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July 8, 2012 / Wythe

Mountain Tribes

Bizarre tribal enemy idea:

There is a term for those humans who dwell in the mostly gmothi-controlled mountains of  northeast Pala—all the small plateaus and old ranges between the swamps of Arakha and the low, quan- and sahaguin-infested plains of Djenma. These humans, who have gone back to the wild in the eyes of the citydwellers, are called Tattered People. They wear horrible fungal bark masks and ad hoc shawls and tunics made of strips of flesh and shards of chitin, sewn together at random and stinking, often inhabited by entirely novel microbial and fungal colonies.

These colonies, in fact, can direct the actions of the Tattered People, leeching chemicals into the blood that influence emotion and desire (as cats, extinct in the future, may control our brains today). Sometimes driven to eat the flesh of gmothi and other sents by their microbial–fungal shawl-colonies (shawlonies), the Tattered People are feared and hated by the gmothi tribes, and viewed as “demons” by the Barbari tribes of humans who inhabit the cool lowlands beyond the northern coastal ranges.

Tattered People themselves tend to run Bloodthirsty/ADD and organize themselves into hermetically sealed clans or familial units, depending on the total number of their cohort. These clans or families fight one another more or less constantly, but seek amputation and ingestion instead of death. (When making called shots to the digit, nose, or ear, Tattered Person barbarians only suffer -2, not -4. Crits have a 1 in 4 chance of slicing off a digit/nose/ear.)

Thus, the Tattered People are frequently missing fingers, toes, ears, noses, tongues, limbs, and random patches of skin. They particularly venerate barbarian bravos who have won many battles but lost their noses: These Noseless create a music by whistling through the holes in their faces, and they never lose morale. Even seeing them calls for a Sanity check (failure means losing d6 SAN).

Typical names:

  • Tylbuk the Hungry
  • Thungba the Unsatiate
  • Tortorbaghont the Fiercely Comestibilating

Typical weapons:

  • Irradiated frogs filled with nails – launched from an ad hoc potato gun
  • Gun that shoots nails – functions as a short-range area of effect weapon, cone shaped, damage deteriorating every five feet from 3d4-3, 2d4-2, d4-1, 1
  • Wooden sword covered in horrible flesh-melting fungus
  • Huge metal spoon (?)
  • Teeth, sharpened
  • Teeth, someone else’s – worn as weaponized dentures or “superteeth” (the proper ethnological term), 1 in 4 chance of infecting someone bit by them with a horrible disease
  • Foul smell

Tattered People culture is rich in many respects, however. Their fungal liquors are considered the best in northern Pala, and their music is pleasing to many aficionados, after the initial SAN loss.

What do the Tattered People want? They worship the constant consuming re-consuming of the self, and the mutation of the mind and body. They want to embrace and enforce mutation in its most abstract. They want you…


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