#beholders

STRUCTURE OF THE SHIP

The Panoptes, originally, was a large, roughly spherical asteroid of metallic grey rock, just over 1500ft in diameter. It was then carved, hollowed, and altered to house more than 400 beholders in a vast travelling cityship, and it bears significant marks of this transformation.

First, and most prominently, the asteroid is no longer intact. In order to enable the city to be divided into independent districts that could be isolated from each other if need be, the asteroid was magically fractured into eight equal pieces, arranged in two hemisphere of four pieces each. Dividing these pieces, sections, are 360ft wide chasms of empty air, bridged only by forcefield gantries and the vast anchor chains that make sure the cityship is, even still, one thing, even while divided. The whole ship is now nearly 2000ft in diameter, counting these gaps.

At the core of the sphere, in the centre where all the divides meet, hovers the Panopticon, a smaller, artificial metallic sphere that serves as the helm and bridge of the cityship as a whole, and from which the magical forces that hold the city together originate. The Panopticon is entirely physically independent of the rest of the ship, and can only be accessed by teleportation or by floating through the gap.

The cityship has a defined plane of gravity which extends through the equatorial gap between the two hemispheres, leading one to be called the ‘north’ hemisphere and the other to be called the ‘south’ hemisphere. Gravity generally points ‘downwards’ towards the equatorial gap, meaning that as one crosses from hemisphere to hemisphere, the direction of gravity reverses, although each section of the city has its own controllable gravity. One wouldn’t necessarily notice the shift, however, as the gaps themselves have no gravity at all. One would simply climb out the bottom of one hemisphere, float across the divide, and climb in the bottom of the other hemisphere. Well. If it were as easy as that, at least.

Each of the eight sections of the cityship has been hollowed out into six horizontal ‘decks’, 120ft high spaces at roughly the same level, with 10ft of uncarved asteroid between them, running from Deck 6 at the equatorial gap, the lowest and largest deck of every section, up to Deck 1 at the top of section, near the poles of the ship. Deck 6 therefore is 780ft wide, and each of the eight sections is 780ft tall, although the curved exterior edge of the ship is an additional 30ft thick on top of that. (Or, to put it another way, each section has a radius of 810ft from the point nearest the Panopticon in the centre of the ship to the outer surface of the ship).

Each of the eight sections of the ship was designed for a specific purpose, creating city ‘districts’ that are physically divided from each other. These eight sections will be detailed more later. They are designed alpha, beta, gamma or delta per hemisphere, with four pairs of sections, north and south, so that North Alpha is directly above South Alpha across the equatorial gap.

Travel between the various sections of the ship is primarily accomplished by one of two means: physical travel across ‘gantries’ formed by walls of force between sections, or teleportation between teleportation circles at various locations across the cityship. Because of potential gravity changes, each end of the various gantries is entered via a small room that can magically reduce the gravity inside itself to zero and then back again. These rooms also function as defenses, as they can be locked off to prevent access to the section. The gantries themselves can also be retracted, so that one would have to float under their own power across the gap. Attempting to do so is not without risk, however, as the gaps between sections are often full of disposed waste and other hazards, and can also be ‘flushed’ by a pulse of force from the Panopticon that violently propels anything in the gaps out beyond the air envelope of the ship.

Travel within a section has its own issues for non-beholders, as the cityship was carved with the ability to hover in mind, and thus tends to have simple open shafts to travel vertically between decks. Some exceptions exist, such as Section North Alpha, which has a long curving ramp carved along the outer wall of the section to allow travel between the six decks. Other decks have shafts where gravity has been nullified to allow even terrestrial visitors to float up and down them.

Access to the cityship from the outside can also be done by one of two means: physically docking with the ship in a smaller vessel in the dock district of Section North Delta, or by portal from a world or nearby ship into either Section North Delta or Section North Beta. These portals can be altered to essentially ‘scoop’ random inhabitants of said worlds or ships and bring them against their will onto Panoptes, and recently that has more often been the case than not.

The cityship is also well defended and armed. The 30ft thick metallic outer skin provides physical armour, and the ship is equipped with eight eyestalk weapon arrays, one at the centre of the outer surface of each section, providing protection in most directions. The cityship also possesses a beam weapon produced from the Panoption which can be directed outwards along any of the six axial shafts of the cityship, meaning the city doesn’t have to manoeuvre much to defend itself.

HISTORY OF THE SHIP

The history of Panoptes is a little difficult to ascertain, as there aren’t many left to ask, but it was clearly designed as mobile outpost or small city, with room to comfortably hold a few hundred beholders. There are features within the city that strongly suggest it was intended as an exploration vessel, equipped with portals to make contact with the various wildspace systems and worlds the cityship would encounter on its voyages, vast archives to record information and findings, and multiple laboratories of various focuses across the city. Possibly the cityship was also intended as a colonising vessel, as it would be strange to carry so many beholders merely for scientific exploration.

This is all guesswork, however, as the fact remains that almost no one still living remembers the original purpose of the Panoptes, for the simple reason that there is almost no one left to remember. The Panoptes, you see, is a ghost ship. There are personal quarters for over four hundred beholders on the ship, and almost every single one is empty. The crew of the Panoptes, whoever they were and whatever they intended to do, were wiped out. She sails now with a grand total of five (official) occupants. Five solitary survivors, of more than four hundred. And five fractured survivors.

Panoptes is the roving home of the Council of Five. Or the Council of Four, or the Council of One, depending on which of them you ask. It is believed, and they certainly claim, that the Five were among her original crew, though those claims may be questionable. It wasn’t only the crew itself that was wiped out. Large chunks of the ship’s records have also been damaged or wholesale erased, and there is a gap of roughly two hundred years where no records exist. It is inside this gap of time that the fate of the ship, and the deaths of its crew, are believed to have taken place, and there is no mention of any of the Five until after this gap, unless it was by other names.

Not that this would be difficult. The Five do not claim personal names, and instead each go by a title of their own choosing. Whatever their true names were, none save them know or speak them any longer.

Whatever that long ago calamity was, the Panoptes has turned to a new mission in its aftermath. She flies now by the whims of her Council, and her Council have, to put it mildly, disparate goals. But some twisted remnants of her original mission of exploration still remains. The Panoptes is exploring, and she is hunting. She seeks to explore strange new worlds, to take and to examine new life and new civilisations. She snatches prey wherever she passes. But she does not stop. Panoptes is not an invasion force. She is ever-moving, ever-seeking, picking up and examining things, people, as she goes, but always in search of something else, something more. What are her end goals? What is her end destination? No one, perhaps not even her own crew, are fully certain.

What is certain is that, should you encounter the Panoptes in the Astral Sea, it is strongly advised that you promptly find a different part of the Sea to be in. And should you be unfortunate enough to be one of her chosen prey, snatched from your world via one of her portals … She doesn’t stop. She doesn’t linger. Unless you can escape her almost immediately, it is very likely that you will never see your world again.

THE COUNCIL OF FIVE

The Council of Five are the five surviving beholders who control the Panoptes cityship. Unfathomably ancient beings who have survived the ageless depths of the Astral Sea for centuries, if not millennia, since the catastrophe that befell their city, the Council are the only beings still in existence who understand the secrets of the Panoptes’ systems and functions, and thus the only ones (they argue) that can hope to use her to her full potential.

As survivors of catastrophe, the Five are … aloof, even by beholder standards. They do not deign to speak to anyone outside of their own cadre. They do not deign to acknowledge the sovereignty, personhood or opinions of anyone who is not one of their own. And barely their own, either. The Council is most definitely not united, in anything beyond their determination to defend their claim to the ship. Each of the Five pursues their own goals above all else, and while alliances exist between various members, there is little in the way of true loyalty.

Each of the Five bears a self-appointed title that appear to be all they will acknowledge in lieu of a name. These titles are indicative of the individual beholder’s priorities and function within the city, inasmuch as functions still remain. The members of the Council of Five are as follows:

Control. A tyrant among tyrants, this beholder chose their name well and pointedly. Control considers themselves the head of the council and the de facto ruler of Panoptes, and that leadership is strongly reinforced by the fact that Control holds the Panopticon, the central control room of the cityship, as its personal territory. As such, Control functions as the pilot and overseer of the entire city. Forever fearful of being usurped, Control never leaves the Panopticon for any reason, and fiercely defends this tiny but vital territory. Its presence is more than felt throughout the rest of the cityship, however, via the roving eyes, the hovering automated scrying orbs that travel the entirety of the city, feeding everything they see and hear back to the Panopticon. The Panopticon allows Control to fly the ship, and to remotely exert considerable control over several areas of the cityship. The gantry bridges that connect each of the eight segments of the ship can be remotely disconnected from the Panopticon, and it has several other powers to control and isolate territory within the ship. As such, the other four of the Five take care not to offend Control too badly, no matter their personal views on their paranoid ‘leader’. If anyone has an idea where, if anywhere, Panoptes is ultimately headed, it’s Control.

Control is an absolutely pallid beholder, pale enough to be a Death Kiss, and has the eyebags of a chronic insomniac.

The Biologist. Very likely the first, and last, of the Council that non-beholder visitors to Panoptes ever meet, the Biologist has taken very avidly to certain aspects of Panoptes’ exploration mission. In particular, as one might guess, ‘she’ is fascinated by biology, the strange alien forms of all the myriad lifeforms the Panoptes has encountered. It is by her influence that the cityship is encourage to fly close to worlds and systems on her route, the better to scoop up a few fascinating specimens for examination. The Biologist has claimed Section North Beta, which would once have contained the medical wing and many of the old laboratories, as her territory, aided by the fact that not one but two of the ship’s mystical portals are located there. With the aid of her ally the Astrogator, those portals are programmed to fire whenever the Panoptes passes close enough to an inhabited world, ship or asteroid, randomly teleporting up to six desperately unfortunate occupants of those worlds or ships at a time directly into her laboratories. Almost every non-beholder occupant of Panoptes has their origins as victims or escapees of the Biologist’s labs, and another entire section of the ship, South Beta, one of the old habitation sectors of the city, is overrun with the results of her experiments, and has been quarantined from all other segments of the ship save North Beta by an exasperated Control as a result.

The Biologist is a greenish beholder with very long, delicate eyestalks. Her petrification ray is instead a vitrification ray, turning victims to glass instead of stone, as the Biologist prefers that the fascinating internal anatomy of her subjects remain visible and preserved.

The Astrogator. A long-time ally and borderline ‘friend’ of the Biologist, the Astrogator also nurses a scientific bent, but their focus is somewhat different. The Astrogator is fascinated by the geometry of the Astral Sea and its connected planes, and views the endless voyage of the Panoptes as one long examination of the underlying structure of the planes. As a side effect of this fascination, the Astrogator also has the keenest grasp of the function and programming of the various portals carried by the ship, as well as the most in depth exploration of Panoptes’ surviving archives. In the interests of steering the cityship to the most interesting confluences of the planes, as well as using the sensors and scrying equipment contained in the Panopticon to examine them, the Astrogator has taken care to maintain a cordial relationship with Control, and is often regarded as something of the pilot’s ‘second in command’, a position which largely boils down to ‘person Control is most likely to take a suggestion from if pushed’. Both the Astrogator and Control are aware that it is an extremely mercenary relationship, however, and the Astrogator may be the one Control most fears attempting to simply remove them and take control of the Panopticon for themselves. Likely for good reason, as the Astrogator most certainly would not be opposed. The Astrogator has claimed the transport hub of Section North Delta as its primary territory, although it also maintains control over the archival complex in Section North Gamma.

The Astrogator is a dark purple, nearly black beholder with abnormally tough, thick skin, granting it a +1 to AC from increased natural armour.

The Engineer. Easily the most long-suffering of all the Council, and also the most inclined to cooperate with other inhabitants of the cityship, within certain limits, the Engineer is the poor beholder who took it upon themselves to keep the battered Panoptes intact and functioning while the other four send it hither and yon across the Silver Sea. Which, given that the cityship is operating at a severely diminished crew capacity, and has accumulated more than a few scars over its long voyage, is more than a little difficult. The Engineer’s whole preoccupation is the continued safe(-ish) functioning of the cityship, and in that cause it has recruited several of the larger and more organised groups of the Biologist’s escapees to help it maintain Panoptes, in exchange for limited protection from the rest of the Council. Which mostly boils down to the Engineer declining to mention where they’re hiding if the Biologist or the Astrogator happens to be the vicinity. There’s no hiding most things from Control, given the reach of the Panopticon, but fortunately Control is extremely unconcerned with lesser beings, focusing the bulk of its paranoia on its fellow Council members, and so the Engineer’s little helpers are allowed to exist as long as they don’t do anything that would threaten the ship itself or put any of the Five at risk of harm. Which is also the limit of the Engineer’s tolerance, so Control is happy enough to leave them at it. While Control is sometimes worried about the extent of the Engineer’s own power, especially given the auxiliary controls in Section South Gamma, The Engineer’s priorities are easily discernable, and the Astrogator is a larger concern, so they work together happily enough. The Engineer has claimed Section South Gamma, which contains most of the old manufacturing and power facilities of the Panoptes, as their own.

The Engineer is small as beholders go, a tough, reddish ball of stumpy eyestalks and exhaustion. Its eyebags are as pronounced as Control’s.

Exile. The final member of the Council of Five, and the reason that many of the others consider it a Council of Four, Exile is the hermit of the Panoptes. A long time ago, Exile had a nearly fatal falling out with Control, and in an effort to preserve his own skin, he retreated to the one area of the ship where the leader has the least control: the inhospitable outer skin of cityship itself. Because the Panoptes is held together partly by forcefields, Control cannot pull the air envelope of the ship fully beneath the skin without risking the segments becoming destabilised relative to each other, and most of its seeing eyes are too vulnerable to send out into the lower gravity of the skin, where they risk being lost to the Silver Sea. And so, as long as he doesn’t descend back into the interior of the ship, at least not anywhere Control happens to be watching at the time, the Exile is relatively safe, if cold and lonely and extraordinarily bored. He has some regular contact with the Engineer, trading maintenance work on the exterior of the ship for supplies and the odd bit of stilted conversation, and is worried that the Astrogator is interested in him for something, but the bulk of Exile’s social contact is, again, with the colonies of inhabitants who escaped the Biologist’s attentions at one point or another. Garrulous and attention-starved, Exile is delighted to entertain anyone who makes their way out into the exterior skin of the cityship, and is knowledgeable of several ways of traversing the ship while avoiding Control’s attention.

The Exile is a large, blueish-black beholder with an oily sheen to his skin. Owing to aeons of exposure on the surface of the cityship, the Exile has resistance to cold and radiant damage.

OTHER INHABITANTS OF PANOPTES

Over the aeons, primarily as a result of the Biologist and her experiments, the Panoptes has accumulated other groups and colonies of inhabitants. And some of them may have been on the ship longer than anyone has thought.

The Reckoning. In a mockery of the titles the Council of Five have taken for themselves, this secret inhabitant of the cityship has named itself ‘The Reckoning’, after what it ardently hopes to bring to its oblivious enemies. The Reckoning, hidden away among the inaccessible and abandoned Section North Alpha, is a Death Tyrant, and quite possibly an undead remnant of the massacred original crew of the Panoptes. It nurses a titanic hatred of the Council of Five, but for some reason has taken considerable care never to reveal its presence to them in all the aeons since the calamity that wiped out the crew, instead locking down its own section of the ship and building its own forces slowly but surely within those confines. Whether the Death Tyrant was the cause of the calamity that destroyed the crew, with the Council of Five as the only ones who escaped its grasp, albeit apparently unknowingly, or whether the Death Tyrant is an undead survivor of a calamity brought about by someone else, possibly the Council themselves, who hates them for what they have done, might be difficult to ascertain. The presence of quite a number of zombie beholders among its forces, remnants of the occupants of Section North Alpha, might point more to the former, but the fact that the Council of Five appear to be unaware of the Reckoning’s existence, which you’d think they’d know about if it had destroyed their people around them, might point to the latter. Or perhaps the calamity was unrelated to either of the two sides, and the hatred nursed by the Death Tyrant is simply the unreasoning hatred of the undead towards the living.

The Ironskin Clan. One of the largest single groups of Biologist survivors, the Ironskin Clan are a group of some forty-odd dwarves who have set up their own enclave and territory within Panoptes, claiming a large section of the factory decks of Section South Gamma as their home, with the permission and tacit protection of the Engineer. The Ironskins are some of the Engineer’s most trusted allies, and for their part have come to genuinely support the beholder in its self-appointed task to keep the cityship functional and running. The cityship, for all it is currently a floating house of horrors, is a beautifully designed ship, and it breaks a dwarf’s heart to see her so perpetually close to falling (quite literally) apart because the majority of her remaining so-called crew are too embroiled in their own concerns to take care of her. While many of the survivors of the Biologist’s and Astrogator’s experiments are seeking a way off the cityship, and fuck this entire hellship anyway, the Ironskins are more likely to seek to throw the Council off the ship, in order to take her and look after her themselves, along with their ally the Engineer.

The Crimson Court. An experiment of the Biologist’s that nearly went quite badly wrong for her, the Crimson Court are a cadre of vampires that were snatched up by portal and deposited in Section North Beta. While the Biologist did manage to subdue them, and perform horrific experiments on several of them, holding vampires long-term proved more than she had interest in, and the survivors were relegated to Section South Beta along with the rest of her old or failed experiments. Declining to remain among the other pathetic (and sometimes deadly) former experiments, the vampires escaped the quarantine on Section South Beta and instead made their way across to the old wealthy habitation section of South Alpha, which was eminently more suited to their tastes. They have remained their to this day, carving out their own little fiefdom, surviving on the blood of other survivors who find the same path out of Section South Beta that they did. Most other survivors in other sections of the ship have tangled with the Crimson Court at least once as a result, and most strongly dislike them, but open war on them runs the risk of drawing the Biologist’s or, more likely, the Astrogator’s attention.

The Ragged Remnants. A self-adopted name, the Ragged Remnants are those of the Biologist’s more warped experiments, monstrosities or aberrations, who nonetheless retained their intelligence, memories and sense of self. Relegated to Section South Beta, instead of escaping further out into the ship, the Ragged Remnants decided to stay among the broken of Section South Beta, and do their best to both guide more intact survivors towards escape, and to shepherd and take care of the less intact survivors within the twisting corridors of their own section. Though almost universally terrifying to look at, often at least partially vitrified, the Ragged Remnants are among the gentlest inhabitants of Panoptes as a whole.

Light of Life. Despite the lofty name, the Light of Life are largely motivated by pragmatism. Formed largely of various forced inhabitants of the cityship with magic that can aid in the production of food, water and air, mostly clerics or druids, the Light of Life work towards the full restoration of Section South Delta, in order to make sure that people stuck on this damned ship can keep breathing, eating and drinking. Unlike the Ironskins, the Light of Life members nurse a range of views on Panoptes and its inhabitants, but are generally inclined to prioritise making sure staying alive remains an option for everyone involved before moving on to other goals. They work closely with the Engineer, though several of them do still view him as simply the most sensible of their jailers.

Miscellaneous Survivors. While some of the people forcibly relocated to the Panoptes by the portals banded together into groups like the Crimson Court, the Ironskin clan and the Light of Life, many others simply struck out for themselves and found ways to survive in whatever nooks and crannies of the cityship they were able to. These individual survivors can be encountered all across the ship, and run the entire gamut from friendly to murderous, resigned to defiant, desperate to entirely satisfied with their new lives.

SECTIONS OF PANOPTES

Panopticon: 

The Panopticon is a 180ft diameter metal sphere that hovers in the exact core of the Panoptes Cityship. It is the primary control hub for the ship, containing the helm, the divination core, and the magical controls for most of the ship’s systems. The sphere is divided into 3 chambers: the main central control room which contains the helm and the teleportation array, as well as most of the ship’s controls; the surveillance room, which contains a scrying table and the controls for the roving orbs; and a small private chamber originally intended as a bunkroom for the watchmaster, which Control now uses as a private chamber.

The Panopticon allows remote control of many of the systems of the cityship. This includes locking down or retracting gantries between sections, remotely disabling teleportation arrays or portals, activating security features such as weaponised doors or bulkheads, activating or deactivating the gravity in a section of the ship, activating the eyestalk arrays or beam weapon, flushing the gaps between sections of debris/hostiles, and expanding or contracting the air envelope around the ship. The divination room allows control of the roving orbs, a veritable army of arcane eyes that patrol the cityship and report all that they see back to the Panopticon. The scrying table also allows more targeted viewing, both inside and outside the ship.

Access Points: The Panopticon has no physical access from the rest of the ship, and could only be accessed physically by cutting through the metal exterior while floating in the central shaft, which the sphere has several defenses against. It was intended to be accessed via a 2-way teleportation array which connects to the maintenance arrays in all cityship sections, but Control has disabled this array. The Panopticon is equipped with wards which prevents all other forms of teleportation into the interior of the sphere.

Section North Alpha: 

Section North Alpha was originally the entertainment and governance district of Panoptes, and served as the social and political hub of the city during better days. Its larger lower decks, Decks 5 and 6, are honeycombed with eateries, debate halls, gambling halls, and various other social venues, as well as a huge zero gravity open arena which stretches between the two decks and was often used for large scale games. The upper decks of the district were focused more on city governance, with public offices and meeting spaces on Deck 4, the City Council Chambers on Deck 3, council offices on Deck 2, and the Governor’s Palace at the peak of the District on Deck 1.

Since the fall of Panoptes, Section North Alpha has been quarantined for unknown reasons, and cannot be accessed by gantry or teleportation array. What most of the residents of Panoptes do not know is that Control wasn’t the one to quarantine the section, and cannot access it either, not even from the Panopticon. Should anyone find their way into the disused, abandoned section, they would find it the secret lair of a Death Tyrant, and several other undead beholders from before the calamity. These undead inhabitants are nursing quite the grudge against the Council of Five, but have restrained themselves from acting upon it for unknown reasons.

Access Points: Section North Alpha is currently quarantined and is inaccessible, with all gantries retracted, but under ordinary circumstances it would be accessible from Section South Alpha via a gantry to Deck 6, from Section North Beta via a gantry on Deck 5, and from Section North Delta via a gantry on Deck 4. There is also a teleportation array on Deck 3 that would connect to the Panopticon, and several arrays on Deck 5 that would connect to the habitation Sections of South Alpha and South Beta and the Portal Hub in North Delta. A smaller array on Deck 4 would have connected to Maintenance in Section South Gamma. Again, these arrays have been disabled. Waste disposal units on all decks flush waste out into the gaps, though these are inaccessible from the exterior. Additionally, a single maintenance airlock extends outwards to the eyestalk weapon arrays on the surface of the section from Deck 4.

Section North Beta: 

Section North Beta was the medical and scientific hub of Panoptes, and the fact that it required an entire city district says quite a lot about the intended function of the cityship. The section has large areas available for the treatment, holding and quarantine of large numbers of beings, and is one of two sections where significant numbers of outsiders are designed to come aboard. As such, Section North Beta contains one of two planetary portal hubs aboard Panoptes, an array of four portals capable of transporting up to six medium creatures at a time each. This portal hub is located on the lowest deck, Deck 6, which also contains the quarantine wards and containment areas. Deck 5, above it, contains most of the medical and treatment facilities aboard Panoptes, which includes objects and rooms which can provide healing magic. Decks 3 and 4 are more research-orientated, and contain laboratories of various types. Deck 2 contains the cityship’s medical records, and Deck 1 holds the medical and research administration offices.

Since the fall of Panoptes, Section North Beta has been almost entirely the preserve of The Biologist, and it has become the sole area of the cityship where outsiders are still regularly brought in, at the Biologist’s request and by Control’s permission, via the medical portals. As a result, egress from the section is severely limited, with exits via gantry or teleport array tightly monitored by Control from the Panopticon. The Biologist is largely unbothered by this, as she has no intentions of leaving her domain. Decks 3 and 4, the laboratory levels, are her residence and primary location, while the lower decks are littered with her trophies and some of her favoured still-living experiments. Those experiments she is less fond of are instead transported to Section South Beta to get them out of her way, and she has no care whatsoever what happens to them down there.

Access Points: Section North Beta can be entered by gantry from Section South Beta on Deck 6, from Section North Alpha on Deck 5, and from Section North Gamma on Deck 3. It has teleport arrays on Deck 5 that access all other Sections, except the Panopticon. Additionally, Deck 6 contains the portal hub which can portal people into South Beta from external worlds or ships within range of the portal system. Leaving Section North Beta is more complicated, as neither the teleport arrays nor portal hub work in the other direction, and all gantries except the gantry to Section South Beta have barred access except to the Council of Five. Waste disposal units across the section flush waste into the gaps around the section, after first bathing them in killing light to ensure that no contaminations leave the section. These units are not accessible from the exterior. Additionally, a single maintenance airlock extends outwards to the eyestalk weapon arrays on the surface of the section from Deck 4.

Section North Gamma: 

Section North Gamma was a massive archive, library and college district, and was intended to collect works from worlds the cityship visited as well as works produced by the beholders of Panoptes themselves, so large swathes of archive space were left empty with the intent to expand into them as the ship travelled. These archives exist in several formats, including written texts, collections of information orbs, and other, rarer forms of information storage encountered in stranger worlds along the journey. The city’s own internal records are also stored here, usually in shrunken orb format. City and maintenance archives are stored on Deck 6, as well as records of the city’s voyages, general archives on Decks 3 and 4, and works created in Panoptes on Deck 2. Deck 5 contains lecture halls, study rooms, small laboratories, an archive maintenance and restoration unit, and archive offices. Deck 1 contains archive administration.

Since the fall of Panoptes, Section North Gamma has been the secondary territory of The Astrogator, and this beholder has been responsible for the continued documentation of the city’s journey, continued expansion of collections, and several of its own written works. The Astrogator’s residence while in this section is in the archive administration area on Deck 1. While Section North Gamma isn’t quarantined or limited in access like other sections of the North hemisphere, it is religiously patrolled by the Astrogator’s own private constructs, and while rooms are accessible, the actual records and documents are contained within extremely sturdy and magically locked containers that are difficult to access without the Astrogator’s permission.

Access Points: Section North Gamma can be accessed by gantry from Section South Gamma on Deck 6, from Section North Beta on Deck 3, and from Section North Delta on Deck 2. The only teleport array access is a maintenance link on Deck 5 from Section South Gamma. Additionally, a single maintenance airlock extends outwards to the eyestalk weapon arrays on the surface of the section from Deck 4.

Section North Delta: 

Section North Delta was the transportation hub of Panoptes, and was the primary entrance point to the city for most outsiders. The cityship’s main portal hub was located in this section, a series of interlinked portal rooms with over 15 portals that could connect to worlds and ships at varying ranges, and allow for parties of varying sizes. In addition to the portal hub, Section North Delta also allowed some docking facilities for small Astral Sea vessels, both on the underside of the section below Deck 6, and via docking arms on the exterior skin of the section with large cargo lifts down into the interior. The ship docks are each entirely self-contained and access inwards from the dock is controlled via airlocks. The entirety of the section was devoted to processing and occasionally storing the people and goods from these port facilities. Deck 6 contained the bulk of the ship docking facilities, as well as massive warehouse and storage facilities. Deck 5 is a containment area between the docks on Deck 6 and the portals on Deck 4, and contains holding cells, short-term storage bays, confiscated materials lockers, as well as a miniature monitoring suite similar to the divination suite on the Panopticon, which allows cityship security to more closely (and independently) monitor this section of the ship. Deck 4 contains the main portal hub and a visitor processing/customs facility. Deck 3 holds guest accommodations for short term visitors (long-term visitors are rare, and were usually housed in either the entertainment area of North Alpha, or in the nicer habitation areas of South Alpha). Deck 2 contains the portal control and maintenance section, as well as an archive of portal activation records. Deck 1 contains the Sectionmaster’s quarters.

After the fall of Panoptes, Section North Delta has been the primary home and stomping grounds of The Astrogator. The portal hub, control hub and activation records have been the primary focus of the beholder’s studies since the fall, and it keeps its primary lair in the Sectionmaster’s quarters on Deck 1. The Astrogator has much less interest in the lower levels of the Section, the docks and containment areas, although it has found use for some of the holding cells on Deck 5 over the aeons. The Astrogator will tolerate no intrusion onto the portal decks or above, however, and will kill any creature it finds between Decks 1 and 4. This is not to say that none are ever found here, however. The Astrogator’s closest guarded secret is that it has managed to break Control’s lock on two of the smaller portals, and has been using them to experiment with the functions of portals within the Astral Sea. The Astrogator uses the holding cells on Deck 5 to contain any creatures that emerge from these portals until they have been interrogated on their origins and experience of the portal, after which they are almost always destroyed and disposed of.

Access Points: Section North Delta can be accessed by gantry from Section South Delta on Deck 6, from Section North Alpha on Deck 4, and from Section North Gamma on Deck 2. Teleport arrays on Deck 4 connect with Section North Alpha, and smaller array on Deck 2 connects with Maintenance in Section South Gamma. Section North Delta also has exterior access via the ship docks on Deck 6, and via cargo transport tunnels that connect the warehouse district on Deck 6 up through the section to several external ship docking arms on the exterior surface of the section. Finally, Section North Delta contains the cityship’s primary portal hub, capable of reaching worlds and ships on different planes and at incredible ranges. These portals have been disabled by Control from the Panopticon, but two smaller ones have been secretly re-enabled by the Astrogator, and these portals are two-directional. Additionally, a single maintenance airlock extends outwards to the eyestalk weapon arrays on the surface of the section from Deck 4.

Section South Alpha: 

Section South Alpha was one of two habitation/residential districts in Panoptes, and was decidedly the nicer and more spacious of the two, equating to an ‘upper class’ district. City councillors, favoured socialites, and individuals important to the function of the city had quarters here, as well as the occasional foreign guest or ambassador. The city governor also maintained a residence here, in addition to their Palace in Section North Alpha, primarily for hosting social functions and for taking holidays. Deck 6 functions as the public area of the Section, containing restaurants, public amenities, and various social meeting spaces. Decks 5 to 3 contain large private residences, while Decks 1 and 2 contain the truly palatial halls, primarily the homes of city councillors.

After the fall of Panoptes, Section South Alpha has become all but uninhabited. None of the Council of Five have any interest in the empty palaces and social spaces designed for significantly larger groups of people. It is largely ignored by the powers that currently be within the city, and in fact has no gravity, as that system was shut off in what was considered to be an uninhabited area. As such, South Alpha might have functioned as a safe harbour for those who managed to escape the Biologist’s or Astrogator’s clutches and managed to flee to other sections of the ship. However, an early colony of such escapees, who happened to be vampires, took over large parts of the section, and made it distinctly dangerous for anyone else. This vampire colony, calling itself the Crimson Court, has made its home in several of the more palatial of the old residences, and anyone else who would like to set up shop here is expected to pay a toll in blood, willingly or otherwise.

Access Points: Section South Alpha can be accessed by gantry from Sections North Alpha and South Delta on Deck 6. The gantry from South Beta, also on Deck 6, has been retracted and disabled as part of the quarantine on South Beta. Teleportation arrays on Deck 6 connect to Sections North Alpha, North Beta, and South Gamma. Waste disposal units, primarily on Deck 6, flush waste materials into the equatorial gap, though these are not accessible from the exterior. Additionally, a single maintenance airlock extends outwards to the eyestalk weapon arrays on the surface of the section from Deck 4.

Section South Beta: 

Section South Beta was the other of the two residential sections on Panoptes, and was definitely the less comfortable of the two. South Beta has much less distinct decks than other sections of the cityship, beyond the more public areas of Deck 6 at the base of the section. Above Deck 6, South Beta is an indistinct warren of small residences and public passages carved from the raw metallic rock of the asteroid in whatever fashion proved most expedient. At the peak of the section, however, on the nominal Deck 1, was a set of offices for the South Beta Habitation Overseer, who was responsible for relaying concerns from the section primarily to city government and city maintenance. The Habitation Overseer was an elected role from within the inhabitants of the section.

Since the fall of Panoptes, Section South Beta has had the misfortune to be the dumping ground and repository for all the Biologist’s older or less successful experiments. As a result, the section is a warren of monstrosities and aberrations, some of which maintain their previous minds and memories, and more of which who don’t, trapped within the walls of South Beta. The entire section has been quarantined from the cityship at large, with access in only permitted from North Beta, and no escape out. Or at least, that’s the theory. There are several intelligent inhabitants who have no interest in leaving their new home, however, and who have made the best of their lives here.

Access Points: Section South Beta, like Section North Alpha, is currently quarantined and inaccessible, with all gantries retracted and disable except the gantry from North Beta on Deck 6, which allows access only into South Beta, not out. If they were extended, gantries would also extend from Deck 6 to Sections South Gamma and South Alpha. The teleportation arrays on Deck 6, which would have connected to Sections North Alpha, South Alpha and South Gamma, have also been disabled. The array which connects to North Beta, again, is active but only one-way, into South Beta only. Waste disposal units, primarily on Deck 6, flush waste materials into the equatorial gap, though these are not accessible from the exterior. Additionally, a single maintenance airlock extends outwards to the eyestalk weapon arrays on the surface of the section from Deck 4.

Section South Gamma: 

Section South Gamma was the primary maintenance and manufacturing hub of Panoptes. Anything the city made for itself was made in the workshops and factories in this section, and the maintenance workers for the entire cityship made their base here. As a result, section South Gamma is the most well-connected section within the city, since it required maintenance access to all other sections, and the section is also home to several auxiliary and redundant controls to function as a back-up to the Panopticon if required. Decks 5 and 6 contain most of the city’s factories and foundries, as well as storage and warehouse facilities. These are public decks, while the higher decks of the section, which house the cityship’s maintenance department, are self-contained with controlled access via bulkheads. Deck 4 contains maintenance workshops, as well as the teleportation arrays to the rest of the cityship. Deck 3 houses the auxiliary control and monitoring rooms, functioning essentially as a second Panopticon, although if conflict arises between the two control centres, the Panopticon overrides. Deck 2 offers eating and rest areas for maintenance workers from Decks 3 and 4. Deck 1 contains maintenance administration offices.

Since the fall of Panoptes, Section South Gamma has become the territory of The Engineer, the sole member of the Council of Five who is trying to keep the cityship as a whole intact and functioning. The Engineer is most often found on Deck 3, in the auxiliary control rooms, although it often ventures throughout Panoptes as a whole on maintenance missions, and even out onto the surface of the cityship on occasion. Chronically overworked, the Engineer has made bargains with several of the non-beholder inhabitants of Panoptes to do maintenance work for it in exchange for a safe place to stay and the Engineer’s protection from other members of the Council of Five. As a result, several groups of beings inhabit and work in Decks 4, 5 and 6 of South Gamma, although none are permitted into the Control areas of Deck 3. In particular, an adoptive clan of dwarves called the Ironskins live on Deck 5 and willingly help the Engineer in its endeavours out of genuine sympathy as much as mercenary bargaining. The Engineer has jury-rigged its own teleport array to allow these inhabitants to access the rest areas and in particular the food production areas on Deck 2. Control is aware of this and distinctly unhappy about it, but allows it out of a need for someone to be working on keeping the city flying.

Access Points: Section South Gamma is extremely well connected to the rest of the ship. Gantries on Deck 6 connect to Sections North Gamma and South Beta, although the South Beta gantry has been disabled. A gantry on Deck 5 connects with Section South Delta. Cargo-only teleportation arrays also connect to Section North Delta for bulk transport of goods from the docks to the factories and vice versa. Teleportation arrays on Deck 4 connected with all other Sections of the ship, as well as several locations on the ship’s exterior, and also to Deck 2 within Section South Gamma. The array to the Panopticon has been disabled. Additionally, Section South Gamma has several airlocks to manually travel out onto the exterior of the ship, including one to the eyestalk weapon array, as well as internal maintenance hatches out into the shafts and gaps between sections.

Section South Delta: 

Section South Delta was the primary systems facility on Panoptes, and houses most of the magical systems that keep the city functioning. These systems include water production, air production, food production, and sewage transportation and control. Because of these systems, consistent gravity is vitally important within this section and cannot be shut off, even from the Panopticon. Deck 6 contains vast storage tanks, primarily for water and foodstuffs. Decks 4 and 5 contain a massive water production tank and several air production units. Air and water are then dispersed through the cityship from these units using a system of microscopic portals to take air or water to dispersal units on other decks and in other sections. Decks 2 and 3 hold greenhouses for food production. Deck 1 holds the system status monitors for the entire section.

After the fall of Panoptes, Section South Delta was unmaintained for a long time, and nearly fell fatally into disrepair. One of the Engineer’s most longstanding projects has been getting the section back working again, and it has largely succeeded, although several back-up systems are still inoperative, leaving the section still very vulnerable to failure. Conscious of this, the Engineer has convinced Control to focus a lot of security measures and surveillance into this section to make sure that this vital area cannot be taken offline by intruders. As the Panopticon is provided with food, water and air exclusively by minor portals from Section South Delta, while other sections have some option to gain sustenance via portal or from the exterior, Control wasn’t long in agreeing. Only those most trusted by the Engineer are allowed to work in this section, meaning it is primarily the Ironskins and several other trusted individuals who have talents in certain areas of magic, such as plant growth and the production of water.

Access Points: Section South Delta can be accessed by gantry from Sections North Delta and South Alpha on Deck 6, and from Section South Gamma on Deck 5. The North Delta and South Alpha gantries have been retracted and disabled to make sure the Engineer controls access to the section. A single teleport array on Deck 6 allows access for creatures from Section South Gamma. However, the water, air and sewage systems all maintain their own portal connections to various locations on the cityship, though not large enough for any creature larger than Tiny in size to access. The water and air systems transport outwards, the sewage system transports inwards. Additionally, a single maintenance airlock extends outwards to the eyestalk weapon arrays on the surface of the section from Deck 4.

Exterior Surface: 

The Exterior Surface of Panoptes has primarily existed purely for the defense of the cityship within. A 30ft thick skin of metallic rock sheaths the outward faces of all sections of the ship, solid except for the maintenance hatches to the eyestalk weapon arrays, the maintenance access from Section South Gamma, and the ship docks in Section North Delta. Between the eight sections of Panoptes, the exterior surfaces are connected via massive anchor chains at the midpoint of the exterior edge of all sections. The only ‘habitation’, if it could be called that, on the surface are the interiors of the eyestalk arrays themselves, which have small maintenance chambers within them. Each of the eight sections of the cityship has its own eyestalk weapon array at the very centre of their exterior surface, for a total of eight arrays around the ship.

Gravity on the surface of the cityship is weak, and focused inwards so that ‘down’ points into the ship. At the edges of the sections, where the surface touches the edges of the interior gravity-less spaces between, gravitational eddies and anomalies are common, and walls of force have been erected to prevent unfortunate accidents. These walls extend across the anchor chains in similar ways to the internal gantries, and thus allow travel between sections. Not all of these walls of force are still in operation, however, with those of Section North Alpha, Section South Alpha and Section South Beta in particular no longer in existence, and the gravity on the exterior of those sections is weak enough to be nearly non-existent.

For some time now, the Exterior Surface has been the home of The Exile, the last member of the Council of Five, who makes his primary home inside the Eyestalk of Section South Delta, as the necessity of that section remaining intact provides a nice extra defense against Control taking adverse actions against him. He is also commonly seen on the surface of Sections South Gamma and North Delta.

The Spaces Between: 

The Spaces Between refers to the gaps between the various sections of the cityship. The equatorial gap, the 360ft tall space of air that runs horizontally through the ship, has special focus, as does the vertical shaft that between the ‘poles’ of the ship, with the Panopticon in the centre of it, which acts as one of three main vectors for the cityship’s beam weapon, along with the two axial shafts that run horizontally through the ship. The Spaces Between do not have gravity, though they do have air, as they are still within the cityship’s air envelope.

They are also generally filthy, as most waste from the sections of the cityship is vented out into the Spaces Between, usually from waste vents into the equatorial gap. This collection of waste was why the flushing system, the pulse of force that shoves everything in the gaps out beyond the walls of the cityship, was developed, though it also has useful defensive benefits against those attempting to use the zero gravity environment of the Spaces Between to move around the ship. Or, particularly when conscious of the small ship docks in Section North Delta, people attempting to use small vessels to fly into the cityship and attack the Panopticon. One can actually discover the wreckage of a small spelljamming vessel wedged onto the anchor chain between Sections North Delta and South Delta, where an attempted manoeuvre by the vessel during the flush pushed it into the horizontal gap between the two sections and smashed it up against the central anchor chain. It is possible that this vessel is salvageable, although it clearly did not prove so for its crew, assuming any survived the crash.

ADVENTURES IN PANOPTES

Since the calamity that struck the cityship, and its take-over by the Council of Five, Panoptes does not host willing guests. Almost everyone who encounters the cityship does so as a result of either stumbling across it in the Astral Sea, or being kidnapped from their worlds or ships by the portals aboard her. As such, strangers to the ship will almost always begin their time aboard her in either Section North Beta (kidnapped by the Biologist and the medical portals) or Section North Delta (approached via spelljamming vessel to the docks or kidnapped by the Astrogator using its hijacked main portals). In most cases, this will require visitors to escape those sections, or at least fall back to defensible points within them, to avoid the clutches of either of those two beholders.

Section North Delta is definitely the more escapable option of the two, as it does have both the spelljammer docks and two reversible portals, although the portals at least would involve a direct confrontation with the Astrogator, as well as a tough puzzle to successfully reverse the portals before the cityship moves out of range of the character’s world or ship of origin.

Section North Beta is a lot trickier to get out of, as both it and Section South Beta below it have been quarantined to keep the Biologist’s experiments from the rest of the ship. However, South Beta definitely has some vulnerabilities, as its history of escapees proves, and while North Beta is more locked down, it might be possible to trick the locks on the gantries or to exit while the Biologist or Astrogator have opened them to pass between sections themselves.

Should a party either be forced or decide to stay longer and involve themselves in the cityship, however, there are several factions vying for supremacy on the ship, and several threats that could destroy it. Discovering the secret of the quarantined Section North Alpha, helping the Astrogator or possibly the Engineer wrest control of Panoptes away from Control, working for Control to monitor or act against the others in exchange for a promised escape, helping the brutalised victims of Sections North and South Beta to stand up against or kill the Biologist, gaining the assistance of the Exile or the Engineer to help restore the wrecked spelljammer in the equatorial gap in order to escape in a vessel of your own, working with the Engineer, the Ironskins and the Light of Life to fully restore the cityship to her former glory, discovering what calamity wiped the city out in the first place, luring or coordinating with an external vessel to do a death star run on the Panopticon through the Spaces Between in order to splinter this whole hellship finally and fatally apart …