The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Intermission 3: The Effects of the Bleak and The Pearl

On Being and Becoming and the Fall of the Ancients

In the language of the ancients the names of the twin islands were Artuunila and Siluutila: the place of being (siluut) and the place of becoming (artuun). There were not mere philosophical notions, but a way to describe the great immanent energy in these lands. Artuun warped and changed those exposed to it. Siluut reinforced the nature of things but in doing so made things outsized. Artuun turned a mountain into a magical plateau of strange fay magic. Siluut turned a mountain into a huge monolith beyond comprehension. 

Both took time. The creatures and plants on Artuunila shifted and merged in strange ways. The creatures and plants on Siluutila grew large and strong and severe. Neither was a place for civilization, both would inherently destroy any attempt to tame the land. Until the Ancients did just that by discovering uuxa: a form of energy generated by the tension where the two forced clashed. 

Uuxa is the same energy that Jonias Grunkheart later dubbed The Light. It feeds off the Being and the Becoming and repels them both, simultaneously giving the resource to fight back but also to make a safe place where the great teeth of the land can not grind those within it. Jonias suspected that the two energies were outsized here because of the Ancients who might have actually increased their output to create more uuxa, but the result was the opposite. Both energies decreased until they were barely noticeable: taking centuries to recreate the impact that a few years might have. 

The twin lands became just two large landmasses with somewhat unique ecosystems. The great engines of the Ancients ceased to function. 

And so the Ancients entered into millennia of decay, until the Barthic Empire rose to the west, led by the mage tyrants tapping into latent amounts of artuun as a mystical force further decreasing it. 

To the east was Silt, a semantic degradation of Siluutila. Remnants of siluut meant magic struggled to take hold so the Barthic mages avoided it. Left it a wild and unexplored land. 

On the Bleak and the Impact Upon Those Within

It is unknown exactly how the primal energy known as artuun became corrupted into The Bleak but the effects are known in more recent history. There is no immediate indication of your exposure to its foul energies. Buildings might decay faster. Certain fast growing life forms like molds will spread and grow new and strange spores. New growth on plants will be more gnarled, more diseased. Stranger. Darker. 

New generations of life are where it is always most obvious. Offspring of two healthy parents might show some strange mutation. Deer with spider legs. Two headed serpents. Birds with odd number of wings. For the people of the Barthic Empire, rumors of strange "witchery" in the provinces gave way to panic when it was their own children. A generation later, the children of people impacted by The Bleak were even more twisted. If it was every child, every generation, the society would have collapsed before it could attempt its great failed migration. 

The effects were tenuous at first. Even as they became stronger they were never automatic. A small village might find all of its newborn children born more mushroom than goblin but then the dwarf clan a few miles away would merely see a slight shift in hair color. This was the great cruelty. Because of this, people turned on each other. Those who suffered The Encroachment were blamed: a sign of the gods' disfavor, a sign of some great sin. 

As wars and fleeing marches of refugees wiped out the Barthic Empire, researchers like Jonias Grunkheart realized it was already too late. The slow increase of The Encroachment meant that everyone sailing across The Gray Channel was already infected to some degree. Still, he and others fought valiantly to buy people time, to stop the flow of the strange destroying energy before it could cross. 

People spending days and weeks in The Bleak may show very few symptoms. A general sense of unease. A tendency to nausea. Of not feeling well. After a few months, shifts might be minimal. Fingers slightly different in length. Joints that bend at slightly new angles. 

Years in, and people will almost definitely show some changes. Different for everyone. Lifespans will decrease, even for those who manage to avoid the new dangers and monsters. New sicknesses and curses will be found. 

And then, for others, the Encroachment will never begin. Others can spend decades in The Bleak and never show any changes at all. 

Those that have children may see the true cost of their adventuring days because while not every child is born Bleaktouched, enough are for every person driven to expedition to understand the true cost of exploring the twice great land. 

On Borders and Shores

Another element unknown about The Bleak is why there are pockets where it does not reach. Jonias believed it was like an ocean that flowed to the rhythm of a tide we could not see. Islands rose out of this ocean and there some semblance of normalcy could remain. Other places he classified as Shallows and Deeps. In the Shallows, effects would be relatively minor. Entire generations could live somewhat peacefully if they were lucky. In the Deep, people will find it nearly impossible to survive even a single generation without risking great harm and change. 

As an old man, Jonias began to suspect that the material used to make the fuelstones were possibly the cause of these small regions of normalcy. He had believed them to be unique to the Everburning Forest, but grew to believe they were the leftover generators of the Ancients. People naturally gravitating to the places The Ancients had harnessed uuxa. Unfortunately, Jonias died before carrying out an expedition to study these energies. And the infighting in Grunce meant that the Keepers had to switch fulltime to keeping the Lighthouse functioning until Jonias's dream of retaking Barthus had morphed, like everything in The Bleak morphs. No longer was it a conquest, it was merely a last stand. 

Others call these pocket zones of safety "The Borders" and several towns and villages and forts have grown up in them. Expeditions to raid the corpse of The Barthic Empire use them as layovers. An entire economy based on people willing to brave the miles and miles in between. Sometimes only to find that some border fort or border town had fallen in the weeks since it was last visited. Another victim in the centuries of Encroachment. 

DOUG'S NOTES

The general crunch of the new academic year is not precisely over but I am getting some time to actually sit down and play things and think about playing things again so wanted to try and work out some ideas and concepts. The intention was to jump straight into the short hex crawl related to the Everburning Forest but while prepping that I decided I wanted to go back and actually answer some questions. This is one of two campaigns I am running about some non-specific dark energy force that does...something. Figured it was best to work some mechanics about what that something might mean. 

Reading through Made in Abyss and thinking about the Southern Reach trilogy got me into the mindset of the broad "Stalker" genre greatly influenced by Roadside Picnic. The fictional trope of there being some place where reality and normalcy breaks down and people risk going into that place for knowledge and for fortune. 

The idea of a great civilization that was built on the back of an even greater civilization means it is logical that many, many treasures are buried out in a realm infested by an unknown source. But...did I want "The Bleak" to be something more allegorical - a general decline in civilization (the rough explanation at the start of the campaign) - or something more tangible - an energy that actually does something? I have been leaning towards it as an active force more and more so I decided to dive into the latter. The Bleak is an energy that corrupts. Everything. However, at its core it is a natural, primal force of change. One that is merely accelerated. And itself corrupted. I might not ever get around to getting more specific than that. I do not really need to be. 

When it started, this campaign treated "The Bleak" as basically a land where old magics had shifted reality and burned out the old cities but there was really no reason not to immediately retake it. In this new "twist," no one can stay out in The Bleak for too long. 

Eventually we may get around to how The Pearl is a sister force to this, but there is no rush. It is the sword and sorcery counterpart to the grimdark fantasy of The Bleak. That is enough, for now. The "Being" and "Becoming" energy trope, by the way, is a nod to my very first RPG product from some years ago: Ghostlight. In the never completed "second edition," the notions of being and becoming were going to be more definite forces with the general world built out the energy at the center of the two. 

The plan from this point on with the campaign is to lean into worldbuilding and plot development from here on out. While the campaign essentially started as a way to just dungeon dive without any real explanation, I think we are past that. 

Probably was from the get go. 

I'm also going to try a new style of art for this campaign using high contrast two-color art to highlight the "twin" nature of things but also to tap into the sort of dark art of the source material.