⭗ REDIRECTIONS XXVI⭗
⭗ TALES FROM THE UTTER WEST #6 ⭗
⭗ THE HÆRT OF THE WINEDARKNESS ⭗
"Your journey through the darkness didn't end with the Zenithali," the Blue Oracle settled both of her azure hands on the shoulders of the weathered old shaman. "Even after you were free from their shackles, you floated through the obsidian abyss until you found other shadowy shores to wander.”
“It was the abyss that was the most harrowing,” Charred-Hand stared into the distance, too lost in thought to remember his shrinking cigarette. “The hært of it all was the place that changed me the most. Beyond the ranges of the Zenithali, there are endless stretches of nebbiolo abyss that hold unseeable horrors which warp the mind to even attempt to envision. My memories of those places are scattered. They are not linear, like my memories here. They proceed in every direction, independent of time and space.”
“I will help you tell us what you can, if you are willing,” the Blue Oracle said, smiling.
“I am,” Charred-Hand suddenly remembered his cigarette, taking a long draw and releasing it slowly, letting the smoke cloud the air. “These are wounds that have gone fetid. It’s long past time that they were given air.”
"Your journey through the darkness didn't end with the Zenithali," the Blue Oracle settled both of her azure hands on the shoulders of the weathered old shaman. "Even after you were free from their shackles, you floated through the obsidian abyss until you found other shadowy shores to wander.”
“It was the abyss that was the most harrowing,” Charred-Hand stared into the distance, too lost in thought to remember his shrinking cigarette. “The hært of it all was the place that changed me the most. Beyond the ranges of the Zenithali, there are endless stretches of nebbiolo abyss that hold unseeable horrors which warp the mind to even attempt to envision. My memories of those places are scattered. They are not linear, like my memories here. They proceed in every direction, independent of time and space.”
“I will help you tell us what you can, if you are willing,” the Blue Oracle said, smiling.
“I am,” Charred-Hand suddenly remembered his cigarette, taking a long draw and releasing it slowly, letting the smoke cloud the air. “These are wounds that have gone fetid. It’s long past time that they were given air.”
⭗ HORRORS OF THE HÆRT⭗
Deep within the tractless abyssal nothingness of the very heart of the Winedark, the world grows so hot and so black that it cannot be navigated by those unaccustomed to (or unprepared for) the hazards of this utterly alien realm. The hotter the temperature, the more wild and ravenous the sludgy seas become, sharpening the isle-like concretions of radio-emitting gamma spires until they are like obsidian knives hidden among the waves, dangerous to even look at. Tunnels full of sharp, toothy mouths that howl and snap from the shadows spot these concretions, and unseeable predatory beasts turn their microwave-emitting organs on any unfortunate strangers who linger there. Black lightning rips up from the waves at intervals, ripping at ships and warping both matter and mind wherever they touch. Black fog so charged with ultraviolet urathyst fallout that it dissolves flesh on contact descends from the inky, bleeding sky while towering, sinewy god-forms hunt the mucilaginous black maelstroms, their massive eyes like trinaries of unseeable suns blasting everything with x-rays and ultramagnificent radiation. Craters full of thick, rectangular mirrors of black glass that glow when touched rise in the low, gelatinous places where the sea seems most alive, and sometimes, the cacophony of whispers that echo from them can be heard for miles.
The bravest Zenithali sky-scouts (L4, umbral, chiral) have learned to navigate this stretch of the Winedark with the cunning use of stolen aeroliths, hovering near the inky overdark while avoiding the persistent pull of the undervoid, but such scouts are rare, and usually only stray into the heart when pursuing escaped prisoners they have orders to capture alive. Exiles and those slated for execution are not pursued here.
⭗ THE ÆPHEMERAL TEMPLE⭗
The Zenithali have a legend that deep within the tractless span of the Winedark is a place which is all that remains of the workshop of the architects of the void. It isn’t a physical place, but rather a dream impressed onto the darkness of the Winedark itself like a double exposure. It is the ghost of a cathedral-ship whose halls still echo with the hymns of creation forged in the Long, Long Ago by singer-priests in the employ of the chorus of the highest stellar gods. What part of it is solid enough to stand on (mostly) still floats on the sea, it is said, but in a manner that is completely still, as if it were the source of the tides and the whole of reality only bends around it. What you will find within it (if you can find your way within it) are foggy memories of artifacts of immense creative power that have long ago soured under the light of the unseeable sun. Such things are sometimes sought for their use as weapons, or as ways to revitalize whole nations with fertile energies, but few know how to cleanse the sour from such instruments and even fewer have any inkling of how to use them without restructuring reality on a massive and destructive scale.
⭗ THE AVATAR OF NEPTUNUS NEBBIOLOUS⭗
Wrathful and blind to visible light, the Avatar of Neptunus Nebbiolous rises from the Winedark Depths, frothing with the paroxysms of his own immaculate birth. The god is as a phoenix, growing and burning, whipping up the seas and then reducing himself to liquid giblets in the space of days, but it is said that there is a brief phase where his attention can be caught and he can be spoken with, or even worshiped. On either side of this phase, he is as a squalling infant or a dementia-riddled old man descending inward toward his own depths. Both of these points in the god’s life are dull-eyed and prone to fits of violence, but when he is clear-headed and calm, the blessings he is capable of bestowing are those befitting any great god of the seas. Sailors beware, however– even at his best, Neptunus Nebbiolous is a capricious god, jealous and hungry, but never impossible to bargain with.
⭗ THE EYE OF THE INVISIBLE SUN⭗
Somewhere in the black morass, it is said that you will find the deepest, densest point of the darkness, and that if you pass through it, you will be reborn. That place of infinite unvision is called The Very Bottom of the World, and The Mote in the Needle’s Eye. It is a point that the whole of the Winedark Ocean slopes toward, a point where the edge of the world exists as a sucking circle in the center of the depths, pulling everything toward a point of infinite invisible heat with the unyielding grip of an inverted sun. It is a whirlpool, a singularity that screams in the radio spectrum, deafening and blinding to the creatures of the deep. To those who can see and hear such things, it is a constant companion in the Winedark, a steady thrum that can never be escaped from, only avoided, and only temporarily. All things in the Winedark will pass through the Bottom of the World in time, it is said. Whether and where they emerge is a matter that is still hotly debated by those who have only skirted the edge of the place.
⭗ 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.
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.
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