Field Guides #4 - Muck Divers

27 February 2024

Contents

• Contents
• Intro
• Life in Dahlia Mosaic
  • Muck Divers
  • Diver Ingenuity
  • The City
• Layers in the Muck
  • The High Filth
  • The Middens
  • Far Chalcic
  • Grimy Surface Locales
• Freaks in the Muck
  • Barb
  • Mayor Hominy
  • Greenhorns
  • Other Foul Inhabitants
• Threats in the Muck
  • Flakes
  • Trash Birthling
  • A Yearning
  • Other Dour Encounters
• Hooks
• Trashborne Treasure And Where To Find It
• Touchstones and Inspirations

Intro

Come. Puncture the rotting flesh of the world and find treasure beneath its skin.

The places a city abandons hold a sickening kind of melancholy. In their bones we might see scars: extracted wealth, ghost towns, mining tunnels drilled through earth like an ice pick to the brain. Civilization is a half-corpse crawling slowly to absolution, ignoring the true life seeping from its torso. These wretched children fester, percolate, blister and writhe and cry out but God, they can't help but live. In this way the swamp outside Bastion was formed.

It's foul, obviously, a miserable place of many gruesome adjectives, but apart from that surface level filth it's surprisingly hard to pin down. Names don't stick - they slip off the mind, ignored through gut feeling or bad vibes. Common practice says to use the names of ex lovers. "You'll know her by the bitter taste," they say. If a map even shows her she will often be unlabeled, reduced to a smudge or a burn scar. The swamp's most common depiction is like a mole going wrong - misshapen, dark, and worse: growing.

Not outward - the wetland boundary is clearly defined, signposted, and avoided - but inward. Deeper. The bottom sinks and sinks into the earth. "Leaving?" the locals ask, "or returning?" Imagine: the carved imprints of a child's toes dug into the mud, flinching away from the surface a little more each day. A hundred years ago sunlight was already a memory. How deep will it be when we're dead?

Life in Dahlia Mosaic

The swamp's only settlement is a crumbling altar bound with spit and salvage. It's hard to tell if Dahlia Mosaic was built or simply birthed at the dawn of time alongside old favorites like gravity, or love. Either way, here it is. Lit by gaslamp at day and cackling wisps at night, Dahlia Mosaic stands as unfortunate proof to human perserverance.

Consider: as the swamp sinks always, so too does anything built within. Life on drowning foundation requires certain adjustments for the working stiff. Today's floor may be tomorrow's roof, so remember your ABCs: Always Be Cbuilding! The main hub would be a skyscraper in its full glory, but only two or three stories emerge from the sludge at any time. The rest of the structure, every bygone inch, forms a massive pillar spiking through the High Filth. Untold years of history and culture adorn that spinal column along with more modern shrines, choked with mud, guarded by flakes.

Everyone's got their favored styles. Some jerry-rigged apartments hang with thick cables from ancient mangroves. Others bulge from established buildings, offsetting their weight with gas-powered balloon or starving asceticism. Wealth moves fast with unstable Muck Diver profits, and fads move faster. There's always a good-old-boy trying to turn a profit on their newest non-sink architecture, but most locals do their own construction. You don't live here long without getting a little handy.

Muck Divers

Dahlia Mosaic's neurotic workforce. Anyone not a diver is likely a dedicated builder, and even they dabble. Each day at sun-up these peons crawl from their sinking abodes to flit wormlike through the sludge, hungry for scraps. Why? Aside from your standard bog assortment of carcass matter, Dahlia's roots are host to relics of our ancients. The entire history of this swamp is preserved in foul amber, and the record stretches down for miles and miles. The deeper you go, the more exotic your finds become. Anyone returning surface-side takes a deep breath, keeps what they crave, and ships the rest to the City. Most days the profit's just enough to keep your home above the mud and buy a few drinks, but the locals don't mind. Their yearning is enough to sustain them.

Some divers form small cliques or gangs, but there's no central office. The only rule is this: everyone - everyone - answers to Barb.

What's this diver's prized salvage?

Diver Ingenuity

Swampland innovation is driven less by capital and more by an unhinged bond with nature. Our hearts yearn for connection in the strangest places. The first woman in Dahlia Mosaic to anthropomorphize her gut flora was branded a genius; her statue stood for three days before falling to the High Filth. So it goes. There are many problems in this world, but these few, in this place, are solved.

Breath: Mucksuits are the midpoint between a bad hug and a coffin. From the front, they're bulky diving suits carved from thick, sweaty canvas. The real party's in the back: twisting pipes and valves mount between the shoulder blades, housing swarms of leechlike fellas called skuggs. These hoary turds eat mud like an aphrodesiac and produce breathable air as a side effect of copulation. Their rabid gurgling haunts divers through the tubes, but a bashful few admit they can't sleep without it.

Sight: Canker mites, bulbous insects that live symbiotically in our stomach lining, are one of life's little miracles. Their reedy antennae allow them to filter feed through human skin, creating a bubble of clear-ish water around their hosts. The feeling is not unlike being dissolved, but, surprisingly, most divers feel a fondness for their cankers. Some even take algae baths on their off days as a treat for the tiny passengers.

Storage: Garfs are actually not native to the swamp - they were bred in a lab by city boys trying to smuggle pond weed, then dumped here when that became legal. Now with no known predators they've grown fat and happy in this rotten paradise. Fish-shaped, all blubber, zero IQ, the real magic lies in their gut: a system of eight interlocking stomachs surrounded by impenetrable fat. Perfect for storing muckborn treasures! Input's easy, output's harder. You've gotta squeeze 'em, and gripping through all that fat is a fool's errand. If you're in a pinch and need an item fast, roll 1d8 to determine which stomach gets emptied.

The City

Yes, the City, always glittering on the horizon. Its ridges buck and swell like a busted piano, keeping its bulk visible day and night. The swamp lives in breathless tension with Bastion. To the City, this grime provides an indescribable joy. What's the point of an ivory tower with nothing to look down upon? It's a rural backwater, the butt of every joke, the "at least we're not them" for those who seek out evil everywhere except their own hearts.

The swamp, in return, loves the City.

Loves is maybe the wrong word. It yearns, or hungers. The City is the cause and solution for all of their problems. Treasure goes in, money comes out - enough to know there's more out there but not enough to leave. There's a City shaped hole in each diver's chest and it'll never ever be filled as long as Dahlia keeps sinking and the world keeps spinning. These people want to improve their lives but it's all they can do to stay afloat. They can't be alive until they're out of the swamp, but leaving their homes to sink feels like another form of death. Life in Dahlia Mosaic mostly involves new and exciting ways for stress to rip your body apart at the molecular level until you're nothing but grey skin over an empty spirit and eyes always, always on the horizon.

Layers in the Muck

See what hides in the sinking decay.

The High Filth

Civilization still lingers in the High Filth. Dahlia Mosaic's central pillar spikes through the rancid water, linking the surface world to the Middens' foul darkness. Any hackneyed construction that falls from topside ends up here, caught on a muddy wall or piled up with the dreck on the bottom.

New divers cut their teeth here, usually sent to find childhood toys or wedding rings from older layers of Dahlia Mosaic. The late bones of the town are intercut with new construction made by flakes - divers who've rejected the surface world. They comb through the wreckage like vultures, creating gods and discarding them just as quick, littering the pillar with their shrines.

A thick, cloudy film separates the bottom of the High Filth from the Middens. You can scrape your way through, but it's a tight fit, and it regrows behind you. This gate is itself gatekept by a massive pile of garbage. Flake waste, discarded diver tools, homes, bodies - it all ends up here. As the swamp sinks down, the pile grows up, reaching always to its old life.

What signs of life lie in the brown haze?

The Middens

Most trash heaps feel gross; the Middens feels primordial. Its use as a dumping ground predates sapience. Light doesn't penetrate past the High Filth, so your only company is cold, squishy darkness. The potent cocktail of chemicals percolating down here for centuries have morphed the water into a dense slurry, thin enough to swim through, but thick enough to slow you down.

And then there's the garbage itself. Turns out that eons of rotting in a primeval cesspit was just enough to create new life, and now this entire stratum exists as a gestalt waste consciousness, affectionately called WC by local trash saints. It's been alive for probably a thousand years but in the grand scheme of things it's still a child, and boy it'll let you know it. WC doesn't take kindly to invaders in its territory and will manifest trash birthlings to send you packing.

Hardened divers know this: save your bottles, bones, and receipts for offerings to this lowbound divinity. At worst, WC'll leave you alone. At best, it'll take a shine to you, building curious little junk golems to float crumbling in your wake.

How does the Waste Consciousness block your path here?

Far Chalcic

If time is a flat circle then Far Chalcic is spinning faster than the rest. The weight of the world heaved itself onto this layer like a hydraulic press, gaining more pressure as the swamp kept sinking. Eventually the swamp could no longer go down, so it had to go... inward. Some say it's a new big bang, others say it's the afterlife. Diver reports of Far Chalcic are few and far between, but there's a few consistent notes:

• The water thins, like air, and becomes completely clear.
• There are no outer walls. Just emptiness, forever.
• Singing like a dying star below, in the far, far reaches: a yearning.

The only signs of life down here are greenhorns - wriggling fleshites struggling towards life - and echoes, where the real treasures lie. Echoes are reflections of the surface world placed haphazardly as if by a bored creator. They litter Far Chalcic's inky blackness like scattered dreams, all spiraling towards that distant star. The boys back in the lab aren't sure if these visions are fragments of our past or future, but they do know this: everything in them taken back to the surface is overrun with yearning.

What echo is that in the near darkness?

Grimy Surface Locales

Freaks in the Muck

Odd faces in odder places.

Barb

As the first diver to breach Far Chalcic, nobody was around to stop Barb from climbing into the first cocoon she saw and shedding her old life. When she emerged from the muck, shining with chitin, the locals dropped to their knees and wept knowing that in the annals of infamy they were living in a post-Barb world. They carved space for her to nest in Dahlia Mosaic, and that was that. Some folks say she's the top of the evolutionary ladder, but Barb's humble: she says she's still looking for the next rung.

Transcendence hasn't changed Barb too much. She's still an ornery, charismatic force with an ear for rumors and a taste for fruit; now she just has a few more eyes and an echoing, shrill laugh. Want a High Filth retrieval contract? Need a hot tip on the cool shit WC's hiding? Barb's got you covered. Want to get that yearning cured? Well, that's where things get interesting. Barb's new form is completely immune to yearning, but she has a strange revulsion - or appreciation? - for the feeling. Her price for a cure is sending you on a careful trip through her gullet, where swarms of sentient parasites inside her stomach will remake you according to their alien whims. "It don't hurt, honey," she'll say with a sheepish grin. "Just the cost of doin' business!"

How will Barb's passengers remake you this time?

Mayor Hominy

Mayor Hominy found religion the first time he met WC, a story he tells all the time. By the dirty twilight in his bubble of sight he was confronted with his own history. The construct WC hastily built to harass him was formed from Hominy's family tree - heirloom scarves, discarded boyhood clothes, a ragged and faded painting of his grandmother. Of course he cried, of course he worshipped - what else? His return to the surface marked the birth of the Trash Saints.

Now he sits above the surface, spreading his feelers across the world, looking for rare garbage. The stranger the better, he says. In his younger days he tried to guide WC by only presenting it with high-quality junk, but now he'll throw any old thing down there just to see what happens. If you've got something broken and need a quick fence, he's the guy to go to, and in return he'll help unlock the latent powers in your own detritus.

What hidden powers can Mayor Hominy unlock?

Greenhorns

Unfortunate fleshlings born in the crucible of Far Chalcic. These guys are like a dreaming mind's attempt at creating life. The shape of a living thing is there, and some of the noises, but for the most part they're miserable and short-lived. Their pathetic squelching inspires a certain disgust in the hearts of man, enough that your average Joe can't stand them.

Sadly, greenhorns are still useful - the strange cyclical forces at work in Far Chalcic have blessed them with the gift of prophecy. Not even the fun kind, like with riddles. Just straight facts. Given a mouth and a patient ear, one of these skinbags will jabber out truth after truth before perishing. Is a random fact about the future useful? You decide. In the meantime corporate pigs with fat stacks and a healthy fear of death are paying the big bucks for these guys, desperate to hear of their impending doom.

Who's paying for the latest greenhorn prophecies?

Other Foul Inhabitants

Threats in the Muck

Rarer than you think, but still here.

Flakes

HP 4 | Armor 1 | STR 10 | DEX 8 | CHA 13 | Harpoon Gun 1d6

Critical Damage: your oxygen supply (if applicable) is pierced and destroyed.

• Muck Divers who've gone rogue and rejected the surface, falling in love with the old world again and again.
• Build filthy underwater shrines from what they scavenge in the High Filth.
• Familiar with diver tech, obviously. Would rather attack your oxygen source than fight fair.

Omens: ragged breathing, old sea shanties hummed through the muck, underwater altars lit with glowing algae

Trash Birthling

HP 3 | STR 5 | DEX 15 | CHA 5 | Limp flailing 1d4

Critical Damage: all nearby birthlings merge into massive Trash Hulk (HP 8, Armor 3, STR 18, Junk Smash 1d12)

• WC's animated trash golems. Come in all broken shapes and sizes.
• Weak, but they swarm, and can move much faster than you through the Middens' sludge.
• WC needs to concentrate to make them violent. Left to their own devices they are filled with boundless curiosity.

Omens: idle squelching, muted rattling, crude childlike drawings

A Yearning

Yearning is a disease.

Originally documented in the depths of Far Chalcic, yearning was misunderstood for a long time. This is known:

• Yearning infuses unowned objects seemingly at random. The closer to Far Chalcic, the more likely the odds.
• Once you recognize the object as "yours", you're infected. Symptoms manifest on selling the object.
• Minor symptoms: melancholy, longing, daydreaming about how you could have utilized the object better.
• Major symptoms (manifest after one week): until the object is returned to your hands, you are both deprived and unable to die. Your saves bottom out at 1.

The swirling core of yearning at the so-called bottom of the swamp is accepted to be the disease's source, for no other reason than the dreams: it appears without fail in the infected's dreams each night. Infinitesimally small at first, it grows with each subsequent dream until it takes up all of the dreamer's senses. After about a year they can only see, feel, hear, taste, and smell the star. This is how they spend their nights: either becoming something else, or having something else become them.

Barb is the only known creature to transcend yearning entirely, and she's happy to cure you. Most divers actually choose to live with their infection, though. They whittle away eternity gathering late at night, watching the far off lights of the City, sharing could'vebeens and almosts, living forever in a dream of elsewhere.

Odds of yearning infection in found objects

Other Dour Encounters

Hooks

Trashborne Treasure And Where To Find It

Touchstones and Inspirations

Veniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

The Zahir by Borges

Anthology of the Killer by thecatamites

AI art generated with the Bing create tool through Microsoft.