Ruk is pronounced like duke.
Ruk has hidden in Earth's shoals since before humanity evolved. Creatures that were never human populate Ruk, because fiction from somewhere else birthed this recursion. Ruk is a land of amazing technology, miracles of biological enhancement, and feuds that have burned since before humanity evolved.
In Ruk, the walls of the world are a literal fact, visible as massive organimer spars that pierce, protect, and lie shattered across the landscape. Organimer is a level 6, quasi-living, metal material
Outside the relative safety of Harmonious, the capital city, threats abound in the form of spore worms, venom troopers, constructs from the Qinod Singularity, and glial storms.
Ruk's factions, powerful and ancient, strive always against each other. Lately, their strife is coming to a head, and the fate of Earth hangs in the balance.
Ruk was forged in the Strange as a massive “lifeboat” fleeing the apocalypse of a civilization in the universe of normal matter being consumed by a planetovore. This lifeboat shipwrecked on the Shoals of Earth, where it has remained caught to this day. Ruk is far older than any human civilization—older even than humanity itself. Everyone knows these things, but the specifics of the events have somehow been lost to time.
For instance: What was the name of the world Ruk fled from, and what was the nature of the planetovore responsible? What was the shape of the original species Ruk natives sprang from, and why does the True Code not more clearly reveal this phenotype? Speaking of which, what led to the confusions in the True Code, and how did the All Song emerge? Did Ruk set off at random through the Strange, or did they have a specific goal in mind, as hints suggest? Most blame the shipwreck itself for the loss of knowledge, but that's only partly true.
Any devoted apostle of the True Code knows that a prior disruption happened sometime earlier, while Ruk still journeyed through the Strange. It seems likely that an external event in the Strange severely damaged Ruk and compromised its ability to survive. This damage was not only to the physical structure of Ruk, but also to the underlying True Code, on which everything depended. (The event is also when Ruk took aboard the Qinod Singularity, which manifests from time to time in the Periphery.) It's all just guesswork at this point. But devotees of the All Song make a compelling case and say evidence for the All Song's inception appears around this time. They say the All Song arose first as a way to repair the damage done to the True Code, as a patch over what was lost with a chance for something new, and as a means to salvage a recursion on the cusp of collapsing into nothing. In a way, the All Song might be a divergence of the True Code. True Code apostles call that idea heresy, but the idea does lend the All Song even further importance in certain circles.
The heart of Ruk is an artificial construct. It is, for lack of a better term, a craft that once traveled through the Strange. True to the nature of the Strange, however, this craft is a recursion, created through the power of its creators' imaginations and their ability to impress their will on the roiling chaos there.
Unlike most recursions, Ruk could move, traveling down the informational canals by constantly writing and rewriting the laws that govern the Strange. And move it did, for its builders had fashioned Ruk as themeans to escape a disaster (presumably, one or more planetovores that had consumed their native world, though histories are fragmented).
Ruk suffered a few terrible mishaps along the way, but it continued onward until one day, millennia after its journey began, but even more millennia before today, Ruk was caught fast.Inexplicable properties from a nearby world had stopped its progression. Ruk had run aground. The ship was now damaged and stuck—a shipwreck.
As years passed, some of those native to Ruk began to think of the new world—Earth—in whose shoals their craft now lay as a potential permanent haven. They saw that Earth was unique. Perhaps it was no accident the ship had fled in Earth's direction through the Strange in the first place, though no single piece of historical evidence remains to validate that idea. Many in Ruk decided that Earth might be a place whose proximity could offer true shelter from those that destroyed their homeworld. Yet others reckoned that Earth's destruction by the planetovores was the only thing that would free them from their predicament and allow them to continue on their way.
“We are ancient, for the True Code winds through us.” ~Chant of the Embodiment
Biological form is relatively fluid in Ruk thanks to access to relatively quick genetic redesigns and modular grafts, but the natives also revere the True Code, the original basis of their race. Ruk scientists constantly look for fragments of their lost genetic origins that the True Code represents. Ruk religions, such as the Church of the Embodiment, honor their ancient ancestors, and some believe that a “scion of the True Code” will arise and make himself or herself known as a messianic figure.
The All Song sings through every cell of all engineered tissue in Ruk. A biological data network, it allows those of Ruk to store information and communicate over vast distances. A minor connection to the All Song exists for native Ruk residents at all times, but most use devices called umbilicals to tap more directly into the network. The presence of the All Song—some might say the consciousness of it—encourages more and more development in the arts of genetics and bioengineering through facilitation and advice. There are those who fear that the All Song is a direct contradiction of the True Code—a viral presence literally unwinding the natives of Ruk from their original heritage and taking them farther away from their revered past.
The so-called “riddle of Ruk,” then, of which philosophers, poets, and priests speak, is the juxtaposition of the True Code and the All Song—the call toward the past and the impetus toward the future—and its effect on all the natives of this world/craft. Most embrace the contradictions of their nature, the contradictions they find in life, and even the contradictions of the situation in which they find themselves wanting to see Earth as both friend and foe.
Humanity first became aware of Ruk's existence only a short time ago. The forensic pathologist Rafaela Rocha in Sao Paulo ended up with a corpse on her table that outwardly appeared to be human but was decidedly something else. Before she could even consider submitting her findings to the science journals, her work inadvertently triggered a kind of organic device within the corpse, translating her and some of her coworkers to Ruk. The team of Brazilians survived in what they first thought was a hostile alien world, then believed to be an alternate, parallel dimension.
Whatever Ruk's true origin, it was clear that it was a place where genetic engineering and biotechnology had risen to heights undreamt of on Earth, but also a place inextricably bound to Earth. After all, many Ruk natives look like humans, which was why it was all the more surprising for Rafaela to learn that she and her team might be the very first humans ever to come to Ruk. And perhaps even more surprising, it seemed that people from Ruk had been traveling to Earth since before recorded history. It was even probable that a few significant figures from Earth's history were, in fact, beings from Ruk.
Rafaela and her team spent many days in Ruk, passing as natives thanks to being translated into the recursion. They finally came to the notice of a Quiet Cabal initiate named Shallarum-ahmak, who took Rafaela and her team under his wing. If the Karum or another less Earth-oriented faction had recognized the explorers for what they were first, things might have gone far differently for everyone involved.
Rafaela Rocha: level 5; psychically learns one random fact about a person or location that is pertinent to a topic she designates once per day
Ruk is small and sparsely populated. Most people live in the capital city, known as Harmonious, while others live in smaller, scattered communities in the Hub or Periphery. Over half the population works in sciencerelated fields, whether as bioengineers, genetic technicians, or as workers in the processing plants who take harvested biological matter and create whatever is needed. Even themetals, plastics, and other materials in Ruk, which would seem to be inorganic, were originally organic material. The most popular building material is organimer, a quasi-living metal.
Food is created artificially, using resources taken from the biomass of regions called the grey forests. Many simply use nutrient injections rather than eat.
Only about half the inhabitants of Ruk experienced a natural birth. The others were grown in vats. Regardless, familial connections are carefully monitored due to the genetic lineage, but they contain only passing emotional importance. Children are raised communally. Those with great promise are quickly adopted by a powerful faction and trained in a valuable profession.
With few exceptions, every Ruk native speaks the native language, Rukic, as well as at least one of th emajor languages of Earth (typically Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, or Arabic). When someone translates into Ruk, she chooses the language she wishes the translation to provide for “free.” Learning other languages is something a player character can choose to do the old-fashioned way, if desired.
Ruk has no central government. Instead, a number of factions with various agendas provide individual power structures. Small, often clandestine wars between rival factions are conducted all the time. The largest and most powerful organizations include the following.
Largest of Ruk's factions, the Church of the Embodiment believes that adhering to and preserving the True Code will result in a messiah that will bring peace, order, and stability to Ruk.
So-called nihilists, the Karum believe that if Earth were destroyed, Ruk would be free of its pull. Karum agents travel to Earth frequently in the guise of helping humans advance their knowledge of science and high-energy particle physics. What they are really attempting to do is create conditions that might result in a planetovore finding and destroying the prime world. A Karum agent with one of the best records in advancing the cause is Dadanum-tal, though on Earth he goes by Dr. Gavin Bixby, professor of nuclear research.
The counter to the Karum, the Quiet Cabal is an organization with a covert arm seeking to preserve Earth, for they believe that if Earth is destroyed, Ruk will be as well. A secret war has waged in Ruk and Earth for millennia between these two groups. The Cabal has no single leader, employing many self-starting agents to accomplish its goals.
A particularly powerful faction in Harmonious, this group is interested in the advancement of science and the people of Ruk as a whole. The Choir is willing to sacrifice the needs (and even the lives) of individuals for the good of the race. Choir-Scientist Ummi-natar is one of the most wellknown advocates of the “Unification,” and his wise and calming words do much to promote the position of the organization. Most people outside the Tower of Unification don't know the kinds of experiments Ummi-natar commonly performs on living and usually conscious subjects. Some might call those experiments questionable.
Unification is the radical philosophy some in Ruk preach. Unification proposes that the True Code and the All Song be synthesized into a single entity, and suggests that hey may already be, in fact, alternate sides of the same coin.
Choir-Scientist Ummi-natar: level 4, level 6 for all research-based tasks Unification is the radical philosophy some in Ruk preach. Unification proposes that the True Code and the All Song be synthesized into a single entity, and suggests that they may already be, in fact, alternate sides of the same coin.
To an Earth native, the faction of Zal appears very much like a large and wealthy corporation. Zal's goal is ultimately the advancement and profit of its members, in particular those at the top of its hierarchy. Zal controls more of themobile factories in the Periphery than any other faction, although they have a powerful presence in Harmonious as well. Led by charismatic and loquacious Chief Advancement Officer (CAO) Sinixtab, the company's products and services are ubiquitous throughout Ruk. The most prominent of these are themany All Song communals that citizens, no matter their allegiance, can enjoy at no cost.
Sin-ixtab: level 5, level 6 for all interaction tasks
Ruk was originally a near-perfect disk. As the millennia passed after it ran aground in Earth's shoals, Ruk began to grow like a living thing. This organic “edge” to Ruk is called the Periphery. Over time, it began to grow slowly. In recent centuries, that growth has accelerated so that today, the edge in any given region of the Periphery usually grows about a centimeter, but sometimes up to a meter or more in a day.
Ruk's central portion is often referred to as the Hub or the Core. Most inhabitants dwell in the Hub, in Harmonious. Areas beyond Harmonious, both in the Hub and in the Periphery, are primarily used for resource harvesting (organic matter from the grey forests being the most extensive). The farther one travels from Harmonious, the more dangerous a frontier Ruk becomes.
Although the inhabitants use terms that can be translated as “day” and “night” (as well as “weeks,” “months,” and “years”) to mark the passage of time, Ruk is forever enshrouded in twilight. Ruk has no sun, nor does its sky ever show stars, other than the ghostly form of the Earth itself and a few pale white lights seen in the grey mists—a result of the everpresent Strange that surrounds the recursion.
The damage Ruk sustained when it “ran aground” near Earth shaped much of its geography, even today. The massive disk broke, leaving upturned and twisted structural elements throughout much of the Hub. These are known as the Spar Jungles, and they are some of the most dangerous areas in Ruk, home to outlaw gangs and horrific wild beasts.
Between the Spar Jungles are the Shattered Wastes, debris fields that stretch for miles, often without much water or life. The spars are forged organimer, the quasi-living metal that Ruk was originally built from. Organimer heals itself if damaged, although if greatly damaged, it either dies or can grow back imperfectly, which has led to the wrecked and twisted landscape of Ruk. Damaged organimer (such as that used in the basis of Ruk itself) may continue to grow without bound, beyond the intent of the original designers.
Throughout Ruk, forests of exotic fungi grow, with fields of globular sporepods, broad mushrooms, and tall stalks of fruiting bodies. Most of these fungi grow very quickly, bloom, and then die in just a matter of a few weeks. This cycle occurs constantly, as Ruk experiences no seasons.
Traveling through a grey forest is usually dangerous, since the fungi produce hallucinogenic and poisonous spores in thick clouds. The only creatures that dwell in the forests are immune to these spores, although it is not uncommon for masked or biomodded explorers, hunters, and harvesters to enter for short periods.
Grey forest spores: level 4 hallucinogens that last for 1d6 hours, or level 5 poisons that inflict 3 points of damage every ten minutes for one hour
Huge mobile factories move through these fungi forests on hundreds of insectlike legs, harvesting material and producing biotech goods as well as food and substances needed for more biotech processes and experimentation. Zal owns many of these so-called “grey harvesters,” though some are owned by small co-ops, families, and not a few free-booting captains who make their haul by stealing from the harvests of others.
When Ruk became damaged, so did the True Code. The All Song was liberated in an attempt to patch the True Code, but in many places, the damage was too extensive. Bioelectrical fields remain upset even after themillennia, and no one has had the ability to set them right. Manifestations of this imbalance are called glial storms, and they appear to be moving cascades of scintillating energy. In actual fact, glial storms are discharges of built-up, uncontrolled neural discharges from the All Song itself.
Normally, these move across the landscape— usually around the Periphery of Ruk rather than the central Hub—at speeds of 10 to 20 miles (16 to 32 km) an hour. They are often a mile or more across, and they randomly burst with deadly energies and—even stranger—bits of information or random ideas, some of which have been known to drive people mad.
Glial storms are usually level 4 but can be as high as level 6 (inflicting damage appropriate to their level). A PC caught out in a glial storm must make Intellect defense rolls every minute or so, with a difficulty equal to the severity of the storm. Failed defense rolls usually result in Intellect damage.
Fortunately, glial storms are more rare now than they used to be.
The Hub is the original extent of Ruk, and the most important part of the Hub is Harmonious, the Glistening City. Besides Harmonious, just a couple of other regions of note can be found, mostly in the subsurface areas not normally considered part of the Glistening City. These regions are sometimes allied with interests in the city and sometimes at odds, but all of them depend on the resources available in the Periphery in one fashion or another.
Most places in the Hub are policed, monitored, and cleaned, though exceptions exist, especially outside Harmonious proper, but locations also exist within the city that are the opposite of glistening.
Besides Harmonious, the next most significant area of the Hub is the Glistening City's sister, the Shadowed City, which lies immediately beneath it. Beneath both (and interpenetrating all the Hub) is the Veritex, a system of subterranean tunnels.
At the very center of Ruk lies its largest and most sophisticated city, Harmonious. The majority of the city floats above the surface of the world, a multileveled horizontal metropolis defying gravity via massive and ancient technological engines. An undercity, called the Shadowed City, lies on the ground below and grows in size every year.
Harmonious is reached by flying craft and dozens of pneumatic elevator tubes that stretch down to the surface. (At one time, these tubes could be retracted for defense, but it's unknown whether themechanisms still function.) Given the nature of the city, people also travel from structure to structure (or between widely separated locations on the same structure) through a variety of rented craft, personal transport devices (wing gliders being most popular), and physical metamorphosis, using myriad aerial piers and masts placed throughout Harmonious. Some of these methods of transport are robust enough to serve travelers who wish to leave Harmonious (or even the Hub) behind and flit off over the near Periphery or even farther locations.
Living quarters make up a good part of Harmonious: over a hundred thousand people dwell in the Glistening City. But living in Harmonious isn't a right; it's a privilege, earned by keeping up one's standing within a recognized faction. Those who do maintain their allegiances are comfortable, are engaged in vital employment, have copious opportunities for entertainment, and suffer no lack of sufficient shelter, food, and social opportunities. Neighborhoods span multiple levels and are connected with glowing bridges, open balconies, and free-floating elevators (for those who don't have a wing glider handy).
Gardens shining with bioluminescent plant, animal, and even organimer flowers are quite the rage in Harmonious. Sometimes the fruits of such a neighborhood garden can rival the quality of products being produced by Zal and other factions.
The parts of Harmonious not given over to living quarters are a vast sprawl of faction administration buildings, markets, transformation hostels, tissue libraries, resource processing facilities, amusement parks, laboratories, All Song communals, pleasure quarters, and other areas that are more difficult to describe. At the center is the physical location of the Church of the Embodiment.
The many markets of Harmonious mostly exist in one magnificent swath of storefronts and galleries that ascend, in spiral fashion, a set of three interconnected large towers in the city. So bedazzling and bedecked with lights is the socalled Market Tri-Tower that it's possible the city gets its moniker from its glistening expanse.
The comfort that the people of Harmonious enjoy comes at the cost of their personal freedom. Anyone attempting to survive in the city without allegiance (or a contract) to one of themajor factions is going to find life difficult.
That's because a faction in Ruk is a different beast than a faction on Earth. A Ruk faction has the combined power of a corporation, a religious sect, and a political entity all rolled into one. Factions do more than promote a philosophy; each recognized faction sends a representative to sit on the Factol Council.
Representatives to the Factol Council are each supposed to wield roughly equal political power, but in practice that's not always true, which is why the council defers close decisions to the Office of the Arbiter.
Currently that office is held by Arbiter Maru-shtal, who made her name in the Periphery hunting spore worms and rogue Qinod constructs before giving up her weapons in return for the scintillating robes of office. As the arbiter, Maru-shtal has the ability to send directives to the Myriand, the faction responsible for keeping peace in Harmonious. Maru-shtal is direct, doesn't flinch in handing down harsh verdicts, and reacts poorly to bribes or other attempts to sway her arbitrations. This was demonstrated by the fact that Maru-shtal once had a twin brother. The Ankaseri faction attempted to use his life as a bargaining chip to sway her on a decision. Maru-shtal didn't hesitate in ordering a strike on Ankaseri's tower, courtesy of a host of Myriand, ending both Ankaseri's reign as a faction and her brother's life.
Factions come and go in Ruk, though the largest and most popular persist for so long that they may seem like permanent fixtures. However, as the once-powerful Ankaseri faction’s demise proved, even a large faction can stumble and fall. Ankaseri was a faction that dabbled in both consumer-grade and military-grade grafts, but it fell afoul of too many of its own internal secrets, which were finally “called due” by Arbiter Maru-shtal.
Arbiter Maru-shtal: level 7; Armor 4; four Myriand veterans are always close, acting as bodyguards
At the center of Harmonious is the Church of the Embodiment (also sometimes called the Cathedral of the True Code). The faction basilica serves as a residence, research center, and temple for disseminating information during public ceremonies. The church has many apostles, including Apostle Warad-chel, who is high in the hierarchy, but not so high that he can't go out into the field to defend the “interests” of the True Code. Warad-chel has been implicated in more than a couple of incidents that almost led to disciplinary action by the faction, but for reasons that are not completely clear, First Apostle Ah-kalla has refused to bring his disfavor down on his most favored of Servitors. In fact, the First Apostle has gone so far as to say that the True Code has never woken so strongly in a modern person as in the body of Warad-chel.
Apostle Warad-chel: level 5, level 7 for all tasks relating to seeing through guile and trickery
The church's overarching goal is to uncover the full and complete True Code. All its other practices, policies, and projects are a means to that end.
Those who become apostles of the church can take communion. According to the Church, when a wafer of bread is synthesized from the True Code, whosoever eats of it becomes a vessel of ancient Ruk, and thus they strengthen their ties to what is most important.
Whatever the process is, results are real. Anyone who takes communion gains an asset on their next Intellect-based task related to the True Code if the task is performed within an hour of taking communion. Those who take communion directly from First Apostle A-hkalla gain more significant advantages. (Most assume the greater boon comes about because of the First Apostle's deep knowledge, which is indirectly true: he uses a platter of the True Code to offer communion.)
First Apostle Ah-kalla: level 6; Armor 3; wields the communion platter of the True Code
The Church of the Embodiment knows that a little of the True Code lies in the genetic code of every Ruk native, beneath the humaniform phenotype, which is why the church sponsors several labs around Harmonious (and a few outside it) where genetic research is conducted. Currently, the church is investigating the possibility that the original Ruk form was humanoid, but more akin to Earth lizards than simians. This theory was suggested by a few artifacts found on Earth at the Al Ubaíd archeological site in Iraq from a period that predates Sumerian culture. The labs are looking for a slew of new volunteers to test this latest theory, though rumors suggest that for some reason the latest round of tests trigger dangerous mutations that can't be controlled.
Snippets of the True Code are sometimes found in the plasma and genetic code of newly generated creatures and plants that grow wild along the bleeding edge of Ruk. Church doctrine explains that Ruk's continual growth is a direct result of the True Code attempting to renew itself, iterating every year to find what was lost. Their faith is well placed, since sometimes expeditions to the edge stumble across genetic treasures. These discoveries allow them to use the True Code to accomplish tasks that previously required the All Song, such as was the case for biosplice companions.
Law and order is maintained in Harmonious by a host of battle chrysalides (Myriand volunteers and Myriand veterans) that patrol all the levels of the city, and sometimes even venture into the Shadowed City. A faction called Myriand maintains the host, but the label is often applied to the battle chrysalides themselves; when people talk about a Myriand or the Myriand, the y're usually referring to one or more lawkeeping battle chrysalides.
Myriand, as a faction, offers an odd sort of allegiance to its members. Instead of being a consolidated force of lifetime members, individual peacekeepers are composed of those who've agreed (or been sentenced) to give up their self-awareness for a period of time each day in exchange for payment (or as community service). When it's time for a faction member to go on shift, an attached biological pod activates and themember is metamorphosized into a battle chrysalid. While transformed, the Myriand loses all sense of its former identity and instead becomes part of a gestalt mind that operates through a secure layer of the All Song. Myriands are hypervigilant, without pity, and fearless. They obey the letter of the law but are also duty-bound to follow the dictates of the Factol Arbiter.
Unlike the True Code, the All Song is available to anyone who has the ability to plug in. That can be difficult outside Harmonious, or for those without a connection umbilical, but thanks to the efforts of Zal, All Song communals exist throughout the Glistening City. To an Earth visitor, an All Song communal looks like a large pillow room dotted with “pillars” composed of twining root bundles—a mass of public umbilicals. Anyone who lies (or stands) next to a pillar can use a free umbilical to plug into the All Song whether or not they possess any personal modifications, because the umbilical takes care of the interface.
People connect to the All Song for a variety of reasons—to pass messages, to read faction disclosures, to find inspiration, to do research on almost any topic, and sometimes to seek the All Song's legendary controlling intelligence (no one has succeeded at the latter, but it's a popular time-waster).
Unpracticed users of the All Song who first plug in are inundated by music, text, images, emotions, varying feelings of pressure, scents, and other sensations that defy explanation. An Earth visitor once described it as drowning in a social media ocean that wasn't restricted to a two-dimensional screen, nor just to sight and sound—an experience akin to taking psilocybin mushrooms or LSD.
A practiced user of the All Song can attempt to find out specific pieces of information, though that requires an Intellect-based roll, the level of which depends on how revelatory the information might be. For instance, basic facts about Ruk and the address of well-known locations within Harmonious are routine tasks, but the location of the Karum's secret stronghold (as opposed to its public faction headquarters) is at least a level 5 task, and accessing that information without drawing countermeasures is at least a level 7 task.
The All Song is also a great place for factions and individuals to send requests for aid or resources, and thus an ideal place for Ruk natives to find contract opportunities. The All Song sometimes makes connections to people in Ruk spontaneously and reveals unmet needs of all kinds.
Zal doesn't charge for regular access to any of its communals, and the more people who use the All Song, the more coherent it becomes, which in turn aids Zal's many research initiatives, such as their much-heralded recursion pod.
Despite Zal propaganda describing their communals as “the only place to safely connect to the All Song,” outlets for the All Song spontaneously sprout all across Ruk in both wild and natural areas, as if some underlying unconscious aspect of the recursion seeks to make itself known through a physical interface.
Anyone with an umbilical can connect to these to gain direct access to the All Song. In areas outside Harmonious, finding such an outlet usually requires a difficulty 3 Intellect-based task.
The Quiet Cabal isn't large when compared to Zal or the Church of the Embodiment, but it's well supported. Many in Ruk believe that Earth's continued existence is vital to Ruk's own, despite constant low-level propaganda to the contrary produced by the Karum.
The High Command is a slender tower with many levels. Particular level swathes are given over to a single function, including member quarters, tower security, biolabs of various sorts, a fusion lab where True Code and All Song research occurs in concert, holding cells for dangerous entities and objects, training rooms, and more. Right below the top level is a translation level set aside for those translating to and from various recursions and, of course, the prime world of Earth.
The Quiet Cabal has secretly foiled a handful of Karum attempts to bring Earth to the attention of planetovores. The most “famous” victory was when agents of the Quiet Cabal got funding pulled for a Texas-based high-energy particle accelerator that was so massive (a 54 mile/87 km ring) that it was almost guaranteed to ping the dark energy network when operating at full power. But thanks to the hard work of several secret agents, the Superconducting Super Collider never got far enough along to become a true threat.
The top level of High Command is always busy with Cabal members connecting and disconnecting to a pillar not unlike those used in All Song communals. Called the Pillar of Insight, this piece of living Ruk biotech is a limited (and completely firewalled) portion of the All Song that allows many minds to commingle, and from that commingling, come up with a synthesis of shared thought, ideas, and plans going forward. Thus the Pillar of Insight is the reason no particular individual or individuals lead the Cabal. Any agent in good standing plays a part in deciding Quiet Cabal policy by occasionally showing up on-site to interface directly.
When an agent of the Quiet Cabal requests a kit in pursuit of a specific mission, she can come to the tower level called Outfitting. Generally speaking, a kit can be any number of mundane things, of the kind described under Ruk Equipment. In addition to that, a Cabal member may take one object from Outfitting that serves as an asset to one task, including attack, defense, knowledge, and stealth. The asset is normally a pod, bioengineered spine, or other temporary enhancement to the agent's form. A given enhancement is placed into an agent's keeping only for the duration of a particular mission, and the Cabal expects it to be returned, intact, when themission is complete.
The fluid nature of the Quiet Cabal, with different agents serving different roles at different times, means that it's sometimes hard to know what to expect when dealing with any given aspect of the organization, which is why certain personnel remain in High Command to provide a sense of stability. These are called “on-site agents.” The most well-known on-site agent is Uttatum-tum, who is in charge of seeing to the needs of agents for lodging, recreation, and (for visitors from Earth especially) introduction around the Cabal. Uttatum-tum doesn't consider his job complete if newcomers don't have an opportunity to see the sights of Harmonious and sample its many wonders and delights.
Uttatum-tum: level 4, level 7 in tasks related to persuasion
The Consult is a large auditoriumlike conference room filled with threedimensional viewing technology of amazing holographic quality. After an initiative is decided by a session with the Pillar of Insight, it's useful for agents to talk about the process necessary to achieve those ends. Just as important, the Quiet Cabal often hires freelance contractors (people like the PCs, if the PCs are not already agents) to accomplish various steps toward those goals. Contractors don't get to connect to the Pillar of Insight, so the Consult makes such discussions and conferences possible and easy.
Several Earth humans were recruited by the Quiet Cabal from their respective military units, security companies, and related situations to form an elite group of operatives known as the Prime Element. The Prime Element works on the Cabal’s behalf on Earth, in Ruk, Ardeyn, and various other recursions, and in the Strange itself.
The Prime Element’s roster includes the following founding members.
Antonio Jesus Rodriguez Fuentes, “Chantiel.” Specialty: Weapons. Level 4; attacks as level 7
Salvador Amador Salvaterra, “El Trotamundos.” Specialty: Scouting and Tracking. Level 5, level 6 for all tasks related to perception and tracking
Bret “Ski” Holien. Specialty: Diplomacy. Level 5, level 6 for all tasks related to disguise and persuasion
Thaddeus Wend. Specialty: Field Medicine. Level 6, level 7 for all tasks related to diagnostics, first aid, and healing
W. Dove Boyett III. Specialty: Infiltration. Level 5, stealth as level 6
Lawrence “Elvers” Sica. Specialty: Poisons. Level 4, level 7 with poisoned weapons; keeps a pet spider in most recursions
Brett “Boodro” Bozeman. Specialty: Defense. Level 4, defends as level 7
The Karum's public faction headquarters is a floating organimer disc, its shape recalling Ruk's own. Members will say that the headquarters are not tied to another structure in Harmonious because it's intended as a visual symbol of the Karum's belief that Ruk's destiny can never be fulfilled while tied to Earth.
While that's a convenient secondary effect, the real reason the Karum faction house floats free is that mobility is a wonderful thing, especially for a group that sometimes finds its activities potentially too extreme for Myriand or other factions to ignore. The public faction house owes its aerial nature (and some of its internal defenses) to an artifact that emerged from the Qinod Singularity called the Air Engine.
Everyone in Ruk knows or suspects that the Karum keep a separate, secret stronghold somewhere else, and the Karum do not dispute it. Within this secret stronghold, the Karum marshal the greatest part of their strength in agents, weapons, and secret research projects. Only Karum members with high-enough clearance know where to find the stronghold, and only they have themeans to access it. What most everyone doesn't know is that the Karum secret stronghold is located in a mote of fundament out in the Strange, and the gate connecting the two locations is hosted from the guarded center of their public faction house.
From within their secret stronghold, agents of Karum infiltrate Earth, re-entering the prime world via other secondary recursions created to serve as gateways unknown by other factions in Ruk. One of these secondary recursions is where agent Dadanum-tal spends his off hours while not on Earth passing as Dr. Gavin Bixby, a man with a busy schedule consulting with various particle acceleration labs on best practices.
The Karum is led by two advocates of the faction policy. One is the Foreseer, a particularly vocal and long-lived woman. The Foreseer claims no other name for herself and says she can see the future—a future where Ruk collapses if its ties to Earth cannot be severed. The Foreseer is not one for subtlety, compromise, or catching flies with honey. Even within the Karum, the Foreseer is not trotted out much. Given that her biological functions are inextricably tied to the continuing functions of the Air Engine, though, she would be hard to get rid of.
Ubbar-zarim shares equal power with the Foreseer. Ubbar-zarim seldom goes anywhere without his pet koridle (a catlike creature with seven eyes) drooped about his shoulders.
This advocate is calm, reasonable, and given to compromise, both among members and externally between factions. Ubbar-zarim keenly appreciates the real dangers that severing Ruk's connection with Earth risks, but he still believes that Ruk can't survive unless that separation is made. If anyone in the Karum could be convinced that Ruk's separation doesn't have to spell Earth's end, it is Ubbar-zarim, but only with copious and legitimate evidence.
Among the many chambers set aside for projects is one particularly dangerous initiative about which not even everyone in the Karum knows the details. That's because Lead Geneticist Ledumzar is playing with fire by attempting to devise something he calls a Planetovore Lure. A Planetovore Lure is a collection of experimental equipment designed to artificially “ping” the dark energy network in the same way a fledgling civilization might. Due to the extreme dangers of testing the equipment, Ledum-zar is putting together a team to travel for several months into the Strange and then detonate the lure to see what happens.
Foreseer: level 5, level 7 for all Might-based tasks
Ledum-zar: level 4, level 6 for research tasks
Ubbar-zarim: level 6
Ealam-asi: level 6; always accompanied by six level 4 creature bodyguards
Kubbarum-dai: level 5, level 7 for all tasks related to stealth and thievery
The Shadowed City is by no means a lawless slum, but those who live beneath the Glistening City have definitely come down in the world, metaphorically as well as literally. Myriand doesn't always have enough hosts to properly patrol the Shadowed City, which is why traveling representatives of Shome criminal organizations thrive the re, offering various illegal items, favors, and other services that most citizens of the Glistening City would rather know nothing about. In addition to less savory fare, a lot of trade and manufacturing moves between Harmonious and the Shadowed City, which is why travel between the upper and lower city is a constant flow.
Runoff from the Glistening City above is not sewage, because specially grown organimer threads treat all of Harmonious's outflows. But the amount that falls from above is prodigious. Channels in the ground suck it underground, but the water wells up again in various parts of Ruk and helps feed the Collapsed Lake, Edge Lake, and Lake Zuhr.
Custom pets, temporary companions, bodyguards, and even poisonous assassins can be ordered for the right price from genetic engineer Ealam-asi. Ealam-asi works at a remove from his customers in a hidden location and rarely reveals himself. He prefers to interact with customers, if it can be called interaction, through a massive viewing wall that displays images of creatures available for purchase along a 100 foot (30 m) long and 20 foot (6 m) high surface. The images of potential creatures run, jump, frolic, or lurk according to each creature's individual nature. If a potential customer moves up to study the wall, lowlevel functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) devices read the customer's frame of mind. Then these devices create a display of an appropriate creature on the wall, whether that is one of the creatures already shown or a custom creation. To order the creation of a creature, the customer must merely touch one that is shown, which samples the customer's DNA. Bits are transferred by the touch (about 300, though costs vary), and within seven days the selected creature finds the customer, tracking him down by scent.
A popular destination for citizens of both upper and lower, the House of Kubbarum is run by retired celebrity thief Kubbarum-dai.
In addition to the libations, music hall, and public and private rooms where patrons can carouse, Kubbarum-dai keeps a trophy room where particularly valuable or sensational items he's stolen are on display behind transparent organimer panels, which he may deign to show to special guests. Hearsay has it that the retired thief paid every one of the victims double the price of the stolen items after the fact. In some cases, however, the insult of being robbed proved too much for the victim to accept. As a result, the proprietor walks around with more than a couple of death threats. Kubbarumdai doesn't seem too put out, and in fact he advertises his amazing abilities to anyone with a job that's fascinating enough to catch his interest.
Periphery Safari: The Church of the Embodiment is looking to mount a series of new safaris to check out an unusual nodule recently grown on the Periphery called the Thorn Castle. They hope the new discovery proves to be a True Code cache, but they’re worried about reports of bizarre flying guardians with coherent light weapons for eyes.
Law in Your Hands: The Myriand faction has discovered that someone down in the Shadowed City is kidnapping citizens of Harmonious, who are sometimes found later sans their grey matter. Additional contractors are being sought to investigate and deal with the brain thieves. Battle chrysalid forms will be provided (though the faction doesn’t guarantee autonomy to go with them).
Songs of Seeking: Sometimes requests for aid with no obvious author find those who are connected to the All Song. Some wonder if these are messages from the awakening mind of the All Song itself (if there is such a thing), because the requests for aid usually have to do with defending the integrity of Ruk, such as the most recent message that seeks to direct a small group to the spiderfields in the Periphery. According to the anonymous message, that location will host the next manifestation of the Qinod Singularity.
A Quiet Vacation: The Quiet Cabal is looking for a group to infiltrate a university campus on Earth that seems to be developing a particle accelerator that might not require themassive size of traditional particle accelerators. If such technology is possible in a world operating under the law of Standard Physics, Earth is in serious trouble. Karum involvement is suspected.
A Strange Odyssey: Zal is offering a considerable sum for a few more crew members to fill out a ship it intends to send into the Strange to gather reality seeds. Zal has financed previous efforts at gathering reality seeds but now indicates that it may have found a particularly rich “field” of them several days’ transit time from Ruk. Those willing to risk the mental alienation and physical threats of the creatures that reside in the dark energy network should apply.
Myriand: Three four-hour shifts a week with Myriand is good enough to give someone faction allegiance in Harmonious. Visitors who stay so long that they can no longer be considered guests might wish to check out becoming another arm of the law in the Glistening City.
Shady Offer: A message offers work down in the Shadowed City for those willing to travel, and directions appear at the Creature Feature wall. If acted upon, a message appears in the form of a contract (all that’s required is a touch to accept it), which asks the respondents to find an escaped custom-designed creature called the Despoiler that had an unexpected flaw: it is always hungry, and it just keeps growing and growing (it’s currently a level 7 creature the size of an elephant). Payment for a completed job is a custom pet creature for each team member (up to five custom pets) who helps take down the Despoiler.
Kolum was built by a splinter group, tired of having to live under the rules of the factions, that departed Harmonious fifty-some years ago. They named their city after founder Kolumdam, who preached that a better life, with true freedom, could be had with a little effort. Kolum seemed to be on its way to becoming a truly independent city when disaster struck. Some say criminal elements in Shome were responsible, but a majority believes that Zal, the Church of the Embodiment, the Karum, or another major faction was responsible because they felt threatened by the factionless existence in Kolum. Regardless of how it happened, a rogue Qinod construct found its way into the city, laying the place to ruin.
The construct responsible for the disaster may still lurk in Kolum, because a watchpost built at the edge of the ruin never witnessed the construct leave the site. The watchpost contains guardians selected from several different factions in Harmonious. The guardians are charged with preventing anyone from exploring the ruins, lest that accidentally reactivate the ravaging construct.
The Veritex is a labyrinthine system of tunnels that runs below the surface of Ruk. Due to the damage sustained by Ruk eons ago, some portions of the Veritex are isolated from others behind tunnels blocked by collapses.
Small underground cities can be found throughout the Veritex. Some of these hide small, secretive cabals and cloisters with their own agendas and beliefs. Others are home to criminals, revolutionaries, or raiders. Still others simply offer shelter to those who would like to live free and in peace.
The underground city of Dran was recently hit by quakes that buried one side of Dran in a ceiling collapse and destroyed more than half of the remaining structures. Although the survivors are rebuilding, most are happy to accept the assistance of representatives from Zal who show up with offers of aid.
Irrara-ya is a native of Dran who found a device after the collapse that steals the face of any living creature she turns it upon and stores that face as a digital avatar. The body remains behind, alive but in stasis, with no mind left to it. Irrara-ya learned that she can ask the stored face questions, and the face will answer according to its knowledge. Irrara-ya doesn't know if she has the ability to restore a face back to its body. But if that turns out to be possible, what she's more interested in is restoring a face to a different body, just to see what happens.
Irrara-ya: level 4; wields an experimental facestealing artifact (level 5) that removes the face of a target within immediate range.Depletion: 1 in 1d20
The All Song does not reach into Muk, thanks to an accidental feature of the surrounding material. This small city is built within a single long, open area, with many galleries and tunnels leading off into smaller chambers.
Muk is a popular destination for monks of the Church of the Embodiment, who take special vows to come meditate on the True Code. The Abbess of Muk is Laran-xi, a diminutive woman who conceals her features under a hood. She is welcoming of visitors, offering them a night's stay in exchange for a story of Harmonious, the Glistening City, which her vows forbid her from returning to. She's not bitter, since she feels she and her brothers and sisters are making real headway in uncovering hints of the True Code in the echoes of their own minds in the peace provided by the All Song's absence.
Laran-xi was once a member of the Karum. As an agent, she slew many Quiet Cabal members during secret conflicts that occurred outside of Ruk. Those incidents and that allegiance are well behind her now, and she regrets her actions. She hopes that after all this time the Quiet Cabal and Karum have forgotten her, but she knows that justice may someday still find her. She is prepared to accept it if it does.
Laran-xi: level 4
It's a truism that the farther one travels from Harmonious, the more of a dangerous frontier Ruk becomes. For this reason, people are happy to stay in the Hub. The average citizen of Ruk stays in Harmonious and believes one would have to be mentally unbalanced, in desperate need of bits, a crazed risk taker, or a criminal to want to venture into the Periphery.
Several factions do have interests that lie beyond the civilized core of the recursion, and they staff various outposts and well-guarded installations on the frontier, as well as mobile harvesters and resource barges. Regions of the Periphery include Shome, Jir, and Gatt.
Shome is a lawless city of dangerous criminals and mercenaries. Its black markets make all manner of rare and obscure goods available, particularly those that the major factions of Ruk don't want to be available. For example, contraband or controlled genetic codes that allow one to make particularly dangerous creatures and biotech creations can be purchased here, for the right price. Underground tunnels, via the Veritex, lead from the Shadowed City to Shome.
Thanks to the efforts of previous criminals, a rapid-transport system operates in these tunnels, where people ride in a kind of slime-filled pneumatic tube between the two stations. Transport takes only a minute, if one is willing to put up with being covered in mucus. At least it's mucus that smells of cinnamon and clove.
The Fortress of Favors is where Lady Kasin-dar resides. She's known by various names around Ruk, including the “Shadowed Queen,” “Bone Splicer,” and the “Bone Thief” (the latter two for her penchant for extracting marrow for genetic black-market needs). She carries a feared artifact called the Splice Rod (which also has several bloodier monikers) that has the ability to rip the bones from victims and splice them into others, granting temporary abilities to the latter while crippling or killing the former. Sometimes clients pay her for her services, and other times she enhances those within her employ or herself.
Both the Factol Council and Myriand have warned Kasin-dar to stay away from using citizens of Harmonious as source material. As long as she complies, they do little to prevent clients from journeying to Shome to make use of her services.
Lady Kasin-dar: level 6; Armor 3; wields an artifact that steals an ability from one target and confers it on another target for one hour
Names have a certain power in Ruk, especially if they are paired with an associated complete genetic profile. The criminal organization known as Onomasticon keeps just such genetic profiles in a secret database against the strict prohibition of Ruk law and sensibilities. In a place like Ruk, to possess someone's genome, epigenetic factors, and microbiome code is to have a piece of that person's soul. Someone with such a profile could create person-specific poisons, toxins, mind-control parasites—the sky's the limit, which is why “names” sold by Onomasticon don't come cheap. It's also why potential clients of Onomasticon must be very careful to avoid the appearance of being in any way connected to Myriand or the Factol Council, as well as the Quiet Cabal, the Church of the Embodiment, or any other faction that has attempted to shut the criminal group down in the past. If such an association is sensed, not only will the client be denied service, the client will be dispatched with prejudice.
Though no one's seen him, a deformed, scarred, and brutal crime lord named Mendalla leads Onomasticon. Mendalla never stirs from his secret lair beneath the Iasos River, sending various representatives and contractors to do his bidding. What only a very few know is that the crime lord is not a Ruk native. He is a quickened sirrush from Ardeyn who translated into Ruk and, after many lessons and setbacks, worked his way up to a position of authority and power that is as godlike as one can achieve in a realm where science trumps magic.
Mendalla: level 5; those attempting to attack Mendalla must succeed on an Intellect-based roll. Failure means they are unable to attack due to a sense of awe, fear, or friendship. Succumbing to the effect once increases the difficulty of future attempts to attack Mendalla by two steps.
The city of Jir maintains a position at the very edge of the Periphery so that portions of its towers and gantries extend into the Strange itself, piercing the boundary. Jir is the primary port between Ruk and the Strange, and most traffic that passes between the two realms occurs here. Once out in the Strange, it is nearly impossible to find a way back into Ruk by direct physical means (creatures out in the Strange can't see or sense the boundary of Ruk because the recursion was designed to stay hidden). But the Jir Locks provide access for those who know where to look.
Various kinds of vessels able to travel the Strange can be chartered, rented, or sometimes even bought in Jir, though the latter option doesn't come up often. Many of the ships are modified Ruk flying barges, built to transport resources harvested in the grey forests to the factories outside Harmonious. But a few are chaos skiffs purchased (or otherwise obtained) from similar travelers out of Ardeyn.
Jir is an odd port city given what it borders, but the needs of a crew who's spent months locked in a Strange transit can be met in Jir, which is known for its taverns, pleasure quarters, All Song communals, and merchants of every sort. Crewmembers who want to make a few extra bits can find fences for the sale of items they nicked from the Strange, too.
One or two monks from the Orb of Worlds can usually be found walking the “docks” or frequenting Jir's many public establishments. The Orb of Worlds is an artificial structure out in the Strange where reality seeds can be “fertilized” with an investiture ritual by those on a genesis quest. The Order is a group of caretakers who maintain and protect the sanctity of the Orb.
Like any faction, the Order needs to find new members now and then or, failing that, special contractors to take care of unusual situations as they arise. This need is why themonks found in Jir have been given dispensation to speak despite their vow of silence, allowing them to describe the wonders or needs of the Order as they arise.
A loose band of scouts, scholars, and adventurers from Ruk, Earth, and Ardeyn make up the Apotheme Rangers. The rangers chart the Strange within the vicinity of Ruk and Earth, searching for signs of danger and seeking evidence of alien civilizations in the distant network that have not succumbed to planetovores.
The Apotheme Rangers keep their main headquarters in the Strange on a massive chaos ship called Redstone. The rangers also maintain a recruitment tower in Jir, where people who are already used to the idea of entering the Strange itself frequent. Recruitment chief Darduin-lan paints an exciting picture of a life of exploration, adventure, and journeying where no Ruk native has gone before.
Darduin-lan: level 5; health 50; can produce rays of energy that inflict 5 points of damage or restore 5 points of Might to a target within short range as an action each round
Zal has many interests, and one is the extraction of valuable items from the Strange. Zal usually prospects for violet spiral, but also looks for reality seeds or other relics of the dark energy network. Zal Extraction ships sometimes lack a full crew complement, which is why contractors for Zal sometimes resort to shanghaiing vulnerable people from all over Ruk to fill empty posts for upcoming voyages.
The “locks” of Jir are two separate series of gantry cranes that lift a vessel and transfer it between Jir and Jir Station in the Strange. Jir Station is built on a section of fundament and is visible in the Strange to those who know where to find it. Each lock can pass about one large craft per hour one way, though the traffic between Ruk and the Strange isn't so heavy that the re's ever much of a wait. Vessels don't need to use the locks to leave Ruk, but they often do (if on sanctioned faction business) to take advantage of the added security Jir offers, which includes a host of Myriand.
Jir maintains its position on the very edge of Ruk, which is constantly (if slowly) growing and expanding, thanks to themassive biomechanical treads the entire city is constructed upon. Massive engines power the treads and run off a differential between the Strange and Ruk, which means if the boundary ever got too far away, the treads would stop. On some days, the treads have to advance the city about a centimeter, but on many days they don't have to move at all. But a couple of times in recent memory, the treads had to roll almost 3 feet (1 m) in an hour, which taxed them to their limit.
A guild of several hundred biomechanics constantly clambers across the treads and difference engine, making certain that they are always in tip-top shape.
Before Ruk crashed on the Shoals of Earth, it encountered something as it traveled through the Strange. The event was so apocalyptic that the True Code was disrupted, which gave birth to the All Song and the divisions that plague Ruk to this day. The best guess scholars have regarding the event is that Ruk had alien contact with something called the Qinod. Whether that contact was with an intelligent artifact, a planetovore-class entity, or a group of traveling aliens more advanced than Ruk is lost in the resultant disruption of the True Code, and the information was never contained in the All Song.
Whatever the truth, Ruk survived and limped on until finally crashing on the Shoals of Earth, forever changed, and bearing a stowaway that’s come to be called the Qinod Singularity.
The Qinod Singularity remains an enigma because it manifests only infrequently in Ruk, and when it does, it appears in a seemingly random location. Its appearance is that of a blinding point of light that lightly bobs over the ground, randomly spewing devices, detritus, freeze-dried corpses of alien creatures (no two ever alike), and the occasional animate construct that almost invariably sets to destroying every other life form or artificial structure it comes across. Since most of Ruk is artificial, some constructs just begin burrowing and appear days later in the Veritex, where they carry on their rampage until stopped. Unlike the constructs, the purpose of the discarded devices is usually incomprehensible, but sometimes they can be used as artifacts.
On three previous occasions, Ruk natives employed by various interests attempted to enter themaw of the singularity when it manifested to see if it was an animate gate to another recursion. On each of those occasions, those attempting to enter either were fried to a crisp before making it across the threshold, or never returned.
Gatt is a small city built from discarded spars of the surrounding debris field and newer construction. The city contains small towers and block buildings, and every single window, door, or other opening comes with an additional hatch that the residents refer to as “mating shutters.” Fluffy white spiderfields extend all around Gatt, covering everything in a shroud of silky webs that looks like new-fallen snow. Of course it's not snow, since much of Ruk remains climate controlled. The spiderfields are so named because of the swarms of tiny white spiders that awaken to crawl up the legs and cover the bodies of foolish visitors who wade out into the white.
The spiderfields extend for dozens of miles (58 km) in all directions, and like the grey forests, serve as a valuable resource that a couple of small factions based in the city of Gatt harvest. Spider silk and spiders alike are collected as a specialty biomass resource by individual Ruk natives who walk atop the spun webs with special web-walking grafts.
Life in Gatt is generally pastoral, except once every sixteen months, when thousands of spiderlike creatures almost as large as people begin an orgy of mating. Like their Earth counterparts from which they were bred a thousand years earlier, the female spider creature kills themale—and every other male it can find in and around the city of Gatt, regardless of species. That's when themating shutters are fastened down and no one goes out. At least, no one with a Y chromosome.
Zamaran-sin is a spider breeder who lives and has labs in Gatt. Each year, she selects for finer strands of webs, or webs with special qualities such as color, scent, or strength. She also breeds for taste—spider biomass is a delicacy that commands high prices in Harmonious. Zamaransin serves as a secret clearinghouse for Karum communiqués, which she codes genetically in spider silk so that such messages are never exposed in an All Song communication.
Zamaran-sin: level 5, level 7 for all tasks related to genetic engineering; Armor 3 (from webarmor; foes who strike Zamaran-sin with a melee weapon and who fail a Might defense roll lose hold of their weapon when it becomes stuck to her armor)
Vun is a large city of towering fungal stalks (fungus-bred to be safe from poison and hallucinogens) mixed with the more traditional organimer construction. The edges of Vun teem with grey harvesters; the huge mobile factories move through fungi forests on hundreds of insectlike legs because Vun is a major center for biomass harvest in Ruk. Other centers exist in the Hub and the Periphery, but Vun is known for the quantity it can process and transport each day. The incredible amount it produces is due to its impressive biomechanical complex where grey harvesters are built and repaired, collected biomass is processed in massive tanks, and processed biomass is loaded onto the ubiquitous flying barges that travel between Harmonious and other points Hubward.
The mayor of Vun, Uer-gula, sports an odiferous biomod that can spew a variety of different fluids, including hallucinogens, poisons, and acids. As a public figure he is reviled and feared, given his reputation for melting more than one faction representative who tried to finagle Vun out of a fair price for meeting biomass quota. But rumor has it that when he sheds his biomod graft each night, he's actually a personable fellow to his friends and family, and he is loyal to those who somehow earn his trust.
Uer-gula: level 6; can spray liquids in immediate range that inflict 6 points of damage as an action each round
Orders from the Orb: A group of monks set off after an unknown craft that fired missile-like weapons on the Orb of Worlds, then fled. The pursuing monks, in their borrowed chaos skiff, never returned, and the Order seeks contractors who are willing to follow the clues through the Strange and rescue themissing members from whatever situation has befallen them.
Forget My Name: A faction official in Harmonious is looking to hire a discreet band of contractors for a dangerous job. The official has reason to believe that her name (and full genetic profile) was obtained by Onomasticon in Shome. She wants someone to enter that dread tower and retrieve or destroy her profile before a kind of personalized eradication can be fashioned to blackmail her.
Thorn in the Treads: The treads of Jir have been infested with parasites of unknown origin, but ones that seem capable of eating the flamethrower-armed mechanics who’ve tried to enter the deep crevices inside to burn them out. If the parasites can’t be removed soon, all of Jir may fall behind the boundary between itself and the Strange, and subsequently lose complete power in its differential engine.
As with everything in Ruk, if a need for a service or commodity exists, a faction steps in and provides it. Lately a need for Earthborn natives to fill specialized roles has surfaced in Ruk. Sometimes a faction that wants such natives does its own recruiting. But most times, that recruitment is outsourced to a third party: Zal.
Zal is one of the many factions of Ruk, but it’s the one an Earth native is most likely to find familiar because it operates in many ways like a wealthy multinational corporation. It has interests all over Ruk and in several other recursions as well. Though Zal already provides services to every Rukian (in the form of All Song communals), the faction is not content to rest on its laurels. It constantly seeks more profits, more influence, and more control. That’s why it created the Earth Recruitment Center.
Potential recruits need not be recursors; Zal has access to translation and inapposite gates for applicants who make it far enough in the interview process. Those who are not recursors (but who have the spark) can pass through a translation gate and gain many of the same benefits as a player character (such as a focus, though not a type).
Zal’s preferred method of contact is somewhat self-selecting. Representatives trawl social media on Earth, generating online advertisements designed to get the attention of two different kinds of individual.
The first recruit targeted is someone looking to “expand their frontiers and take a break from the everyday.” These kinds of ads use language similar to that used by the Peace Corps or the French Foreign Legion, offering a “life-defining experience serving abroad for a two-year contract that includes training, opportunities for advancement, cross-cultural understanding, and a facility with technical subjects not normally possible.”
The second kind of recruit sought is someone who seems prone to flights of fancy or feats of imagination, but who has strong social skills. These are the traits most likely translation into a new recursion, will not break down and, in fact, will take to the new situation without extended handholding. Once potential recruits are identified, they are either sent a “mysterious package” or contacted directly with a visitation.
A few companies specialize in engaging clients with an exciting narrative by using props such as letters, pamphlets, and other associated objects. The idea is to provide an enhanced sense of the reality of the story. One of those companies is run by Zal. The mysterious package actually contains elements of truth. The letter tells a story of aliens who live in a “shadow dimension” alongside Earth, aliens who need help from Earthborn explorers. Coordinates are provided for a local contact, and a cypher of some sort is included as proof of alien involvement. If the recipient of a package has the nerve to visit the location indicated, he is offered a contract and training.
This contact scenario works similarly to the Mysterious Package option, except it is delivered in person by a Zal agent or two who initially come across as concerned government agents or proselytizers of an evangelical affiliation.
Tilman-har, sales associate: level 3, all tasks related to molecular, cellular, and biological research as level 4
A few who respond to outreach on Earth are brought to Ruk, where the reality of the Strange, Ruk’s place in it, and the concept of recursions is explained and a training period is offered. Those who react negatively, who can’t handle using the All Song, who break down, or who refuse the offer are returned to Earth, but not before a memory-dissolving enzyme introduced into the bloodstream erases the experience.
Those who accept training are assigned a few missions in or around Ruk. The missions are usually directly by Zal, though sometimes representatives contract out this portion of the training (possibly to one of the other factions seeking Earthborn in the first place).
The training missions are relatively short. They’re designed as a test and as a way to familiarize the trainee with potentially dangerous and exotic situations. An important part of a training mission is to assess how well a recursor reacts to using the All Song. Some Earthborn react violently to it, so much so that they are actually injured by the experience. Those with the wrong disposition who fail a difficulty 5 Intellect roll don’t discover what they were looking for and descend one step on the damage track.
If the training is a success, or close enough, the trainee is sent to one of several factions looking for Earthborn (including the Quiet Cabal or the Karum), to the Geshimmar who are attempting to understand and eradicate the Scar, or to Captain Melana-shem of the Resolution.
A package containing highly valuable genetic material must be delivered to a man named Tilman-har working in Semerimis Tower. The tower hosts a business called Whole Body Grafts, which offers Rukians a range of decorative and useful body modifications. Part of the training mission involves finding Semerimis Tower in Harmonious and delivering the package. Recruits are also evaluated on whether they can resist the hard sell that Tilman-har provides in return, especially because they have no bits, so they must go into debt to pay for any modifications they receive.
A series of crimes in Harmonious leaves citizens dead, their brains missing. Myriand (the Ruk “police” force) have had no luck locating the group, which probably means they are operating without using the All Song. Finding the perpetrators will require pure physical detective work.
Two minor factions are fighting it out in Harmonious. It’s something of a nuisance, but worse for those caught in the crossfire. Someone needs to go in and create a peace, one way or the other. Guiding the Myriand to the faction leaders would be another way to end the fighting (because the Myriand would likely wipe out both groups).
Even the city of Harmonious, with all its amazing technology capable of literally lifting the natives to new heights, has a slum. Known as the Scar, this wide and unsightly district blights the edge of Harmonious. From a distance, the Scar appears like a bite chewed from the city’s disc. But not a clean one; straggling spars and splintered structures protrude and dangle everywhere, and much of what was once part of the Glistening City proper has smashed down onto the Shadowed City beneath Ruk, forming towerlike heaps of destruction that also bridge the two cities into one continuous vertical arc of desolation, albeit one that is inhabited.
Living in Harmonious requires a citizen to be in good standing with a faction. That’s not true in the Scar. The regular All Song does not penetrate it, and Myriand do not patrol it. Even organized black marketeers out of Shome that operate in the Shadowed City have mostly failed to find lasting influence or purchase in the Scar. It’s a region of disorganized spar growth, gangs of the truly desperate, the dregs of destroyed factions, and, just perhaps, the nucleus of new ones.
Scar GM Intrusions: The floor gives way. The ceiling collapses. All Song static rends minds (Rukians are
The Scar was created almost a thousand years ago in a massive explosion. Because the incident happened so long ago, most Rukians don’t know what created the slum—to them, it’s just a place most people avoid. Querying the All Song provides few additional details, which is odd in itself. It’s almost as if all the easily accessible knowledge regarding the Scar has been excised from the network. Those who press deeper discover that the All Song that pervades the Scar is twisted, damaged, and prone to driving those who connect to it mad. All that anyone really knows about the Scar comes from word of mouth, which implies that the area was created by some sort of collision—though a collision with what, the All Song does not record.
Actually, it’s not the Scar that needs Earthborn so much as the Geshimmar does. The Geshimmar is a small faction that presents itself as the group best suited to cleaning up the Scar because of its multifaceted approach. Geshimmar tactics stand on two pillars: research and exploration.
Research is handled by top-notch faction bioengineers working to determine why the All Song is so corrupted when accessed within the Scar, why the organimer spars that should initiate self-repair do not, and what collided with Harmonious to create the Scar in the first place. Exploration is handled, in large part, by Earthborn, who are recruited mainly because humans are naturally repelled by the All Song. Even when they translate, they don’t share the low-level natural connection that native Rukians possess. Thus, an Earthborn who spends a lot of time in the Scar isn’t slowly driven barking mad by seclusion from the All Song. The Scar was created almost a thousand Actually, it’s not the Scar that needs Earthborn
Much of the Scar is a sloping, metallic and synthetic dystopia of splintered spars and half-revealed chambers, broken towers, smashed buildings, and less-identifiable bits. The interior of the Scar extends almost a thousand feet, with tunnels, tubes, and chambers that share many of the traits of the exterior. Several direct connections hold the heaped towers, whose foundations lie in the Shadowed City below, to the portion hosted by floating Harmonious. The quasi-living metal organimer that Harmonious is built from often and unaccountably loses its residual programming in the Scar, creating strange patches of vegetation not seen in other parts of Ruk. Sometimes a gaping component squirts odiferous gasses with odd properties, and other times sections spark, arc with odd energies, or move about.
The Scar offers many distinct dangers to travelers who trawl its broken roads looking for the occasional cypher or hidden truth. The one constant danger that everyone in the Scar faces every day is the potential for a fall from the heights of the Glistening City, a fall precipitously ended several hundred feet farther down. Most such falls are lethal.
Scar explorers occasionally find odd loops of silvery material emerging from the detritus. Called silver strands, these 100-foot (10 m) long cords feel more plastic than metallic, are warm to the touch, and give the sense that some sort of liquid is moving within. If these level 5 objects are cut open, milky fluid spills out. It smells strongly of oily fish, an odor that draws hungry foragers to lap at the apparently nutritious fluid, including desperate vat rejects. (The liquid is akin to a very nutritious but highly alcoholic rotting-fish puree.)
Venom troopers, commonly cloned entities in Ruk, are mass produced. When that production goes wrong, vat rejects are born. Most are destroyed, but some escape and make their way to the Scar. Though their warped forms mean that they are constantly in pain, vat rejects in the Scar try to make a community of their own, so they do not welcome death in the same way that vat rejects with no other options seem to do. That said, they are unstable almost by definition, and explorers who come across a colony of vat rejects in the Scar should tread lightly.
Scar vat reject: level 3, or level 5 for one minute after sipping milky fluid from silver strand
The ubiquitous, semi-living spars visible in other parts of Ruk are especially obvious in the Scar because few have repaired themselves, and several sections have given rise to tiny jungles of crazy foliage—reeds, grass, trees, and oddly glowing fruits composed of spar organimer. Sometimes these groves produce what seem to be All Song umbilical connections. No Geshimmar agent or Earthborn recruit in their employ has dared to try one of these connections to see what happens.
Within the deepest tangle of the Scar is a conclave of entities that few in Ruk have ever laid eyes on. Called crucibles, these odd creatures seem to lie along the continuum between inert matter and living tissue. They are composed of polymers and alloys seamlessly fused with flesh and pumping blood. Apparently intelligent and definitely dangerous, a crucible has the ability to absorb organic and inorganic material to repair itself or adapt to new situations. It’s entirely possible that these crucibles (or a single, founding crucible that gave rise to others) are the entities that crashed into Harmonious and lodged there, creating the Scar. Since they are not native to Ruk, they likely have an origin somewhere out in the Strange, or possibly from a highly radical recursion where Weird Science operates.
Youths in Ruk are always getting into trouble. They’re too young to join a faction in full standing and too old to remain entertained by full-time immersion in the All Song. A group of seven kids has recently gone missing, and it seems likely that they entered the Scar. The question is, are they dead, or are they the prisoners of vat rejects, maddened criminals, or something worse?
A breakaway subfaction of the Karum has kidnapped Arbiter Maru-shtal, the head of the Factol Council that regulates Ruk. The dissidents retreated to the Scar. Maru-shtal’s only chance is a rescue because the other factions will never give in to the dissidents’ demands to blast Earth to cinders within the week.
A recent explorer of the Scar returned with a crystal sphere a little less than 1 foot (30 cm) in diameter. Inside, it alternatively appears to be empty, to be filled with red fluid, or to contain the replica of a human head made of silvery metal. Whenever this last image appears, whoever is closest to the pod disappears, along with the image of the head. The Church of the Embodiment currently has the pod but is looking for someone to take it off their hands and, if possible, locate those previously abducted (presumably to a location within the Scar).
Crucible: level 5, Speed defense as level 2, knowledge of recursions and the Strange as level 8; teleport a short distance every other round as a move; short-range attack with tendrils; absorb matter to regain 5 points of health
The Resolution is a strangecraft—a ship capable of traveling through the Strange itself—recently constructed on the periphery of Ruk in the city of Jir. The Resolution’s stated mission is to travel into the Strange to gather reality seeds. Zal has previously financed such expeditions, though never with a ship so large and well outfitted. A skeleton crew of Rukians has been assigned to the craft, but the ship’s captain, Melana-shem, still hasn’t filled the roster to her liking because the Resolution’s actual mission is secret.
The Resolution: level 8
Resolution crew member: level 3, starship operation tasks as level 5; short-range “taser” pistol attack inflicts 4 points of damage
The Resolution has basic facilities to traverse the Strange and mine reality seeds, but that’s just a cover. Though the ship and its systems were manufactured using Ruk’s state-of-the-art Weird Science technology, the resulting craft can operate solely in conditions of Standard Physics, if necessary. That’s because the real mission of the Resolution is to conduct operations not only in the Strange but also in the universe of normal matter, in and around the Sol system that hosts the planet Earth.
Why is the Resolution secretly outfitted to operate in normal space? Because Zal technology has detected a disturbance there that is frighteningly similar to the kinds of radiation the Qinod Singularity gives off. If whatever mysterious entity behind the manifestation of the Qinod Singularity in Ruk is becoming active in the realm of normal matter, Earth (as well as all the recursions in the Shoals of Earth, including Ruk) could be in terrible danger.
Captain Melana-shem believes that Earthborn crew members are crucial because the abilities of many Rukians are best suited for Weird Science. It just won’t do, she believes, to have most of her crew operating at reduced capacity if the Resolution makes the inapposite transition to normal space. Earthborn crew won’t suffer from such a deficiency.
The strangecraft Resolution is massive, sized to accommodate a crew of several hundred people on expeditions lasting months or longer. The ship includes a bridge, quarters, engineering, stasis chambers, a power core, and engines capable of functioning both in the Strange and in normal space. Each crew member is also issued a lifesuit.
The antimatter collected and contained within the magnetic vessel in the power section is a few orders of magnitude more plentiful than what could have been easily collected in normal space under the law of Standard Physics. That’s why the Resolution didn’t collect it there—the ship manufactured the antimatter using Weird Science methods of Ruk and created a containment vessel strong enough to hold it. There is enough antimatter to power the ship for several years without refueling. The power section requires a small team of technicians, which is headed up by an Earthborn, Leslie Matthews, who was a theoretical physics post-grad with dim prospects until she was offered a position aboard the Resolution. Leslie is not quickened, but she knows her way around antimatter.
The engines that power the ship provide propulsion and a secret method of transitioning between the recursion of Ruk and the universe of normal matter. The propulsion method, “beamed core antimatter,” allows the Resolution to thrust rapidly through the universe of normal matter as well as the chaotic surge of the Strange (and, should it ever prove necessary, above the disc of Ruk).
Of more concern is the mechanism that allows the ship and her crew to transfer between Ruk and normal space. Special gantries in Ruk (in the city of Jir) are fitted with inapposite hardware to “cast” the ship into normal space at a predetermined location orbiting Earth’s moon. Matching hardware on the ship—great rings that encircle the vessel— can be used to drag it back to Ruk. The engines are tended by a team of technicians under the leadership of a dour Scot chief engineer recruited from a recursion where he was famous for being able to handle anything thrown at him when it came to starship systems, especially engines.
The stasis chambers aboard the Resolution are essentially empty pods just large enough to accommodate one occupant. The pods are scattered about the ship. Most don’t have associated stasis equipment because crew members are assigned stasis rings that provide emergency “life support” in dangerous circumstances, as well as individual control over stasis when a person is assigned a “static shift” in a stasis chamber.
Captain Melana-shem can usually be found on the bridge with Weapons Officer Brian Mason. Melana-shem is an Apoptosisclass battle chrysalid modified to function entirely under the law of Standard Physics (which degrades her abilities by a few levels). Thanks to her onboard systems and because most Resolution systems are computerized, she doesn’t need a large complement of officers to help her guide the ship, deploy sensors, or direct the course, though she does rely on Mason if they come under threat. Her Zal superiors believe that she is well suited to holding the leash of command, but those under her do not love her ways. Other Rukians on the ship believe that she coddles the Earthborn. For their part, Earthborn crew members often find her cynical, strict, and given to playing games instead of saying what she means. And, of course, the mere sight of her is unsettling to Earthborn. But Melana-shem is just being Rukian. She puts nothing before the success of the Resolution and its mission.
Captain Melana-shem, Apoptosis chrysalid: level 6; health 45; Armor 1; long-range radiation attack inflicts 6 points of damage on all targets within immediate range of each other; two melee attacks as one action each inflict 6 points of damage; regains 1 point of health per round
Leslie Matthews: level 3, knowledge tasks related to physics and antimatter containment as level 7
Chief Engineer: level 4, tasks related to engineering and beamed core antimatter systems as level 7; long-range directed energy pistol attack inflicts 5 points of damage
Endeavor, a Rukian craft sent out to explore the Strange, disappeared with all hands three hundred years ago. Apotheme Rangers recently found it adrift with no crew, but with hundreds of ghost-white oblong spheres of unknown origin filling its hold. The Resolution has been tasked with checking out Endeavor to determine the true nature of the spheres and, if possible, tow the recovered vessel back to Ruk.
A mysterious object called the Rogue Star blazes through the Strange, leaving behind a trail of torn fractal patterns and shattered fundament. According to a warning delivered by Strange explorers, it’s heading directly for Ruk. The Resolution needs to reach and intercept the object however it can.
The region of Harmonious called the Scar is dead to the normal All Song. Recently, that dead zone has begun creeping outward into other parts of Harmonious, and no one knows why. Several factions are scrambling to investigate and deal with the situation, including a team of Earthborn assigned to the Scar by the Geshimmar faction, but the Resolution is also called on to assist.
Ruk has been plagued with the occasional appearance of seepage from bandit genetic labs that sometimes gains sentience. These mytocytic pools can birth twisted parodies of life that go on to become scourges all their own. The pools are difficult to destroy, given their mutable properties and their ability to birth a variety of defenders that adjust to meet the threat. The Resolution’s weapon systems might be enough to take one out if away teams can distract it first.
Mytocytic pool: level 10, Speed defense as level 3; health 120; long-range melee pseudopod attack inflicts 10 points of damage
A selection of the crew brought aboard during the last rotation in Ruk are actually Karum members who replaced the real crew using level 6 Rukian technology to disguise their appearance. At some point (probably while the ship is on another mission), they begin their operation to wrest control of the Resolution from Zal hands and deliver it to the Karum. It’ll take Earthborn to stop the mutiny, given the number of Rukians who are now in the employ of the Karum. (The mutineers’ disguise tech fails over the course of a few hours after the ship transitions to normal Earth space.)
A toxic ammonia leak requires an emergency evacuation of the International Space Station. Six crew members in the US section of the station took refuge in the Russian section, but the leak is pervasive and fast becoming untenable. Unfortunately, one of the pair of Soyuz lifeboats normally attached to the station is defective, and only three astronauts were able to flee. Unless a miracle occurs, the three remaining astronauts will perish, and the ISS will likely burn up. The Resolution could provide aid. But can it do so without revealing the nature of its existence to those it saves?
According to NASA scientists, Earth will be safe from the giant asteroid Apophis when it flies extremely close to our planet in 2029, and then returns for seconds in 2036. In reality, finer-scale calculations show that the asteroid will indeed impact the Earth, with devastating consequences. Earth governments have chosen to keep that a secret while they try to come up with a plan. When the Resolution isn’t busy with more urgent missions, it is directed to divert the asteroid.
Sensors reveal a growing source of radiation in orbit around Jupiter, though one that is not associated with any of the planet’s moons. This is the reason the Resolution was built! Upon receiving these readings, the captain sends the ship toward Jupiter at full speed (with an acceleration of 0.5 G for the first half of the trip and a deceleration of 0.5 G for the second half). As the ship approaches, sensors reveal several small objects orbiting in space, each 20 feet (6 m) in diameter, that look frighteningly like Qinod deconstructors. However, unlike their namesake, they are building something strange.
In Ruk, artifacts are usually the result of extreme technological expertise. Some of these are modern Ruk manufacture, while others were discovered out in the Strange and are true artifacts of extinct alien races. A subset of Ruk artifacts come from the Qinod Singularity. In Ruk, most artifacts are already claimed, though the Qinod Singularity sometimes coughs up new ones, along with the horrors it expels.
Level: 1d6
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Red fluid in pod, self-injecting
Effect: Once a recipient has incorporated a full measure of artificial blood into her system, she is more resilient, adding 1 to all recovery rolls, and she gains one additional benefit, as determined by a d100 roll. The effects last for twenty-four hours.
|
01–10 Immune to disease |
| 11–15 Immune to poison |
| 16–20 Immune to acid |
| 21–25 +5 to Armor against electrical damage |
| 26–30 +5 to Armor against fire damage |
| 31–40 +5 to Armor against cold damage |
| 41–50 +5 to Armor against psychic damage |
| 51–60 +5 to Armor against damage from high gravity |
| 61–65 Difficulty of defense rolls to survive drug or alcohol overdose decreased by two steps, and user is not subject to hangovers |
| 66–70 Tireless; add 1 to Might Edge |
| 71–75 Quick; add 1 to Speed Edge |
| 76–80 Smart; add 1 to Intellect Edge |
| 81–85 Regenerative; recovery roll restores 2 additional points to a Pool |
| 86–90 User’s eyes reflect light like a cat’s; user can see in the dark |
| 91–95 User’s blood is acidic to other creatures; melee attackers who damage the user suffer 1 point of acid damage from blood splash |
| 96–00 User can apply one level of Effort to a noncombat task without spending any points from a Pool |
Depletion: 1 in 1d20 (check each day) s
Level: 1d6
Form (initial): An ampule filled with glowing blue bioactive tissue
Effect: Several different biosplice companions exist. To create a biosplice companion, a wouldbe master injects a biosplice ampule into her body. Over the course of thirty-three hours, the injection site swells up to the size of a second head, then bursts, inflicting 3 points of damage as the biosplice companion emerges. Generally, a biosplice companion's level is equal to the artifact level. It is about half the size of its master and has enough intelligence to follow commands, but otherwise it operates at the level of a companion. A depletion roll is required each time a biosplice companion uses its special ability.
The types of companions include (but are not limited to) the following:
The messenger can find any location its master has been to or could find, and deliver a short message without requiring a depletion roll. If desired, themessenger can mentally link to its master, allowing its master to speak from themouth of themessenger and hear what themessenger hears in return; each round of such mental linkage requires a depletion roll.
A biosplice companion is grown from the flesh of its master, but its form suits the biosplice companion’s type.
Depletion: 1 in 1d100
Level: 1d6+2
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Scarlet pistol-like device
Effect: This weapon fires a heat beam at a target within long range, inflicting damage equal to the artifact level. An affected target ignites with flame, and beginning in the round following the attack, takes 2 points of damage for three rounds.
This device is a rapid-fire weapon, and thus can be used with the Spray or Arc Spray abilities that some characters have, but each additional target selected requires an additional depletion roll.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20
Level: 1d6+1
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: 4-foot-long (1 m) metallic rod with a barbed propulsive head
Effect: The cellular prod is used like a cattle prod. When its business end is applied to a living target (possibly in a melee attack), it injects a potent cocktail of DNA, RNA, ribosomes, and other promoters that have an immediate effect and a long-term effect on the target.
The immediate effect paralyzes the target for up to one minute, after which the target has no memory of that time period. The long-term effect could be any one of the following, depending on the nature of the cellular prod (each injector has only one kind of secondary effect).
Depletion: 1 in 1d20
Level: 1d6+1
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: 4-foot-long (1 m) metallic rod with a barbed propulsive head
Effect: The cellular sampler is used like a cattle prod. When its business end is applied to a living target (possibly in a melee attack), it removes a sample of the target's tissue and analyzes it. A readout shows what, if any, special abilities the target possesses. If the wielder wishes, she can then use the cellular sampler on herself and gain one of the special abilities from the last creature sampled. A transferred ability lasts for one minute. Sampling and transferring each require a depletion roll.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20
Level: 1d6
Form: An ornate organimer platter with covering lid
Effect: Up to six communion wafers (or any small pieces of edible food) can be treated at a time in a one-round process that involves closing the platter's covering lid and pressing a contact. A treated communion wafer confers the normal benefits of communion (if any) and grants a temporary +3 bonus to Edge, distributed across whatever Pools the character desires. The bonus lasts for one hour. Eating additional communion platter wafers has no effect beyond the first, but that doesn’t stop people from trying.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20
Level: 1d6+2
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Palm-sized disc
Effect: Creates a duplicate of the user that persists for up to one hour. The duplicate's level is equal to the artifact's level or the user's level (or tier), whichever is lower. The duplicate is dressed like the user but has no specialized equipment such as cyphers or artifacts. The duplicate possesses the general knowledge of the user, including at least one special ability that most defines the user.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20
Level: 1d6
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Small biopod fitted behind the left ear
Effect: Once the biopod is fitted, the user can mentally direct the stimulation of his brain's pleasure center in a short pulse lasting about a round, or program a series of pulses lasting up to ten minutes. On the lowest intensity setting, the user has an asset on tasks related to pleasant social interaction. On the medium setting, the user can still interact with his surroundings, but the difficulty of all tasks is increased by one step. On the highest setting, the user is essentially debilitated, though incredibly happy.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20
Level: 1d6+4
Form: A flat, palm-sized stone disc, which can be “unfolded” to create a 6-foot-high (2 m) monolith. Enigmaliths are scribed with 1d6 stylized carvings on their surface, each apparently depicting a completely unknown creature.
Effect: An enigmalith can be unfolded over the course of six actions, with each action roughly doubling themass of the object until it has as much as a granite monolith of the given dimensions would. (Folding reverses the process.) An enigmalith is a prison that stores its inmates in abeyance. An unfolded enigmalith may accidentally trap whoever opens it or attempts to use it if the user fails an Intellect defense roll. Newly trapped victims go into abeyance, leaving an afterimage of a stylized engraving of the victim on the enigmalith's surface. Touching an engraving on an enigmalith frees the associated trapped creature (unless whoever touches the engraving is trapped in turn). Newly discovered enigmaliths often contain random creatures wholly unknown to modern Ruk (randomly selected by the GM, up to the artifact's level).
Newly released creatures are often dangerous, confused, and difficult to communicate with.
A depletion roll is required each time a creature is trapped or released. If the artifact is depleted, all the creatures trapped within are released.
Depletion: 1-2 in d100
Level: 1d6+2
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Metallic umbilical
Effect: The user can project a short-lived imprint of her consciousness into the All Song. The imprint—a "ghost"—can travel the network for up to ten hours, searching for hard-to-find data, tracing users of other networks, and attempting to break into encrypted areas. The ghost sends a message with a summary of everything it's learned on a topic (if anything) prior to its natural dissolution. In effect, the ghost instance reduces the difficulty of an information-gathering or hacking attempt by two steps.
The ghost instance could spawn a "ghost" into a similar data network, such as the Internet, if it were brought into a different recursion. However, in a recursion that doesn't support Weird Science, the ghost lasts for only a few hours, and the difficulty is reduced by only one step.
Depletion: 1 in 1d10 (Upon depletion, the user's mind is transferred, not duplicated, leaving behind an unconscious body; the user must find a way back into her body or risk permanent disassociation with it.)
Level: 1d6
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Organ, self-installing
Effect: The graft recipient can plug into the All Song anywhere in Ruk and gain full access to it without the need to connect via umbilical to an All Song communal. The difficulty of all tasks associated with connecting to and retrieving information from the All Song is decreased by one step.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20
Level: 1d6
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Organ, self-installing
Effect: The graft recipient's cypher limit increases by one.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20 (check each day)
Level: 1d6
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Organ, self-installing
Effect: The graft recipient permanently adds 2 points to her Speed Pool.
Depletion:—
Level: 1d6
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Organ, self-installing
Effect: The graft recipient can reduce or increase his gravity on the fly, nullifying the effects of high, low, or no gravity, as a normal function of the graft that doesn't require a depletion roll. In addition, he can trigger the graft to reduce his effective mass in order to leap up to a long distance as his normal movement for the round.
Depletion:—
Level: 1d6+2
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Skin replacement, self-wrapping
Effect: The graft recipient can subsist without food as long as he has the equivalent of one hour of bright sunlight exposure each day and a normal quantity of water. In addition, he gains +5 to Armor against attacks using light, including lasers. Finally, each time the user is attacked by light or lasers, 1 point is restored to the Pool of his choice.
Depletion:—
Level: 1d6
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Organ, self-installing
Effect: This organ grants specialization in one noncombat task. A multitude of different skill grafts provide specialization in a multitude of different skills. The higher metabolic cost of a skill-specialization graft (as opposed to a skill-training graft) means that this graft will eventually burn out and become depleted.
Depletion: 1 in 1d00 (check each day)
Level: 1d6
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Organ, self-installing
Effect: This organ grants training in one noncombat task that the user is not already trained in. A multitude of different skill grafts provide training in a multitude of different skills.
Generally speaking, grafts that become part of a character translate into other recursions with that character as if a cypher, taking on the visual context of the new location. They do not count against a PC's cypher limit.
Roll a d20 to determine the skill training or choose from this table:
| 1 | Biology |
| 2 | Climbing |
| 3 | Computer science |
| 4 | Crafting |
| 5 | Deceiving |
| 6 | Escaping |
| 7 | Forensic science |
| 8 | Healing |
| 9 | History |
| 10 | Initiative |
| 11 | Intimidation |
| 12 | Jumping |
| 13 | Lockpicking |
| 14 | Mechanical repair |
| 15 | Perception |
| 16 | Persuasion |
| 17 | Pickpocketing |
| 18 | Riding |
| 19 | Stealth |
| 20 | Swimming |
Depletion:—
Level: 1d6
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Organ, self-installing
Effect: The graft recipient permanently adds 2 points to her Might Pool.
Depletion:—
Level: 1d6
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Organ, self-installing
Effect: Over the course of one minute, the graft recipient can synthesize hormones and other chemicals that feed directly into her blood. This can provide a great many advantages, including reducing the difficulty by one step of a particular task, kind of attack, or kind of defense for three rounds; counteracting a poison or acid; or restoring 2 points to a Pool. The GM may allow other effects from synthesized chemicals but may require a roll. Users who spectacularly fail to create a desired outlier chemical may suffer instead of gain a benefit from the botched synthesis, as determined by the GM.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20
GM Intrusions: The character takes damage equal to the artifact level. The character loses her next turn. The character's skin turns bright blue. The character begins to emit the overpowering odor of burned chocolate.
Level: 1d6
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: 3-foot (1 m) long tentacle, self-installing
Effect: The graft recipient gains an additional limb, which allows her to hold an extra piece of equipment, such as a shield, or make an unarmed attack with the tentacle (as if practiced), treating it as a light weapon. On a hit, the user can inflict damage or hold the victim in place for one round.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20 (check each day)
Level: 1d6+1
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Black attaché case
Effect: The case translates with its holder, but objects within the case retain the context of the recursion where they were stored. If items are stored in a recursion that operates under one law and then taken to a recursion that operates under a different law, they do not begin to degrade until they are removed from the case. This means that cross-law items function for at least a minute at full capacity upon removal from the case. Thus, a magic wand could work in Ruk, a nanobot injector could work on Earth, and so on, without having to be used immediately after translation or inapposite travel.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20 (check per translation)
Level: 1d6
Form: An organic pod, almost like a small, hemispherical bit of brain; once grafted to a host, the host's flesh grows over it until it is only a lump
Effect: The pod grafts onto any living host (usually near the brain or spine) and injects chemicals that boost the creature's metabolism. This permanently raises the host's Speed Pool maximum by 5 points.
Depletion: —
Level: 1d6
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Injection
Effect: A microthin layer of flexible metal spreads beneath the user’s skin, giving her a greyish, silvery cast. She gains +1 to Armor.
Generally speaking, grafts that become part of a character translate into other recursions with that character as if they were a cypher and take on the visual context of the new location, though they do not count against a PC's cypher limit.
Depletion: 1 in 1d100 (check each day)
Effect: When the user ingests the pill, nanobots swarm out of it and into her body, providing one of the benefits described below. When the effect ends after about a minute, the nanobots xtricate themselves from her tissue and form a fresh pill nestled in her hand, ready for another use (unless depleted). Effects include the following.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20 (Upon depletion, the pill reforms one final time; if ingested again, it acts like acid that inflicts 5 points of damage for three rounds.)
Level: 1d6+1
Form: A wide strip of flexible material that gives off a pungent scent
Effect: When activated, a banner emits a pheromone that can affect all pre-treated allies within short range that breathe in the odor.
Pre-treating an ally requires an action and touch proximity. Unless noted otherwise, a pheromone banner produces its effect for one minute per activation.
| 01-10 Melee attacks of pre-treated allies decrease in difficulty by one step |
| 11-20 Ranged attacks of pre-treated allies decrease in difficulty by one step |
| 21-30 Melee attacks made by targets other than a pre-treated ally increase in difficulty by one step |
| 31-40 Ranged attacks made by targets other than a pre-treated ally increase in difficulty by one step |
| 41-50 Pre-treated allies feel less pain (and gain +1 to Armor) |
| 51-60 Attempts to intimidate targets other than a pre-treated ally decrease in difficulty by one step |
| 61-70 Pre-treated allies who make a recovery roll while banner is active recover an additional 4 points |
| 71-80 Speed defense rolls of pre-treated allies decrease in difficulty by one step |
| 81-90 Might defense rolls of pre-treated allies decrease in difficulty by one step |
| 91-00 Intellect defense rolls of pre-treated allies decrease in difficulty by one step |
Depletion: 1 in 1d20
Level: 1d6+4
Form: A bulb of living organic tissue the size of a human head Special: A recursion pod can move between recursions.
Effect: When a recursion pod is placed on an object (usually another artifact), the pod insinuates veinlike tendrils into that object. This doesn't normally affect the object's function. If themated object and recursion pod are translated into a different recursion, though, not only does the pod make it possible for themated object to make the transfer, but both the pod and mated object retain their original forms as if having moved through an inapposite gate. Any special properties possessed by themated object in its home recursion continue to function at full capacity in the new recursion, even if different laws are in operation. A depletion roll is required each time themated object translates into a new recursion.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20 activated, the wearer can take command of
Level: 1d6+1
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Metallic claws and bone sheath graft, self-installing
Effect: The graft recipient can make unarmed weapon attacks with metallic claws that can be extended as part of another action. Instead of dealing normal unarmed attack damage, the attack deals damage equal to the artifact level. If the user has a special ability or training that increases her natural unarmed attack damage, the increase is applied to the damage dealt by the retractable claws.
Depletion: —
Level: 1d6+3
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Metallic claws and bone sheath graft, self-installing
Effect: This graft functions like a set of regular retractable claws. However, as a special use of the claws, the user can energize them with a laser-cutting surface, which can cut through any material of the artifact level or less.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20 (check per laser ignition)
Level: 1d6+1
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Cranial spikes, self-installing
Effect: If the wearer of this graft head-butts a foe and inflicts damage, the victim must make a Might defense roll as the venomous spikes automatically break the skin and inject the foe with venom. If the second defense roll fails, the target takes an additional number of points of Speed damage (ignores Armor) equal to the artifact level and is so stunned with pain that it loses its next turn.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20
Level: 1d6
Form: An organic pod, almost like a small, hemispherical bit of brain; once grafted to a host, the host's flesh grows over it until it is only a lump
Effect: This pod grafts onto any living host (must be near the brain) and injects complex chemicals that alter brain and muscle functions. This grants the host training in one (predetermined) skill.
Depletion: —
Level: 1d6
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Thick ring with a control dial and contact surface
Effect: The wearer can adjust the ring from one to six settings, corresponding to one minute, one hour, ten hours, one hundred hours, 1,000 hours (a bit longer than a month), and 10,000 hours (a bit longer than an Earth year). If the contact surface is depressed, the wearer goes into stasis for the amount of time set on the ring. While in stasis, the wearer can take no actions, doesn't age, and gains +10 to Armor against all forms of damage, even kinds not normally reduced by Armor.
If a wearer in stasis takes enough damage to get through his Armor, the stasis effect immediately ends.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20
Level: 1d6
Origin: Ruk (emergent)
Law: Weird Science
Form: Injection
Effect: When injected under the skin, organic nanomachines able to stimulate and adjust skin cells give the semblance of inked tattoos of various designs. Each tattoo graft comes with a static template, but a user can concentrate on the tattoos and, over the course of one minute, create any design on his skin that he can imagine. He can also animate a design or make a tattoo visible only under certain wavelengths. Finally, he can cause a tattoo to emit light, and if the design is concentrated enough, it can emit light in a bright beam reaching a short distance.
Depletion: 1 in 1d100 (check per design change)
Level: 1d6
Form: A whiplike length of organic material similar to flesh
Effect: This graft attaches to the host's spinal column so that it can be controlled like a limb. The host can use it like a whip (a light weapon) even if his hands are full. He can also use it like a prehensile tail that can hold his weight (assuming he is roughly human-sized) or another object.
Depletion: —
Level: 1d6+4
Form: A helmet that looks similar to the head of a venom trooper, with a Zal faction symbol emblazoned on the back
Effect: When worn by a creature and a number of venom troopers (equal to the artifact's level) within long range. The wearer must be able to see and hear the venom troopers to be commanded, and vice versa. The period of control lasts up to one hour.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20
Level: 1d6
Form: A medium weapon (melee or ranged), with a sleeve of softer, fleshy material
Effect: This organic graft fits over a hand or stump and affixes to the flesh of the host. The physical bond provides an asset that makes attacks one step easier. When a PC finds a weapon graft, the GM determines what kind of weapon is attached to the graft.
Depletion: —
Level: 1d6+1
Form: An 8-foot-long (2 m) organimer wing
Effect: This is a vehicle that can be ridden by someone who makes Speed rolls (level 1) each round. In combat, it moves a long distance each round, but on extended trips, it can move up to 80 miles (129 km) per hour. A depletion roll is required for each hour of use.
Depletion: 1-2 in 1d100
Level: 1d6
Form: Stylish glasses with tinted lenses
Effect: The wearer can adjust the tint from slight to dark enough to stare into the heart of a star without sustaining eye damage. In addition, the wearer can receive help on knowledge-based tasks (including repair or infiltration tasks that require special knowledge) by someone else wearing AR glasses who is on the same network. Some AR glasses come programmed with computer animation aids on a limited selection of topics (such as starship operation tasks, for instance) that can also provide assistance even without a paired helper on the same network.
Depletion: — (Requires daily charging to operate.)
Level: 1d6
Form: Handheld device with several extended metallic prongs
Effect: The wielder targets a device in long range that runs on an electrical charge, and the device is repowered in whole or in part.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20
Level: 1d6
Form: Flying device small enough to fit in a pocket
Effect: A nano drone can be keyed to one or more uses by the application of the correct passphrase (or a hardware hacking success). The drone provides aid in the form of knowledge (voice activated), surveillance, communication with other users of nano drones, and offense (once every other round, it can fire a short-range maser beam that inflicts damage equal to its level).
Depletion: — (The drone must be recharged every few days, either manually or with a charge gun.)
Level: 1d6
Form: Thick ring with a control dial and contact surface
Effect: The wearer can adjust the ring from one to six settings, corresponding to one minute, one hour, ten hours, one hundred hours, 1,000 hours (a bit longer than a month), and 10,000 hours (a bit longer than an Earth year). If the contact surface is depressed, the wearer goes into stasis for the amount of time set on the ring. While in stasis, the wearer can take no actions, doesn’t age, and gains +10 to Armor against all forms of damage, even kinds not normally reduced by Armor. If a wearer in stasis takes enough damage to get through his Armor, the stasis effect immediately ends.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20
Level: 1d6
Form: Injection
Effect: When injected under the skin, organic nanomachines able to stimulate and adjust skin cells give the semblance of inked tattoos of various designs. Each tattoo graft comes with a static template, but a user can concentrate on the tattoos and, over the course of one minute, create any design on her skin she can imagine. She can also animate a design or make a tattoo visible only under certain wavelengths. Each design change requires a depletion roll. Finally, she can cause a tattoo to emit light, and if the design is concentrated enough, it can emit light in a bright beam reaching a short distance.
Depletion: 1 in 1d100