East Vale Chaos Landing

We’re more than halfway through Chaos Landing, now, this time dealing with East Vale, the poor part of town across the river and connected with the mainland which, in the Warp, means that it just opens up onto the churning madness of regular Warpspace.

D1) This is the East Vale Market. There are eight puppets and two lurchers here, and they’ll attack anyone who enters the area.

D2) This shantytown is crawling with a dozen faceless children. They fall upon anyone passing through in a mindless swarm.

D3) This is Scrum Lane, and it’s lined with rickety houses cobbled together from scrapwood. Multi-room shanties, essentially. A pack of three skin wolves scavenges along the street.

D4) This clinic is home to a pale lady with biomancy powers and four faceless children who attend her, like orphans to an old woman who gives out candy to helpful kids. She’s gathering up the remains of the Thin Man’s victims and stitching them together, trying to bring them back to life, but it never works. She is non-hostile and wears the key to the church at D6 on her neck, but will become hostile if the characters attempt to steal the key. She does not speak, but does listen intently whenever her Disposition is increased, showing clear interest. She has a clever personality. When her disposition is reduced to zero, she and her children attack.

The pale lady who lives here has a large basin filled with the blood of daemons. Severed limbs or other appendages can be dipped into the basin and will subsequently attach themselves to whatever skinned body part they are attached to. The stump from which they were severed obviously qualifies, but one could also, say, skin their shoulders and attach a second pair of arms severed from a foe, or just some unfortunate victim. The procedure will work on dead creatures, but will not bring them back to life, just fuse bits of corpses together. Dipping a body part in blood and attaching it to a new body (yours or someone else’s) each calls for a Very Hard(-30) Willpower test. If failed, each causes 1d5 Corruption. You can also drink from the basin directly to heal wounds. First say how many wounds you are going to heal. Critical wounds count double. Then make a Challenging(+0) Willpower test. For every degree of success, you heal one wound for free. For each wound past that, you take a point of Corruption.

The basin is made of some rusty, corrugated metal, weighs 15kg, and is two feet across. Carrying it without spilling its contents requires two hands. If the contents of the basin are spilled, it must be refilled, requiring the blood of a hundred daemons. An Ordinary(+10) Forbidden Lore(Daemonology) or Forbidden Lore(Heresy) will reveal that the basin is filled with daemon blood and is used for healing (the latter can be observed if the pale lady is left to do her work for long enough before the characters attack or converse with her). A Difficult(-10) Daemonology or Heresy test will reveal all the details of how it functions, including how many Corruption points are risked for each use and how to replenish its stock of daemon blood if it’s spilled.

D5) The buildings thin out to nothing here. This edge of town is patrolled by a pack of five skin wolves. Past this is the churning mass of the Warp.

D6) This church is shut tight with the same Armour 32 supernatural chains as the others. Like the others, however, its door is only wood and can be broken open much more easily if the characters have some explosives handy. If not, the key is at D4. Inside are five faceless children and a Thin Man maggotface who is torturing a gaunt on the altar. The maggotface will attack any intruders immediately with its minions, including the gaunt. Defeating the maggotface clears the area and prevents it from restocking encounters. Random encounters left in the area will flee the town entirely. The exit route to the rest of the Warp is right there, after all.

D7) The bridge here has collapsed. A maggotface sits at a small port for rafts. He’s got an introspective personality and a starting disposition of 50. He’s pondering the nature of daemonic existence. He is theoretically immortal. But if he dies, will he leave any legacy? He was created from the Warp itself, perfectly fitted to perform his role. But he’s locked into that role. Would it be better to be a mortal, imperfect, short-lived, but with the potential to choose?

Morality is a funny thing. He can recognize its importance. It’s easy to see how an instinctive agreement not to harm one another would be beneficial. He would try to make such a pact between the daemons he knew, except that, barring a common enemy or a common master, he knows they would never keep it. He wouldn’t keep it, he would be too scared that someone else would betray first.

And yet morals are such helpful things. To live among moral people is paradise in its security. But mortals aren’t really moral, are they? They just have the potential for morality. And most of the time they do not realize it. The ultimate conclusion that the daemon keeps circling around to is: There is no winner. It sucks to be everyone.

Philosophizing with the maggotface may raise its disposition to the point where it will willingly raft the characters across the river. On the other hand, the characters could just kill the maggotface and take the raft, although if they don’t bring it back this will make it impossible to get from East Vale to the rest of the town without swimming.

Introspective Personality:

Zero Disposition: At zero disposition, an introspective person becomes dismissive and uninterested towards the characters, too bored to even listen to what they’re saying, let alone respond.