⭗ REDIRECTIONS XXIX⭗

 

⭗ LONGWINTER IN UVG #2 ⭗

⭗ WHISPERS OF BREZIM ⭗

“I cut out east during the worst of it,” Kvelak said. “I’d heard that there were warmer waters along the course of the Riblinza. I’d already lost half my sundries to bandits and desperate trading, but that promise pulled me on.”

“And what did you find?” Lleva asked.

“More ice,” Kvelak stirred, uncomfortable. “More death.”

⭗ BACKGROUND ⭗

Brezim is the setting of Luka Rejec’s Longwinter books. While not explicitly set in the same world as Ultraviolet Grasslands (also by Rejec,) both settings have enough similarities in terminology and in encounters that they can mesh together relatively easily. Still, there is room for more flavor to integrate the two together when moving your UVG caravan through Brezim and experiencing the wrath of Winterwhite. Some of my ideas for encounters which mesh with both worlds are below:

⭗ TINY MONSTERS ⭗

Plaintive, desperate meows carried on a cold wind lead unwary travelers to a cat crouching in the cooling corpse of her thrall. She is in Brezim on business, but lost her treasured human when the winter took a turn for the worst and she drove him too hard into the blowing snow. The cat promises riches and acclaim to any who can help her return to her warm and luxurious holdings in the Violet City. Whether she is good for it, whether she is dead broke, in league with the Wolffolk or is, in actuality, a skintaker disguised as a cat, remains to be seen. Even if she is brought back to the Violet City, she will need to take on a new thrall to carry her about and serve her whims.

⭗ HORIZONS ⭗

A circular portway recently unearthed by the passing of a landslide beckons from a steep hillside, yawning with heat and steam. The rustless steel interior is warm and welcoming, even despite the presence of the picked-clean bones of old architects that died clawing at the floor and walls. Setting up camp in the entryway would surely be fine, wouldn’t it? But those tunnels, those dark, misty tunnels that descend deep into the earth could be full of wonders from another age. Strange warnings from Long, Long Ago are etched in the walls in a language no one reads or speaks anymore, and subtly-glowing lines on the floor lead to vaults that echo with squirming insect noises or the gentle humming of fantascience devices. You could crack open just one door and maybe find something that will get you out of this icy hell (or doom you to it forever) but until you open the vaults, you’ll never know what wonders the unwise will find.

⭗ MAN OVERBOARD ⭗

A tracked, overland whaling barge is tonguing a mated pair of sky-whale corpses for one final round of brisk business with the baronials before they pack up and trundle off to warmer lands. The captain of the overland whaling barge is a polybody trio named Ahab-3 (L6, grumpy), and each of his bodies is fitted with sharp, functional prosthetics that give him an edge in whale oil processing, in blubber bladder butchering and in combat against bandits. He has a keen eye for opportunity, but often sees threats where they don’t exist, giving him the reputation of being a capricious and ornery old man no matter which of his bodies people are dealing with. One of his bodies, the most dominant one, carries an impressively large Lundtkirk quarter-gauge hunting rifle everywhere he goes, along with a bandoleer of phosphored-silver slug rounds specifically crafted to turn skintakers into puffs of tattered rag and smoke. The other two bodies wear magnifying monocles and often act as spotters for their rifle-toting body.

⭗ SOUR GRAPES ⭗

Marmotfolk bandits (L3, Ambushing) who have fallen on hard times (and lean pickings) are stalking the trees near an abandoned mine and extorting whatever food, fuel and furs they can out of any baronials unfortunate enough to wander past. Oldsettlers generally avoid the area. Wolffolk are actively hunting the bandits, but the marmotfolk have managed to avoid them so far. The wolffolk are unlikely to ally themselves with anyone they see as outsiders in the hunt for the marmotfolk, but the bandits may be interested in allying themselves with anyone who can help them stay one step ahead of their pursuers.

⭗ THE REMEDY ⭗

A traveling menagerie that has spent the autumn collecting gnome monkeys and other local oddities to sell back home in the Decapolis as exotic (and expensive) pets has been caught off guard by the harsh and sudden arrival of winter. The proprietor, Jason V.R. Berlitsowicz (L3, scatterbrained) and his three sons, Ferris, Redford and Mackie (L2, idealistic) run the menagerie out of a series of four glitzy and impracticably tall wagons. They are attempting to escape before Winterwhite buries the barony under a mountain of snow, but their escape alone is unlikely, as their wagons keep getting stuck and the gnome monkeys are as clever as they are loud. They are dead-set against leaving any of their “pets” or wagons behind, but hunger and the constant threat of bandits and predators drawn in by the monkeys’ howls are already taking their toll.

⭗ PERSONAL PROMETHEUS ⭗

Radiation ghosts crowd around a hazy crater as if clustering together to try to keep warm. In truth, they are drawn to the emanations of an old architect device that is thrumming just below the surface. The crater above the device was caused by either the accidental detonation of a forgotten old architect weapon lost in an ancient war, an electromagnificent bomb carried out to the site by a brave team of witchburners intent on destroying the ghost-attracting device, or by a baronial blackpowder merchant’s unfortunate accident. Whatever the cause, the local villagers are willing to pool their resources to pay anyone who can exorcize the site and drive off the radiation ghosts for good. The last few heroes they hired didn’t quite measure up to the task, it seems.

⭗ SMOKE AND MIRRORS ⭗

On your journey toward warmer lands, you come across a calm place of pristine snow and sparse trees separating two roads. This silent, barren-looking ice field seems (at first blush) as if it could be the perfect shortcut to shave a watch off the grueling march between points of safe haven. In truth, it’s anything but. Local oldsettlers and guides familiar to the region all claim that passing through the ice field is perilous and that it should be avoided at all costs. The reasons why seem to change from person to person though, with some claiming that the fields are home to a hive of ravenous vomes, or the underground warrens of a cannibal clan of wolffolk. Still others claim that a forgotten old architect weapons cache lies buried under the icefield, leaking electromagnificent radiation, filling the air with heady, deadly vapors and leaching heavy toxins into the soil. Some even claim that the field is elf-touched, with infectious faerie spores in the soil and strange, circular burn marks that attest to visitations by void gods keen to kidnap the unwary. Whatever the truth is, no one can say. It may all be true (or none of it) but will you be able to find anyone willing to risk it and find out? For most, there isn’t enough cash in Brezim to cajole a guide into the area, but maybe now that times are more desperate, that could soon change.

⭗ OUR PARTY (SO FAR) ⭗

Lleva Vyeldisana, Greenfolk Naturalist and Zoa Conservationist

"Charred-Hand" a perfectly ordinary and unassuming wastelander

The Blue Oracle, Dreamer of Dreams

 

Coda-1, Coda-2 and Coda-3, a bluelander polybody pilgrim, allegedly.

⭗ WHAT ARE REDIRECTIONS? ⭗

My goal with REDIRECTIONS is to add my own contribution to the Psychedelic / Heavy Metal / Ligne Claire art RPG space.  Much in the way that people inspired by Tolkien’s style helped give birth to the modern genre of High Fantasy, the style of Jean “Moebius” Giraud (and others like him) seems to be spawning a sort of genre of its own right now, and I want to expose more people to the wonders of it. I want to share it. I want to be a part of it. Most of all, I want it to grow.

    REDIRECTIONS is a collection of wondrous places and resources presented in story format (as a game in play, specifically traversing the universe of UVG (Ultraviolet Grasslands) but it is also kept more general for your own RPG characters to visit and explore regardless of the system you use. Each place is unique and wholly original, with a bevy of interesting stories, plot hooks and characters to color your experience. 

    The format and many of the specific terms are from UVG. I'm just playing in Luca Rejec's universe. 

    If you like these posts and find them useful, let me know! 

    As of this point, all art in these posts is created as a collaboration with AI. Basically I trained an AI art model on my own sharpie marker drawings, then generated a bunch of pictures and trained a series of other models on them. I generate images with these secondary models, sometimes using the output as it is, and sometimes modifying the images with inpainting and/ or using the secondary models to refine output from DALLE-3. There is, literally, in every image, a little bit of me. Consider these images to be homages to the genre and pretty pictures, but nothing more. I greatly respect the skill of people who work with pen and pencil and have the skill of hand to make things from scratch. 

    This is a series, and each entry is numbered. If you like things like this, please support the true artists whose works are part of the genre, such as the works of Moebius, Luka Rejec's Ultraviolet Grasslands, Luke Gearing's Acid Death Fantasy and Raw Fury's game SABLE.