The Blood Hive Mesas (That Which Hungers Pt 2)
The Blood Hive Mesas surround Zuldroom for miles in all directions. Zuldroom stands in the exact center of this scarlet land.
The Mesas are names for the honeycombs of tunnels that run all throughout the bizarrely multilayered rock, rising on natural columns like the many layers of the city, itself. These hives contain the remains of the ancient creatures that dug them and their calcified chitin is one of the most valuable things in the world and the major trade good of Zuldroom besides Worm worship and hulking, body-horror, behemoths.
The Hives:
The hived cliffs of the mesas are all blood red. The rock has come to be known as bloodstone for this reason. In Ancient times these mesas were not mesas but the busy living centers of a thriving metropolis formed straight from the earth. These creatures, called the Hive Diggers by the miners that come to steal their chitin or the Ancient Ones, as the cultists which came to worship these creatures call them, began to die out long ago.
No one quite knows why it happened. Some say they dug so deep into the earth that they breached the skin of the world and unleased Unreality upon themselves, releasing a sickness into the fabric of Reality. Others say they struck Unreality but released no sickness but the daemonic alien inhabitants of those far planes.
However they died, they had time to construct great tomb-hives to store their giant bodies. It is these tomb-hives that are the target of the chitin miners and their industry. A whole Hive Digger corpse will feed a team of miners and their families for a year. A whole tomb-hive could set a man for life. The work is extremely dangerous, however. Wild insectoid creatures roam the underground, possibly the mutant remnants of the Hive Digger race or some slave population that outlived their masters. These Hivelings have made some of the tomb-hives into their homes and guard the corpses of the Diggers, perhaps out of some religious awe or spark of genetic memory.
Other creatures roam the underground. The Children of the Worm burrow through the skin of the world here. Out of religious respect and mortal terror, most miners will do nothing but run for their tiny lives from these giants who pay no heed to the pleas of the faithful.
All manner of creatures from Unreality have made their way into the tunnels. Warping Gibberers turn the very earth around them into toothy, hungry flesh, leaving nightmare frescos of flesh-like stone in their wake. Golden masked soldiers of living metal fight a war of conquest. Antielves slink along in dark corners, their shifting forms morphing with each step, looking to merge more living things into their personal collections of biological oddities.
Cultists also occasionally create sanctums in tomb-hives that they guard with their lives. Some know the art of animating an Ancient One's corpse to fight for them. Other humans will also fight to the death for the wealth that can be attained from a big chitin score. Should adventurers become chitin prospectors, these are only some of the dangers that await them. The greatest danger of all is to dig too deep and to truly enter Unreality. Many do not return from such expeditions. Those that return, do not come out the same.
The Chitin:
Why is the chitin so valuable? For one thing, the highly calcified form is an enormously potent fuel for combustion engines such as the ones that power the trains. If any of the flesh of the creature remains, the Flesh Sculptors of the Volkrom School will pay ludicrous amounts of scarabs (the silver currency of Zulodroom) to acquire even a pound of the potent material.
Tomb Town:
There are little mining towns all over the Mesas, but Tomb Town is the biggest. Job and Vrem Troog, the Tomb Brothers, or so the townsfolk have taken to calling them, made a fortune off of finding one of the largest tomb-hives ever discovered and using stitch-slaves, made by their team of Volkrom School dropouts to mine it. They often need adventurer-prospectors to delve into the tomb complex to find new chambers and assess threats. They pay such adventurers handsomely for their endeavors.
A train station is here to export all the valuable chitin back to Zuldroom and to bring in more parts to make stitch-slaves out of and other goods needed for the ongoing work of the town.
Slaves will sometimes escape and many make their living tracking them down and returning them to their masters. A slave thus returned is often fated to be recycled for parts.
A church of the Worm stands proudly here, the only fully warp-sung building in town. The High Servitor of the Worm, Mog Morgus, that oversees this temple is a massively overweight creature in the final stages of his process of mutation into a Worm Child. He head has been replaced by a many-toothed worm maw and he has no legs but leaves a trail of rank secretions across the floor as he squirms from place to place. He must have an interpreter on hand to make his will known which is mostly for more food to be brought to his drooling abyss of a mouth.
Another church is here, serving Maladraz, the creator god of all that is acutely angled and sharply defined. Pastor Elias seeks to call the hopelessly lost Worm worshippers out of their lives of chaos and class-vaguery. Few choose to accept his call to worship in uncomfortable pews even though his faith requires much less surgical alteration and human sacrifice.
Madame Gorongo's Gratuitous Freak Show and Carnival:
Madame Gorongo purposefully buys stitch-slaves made with abnormalities from Volkrom school dropouts. These poor freaks are the subjects of a double dose of resentment from their audience. Of course, many that live in the Mesas never have a chance to truly see really strange things, so they fear and resent the freaks. Those that are devout Worm worshippers are also envious of their deformity and thus resent them.
The Carnival travels all across the Mesas, often acting as little better than highwaymen for Madame Gornongo when ticket sales are low. She also is more than willing to increase her supply of freaks by kidnapping the occasional carnival patron and turning them into another freak.
Dr. Sympatico's Zoo:
Dr. Sympatico was on his way to being a Master Flesh sculptor but his unorthodox ideas about using homunculi to probe into Unreality had him kicked out of the Volkrom School. The faithful of the Worm view Unreality with reverence and fear, considering it the place of origin for the Worm.
He built a complex in the Mesas, building an elaborate dungeon-zoo, showcasing different areas where his defense-homunculi might be useful. It was his endeavor to create creatures that would be so useful that the very Masters that kicked him out would have no choice but to admit his genius.
Among his creations, are many kinds of mimics for trapping laboratories, keeping out spies and adventurers. Wandering chest mimics, floor mimics, ladder mimics, and more fill the Mimic Menagerie.
The House of Homunculi holds many horrors: intestinal squids that digest their prey outside of their bodies, fat slimes that drain the fats from their victims, neurocrawlers that take over their prey's minds, white blood slimes that target their prey with antibodies, and many more.
The Astral Aquarium holds the many Unreal creatures that Dr. Sympatico has gathered over the years. The Zoo used to be regularly toured by Masters and other wealthy patrons looking to secure the good doctor's services. Recently, it was abandoned and many of the enchantments that contained the creatures decayed. It is said Dr. Sympatico finally escaped into the Unreality which he had been fascinated by for so long and that his physical body yet remains somewhere within the Zoo. Many adventurers have attempted to claim the doctor's notes and formulae for various employers. None have succeeded.
Occupations (1d20):
The Mesas are names for the honeycombs of tunnels that run all throughout the bizarrely multilayered rock, rising on natural columns like the many layers of the city, itself. These hives contain the remains of the ancient creatures that dug them and their calcified chitin is one of the most valuable things in the world and the major trade good of Zuldroom besides Worm worship and hulking, body-horror, behemoths.
The Hives:
The hived cliffs of the mesas are all blood red. The rock has come to be known as bloodstone for this reason. In Ancient times these mesas were not mesas but the busy living centers of a thriving metropolis formed straight from the earth. These creatures, called the Hive Diggers by the miners that come to steal their chitin or the Ancient Ones, as the cultists which came to worship these creatures call them, began to die out long ago.
No one quite knows why it happened. Some say they dug so deep into the earth that they breached the skin of the world and unleased Unreality upon themselves, releasing a sickness into the fabric of Reality. Others say they struck Unreality but released no sickness but the daemonic alien inhabitants of those far planes.
However they died, they had time to construct great tomb-hives to store their giant bodies. It is these tomb-hives that are the target of the chitin miners and their industry. A whole Hive Digger corpse will feed a team of miners and their families for a year. A whole tomb-hive could set a man for life. The work is extremely dangerous, however. Wild insectoid creatures roam the underground, possibly the mutant remnants of the Hive Digger race or some slave population that outlived their masters. These Hivelings have made some of the tomb-hives into their homes and guard the corpses of the Diggers, perhaps out of some religious awe or spark of genetic memory.
Other creatures roam the underground. The Children of the Worm burrow through the skin of the world here. Out of religious respect and mortal terror, most miners will do nothing but run for their tiny lives from these giants who pay no heed to the pleas of the faithful.
All manner of creatures from Unreality have made their way into the tunnels. Warping Gibberers turn the very earth around them into toothy, hungry flesh, leaving nightmare frescos of flesh-like stone in their wake. Golden masked soldiers of living metal fight a war of conquest. Antielves slink along in dark corners, their shifting forms morphing with each step, looking to merge more living things into their personal collections of biological oddities.
Cultists also occasionally create sanctums in tomb-hives that they guard with their lives. Some know the art of animating an Ancient One's corpse to fight for them. Other humans will also fight to the death for the wealth that can be attained from a big chitin score. Should adventurers become chitin prospectors, these are only some of the dangers that await them. The greatest danger of all is to dig too deep and to truly enter Unreality. Many do not return from such expeditions. Those that return, do not come out the same.
The Chitin:
Why is the chitin so valuable? For one thing, the highly calcified form is an enormously potent fuel for combustion engines such as the ones that power the trains. If any of the flesh of the creature remains, the Flesh Sculptors of the Volkrom School will pay ludicrous amounts of scarabs (the silver currency of Zulodroom) to acquire even a pound of the potent material.
Tomb Town:
There are little mining towns all over the Mesas, but Tomb Town is the biggest. Job and Vrem Troog, the Tomb Brothers, or so the townsfolk have taken to calling them, made a fortune off of finding one of the largest tomb-hives ever discovered and using stitch-slaves, made by their team of Volkrom School dropouts to mine it. They often need adventurer-prospectors to delve into the tomb complex to find new chambers and assess threats. They pay such adventurers handsomely for their endeavors.
A train station is here to export all the valuable chitin back to Zuldroom and to bring in more parts to make stitch-slaves out of and other goods needed for the ongoing work of the town.
Slaves will sometimes escape and many make their living tracking them down and returning them to their masters. A slave thus returned is often fated to be recycled for parts.
A church of the Worm stands proudly here, the only fully warp-sung building in town. The High Servitor of the Worm, Mog Morgus, that oversees this temple is a massively overweight creature in the final stages of his process of mutation into a Worm Child. He head has been replaced by a many-toothed worm maw and he has no legs but leaves a trail of rank secretions across the floor as he squirms from place to place. He must have an interpreter on hand to make his will known which is mostly for more food to be brought to his drooling abyss of a mouth.
Another church is here, serving Maladraz, the creator god of all that is acutely angled and sharply defined. Pastor Elias seeks to call the hopelessly lost Worm worshippers out of their lives of chaos and class-vaguery. Few choose to accept his call to worship in uncomfortable pews even though his faith requires much less surgical alteration and human sacrifice.
Madame Gorongo's Gratuitous Freak Show and Carnival:
Madame Gorongo purposefully buys stitch-slaves made with abnormalities from Volkrom school dropouts. These poor freaks are the subjects of a double dose of resentment from their audience. Of course, many that live in the Mesas never have a chance to truly see really strange things, so they fear and resent the freaks. Those that are devout Worm worshippers are also envious of their deformity and thus resent them.
The Carnival travels all across the Mesas, often acting as little better than highwaymen for Madame Gornongo when ticket sales are low. She also is more than willing to increase her supply of freaks by kidnapping the occasional carnival patron and turning them into another freak.
Dr. Sympatico's Zoo:
Dr. Sympatico was on his way to being a Master Flesh sculptor but his unorthodox ideas about using homunculi to probe into Unreality had him kicked out of the Volkrom School. The faithful of the Worm view Unreality with reverence and fear, considering it the place of origin for the Worm.
He built a complex in the Mesas, building an elaborate dungeon-zoo, showcasing different areas where his defense-homunculi might be useful. It was his endeavor to create creatures that would be so useful that the very Masters that kicked him out would have no choice but to admit his genius.
Among his creations, are many kinds of mimics for trapping laboratories, keeping out spies and adventurers. Wandering chest mimics, floor mimics, ladder mimics, and more fill the Mimic Menagerie.
The House of Homunculi holds many horrors: intestinal squids that digest their prey outside of their bodies, fat slimes that drain the fats from their victims, neurocrawlers that take over their prey's minds, white blood slimes that target their prey with antibodies, and many more.
The Astral Aquarium holds the many Unreal creatures that Dr. Sympatico has gathered over the years. The Zoo used to be regularly toured by Masters and other wealthy patrons looking to secure the good doctor's services. Recently, it was abandoned and many of the enchantments that contained the creatures decayed. It is said Dr. Sympatico finally escaped into the Unreality which he had been fascinated by for so long and that his physical body yet remains somewhere within the Zoo. Many adventurers have attempted to claim the doctor's notes and formulae for various employers. None have succeeded.
Occupations (1d20):
- Escaped Stitch Slave Freak: Throwing Knife (1d4), Roll Once on the Freak Table
- Slave Catcher: Flintlock Pistol (1d8/Reload 3), 3 Iron Shackles
- Stitch Slave Miner: Chitin Pick (1d8), A Pocket of Secreted Away Chitin (Worth 5gp)
- Hive Digger Cultist: Sacrificial Dagger (1d4), A Bundle of Pamphlets
- Worm Evangelist: Worm Staff (1d4), The Teachings of the Worm
- Maladrazi Preacher: Angular Blade (1d6), 2 Vials of Holy Water
- Pseudobeast Rancher: Shock Crook (1d6), A Small Pseudobeast
- Highway Man: Flintlock Pistol (1d8/Reload 3), 12 Caltrops
- Volkrom Dropout: Stitching Needle (1d4), Tiny Homunculus in a Jar
- Saloon Server: Club (1d4), Flask of Ale
- Hiveling Exile: Chitin Bow (1d6), 3 Mushroom Rations
- Archeologist: Rock Pick (1d6), Escavation Tools
- Body Part Collector: Bone Saw (1d4), 3 Preserved Limbs
- Mad Prophet: Staff (1d4), An Artifact of the Hive Diggers
- Slave Driver: Whip (1d3), 3 Iron Shackles
- Former Zookeeper: Stun Stick (1d4), Small Unreal Creature
- Snake Oil Salesmen: Crossbow (1d6), A Suitcase of 12 Snake Oil Vials
- Mad Wastelander: Wicked Axe (1d8), Shield
- Railway Worker: Hammer (1d8), 4 Rail Nails
- Burlesque Dancer: Hair Pin (1d4), Makeup Kit
Freak Table (1d12):
- You have an extra arm on your back.
- You can contort into small spaces.
- You have eyes all around your head. Advantage to avoid being surprised.
- You are a hunchback.
- You have no eyes on your face but one eye on both hands.
- You can projectile vomit on command, Con Save or become sickened for 1d4 rounds.
- You have a prehensile tail.
- One of your arms is a tentacle. It can reach 10' away through narrow spaces but it cannot hold a weapon.
- You have gills, allowing you to breathe underwater.
- You always have a membrane of sticky mucus over your skin.
- Your head is too large for your body. You have Disadvantage on checks requiring balance, but you can also levitate small objects you can see with your mind.
- You have a second mouth in your stomach with sharp teeth.
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