They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky

Book

"Later my father asked 'what colour was that hyena?'
'It wasn't really yellow and it wasn't really red.'
'What did his neck look like?'
'Big neck with lots of hair and on the head.'
'You got a lion this time so we have to go and take care of it.'"

"'Fetch my spears,' my father said.
'Dad', said Dingmakuan, his eldest son by his first wife, 'I don't think only two of us can fight a lion.'
'Son, the covenant has been broken. I have to kill this lion.'"

Enforced Poisoning and Dismemberment in the Mycelium Metropolis

"Is this the largest organism in the world? This 2,400-acre (9.7 km2) site in eastern Oregon had a contiguous growth of mycelium before logging roads cut through it.Estimated at 1,665 football fields in size and 2,200 years old, this one fungus has killed the forest above it several times over, and in so doing has built deeper soil layers that allow the growth of ever-larger stands of trees. Mushroom-forming forest fungi are unique in that their mycelial mats can achieve such massive proportions."

—Paul Stamets, Mycelium Running

REASONS FOR GOING TO THE MYCELIUM METROPOLIS

1. To find the ingredients to complete an obscure and powerful spell or ritual.
2. To find a god-poison.
3. To hire an invincible mercenary army.
4. To find the fabled Homokaryotic Hammer.
5. As part of a pilgrimage for a weird, musty god.
6. Because you are a secret agent for the SLIME MOULD.
7. To find help purifying a region of poison or radioactive taint.
8. To find Old Mould Mouth.
9. Banished there by a sadistic hell-sorcerer.
10. To plead that a town in the path of the mushroom-men's autumnal warparth be spared.
11. To become infected with old knowledge.
12. Because you are so fucking lost.

I Ran Deep Carbon

I am not yet done with Deep Carbon Observatory, though the end is near. My players are currently trapped deep within the Observatory itself; too afraid to descend the great titanium chain into the darkness and kept from returning to the hollow comfort of the surface by the ravenous malice of a naked, crawling giant. This is the culmination of about eighty hours of play during the last six months (almost an hour per A5 page - and that's not counting a lot of unrelated fucking around). This book is dense to the point of being obtuse. Nothing is repeated. Nothing is explicitly stated that can be inferred. In order to discuss it I am going to be blunt and obvious about content that is deft and clever and, I am certain, reveal my total misunderstanding of several core concepts central to Deep Carbon and life in general.

Let's go.

Elves Hold the Lives of Every Other Creature in their Filth-Encrusted Hands

Elves have pointed teeth, small, delicate genitals and the ability to vomit up plants once per day.They are itinerant disease ridden vagrants who have fucked the world so bad that it would take the destruction of every living thing on the planet to fix it. They are burned by holy water.

Elves have spell slots. They can use them for spells and inventing plants. Once they have invented a plant they can vomit up a corresponding seedling once per day. If they ever clear out the spell slot then that entire species of plants will wither and die.

Elven children can be made the same way as plants. Elves can also reproduce sexually and through the implantation of humans with changeling children, but they prefer not to. Natural birth kills elven mothers and changelings creep everybody out - even elves.

Dwarfs Live Outside of Time and Despise You as the Bad Dream You Are

Dwarfs are just like humans in many ways. They have kings and beards, they like fucking* and they define themselves by their monuments. However, there is one crucial way in which Dwarfs and Humans are irreconcilably divergent, and that is what we shall discuss here.

The human race has been blessed with the ability and drive to crawl all over this yellow earth - filling up its arable and its desolate places with their lives and leavings.

Time, however, will do for them in the end.

Canoptic Abomination

I am nearly done with Deep Carbon Observatory. It's badass. If you haven't checked it out already then you definitely should. It's my favourite DnD module-thing from last year. Also this post probably won't make any sense if you haven't read or played it.

Anyway, halfway to the dungeon there is an excellent dam. It is guarded by some statues that are full of guts called Canoptic Guards. Upon his gruesome murder at the hands of a Canoptic Guard, one of my player's last words were "Cut out my brain, shove it in this thing and see what happens."

The un-paralysed wizard performed a long and ridiculous ritual and I rolled on The DMs Emergency Dodecahedron Outcomes Table with all of the modifiers except for +2 and -2. The ritual was successful.

IF THIS SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU, THEN PERHAPS THIS INFORMATION WILL BE OF USE