Chromatic Soup 03: Turtles and Birds

Contributions by Christopher Potter and Evlyn M

The Caravan of the Crystal Carapace Chant

The Great Tortoises of the Crystal Carapace accumulate mineral growths on their shells from their habit of bathing in the Chromatic Soup of the Prismatic Swamps.

These form crystals which resonate to the songs of the Finchfolk or Fringu (of the family Fringillidae). Known throughout all lands for the sweetness of their songs, the Fringu refine their melodies through the harmonics of the crystal shells, honing their voices to the most pleasing pitch.

Now with the world's ending new songs are being sung as the Fringu seek to attune to the music of the sphere's and rendezvous with the Astral Turtle so that the Celestial Chant may not be silenced.

Human musicians and singers who can contribute to the celestial chants are welcomed into their caravan.


Contributions by Dan D, Jeremy Duncan, Shel Kahn, C Huth, Robbert Raets, Richie Cyngler, Perttu Vedenoja and Evlyn M

Astral Egg of the Walking Flock

The Walking Flock are a tribe of sentient giant carnivorous land birds.
They wear exaggerated artificial head crests -- especially prized by breeding males. Status indicated by size, color, gaudiness, rarity of materials, etc. They wear saddlebag pouches to hold and protect eggs, retain and channel heat or use chariot nests. No time to sit and brood while on the move. They use decorative bibs with heraldry to identify their clans.

Some members of the flock display a kind of 'flock sentience' with multiple members cooperating to perform complex dexterous tasks with their beaks.

The flock have a symbiotic relationship with a specie of sentient Meekats who use their dexterous hands to craft things for them.

Some clan members wear tiny head howdah with their meekats allies riding in them.
Some others wear baroquely crafted harnesses bordering on sculptures reminiscent of birds of paradise's flamboyance. Hunters like to wear eyewear to protect their eyes from the blinding sun.

Their collective bird cries can be intimidating as bagpiping.

A few human mercenaries families also accompany their caravan into the astral plains.

Their portal to the astral plain is contained in magically imbued astral egg that from which a astral gate will hatch. 

Chromatic Soup 03: Elven-Troll Ancestral Portals

Contributions: Jeremy Duncan, Dan D, Christopher Potter, Evlyn M

As the cosmic alignments vanished, trolls and elven people reunited and traveled together toward the astral plains. They've had to pass through several ancient battlefields, and have learned a great deal of hidden lore about each one, thanks to the trolls' necromantic abilities, with the elves acting in their traditional role as mediators and go-betweens. This includes the sites of treasure caches, where long-dead soldiers had stashed the plunder of their campaigns, never to dig it up again and reclaim it.

The unlikely alliance between ancient enemies was formed through wide-scale acts of reparations and forgiveness by both sides. After long travel on the astral road, the two peoples have intermingled more than any could have expected: trolls are called "auntie" and "uncle" by elf children. The Council of Longhouses has returned centuries of stolen bones and grave goods to the Muckmoot. It is not uncommon to see families opening their tents to members of the other species.

In the face of the Sunset of the World, it is reason to hope.

Word of their abilities has spread, so that desperate travelers will come from far and wide bearing the remains of their restless ancestors. They hope that someone in the caravan can make contact with these ghosts in order to resolve unfinished business, centuries-old disputes, feuds, etc. This has brought the caravan a great deal of unexpected wealth, along with increased scrutiny. Gifts of food and drink are consumed quickly, but the material gifts are slowing the caravan down and attracting the attention of local bandits.

Troll and elf wagons started off with extremely distinct looks-- the trolls tending mushroom houses on the backs of giant spiders, with spores from the fungi fruiting inside the spider's brains and allowing for some rudimentary control by trained Troll wagoneers.

Elf wagons look like wooden towers with colorful tents hanging off of them, like mountain climbers on a cliff-face. They are pulled by creatures that look like a cross between zebra and goat. They also had these delicate wooden Strandbeest things, only load-bearing and requiring 1-4 elves to steer, working in shifts.

Hybrid designs are starting to merge, intact spiders yoked to strandbeests, mushroom domes clinging to moving wooden slats.

These all surround the caravan's main wagon, a 16-wheeled longhouse.

The opening of the ancestral gates
To travel to the astral plains elves and trolls had to unite their efforts to open their ancestral astral gates. The trolls performed an exhausting ritual to open the gate (and awaken the gatekeepers in the process). This effort left most of the trolls unconscious from the effort. The elves were then left with the task of negotiating for passage with the awakened gatekeepers, citing ancient precedent and even introducing new arguments. The gatekeepers were forced to concede, but at a cost. Four living sacrifices were required for passage. This was non-negotiable...

The gatekeepers look like elven-trolls or maybe trollish-elves as once both people were one.

Their common ancestors are now extinct as a civilization. Only certain individuals held in ritual stasis (like the gatekeepers) still exist on the material plane. There are rumored to be a few scattered diaspora communities where they do their best to recreate their civilization at its imagined height, but they function more like a cargo cult than anything. There are also "orphans" making their way as astral vagabonds, but most of them have no idea of their origins. In any case, they can barely viably reproduce. Some of their number are convinced that this is all for the best, and that their essence lives on in their "seed races" while others refuse to accept the situation and seek for some other means to perpetuate themselves in defiance of time and biology.

A child of the two races has been produced, and named Root. They are expected to become the Messiah of a new race, all actions are watched closely and seen as auguries, Troll shaman read the stools, Elf seers divine the flutter of eyelids. Others may follow, united as the caravan is on the path what will occur when the destination is reached, Root may become conflicted. 

Chromatic Soup 03: more means of escape 2

Contributions by Robbert Raets, Tore Nielsen and Evlyn M

Orkish Cosmic Cans Opener 

There is rumors about nomadic orcs who have their own mobile cannery and a large supply of tinned goods.

Hobos say they have large signs on the cart holding the cannery - "BUTCHA ELKZ FURST!" or "NO WUN LIEKS TEH FLAVER OV ORK FINGAZ!" and that a orc engineer weaponized the thing by figuring out that the cannery can produce bio-grenades if you feed it regenerating bits of troll and pieces of other creatures encountered in the astral plains.

Orc's engineers and shamans crafted together a gigantic experimental cans opener that can cut a unstable rift into the astral plains or through pocket words.

Now that alignments are gone, there is also weird rumors about vegan orcs who made their cannery only with vegetables.


Contributions by Richie Cyngler

Thaumaturgic Community Displacement 

New Spell: Community Lifeboat
Level (if you need it): 1
Range: one community (interpret liberally)
Duration: permanent (well as permanent as anything is in the fictoverse)
Spell components: one dying world
School: alchemy

The wizard harnesses the energy of a dying world to teleport her entire community to the astral plains and from there to random pocket worlds!

Roll to determine some characteristics of these pocket world.
dX
0.0 Mumbleverse. Error in the formulae! Your entire community has been transplanted! But as the language of another species on another world. Most people are words, some sentences, the lucky few are phrases or punctuation. This would be difficult to explain to the people... except you're made of language.
1.0 Oops 2D low rez. Its pretty cool here. There's 16 whole colours, if you're lucky. You can travel left, right, up or down (wasd). This place is full of cool adventures. "Look North".
2.0 Outwardly appears similar to the old world, but eerily so. Everything is so similar that there has to be a sinister conspiracy going on. Of course there is. Spoiler alert: it's mostly the male of the majority native species, they're afraid of basically everything particularly their own nature, which of course manifests as a violent need to subjugate others.
4.0 Functionally very similar to the old world. Similar political and economic structures, technologies (magical and otherwise), ethical spectrum, even physical properties, it might even be better! Yeah the people have blue skin, whatevs.


Contributions by Paul C

The Waybringers' Path

The Goddess of Wayfarers had prepared for the Sunset, for she knew that along the journey to safety would be fiends waiting to destroy the caravans. Her last boon before her departure was to infuse bowls with her ichor and give them to her ordained followers.

Those that consumed this ichor soup were driven to a frenzy, they gained a great and terrible power and teared astral rifts into reality with their bare hands.

They are now unwavering in their devotion to finding (and clearing, if necessary) the best path for their caravan. They are known as Waybringers, and others think of them as incredibly helpful but also ferociously violent.

Waybringers character class

As Fighter except:

• Experience requirements as Dwarf (2,200 for second level, and so on).
• Bump up the Hit Die of the Fighter by one degree in your chosen rule set.
• No armour or shields, only travelling clothes and a hood or hat, for the Waybringer instinctively seeks to emulate the Goddess. Despite this, your quasi-divine nature gives you a natural AC of 6, with a +1 bonus every 3 levels after the first.
• The Waybringer understands that there are things lurking in the dark corners of the planes that are immune to the bite of steel. Therefore, they will fight them on equal terms: with their bare hands! Unarmed attacks do 1d8 damage, increasing in die size at levels 5 and 9, and you gain a +2 bonus to grappling. You also ignore any monster's immunity to non-magic weaponry.
• They are also skilled in bushcraft, with a 3-6 chance of success on 1d6. This increases to 2-6 at 6th level.

Chromatic Soup 03: More means of escape

Contribution by Carys, Paul C and Evlyn M

Death Blinking and Reincarnation Cult

There's the moment before death, the moment after, and the blink-of-an-eye in-between of death itself. In that moment, neither living nor dead, one is unshackled from the burden of the body. In that moment, one momentarily glimpses the astral planes before they simply cease to exist. Those with enough will and skill may grab on to that moment a little longer, in the hope of reincarnating. Sometimes that works out for them, sometimes they end up in the body of a dung beetle. Death is a gamble in that way, but a guaranteed ticket to the astral planes when in a pinch.

Liminalis are attuned to the intermediate state of being at the threshold of life and death are trained to experience multiple reincarnations that let them death blink in and out of pocket worlds. Some are psychopompe and have the ability of guiding other people through their reincarnation, as the world end, reincarnation cults build around these Liminalis. 

Your Memories (Liminalis can reroll their results) 

1. Total recall of all your lives, you are disoriented for 2d6 hours.
2. Fragment of all your lives. 
3. Good memory of a random of past live
4. Good memory of your previous past live
5. Good memory of your current live
6. A mix of your current live and a random past live
7. Partial memory of your current live
8. Fragment of your current live
9. Fragment of your current live and glimpse of the future
10. Blank state, only a vague sense of purpose 
11. Memory of a imaginary or dreamed live
12. Memory of the live of someone who died at the same time

Your Form (gender is always random) 

These forms come from your memories when you incarnate in the astral plains but they are native forms when you incarnate in a pocket world. 

1. A monstruous creature
2. A large insect  
3. A small creature
4. A humble creature
5. A noble creature
6. A humanoid creature
7. A outcast human (1 child, 2-3 teenager, 4-6 adult) 
8. A commoner human(1 child, 2-3 teenager, 4-6 adult) 
9. A noble human (1 child, 2-3 teenager, 4-6 adult) 
10. A magical or feary creature

Astral Burrows 

A child like traveler with a massive caravan of animals that move fluidly in-and-out of human and animal-like qualities. The holes animal-folk dig, no matter how shallow, are astral portals--escape routes. Any time the traveler jump into an animal-dug-hole, without hesitation, they will end up in an astral tunnel. If they hesitate, it's just a hole.

The scholar madam Carveli call these traveler "Puer Aeternus" or eternal childs. She describe them as the incarnation of the idea of someone caught in an eternal childlike state, and that their power relies on faith and luck. Rumor say that Madam Carveli knowledge let her use these burrows and that she follow the trail of these wild caravans, taking note and telling stories or teaching recipes to the Puer Aeternus and their amazed animal companions.

Other people living near the forest or who remained close with nature were also able to join some of these caravans through these astral burrows.

Contributions by Brian Ashford and Evlyn M

Dwarven Astral Tunnel

Dwarves are digging down. Ancient poetry tell that below the fires at the heart of the world in the elemental plane of eternat fire. They are dismantling their vast undercities and using the masonry to line the tunnel they are excavating. Massive copper heat sinks draw the heat out of the tunnel as fast as it can seep through the walls, leaving the descent just about survivable. The excess heat ejects into the sky above the Dwarven Mountains in pointed pillars of blue flame, visible on the horizon from all of this doomed world. 

As more and more human refugees pour in the dwarven kingdom, it was decided that these human will be adopted and assigned into the dwarven houses as having houseless people around is worse for the dwarfs than having humans. Naturally for these human refugees, adapting themselves to the dwarven culture is not a easy task. 

Fae Gate

Fae gates open in shadows, graveyards and rubbish dumps the world over suggesting that escape is possible. Unfortunately entering the faewilds is still illegal and and one setting foot through these gates will be immediately stripped of all possessions and separated from their family members by the fey folk. All refugees from the Prime Material are placed in animal cages until they are taken as pets, livestock or stuffed into a ball only to be used as cute battle arena warriors. Still some desperate people dare to use the gates and are crafty enough to avoid the fey patrols.

Soon the mass of desperate refugees will be overwhelming even for the fey folk and they will see the faewilds overruns with caravans. Most of the fea will decide to die with the world as this is properly tragic but some of them will join the human caravans that venture into the astral plains.

The Tube

Spell casters are all trading Tube Tickets. the Tube is a massive network of shortcuts across the world and, if you know what you are doing, through to other Tube networks in the astral plains and other worlds. It was a wizarding secret but now everyone has hear the rumours. Tickets cost about 100gp if you can find a seller. Family tickets can be bought for 250 provided two of your party can pass as children. 1/6 tickets is a return ticket (a powerful Remove Curse is required to nullify the return half).

The magic guild is crafting golems non-stop to try to handle the ever growing flow of refugees who try to sneak into the tubes. Near the end, the refugees will simply overrun the golems and pour into the tubes, but the wizards will be long gone.


Contributions by Arnold K and Evlyn M (only the last lines)

The Infinite Bridge

Made from living trees that grow from the seafloor, across an infinite ocean. Occasionally burned by hostile groups migrating ahead of you. Filled by clans of tiny nature spirits who are debating whether to allow this evacuation or not. Occasionally the bridge branches to reach different pocket worlds.

Like for the Milky roads, the Infinite Bridge is easily accessible but overcrowded with refugees.

Ship of Stars

Still across an infinite ocean. Changing the state of the ship changes the location. Spin the wheel to travel a thousand miles in a single second. Lower the sails to flip upside down and sail on the underside of the waves. You are not really sailing the ocean, but are traveling among the stars above, reflected in your sails. Beware the red star.

Building or activating the ship will be easier that handling the flow of refugee that gather around and who want to get in. 

Chromatic Soup 03: The Melentiwar Moon Gates

Contributions by Gennifer Bone, Harald Wagener (oliof) and Evlyn M

The Melentiwar Monks

An order of monks formed long ago. They have always been preparing for the End, so they have had stores of supplies ready for centuries.

The Ai-Masters of the Order all have magical tattoos that allow them to transpose themselves to a single other pocket world, where they often have small outpost orders.

The Ur-masters of the Order have, in addition to the tattoos, a disk of carved moonstone implanted into the forehead. Once during a full moon, they may take a single person with them to the other world.

Finally, Khe-Masters have so dedicated themselves to the transposition, that they are partially ossified, and unable to move under their own power. However, at certain places of power, they can open a Gate to the other world, that anyone can use. Communities transport the ossified masters on allegorical portable shrines followed by a procession of praying and chanting monks.

When caravans of refugees came looking for them things broke down. In some places, the monks have hired mercenaries to keep things under control. In others, the Khe-Masters have been taken prisoner, and forced to open gates. (but without the proper ceremony, the Gate can open into... unpleasant places)

The satellite pocket worlds can only ever be step stones on the journey, as the monks need to move on to another world before the moon makes a full turn. When there was not much movement between worlds, this was manageable with shifts and careful planning and prioritization of help where the end was possible, but not yet certain.

Now that the end is certain in so many places at once, there aren't enough monks, and certainly way too few Khe-Masters to open the roads to the pocket worlds reliably or often enough. Many of the pocket worlds do not have enough reality to allow creation of food and water, and the reserves of the outposts are ever-dwindling.

There are also rumors that some of these worlds only exist as long as a monk visits them, and those who stay behind will be turned in to chromatic dust when the pocket world collapses after the last moon disc bearer left.

Eventually the monks and their caravan of refugee will have to leave behind their satellite worlds and walk the long march through the astral plains in search of new worlds. 

Chromatic Soup 03: Dreaming Cults and other means of escape

Contributions by C Huth, Dan D and Evlyn M

The Dreaming cult

Dreaming cults emerge all over the word, brewing various dreaming elixirs and drugs that let their followers dream themselves into the Dreamlands. From there caravan of dreamers leave the crumbling dreamworld, taking along citizen of the Dreamlands. Some people manage to dream themselves differently while others distort their dreamself under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. The cities were the cult take hold become quiet place as people fall sleep one after the others.

Some dreaming cults also become suicide cults as the dreamers plan to die mid-dream, out of belief of a stronger dream transfer or out of fear of having their dream journey interrupted by rivals who may attempt to wake them up to prevent their escape.

Dreamers can use their dream elixir to dream themselves into the pocket worlds they encounter.


Alephic 'Transmitters

Some wizards or technomancers guilds attempt to use a astral aleph to use as either the seed of a remade version of the world, or at least a record thereof. They attempt to connect themselves to a astral aleph to use the aleph to ‘focus’ on this world so others reading the aleph experience it.

Parallels here to computer uploading — you contract with someone on another world to build a copy of you via totalizing aleph-information, who believes that to be ‘you’. Different answers may apply in worlds with hermetic metaphysics. It's more a philosophical question of whether perceiving the thing, even perfectly, is the same as being present with the thing. To continue the 'uploading consciousness' comparison, duplication of the process by different 'end points' would lead to multiple perfect copies/transmissions.

Printed copies of people and things recorded from the dying world form caravans. Some people and things are printed with errors as the world get closer to it sunset. There is also rumor of aleph operators editing or hacking the transmitted data before printing it.

Each caravan carry a portable aleph recorder that let them beam copies of themselves into the aleph terminals that the Builders installed in pocket worlds. The Builders weaved a large network of aleph terminal around the pocket worlds that once formed their astral plains empire, but since the Builders left, most of these terminals are now offline or malfunctioning. 


The Arks of Abzu

As the world is unmade, great arks (or ark-ologies) are constructed to sail the Sea of Chaos that the material world descends back into. Their shells must be hardened with the powers of Creation and Law to resist the unmaking, or be built from nonlocal materials so as to shield the interior from the unmaking.

The protective wards of some ark may breach during the voyage and chaos may infect some the ark's passengers and crew. There is also the danger of encountering raiding chaos ships.

While sailing the astral seas, the arks may emerge into pocket worlds. Since outside of the world, time doesn't really exist, they might emerge from the astral sea into an pocket-world after having experienced vast epochs in their own divergent timelines, or have been transformed by the experience of abyssal timelessness.


Karmic Hitchhiking

Cults form around charismatic guru and holy figures and popular astral travelers who entered a state of meditation that will soon let to the ascent of their consciousness into the astral plains and beyond.

Their followers latch themselves onto the spirit of these greater being as they ascends their consciousness. They unhook when they passes by the astral plains, just before their master ascend into the cosmic planes.

Karmic hitchhiking runs the risk of carrying bits of your ride along with you - sometimes there's enough to overpower you, and you're left as the fragment of a greater being.


The Milk Roads

A highway of translucent white star-stuff that appeared as the world began to sunset. Traveling the Milk Roads is a relatively safe methods, but crowded with caravans. Space and supplies at a premium.

Marching too long on the Milk Roads might lead one to decide it's better to live forever among the stars unthinking than to continue on to a new home. The risks of moving in large groups of desperate people go without saying.

Some people drink the milk of the road, if they survive their eyes become milky white, they spiritually connect to the roads and become starry guides. Starry guides are able to see the fainter milk trails that connect the pocket worlds together. 

Chromatic Soup 03: Noble Blood Portals

Contribution by Robbert Raets and Evlyn M.

The royal family of Martendale are said to be of divine lineage, and at dire need, the reigning monarch can sacrifice themselves by allowing a charging unicorn to pierce their heart. This particular method of death (briefly) substantiates a portal to the domain of their godly ancestor; however, the ritual has now been modified to allow the people of Martendale to retreat into the Astral. Unfortunately, the quick succession of monarchs may soon run out, and there are many corners of Martendale that have yet to be evacuated... Luckily the unicorns blessed the Martendale House with fertility and high birth rate.

It's also said that some of the aristocratic families managed to abduct members of cadet branches of the royal family who became nobles in neighbouring kingdoms, likely for 'use as conduits' into pocket realms or other planes....

Enacting the ritual in the astral plains allow the unicorns to absorb the noble' soul for safe-keeping; there may be more ways than one for getting it out again... These joined souls unicorns are considered holy.

The unicorns allied with the Martendales have their own noble blood lineages. Each unicorn is bound to a Martendale and are considered like a family member by the House. Mourning unicorns who pierced the heart of their bound nobles are highly respected by other unicorns.

Their is rumors of a Martendale necromancer who use a dark unicorn to pierce the reanimated hearts of her family members. 

Chromatic Soup 03: The All-One Holy Soul Pudding

Contribution by Benjamin Baugh and Evlyn M (just a tiny bit). 

"Sir'ai Sir'ai! It consumes, it perfects! I cast myself into thee, to be reborn clean in a world made anew! Sir'ai! Sir'ai It be monster mother to us, eating and then birthing, we are to be its succor and its children! Sir'ai Sir'ai!" 

Beneath the Holy City of Urd, in the catacombs once used to punish the ungodly and harrow heretics, the new Savior of the Cult of Urd dwells, growing, pregnant with the promise of a future in a world without one.

The Savior began its life humble, as a mere carnivorous pudding - something between fungus and animal, jellyfish and algae. But according to the Archimandrite of the College of Holy Urdish Sciences, the creature was changed by the sacrifice of Saint Pellomel the Forseeing. When thrown into the catacombs for what, at the time, seemed to be blasphemous predictions of the end of the world and the abandonment of the gods, Pellomel fell victim to one of the puddings which infested the dark tunnels, but rather than simply dying and being consumed, she was elevated to a new plane of existence, her body's mass adding to the pudding's, and her soul inhabiting a pseudo plain of light within the creture's luminous nervous system.

From this strange hinter-realm, she could project her dreams as songs or her songs into dreams, and shared the truth of the Holy Soul Pudding - it would be the Cult's conveyance away from this dying world, and into a new realm created from holy light.

Urdish cult doctrine changed when the realization of the world's end spread among the population of the city, and the Synod of Urd was forced to acknowledge it, and offered the Holy Soul Pudding as the Cult's redemption.

The City of Urd is much depleted in numbers, as more and more cultists make their goodbys, close their mortal affairs, and walk into the catacombs to join their fellows with the sun-bright Pudding, feeding the creature with their bodies, and giving their souls over to its care until it achieves, according to the deans of the College of Urdish Holy Sciences, a spiritual mass of such density that it will breach the Astral realm and wriggle free of the drying world, like a moth emerging from a cocoon.

When this mass will be achieved is still uncertain, which lends a sense of desperation to those seeking Communion with the Pudding. With more high Cult officials going to join the creature, governance in the City of Urd is failing, and opportunists and interlopers and scavengers have begun invading the city, to pick the bones of what the cultists have left behind.

More troubling to Cult officials are the outsiders, pagans, heretics, and non-believers who have learned of the Holy Pudding, and see it as a way to escape. The Holy Soul Pudding does not seem to care about cult membership, good, evil, alignment, creed, culture, or species. All are welcome, all are consumed, all join the light. So the Cult has set guards at all known entrances to the catacombs, and jealously guard access to the Pudding. These vicious and highly trusted fanatics will kill anyone who tries to enter without an official Decree of Second Baptism signed by at least a Cult Vice-Bishop. The Holy Pudding Guard trust they will be the last cultists to give themselves over to communion, when all others have passed beyond and spiritual hypermass is about to be achieved.

But despite their formidable presence, the interlopers gather, hungry for salvation, drooling at the prospect of escape, and the Cult grows fearful that their salvation will be polluted by nonbelievers, and in their fear they grow cruel.

The Soul Pudding has merged with all its lesser fellows, and refugee and cultist all end up in the same luminous realm. Which is why the cult is getting spooked, and setting such brutal guards - they don't want their escape to include people they don't like. if enough outsiders get into the Pudding, they might tip the balance and the Holy Science of Urd might be corrupted by foreign ideas.

As the world is sunsetting, the Pudding will start to impinge on the Astral, sort of bulging through a weak place in the world until it is massy enough with bodies and souls to burst fully through. At that point, no one can know if the pudding would stop... would the astral provide it with a rich source of soulstuff? Would it start to spread even more rapidly? Would the Pudding become like an aggressively evangelical religion spreading into new territory?

As the pudding grows, it slows down (and the souls contained within it experience time slower) so as it transitions from a beast in the basement to the landscape itself the pudding will seem less aggressive, so at some point a caravan might wander across a branch of the pudding grown to span the horizon, a weird glowing squishy terrain, like luminous prairies. 

Slowly, the digested people emerge from the hypermass into the astral plains. The holy digestion changed them, their memories are confused, but they seem fine (are they?). They gather lumps of the hypermass and start their long journey through the astral plains to bring the holy pudding to new worlds.

Chromatic Soup 03: Molding Gates of the Fungi

Contributions by Saker Tarsos, Harald Wagener, Michael Kennedy, Charles Castillo and Evlyn M

Long have the Fungi been content to remain in the undergrowth of history. The world's silent, unseen rulers. After all, patient decay claims all things in time.

But now the world is no longer theirs. The sunset has begun, and the many peoples of this world are leaving. Thousands of sightless eyes observe the caravans setting off. Silent councils gather in the roots of the world, and the fungi debate.

They fracture. At a loss for what to do, some colonies imitate: mold themselves into humanoid shapes and pull mushroom caravans until the great beyond, heralded by waves of glittering spores. They infect the dead and use them as beasts of burden.

But some ancients, the oldest and wisest, will stay. Some disbelieve. Some cannot move themselves. Some cannot bring themselves to say goodbye. They wish to personally witness the night-death of their world. Some of these venerable Fungi will open the Molding Gates, their spores infect the corpses of divine beings, reshaping them into portals of escape.

Some caravans that went astray met the fungoid trail and started the Ritual of Symbiosis; preferring to retain their essence by sacrificing their bodies as sustenance to a fate of slow waste, cannibalism, or worse. Thus the Mold Traders: Their symbiotic bodies don't require many things and are willing to trade tools, pickled foods, and other items not inducible to symbiosis ... usually at the price of some suitable host to continue the Mold Traders' growth and expansion. Sadly, not all hosts are traded by their own volition.

Some insidious Fungi who have been exiled by the Mycelium Council began to covertly float their spores into the crowds of refugees fleeing the world. Quietly infecting entire caravans, unbeknown to their carriers. As soon as the caravans would exit the world the corrupted mycelium networks that had been silently spreading in their hosts would desiccate whole communities. Leaving empty husks filled with spores behind, to float in a state of hibernation in the astral sea, till a more suitable world was found. There they could take root and begin anew. Their slow creeping spread into eternity with antediluvian patience.

Chromatic Soup 03: Sacred Dishes of the Qu

Contributions by: Giuliano Pereira, Robbert Raets and Evlyn M.

Time is running short for the Qu. Their vast culinary knowledge is at risk of being lost. As their world collapses they embark on a journey to preserve their food and culture.

They are mostly small, toad like (including giant tongues) creatures, who speak a elaborate dialect in a chipmunk like voice. Learning Qu etiquette is a livelong project.

To traverse to the astral plains, each Qu settlements prepared a sumptuous and wondrous banquet of their finest astral travel inducing dishes. The Qu gorged themselves on these and woke up in the astral plains with different levels of a hangovers. Some welcomed (and unwelcome) guests invited themselves to these banquets or scavenged the leftovers to escape to the astral plains.

As the ultimate gourmands of the multiverse, having served demons and gods, their caravans carts and houses are all equipped with essential kitchen material. Their most prized possessions are carried atop giant blue crabs (would be meals), these include their spices, ingredients and tools.

Every caravans of the Qu transport these:

1. The Qu's most prized spices are sentient ones. They work in tandem with the cook to create otherworldly flavors. 
2. The Crimson Gourmand Tools: a set of holy kitchen utensils that allow a user to turn anything into an edible, physical substance. The Qu are extremely protective of this item, as an ill intentioned creature might eat even noncorporeal concepts, possibly unraveling reality, such as spells, time and even death itself.
3. Linguals: gloves made from the tongues of giant toads. They allow the user to identify the exact composition of anything they touch.
4. Qu Recipe book: contains recipes for past, present and future recipes. Only a select few are allowed to read it. All written in Giant Braille, as the information concealed in it must be taken with the whole body, as the eyes cannot handle it.
5. Freshly baked Sun: inside a special glass oven, this brand new sun is being taken with the Qu to grow in their new world. Its taken out of its protective oven, it works like our earth sun, just as hot and deadly. Only by following the right recipe, can the sun be safely transported to its new location.

What the Qu don't know is that dragons offspring lives parasitically inside all the suns they bake. Their greatest culinary rival, a ancient worm and tyrannic chef used ancient dragon rituals to put her offspring into the sun's recipe. Each time a new sun is bake, a baby dragon is born. 

Chromatic Soup 03: Whirlpool of Gildedstar

Contributions by: Robbert Raets, Michael Kennedy, Tamás Kisbali and Evlyn M. 

The city of Gildedstar was a miracle of modern magic, channeling every thaum of energy their mana farms and mines could produce via leylines and underground mithril wires. When the ebb and flow of this system was outstripped by the demand for thaum, the Maintainers were created.

Originally intended as immobile rote-automatons ritually feeding excess energy from peak production into a massive whirlpool inside an artificial lake and retrieving it during hours of high demand, the Maintainers gradually awoke to a higher awareness and sense of self. When the first among them to experience this and express a desire to leave the confines of their assignment were 'retired', the remainder wisely feigned intellectual indolence. 

As Gildedstarite society disintegrated in the approach of Sunset, the Maintainers were left to their own devices, and their own need to survive - the whirlpool that was the shackle of their existence for countless decades now proved to be the tool of their liberation. Escaping into the roil of the Astral, the Maintainers realized that although they needed no physical nourishment themselves, enough magic to sustain themselves proved hard to come by. (Background energy levels in the Astral is not sufficing for constructs traveling in larger groups.) Thus, the Maintainers hunt, fish and forage much like other caravans do, hoping to trade these supplies for spell energy that their organic counterparts can spare.

Some groups of Maintainers can become desperate enough to abduct wizards to use them as living batteries. The Maintainers will try to befriend them like a child who try to befriend a wild animal or a pet. They will give the wizard gifts and try to deduce their need and maintain their happiness. If they realize that their pet wizard is too sad they will probably set them free as they understand that unwilling servitude is not a good thing.

1d5 Maintainer types
1 - Protector: These Maintainers' main function is to protect and transport other, more fragile Maintainers. Monumental yet elegant tripods, with a mesh-structure at the top. Three other small Maintainers can fit there, as the Protector covers them with its wings. A thaum-field generator provides extra protection.
2 - Seeker: These Maintainers were created to trace and explore new ley-lines. In their awoken form, they are the scouts and rangers of the Maintainer caravan.
3 - Filigraner: The underground mithril wires don't need maintenance, they need tending. They require the most fine little corrections and tuning. The Filigraners were created to do just that, their elongated tendril-like fingers are so they can do brain surgery.
4 - Segment: Segments are small Maintainers, not capable of much alone, but when combined, they can accomplish various tasks. Like a swarm of nanobots, only bigger... and with a shinier gilded carapace.
5 - Unshackler: A new type, created by the awoken Maintainers. Unshacklers move around on twelve scaraboid legs, and are equipped with all kinds of tools - chain cutters, permafrost beams, arcane lasers. Their first function is to free other Maintainers. The process is painful and rough, but swift... And grants mobility and freedom.

Chromatic Soup 03: The Bifrost Bridge

Contributions by: C Huth,Tamás Kisbali and Evlyn M

The Bifrost Bridge, being a rainbow, requires mirrors and prisms to refract it further so it may serve as linkages beyond its original function. It is building (or stealing) these mirrors and prisons that the combined svartalvar/ljosalvar teams referred to as the "Asgard Corps of Engineers" are tasked with, and they're constantly looking for information on different materials or techniques to use in their refractory lens arrays. (The ljosalvar cover light-physics/metaphysics and testing, svartalvar the construction and repair.)

Of course, these child-bridges are reduced in energy over each refraction, so at some point the bridges will falter and become dangerously unusable. Some child-bridges may already be sending those who traverse them to the wrong destinations, or change them in strange ways, due to low-energy states or misalignment of refraction arrays.

The Bifrosts are not just a means of transportation. While traversing the rainbow bridge, those who keep an open mind can attune themselves to the various colors embedded in the spectrum. Attunement gives special powers or abilities. They work best while on Bifrost, but also have some effect off-bridge.

Novice traversers of the Bifrost attune to one color first. But everybody knows that the colors of the rainbow are not discrete and separate, but form a continuous spectrum. Experienced Bifrost-travelers can start attuning to colors up and down on the spectrum from the one they attuned to in the first place.

Red: Attuning to red is like putting one’s ear against a railroad track: the attuned creature can sense if there’s anybody else traversing Bifrost seven light years ahead or behind. Off-bridge, the attuned creature walks like a sailor getting off the ship for the first time in months: with a slight wobble; but this also makes them harder to hit with ranged attacks.

Orange: In this part of the Bifrost spectrum the trip becomes trippy! The Orange strain is a potent psychoactive resonance. Any creature that concentrates on Orange for a long time enters a trance state. It feels good. Takes your mind off the dreariness and boredom of the travel. But cannot wake up. Somebody else on the outside must wake them up. If somebody is attuned to Orange, they learn to wake up by themselves. The resonance can be captured between nano-particles, creating the so called "Orange Spice". In this form, the effect is sold off-bridge, as a drug.

Yellow: During the travel, the attuned creature does not need to eat food or drink liquid to sustain themselves. The vibrations of the yellow spectrum provide enough nutrition. The attuned creature can also go three day-night cycles without eating or drinking while exploring a location off the bridge.

Green: Green is the most malleable and corpuscular of all the colors in the Bifrost spectrum. An attuned creature can take a lump of Green and shape it into something useful and durable. A Green item is practically indestructible while on Bifrost, but deteriorates in three days if taken off the bridge. One creature can only take a limited amount of Green, but several attuned creatures working together can create bigger objects.

Blue: Located somewhere-but-not-quite-in-the-middle of the spectrum, Blue gives more or less balanced knowledge. Attuned creatures become better at navigating on Bifrost. Off the bridge, an attuned creature has a spell-like ability for three days. It's called "Define Direction": it's a locator spell for unstable environments. It doesn't give you an exact direction or location, but rather creates a stable point you can align your movement with. For example, if you are floating in non-Euclidean anti-gravity, you can "Define Direction" to stabilize yourself.

Indigo: A telepathic link is established between ALL creatures attuned to indigo. The communication channel remains functional even when off the bridge, but all thoughts are delayed, as they have to travel back to Bifrost first. Also, attuned creatures see everything through a distinct indigo-tint filter. It protects against bright flashing lights and lasers, but hinders perception as some minor details are blended into the background.

Violet: attuning yourself to violet let expand your imagination, the violet particles will coalesce around your daydreaming and take the shape of your fantasies. These constructs are not wholly solid and will appear like violet ghosts or holograms. They often become sentient and tend to act like muses. Like green items they can only exist for three days if taken off the bridge. But there is a song about a bard who crafter a prismatic to sustain a violet apparition that fell in love with her.

Infrared and Ultraviolet: mastering the red or the violet color can also let you peaks behind the curtain of the color spectrum and interact with the backstage of reality that touch the void…

\\\\VOID////: Most traversers of Bifrost think of it as a long corridor, enclosed by invisible walls on the sides. But in reality the rainbow is a spectrum, and its edges blend into the eternal cosmic blackness. There are no walls. After mastering red OR violet, AND one more color of the spectrum, one can risk attuning to the \\\\VOID//// that’s touching the edges of Bifrost. This is a deep, dark secret, and nobody knows (or nobody would tell) what happens when a creature is attuned to the \\\\VOID////.


1d6 Encounters & Events while traveling on Bifrost:

1. Under Construction: This part of Bifrost got damaged, and is currently being repaired by a crew of Yellow Green Sevenarms. Their only goal is to patch up the holes in the rainbow and flatten all bumps on the surface. This includes the players.
2. A hailstorm of frozen starlight. The shards are strong enough to penetrate standard armor and spaceship hulls. After the bombardment, the shards melt quickly – but if collected and then stored at absolute zero temperature, these star ice crystals can be used as prisms to refract Bifrost and put to other magical uses.
3. The-Utterly-Alien-But-Maybe-Not-So Mind: The encountered entity is utterly mysterious, alien and unknowable. However, there is one little thing it shares with the players. Ask the players, what it is. Nothing spectacular, but still a chance to establish a connection with this entity. E.g.: similar music taste (it loves ‘Good Vibrations’ by the Beach Boys) or dislike for the name its 777 parents gave it.
4. Indigo Knot: Contrary to popular belief, Bifrost is not a straight line: it’s full of curves, turns, bends… The Knot is a Moebius strip-like formation, where the indigo part of the rainbow spectrum is dominant. Traversing the whole length of the spiral takes infinity minus one second (but grants instant attunement to Indigo). With the help of the Indigo Dwarves it takes one second. But how can you get them to help you?
5. Pam & The Prismatics!: The tour bus of the world-famous rock band broke down! And their mechanic is too high on Orange Spice to fix it. They travel with an elaborate light show (with tons of prisms, mirror and crystals) and powerful sound amplifying equipment, which they can lend to you if you help them out with the bus.
6. This is a bad one: The Color from Out of Space! A parasitic chromatic entity, from outside Bifrost’s color spectrum. It shifts, shimmers, emits deadly cosmic radiation, drives everybody insane. How do you defeat a Color?

Chormatic Soup 03: Means of Celestial Evacuation

Means of evacuating the dying world (d30)

1. Bifrost Bridge
2. Whirlpool of Gildedstar
3. Sacred Dishes of the Qu
4. Molding gates of the Fungi
5. Holy Pudding Communion
6. House Martendale’s Blood Portal
7. Dreaming Cult
8. Alephic Transmitters
9. Karmic Hitchhiking
10. The Milk Road
11. Ark of Abzu
12. Melentiwar Moon’s Gate
13. Sunset Archive
14. The Infinite Bridge
15. The Ship of Stars
16. Death Blinking Cult
17. Astral Burrows
18. Dwarven Astral Tunnel
19. Fae Gate
20. The Tube
21. Orkish Capsules   
22. Thaumaturgic Community Displacement
23. Astral Egg of the Flock
24. Ancestral Gate of the Elven Trolls
25. Wayfarers Trail
26. Great Clockwork Gate
27. Readings of the Book of the Planes
28. The Fractured Stairs and the Cloud Mountain
29. The Warped Mirror
30. Crystal Carapace Chant 

Next: descriptions of each means of evacuation.

Chromatic Soup 03: The Sunset of a World

I decided to post the articles of Chromatic Soup 03 on my blog to motivate me to finish this project. I will try to compile everything into a zine afterward.

The Sunset of a World.

The gods are sunsetting their pantheons and the world. Free from their alignments, people and monsters are evacuating together. To reach new worlds they have to migrate across near infinite astral plains.

As the gods leave the world, no one is there to maintain the celestial spheres and the forces that run the world grind to a halt. Law and Chaos being gone, the world calcifiate and crumble into the void.

On their way out, the gods left the gates to the astral plains wide open. Passageways that were only accessible to the gods are now usable by all. People, creatures and monsters use old and new means to leave the world before the crumbling sun forever set beyond the horizon.

Creatures devoid of senses spill through cracks of the celestial spheres and harass those who linger in the dying world. In the astral plains, people and creatures assemble themselves into caravans, as they journey through the ever changing silvery landscape they encounter strange phenomena, creatures born between the worlds and other refugees. Along the way they must halt and take refuge in pocket worlds to rest and replenish their provisions. These unfinished worlds are too limited or dangerous, the caravans most venture again and again in the astral plains, their only true hope is to find a fully formed world.

Inspirations: The Banner Saga, Oregon Trail, and other stories about long migrations. Also the G+ sunsetting...

Setting up the campaign.

Start the campaign in a settlement, people are packing up, even local creatures and monsters are getting ready to leave. There is a lot of rumors going around about different means of escape.

Setup a short point crawl that point toward different means of evacuating the world. There should be one in the current settlement and rumors should point to maybe 2 to 5 other means of evacuation.

Other means of evacuation are 2d6 points aways.

• Travelling on foot while being encumbered or slowed down let you travel 1 points a day
• Travelling on foot without hindrances let you travel 2 points a day
• Caravans let you travel 3 points a day
• Horses let you travel 4 points a day

Roll one dying world encounter for each days of travel. 

Setup exemple:

The first settlement

Give it a descriptive name like Calendra the Bright City and ask each players 1 or 2 questions about the settlement…

1. How it was to grow up there?
2. Who are you anxious to rejoin there?
3. Who do you fear is waiting for you?
4. What landmark you hope to see one last time?
5. Which district is best to avoid?
6. Tell me about when the city guard arrested you...
7. What part of your life did you leave there?
8. What local product or service do you remember foundly?
9. Who own you big time there?
10. What local cult or organization you always avoided?
11. What or who do you hope to see ruined before escaping?
12. Tell me about how you learned your craft here…

There is a local mean to leave the world here but people are crowding and camping around it, waiting for their turn to leave. Waiting without creating trouble for your turn to leave will happen after 1d6 settlement encounters. Naturally characters can try to find ways to cut the line.

You can also use the settlement encounters to note the passage of time when the characters do other things beside waiting in line.

Settlement encounters (d12)

1. Riot: people are demanding something or maybe they are just panicking, the city guards are trying to prevent the riot but things are quickly getting out of hand.
2. Plague: people are sick but they fail to die as the plague goddess have already left, sick people implore her priestess for a quick death. Plague doctors are failing at finding a cure. Plague bearers are forced to wear something special to identify them.
3. Refugee arrival: a large caravan of refugees from a near city or a distant land are arriving in the already overcrowded city.
4. Carnival: people are cheerfully celebrating the end of the world, having a great time, this can naturally easily degenerate in complicated situations.
5. Doom cult: a doom cult is conducting rituals or building strange devices to try to summon the gods or to accelerate the end of the world.
6. Monsters: a large monster or a group of strange creatures are looking for a caravan to join.
7. Serial killer: someone lost it and decided to reduce the population, to get rid of priests, to celebrate death, etc.
8. Hero or Demigod: a depowered divine hero or demigod is trying to help people or is failing at remaining incognito.
9. Rich people trying to buy favors and privilege: some have a retinue of guards or servitors other are maybe more desperate. 
10. Violence and vandalism: people are toppling down landmarks, breaking in shops, defiling temples, beating up guild members or nobles, etc.
11. Someone looking for a lover, friend, pet, child or parent or someone ask to be hidden.
12. Rift: a unstable rift that lead to the astral plains or to the void. People are afraid, astral or void creatures may emerge from it.

Dying world encounters (d12)

1. Celestial engine: reality is crumbling down and gigantic gears and mechanical parts can be seen in the sky or emerging from the ground or from other elements. The minor spirits who were in charge of maintaining them are camping around them, they are slowly dying, some are still trying to do their duties, other are simply awaiting their final fate.
2. Calcification: a part of reality turn grey, freeze and calcifiate. Calcificated things are very friable, some void beings feed on calcificated matter.
3. Dying divine servitor: cut from their life force, a majestic or terrifying divine servitor is slowly dying or calcificating and crumbling to dust. Finally free to be individual, some stop serving the principles they embodied, while other desperately try to uphold them.
4. Natural phenomena grinding to a halt: a river stop running, a fire fail to burn, clouds stops. rain stop in midair, etc.
5. Human refugees: a group of human refugees from a near city or a distant land are looking for a refuge, a caravan or a mean to escape from the world.
6. Bandits: these people don’t get it, they think that they can survive here by praying on refugees and caravans.
7. Monsters: a huge monster or a group of strange creatures are looking for a refuge, a caravan or a mean to escape from the world.
8. Scavenging opportunity: a abandoned building or things left behind.
9. Doom cult: a doom cult is conducting rituals or building strange devices in the wild to try to summon the gods or to accelerate the end of the world.
10. Divine husk: a god left it divine husk behind, like a calcificated molt. Cultists are using it as a refuge, void worms will soon arrive to devour it.
11. Clueless people, adventurer or monster who did not catch that the world is ending.
12. Rift: a unstable rift that lead to the astral plains or to the void. Astral or void creatures may emerge from it.

NEXT: Means of escaping the dying world.