Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Neshm hiKumala

Hello all.

I've been reading this most excellent thread for a while and am now coming out of the shadows to ask a question: Chirine, in your years of adventure, did you ever visit the Unstraightened City? I so, what do you remember?

Welcome my friend
to the show that never ends
Step inside, step inside.

Shemek

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

I have always described Ssuganar using the term non-Euclidian geometry. I know that the hazards one encounters are far more physical than outer-planar, but I always have my idea of R'leyh in my mind's eye, when describing what's there.
Speaking of Plains, did you ever make it to the Plain of Towers?

Shemek

Yes, we did. Gaschine, out on the northwest edge of Mu'ugalvya, makes Fort Zindeneuf look like paradise. The Plain is pretty odd; you have the occasional actual starship or intra-system ship sitting around, surrounded by the fake spaceships that some forgotten cargo cult built up out of baked bricks and stones. Timbers, too, which told us that they'd been built before this part of the continent had dried out. Most of the fake ships are simply solid 'towers' but some have interiors that can be explored. The very best preserved are actually kind of sad to explore, as they have interiors where the fittings of the ancient's ships have been faithfully duplicated - but in mud-brick or stone. Actual windows where the view-screens or possibly portholes would be. Phil's explanation was that the locals had built the fakes / replicas in the hope of bringing more god-ships back from the skies...

Local fauna as lots of teeth, and tends to the large and hungry. (Like, what else is new on Tekumel, eh?)

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Welcome my friend
to the show that never ends
Step inside, step inside.

Shemek

What he said. I'll be here as long as you have questions...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Yes, we did. Gaschine, out on the northwest edge of Mu'ugalvya, makes Fort Zindeneuf look like paradise. The Plain is pretty odd; you have the occasional actual starship or intra-system ship sitting around, surrounded by the fake spaceships that some forgotten cargo cult built up out of baked bricks and stones. Timbers, too, which told us that they'd been built before this part of the continent had dried out. Most of the fake ships are simply solid 'towers' but some have interiors that can be explored. The very best preserved are actually kind of sad to explore, as they have interiors where the fittings of the ancient's ships have been faithfully duplicated - but in mud-brick or stone. Actual windows where the view-screens or possibly portholes would be. Phil's explanation was that the locals had built the fakes / replicas in the hope of bringing more god-ships back from the skies...

Local fauna as lots of teeth, and tends to the large and hungry. (Like, what else is new on Tekumel, eh?)

That's interesting. Gaschine sounds like one of those towns from a Sergio Leonne (sp?) Spaghetti Western: hot, dusty, decrepit, with lots of flies buzzing around, a bunch of people with nothing to do, and a gang of local toughs ready to kill you at a moment's notice.. I seem to remember Phil talking about this region over on the Blue Room. I'll look for it after work. One thing I recall is that it's dangerous as heck, like you said.
This is the type of setting my guys have always hated because they know that underneath the "malaise" there is something that wishes to do them harm. I've never been to the Plain of Towers, I might have to send the party in that direction and see if they make it there.


Shemek.

Originally Posted by Neshm hiKumala

Thank you all for the welcome.
It is a great thread!

RE: the Unstraightened City
Thanks for the details. What you describe is sort what I imagined after reading about it on the Tekumel website. Using a Nexus point might indeed be the best way of getting in. Trying it on foot ... well, unless the PCs are accompanied by a powerful sorcerer or using some clever techno-magical apparatus, I don't see how that could be possible. Madness would take its toll well before the city proper.

RE: the Plain of Towers
Love it. What else can I say. It's perfect. Cargo cult type stuff ... but stuck on the flats of the desert. One can imagine the despair of the people who came up with the idea of constructing those mud-brick replicas long ago.

Great points. Just getting to these spots would be an epic undertaking, let alone what you would find once you actually got there.

Shemek.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Yes, we did. Gaschine, out on the northwest edge of Mu'ugalvya, makes Fort Zindeneuf look like paradise. The Plain is pretty odd; you have the occasional actual starship or intra-system ship sitting around, surrounded by the fake spaceships that some forgotten cargo cult built up out of baked bricks and stones. Timbers, too, which told us that they'd been built before this part of the continent had dried out. Most of the fake ships are simply solid 'towers' but some have interiors that can be explored. The very best preserved are actually kind of sad to explore, as they have interiors where the fittings of the ancient's ships have been faithfully duplicated - but in mud-brick or stone. Actual windows where the view-screens or possibly portholes would be. Phil's explanation was that the locals had built the fakes / replicas in the hope of bringing more god-ships back from the skies...

Local fauna as lots of teeth, and tends to the large and hungry. (Like, what else is new on Tekumel, eh?)

Chirine,

Here is the post I was thinking about earlier. It's not from Phil, but from someone called David Bailey, who I think played in Phil's game at some point. I think that it's a good description of what one can expect there.

"Ah, the Plain of Towers, I remember it as a place of shifting sands and
howling winds. 'Look on my works ye mighty and despair', and all is
shadows and sudden, looming shapes.

There are strange shaman wandering in the rocky hollows and the call of sad
beasts chills the night. many of our party simply ran in fear, and a few
were spirited away in the darkness.

My warrior companion was killed when he tried to prize open the metal door
at the foot of a baked clay tower. Alas for him the baked clay was the
dust of millennia dried onto the skin of a metal spire, and the rock of
many ages fell on him.

Inside the towers there were whispering ghosts and strange visions of no
substance. In two places we found the remains of strange inhumans, one a
desiccated hokun. In other places we found a gateway to the red moon, and
in yet another we found a strange rod that devoured the souls and minds of
sorcerers.

We left, having failed to find what we sought, and in fear of our lives,
for, on the last night we heard a rushing of air from a pit in the ground,
and a party of black Ssu had come out on us by surprise.

Go not to the plain of towers my noble friends, for all is decay and
despair."

Shemek

Some more questions. I came across this post from Phil, and was wondering if you could shed some more light on the subject? Both of these locations sound like they would be "fun" to explore.

"Stick to the coasts for cargo and passenger travel, and hire a good pilot
for open-water voyages. Very few navigators would ever try to sail out
to the Isle of Eyes or the lost little city of Mardza on the Isles of
Ill Wind!"

Shemek