Slivers & Shards: Jaunt Info

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Slivers & Shards
Post-Apocalyptic Psionic Kaiju Funtimes
December 1 - January 24

First was the Age of the Ancients. Nine billion Ancients ruled over all of the Living World, ripe with mushrooms, blue with water. They lived on the High Tables, for they were ascended beings and knew the secret of breathing there. They reigned, we think, for a hundred thousand years, since the birth of the world. They knew Paradise, and they built Heaven. But they were fools, and used fire in war. They burned the World down.

Second was the Age of the Mystics. For ten thousand years after the Death of the World, the Mystics built Spires on the edge of the Tables, unlocking glorious powers and sheltering a chosen few - eight million, it is said. They ruled whole Tables, but no one ruled all the Dead World. The eight million Mystics knew secrets of fire the Ancients never did, and while the World was not theirs to travel, everyone in it lived safe, and no one died before they turned one hundred. But they were fools, and their power ran on water. The seas dried to dirt, and the Mystics died.

Third was the Age of the Shadow. For one thousand years, the Umbrian Protectorate united the Vales of the Fallen World. They could not live on the High Tables any longer, and all people were born thirsty and died thirsty, but they were still united, and they were careful with their resources. They ruled Nations the size of Vales. They delved in the depths for crystals, and found they could place thoughts in them. Many of the secrets of the Ancients and Mystics still rang in the depths. The world had died twice, but the Umbrians thought if they could control the minds of everyone, they could prevent a third apocalypse. But they built the hellstones, crystals that could destroy Vales who wanted to think for themselves. And the hellstones, being a violation of the earth as the Mystics violated water and the Ancients violated fire, drew the third apocalypse up from the heart of the world. The Nation-Eaters devoured Vale after Vale, and the Umbrian overlords were shattered for their hubris.

This Age doesn’t have a name. It’s been a hundred years since the Fall of the Protectorate. By the end of the Age there will only be 60,000 people left, they say. Nobody rules anything larger than a Spire, and anybody who thinks he rules a Spire himself best look out. The secrets of the past were lost when the Umbrian Shadow fell. The only secret knowledge people have now is what their grandparents told them - and their grandparents knew the world would end again soon. “Don’t fuck up the air,” we remind each other. Earth, Fire, and Water all turned against us, abandoned us. The world may be nothing but Slivers & Shards, but this is all the world we got left, and it’s going away soon. Hang onto it.

World Info | Surviving Flora & Fauna | Fallenheart Locations/Map | Vale Locations/Map | Glossary | Casting Call/Plot Role Announcements | Psionic Powers in the Vale | Spire-Specific Powers | Skills | Infiltrator/Investigator Roles | A Day in the Life | Calendar | Infiltrator Directory | Player Resources | Questions | Plotting

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WORLD INFO

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The Umbrian Vale and its 60,000 people are the last known survivors of the fall of the Umbrian Protectorate and the Nation-Eaters, a century ago. With the fall of the Protectorate, all knowledge and technology, which had been stored on psychic ‘servers’ called Shades, was lost. People today only know the skills their grandparents knew - basic psychics, wilderness survival, mushroom agriculture, making bread and beer. There’s little metalworking and absolutely no writing - it’s not just that people are illiterate, but that after a thousand years of psychic group minds, even the concept of writing information down has been lost. Small city-states called Spires, governed by councils of powerful psychics, form loose coalitions and governments, but daily life is just about survival. No Nation-Eaters have been seen in twenty years - but there’s been no contact with the two other Vales in that time, either. The people of the Fallen World are fiercely independent, and any sign of someone trying to become a central authority or a single ruler is met with violence - everyone hears tales of what it was like when everyone dreampushed while they slept, and Adepts adjusted their thoughts and feelings into harmony. Fuck that noise. Losing trains, libraries, and irrigation was worth it to be individuals again.

Each Spire is a walled city on the lower slope of a mountain whose peak pierces the clouds (about three kilometers up). Around each Spire are Terraces, where mushrooms and grain are grown. Famine is common; weather is harsh. The world has ended three times, and may end again soon. But in the meantime, everyone’s going to fight to stay alive, and find joy and meaning together, just like in every other time.

SURVIVING FLORA & FAUNA

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In the Fallen World, only a few species survive. All are rare - indeed, all are endangered and in the process of dying out. Fungi, not plants, are the primary food staples; meat is so rare that it is only eaten in extreme conditions. There are so few surviving species that everyone knows all of them. Nation-Eaters and humans are not included on this list.

FAUNA
Mammal
Molerat - burrowing hairless rodents, blind and aggressive, that live in subterranean hives.
Fang Addax - an antelope with pointed canines. Drinks no water, only blood. Used for milk.
Pole-badger - a hostile, foul-smelling mustelid.
Porcupine - a dense-quilled and vocal rodent.
Burncat - a medium-sized wildcat with a bristly ruff and dark brown, scorched-looking fur. Burncats can burn psi to increase their speed.

Reptile
Asp - an extremely venomous hooded snake.
Rain Toad - a bulbous, waddling toad that can inflate itself into a sphere; a sign water is nearby.
Silt Eel - grinning eels that burrow through the sea.

Bird
Ostrich - the largest animal other than Nation-Eaters. Fast runners; rarely captured as mounts.
Penguin - these divers on the edge of the Sea of Silt become red-faced as the day grows hot.
Chucker - these small, rotund birds live on Spires and glide down hillsides when they run.

Thanopod
Scorpion - the most common animal. Most are extremely venomous.
Tarantula - the largest of these are 20” across.
Dowsercrab - small, horseshoe-shaped creatures that race across the desert towards water.
Isopods - foragers in the Sea of Silt up to 2’ long, the closest thing to fish in the ecosystem.

Winger
Locusts - swarms of 6” grasshoppers. Most common meat animals. Dangerous to crops.
Moth - fluid-siphoning pests that congregate around trees. Dangerous in large numbers.
Antlions - halfway between dragonflies & butterflies as adults; monstrous larvae.

Insect
Ants - inch-long stinging insects that swarm across the desert at dusk and dawn.
Superworms - segmented giant mealworms, up to 8” long, destroy stored wood pulp.
Lice - some grow large enough to be seen, but not above ½”.
Termites - mound-builders.

FLORA
Trees
Date Tree - not half a dozen in the Vale, dates are considered the height of luxury.
Acacia Tree - thorn trees, home of ants and pole-badgers.
Ghaf Tree - perhaps one per Spire survive, pods used to season lentil curry.
Saltbush - coastal shrubs, scraggly and inedible, rendered to pulp vats for mycos.

Grasses
Teff - grain, grown on Terraces & used for bread.
Rye - grain, grown on Terraces, used for bread, porridge, & beer.
Saltgrass - covers the ground near the Silt Sea or salt flats; inedible.
Needlegrass - common near oases, pointed and dangerous.

Water-Bearers
Mistletoe Cactus - purple-brown, spindly, needled; most common plant in the Vale.
Lithops - little plants that look like stones; contain water inside.

Roots
Walking Leeks - vegetables; they are rooted shallowly and slowly drift along dunes.
Lentils - dietary staple, grown in caves or on terraces.
Horned melons - rare, spiky underground fruit; good source of water.
Tumbo - plant whose leaves look like straps; hosts many yeasts & molds.

FUNGI

Yeasts - slimelike fungus, sometimes grow in large, bubbling fields.
Black yeast - grows where nothing else will, the ‘weeds’ of the desert.
Red yeast - used to ferment & preserve grains.
Milk yeast - used to grow yogurts and cheeses.
Baker’s yeast - used to make bread & beer.
Seething yeast - dangerous but valued, caustic, breaks down tough food & cooks without fire

Lichens - flat carpets of hard inedible fungus.
Rock moss - shaggy carpets of this grow across rocks.
Boneflag - this orange lichen only grows near or on dead animals.
Paintmoss - bright-colored, clings to any flat surface, used as pigment & dye.

Mushrooms - stemmed fungus with fruiting heads; most of what people eat.
King Cap - common mushroom, food staple, grown on terraces.
Earthstar - star-shaped husk, food staple. Squirt spores, dead stars roll like tumbleweeds.
False earthstar - like earthstars. Tough-fleshed, smell bad.
Shaggy-mane - wild-foraged mushroom used in bone marrow soup.
Agaric - hallucinogenic mushroom, used as seasoning or in beer.
Miracles - spongy-capped, delicious, rare.
Sheikh truffle - rare, delicious, grow mostly by acacia roots.
Siltfish - floating inedible mushroom on the Sea of Silt. Burned for fuel.
Sandal’s friend - little fast-growing, inedible mushrooms that sprout around latrines & similar.

Phages - flesh-eating fungi.
Hair-eater - ringworm.
Nail-eater - a fungus on the nail beds, causing rashes and athlete’s foot.
Mind-eater - inhaled, rare, causes brain abcesses.
Rock-eater - a fungus that quite literally breaks down rocks; rare and caustic.
Scarbiter - a fungus causing existing scar tissue to swell and spread.

Mycos - these mushrooms only grow on wood; cultivated on vats of wood pulp.
Quorn - fibrous, bluish whisps of fungus, meatlike in texture.
Blight quorn - a poisonous strain of quorn, almost identical,.
Chaga conk - black, shaggy, faintly poisonous vitamin supplement, & sleep aid.
Reicathic conk - disk-like mushrooms, rare, eaten to enhance psi power when Burning.
Bearded tooth - beardlike clumps of highly nutritious fungus. Prized delicacy.
Grass soot - a black particulate plague on trees and grasses.

Pathos - all used as poisons or bioweapons.
Vale feverberry - causes lung fevers; little spotted fungal bodies scatter hillsides.
Purple ergot - hallucinogenic poison, paralytic in quantity, used in beer.
Salt mold - grows on salt flats and seashores,
Tumbo mold - the choking black molds and plaguebearers in tumbo leaves.
Frostbite’s friend - a phage that takes root in chilled flesh.
Dowser’s cotton - a form of white mildew, only blooms near water.
Malak Mashit - a mushroom containing hideously deadly poison.

FALLENHEART LOCATIONS/MAP

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1. The Qanat is a horizontal channel cut deep into the rock, which acts to capture and collect moisture. As the only source of surface water for the community, it is guarded constantly and rationed carefully. Each citizen receives two liters per day.

2. The Grand Menagerie is an open-air zoo with twists of thorny acacia-wood fencing. Smaller animals have cages of copper wire. The Menagerie contains a breeding pair of every animal known to exist, and the skeletons of many extinct species.

3. The Market was once a station for Umbrian Protectorate hovertrains. The tuning-fork pylons the trains ran over and between stretch out into the desert, but the platforms and resting cradles have become stalls in what is now an open-air market where caravans from every Spire sell their wares. There is no currency; all trade is based in barter or labor, but the most valuable transactions always involve psychic energy stored in Moonfall crystals.

4. The Theater. A round basin with a circular stone stage and stepped bench seating, the Theater is home to not only dramatic productions, but regular speeches, newscriers, and other civic announcements.

5. The Calculator Council, which consists of the 5 most respected Factors in the Spire, meets in a hexagonal basalt chamber. All deliberations are open to the public from the gallery surrounding the chamber, but only one person may enter the chamber and address the Council at a time. Council meetings occur at dawn or an hour before dusk, on any day two or more Councilors wish to meet.

6. The Avenue of Pillars extends between the Market and the Council chambers, a wide road paved in fossil-heavy limestone, with five-meter tall squared off pillars on either side. The four faces of the pillars are carved to resemble the profiles of humanoid figures - one ostrich-headed, one with a strange, distinctive head shape and antelope horns, one sphinxlike, with a human face but with a burncat's mane, and one with a bald head and goggles.

7. The Mural Plateau is a flattish, sloped slab of stone roughly the size of a football field, upon which lichens are grown, tended, and scraped into artistic patterns of color.

8. The Factors' Tower is a five-story tower with an open amphitheater the size of a classroom at the top. It is where Factors primarily practice and are taught the Vale Arts, and occasionally where exhibition matches with Vale Artists from other Spires occur. It is guarded, because most of the primed and unprimed crystal in the city is stored within the Tower. The Tower also serves to watch over the Western Walls

9. The Watchtower, a slowly-tilting edifice of rough, crenelated sandstone seven stories tall, looks out over the Eastern Walls and the closest terraces.

10. The Statue Garden is simple a section of slope where large chunks of granite, basalt, sandstone, and marble have been deposited after removal from the Quarries. Some of them are marked with paint as intended for some construction project or another; the others may be carved by anyone with a chisel, and have become a haphazard, unfinished gallery of sculpture in many different styles.

11. The Quarries are stone pits from which large amounts of useful, workable stone have been harvested; they lead to extensive underground tunnels and galleries excavated along the paths that lodes of interesting stone strata lay in before being harvested. Some tunnels may connect as far away as the Caves.

12. The Shadow District contains half a dozen pinecone-shaped towers of ceramic and polymer - early Umbrian construction, said to resemble the towers of the Mystic Age. This neighborhood escaped damage in the Fall a hundred years ago, and is still actively being scavenged; but Umbrian security systems involving primed crystal with deadly psychic powers inlaid make it risky. The buildings themselves have not been scavenged for materials because the ceramics and polymers used are resistant to steel tools - much tougher than any modern material.

13. The Walls. Half retaining wall, half defensive measure, these steeply angled walls section off the Spire from the Terraces below. Most of them lie along cliff faces or embankments, so while they are as high as forty feet tall from the base of the wall to the top; from the Spire-side they're rarely more than five or ten feet tall, with walkways on top and guardhouses for shelter and defense at either end.

14. The terraces are just that - terraced fields of mushrooms, rye, and teff on the mountainside; irrigated by qanat-channels into the hillside. All dead animals are buried in the fields as fertilizer.

15. These storehouses and silos contain goods traded in the market, as well as stockpiles of furs, leathers, dried meat, grain, or mushrooms, and occasionally scavenged objects from the Umbrians. Most things stored here are considered common property by the city; those that are private property are under guard.

16. Residential Districts. Most homes are sandstone and brick; one-roomed domed stone huts, roughly egg-shaped, with a small oculus at the top; this being the most efficient shape for maintaining a steady, cool temperature during the day.

17. Blacksmiths, guardsmen, and Vale Artists all use this area to store whatever leather or bronze armor, and whatever bronze or iron weapons they can make - or more rarely, steel, crystal, or ceramic weapons made over a hundred years ago, before the Shades fell.

18. Umbrian Ruins. These blasted-out shells of buildings and crumbling wrecks were destroyed during the fighting a century ago. They've long since been scavenged for anything useful, and are slowly being broken down for the stone needed for new buildings. Hopeful prospectors lead salvage teams through them anyway, but useful finds are rare.

19. These natural limestone caves curlicue deep into the rock. Guards search them regularly to make sure moths and locusts don't start breeding grounds within the city. They're frequent clandestine meeting spots, as well as housing many of the Spire's stills.

VALE LOCATIONS/MAP

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Fallenheart: Once the center of the Umbrian rail lines, Fallenheart is still a center of trade, exchanging caravans of silt, spores, crystals, and iron. The psionic arts of Fallenheart focus on detection, assessment, and mathematics. Practitioners of these arts are known as Factors.
Spire population: 650.
Terrace population: 5,500.

Fallen Wrath: The largest and most spread-out of the surviving Umbrian terraces, Fallen Wrath exports silt to the inland terraces; trains warriors, mountaineers, and sailors. The psionic arts of Wrath emphasize augmenting physical abilities and converting passionate emotion into psychic power. The warrior elite of Wrath are known as Katadors.
Spire population: 900.
Terrace population: 20,100.

Fallen Heaven: Once a center of the arts and cultures, a perfectly pruned paradise, Fallen Heaven has been thrown down, its every luxury looted, the people who survive there sripping its bones for anything useful. Fallen Heaven’s psionic arts focus on manipulating and breaking down nonliving matter, and its fearsome, furious practitioners are known as Nectors.
Spire population: 250.
Terrace population: 1,900.

Lodestar: Once the capital of the Umbrian Protectorate, Lodestar is now a decaying slum, a ruin of a ruin. It would be abandoned if it were not for the iron mine which still produces most of the Vale’s wealth. There are not enough smiths who know how to work the iron, however, and the stockpiles decay. The psionic arts of Lodestar focus on producing energy and telekinetic manipulation. Those who dare to admit that they still practice these Umbrian arts are hated and resented as much as they are needed, and they are called Magnators.
Spire population: 1,150.
Terrace population: 10,200.

Scatter-Spore: The fungal groves of Scatter-Spore make it a center of food… and one of disease and illness. The psionic arts of Scatter-Spore emphasize psionic persuasion of plants, animals, fungi, and other organisms and chemical manipulation of the ground itself. Their agricultural adepts are called Genitors.
Spire population: 950.
Terrace population: 15,050.

Stricken Star: Once a center of trade and defense between Vales - but no living beings have come from the west in years, and few expeditions return. Those that do did not find their way through the passes. The psionic arts of Stricken Star focus on defense, debilitation, and large-scale manipulation - applying psychic adjustments to crowds and armies. Their practitioners are called Vocators.
Spire population: 350.
Terrace population: 3,150.

Moonfall: The crystal quarries of Moonfall produce more psychic material than anywhere known. They are a still and peaceful people; to be otherwise above a deposit of psychically resonant crystal is to risk mental imbalance, without the protection of the Umbra. The Cleritors of Moonfall are trained in mnemonic arts - the psionic arts of memory.
Spire population: 400.
Terrace population: 5,150.

Cabal: The terrace called Cabal is where Cabalists are trained - those who specialize in experimental or psionic arts beyond the usual. Cabal has retained more knowledge of times past than the other Umbrian cities, but shares none of them. The only remaining hovertrain car runs from Cabal to Lodestar, but only when the Cabalists want to impress.
Spire population: 150.
Terrace population: 750.

GLOSSARY

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(pending; if you don’t understand a word, please ask under the Questions header, and we’ll define it here)

CASTING CALL

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If you’d like to sign up for a plot role, let us know which one here. Casting will be done during the day on the 29th.

Cabalist Conspirator - a sinister but powerful psychic whose believes their knowledge is the key to salvation for the world, and walks the line between mentor and villain.The player taking this role must be comfortable with disturbing ruthlessness for the greater good.
Magnator Scion - a direct descendant of the last Umbrian Protector, raised in secret to have great psionic power and believe in their destiny as a leader, but knows many would kill them on sight. Can be played as an innocent idealist or an entitled aspiring tyrant.
Prime Factor - mathematical savant, most respected member of Fallenheart’s Calculator Council, struggling to be a person and not just a role.
Wastelands Survivor - a Nector or Katador who has settled in Fallenheart and now leads caravans and rescue teams, comfortable in the open wastelands.
Grafted Genitor - a refugee and reluctant witness to trauma whose homegrown bioweapons include a potentially world-changing secret. The player taking this role must be comfortable with moderate body horror.
Bandit - a jaded cynical raider & renegade, formerly either a Katador or Nector, self-serving.

PLOT ROLE ANNOUNCEMENTS

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Once parts have been cast, we;ll have the players who got them announce them here!

PSIONIC POWERS IN THE VALE

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The following psionic powers are universal among all infiltrators, and can be mimicked by investigators after very brief adjustment/observation periods:

Telling
-The ability to send and receive psionic messages to people within line of sight, or people you know, regardless of distance. These messages:

- are limited to four sentences; each sentence to six words.
- may contain a single sensory image
- may contain a single emotional impression

These messages may be sent regardless of any connections to any psychic networks.

Pinning
-The ability to sense the precise location of psychic skill usage within five miles, to deliberately share one’s location with others pinning, and to sense the general direction of the nearest or most intense source of psychic energy, regardless of distance (so someone pinning can always locate the nearest city - but direction only, not distance; and if equidistant between two cities, will only sense the larger or more psychically active city).

Tekeing
-The ability to, with intense concentration, lift and move a single object of less than ten pounds at a rate of five feet per pound per second, at a range of up to thirty feet. (That is, a five-pound object may be moved up to five feet per second; a ten-pound object at six feet per second, a one-ounce object at eighty feet per second (but all eighty feet of movement within thirty feet of you).) This same ability can be used to slow or stop the motion of an object, at the same rate, and is known as a teke-shield.

Kything
-The ability to share hydration, nutrition, and physical/emotional energy with a single individual within thirty feet. If this person in turn shares with another individual, it’s possible to daisy-chain the effect indefinitely. Individuals in a kythe-link automatically distribute their emotional reactions evenly among all in the link, as well as sharing food, water, and sleep (or dividing starvation, thirst, and fatigue). All individuals in a kythe-link must share equally, and when the link is broken, the redistributed energy remains divided evenly.

The most common use of kything is for a well-fed rescuer to give nutrition and energy to a person being rescued from the wilds, so they can all reach shelter. The second-most common is to create a chain of warriors who feed on one another’s rage and share pain evenly between them. As a note, this shares pain, but the wounds remain on the bodies they are inflicted on. Kything does not permit healing of injuries to be shared.

Burning
The ability to convert your own psychic energy to physical energy, or vice versa. An individual ‘burning psi’ is using mental or emotional energy to nourish, refresh, or stimulate their body - they may be able to move fast, use their muscles to the utmost of their physical limits, or walk through a desert with no water for two weeks; but may not us psychic powers while burning (and needs an ongoing source of psychic/emotional power). An individual ‘burning flesh’ is directly converting calories or other stored physical energy into extra psionic power, as much as doubling the effectiveness of psychic skills.

Burning is extremely lossy - that is, the transfer of energy is inefficient. Burning flesh might make someone lose a pound of weight in a minute or lead to ongoing physical issues. Burning psi creates long-term mental trauma, slows down thought, causes symptoms similar to shock, and may lead to long-term reduction of powers or, in severe cases, neurological injuries. Burning is considered wasteful and stupid - but everyone knows someone who wouldn’t have survived if they hadn’t burned at a critical moment.

THE FOLLOWING ABILITIES ARE MORE SPECIALIZED, and each count as their own skill:

Dreampushing
The ability to act as a psychic battery for others while asleep. Dreampushing has almost no cost for the ‘battery,’ but requires trust - the waking individual you’re ‘pushing for has complete access to your unconscious mind, and can read, implant, or remove thoughts and emotions with impunity. Any Traveler with Psychic Computer may use Dreampushing while they are dreaming during the Jaunt, but must take it as a skill to keep it post-Jaunt.

Shading
What Travelers call Memory Sharing, combined with Network Archive Retrieval, Network Bookmarking, Psychic Upload, Psychic Snapshot, Sensory Livestreaming, and Psychic Download: the ability to store knowledge externally of one’s mind. A shade, the network or server on which knowledge is stored, lasts only so long as it is powered. In the days of the Umbrian Vale, the sum total of a millennium of psychic, academic, and technical knowledge was shared in the Overmind and powered by Dreampushing. All that knowledge was lost when the Overmind was destroyed. Post-Jaunt, it may be upgraded to one of those skills, or kept in order to be able to create a ‘private server’ psychic network.

Astral Tripping
The (very rare!) ability to maintain consciousness while dreaming, communicate deliberately and intelligibly, travel through dreams, and sort possible real and unreal elements apart from one another. Trippers can also move their dream-self as an invisible, intangible psychic presence flying through the physical world at up to twenty miles per hour, but no farther than eighty miles from their body. Travelers with Dream Communication, Ombrandanti Bloodline, or Lucid Dreaming/Spirit Travel are considered to possess an equivalence for this skill. Someone who is Tripping cannot also be Dreampushing, as the two states of consciousness are antithetical to one another; however, you can know both skills, and use one at a time.

Reaving
Mind-probing. In-Jaunt, this catchall skill covers almost all intrusive psychic powers, and is equivalent to Filter Intrusion, Mind Reading, Mind Trick, Psychic Echo, Sensory Eavesdropping, and Psychic Mirror. With no psychic network, these powers are limited to thirty feet in range. Post-Jaunt, it may be upgraded to one of those skills.

Re: PSIONIC POWERS IN THE VALE

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A note on Psychic Defenses in the Vale: Psychic Protection has only partial functionality against Vale psychics during the Jaunt.

Likewise, there is no dedicated Vale skill to defend against reaving - without a reservoir of psychic energy like the Network to draw from, who wins a psychic contest is a matter of will against will. Kything with an ally, counter-Reaving your attacker, or burning flesh to make your mind more powerful are the most common defenses, along with stabbing someone who invades your mind; but all of these can be countered in turn. Vale Psychics believe that the best defense is a good offense.

SPIRE-SPECIFIC POWERS

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Factor
A Factor, while kything, may automatically use Psychic Computer with everyone in kythelink. Factors do not face the normal limitations on Pinning - a Factor always knows the direction of every city-sized psychic presence within a hundred miles, and may use the precision elements of pinning at a distance of twenty miles. They may detect and interact normally with anyone Tripping. A Factor may correctly solve any single math problem at a time that they have seen solved in error - including, for example, “how much force will it take with this bow I’m holding to hit a stationary target four hundred feet away?” But not “if this running warrior is varying speed and direction as they charge me, how much force will it take to shoot them three seconds from now?” Factors must see the calculation fail first - which makes others regard them as withdrawn and arrogant. Factors tend not to see the percentage in correcting that perception.

Katador
A kything, enraged katador is immune to pain, fatigue and reaving, and may burn psi while kything. In place of a teke-shield, a katador may automatically staunch their own wounds with telekinesis. This does not prevent damaged muscles or organs from failing, but it does stop blood loss. Katadors deliberately cultivate a short fuse - there’s no such thing as a katador who keeps their cool under pressure or in the face of a slight or insult.

Nector
A Nector may Teke to disintegrate chemically stable matter at a rate of one pound per second. All living matter has ongoing chemical reactions, and cannot be targeted by a Nector’s ability. A Nector burning flesh may separate acidic and alkaline elements in what they’re breaking down, creating caustic chemical dusts and vapors, or may allow the friction of the dissolution to transfer heat or friction along the surface of the dissolving substance. Nectors using these abilities together can precipitate a large number of nasty chemical reactions, but are also among the best blacksmiths in the Fallen World. Nectors’ abilities run on adrenaline, and as a result Nectors are very high-strung. Unlike Katadors, fear and anxiety are as likely as rage. Startled Nectors tend to reflexively dissolve objects near them. Nectors are considered to be capricious and unpredictable, and in a world where nothing is wasted, their ability to turn objects to dust is both frightening and disgusting.

Magnator
Kything Magnators can combine telekinetic power by powers of two rather than linear progression. (Two Magnators can lift four times as much, three can lift eight times as much, etc). A Magnator can burn flesh to produce electrical energy roughly equivalent to Liminal Energy, and can use a chemical battery as a source of power to burn from. Admitting to being a Magnator outside of Lodestar is often an invitation for a lynch mob to form, as the Magnators of the Umbrian Protectorate used their skills to power nationwide utilities with dreampushers, but brainwashed those dreampushers with right-think to believe in self-sacrifice and the Magnators’ fitness to rule. Magnators’ tendency to burn flesh means they’re likely to be scarred and undermuscled, and they often have shortened lifespans.

Genitor
Genitors may Tell, Pin, and Kythe with animals, plants, and fungi. While kything with a non-sapient life form, they may burn flesh to generate energy for that life form. Most Genitors cultivate dormant fungal colonies within their own bodies, and may use them as bio-weapons in self-defense. They are not immune to damage from such activated bioweapons, although they can end ongoing damage by deactivating them again. A Genitor who has seen combat frequently very often has compromised lungs, muscle capacity, or even brain damage from repeated exposure to active bioweapons - but Gentiors make food, and so they’re the most revered adepts in the Vale.

Vocator
Vocators are not limited by single-target restrictions on their psionic skills. They may divide their power and attention between as many as four targets at once. Vocators with reaving skill can force a kythe on others, and use Psychic Stun, Psychic Spear, Psychic Hypocognition, and Sensory Deprivation on those they’re kything with. Vocators have a poor sense of individuality, and often take on the emotions of others around them, even when not Telling or Kything. Vocators aren’t really ditzy - they just get confused about where they stop and you begin.

Cleritor
Cleritors remember ages past. While more Cleritors know how to shade than any other type of Vale adept, that isn’t how. Cleritors can choose to kythe only physically, or only mentally. A Cleritor kything mentally with a dying individual may choose to retain up to six memories of that individual, or store those memories in unprimed crystal. A Cleritor kything physically with a wounded individual can share physical health equally, sharing injuries - but Cleritors generally deny having such a power, because their purpose is not to risk their lives in healing, but to gather the secret knowledge of generations past. Skilled Cleritors may even be able to read memory off fresh corpses. Kything with the dying is a deeply disturbing experience. Cleritors tend to be morbid, depressed, and old beyond their years. Living around psychically active crystal also makes them seem placid and muted in their reactions, for fear of activating unprimed crystals. Cleritors have one other notable power - they can kythe while in Astral form, meaning they can be mentally present at a battle while physically distant.

Cabalist
Nobody except Cabalists knows how Cabalist skills work or what the limits and drawbacks of Cabalist skills are. For more information on how exactly Cabalists do, see here; the mods recommend only reading this if you’re considering playing one.

The common perception of Cabalists is that they possess no manners and no boundaries or sense of privacy, shamelessly asking any question, transgressing any rule of manners. This perception is, of course, one hundred percent correct.

SKILLS

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Vale Psychics - everyone on the Jaunt gains this skill automatically, and will be able to replicate the basic psychic powers of the Vale later simply by using the Psychic Network. This skill does not need to be claimed, and is listed here to clarify that its capabilities are available without a skill claim.

Dreampushing, Shading, Astral Tripping, Reaving - as above. Requires Vale Psychics.

Vale Arts - the psychic skills of each Spire. When taking this skill, you must select Factor, Katador, Nector, Magnator, Vocator, Genitor, Cleritor, or Cabalist. With rare exceptions, it is impossible to master more than one Vale Art.

Wastelands Survival - surviving on a handful of grain while traveling in temperature that oscillates between roasting and freezing, finding water in the open desert, and weathering dust storms, yeast fields, and moth swarms is a highly specialized skill set. We do not recommend keeping this skill, as it is not likely to be relevant in endgame.

Improvised Weapons - the ability to turn your clothes and the environment around you into deadly fighting tools through desperation and ingenuity.

Crystalline Storage - the ability to store strong emotions, vivid sense memories, mundane skill instructions, or raw psychic power in an unprimed crystal, and access that stored thoughtform regardless of local psychic conditions or networks. Each time you take this skill you may apply it to up to three crystals, which may be re-used, but which may each only store one emotion, memory, instruction, or dose of power at a time. Using a crystal empties it of the stored thoughtform. It takes eight hours to refill a crystal with a new thoughtform.

INFILTRATOR/INVESTIGATOR ROLES

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Players will start out near Fallenheart, but as Fallenheart is a trade hub they can be natives of any Spire, trained in any of the Vale Arts. For an idea about Infiltrator roles, see A Day In The Life. There will also be refugees from Scatter-Spore and Lodestar, and Investigators can easily hide among the refugees.

Pre-Moebius veterans have been here before, and can ask the mods for memory-jogging prompts here.

A DAY IN THE LIFE

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When you wake up in the morning, you begin burning psi right away, to dull the hunger pangs and thirst. It’s just after dawn, and the temperature outside has risen from around 0 Fahrenheit/-20 Celsius to 50 F/10 C. If the burnt, hazy clouds in the sky clear enough for you to see the orange sun, the apparent size of a tennis ball, then in the late afternoon temperatures may spike as high as 115 F/45 C; on most days, though, it won’t get much warmer than this. As you emerge from the single-room stone hut you share with the two or three people you trust most, you scan the horizon for any signs of a dust storm, smog storm, or salt wind. They come about once every five days, and are more likely on clear days than cloudy days, as the heat boils energy out of the air.

You make your way downslope from the upper Spire, wary of cutthroats and bandits, but knowing as long as you’re not caught away from people, you have nothing to fear. Most people are good, and most people defend each other. You wait in line outside the qanat, a shadowy tunnel into the hillside, for a heavily armed guard with real iron weapons and defined muscles that say they eat too well to burn flesh. The guard escorts you in, lets you fill a single waterskin, and escorts you out. You take one drink - just one. You don’t stop burning psi; there’s no food in your house.

You move further downslope, past the angled stone walls of the Spire and into the Terraces. You’ll spend three or four hours grinding thorn-tree branches into pulp for the myco vats; carefully hoeing rows of walking leeks back up the dunes so they don’t escape; and carefully checking the rye fields for any sign of fungal plagues - grass soot or ergot. If you see a locust, you kill it right away, and inform the field proctor. You can keep the carcass to roast tonight - the only meat you’ve had in a year. You’ll find ergot on the grain (there’s always some) and give half of it to the vat-masters, keeping the other half for trade. A few lumpy pieces will get you a bowl of bone marrow soup, made from the skeletons of dead and salvaged animals, plus whatever foraged mushrooms people were willing to share and trade. Only after you’ve had a cup of soup - enough for the day - will you stop burning psi. You’re still hungry and thirsty, but only the dull ache you’ve felt every day of your life.

“Don’t fuck up the air,” you advise everyone at the soup cauldron, and they’ll laugh and tell you the same.

It’s getting close to noon. You go home to nap in the shade for an hour or two. After that, you have a choice. You could go to the Grand Menagerie, and look at the animals again - two of every kind known to exist in the Fallen World; or to the Mural Terrace, where they scrape the lichen into beautiful paintings; or to the Theater; or to the base of the Spire, to practice Vale Arts with the Factors there. Whichever you choose, now that you’re not burning psi, you occasionally hear the voices of friends in your head, Telling you what their plans for the evening are. When no-one is looking, you Teke a mushroom or two out of the feed bins in the Menagerie, maybe. You might Pin a particularly good lichen-painting so you can find it again in a few days.

Then there’s a commotion. Sirocco, the Tell goes around - a real man-pusher of a wind has kicked up a dust storm to the north. A moment later, the Tell says Caravan in Danger! and pins a location in your mind. Just like that, everyone you can see is running towards the desert, grabbing heavy cloaks veils or masks, and any waterskins or bags they can carry. You don’t ever leave a caravan in the open desert during a storm. When there’s trouble, everyone who isn’t a bandit helps out, always.

CALENDAR

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Year 99, Day 299 (December 1-10): a refugee caravan near Fallenheart is recovered in a dust storm, and reports the destruction of Scatter-Spore. The refugees are taken in, and the Factors begin a desperate plan.
Year 99, Day 314 (December 11-20): Either raiding or diplomacy in Fallen Wrath & Fallen Heaven.
A LIMINAL EVENT (December 21-January 4) the Jaunt will freeze in time and pause for the holidays. The causes of this freeze will be revealed when the event goes live.
Year 99, Day 333 (January 5-14): The caravan to Cabal.
Year 99, Day 350 (January 15-24): One last chance.

INFILTRATOR DIRECTORY

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Once you’ve solidified your plans, pop over here to report your character’s faction.

PLAYER RESOURCES

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(pending...)

QUESTIONS

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This Jaunt was brought to you by Matt.

Re: QUESTIONS

[letsgetdowntobismuth]

What do Nation Eaters look like? I'm curious as to what everyone is so scared of.

[seestheworld]

With regard to Shading and Reaving, would whichever network skill those resolve to post-Jaunt be one you need to have the necessary prereqs for, or could it be any of the listed skills regardless of prereqs?

Re: QUESTIONS

[truerevelation]

How do Psychic Protection skills interact with the Vale psionics - can it block Reaving or Pinning, for example, or can the Intrusion Notifications branch catch Reaving in the act?

Re: QUESTIONS

[lightnovelexperiences]

Do Kything and Burning have any distinctive visual effects?

Would obviously inhuman Investigators look more or less human on the Jaunt, or would it be more hilarious if Jaina-Three Tails here stuck out like a sore thumb?

What assistive devices or psychic skills are available for individuals who cannot walk, such as Madoka Mawaru?

Re: QUESTIONS

[letsgetdowntobismuth]

When someone is Dreampushing, that's essentially pushing more fuel into someone else's stores for them to burn, right?

Apart from that and the Magnator's chemical battery usage, is it not possible to use an outside source as burn fuel at all? And for a Magnator, what counts as a chemical battery?

Re: QUESTIONS

[youandyoualone]

What kind of naming patterns are appropriate for the setting?

Re: QUESTIONS

[letsgetdowntobismuth]

sorry for fifty different unrelated questions How would regenerative/restorative skills (eg Psychic/Liminal Healing, Ichor etc) work to counteract burning damage?

Also a mild clarification: burning in general typically goes for body fats first, but Magnators are special in that they can go straight for proper muscles instead?

[crouching_sin]

What's the general skin tone/hair tone/racial equivalent makeup of this group?