#ellomyr

On the 17th day sharing my #Numenera paintings for @MonteCookGames , "Ellomyr" begins as a tiny village in the wilderness with a strange stone at its center called the Trilling Shard.... #scifiart #scifidaily #rpgart #wilderness #moors #scififantasy #ellomyr #numenerarpg #rpggame https://www.instagram.com/p/B9DeTMzjDr8/?igshid=ef4ao1qkh7rp

On the 21st day sharing my #Numenera paintings for @MonteCookGames, #Ellomyr reaches its final form as the amazingly weird city it was always meant to be! #SciFiSunday #scifiart #scifi #sciencefantasy https://www.instagram.com/p/B9NpffyD5N7/?igshid=18gv14i76lnf9

#ellomyr for #numenera from #montecookgames And also the #PlayersGuide and #BuildingTomorrow

But anyway, he stumbled out of the shard, confused. And he stumbled out of the city. And this time, the god offered no resistance.

The world falls away around me.

Darrion slipped in first, his thin frame brushing past the thick rocky spikes. Then went Gaven, then Ofra, the Tactus, and lastly Malco. Malco stayed behind the Tactus to help pull it back out in case it’s long body wasn’t able to fit through the cramped hole, but apparently there was no need because Malco just stood back and watched as the chitinous sections just slid into the earth until the were obscured by a turn in the rock. Malco took a deep breath.  .....  “HAAAaaaaaa” and began to descend. The rocks banged his elbows as he moved, pinched his sides, and blocked his knees as he searched for foot holds. The tunnel was not even close to straight down but soon after the first turn everything had gone dark. As his body began to fatigue from the exorcise he could no longer hear the sounds of his the rest of his expedition below him over his own laborious breaths. Malco, was utterly alone. Seconds stretched into minutes, which stretched into hours, each time he had to rotate around the bottomless cliff to find a foot hold felt like an entire day went by. It was warm in the pits, it felt like an oven. maybe it was just the exorcise, but Malco didn’t care at the moment, he just wanted it over with! There were two occasions where Malco found a corpse pinned between the stones. One was an Ithsyn which had been unlucky enough to fall down the hole a awhile back, its long blue neck shredded and caught between a particularly sharp crack in the rock. The other was a woman, she seemed to be carrying a large amount of gear on her, gear the got snagged on the stone and pinned her to the cave, she probably died of dehydration.  Malco couldn’t see enough of her to know if he knew her. Maybe she was on the last expedition, the one that didn’t make it. Malco doubted it, but he couldn’t be sure, the darkness would probably hold that woman’s identity a secret for all eternity. Far below the world above. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “So why is it called The Crypt anyway?” Gaven looked down at the map Darrion had drawn out before them, ink still wet.  “That’s because allot of poor souls fall into the pits that lead down to it and get stuck along the way.” Darrion put the pen back into the block of liquid ink floating near his head. “When we go in, we have to make absolutely sure we’re not taking anything that can get snagged. Otherwise we might die down there.” Darrion stretched his arms out and looked upon the group. They were in Malco’s house, just days before they had to leave for the Valley of Sin. Darrion knew he volunteered for this job, but was having second thoughts. He didn't like going to the Crypt.  He didn’t lie to the group, many unlucky adventurers or wandering beasts fell into the caves and died, but the real reason why it was called The Crypt was because his dad was buried there. Locked away in a cyber coffin, deep below the drit, just as he had wanted. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Maclo slipped. The fall was short. He was able to catch himself with his magnetism, if it wasn’t for the fact that he had been practicing for so long, he might have died much like the Ithsyn still above him, his body torn open by the sharp, all consuming rocks.  He reach out for the tuft of fur at the end of his pole... but it wasn’t there. He had left the pole back above ground. It would have been too big to take into the Crypt anyways Gaven was barely able to carry his sword through and the pole was a good length and a half longer than that. The absence of the fur bothered him, not because it felt nice. No on the contrary it had grown coarse and ragged with age, but because it reminded him of a time when things were simpler. Times when the fate of Malco’s little world wasn’t in jeopardy, back when he still lived with his family. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “When alone in the dark, one must learn to face themselves. You can’t run away from it, because there’s nothing to run away from. It’s just you.... and the dark. See, people have this strange habit. When something bad’s about to happen we close are eyes. We’ve all done it. We hide inside ourselves and block out the truth of the world around us. To hide within our fantasies and pretend that everything's going to be okay. That the world isn’t as dark as we think it is. But when you close your eyes to hide from the darkness, the only thing you’ll discover is that the darkness was already inside you. ... I like the dark. I’ve been crawling through cave’s and ditches since I was a little kid. My dad threw me into random pits and forced me to get out on my own.... I learned allot from him, he was always an honest man. I could see the worry on his face as he watched me climb from the tiny holes he dug. I could see the joy on his face as I brought back weird machines I found combing the fields. I could see the sadness on his face as mother left us and took my siblings with her.  He was always an honest man. Perhaps that’s why I like the dark. Some say it obscures the world, that it hides the true nature of how things are. But I disagree, maybe it’s just me, but when I’m in the dark.... When I’m locked away with nothing but my thoughts and worries... I’m the most honest man I’m ever going to be.”                                                                                                       ~ Darrion  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gaven could feel the warmth of his blade leak through the scabbard as it brushed against his leg. Normally it was comforting, now it just added heat to the inferno around him.  The tunnels in the Crypt were unnaturally warm, even the tunnels he had explored for the rocks he used to cook with weren't this hot. If he hadn’t been warned of this before hand, he might have tried to descend wearing all his gear, and might have died of heatstroke before even setting foot in the Crypt.  Darrion said it got better once you reached the caverns, that the land was naturally expelling heat away from the machine below, or so it seemed. The bodies were disturbing, but it wasn’t anything Gaven hadn’t seen before. He thought Ofra had stopped a ways above him, for he couldn’t hear her incessant complaining about the manual labor she had to preform, but that might have just been a trick formed from the fact that he could only hear his own breaths and grunts as he slowly crawled down the shaft.  He wasn’t as thin as the rest of them, his elbows scarped along the walls, leaving slight trails of blood as the chalky spirals cut into him. What he wouldn’t give for some plate armor, or at least some knee pads right now. Maybe he’d fashion some once they got back to the surface. The glass blades could be warped under the heat of his sword, so he’d be able to bend it easily.  He paused for a sip of water, it was already warm... disgusting.  He dropped a small ball into the waterskin and the liquid began to cool, but it took awhile to take effect. As he waited he began to watch up above him, he found a nice resting spot where he was able to prop his back against the wall and stand with his arms free at his side. Though he would have to move once the shrimp caught up to him.  He didn’t see her. Maybe she stopped after all. Maybe a gap was too large, or she found something on the body. Gaven didn’t think she could resist looting a corpse for it’s cyphers. Gaven thought it rude since he already had what he needed back at camp and on his person, but to each their own. He took a sip from the skin again. Nice and cold. He’d have to be careful not to swallow the bead, wouldn’t want his stomach juices freezing, but it was well worth the risk. He screwed the top back on and began to crawl down the rest of the pit. He cracked his sword a bit before he left to see if the light would be able to catch any of the other climbers. None. Gaven shrugged, and carried on, waiting patiently to reach the bottom.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “No plan survives first contact with the enemy, and your greatest enemy is yourself. In all my years of wandering around the world, I’ve found that the most common reason for someone to die out in the wilderness is not because of random chance or poor planning, but because they didn’t execute the plan correctly. I’m not saying fear is a bad thing. No, fear is what has kept me alive for so long, but when someone diverts from the plan because they begin to panic, that’s when people die, and it’s usually more than just the person who panicked in the first place.”                                                                                     ~Gaven Selby ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The body felt new. Skin, fare. Clothes, clean. Muscles, hardened but movable.   These were not the traits of a body long lost to the world above. As Ofra continued her examination of the body, she began to search the corpses tools. There were a few pings of Numenera that caught her attention as she scanned it. A few cyphers, a circular synth disc that needed to be identified later, and some sort of large ring with devices along the edge. Aside from those, the person had a few rations, and some vials of various liquids that were a toss between enhancement drugs, and poisons. She would have to ask Gaven about them later.  She could already hear the swordsman calling her shrimp now. Ohhhh did she wish that when Darrion measured Gaven’s blade that it would’ve ended up to long, but no, the chef got to keep his prized knife and she had to leave Avis behind. The world wasn’t fair. if it was, she would have been blessed with the height of her siblings, but she stood a measly 4 lengths off the ground to the tip of the skull. Though what it took from her height, it gave back to her mind. She was smart, always had been, and loved to tinker. She used her small frame to climb into holes as a kid and find different Iotum and use it to craft cool machines for her family.  Aswalys crafting, always working. That was her motto, her outlook on life. Awhile back she met the Tactus, a charming fellow who shared the same interests as her. They could talk for hours with each other about how different Iotum reacted with one another, or how the properties of some Iotum made them better for powered or non powered machines. Each conversation she had with him was the best she ever had, and he couldn’t even talk. As she finished picking through the bodies remains, she began to descend deeper into the pit below. Her small size would normally be a hindrance for climbs like these, but she had a series of small mechanical needle like arms that extended from the back of the hands and feet. She came up with the idea from watching the Tactus walk. It has saved her massive amounts of time when searching through holes. Giving her the ability to climb even nearly flat surfaces with ease.  As she left the body above her, she said a prayer, nothing fancy, one of the many hundreds of prayers for safe passing to the afterlife that she knew. She selected one from a tribe of abhumans that live far north of here in a series of mountains that occasionally raise into the air for months at a time.  The abhumans drop their dead through shoots in the ground while the mountain is floating. Then as the mountain descends it buries the bodies deep below the ground. the tribe believed that when a person died, their soul began a journey to the center of the world. Once there the soul met with the creator of the known existence and melded with it’s body to become one with the land around us. They buried the bodies in this manor so that the souls could have a head start on their journey to the core, she thought it appropriate. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “When the last one of us hit the floor of the Crypt, I let out a sigh of relief. It had only been an hour, but it had felt like an entire day had passed. We stood in the cooled chamber and drank from our waterskins. Gaven pulled out his sword and used it as a torch, lighting up the passage with a bright blue glow.  Moss covered the wall, and the floor was littered with small shrubs containing the bright red fruit that was seen on the surface. I don’t know how the fruit made the journey up from the Crypt down below. it seems impossible for a small plant to make the journey that nearly exhausted 5 able-bodied people, but stranger things have happened. Our time in the darkness had begun, and it was going to be allot longer than we expected.”                                                                                                      ~Ofra  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is part of my contribution to the Numenera2 Kickstarter for the Trilling Shard. The Kickstarter can be found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/montecookgames/numenera-2-discovery-and-destiny/description

As the bay sled moved over the land, the only noise it made was the clattering of boots as people walked or shifted inside it. Darrion and Ofra were looking through some devices that allowed them to survey the area. Gaven was resting near the back making sure the teams belongings stayed secured, and Tactus was coiled up in the corner hanging his torso over the edge scanning the drit below them for useful parts.  From the sled, Malco could see the shape of Acel’s windrider circling over them like a scavenger. Acel was the true reconnaissance unit after all, and had a cartridge that would produce a large Numenera charged cloud of green smoke that would be used as a signal in case the team was in trouble, and if that failed, Acel was told to abandon them.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “The windrider circling above our heads reminded us that death could come at any moment. I mean no ill will to Acel when I say that. He was only trying to help...                    but it’s disturbing to think that you’re entering a land so perilous that the only way someone could help you, was for that person to leave you to die so that they can get someone else to collect your bones once the monsters left.”                                                                                                ~Gaven Selby ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- After about 4 hours of travel into the Valley of Sin, the team found the location they would be spending the next month in, the ravaged land. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “As we went over the 20th or so hill of bog, we realized how advantageous the sled was. I was able to keep us high enough to escape any altercations the mist could bring us. It was tough, but I think I should be able to do the same with a full sled as well.       You should have seen how the ravaged land looked in the morning sun. The grass had been torn away, leaving miles of chalky stone filled with tiny spiraling holes that led into the drit. Most were tiny, like a sponge, but some split the earth into massive toothy maws ready to swallow people that walked inside.  Darrion knew the place well, said that predators avoided the place. He was right....                                                                       Everything avoided that place.         The calls of birds went silent, the winds died down, and the plants refused to grow. All that remained were those tiny ball like fruit, ruby in color, and no bigger than a small glass bead. Darrion warned us never to eat the fruit, but with that many people stuck in one place for that long, someone had to try.....                                                                                                                           I just wished we had listened.”                                                                                              ~Malco Harley ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The ground crunched below their feet as they walked, their clothes sticking to their bodies from sweat. Some fared better than other, Ofra floated around in Avis, and if Gaven was feeling the least bit uncomfortable by the difficult terrain, he didn’t show it.  The Tactus walked before them, it’s many chitinous legs easily flowing over the fractured landscape. When the ground opened up into bottomless pits, the Tactus walked over them, allowing the others to use his body like a bridge. When the ground shot up into a massive cliff, the Tactus moved its legs like a ladder and allowed them to climb. From this point on, movement was slow. They left the sled back at the base, they wouldn’t need it for awhile and wanted to make sure that even if Malco died, they could still make it back out. They were walking out towards their excavation site. A place Darrion knew by heart, a series of tiny interlocking tunnels that Darrion called the “The Crypt”. They stretched far below the surface, deep into what Darrion claimed to be massive caverns of Iotum, they sprawled out far below the porous rock above.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “When we came across the entrance to the crypt, there were a few laughs of nervousness as people began to realize the reality of the situation. Each time we came across a cave, we wondered if our trip was finished. Each time we saw a rift through the drit that descended into the darkness below, we knew it was finished, all of us except Darrion that is.  He just kept skipping along, jumping the pits and clinging to handholds, like he was greeting an old friend.                                                          Just how many times had he been out here. Those caves, those rifts, we crossed on our way to the crypt, those would have been a godsend compared to where Darrion decided to finally descend.”                                                                                                                ~Ofra  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When he stopped, Darrion waved for Acel to land, he wanted to make sure that Acel knew exactly where they were going.  The hole Darrion pointed out in the drit was no larger than the body of a slightly larger adult human. The edges were spiked, and grasped at the air like the teeth of some horrid monster. Near the opening was a small circle made out of some kind of purple paint that was drawn onto the rock. “This,” Darrion stated pointing to the incredibly cramped hole in the ground, “is the Crypt.” ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “It was surprising that the Tactus was able to fit in at all, apparently it’s body can be squished and still function normally, Avis wasn’t going to fit inside, so Ofra had to continue down on foot. Acel stayed above so he could warn the others if we didn’t make it back up before sundown.                                                                           It wasn’t until nearly 3 months later we found out that he had indeed called for help, but....                                                                                                                              Well, we decided we wouldn’t ever talk about that again.”                                                                                        ~Gaven Selby ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   This is part of my contribution to the Numenera2 Kickstarter for the Trilling Shard. The Kickstarter can be found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/montecookgames/numenera-2-discovery-and-destiny/description