When the ancestors of the Sinquisition came into the caverns, wretchedly pursued by drainers and fresh waves of the Bloom, there were others already there — mechanical men.
It was these automen who built Necos, La
Ciudead. Perhaps they constructed the city by some sort of instinct or mechanical pattern, and it was the resultant structures themselves gave (or continue to give, in exile) something approximating sentience — via the tall antennae towers that resist alteration and shoot lightning: KEEP AWAY.
Perhaps they little realized their nature viz a viz other
lifeforms: their artifice well-concealed and deemed consistent with the
workings of their creation. Perhaps they imagined themselves living
beings in a stricter sense — that the newcomers were artificial, un-living. (Of course, in matters regarding the
risen dead, they are half-correct — but the question of whether a
thing breathes or not is not important to the clockwork — of what material is its insides?)
Perhaps buried, deep
within a secret compartment in the center is some sort of a queen, waiting, unfertilized. Perhaps she
has been found by the Shadows already and colonized, the resultant brood something entirely new, a fire to clear the driftwood off the beach.
What is known is that the Clockwork Floresiensis were chased
away by the Sinquisition, their city polished and kept as a prize.
This is paramount — the Floreisensis long to return. All the other details of their lives are subsidiary to
the one purpose: although, being machines they don't pursue this goal
creatively, but rather march toward it, disorder their lives after it.
It undermines them.
This is a key difference between clockwork life
and (un)life. (Un)life works inside out — it has a nature from which it derives purpose. Mechanical life
is high-concept — purpose first — and from that it derives its
nature. Even if circumstances no longer match.
The C. Floresiensis still have a presence in the city, in pockets — for one thing they have a n monopoly on the tone RE that opens the Amberduct allowing fast transport through La Carreterra Anaranjada on its silt river. They upkeep the city, oil the great pistons and scrape off corrosion from the mechanisms which cycle the streets.
These Clockworkers are looked at as collaborators by the greater diaspora — they act and dress pompously and are routinely not properly serviced, technicians though they are, whizzing and popping and rattling and prone to prophetic vomiting of gibberish. (there is plenty of bogus work done by hired undead mechanics who don't properly understand their workings — who shake rattles and dunk them in chemical baths and hang animal skulls from their necks). Still — the city is far safer than the "kyriakon" outside the city and these see themselves as preserving and the city itself for an eventual repatriation.
The bulk of the Floreisensis who were chased into the marches have been pretty thoroughly exterminated by the elements. One ghost town after another, its signal tower blinking impotently.
As it turns out, the nemesis shadows can lay an egg in them pretty good (see the rumination above regarding colonized queens) — and so infested, the Floreisensis' longing changes away from the City to their offspring, a composite creature that eats their insides out, center to shell. To host an Egg gives magic powers — and those so "blessed" sleep a dreamless sleep, shivering under blankets while manifesting illusory quarter-shadows — these shadows too lay eggs in Floresiensis, or in their minds, and make quarter-half shadows themselves, and so forth, each generation less substantial, until at last the pool of hosts are exhausted, and the pure offspring is born and slaughters the entire village.
|
Half Shadows Quantum O.G.R.E. |
This is the end of the process. A war-machine monstrosity. Skinny : tinkertoy type connections : body parts any which way : lots of sharp edges. It will kill everything - and then will most likely go dormant : ant lion like : waiting for further instructions. |
|
Quarter Shadows Bag Katies |
There are always 4 : Think of popular descriptions of the 3
Part Goddess : Badb Catha/Macha/Nemain — they from one angle are a
rustle of wings and cloth — and at another are 4 figures — talking
in the same voice, but with a different font, this sort of thing:
Nurse Shadow : This is the part of the split-self that tends to the body : it shivers, it tucks the covers in, shhhs. It will deliver the half-shadow. (Angelpoise) Lamp : Light from which the shadows ascend the wall and change size. This is probably loosely the "machine-soul" of the infected. Sometimes it's a creature with an illuminating sphere, sometimes a torch, sometimes a burning body. Claws : Unhinged fury : The protector. Almost without form. Cutting comes from THAT corner. And THAT. And THAT. Architect : Plots the next step with a protractor and sheaves of paper. Stooped, walks with a limp. Most likely to do the stinging, although any of them could, if it came down to it, resulting in : |
|
Eighth Shadows The Minnow-taur Visibility - 3 |
The Offspring of a Quarter-Shadow (the half-shadow lets nothing
live at all). They run faster and faster (and they better - see
above). Very small. Very fearful. Little motes : think the
critters swimming around that Jabba the Hut catches and gobbles.
Or squigs. Any village around will have them : they are shoo'd
away — pests — and operate a little bit like a flash programmed
fidget game : you push one away, it goes far, and the center of
gravity shifts for the whole bunch : his buddies/proximate points
drift off away toward him : the whole school moves, and then comes
back together.
Often they have some ability to disguise themselves : they look FAAAAIRLY normal : but their glamours like everything else drifts with the group : so there is a tug of the skin : a softening on one side : outlier's lurching motion pulled toward the congregation. |
|
Sixteenth Shadows Baby Visibility - 2 |
The Offspring of a Half Shadow AND an Eighth shadow it has
caught.
So : first of all, the group issue is here. The accumulated WEIGHT of the captured eighth shadow : plugged as it is into some hyper complex death machine : draws the others in. They want to rescue their friend. They harass the Half Shadow, as it is weaving itself around the unfortunate. They overthrow it : tear it to shreds : even as it creates the offspring. The host dies too : now you have seven in need of an eighth : they take the baby into their circle : and are quickly dominated by a mind approximately 8 times smarter. No better disguised than the Minnows (really) and they keep the baby bundled VERY well (the odd horror pull away and you look inside the blankets and it's ONLY stars and such): the thing is, the 7 stay TOGETHER, so there is no distortion. |
|
Thirty-second Shadows Clockwork Habailis Visibility - 1 |
Some 7th son of a 7th son thing here. Entirely
indistinguishable from a Floresiensis. Say, one is a live image,
one is a flip-book. You made it kid! You are a (mecho) human
again.
Except : See below |
|
Big Rig (64) Gh0st Visibility - 0 |
The child of a Clock Hobbit (aka Clockwork Habalis) and a
Clockwork Man. The resultant child might stick around for a while
: even grow to adulthood, but they will slowly FADE into the
background. Bilbo Baggins that s***.
Maybe the hand goes first. Did it get chopped off? Or it it just slowly fade away to the Negative Material Plane. Who can say. Well, the Ghost knows. Maybe. Maybe not. Sure, they are preten....nndding to have undergone an industrial accident : saw, meet hand. But maybe they're not really sure where it is either. Ghosts essentially. (but sliiiiiighly mechanical ghosts, hence the 0) Once they disappear, they are WELL pissed, but can only unwind the maze of negative material (like being covered in a million strands of thin black), or finding your mouse on a malfunctioning screen. They'll f*** with you when they can. |
 |
| Simon Sherry |
(and herein we engage in a shameless reskin of Scenic Dunsmouth) :
Cadaverland (Kyriakon to the clockworkers) is littered with signal towers - settlements subsequently overwhelmed.
The devastation has been so complete that Floresiensis survives only in a single village, Clepsydra, a place of
waterwheels and canals echoing the motorized complexity of Necos. When the time came for this too to fall, two
heroes arose as they must do in these circumstances (that you hear
about — the sample size being exactly equal to the number of
tellers: no survivors = no story). They drove back the wave of
shrieking undead. They burned out the infection with blue fire.
They persist, restless, on guard
without rest, diminishing but alert. They really hate each other.
a : Synchro-wulf — that great
killbot from the wars BEFORE, mumbling to himself at the far side of the
village, killing without mercy or reason if you look at him wrong. A pursuit predator. Steer well clear. He will find offense at anything. He will kill for anything, for the most innocuous remark. He will relate his exploits, how he killed the ogre Humbaab, killed the Silver Dragon Tetrafluoroargentate, killed the Watch Witch . . .
He has killed the Watch Witch.
He has killed the Watch Witch. He has
killed her again and again.
b : The Watch Witch — frail
and threadbare. An ambush predator. Her pieces reassemble themselves like a box of abandoned legos picked up by the children of a houseguest. She haunts Synchro-wulf, appears in
his reflection in the water (he has long ago broken the mirrors). Sometimes she even gets him, pulling him down until he smothers, his circuitry fraying. Sometimes they have children.
The 2 are always plotting to kill each
other, fomenting factions (such as only two particularly anti-social
creatures can politic — ambitious schemers try to keep them on task — but you'll end up with a knife in your stomach as likely as
anything), setting ingenious strategems.
The both are ever-vigilant, against each other, against the dead, guarding all that remains of that once glorious clockwork civilization (set aside the clockworkers who are completely beneath the
villagers' contempt). Sometimes they become
too caught up in their schemes toward one another and a Nemesis shadow gets in, lays an egg, cultivates a little shadow cult.
Maybe this happens a lot. It's hard to tell. Because the Watch Witch has a ceremony. The Factory Reset. Even completely compromised, she'll go about
Because there is a BUG in the system — a hiccup of time, an anomaly
that runs the clocks backwards. Every time you come to Clepsydra, it
runs backwards differently. Sometimes everyone is infected. Sometimes the
Shadows have been cauterized with violence and it's free and clear. Stay
in Clepsydra too long and it resets itself.
The clock resets, but the shadow-spawn
sometimes escape as they are outside of time to make war in other parts of Cadaverland. If
they can get out fast enough. Imagine a space-vessel on the edge of the event horizon giving the engines everything.
The Watch Witch and Synchrowulf are
always insane — the price they paid to their clockwork gods
long ago for strength to perpetually resist. Now they are the clockwork gods. Probably at first they were able to remember a bit across iterations — in flashes they are able to even now, but get everything muddled together. Their hands cradle drifting sand.
A train turntable lines up in a certain configuration for a while — but then all of a
sudden you are at a dead end. That is how the Tic Toc Woods are.
They are a source of limitless energy, but it is inward pointing.
Someday some enterprising soul might damn it up and create
electricity from its weird little workings. Maybe this has already happened.
Someone like :
9 JULIA ATLAS MOTH
Source : Blood in the Chocolate,
Hubris
A cursed sometimes child of Synchrowulf
and the Watch Witch, during one of the reboots that went more Rom-Com
than Boho Body Horror. Formerly an activist against the destructive
exploitation of the Cathedral Arboreal, now a good capitalist busy
turning turnips into tincture.
It is her fate to cross from one mask
to another, and every project that she undertakes is in essence some
sort of trap laid against the designs of her future self. So there
are veins of agitation in the Cathedral which Julia Atlas Moth laid,
in a prior incarnation as Rainbow or an intermediate form, and being
a hyper-efficient maven of machine production she knows too well that
the CREATURE she will become - the plugged in hive-mind - the flayer
- her inevitable descent from idiosyncratic living machine-woman to
mere implement of some larger purpose.
(perhaps this is but summary, the
nature of all men : these differently-limbed creatures ganging up
against themselves in a great super-Nova-ctopus trying to choke out
it's own neck - shabby- chic
in their new but ill-fitting skin
suits, changing clothes every 27 days, the down-stream implication of
that curse of death loosed by Adam).
The different Julia Atlas Moths slip
the bonds of time and appear - here and there - to make mischief for
the other. These creatures, by virtue of their wispy
semi-physicality and bore-bit eyes attract followers - and despite
the falling off over time as the memory fades - enthusiasts persist.
If you meet one, chances are you have already met the others - and
each is attempting to pull you into their orbit at the expense of
these alternate perspectives. They, being the same person, can
disguise themselves as other incarnations, and at least some of the
time keep straight who they really are and what their purposes were
for the impersonation.
 |
| Mara Trachtenberg |
TABLE 1 - Julia's MANIFESTATION
1 : Child Julia
Preternaturally aware child - wandering
around the Red Swamp.
Red hair - almost druid-like connection
with the environment - the trees will bend to protect her. Level zero
but possessing copious psychic or wild-magikal power. She will most
probably offer you something to eat : a root, a leaf of exotic plant.
Hair : Straight, Red, Long.
If she is encountered OUTSIDE the swamp
- there remains a bit of the swamp that is with her - the floorboards
are rotted, the tree collapses and is filled with locusts.
2 : Julia Rainbow Moth
In the Cathedral Arboreal - carried
around as a shiny talisman by the Silvertip Skink tribe (a little bit
lizardman, a little bit bullywog - a little bit 40k orks).
She isn't 100% sure what is going on -
she probably believes she is doing some form of activism, or leading
them as a gnomic outsider - but they regard her more as a magical
object, a god-horn, a coat of colors.
Hair : Braided, Painted rainbow.
The Silvertips will make LONG journeys
outside of their territories - to anywhere and anywhen. She tells
them that strangers are coming to mine their home, she doesn't tell
them it will be her.
3 : Julia Atlas Moth
The Skinks enslaved. They dart around
and do mechanical tasks. She has convinced them that they are in
hell, being punished for transgressions, working off their sins with
boring rote polishing of stone to make Vino Huecovo.
Most of her thralls were troubled
before - they were lazy or adulterous or murderers or traitors : and
they thank her for purifying them. This is like a seventh tribe, ill
regarded by the others.
Hair: Grey - dyed BRIGHT red. Pulled
back in a complicated bun with enchanted pins that will pinch on
hearing a lie (hers or by others).
There are distribution points
everywhere - little meth labs run by little Julias - most are
eventually absorbed into the greater Crooked House - they slink
toward it : busted up by adventurers and reforming, ever and ever
closer until it's long tongue hooks them and the Fattest Julia Atlas
Moth pierces the doppelganger's eyes with fishhooks.
4 : Julia Atlas
The Sorcerer - who starts dipping into
the Vino herself after long keeping things professional : it makes
you see in all directions that time goes - down through the floor of
the moment : drip drip into the other streams, the long underground
that you die and when you come up for air again it's just after you
were born and there are two of you eyeing each other through a wall,
through a shoji divider.
Hair: Gray - a beehive of a thing,
straight up Bride of Frankenstein style, a Marge Simpson.
Brooding in her tower - she will be
encountered through a portal always as she does not LEAVE her tower
ever, but rather seeds it with doors and brings people to her.
Absolute Center. She is after something she has lost, but whether it
in particular is an object, or a person, or herself, she, having lost
all three over time, she can little tell.
5 : Julia Salt
Hathor of Storms. She haunts abandoned
places, brings their mechanisms back to life through tedious
bench-work. Brings them to life to drain the fluids from their
successors. The horror movie shadow. Masked in grotesque manner.
Hair: Shaved.
She takes joy in causing machines to
destroy themselves : be they physical or best laid plans. It is
Julia Salt that Julia Atlas Moth fears the most and takes the
greatest precautions against - she has laid traps for "The Salt"
to spend her energy against : but even these offer a silver string
back toward their creator, and traps within traps within traps are
necessary to slow her calculated advance.
6 : The Salt Witch
Druid of the Slums, at a level of peace
at last. She has given her life to Shülaff
the Green Dragon - serving him, combing his hair, polishing his
scales. Perhaps she will venture back to the village and become her
own mother. It is not outside the stratagems of Shülaff.
Hair : Gummy white tied with other
people's hair to complete a wild rats-nest.
Encountered probably on the way back
from visiting the mad god himself - he has perhaps tortured her :
flayed her or decapitated her but she is past such trivial things and
will sew herself back together. Everything is for a purpose and that
purpose is Shülaff.
Sources : Scenic Dunnsmouth. Warhammer 40k Compilation
