Tellep

Creature

Description:

Like the Offspring of a Moth and a Wallaby

Though none would be familiar with the words “moth” or “wallaby” outside of those who regularly study incredibly ancient records, telleps look a bit like a combination of the two. Standing a little over a meter tall on average, telleps are primarily herbivores, using the grinding pads on the bottoms of their stout tails to strip lichen and moss from the mountainous cliff sides they call home. (These tails are also home to hollow calcareous stylets, essentially organic needles, which are used to extract hemolymph from dead predators. See “Nourish the Body, Poison the Mind” below for more information.)

Telleps are timid, trunked creatures covered in a fuzzy grey material similar to fur or downy feathers, have a pair of heavily muscled legs that end in small cloven hooves, and sport two pairs of lateral frills that almost disappear when folded up. Telleps use these frills as proto-winglike structures to navigate the mountainous territory they call home, for communication and threat displays towards potential predators and rivals, and (in conjunction with the numerous miniature radar emitters at the tip of the tellep’s trunk) as sensory organs to help triangulate the projection of their globules, which essentially act as soft organic bullets.

Quirks:

Edible “Bullets”

If the flaring of their frills or their high-pitched chirping isn’t enough to deter a would-be threat, telleps are able to fire a sport of natural “bullet” at their target with significant velocity. These globules or pellets are densely compacted wads of what is essentially cud, although chemical analysis of a number of specimens has confirmed the globules actually contain far more nutrients (and of greater varieties) than one would expect to be produced by an animal that primarily eats moss and lichen.

While dense, these natural bullets are rather soft and deform on impact, which reduces their effectiveness as a deterrent somewhat when striking armored targets. However, the nutritional value of even a few tellep globules is quite high, and many species thought to have once preyed on the small creatures instead frighten them into providing a free lunch instead, a behavior thought to have evolved over time.

Nourish the Body, Poison the Mind

While the relationship between telleps and their would-be predators is essentially an example of animal extortion, the relationship between hunter and hunted isn’t always quite so straightforward. If sufficiently stressed, telleps are capable of firing globules covered in a coating of sticky mucus. This mucus has psychoactive properties which, while mild if absorbed through the skin, are incredibly potent if consumed. Often, predators that consume these “drug bullets” become so disoriented that they fall to their deaths, and telleps use the calcareous stylets found in their “tails” to feed upon their bodily fluids.

It’s unclear as to whether this strategy is purposeful and telleps are deliberately killing their aggressor in order to consume their hemolymph, or whether their behavior is accidental, as telleps will scavenge other carrion they come upon, not merely animals which they themselves have killed. That being said, the longer a tellep goes without consuming hemolymph, the more likely it is to produce psychoactive mucus, so it’s likely that there is some connection.

Adventure Hooks:

Periodically, Pet Pacification Proceeds Poorly

In the city of Opalmoss, pet telleps have been the rage for over twenty years, ever since Car’Kon the Metallurgist began producing what xe called “pacification studs.” The small coppery spikes, when pierced through a tellep’s upper and lower frills, render it completely docile, no matter its temperament before. Not only will its owner no longer have to worry about the calcareous stylet in its tail or its psychoactive mucus, but once pacified, tellep become extremely affectionate pets. True, the studs need to be replaced every so often as they corrode, but that’s no worry—Car’Kon offers replacements for half-price.

Unfortunately, when the Metallurgist goes missing after their foundry is found melted to slag, there are quite a number of pacified telleps throughout Opalmoss in dire need of new studs, soon...an issue that becomes especially pressing after a few of the creatures lose more than one stud and go feral, attacking all and sundry with psychoactive mucus more potent (and toxic) than normal.

A Heart That Beats on Borrowed Time

The lives of the Amoroni-Saput (the people whose name is shared by the mountains they call home) have depended on the telleps for generations, and the animals are treated as sacred beings, revered for all that they give unto the people. The Amoroni-Saput use tellep hide for their clothing, fur for their fabric, hooves for their glue, radar emitters for communication, and psychoactive mucus for their holy rites, viewing it as a gift from their ancestors for its ability to expand the horizons of the mind and elevate the spirit from this tellurian plane. However, when Saumhoornil (an old Amoroni-Saput friend of theirs) finds them, the PCs learn something has gone terribly wrong with the telleps of the mountains.

For the last season, tellep mucus has somehow changed, becoming more varied in color, intensity, and effect. This has drastically affected Amoroni-Saput shamans’ abilities to perform birth welcomings, marriages, and funerary rites, and worst of all, their most ancient and revered shaman has seemingly been poisoned by the latest batch of altered mucus. Saumhoornil asks for their help in uncovering the cause behind this change and explains that time is running out—for the PCs’ friend and the shaman. It seems that the poisoned shaman is Saumhoornil’s only living family member, and to keep them alive, Saumhoornil has performed imqi’ohqi, a ritual where a healthy member of the tribe gives up some of their blood to one who is in need, replacing it with godtears, to be changed back into regular blood with a tellep mucus-derived compound.

Normally, one only gives up a fifth or a quarter of one’s blood in imqi’ohqi, but Saumhoornil gave up nine-tenths of theirs, and without untainted mucus to change the godtears in their veins back into blood, the PCs’ friend will surely die. Until that point, however, Saumhoornil’s status as imqi (more powerful than any in Amoroni-Saput history) gives them an insight into the realm beyond this one, an insight that tells them the PCs are the key to healing the telleps and saving their life.

Would-Be Shepherds Would Do Well to Remember “Caveat Emptor”

The PCs stay the night at a small farmhouse with a gregarious family of tokasheru (five-legged sophonts with an affection for simple living, hard work, and total pacifism). It seems the tokasheru have decided to take up tellep farming in an effort to add some flavor to their diet that meets with their high philosophical standards. Up until recently, they’d depended on a Wonder capable of creating a nutritious, if exceedingly bland, gruel, but when a traveling merchant passed by a few tendays past, the tokasheru used the last of their savings to purchase a small herd of telleps. The globules harvested from the telleps would not only be a welcome addition to their meals, but they could sell them for extra money as well.

Unfortunately, the PCs’ hosts explain, if the telleps do not regularly feed on hemolymph, their globules become coated with a disgusting mucus. (The tokasheru are immune to its psychoactive properties, but it utterly ruins the organic projectiles as a source of food for them.) Although they hesitate to ask, the tokasheru would greatly appreciate if the PCs could bring back any dead arthropods they find on their travels in the nearby area.

If the PCs accept the quest and slay an arthropod, they’ll soon find themselves traveling alongside the robotic merchant described by their tokasheru friends—a member of the Eukeynes Consolidation, in fact. The telepresence drone remarks on the PCs’ bounty, and inquires as to whether they’d be interested in its latest offering: an exceedingly realistic (albeit, synthetic) arthropod “corpse” that comes complete with a hemolymph dispenser, as well as a month’s supply of hemolymph pellets to fill it—just add water!

Will the PCs react kindly to a merchant who dealt their pacifist friends a bad hand? Are they willing to upset the powerful economic force that is the Eukeynes Consolidation? Can they figure out a way to beg, borrow, or steal the hemolymph? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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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.