2025-8-28

Properly fed, an auger sharpens the divination ritual that birthed it — though whether the creature is a familiar, a parasite, or simply the ritual's leftover run-off is a matter of some theological disagreement among the Orgs.

The noise came first — a low, sourceless hum lodged behind the eyes — and Tywelwyn has been unraveling ever since, spinning around the polished floor of his roller rink whilst something inaudible drills deeper into him.

Few who encounter an Ugathal describe it the same way twice — a pink, fleshy thing like a naked mole rat stretched upright, its face a blank crater where eyes have sunk and features melted smooth into the skin. When it transforms it gains perhaps a foot and a half in height, its clothes fusing into the body as though they were never separate, and from that blank face a proboscis unfurls to drink. Wounds do not register — the creature feels nothing, and its flesh, stringy and dry, loses cohesion when cut, revealing not blood but simply more of itself beneath.

Forget the feral things of frontier legend — the goblinoids in this part of the city are factory hands, clocking in for shifts in workman's attire like any other labourer.

The Black and White is a world separate from Færrin but connected to it through the Pharos.

The Black and White also operates as an organization, issuing badges — though to whom and for what end, those outside it can only guess.

The Sin and Tonic is a bar in Sableclutch. Owned by Illmari Vaino, it's the current headquarters of Iconoclasm.

The interior is dingy and dark, and Illmari keeps incense censors burning tobacco hanging from the ceiling during operating ours. The main serving area is a large rectangular room with booths along the walls and a bar in the center. The left exit leads to the workshop and garage, the right exit leads to the stockroom and armory, and the back exit leads to bedrooms and an office.

Unlike many a Fane — its walls sustained by a Heart rather than mere brickwork — the Sin and Tonic makes no pretence of grandeur: the sleeping quarters are tucked at the back on the same level as the bar, the beds hovering somewhere around two-star comfort on a generous night. The twins are the greater draw for those in need, skilled enough to brew healing potions, though they run nothing so formal as a shop — bring your own components, or don't bother asking. A supermarket a few blocks off covers the more mundane resupply.

You'll find it tucked into one of the less prosperous commercial stretches of Hallia — fitting enough for a place whose sustaining Heart is called the Gin Soaked Rag.

Sableclutch is a poorer neighborhood at the southernmost point of Hallia. Hugging the south bank of the Fousan River, Sableclutch is dominated by the dockworkers and warehouse employees that ply their trade on the river. The district is somewhat overlooked by the rest of the capital -- whilst many of the goods that enter into the city start their journey in Sableclutch, the power centers of the Orgs that manage it are found elsewhere.

Sableclutch Scrap is Copperjaw's operation — a dwarven man whose yard sits amid the winding, unenforced streets of the district, where trucks hauling between factories and scrapyards move more or less as they please, and the factory floors they service are worked in no small part by goblinoid labour.

The district lies voidward and downward from the city center, where the factory floors thin into undeveloped lots and the streets grow rougher underfoot — though not so rough that the churches can't get a footing, with small temples to the Host and a smattering of other gods wedged between warehouses and junkyards. Among these, Sableclutch Scrap's operation draws the willing and the desperate alike — anyone prepared to work the yard, and brave enough to feed the giant crusher at its heart, can find a wage.

Where the city's east side wears its wealth on its sleeve, Fifth Ave strings together jewellery shops fronting residences that would make their own resident jewelers wince at the markup.

The countless worlds across the Astra share little in common -- different gods, different celestial bodies, and different magical phenomena cause any one person's experience to be wholly unique across the vast tapestry of the universe. The solitary thread that ties everyone and everything in the Astra together is magic.

Magic is pervasive in this universe and a fact of life everywhere, save one small planet near the galaxy's core. Until recently, Færrin was alone. No magic diffused the world, no gods walked the planet, and no stars lit its sky. It was, in a word, mundane.

For hundreds of thousands of years, the people of Færrin lived believing they were alone in the universe. As it turns out, life with the certainty that there's nothing out there is not much different than life with the certainty that there is. The Færrish people lived, died, built civilizations, and let them crumble in much the same way as anyone else anywhere else. Life happened, unfettered.

The world of Færrin is the setting for this campaign.

Among the more curious legacies of that sudden transformation are the pug people — a lineage whose blunt, wrinkled faces and stubborn disposition now number among Færrin's recognised peoples, though no researcher has yet satisfactorily explained why that particular shape.

Where the city's coin flows thickest, the Masque District catches most of it — every visitingmerchant, diplomat, and gawking tourist ends up bedding down here sooner or later. The hotels rise along the main thoroughfares in garish competition, each one pricier and less sincere than the last.

Squeezed between two former homes down the horizon in Hallia's Star 12, it advertises itself with nothing more than a handwritten sign and an absence of display windows. The Undertable is a pawn shop trading in appliances, jewelry, radios in stages of deconstruction, and firearms — stock that suggests it does not rely on passing custom.

Down the horizon in Hallia, Starward is what happens when ambition outpaces demand — blocks of speculative buildings thrown up in anticipation of a tram line boom that never quite arrived, now sagging through decades of neglect into something seedier and less trodden than the central districts care to acknowledge.

What do you get when a spy, a scholar, and a sliver of divine will walk into a bar? The lead-in to a bad joke, indeed, but also the great enclave of Belvedere.

Belvedere is one of the great old Orgs, founded soon after the Dark Ages ended and Aurelia brought the Gods' graces to Færrin. The Watcher gave the first Provost a mandate to chronicle the planet as it was, is, and will be. The first Provost journeyed to the peaks of the highest mountains on the planet, such that his view of the Watcher's sky would be unimpeded and Færrin's ground would be clear. There, in Austrene, he founded the first chancery of Belvedere, a public forum for studying the natural world and recording any newfound knowledge.

What Have You Become?

No mortal-built structure is permanent, and Belvedere is no exception. Thanks to outside pressures, what began as a simple fact-recording outfit quickly ballooned into so much more. While the first Provost and his like were content to sequester themselves away from the rest of the world, the promise of powerful secrets was too much of a lure for other Orgs.

Belvedere was beset by those who would crack it open and harvest any power they might find within. To survive, it changed. First came political meddling -- members of the Org who would learn people instead of things. After all, the people of Færrin are just as crucial to its history as natural events. Socialites and spies from Belvedere would enter high society and fight proxy wars, turning their enemies against each other and spreading discontent.

Second came the Hearts, slivers of sentient divine energy gifted by the Outer Gods. As Belvedere expanded, so too did its data availability. Before long, the quantity of information far outstripped their ability to process it. The Hearts had no such issues and could easily connect seemingly disparate data points. Quickly, the Hearts became coordinators and leaders within the Org, and in the modern day, many report to a Heart alongside (or instead of) another person.

Now, a member of Belvedere has a few paths to take. They could join the ranks of the academics, studying natural phenomena. They could become archivists, recording history's ebb and flow. They could be aristocrats, moving through polite society like a fish through water. Finally, they could be arcanists, working closely with the Hearts and their divine machinery.

Few places in Austrene concentrate Fanes and Hearts as densely as Belvedere — the Hearts folded into the city's hierarchy as an additional layer rather than an afterthought, which lends the place an unusual spiritual texture. That the city doubles as a school, with children receiving a proper education alongside whatever else Belvedere demands of them, only deepens the sense that power here is being quietly cultivated from the ground up.

Most of the Fanes you come across here aren't combined areas but standalone affairs, which leaves the city's spiritual map more scattered than cohesive. If you trace influence across Belvedere's divisions, you'll eventually brush against Anzu's family, who have their fingers in several of them at once.

If you can afford the subscription, Blackline will keep your streets clean — a private police force that patrols only the city's more agreeable quarters, their officers striding about in full uniform with batons at the hip.

Chorath built its fortune on tyres, but its cultural clout flows from the guide it publishes — a restaurant and city-rating institution much like the Michelin Guide. Cities must pay the company to dispatch its evaluators, so even the hope of a flattering rating comes at a price.

What began as devotion has hardened into institution — the Church of Riostad is, at its core, a religious organisation, and that word organisation does heavier lifting than its faithful might care to admit.

You weren't the only one who heard the Voidsong in your dreams. Many like you seek to understand the song and why they were selected to listen to it. The most well-known group working to delve the song's secrets is a mercenary group, Iconoclasm.

Before the Voidsong, Iconoclasm was a small-time freelance group operating out of Hallia. When the dreams started, its founder Ilmari Vaino was among the first to hear the song. Soon after, other group members heard the song until, by chance, Iconoclasm had the highest concentration of listeners on the continent. This snowballed as listeners from other Orgs joined, hoping to get answers. Now, Orgs from all over have donated staffing and funding to Iconoclasm as a show of goodwill to the unknown and as a way to prevent others from getting an advantage.

You're a recently joined member of Iconoclasm, either loaned by another Org or joined independently.

Their base of operations is the Sin and Tonic, with a company car available to members who need it.

You'll hear rumours that Iconoclasm employs children — not least because it operates, in part, as a religious orphanage, taking in the young and the unmoored. Among its more notable affiliates is Johnny, whose ties to the group predate much of the recent influx.

Operating under the corporate banner of Embercall Industries, Pyrelight keeps its commercial interests at arm's length from its factional ones — at least in appearance.

The name that appears on bills of materials — where the faction's identity would be inconvenient — is Embercall Industries.

Tywelwyn is a 6'11" deerfolk, with dappled brown fur and tall, branching antlers. His muscles are far larger than could be achieved without magical or chemical intervention, and his skin is hot enough that his sweat sizzles as it's produced.

He is the founder and leader of the Roundhat Gang, a protection racket in Sableclutch. He was rumored to have gone crazy, hearing voices, but it appears that he's struck a deal with someone in Pyrelight. Formerly unable to wield magic, he now pilots a simulacrum to work on his behalf.

He was also in the process of opening a roller rink — a venture that, given his reputation, nobody was entirely sure was a legitimate business or another front for the gang's operations.

The Roundhat Gang is a protection racket in Sableclutch. Its run by Tywelwyn Leatherhide out of The Crowded Flea. Recently, it appears to have established some kind of partnership with Pyrelight.

Under Tywelwyn Leatherhide, the Roundhat Gang operates with whatever authority its leader's reputation can command.

The Roundhat Gang also runs a roller rink, though whether it serves as a front, a laundering operation, or simply Tywelwyn's idea of civic generosity remains a matter of local debate.

Not just anyone can collect a bounty under Scale's banner — the Org empowers its own arbiters for the work, and those arbiters are the only hands it trusts.

The Scale serves as the Judge's hand as it seeks to impose order and balance across Færrin. The seat of the Scale's power is their Stronghold -- a citadel in the Opaline Mountains that sits on a conjunction of leylines.

The Scale operates as an extranational form of governance with stronger guarantees than any nation could provide. The organization is split into the following groups, in order of rarity:

• Pactbrokers oversee contracts between parties, ensuring that both sides hold up their end, no matter what.

• Arbiters track down those who have escaped justice and deliver them their due.

• Overseers stop those seeking to seal the Gods away again, returning the planet to the Dark Ages.

• Timekeepers prevent meddling with the time stream, preventing the creation of paradoxes.

The average person would be most familiar with the Pactbrokers -- in most cities, one can find a member of the Scale who will (for a fee) witness the signing of a contract. Magic imbued in the contract will monitor the signees, and deviating from one's responsibilities will bring the full might of the Scale down on the contract-breaker.

Unlike many organisations that farm such work out to independent contractors, The Scale keeps its bounty hunting strictly in-house — only its own arbiters are empowered to pursue and recover marks.

For all its rhetoric of balance, the Scale is notably non-transparent — its internal rulings and reasons are kept from public view. Among its known operatives are Aaron Cross and Joran Davinrock.

Most folk in the region know them simply as the TA — and you can spot their greenish uniforms a street away, the letters stencilled bold enough to leave no doubt about who is asking the questions.

Adventurers come and go through Iconoclasm's ranks, but Anaïs — always spoken of as one of 'the twins' — has lingered long enough to make Copperjaw uneasy, which is no common feat.

Half of a pair nobody calls anything but 'the twins,' Anouk has made a life of adventuring on the strength of old loyalties — an old friend runs a scrapyard in Sableclutch that's always looking for couriers, and the work rarely dries up.

Born in a nest, Anzu came up through Belvedere the way only a local can — their family comfortable enough to thread itself through several of the institution's concerns, with a father keeping the archives and a mother who, never formally on Belvedere's rolls, manages the household's affairs. Now an academic fellow there, Anzu is rarely seen without a bird companion — a creature called Othello that has made a permanent perch of their shoulder.

Those marked by the Scale don't hunt for coin so much as compulsion — the Arctos are empowered to pursue bounties that lesser hunters wouldn't survive long enough to regret taking. Whether the Scale's gift is a blessing or a leash depends largely on which side of the warrant you're standing.

Though barely twenty in human years, Argyle holds a medical license — a fact made stranger by farm-stock origins and the slow alchemy turning their eyes from gold to a bright, near-bluish white. Both parents, Aaron Cross and Joran Davinrock, are Scale operatives, and Argyle can name every soul in that outfit as readily as any patient.

Benny's father, Atum, has made his home in Belvedere.

A Belvedere-born boy of nine who still wears his name tag like it might keep him safe, Benny is one of the children the Voidsong has called — fathered by Atum, mother absent from the picture, and currently sustained more by a love of comics than by any visible adult supervision.

A dwarven man pushing the far edge of middle age — somewhere past his hundred-and-twentieth year — Copperjaw earned his name from the crude copper prosthetic bolted where his bottom jaw ought to be, and he wears the rest of his history on his face: a mashed nose that never set right, a waddling gait, and a dogged refusal to stop finding new fights. He runs Sableclutch Scrap, where a giant crusher near the front gate does most of his discouraging for him and a converted storage container serves as his office — though finer work still passes through his hands, including the crafting of the contents of a certain metal suitcase.

Every crate and keg that passes through Elias's hands gets counted twice — a dwarf does not suffer sloppy bookkeeping, and the quartermaster has made that abundantly clear.

Whatever Johnny's trade, the arms and plate that see him through it pass through the hands of Smiler at the Undertable — a supplier whose reliability, by the standards of that shadowed market, amounts almost to loyalty.

What muteness costs a Blackline officer is a question Mutagen answers daily — he lost his voice in an accident during a scuffle, and now signs his reports through his partner, Officer Smith.

A human Blackline officer scraping through his late forties, Officer Smith is the sort of man who has seen enough to know the answers and too tired to pretend otherwise.

They call him the Patchwork Prince, and none of his reputation as a major antagonist sits easily against the sight of him — a frail old man who couldn't fend off a stiff breeze, let alone a blade.

A nine-foot centaur in a stained white tee, Smiler runs the Undertable pawn shop — though "fence" would be the more honest word for what goes on behind the counter. His arms are stacked with yellowish metal bands, his braided beard and tail studded through with gems, and flare gauges glint in his ears; Johnny knows him well enough not to haggle.

Tanner weighs almost nothing — enough that a strong gust puts him at risk, and enough that no one can quite agree on how he stays earthbound at all. He compensates by keeping Othello, a bird whose eyes Tanner can see through — a useful trick for a man who would rather not be where the danger is.

They are a pair of crafters — twins, one male — whose work fetches a premium despite, or perhaps because of, their stubborn refusal to keep a shop.

A signal — or perhaps a song, depending on which engineer you ask — that certain radar dishes pick up whether they want to or not. The trouble isn't hearing Embercall; it's that tuning toward it leaves no room for the Voidsong, and more than one operator has had to choose which frequency matters more.

A Fane grows to whatever its heart can sustain — feed it more magical energy and the construct expands accordingly. Where a single heart won't suffice, as in the headquarters of organizations whose operations demand more than one, multiple hearts can prop up the same Fane to cover greater ground, though when those hearts disagree on temperament the result is a patchwork affair.

It is not merely a dream-thing to you, however — a radar dish, properly tuned, can pick up the Voidsong as a signal, cold and mechanical and real as any transmission.

Nobody can quite agree whether it began in the broadcasts or the bread, but the faithful line their hats with foil regardless — convinced that Zorbon's mushrooms are already in the static and the soup, and that a bit of kitchen metal is all that keeps the bloom at bay.

The capital's paranoia is everywhere, but nowhere more petty than in its ban on slides — the network of transit-points that could, in theory, let you blink past the city walls and into the wilds beyond. Within city limits they are locked down for "security reasons," which is Org-speak for we'd rather you didn't leave.

What separates a Scale operative from the job's usual run of spooks is the readiness with which they'll raise a child in the life — and Argyle is living proof of that wager, for better or worse.

Helmstier clings to a thin mountain road where two countries meet — a small town that exists, by all appearances, chiefly because the border needed somewhere to pass through.

Where most parents worry over their children's futures, Argyle's had rather more pressing concerns — being an operative of the Scale tends to put domestic life in a different perspective.

An arcane enchantment tasked with spreading a signal far and wide — though one knock against the thing and whatever it carries goes silent for good, so fragile is its make.

Helmstier's border folk know the joke by heart — the name refers to both the last drink of the evening and the last waypoint before you cross into or out of the country. The half-elven barkeep has heard every possible iteration of it and stopped laughing some decades ago.

Whether one god or a clutch of them wearing a single face, the Heart boasts more churches in Sableclutch than any other faith — and rather less agreement on the matter than you'd expect from neighbours who share pews.