Social Weave

The inner forest hides it, and it embraces the unique nature of the place. The members scuttle, passing messages along web-networks which act as telegrams, subtle vibrations giving a constant updates to the Weave. To an outsider, the monolithic system of these gigantic social spiders is sealed tight, impossible to penetrate. 

Families will share central web-complexes like the noble houses of the aristocracy, with the young scions ranging far in their hunts. All families are connected to the Line, a length of web connecting all within the Weave's domain, used to pass messages along in the form of subtle vibrations. Hidden meanings and codes are common, as anyone could be listening in. 

Most members are bound in a web unyielding as those they weave. The most common bond is child to parent - great broods of children carrying out the bidding of their mother. The females outnumber the males greatly, and the fathers are not directly involved with the children, although they decide how the Weave develops and grows.

The second bond is that of the client. Like the system of ancient Rome, a favour performed is to be paid back when owed desires it. And so most of the population is double-bound between their mother and their duties as a client. What these favours are is incomprehensible to bipeds, the alien arachnid mind operating in differing patterns.

Occasionally, an outcast of the Weave will capture a Magic User with the ability to speak tongues. The patient, alien mind of the spider will listen to the desperate promises of tutelage. These mage-spiders are terrible, their eight-legged patience perfect for arcane study. These few are welcomed back to the Weave, and have begun teaching others, a powerful favour indeed.

Spider's Spellbooks are hidden amongst the endless webs.

Ptolemax

Fiction. Ptolemax is a piss-yellow hipster dragon.

Phagelands

Not geography but an infection, coursing through the landscape. A patch of plague, where parasite-trees claw the sky atop tumour-hills. Infected valleys weep the earth's pus. Yet the Phagelands do not stagnate - competition is rife amongst the many diseases and disorders present, and therein lies it's deadly lure. The huge, complex hierarchies of infections and parasites have led to twisted cures which literally eat other diseases, leaving the host comparatively unharmed - after all, nothing normal lives in the Phagelands.

The plaguescape does have its migratory inhabitants - trains of lepers accompanied by a litany of death-rattles, those driven to desperation by biological ruin hunting across the dying land for the cure to what ails. Diseases are adaptable however, and take their toll on the desperate as they change to infect their new hosts.

The Phagelands move, drifting across the landscape. Though the size varies, it is always at least a days travel wide. Animals flee and plants die as it blindly slides across the lands, unperturbed by obstacles. Cities have been devastated simply through loss of cropland, let alone the nightmarish infestation of direct contact. It has lurked beneath the sea for centuries before, eventually emerging onto land once more, beset with new infections and maladies.

Those who have the misfortune to dwell long in drifting disaster speak in hushed whispers of the Walking Plagues, who have developed an alien intelligence and stalk their dying environs. No healthy human has seen one, and can you trust one who chooses to live in such a place?

Inorganic Demons, Xenolithic Artefacts.

See end for the why and where of this one.

Undesirable without power, an unearthed tool (weapon) shivers to life. First it selects the host, or a host embraces it, the process is unclear. The first host, an individual. Then a group. Then a population. The tendrils spread upwards, outwards, and all will feel the effects. They have forms beyond reckoning, a seductive revulsion, sickening attraction, a leper-temptation.

Roll thrice, summate to create.

d10	a	b	c
1	Twisting	Despairing	Bones (Animal, Fish, Other)
2	Swirling	Jubilant	Ashes (Organic, Mineral)
3	Smoking	Furious	Ceramic (Whole, Smashed)
4	Retracting	Hungry	Meat (Animal, Fish, Other)
5	Expanding	Uncaring	Metal  (Earthly, Unearthly)
6	Inflating	Sickened	Writing (Forgotten)
7	Exploring	Lustful	Glass (Smashed, Whole, Cracked)
8	Collapsing	Alienating	Liquid (Oil, oil, oil, oil)
9	Constructing	Sincere	Intangible
0	Roll twice	Roll twice	Roll twice

Grip it, feel it, taste it, know it. Or rather, it knows you, and you are now of it, a nerve receptacle, inextricable from the thing itself. Distance has nothing to do with this special relationship. Feed it stimuli, and feel the encroaching presence as power and knowledge. Both the power and the knowledge are very much real, although the gain is illusory – you are not gaining, you are being supplanted, replaced.

Roll once grow slow. Grinding of tectonic plates.

d4	The knowledge is the power, or the power knowledge.
1	Void. Holes. Worm-machines consuming willing solid (all solid is willing, defined by void)
2	Illumination. The light can blind, ignite, reveal and obscure through sheer overload.
3	Decomposition. All things trend towards a stable form, calcifying as corpses, oil, coal. A process of stabilization, fast-forwarded.
4	Feedback. One process informs another, informing the initial. An endless web of reaction, waiting to be pulled.

It is something Othered. It is something Inorganic, and so there are consequences. Inflicted by its uncaring presence yet also an allergic reaction, a systems desperate rejection of the parasite, the invader. A price paid for such a thing.

Roll once and tremble. Measurable by our reckoning of time.

d4	Self-inflicted wounds of the aggressor.
1	Organic rot, a riot of disease, malady, canker, cancer and biological failure.
2	Images, scents, sounds of place in your fragile egg-shell skull. Lose days uncountable to it, and learn nothing.
3	You are Marked, and the others will know you by it. They grow by the defeat of their own kind, and others now ache in their slumber to strike your parasite down.
4	Conversion towards something else entirely. Organics become Inorganic. Something not-machine but mechanical replaces organs, limbs, thoughts.

Such things are only destroyed by their own kind, which grow in such an act. Their presence is inescapable, the only brief reprieve given by returning them to their burial/bed chambers, far below the soil and stone.

--

This is pretty heavily inspired by the book I'm reading at the moment. It's batshit insane, but has some great ideas, although the writing itself is complete word salad - I'm probably missing most of what I'm reading but goddamn is it evocative. This THING above is inspired by the note on Inorganic Demons. I'll probably be doing several things based on the stuff I get from this tome. Available on Amazon.

Commune Pit

The dungeon architecture shifts as you come around the corner. The old material is replaced with organically twisted stone like sinews, taut, wet, straining. The air becomes clammy as you walk down the corridor, although no moisture gathers on the walls nor floor. There is a slight suction to the movement of air, pulling you towards it. A circular room, perhaps 30 foot across, dominated by the huge pit below. The blackness within is impenetrable, like a sea of ink or oil.

It grows in places abandoned. Places forgotten. It is here those Outside will attempt commune, will attempt to worm some tendril through the gaps. Gaze too long into the abyss, and the abyss will whisper horrible secrets to you.

d8	Whispers, Impressions and False Memories
1	The Unhive of the Spirit Insects. The crowd, buzz, fly, skitter across your brain. Always. Sleep is impossible. Sometimes you feel your wings, lurking just below the surface. Other days, your chitin yearns to be free. You learn to analyse, but cool as a person. +1 Int, -2 Cha. One day you will emerge.
2	Magnitude of Grind. The millstone of ages, empires, worlds, suns. You can hear the grinding, and it grows louder. Sift through the dust which leaks into your head, and find inspiration, knowledge, history rendered to particles. 1 in 10 chance to know about something you couldn't otherwise. 1 in 6 if it’s extra-planar and old.
3	Resting Many. A single synapse-equivalent of one of those great slumbering leviathans of the sea of chaos is fired by your gaze, and you are blasted. Save-vs-Death. Survivors gain 2d6 random level spells, burnt into the brain. These spells must be prepared, and eat other spells when they are cast, expending the charge of another. The spells eat other parts of the brain too.
4	Hungry Sensate. Starved, wild, screaming, hedonist, it eats a sense of yours, randomly determined. Another is massively increased, although it now utilizes alien organs and biology. 10% chance these new organs are not visible. At night your body rebels, and at dawn the alien organs win victory once more. Each time you feel the taint spread.
5	( ). Time not space. Know this, but sideways, backwards, wrong. Always seeing ‘now’ (how laughable) and ‘then’ (equally) of six seconds before. Simultaneous, mixed images. Focusing on one (lying to yourself) helped with drugs, drink or meditation. -3 to activities relying on a solid grasp of ‘now’.
6	Cosmic Computation. The neural network of stars. Ponderous, ancient, slow, unimaginable in the complexity and knowledge. All is insignificant to these cosmic engines burning in calculation of The Great Question. Filled with the desire to find scraps of the answer in the little things, the things they cannot comprehend. Always hungry for it now.

Fragment

Just some short fiction.