Blight Zones

Overview

• Alchemicals: “Areas where the Great Maker’s body has broken down are called blight zones. They are not shadowlands per se, as even the dead find them desolate and devoid of motes to respire. Yet, the tendency of these regions to warp reality and suck the life out of the landscape combines most of the worst features of the Wyld and the Labyrinth into a chaotic industrial wasteland stinking of rust, smog and decay.”
• “As a traveler enters a Blight, machines gradually display subtle and then overt malfunctions. Arcs sputter and suddenly go out like windblown candles, flickering back to life seconds or minutes later. Gears slip and grind or fail to turn. A fine patina of rust dusts out-of-the-way corners long before it paints entire surfaces like spattered blood-stains. The scent of burnt wires mingles with decay and a distinct staleness to the air. Broken and gutted machines show where gremlins have dismantled the landscape and torn out random mazes of tunnels in which to creep and ambush intruders.
• Within long-tainted areas, technomorphic cysts mutate barely-functioning machines into something worse. Frequently, this introduces organic components like broken pipes that drip bile and leathery walls of flesh threaded in a tangled circuitboard of wires. A row of capacitors could transform into beating hearts gripped in metal barbs. Those Blight Zones that remain strictly mechanical assume organic aesthetics, growing tumors of twisted metal fused with jagged crystalline cancers. Pumps contract with peristalsis and bulbous expansion, oozing sludge-like blacktog into unholy mechanisms of infinite complexity.
• In extreme cases, physical laws may even degrade, bending gravity in random vectors or creating oscillating adjacency between different locations. Most fearsomely, some Blight Zones seem haunted by an impersonal malevolence that actively turns the landscape’s features against invaders and picks them off as gruesomely as possible.”
• “As an area begins to suffer from Void taint, gremlins from other blight zones increasingly invade. Their mission is simple: destroy key machines and devour or convert all custodians found attempting repairs. Battles with destroyers and other guardians are frequent and brutal. If the Great Maker’s defenders prevail, the forces of the Void gradually reduce the frequency of their attacks as they scout in search of softer targets. Repairs may take months or years, but eventually the area returns to normal. More rarely, counter-invasions exterminate the infestation outright as a prelude to healing. Such victories are costly and rare.
• When the divine hierarchy calculates that loss is inevitable, they cut their losses and fall back to safer terrain. This leaves the gremlins their prize, which they desecrate and vandalize in an orgy of celebration before converting it into a staging area for the next incursion. Gremlins vary from solitary monsters to highly social hive predators, but the latter are far more common. The strong dominate the weak in a pyramid scheme of suffering. The weakest do not last long.
• A few Blight Zones contain Voidbringer colonies, but these are rare. Most gremlins cannot differentiate those who worship the Void from those who don’t, and so would-be colonists run a strong risk of sudden annihilation from the spirits they worship. Blightborn and women pregnant with these mutants do not run this risk, so some women deliberately impregnate themselves on a continual basis as a matter of survival.
• Voidbringer colonies with an Apostate master run less risk of indiscriminate mass slaughter, but at the cost of monstrous oppression. Void Lords are not kind masters, and they primarily view mortals as cultists and slave labor. Those rare few who share in their master’s malice may receive Voidtech upgrades, mutating them into maddened cybernetic shock-troops. Alternately, cross-breeding with gremlins produces colonies of vile technomorphic god-blooded. With their powerful Charms, Apostates can easily force their will upon existing gremlin hives and have little to fear besides each other.”
• Hazards on p. 122.
• Voidtech charms are awesome and detailed on p. 179 of Alchemicals. You know this.
• “In the event that one of Creation’s Exalted, the Jadeborn or some other being without a Clarity track contracts Gremlin Syndrome, that character immediately gains the Dissonance trait. This is managed in exactly the same manner as an Alchemical Dissonance track.
• Two special cases exist. First, when Abyssals gain Dissonance, they also receive a simultaneous point of Resonance as the spiritual taint of their most hated former sibling provokes the subconscious rage of the Neverborn. If they have a Whispers rating, they can prophetically hear the grinding echoes of the Engine of Extinction, the Neverborn that the Great Maker will become if he succumbs to his disease. Second, contracting Gremlin Syndrome is likely to cause Infernals to be marked for execution by their masters, especially akuma. For all that the Yozis mocked Autochthon’s infirmity, the thought of their brother’s endemic sickness propagating throughout their soul hierarchies terrifies them. Plague-bearers will be stamped out for fear that their infection is communicable.”
• Alchemicals: Metsubou gremlin-armor, used to convert mortals, is detailed on p. 216.
• Alchemicals: “Games focusing on Apostates need not be devoted to evil, though they are inevitably dark and tragic. The effects of Dissonance describe a slow descent into madness, but the Alchemical Exalted are heroes. A series featuring one of the noble Chosen, infected with Gremlin Syndrome, is an easy mine for pathos as the hero within the Alchemical struggles to fight the horrific and destructive urges that suddenly dwell within. While the fellows of his assembly risk alienating their mortal lovers and the citizens of the nation, the Apostate risks murdering them in a frenzy of chaotic and entropic lust.”
• Alchemicals: “Unlike Clarity, Dissonance actually does manifest itself as overt sociopathic tendencies. While Clarity seeks to preserve order and channels itself through the lens of the character’s Intimacies, those afflicted with Gremlin Syndrome take a morbid satisfaction in torturing others and tearing down the society they once helped build. They need not be gross with these tendencies, however. Many a gremlin cult has been started when a Champion is corrupted into an Apostate.
• Alchemicals infected with Gremlin Syndrome delight in bringing pain and suffering to others in horrid displays of inefficiency—ironic, in that if Dissonance possessed the same devotion to efficiency that Clarity does, the gremlins might well have conquered the Realm of Brass and Shadow long before. Brief moments of lucidity, calm and regret only serve to punctuate the slide back into maniacal villainy. Players of Apostate Alchemicals should take great care that their characters’ displays of sociopathy serve only to emphasize what horrific beings their heroes have become, and not seek to disturb other players unduly. As stated before, Dissonance does not immediately make an Alchemical a villain, merely a tragic hero.”
• Gunstar: “Blade of the Apostate slaughtered dozens of young Dragon-Blooded and a Lunar shikari in a string of brutal serial murders before fleeing into the Reaches, marshaling an army of gremlins as a self-proclaimed Void Lord. Clambering Horror Mechanism waged a covert war of sabotage throughout the Centropolis of Hadal, damaging its geomantic grids so severely that the Realm Defense Grid and other vital infrastructure were forced offline for months. The hidden laboratories of Carnifex of the New Flesh spawned abominations of the Genesis sciences, a freakish army that rampaged throughout Nurad until the Void Hunt put him down.”

Places of Note???

• Alchemicals: “Rumors speak of the patropolis of Erlik, a burrowing city teeming with gremlins and Voidbringers. The Great Maker’s tunnels ring with their blasphemous prayers, and his processes malfunction and fail as the patropolis’s drill-tipped tendrils tear through his guts, pulling the razor-toothed streets of the city through the works of his flesh and industry. Or so the story goes. . . . The Gremlin City might be out there in the dark, waiting to be found. Or it could be moving toward the Eight Nations, full of terrible purpose.”

People of Note

Herald of the Black Engine:

• “Herald of the Black Engine admires himself as a social engineer of sorts. His modus operandi of infiltration, sabotage, and assassination may be more visceral than the methods of the Starmetal Caste, but his ambition is none the lesser for it. Unlike other Apostates who seek the annihilation of the Eight Nations, Herald desires to corrupt them, recreating Autochthonian society in a form that can survive and prosper once the Great Maker has been destroyed, and the Engine of Extinction is born from his corpse.
• Despite his Apostolic betrayal of the Great Maker, Herald considers himself benevolent. As a secret operative of the Adamant Caste, he was tasked by Domadamod with ensuring the survival of Autochthonia by any means necessary, hunting down Apostates and policing the Champions of the Octet. But the more he saw of gremlins and Blight Zones, the more he understood of the Great Maker’s sickness. Autochthon’s death is inevitable—but the Octet might still survive. So Herald set himself to a grim new purpose, hiding his corruption from the Divine Ministers and his fellow Adamant Castes with powerful Voidtech Charms.
• Now he walks among the cities of the Eight Nations in disguise, the savior of a dying world. He spreads Voidbringer heresies, assassinates Champions and high-placed Tripartite members, and sabotages Municipal Charms. Disguising magic constantly masks his appearance behind countless faces of every gender and class—only when he moves to assassinate an enemy does he reveal the lithe crystalline form that is his true shape, veins of oil-black ichor and meaty tendrils tracing through the adamant of his body.”
• Really boss actually, it's a shame he doesn't easily translate to Gunstar. Or I guess we figured out how.

The Palladium Wyrm: Artifact N/A (Repair 5)

• “Most automata in Autochthonia are crafted with a specific purpose in mind and overseen by the Tripartite or the Alchemicals themselves. The Palladium Wyrm is no exception. It was originally programmed to traverse the entire body of the Machine God and destroy or neutralize hostile entities, much like a white blood cell in the human body will fight off infection. Constructed by the best technicians of all Eight Nations under the close supervision of Domadamod, it was intended to house one of Domadamod’s subroutine spirits so that it could work for the greater good of the Machine God. Although the subroutine, Idriandiont, was successfully installed in the Palladium Wyrm, it did not remain under his control for long. The beast was overwhelmed by a host of gremlins out in the Far Reaches several years after its construction,and the clever spirits managed to capture and corrupt Idriandiont over a period of decades. Domadamod has been unable to locate his wayward subroutine, his connection to it lost shortly after its capture. Now the Palladium Wyrm roams the body of the Great Maker, tearing a path of destruction through it like a worm eating through an apple. Custodians are often kept busy undoing the damage caused by this colossal machine-spirit.
  • Those who have seen the Palladium Wyrm and lived to tell the tale speak of a silvery, segmented construct that smashes through the components of the Machine God, creating its own tunnels of destruction. Its main body is over 1,000 yards long, has over 200 segments and creeps along, its body-plates constricting and pushing outward, scraping against the walls around it. Its head is a smooth ovoid with a dozen small, multi-faceted eyes set above a fanged mouth with two sets of pincers set on either side. The teeth inside revolve at high speeds, grinding anything it consumes into component parts that are later ejected from one of the creature’s aft segments in compressed mineral cubes that can be melted down and used for new construction. The corrupted automaton leaves these cubes behind, which happens to aid the custodians in their efforts to reconstruct damaged systems, but the Wyrm is apparently unaware or unconcerned by such events.
  • In addition to its prodigious strength and gargantuan size, the Palladium Wyrm is equipped with four medium Essence cannons set into the head in a row behind its eyes. It often uses these cannons to shear through the toughest walls of the Machine God’s body. It uses them in combat if it determines that something nearby poses a threat to it.
• Alchemicals have been trying for decades to locate the lair of the Palladium Wyrm and capture it intact so that it can be returned to its original purpose. The beast has remained cunning enough to evade the Champions, however, and has proven to be only a nuisance to the systems of the Great Maker rather than a serious threat to the Machine God’s survival. It simply has not been able to do enough damage to the Realm of Brass and Shadow, a fact that enrages the Palladium Wyrm… whenever it stops to think about such things. If the automaton should breach the Elemental Pole of Crystal and attack the Core, it could pose a serious threat to all of Autochthonia and everything inhabiting the Machine God’s body. Thus far, it has stayed away from that pole, a fact that some savants theorize is due to some property about the Palladium Wyrm that gives it good reason to avoid either the design weavers that inhabit the Great Maker’s brain or the thought-lightning that arcs all throughout the pole. Perhaps it is aware that should it breach the Great Maker’s Core, it would end its own existence as well as that of the Primordial whose very existence it has come to despise.
• The Palladium Wyrm is capable of speech, and it often commands lesser gremlins to do its bidding. It has also been known to communicate on rare occasion with Apostates it deems worthy of aiding it in its goals. Unfortunately for most Apostates who seek out the Wyrm, it finds them lacking in some unknown quality and consumes them. Since it seems to enjoy the “taste” of Apostates, the Wyrm is likely the primary reason that Apostates are a rarity in Autochthonia. In that regard, it still seems to serve Autochthon faithfully, although it doesn’t realize it.”

Blightborn

• “Some regions desecrated by the Void contain a mutagenic radiance that can warp unborn children. Each week of prenatal exposure prompts a (difficulty 1) Essence roll for the mother, with failure resulting in corruption of her unborn offspring. Adults are not naturally vulnerable to this transformation, though powerful Apostates have demonstrated Voidtech Charms capable of inflicting the state to promote minions and torture prisoners.
• Blightborn appear mostly human, enough to fool the ignorant masses. Their slightly enlarged skulls, angular faces and oversized eyes faintly resemble the tortured fossils of Nameless Ones found in soulsteel, prompting unnerved double-takes from savants who catch a glimpse out of their peripheral vision. Blightborn eyes burn red in the dark—the secondary ocular-tumors responsible also extend needle-thin spikes into the skull, branching out into a forest of barbed circuits that augment thought even as they shred all sanity.
• The known danger of conceiving blightborn children has prompted policies forbidding pregnant women from entering Blight Zones as combatants or scouts. In the interest of deterring Voidbringers mad enough to try, only Tripartite leaders know the rationale behind these laws. For the Populat, it’s enough to say that Void energies can complicate pregnancies.
• Blightborn draw their first breath with full awareness of their world, already more intelligent than most adults. The shrieking song of the Engine of Extinction hums within their minds, urging them to birth its abomination as it birthed them. This shared music draws them together, gathering them in vicious think-tanks of sociopathic tinkers that attend Apostates as acolytes. Some fallen Champions flee to the Far Reaches and take refuge in Blight Zones, only to find their prophetic slaves waiting for them with jury-rigged Vats and armories of horrific Charms ready to install.”
  • Mutations on p. 127.

The Void-Eaten

• “As the Great Maker’s sickness worsens, the Void metastasizes throughout his soul hierarchy. Machine gods that once preserved Autochthon’s inner workings turn against him, shattering gears and devouring vital components in a consumptive rage. Gremlin spirits rarely have any higher goal than the mad destructive instincts that arise from their tainted nature, unless brought under the command of an Apostate.
• These traits are representative of a gremlin exmachina of significant power, capable of threatening a lone Champion or mobbing an Assembly in swarms. Storytellers can customize them by changing their mutations, Charms, or Essence rating.”
  • Stats listed on p. 127
• “Biomechanoids and golems are as vulnerable to Gremlin Syndrome as humans and machine gods. Degenerative thought-patterns slowly degrade their encoded sentience and machine logic, perverting them to the purposes of the Void. As gremlinization progresses, their mechanical components begin to extrude organic matter, chitinous membranes and fleshy tumors. A fully evolved gremlin-automaton is monstrous amalgamation of meat and machine, its oculars glowing a dim predatory red.
• These traits represent a wide range of gremlins, and can be customized for different variations. While most will not threaten a Champion, they can menace even the strongest mortal heroes or serve as minions for an Apostate or gremlinized machine spirit.”
  • Stats listed on p. 128
• “Wild rats that wander into blight zones or are unfortunate enough to be the subject of an Apostate’s experimentations may be corrupted by gremlin syndrome. These mutated rats pose little threat on their own, but are often massed in swarms by Apostates or gremlin custodians for raids on Autochthonian cities. Gremlin rats have the Gremlin Syndrome, Machine Mind, and Void Adaptation mutations, and up to ten points of other mutations chosen by the Storyteller. Some have enhanced traits as a terrier-rat. They have the Motivation “consume organic matter.””