Peng Lai, where dreams come true, the Chancel of Kirin

Properties of Peng Lai

• Everyone has a purpose
• Destiny shapes all lives
• Doubt will destroy you

The Geography of Peng Lai

Peng Lai is a great mountain in a still, sun-set sea, with great clouds rumbling above its peak and a lazy, perpetual rain. It has a picaresque quality, like a fantastic painting brought to life. One can only arrive at Peng Lai by boat, which leads to a great gate and wall. One must pass the gate and then travel the 10,000 steps to reach the top of the great, craggy mountain, and only there, at the top, can one petition Kirin herself to grant your destiny. The path taken is called the Pilgrimage and one must necessarily encounter the whole of Kirin’s estates and Powers along the way in some fashion.

The Poison of Peng Lai

Something rots at the heart of Peng Lai. A great crack runs up the entirely of the mountain that has split the temple at the top itself. At first, it was barely perceptible, but it grows worse. Something blackens the plant life and the water, and sometimes, off the beaten path, terrible beasts roam. Not everyone sees these things, but they always flicker at the edges of your vision. This is the manifestation of the poison of Peng Lai, which Kirin claims is the result of some attack on her domain and her estates, perhaps the act of an Excrucian, or perhaps even treachery by Lord Entropy himself (for he is Dark and Kirin is Light). The poison can infect and wound those who stay in Peng Lai via numerous possiblepaths, but only one vector for infection is certain: If you give into your doubts about Peng Lai, you’ll be poisoned. This definitelyincludes a player asking if “Will this poison me?” Just asking such a question results in the poisoning of your character. The severity of poison depends on how deep one has traveled into Peng Lai, and manifests as a wound.
Other possibleways to become poisoned mayinclude (or may not include!):

• Accepting food/help from strangers
• Suffering the scorn of others
• Drinking the water of Peng Lai
• Accepting a lie as truth
• Acting in a way contrary to your true dharma

Go to a better place!

0 or less: You may not enter Peng Lai, for you are unworthy!

1: You may not enter Peng Lai yet, but perhaps you’ll be worthy of entrance some day

3: You may not enter Peng Lai, for you are unworthy, but you meet someone who is also trying to gain entrance. You agree to go out for a cup of tea together!

5: You may not enter Peng Lai, for you are not worthy, but you know why you are unworthy! You have learned how you mightenter Peng Lai! You just need to improve these things about yourself, and by following your dharmic path, you will inevitably enter Peng Lai.

6: You may not enter Peng Lai, for you are unworthy, but you have learned what it takes for anyoneto enter Peng Lai. People come to you for help, and you can offer them your great wisdom.

8:You may enter Peng Lai. You are worthy!

9: Do not enter Peng Lai. Stay, and help others enter Peng Lai.

Troubles, Tools and Bonds

• You are worthy!: None may enter Peng Lai who are unworthy, which is built into the difficulty list. But if one is truly worthy, having fulfilled their dharma, walked the path of their life and finally, at last, achieved their destiny, gains a +5 to enter Peng Lai. This definitely applies to any Power whose Flower is Alyssym.

Exile

Many manypeople want to enter Peng Lai. Entire nations have decamped from their worlds to come to Peng Lai to find their destiny, but none are worthy to enter. They await their moment of destiny at the base of the mountain, outside of the gate, in a great, vast refugee community named Exile. Budd reigns here, often bringing people across the sunset sea and parking them at Exile until he can find another place for them. It acts as a sort of half-way house for the dispossessed and desperate. The result is an explosion of anarchic culture, despair, hope, bright-eyed children and hollow-eyed adults, cynicism mixed with idealism, and violence mixed with hope.

The Poison of Exile: Exile isn’tpoisoned, because it’s outsidePeng Lai. It lies at the gate that entersPeng Lai. So, Budd is quick to assure everyone that there is no danger in Exile. Even so, rumors persist that those who have poisoned Peng Lai reside in Exile, and certainly some strange and dangerous seeming characters lurk in Exile, lending it some truth. If there is poison in Exile, though, it is evidently weak:

• Poison of Exile: Surface Wound (“Strangers mean to harm me”) 1

Properties of Exile

• Tool/Trouble: That’s Weird! (+/-2): Everything in Exile is weird. Ancient Gauls brush shoulders with medieval Jews, modern Syrians and Zeta Reticulans. You can find anything in Exile, providing you seek something unfamiliar. This cuts both ways. If you seek something weird or exotic, you gain +2 to find it (that is, not only are you more likely to find it, but doing so will improve your life), but seeking the traditional and familiar is penalized (That is, not only is it more likely to fail, but it will make your life worse).
• Edge: The Specter of Violence (Varies): The Power of Violence, one of Bhaal’s powers, visited Exile after the death of Bhaal, in an effort to force Budd back to his old ways. Deadwood found him and killed him, and his specter still haunts Exile. The people there are all intimately familiar with the fear and possibility of violence. One can invoke the power of Violence simply by uttering its name, implying the possibility. Doing so grants a powerful edge that increases the more one invokes him. It cannot be used to improve your life, but it can be used to force your will onto others. However, the more powerful you make the specter of violence, the more powerful it becomes for others to invoke as well. Budd has forbidden his invocation, because too much invocation might bring Violence back.

Description Snippets

• 
  A light drizzle taps gently on the draped cloth that covers the pavillion of the marketplace. Beneath you, the mud squishes between your toes or beneath your shoes. Thunder rumbles and the warm, lifting wind, the one that flaps the canopy above, smells of lotus blossoms, peace and the promise of a coming spring. Through the drizzle, to the East, the sun touches the horizon behind the grey curtain of rain, and paints the great mountain of Peng Lai a rainbow of hues.
• An elephant stops at a red light, flicking his ears to wave away flies as he waits for traffic to pass before him. Atop the gray titan rests a wide-eyed alien, wearing a turban on his oversized, pallid head. When he catches you watching him, he waves his riding crop and shouts in a deep bariton “Wazzaaaap?”
• As you walk through the market, a black woman begins to shout at you from a stall. She wears prayer beads in her dreads that clack ceremoniously as she moves, and her richly colored, arabic-styles robes flow in the wind. She’s trying to sell you saffron, or perhaps an old 8-track player. Across the street, a portly goblin also vies for your attention. His griddle steams with crab pancakes, falafel and fresh, still-living gagh. He grins at you with yellow teeth and waves the odor of his crazed BBQ in your direction “Only one dolla!” he growls.
• A little girl is lost in a dark alley. A Mexican, a Syrian and a Zeta Reticulan, with ominous technology, notice her. They close in. She trembled but says “I am not afraid!” Behind her, an ominous specter rises invisibly. It whispers a threat in her ear. She trembles again. The men, they say “You look lost, little girl.” One reaches out for her…

Improve Yourself!

0 or less: Sometimes fad dieting and self-improvement plans leave you worse off than you were before.

1: You’re perfect the way you are.

3: Your motivation for self-improvement infects others!

4: You improve yourself in some specific, small way.

6: Your self-improvement is noticeable. Others are impressed! Even jealous!

7: You gain the sort of quick self-improvement people really crave. You lose all that weight and look great! You get that degree! You’re a better person.

9: You don’t achieve self-improvement, but you find the path to genuine self-improvement and gain a stone that you can apply to self-improvement

Troubles, Tools and Bonds

• Wound: Superficial Self-Improvement: Success at self-improvement might be illusory. You gain a bond that states that you’re better at something, but it wounds you, and lasts only until such time that you realize that it’s not really you, and then goes away.
• Wound: Magical Self-Improvement: Success at self-improvement might be illusory but awesome. This grants you the sort of benefits that you see in adverts or on posters, the sort of self-improvement that you actually want. It’s kung fu, or a perfect waistline, or a better degree than everyone else. You are a demonstrably better person. This is also a wound, but a Serious or Divine Wound. It grants an Affliction-based power associated with your self-improvement, and lasts until you realize that it’s not really you. This sort of self-improvement dissolves people, like the chubby sweet girl who becomes sleek and perfect but loses all of her personality and becomes a plastic magazine cover.

The Golden Palace

Visible from Exile is the great Golden Palace, a wondrous and glittering mansion that stands just beyond the gates and has balconies from which its denizens can step out, survey those unworthy of entrance into Peng Lai, and assure themselves that they are better people.

The Golden Palace is the domain of the Power of Etiquette, though it has lain empty for quite some time. Nonetheless, the relics of her passing remain within. It contains libraries full of geneological books in which one may find proof that your ancestors were kings, or golden robot-like beings who will happily teach you how to eat or speak or dress or walk to prove that you are a superior person. If you remain in the Golden Palace, they promise you, you can achieve the sort of success that one dreams about.

Poison of the Golden Palace: The poison of the Golden Palace is well-known, and it haunts the hallways. The persistent rumor is that if you’re discovered to be poisoned, you’ll be cast out of Peng Lai, thus the denizens of the Golden Palace run about, attempting to prove to others that, unlike the dirty people of Exile, they’re too good to be poisoned. Nonetheless, more and more sick people are found. What is its cause?

• Serious Wound: “I am not good enough” 2

Properties of the Golden Palace

• Edge: Self-Improvement Scheme +3: The Golden makes self-improvement easier, if you can step past its gates. However, its effects only apply in comparison to others. You may apply it as a tool, but only if you accept one of the wounds aabove as a result of the attempt.
• Edge: Proof of Worth (+4): The Golden Palace contains a vast library of documents, certificates and eloquent books that all prove that you, specifically, are worthy. These can be offered up as evidence of proof of worth to anyone, including to gain entrance to Peng Lai!
• Bond: Better than You: The native Denizens of the Golden Palace have a bond that expresses their ultimate superiority over all others, worth +1 to +5, depending on how supreme they are, though usually only the Duchess of Etiquette herself has achieved the lofty heights of “Better than You +5”

Description Snippets

• 
  The golden clockwork denizen of the golden palace gleams a burnished hue in gaze of the setting sun. She bows before you. “I am DeeDee-Six, human/Noble relations. I am pleased to make your acquaintance. Please, step in out of the rain.”
• Endless halls and spiraling staircases spread before you, each leading to unknown and unfamiliar rooms. Portraits of people you should know, but don’t, line the walls, and various impressive statuary and knick-knacks clutter the walls, giving one the sense that a single touch might send the crashing down, shattering the cathedral like silence of the Golden Palace. The clockwork robots move precisely and exactly: the know they belong here, know where they are going and where they are coming from. Do you?
• Down one of the corridors, you can see humans sitting at tables and dining under the instruction of golden robots. They lift their spoons to their mouths in perfect unison, and lower them again, clacking them together on the table like one great machine.
• Upon the balcony, you can survey the valley below. Exile spreads out beneath you, filthy and muddy, a riot of disconnected colors. The people seem so small, so petty and so minor from this lofty perch. A woman stands at your side. She smiles at you. She seems to believe you are important and impressive. She clears her throat, and you sense that she’s about to test her perception, to see if you belong here, in this lofty perch, or down there, among the rabble.
• As you walk the endless halls in search of the missing mistress of Etiquette, you overhear a conversation “We are here to make you better,” a clockwork robot intones with the vibratoins of a tolling clock. “But if I am on the soil of Peng Lai, surely I am already worthy.” “I said not that you were unworthy, only that we are here to make you better.”

Find Inner Peace

0 or less: Your doubts manifest as the poison of Peng Lai! I guess it isa real thing!

1: You meditate and find your center and calm. But does that really count as inner peace?

3: You meditate beautifully and find your center and calm. But is that inner peace? Others think it might be. They want to know how you achieved it.

5: You meditate and find your center and calm, and you also realize something important, about yourself, about your past, about your regrets or hopes and dreams. You understand the world better, as well as your place in it. But does that really count as inner peace?

6: You meditate and find your center and calm, and others are awed by your evident inner peace. They come to you as a wise sage and ask for help in achieving inner peace. But did you really achieve inner peace.

8: You meditate and find your center and calm and achieve enlightenment. You know something profoundly spiritual and important, having learned a fundamental truth of the world that you can offer to others. But does that really count as inner peace?

9: You meditate and find your center and calm.

Troubles, Tools and Bonds

• Wound: Enlightenment (1): You have achieved enlightenment, which grants +1 to any attempts to retain your moral center. This is a great burden, however, and it wounds you (superficial). The only way to heal it is to accept that it is an illusion.
• Tool: Inner Peace (+5): You have achieved the final state of bliss where no things bother you. How did you do it? Can it be done?

The Tea Garden

The heart of the Peng Lai is not its temple, but its tea garden. Here, the Cult of the Tea Blossom serves perfect tea brewed in the hot springs from the heart of the mountain, where the Power of Tea reigns over the peace of Peng Lai. With the death of Abigail Ng, however, things have fallen into disarray. Two of the five divine guard beasts, the sworn protectors of the Tea Garden, have been exiled and one has vanished. Abigail herself has perished. The Cult of the Tea Blossom struggles to hold the increasing poison at bay, but sometimes the hot springs run black with it, and the caverns deep in the bowels of the temple hiss and whistle with the hungry rumblings of strange, shadowy monsters.

Poison of the Tea Garden: The Tea Garden now has not one, but two poisons. The first, the original, is an insidious one that comes to those who try to meditate, and often takes the form of a poisoned enlightenment. The other, the new one, comes (sometimes!) to those who drink the tea. The latter is contagious, because the bearer carries the poison of Peng Lai.

• Serious Wound: “I shall never find inner peace” (3)
• Serious Wound: “Veins filled with the Poison of Peng Lai” (3)

Properties of the Tea Garden

• The Five Divine Guardians: The Five Divine Beasts are immortal martial artists who have achieved martial enlightenment in the Tea Garden and have been chosen by Kirin to act as the protectors of the Power of Tea. They failed in their task. To learn more, see Abigail Ng.
• Cult of the Tea Blossom (+3): When it comes to enjoying a cup of tea, few can offer a better or more perfect cup of tea than the Cult of the Tea Blossom. Yukimura Yuji himself has gone on a quest to find them and to join their ranks due to his love of Abigail Ng, but has thus far failed.

Description Snippets

• The rain of Peng Lai bounces off the roof of your pagoda, leaving you in peace. In the distance, it fills a deer-chaser fills slowly with rain water and then rings out a gentle bamboo percussion. The white noise of the rain wipes out all other noise and sound, leaving you alone with your thoughts.
• Tea feels warm in your hand. It warms your lips, your mouth, and it tastes bitter and sweet at once, each flavor accentuating the other. It fills your belly with healing warmth. Deep in that warmth, in the truth found in the yin and yang of sweet and bitter, you sense some greater truth.
• Rain disturbs the peace of the ponds in the garden. It makes their surface a riot of tiny ripples. Beside the pools, tea blossoms catch the rain, forming small, jewel-like droplets on the petals and blossoms.
• As you seek calm, the cultists sit with you. They prepare your tea, wearing their robes of green and black, beautiful young women not much different from the barristas of Vancouver except for the gentleness of their eyes. Their graceful tea ceremony is ruined by the rival of a frightened priestess, who whispers urgently in their ear. The tea cup slips ever so slightly, losing some of its tea, and the cup itself cracking in her hand. The sound of that crack cuts through the peace offered by the fall of the rain, and the warmth of the tea in your hand.

Achieve True Wisdom

0 or less: You’ve achieved sophistry. You’ve come up with some clever arguments and ideas that seem sound, but are actually just very clever logical fallacies. You’re actually worse off than when you started!

1: Learning is fun!

2: You don’t achieve wisdom, but you do achieve trivia. Did you know that James Garfield was the first US president to be assassinated in office?

3: You didn’t achieve wisdom, but you’re more erudite. You can offer wisdoms that impress others, even if they’re not truewisdom.

5: You don’t achieve true wisdom, but you learned something you needed to know. This is usually some pertinent fact to a problem in your life, such as a good strategy to defeat an enemy, or a wrong you committed in the past and should rectify.

6: You don’t achieve true wisdom, but you become so erudite that people begin to think of you as a sage. They hope you’ll offer them your wisdom, so they can gain it more easily than risking themselves on the Poison of the Font, or otherwise going through the work themselves.

8:You don’t achieve true wisdom, but you learn something profoundlyimportant: the secret vulnerability of Lord Entropy, the name of a lost world, the true nature of the Poison of Peng Lai.

9: You know that you do not know. You have achieved the first step of true wisdom.

Troubles, Tools and Bonds

• Tool: True Wisdom (+5): Can such a thing even exist?

The Fountain of Wisdom

Near the pinnacle of Peng Lai, deep in a foreboding cavern protected by strange monsters and terrifying, difficult to navigate cavern, one can find the fountain. It is lonely, with no attendants or assistants, deep in a cavern haunted by shadows, for wisdom stands alone. Those who humbly kneel may drink from it and partake of the heartwaters of Peng Lai, that which feeds the tea garden springs below, and gain not only inner peace, but true wisdom. When Deirdre Brooks drank from the font, she became the Power of Education.

Poison of the Fountain of Wisdom: Some refuse to drink from the Font of Wisdom for fear of its poison. They would rather cling to the truths they already know rather than risk their world view on the false wisdom offered by the Font. They claim that some who drink from the fountain sometimes find something black and brakish in it, something dread and terrible. When they do, they find themselves afflicted with the following poison:

• Serious Wound: Nothing is True (4)

Properties of the Fountain of Wisdom

• The Unknown Beast: A monster shrouded in mystery stalks the caverns outside the Font of Wisdom. Its claws and teeth drip with all the poisons of Peng Lai, and the fears of mortal men call it. It whispers to others to turn back, to accept their ignorance. Those who embrace and revel in their ignorance became the allies of the Unknown Beast, who rests in their shadows, breathing its poison on all others. The Unknown Beast has an Aspect Gift “Slavering Beast” 5, the Mysterious Gift, and the Poisons of Peng Lai gift, which allows it to inflict any poison of Peng Lai.
• The Winding Cavern (Trouble -4): Making it through the winding caverns of the font of wisdom require facing illusions, tricky passages and intuition-defying physics, but all of it follows a logic of its own. Those who face the Winding Cavern face a -4 to their efforts to navigate it unless they set aside their preconceptions.

Description Snippets

• The cliff leading to the cavern is exceedingly narrow. The wind here howls and turns the rain into cutting droplets that make the stone slick and dangerous. Exile is a patchwork of color down below, and the stairs of Peng Lai seem a thin ribbon winding of up the mountain side. You’re reached a terrifying height, one few mortals have ever achieved. Dare you to rise further? To touch heaven itself?
• The cavern offers some shelter from the rain, but it’s cold. The stone of the cavern walls feels hard and unforgiving under your hands, and it vanishes deep into uncertain shadows, creating a confusing maze of darkness and uncertainty. The only illumination offered comes from sudden jags of lightning outside, which cast strange, unfamiliar shadows. You’d have to leave the cave to know what cast those shadows, but true wisdom lies deeper in the cavern.
• Something crawls these caverns with you. It hulks. It breaths. You cannot see it, but you sense its presence. “There is no font,” a stranger once confided in you down in Exile. “Kirin is a monster and lies to others to convince them to come up here so that she can devour you.” Those words come unbidden as you realize that the heavy, poisonous breathing of the Unknown Beast is right behind you…

Summit Peng Lai

0 or less: The path of Peng Lai is a straight and narrow one, yet somehow, you managed to get lost. Strange monsters lurk in the wilderness of Peng Lai, the manifestation of your doubts and fears, and the poison of Peng Lai. They breath their poison in to the wilds of Peng Lai, and they hunt you now.

1: My, doens’t Peng Lai have beautiful scenery?

2: You manage to climb Peng Lai! You reach the Tea Garden, where you may find inner peace. Isn’t that enough?

3: The Tea Cult are impressed you’ve made it so far. “Few manage so many steps, for the burden of destiny is great. Come, great one, and sit with us.”

4: You manage to climb Peng Lai! You reach the Font of Wisdom. It’s yawning cavern now beckons to you.

6: Tales of your summit spread far and wide. People know you surrendered your chance for inner peace instead for a chance at wisdom. When you return, they will eagerly sit at your feet, waiting to learn what you will tell them.

7: You summit Peng Lai. The temple of Kirin lies before you. Dare you to enter and face your destiny?

Troubles, Tools and Bonds

• Trouble: Destiny answers to none (-5): You cannot force destiny’s hand. Attempting to do so results in a -5 trouble. Those who attempt to avoid their destiny, or who try to rewrite it, end badly.
• Wound: Burning Dharma (+1 to +5): If you find your destiny in Peng Lai, beneath the gaze of the Divine Kirin, your dharma shall burn with vivid intensity and slowly consume you in the process. If you accept the burden of your bright destiny, you’ll gain a bond to achieve your destiny, but it will manifest as a wound. The closer you get to your destiny, the larger the bond gets, but the worse your wound gets, until eventually the conflagaration consumes you utterly at the moment of perfect oneness with your purpose.

For none may speak of the Temple of Kirin

The Temple of Kirin

The Temple rests upon the pinnacle of Peng Lai, beneath the weeping rain clouds. The rift that runs through Peng Lai reaches it and splits it in twain. The split travels even higher and rends the clouds above, creating a rift through which the sunset gleams and casts a hopeful rainbow through the perpetual rain. Some say that in that split, you can see the real truth of Peng Lai. Others say that the split itself is a lie, something placed their by an excrucian menace. Those who step in the temple may look upon the rift and see the truth for themselves, but those that do may not speak of it, for none who have beheld Kirin’s temple may speak of it, by the Divine Mandate of Kirin herself.

The Temple of Kirin, at the 10,000^thstep, carries within it the ultimate promise of knowing and achieving your purpose. Kirin will grant you the destiny you know you deserve. She will make your dreams come true. All travel in Peng Lai, each step, is but a step in an attempt to achieve ones true purpose. Her temple represents the culmination of that dream: You can be all that you ever hoped to be.

And, if the rumors are true, that pinnacle is poisoned. According to their doubts, Kirin’s temple rests atop a lie. Do you believe them, or do you believe her?

Poison of Kirin’s Temple: Kirin assures all that her temple has escaped all poison, that upon the completion of your pilgrimage, you’ll certainly achieve your destiny, but some claim that when you reach the top, you’ll find nothing but an empty ruin. They argue that Kirin’s temple is the source of the poison, and that the poison itself is the truth of Peng Lai, and that Peng Lai is, itself, a lie. If that’s true, then when one reaches the temple, they’ll be afflicted with this soul-breaking poison:

• Divine Wound: I have no purpose (5)

Properties of the Temple of Kirin

• Imperial Miracle: Speak Note of What Happens Here: Those who witness the beautiful majesty or Kirin’s temple are forbidden from speaking of it. When asked, their eyes widen, and then they shake their head “You cannot understand without seeing it. It is not what you expect” and they are always right.
• The Bent Strands of Destiny: Kirin and her palace let you achieve, or even change, your ultimate destiny. You may escape the trouble of “Destiny Answers to None” but Kirin will set your destiny on fire if she does this.

Description Snippets

• None ever describe the temple of Kirin. Perhaps none have seen it?

The Nemesis System

The Nemesis System

Properties of the Nemesis System

• The Final Law: All Things End
• The Law of Laws: Laws have physical weight, and must be followed.
• The Law of the Black Sun: Only the truth may be spoken under the gaze of the black sun.

The Shape of the Nemesis System

The sun has a sinister twin, the Black Sun, the Occulted Star, which orbits at the rim of the Solar System. The Black Sun, also called Nemesis or the “Apocalypse Clock”, travels on an elliptical, and its pertubation can send asteroids and comets cascading down upon the inner solar system. Nemesis, thus, determines the end of the world.

The detritus of slain worlds circles the yawning mouth of Nemesis, and the bones of dead civilizations decorate these free-floating boulders and world-fragments. Upon these, Azrael resides, gazing upon her Black Sun and waiting to be called to End All Things.

The Nemesis System houses

• the Crossroads of Worlds
• the Library of Truth
• the Gaming Underworld
• the Tomb of Azrael

The Laws of the Nemesis System

Arbitrary rules and laws interweave the Nemesis System with a sort of physics that force those within the Nemesis System to behave a particular way. These rules don’t precisely change, but their impact on the world wane and fall with the movements of the Nemesis system in a fashion that seems utterly unpredictable to the less-than-divine inhabitants of the system. Violating the laws is akin to violating an Imperial Miracle, especially in the gaze of Nemesis. One can resist the law, but it wounds you, in the same way that resisting the pull of gravity slowly changes one into a gravity-resisting alien.
Some laws might be:

• You must sleep with your head facing the Black Sun.
• If a pile of something small and countable is thrown at your feet, you must count them.
• Everything that you have done yesterday must be repeated, but that repeat will be done by a shadow of yourself, as your life begins to blur together across time.
• You must orient towards the nearest appropriate structure: Walls become floors, ceilings become floors. “Down” becomes what looks like should be down.
• All doors must connect to all other doors. Walking from one to the other must be done by conscious connection, rather than physical effort.
• Anyone who knows your true name may command you by name, and you must obey. After this, your name changes.
• You may not cross running water or lines of salt.
• Travel from one place to another by means other than simply walking (crossing lines or gaps of void) costs two, greek copper coins.
• Anyone who eats the food of the Nemesis system cannot leave the nemesis system.
• The water of the Nemesis System is richly fertile. A living being who drinks of it will give birth to another, different living being by giving up his flesh to that being. This usually leaves a grave wound, perhaps even consuming the original “parent”completely.
• If you are emotionally afflicted, your memories can come to life. You must keep your passions in check!
• Mazes of invisible walls dot the landscape and can suddenly rise up to trap the walker. The answer to these mazes is always to walk widdershins.

Challenges of the Nemesis System

Hunt an Alien!

0 or less: It’s hunt or be hunted. You chose poorly.
1: You’re more into photography than killing. Woah! Is that an alien? No, wait, that’s just a cool rock. What an adventure!
2: You foundan alien. Now what?
3: You found a coolalien. Your struggle will be epic!
4: You hunt and killan alien! Well done! Now, what to use its strange organs for?
6:You hunt and kill a rareand preciousalien. Mastery of the void is yours!
7: You hunt and kill a wondrousalien. An Elder God lies at your feet, or the priest of a strange faith, or a blue-skinned alien space-princess.
Trouble, Tools and Bonds

• All things must End: Gain an edge of +2 against an alien that’s just trying to survive, rather than kill you.
• An Alien is You: There are strange laws and properties within the void that surrounds the Nemesis System that can change you into an alien. This is usually a major or divine wound.

The Crossroads of Worlds

Deep within the heart of the greatest dead city of the Nemesis system lies the crossroads of worlds, a complex arrangement of gates, arches, portals and doorways that can lead from the Nemesis System to other worlds. This is the most common entrance into the Nemesis system.

Creatures of the Void

Strange things lurk within the void. Some examples include:

• The Astral Behemoth
  
  • A monstrous creature with Paramount Strength that exists in the 4^th Dimension. One sees monstrous, elephantine creatures hulking about, but they are all extrusions of one, great Astral Behemoth.
• The Shade
  
  • An unusual hue that settles upon all things. Its color is one that Earthly being can truly comprehend or describe. If its color descends upon you, or you witness it for long enough to infect your mind, you begin to take on unearthly qualities, as you begin to understand it.
• Adorable Green Things From Outer Space
  
  • Often afflict those who look upon them with an unwholesome and unearthly desire to cuddle them like crazy.
• Hunters
  
  • Chitinous, black things that hiss and laugh and then vanish into the void. They scuttle about and claw at things from within crevices and devour you when you sleep.
• Zeta Reticulans
  
  • Small, squat beings with black eyes and glowing flesh, they are numinous, nightmarish, psychic and inherently mysterious (anything you learn about them slowly drains from your mind). They seek to poke and prod the flesh of earthly beings, for no evident reason.
• Machine Elves
  
  • Twisting, changing shapes that, nonetheless, give an impression of cybernetic space-elves. They can teach others to change and, those who mastery their psychedelic polymorphism, will find their form dissolving into nothing, at which point they too become Machine Elves.
• The Tall
  
  • These tall, pointy-eared beings of exquisite beauty with blond hair, blue eyes and white skin. They will claim inherent racial superiority. They wear silvery jumpsuits and weild strange rayguns and are free with gifts of technology and food that, when returned to Earth, turn out to be simple aluminum and biscuits. They claim to be from a “Federation of Intelligences” and that offer pronouncements on how your race needs to mature, citing concerns about humanity’s environmental, nuclear and military crimes.

Survive!

0 or less: All things must end.
1: Anyone can find a sliver of peace in accepting the inevitable, as you have.
2: Something happens: A disaster strikes, or you stumble across an interesting box, or you find some lost ruin. Perhaps you have a chance now?
3: Your starvation is exquisite. Your suffering is poetry. You might be dying, but you’re doing so artistically.
5: You survive! For now.
6:Your survival inspires others. A community of strange creatures gather near you, hoping to steal your fire, or to learn your secrets.
8: You’ve done more than survive, but you’ve begun to lay the foundations for continued survival. What you build, others can use too. Can one found a civilization on the edges of death itself?
9: All things must end.
Trouble, Tools and Bonds

• All things must end: This trouble is worth at least -2 for mortals. It violates the law of the Chancel to survive for too long.

The Tomb of Azrael

Even Azrael herself will someday die. She knows this. She has seen it. She even knows how she will die. Azrael is Eternal and exists at all points of time, but at the same time, she mustend, so her corpse, like her body, resonates backwards and forwards through all points in time. As Azrael walks the world, she also lies dead in her tomb.

No mortal has ever entered the tomb, and Azrael will not, for it lies outside of her living purview. But some say that if the immortal enters here, he may commune with the Dead Angel of Death and learn forbidden things about what will happen after all things have ended.

Properties of the Tomb of Azrael

• Entering that which has no Entrance (-5): The Tomb of Azrael cannot be breached by the living. It is like a chancel within a chancel, and offers a trouble of 5 to attempt to enter. In practice, only the miraculous have a hope of gaining entrance, though it is said that the Powers of Death know a secret way in.
• Nothing Living Walks Here (-5): Nothing living can be in the Tomb of Azrael. Those who enter are turned instantly to dust. Anyone who enters must attempt to survive with a -5 difficulty, and even those who succeed are marked by a wound for having entered. Only the Eternal and Actively Immortal can endure the infinite years that lie within the Tomb of Azrael.
• The Grave Goods of Azrael (+5): The funerary mask, the caul, the sarcophagus, the funerary urns of Azrael all contain the remnants of her dead power. Those who carry them hold in their hands the power of a dead angel. It grants enormous, world-shattering power to those who bear them, though getting in to the Tomb of Azrael is virtual impossible.
• The Wounds of the Tomb of Azrael:
  • Blinded by Infinite Darkness
  • Maddened by the Whispers of the Tomb of Azrael
  • (Divine) turned to dust by the Tomb of Azrael’s infinite years.
  • (Divine) exalted to mad godhood by tasting of the corpse of Azrael.

Description Snippets

• Surrounded by the bleached bones of a dead world, steel girders jutting out of black sand beneath the dread majesty of the Black Sun, rises the great edifice of Azrael’s death, made of cyclopean stone and covered in a fine layer of decaying dust. It casts a long shadow.
• The stones of the Tomb whisper. No wind stirs the dust within, and a darkness so total that it drives those who witness it to blindness, but the stones whisper. They whisper to you that which you already know to be true, but have long denied. Those whispers tell you what has happened and what will happen. Each whisper cuts at your sanity until none is left.
• The air smells of dust. The dust rises with each step, a fine, bone-grey powder. It stinks of old books and discarded lives. The dust is the remnants of every mortal, angel or god who dared to step within the tomb.
• The grave goods of Azrael burn with a darkness so dark that they glow with inverted light: that which is dark becomes white, and that which is light becomes black. Upon this negative view, one does not see so much as know. The presence of those grave goods, of the corpse of the angel of death, weigh down upon one with vast, psychic power. These can crush a mere mortal, driving them mad or exalting them to godhood, or both.

Uncover the Truth

0 or less: Sometimes, it is better to decieve ourselves than to know.
1: You learn enoughof a truth to be satisfied.
4: You learn the truth that you sought. Can you bear that burden?
6:You learn a truth that others seek. You can withhold this truth for power over them, or to protect them from that which they should not know.
7: You learn a great and powerful truth that you sought. It will certainly change you.
8: You learn a great and terrible trugh that all the world wishes to know. The world itself will be fundamentally changed by this truth.
Trouble, Tools and Bonds

• The Power of Truth: The Truth can be a tool that grants one access to powerful and mystical principles. Depending on the truth, it can grant a +1 to +3 tool or edge, but only in a direction that the Truth wishes to go. One cannot bend the truth to one’s own purpose.
• The Truth Hurts: Learning the truth always wounds us by stripping us of our illusions. Such wounds are usually Surface wounds, but the deepest truths can run even deeper. Some truths might even agree with the Excrucians and unmake the Divine itself.

The Library of Truth

Azrael is the Angel of Truth, and she keeps every truth in the world in a great library, hidden behind the protection of the Nameless Sphinx. Within its strange halls, anything can be found.

Properties of the Library of Truth

• Twisting Halls: The physics of the Library of Truth are not the familiar physics of Earth, but the Escherian physics of the Nemesis System. Getting to a specific point in the library can be difficult for those not adapted (-1 to -2 trouble).
• Books of Babel : The books within contain all truth, but not all truth is equally useful. One book contains the complete totality of Pi in hexadecimal notation. Another book describes all electromagnetic fluctuations of the sun. These books, without the proper context or a mind that can comprehend them, read like static sounds. Too many of them can blast the reader with a surface wound of “Static Madness” where he begins to see the truth in chaos.
• The Truth Within (+1): The library can give absolute, perfect truth, and any truth can be found here. Given the difficulties facing one within the Library of Truth, it only offers a +1 to the pursuit of truth, but also allows perfect confidence in what is found.

Description Snippets

• The Black Sun’s burning corona casts a strange, flickering red glow through the stained glass of the library that makes the shadows of the books and shelves writhe and dance.
• The musty scent of books thickens the air with a miasma of curiosity and wonder.
• Opening a book can instantly engross the reader in worlds of unexpected and powerful truths. A religious text can reveal the absolute truth of whether or not an afterlife exists and why, or point one to the location of an even greater and more important text, or just be filled with endless expounding of points that, while true, aren’t particularly useful. Lost in the pages, those who read the tomes become transfixed and zombie-like. The ground in some places are littered with bones of readers.
• The library has the silence of a cathedral, interrupted only by the distant echoes of your own words filtering through the twisted, escherian madness of the building’s architecture. Always far away, down (or up, or sideways) several floors, one can see the glow of candles and the red robes of the Cult of Babel, who believe that the truths of the random texts contain secrets to the ultimate truths buried in the deep within the library, or “the Master Truth” or “the Monadic Gospel.”

The Nameless Sphinx

A great beast guards the Library of Truth. It has ten million faces, one for each person who has, or will, visit the library. Each face and form is unique. To enter the library, the petitioner must know:

• The Name of the Sphinx
• The Form of the Spinx
• The Power of the Spinx

Each petitioner defines these, by his own fears and deeds. Those who do not know themselves cannot know the Sphinx and thus cannot pass. Only those who face who and what they are can understand what they have made the Sphinx, and thus pass.

Win the Game!

0 or less: You didn’t win the game 😦
1: Games are fun!
2: Ooo, good try.
3: You’re having such a good time, your friends are growing impatient with their desire to join in.
4: Congratulations, you won the game!
6: And you won with a high score!
Trouble, Tools and Bonds

• Escape: Games can serve a purpose, but one can become lost in the twisting maze of their delights, especially in the Nemesis System. This serves as a Wound (usually a surface wound) for those who find themselves playing too long in the Gaming Underworld. It prevents them from leaving, or from even existing as something outside a game.
• Nothing really matters (-5): Nothing you can do in a game, especially in the Nemesis System, has dharmic weight. All achievements are the equivalent to ghost miracles. You can find love in a game, but it’s not real love. You can defeat your enemy in a game, but he’s not really defeated. Sometimes, you can turn what happens in a game into something real, but it takes super-human effort.
• High Score! (+1): Someone who gains High Score has an edge over any other denizen of the gaming underworld.

The Gaming Underworld

The rules of the Nemesis System accumulate like dust gathering on the surface of old ruins. And as they gather, they begin to combine and merge to form weird, arbitrary ruleset that can be frustrating, or interesting, to navigate and explore. These have themselves merged in the bowels of the Nemesis System, deep below the library and the crossroads and the tomb, to form a wierd underworld full of games.

The games of the Gaming Underworld usedto be old and primal. This was where the pawns of chess and parcheesi would swap tokens and war stories while bowing before the King of Diamonds and lusting after the Queen of Hearts. But with the coming of Zee, the world has fundamentally changed. It has expanded, though one can “fall through” the world of gaming into the glitchy “donkey space” just beyond it, seeing the Nemesis System from behind its textures, and gained colorful sprites and 3D models. Gold coins replace tokens and wargame chits and checker pieces have been pushed aside to make way for a new royalty of franchise heroes. This has proven controversialwith the old denizens.

Properties of the Gaming Underworld

• Play the rules: The rules of the Nemesis System hold just as much sway here, but they grow vastly more complex, nuanced, knowable and fun. And should one wish to escape one set of rules, one has only to travel a short distance to do so.
• Everything is a Game: All conflict and problems within the Gaming Underworld must be resolved by gameplay. One does not kill the King of Diamonds, but defeats him at Poker. One does not seduce a waifu, one grinds her with gifts and proper dialogue choices until her heart bursts in a cloud of stars that spell out “You win!” after which you get a cut-scene that extends the story.
• Treasures of the Gaming Underworld: The gaming underworld has grown a collection of powerful treasures over time, including:
• The Konami Codex, which contains a complete account of the cheat codes necessary to defeat any game, or to overcome any rule in the Nemesis System
• The Master Glove, a powerful tool (worth +2) to attain victory in any game.
• The Princess, a perfectly beautiful woman, virtuous and kind, who has been captured! Every time you’ve been told she was in another castle she was, in fact, here.

Description Snippets

• Charmingly beautiful and anime-esque sprites cluster near you, interested in hearing what you have to say, and repeatedly (often using the same words) inviting you on a quest, or to “save their princess.” Close inspection shows that they’re two dimensional (don’t push one over!), and that they’ll sometimes glitch and shimmer in a staticky sheen to show something ghostly beneath.
• As one travels over the hills and valleys of the gaming underworld, one’s feet make a highly repetitive “clop clop” sound.  A tinny, electronic chip-tune accompanies your action, shifting based on the context of the situation.  Every useful and narratively pertinent action, like bumping a gold-giving block, or taking some damage, is always accompanied by a little, cute sound-effect.
• Deeper in the gaming underworld, as one travels its deeper tunnels and sewer pipes, one comes across horrific scenes of carnage.  The dead of those above pile in great heaps, often the same person dead over and over again, including endless corpses of Zee, left before she respawns.
• The air of the gaming underworld smells like bubble-gum and electricity, just like an old arcade.  Its swirling lights and and beeping tunes also evoke the atmosphere of an arcade.  But beyond the digital facade, the scent changes to something older, the scent of oak and stone and tea.  Here, dust and mold hangs heavily on the air.
• Deeper still in the bowels of the gaming underworld, beneath the digital textures of the vaunted Video Game realms likes a world of stone and wood, where strange pieces move and shift in an endless game of strategy.  Old gods come here to gamble souls.  Here, the Black Bishop walks, discussing the future of the gaming underworld with the Queen of Hearts and the Jack of Diamonds and the dread King of Spades.

The Reincarnation Engine, Chancel of Belphegor

Properties of the Reincarnation Engine

• Promises carry physical weight. They can chain someone, they can create weapons, they can even power animated mannequins.
• The power of the Reincarnation Engine depends on the power of the New World Order’s machinations.
• Beauty is the currency of the Reincarnation engine. It can be traded, given away, and accepted.
• 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.

• The Topmost level, the pinnacle of the pyramid jutting above the dying world, is called The Promise and consists of Belphegor’s throne.
• The Second level is called The Principle and consists of Belphegor’s Library of the Damned and the Vault of Wonders.
• 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.
• 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.
• The Fifth Level is called the Truth and collects the industrial runoff of the Reincarnation Engine.
• 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

• 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.
• “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

• 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

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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

• 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.
• 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

• Red Hot Chili Peppers – One Hot Minute
• Metallica – Load
• The Original Copy of Assassin’s Creed: Unity
• Zack Snyder’s original Sucker Punch
• 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

• 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.
• 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.
• 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

• 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

• 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.
• 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.
• 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

• 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.
• 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

• 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.
• (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

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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

• 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.
• 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.
• (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

• 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.
• 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

• 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.
• (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.
• (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

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Toyland

Properties of Toyland

• Nobody dies in Toyland
• Only children and toys may enworkmenin Toyland.
• Any toy can be found in Toyland.

Challenges of Toyland

Play!

0 or less: Call down the Damien’s dread enforcers, who will demand to know precisely who is engaging in unauthorized play with his toys! Or break the toy you’re playing with. Ooops!

1: Well, that was fun!

3: Make other kids jealous of how much fun you’re having.

5: You’ve learned something while playing with what is clearly an educational toy. Oh no!

7: Your play is actually exactly as fun as you hoped it would be. The things you always wanted to happen when you play? They happen. It might not be good, but they happen!

Trouble and Tools:

• “Nobody plays with my toys but me!” (3): Damien Bogsworth has issued his decree, and so none may play with any of the toys of toyland but himself! Anyone attempting to bypass this Trouble inevitably gains the attention of one of Damien’s informants, who will call down Damien’s enforcers on the interloper. Still, consider applying a trouble of 1, as toys are so terrified of being cast into the Dungeon of Lost Toys that they tend to keep to themselves and avoid strange children.
• Tool: The Seven Fabled Toys (+4): The Seven Fabled Toys, if the deign to descend from Toy Mountain to play with a child, will so empower that child’s play that even the most surly child will experience impossible delight and have fun. They’re often highly educational (boo!).

Toy City

The largest collections of toys in all the world, the once great megatropolis of merriment has bloated into a crime-ridden monstrosity under Damien’s ruthless reign. Once, toy soldiers guarded its walls, while tops spun upright and balls and jacks got along and Lego laborers worked tirelessly to keep the doll houses and block skyscrapers in top condition. Now, barbie dolls turn tricks on the street corners. Bouncing balls have learned to stay within their homes lest a rogue jack puncture them. Gangs of laughing, rampaging Sock Monkeys have taken to the streets, gleefully ripping the stuffing from rag dolls who don’t fork over their protection coins. Only Damien’s favorite toys, franchise merchandizing and exclusive collectibles, walk the streets unmolested under the watchful eyes of Damien’s enforcers like the Commando Elite. And even they know their days are numbered, for when the next movie catches Damien’s attention, or a sudden surge in production drops a toy’s value, the Tyrant of Toyland’s whimsical interests will change.

Properties of Toy City

• Corruption (Trouble 2): Toy City rots beneath Damien’s rule. Those who want to achieve anything meaningful in city must grease the palms of a higher official or particpate in the criminal underworld to get something done. Unless a toy (or a child) is willing to accept some of Toy City’s corruption into themselves, they face Trouble worth 2 points whenever they try to do anything in Toy City.
• You can find anything in Toy City (+1): If someone is looking for a lost toy or a specific brand of toy, or useful information, Toy City is the best place to do it. It will not help you find mystical or legendary toys, however.
• Let’s play Licenses and Legal Fees!: Toy City lets you bypass Damien’s Decree by seeking bureaucratic permission to play with one of the Toys of Toyland. Alas, you still have to deal with Corruption.

Description Snippets:

• The faded colors of the once bright blocks that make up the towering skyscrapers, once set against a glorious, sun-blazing skyline, now mostly hidden in the oppressive grey-clouds of Damien’s disapproval.
• The haunting laughter of a villainous Sock Monkey, followed by the loud pop of a ball or a balloon, and then the tiny, electronic sound of a police siren.
• The chipped paint of a Barbie’s lips, the fading luster of her once-golden hair, a broken heel clinging to her permanently tip-toed feet, her too-short, glossy skirt showing a vast expanse of posable, plastic thigh, and her electronic croak of “Want to play?”
• A momentary glimpse of wooden fruit on a table and the frightened google-eyes of a doll through the window of a dollhouse before she yanks the cotton curtains closed.
• The click-clack of a rubicks cube over an intersection, while slot cars rev their electrical engine, waiting for its red face to turn green.

Find one of the Seven Fabled Toys of Toyland

0 or less: The hinterlands of Toyland pose many dangers. You cannot die in toyland, but that doesn’t mean you want to meet a feral Teddy Bear either. Or perhaps one of the Seven Fabled Toys finds you and is very ill-disposed towards you.

1: What an adventure! At least you had fun.

2: You find something. It might not be one of the Seven Fabled Toys, and it might not even be a clue towards one of them, but you find something.

4: You’ve found a very important clue to one of the Seven Fabled Toys, or perhaps even attracted their attention and gained an audience with one of their mediaries, who wants to know what you seek, or pronounces you unworthy.

5: You do not find one of the Seven Fabled Toys, but you do learn something of what it means to be worthy of their attention. Perhaps you regain some of your childlike innocence, or you learn to value toys, or you learn the importance of sharing.

7: You find one of the seven fabled toys. They may or may not be well-disposed towards you. What now?

9: You find one of the seven fabled toys and enlightenment. You understand why this quest was important for you personally and in making the change necessary in your life, you have gained the favor of one of the Seven Fabled Toys of Toyland. They will fulfill your request.

Bonds, Afflictions, Trouble and Tools:

• Tool: The Holiday Wish Catalog(+1): The Holiday Wish Catalog, released by Rosens Ltd, is the only known catalog in the world to contain information on the Seven Fabled Toys of Toyland (sometimes, they even include listings that allow you to buy one, but Damien’s influence has prevented that for over a century). Consulting one can make it easier for you to find one of the Seven Fabled Toys.
• Trouble: You are Unworthy (-3): To approach one of the seven fabled toys of toyland, one must have childlike innocence, a profound appreciation of toys and the secret lives they lead, and you must embrace the Kindergarten Virtues, such as sharing, taking naps at the right time, not bullying others, being nice to your parents, etc. Bypass this trouble if you are willing to incur the wrath of of one of the toys, or to be changed.
• Bond (Childlike Innocence): If one is willing to be changed by the seven fabled toys of toyland, treat this as a Wound that inflicts a Bond for Childlike Innocence or some other Kindergarten Virtue. For mere mortals, this often changes them into children, or possibly even into toys, who thereafter become one of the mediaries of the Fabled Toy.

Toy Mountain

Toy Mountain is a fabled mountain found in the most distant reaches of Toyland, beyond the Bathtub Sea, past the desolate Sandbox wastes and further even than the Great Backyard Forest. The Toys of Toyland never die, but they know that eventually, their lives in Toyland itself must somehow end. The unworthy and wicked toys who prick their child’s fight or refuse to be shared or work hard to lose themselves in the bottom of the toybox end up, inevitably, in the Dungeon of Lost Toys. But the worthy and faithful toys are sometimes welcomed by the Gods of Toyland, the Seven Fabled Toys to the great and wondrous Toy Mountain. According to some stories, the mountain itself is built out of the endless resting-boxes of millennia of good toys slowly accumulating in this, the most sacred of places in Toyland.

Properties of Toy Mountain

• Unforgiving Wilderness: Anyone who seeks to get to Toy Mountain must face a gauntlet of physical dangers enough to extinguish the courage of even the hardiest toy. While toys cannot be lost, they can be melted by the deserts, soaked by sea, or devoured by the great hounds that roam the Backyard Forests.
• Home to the Gods (+3): Any attempts to find the Seven Fabled Toys will be far more successful if undertaken here.
• Finding God: Those who come to Toy Mountain often walk away changed. It’s possible that characters might acquire one of the following Wounds:
  • Bond: Feral Toy 1: The toy forgets its child and loses its connection to its original purpose, and joins the roving feral tribes of toys in the wastes that surround Toy Mountain.
  • Affliction: I see the true lives of toys 1: You have been touched by the power of the Seven Fabled Toys, and you can see and hear what other mortals cannot: the slow blink of a dolls eyes, the whispered gossip toys share with one another about their children, etc.
• Trouble: Beyond the Tyrant’s Grasp (-4): The Seven Fabled Toys reject the authority of Damien Bogsworth, and represent the core of the Estate’s conflict with Damien. They have used their considerable power to erect a Miraculous barrier that makes the mountain itself seem to shift and move if the agents of Damien attempt to come closer to it. If you’re a loyal agent of Damien Bogsworth, you must surmount this Trouble or have some magic that lets you ignore it.

Description Snippets

• The mountain smells musty, like an attic full of old, treasured toys, and sunlight pours through dust motes like gold shooting through floating diamonds, and at the top of a mountain, the silhouette of a mysterious-but-familiar toy gazes upon you, before turning his back on you and losing himself higher up in the mountain.
• A painted river, churning blue and white with fish-like paint-flecks of silver, flows down the plastic green sides of the mountain, flowing past a forest of toothpick trees and a small-but-exquisitely detailed village full of blobby looking half-people and windmills that turn against a non-existent wind. In the distance, against dark blue cardboard sky, back-lit lightning flashes to recorded thunder.
• The churning heat of red-painted, baking-soda-and-vinegar lava boils out over the top of a paper-mache peak, spilling its red guts out over the blasted landscape and sending nearby toys scurrying for cover.
• The peak of Toy Mountain is covered in gift-wrapped packages and small, wooden pine trees. The frozen stillness of Christmas anticipation brings a hallowed frostiness to this sacred spot. If you reach up, you feel like you could almost touch the sky and, with it, achieve the aspirations of every toy: to become forever beloved.
• Flash! Behold, one of the seven fabled toys. The sun surmounts its head like a halo. It stands perfectly, like a toy in the window on a cold, Christmas morning. Its face contains the beauty of the most coveted toy, with the perfection of a catalog advertisement. Its voice is the breathless excitement of a child describing the toy they want most. Its touch is the loving caress of a child taking their precious toy into their grasp for the first time, full of electric thrill. The Fabled Toy beckons you forward. You are blessed!

Rescue a Lost Childhood Toy

0 or less: Perhaps your toy has joined the resistance and your actions have lead to Damien uncovering it and foil its attempt to restore the True King of Toyland. Oops! Or perhaps you get lost in the search for your toy and become afflicted with Nostalgia. Or perhaps Damien uncovers your efforts and throws you into his Dungeon of Lost Toys.

1: Toyland is kind of neat! Make some new friends

3: You don’t find your lost, childhood toy, but your quest speaks to the hearts of those in toyland. They whisper of you and grow envious of your toy, who has such a loyal master.

4: You found your lost, childhood toy! Hopefully, it’s not in trouble!

6: The toys in toyland are moved by your actions. They rally around you, as a good child who seeks to protect her toys, and look to your for leadership against the despotic reign of Damien. Will you join them in their fight to overthrow Damien?

7: You find your lost, childhood toy. You find all of your lost, childhood toys, or you also find the means to free them or fix them. Things return to how you remember them as a child!

Bonds, Afflictions, Trouble and Tools:

• Bond: Nostalgia (1): You’re afflicted with an inflated sense of how wonderful your child was and a deep yearning to be as you were back then. Treat this as a wound that can occur if you find a lost, childhood toy, or if someone brings one to you.

The Dungeon of Lost Toys

In the bowels of the Great Toy Castle lies the Dungeon of Lost Toys. Most Toys believe the Kings of Toyland constructed the dungeon to house the worst of the toys, and in a sense, that’s true. The first King did indeed dig deep into the core of Toyland to hide away the 13 Hell Toys, but what he found was a vast network of forbidding plastic, lego, clay and paper-mache tunnels. The presence of the 13 hell toys warped it further, expanding and twisting the tunnels back in upon themselves.

The highest levels of the dungeon, those closest to the Great Toy Castle resemble what one would expect of a prison, and here, Damien keeps his political prisoners. Deeper yet, where the artificial plastic and wood give way to more natural paper-mache and clay, the 13 Hell Toys are kept in vaults, and the tunnels, caverns and grottos begin to spider throughout the core of toyland, ever shifting under the influence of the hell toys. Sometimes, prisoners escape and make their way into the bowels of the dungeon, where they are never heard from again. For the toys of toyland, the Dungeon of Lost Toys ishell.

Properties of The Dungeon of Lost Toys

• Trouble: Tight Security (-3): Any attempt to rescue a lost childhood toy that’s been cast into the Dungeon of Lost Toys requires you to either overcome this trouble, or deal with the security directly, or accept that your toy might have been irreparably lost or destroyed by Damien’s torture.
• The Forbidden Toybox: In the most secure depths of the Dungeon, there lay scattered and lost vaults wherein the 13 hell-toys, those toys exiled by the first King of Toyland for being too dangerous. Finding one of these is worth an additional -2 trouble, for a total of -5 trouble!
• Lost Pathways: The deepest bowels of the Dungeon of Lost Toys connects to the Reincarnation Engine, allowing one to travel from one Chancel to the other.
• Lost (Wound): Toys cannot die, but they can become Lost.  Any such Lost toy can always be found in the bowels of the Dungeon of Lost Toys.

Description Snippets

• The slow groan of a multi-colored, camo-toned, puddle of waxy like plastic that was once a G.I. Joe, that slowly gropes its way across the plastic bricks of the dungeon.
• Amidst the scattered fluff and red thread of Damien’s many victims, a barbie-dolls head has been spiked atop a sharpened pencil, with its hair shorn to stubs. Its painted eyes slowly flutter own, deep green and full of pain. “Help me,” it pleads.
• The plastic walls and floors feel rough and cool to the touch. Green Fun Express™ glow-in-the-dark goo slowly drips down the wall with a disgustingly squishing sound and a strange, hungry burbling.
• In the bowels of the dungeon, where the shadows grow thickest and rubber spiders dangle on frightful rubber strings, toys move sluggishly behind plastic bars, except for one, where the open, orange manacles of a My Pet Monster™ rest empty in mute testimony to its escaped denizen. In the cell behind you, a haunted doll’s mouth begins to rattle up and down as she cackles electronically “Want to play? Want to play?”

Fight the forces of Damien Bogsworth!

0 or less: You suffer defeat! You’ve been wounded in some way, or captured and dragged off to the Dungeon of Lost Toys! Or, even if you survive, some of your allies will almost certainly suffer an ill-fate, or you’ll bring the gimlet eye of Damien Bogsworth upon you.

1: You fought the forces of Damien Bogsworth. Perhaps you didn’t win, but you at least have satisfaction of knowing you didn’t go quietly into the night.

3: You fought the forces of Damien Bogsworth and your efforts have rocked toyland. Barbie wants to interview you. Damien puts out crayon wanted posters out for you. Your efforts have made an impact and not gone unnoticed.

4: You achieved some measure of victory! You’ve captured Toy City, or freed some toys from the Dungeon of Lost toys! Damien will certainly remember that!

6: The Toys of Toyland watch your efforts breathlessly. Dare they hope? Many rally to your side, and you soon find yourself swamped with an army.

7: The armies of Damien Bogsworth lay crushed beneath your iron heel. The dismembered body of one of the Commando Elite begs for your mercy. Damien still has plenty of forces, but his power has definitely been greatly diminished by this victory.

9: By clever strategem, you have forced the armies of Damien Bogsworth to surrender, or even to join your side. No toys were destroyed this day! Indeed, those who faced you now reconsider their decision and realize that, through you, a united and whole Toyland might be possible.

Trouble and Tools:

• Damien Bogsworth’s leadership: If Damien himself leads his forces, this becomes a contest.
• Trouble: Commando Elite (-2): The Commando Elite are the finest fighting force currently in Toyland. If they join the battle, beware! If Damien wields them in a contest, they give him an Edge of +2.
• Tool: An Army of Tin Soldiers (+1): The old tin soldiers can still fight with the ferociousness of the Napoleonic armies upon which they were founded, if one can still find enough of them.
• The Might of a Fabled Toy (+4): Few things can compare, in toyland, to the power of one of the Fabled Seven Toys, except perhaps all seven.

The Great Toy Castle

Accumulating over the millennia that Toyland has existed, it is every toy castle ever built by children. It has spires topped with triangle blocks, walls built from LEGO bricks, and is fronted by the leering plastic of Castle Greyskull. It is the seat of the King of Toyland, and held in the greatest respect by all Toys. It is the literal center of Toyland just as it is the symbolic center of the Estate of Toys. He who holds the Great Toy Castle holds the Power of Toys.

Properties of the Great Toy Castle

• Edge: The Throne of Toys (+5): The Throne of Toys is the ultimate authority of power in all the lands of toys. Those who sit upon it utterly dominate the politics of Toyland. Anyone who resists them in a contest of political authority must contend with an Edge of +5.
• Toy Royalty (+2): The Great Toy Castle houses the most noble toys in toyland, only the finest.  Anyone who wants to play with these toys gain +2 from the extra satisfaction and happiness those toys will bring them!
• Affliction (Packaged): Damien Bogsworth keeps the Great Vault of Packaged Toys in the depths of the Great Toy Castle. Those captured fighting him might find themselves afflicted with this Wound. It preserves their value while assuring they can no longer effectively oppose him. This is too much for some toys to bear, though, who are sometimes utterly changed from Toys (which are meant to be played with) and into Collectibles.

Description Snippets

• The loud blare of commercial trumpets, the excited chatter of toys, and the popping sound of confetti bombs bursting to cast a rain of color and ribbon streamers down onto the streets near the Great Toy Castle.
• The swoop of the newest, coolest toy jets as they buzz the castle. The rhythmic, marching plastic click-click-click of Damien’s armies as they patrol the walls.
• The imagination-firing vastness of the great castle, like an ever-growing pile of grandeur, heaped up by the dreams of every child who has ever put a toy crown on his head and a sheet about his shoulders.
• The hushed, excited silence within the great castle, lit by strings of light-bright bulbs, with speak-and-reads announcing the room you’ve entered.
• The grandeur of the court room, with its wood-block thrown, the exquisite burger-king crown jewels of toy land still in their original packaging, awaiting the next king of Toyland, while Magistrate Bopit informs you, in rapid sequence, of what protocols are expected of you in the august presence of King Damien Bogsworth.