The Cadaverous Earth

[Nomadic]

Does it drive everyone mad or would someone used to it be able to resist the whispers, knowing them for what they are.

[Steerpike]

Nomadic, it could be resisted.  In crunch terms it'd be a Madness save, similar to a Kyton's Unnerving Gaze attack, or the suicide statuette from our campaign.
[blockquote=Ghostman]Can't help myself. My first thought reading that was that someone must have tried smoking the grass[/blockquote]How could I overlook this possibility?!?  Cool idea!

[Nomadic]

Nomadic, it could be resisted.  In crunch terms it'd be a Madness save, similar to a Kyton's Unnerving Gaze attack, or the suicide statuette from our campaign.
[blockquote=Ghostman]Can't help myself. My first thought reading that was that someone must have tried smoking the grass[/blockquote]How could I overlook this possibility?!?  Cool idea!

New idea... witch smokes grass, gains great power, but is also driven mad (like with drinking too much of that mad wine stuff). So you have an insane person with alot of power and no predictability or sane reasoning. Power would probably be related to necromancy or control of spirits or something like that. And of course they would now be dependent on the grass.

[Steerpike]

Modified version:
[ic=Ghostgrass]Ghostgrass is a type of vegetation found principally in the Mewling Moors east of the Gloom Coast, though some has crept up into the south-easterly Slaughter-lands. Drawing energy in part from the aether, ghostgrass is sometimes classified as a 'grave-spawn plant.' It is immune to many diseases and, most importantly, to the putrefying Rotmists common in the regions it flourishes. Arcane winds in the aether cause ghostgrass to rustle, producing a whispering noise that uncannily mimics the sound of voices: in particular, the voices of the dead. A group of individuals moving through ghostgrass will all hear distinct and different voices identical to those of departed loved ones. These voices begin by simply muttering familiar phrases or names, but gradually grow more and more disturbing, urging those near the ghostgrass to acts of extreme violence against their companions, or themselves, or else taunting an individual with shameful secrets. During eldritch 'gales' this murderous susurrus has been known to drive travelers quite mad, forcing them to set upon one another. In other cases it is merely unnerving. Witches seem especially susceptible. It is suspected that ghostgrass feeds on the dissipating life-energy ('soul') of dying creatures, and so encourages killing as a method of subtle predation.

Physically, ghostgrass is extremely pale, almost translucent; in moonlight it acquires an eerie greenish or bluish tinge, depending on subspecies. It is extremely hardy and difficult to kill, being highly resistant to toxins or physical damage. Fire is effective, but the damp of the Moors makes it difficult for flames to spread.  Interestingly, ghostgrass has great utility as an alchemical ingredient: when combined with other reagents it can be refined into an elixir which, when imbibed, produces temporary incorporeality in the drinker. When mixed with nectar from the Elder Tree and then injected by a witch, essence of ghostgrass greatly increases the efficacy of necromantic witchcraft.  It can also be smoked in its raw state, which likewise produces an interesting effect: the smoker becomes intensely aware of the life-force of surrounding creatures, discerning whether they are living, dead, grave-spawn, or near to death.  Overdoses can produce vivid hallucinations (generally taking the form of departed friends or enemies) and psychotic paranoia.[/ic]

[Nomadic]

Modified version:
[ic=Ghostgrass]Ghostgrass is a type of vegetation found principally in the Mewling Moors east of the Gloom Coast, though some has crept up into the south-easterly Slaughter-lands. Drawing energy in part from the aether, ghostgrass is sometimes classified as a 'grave-spawn plant.' It is immune to many diseases and, most importantly, to the putrefying Rotmists common in the regions it flourishes. Arcane winds in the aether cause ghostgrass to rustle, producing a whispering noise that uncannily mimics the sound of voices: in particular, the voices of the dead. A group of individuals moving through ghostgrass will all hear distinct and different voices identical to those of departed loved ones. These voices begin by simply muttering familiar phrases or names, but gradually grow more and more disturbing, urging those near the ghostgrass to acts of extreme violence against their companions, or themselves, or else taunting an individual with shameful secrets. During eldritch 'gales' this murderous susurrus has been known to drive travelers quite mad, forcing them to set upon one another. In other cases it is merely unnerving. Witches seem especially susceptible. It is suspected that ghostgrass feeds on the dissipating life-energy ('soul') of dying creatures, and so encourages killing as a method of subtle predation.

Physically, ghostgrass is extremely pale, almost translucent; in moonlight it acquires an eerie greenish or bluish tinge, depending on subspecies. It is extremely hardy and difficult to kill, being highly resistant to toxins or physical damage. Fire is effective, but the damp of the Moors makes it difficult for flames to spread.  Interestingly, ghostgrass has great utility as an alchemical ingredient: when combined with other reagents it can be refined into an elixir which, when imbibed, produces temporary incorporeality in the drinker. When mixed with nectar from the Elder Tree and then injected by a witch, essence of ghostgrass greatly increases the efficacy of necromantic witchcraft.  It can also be smoked in its raw state, which likewise produces an interesting effect: the smoker becomes intensely aware of the life-force of surrounding creatures, discerning whether they are living, dead, grave-spawn, or near to death.  Overdoses can produce vivid hallucinations (generally taking the form of departed friends or enemies) and psychotic paranoia.[/ic]

I love it, should totally get eareg a little bit. He does love a good smoke :)

[Magnus Pym]

Very nice indeed.

[Steerpike]

On a roll today, those these aren't original in the slightest.  Check out these pictures - more or less how I'm envisioning these guys (probably more the former).

[ic=Anthropophagoi]Also known as the Headless, the anthropophagoi are an insular, barbarian people who dwell along the Gloom Coast and in the Mewling Moors in the far south, though small, isolated tribes have been found in Dour Erg and the Firesong Marches.  Doubtless the product of eldritch mishap or twisted design rather than the natural evolution, anthropophagoi have faces set in their torsos: eyes in place of nipples, huge mouths gaping on their bellies, and bony stumps where their necks and heads should be.  Anthropophagoi do not possess either ears or noses, but seem to be able to smell with their tongues, and have internal auditory organs (not dissimilar to those of fish); their hearing, however, is quite poor.  They communicate primarily through an elaborate sign language, though they do vocalize, notably producing extremely shrill and terrifying shrieks to dishearten their foes and signal the presence of prey to other anthropophagoi.  Some slavers have learnt the anthropophagoi sign-language in order to sell the savage creatures captured slaves as food: anthropophagoi generally attack other humanoids on sight, but those scattered tribes in more northerly regions have been known to converse with outsiders.

Anthropophagoi are, of course, carnivorous beings, in particular savouring the flesh of other sapient organisms.  Though not as demented as the sadistic fetch or leechkin possessed by the thirst, anthropophagoi know a near-boundless hunger, an insatiable ravenousness that drives them always to the hunt.  Some scholars have suggested that this voraciousness is the product of the anthropophagoic habitat: dwelling as they do on the Mewling Moors, anthropophagoi are constantly exposed to the sanity-eroding ghostgrass of that region, and the plant matter is even incorporated into their diet as one of the sole vegetable components, used as a herb to crust their otherwise exclusively carnivorous meals.  The substance also finds a use in certain rituals performed by anthropophagoic witch-doctors, who display an exceptional command of non-sentient grave-spawn (such as geists): indeed, Headless witch-doctors frequently assemble the gnawed skeletons of anthropophagoic victims into osseous servants, reanimated (and kept together) through witchcraft.  Occasionally such creatures are used as cannon fodder during tribal wars.

A few rare individuals '" usually criminals or wounded warriors left for dead on the battlefield '" become members of non-anthropophagoi communities.  Such exiles can even learn the languages of non-anthropophagoi, albeit with some difficulty, but the bad reputation of their species generally precedes them, problematizing communication.  Occasionally one finds displaced individuals amongst groups of leechkin, cestoids, or other shunned races on the fringes or in the ghettos of the Twilight Cities, predominantly Erebh, Marainein, Lophius, and Macellaria.  These solitary creatures are still very rare, however.[/ic]

[Magnus Pym]

Are these arts done specifically for Cadaverous Earth? I think the first one really captures the feel.

[Steerpike]

No, they're culled from other sources - but the first one does fit very well, I agree!

[Steerpike]

Just in case a character in Blood & Bewitchment dies and someone wanted to make one...
[ic=Anthropophagoi Traits]+2 Wisdom, -2 Charisma '" Anthropophagoi are resistant to mind-influencing effects (likely an adaptation due to constant ghostgrass exposure), but lack social graces.

Base speed 30 ft.

-4 Listen.

+2 Hide, Move Silently, and Survival.
 
Unusual Anatomy: Because of their strange body shapes anthropophagoi have to wear specially made armour.  If they don regular armour they are unable to see, hear, or smell.

Carnivorous: Anthropophagoi can only digest meat.

Shriek: Anthropophagoi can shriek hideously as a standard action.  All enemies within 60 ft. of the anthropophagus must make a Fear save (DC 10 + the anthropophagus' level) or be Shaken (-2 on attack rolls, saving throws, skills checks, and ability checks).

Natural Weapon: Bite 1d6.

Witch-Doctors: Anthropophagoi cast using Wisdom rather than Intelligence as their base attribute.  They cannot cast Abjuration spells or Evocation spells but can prepare an additional Necromancy spell per spell level per day, and get a +2 to Witchcraft checks to learn Necromancy spells.

Anthropophagoi always take the Savage Appearance trait and the Bloodthirsty trait but receive no other traits.

Favoured Class: Berserker.  Many anthropophagoi who multiclass become Berserker/Hunters.

Automatic Languages: Anthropophagoi (sign language).[/ic]

[Steerpike]

Some basic info on Somnambulon added - more to come in the future:

Somnambulon

The Sleepwalker's City

Demographics

Human '" 15%
Zehrer (The Lords and Ladies Revenant) '" 1%
Zombie '" 80%
Other '" 4%

Architecture

Somnambulon is a schizoid city.  Its central bulk is a brutally industrial conglomeration, a snarl of pipes and gears and brick, naked pistons and smouldering smokestacks and hissing steam-engines, narrow streets wreathed in the dense smog through which the zombie proles endlessly trudge.  Rising above this undifferentiated mass are the thirteen Manses of the so-called Families, the Houses of the Lords and Ladies Revenant: dour, buttressed, elaborately sculpted structures of bone-gray stone and glimmering stained glass, like monstrous cyclopean tombstones or the overgrown spires of some profane, sinister church.  They are well-fortified; they bristle with ancient guns, and their battlements are attended by dozens of dull-eyed but vigilant zombie guardians, standing sentinel shoulder to shoulder with an army of stony grotesques.

But beyond the city proper lie the gaudy, carnival mazes of the Shanties, the ragtag district known as Quickside or Patchwork where the Unbound dwell.  Against the banks of the Sinew lies the variegated Waterfront where the two cities mingle, the ugly warehouses and cranes of the Revenants mixed in with the slapdash wooden tatterdemalions of the quick.

Fashion

Fashion in Somnambulon is highly stratified.  While the zombie workers wear menial uniforms of dour grey, the Unbound revel in flamboyant and outlandish costumes of a bewildering variety of colours.  Rich fabrics imported from Skein are especially common in Quickside.  In contrast, the Insomnolent Guard typically wear dull grey armour with minimal ornamentation '" typically only a device signifying rank and House.  The sinister Whispers wear their own armour of black leather, sometimes hexed to blend into the shadows or allow them to move without making a sound.  The Guard and Whispers are armed at all times, the former with finely made firearms, swords, and shields, the latter with precision pistols or rifles, wire garrottes, knives, and blowguns.

The Lords and Ladies Revenant themselves dress ostentatiously, though not colourfully.  Their clothes are extremely sumptuous but are usually shades of black, white, or grey, giving them a wraith-like appearance; a few more daring individuals garb themselves in dark purples, reds, and blues.  Lace, velvet, silk, and satin are common materials, as is fur.  The Lords favour long dark coats or cloaks and sometimes wear tall hats, while the Ladies prefer elaborate dresses with hooped skirts: it often takes several zombie retainers to get a Lady Revenant in and out of more formal costumes.  Corsets and petticoats are also common.  Side-arms are carried by both sexes '" typically a concealed stiletto blade or a pocket pistol.

Nechromechanoids

Zombies are not the only thralls of the Lords and Ladies Revenant.  Working in unison, multiple Revenants can create more powerful grave-spawn under psychic control, beings often augmented with steam-driven machines.  Such of these servants are called Necromechanoids: horrific fusions of dead flesh and churning, diabolic machines.  They are few in number and costly to create, and tend to fill specialized roles; some are unique.  Perhaps most feared are the Juggernauts, enormous osseous abominations of bone and steel, almost insectile in appearance and bristling with weapons.

The Awakeners

A rebel group and secret society drawing its membership primarily from the inhabitants of the Northern Baronies, many of whose lords have sworn allegiance to the Revenants, the organization called the Awakeners opposes the rulers of Somnambulon and fight a guerrilla war against them.  Rumour has it that many prominent nobles, resentful of the lords and Ladies Revenant, are high-ranking members, paying lip service to their liege-lords while secretly plotting insurrection against them; many members keep their identities secret even during Awakener meetings.  Though rarely attacking the city itself, the Awakeners do ambush Somnambulon's agents and mount raids on Revenant outposts, Nurseries, and training grounds.  While their victories are small in the big scheme of things and they are mostly little more than an annoyance to the Lords, they nonetheless constitute one of the greatest threats to the continued rule of the Revenants.

The Thirteen Manses

The thirteen Houses or Families of the necrotic industrialists known as the Lords Revenant tower over the streets of Somnambulon, grim and gargoyle-encrusted edifices of impossibly ancient design resembling enormous cathedrals.  Zombie servants garbed in the finest silk, lace, and velvet with carefully preserved and perfumed skins attend to the every wish of the decadent grave-spawn aristocrats, joined through the hive-mind of zehrer parasites that all Lords and Ladies share, save the young Childes yet to be Bound and those few rejected as hosts, doomed to become Insomnolent Guards, or the drug-fuelled assassins known as Whispers.  Important rooms within each Manse include the Solar (the personal rooms of the House patriarch and matriarch) and Living Quarters, the Great Hall, the Binding Chamber, the Libraries, the Torture Galleries, and the Servant's Quarters.  All are elaborately decorated with fine albeit somewhat gloomy ornamental stonework, glass, gilt, and archaic tapestries and rugs.  Much of this finery, however, has grown shabby over the years.  Slowly the carpets fray and rot dryly; the goblets and silverware acquire reddish blemishes; the antique sabres rust in their scabbards.

The Manses are labyrinthine and very far from fully inhabited.  The halls are cold: the Revenants and their retainers are unworried by temperature.  The stained-glass windows filter sunlight, dappling the cavernous corridors with blood-red or jade-green light; passages wind throughout the huge stony towers like the twisted entrails of some unfathomable colossus, smelling of dust and mildew.  Below the lowest aboveground levels, networks of tunnels radiate outwards from the foundations, given over to a dungeon ecology of spiders, bats, rats, worms, and less wholesome things that lurk in the dark and long unexplored cells, forgotten by the Lords and their shambling subjects.

The Factories

The single largest industrial city on the Cadaverous Earth, Somnambulon consists mostly of factories.  Zombies fill the belching edifices in endless numbers, all but indistinct from the churning machines found within.  Thick pollution fills the streets, but zombies do not breathe and so are unaffected by the acrid fumes of the factories.  Those workers critically injured in the course of their duties are rarely tended to, rather sent to the Reclamation Vats to be broken down into biomass to be used as raw material for the various Necromechanoid creations of the Lords.

Zombies do not require food or rest, so there are no dwelling places, restaurants, or mess halls in the factory districts.  There are boroughs specializing in particular sorts of goods.  Various sections are controlled by the individual Families and jealously guarded.

The Shanties

The Shanties; Patchwork; Quickside: the domain of the living and the free dead in the Sleepwalker's City.  Apart from the Waterfront, the Shanties are the only place in Somnambulon inhabited by the Unbound (with the exception of those very few young Lords and Ladies not yet fused with a zehrer '" and of course the Insomnolent Guard and the Whispers, the Revenant's living thralls).  The district is a chaotic one, built around a bustling central marketplace, the Square of Colours.  The items bought and sold here are not the soulless things vomited forth from the factories but hand-made artefacts: cups of blown glass, whittled bone knives, ceramic plates, carved idols, and an endless myriad of similarly unique goods.  Five rough streets radiate from the Square of Colours, the winding and uneven arteries of Quickside: the Street of Horns, the Street of Tar, the Street of Baubles, the Street of Flesh, and the Street of Spice.  Each is controlled by the largest gang on the street.  There is horrific violence here, and extreme decadence.  Gangs of costumed fops rape and steal and murder with whimsical amorality; to walk unarmed is to invite assault or worse.  There are brothels on every corner: whereas the other Twilight Cities tend to confine their pleasure-houses to a single district, the second-city of Somnambulon's Shanties does not yield to such niceties.

The Lords and Ladies tolerate Quickside with a kind of bemused indulgence, secure in the knowledge that they could crush and consume the district's inhabitants virtually at any time.  The quick are not openly hostile to the Lords, of course, however much they might resent them: like the Northern Barons and their sworn men, they are largely loyal if somewhat unwilling subjects.  Occasionally the Revenants kidnap Quicksiders for sport, setting them loose in the Slouching-devil Mountains to the west and then hunting them down like animals.  Others are employed as trading agents, or as artisans to create those few goods the Revenants do no manufacture on a mass level.

The Waterfront

While the Manses of Somnambulon are grandiose and the factories sublime in their perfect, mechanical efficacy, the Waterfront is a chaotic and messy place, tainted by the influence of outsiders.  Structures teeter over the banks of the Sinew on rickety pilings and metal girders, strung together with swaying rope bridges and slanting planks.  Foreign sailors mingle with the grey-fleshed zombie dock-workers, bringing their vices with them.  While the stern black galleons of the Lords Revenant (crewed by zombie oarsmen) daily leave the city bearing the processed spoils of Somnambulon to the other Twilight Cities '" foodstuffs, textiles, machine parts, bullets, furniture, and all manner of other mass-produced bric-a-brac '" they are joined by a veritable armada of gaudy alien vessels.  Chitinous submersibles from Skein; steamers from Lophius; the painted merchant cogs of Crepuscle; the twisted slave-ships of the lilix.

The warehouses of the Lords are huge, blocky buildings of brick, but apart from these squat structures and the skeletal machines used to move goods onto ships, the rest of the Waterfront consists of a roughly built, impromptu mess of wood and canvas.  Mixed in with the docks are the small fishing wharves where Unbound men and women haul crabs, eels, frogs, mud-sharks, or small fish from the murky river.

In many ways, the Shanties and the Waterfront are more or less contiguous, but technically the Waterfront lies within the city limits, and despite the influx of outsiders the dead still outnumber the quick three to one.

The Nurseries

Outside the city itself and scattered across the territory of the Revenants are the Nurseries, fortified complexes.  The Nurseries are administered by the Grey Matrons: a form of elevated zombie given augmented intellect by the Revenants, though still bound utterly to the will of the zehrer.  The Matrons oversee vast herds of the quick, predominantly children, feeding them through chutes and keeping them in their corrals.  These young humans are destined to become zombies in the service of the Revenants, and so are raised as livestock.  They are feral and utterly uneducated, without even the rudiments of formal language, though certain secret pidgin tongues inevitably evolve amongst the inmate-cattle.  Upon reaching maturity, those raised in the Nurseries are killed and revivified as zombies.

The Nurseries are sometimes the target of raids by members of the Awakeners.  While such raids occasionally liberate a few children from the clutches of the Matrons and their masters, most are quashed by the heard-hearted Insomnolent Guards stationed at all of the Nurseries, often backed up by small detachments of Necromechanoids.

[LD]

Would a Zehrer work as a PC? No need to stat it up since I don't intend to die, but I'm just wondering if it could work. I'm also seeing that it might be able to be CE's first potential Psionics character class.

Feedback: I think that you already provided for this (there is so much CE that it is sometimes difficult to remember,) but Given that it has so many factories, it should be either on a good transportation route for coal or whatever minerals are used, or it should be near a well-provisioned area for mining--which would suggest some good adventures and adventuring areas [I suppose the mountains are in the Slouching devil mountains... but I would think that would at minimum suggest some way that transportation has been secured between these areas- without lots of horses and wagons, or trains, transport could be difficult--although the zombies apparently are relentless and they walk without rest.

I enjoyed the writeup!

Re: the brothels... are these populated by humans or zombies?

[Steerpike]

Although he kept it to himself and hasn't displayed his powers yet, Kaius is actually bonded with a newborn zehrer (it happened en route to the jatayi eyrie).  I statted up a 10 level prestige/monster class to represent its growing abilities - Kaius has just earned his 2nd Revenant level.  You can find the class here.  It does borrow some mechanics from the psionics handbook.

Re: brothels - mostly humans but there might be some more perverse places with zombies.  Certainly there are undead sex workers in Macellaria - in fact the whole reason the Cult of the Bloodletter is currently after Tarim/Kaius is because they pissed off the Splicing Consortium, one of whose members was digging up young women from the cemetery by the Witch's Gate, reanimating them, and then selling them to a brothel called "Wormflesh" in Velveteen Circus.  Gorethirst, Tarim, and Kaius put a stop to the fleshcrafter's little scam and earned the wrath of the Consortium.

Oh, and there are definitely railroads and highways leading in and out of Somnambulon.  The Slouching-devil Mountains would indeed have a lot of mines in them.  They might also get ore from Dolmen, where subhuman slaves would be mining the Chelicerae Mountains.

[LD]

Ah! Okay, I thought he was a bonded Shade. Thanks for the clarification.

>>and earned the wrath of the Consortium

I see. That explains that then. Hadn't read that part of the story.

[Superfluous Crow]

I was wondering, even though Cadaverous Earth is a stagnant world there must still be some kind of progress. They have a reasonably high level of technology to maintain and humans are humans, so...
what is the newest invention to grace the Cadaverous Earth?

This is admittedly an untypically specific question for a grotesque dreamscape like CE, and not a question that really needs to be answered (or asked), but nevertheless I found myself curious enough to question you.