The Cadaverous Earth: Across the Fevered Ocean

[Xathan]

Wooo, something from CE I can sink my teeth into due to not being massive yet. Is there anything from the main thread in particular I should read to better understand this?

Due to countless reviews you've given my stuff over the years, Steerpike, which I have never properly reciprocated, I'm going to spend the next few days going though this location by location and attempting to provide feedback on every part of the setting in as much details as possible. Starting with...

Gristle, The Voracious City, City of Cannibals

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Starting right off, this is beautifully horrible. Really, what you're describing is aweful in the most visceral possible way...and part of me really wants to see it, based on this. Somethings I'm curious about from this; is a fleshtree just a tree made out of meat? Some kind of stationary animal? Something more aweful? What is a mankine? From the description it sounds like they're some kind of manlike pack animal that's also food...but I imagine the truth is far more horrible.

I'm also interested in the Drudges – you say they are semi-sentient, but what exactly does that mean? Are they intellectually on the level of apes? Small children? Or are they more like automatons that can understand more complex commands? If they are intelligent in the human sense, have they ever tried to break free or escape? And what horrible things happened to them when that failed? (It's CE, I can't imagine any other possibility except they do manage to break away and become even more horrible tyrants in their own right.)

Also, I'm afraid to ask...how big is a dire maggot? And what's it used for? Is...is dire maggot for eating?

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The fact that the police force wear literal pig masks make me absurdly happy. I'm guessing they don't have any police brutality laws? The gangs/syndicates here are awesome and horrifying. Why don't the Skin-Filchers rule the city, given they can become anyone they want? What keeps them in check?

With my focus and love on monsters, I want to know what Brawngasts and Heartgorgers and Putrevores are very badly, especially given how horrifying their brief descriptions imply them to be.

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I like the Acari as a ripe breeding ground for PCs. How big a threat are they to the established order? Do they work with any of the above criminal organizations to overthrow Regina? Or do the criminals like things the way they are and oppose them? Is swarm-Singing actually musical? How horrible is it to hear?

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The Boneshrines sound awesome! How long have them been building them, and how large are they? Do people go to the Boneshrine made out of the bones of their dead ancestors, or does any Boneshrine work? How does the ancestor-worship work? What do the worshipers expect, and is their any idea of an afterlife?

Apologies in advance if any of these were answered above and I missed it. Great stuff as always, Steerpike, looking forward to taking a bite of the next bit!

[LordVreeg]

DIRE MAGGOT!
now that is a concept.

[Rose-of-Vellum]

Dire maggots are the larval stage of gorgeflies.

One of the most feared creatures of the Cadaverous Earth, the gorgefly is an enormous, bestial fiend resembling a horrific hybrid of an obese giant and flesh-fly. Similar to normal flies, the gorgefly undergoes an extensive larval stage. After hatching from an egg laid by an adult gorgefly in a suitably large carcass, the larva -a horse-size thing sometimes called a dire maggot- slowly develops, feeding off carrion and enlarging itself many times over: some gorgefly larva reach titanic sizes, often well over a hundred feet in length. They are detritivores, feedings exclusively on carrion, including grave-spawn, who they differentiate easily from the quick; despite their taste for decomposing matter, however, dire maggots are not scrupulous in their diets and have been known to attack smaller living prey. They are also powerful burrowers, tunneling through soft earth as if through necrotic flesh. Most live in the Slaughterlands, feeding off old battlefields; a few have even been sighted in the Etiolation, where they feast gorily until blanch page cripples them with apathy. A few have also found their way to Macellaria, where they must be dispatched by the Watchdogs. Those that survive and grow to a critical size eventually molt and pupate into adult gorgeflies, sloughing off the husk of their maggot-stage and emerging, tenebrous and triumphant, from their larval husk.

As for flesh trees:

Thought by some arcanobiologists to be related to the morbid Bloodwoods of the southern swamps and linked by others to the warped experiments of the Cultivar Technocracy, the bizarre, unsettling beings known as fleshtrees are not plants at all but grotesque creatures of dubious intelligence usually encountered singly or in small 'copses,' or, more dangerously, in 'groves.'  In place of bark, fleshtrees have sickeningly human-like skin; in place of branches, they have a series of fully mobile, brachiating humanoid arms, each with long, claw-like nails; in place of roots, a great mass of writhing, pallid tentacles.  Covering the central trunk of the fleshtree are a number of 'knotholes': tiny, jawless mouths, round, like a lamprey's, that greedily consume almost anything thrust into them.  Though omnivorous, flesthtrees exhibit a clear preference for protein, and go out of their way to devour meat rather than vegetable matter.

Lacking eyes, noses, or ears, fleshtrees seem to hunt primarily by sensing tremors along the ground, seeking out vibrations.  They are also quite sensitive to changes in air currents: many an unwary bird or bat has been snared by the groping limbs of a fleshtree.  Rib-like bones form the central trunk (which houses a variety of organs, including multiple hearts), while the creature's limbs possess extremely flexible, many-socketed joints.  As a fleshtree grows it develops new 'branches' much as a normal tree might.  Though fleshtrees sweat they produce no other waste-matter, using all of their energy to grow new limbs.  They reproduce asexually: when a large enough branch of a fleshtree is removed it will eventually grow roots and become a new fleshtree.  Periodically fleshetrees will pull off their own limbs to produce such saplings, even bringing their 'young' food in the early stages of growth.  This disturbing practice has led many to speculate that fleshtrees are intelligent in some way, though they have no discernable brains, only crude nerve-bundles.

Though dangerous, fleshtrees are also highly useful.  In some areas -particularly the hinterlands of Macellaria- small copses of fleshtrees are tended by enterprising individuals known as treeherds.  Using percussive instruments they drive their copse from one location to another, always maintaining a safe distance, until ready to prune their gruesome livestock.  At this point, paralyzing drugs or hexes are used to temporarily subdue the fleshtrees, at which point limbs or other meat will be shorn off.  This does little permanent damage to the fleshtree, which will eventually regenerate lost branches or roots with minimal scarring, though the creatures do seem to experience pain -their many mouths moan dully and whimper when limbs are being pruned.  Treeherds will also typically collect blood during pruning.  The resulting harvest is usually sold to the Skin Markets, to either be eaten by the city's grave-spawn or else utilized by its fleshcrafters in the tissue-shops.

Both of these are present in the east; mankine, however, are unique to the western lands, or at least this is the first time I have heard of them. When I asked what they are, Ungoliant's Spawn replied that
"Mankine are exactly like humans but have the minds of cattle, so ethically killing and eating mankine is the same as killing and eating other sorts of livestock."

[Steerpike]

Thanks for answering questions, Rose-of-Vellum!

Some more answers:

I'm also interested in the Drudges – you say they are semi-sentient, but what exactly does that mean? Are they intellectually on the level of apes? Small children? Or are they more like automatons that can understand more complex commands? If they are intelligent in the human sense, have they ever tried to break free or escape? And what horrible things happened to them when that failed? (It's CE, I can't imagine any other possibility except they do manage to break away and become even more horrible tyrants in their own right.)

I'm thinking golem-style thrall-like intelligence, i.e. stupid but obedient, capable of carrying out commands.  But there are probably crazy renegades and Drudges that are smarter than they should be due to eldritch mishap.

Why don't the Skin-Filchers rule the city, given they can become anyone they want? What keeps them in check?

Who says they don't rule the city?  At any given time there are probably conspiracy theories about any given high-up.

I imagine only the Butcheress is exempt from such rumours on the grounds that no Skin-Filcher would be assassin enough to steal her skin - I'm imagining her as a ridiculously badass, bload-soaked warrior-queen who even in her fifties is an extraordinarily talented fighter.  I'm planning on including all sorts of rumours about this (that she sold her soul for martial talent, that she's an avatar of the Bloodletter, that kind of thing).

I like the Acari as a ripe breeding ground for PCs. How big a threat are they to the established order? Do they work with any of the above criminal organizations to overthrow Regina? Or do the criminals like things the way they are and oppose them? Is swarm-Singing actually musical? How horrible is it to hear?

I'm thinking that the criminal factions might be allies of convenience occasionally, but some might well be benefiting from the current status-quo, especially if they have arrangements with the Swine which most probably do.  I see the Swine as probably being absurdly brutal but also fairly corrupt.  The Butcheress probably approves of and even cultivates tenuous relationships with the criminal element to some extent.  This is generally the sort of thing dictators do.

I don't see the Acari as posing that significant a threat, since they've been kept in check for decades now, but they probably cause a lot of random violence.  Most of the city probably hates them more than Regina Carnifex, who at the very least has made the city prosper.  The Gluttons taxed everyone severely and spent most of the resulting funds on themselves; they weren't a popular regime.  When the Butcheress arrived many citizens welcomed her with gratitude.  It's probably only now that people are starting to wonder about some of the changes she's made, like the excesses of the Swine.

The Boneshrines sound awesome! How long have them been building them, and how large are they? Do people go to the Boneshrine made out of the bones of their dead ancestors, or does any Boneshrine work? How does the ancestor-worship work? What do the worshipers expect, and is their any idea of an afterlife?

I haven't worked out all the details but I'm imagining pretty large shrines.  You'd visit the shrine(s) containing your ancestors' bones, much like people visit a cemetery, for example - probably on the anniversary of a person's death, and on particular religious days.  There'd be various offerings to the dead.  Might be that the monks are actually mediums, or claim to be - if given offerings they might claim to "channel" a specific spirit.  Whether this is real or not might be rather ambiguous.  It's possible the monks are just skilled charlatans or it's possible they're genuinely communing with the consciousnesses of the departed, perhaps stored somehow in the glyph-graven bones.  CE has traditional not been big on ghosts (I want a pretty corporeal, physicalist/monist ontology...) but there have been some allusions to "souls" as the psychic imprints of a person's mind.

[Rose-of-Vellum]

Glad to be of help -plus I figure that gives you more time to respond to other questions... like these, for instance:

Fleshtrees: creations of Ganglion?

Mankine: Seems their existence/exploitation would lend them to extreme breeding and drug work to accelerate development, hypertrophy (more muscle, more meat), and maybe a smaller skull/brain (at least in the prefrontal cortex which might mean slanted forehead). Also, branding 'stock' I could imagine would be a big thing. Thoughts?

Love the additional info about the Skin-Filchers and the Butcheress. Was she originally from Gristle or did she hail from the herders or elsewhere and thus conquer as an outsider?

Boneshrines: awesome. I can imagine they erupt from the city akin to giant termitaries. Different families/clans comparing prestige by size (with others vying for artistic design?).

Perhaps those emaciated monks extensively fast -which stands out starkly in a city of endless slaughter and eating. Thus, they rely upon the offerings of the dead (maybe they eat them save for the bones, which they then use to enlarge the shrines). As eaters of the dead, they allegedly hold the ability to commune with them -and so the oldest monks would be viewed with the greatest respect and thus given the choicest bits of the dead. Eventually as age takes them, these monks would be devoured by their acolytes, so that a chain of devouring could trace itself to the first ancestors interred therein.

Perhaps some actually have the prophetic gift, whilst others are charlatans. Perhaps it is less about communing with discorporated spirits, and more about the corporeal life within -that the dead ancestors 'live' within the monks who ate them (or at least part of them)? That they train their own flesh to remember through ritual fasts and feasts, digesting secrets and imbibing the hidden truths of a life (imagine an eldritch, grisly, preternatural practice that's part forensic anthropology and part gastronomy).

[Steerpike]

Ooh really good idea on the monks.  I'd say they'd be more brain-eaters than flesh-eaters (you'd probably sell off the flesh).

I was definitely picturing rival Boneshrines, although in a sense you don't *want* to grow your family's Boneshrine, what with the deaths required.

You've got mankine down.  Powerfully muscled imbeciles.  There are probably all sorts of grotesque strains, force-feeding practices, that kind of horrific thing.

For Fleshtrees and such-like, I generally like to build-in some ambiguity and not leave everything resolved.  Maybe they're from Ganglion, or maybe they're the result of some eldritch weapon that nuked a city, or maybe they're a distant relative of the Bloodwood...

[Rose-of-Vellum]

Love the brain-consumption. Much better.

[Kindling]

Ooohhh.... Ahhh!
New CE! Very exciting.

So, does Vetter count as a Metamorphicist? :P

I love these new cities (Mara and Blodvinter especially) but I kind of agree with Rose-of-Vellum that in places they're a little less multifaceted than the old ones. Some extra angles could do with adding/exploring I think...

If I may be so bold as to make a few humble suggestions?

GRISTLE
Compared to the other cities, I think the various gangs and the Infestation already add a couple of nice alternatives the overall slaughterhouse vibe of the place, but maybe expand on the ancestor-worship a bit more? Bones are important, which I guess makes sense in a place so focussed around the meat trade, but what is their specific significance in Gristle beliefs? How else does the religion/philosophy/tradition/whatever manifest itself? Rituals to commune with or evoke or be temporarily possessed by ancestor-spirits? A day-of-the-dead type festival where the ancestors' bones are paraded through the streets and taken into the homes of their living descendants as honoured guests? Or maybe they fear the ancestors, and that's why they keep them locked away in the shrines, guarded by the endless vigil of the gaoler-monks? Or maybe even all three could be cool – like they honour the ancestral skeletons as guests on certain holy nights, not joyously, but rather out of terrified duty?

NEW PANDEMONIUM
This seems like almost the most vivid and the least fleshed out of the new cities. I love the cults and cambions, but what else is there going on? Aside from adding another facet using whole cloth (a significant foreign quarter perhaps, of outsiders relatively unrelated to daemonic matters), my only idea is to add a more scholarly class of citizens. What with the history of the place, maybe the cultists find themselves rubbing shoulders with archaeologists and historians of the membrane wars, as well as other more esoteric and occult academics there to research daemonology in one form or another. Perhaps there's antagonism or even open conflict between the cults and the scholars; between those who worship and those who study?

MARA
As I think has already been mentioned, the matriarchal, men-as-chattel theme seems a little close to that used in Dolmen "back east." Whether that's intentional or not, I have a couple of thoughts on how to vary the formula slightly, without casting it aside completely.
Firstly to have the men as a lower caste in society but not out-and-out slaves or possessions of the Crones and the annis. Their servitude, rather, is seen as a privilege and they aspire to work for the greatest of the womenfolk. As the men are not seen as capable of operating on the same mystical or cerebral level as their betters, they instead prize physicality – both athleticism and beauty – and so seek to perfect various dances, martial arts, and other bodily, material disciplines in order to catch the eye of potential mistresses. Perhaps they peacock a bit as well, with heavily-kohled eyes, white-powdered cheeks and elaborately spiked crow-dark hair.
Secondly, maybe there is an influential faction of eunuch-witches who have overcome the weakness of their sex to operate alongside the Crones and annis as almost-equals. Similarly, though, their powers could differ from that of the female witches to reinforce a duality of Maran society (women = mind, men = body) so that their hexes are all about real physical change rather than illusions and dreams. Maybe they're fleshcrafters, and modify themselves to work towards a feminine body ideal, further removing themselves from their lowly male origins.

GANGLION
Not sure what to say on this one – although it has a tight focus as is it doesn't seem like there's an obvious direction in which to broaden it. Maybe flesh out the Cysts a bit more, some of the factions, trends, personalities and so on of the slavers that live there?

CATAFALQUE
What jumps out at me about this city is where you say that although many believe they are, the wights are not the original residents of the necropolis. This begs the question of who was, and what, if any, relevance they have to the modern city. Of course you may want to keep that as a secret to be discovered through play but if not it could be one avenue to expand down with this city. The other obvious one is the dungeon-crawling you talk about happening so often in the unexplored lower levels. Perhaps this could lead to another facet of the city, if a subculture was developed around the practice. Maybe some factions a little bit like the Macellarian robber guilds could be in operation and/or parties are sent by the other cities (or at least by powerful groups or individuals from those cities) to engage in sanctioned tomb robbing delves? There could then be embassy-like offices of foreign bureaucrats to co-ordinate and regulate things – obviously all in competition with one another.

BLODVINTER
This is another one that seems to have a very tight focus, so it's a little tricky to see an angle to go with for extra facets and so on. Maybe it would be enough just to expand on the peculiarities of each unique clan, and their backgrounds, histories and traditions and so on. Perhaps you could try something a little bit like the Factions in Planescape, so that each clan is not only a political entity but also espouses philosophical concepts or a certain way of life. Sticking to the somewhat nordic/viking theme you could tie each roughly to parralels of deities – maybe not as gods but as archetypes. So one clan might have been founded by a one-eyed mystic and praises the ideals of wisdom and pursuit of knowledge along with martial valour and respect for the dead. Another (Clan Death-Wail?) might be great smiths who revere individual strength and resilience, hard work, and a oneness of thur/thrall with nature, especially nature as embodied by the weather.

PURULENCE
Similarly to Ganglion, it seems like the easiest way to add another side to this city is to expand on the foreigners. I can imagine Dry Town being home to all kinds of madness. Are the same religions present in these new Twilight Cities as in the old, eastern ones? There could be a lot of interesting possibilities for missions from the Church of Srtiga to set up shop here and possibly even try to convert the heathen lamiae. And what about Hirud-cultists? Maybe they would come to Dry Town as pilgrims, seeing the lamiae as living avatars of the Ravager-Worm?

VERDIGRIS
This city strikes me as being pretty cyberpunk in a lot of ways, so you could try throwing in another cyberpunk staple: the megacorp. Perhaps there's a Weft-based banking firm based in Verdigris that has its fingers in lots of pies all across the western continent, and funds/is funded by some very suspect people? Perhaps there are companies that buy and sell arcane data dredged up from the most distant, ancient and esoteric depths of the Weft? Or maybe the more mundane data is actually more valuable on the open market, and people are often assassinated or disappeared to protect secret recipes, plans for the latest irrigation schemes, and so on?

[Steerpike]

Great thoughts Kindling!  Particularly about Mara and the idea of eunuchs.

Hopefully I'll get round to proper write-ups for these places at some point where I can incorporate more details on things like Boneshrines or specific cult rivalries in New Pandemonium.  For now I'm definitely going to work on getting the broad strokes of the main cities in place.

[Rose-of-Vellum]

To expand on Kindling's ideas for Mara, as well as my previous ones, what if Mara has a male society of castrati-merchants? This caste, if you will, travels the outskirts of Mara, setting up trading posts and traveling to other towns. They attempt to garner riches, exotic relics, and thus peacock with coin and curios to gather the favor/patronage of the Crones. As eunuchs, they practice a grotesque form of chaste/courtly love. They would have a mixture of envy and pity towards males dream-summoned who couple with the witches, with the survivors of such couplings joining their fold. Their's would be a culture that disavows masculinity -or reinterprets it as something other than physicality and sexuality. Imagine svelte figures, clad in silken robes, gem-drenched veils, adorned with charms and amulets, sipping teas from porcelain doll-cups, haggling for oddities, scholars of the sky, roads, and ruins: self-avowed pacifists: their castration their last act of violence.

Drudes on the other hand would be the exact opposite: brutish, carnal, physical males who revel in violence, cowed yet lusting after the annis with a banal physicality. Competing against one another in savage, night-contests of barbaric strength and bloodshed.

[Ghostman]

There seems to be next to no information on the status of human women in Mara; we know merely that they must rank above men. If the crones and annis are supposed to be a kind of "aristocratic" caste ruling over a larger population of humans, what reason do they have to enforce matriarchy among this underclass when they themselves would be in charge regardless?

Regarding Verdigris, I have this little idea for a potential addition: the value of the brain as a resource for computation and data storage. I'm imagining warehouse-farms full of people stuffed inside stasis tubes, cables and pipes plugged into their inert bodies, their synapses harnessed to process mystical formulae for the benefit of techno-warlocks. On the streets mnemonic couriers are relaying huge payloads of data fed into their brains via cranial implants, wary of gangs that would abduct them to steal or ransom that information.

[Steerpike]

There seems to be next to no information on the status of human women in Mara; we know merely that they must rank above men. If the crones and annis are supposed to be a kind of "aristocratic" caste ruling over a larger population of humans, what reason do they have to enforce matriarchy among this underclass when they themselves would be in charge regardless?

For a long time the aristocracies of Europe were pretty staunchly patriarchal, with very strict laws of primogeniture (some still are).  The men were definitely in charge - yet patriarchy still flourished in the underclass, too.  Matriarchy/patriarchy aren't always enforced consciously so much as they form the background assumptions of a given society.  For a long stretch of human history the supposed inferiority of women was held as a self-evident truth, not a discriminatory social construct.

Women couldn't inherit properly fully in Britain until 1882.

Love the cyberpunk brain-as-commodity stuff!!

[Rose-of-Vellum]

Regarding New Pandemonium's additions:

Love the name of Imago Heath and the concept of secret disrobing gatherings.

The pentagram shape-city is a nice addition -not spectacular or surprising, but alright.

The Corpsewall reminds me of Forgotten Realms' Wall of the Faithless, except they're stitched together rather than bound with supernatural mold. The part that surprised me, however, was the explicit mention that the corpses are animated with the "souls of the damned". I thought it was your intention to avoid dualism, no?  Also, if the city is so fractious, do only wards that border the wall use said punishments?  Regardless, if you wanted to further differentiate the Corpsewall from the Wall of the Faithless, you could instead make it a massive 'moat' that can surge up, rise, slither, and so forth: call it the Corpsefoss(e).

Regarding treasure-sales, where does New Pandemonium get the 'cash' to buy all the relics? Primarily from scholars and pilgrims making donations? I guess I'm failing to see how the economy of the place survives, much less thrives, what with the alleged constant civil-war/territorial disputes. Sectarian violence consumes a lot of resources.

Indentured Possession: totally awesome addition.

Architecture: Love it -both the general concept and the two examples (I also love the name of Little Stygia).

Fell Gate -I'm still at a loss as to what the structure looks like. As the symbolic and literal heart of the city, some brief mention of its appearance may help.

[Magnus Pym]

That Corpsewall reminds me of the Wall of Moaning Faces in my Plaguelands setting. Except mine was a gathering of severed heads, instead of whole corpses or other kinds of limbs. However morbid the idea is, I really like it. It's grand.

[Steerpike]

Souls of the damned - more a descriptive phrase than an ontological statement.  The Hells aren't afterlives, but this is the way the city presents the wall.

But I wasn't aware of the Wall of the Faithless.  I may have to tweak/remove that, now.

Thinking about the economy - I'll detail more on the city's micro-economies, but I see tithing/protection-rackets as being the main source of funds (so, basically, you have merchants paying taxes to their cult/protectors).