The only things we know about the Mirth Gate

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Despite all the media attention Seraph Moore has had over the past four months, he is now barely recognisable from his headshot sent to me by his media team. The give away as I take my seat opposite the diner table from him is his telltale yellow cravat, which sits, tossed aside, next to his full English breakfast.

“Sunlight is an issue, down at camp,” he says, which explains the pale complexion his skin has taken on. Even his eyes seem ringed with emerald when the morning light catches behind his glasses. “The plan is that by the time I get back, there will be some solution to that.” He waves his hand to dismiss the thought. I get the feeling he has bigger fish to fry.

When I ask if he’s willing to go on the record with the “down at camp” remark he bites his lip, as I imagine he’s running through a mental checklist that his legal team have given him. “It was just an expression,” he decides. “Down” alone would be the scoop of the year.

The location of the Mirth Gate is still only known to a few handful of people on Earth – and a couple who at any given time may not actually be on a Earth at all, if the theories around the Gate are to be believed.

I have 10 minutes with Seraph which was begged for via a friend of a friend, and was only agreed to on the condition that I could bring him coffee beans from a Nottingham roastery that was local to me, but not anywhere near the Brighton seaside that Seraph would be conducting his UK business from in the eight hours he’s here. The greasy spoon, which was supposedly a pitstop before moving onto the makeshift hotel room-and-office, is already a live with others waiting their turn to speak with the Head Scientist.

“It wouldn’t help you to know,” Seraph said when I asked him if he could at least narrow down the continent the Mirth Gate was discovered. When I press for more, whether he means that cryptically, whether it wouldn’t help because there’s some “non-universal” physics at work, or if he simply meant the world wouldn’t be better off by knowing, he takes a bite from his toast and leaves the time-wasting silence lingering.

Seraph has been in charge of the Mirth Gate Research Project since the original research lead, Rodger Mirth, went missing in circumstances that the Project has been tight lipped on. Mirth’s first paper, published in International Journal of Thermal Sciences six months ago, revealed that he and his team of cave divers and deep-hole specialists had uncovered an unnatural rock formation which gave off an unusual heat signature that was not radioactive in nature. Attached to the paper was the only publicly released photograph of the Gate. (The torch lit, underexposed photo remains the only released photo.) It was only after efforts from people whose interests extend past thermal dynamics looked at the photograph that more was discovered about it: glyphs like Celtic runic inscriptions were chiselled into the rock.

The free standing, stone archway captured the attention of the mainstream media in a frenzy that hasn’t let up in the months following, despite any further news coming from the research team. Clinging to Mirth’s paper, drawing out every line of it until all interpretations possible have been made about it, it’s now difficult for any one to keep track of what makes sense. With no guidance from those with first hand experience of the Project, an entire scientific field of non-universal physics has sprung to life, branching away from the mind bending theoretical sciences into the down right strange.

“We are juggling many plates. Some days progress is slow, some days there are a string of breakthroughs one after another. The world will have to be patient. The science put forward by these… novices is not dangerous, per se. They are writing science fiction though. We will give a full report when we understand what it is we have.”

Are you able to tell us who is funding the project? “No.” Are you able to tell us which journal you will be publishing your findings in? Which subject area, even. “No.” Can you say how many people are working on the project? “No.” Are there military implications to the findings? “I cannot say.”

It’s clear now why, in the few days away from the secret location of the Mirth Gate, there have been so few interviews with the press. There’s very little, maybe nothing, that can be revealed yet.

Instead of running at the same wall again in my last few moments, I simply ask how he’s doing.

“The project is going at a sustainable pace. We should have more soon.”

No, sorry, how are you doing? Seraph Moore looks at me and I think for a moment I’ve offended him. But in fact he’s looking right past me. I see for a moment a fluttering of breath and wonder if there’s any you in there.

A woman who seems to have had much more sleep than Seraph touches him on the shoulder, says they must be going, and the diner is empty in a few seconds. The scientist’s full English is complete save for a single bite of unbuttered toast.

I’m working on a video game! It’s been a while and progress is going quite well. It’s been three weeks or so now, and I’m covering the journey (when I have something to show off) over on d20.social.

It’s a dungeon crawl game, inspires by Nethack and Stargate and Neopets (I’m not entirely kidding on that last one).

I know what you’re thinking: does it have the Three Principles? It does not. It might have one! But not yet.

Old Maps and Starchasers

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The oceans have always been eyed up greedily by humankind. Transport by boat was crucial for emergence of empires and economies over the few hundred years, and remains so today. Shipping routes aren’t the only thing to be jostling for; what’s in (and under!) the oceans are crucial too, from oil to food.

Our jobs are much easier nowadays with fossil fuel powered, enormous ships, not to mention highly accurate maps and nautical equipment.

Maps aren’t new though. They are more prolific, but there are many maps we have of older civilizations. These maps, especially before 1300AD, show other issues with traveling through the inky green: dozens of sea monsters.

A mosaic of a lion-sea creature. Its upper body is lion-like, but its lower half is a long fish tail, coiled around itself.

I’m reading Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps (Chet van Duzer) and couldn’t help but do a bit of world building here. The images in this blog post are scans of part of this book. (With hundreds more in the book!)

The creatures range from sea-pigs, to merfolk, to leviathans that could be mistaken for islands. In fact a common supposition was that “every land creature has an aquatic equal”. These creatures appear all over the world, corroborated on multiple maps. They were discussed in Green literature, known as “ketos”. Marco Polo in 1254 writes of spells needed by the pearl farmers which they incant to keep away the sea monsters.

An adorable pig-dog. A stocky creature with something like a dog's face, a pig's body, and flippers.
A “pig-dog”. I can’t imagine this guy was a menace. A familiar, maybe?

Then, quite suddenly, these warnings of sea monster being to disappear from new maps. Rare and rarer still throughout the 1500s, until today where maps are very dry. The oceans are empty of most nuisances, other than weather (which we’ve never really been able to tame). Not a winged sea dragon or a ichthyocentaur to be found.

What happened to them?

There is a place where these creatures can still be found, and witnessed quite safely by every person on Earth. Look up. What made the ketos disappear from our oceans and reappear as constellations?

Order of the Seraphic Seas

The Order existed for a few hundred years and then was dissolved once their job was completed. Their singular aim, given to them by the church and funded by vested merchants, was to tame the seas.

They did this, quietly and with great honor, by hunting the seas for “ungodly” creatures and extincting them by force. These paladins were efficient and thorough. As the might of man stood against the ketos, there was no doubt about the end of this road. The ketos would be wiped out.

A gentleman playing a lute with a fiddle, except he's half sea-creature. Like a centaur, but if it was a sea dragon instead of a horse.
An ichthyocentaur. Apparently that’s what this is.

The smarter, more sentient of these creatures, made a deal with something for protection. Like Noah and his arc, the creatures who accepted the offer of help were swept away from their waters to safety.

They shelter in the cosmos now, their eyes glinting down at night, watching. Awaiting a return? Trapped in a pact they can’t escape?

Whatever they were doing, they were exterminated from the seas and so the job was done for the Order.

The Starchasers

But stars don’t always stay in the sky. “Tiny, harmless meteors,” we’re told. “Safely crashed into the ocean, causing no harm,” they say.

Some escape the hell they were confined to, in the maddening space between silence and dark. In their escape, they make a beeline for the place they once called home.

It’s possible before the Order that these creatures were aggressive only in protecting their home. Now though, centuries of abyssal torture has driven them mad and their fury is all they have left. Not only that, but the vile darkness has left its mark on them. Twisting them. Granting them unearthly strength.

With the Order gone, it falls to a much more ramshackle group to deal with the mess. (This is where the players come in!) The Starchasers hunt down these creatures – on land or at sea – to finish off the Sepharific duties of the Order.

I think this is a fine premise for a monster of the week style game, and you’ve got hundreds of ideas for bad guys from actual maps. And, of course, cryptids.

Imagination & Cryptids

Shane1 Comment

“I don’t know you how do it” is a pretty common refrain when hearing about someone running a marathon, writing computer code, or making art.

“Yes, you do!” I often want to scream. The runner spends hours training, the coder hours learning, and the artist hours practicing. There are very few skills humans are born with. We have to learn them. Suggesting otherwise is to disregard the effort someone has put into something.

Imagination is exactly the same. “I’m not creative enough to write a story.” Neither was Gaiman, until he put a bit of effort in. No one is born with thoroughly unique ideas and no one sits around waiting for a muse.

Imagination is an active process that works of the fuel you’ve been collecting for years: books, music, TV. Almost every piece of popular culture is built on top of a predecessor’s work. Munched own by one author to be mulled over and reshaped by the next.

The writing advice of “always be reading” isn’t to improve your vocabulary (that does help, but you may want to turn to crosswords for that!), it’s to fill you up with ideas you can take and work with.

Not wholesale stealing – I believe the industry frowns upon that. But you largely have free reign with the ingredients of stories; if stealing from one place is bad, stealing a tiny bit from lots of places is industry standard!

“It’s Sherlock Holmes, but if Sherlock was a house elf, and he’s trying to track down some keys, like from Locke and Key, but instead of keys they’re dog collars from Infernal Soldiers.”

All ideas stolen from books I’ve read recently, but altogether make a unique premise. Is that imaginative? There’s nothing inspired about it in there – it’s a collection of stolen ideas. But their combination will connect ideas no one has every had before. The twine that connects those threads will make a whole world out of nothing, and the story you tell will come sort of naturally out of that. You’ll have to explain the Infernal Soldiers for one thing, and the relationship between your-version-of-the-house-elves and the rest of society. You’ll have to figure out why the main character is interested in their left over collars – if nothing jumps out at you pick the obvious and see where it takes you. “Well, because he lost them.”

A fantastic and seemingly endless (and public domain!) well spring of ideas to fill up on are folklore stories.

I’m reading an indie published book, Myth & Lore: Cryptids of the UK, which is full of ancient and Weird creatures. These creatures are so mysterious that there’s often large white pieces of canvas around them which need to be filled in with stories. Rarely, for instance, are the motivations of the Loch Ness considered. Lets accept that there is a huge dino swimming around the Scottish lakes, but then the question is why was this singular creature placed there?

Take the macguffin from the last book you read or film you recently saw. Chuck that at the bottom of the loch and suddenly Nessy is there to protect that! That’s a story (or at the very least a side quest)!

That’s what imagination often is. The fun of combining ideas, jumbling them about to see how they play together, and then hopefully their summation ends up inspired.

A Trap Has Grown Here to Farm the Droppings of Hornet-Women

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McGrogan asked over on their blog asked about a trap for hornet-women. Here’s by naturally occuring option.

Pseudo Nests are actually a fungus that survives mostly on the … processed leavings of hornet-women as they’re going to and from their actual nest. Mostly harmless to non-hornet creatures, these imitation nests become more proficient at luring their meals towards them as they grow from small patches of fungus to swallowing up whole forests if allowed.

Spores of this fungus can be found, quite harmlessly, inside many hornet-women’s digestive tracts, largely dormant. These spores are swept up in the normal processes of the hornet and are expelled, often quite near to an actual nest. They begin to reproduce only when in contact with trees or soil which it makes its habitat and yet still survives off of hornet droppings throughout its life cycle.

Once passed their immature stage of “hoping” for food delivery, the nest takes a more active roll in finding food: the developed fungus looks and smells nearly identical to a hornet nest made of traditional material. Akin to catnap or nicotine, the hornets stop by regularly simply to breath it in (and there by picking up more fungus inside of themselves).

For the largest colonies – a key identification for gardeners is the speed of growth and if it reaches unnatural size – the colony has been known to take the addicted, starved bodies of the hornets and reassemble them in the ape of a queen hornet.

With a “queen” present, whole swarms settle and ultimately perish to the fungus. This seems to be the natural limiting factor to the size of Pseudo Nests: they ultimately become too efficient at capturing their prey and can wipe out entire swarms that pass.

Loadouts

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“Did anyone remember to buy a healers kit?”

There are some situations where characters would behave smarter than their players. That’s why we have passive checks and other checks to see if the character thinks (or even remembers) something the player doesn’t.

A trunk and packback wait by a door, ready to be taken off on an adventure. Drawn to the best of Shane's ability, which is to say "crudely but an enjoyable 30 minutes was spent with felt tips".

One of those situations is remember to leave the house with their winter coat when in the middle of the darkest months. It’d be cruel for a DM to suggest that since the player didn’t specifically say, “I’m going to dress up warm,” that the character would be wandering around in a t-shirt and shorts.

Similarly, when you are on floor four of a mine, where the job was to collect a few diamonds, only to realise that no one noted down a pickaxe, the group should be given the benefit of the doubt. Obviously the character would have considered this and picked one up.

Full disclosure: I’ve not actually read Blades in the Dark, and only know it from the Adventure Zone, but it has a nice system for this kind of thing. Before setting off on an adventure, the players decide what loadout they’d like to take. I believe these are along the lines of light and heavy.

The items in those loadouts aren’t decided immediately, but are decided in the adventure as they’re needed. If you’re going in light you can get away with a small handgun or an iron file or some such. Small things. Too many small things will eventually add up to a heavy load, so at some point you can no longer add more things.

A heavy load means you can start pulling out great axes and whatnot. The downside here is that (even before you’ve decided on what items there are) people around you will know you’re packing. Suspicions are going to be raised pretty quickly.

These loadouts might cost an upfront payment, but making the group pay for the items at the end might be more fun, adding a push-your-luck mechanic. Shall we splash out on a Scroll of Detect Lies now? What if it reveals nothing? What if the dungeon is a bust and the PCs end up going into debt? Drama! Tension! Oooh!

The DM can of course have final ruling on what a loadout contains. Maybe it doesn’t make sense for the PC to be carrying a glass making kit. It’s important to remember rule one of being a good DM though: at the end of the day, your job is to make the players feel like their characters are heroes. If that means they pull the perfect macguffin out their ass and it makes for a cool scene, then why on earth not.