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Post by Insano-Man on Sept 23, 2018 9:13:09 GMT -5
THE WAX VIGIL
CONTINENT: Patzaghd
REGION: Cackling Circle, Well of Japes
CONDITIONS: Desert, Barren, Mountains, Crags, Husklands, Terrorscapes
POPULATION:
- Unaffiliated: Low
- Loonies: Negligible
- Space Loonies: None
- Cult of Meat: None
- Wildlife: Low
LANDMARKS:
- Towns: Sunjuggler, Basking Wick
- Roads: Logorof Loop
- Biomes: Eastern Barrens, Northern Crags, Runoff Canyon, Southern Harrelson Crossings, Funnelbreath Mountain Range, Western Wheelbreakers
- Other: Wax Vigil, Giants' Council
SUMMARY
Somewhere south of the Well of Japes is a mess of stone, rubble, and steel pretending to be a temple. Aging ruins tangle and twine across several kilometers of walkways and half-shattered buildings. Purpose is lost on the structure; everywhere you look are blank walls, empty balconies, and rooms devoid of meaning. Nothing leads where it should. The structure itself plugs the top of a gaping trench nearly twice as long and ten times as deep. Below, at the bottom, a dull stew of molten debris and broiling slag wheezes out a toxic smog. A weary, sandy haze covers everything, sucking the life from everything it touches.
Lost travellers and centuries-old robots tend the grounds - none of them are really sure why. No one goes to this place willingly. Not many have the strength to leave. Men, monsters, and even the weather give the trench a wide berth. The few that don't wind up as permanent guests, trapped for a few miserable years of life before the smog can catch up with them. There's nothing to be found, no way to leave, and better places to hide. The temple has plenty of names, but only one's ever managed to stick. Whether you're caught inside or passing by, most people know it as the Wax Vigil.
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Post by Insano-Man on Sept 23, 2018 9:13:22 GMT -5
THE VIGIL
The structure most know the region for is a precariously-placed mess of random architecture. Against all good engineering sense, it hangs in the air by a series of struts and reinforcing arches over Runoff Canyon, the region's defining trench. It starts at the southernmost edge and ends about halfway through, after a few tricky bends its architects couldn't quite handle. Along the bottom of the trench are dozens of pieces of the building above, slowly bubbling away into nothing. Some collapsed towards the trench walls and ended up bracing the building. Most just fall straight down when it's time.
There's absolutely no sense to the structure. It's a heaving knot of random stone slabs, ramps, walkways, and free-standing walls, held up by a skeleton of supports below. Everywhere are platforms and balconies overlooking eachother, for reasons dead with the place's architects. Everywhere are broken-off paths that have disappeared into the depths. Everywhere are dead drops straight down into the rubbly sludge below. Every wall is blank and flat. Most walkways don't even have railings. Occasionally, a ramp has stairs, but that's the extent of their identity. A few ragged tarps of featureless leather hang over random walls, waiting to rot to pieces.
Meaning and reason are lost together in the Vigil. Walkways run into eachother, intersect, or cut over eachother so low you'd be forced to crawl on your stomach just to stay on the lower path. Some of them run right up against walls and continue along on the other side. Balconies and open platforms hang without any way to reach them. Pillars jut up from the framework below, supporting nothing. Open air is everywhere and ceilings are scant. Walls segment the Vigil into rooms that don't need to exist. The structure's slow, steady collapse has made it more complicated. Attempts to repair the building have only made it worse.
People who wind up in the Vigil usually stay permanently. The waxy fog wears them down, clogs their senses, and keeps them there. They stagger around like confused corpses, lost on what to spend their time on. Only a handful are even cognisant enough to recognize another person. Of those few, even less can actually speak. Most are compelled to keep the Vigil from collapsing, either by survival instinct or something darker still. Small villages of tents and rubble huts dot the corridors that are a little easier on the mind. Roofs, as odd as it sounds, are avoided; there's no telling when one will come down for a visit. No one's sure how they get their food, water, or anything else. They don't know themselves. The Vigil doesn't provide.
Alongside them are roughly the same number of service drones and work androids. Most are hardly even capable of functioning. Plenty of them are only just operational, stuck where they last laid down, trapped peeping about on sluggish sensors. The work androids are the strangest of all. About nine in ten are a make and model exclusive to the Vigil, smooth and rusty under a hefty coating of sandy slime. Their particular breed is made of a low-grade synthetic muscle tissue, forming a sagging envelope over their critical components. None of them are sentient. None of them are even aware of their surroundings.
All the while, the men and machines stalk the ruins, doing their best to keep them from falling into the trench. The trapped wanderers steer clear of their automated counterparts. The drones give them like treatment. No one's sure why. There's never any bloodshed, disputes, scuffles, or anything. They're just not fond of eachother. In their daily business, they're both poor, but stubborn caretakers. Not many actually have any experience in taking care of a structure that large, that old, but they try. Just as well, it seems that every one that dies to the wax ends up replaced by another nomad blundering into the Vigil.
It's not clear who built the Vigil. About two centuries ago, the trench didn't exist. The occasional Japester wandered through every once in a while. The people who left notes on the area said it was nothing more than a mustard-hued desert under the shadows of a few stumpy mountain ranges. Between around 1140 and 1150 OSC, there was some kind of disturbance in the area. Journals and memoirs claim it was some kind of a storm. Most accounts paint a picture of a barrier aurora, in that same mustard tint as the sand. No one witnessed it in person. A few scattered records suggest that the people who tried didn't last very long.
Following that, there was the trench. The same viscous fog was there, but the Vigil wasn't anywhere to be seen. People learned to avoid the region soon after; the haze was deadly, depressing, and didn't hide anything. There was just a hole. There was that same stew of molten rock at the bottom, but there wasn't anything worth picking over. For around half a century, that was all there was to it. The trench took on names like "the Western Maw", "Asaghan's Grip", and "the Well of Wax". The fog was twice as thick and a few times more expansive then, which helped keep tourism in check. Explorers usually kept to the more interesting and less deadly places.
It was around May of 1203 that someone finally decided to head to the trench. They came back with the same kind of stories people tell today. For no reason at all, there was a building spanning the gap. The fog wasn't as bad as it was, either; the lofted pile of stone spaghetti was keeping the worst of it plugged up. There was a quick gold rush over it, but the enthusiasm died off in a hurry. The fog wasn't as bad, but it was still there. It wasn't hiding much. There was just a building, poked at by the occasional broken-down wanderer or confused robot. A few of the adventurers who came running ended up as permanent guests.
Things kept up in about the same way for a century. Neither time, nor wax, nor sudden and mysterious happenings from the Well of Japes have done much to the Vigil. It's simply been there, for no good reason, doing nothing of any consequence. Pieces of it fall down just about every week, but the sheer size of the building means most are inconsequential. It remains to be seen as to what'll happen when the whole thing finally crashes down. There's not much reason to suspect anything will happen at all.
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Post by Insano-Man on Sept 23, 2018 9:13:36 GMT -5
THE WAX
There's a mist and an aroma in the air around the Vigil. It's spewed up from Runoff Canyon, from the slag at the bottom. No one's sure how it's made or why it exists. It doesn't have much of a name, either. Most just call it "the wax" and leave it at that. The name is about as appropriate as it gets; everywhere the wax touches, it leaves a sticky film of yellowish slime. Over the course of a few weeks, the slime hardens into a smooth, pliable coating. Taken out of its natural environment, the wax gradually decays, rots, and flakes off over a few months.
The wax has a stink depending on how old it is. Fresh wax has a zesty stink of burning insects or sizzling plastic, spiked through a few times with brimstone. Older wax smells something like sweating feet and shoeborn bacteria in a hot, hearty stew. Rotting wax and peeling flakes exude the kind of awkward smell of chlorine, amplified by a factor of ten. One way or another, the stink is everywhere. Even gas masks don't offer much protection. Given enough time, filters stop up and stop working. Only a closed system offers any real protection.
Wind whips the wax around on a daily basis, churning it into a sloppy sandstorm that never seems to end. It doesn't matter where it lands or what it lands on. It works its way into every crack, seam, and pore it can find. Everything around the Vigil is quick to be covered in it. Skin, eyes, clothes, stone - nothing's off-limits. Everywhere you look, there's that same sheen of sickly yellows. There's such a scarcity of color that the hobbling locals are hard to pick out - like ghosts drifting through the mist.
When the wax gets into a person, it slows them down. It gums up the gums, mires the muscles, and lingers in the lungs. It gets hard to see, hard to hear, and hard to keep a solid grip on anything. More than all else, the wax finds its way into a person's mind. It wears on the senses and beats down the will. It soaks up every bit of strength, physical and mental. It drags people down until they can't leave, until the world outside is too harsh and quick for them to survive.
Even when someone finds it in themselves to break loose, the wax stays with them. It clings on, suffocating every part of their body. Most give up to heart attacks from sheer exertion. Plenty more die from respiratory ailments as the wax starts to flake off into their lungs. Some find out they can't eat anymore; chewing takes too much effort, swallowing is close to impossible, and their stomach can hardly digest anything. Dehydration from physical stress or hyperthermia to clogged sweat glands are other common ailments. One way or another, the wax doesn't want anyone to leave.
In a way, the wax provides. It doesn't just want people to leave. It wants them to stay. People soaked through with the wax don't eat much. They don't drink much. They don't need much. It's not just because it's gotten too hard to chew or swallow. In some way, the wax slows down everything; water loss, calorie consumption, everything. Disease is trapped in the sandy coating. It acts as a sealant for wounds, staves off the elements, and keeps the infirm alive for longer than they had a right to. Life under the wax is short and miserable, but it's hard to say it isn't stable.
It extends to the weather, as well. The Wax Vigil is placed in between a few rows of short mountains that help break up oncoming storms. When a storm finally does summon the gumption to go after the Vigil, the wax stops it cold. Japes tornadoes have struck, only to bog down in the sluggish yellows. Lightning storms have hit, only for the thunder to slow to a meaningless rumble as soon as it reached the Vigil. An earthquake rocked the trench in about 1296. The wax held everything still while the entire region around it shook. Anomalous events aren't fond of the wax. Freak occurrences stay past the mountains.
The wax wheezes up from Runoff Canyon, below the Vigil. There's no explanation why. Whatever geological, chemical, or geochemical processes are responsible for it are a mystery. No scientific expedition has ever gone that far down. No scientific expedition has even poked into the Vigil. Locals in the region don't have the suicidal determination to climb down for a sample. No one in the area has the education or equipment to make good on it. One way or another, the wax has always been there, drifting up from below.
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Post by Insano-Man on Sept 23, 2018 9:13:45 GMT -5
THE CANYON
Runoff Canyon is the largest of its kind for a few dozen kilometers around. It's a tremendous rift in the Erf that drops down several kilometers into a pool of lightless, liquefied rubble. Dozens of caves drop off inside of it, flooded with waxy fumes and yellowy stains. Monsters of the underground give Runoff a wide clearance. A few unhappy corpses lie just short of dropping into the stew below. Up above, on its cliffsides, the Vigil hangs on for dear life. The slow barrage of debris makes it clear that it's not doing a good enough job.
There's a scarcity of information surrounding the slurry of molten stone at the bottom. Educated guesses suggest some kind of interaction between subterranean anomalous formations and local geological activity. Most people around the Well of Japes aren't lucid enough to believe that. Legend says that it's the blood of an earthen god, beyond the reckoning of man and science. A competing theory says it's a river of souls, flowing in from an immaterial realm of the damned. Space-savvy travellers say it's an old Zaschia landfill that Set decided to uncork for the benefit of mankind.
Whatever it is, the slag at the bottom is deadly. Flows of molten rock and mangled Vigil chunks lazily collide with eachother, enough to shear concrete with ease. Wax concentrations are at their peak at the bottom of the pit. Most guess that, even if the stone isn't lethal itself, the wax is enough to squeeze someone solid in about a minute of condensation. Toxic fumes and dense particulates in the air make it impossible to breathe even without the wax. Whispers from regular visitors suggest something terrible lurks in all that darkness - something alive and not terribly happy about it.
Runoff Canyon puffs up major expulsions of waxy winds about once every week, usually on the uncapped northern side. The jets of sticky mist fly fast enough to reach the clouds over the area. Sometimes, the wax forms into small clouds that drift away from the Canyon, off to terrorize the towns and trails nearby. On other occasions, it lingers in its trademark haze over the maw. Occasionally, the thicker haze of the north drifts back to the Vigil to remind it of the older, slimier days.
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Post by Insano-Man on Sept 23, 2018 9:14:12 GMT -5
THE SURROUNDINGSOutside, beyond the surly, sapping touch of the wax, life around the Well of Japes is mostly unchanged. People avoid the Wax Vigil. It pulls in lost travellers at a rate of about once every few months. Most of them are from the distant towns of Sunjuggler and Basking Wick, to the east and north respectively. The Logorof Loop trade route passes just a few kilometers from the northern tip of the Runoff Canyon. Dozens of paranormal phenomena rule the nearby environments. They change places and reinvent themselves on a monthly basis. The locals gave up on naming them a long time ago. Surrounding the Wax Vigil is a tall cup of short mountains, navigable on foot without much more than a walking stick. East are the barrens where Sunjuggler makes its living, west are a series of bumpy highlands and ragged trails. North, where Basking Wick keeps itself, craggy mountains and rocky gorges are common. The Giants' Council hides there, occasionally moving around on the map. Sometimes, it's just bad record-keeping. Sometimes, it's a genuine geodisplacement event. South are several valleys and ravines, one of which shelters part of the Logorof Loop. Another connects via caves to Runoff Canyon. During the more viscous months, sandy exhaust can be seen spilling out from cave mouths there. - Sunjuggler is a tiny, sandstone village of about 40 people trying desperately to stay alive in the eastern barrens. They have sand. They have absolutely nothing else. On occasion, a merchant passes through with just enough goods to trade to keep the village alive for another few months. Anyone old enough to hold a gun or a spear is sold off as a short-term mercenary to help the bolder traders make it to Basking Wick. There, they find new work, earn enough bread and water to make it home, and go back to the routine.
Life in Sunjuggler is an awkward balance between hunting for naskatters on the dunes and dodging roving terrorscapes. True to its name, anomalies in the region prefer heatwaves and lightshows. Every once in a while, the Well of Japes sends a thermodynamics circus down at the unlucky town. Hard as it all is, Sunjuggler's always had a wealth of grit. Against all odds, the town's hung on for precisely twenty years and counting. Whether it'll ever get any bigger is anyone's guess. - Basking Wick is an oddball town fit for the environment. It's a decently-sized settlement of about 290 that's been running since 1242 OSC. It was named for Alaska Wick, who purportedly died face-up at the town's center when the first settlers got lost in the area. The founders took it as a sign, planted their flag, and started up the town. Once they got the hang of digging storm shelters and squeezing water out of the local flora, the town started thriving. It went through about six names before they finally named it in honor of Wick.
What defines the town is that it's a massive, stone recreation of Alaska, lying on his back in the sun. Up close, it doesn't look much like the man. A bunch of rocky slabs with a passing resemblance to an unearthed Looney bunker and that's it. From a distance or from above, it's a decent depiction of a human body, lying spread-eagle on its back. In the center, open-air farms and water storage suggest something akin to respect for the dead. The town's small council of elders and officials meet in the head, usually around the top of the neck. The tiny town watch keeps an eye on everything from a guard tower in the nose.
Basking Wick gets it anything but easy. It does better than Sunjuggler thanks to age and location, but work is life in the stone giant. Hunting parties prowl for naskatters and northern rascal crabs. Scouts roam around everywhere, searching for monster nests to note down and plantlife to harvest. A small clan of merchants make trade runs into Sunjuggler and on to distant towns along the Logorof Loop. Wick's walls usually hold up better in storms than their tinier neighbor's, but repairs keep masons busy year-round. Growth is slow in all areas. - Connecting the two towns is the Logorof Loop, which starts far to the southeast in Oskalindin and wraps around to the equally-distant Miser's Bay. Near the Wax Vigil, there's not much worth discussing on the trail. It's hardly recognizable as a trade route; the limited activity in the region means that there's no one to keep the roads clear. Monsters occasionally lurk near the northern crags to prey on travellers, but even that's par for the course on Set. Terrorscapes flow in and out of the trail freely, but that's the status quo near the Well of Japes.
- Somewhere inside the northern crags, deep in a sea of natural pillars, lies the ominous Giants' Council. A set of stone faces stare at eachother, some with partly-sculpted bodies emerging from the rock. It's done nothing in the sixty years people have known about it. Locals avoid the place so routinely that myth hasn't had the seed to grow. A few rumors drift in and out that the giants are plotting, scheming, or trying to have lunch when no one's looking. Nothing solid has ever come up. A few travellers have claimed that the area is rife with unexplored caves. No one's gone to investigate them.
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Post by Insano-Man on Sept 23, 2018 9:14:36 GMT -5
POPULATION
The population in the region caps out at about 400 total, with the tenders in the Wax Vigil fluctuating wildly with the seasons. Transients in the area are sparse, mostly limited to merchants on the Logorof Loop. Loonies border on non-existent; if they're there, they're not interested in showing themselves. In the region's entire history, there was exactly one Space Looney landing by a damaged shuttle, about thirty years ago. No ships have arrived since. The Cult of Meat doesn't even know the Vigil exists.
Wildlife in the region mostly consists of naskatters and not much more. Northern areas are host to small populations of rascal crabs, especially around the crags and bluffs. Sandsnipes occasionally drift in from the west on winter migration routes, to Darimesa's northern jungles or the Green Sea. Monsters are limited in quantity, but plentiful in variety. Everything from glass sirens, to hoprocks, to marshmen have been seen wandering around the Vigil. Black horrors favor the region's underground, but the limited access to the surface makes them a rare sight above. Pedesawyers make a habit of harassing travellers on the open legs of the Logorof Loop, but most aren't more than solo or duo flights.
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