Properties of the Reincarnation Engine
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Promises carry physical weight. They can chain someone, they can create weapons, they can even power animated mannequins.
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The power of the Reincarnation Engine depends on the power of the New World Order’s machinations.
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Beauty is the currency of the Reincarnation engine. It can be traded, given away, and accepted.
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The Reincarnation Engine hungers.
The Structure of the Reincarnation Engine
The Reincarnation Engine is built in the Earth’s future, when it lies rotting beneath a dying sun, after Belphegor’s plans culminate in the Rapture that allows for his army to invade Heaven. Thus, the closer Belphegor comes to aligning the future to the one of his design, the more powerful the Reincarnation Engine grows.
The Reincarnation Engine is constructued in six layers, each deeper into the earth and larger the one before, like a buried pyramid.
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The Topmost level, the pinnacle of the pyramid jutting above the dying world, is called The Promise and consists of Belphegor’s throne.
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The Second level is called The Principle and consists of Belphegor’s Library of the Damned and the Vault of Wonders.
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The Third level is called The Purpose, and consists of the vast machinery that creates souls, the Soul Forge, and then constructs the artificial flesh and metaphysical machinery of the mannequins, combining the two into a new person.
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The Fouth Level is called The Prison, and contains the devilish enforcers of the Reincarnation engine, and a prison that contains rebellious Mannequins, captured gremlins, or stray humans who wandered deeper than they should. The Prison protects the Reincarnation Engine from what lies below, and also houses its greatest secret.
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The Fifth Level is called the Truth and collects the industrial runoff of the Reincarnation Engine.
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The roots of the Reincarnation Engine, the deepest level, has no name (and Belphegor will correct anyone who says otherwise), but its denizens call it Liberty while some the security forces higher up often refer to it as the Lie. It houses the outcasts and offal of the Reincarnation Engine, who have forged their own civilization in its deepest bowels. This lowest level ground the Reincarnation Engine in the dying Earth, and allows it to draw in the raw materials necessary for the construction of Mannequins, as well as providing an outlet for waste products.
The Promise and the Principle
Plot to take over the world!
0 or less: Your plot is uncovered! Antagonistic agents move against you and attempt to dethrone you. Or perhaps your plot works… but not as intended! The world, and your life, is worse off for your attempts!
1: You laugh manaically. Mwahahaha! You feel better.
3: Your plot is diabolical. It might not work, but your rivals and opponents will surely be impressed when you explain it to them.
4: Your plot succeeds! Your agenda advances as you slowly and inexorably come closer to ruling all the world!
6: Your successful plot spawns new conspiracy theories, paranoid and jealous worship directed at you by the powerless. Bask in their cowering fear!
7: A government topples! A city vanishes in a flash and a puff of radioactive smoke! Everyone is singing your newest pop-song, unaware of its secret, mind-controlling properties!
9: Your actions have redirected the world on the right path. A thousand may die, and all the art of the world might be lost, and you might cast millions into poverty, but the world is better for it.
Troubles, Tools and Bonds
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Megalomania: This wound inflicts many of those who try to conquer the world and fail. It acts as an ever mounting obstacle, or an edge others can use against you.
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“None may know of my plot!” This bond helps to protect your conspiracy and bind you to it, but should it be uncovered by a dashing, British spy, or a paranoid conspiracy theory, then you’ll be deeply wounded (and if the wound is lethal, you’ll die dramatically in the culmination of your plot being unwound.)
The Throne of Belphegor
Belphegor resides atop his great reincarnation engine, wherein all the splendor and wealth his has accumulated is gathered. The most beautiful of his mannequins drape themselves in wanton silk, and wait upon those who come to see the great and mighty Belphegor. This is one of the few places where natural sunlight is allowed to spill into the Reincarnation Engine, as the rest is buried in the corpse of a dying Earth.
He brings the inner circle of his New World Order here to make pacts with their damned children, to induct the newest members of the NWO, and to let those who have sold their soul to him to see survey the culmination of his great work and look upon the bleached bones of Earth’s cities.
Properties of the Throne of Belphegor
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Edge: The Seat of Mortal Power (+4): Belghegor has constructed his throne so that the words of every pact of power lay inscribed on its black basalt surface. It vibrates with pure political momentum. Any attempt to change the course of the world’s political or economic sphere gains an enormous Edge of +4.
Description Snippets
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Pale sunlight from a wane and dying star spills in through vast, stained glass windows that surround the Throne of Belphegor, blinding the supplicant and creating a golden aura around the once-angelic Belphegor. The colored glass lends an illusion of life to a grey world of black earth and the skeletal white bones of ruined, post-apocalyptic cities.
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Vast tables overflowing with picture-perfect food, the exquisite culinary art found on franchise menus and that fill fast-food billboards. The mouth-watering scent of the food has an industrial after-tang, a hint of cloying sweetness and tinny, artificial savoriness constructed by an alphabet soup of chemicals. The food itself tastes fine, but standard and unremarkable and leaves one with an unsatiated hollowness.
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Exquisitely attractive young men and women with lively eyes that brim with masterful beautiful and wickedness glide across the room wearing little more than jewelry and scandalously skimpy garments of flowing white or black. Each bears a barcode stamp somewhere and resemble one another in an uncanny fashion. If one looks closely enough, one can just barely make out seams in their joints and along their limbs.
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The beneath the cool surface of the glossy black marble floors, the reincarnation engine itself throbs and pulses. The clicking of the clockwork Mannequin servants also interrupts the silence between the murmur of tie-wearing dignitaries.
Find a lost work of art
0 or less: You’ve alerted security! Devils will shortly swarm around you and drag you off to the Prison. Or, possibly, you accidentally ruin a stored masterwork, stripping it of its beauty.
1: You find a work of art. It’s very pretty.
3: You find and claima lost work of art. It might not be the one you were looking for.
4: You find and claim the lost work of art you were looking for. Now, to escape!
5: You find a work of art. It speaks to you. You realize something important about your life, or find the inspiration you were really looking for.
8: You found a work of art. You didn’t even know this existed! It’s better than what you sought, and is a lynchpin to Belphegor’s plot. What will you do with it?
Troubles, Tools and Bonds
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Trouble: Corporate Security (-2): The Reincarnation Engine is protected by clockwork soldiers, mannequin warriors and a legion of devils. They’ve sprinkled wards, watchful eyes and barriers all throughout the establishment. Trying to get past all of them is exceedingly difficult.
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Wound: Enchanted: The art, the music, the treasures of the Reincarnation Engine are so breathtakingly beautiful that they begin to approach the power of heaven. Looking upon them can threaten one with this Wound (which is usually just a superficial wound, as only the most fragile of creatures would be utterly transformed by just a single glance at a lost Picasso or a single listen to Chad Kroeger’s audition tape).
The Vault of Wonders
When Carter’s corporate grasp has snatched up some precious treasure, or Chad has wrestled down the next great musical masterpiece, or Damien has found the most precious of a child’s collection, they offer it up to Belphegor, who keeps it in his Vault of Wonders. Eventually, Belpegor’s minions will shift it to the Soul Forge, where it will be stripped of the essenceof what makes that beautiful thing unique, authentic and precious. At that point, the actual work itself can be discarded, as a husk. Generally, at that point, it’s safe (and best!) to mass produce the bland result. Thus, the vault of wonders is full of works that disappointed the mass market not because they were poor, but because Belphegor stripped their glory from them.
A Sampling of Wonders
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Red Hot Chili Peppers – One Hot Minute
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Metallica – Load
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The Original Copy of Assassin’s Creed: Unity
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Zack Snyder’s original Sucker Punch
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The True Transformers Armada Toyline
Find a contract of damnation
0 or less: You’ve been spotted by security! Perhaps when Belphegor is finished torturing you, he’ll take your soul in exchange for releasing you! Or perhaps you’ve grabbed the wrong contract or, worse, accidentally damaged one in such a way that dangerous promises begin to leak out and some damned soul finds himself able to shake loose his obligations and go on rampage!
2: You’ve managed to break into the Reincarnation Engine and grab a handful of contracts. Maybe some will be useful.
4: You find the contract that you sought. What secrets will it hold? What power?
5: You don’t find the contract you seek. Instead, you find a series of interconnected contracts that point you in the direction of some important plot by Belphegor, or some deeper secret for the Reincarnation Engine.
8: You do not find the contract you seek. Instead, you find some contract between Belphegor and and a power, or another Imperator, or perhaps even an Excrucian. This dangerous contract holds untold secrets and power… if you can escape with it.
Troubles, Tools and Bonds
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Trouble: Corporate Security (-2): The Reincarnation Engine is protected by clockwork soldiers, mannequin warriors and a legion of devils. They’ve sprinkled wards, watchful eyes and barriers all throughout the establishment. Trying to get past all of them is exceedingly difficult.
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Bond: I serve Belphegor: Every contract, to some degree, measures a service to Belphegor. Those who violate this service will take a wound commesurate with their bond. Typically, this is a manifestation of Belphegor’s displeasure, and often transforms them into half-people who are still forced to serve Belphegor in another capacity.
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Tool: Contract of Damnation (+3): A contract of damnation contains the exact nature of the agreement, the true names of all involved, and is bound to the soul of those involved. This makes it an exceedingly powerful aid when trying to blackmail people, or when trying to use magic against them (that is, mortal magic, not miraculous power, though perhaps such a contract would grant a strike bonus when used in a rite). Treat it as Edge, in most cases.
The Library of the Damned
Belpegor keeps perfect records of every contrat he has ever taken out. He must! That way, he can produce it when his victims try to welsh on their agreement, or when he needs to use some explicit loophole to escape. The armies of clockwork clerks and robed devils also act as his legal department, carefully crafting the language of each contract to explicitly ensure that Belphegor gets what he wants out of the contract. And, of course, the contracts themselves bind souls, hence the name of the library (it is not just a library full of contracts, but of the damned themselves). Thus, the contract can be used in the creation of a Mannequin.
Properties of the Library of the Damned
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Edge: Demonic Legal Team (+2): Having an entire department of demons as your legal team is slightly superior to having a legal department full of lawyers.
Description Snippets
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Dim yellow bulbs hanging low near shelves and shelves of paper and books and boxes full of documents. Strange, arcane and sinister characters mark the library shelves in a system known only to the librarians (though, of course, Powers can read any language). As one nears the documents themselves, they drain the light around them, creating thick, miasmatic shadows that cluster in far corners of the shelves and make the lightbulbs buzz and dim when an especially powerful contract of damnation is read.
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The sheaves of paper whisper on unseen winds. They whisper of regret, of dreams unrighteously achieved and the unexpected costs. They whisper for freedom from their contractual shackles. They whisper for virtue unearned. The darker ones whisper promises of their own, promises of hidden power and secret knowledge. The wise do not listen.
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The room smells of dust, cobwebs and drying, cracking parchment. Beneath that, there lies the hint of sulfur and the cloying sweet of dying flesh and rotting teeth.
The Purpose and the Prison
Create your own Dream Mannequin
0 or less: You make a mess and ruin some perfectly good Mannequins, or create a new mannequin, but it goes madand becomes an abomination.
2: You make a mannequin. It might not be your dream mannequin, though.
3: You make a particularly beautiful mannequin. It’s not your dream mannequin, but it’s surely someone’s.
4: You create your dream mannequin.
5: You create a mannequin, but it’s not your dream mannequin. Nonetheless, it becomes a boon companion and a close ally.
6: You create a powerful and exceptional mannequin, one that with magical properties or unique genius.
7: You create your dream mannequin, but it exceeds all of your expectations, unequally magical or exceptionally capable.
Troubles, Tools and Bonds
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Trouble: You can’t just make people out of nothing (-5): To create a mannequin requires the essence of something uniquely beautiful, and a contract for a damned soul. The trouble can be bypassed if you have both, but the mannequin itself will be shaped by the masterpiece and the damned soul.
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Bond: Abomination: Some damned souls have gone too far and become devils. A devil in human skin is a monster, hungry for flesh and mad, unable to escape the border mythic.
The Soul Forge
The heart of the Reincarnation Engine is the soul forge. The vast, clockwork machinery takes a damned soul and fuses it with the beautiful uniqueness of a masterpiece. The combination is a twisted combination of heaven and hell, of purity with taint.
The Soul Forge’s machinery also constructs a new body from the corpses of the dead and the raw material from the heart of the dying Earth to create artificial beings powered by the same metaphysical machinery that the Reincarnation engine, and then houses the soul within the newly constructed body. The body can be designed to spec, as well as the mind. Only the soul is notoriously difficult to control, and it can shape the flesh and mind, even warping it into something monstrous.
Properties of the Soul Forge
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The Soul Forge Machinery: The Soul Forge allows one to bypass the “You can’t just create a soul from nothing” trouble, provided one has a damned soul and the beautiful uniqueness of a masterpiece.
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(Wound) Stripped of Beauty: Those who fall into the workings of the Soul Forge risk something worse than physical injury. The devouring teeth of that great machine can chew up your very beauty and uniqueness, stripping from you everything that makes you remarkable, and leaving a boring, gray, mass-produced mass behind. That can take quite some time to heal!
Description Snippets
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As far as the eye can see, the vast machinery of the Soul Forge churns, turns, clanks and whirs. The thin, steel catwalks that stretch over the grinding teeth of the factory’s endless clockwork vibrates constantly with the motion.
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Thick, viscous black grease lubricates the gears and cogs of the factory. It drips from the machinery and pools on the catwalks and flooring, great globs of it like black, sticky tears.
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The Soul Forge itself, sometimes called the Navarasa Refinery, lies at the heart of the great Reincarnation Engine, precisely at its center. The steel struts flow from it out to the walls of the Reincarnation engine, each supporting the other. As works of art are poured into it, the prismatic fires within purge all the physical components leaving only the essence of beauty. It burns with rainbow light, with the smell of a summer’s day, or the smell of leaves after an autumn rain, with the warmth your father’s sweater when you haven’t seen him for a long time or of a hearth during winter, and with the sound of church bells ringing out. Next, a thrashing shadow of a damned soul, bound in the steely ribbons of contractual law, is dropped in, and all at once a terrible reaction happens. With the rumble of ominous thunder and a stomach-lurching sense of wrong, the two things combine and then it condenses into a point of light that spins and swirls with gossamer strands of virtue, sin, potential and infinity, and becomes a single speck of heaven stained with hell. A soul is born, swirling with both tear-wrenching beauty and a sickening sense of wrong.
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Steely skeletons hang from the hooks of the factory line as they wend their way through the great engine. Here, spidery machinery bolts on strips of grey-brown, leathery muscles, there metallic seamstresses sow a plastic-like hide over the flesh and silken hair is woven around the factory-made face. Overseers might pour over rows of glass eyes, choosing the best for a custom-made mannequin. They find their way to the great dharma stamp, which impresses them with purpose, and then, in the final step, the thrashing shadow of a damned soul and finally, that profane star-speck of heaven is infused into the mannequin and they suddenly jerk awake and alive, their eyes seeing, their mouths working, and often their hands reaching up to touch their face, to try to make sense of their jumbled memories and who they are.
Rescue a Prisoner from the Reincarnation Engine
0 or less: You’ve made a right hash of things. Alarms are ringing, the devils of the Reincarnation Engine and their mannequin flunkies descend upon you. In short order, you’ll be added to the collection of prisoners within the Reincarnation Engine and, worse, you released the wrong person!
3: Wow, what an adventure! You broke into the prisons in the heart of the Reincarnation, made a mess, and released a few prisoners, and then managed to escape! They sure won’t forget your name!
4: You rescued your prisoner.
6: You rescued your prisoner and a few others, and now they owe you. More, those beneath the Reincarnation Engine, in Liberty, have heard of your success, and hope you’ll lead them in their glorious revolution.
9:You didn’t rescue your prisoner. You found the Chamber of Grace.
The Chamber of Grace
The true heart of the Reincarnation Engine is not its Soul Forge, but its power source, just beneath it. Before Belphegor was cast out of heaven, he kidnapped one of its angels, Aionide, and dragged her down with him to Earth. He’s chained her up and slowly drains the Grace from her. Century by century, more of her feathers fall away and she grows smaller. She is, now, the size of a child, but she could spring back to her full glory if she had a chance to return to heaven. Her grace supplies what Belphegor no longer can: A small piece of heaven to infuse his wicked, stolen souls.
Properties of the Clockwork Cathdral
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Unbreakable Chains (-5): No mortal hand can break the chains that bind Aionade, only Miraculous actions can do that, and Belphegor has infused them with a powerful Auctoritas, making any attempt to free Aionade a doomed effort.
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Trouble: Corporate Security (-2): The Reincarnation Engine is protected by clockwork soldiers, mannequin warriors and a legion of devils. They’ve sprinkled wards, watchful eyes and barriers all throughout the establishment. Trying to get past all of them is exceedingly difficult.
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(Wound) Touched by Grace: Those who stay too long in the presence of Aoinide, the Angel of Grace, become changed by her. They gain stained-glass eyes and metaphysical additions, like clockwork wings. They become addicted to the castoffs of the Soul Forge and begin to see the Angel of Grace in their dreams.
The Truth and Liberty
Revolt against the Machine
0 or less: Your actions draw the authority and power of Belphegor down upon you. His devils and his mannequin army now descend upon the lower levels of the Reincarnation Engine to demolish your resistance. The Machine is stronger than ever.
1: Slacktivism lets you feel like you’re making a difference, even if you aren’t.
2: It turns out that raising awareness really doesmake a difference.
3: Whee, firebombs can be pretty! Watch that clockwork man-machine stagger and burn while its voice drones out a low and slow static-howl before it dies. You’ve made a difference!
4: Your revolt has pushed the machine so that it teeters. Devils must turn in their resignation notices. Prisoners are released. Belphegor promises reform. Perhaps he even means it!
6: Your revolt has really pushed the Reincarnation Engine to the brink! You’ve managed to alarm Belphegor’s backers and word of your success spreads to the disenfranchised of the Reincarnation and the Dying Earth. Others begin to take up the banner.
7: You break something fundamental to the Reincarnation Engine. Perhaps you free someone vital, or you smash the Soul Forge itself. Short of a project, you cannot destroy the whole chancel, but the nature of it changes utterly.
Troubles, Tools and Bonds
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Trouble: Corporate Security (-2): The Reincarnation Engine is protected by clockwork soldiers, mannequin warriors and a legion of devils. They’ve sprinkled wards, watchful eyes and barriers all throughout the establishment. Trying to get past all of them is exceedingly difficult.
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Trouble: You and what army (-3): It’s very difficult to make meaningful, wide-scale change without a considerable force at your disposal. If you don’t have an army, apply this penalty.
The Clockwork Cathedral
Beneath the Soul Forge and the Chamber of Grace, deep in the Truth, the industrial residue and runoff of the industrial processes above gather and pool in one central place. Once, machinery removed the industrial build-up, but that has since broken down. Now, every spilled scrap of heart-wrenching beauty, and Aionide’s Grace and Inspiration, as well as fragments of souls and just a hint of damnation, have pooled into a single place, giving it enormous dharmic and artistic weight, and changing it. It has become the Clockwork Cathedral, a place of hope in the Truth and Liberty, the lowest depths of the Reincarnation Engine, where the misfits and castoffs can gather to worship or, perhaps, to plan for the overthrow of the Reincarnation Engine.
Properties of the Clockwork Cathedral
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What you need to See: The hymns of the Clockwork Cathedral carry words within words, and its stained glass windows carry so many facets that its congregation hear what they need to hear and see what they need to see. These are usually moral or artistic visions, rather than dharmic ones.
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(Tool) Spiritual Center (+3): The great spiritual weight of the Clockwork Cathedral absolutely centers its congregation and improves their lives. Anyone who must contemplate spirituality, their place in the universe, or what they should be doing gains a +3 to that effort.
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(Wound) Touched by Grace: Those who stay too long in the Clockwork Cathedral become changed by it. They gain stained-glass eyes and metaphysical additions, like clockwork wings. They become addicted to the castoffs of the Soul Forge and begin to see the Angel of Grace in their dreams.
Description Snippets
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The Multifaceted, stained glass windows are asterions: they catch the light given to them by others and reflect it back with an inner fire, showing different visions from different perspectives. They gleam and glow and seem so shift and flow as one walks past them, scenes animating themselves with a play of light. They show tragic and beautiful scenes, of suffering, broken artistry and great moral imperative.
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The vast vaults of the Clockwork Cathedral catch the hymns of the congregation and echo them back, but often with old words, perhaps with whispers spoken days ago, or a sermon that is yet to be spoken. To hear the echoes of yesterday or tomorrow, or even the voice of the Angel of Grace, one must be silent and meditate upon the great spiritual weight of the place. Once so centered, one can hear the words whispered by the walls in between the notes of sacred hymns.
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The air carries the weight of tragic, broken grandeur, like stepping into the desecrated ruins of a house of worship: One can feel the tragedy of the once holy, and the hope of something that could be holy once more. It carries with it the weight of expectation and awe, like the thickness of the air when the orchestra falls silent, but before the roar of applause begins.
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Poorly lit, so deep beneath the surface of the dying earth, shadows hang heavy in the Clockwork Cathedral. Only the candles and yellowy electric lanterns of the misfit denizens offers any light, as well as the reflected light of the stained glass windows and the glittering eyes of the creatures that attend the Clockwork Cathedral. The rattle of their machinery, the click of their teeth and rustle of their vocoders mix with the smell of oil, earthy rot and incense to create a strangely heady atmosphere. These are the dispossessed and desperate, those that hope someday to be real people.
Survive!
0 or less: The Reincarnation Engine devours all that comes within it; you are no exception. If you’re lucky, you’ll be chewed up by its gears, to have your bones picked by the devilish gremlins that infest the machinery. Perhaps you’ll have your beauty stripped and be turned into a pasty, catatonic slave of the machine. Perhaps your parts will be turned into fodder for the mannequins and your soul, bound to a promise by belphegor, will awaken in the artificial flesh of a mannequin.
1: One can find joy and beauty even in the harshest of worlds.
2: You’re surviving… for now. You’ve found food in the hide of a dying devil, and you’ve found shelter in the underpass of a catwalk. But it won’t last.
4: You’re managed to survive, carving out a niche for yourself in the heart of the Engine.
5: It’s like you’re meant to be here. The Reincarnation engine isn’t just a place you’re surviving, but a place you’re living. You belong here!
6: You’re not just surviving, but thriving! The misfit gangs of Liberty fear you, and the mannequin army knows to avoid you. Perhaps people even come to you for advice on how to survive, or to trade for some of the things you’ve been making to help yourself survive.
7: You’ve not just survived the Reincarnation Engine, but conquered it! You’ve become a force to be reckoned with. The Reincarnation Engine must fold you into its workings, just as Liberty itself has forced the whole of the Reincarnation Engine to grudgingly accept it and its denizens.
Troubles, Tools and Bonds
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Trouble: The Will of Belphegor (-3): Belphegor must accept that which comes into his Reincarnation Engine. This lacks the force of a true Imperial Miracle, but resembles it on a mortal scale. Those who evade Belphegor’s will and live here without his knowledge face a harder struggle. Those who gain Belphegor’s permission to be here, often by making an oath, or “Selling out” as Liberty puts it, can avoid this trouble.
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Tool: The Freedom of the Lie (+2): Those who make their way to Liberty can better survive the Reincarnation Engine. This tool can only overcome the Will of Belphegor trouble, but it’s enough to shift survival from impossibly difficult to merely inconvenient.
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Wound: Devoured by the Reincarnation Engine: Those who fail to survive are digested by the Reincarnation Engine. This wound usually results in the end of that particular character, but it sometimes just changes them into something else, one of the servitors of the Engine, or a Mannequin, etc.
The Underground
Sprawling beneath the gigantic Reincarnation Engine, Liberty is a city within a city. It brims with helter-skelter construction, apartments piled atop one another like a child’s bricks, and winding roads and alleyways. In the Underground, the misfits and outcasts of the Reincarnation Engine make their home. For many, the Underground isthe Reincarnation Engine, for they never get much above it, except for perhaps the Truth and its Clockwork Cathedral.
The Locations of the Underground
- The Underground Market: Because of the properties of the Chancel, many of the misfit denizens have taken to trading their beauty, or scraps of beauty they find lying around, or perhaps given freely by the charity of the Clockwork Cathedral, or perhaps ripped off a victim by a savage mugging, for promises made real, the metaphysical machinery of the reincarnation engine. The oathsmiths of the Underground can shape a promise into a sharp blade, or durable armor, or even exquisite vehicles, though they cannot forge something truly living without access to the Soul Forge. The Underground Marked also trades in said beauty, swapping genuinely authentic, original and meaningful artifacts for promises, mannequin slaves or metaphysical machinery.
- Club: Zero Exposure: The cultural heart of the Underground is Zero Exposure, a ramshackle club that serves whiskey, rum and rainbow bowls. It’s covered in corrugated iron, the tables are industrial wirespools and the waitstaff are clockwork servitors. Aqua Punk got its initial start here.
- The Offramp: Liberty is build into the roots of the world, so its connects with other places and other times. One can take an offramp from the Underground to Gastown in Vancouver or the Dungeon of Lost Toys, among other places.
Description Snippets:
- Industrial run off and the oil of reincarnation engine above gives the puddles of water and the greasy black mud a rainbow sheen in the soft glow of the mushrooms that root in the trash of the Underground. The drip-drip of water is sometimes the only sound audible in the emptier parts of the Underground.
- The rogue servitors of the Reincarnation Engine clank and whir as they walk past, speaking to one another in crackling, radio voices. When questioned, they’ll stop and turn to stare at you with burning, yellow, electric-lamp eyes, their hide covered in rust and burlap.
- Raucous laughter and the pulse-pounding beat of truly unique and innovative music makes it way out of Zero Exposure. The neon sign, with a flickering Z, announces the location. Inside, devils curl their tails around their glasses of hard vodka, a wizened clockwork servitor swirls his sparkling rainbow bowl, and a beautiful-eyed mannequin girl smiles at you with steel teeth and asks what you’ll have, while man in a patchwork top-hat announces the next act to the shadow-swathed audience, who erupt in cheers and whistles.
- The stink of trash, human waste and the rusting of metal pervades all of the Underground. The miasma grows so thick in places, it forms a choking mist of a sinister yellow-green hue. As one sloshes through the thick, clumpy, greasy brown mud of the streets of the Underground, one might wonder if this is what happens when someone builds a city in a sewer.
Mailanka's Musing 
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