A closer look at the Wendigo

All monsters begin as something mundane. The fractal begins with simple rules, and then spirals out into something more, and sometimes, something much worse. The origins of the Giants are unknown to the Psychonauts, but the origins of the Wendigo are not. The Wendigo were once human.  

The Wendigo are what happens when the hunger of the Grey Locust is left wild and uncontained by the Locust King and the constraints that the Grey places upon the Hungry Empire in an attempt to maintain its cold order.   

The hunger drives them, and in the early stages they still seem human.  

The Stillborn  

From a distance, one might mistake the Stillborn for people. Up close, the mistake is unlikely. The Stillborn's skill has gone white and chalky, and clouds of dry skin cells explode around them with sudden movements. Their eyes have gone milky blue-white and the skin has tightened all across the face to give the eyes a sunken look. The Stillborn's hair has bleached to translucent silver and seems to defy gravity, floating about the skull like an unholy halo.   

The Stillborn still speak, but their language is unintelligible to any non-wendigo. They have their own culture and mythology, those none who understand it are able to transmit it back to those who still understand human speech. The path to hunger is nearly always a one way journey.   

The Hungry Ghost  

As the body is consumed by the hunger, the Stillborn go from emaciated to truly skeletal, with skin stretched so tightly of bone and sinew that they could be mistaken for desiccated corpses if they choose to remain still. The teeth sharpen and elongate and the eyes decompose completely in the head, replaced by cold blue lights. At this point, the Wendigo is known as a Hungry Ghost. The Hungry Ghost, like the Stillborn army, still physically eat. However, they no longer attempt to cook their food, and seem unable to digest it- as the food sits inside their huge distended bellies.   

The Ravener  

The final state of deterioration. The Wendigo's head is now a skull with glowing eyes, resembling nothing so much as the terrible love child of an elk and a bear. Carnivores teeth poke out of a herbivore's jaw. A predator's eyes sit uneasy in the skull of a prey animal. What skin remains is ragged and wispy and flutters in the slightest breeze. The Ravener is an animate skeleton that glows with a cold blue light. The body of the skeleton too is twisted, elongated and ape-like, but with the hooves of an ungulate, the ribcage and fore paws of a polar bear, and bizarre protrusions extending from the individual vertebra of the spinal column.      

The Recurrence of the Tower

Whether its the Tower of Retribution in Berserk or Kami's Watch Tower in Dragon Ball, The Tower of Babel in Ancient myth or the New Tower of Babel in the film Metropolis, The Dark Tower quoted in King Lear or the Dark Tower in the works of Stephen King; no matter the form of the story, epic tales grow towers like damp houses grow mold.

 

The Leviathan

The Fading Lake and the Drowned City are not deep bodies of water for the most part, but there are deep parts. And in those areas, sink holes and trenches, buried caverns formed of sunken bits of a long past golden; here the Leviathan makes its nest.

Most of the time, the Leviathan is content to remain hidden beneath the waves, feeding upon whatever has left the scars in its mutilated hide. Most of the time. Some of the time, the great giant sea monster explodes up to the surface and devours settlements on the Coast. Like the Behemoth, the Leviathan is singular. There is no more than one to bear the name. Unlike the Behemoth, the Leviathan is predatory, and those sentient beings that it devours it certainly does not devour by accident.

Unlike the Behemoth, there are not structures on the back of Leviathan that the Psychonauts might plunder. But when the Leviathan is active, the ancient underwater tunnels and structures where it normally sleeps are open for exploration by the bold and near suicidal. But psychonauts should be wary. The Leviathan got its scars somewhere.

The Behemoth

The largest Thing to walk upon the Wastelands; the Behemoth is, like the Leviathan and the Sentinel but unlike the Watchers and Trolls and Colossi, singular in existence. Psychonauts who have studied the Behemoth are uncertain whether the behemoth has always been singular or whether the great beast is the last of some monster species.

The Vast majority of the Behemoth's time is spent sleeping in the southern wastes. The Behemoth sleeps so long that dust will cover much of the giant's flanks and scrub grass and tumbleweeds will seed and take root. The Behemoth does not sleep long enough for cities to spring up, but upon each waking Psychonauts have observed a hut or ruined tower or two upon the back of the Giant. Because of their location, the story inevitably places things of great note or merit in these structures and brave Psychonauts will frequently attempt to climb the behemoth and explore the structures.

When the Behemeoth awakens, it feeds. The Behemoth is an omnivore, although seemingly by accident. The great giant lumbers across the landscape and grazing by devouring whole hillsides as it literally bites the tops of hills and mountaintops alike. It can devour whole camps or settlements this way, though most scholars agree that this is almost certainly accidental.

To the Scavenger Folk, the waking time of the Behemoth is a time of dangerous omens and ill portents, not the least of which because the Behemoth could simply decide to sit on a Scavenger Camp without noticing that it had done so.

The Question of the treaty

The tribes and clans of wild folk and the green peoples will nearly all speak of the treaty if question about law by a psychonaut. Any one of these folk or people may give the treaty and the Psychonaut's lack of adherence to it as a reason for not speaking with or assisting the psychonaut. A member of the treaty peoples might explain it briefly if pressed. Such an explanation would likely point out that the wild folk contains both predator and prey and that even those amongst the wild Folk who are prey themselves do in fact prey upon the green peoples. The treaty is the agreement whereby the tribes and clans of green peoples and wild folk might deal honorably with one another while still allowing room for natural predation. A fox will hunt a grouse. A goat will feed upon the bushes of many species. But despite this, through adherence to the treaty, goat folk may trade with fox folk and berry persons. The Psychonauts will naturally wonder; may they sign the treaty? And Yes, they may, if they have passed the initiation and endeared the rites of passage and earned the right to call themselves warriors under the Freepath. And foremost Psychonauts fresh to the foglands, is the primary goal.

A brief Snapshot of the Foglands

The Foglands is an eerie place for new arrivals to experience. The concrete hard sand dunes and broken rocky ground have been desaturated by some earlier tragedy and most of the landscape is the weird monochrome of a 1950s television broadcast. The sky, by contrast is a toxic looking bloody orange by day, and a deeper near opaque orange black at night- marked by a hallowe'en orange moon. The brackish lakes and inland seas are nearly all a rusty orange from the oxidizing metal and salt content of the water. Grey and Orange. Monochrome and and garish contrast. The visuals along are enough to make some new arrivals lose what lunch they brought with them for the incursion.

The Four have a discussion

Into the void a cold tenor voice rang out like, ice field splitting across the horizon, "This is the story of us."

A second, distinctly motherly voice wreathed in an echoing chorus interrupted "And them. Don't forget that."

A third wet voice that seemed to thrum rather than speak add, "She means you, the reader."

"They may be listeners." Added a voice that echoed like a sermon in a sunken cathedral.

"In any event," The first cold voice said, regaining control of the narrative, "This is the story of us, and how our story is your story."

The motherly voice continued, "This is the story of how we made you."

"And how you then returned the favor, " the third voice thrummed.

"And this is the story of paradox of those words is the key to understanding your importance to the story." The Cathedral voice added.

"Because the story is where we live," The motherly voice said.

"And where we will find ourselves once we die," The cold voice concluded.

"And where you find us now." The Cathedral voice added.

"I'm trying to set up the story," The Cold voice objected, "You are ruining the mood."

"I am explaining important information," The cathedral voice insisted.

"You're just going to confuse them," the motherly voice said.

"Then I'm doing my job," The Cathedral voice answered.

"May we get on with this, please?" The Cold voice said.

"Yes," Said the Motherly voice," Our readers may be growing bored."

"Our Listeners." The Cathedral voice.

"Our audience," The Cold Voice said, "And while we waste time, our audience is dying."

Shadows and Artifacts

Objects in the shadowlands are not stable. Things collected in one incursion will not be retained into the next incursion unless they are attuned to the psychonaut's avatar. Things that can be attuned include artifacts, spells, watchtower links, realm keys, sparks and such. Any normal bits and pieces found in the shadowlands will fade upon departure from the shadowlands.

Fading Lake Regional Locations: The Witch Hut

The Witch Hut

A traditionally Forboding hut sits on the edge of the Fading lake, standing on low stilts to appear to float in the water when the lake is high. A Witch is always present in the Witch Hut. Which one is present will vary, although the Witch will rarely be a named Archetype, and will rarely admit a definitive identity- least of all to a green Psychonaut not worth her (or more rarely his) time.

Playtesting the Foglands

My Intrepid band of Psychonauts have run our first play test of the foglands. Entering the fog lamps true the gate room in the ring, but without any activated watchtowers, they ended up at the altar Stone plinth.

There they encountered the Colossus Giant, and our three Psychonauts disagreed on whether or not one could communicate with a Colossus. Much Amusement was had, and no Psychonauts were harmed in the making of this joke. And certainly no Psychonauts were eaten by Giants.

Two Psychonauts went scurrying through junkyard tunnels aided by one of the wildfolk, an intelligent badger who gave his name as... ...badger. within the tunnels, they ran afoul of a giant Ghostly monstrosity which looks vaguely like a caterpillar built of human parts and wearing a small faceless mask; which they took with them after Escaping The Thing.

the third psychonaut not decided it was more productive to bait and taunt the Giants until by a series of improbable successes he ended up with a parachute and a corpse of another psychonaut riding one of the winged Watcher Giants to the temples and shrines surrounding the Screaming Stone.

The area around the screaming Stone was populated by the hungry and agitated troll Giants. Here the Psychonauts briefly reunited before the more adventurous psychonaut acted as a distraction to draw off the trolls well the other two Ren two and attuned to themselves to the Watchtower at the head of the Totem Wastes.

Their goal achieved, the distracting psychonaut used the mask taken earlier to drive away the trolls and the play test ended in Victory.

The Fisher King Spider, The Deep Water Spider, The Eye Spider

A Bright painted spider with an elongated abdomen and which sports, instead of a cephalothorax, a miniature carapace shaped like an eyeless human skull. Mandible protrude from the front of the thorac, where the skull would have teeth. And in place of a cranium, the carapace fascimile skull sports a human-like eye swivelling in a bizarre ball socket.

The Fisher King Spider is a creature like Falsenight, stolen from and built by the Locust King from a piece of an ancient Elder- one of the Three. In this case, a stolen eye from the Weaver.

Unlike other mythic creations of the False King, the Eye Spider is not a large monstrosity. The Spiders that form its temporal bodies in the Shadowlands are only slightly larger than a typical hunting spider, smaller than a tarantula or camel spider certainly. The Deep Water Spider is not any spider however, and creates many avatars in the Shadowlands- an army of quietly watching bodies.

The Eye Spider is paranoia and surveillance and the chilling effect that such surveillance has upon creativity in creating the story.

The Eye Spider makes webs out of stagnant or polluted water and travels along its webs and only along its webs. but it can allow the web to disperse and 'surf' along drops of water or within (or upon) any stagnant or polluted body of water- as these things are all implicitly its web as well.

The Eye Spider can cast a charged line of water to strike the skin of a denizen, and thereby influence what they see, changing their perception of the Shadowlands.

Due to the Deep Water Spider's movement limitations, it is at its most powerful in the Foglands and nearly as powerful in the Mirrored City, and virtually powerless in Arcadia and The Painted Labyrinth, and completely powerless in Hollow Heart.

Wastelands Regional Location: The Fading Lake

The Fading Lake

The Fading Lake is a brackish lake whose water line rises and falls with mysterious apparently non-tidal rhythms. The Fading Lake harbors secrets beneath the silty bottom, but Psychonauts will be hard pressed to explore those secrets without impressive preparations. Some experienced Psychonauts have claimed that beneath the silt is a half flooded temple from the time of the Mirrored City, whose machinery still runs. They further claim that the turning of these ancient clockworks is what causes the waters of the lake to rise or fall. Other experienced Psychonauts who have sought to prove or disprove this claim have failed to return to the Foglands for later incursions.

Wastelands Region Location: The Haypenny Camp

The Haypenny Camp

The chief competitor to the Salt Market, the Haypenny camp is cleaner and tidier, but also smaller and less well stocked that its more famous Plateau based competition. The Haypenny camp is also nearly half settlement if one looks purely at the number of tents, and sacred hospitality is practised in both the Open Market and the Old Camp. The people of the Haypenny Camp are not free peoples, but no Stillborn Army or Hungry Empire either. They sit in between, balancing on the blade of rusted straight razor, trying to survive on the business provided chiefly by newly arrived Psychonauts.

The genre savvy Psychonaut will quickly realize that the Open Market operates as the starter shop and the Old Camp functions as the first hub village for Psychonauts making incursions into the Foglands.

Wastelands Region: The Womb

The Womb

A collection of natural limestone caves twist beneath the the heart of the wastelands. Expanded by unknown denizens, stalagmites sculpted into strange humanoid forms and new passage way added and small corridors expanded to accomodate foot traffic. In some places, unknown visitors have placed altars and shrines and statues of sacred beings, and time has allowed the limestone to partially encase them in stalagmites and sometimes full limestone columns. The Womb is now a dangerous set of labyrinths used by many denizens as a place to conduct rites of passage and ritual vision quests. Bioluminescent fungi and airborne spores dimly light different areas of the caves with strange iridescent raninbow lights. But beyond the light lurk monsters, including the occasional chimera- suggesting a link between the Womb and the Painted Labyrinth.

Altar Stone Regional Locations: The Screaming Stone

The Screaming Stone

To the East of the Altar Stone Plinth is Screaming Stone. One of three truly enormous humanoid statues (the other two being the Weeping Stone and the Thinking Stone), The Screaming Stone looms above the landscape and stands over three times as large as the largest Giant. The Three Great Stones are hollow structures, though still impossibly heavy and monolithic. Psychonauts could disappear into one of the Great Stones and wander for months, and that's before they discover the vast tunnels underneath each stone monster. The open maw of the Screaming Stone is a massive viewing platform, from which one can view the landscape for miles in any direction and which is a good place to get an early glimpse of the Plateau.

Altar Stone Regional Locations: The Altar Stone Plinth

The Altar Stone Plinth

Psychonauts who find the first gate key will inevitably end up in region of the Altar Stone Plinth upon their first use of the Foglands Gate. The Plint itself is a massive stone, carved as though to be a base to hold some larger statue or vase. The Plinth is as large as a human temple, and the top shows scraping and wearing that is visible on to those tall enough to see the top or brave enough to scale a structure considered sacred to the Giants. What, if anything previously sat upon the plinth is unknown, but the Giants are entirely too willing to place dead psychonauts there as offerings or leave live Psychonauts there- presumably to die of exposure (although their actual motive is a mystery).

Around the Plinth are a collection of stone barrows and dolmen built from large standing stone placed by the giants and then modified by smaller denizens into burial grounds and holy places, hiding holes and ad hoc housing. Psychonauts will find many secrets in these structures and many denizens- friendly, neutral and hostile.

After much exploration, Psychonauts have discovered that a series of more impressive Dolmen, which are connected by a series of underground corridors, are associated with key stars in the Northern night sky. Interestingly, the sub locations in the Step Pyramid region have similar references to key stars in the Southern night sky.

Wastelands Locations: The Altar Stone Region

The Altar Stone

The area of the Wasteland known collectively as the Altar Stone or Altar Stones is a collection of statues and standing stones that radiate out from a central point. The area is apparently sacred to the Giants, as Psychonauts who journey there will find that the area always has a few such visitors. The Giants will prostrate themselves before the enormous humanoid statues, and will leave offerings. Psychonauts should be wary near the Altar Stones, as the Giants visiting the stones are more animated than normal and an unwary Psychonaut may find themselves beaten to death against a rock and then gently placed before one of the stones as an offering from some devout Giant.

Speculation on the relationship between the Giants and the Stones has gone on for as long as both have been known to exist. Some scholars speculate that the humanoid apeparing statues are in fact dead or hibernating Giants. Other vocies have suggested that these are simply altars to whatever gods the Giants worship. Experienced Psychonauts have noted that first time visitors to the Foglands always find themselves deposited in the region of the Altar Stones, and have suggested that the Giant might revere the area itself as a bringer of food. The suggestion being that the giants subsequently built the Altar Stones around the region where unready and easily captured meals appeared with satisfying regularity. Whatever the reason, the Giants aren't telling and certainly aren't going away.

The Altar Stone region is filled with secret rooms and hidden tunnels and labyrinths. Experienced Psychonauts do incursions to explore the Altar Stones frequently. For first time visitors to the Foglands, the Altar Stones are a dangerous place filled with practically unkillable very hungry Giants and ancient death traps that stubbornly refuse to rust or malfunction. The area is confusing and maze-like, with huge stones and statues forming twisting labyrinthine tunnels and troughs in the landscape that the psychonauts must navigate carefully to escape with their limbs intact.

A very very Short and Thoroughly Incomplete List of Locations in Arcadia

• The Village
• The Cematary
• The Lake
• The Mountain
• The Forest
• The Plains
• The Coastline

An Abridged list of Locations in the Mirrored City

The City

• The Ward of Gildguld
• The Ward of Mitchuas
• The Ward of Gaibrus
• The Ward of Zeudin Vashas
• The Ward of Lamris
• The Ward of Friedites
• The Ward of Valstaris
• The Ward of Xerfer

The Lef River

• The Northern Waters of Gongin
• The Southern Waters of Lamlex
  

The Frontier Lands

• The Mountain Stronghold
• The Frozen Plains
• The Windswept Plains
• Strongiron Village
• The Living Forest
• The Second Forest

A Brief and Incomplete list of Locations in the Ring

The Threshold

The Lotus Garden

• Village Region
• Graveyard Region
• Lake Shrine Region
• Dark Mountain Region
• Bone Forest Region
• Great Plains Region
• Coastal Seas Region
• Bridge to Stellar House
• Bridge to Void House
• Bridge to Gate Room
• Bridge to the Threshold

Void House

Stellar House

The Gate Room

• The Front Room
• The Back Room

Brief Overiew of Location in Hidden Heart

The Dual Core Chambers

• The Chamber of the Survivors
• The Chamber of the Scavengers

The Three Wings

• The Glass Wing
• The Emerald Wing
• The Dust Wing

The Four Corners

• The Table Corner
• The Dark Corner
• The Scorched Corner
• The Salt Corner

The Five Terminals

• The Serpent Terminal
• The Mystery Terminal
• The Bridge Terminal
• The Ancient Terminal
• The Alliance Terminal

Brief List of Location in the Painted Labyrinth

The Shrines of the Three

• The Firebird Temple
• Weaver Cave
• The Spiral Tower

The Meeting Places

• The Amphitheatre
• The Globe Sepulchre
• The Bazaar
• The Council Stronghold
• The Alliance Gate
• The Witch House

Precursor Ruins

• The Beetle
• The Twin Collosi
• Dikinesh Canyon
• The Altar of the Elder Brothers
• The Grave of the Corn Lady

The Pillars

• The Great Western Pillar
• The Great Eastern Pillar

The Bridges

• The Hummingbird Bridge
• The Butterfly Bridge

Campaign Grounds

• Barren Island
• Hunting Grounds
• Tenfold Manor
• Damacles Graveyard Throne
• Daemon Temple
• The Short Tower
• The Keystone Cave
• The Solar Moon Henge
• The Place of Slaughter
• The Fern Forest
• Cavern Lake of Discord