars Linked by Bridges

Several bands of sophonts live in Chay:wonnoj (although it might be more accurate to refer to their condition as “imprisoned within”), loosely assembled in a number of small bands. Each band of Chay:wonnoji has claimed a territory of a few pillars, territories which tend to include a farm or two, a source of water, and an easily defensible position to serve as a stronghold and resting place. Important clans include the Leapupons (who forego bridges entirely in favor of pole-vaulting and lighter-than-air materials), the Emptybellies (who favor using their powerful arsenal to extort other bands for food ), the Fallen (once known as the Gohnakaheen, who now serve as permanently nomadic scouts for the Emptybellies), and the Tusked Children (covered below).

These primary pillars are linked by permanent bridges of whatever materials are easiest to find or farm (such wood, woven wires, floatstone), while the pillars surrounding a band’s territory are connected with defense in mind. Some bridges can be drawn back to safety in an instant, or cut loose, or collapsed, but are still normally safe to travel upon. The portable bridges that Chay:wonnoji scouts use to explore the unclaimed pillars between territories, however, are trusted only by the desperate or the foolhardy.

Expanding foam that shatters after a few minutes, hard light projectors prone to flickering at the worst time, telescoping poles that require exquisite balance to navigate, these are the tools Chay:wonnoji scouts depend on to explore the world that hangs above the muck, and the sane Chay:wonnoji depend on these scouts if they are to survive the machinations of the Tusked Children.

If You Cannot Defeat the Monsters, Become Them

A few generations ago, a band of Chay:wonnoji known as the Gohnakaheen fell when the sudkets managed to demolish a significant portion of the base of a nearby pillar. The pillar crashed into its neighbor, which crashed into the band’s only nearby source of water. The water pillar itself stayed standing, but the water grew poisoned, sickening so many Gohnakaheen that not enough of them were able to wash away the sudket’s foam-spittle, and so more of their pillars fell.

Eventually, the Gohnakaheen looked like they might be able to win the war of attrition after withdrawing all scouts and using weapons normally reserved for all-out war against the other bands, but then another pillar fell, exposing internal mechanisms that released waves of bizarre radiation. This radiation killed a portion of the Gonakaheen outright and drove others to madness. Those who survived with their sanity intact fled to the Emptybellies, where they pledged their skills as scouts in return for shelter from the sudket, and became the Fallen. The Gonakaheen who went mad, however, were transformed by the radiation of the fallen pillar, changing their bodies such that they are able to make use of the ket like the sudket, whom they worship as the epitome of life in Chay:wonnoj.

The Tusked Children, as they call themselves, do not gain sustenance from the ket, but they can extrude it from apertures that grow in their skin like sucking wounds to become stone-like armor or claws or horns. The process is painful, but they revel in that pain now, welcoming it as a sign of their gradual transformation into their revered sudket. The sudkets, for their part, do not seem to sense the Tusked Children as easily as the Emptybellies or the Fallen, (though they will still gore any non-sudket to death at the slightest touch), a change that the Tusked Children interpret as proof of their doctrine’s veracity.

Adventure Hooks:

Condemned to Chay:wonnoj

It seems the PCs have really gotten themselves into a mess this time. After having committed a crime that didn't seem that serious at the time, they've been informed that their sentence consists of transportation to Chay:wonnoj, which—from the simulations shown to the PCs by their jailers—does not seem very pleasant. However, if the PCs can acquire a particular Wonder located somewhere in Chay:wonnoj within 200 hours, their sentences will be commuted to mere banishment from the city.

Each of the PCs is fitted with a web of matte black nanotubing which their captors explain will facilitate their return, as well as ensure their compliance. In regards to the former, the nanotubing will increase strength, agility, and endurance by a noticeable amount, as well as serve as a teleportation beacon once the PCs have located the Wonder. A simple swiping gesture up one limb and down the other, and they'll be instantly teleported home along with the Wonder.

As far as "mission compliance" goes, the nanotubing can also teleport the PCs to a facility known as the Oubliette of Eternal Suffering, a translocation that can be triggered by a number of conditions, including (but not limited to): trying to disable or destroy the nanotubing or suffering enough damage such that one might die (which will be treated as the latter), activating one's beacon without the Wonder, failing to find the Wonder within the 200-hour time limit, attempting to escape Chay:wonnoj. Making things even trickier, the only information given to the PCs about the Wonder which their lives depend on finding is that it "hums constantly, is really shiny, and emits a gallon of sickly-sweet sludge every other minute."

The Little Sudket Who Could (Talk) (Probably)

After taking a ride in what they thought was an interstellar spaceship (but actually turned out to be a malfunctioning transpatial warp node), the exceedingly nauseous PCs find themselves stuck in a creepy cavern full of sludge, unfriendly bands of sophonts, and a bizarre man named Shaminsh. He seems friendly enough—offering the PCs a somewhat bitter brew that nonetheless gets rid of their stomach issues—but has odd horns of muddy stone and silver wire that sprout from what look like sores all over his body.

According to Shaminsh, the wires in his horns allow him to talk to "Sparky," a crippled sudket he claims to have bootstrapped to sapience thanks to the "talking wires" he shoved into a large gash in the disabled creature's head. While Sparky is far more docile than other sudkets the PCs have seen, it's unclear if Shaminsh is telling the truth about the creature's sapience, (especially since Sparky's legs are very clearly missing). Then Shamnish's story gets even wilder.

Sparky apparently loathes the rest of its kind (blaming them for eating its legs), and Sparky's plan for revenge dovetails neatly with a way to help the PCs escape Chay:wonnoj—the annihilation of that which the sudkets require above all things, ket. Sudkets eat it, dwell in it, and use it as camouflage, but most importantly, they need it to reproduce. Without ket, they cannot make foam-spittle; without foam-spittle, they cannot make mush from the stalagmite pillars; and without mush, they cannot bud new sudket. Sparky—Shaminsh tells the PCs—not only knows the source of all ket in Chay:wonnoj, (a Wonder that acts as a wellspring of the foul sludge), but also a way to reverse its function so that it absorbs the ket instead of emitting it. Once all the ket is gone, ancient control panels beneath the muck and mire will be safely accessible once again, and the PCs will be able to escape.

All the PCs will need to do is follow Sparky's directions (given to them through Shaminsh, of course), find the Wonder, and activate it, all while avoiding the sudkets, the Tusked Children, and whatever other hazards Chay:wonnoj can throw their way. What could go wrong?

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Also, please note—The Gazetteer of the Weird and all entries within it are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, so be cool. 

Carnon Furrows

Place of Interest

Description:

More Than It Appears to Be

For centuries, the barren lava plains of Carnon were avoided by all but the most dedicated (or desperate) of travelers. A handful of tribes who hunted the steppes surrounding Carnon would use the rippling expanse of basalt as meeting grounds for ritual combat or purification dances, but it was many years before anyone learned of the strange things that flourished beneath the sterile stone.

Bizarre Hidden Gardens

A section of the Carnon lava plains appears to be a long and regular series of furrows, as though some great power took a plow to the basalt but left it barren.  Most are roughly a kilometer long, and measure fifteen meters deep and wide. Some of the furrows have kinks along their length and seem to wind in serpentine patterns, while a scattered few intersect those beside them in short diagonal lines, as though letters in some enormous abecedarium.

The latter was a theory once posited by Timekeeper scholars traveling overhead by aerostat, but the true nature of the Carnon Furrows was realized on the discovery of hatches designed to blend in with the stone around them. Those bold enough to open one of these hatches and go through it found themselves in massive chambers nearly filled to bursting with a riot of alien flora and fauna.

Quirks:

Garden or Accident of Nature?

 There are a number of opinions as to the true nature of the Carnon Furrows, with most scholars proclaiming allegiance to one of two camps: the Gardeners and the Naturalists

The Gardener faction believes that an unknown ancient race of beings (referred to, coherently, as the Gardeners) either created or found the furrows in the lava plains of Carnon and deliberately seeded them with life. Evidence that supports this claim include the hatches into the underground chambers (which smoothly open with a light touch in the correct place, but otherwise remain sealed tight) as well as the mirrorichalcum "airlocks" that block off the hatch antechambers from the "gardens" themselves (not to mention the Wondrous "mittens" that rest in the cubical depressions set into the walls of the antechamber, which are necessary to navigate the gardens safely). 

The Naturalist faction concedes that the hatches, the airlock walls, and the mittens all appear to be purposefully manufactured objects, however, neither their nature nor their presence near the gardens necessitates that the gardens themselves be constructed. It's completely possible for the so-called "Gardeners" simply found the furrows as they were, and created the hatches, airlocks, and mittens to take advantage of this strange location that they'd found.

In either case—Gardeners or no Gardeners—those wishing to explore what lies beneath the Carnon Furrows had best put on their mittens in the antechamber before traveling through the shining metallic airlock that leads into the gardens themselves.

Dark, Hot, Humid, and Rotting

The first thing an explorer will notice on passing through the mirrorichalcum wall is that the chambers are completely dark. With the proper finger movements, the mittens can create strobing lights, but be warned—the effect can be disorienting, so use it with caution. Almost at the same time as the darkness, one may notice that the best word to describe air of the gardens (which is breathable to most common humanoid species) is "intense." From its smell of putrefaction to its incredibly high heat index, the gardens' environment was clearly designed for the comfort of its inhabitants, and no one else.

Inhabitants of the Gardens

If one translocated a 21st-century biologist to gardens beneath the Carnon Furrows and asked them to describe the primary fauna that dwell there, the answer would most likely involve a lot of screaming, flailing, and peeing of their pants.* The former is a perfectly safe activity in the Gardens—the creatures most refer to as "legbeasts" seem unable to perceive sound in any way. However, the latter two activities would quickly lead to the unfortunate scientist's demise, as legbeasts are extraordinary at sensing heat, scent, and air currents.

A suitably rigorous dissection of these creatures has not yet been achieved by modern scholars, however, tales told by explorers and natives local to the area describe them as being composed almost entirely of long segmented legs like whips, finely scaled tentacles that end in squat ridged claws, and feathery antennae that never seem to stop moving. Living legbeasts seem to be sessile, with each one taking up station in the ceilings of the furrows and never moving from this location until death. (Interestingly enough, while legbeasts don't travel away from their "spot," they do slowly turn in place, rotating either clockwise or counter-clockwise. An especially long pair of limbs held just above the surface of the ceiling thus marks out their territory, a border which newly spawned legbeasts cross at their own peril.

Protective Mittens and Other Safety Gear

Of course, if our time-traveling biologist happened to have their breakdown while wearing a pair of protective mittens, they'd be fine (so long as they were appropriately armored, of course). The mittens seem to masks their wearer's heat and scent signatures, making them almost completely undetectable to the legbeasts. Would-be explorers should be advised, however, that legbeasts are by no means hesitant to use their claws, however, even if their whip-like limbs detect something that turns out not to be food. (As such, crush-resistant clothing is advised.)

Flora, Fauna, and "Other"

Speaking of food, the legbeasts seem to depend completely on the growths of what the locals call the meatpod bush. When stimulated simultaneously by all three types of a legbeasts' limbs, the numerous thorny limbs of the bush contract to reveal a central stalk, which then vomits out a hot, stinky sack of what seems for all the world to be an animate hunk of meat. The "meatpod" is capable of leaping short distances through rapid contractions, and seems custom-made to be a legbeast's ideal snack appealing to its sense of touch, heat, and smell.

When not eating meatpods, legbeasts spend most of their time interacting with the plants, fungi, moss, and other vegetative lifeforms that make up the fecund abundance of the gardens. Though a difficult prize to recover, numerous scholars have made names for themselves by distilling this odd flora into all sorts of compounds.

Adventure Hooks:

Solving the "Gardener/Naturalist" Debate, Once and For All

A Timekeeper scholar named Hebbadon Floon is not only certain that the gardens of the  Carnon Furrows were deliberately constructed, but they also have reason to believe that it was the legbeasts themselves who built them. To prove their hypothesis, however, (not to mention repair their somewhat abused reputation among their fellow scholars), Hebbadon needs undeniable proof. 

That proof should be relatively easy to acquire (thanks to Hebbadon's...unofficial requisition of a Wonder that should facilitate communications with the creatures), but the journey to the lava plains will be full of peril, not to mention the atmosphere of the furrows themselves. As such, Hebbadon is seeking a group of adventurers to safeguard them over the course of the trip, with payment rendered in advice as to the most valuable types of flora found within the gardens.

War Comes to the Plains of Carnon

While Carnon's basalt plains are no strangers to blood spilled in ritual combat, or even small-scale skirmishes between tribes when times are desperate, war the likes of which has never been seen by the locals is coming. It seems that the Voivode of Bitterburning, the Apodektai of Tenth Wisdom, and the Edictor of Everlasting Light each had a dream of revelation.

In this dream, the leaders learned that if one were to view the Carnon Furrows from above, the pattern they create (when properly interpreted) will not only spell out the location of an ancient superweapon, but also give one mastery of it as well. As the peace between the three nations is an uneasy one, to bring anything less than overwhelming might to the lava plains is to risk one of the other nations decoding the clues first. Now the armies of three nations are headed to the plains, and it's quite possible the gardens beneath them may be destroyed forever,

Those Who Steal a Monster's Dinner Might Become One

In the last decades, a quartet of tribes has formed a more permanent settlement in the steppes close to the Carnon Furrows. Though they have their herds of scriggles and telleps, the land is harsh and food is often scarce. With the discovery of a fracture in the side of one of the underground gardens and careful attention paid to how the legbeasts interact with the meatpod bushes, particularly brave villagers have taken to regularly harvesting the legbeasts' snacks to supplant the bolster the communal larder when times grow tough.

However, it seems that sufficiently hungry legbeasts aren't quite as sessile as everyone thought, and some are now leaving their gardens to search for other forms of sustenance...

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Your Support = More Gazetteer Entries!

If you enjoy my work and would like to see more stat-less bizarrities, places of interest, odd creatures, and strange settlements, please support me on Patreon or Ko-fi! (Non-monetary support is always welcome, too. Spread the word of the #WeirdGazetteer far and wide!)

Also, please note—The Gazetteer of the Weird and all entries within it are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, so be cool.

*A more stoic or well-temporally traveled biologist might compare them to whip spiders. 

Traitors Gasp

Place of Interest

Description:

Hidden Within Pools of Fog

If not for the huts of the socketeers that huddle in clumps on the rolling hills of this area, one might never know that this bleak landscape sits atop the ancient facility known as Traitors Gasp. Strange groundcover clings to the hills like a scab on a wound, alternating between slimy brown moss and sponge-like growths from which peek tall blades of neon-blue grass, with edges sharp as glass. In between the hills are hollows where dense fog settles in pools, and it is these shrouded pools that hold the way into Traitors Gasp.

“Designed” Does not Mean “Built for Humans”

Those who descend into the vapor find themselves in a twisted jumble of hexagonal corridors and chambers built like inverted step pyramids. Clearly not a space designed for humanoid occupation, the atmosphere of Traitors Gasp is not only dense, opaque as smoke, and mildly corrosive, but the “floors” of the corridors are more of a squat V-shape, while blunt hooks descend from the inverted ^ of the ceiling. But it’s what lies within the chambers of Traitors Gasp that makes this difficult environment not only possible to explore, but worth exploring in the first place: the sockets.

Ports Out of Penury

Few socketeers take to the trade for the thrill of it, but rather are forced there by desperation. The sockets that line the chambers of Traitors Grasp can be tapped for their contents. Careful trial and error—as well as knowledge paid for in blood and pain—has given socketeers a decent working knowledge of the meaning of the jagged hieroglyphs etched into the metal rings around the sockets. Shapes of this type relate to water, while those of that type refer to temperature, (or pressure, or gas, etc.)

• A lesson socketeers learn quickly—or not at all—is that the symbols for “breathable air” and “highly acidic vapor” are remarkably similar...

On occasion, however, sockets turn out to be  motherlodes , with socketeers discovering everything from energy-dense fuels to potent intoxicants, even panaceas for everything from bumps and bruises to senescence and death. It is these intermittent jackpots that bring the desperate and the destitute to the poison-shrouded corridors of Traitors Gasp.

Quirks:

What’s in a Name?

No one’s quite sure about the origin of the name “Traitors Gasp,” whether it’s possessive (and if so, whether it refers to the gasp of a specific traitor, or a group of them), or if the name is simply a statement about the breathing habits of traitors. No one knows for sure, but most socketeers believe the name holds the secret to the origin of gaspers, that the diaphanous monsters that stalk the corridors of this ancient facility are created when a betrayer breathes their last breath in the vile miasma that fills Traitors Gasp, which then metamorphoses into the horrors faced by future socketeers.

The near-pervasiveness of this belief is what gives the three laws of the Socketeer’s Code their strength.

The Socketeer’s Code

In order to prevent the creation of new gaspers, all socketeers agree to abide by a strict code of ethics or face the harsh judgment of their peers.

The first law of the Code is, “Leave no rothver behind.” This law refers to the implements socketeers use to tap the sockets of Traitors Gasp—devices created and named after their inventor, the famed socketeer altoKikoo Rothver. Unfortunately, since Rothver’s disappearance decades ago, none have been able to recreate their work, which means the loss of a single rothver is a permanent one. (And as such, they are highly prized by their wielders.)

• The spirit of the first law encourages socketeers to aid each other while in Traitors Gasp, but the mercenarily inclined among them only follow the letter of the law—no socketeer is obligated to save another, they point out, merely their tools.

The second law of the Code is, “There is no justice underground.” Barring the occasional lucky discovery, the life of socketeers is often dangerous, claustrophobic, laborious, and short, and on its face, this law serves as a reminder of that fact. A stupid mistake or unforeseen accident can kill a veteran as easily as a novice. Every trip into Traitors Gasp could be your last. But this law also serves as a reminder, a lesson drilled into every socketeer that all disputes between them—no matter how dire—must be settled only when both parties are above ground. A fight in the corridors or chambers is liable to spawn another gasper, and there are more than enough of those already.

The third law of the Code is, “Corrupt a socket, corrupt the trust.” This law refers to the practice of subtly changing the etchings around a socket to suggest that it emits something other than it does. Some socketeers do so to protect their claim (as no socket yet discovered has contained an unlimited amount of its bounty), while others deliberately alter dangerous sockets to look harmless, or vice versa. Difficult to prove unless explicitly witnessed and recorded by another, altering sockets to serve as booby traps weakens the trust which underpins the first and second laws of the Code.

Ghosts of Miasma

From its poisonous environment to its maze-like structure, Traitors Gasp holds many dangers, but none pose a greater threat to socketeers than gaspers. When in their passive state, gaspers resemble headless jellyfish lit from within by a pale grey illumination, mere bundles of wispy tendrils that silently float throughout the facility. In this state, gaspers pose no danger to the average socketeer—so long as they remain calm and ensure the physical integrity of their suit, a socketeer could walk right through a gasper and be fine. 

• NOTE: This integrity check is necessary because of how gaspers react to non-miasma gases—an instant transition to their hunting state.

When gaspers enter a chamber, they either pause for a moment before passively continuing along, or enter a more active state. An active gasper can be spotted by a change in illumination (from a steady pale grey to slowly pulsing sickly green and bruised purple) as well as a low vocalization, as of someone’s labored breathing. Active gaspers will use their tendrils to investigate the sockets of a chamber, seemingly at random, until they either calm down and revert back to passivity, or elevate to their hunting state.

A hunting gasper can be identified through the increased volume of its “gasping,” as well as the intensity and frequency of its pulsing lights. In this state, gaspers move more quickly and seem to gain mass and density—the strike of a hunting gasper’s tendril is powerful enough to break bones and shatter suit seals. In this state, the only way to handle a gasper is to tap a socket of vacuum and hope for the best. (Unfortunately, this is the only time such strategy is possible—gaspers not in hunting state are not “solid” enough to be affected by a vacuum.) Under ideal circumstances, sucking the gasper through the rothver and into the port should give the socketeer enough time to safely leave the area. If not...death by gasper is not a pleasant way to go.

Adventure Hooks:

An Awfully Convenient Advantage...

Socketeers depend on their protective suits to survive in Traitors Gasp, not only so that they may breathe, but also to navigate the facility at all. So long as they visionplate of a suit is kept charged, the curved metal panels allow one to see under any condition, including the opaque miasma that fills the corridors beneath the hills. However, every visionplate in the area lost power after a recent meteor shower, and now none of them will hold a charge any longer than a few minutes.

The only socketeer still able to work is Ever-Up-and-Up, a sophont made of equal parts sapient fungus and cybernetic limbs. Ever-Up-and-Up isn’t overly bothered by the lack of a visionplate (as they primarily use radar to navigate anyway). However, this natural advantage has spawned suspicion that Ever-Up-and-Up is the reason behind the visionplate failure in the first place. As discontent grows and tensions rise, a veteran socketeer asks the PCs to help solve the issue before things get out of hand.

The Mystery of the Missing Socketeers

For the last few weeks, no gasper has been observed elevating to hunting state, which would normally be a cause for celebration—socketeers are not given to looking a gift tellep in the spout. But in the days after this change in behavior was spotted, socketeers have started to go missing during the night. When the PCs are asked to investigate by an old friend and socketeer, they discover that every person to have disappeared tapped into a specific socket for water while last in Traitors Gasp, and a quick poll among the other socketeers as to who else did so only turns up one name: the PCs’ friend. 

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If you enjoy my work and would like to see more stat-less bizarrities, places of interest, odd creatures, and strange settlements, please support me on Patreon or Ko-fi! (Non-monetary support is always welcome, too. Spread the word of the #WeirdGazetteer far and wide!)

Also, please note—The Gazetteer of the Weird and all entries within it are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, so be cool.

Gultan's Reef

Place of Interest

Description

The Reefwall is named after the legendary (and potentially apocryphal) explorer named Gultan. According to the most commonly told stories, Gultan found the Reefwall when their traveling companion suddenly fell into two perfectly vertical pieces, sliced down the middle by some unseen force, a force that turned out to be the eponymous Reefwall. 

A two-dimensional wall that stretched ten feet high and over a hundred rods long, the Reefwall appears to be made of pale gray stone studded with numerous apertures along its length. Some are as wide as a hand while others are so large that one could walk through without crouching. A semi-transparent, rose-colored liquid covers the apertures, which flows up into a series of intricately carved channels that ring the apertures, pulling the roseate substance up towards the top of the wall, where it’s converted it into a sheet of pink mist that rises into the sky.

But while the exterior of Gultan’s Reefwall is odd (and its endpoints are dangerous), it’s what lies within it that draws explorers, scholars, merchants, and more to this Place of Interest: the eponymous Gultan’s Reef.

Quirks
A Reef of Invisible Water

The Reef gets its name from what look like coral reefs found within it, colorful forms that seem almost hybrids of rocks and plants, all rough exteriors, numerous branches, and leaf-like blades that slowly sway in unseen currents. The creatures that inhabit the Reef are just as varied (and just as strange) as those found within terrestrial seas and skies, although it can be difficult to differentiate between those that “fly” and those that “swim,” and perhaps such a strict line need not be drawn between the two at all. Why?

Because the “water” within the Reef...isn’t. Those who enter most apertures in the Reefwall find themselves swimming through what feels like water, but the viscosity of the “water” inside the Reef varies greatly, ranging from “molasses” to “water” to “foam” to “air” to “vacuum,” and there are occasions and locations where things change from one end of the scale to the other without warning. 

Thus, for the purpose of safety, the Guild of Gultan’s Guides (a troupe of explorers who offer their services to those interested in safely exploring the Reef), prevent free travel through just any aperture. Some are forbidden to the casual explorer for fear that they may underestimate the dangers of the seductive fire fountains or incorrectly calculate the timing needed to navigate the Foamstone Labyrinth. Others are barred to all, deemed too dangerous for even hardened veterans to enter, with what lies beyond those portals better left undisturbed (and even unthought of, for fear of the consequences...)

Forcefield “Bubbles”

Though the Reef may hold dangers within it (not to mention the deadly, two-dimensional edges it sports on either terminus), there are a handful of safety measures that seem built—or grown—into it, and chief among them are the forcefield bubbles.

Those who enter the apertures in the Reefwall and who pay close attention during the process will notice themselves sheathed in a whisper-thin membrane of the same roseate liquid that covers the holes themselves. This membrane allows nonindigenous beings to enter Gultan’s Reef with a moderate supply of air (depending on one’s respiratory needs, of course) as well as the ability to see while in the Reef—as far as can be discerned, no natural light sources have ever been found there.

These sheaths work in reverse as well, enclosing whatever items or objects explorers bring back from the Reef in a similar (if somewhat thicker and slightly stickier) version of that same pink membrane. If not returned to the Reef in a few days time, objects so enclosed will melt into a kind of dark green slurry before they and the forcefield “shell” dissipate completely. 

Merchants Along the Wall

Luckily, for all those interested in plumbing the depths of the Reef in search of treasure (both natural and artificial), there is a way to remove objects from their forcefield bubbles...for a price. The exact process involved is a highly guarded secret (only the Gallowglass and Nrw’Mrw’Prw merchant families possess it), but any who visit the Reef and wish to bring home a souvenir simply pay the fee to either clan and receive their prize.

Other goods and services for hire along the Reefwall include food, beverage, and intoxicants; guides to the most picturesque areas of the Reef; guides to some of the more dangerous places of the Reef; collectors interested in purchasing rare flora and fauna; purveyors of neural maps and navigational aids; and more.

In addition, it’s traditional for those exploring the Reef on for the first time to pay homage to Gultan’s lost companion by paying for a special token to hang on one of the end posts constructed to keep others for suffering the same fate. Purchase of the token goes to funding the Guild of Gultan’s Guides, as well as maintaining the safety end posts themselves, and it’s said that hanging the token (or paying someone to have it hung for you) increases your chances of a safe return from the Reef. 

NOTE: The tradition pertains to one’s first foray into the Reef. Those who claim it’s a requirement each time one enters are thieves and charlatans, and should b reported to the Guild of Guides immediately.

Adventure Hooks:

• A pair of spouse smiths have recently started offering arms and armor incorporating pieces of the roseate forcefield that encases objects brought back from the Reef. According to rumor, the pair discovered a way to preserve the forcefield “shells” rather than the objects insides them, and then are able to work the wondrous material into useful equipment. No one’s quite sure how they manage the feat, but both the Gallowglass and the Nrw’Mrw’Prw are willing to pay a significant amount to anyone who can discern their secret.

• The adventurers break up a fight between an angry explorer and a sputtering guide. According to the explorer, the mindmap purchased from the guide was inaccurate. The guide maintains their wares are only of the utmost quality. Is the guide a charlatan, or has the interior of Gultan’s Reef really changed?

• Unbeknownst to any along the Reefwall, Kaz-Maz the Gregarious (a local scholar and eccentric) has successfully cultured a piece of coral from the Reef in their laboratory’s largest aquarium, and it has started to produce the invisible “water” of the Reef. Unfortunately, Kaz-Maz has gone missing, and with no forcefield bubble to contain it, the level of “water” is rising. What’s worse, Kaz-Maz’s laboratory is hidden, dug into a nearby hillside, so the first that any might be aware of the problem is when a torrent of invisible liquid rushes down the hill and toward the Reefwall...

• A rumor has spread to all nearby towns that someone discovered a Wonder in the Reef that purports to show the way to Gultan’s treasure horde, a vast collection of wealth and powerful Wonders that Gultan stashed in a hidden section of the Reef where no one would be able to find it without the Wonder. As a result, countless treasure-hunters have descended upon the Reefwall, and the locals are making money hand over fist. But is there any truth to the rumor? And if so, where is the Wonder that will show the way to the horde? 

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If you enjoy my work and would like to see more stat-less bizarrities, places of interest, odd creatures, and strange settlements, please support me on Patreon or Ko-fi! (Non-monetary support is always welcome, too. Spread the word of the #WeirdGazetteer far and wide!)

Also, please note—The Gazetteer of the Weird and all entries within it are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, so be cool.

Brewer Mounds

Place of Interest

Description:

What look like enormous termite mounds made from half-melted obsidian rise from the ground, taller than many houses in the area. Architecturally, the mounds are all organic curves and jagged edges (ones so sharp they nearly hurt to look at).

Inside the mounds, you will find the eponymous Brewers, creatures of ferocious mien with dark exoskeletons that constantly leak mildly acidic ichor from the joints, tails that end in wickedly sharp pincers, and mouths that contain thorny appendages that serve as both tongues and mandibles.

Despite their appearance, however, Brewers are quite gentle and gregarious beings. No means of communicating with them has yet been discovered, and not only do their physically repel all attempts at investigating their mounds, but the substance of the mounds themselves resists all known form of sensors.

And yet, every ten days, Brewers emerge from their mounds and set out a plethora of what has given them their nicknames: what appear to be jugs made of slightly grainy clay that’s a bit stick. 

Quirks:

Like honeycomb or curnbutter, these “jugs” are actually organic in nature, extruded from an aperture in the Brewers’ thoraxes. The jugs contain intoxicating liquids of great potency, with hallucinatory, euphoric, and other enjoyable effects. Luckily, imbibing the liquids themselves have no negative side effects (although one should be careful while under their influence)—most, in fact, often have powerful medicinal or nootropic properties as well.

Adventure Hooks:

• A community leader is convinced that the nearby Brewers are using their wares to try and drug the populace into complacency, rendering the community helpless to fight off a Brewer invasion. Rumor has it that the community leader has commandeered an ancient excavator and is preparing to attack the mound when the Brewers emerge at the next market...

• A handful of people are having bizarre reactions after imbibing Brewer goods, with those affected transforming into bizarre (and violent) monsters. Some say it’s some plot of the Brewers, while others suspect inhuman shapeshifters have been changed back to their true forms by the Brewers’ intoxicants...

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If you enjoy my work and would like to see more stat-less bizarrities, places of interest, odd creatures, and strange settlements, please support me on Patreon or Ko-fi! (Non-monetary support is always welcome, too. Spread the word of the #WeirdGazetteer far and wide!)

Also, please note—The Gazetteer of the Weird and all entries within it are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, so be cool.