Something I'm working on/Deep Carbon Observatory

well-behaved formostian children

DeepCarbon Observatory is really, really good. +Scrap Princess +Patrick Stuart +Alex Mayo made it.

Rather than review it, here is something I wrote because of it for an adventure/ setting/ hexcrawl on which I'm working, which feels like a better, more honest way to review it (and really, who gives a shit what I think).

Formost

the ceiling slung low, crowded with stalactites of enormous size, home of small, hirsute men and women of broad physique and wide mouth with wide, flat teeth and a diet consisting of fungi and a thin ale, Formost hangs above, and occasionally touches the Black Sea.

The stalactite stuff of Formost is hollow and of a crumbly, soft, porous stone and have been worked in great intricacy to depict the weird geometric figures the people of Formost revere as ancestors and deities. A large portion of the town is sealed up and the sealed webwork of caverns of the stalactites have only been half-worked or not at all and appear to have been scraped out by a thousand little beaked, scraping utensil or teeth or mouths.

Most of Formost is lit with bioluminescent moss that grows on fish from the Black Sea. This gives most of the lit part of the city a distinct smell of rotten fish. Old Moss is a delicacy and is used much in brewing and accounts for the frequently glowing teeth and facial hair of the Formostian.

At three of the points where the inverse towers of Formost thrust into the Black Sea, there are water-side markets and fishing vessels and docks, all of a ramshackle, stinking, and grimy nature.

if you want information, head to the docks and ask around the watering hole. for every rumor sought, you have to buy a round of foil, oily-black drinks (and drink yourself); costs 2d10 small coins and Save v Rot or lose 1 HP permanently as your insides turn to black bile (death from this causes you to weep and vomit a quivering, acidic black mass composed of blood and a malicious, alien, rudimentary sapience). Use the roll for coins to determine the rumor and the person mongering them.

	rumors	monger
1	never trust a Formostian	a Formostian official, distinguished by her majestic scarification in the shape of an ancestor glyph
2	the Formost seal up their heroes to fight some monster in the center of the town	a Halfling, broken-nosed and gap-toothed, weeping into ale (will try to stab anyone that thinks is condescending, shows pity)
3	there is scratching at the boards inside the sealed up part of Formost	a Flotsian, weirdly pale and blind, speaks loudly, spits all over
4	the barnacles just below the surface tell secrets if you put your ear to them	rosy-cheeked Formostian with a brace of throwing knives, missing three fingers
5	Formostians brains have a third lobe wherein they store the secrets of their ancestors	a grossly fat merchant whose fingers swell with lividity around many rings and torques. He desperately wants back home.
6	deep worms can be ridden if you’ve the right tools	a rot-mouthed human with a conspicuous flounce hat and incredibly good luck
7	certain rocks and gems, when eaten or crushed into a paste or poultice will fill your belly for weeks	a gilled human in a makeshift breathing apparatus, desperate for word of its people
8	the Formostian will some day soon become hungry and eat and eat and eat until no one is left	a beautiful Formostian woman with scrimshaw teeth depicting something… strange. She avoids smiling and talks in the Formostian fashion (hand over teeth)
9	the glyph-deities of Formost are part of an ancient word	a shifty-eyed, nervous looking Formostian man, covered in sheets of fungal growth
10	there is a city lost beneath the waves where the beautiful god-people that made the Formostians sleep in glass chambers	a tall, wan Anglian in furs of a clearly dying of a venomous drug (has a single dose in his purse full of 10d4 small coins)

note that a Formostian will never talk about the lost city and most won’t talk about problems in Formost

somewhere far below the waves, lies Formoria the terrible.

the red bishop of Formost

attributions: Hikari Shimoda, Twin Peaks