Nightmare Fruit

The world is changing: the way of life of the hunters,  herders, foragers and fishers is compromised by those that grow and plan. With this new subsistence strategy comes new ideas: not just about how to obtain sustenance but also about our individual rights and responsibilities.

These rights seem to vary from one person to another, rather than equal among all peoples.

It is a curious and alien thing for outsider to observe: people having stopped being people, transforming into the parts of a grander mechanism. Behind this transformation might lie many hands: the servants of dusk, or the emerging cult of the Sun & Heavens... but most insidious of all is the cult of the Nightmare Fruit...

To understand the cult, we must first understand the fruit: but be warned... wise-ones warn that while it offers great insights, its final gift is the greatest lie yet told.

CONTENT WARNING: mild body horror, descriptions of horrible things, death, drowning, reference to Lovecraft's racist story Polaris,  panic and being forced to swallow things.

THE BEYOND: POLARIS REVISITED, via Carcosa and... The Imperium of Man?

In this post I return to THE BEYOND in PARIAH, principally the realm of POLARIS. This idea's been stewing for several years now but two recent blog posts by others prompted me to revisit it. 

CONTENT WARNING: The Absolute Worst Stuff Imaginable is alluded to. 

City of 100 Gods Pt.7: The Artisans Quarter plus Ward 41. The Gardeners

In a Neolithic proto-Megalopolis where each individual ward has its own deity, it's hard to find a denizen embracing the concept of a single, creator god. But the artisans know, for they carry the divine knowledge that can only be imparted by The Creator. For She made this world through craft and by design, and She shared this power with her children – through her ten avatars.

The Mesopotamian Goddess Bau

This post continues our ongoing exploration of the City of a Hundred Gods: 

Part 1... City Limits

Part 2... Gates and Ladders
Part 3... Further Along the Ladders

Part 4... The Last Ladders

Part N.... Navigating the City

Part  5... Traders Wake

Part 6... Final Traders Wake Wards 

Let us meet the Artisans!

200 POSTS BEFORE 2021 (site index)

EDIT JULY 2023:
The blog Index is now listed on this page:
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/p/site-index.html

- - - - -

When Semiurge did it, there was a feeling of victorious hopelessness:

http://archonsmarchon.blogspot.com/2020/11/index-incomplete.html

Now that I've done it too, it's like an anti-climax that no one was anticipating... a nun's fart?

That's right: Alone in the Labyrinth has hit 200 posts. 

Spot the hidden message!

Obligatory milestone idiosyncratic index below:

UPDATES 

16TH JUNE 2022 (272)
15TH AUGUST 2021 (236)
28TH DECEMBER 2020 (200)

CITY OF A HUNDRED GODS: Part 2/10... the remaining gates and the Ladders

The Sea of Tents, the Black River and Dusk Gate have previously been described, alongside their patron deities the Shit-Beetle, the Goddess of the Lime-Slake and more. Have a look at that post before coming back here:

https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/02/city-of-hundred-gods-part-110-city.html

Actually, read THIS post and come back here. The Bad Doctor shared this just as I was writing my slightly undercooked entry for the RPG Blog carnival, and I had to postpone reading it until I'd finished it, lest I gave up entirely. I'm glad I did: this is damn fine. Excellently selection of augmenting images, too:

https://wasitlikely.blogspot.com/2024/12/gods-of-stolen-world.html

Oh and then read THIS post, too, because Shuttered Room has come up with something very, very good for Secret Santicore: an ice age (past? present? future? it'll work as each of those) settlement, partly inspired by module B4. Another great example of minimalist worldbuilding:

https://shutteredroom.blogspot.com/2024/12/no-holidays-this-season-secret.html.

Sometimes it's hard not to feel like the ugly sister to Cinderella when stood beside such luminaries. I don't know if you ever get similar feelings but—assuming that you also have an RPG blog, which is likely—whenever I do I try to be thankful that I'm at least at the ball. 

Anyway, here's some more of my own gods, native to a sprawling Neolithic proto-city.

Ruins of Çatalhöyük—which could be the title of YOUR next adventure, couldn't it?

City of 100 Gods Pt.8: The Serpent of the Sky (ward 49)

This post is the in the City '26 series and continues our ongoing exploration of the City of a Hundred Gods: 

Part 1... City Limits

Part 2... Gates and Ladders
Part 3... Further Along the Ladders

Part 4... The Last Ladders

Part N.... Navigating the City

Part  5... Traders Wake

Part 6... Final Traders Wake Wards 
Part 7... Artisans Quarter

I will need to return to the Artisans and add the NINE other wards I have failed to include at a later date, but I feel obliged to show my working to a wider audience than Instagram... thus this post.

Roman Serpent Carving

...this ward centres on the The Temple of the Sky Serpent: being the penultimate ward of the Artisans' District, the Sky Serpent is a god of a particular craft requiring a particular set of skills...

The Beyond & Cthulhu Dark

The entities of The Beyond are infinitely varied, but draw on the traditionally nightmarish: eldritch horrors, demonic beings, tentacled monstrosities, horrifically assembled flesh golems, spectral maidens with bleeding eye sockets, faceless statues, the greys…

THE UPSIDE-DOWN:

Make it weird by turning the lights out and switching to Cthulhu Dark...

- Pariah Volume 1, Page 50

ANIMA: MOSAIC Strict Spirit Magic

What's This?

I'm fond of the free-form magic system that was included in PARIAH Volume 1 and have written multiple posts about using hit dice in a similar way to GLOG magic dice, a number of ritual magic posts (including this one) and an attempt at summarising free-form spirit-magic for the post-kickstarter crowd. 

Fond, yes, but not in love... and perhaps it's time to take some advice from Jim Parkin (via William Faulkner) and kill my darlings...

D12 Anomalous Orbs...

I'm back out the other side of one of my bi-annual delves into the rabbit-hole of UFOlogy, and my takeaways are two in number:

1. Is it me or is this group getting increasingly right wing? We need to revive Posadism at once... some classic Trotskyite entryism could work wonders...
2. The "jellyfish" video is probably the most sinister children's party balloon I've seen in my life

Before we go on you should know this: I am a believer. In spite my irreverence here let it be known that my worldview is broad enough to entertain the concept of multi-dimensional entities disguised as jellyfish hovering over military bases for reasons unfathomable. Sure, I'm a pragmatic materialist: but beyond the day-to-day existence is a mystery, and my heart knows that there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy...

Album cover to Metallic Spheres by The Orb and David Gilmour, AI generated 

D12 ANOMALOUS ORBS

Encountered (mostly) at night, at a distance of 100 yards or fewer... a glowing, luminous sphere of indeterminate size is spotted. Closer investigation reveals it to be...

Artefacts of the Others

As explained in my last a recent post I think I'm nearly done with hand-wringing and "anxietising" over my post frequency (or lack thereof). Life is complex at the moment and I will just have to deal with it, hoping that the future will provide more opportunities to play and to create.

That said, I have plenty of drafts sat on the ol' slush-pile awaiting a cursory polish, and I will attempt to drip feed these out to you as the weeks and months go by. This is one such slush-post: the Artefacts of the Others...

Roadside Picnic concept art by Alex Andreev https://www.behance.net/gallery/19310523/ZONA 

This post is at least partly inspired by the novel Roadside Picnic, though the contents were originally designed for use in burgeoning Pariah adventure/sandbox City of Ghosts. Another inspiration—the great Semiurge of Archons March On—I shall pace the generator proper at the top of the pile:

The form, materiality and the effect these artefacts produce may not make any real sense: this is not a bug, it's a feature. A Neolithic person would have no idea what to do with a Marshall combi amp, but taking it apart they'd gain multiple capacitors capable of delivering powerful shocks, lots of shiny copper and a fuck-off big magnet. Similarly, artefacts are fragments of larger wholes, beyond the ken of the average pariah, but still capable of producing incredible supernatural effects.

Read on to find out how the generator slots together (1d20 tables listed below)