⭗ REDIRECTIONS XXVII⭗
⭗ TALES FROM THE UTTER WEST #7 ⭗
⭗ GLIMMERS IN THE NEBBIOLO BLACK ⭗
"There were moments when I found peace as well," Charred-Hand said, trembling a little with the deepening cold. "The memories are a haze, but they are there, regardless."
“What good could possibly exist in such a place?” Kvelak asked, staring at Charred-Hand’s weathered face until the shaman stared back. Chill winds whispered down from the pass between the Greenlands and the Bluelands, reminding the old trader of a long winter he weathered when he was a younger and stronger man. “You said yourself that no expedition has ever come back from the Winedark. Is it not all just irradiated horrors and shadowy demonic beings in the depths?”
“You never leave the Winedark, not really,” The Blue Oracle said, looking up to meet Kvelak’s eyes, seeing him through a haze of dreams drawn up from Charred-Hand’s memories like cold water from an old well. “Some stay forever, but all who are touched by it become a part of it.”
“Or leave a part of themselves behind with it,” Charred-Hand said, taking one final drag off the stub of the cigarette before grinding it out on the gritty sand. “That is where the good comes from. What little of it can be found is all ultimately left in the Nebbiolo Black.”
"There were moments when I found peace as well," Charred-Hand said, trembling a little with the deepening cold. "The memories are a haze, but they are there, regardless."
“What good could possibly exist in such a place?” Kvelak asked, staring at Charred-Hand’s weathered face until the shaman stared back. Chill winds whispered down from the pass between the Greenlands and the Bluelands, reminding the old trader of a long winter he weathered when he was a younger and stronger man. “You said yourself that no expedition has ever come back from the Winedark. Is it not all just irradiated horrors and shadowy demonic beings in the depths?”
“You never leave the Winedark, not really,” The Blue Oracle said, looking up to meet Kvelak’s eyes, seeing him through a haze of dreams drawn up from Charred-Hand’s memories like cold water from an old well. “Some stay forever, but all who are touched by it become a part of it.”
“Or leave a part of themselves behind with it,” Charred-Hand said, taking one final drag off the stub of the cigarette before grinding it out on the gritty sand. “That is where the good comes from. What little of it can be found is all ultimately left in the Nebbiolo Black.”
⭗ THE BARLEYWINE CALMS ⭗
Beyond the maelstroms and sinewy horrors stirred up in the abyss by the oppressive heat of the invisible sun, the fortunate sailor may find themselves floating in the doldrums known as The Barleywine Calms. All of the world’s waterlogged trash and remnants of cultures lost in the mists of the Long Ago (and the Long, Long Ago) ends up gathered into great garbage islands that swirl through The Calms. Sable-winged pitch-gulls (L2, swarming) pick at the trash and build towering garbage nests on the isles, exploding periodically in flashes of stink and gore whenever they asexually reproduce and leave a nest of 3-8 live-birth fledgelings in their wake. Swarms of fractal jelly midges (L5, psychic vampiric) also have their nesting grounds here, and the breeding pools where their eggs hatch flash and sing in the darkness, creating a musical ambiance that lilts hauntingly across the (mostly) still waves. The wanderer brave enough to explore these great trash islands could probably expect to find almost anything from chunks of ill-fated ships to corpses, clothing and treasures. Whatever it may be, the calms gathers everything, but a word to the wise– it also does not part with its hoard willingly.
⭗ THE ELDERSHALE GREASEFIELDS ⭗
A wide-ranging reef of low-lying tidepools and shoals of dark, olivine glass stretches somewhere in a calmer stretch of the sludgy Winedark. Oily geysers of hallucinogenic organometallic carbonyls spurt from and pool around vents in the sand here, and a smaller, glassy-translucent species of gamma crab thrives on amidst it all. The geyser-oil is a potent fuel and a highly addictive psychoactive substance, but its use (either in smoke or liquid form) fosters a powerful photosensitivity and photophobia in those who become addicted to it. The bones of those who starved to death because they could not leave the geysers are littered around the reef, and some are so old that they have been polished to pebbles by the tide of the relentless sea.
⭗ THE HMS AHRIMAN ⭗
Perhaps the most famous expedition into the Winedark was that of Captain Gamay Sangiovese and the HMS Ahriman. The Ahriman was a heavily-laden and well-funded carrack staffed with enough greenfolk weather wizards to push past the worst of the hazards at the edge of the Utter West, but once they were out of sight of the watchers gathered on the shore of the Northern Dust, they were never seen or heard from again. Stories of the ship have come back, though. Terrifying stories mumbled on the lips of castaways spat out on the shore of the Winedark sometimes tell of the HMS Ahriman, saying that she has become a predator of the deep nebbiolo seas, preying upon any ship or shipless unfortunate who crosses her path. The stories are many, but they never seem to agree, with “witnesses” often contradicting even themselves in the telling. Has the crew of the Ahriman become a crew of demons or undead horrors who make slaves of their victims and steal their skin to make coats to defend against the penetrating heat of the invisible sun? Has the ship itself become a barque of clotted meat tossed on the Winedark, devouring trash and zenithali scouts as it ascends toward a collaborative godhood? Whatever the truth is, pray you never find out. Pray you never learn the true fate of Captain Gamay Sangiovese and the HMS Ahriman
⭗ MANSE OF THE EXILED COUNT ⭗
The cry of the exiled count can be heard for miles in the Winedark, and even further if one has an ear for music. An ageless exile who was locked away here long, long ago, Tannat Dopplebock is a sentient, velvety, crimson-skinned electric guitar packed with sweet smoke and mind-bending devil’s music. His castle is guarded by a flock of vomish obsidian gargoyles with bladed wings that slice reality to ribbons when they fly. After having spent an eternity summoning futile spells from his own rusty, rattling strings, he yearns to have them plucked by another. To anyone with any skill in playing a guitar, he offers a vision of a future of fame and excess, should he be freed and returned to the world of visible light. To those who do not have such a skill, he offers to show them the way, but he is not a patient teacher, and the corpses that litter the castle where he has been imprisoned all bear testament to his impatience and his penchant for exacting bloody punishment on inexpert students.
⭗ THE PORT OF ZINN ⭗
Zinn is a jagged little peninsula where a pod of cloud-feeding sun-whales with bellies full of radioactive waste beached themselves upon the rocks in unknowable centuries past. A bustling butchering trade has risen up in the midst of the many (countless) corpses, and there is steady work cutting lift crystal concretions out of the irradiated meatways of the sun-whales. Castaways from the lands of visible light, zenithali silverlings, golems and half-cured former elves can all be found working the whale corpses here.
New hires will find that much of the economy is reversed here, with food, clothing and simple luxuries all being virtually invaluable while items that would fetch a high price back in the world of visible light (lift-crystals, enriched urathyst crystals, translucium ingots, and organically-grown monopole magnets) are nearly worthless. Good luck getting them back to the world of visible light, however. The last castaway who gathered together enough fuel wood to build a one-man raft was never seen or heard from again.
Most of the workers live in a drafty bunkhouse made of sun-whale bone and lose their daily earnings at a bar called “Afterglow.” The bar itself is run by polybody exotic dancers and also acts as the port’s primary provisioner for edible goods and basic radiation protection. Hibiscus Tea-33 is the proprietor, and her thirty-three bodies work security, stocking, serving, dancing and tending the secret fungal gardens beneath the bar where the ingredients of her “survivors slop” are jealously grown and guarded.
⭗ PORT PORTER ⭗
A dim and dingy little edifice of Long, Long Ago architecture clinging to a rocky shore, Port Porter is at a point so far into the Utter West that the sludgy sea starts to calm and normalize. A visible sun sometimes pokes its way out of the purple clouds to gently warm the waters and the blasted black rocks. Beyond the port are the frontier wilds of a world virtually unknown back in the Ultraviolet Grasslands, with treasures and cultures all its own to discover. Only the crossing of the Winedark Ocean separates the two worlds, but perhaps that is more than enough to ensure that few, if any, ever make the crossing. Perhaps that is a good thing, even if (or especially if) it thoroughly frustrates those with colonial ambitions.
⭗ 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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