The Cadaverous Earth

[Steerpike]

Wow, I'm really flattered!  I'm glad you're enjoying the setting.  I've seen Barlowe before and along with Keith Thompson and Brom his stuff is close to the images in my head (especially for CE's Hells).

I'd love to hear more about your Lophius stuff.  In the Cadavouers Earth game I'm running over mIRC with other forum-members the party is just now heading to Lophius from Macellaria.  Did you spot the Lophius adventure outlines buried somewhere on the first page?  They might help generate ideas.

[ErebusRed]

I love Brom :)  I can see the shared themes and flavours.  

At present the heroes are somewhat staggered by the enormity of the City, and the pitfalls of traversing between districts.  So far it's been a mixture of minor sabotage at the slave market, and exploring subterrain areas beneath the city for a relic sought by their tribe.  The headstrong group are accumulating enemies rather fast...!

I couldn't find much information on the Twilight Isles, sorry if I have missed a section, but I wonder if you had any particular thoughts about that region?  

Many thanks

[Steerpike]

The Midnight Isles I think you mean - and yeah, I haven't done a formal write-up of them (I should do that... my own group is heading there soon).  Basically they're a series of forsaken islands shrouded by incredibly thick, dense, probably eldritch clouds, so that it's perpetually night.  As a result, the only plants are weird aphotic lichens and stunted carnivorous creepers and the like.  Corsairs tend to use the Isles a lot since they're the perfect place to retreat into - easy to shake pursuing ships in the darkness.  I'd imagine that there are lots of other bizarre things in the Isles, and I haven't specified an exact number, so you could easily make stuff up (of course, it's your campaign so you can make up whatever you want anyway, but you know what I mean).  In my current campaign there's an island called Blaspheme in the Midnight Isles where a crazed witch (the Profanomancer Xheen) built his Citadel of Maledictions before dying of a wasting illness contracted in alien realms; his servants, the grotesque Anathemites ("obscenementals") still roam the barren beaches and infest the tower.  The only other Isle I've mentioned is the Gnawed Isle, a corsair base.

Other stuff that I'm planning on having in the Isles:

- A colony of shades who dwell in a ruin on one of the Isles and can potentially help travelers (since there's no sun, they never have to worry about being expelled from their corpse-hosts).
- Tenebral sea-monsters ("shadowyrms" or something similar).
- A community of escaped slaves who subsist on fungi and albino fish.
- A fortified monastery of the Weeping Lady who specialize in mourning those lost at sea.  Necessarily the nuns here have become warriors due to constant corsair harassment.
- A phantom ship crewed by a renegade Revenant and his zombic crew, which even the corsairs fear.
- Roving masses of white, predatory sargasso called Nightweed.
- An island with a tribe of monstrously deformed hagmen with black skins and no eyes who worship a taboo/heretical Aspect of the Aeon-Worm.

EDIT: Erebus, what system are you running things in?

[ErebusRed]

Thanks Steerpike, that gives me a good spread of ideas to play with.  The party are trying to get passage to the isles via a close-knit pirate faction (think a fantasy version of the 'Sons of Anarchy') in the hopes of obtaining crystal 'Radiance'.  Radiance can act as a counter-radiation to the cancerous effects of Fecundity (albeit with terrible side-effects) and potentially could be used to make it possible for individuals travel within the Fecundity without sucumbing to it's corruption - at least that's my plot :)

I use a (constantly tinkered) home-grown system, which is most similar to Runequest.

An illustration (not by me) of what a raw radiance deposit might look like: http://kire1987.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=0#/d486xbx

[LordVreeg]

Thanks Steerpike, that gives me a good spread of ideas to play with.  The party are trying to get passage to the isles via a close-knit pirate faction (think a fantasy version of the 'Sons of Anarchy') in the hopes of obtaining crystal 'Radiance'.  Radiance can act as a counter-radiation to the cancerous effects of Fecundity (albeit with terrible side-effects) and potentially could be used to make it possible for individuals travel within the Fecundity without sucumbing to it's corruption - at least that's my plot :)

I use a (constantly tinkered) home-grown system, which is most similar to Runequest.

that homegrown system sounds like a system after my own heart...

[ErebusRed]

Yes I like something that can avoid the players feeling too overpowered as they progress.  I'm not a big fan of the 'players are the heroes and should be stronger' idea.  I like to think of player characters as merely one group of social actors in a world full of other social actors.  Otherwise it's The Matrix!  Keeping things simple helps us stop mechanics intruding all over our scene building!

I've run a few more sessions now (including flash-backs), enough to establish some informing themes for our home-group story and a small sub-plot within TCE.  

Flashback sessions so far:  Within Flenze Veldt exist three small interelated tribes, each one a matriachy ruled by a Gorgon Queen (respectively Medusa, Euryale & Stheno).  these are the Gorgonne people and they are largely female, have their own rituals and practices and venerate a great statue to a feminine entity known as Ceto.  Each queen also holds an artifact sacred to Ceto.  This is a relatively innocent and naive place.

The warlord Hereku has agents in this part of the Flenze Vale, a self-serving general; Kaine who has negotiated with Queen Medusa of the unobtrusive Gorgonne that they may live unmolested by Heruku's vastly superior forces as long as Kaine may take a bride, each year, who must be the most comely Gorgonne maiden of the season.  This agreement has been in place for several years but the truth of it is known only to Medusa, her personal Witch and a few trusted warriors.  Typically the chosen girl is thought to have vanished or died.

One of our heroes, Azenor, is selected to be the offering for this agreement, but the secret exchange is sabotaged by the intervention of Storm, an on-the-run assassin formerly in the service of the Revenant Lords.  Storm reasons that Azenor now belongs to him, and offers Azenor freedom so long as she first helps him with deal with his pursuer: Eldred The Composite Man - a Bricoleur adorned in eclectic armour concealing a body pieced together from people of aesthetic beauty to create a horrific whole.  

Well that's where I am at right now.  Hopefully this will all bridge to a return to the tribes to confront the conspiracy, and subsequently to the emergence of Fecundity as a rising threat in the region (perhaps the unexpected swallowing of an entire Gorgonne village, loss of sacred items), mission to find Radiance etc...

[Steerpike]

Wow, that sounds really cool!  It's awesome to see someone running with ideas - sounds like a really fun game.   Makes me want to have a glossy illustrated CE setting bible.

I'm glad you're making it your own, too.  Some of your characters may have to make cameos in my own game now...

[TheMeanestGuest]

That's pretty cool that you're running your own game of CE, Erebus! I hope you'll continue to keep us updated. I'm curious to hear how your players fare.

Steerpike puts up the logs from our own ongoing game, in case you're interested: http://www.thecbg.org/PLUGIN_DIR/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?81151.0

Kind of lengthy by now, but an interesting read, at least I think so. Might be able to provide some additional insight into the thousand horrors of the Cadaverous Earth. |||||||| Edit: Some of my favourite excerpts are Wispy's & Carver's zany adventure in Ezekiel Khaan's mansion (and subsequently, Hell) near the start of page 3. And Kaius's abduction by Emery and Bernadette, and his encounter with the Revenant Lord Vladmir, this is on page 5 starting near the end of "Whispers".  

Koldobika's fire-mad arson spree is also excellent, as is Kryz's return to the estate of the Man-in-Armour. Also Kaius & Kryz in Skein, and Tarim's dream sequence... and the suicide statuette. Actually, there's a lot. So.. yeah.  

[Nomadic]

and the suicide statuette.

The suicide statuette was hilarious.

[Steerpike]

It's good to know which bits you guys enjoyed especially!

I particularly liked GMing all those scenes as well... other high points for me include the two major Catacomb escapades (the first with Carver & Gorethirst near the bottom of the first page, and the second with the whole party on pages 4-5) and the weird assault on the "Ghost" Town south of the city with the former townsfolk embedded in the walls (bottom of page 2).

[Superfluous Crow]

I really should read the latest logs soon...
I agree, the suicide statuette was great as was the catacomb with Gorethirst. I like our social encounters with the high and mighty of Macellaria. Kaius' dream of awakening is beautiful. The stronghold of the masticators and the sacking of the temple of Striga.

[Steerpike]

I'm quite behind on the logs, though not too too egregiously (just at the end of Part III, with the Red Rain and the Conclave).

[ErebusRed]

Enjoying the logs; fresh link since site update: http://www.thecbg.org/index.php/topic,81151.0.html

Plenty of valuable information there (including useful goods and services), but especially vivid atmosphere building through strange but well chosen details.  Admiration to all the group for creating something enjoyable to follow!  I'll have further feedback when I've read the lot.

Have run one further session of TCE since last posting (continuing the flashback RP).  Storm divined the location of his pursuer, the bricoleur Eldred, and tracked him to an independent military fortress in Flense Veldt.  The fortress lies a few days from the Gorgonne Tribes and is controlled by a human separatist movement, known locally as 'the Order'.  Arriving on an unforgiving night, Storm and Azenor took shelter inside a temple to Synaesthesia, presumarably a local deity.  During the night they witnessed a bizarre ritual.  A seemingly comatose or dead woman was hoisted onto a iconic looking platform of steel webbing and bought to consciousness by the use of batteries electifying the construct.  She animated and was treated with great reverence by the Priest, and members of the Order, who questioned her about the future.  She replied with ominous portents. After the ritual she was removed and the members bemoaned the little power they had remaining for summoning Synaesthesia.

After witnessing this disturbing rite, Storm sent Azenor to scout the taverns and report back on the faces on the men there, hoping that Eldred might be identified in his usual guise as an extraordinarily beautiful man.  This lead ran cold.  However a local apprentice of the Order, a lacklustre warrior named Larp, dropped a hint about a notable local sculptor Mauro, whose work was of great aesthetic note.  Azenor and Storm went to visit the sculptor, finding themselves within a dark and gruesome maze of bodies, both stone and flesh, as Eldred had indeed come here and, being stirred by the art, had done some sculpting of his own with the patron and his models (flesh and stone). 

Ambushed amid the grosteque display by Eldred, and his man-at-arms Nefarion, a brutal skirmish was fought.  It ended badly with the capture of Storm and the intention to return him to Somnambulon for 'consequences'.  Azenor awoke in pitiful Order hospital, scarred from jaw to ear, sad and far from home, with only a meagre offer of friendship from the hopeless squire Larp to work with.   

[Steerpike]

[ooc]A bit of slang for my players.  I stole a couple of terms from the slang Salacious Angel invented for Thousand Isles.

Note that some articles of Macellarian slang will have crept down to Lophius, but they'll be less common, and will tend to mark someone as a Macellarian, sometimes colloquially known as a Snatcher (as in, someone from the City of Bodysnatchers).

General pirate-talk in general also works.[/ooc]

Lophian Slang

barnacle – old person, especially a mean one, stubbornly clinging to life

barnacled – old

blunderbuss – a wide-hipped and/or feisty woman

breath – life, spirit

breech - anus

breech-loader - sodomite

briny – crazy (a reference to drinking seawater)

cannonballs – testicles

crab-eaten – dead

dry - true, straight, honest, as in "was he dry, or was that eelish bastard lying?"

eelish – cunning, predatory, opportunistic

fin – blade, especially a small or discrete one

fish – idiot, conformist, fool

gribble – annoying person

gull – scavenger, especially a maritime scavenger

hagfaced – ugly

muzzle – bawdy term for female genitals

nacre – cash

nacred – rich

pincers – fingers

piranha – ruthless, bloodthirsty individual, especially one of a group

powder - chutzpah, verve

quaggy - unreliable

salty – wise, experienced

scales – armour

scaly – well protected

school – crew or gang

sharkshit – cowardly

shell – protect, guard, hole up, as in "we shelled ourselves in an old cabin and fought the leechkin off"

snot-tail – a derogatory name for a hagman, more pejorative than the somewhat affectionate "squirmy"

squiddist – a witch (a reference to squid ink and grimoires)

squidscrawl – writing

starfish – a harlot, loose woman, slut ("limbs spread like a starfish's")

stormy – angry, irritable

sunken – hidden or concealed; also, forgotten

[Superfluous Crow]

I feel like half of these would apply to Lhars and I could easily see him throw these terms around.
Good creative slang, I like it!
Squiddist reminds me a little of "Kraken" (the book).