Shrine Keeper Simulator Pt 7: Turn 3 (Patreon)

[X] Plan: Who do you call? The Vet!

- [X] Host a workshop on crafting protective talismans... in the village, preferably, or at least away from anything sufficiently in disrepair to cause a scandal.

- [X] Market Stall Rumor Mill

- [X] Painstakingly create a warded ritual space to commune with the spirits and divine the location of their treasures.

-[X] Explore Location

--[X] Cauldron Lake

-[X] Pursue Rumor

--[X] The Creekside Cult

-[X] Yaji

-- [X] Send Yaji to go to the vet. Feel kind of sorry for the poor beetles, even if they're awful.

(((())))

Your slate for the week is certainly busy. The first order of business is finding the treasures that have been lost. Now, you COULD ask around the village for anyone sporting an archaeotech las-gun, serpent brooch, and magical golden feather, but you had a much simpler idea.

Chaos magic!

Divination had hardly been your strong suit during your tenure as a servant of the dark gods (seers were notoriously unreliable: your preference had been conjurations), and it got exponentially harder in Directorate space for some reason, but exponentially harder was not impossible. 

Over a few days, you assemble a ritual chamber, doing your best to ward it in the time allotted. The amount of effort you put in is, perhaps, not quite as much as you would have preferred to allocate, though unfortunately other matters take enough of your attention that doing so simply wasn’t possible in the time you had allocated. 

You place the ritual chamber far, far away from the shrine, further down on the tusk. This proves to be a wise decision, as afterward the tusk mysteriously for no reason would suffer a break caused by a regrettable but unforeseeable detonation.

Personally, you blamed teenagers: no doubt they had snuck up the tusk to play with nuclear warheads unsupervised. But as they said, boys will be boys, and all that matters is that no one was hurt and Gajaliath still had most of its four tusks intact. And completely unrelated, you have confirmation that all the treasures are within either Pavva-Ganuk or within a few days walk of it. 

Serendipitously, when you aren’t attending to your other projects, you actually wind up visiting the village considerably: both to meet and converse with Picault and discuss information. Both the flow and dissemination of: Firstly, he agrees to start helping the shrine by keeping an ear out and sending you any notable information the market manager overhears. Then, the two of you collaborate to set up a community notice board in the Market informing the public that there was a new shrine-keeper in town and that there would be classes on crafting talismanic tokens of protection. 

(((())))

The community center is open air: covered by a veranda to block the sun, but otherwise exposed to the elements, at least on the surface. In reality, it was an illusion: the various pylons holding the roof contained shield generators that served to regulate temperature, weather, air flow, and dust. 

They apparently could also be configured to function as dividing walls whenever there were multiple events, and you noted idly that there was a chunk of the structure that was currently being used for the weekly senior seminar, blocked off by an illusory wall covered in a flowing, animated mural of a serpent swimming up a waterfall. Right now, however, you had most of the community center to yourself.

People were currently still streaming in. You had five minutes until you were scheduled to begin, and until then you were content to take the form of a small black and white serpent coiled on the desk. There was a decent turn out so far: most of the chairs were full, and you had set up a hidden monitor you could see from where you were seated that displayed how many of the village were tuned in online. 

You’d say you had roughly half of its inhabitants watching, and more were still filing in, having waited until the last moment to arrive. Satisfactory: it appeared that Picaults efforts to get the word out had paid fruit. People were curious to meet their new Shrine-Keeper. Yaji was currently seated next to you, in a desk of his own, stiff and uncomfortable, and you saw the market vendor who had helped you arrange this leaning back in the front of the crowd, in a pose that conveyed considerable relaxation. 

Moment by moment the clock you had placed behind your desk winded down, and when it finally did, a chime was emitted, and you made your presence known, slithering to the edge of the desk, your form writhing and twisting until you had taken the shape of one of your more common humanoid guises, this one possessing a slightly more feminine frame.

“And with that, our seminar has begun,” You said serenely, brushing off a stray ebon feather. “Firstly, let’s get introductions out of the way. I am Dr. Huriyeh. For the next eight or so weeks I will be working as the chief regional shrine-administrator for the greater gajaliath area, and senior shrine-keeper for Pavva Ganuk. I hope our relationship proves fruitful for us both,” You said, giving a nod of the head. “Now, before we begin, I’m sure you all have questions. I’ll begin with…yes, you, the Hobbgrot in red.”

(((())))

The rest of the introductions had been the sort of meaningless trivia one expected the inhabitants of a small town to ask of someone new. Who you were, what a devil was, why you got the mask, what the mask meant, how had a devil become a shrine-keeper. 

Then had come the seminar, where you had shown them all some basic lessons for creating protective talismans. Theurgy wasn’t your field of specialization, so you had instead opted for something that was both secular and theoretically achievable if their home had a sufficiently well sustained house guardian or the proper materials. 

These lessons were continued over the course of the week, and you steadily collected a list of people in the village who were notable that attended. Picault, of course, stopped by whenever he wasn’t working at the market or making a delivery for those who couldn’t get out to get food themselves for whatever reason. 

You also met the mayor, a Bond Machina by the name of BGMKE who had apparently been working as a terminal in Pavva-Ganuk’s town hall since its creation, who had stopped by in person using a hover-forklift to help move themselves. For obvious reasons they hadn’t been able to stop in for long beyond introducing themselves, but you found them not intolerable.

There had been a few others who had shown promise here and there, and the whole event had proven a useful way to gather information: for instance, you had found a human child with a surprising knack for talisman creation and interest in the arcane  who might serve as a junior shrine-keeper, a means for Yaji to learn leadership themselves. There were also a pair of hobbgrot gardeners who worked at the local community garden growing vegetables who had apparently gotten their hands on a baobob seed they were looking to carve into a sacred treasure for the gardens shrine, a horror novelist who had recently moved to the village, and a tekket gemcutter looking to deal with a manikin problem. 

The real benefit, however, was far more mundane: improving the community as a whole’s ability to solve problems was something that looked oh so elegant on an evaluation, even if it would likely take several weeks of teaching to get anything useful from these lessons. 

Village has gained Talisman Creation F! 0/2 actions until F+!

You’ve identified a selection of dramatis personae. 

 !!!!!

Yaji hadn’t known what had caused the Ogre Beetles to become sick. It couldn’t have been the feed: the previous shrine-keeper had used the feed for years without a problem. It didn’t appear to be a disease: the scanners weren’t picking anything up. There weren’t any particular spiritual maladies near the herdfields you could detect.

In the end, you had sent Yaji to town, to fetch the aid of the local xenoclinician, a hobbgrot by the name of Urbek Rockbite, who with some reticence would come and look the beetles over, determining that the thing that had made the beetles sick was, in fact, the feed. 

It was apparently substandard quality and thus mildly toxic: not enough to make the animal ingesting sick immediately, especially when the old Shrine-Keeper had been very efficient about performing the agri-rites necessary to keep the herd healthy and hale, but decades of consumption combined with a sharp decrease in offerings meant that their bodies had begun to flag in health. 

You immediately suspended all shipments of the feed and report it and its manufacturer. This was, to put it simply, a disaster: worse, the damage was unfortunately PERMANENT without advanced healing rituals you didn’t have access to. It…PROBABLY wouldn’t be held against you in the evaluation, since it was, technically speaking, the result of a decision made by prior management, but it was still the kind of thing that simply Didn’t Happen at a well run shrine. 

…Correction, it wouldn’t be held against YOU. They would almost certainly hold it against Yaji for not successfully deducing the problem beforehand: the poor fellow was likely get a demerit for this on his yearly review. 

The rest of the week is spent doing a bit of exploration further out, such as River Pavva and the investigation of its supposed cult and traveling near Cauldron Lake to scout out it’s spirits and their situation. In the process, you make a number of interesting discoveries…and one terrifying one.

((((()))))

The woods were humid. A thick layer of moss crawled its way across the surface of the oaks surrounding you, each large but conventional sized. You were currently flying around in the shape of a corvid, doing your best to stay in the treetops as you searched the region where the sigils had been discovered. Below, you saw the River Pavva, its waters flowing with great force, sending a spray of it into the air when it hit one of its many bends. 

The source of Pavva Ganuk’s water, the waterway was several kilometers long, stretching the winding path all the way from cauldron lake to the village and beyond through an aqueduct that spanned the length of the next tusk over, base to end, allowing Gajaliath to help water the foliage of the surrounding jungle. You were currently in the forested area known as Creekside, looking for a cult. The region was stuck in an eternal spring, the result of the the Gargantua’s own localized climate and the beasts pacts with the spirits of sun and rain. 

You were an efficient investigator: it didn’t take you long to find something. A human, carving one such sigil. Their garb was a hooded cloak made from scales from the wings of a inferno-scale moth, one covering what appeared to be cargo trousers and black long sleeved tunic. And on their head was a helmet made from the skull of some insectoid, antlered beast, taken apart, its chiten moulded into a shape that was almost cervine. 

For a time you watched them, until they eventually tilted their head. “I know you are watching me.”

…Hmm. Actually able to tell you were there, detecting someone you weren’t aware of, or just paranoid, that was the question… If it was the first, you were likely making a very poor impression by ignoring them. If it was the second, well, that’d just be giving the game away up unnecessarily to reveal yourself out of the blue like that, and if it was the last that still told you something VERY interesting.

Decisions, decisions…

Eventually, you slithered down, reforming as you did, eyeing the simple as you took humanoid shape once more. “Hello neighbor,” You said chipperly. “My name is Dr. Huriyeh.”

“...Balthazaer,” The man said, tonelessly, turning to face you, expression inscrutable underneath the compound eye lenses they wore, both colored a deep onyx. “Why were you spying on me?”

“Yes, well, I couldn’t help but notice that you seem to be carving what I very clearly recognize as the serpent of mitosis,” You said conversationally, mimicking the motions of checking your nails, something your hands at the moment lacked and would be completely trivial to modify if you had them regardless. Small little gestures like that helped, in your experience, reduce how uncanny you came across to mortal brains. It humanized you, apparently: a lesson your own mentor had given you. 

“...You know your symbology, chaoskin,” The human said with admiration, and were you a mortal you’d need to suppress a snort: he was technically correct that you knew and had memorized quite a bit of chaos iconography, but in this case you recognized the circle - consisting of a single serpent twisting and writhing until they divide into many serpents, which devour themselves until they were a single serpent again, creating a self-devouring chain of mitosis and consumption based loosely on an older symbol you had found in an ancient alchemy textbook- because it was one you personally had came up with and taught to the cults and sorcerers you had helped cultivate.

You didn’t know whether to be annoyed or amused at the fact that this was probably the ACTUAL reason you had been assigned Pavva Ganuk. “I know a lot of things,” You responded blandly. “It comes with being a chaoskin. What I personally want to know is how YOU know that symbol, and just as saliently, why you’re carving a modified version of it.” 

“Mmm.” Balthazaer grumbled. “Ritual.”

“Well yes, I gathered, but what kind of ritual?” You responded, growing somewhat annoyed. The benefit of wearing a mask was that it would never show. “Because I’m fairly certain that only a particular brand of ritual would require THAT sort of symbol, and as a law abiding citizen I must admit the possibility of someone using illegal chaos magic DOES have me concerned.”

“Hrrrm. Chaos magic yes, illegal no,” Balthazaer turned once more, returning to carving the sigil, putting the finishing touches on the last serpent before moving to carve a surrounding figure, one that resembled…

A moth? You filed that detail away for later. “Not illegal,” You muttered, mulling over the detail. That meant that they either had been tutored by a (hopefully) senior member of the House of Devils, received a very particular certificate of permission from the fleet, or…

“Ah. A descendent of the Yr Albain warband,” You observed, causing the man to pause.

“The Hand of Doom,” They said bluntly, a note of annoyance creeping into his voice. “Yes, the mortal slaves in the warband were my ancestors.” Ah, a second- or likely third, considering how little contamination you felt wafting off his soul- generation chaos worshiper. 

“Now, what’s a child of doom doing allllll the way out at Creekside?” You asked inquisitorially, causing the man to briefly stop and sigh.

“You don’t plan to go away unless I indulge your curiosity, do you?” They asked rhetorically, voice a deep rumbling bass. “If you must know, me and my family live not far from here. It’s quiet, out of the way, and normally safe. THESE,” He said, deciding to cut through your queries in one go, pointing to the sigil. “Are to help STABILIZE a ritual: I need to carve at least four hundred of these across the creek. The ritual, before you ask, is a protection spell.”

The last was a lie. The rest of it stunk as being more half truths or outright honesty, but that last sentence was a deliberate falsehood. “Against whatever is going on at the lake, I presume?” You inquired, causing Balthazaer to grunt agreement.

“Bad things have been crawling their way out of Cauldron Lake. Some people have been attacked.” Honesty. Honesty that hid more information: he knew something, something he wasn’t going to share. The man tilted his head at you. “Why do you care?”

“Call it a professional interest,” You say flatly. “What can you tell me about the attacks?”

The man is silent for a moment as he attempts to gauge whether he should tell you and what he would if so. Chronic distrust: you didn’t know if your status as a devil was the reason, or if this was just how this person was. “A Tekket wandered into Night Falls Rainjungle the other month: the one located on the shadowed side of Cauldron Lake, under the shadow of Djerd. He was a mycologist. When he came out he was violent. Confused. Kept saying nonsense about a magic mushroom, over and over, like he was just repeating an empty phrase. Attacked my brother, nearly killed him. A single tekket took five grown men to drive off.”

Well. That was some interesting information. “This has been VERY helpful. By any chance if I happened to be wanting to call on you…”

“And I also imagine you won’t give me the option of being left alone,” The man growled, before tilting his head upward, looking at the darkening sky, causing them to give a sigh of defeat. “Fine: I live twenty minutes by grav-raft upriver. You’ll know it when you see it.” They began to walk away, a little too fast to be non-chalant. “Take my advice Chaoskin: don’t be out and about on Gajaliath when the sun goes down. Night is when the things on the dark side of the lake come out, and that Tekket is still out there.”

…Along with, presumably, whatever did that to them. “Duly noted. Any other advice you can give?”

The man paused in his tracks, but just for a moment. “If you run into something unexplainable, make a run for the lake. The mycologist was hydrophobic when we found them.” And with that, they were out of (their) earshot. 

Well THAT was interesting to know.

It really did appear that you needed to explore around Cauldron Lake.

(((())))

If you continued up the creek, one passed through Bright Falls Forest, which surrounded a portion of Lake Cauldron. Much like the rest of Gajaliath’s climate, it was tropical, subject to constant rainfall leaving it constantly drenched. The soil was highly absorbent, a result of helping nourish the Garguantua’s skin located deep below: this meant that despite its rainfall it wasn’t a swamp or other form of wetland, merely very, very muddy. 

It was, at this moment, day, though the latter half of it. You and Yaji were scouting the place out, starting with the Lakeside Shrine. You specifically were using a more vulpine appearance for this, trotting on all fours behind Yaji, who was currently being forced to use an envirosuit to avoid death by drowning, the Tekket pushing ahead of them a portable shield unit strapped to a hand-wagon, the edifice topped by a sacred candle that made your skin crawl but was, unfortunately, a very necessary precaution to keep the young shrine-acolyte safe, it’s light softly shining in the slowly darkening forest.

At the moment, you and he were engaged in a little educational game to pass the time. “-And then the correct response is to triple lock the door, light the sacred incense, and perform three prayers at the statue of Mojo Phobo,” Yaji responded, causing you to give a small nod of your head.

“Yes, mostly right: you need to also offer them an offering of roktagano, otherwise all you’re doing is creating an elaborate time-hound dinner bell.” Awful things, time-hounds were: all sharp corners and non-euclidean teeth.  The smell wasn’t particularly nice either.

“Right, right, forgot the Roktagano…” Yaji muttered.

“Now, say you wanted to, for instance…” You gave a hum. “Awaken a rock, assuming a timeline of six months?” After all, any amateur dendrologist could awaken a tree.

“Uh. You’d want…Black Goat Liturgy Number Three…No, wait, make that Vitruvia Liturgy Number 10, since that’s the one that helps with animation specifically. Then, using five grams of blood as a catalyst, you should be able to use the Kellenbach Nature Rites to achieve awakening in six to ten months,” Yaji answered, to your broad satisfaction.

“A valid solution, if barely: you’ll get more power if you use Foggein’s rites when paired with Black Philip Number 17, ten pounds of cursite, and the same amount of blood,” You noted. “Especially if you coincide the first rite to land near the day of flame.”

“Wouldn’t that make the process needlessly volatile?”

“Well yes,” You admitted. “But the problem wasn’t ‘wake a rock up safely’, it was ‘wake a rock up quickly’: remember, sometimes one will not be granted the luxury of time,” Especially if those damnable time-hounds were causing trouble. 

The candle flickered.

You stopped. “Yaji, remain very, very still,” You whispered as you felt a strange presence, eyes scanning the treeline. Something was approaching. You felt it in your metaphorical bones: something was in the woods with you. Something knew you were here.

Something was watching you. Your instincts, such as they were, were currently screaming at you to run, to flee, and if you had possessed one, your heart might have beated faster and faster. 

Something else was wrong as well: you could feel a heavy presence surrounding you, changing things: small details, such as the fact it was no longer raining, the placement of trees and rocks, the colors of the flowers and blooms, even accelerating the passage of time and making night approach faster and faster, always at the corner of your vision, like whatever was doing it was attempting to do it beyond your notice. In the distance, you heard a quiet rustling.

You possessed a photographic memory and the mind of a daemon, however, and weren’t so easily fooled.

…And yet, no matter where you looked, you couldn’t see what was stalking you, either the strange presence or the thing in the woods. You knew they were there, and yet…

“Master?” Yaji asked, mere seconds having passed since you had told him to not move.

“Don’t speak either,” You commanded, pacing around the very edge of the light. No, nothing: not eyes in the brush staring at you, no beasts in the canopy waiting for you. 

…The candle. It was refusing to approach it. “Yaji,” You said, quietly. “Something is watching us. I think it means to harm us, but the candle is keeping it at bay. I want you to go ahead and retreat back to town: I’m going to approach it.” Your apprentices eyes widened.

“Uh, a-are you sure thats a good idea?” He asked, a question that wasn’t without merit: approaching a hostile spirit was, generally, not a wise idea.

“I’ll be fine,” You answered. For most people. For most people it wasn’t a wise idea. “I’m not most people.”

“I, uh. Okay?” Yaji said, puzzled. “If you say so, sir.” He shifted, turning the wagon with him as he began to haul it in the opposite direction. As he did so, you shifted your form as you walked forward, taking your humanoid form as you prepared to confront whatever was shadowing the pair of you. 

“Why hello,” You said, conjuring a cane to lean on in one hand, while with your other you gave a click, summoning four hovering balls of flame above you, waiting patiently for the light to recede and for the thing in the forest to approach you. “I can’t help but notice you’ve been stalking us. Now, why don’t you stop hiding,” You asked conversationally, just as you found the candle light far enough to no longer be illuminating yourself, the rain coming to a halt at the very same moment, giving the Outsider only a moment of alarm before they realized the extent of their hubris. “After all, there’s no point in hiding-”

The moment he was no longer in the protection of the light, the Outsider found themselves staring at a spirit, one that had suddenly appeared right before them. They realized it hadn’t been hiding, merely rendered mutually invisible to them as they had to it, even as they had been in each others immediate presence. it lunged, a vast tangle of shadowy, sinewy limbs crashing through the forest.

Only barely able to avoid its fangs, the Outsider snapped again, causing the flame they wielded to impact the creature, each azure psy-flare detonating against its surface, the brief flashes of light revealing what looked like an arachnid spirit. However, even with this, it was hard to make out detail: the body of the thing seemed to be covered in living smoke, the substance shifting and tilting away from the light, obscuring the entities visage, much of its body, and even the precise number of legs it possessed. 

The thing made no noise: no sound of pain or agony, even as parts of its body were charred, the grey mottled chitin turning a black crisp, releasing a revolting smell into the air, the scent of burning plastic, chemical fumes, and and urine, a smell that made the Outsiders memory recall memories of their time before the directorate, in the worst recesses of the underhive, where all the garbage and waste matter (synthetic, organic, humanic, it didn’t matter) flowed in great chem-mires. 

You found yourself slammed by a limb with enough force to easily break a humans bones. You were stronger than most of them, however, only knocked off your feet. As you soared through the air, you quickly changed your form to something a little more agile, coming to a stop as you flapped the wings on your slightly more corvid-esque form, taking a moment to stare the thing down as its mass and bulk shifted with surprising agility.

Quickly, you cawwed three times as three stone spikes emerged from the ground, impaling the spirit, spurts of blackened, tar-like blood drippling down the elemental pins. And yet, the spirit didn’t die or stop, the thin narrow spikes breaking as it continued to charge you, forcing you to take to the wind to avoid it, fleeing even as you heard it break and shatter the trees in its path to catch you. 

Swooping low to avoid the slice of a limb you summoned more orbs of psy-fire and spikes, peppering your pursuer with them only for them to do little to nothing to harm the creature, which continued to be silent other than the destruction it’s chase caused. Still, it looked like it couldn’t catch up to you-

Something wooden came out of the shadows and hit the outsider in the face: a weapon. Their flight interrupted, the outsider tumbled through the air, getting a glimpse of a humanoid shape in the darkness. 

Avoiding another blow, the outsider could make out only that this person was covered in the same black smoke as the spirit. Behind them, you could see more shapes in the darkness: some lumbering, some stumbling, and some cooly strolling forward, some holding implements such as omniwrenches, pieces of lumber, and rocks. Flapping quickly, you rose, fast as you could, attempting to gain vertical height only to find themselves mobbed by flights of winged, smokestained birds slamming into them, knocking the Outsider out of the air. 

Taking on a more humanoid form as you tumbled, you attempted to draw yourself into a fighting stance, holding both hands out and conjuring an orb of psychic power condensed into a roiling fireball, letting you count your accosters: twenty in total, and the spider spirit was growing closer as well. Letting lose the fireball, the Outsider aimed it at the closest of their pursuers, releasing flames hot enough to flash fry a humans blood. And yet it was like the darkness that had tainted the unknown corpse possessed some strange immunity to warp-craft, as the flames merely sloughed off the corpse. 

Your eyes widened in surprise and frustration: that wasn’t right. The Other Presence: it was still changing things. Adding things: attempting to tilt the odds in the favor of the smokestained, like their inexplicable immunity to warp craft. No, you realized as you counted more and more shapes in the distance: SUMMONING the smokestained, creating them in the gaps of perception, conjured from shadow in the corner of the eye, just subtly enough a mortal would question if they had already been there. 

You gave a savage grin as you were surrounded, the canopy swarming with dark feathered corvids, lacking any weapon or avenue of escape. Fine: hopefully the shadows were unable to affect daemons. The smokestained spider approached, raising a series of its legs in preparation to begin assaulting you…

Only to finally make a noise as it was pushed backward by a highly pressurized stream of water blasting it with enough force to send it through multiple trees. It wasn’t a noise of pain, no: it was instead a hissing noise, the crackle of doused flame as it flopped to the ground, soaked, revealing that much of smoke that had covered it washed away, revealing the body of the entity. Above you, what appeared to be a Water-Core equipped with fire-fighting equipment beeped, before releasing a spray of water into a crowd of swarming birds attempting to bring it down, causing the corvids to fall, twitching, to the ground. Then, the spheroid began turning its hose on the humanoid figures, blasting them.

Without exception, wherever the water touched, the smoke evaporated. The guardian spirit was slack-mandibled, eyes milky white. The corvids were not black, but rather without the smoke BALD, the substance having left behind only dead and rotting pinions and discolored blotchy skin and bare quills growing out of reddened flesh. The humans were little better, bodies covered in unhealing wounds, lacerations that criss-crossed their flesh and marks that resembled those left by beast teeth across their throats: invariably, their chests were torn open, revealing their hearts, bright red oversized organs that still continued to beat, despite no liquid flowing through the veins of the smokestained. 

Once all the creatures had fallen, the orb let out another series of beeps, and floated away. Blinking, you looked around at the fallen creatures and decided that it was probably a good idea to get as far away from here as possible.

Taking birdshape again, this time you found your ascend untroubled, allowing you to break past the canopy and reach the sky. Quickly beating your wings in the direction of home, as you passed through the forest, in the distance you saw the lake: you hadn’t got close enough to see it from the ground, but now, in the sky, you noted you had been closer that you realized: another ten minutes with Yaji and you would have arrived at the lakeside shrine…

Which, even in the distance, the Outsider could tell was infected by whatever that black smoke had been. Sweeping low, they observed that the place was unnaturally silent: no spirits walked there. The pyrefly dome was silent, and the main hall’s sliding door was currently lying on its side, twenty feet away from the building it was supposed to be guarding. 

Most concerningly, the Gate that led to the shrine had been demolished entirely, lying in ruins strewn across the steps of the lakeside shrine.

Cauldron Lake partially explored! Discovered Smokestained and the Other Entity! The former are spirits and mortals overcame by an unknown force and turned into (mindless?) monsters! Known traits:

• Blessed light seems to render them and non-smokestained mutually invisible. 

• Water seems to hurt them, washing away the smoke.

• They don’t seem to be alive. 

• They can be people, animals, or spirits

• They can overtake locations such as Shrines.

The latter is an unseen force living in the vicinity of Cauldron Lake! Traits and behaviors observed:

• It is capable of altering areas to suit its needs. Limitations on this ability are unknown.

• It can conjure additional Smokestained. If these are organics that fell prey to the Other Entity or constructs of some form is unknown.

• It can alter Smokestained. Limitations unknown.

• It seems either unable or unwilling to weave its changes in front of someones eyes: its presence can only be detected through daemonic instinct, warp sensitivity, and careful observation from the corner of ones eyes. 

The Central Bureaucracy advises gathering information and expanding support network quickly. You have also met Balthazaer.

Balthazaer

Profession: Chaos Cultist?

Body: ???

Mind: ???

Spirit: C Minimum

Skills:

Chaos Magic D+ Minimum: This character knows a little chaos magic at a minimum, though the exact degree of their talent was unknown. 

The following rumors are coming in:

Ghost Busta Ghosted: No word from Barney yet: the ectologist was still missing. A neighbor went to deliver some mail that got mis-sent, only to discover that wherever Barney is, they didn’t notify the post office, as their mail-box is full of unopened letters and packages. 

Pavva-Ganuk Schoolhouse Bravery: A few of the kids who have been hanging out at Picaults market are apparently planning to stay over-night at the school to confront it’s ghost, intent on  using the lessons they had picked up from the recent taliman creation courses the village had been taught to protect themselves.

Lunar Festival Approaching: Pavva Ganuk was, in seven weeks, going to have a lunar festival. It was apparently being planned by the towns festival committee, who were looking for volunteers willing to contribute.

Cranky Well Spirit: One of the town wells was apparently run dry: supposedly its spirit has been angered by someone tossing in garbage. 

More Thefts???: The thief problem continues to get worse, though it appears that Carnegie has an alibi this time, at least: the electrobandit was apparently getting a new hat fitted for themselves. 

Once more, you have five actions for yourself and one for Yaji. No suggested options this time: get creative.