BREAK!!ing the Mold

A holy pilgrimage of sorts has become a common practice on the Bronzed Continent, where participants attempt to visit all of the Shrines of Night within a single year. A new "commencement" of the pilgrimage happens for each season and most travelers will try to fit their journey in within a single season. The keepers of the Shrines of Night and their guard establish a new route for each season, depending on travel conditions and the current route projections of Crater Island.

The Nocturne Crusade is not merely a holy endeavor, though. The areas surrounding these shrines have blossomed into large towns or cities in some cases, and the most common routes between them have become routes for travel, diplomacy, commerce and trade, even tourism! There are even places where proper roads are maintained between multiple communities all designed to service the constant traffic of these pilgrims.

Now the Sol Alliance HATES this, because this free movement gives power to the other kingdoms in the hemisphere and challenge its cultural supremacy. In particular, devotees of the Invincible Bright would be happy to see the Shrines of Night cast out like a serpent from the Blazing Garden for not-entirely-spurious reasons. However, since the Alliance benefits so greatly from the strong trade and diplomatic ties to its rivals, it does not actively (OVERTLY) interfere with the Nocturne Crusades. It does, however, demand certain concessions from the planned routes, certain levies from the pilgrims who can afford it, and are very difficult to liaise with when Crater Island enters their territory.

Because routes vary so much between seasons the whole of the Bronzed Continent is webbed with reminders of pilgrimages past. Some of the most remote permanent settlements in the region were established once to serve those on the Nocturne Crusade. Along the way, traditional "outset points" have accrued among the culture of travelers, and these have become designated places to meet and equip before setting out. Peek Peak, and the recently-established settlement of Innstead, is one of these.

The Bronzed Continent follows the calendar of the Cogstone Warwork in the same way as does much of the Outer World but, in practical cultural terms, the continent marks time through in inexact passage of the three seasons.

The Still Season brings nothing but oppressive heat and increased ferocity from the creatures of the region. Spirits grow restless in these times, too: both those semi-divine and the vestiges of the departed. Because instances of the dead walking are most common during this season (while still rare), and because many creatures and remote homesteads wither and die from lack of food and water in these months, the Still Season is sometimes referred to as "Carrion Days." This is the most popular season for the pilgrims walking the Nocturne Crusade, especially after the losses of the Floods. It is typically the longest season.

The Wailing Season comes with howling winds which scour the land as much as they cool it. As the cooler air from the Twilight Meridian slips in to the realms of eternal light the heavy, cooler air from the Wistful Dark flows in to the Sunrise Lands. This front acts as a wall, leaving nowhere for the swirling airmass to go. The constant buffeting crosswinds give rise to sudden lightning strikes and makes many modes of travel more difficult. The Paw Post in particular seems to have the roughest time during these months and are sometimes forced to suspend certain services, with many people jokingly referring to them as the "Pause Post." The impact of this season is different across different regions, and is welcomed like family in the Sol Alliance.

The Floods come next, the shortest and most dangerous of the three seasons. Scorched lands betray the life they once harbored and those places where the mountains pile up the clouds drink deeply, resulting in lush jungle and rolling green hills. The cost of this is a constant threat of rain and storm at minimum, and the likelihood of sudden unexpected slides and floods nearly tips over into a certainty in many regions. This is considered a season outside of time, when debts and sins are forgiven. Community and mercy take on an added importance, but any truces or alliances during this period are washed away in the currents. This is also the naturally-darkest period on the Bronzed Continent, when people take advantage of cloud cover, softer ground, and the force of mighty torrents to effect great change. It is paradoxically a time when many shelter at home as much as possible as well as a popular time for certain festivals.

In the bright heat of eternal day on the Bronzed Continent any respite is welcome and darkness is prized. Rooms in homes are dedicated to it, the destitute crawl into dangerous caverns seeking it, and some bizarre cults even worship it in defiance of those proselytizing the Invincible Bright. The wealthy and privileged have personal "shaders" which they can crank up to show off their status.

There are also the Shrines of Night. These are unaffiliated shrines to what was lost when the Sun Machine broke and have become quite the destination for travelers. Some are maintained by technology, others by magic, and some stand shrouded through some unknown means, but all exist within an ancient field of night. They dot the Bronzed Continent and its surroundings and are found on all maps dating from the shattering of the Sun Machine.

They are not related to the Shadow Shrine in the Twilight Meridian, which exists in perpetual twilight and venerates not darkness but the transformative nature of shadow and boundary.

Laws honored throughout the Bronzed Continent prohibit any company or individual from lingering at any of the Shrines of Night longer than a few weeks unless about the specific business of the upkeep of the shrines. As such, many people will move from one location to another in the same way some folks follow herd migrations or traveling musicians.

I wanted to make an adventure site using the tools presented in the book and I wanted to show how I go about it. The first step is in gathering results from BREAK!!'s tables. I prefer to start on p342, and going through the section on Encounters. I'll use 2 results from some tables but only 1 from others. That'll give me a list....

From there, I start matching up elements. This is where rolling multiples of some items can come in handy. This quickly establishes a lived-in narrative in a way that makes this adventure make sense, because no element exists in isolation. It's about how everything relates to each other.

I don't feel like the restraints trap really fits in with everything else in a way which speaks to me so I may scrap that result but I'll leave it in for now. Let's look at what we've got so far: 1. A hidden grave (read: unmarked) in a difficult-to-cross, eerily serene area suggests to me a forgotten cemetery of some kind, one of those places like you see in Dark Souls or New Orleans or rural areas where folks are just....piled on each other over time. Peaceful and nice in its way but not calm in a welcoming way. If we're recovering lost tech then the strange mechanism may be something that the grave's occupant wanted to take with him....that may even explain why the grave is unmarked. May be some kind of portal device. An inventor who wanted to protect the world from what they created? 2. Our noble could be someone who coveted that technology and has spent a long time searching for it. The birds/skree are his eyes and ears, and Medium-sized growls act as his muscle. He may be old. He's not even for sure a "he" but cmon wasting all this time pursuing this power that doesn't belong to him when his station could afford him ANY other opportunity? That's a guy. He's been digging, probably using a grid system in search of this grave....a mechanism by which he can seal off sections of the cemetery while he searches could make sense. Probably a magical barrier, a ward.... 3. I like the idea of making the fog more of a local hazard than a trap, and making that what's obscuring everyone's vision. I wouldn't make it too toxic in terms of burning through players' hearts but I might make it toxic enough that only those with Rebreathers can recover hearts, including after a Fight. The glowing light leading them through the fog is a nice idea....the spirit of the departed inventor? It's also raining frogs (ribbittys?) who are unaffected by the fog. 4. Abandoned quarters could represent the home of the inventor on the grounds....is this his ancestral stead, or was he a brilliant gravedigger?....the confused god imprisoned within could have been the key to unlocking the secrets of the portal device. The god may not have a full understanding of time or death, or for that matter of imprisonment; this can be a god in the sense of a force less than a full personality. It may still be expecting the inventor to turn up. I've watched enough Danny Phantom that it makes sense to have the portal device be used to seal away the "hungry adventurers," which could be your standard walking dead but which I prefer to make a kind of ravenous semi-spectral horde, one which perhaps terrorized this plain in the wake of a great battle until sealed away. That wouldn't leave much opportunity for an abandoned home or a cemetery to develop, so maybe they only manifest at certain anniversaries....

Thinking about how the opening to Ninja Gaiden or an oldschool anime recap would handle this helps to put things into perspective for me. Also, when in doubt I just think about the images I want to capture. In this case there are 3: the entity/horde being sealed away as they try to breach into the world again, the noble villain surrounded by his animal servitors, and the uncomfortable effort of clambering over markers and amphibians while following a light in the fog. If I wanted to capture the restraints-trap, I'd do so with the lashing, grasping limbs of the phantom horde as they first escape their containment, moving and flailing as one creature... "In the misty ruins of a mansion's grounds, a bitter aristocrat continually searches for the magical technology he believes is rightfully his. Our heroes must brave the dangers of the Coughin' Gardens or else an ancient curse will be re-visited upon the surrounding countryside."

There's a version of this scenario where the noble listens to reason and it's only through the united efforts of the company, the noble, the god, and the spirit of the inventor that the device is able to renew the seal against the horde, and their opposition comes from a mutiny by the carrion-feeders the noble employs as his spies. Manipulated by the same deathly forces which bind the hungry horde in its sinister cycle...

But it's also an interesting PLACE to spend a session and at least 3 interesting figures around whose struggles the scenario revolves. There's a handful of clear goals. I'm also a big fan of scenarios where things are already moving toward either escalation or resolution by the time the players gets involved. It lets them choose whether to bring a deft touch or a Gordian knot solution to the proceedings when it feels less like all these people were standing around waiting for some adventurer to come and do everything for them; players feel less like their level of investment is being assumed on their behalf.

Battlefield areas can be Isolated or Precarious, most of them can be Obscured, and I'd keep the threat of suffocation at bay and out of a fight's logistics if I were to employ my heart-recovery restriction I mentioned earlier....

Maybe Questionable Other World Ideas:

-Bureaucracy Hell- The Infernal Dimensions have taken over this Other World, but it's not the hell you expect of sulfur and brimstone. No, it's literal bureaucracy hell- becoming wrapped in red tape like a mummy, filling out triplicate forms in triplicate to use the restroom, and standing in line everywhere like it's the DMV.

-Other World with Hats- Yes, just as it says. Everybody wears a hat, but it's because they're required to by law... Turns out the hats are weird fibrous aliens that need human hosts. A fringe group of rebels refuse to wear hats, but they're secretly being manipulated by even weirder shoe aliens.

-An empty Other World where only Truck-Kun reigns supreme!

-A world where everything from business to war is decided by Game Duels! The game in question? Tiddlywinks.