6 The SEVEN ROADS SOLFEO

La Calle Roja	The Passage Palanquinium	UT queant laxis
La Caraterra Anaranjada	The Alley	REsonare fibris
El Camino Amarillo	The Echoway	MIra gestorum
La Via Verde	The Heroute	FAmuli tuorum
La Avenida Azul	The Cleanduit	SOlve polluti
El Sendero Morado	The Brain Bridge	LAbii reatum
La Rada Perdida	???	S'ancte Iohannes

There are seven paths out of the Ciudead. Each is a frequency as much as a road : if you (or at least one of your companions - range varies wildly) vibrates in the correct manner, you will pass through what is otherwise solid stone. Their physical features are things out of a dream : real enough to drift away pitter patter, but lose the tune and the walls will close back in and crush you (1). The hope is that the shrieking dead harmonize themselves around the strongest voice of the pack: they will be able pass by one road only, and so, even hotly pursued, upon reaching a junction, you can escape.

One way is lost already - the way by water : La Rada Perdida. The Sinquisition mines the Bloom for that ONE revenant who possesses some vestigial memory of the pure tone which will open the gate - who can be coerced into passing on the secret. They have found a number with a weak intonation, a suggestion of the song, but none who can open it yet.

There are certain characteristics that the Sinquisition looks for, while sorting. It's not an exact science. The Sinquistion being who they are, it's not a science at all. It's re-li-djinn. But on the off chance they get a lead on that elusive SI tone, they'll keep trying (2). Well, not really THAT off chance. 0 .5%, so 1 out of 200. That's what the Sinquisition is counting on. If only they could stop killing people while interrogating them.  Very regrettable.

 

Shotei, Takahashi (1871-1945)

La Calle Roja : The Passage Palanquinium

Toxic environment : must be traversed in caravans carried by Cyclops type giants or other native and immune creatures. They tilt and stumble : dumb brutes, ferociously strong, some carry platforms with dozens of occupants. Occasional accident but mostly just close calls. Smaller creatures carry one or two : faster, but out of control most of the time, capering about on two stork legs or flightless hop wings.

Characteristics : Artificial, Fizzy

La Caraterra Anaranjada : The Alley

Barely a road at all. Dead-ends all over the place, or "basalt bridges" : fissures that need to be wriggled through : easily taken by bandits and held to ransom. Garbage is strewn about : strange, indomitable, almost worthless, almost priceless junk : plastic drink containers and circuit boards. This is the most cavern-like of the Roads Solfeo: although there are some concessions for its artifice : gemstones that glitter a dull amber light. Prying them out is a bad idea : the walls are brittle and prone to collapse : but then, they were already anyway. However, in succeeding you have acquired a worthless little dull thing that neither sparkles nor casts anything but darkness.

Characteristics : Gritty, Agitated

El Gran Camino Amarillo : The Echoway

Huge : rounded stone : built for some ancient race of giants? The scale will drive you bonkers. There are all sorts of overhangs and elegant ornamentation, although plenty have been pried loose for the raw materials, for the copper in the piping. Several famous graffitiests do complicated murals. Some are magic. Some are protected by guardian creatures, although the most protective element is that to go far off the central path makes you visible for a long way and other travelers are bound to wonder what you're up to and interfere with your life.

Characteristics : Hollow and Nasal.

La Via Verde : The Heroute

The path of adventure. Your basic dungeon hex crawl type operation. There are torches in the wall, burning constantly, until maybe they don't. Curves and labyrinths around - whispers to itself in a low thrum, come hither sailor. Every room has a secret door, a trap, and a treasure. Often they are all one and the same.

Characteristics : Brooding, tortured artist. Imagine Beowulf in Grendel, mumbling to himself, covered in blood and ghosts.

La Avenida Azul : The Cleanduit

Living but infected bone. Ghostly scarved ladies constant cleaning who polish everything as the fuzz will otherwise return and clog the works. You may be compelled to clean it too. A hand may reach out to grab you, to digest or help you find it's fingers. Were these to wake : other than finding themselves brittle fossils entombed by time, there would be some shaking going on. "That's not a cave, it's a mouth!" kind of thing.

It's important to note that these critters are NOT undead per se : they have no part in the great tree of unlife, they can neither be raised or turned. Think of them more as some kind of microbiome in soil, turning the deadspace into something that the quick can crawl through. And were the soil to sort itself into thought and instict, well.

Characteristics : Congested, Sick.

El Sendero Morado : The Brain Bridge

Elevated over infinite chasms. The bridge is of strong gossamer, but easy enough to fall off of. Built and maintained by spiders, who skitter underneath, it's for hunting and for transport, but the things they are after are spindly and half-formed. If the bridge catches one, a whole lot of activity happens real quick, but mostly they have been hunted to extinction.

Occasionally you might run into a spider, neither side paying attention to anything but their work: "Oh, sorry, are you just doing road repairs? Carry on". A big ask perhaps for a murderhobo, so used to being bit and biting in return, but there's bound to be more of them than you.

Characteristics : Wooly, hairy.

La Rada Perdida

Who can say? It's lost, innit?

Characteristics (alleged) : Flabby, dense.

TABLE A-1 : Under which Tone are you (un) Born?

The amplitude of the number is how well you can pass. A 6 could allow a caravan to pass, a 1 won't even allow you through alone without some sort of amplification (be it by spell, device, chorus, or high crisis) but it shows some sort of potential.

Freq: Rnge:	1 UT	2 RE	3 MI	4 FA	5 SO	6 LA
1	See Table A-2	UT 1 RE  5	RE 2 MI 4	RE 1 MI 2 FA  3	MI 2 FA 2 SO  2	UT 1 RE 1 MI 1 FA 1 SO 1 LA  1
2	UT 5 RE  1	See Table A-2	RE 1 MI  5	MI 2 FA  4	MI 1 FA 2 SO  3	FA 2 SO 2 LA  2
3	UT 4 RE  2	RE 5 MI  1	See Table A-2	MI 1 FA 5	FA 2 SO  4	FA 1 SO 2 LA  3
4	UT 3 RE 2 MI  1	RE 4 MI  2	MI 5 FA 1	See Table A-2	FA 1 SO 5	SO 2 LA 4
5	UT 2 RE 2 MI  2	RE 3 MI 2 FA 1	MI 4 FA 2	FA 5 SO 1	See Table A-2	SO 1 LA 5
6	UT 1 RE 1 MI 1 FA 1 SO 1 LA 1	RE 2 MI 2 FA 2	MI 3 FA 2 SO 1	FA 4 SO 2	SO 5 LA 1	See Table A-2

Table A-2 : On doubles, roll a third die :

Original Dice	1 -1	2 - 2	3 - 3	4 - 4	5 - 5	6 -6
3rd Matches	UT 5 SI 1	RE 5 SI 1	MI 5 SI 1	FA 5 SI 1	SO 5 SI 1	LA 4 SI 2
Any other #	UT 6	RE 6	MI 6	FA 6	SO 6	LA 6

Footnote 1 This obviously begs the question : what happens when the "key" to that particular corridor you are passing dies : from misadventure or deliberate murder or disease. If killed by the inhabitants of the road, then you might need to kidnap one of them, being creatures of the tunnel itself, they'll keep it open. Redundancy is always encouraged : perhaps another member, even if they don't quite have a handle on the frequency, vibrates with something close : so the way will become THIN and perilous but not quite cease altogether.

Footnote 2 There are of course successes, but those who reveal such abilities are generally so brutalized by the techniques used to release it (dunking in water, cold-torture, finger-screws) that they are unable to properly cultivate their gift : or else if they do, manage to escape as the Watery Rada Perdida rescues them its own self.

2 The SPIRAL

1 The BLOOM redux

There is a pattern to the Bloom, the head-hatches, somewhat akin Cicada brood cycles – 13 month and 18 month intervals. One group of revenants will achieve near sentience, light up, and be consumed. The World is a flat plain, an interior like a giant grainery, a processing plant. Maybe you can escape into the neighboring brood group by going dark – mute – paint your aureole away with tar from the noose tree. If you can do it – shuffle with the characteristic step of that horticulture, you might escape the drainers.

But there are mechanisms to prevent interlopers and assassin bugs who might lie waiting in the middle of the herd, and the brood may suddenly fall upon you as one to cleanse themselves.

2 The SPIRAL

Everything depends upon the geometry of the revenants. They arrange themselves in a spiral – attracted and repulsed. They bunch up, break apart – per the temporal matrix of each bloom. There are broods within broods. Their proximity warps time – changes the countdown to the next head-hatch.

Furthest from the eye of the spiral, in the stability of cold, cities can form. One can only assume many are formed and have been formed and are ultimately overrun. There are signs of it – although sometimes they will recycle pre-sunset architecture toward their own purposes. If they communicate with each other, they are tied together by talk and commerce and will be overrun together – but then these are cycles like any other.

One such is La Ciudead – City of Duplicates. There are two cities contained in Necos. One is open to the Spiral and is routinely overrun and conquered, like all the rest. The other sits above and opens into the caverns outside.

The full name of All Cities is a sound followed by a possessive. The duplicates in Necos are the true owners – even as they are fed upon and allow the city over top to prosper. It is useful to know the full name of anything – but less useful for a City, because everyone uses the full name all the time – to possess it.

3 The SINGQUISITION

Every dead thing makes a fundamental sound – a mechanical hum, a hiss at against the entropy that seeks to put it to rest. The sounds pull on each other – gather the herds – perhaps trigger the blooms.

The carnivorous plants mimic the sounds to lure their food. The survivors know the songs – in broad strokes, and favor those plants that produce imperfect sounds – sounds that are slightly off – that tips off even a half-sentient to danger.

There are seven bands of sound. Seven great songs. One of the songs has gone silent. There is not one creature that can be found who still sings it.

It is of the utmost importance that it be recovered. Without it, the Passejo Undeado, that great highway out of Necos, cannot be properly traversed. Without it, the second city will eventually starve.

In the center of the Spiral, the cacophony is unbearable – the revenants are occupied with grouping and ungrouping, and make several sounds at once. Perhaps, from this shifting din, some small sliver of the 7^th song might be discovered. Waves of Inquisitor-Archivists journey to the center – round up promising specimens, bring them back to Necos. Torture them. Attempt to crack their carapace and release the lost song.

They wear white, the color of witches, and worship Bitiz, the Half-Dragon, who manifests backwards in mirrors. They have thus far been unsuccessful.

4 WRITHES

The Nemesis Shadow is a funny little thing. It's a replicator like all the rest – the ghouls, the lich, the ghast to some extent - it wraps a man up in it's latency, it's slowness, it's second-handness – and when he emerges from the cocoon he is hollowed out and will slowly waste and waste away until he is thin and bitey. He has been deep within himself and finds it unbearable. The Nemesis Shadow does and it nourishes itself the process, but that this is not ultimately the purpose of the Nemesis Shadow.

If it can capture a drainer – broody fellows between their own feedings – a wraith, or vampire or specter or ghost - It will lay an egg in. It's not the shadow's own egg. It carries it for Rithgr, the Nurse Dragon. A small, compact, ember of fire.

Source: Adventure Comics #346, Penciler: Jim Shooter

Most probably the egg will die. It is long between feedings, light is scarce, and there is lots of competition. A parasitized hunter is at a stiff disadvantage. But if the drainer feeds, the egg feeds. And grows. Into some sort of godling/pseudo-dragon. It will disguise itself. It will be painful. The pain will disguise itself. Everything is disguise and the big reveal.

You guys, the Passejo Undeado is full of these guys. Either it's an accident of geography, or some runaway tribes of survivors seeded them as a particularly toxic defense mechanism.

They are like a heap of ribbons in the shape of a person. They jitter all over the place, like silly string, or a can-o-snakes. The part in the Umbrarea is occupied entirely with housing the egg, which after the deposit of, the Shadow dissipates into the air. The Psuedo-Dragon too will die. Someone will come out of the woodwork to kill it. It's inevitable. The Gods, dead as they are, don't fancy the next generationj. It will be like someone dropping a bomb on the room, the city block. Maybe you can hide it. It wants you to hide it. You should not.

1 The BLOOM

The BLOOM

Mostly there is darkness.

The Stillborn Dragon Uköll escaped his egg and ate the Sun and the earth was plunged into pitch black.

Almost all that moves is dead. The Replicator Races – ghoul, lich, nemesis shadow – hunt for the remnants of life – kill it – raise it. This is a compulsion, the transfer of half-life across into the Umbrarere – “The Threshing Floor” of death - and the resultant rush of absence sustains them, makes them stronger.

 If they discover and overcome a village, new revenants crawl from the wreckage, zombie or skeleton, depending. A ghoul will eat the eyes. The shadow take only its warmth. The lich will bind the arms, say a prayer over it, sanctify it it. Cover it in jewelry.

The raised dead shamble about, blind, mindless – or a mind only at a great distance, feebly trying to guide the corpse with whispers.

The remnants of mankind light fires, but it is a cold blue fire that the dead cannot detect – it is made from captured wraiths or specters fastened to great kilns, wheeled along with the milking aroch herds. It does not warm or cook – but there is light of sorts at least. Meat is forbidden – the great hunts are through the swathes of carnivorous plant forests. These alone eat the dead, and make their substance digestible again to man.

The dead exist in two places at once, and so can move about and dimly see the world's broken architecture, but seldom each other. On the earth it is dark. The Umbrarere is in layers, like with like. Similar types of see each other as through a mist. Further distant taxonomies not at all.

The The Stillborn Dragon Uköll ate the Sun and shrouded it, but it still resides in his stomach. At intervals it illuminates everything.

This is the Bloom.

 The shambling mindless dead light up. Aureoles in bright colors suspend over their heads, like angler fish, except that they are the prey. Everything becomes visible. The Drainers : Vampires and Specters and Wraiths and even Wights that walk undetected among man, fall on them, take their energy, the energy of the consumed but not quite digested sun.

At the peak of the Bloom, everything comes back to revenants, and the Skeletons and Zombies reorganize themselves against attack. And are overcome. Their memories only half work. But some ultimately survive, and the flicker of intelligence persists. And they evolve. Into the other forms of dead.

Perhaps they can somehow evolve back into man, or something nearly man. Mankind proper hangs on, and hunts. The Drainers provide light. The Replicators are threats. Both must be killed, but never drawing attention, never being seen. To be seen is to attract more of them.

During a bloom, Replicators make for the survivors, suddenly brightly lit against the glowing landscape. It is best top keep far away from the masses of skeletons and zombies during this time, but can prove difficult, as they move like water, washing toward you, filling the emptiness. Sometimes replicators farm zombies, for this very purpose, bloodhounds to find their hidden hosts. To make more zombies.  It's like zombie sonar - you let the thing wander about until it runs into something.