#mighty dry

‘And you say the people of the valley spoke a variant of the Flerenti dialect? Fascinating. Just fascinating. And you are sure no one else knows of this? Oh, why do I ask? No reason, my friend. No reason.’ Ferantin-ssi, Truth Hunter Agent before strangling a merchant

Name: Lassamu-ssa

Habitat: Everywhere

Lifespan: 40 - 80 years

Appearance: The Lassamu-ssa possess the appearance of enormous jellyfish. Their heads are large and clear, their brains and organs floating in a gelatinous prison. They have no discernible eyes or mouths and they never seem to need to eat or ingest water. When they speak it is with echoing, forlorn voices which seem to come from all directions at once. Lives: The Lassamu-ssa are a widespread people known for their fanatical interest in the histories of the world. Most are scholars in what remains of the organised communities of the Mighty Dry. They are jealous hoarders of knowledge and will often use underhanded means to secure both data and artifacts from the jeweled lost ages of the past. It is said that more knowledge has been lost to the vaults of the Lassamu-ssa than has been discovered in the modern age.

The Lassamu-ssa are a solitary people who dislike crowds and most of all do not look fondly upon spending time with their own kind who are likely to desire their secrets. Many powers in the world have attempted to wrest knowledge from the clutches of the Lassamu-ssa, but most choose the rite of Ascension to giving up their secrets. During Ascension a Lassamu-ssa shrinks in size over the course of several hours until it disappears from the world completely. Although the Lassamu-ssa believe the rite takes them to the Everdrive where their knowledge is stored until the very last of their kind ascends and forms one perfect being, the act is effectively suicide for the physical world.

’My head/eye/mouth spoke of great torments? How strange. I apologise for the fright it must have given you. It is an unfortunate affliction of my people. I believe wizards were involved. Care to join me in the pipe den?’ Jefu Jasu the Jebu Jam Merchant

Name: Jelu Jalom

Habitat: The Wasp Fields

Lifespan: 450 – 700 years

Appearance: The Jelu Jalom are man-sized creatures with the outward appearance of giant toads. When they open their mouths, it is to reveal a grotesque bouquet of grey and decomposing human arms which they can use to manipulate a wide variety of objects. Their two bulbous eyes are a milky blue and their eyesight overland is very poor, though they are possessed of a kind of dark vision. On the back of each Jelu Jalom there is a human face which looks as if it had just emerged from beneath the Jelu Jalom’s sticky, moist skin. A membrane can cover this face, acting like an eyelid. The Jelu Jalom often closes this eyelid to muffle any words coming from the face which are not the Jelu Jalom’s. Sometimes the eye-faces scream, or weep or gibber uncontrollably, but usually they speak in a deep, impassive voice. This is the true voice of the Jelu Jalom.

Lives: The Jelu Jalom are a cosmopolitan folk who purport to descend from holy beings. They are most populous in the Wasp Fields, large wastes littered with what appear to be enormous silver wasp’s nests. They live inside these nests, which they call ‘motherseeds’ and claim that their ancestors arrived from Heaven inside these cyclopean vessels to spread the holy message of the gods.

‘When I close my eyes I return there, a wide and lush fantasy that may as well be a falsehood. We have fallen far, but I fear there are depths yet unseen in our future.’ Jue’li of the Cutting Eye Name: Elran

Habitat: The Crying Citadels

Lifespan: Indefinite

Appearance: Elran, it is said, are made in the image of ancient gods, and it is easy to believe this claim. They are strange looking creatures. Humanoid, but too long of skull and limb for comfort. Their arms and legs are skeletal, fine golden skin woven across soft and pliable bones. They move unnaturally, not like predators, not like living things at all, but the wraiths of long-gone emperors. Their grey eyes are multi-faceted and shallow on their smooth faces. They are largely hairless, though some sport fine wigs made of strange spidersilk.

Lives: The Elran are the lost children of a green world. It is written in the emerald pillars of the Crying Citadels that before the world dried up, Elrani cities grew from the canopies of mighty forests, their glorious towers piercing the heavens themselves. The Singing Fortresses and Dancing Fleets made the Elran masters of the world, for a time. But not even their greatest rhythm sorcerers predicted the sharp decline of the world.

One by one, their fleets failed and their fortresses sunk beneath the sands. Even their cities dried to dust as the unyielding heat of the sun turned the great Darare into the Mighty Dry. The Elran invested everything into the creation of the moving sanctuaries now known as the Crying Citadels. Meant as eternal habitats for the children of the gods, most have stalled or crashed to the ground. No one knows for sure why such great wonders ceased, but the Sorrow Reticulators theorise that the gods who once tended the world’s great gardens have abandoned them for some great sin of the ancestors.

'I am looking at you looking at my crystal skull, and this looking pleases me not at all. I would ask that your looking relocates to safer objects.’ Dudau the Dedu Name: Dorundi

Habitat: Abandoned holds of the Duarar

Lifespan: 140 - 400 years

Appearance: Dorundi are a stout folk, like their ancestors the Duarar. Unlike the Duarar, their appearance is unfriendly to human sensibilities. Their beards are thin and mangy, the coarse feel of steel wool. Their eyes are deeply sunk into their skulls, completely black and implacable. The Dorundi skin is stretched thinly and strangely over their thick skeletons and is pale, almost translucent in daylight. Lives: The Duarar were a dying race of subterranean builders who had once hollowed out the world beneath the Mighty Dry to turn it into a glorious paradise of underground halls and cities. But much like the great river, Duarar blood was thinned by millennia of a harsh world and they faded from the pages of history. Before their demise, it is said the greatest of them sacrificed their bodies to the sand and stone and created the obsidian eggs from which all Dorundi hatch.

Bottle: 16oz can

Glass: Goblet

Cost: $1.99/can

Pours: Almost clear. Super light yellow, with a good deal of bubbles at first that dissipate quite quickly.

Smell: White wine -- light yet sharp acidity.

Taste: More white wine, with perhaps a splash of champagne. There's almost no apple flavor at all -- it's just really dry. Truth in advertising. It's not bad.

Overall: If you're in the mood for white wine or champagne but all you've got is this, you'll be just fine. It's a perfectly good cider, just know what you're getting into -- it's mighty freakin dry.

Juice Factor: 1/10