SECRETS OF GETHAMANE
From Thirdexalt
Contents |
[edit] THE FARMER CULT
The Gethamanians do not realize that the Gardens’ manse is damaged. It hasn’t suffered any sort of power failure, but spending too much time in the Gardens can affect a person’s mind. Affected people become obsessed with providing the Gardens with… richer compost. A secret cult among the farmers conducts human sacrifices. Now and then, a criminal sentenced to work in the Gardens suffers a “fatal accident” that leaves him spread-eagled over a tray, bled dry and emasculated before the body is discovered. Only senior farmers participate in the cult. The Mistress and several other leading citizens know about the cult but choose not to get involved. The older farmers believe they must propitiate the Gardens and the gods of fungi in this manner. Other Gethamanians believe the farmers and fear to change any of their traditions. An expert in geomancy or Craft (Genesis) who examines the Gardens’ instructions can tell that the sacrifices are completely unnecessary.
There is a small mystery cult among the farmers to the gods of fungus and mushrooms, but the worship is something that stays strictly within the Gardens and is only practiced among the more senior farmers. While the Mistress and a number of other powerful citizens are aware of the cult’s existence, they refrain from getting involved and don’t ask too many questions about the odd “accidental death” of a condemned convict who somehow gets bled dry and emasculated before his body is discovered.
[edit] SECRETS OF THE TEMPLES
The source of the chants and mandalas is obscure but not unknowable: The liturgies are in High Holy Speech, the language of the Dragon Kings. The temple walls portray members of the Pterok breed of this ancient, nearly extinct race. The inscriptions found in the chambers used by the hunters and gatherers are likewise written in this obscure tongue. The priests’ mandalas, however, come from the practices of the Mountain Folk.
[edit] THE MISSING ENTRANCES
What happened to the eastern and western entrances to the City Under the Mountain? They still exist. Landslides covered them long ago, but the early explorers soon found the passages to them. Some settlers proposed excavating these entrances, but the Gethamanians eventually decided to leave them hidden. In fact, they walled off the tunnels and plastered over the walls. Only the Mistress and members of her advisory Council know about the spare entrances. If something should prevent the Gethamanians from using any other exit from the city, they can excavate the buried gateways in a matter of days. 38 inscriptions in a script unlike that found anywhere else in the city. Centuries ago, a visiting savant of the Realm identified it as the High Holy Speech of the Dragon Kings, and chiefly consisting of heretical prayers to the Unconquered Sun.
[edit] LOST MAGITECH
For an Old Realm metropolis, Gethamane shows a distinct lack of Essence-powered conveniences. Only the light-crystals and the Gardens remain, for only they were both durable enough to resist Vodak’s passage and impossible for the Shogunate to remove. (In the centuries when the city was sealed, creatures from the underways might also have scavenged the city.) Nevertheless, the city is woven with hidden Essence accumulators and conduits, which all still function. Of the tens of thousands of jade-alloy plugs that once dispensed the Essence, only a few hundred remain (mostly in the Temple District and Garden District). These can still power any magitech device capable of connecting to them, as if each was a onedot hearthstone. Essence-channeling people cannot use the plugs: They function only for devices.
[edit] THE YU-SHAN GATE
In the underways, perhaps half an hour’s journey from the entrances into Gethamane, lies a gate to Yu-Shan. The gate has no guardian on the Gethamane side, but is watched on the other side by three Celestial lions. The Sidereals know about the gate, as do some of the Lunars and Deathlords. While the elders of the Mountain Folk know of the gate’s location, they also know that Vodak is down there, so no Mountain Folk would ever go near Gethamane — unless, of course, the situation was desperate. Anyone investigating the gate’s location would find it surprisingly clean and well-tended, showing the marks of occasional use.
[edit] SECRETS OF THE UNDERWAYS
The underways are not entirely natural. The Mountain Folk used to inhabit the upper layers, and someone familiar with the Jadeborn can recognize the workmanship of these tunnels and chambers.
Early Gethamanians learned this the hard way.) Many of the artifacts found in the underways are Mountain Folk workmanship.
Races and creatures of which humanity knows almost nothing, such as the centipede-like and savagely bestial cthritae and the eldritch underfolk, shaped other parts of the underways. Most of these “darkbrood” are more or less hostile to humans while entities such as the Leech Gods are utterly malignant. Vodak’s presence subtly draws the most malevolent of these creatures and inflames them with hatred of Gethamane; but most of the gems and ores found by explorers come from mines initiated by underdwellers.
[edit] REALITY ENGINES
Back in the Old Realm, a perceptive geomancer might observe that the City of the Mountain Gateway’s combination of a high peak, a connection to Heaven and alignments to the cardinal directions appears at one other location: the Imperial Mountain, the axis of Creation itself. This was no accident. Deep in the highest-security areas of the city—areas never shown on any map, hidden with the help of the Maiden of Secrets herself—the Deliberative emplaced 25 reality engines. These devices, the height of Old Realm magitech, emulate the Elemental Pole of Earth by stabilizing reality against the Wyld. If some unimaginable catastrophe overwhelmed the Blessed Isle, these engines could turn the mountain of Six Gates into a replacement Elemental Pole of Earth, around which Creation could regain its stability. More than half the population of Six Gates was Dragon- Blooded or God-Blooded. A great many of them functioned as guards, whatever their official duties were. Neither the Mountain Folk nor anyone else was supposed to know what the small city held. These reality engines still exist in a ring between the Garden District and the underways. The entrances are virtually undetectable and open only to a Solar’s anima. Further defenses protect the vaults of each machine.
[edit] THE ULTIMATE HORROR
The second secret of Gethamane began with the Primordial War. When the first Primordial died, its dying Essence and alien ichor generated a new entity: a hekatonkhire, or ghost-behemoth. Most hekatonkhires dwell in the Underworld, but the one called Vodak exists simultaneously in the Underworld and Creation. Vodak took shelter in the underways. Every few centuries, Vodak woke to prey upon the underdwellers, destroying whole cities’ worth of the Mountain Folk and other races. When the blood of almost 300 Solars fell on Creation’s soil, the Essence-taste of its progenitor’s killers roused Vodak from slumber. The Mountain Folk conceived a desperate plan to trap the hekatonkhire. As the Dragon-Blooded and Sidereals stalked and battled the last of the Lawgivers, the Mountain Folk captured numerous Solar offspring. They used the Golden Children as bait, luring Vodak to Six Gates. It arrived hungry. While the monster swept through the city like a silver ocean of death and madness, the greatest savants and sorcerers of the Mountain Folk cast their spells and activated potent artifacts. After six days spent devouring the city’s population, body and soul, Vodak returned to the depths to rest and digest its meal—and found it could not leave. The hekatonkhire now lurks in the deepest caverns below Gethamane, deeper even than the underdwellers know. When it sleeps, its dreams call to the underdwellers and fill them with its own hunger, hate and rage. When it wakes, the terror of its presence drives underdwellers to flee the depths into the city. Sometimes it reconstructs past victims from its own spectral flesh and plays murderous games with them. Vodak refrains from invading Gethamane for now, fearing the possibility of further traps. That may change… especially if Vodak scents Solar blood.
Vodak is a hekatonkhire, a creature of death. It and its spawn hunt the Gethamane of the Underworld. There are no patrols or Guards there to drive the monsters back into the deeper passages, and they raven freely in the lightless tunnels. Rumors of treasure or a shadowland within the hollow mountain draw the occasional foolish ghost from outside, but very few of them, no matter how well prepared, return.
The primary denizen of the Gethamane underways is Vodak and his simulacra. Other creatures enter the dark passages from time to time, and some even last long enough to establish small societies or develop plans to prey on the dwellers above. Sooner or later, however, the creatures end up as food for Vodak’s endless hunger or flee the tunnels for safer territory. Those beings that burst up from the underways into Gethamane proper are sometimes attempting to escape being food rather than seeking the city out — not that they would discuss the situation with the Guard.
As Vodak may produce simulacra of any creature he has devoured, and as he has by now devoured creatures from many different underground races, any sort of creature or race may appear in the caves beneath Gethamane — whether genuinely alive or merely a simulacra created by Vodak that does not realize its true nature. Vodak sometimes amuses itself by creating small tribes of such creatures without letting them realize what they are and then allowing them to play out dramas of life and death, to interact with each other, to attack visiting humans and so on. Eventually, however, Vodak absorbs them again. Combined with the other creatures living in the underways at any given time, this produces a constantly changing society and struggle for territory, resulting in frequent irruptions into upper Gethamane in search of food and living space.
VODAK
Description: A force of incalculable malice and insatiable hunger dwells in the silent crevices under Gethamane. The Mountain Folk call it Vodak in the language of a longextinct race, a name they dare only whisper in dread and hushed awe.
Every utterance of its name is a warning and a horrified prayer. Few know its nature or appearance, as all Mountain Folk flee before ever Vodak could come into sight, but they know it is inescapable death to all who behold it.
Vodak is a hekatonkhire, a behemoth of Malfean Essence. When the first Primordial perished at the hands of the Exalted, its dying blood seeped into the earth. The titan’s last breath animated the flowing ichors with its own vitriolic hatred, transforming the mass into a nightmare of bubbling and writhing quicksilver. At first, it flowed mindlessly, devouring all life it could find. The tortured and half-digested ghosts of its absorbed prey swelled its mass and cunning, gradually expanding Vodak into an undulating lake of necrotic power. In addition to its nearly indestructible form, the hekatonkhire can extrude congealed masses of its Essence to replicate any living being it has ever absorbed. These simulacra are corporeal beings with the semblance, the Traits and even the memories of their former selves up to their deaths. They almost indistinguishably mimic the original beings, save that they remain helplessly enthralled to their hideous maker and instantly dissolve into silver ash if they are slain or touched by sunlight (or if Vodak withdraws the committed Essence sustaining their existence). These copies have no Essence pool and none of the replicated beings’ non-physical supernatural powers (if any), but the copies can easily mistake themselves for the beings they emulate if Vodak gives them that illusion. The hekatonkhire uses its slaves as bait and hunters, luring prey into its glittering depths. It is possible that other Primordials spawned similar monsters throughout Creation when they died, though no such beings have ever made themselves known in the Ages since.
Storytellers should keep in mind that a being of Vodak’s age and power does not necessarily need statistics, nor should the following information provide anything more than a rough guideline. In most cases, this
being will function as an alien evil in the background, never entering scenes except through enslaved proxies. Vodak is currently mostly inert beneath Gethamane, choosing to merely lure prey with its proxies or devour other creatures wandering the underways. If the hekatonkhire rises, or if the wards that keep it under Gethamane are broken, it may mean the destruction of all Gethamane for a second time or the freeing of Vodak to travel throughout the depths of Creation.
Some of the creatures that attack Gethamane, however, are underdwellers slain and reconstructed by Vodak. The hekatonkhire itself created the soulsteel found in certain underways, as the intensity of its necrotic Essence transforms veins of iron ore when it passes.
While the people of Gethamane are aware that dark creatures roam the tunnels below the city and devour anything that they can catch, the people are ignorant of the true horror that lies below.
Those elders of the Mountain Folk who know that Vodak is bound beneath Gethamane are not going to reveal the matter. They are aware that Vodak may rise and devour again but consider this comparatively unimportant, given that it can’t escape. The people of Gethamane are sitting on a potential disaster and have no idea how bad it is. They are also unaware of the Yu-Shan gate below the city, as the secret has been lost to antiquity. Only the Sidereals and a scattering of others are aware of the location of the gate.
[edit] GHOSTS IN GETHAMANE
Few of the materialistic Gethamanians become ghosts after death. They never last long if they do. Vodak spawns numerous smaller versions of itself that sweep through Gethamane’s counterpart in the Underworld, and immaterially through the city in Creation. Those with Essence senses (such as All-Encompassing Sorcerer’s Sight) occasionally see a wash of silver move swiftly through a room or corridor. The rush affects nothing in the material world, but any immaterial creature is most likely doomed. In the Underworld, Vodak’s spawn devour any ghost within minutes.
[edit] VODAK AND THE REALITY ENGINES
The Mountain Folk had few options in binding Vodak: They decided that nothing less than a city could distract the hekatonkhire long enough for them to cast their spells, and few cities connected to Creation’s underways. Storytellers might decide, however, that it was no coincidence the Jadeborn sacrificed a city stocked with reality engines. Conceivably, the Mountain Folk knew about the secret devices, used Vodak’s attack as cover to seize them and re-tuned them to supercharge their spells. Characters who discover the reality engines and remove them to use against the Wyld could unwittingly release Vodak on Creation. Storytellers might prefer instead that the Mountain Folk did not know about the reality engines. In this alternative, if the Mountain Folk had conferred with the Solar Deliberative, they could have lured the hekatonkhire into a trap: Once Vodak was between the reality engines, these mighty artifacts would have created a space that was too real for the spectral horror to exist. But that didn’t happen, and Six Gates died because of the bitter history between the Jadeborn and the Sun’s Chosen. Either choice presents opportunities for Storytellers. Decide for yourself which (if either) is true.
[edit] ADVENTURE SEEDS
A serial killer is targeting Council members, killing them in a way that fits their faction and occupation (a merchant found with his stomach open and stuffed full of jade, a farmer saturated with fungi and is blossoming in different varieties of mushroom). Overt evidence points at an unidentified Guild agent (and the Guild is certainly trying to seize the moment to gain concessions), but the actual killer is a high-ranking Guard member whose mind has snapped and who worships the “Lord of the Underways.” While the killer has no actual contact with the underways, the creatures there will certainly take the opportunity to launch sneak attacks if Guard patrols slack off. The killer’s ultimate aim is to create widespread chaos — and his ultimate target is Mistress Katrin.
Nellens Avanthe has long-term ambitions to bring Gethamane into the Realm; seeing the merchants of Gethamane as her most convenient tool in doing this, as they are the ones with the biggest interest in outside commerce and connections to other countries.
Getting a merchant among the judges would establish a powerful precedent and serve to swing the axis of power in the merchants’ direction. Several merchants would be even better. The only person with the authority to order this is the current Mistress, Katrin Jadehand. Avanthe has some hidden supplies of ghost-flower tea, and she knows about Katrin’s frequent visits to the temples. All she needs is to dose Katrin’s drinks with the tea on those occasions and have someone who can command ghosts to summon up a few of Katrin’s ancestors and force them to command her to change the law.
A problem with this plan is that there aren’t any local ghosts. Avanthe has assumed that this is simply because nobody’s managed to summon them successfully, not that they just aren’t there. She has also failed to consider that she is making herself ridiculously vulnerable to blackmail or that a thaumaturge or Fair Folk could use illusions or glamours to produce fake ghosts. Worst of all, she is careless enough that it might be possible to trace all this back to her and to her Great House. This could be the wedge that causes Katrin to bar Gethamane to all Realm influence.
If a Solar or Abyssal found out about this, would they take the opportunity to influence Katrin, or use Avanthe as a tool instead? How would the priests react, if they found out how she planned to profane their temple?
Gavne’s obsession leaves the Northern Gate in danger. He’s begun reading the works of the Bishop of the Chalcedony Thurible, dreaming of saving the bodies of Gethamane’s dead (Gavne fails to realize how many are already illegally embalmed), raising them as zombies and marching them down into the underways to destroy every living creature there. If one of the Bishop’s deathknights learns (from the merchant who sold Gavne the books, for instance) that a commander of Gethamane’s Guard is vulnerable to his master’s words, then Gavne will certainly be sought out and offered a bargain of some sort.
Equally, a deathknight serving another master might want to prevent such a coup by the Bishop’s forces. At the moment, this can still be stopped by heroic mortals or ghosts who can discover Gavne’s pain and clear his troubled mind. It won’t remain so for much longer.
A Solar/ Abyssal passing through happens to possess the shard of one of the Exalted who raised Gethamane and bargained with the city’s three gods. The three deities are roused from their half-insane slumber and order their priests (through dreams and hallucinatory visions) to bring the Exalt to their temples so that they can speak with him. The gods also begin to neglect their usual duties, resulting in areas of bad air rising in the farther parts of Gethamane and people dying or crowding into other areas (and causing major legal disruptions over the Second Rule) in order to find breathable air.
The deities must be reassured and persuaded to continue in their function if Gethamane is to remain habitable. However, the gods are embittered by the loss of their prestige and power in Yu-Shan and wish to have this issue addressed. They can also warn the Exalt about Vodak — and explain that the hekatonkhire is still there.
A serious disease has struck the Upper Circle. Symptoms consist of bluish blotches on the skin, a high fever, headaches and severe weakness. While not always fatal, this “blue pox” has caused over 100 deaths already and is spreading through human contact and shared water supplies.
Blue pox was actually caused by the magical experiments of a thaumaturge in the Outer Circle below, who was testing his work on some garbagepickers from the Upper Circle whom he thought would not be missed. He has realized that his experiments caused the pox and is now lying low, but his notes and work may provide vital information in creating a cure for the disease.
In the meantime, the Council and the Mistress of Gethamane are discussing possible remedies. The most drastic solution proposed so far is to wall off particularly hard-hit neighborhoods of the Upper Circle and leave the people shut away to die or recover, as the gods will. The sudden influx of ghosts has also begun to draw Vodak’s attention and may even serve to attract him upward.
While engaging in a game of “go near the underways gate and then run away,” one of Jaxar’s child-agents is attacked by dark creatures from the depths and Exalts as a Dawn Caste Solar to defend himself and his friends. Jaxar knows the signs of Solar Exaltation and is currently “sheltering” the child, while sending an urgent message for Guild help to smuggle him out and indoctrinate him properly to serve Guild interests. The boy’s parents (well-off artisans) and family suspect that the child was killed by the monsters, but here is no proof of his death, and the other children who were there are traumatized and refuse to talk about it. (Jaxar has also sent round word that nobody is to talk about the fight or “bad things will happen.”)
While a Guild caravan is scheduled to arrive here within a week, the caravan master won’t want to leave immediately with the boy, as the master wants to do his usual trading. Equally, the boy doesn’t want to leave. Jaxar is working to convince him that his parents will hate him now that he’s become Anathema and that only “her friends” can help, but he’s only 12 years old and wants to try out his new powers. Finally, the Guard has increased its vigilance and is making life unpleasant for all the local lowlife scum and the Janissary Vault.
Rathven, an ambitious and ruthless Guild journeyman, for the last few months has been arranging to import stocks of chemicals into the city (hidden inside casks of wine or bales of food) that, when mixed in the proper quantities, form explosive compounds.
He arranged for his own arrival into the city to coincide with the last shipment of chemicals and is now producing the explosives and preparing to set them. He intends to cause enough physical damage and general uproar that it will become impossible for the Guard to be able to keep outsiders confined to the Guild District and the city will need to ask the Guild for help. What he doesn’t realize is that some of his plotting is known to agents of Samea, the ally of the Bull of the North, who is prepared to have the Bull’s armies move against Gethamane if the city is considerably weakened.
One of Gethamane’s secrets is that a nest of Iselsi hides there. Their progenitors took shelter in Gethamane when the Empress destroyed their Great House, entering as part of a group of merchants and being adopted by the Loshan family. The Iselsi hold a degree of influence in the Guard and sent regular reports to the All-Seeing Eye and, thus, to the Empress herself — which was one of the reasons she didn’t consider Gethamane to be a serious concern.
A couple of the bloodline have Exalted and were hastily smuggled out of the city and into formal training elsewhere, but most of the bloodline is patrician. Unfortunately, Mnemon has managed to trace the bloodline while investigating the All-Seeing Eye elsewhere in Creation and intends to blackmail the Iselsi into helping her gain control of Gethamane. A young but trusted representative of House Mnemon will be arriving at the city shortly, seemingly part of a trading caravan. He is a trained sorcerer and warrior. Should the Iselsi be revealed, the revelation will shake public confidence in the Loshan family and in the Guard as a whole.
During a recent prospecting attempt, a Whitewall miner discovered deposits of jade and silver a couple of days’ journey from Gethamane. If word of this discovery gets out, there will be a rush to exploit the deposits. Gethamane doesn’t have the mining equipment on hand, but it’s the nearest city, and it has the food sources that any significant mining camp will need. Whitewall or the Haslanti could theoretically send a strike force the site to set up a camp and mine as much as they can, if those cities could conceal the mining from Gethamane.
Even the Bull himself might encamp the area and obtain miners to harvest the jade, should he find out. The deposits could, in fact, be the flashpoint that touches off a general war in the region.
In a chamber in the underways of Gethamane lie several ancient Dragon Kings, sealed in centuries-long slumber. Spells of concealment and warding protect the entrance to their chamber, which is why Vodak and others have never yet discovered them. However, the ancient sorcery is weakening, and soon, the Dragon Kings will awake to emerge into
the underways and possibly even ascend into Gethamane itself. They have no knowledge of the modern world, however, and the current citizens of Gethamane will assume that they are the worst sort of monster from below. The Dragon Kings know a great deal about Gethamane and also know about the Yu-Shan gate in the underways. They do not, however, know about Vodak.
A particular Deathlord has decided to slay Vodak in order to forge the hekatonkhire into the plating known as Oblivion’s Panoply, and sends his trusted agents into the tunnels below Gethamane in order to assault Vodak. Unless they are stopped, Gethamane itself will be dragged into the battle, and soon . . .
