Returning to the Veins of the Earth

Patrick Stuart of the False Machine has announced a remastering of Veins of the Earth. I imagine most readers already know what this is; for those who don't - well, it's a vision of the 'Underdark' of D&D fame as examined and remodelled through the lenses of A) Real world caving expeditions, B) Geological time and C) Nightmares, possibly relating to the above.

If you haven't read it, then I can recommend it. If you want someone else, then here's the Questing Beast review. 

Anyway, I've been rereading it over the last week and a half, with an eye towards the remaster - and here are some thoughts.

The Pariahs of the Earth: It's almost impossible to imagine any worthwhile changes to this bestiary. The nature of the various monsters, the art, the assorted off-putting or unsettling or downright mystifying descriptions rather makes Veins. Are they difficult to use versus a pack of level one Goblins? Of course, but one rather has to push the boundaries a little if a work is to stand out at all. (To say nothing of the all-important conceptual density.) Cluttering this up with a low-level goblin / rat / other substitute to carve your way through would be a mistake.

Some of the entries have Treasure or Trophy paragraphs (as, say, the Scissor Fish or Fossil Vampire) - I would like to see these appear for every entry. Not that every entry needs them, but it would be a way to say 'These are here, look out for them'. To point to something of mine for a moment - the Gifts and Trophies entries for Humanity's Elementals is a model I like.

I would also like to know how some of these beasts climb and navigate. Sometimes that's in the text, sometimes it can be clearly derived from descriptions (the salamander-men have two legs and two arms and will climb more like human beings that snakes).

Cultures in the Veins: Likewise, it is very difficult indeed to imagine changing these. Things like the Dvargir are so very emblematic of Veins that changing them would be a mistake. (The dErO are charming, as always.) The Gnonmen don't quite strike the same note, but we have had a hint at a potential remodelling in the form of the RayMen, whose J.B.S Haldane-influenced society strikes the right note of alienness demanded by the Veins.

What would be useful is a separate table appended to these entries of other items from that cultural - EG, the Dvargir Carbide Lamp. The index goes a certain way to do this, but could be broken down more - X, X items, X locations and so forth. If adding or shoring up these entries, some other general purpose details might be good (that the Dvargir capital is City 1A is good, and interesting to learn through a treasure table - but what is the general pattern of Dvargir settlements?). I admit, that too many details of some entries may be less of a boon than hoped for.

Likewise, I suppose - how does Culture XYZ use the light and the darkness?

Generating the Veins: The bit that strangles me a little here is the Large Scale Maps. The overall principle makes sense once explained, but I would be interested in an extra part in the worked example in the Appendices. One more page, explaining 'This is how I decided that this section here is an Eight Mile Waterfall' (or a series of cascades, or...). As with the rest of Veins, no-one has to act make the same decisions, but knowing how someone else has made those decisions is useful. (I may have to do a worked example here!)

Some other, less general points:

• The Gegenschein - how many moths are going to appear in your work, Patrick? (The trilobites are different, I know that.)
• In Appendix III there's talk of a settlement generator in the sequel. I know that this isn't quite a sequel, but some settlement or trading post details would be good. What food and lumes are traded? What games and forms of entertainment are shared in the Veins? What card game would a dErO, an Ælf-Adal and a Substratal all enjoy playing?
• Are the Zombie Coral building anything?
• When the current fond is in bold, some of the detail of serifs is lost and takes a moment to identify - see especially As and Ms. 

***

I'm not certain that I'm necessarily the best person to answer the question of what to do with Veins - I've not tried to run it, and I've had it in my headspace for too long. But I am interested in seeing what comes of it, and look forward to seeing it remastered.

Conquistadors of Tartarus: The Murmuring Fraternity

There are those who will assure you that Hades is sunless. That warmth and light and the rest of the sun's qualities are quite unknown to the underworld; that even if there is sight, then that sight is blurred, obfuscated by the realm of darkness, accepted only as much as it needs must be.

Those who assure you of this have not been there. Now, in the Year of Grace 1580 - or as near as can be told, after the cataclysm at Lepanto - there are settlements on the Styx inhabited by more than ghosts. In the pious fortress of God's Ravelin, or the impromptu forum of Rome Oldest and Newest, the techniques of Hadean astronomy are developing. There is day, and there is night. The sun's rays produced the metal gold in the Earth, and continue to filter down into the Underworld. Even those who do not opine that Hades is truly in the earth admit that it is paraterrestrial - so that the sun reaches even them.

Not that this is sunlight as men know it. So we see the bleak light of Wanhope as the vaults of Hades brighten, the livid clarity of Febriterce, the aching monotony of Rackhour and the sulking slow dwindling of Bittergloam. These are strange states to dwell in - and those who know the surface world still find themselves caught out by the passage of 'days' in the underworld. One or two clocks, in point of fact, did survive the trip down from the Gulf of Patras; given the state of sixteenth century clockwork, no-one is really sure that Wanhope to Wanhope really is twenty-four hours, or even that Febriterce even falls at the same time every day.

Still, there are some effects of the light that equal those on the surface. During Bittergloam, there appear in certain places great gatherings of things like birds. They are dark and small, but bearing about their heads a sort of intangible sorcerous veil. Flying one way, they are distant but clear points in the distance - flying another, they are deceptive little specks that one must focus on carefully, like frogspawn. Flocks wing together in the near-dusk, forming assorted patterns in groups ten thousand or more strong: now a great disc, now a twisting serpent, an unwinding helix, a sinuous crescent, a wolf's head. Then after perhaps an hour, they disperse. 

Given the lack of predictable natural life in Hades, these are not merely birds going about the unclear but ordinary business of avian life. Theories have been proposed by residents of the Underworld. By some it is thought that these are souls of the thoughtless, of those who obeyed in error - who now follow nothing in particular, save that they follow. By others, they are traces of birds as they dwell on the surface, set as a half-measure in the half-realm below. 

An interesting notion holds that these are the souls of humans in purgatory, showing themselves to living Christians and Virtuous Pagans below, indicating that the proper process of human redemption and the afterlife is going on, somewhere. As souls in Purgatory are going through a form of penitence, the birds naturally wear supernatural hoods and there is a soft noise of myriad whispered prayers. 

A variation on this holds that these are not souls in Purgatory (who are really far too busy going through Purgatory) but souls of those on Earth - who sin, or think on sin, and so are brought near to the realms of gloom and flame. They swarm and group and gather as vice and hope war in them, as one sin or another grips them. A spectral trail follows them, trace of their spiritual journey - and, even when briefly set as a bird, the seat of their spirit-handling intellect is the head.

Whatever their origin, it is these last two theories that give rise to the name of the Murmuring Fraternity.