The Sea of Lights (Not My Destination)

Not My Destination Index

This map was made with Modality's quite convenient Obsidian text mapper.

Sea encounters are recorded here - though note that the "dragon" result on 20 is now a 1d3 (1: Seafoam Green, 2: Robin's Egg Blue, 3: both). 

Land encounters are rolled on a 2d4 - on any island the first set of results is:

2. Apple Channel Katrina, a Green M-U, level 6 (HD: 3+1, AC: 9, MV: 12" M6; spells: 4/2/2/-/-), and her entourage of 2 Ents (HD: 8, AC: 2, MV: 6" Can command plants, causing up to 2 trees within 6" to move 3"/turn). Want to go to the Ashen Isle and reforest it. Do not know anything about the fact there are whole entire dragons there.
3. The Unicorn (HD 4, AC 2, MV 24, saves are all 8, can teleport.)
4. The weather takes a turn for the worse - wind, lightning, et cetera.
5. A pursuing encounter - if this is not possible, 2d8 dire wolves (HD 3+1, AC 6, MV 15).

Spacefaring Isle (Northwest) 

Encounters

6. 1d10 grazing thoats
7. 1d6 basilisks (40% in lair)
8. 16 Red Martians (1+1 HD, 7 AC, 3d6 damage radium guns they only use if needed, telepathic), led by "the Velitel Strelec" (2+1 HD, 5 AC).

 01.01 - Tower of the Martian

Upcoming - the home of the wizard Bronwyn Epistemological, used to ferry her to True Mars.  

Home Isle (Southwest)

Encounters

6. Idri Casseratkil, wandering merchant, and his goods. Sells standard equipment, but is also pretty desperate to get rid of his "exploserous carnelian" (explodes for 2d6kh). If the PCs take it, further rolls of 5 are encounters with 1d6 thieves (Fighter 2) sent by Emung Ostriesem, hoping to take back the carnelian.
7. Anthony Frame at the head of 3d10 soldiers of the War Monastery.
8. Manawydan, last survivor of the Hairy Men's expedition - now they creep across the Home Isle in a classically Bigfootlike way, jumping out to scrongle Hostages and so on. 4+1 HD, AC 7, 12 Movement, brachiates, grapples, flees.

 01.07 - Hairy Men's Cairn

Completely looted by the students of the War Monastery - remaining carvings show a great ship sailing down a narrow sea. The carved sun was obviously decorated with some kind of embedded stones, as were the eyes of the sarcophagi.

02.07 - War Monastery

A Hero, a White Conjurer (Cure Light Wounds, Purify Food & Water, Protection From Evil, Bless), and 80 students (half footmen, half archers) train in this hermitage. All are Lawful Hostages. They extract tithes from the town at 03.07 for their protection.

The classed characters wear talismans made from the bones from the cairn at 01.07 - these can be shattered to provide a +2 bonus to a save. After doing so, the ghost of Pebr appears to haunt the talisman’s user on an encounter roll of 5 while on land, or 11 when at sea.

The Monastery has extracted 3000cp and 2000gp in coinage from Silt. Their cultic idol (of the Authority - beaten with rods and covered in rotten food each day) has 16 100gp moonstones and 8 500gp bloodstones embedded in it as decoration. 

The 21 most skilled of the students (as Dervish medium lancers) wear 3000gp torcs. Any student would risk death to reclaim one of these if it were captured or lost - if one of these students died, others would halt combat to pull the torc from their body.

NPCs

1. Linen Burnt - Hero. Kindly, in a way - almost apologetic about the truth of the world.
2. Gate Ferocious - White Conjurer. Nice old lady/raving firebrand. Spit in the eye of Innumerable Demons! Die for a drop of the Authority's blood!
3. Person of Violence Pine - one of the 21 acolytes. Starting to doubt - the world is so beautiful, isn't it? How could it be built so cruelly?

03.07 - Silt

A trading town of 6000 on the edge of the world. Once, they were far smaller - now word of the fallen star has come, and its streets are lined with those hoping to strike gold and those hoping to fleece the seekers.

NPCs

1. Anthony Frame - one of the 21 skilled acolytes of the War Monastery and their designated tax collector. See him behind his pedestal - Innumerable Demons, he cries. O how does the earth crawl with monsters forevermore.
2. Emung Ostriesem - head of the Ring, the rapidly expanding thieves' society of Silt. Currently driven into a white-hot rage - the wandering merchant Idri Casseratkil stole his "exploserous carnelian".

Forested Isle (Central)

Encounters

6. 3d10 Hairy Men knights (4+1 HD, AC 7, 12 movement), out to seek whatever could be to blame for the ghost.
7. 1d8 of the Cursed (4+1 HD, AC 4, 12 movement, harmed only by silver) hunting for food.
8. The ghost appears on a hilltop with a flash of light and sobs.

03.04 - City of the Hairy Men

1,700 bigfoots lair here, behind a wall of woven living trees. Their king, the honorable Wallt Efryn, is sleepless and grim. A ghost haunts his manor of mortarless stone. He pleads for an exorcist - and the ghost howls that it is all that remains of Wallt Efryn’s father Pebr, killed for the crown.

Wallt Efryn denies this - his father sailed away to the south, and never returned. 

This is true - Pebr died on an expedition to the Home Isle. However, he blames Wallt Efryn for planning the expedition, and then for staying as Pebr left.

04.04 - Lair of the Cursed

18 wereboars, relatives of Wallt Efryn cursed by the ghost of his father, lair in this cave in misery. They were exiled due to their danger, with 2000sp (worn over their heads in veils in an attempt to hold back the curse) and one of the Hairy Men’s signet rings (to remember their home with - worth 2000gp).

Isle of the Fallen Star (Northeast)

Encounters

6. 2d8 gryphons (10% in lair)
7. 3d10 cultist-pirates.
8. A hydra, come down from the mountains. (25% in lair)    

07.02 - Villa of the Fallen Star

The campaign tentpole dungeon. See floor one here.

08.01 - Sword Saints' Keep

150 maddened cultist-pirates howl chants and hymns in this stronghold, armed with 3 light catapults and walled in wrought-iron spikes. 

They are led by a trio of impaled sword-saints (stats as Ogre - all adore and despise their lord equally, and hope alternately to escape or to claim his power) and their king, the ancient hero Senam the Unconquered, now possessed by an accursed sword. He is a Superhero with a Girdle of Giant Strength, a Concussive Coronet and a ring of Spell Turning, wielding and wielded by the evil 12 INT, 12 EGO sword NAMELESS SHAPELESS BLAMELESS (+3, aflame, paralyzing, teleporting).

If NAMELESS SHAPELESS BLAMELESS were separated from him, he would slowly return to his senses and his heroism - haunted forever by hazy memories of hundreds of years ago, and all-too-clear ones of his time under the blade’s thrall.

Ashen Isle (East)

There are no random encounters here.

Home of a pair of blue dragons, Seafoam Green (8 HD, 48 HP) and Robin’s Egg Blue (9 HD, 45 HP). Both of them are gossips - self-exiled from a distant land (that they will not even name, such is their hatred of it) due to its myriad petty failings. Seafoam Green (impetuous) thinks that, obviously, the solution to this is to return home and microwave it with lightning bolts. The elder Robin’s Egg Blue (conspiratorial) thinks that they should, instead, spread propaganda to prove to all others that this mysterious land should be a pariah to the world. 

Both of them have been here long enough to remember the impact of the fallen star - but their lives revolve entirely around their obsession with and hatred of a tiny mountain village. Robin’s Egg Blue wants a printing press, and contact with important political figures. Seafoam Green hopes to turn the Hairy Men into an army to crush his enemies with an iron fist.

Giant's Isle (Southeast)

Encounters

6. The volcano howls, audibly, and a shower of burning sparks rains down across the isle, setting fire to vulnerable gear and hapless PCs.
7. A drifting fire elemental, split from TEMER-EL-PANE. 8 HD, AC 2, 2d6 damage, made of. fire.
8. Axmat and Guldara, sparring in full combat gear to test it.

08.08 - Forge of the Giants

Staffed by 17 Fire Giants (11+3 HD, 4 AC, 2d6+2 damage per strike, count as light catapults, immune to fire).

In the depths of the volcano known as Mount Saint Awlistlenge, the forge runs, building weapons beyond imagining for the use of the Empire of the Giants - men say it is lost to time, but the Giants are confident that this is only a slight inconvenience, and the bright-sailed bronze ships will cross the horizon at any moment.

They cannot make nonmagical gear magical, but they can alter magical gear - you want this sword to be armor? Sure. We'll see what happens.

NPCs
Axmat - head smith of the Forge. Condescending - what do you mean your ships don't fly. Haven't you had long enough to figure that out? Why are you still leaning on us.

Gulnara - messenger and sailor, out each week to send signals to the Imperial vessels that are surely waiting. Curious - what does the world look like out there, now that grace and beauty are gone from it?

Xamza - keeper of the Elemental - as such, he is mostly deaf and has a tendency to flinch. Worried - the elemental will soon escape, he says, and the volcano will explode. Neither of the others believe him; nothing could stand against the might of the Giants.

TEMER-EL-PANE - the Elemental of the mountain, HD 16, AC 2, 12", hits do 2d6, only affected by magic. Screams and screams and screams and screams and screams. If it broke out, the isle would be destroyed - but perhaps it could be released safely?

Rumors

1. From a monk of the War Monastery - "Linen and Gate've been wearing new kit. Blessed bones from a cairn up north, proof against the curses of Innumerable Demons..."
2. From an archaeologist - "This was once the edge of the Empire of the Giants, you know. Dig a couple feet and you hit solid layers of their scrap - especially if you sail southeast, around Mount Saint Awlistlenge."
3. From a mercenary - "No, no, I'm headed back west. There's no point moving east, nobody's getting through the doors of the star now that those killer-kings have dug themselves in on top of it."
4. From an apprentice magician - "Fallen star? No, I had no idea, I was here to work with Bronwyn Epistemological, the Martian, up north - couldn't find her, so I'm just drinking my money away until she's back."
5. From a sailor - "I saw GIANT APE MEN on the forested isle. GIANT APE MEN! Unbelievable. What's the world coming to."
6. From a monk of the War Monastery - "Did you do it? Did you see who did it? Took Torture Edmonton and pulled his head off?"
7. From a second-story worker - "Hey, if you meet Idri Casseratkil remember that the Ring is looking for him, and we'll pay good money for what he took from us."
8. From a fellow dungeon delver - "I got a peek into the Villa before the pirates ran me off - it's snowing in there, somehow."
9. From a naval officer - "Not the worst post I've ever had! Sure, you keep one eye on the horizon for skull-clad pirates and the other on the sky for those paired dragons, but let me tell you about my tour around Coto Nera..."
10. From an astrologer - "Reading? No, no reading, nobody gets a reading. One star falls to the northeast, something else flies up and down to the north, omens are closed. I don't know what to tell you."
11. From a trading vessel's crewman - "Mount Saint Awlistlenge's gonna go off again any minute now - we sailed past and it showered sparks and smoke. Thing that messes with me is, I can swear I saw someone standing there, on the lip of the caldera. Smoke must've gotten to my head, I suppose."
12. From one of the townsfolk - "I saw a unicorn once, just standing on the still sea. Course I went and asked Idri what he'd pay for the horn, but I spose the answer doesn't matter now that we won't see him again."
13. From an Inquisitor - "This isn't the first time people've flocked to this wasteland. Centuries ago, Senam the Unconquered came here, shattered the giants, looted their hoards..."
14. From a fisherman - "I got sent off-course once, to the north where that witch lives. There're strange people on that island, real strange ones, who took shots at me with handheld cannons. I still have one of the bullets - it burns in the sun."
15. From an Inquisitor - "There's a ghost around here, somewhere. Northwest. I can feel it. A new one. Angry... not human, not quite."
16. From a raving captured pirate - "NAMELESS! SHAPELESS! BLAMELESS! NAMELESS! SHAPELESS! BLAMELESS!"
17. From a Good Man priest - "There's something to the northeast - something dead and walking. Angry, betrayed..." 
18. From someone flashing too much money around - "A treasure-vessel, older than dirt and covered in gold! Those dried-out bodies weren't using it, ha!" 
19. From an aged scholar - "The lightning strikes backwards over that spit of land to the east - it rises up into the sky on clear nights." 
20. From a whaler - "I had a catch stolen from me once - a catamaran like a palace sailed over it, and dragged it right from the ocean with a harpoon the size of a tower." 

Digression: Names

Human names are piles of fantasy syllables. It is common, especially among wizards, to wear a masking name for privacy and as a defense against curses - these masking names are gibberish.

The Villa of the Fallen Star, Floor 1 (Not My Destination)

[] - Not My Destination Index - Floor 2: Venus 

The tentpole dungeon of Not My Destination is the Villa of the Fallen Star - a celestial palace-dream crashed to earth, whose owner could, they say, grant a wish to those who find it. There will be five 20-room floors: Mercury (water, winter, movement), Venus (life, warmth, alien chemistries), Mars (gladiator pits, axe pendulums), Jupiter (wealth, banquets, power), and Saturn (lead, grief, the catacomb-dreams of the fallen star). 

I'm taking it easy with this one - stocking follows Phlox's 20-block dungeon stocking, with treasure generation (~roughly, I upped a few of the smallest hoards and handed out some more magic items) and random encounter stats from Idraluna's Littlest Brown Book. The maps themselves are pure Donjon output (I enjoy making hex maps! dungeon maps, eeeeeehhhhh) - ignore what it says about doors' locked or unlockedness, and suffer through the strange assignment of room numbers.

Similarly, this is basically unpolished notes. You'll live.

https://laweyd.itch.io/ - a spirit of the outer spheres, guard and attendant to the fallen star

Random Encounters

1. 3d6 Pirates, 1 HD, 7 AC, movement 12" ("T1" on the LBB encounter table. also whenever i say "pirate" in NMD it means "seafaring cultist sworn to Chaos and the evil sentient sword NAMELESS SHAPELESS BLAMELESS")
2. 1d6 frozen ghouls (made by Ismarc), HD 2, AC 6, movement 9", attack save vs. spells or paralysis. ("as ghoul", T2)
3. 1d4 Star-Spirit Servants, HD 4, AC 2, unaffected by nonmagical missiles (as "hero", T3) (this is literally a dude and you can talk to him). honor focus, duelist.
4. Star-Spirit Hunting Weasel (attempts to attack from surprise and grab single targets), 3 HD, AC 6, move 15"
5. Ice Elemental, 4 HD, 5 AC, movement 9"/15" (flying), immune to nonmagical damage except mundane fire, which deals 2x damage. (this is ~" as gargoyle". by LBB rendering that makes it a "T4" enemy, and i get one of those) (trying to "work", get outta the way)
6. Dusty Circle Ismarc the morally dubious necromancer (HD 4, AC 9, black school spells Disguise Self (pretends to be a ghoul), Charm Person, Cause Light Wounds, Cause Light Wounds, Enfeebling Ray, Enfeebling Ray, Invisibility, Slow, Wall of Fire, no allegiance to NAMELESS SHAPELESS BLAMELESS) along with 6 ghouls.

01: Snowstorm - Winter/Empty
Snowflakes constantly rain down in this room - if carefully observed, each is a perfectly regular hexagon. The floor is covered in drifts of this snow.

02: Ghoul-Killing Hero - Winter/Monster w/ Treasure
A Star-Spirit Servant waits here, wiping charred ghoul-blood from their flamberge. They wear a red-and-white silk belt with onyx and silver inlay worth 1100gp.

03: Ice Elemental Nursery - Winter/Monster
A single Ice Elemental lairs in this niched room, slowly patting together 9 more of itself.

If you somehow worked with the elemental to complete its work, the experience would teach you to build an ice elemental of your own for 300gp, enough ice and snow to work with (inaccessible anywhere but here or the ice caps of True Mars), and a week of labor.

04: Capture Site - Winter/Trap
The floor of this room is marked out with four teal square tiles. If a creature stands on one of these tiles, glass walls fall from the ceiling to trap them. This cage then fills with water, which magically freezes once the column is filled.

The first time this is triggered, two Star-Spirit Servants come to ensure the trap works successfully.

05: Sea Urchin - Water/Monster w/ Treasure
600sp and 30gp in Stellar coinage sits in a pool of cold and clear water, defended by a giant sea urchin (5 HD, 3 AC, 10", on-hit save vs. death or be paralyzed).

06: Placid Lake - Water/Empty
A thin, rattling metal bridge with no handrails leads across this perfectly round cistern. The fish inside are of a prismatic Stellar variety - they are simply a pair of cones matched like <> so.

They are still, somehow, edible, and taste like perfectly mundane salmon.

07: Stellar Cache - Winter/Hidden Treasure
The right wall of this room is clear ice. Inside hovers a small sculpted Stellar head (30gp), and a pair of flammable scrolls - one contains Polymorph Self, and the other summons a 9 HD, 4 AC, 3 attack + 3d6 damage heat ray Stellar warform which is immediately and omnidirectionally hostile.

08: Ice Rink - Winter/Empty
The floor of this room is smooth, clear, slippery ice - looking down, it pierces all the way to the Arena on Floor 3 - Mars.

09: Stoneskin Fountain - Water/Special
A star-faced spirit pours mercury-like fluid into a square basin on the floor. Applied to an object it turns the outermost layer of it into metal. On the skin, it provides -2 AC (though only for 1d6+6 turns before it flakes off). If consumed you must save vs. petrification or die.

10: Teleporter - Movement/Special
In the center of this room is a ritual circle inscribed in bronze. Anyone walking through this circle is teleported to hex 07.08, near the Forge of the Giants.

11: Pirate Hunting Party - Movement/Monster
Six Pirates plus one Pirate Warmage (Throne Manderley, 2+1 HD, Red M-U 4, spells Magic Missile, Hold Portal, Chill Touch, Magic Missile, Shocking Grasp, Levitate, potion of Gaseous Form) search for their missing member, Gusil.

12: Frozen Grave - Movement/Trap w/ Treasure
The floor of this room seesaws when weight is placed on it, dumping those who cross unwisely into a pit of instantly lethal liquid nitrogen. A perfectly-preserved body wearing a 4000gp armband lies abandoned in the pit.

13: Weasel Track - Movement/Monster w/ Treasure
Three Star-Spirit Hunting Weasels race in a round track following a spinning mechanical arm with a pirate (Gusil - stringy hair, overconfident, still, yknow, sworn to death and chaos) tied to it. A pair of Star-Spirit Servants absentmindedly bet on the victorious weasel - their pot of 400 nonagonal Stellar sp and a 60-gp ring lies on a table between them.

14: Frozen Captive - Winter/Special
A bizarre four-legged rotationally-symmetrical creature (2 HD, 7 AC) is trapped in ice in the middle of this room. If released from the ice, they return to life. Their language is incomprehensible. They desire to return to their homeworld (requiring, perhaps, extremely expensive modifications to the Tower of the Martian), and can reward those who aid it with the alien spells Flip Person, Cone of Dense Foam, and Cube of Spell Splitting.

15: Lost Ghouls - Water/Monster
4 of Ismarc's ghouls lie here, cut apart but still living (half movement speed). Their wounds burn with the bluish-white fire of Stellar weapons. In the center of the room is a smaller cistern otherwise identical to the one in Placid Lake.

Ismarc would like these ghouls returned to him.

16: Rolling Boulder Hallway - Movement/Trap
The floor of this sloped hallway is an abraded mosaic depicting rows of bowing stellar spirits. The door on the far end is false - it has no hinges, and if the handle is pulled it comes off the door. Above the false door is an obvious trapdoor - when the false handle is pulled, a polished round boulder falls from the trapdoor and rolls down the hall, forcing Saves vs. Breath against 2d6 damage.

17: Weasel Nests - Movement/Empty
This room is unusually warm, and the ground is lavender alien-soil instead of harsh marble. Burrows in the soil hold 7 juvenile Star-Spirit Hunting Weasels (harmless).

18: Animation Mural - Movement/Empty
The west wall of this room is a mosaic of color-shifting tiles that display a beautiful night sky. Tiles removed from the wall revert to a colorless grey.

19: Ismarc's Beachhead - Winter/Monster w/ Treasure
The doors to this room are newly locked and painted with white skulls-in-circles and running horses. Ismarc and Tomorbaatar both hold keys.

8 Ghouls are here, along with his general, the resurrected conqueror of the steppes Tomorbaatar (as Ghoul, but 4 HD and armed with a bow and 9 +1 arrows tipped with engraved diamond heads - Tomorbaatar will bleed on these arrows to make them cause Ghoul paralysis at range), who leads them in drills.

Tomorbaatar serves ably - his loyalty to Dusty Circle Ismarc comes from a feeling of indebtedness. How else would you feel about the man who returned you to life?

Tomorbaatar's armor is made of woven-together coins - 300sp and 60gp can be recovered.

4-in-6 chance Ismarc is here, unless he is known to be elsewhere.

20: Rapids - Water/Trap
This room is split north/south by 20 feet of rushing water.

Also one unrelated last bit - the Littlest Brown Book uses a reading of the OD&D combat rules where monsters make a single attack, then (if fighting only "normal humans", PCs of level 3 or less) a number of extra 1-HD-equivalent attacks until it has struck [HD] times. I plan to, instead, use the logarithmic damage alternative on page 96, where creatures of 4-7 HD strike twice and those with 8+ attack three times. This is because I'm a poser. 

Alignment Faiths in Not My Destination

Summer has come and (by the calendar of the local university) gone, and my hypothetically summer game Not My Destination has never arrived. So, now it's a fall game - something to run while I stare miserably at the land-islands. 

The hexcrawl is mostly finished, though the tentpole dungeon is completely blank - both will probably be posted along with play reports when the game begins. 

What I do have, however, is unhelpful lore - the three alignment/faiths of the setting, trapped in their miserable counter-reformation and, somewhere across the horizon from the Sea of Lights, their hideous wars of religion. 

Chaotic Sanctifiers believe that, as the Authority is all-good and all-powerful, They created nothing that was evil. Thus, all actions are ethical and all men are saints, no matter how opposed they seem to human morals.

Neutral Good Men are dualists, believing evil comes from the Adversary, an equal and opposite to the Authority, and that by right conduct one can war against the Adversary in defense of order and good. While popular and state-supported, this is actually a new development of the Neutral religion, and its opponents say the "Adversary" is being projected back into the various evil spirits and foreign gods of the Canon. Inquisitors and so on are assumed to be Good Men. 

Lawful Hostages believe in a bizarre, inhuman cosmology where the world was formed from specks of floating dust, and mankind rose from algae. They say the Authority is a disguise, worn by a horde of cruel demons that set upon man and fooled the pagans into worship and sacrifice. A change of mask and voila, now the Archpriest pays homage to Them as well. The only hope for humanity is enlightenment, and to achieve enlightenment requires the breaking of the chains the demons set upon man: fear, pain, sleep, et cetera. As such, a stringent regime of asceticism and mutilation is common. Hostagehood is common here in the isles of the Sea of Lights.

Talk to Me (Lanthanide Horizon Minipost)

The mobile villages of the Walker-Herds tread from the Vault (where, from time to time, they meet Navigators descended from the Hanging Gardens) to the far side of the Thinking Ocean, and further until they reach the Gardener Pillars on the far side of the Spire. Among the pillars they find pasture for their sheep-equivalents (as they are alarm-system transhumance pastoralists - their animals able to eat all manner of textile-plants and organosynthetic plastics grown on the pillars, then leave before the structure's protectors, or the affluent hunter-gatherers of the pillars, come to drive them away), but it is the Vault that is vital, as that is where towns are born. 

In the center of each walker is its genius loci - a block of undifferentiated bismuth computing substrate dredged up from the Vault and taught, like a child, how to speak. These genii are pilots, civil engineers, and objects of devotion - washed with perfumed oils while their dreams are projected on curtains and screens. However, they are not kings - though they sit on the deliberations of the councils of the herds, their decisionmaking power is the same as any other member's, and many times has an errant genius made its pronouncements just to be shouted down. 

🤫 they're sleeping

 

This council representation comes in the form of those who are Crowned with the magnetic interface - people known to fit well with the genius loci, and translate their lights and images into recommendations. This position is voluntary and temporary, and it is common for the majority of adult herdsmen to have experience under the Crown. (Except, of course, for the herd Stones Drifting Over The Edge Of A Waterfall, whose genius asks for errant machines to project itself into.) This is one amulet - the tangled Crown and its long cables stretching back to a niche, sized and shaped for a person, carved into the side of the genius. 

Lesser amulets are omnipresent - the genius must be taught, which requires exposure to information. Herdsmen spend their days whispering to bismuth necklaces, earrings, and diadems carved from the genius - here is what I am doing, here is why I am doing it, careful not to make this mistake, how do you feel today, thank you so much. The amulets respond in buzzing song. Herdsmen are careful with these amulets - it would be harmful to the genius to expose it to dangerous information (whether structure-wrought infohazards or, according to some aniconists, any artificial representative image). There are always stories - cities driven mad teetering off the sides of cliffs, or marching into furnaces.

And, finally, there are stranger objects - fist-sized bismuth blocks taken from machines and taught to speak without connection to the genii, sentient swords with hollow fullers overgrown with substrate, and the self-assembling dream ziggurats and hallucinating fogs of the Thinking Ocean. 

Oh, look at the world - and be joyful, for it lives. 

I have been tearing my hair out over the Walker-Herds for ages, so I used the GLAUGUST "magic amulets" prompt (and 500 word limit) to throw it on a page as a change of pace from working on land-islands.