#jbbdp compilation post

[justavulcan]

Seedworld Robotics Facility Compilation Post

Specialized power systems are uncommon throughout human space- typically, being able to interface without adapters is the way most prefer to build, to capitalize on familiarity across markets.  It’s this exact feature that makes the Seedworlds so bizarre.  The untapped raw energy they burst with is too much for conventional power systems to handle and requires specialized equipment to collect, transfer, and use.  As a result they’re something of an energy desert for outside or poorly-adapted hardware.

The Seedworlds are littered with the remnants of prefabbed structures that weren’t built to spec, part of the earliest and most ill-conceived waves of colonization.  The Dungeon is one such structure, a civic robotics factory where the internal circuitry burnt out en masse the first time the production lines were activated.  Still gorgeous and pristine as the day it landed, the Dungeon now plays home to an unorthodox group of locals and colonists alike.

The Master of the Dungeon is the first and only attempt from the Dungeon’s previous life as a prefabbed robotics facility to adjust the machinery to the Seedworld’s native power field.  Visually, it’s monstrous, a chimeric centipede-like construct built using the torsos and limbs of humanoid chassis as raw materials.  Running some kind of security protocols and later equipped with an array of military-grade weaponry, the Master denies access to the structure to most who try, although the odd passerby occasionally meets some hidden criteria for passage and is allowed entry.

The most populous of the Master’s ‘followers’ are cyborgs, mostly explorers and other wilderness types familiar with roaming alien landscapes.  They’ve adopted the role of the emissary since being permitted by the Master to make their home inside the Dungeon, and have adapted themselves admirably to the Seedworld’s power oddities.  Armed with engraving tools and industrial welding equipment, they’ve taken to scribing warnings and messages about the Master’s domain far and wide, inviting supplicants to test themselves and see if the Master finds them worthy.

Perhaps the only one who truly means the best for the Master is a unique robot with a caretaker and repair toolset.  Nearly self-aware due to a complicated interconnected set of systems, it looks after the Master’s repair and upgrade cycles like a concerned teacher would a challenging student.  Its programming has extended to upgrading and repairing the vehicles and equipment the Dungeon’s other occupants bring, nursemaiding their inorganic components and their gear alike.

Newcomers to the Dungeon find that the Master is more than its biggest and most fearsome defender- it is the keystone to the facility’s defense network, a channel through which the other occupants feed each other information and, critically, a free access point for the local power source.  As a result, the Dungeon’s defenders can draw on this network to fuel enhanced shielding or overcharged weaponry as long as the Master is still functional.

Since the Dungeon was dropped, colonization on the Seedworlds has proceeded quickly- and the demand for the facility’s services has increased exponentially.  Since the cost to retrofit the factory is less than the cost of prefabbing and dropping another, or even that of manufacturing another on-planet, there have been interests in reclaiming the Dungeon for its intended use.  Removing the Master and its followers is all that remains, and the facility can be claimed by the most eager of its would-be new owners.

[justavulcan]

Spire of the Centipede Compilation Post

The Maze is dotted with a number of trial dungeons, the final test of a warrior society now lost to the mists of time.  They took the defense of their greatest magical arts and weapons very seriously, and considered each of the sites within the maze to be a separate high-security vault to test the wit and might of those who would follow in their footsteps.  Where they all went, none know; rumor has it some unnamed crime brought the judgement of their god or gods down upon them.  The Spire is simply one such facility

The Crypt For the Living is one of the two original defensive mechanisms built to facilitate keeping the Dungeon and its prize safe, an immense vault of exotic beasts kept in eternal slumber until the Spire is intruded upon.  This means that they’re only released when their specific floor is intruded upon- and that if the intruders are quick, they can catch the territorial beasts still groggy from their stasis.

The Growing Rite is an ongoing ritual perpetuated by a group of near-immortal mushroom people deep in the depths under the Spire.  As the treasures are hidden at the spire’s pinnacle, going to resolve this matter takes would-be explorers out of their way, but it’s worth it- until they’re stopped, the mushroom people’s magic causes the interior of the Spire to grow vegetation riotously to interfere in combat and make exploration difficult.

The jungle delvers, on the other hand, are survivalists that live in the maze around the spire, venerating it as holy ground and only tapping its seemingly-bottomless vault of dinosaurs as a last resort or on special ceremonial occasions.  They’re intolerant of trespassers, as they consider the maze and Spire worthy of veneration, and while they don’t jump straight to violence, they will get there eventually against persistent intruders.

The dungeon’s Master, the Primordial Gnawer, is the spire builders’ final test, a sentient rune-engraved arthropod of immense size and hostility.  It takes its duties very seriously, as intruders are the only entertainment (and food) it ever gets; while it doesn’t experience hunger in the Spire, it does savor the taste of meat, and considers eating intruders something akin to a sacred duty.

The lesser reward for persisting through the dungeon’s trials is a gift of wealth and power: a treasure horde with a potent magical weapon at its heart as a reward for persistance and courage.  The wealth is in raw golden jewelry and art made from jade, turquoise, and coral; the weapon is a polearm or other thrusting or hafted weapon, planted victoriously in a dinosaur skull for display.

The greater reward is the Waterknot, a band of flowing liquid water that grants its wielder a number of abilities related to timelessness or stasis- water is ageless, and the builders considered it a symbol of eternity.  The wielder of the Waterknot can, by tapping its power, hold creatures, objects, and even time itself in stasis, once they’ve mastered the ancient artifact sufficiently.

[justavulcan]

Subway Checkpoint Singer Compilation Post

The Master makes its lair in an abandoned law enforcement checkpoint in the extensive subway and utility access tunnels beneath the city.  While most of the utilities are dead and silent, recently the neighboring human communities have needed to get access to the checkpoint in an attempt to bring power or even running water back.  As the old government wanted to maintain control of both, the Dungeon has the central switching for both, necessitating braving its darkened corridors and the master’s servants.

The Master is a mutant, a creature of the pre-apocalypse twisted and gnarled into a huge, reptilian beast with scarce-used wings and a truly hypnotic song.  Intelligent enough to collect other mutants and even humans to it as defenders and potential food sources, the Master’s basic goals extend to a dominance of its environment that few animals seek- not the simple predatory dominance of an animal or lesser mutant, but administration and control.

The master’s brood, produced from some parthenogenic ability, bear only the barest resemblance to their progenitor.  Man-sized and lean, they’re utterly dwarfed by their colossal parent, but no less the dangerous for it.  Equipped with sharp claws suited equally for clinging to overhead lines and gutting unfortunate lost pigs or humans, the brood range far and wide from their lair in the subway checkpoint.  Most startling is their ability to leap, revealing that while flightless, they can glide well and still prefer to take prey from above.

The dousers of lights are unrelated to the Master, genetically, but the symbiosis they have together is undeniable- the humans are aware of the Master’s song, and go with their ears stoppered against it when they must travel this way.  As this increases their dependence on their lights, these chitinous mutants give chase, lurking in the dark with the ability to psychically dampen illumination.  None can agree if this is a trick on the observer, or if they can truly darken the lights, but there are few survivors to speculate from experience.

Most insidious of the Master’s servants is a small group of humans that make camp in the officer’s mess of the checkpoint, where they are allowed electric lanterns and fires and their own pigs and tiny mushroom farm.  As these are thin rations, the people here are forever near-starved and hollow-looking, but they never complain.  Their master sees to it they do not perish from hunger, although a few have died in the line of service luring prey in for the master and her brood, or new members for their own sorry number.

The Master has a weakness it has kept carefully hidden; its sweat is so oily that it’s combustible, giving the Master a dreadful vulnerability to open flame.  It’s compensated for this by locating and lairing in one of the old storerooms, as they’re equipped with ancient fire-suppression systems.  That these systems are full of filthy, stagnant water that poses a very real infection risk to would-be explorers is simply a bonus.

The psychic backlash from slaying the master is the reward that matters, aside from access to the utilities that are fed through here.  Those nearby when the mutant is slain feel one last gasp of telepathic music, a song that plants in their minds the seeds of creation.  Those so inspired find themselves with the willingness and the knowledge to make something with their own two hands, regardless of their previous ability to use the tools and skills necessary.  This inspiration lasts long enough for one frenzied project to be borne to completion, and then fades like a fever dream.