Pillars of the Earth (Imagepost)

 

Consumerism, Consume Me (Treasures from the Maul of America)

 The meaning of life is to get things and stuff them into your mouth and hope you choke on them. 

Influence - A Sidebar that will be necessary for this post to make much sense: 

Human souls have 100 parts. They start off as Self. Some monsters and dungeon effects possess, colonise or corrupt those parts towards one of the new gods of the shitfuture - i.e., 5 shares turned towards Kegare is 5% Corrupting Influence.

If you max out Stress, you roll 1d100 on your Influence chart, Darkest Dungeon style - rolling on your Self lets you control how you react, otherwise, psychological or supernatural effects occur. 

1d20 UNALIGNED TREASURES

1. Cool Trenchcoat - Black leather and studded, like you might see on a goth at Whitby Cathedral. Cool in isolation, does not look cool on 90% of people. +1AC, +1 Inventory Slot, +1 Reaction with anyone who would want the trenchcoat. 

2. Dead Ender Pills - Black bottle, red cap, grey pills.  Taking a dose turns you into an un-Influenced p-zombie for 1d4 hours. Consistent use causes loss of INT, XHA and WIS. 

3. Pardon the Left, God - A boxing manual printed on thick bloodstained paper. 1d4 hours of study and 3 combats of practical experience turns human hands into light weapons. If you find you have no use of it, you can sell it at Banned Books for $100. 

4. Presidential Unpardon - If someone signs it willingly, they become guilty of every felony in the US law code, which, I must note, is not even a fixed and specific list - when they figure out a new crime, like, fucking space piracy or whatever, the signatory will be guilty of it. 

5. Haunted Game Cartridge (Legend of the Sea 2) - Claims to be for the Ultra Nintendo Entertainment System, which definitely doesn’t exist. Maybe you can buy it at Electronic Diversions. There are so many human ghosts crammed into this fucking game it’s cold to the touch, and moves when you’re not looking at it. Worth a lot to Electronic Diversions if you don’t give a fuck about all the human souls trapped in there like battery chickens (like $4000 or more, you know how fucking 2010s-core haunted games are? That shit is chic now!).

6. “Which Side are You On?” - Comically oversized massive 12-gauge which automatically crits scabs. You might think that’s useless in the Maul, but then again, you might be surprised. 

7. Psychomantic Hat - Thick glass goggles, tight rubber with an internal fur lining. Fucking awful experience. Increases your PSYCHIC OPENNESS immensely. Due to the fact you don’t start with psychic powers, you fckuing moron, all this does is increase all Influence gain by +2% per instance and make you autofail saves against charms and possessions. So, really, this thing is fucking shit. Why is it on a treasure list? 

8. Happy Mannequin - A clothing mannequin with articulated limbs, and a big happy face drawn on its otherwise blank head in black marker. If you dress it up in a cool, cute or stylish outfit, it will spring into animation and assist you as best it can. The Happy Mannequin is relentlessly optimistic, as helpful as it can be, and would love to die saving someone else. Some people seek redemption in the most extreme situations. 

9. UFO Raygun - Warbling, shiny, made of unidentifiable metals. Fires an eye-searing beam that punches through metal and loudly goes BWOAWWAOWWAOWWAOWWAOW as long as you hold the trigger down. 2d6 damage per shot, -1 to hit, ignores (most) armour, ungodly loud. Good for 20 shots, then you need to find fissile material to feed it to recharge it. 

10. Meditation Tape - Elderly, fragile cassette tape (or, well, so it seems to all senses, but carbon dating would say it was made within the last two years). When played, guides listeners through a soothing routine of breathing exercises and guided meditation. This takes 20 minutes of undisturbed quiet and stillness, and clears 2d6 Stress. 

11. 1d6 Packaged Dreamsicles - Soft pink ice lollies, printed with the words OMNIA SOMNIA in a cute purple. They never melt. Consuming an entire Dreamsicle causes you to fall asleep. If you have any Influence over 80%, your sleeping body is puppeted by the instar divines to whatever stupid end they desire. Intelligent scholars of the subterranean economic crypts tell us they accrete from the eyes of ancients during their 3000-year slumbers. However, they usually seem immediately conflicted after asserting this. Maybe they’re just from Albuquerque. 

12. Ace of Spades - Concentrated talisman of ill fortune. Has a skull design in the ♠ ️. If someone nearby pulls off an incredible success (i.e., rolls a 20), you may activate the card to immediately turn that into a tragic fumble (i.e., a 1). Then, the next time you roll a 20, it becomes 1, which recharges the card for another use. 

13. Invisible Car - Fucking impossible to drive through the dungeon alright? Jesus christ why is it even down here. This thing would be worth like $20000 at the City Motor Lot if you could figure out what part keeps getting stuck when you try to drive it into this freight elevator. This elevator doesn’t even go all the way back up, man. 

14. The Toreador March, on CD - While it’s playing aloud and loudly, gain +2 to hit versus monsters that are significantly larger than you. Large monsters which are intelligent know about this property, and will change their tactics accordingly.  

15. Psilocybin Soup - The can imitates the brand dress of your favourite kind of canned mushroom soup. In exchange for 1d12 hours of psilocybin effects, clears all Stress from your bar. If you have any Influence below 50%, it goes down by 5%. If you have any Influence above 50%, it goes up by 5% and you have a very bad trip. 

16. Painter Thing - A little homunculus. It looks downtrodden and dresses in shabby clothing, sized for its foot-tall body. Incapable of independent creativity, but finds great joy in painting the suggestions of others. Where it gets the ink, charcoal, oil paint and spray paint, nobody knows - the supply seems infinite. Occasionally toots away on a little flute, trying to learn the basics of music from first principles.
    
    

17. Packaged Kabanosy, Labelled “Crack” - When you open this package, all present must save or lose the following five minutes to an unconscious frenzy of devouring cured meats. It even affects herbivorous creatures - only robots are immune. 

18. The Camera from Sun Dog, that One Stephen King Story - Fuck. The Camera from Sun Dog, that One Stephen King Short Story from Four Past Midnight, the anthology which also contained The Langoliers. Are fucking Langoliers real? I’m going to shit myself if the Langoliers are real. 

19. Authentic Katana - +1 Sword. Uses WIS instead of STR. From Japan, which these days is pretty hard to get to, due to the Flood-haunted sea and Salvific skies. People will assume the scavenger with the katana is the one leading the party, and you’re impossible to ignore when holding it, for better or for worse. 

20. Fucking Landfill Fodder - Stupid figurine of plastic depicting some distorted human caricature. Provokes instant hostility in anything that sees it, unless they’ve mentally prepared themselves in advance. 

1d6 TREASURES ALIGNED TO ZEITGEIST 

1. Smoking Mirrors - A pair of reflective aviator sunglasses. It looks like a short gif of swirling smoke is looping on their surface. If you have at least 30% Lunatic Influence, these eyeglasses will show you the real emotions of people in big red letters, increasing in size the more dissonant they are from what they’re showing you. If you have at least 60%, they remove disguises, invisibility, one-way mirrors, smoke, fog, artifacting, veils, and any other kind of concealment. It’s not surprising to learn that they see everything. 

2. Bigfoot Costume - Smells like sweat and shaving foam. Light armour. Makes you immune to cameras, reducing you to an indistinct blurred smear, grounded indistinctly in the image, of inconsistent proportion and perspective. If they can’t reproduce your image, they can’t tell others about you with accuracy. 

3. Villain Mask - Full-face black mask, featureless except for a pair of large plastic disc eyes (which are one-way mirrors) and a set of plastic teeth sewn into an enigmatic grin. Loose threads escape the mask here and there, a sign of wear and tear. The wearer has +1 to hit and damage per 10% Lunatic Influence they possess. When the wearer is clearly visible among the group, Reaction is rolled with a single d6. They don’t want the same things as you. They aren’t normal. It’s better to be the outlier. 

4. Paranoiatine - Pill-bottle, old brown plastic. Slightly cracked lid, child locked. Inside, capsule pills, half black and half white. Taking a dose of Paranoiatine gives you the ability to sense danger 3 rounds before it arrives, for an hour. Every time you sense danger, gain 1 Stress. The Maul is a dangerous place. They have friends everywhere. 

5. Arms Dealer - The dehydrated, mummified, compressed body of a skinny, short old man. He’s got a white Stan Lee moustache, yellow-glass aviators, a hawaiian shirt, and cargo-shorts. 6 slots, insensate. Occasionally makes little whispering sounds; complaining about the Vietnam War. Bring him back to the mall and soak him in a bathtub full of alcohol for 24hrs, and he’ll resume his proper stature and animation, re-contact old friends, and reopen his old weapon-shop. He’ll tell you this: they’re coming to get you. Arm yourself. 

6. Talking Heads - A tabloid newspaper full of grotesque sins against the craft of typesetting. Abominable fonts cavort on the surface, squeezing into every inch of negative space, fighting to throng at the edges of the shifting pictures. Talking Heads was in circulation for six weeks in Washington D.C., back in the olden days, before people realised what was wrong with it. Therefore, there are limited numbers of copies left in existence. This copy’s cheap paper is fragile and water-damaged - it’s a sick beast, but it can still communicate with you through the news-stories it shows you. In these writhing words, you can read all about what they’re up to. 

1d6 TREASURES ALIGNED TO ECONOMY

1. Personal Shopper - Found somewhere in the dungeon in a huge, airtight plastic bag, like a massive crisp-packet. The bag has YOUR PERSONABLE SHOPPER on the outside in big yellow letters. When you crack the seal, the Personal Shopper will exit their state of suspended animation and crawl out to greet you. They resemble a tall, blandly attractive person with hollow eyes, perfect teeth, clear skin and a boring but well-fitting outfit. Personal Shoppers are inexplicably knowledgeable about the Maul, and seem to have a psychic ability to discern your wants, needs and tastes. You can give the Personal Shopper a budget in dollars, and they will vanish into the dungeon, returning when you next rest with useful items (and cute outfits!). Treat a Personal Shopper as a 0-level scavenger with 100% Economic Influence. They are loyal to the opener of their bag even unto bankruptcy (which is worse than death, of course).
   
   

2. Econofurnace - Gigantic, unwieldy piece of machinery - takes three or four strong people to move it, looks like a massive upright autoclave. There’s a door on the front made of inch-thick pyrex, marked with a bunch of engraved currency symbols. Chuck things into the compartment behind the door (can hold 5 slots a go) and turn it on. Blinding yellow electricity converts the things shovelled in directly to their value in dollars, which print out of a slot on the side. The converted objects are, naturally, destroyed. The machine radiates electricity while active, making your hair stand on end, nearby electrical devices fritz, and compasses spin.
   
   

3. Hoarder’s Bag - Orange rucksack, old and water-stained due to a long spell in the Maul. Patches sewn onto it depict flowers, sunshine and rainbows. The interior of the bag is not the expected interior, but instead a mass of soft, warm fabric fibres, tangled and bunched together. The interior is larger than the exterior. This bag can only hold one type of item at a time, but it can hold up to 20 slots of it, if need be. 

4. Plug Mask - Resembles a huge Type B plug, in off-white. The grounding pin fits neatly in the wearer’s mouth, and the parallel pins slide - somehow - into the space between the nasal bone and the eyeballs, slithering back into the head in constant contact with the tearducts. While wearing the Plug Mask, you can sense electricity, and have a 20-point “Electrical Buffer”. When you take electrical damage, the Buffer fills up instead of your HP going down. When you successfully land a hit in melee, you can add points of electrical damage from your buffer at a 1 to 1 rate.   

5. Wargaming Miniatures - Worth $500 if returned to the Mall intact and undamaged. Made of cheap, fragile plastic. Miniature Economic idols, you suppose, for they lack any practical purpose and seem exceedingly inexpensive to produce. 

6. Scavenging Insurance Paperwork - Pleasantly thick paper. Smells like a waiting room. Filling out this paperwork (takes 6 hours of downtime) means that, should you be injured on your next scavenging trip into the Maul, you will receive $50 (untaxable, non-XP-gaining) for every HP you lost in that delve. If you die in that delve, the person in your party with the most Economic Influence receives $1000 (untaxable, xp-gaining). You need your own pen. 

1d6 TREASURES ALIGNED TO PRISMA

1. 666 - Tattoo in shifting, luminous ink that changes colour according to the wearer’s emotional state (the emotional state of “dead” results in a bright, unwavering white glow). You find it on a dead body, and it crawls from their skin to yours like a spider, and settles itself on the lower back, underarm or inner thigh. Once you are tattooed with the mark, and thereafter, you read as “evil, but hot”, to all magical detection. All magical detection. Attempts to divine your location will return “evil, but hot”, attempts to divine your weaknesses will return “evil, but hot”. This can absolutely enter the realms of the absurd – if you cast Speak with Dead on anyone who’s ever been marked with the tattoo, the answer to all their questions is “evil, but hot”. This can even confuse one of the new gods, if they’re using some kind of sorcerous sensor and not looking at you directly. 

2. Dramatic Escape - Looks a bit like a folded up self-inflating liferaft made of crinkly, reflective plastic. Pulling the tab will unfurl the boat and cause it to begin summoning a frightening volume of glittering water full of bioluminescent bacteria. The boat will safely flee this location on a glowing tide with anyone that springs aboard, while flooding the location it was unfurled and drowning anyone left behind. 

3. Lightblade - This is a +3 medium katana, which sheds light like a neon sign when drawn. Glows your favourite colour. The handle and sheath are decorated with bismuth-like spirals of metal, and bright crystalline growths. Invokes feelings of envy, despair and self-absorption in its wielders if they have less than 50% Prismatic Influence. This weapon deals triple damage to people who trust the wielder. 

4. Now! Now! Now! - A very shiny, rainbowy CD. Contains 3 solid hours of punchy, upbeat hip-pop. The horribly wonderful voices singing forth siren-like from the drum-beats and crescendos are clearly Beauties, those Prismatic creatures which once ruled Chicago. The CD’s sound inflicts fear in any citizen who remembers their reign (people about 45 and up). The tenth track, “Midnight Ritual (Me and You)” features a single vocalist whose singing voice is so inhumanly beautiful you can’t even discern the words. Listening to the whole song inflicts 3d6 Stress. Playing it backwards summons the Beauties to your location. This CD is worth $200 at Tower Records, but only if you don’t loudly announce what you’ve got. 

5. Transforming Wand - Plasticky, topped with a luminous crystalline star. If you have less than 20% Prismatic Influence, this does nothing. If you clear that threshold, however, you can activate the wand. Doing so engages a ~12-second long transformation sequence, which paralyses all onlookers (friend and foe) and forces them to pay attention to you as you transform into a magical-girl. The transformation is accompanied by really loud upbeat music blaring in the background and painful strobing lights. While you’re a magical girl, your clothing is replaced by a fancy outfit themed around a single colour. Magical girls of the same colour cannot coexist. Any filth or dirt is blasted clean off you. You can’t get dirt or blood on you at all while you’re a magical girl. Furthermore, two of your stats (choose the first time you transform) are set to 20, you can summon a +1 weapon (any size) and/or +1 shield, and you can fire painfully bright magical blasts out of your hands (1d8 damage, double to creatures Aligned to Radicarian).
   If another magical girl is engaging in ✨teamwork ✨with you, you get her stat bonuses too, your weapons go up by +1, and your blasts increase a dice-size. This stacks.
   Each time you activate the Wand, gain +5% Prismatic Influence, up to a maximum of 80%. 

6. Aureole of the Chosen One - Large, thin white disc of some kind of plastic material, which hovers behind your head and glows with a faux-divine light. Sheds light like a good quality ring-light. When wearing it, you have +3 Save, and everything in the Dungeon recognises you as the “Chosen One”, for good or for ill. This is the only one in Chicago. Also, if you have over 50% Prismatic Influence, gain +1MD while wearing it. 

1d6 TREASURES ALIGNED TO RADICARIAN

1. Carpenter’s Tools - Carpentry is one of the great symbols of Radicarian - it assembles the stocks, the rood-screen, the throne and the gallows, all of which it has stolen for its symbols. These carpenter’s tools are sized for huge hands, made of a dark, cold metal - iron-black and striated like geological substrates. Plane, saw, hammer, chisel, hand-drill, and all their companions - all near-indestructible and supernaturally capable of bending wood to willpower. Worth at least $5000 if recovered to Alexander’s Hardware Store. 

2. Raw Leather Jacket - Well-fitting jacket made of raw, untanned animal hides, scraped free of hair. Smells a bit like blood, ragged round the edges, sewn up with gut cord and bone buttons. If you have any Atavistic Influence at all, this jacket will serve you as medium armour, and while you are wearing it, Living Petrol won’t try to harm you or your companions. 

3. The Pater Familias - A large, heavy depiction of a simplified tree, in dark wood, assembled with finger-length iron nails. 5 slots. It commands the Radicarian powers, despite and due to its immense unwieldiness - it is a devotional object. When you cast a Radicarian spell, add +5 to [sum] and +2 to [dice]. Reduce any Stress you would suffer from any Radicarian spell (your own or others) to nothing. You can set the Pater Familias down and “root” it. Nothing with less HD than you can uproot it, move it, damage it or push it over. 

4. Animal Gloves - Worn by someone at 0% Atavistic Influence, a fine pair of leather gloves with heavy cuffs. At 25%, make the wearer’s fists into light bludgeons. At 50%, the gloves grow short black fur and claws, becoming medium weapons. At 75%, hands can no longer manipulate tools while inside the gloves, turning into distended, clawed heavy weapons. If you hit 100% while wearing the gloves, forgo the roll and immediately turn into a feral werewolf, absorbing the gloves. If you aren’t killed in your first rampage, this can theoretically work in your favour. 

5. Mesolithic Geometer - Probably not authentic. Resembles a slot-big chunk of granite absolutely covered in dense, interlocking carvings of simplistic people and animals. While touching it, or examining the carvings, your guts swell with a feeling of certainty and animal strength. While possessing the Geometer, or within 24hrs of staring into it, you can “spend” 4 Stress to create a point of rage. 

6. Deino Saurus - Vinyl record in a venerable paper case. Claims to have been released by a “Ty Rex” in 1958. If you can find a way to play it, the first track is suburban musical puke about God making fake dinosaur bones to test good Protestants - about ten seconds before the end, animalistic roars and screams begin in the background and grow to drown out the music. The remaining ten tracks are this, growing steadily louder. Human listeners with less than 50% Atavistic Influence are inflicted with fear, and suffer 1d4 Stress per minute of listening. The total record once the roaring starts lasts for 24 minutes. 

1d6 TREASURES ALIGNED TO OPUS

1. Desexualiser - Massive wheeled machine with a big sci-fi glass tube thing on the top. Looks like a portable version of that thing that turned Willem Dafoe into the fucking Green Goblin. Climb inside, activate it, go through ~10 minutes of agony, get +20% Alchemical Influence. You lose any and all sex characteristics and any “reproductive drive” (as the Alchemically aligned might put it). This is the first of four steps to become one of Opus’ Perfected. 

2. Doctor Hand - Fore-arm sized, bullet-shaped, unmarked and blue, bottom is a hand-sized hole. Plastic and stainless steel cuff goes over the hand, then internal machinery interlocks with the fingers. The domed end unfolds into metal “fingers” armed with tiny buzzing saws, suturing machines, scalpels, anaesthetic misters, &c. With ten minutes of attention, restore 1d6HP, no strings attached (except how scary the damn thing looks). However, Doctor Hand recoils in disgust from anyone who has a disease, who is covered in muck, who has touched an insect in the last 24hrs, who has had sex in the last 24hrs, who is irradiated, or who has any Corrupting Influence at all, even 1%. If even one of these conditions is met, the Doctor Hand refuses to heal. 

3. Personal Forcefield - A heavy belt of nylon straps and tingly metal blocks. When you tap the big blue button on one of the blocks, a luminous and shimmering sheath of energy envelops your entire body, mostly obscuring your features and producing a low harmonic hum. The forcefield is heavy armour and repels dirt, rays, filth and all sound, rendering you deaf while it’s active. 1 slot. 

4. Soul Compressor - Huge, blocky helmet. Steel, glass and plastic. Thick wires trailing into it, framed with two big locking bolts. Requires electrical power to run. 3 slots. No eyeholes, not intended for use in combat or exploration, intended for use in a medical setting. Lock the helmet onto your head, boot it up, see the cold blue HUD within illustrate a dithered image of your soul. It targets 20% of your soul, prioritising your Self, and then Corrupting Influence, and then other types of Influence. If you have an expert in Operatic technology, they can target the compressor to a specific 20% of your soul. 10% of the targeted section becomes Alchemical Influence, and another 10% becomes Rational Virtue, a special Influence type. Rational Virtue is always the last to be replaced by another type of Influence, and, if you max out Stress and roll on it, you suffer no ill effects and instead clear your Stress bar. 

5. Harmonic Sound Machine - Heavy thing with handles on each side and a thick nylon carrying strap to be looped over the neck. Carried in front of the stomach, and operated via buttons on the handles. Produces booming, resonating tones, like machine whalesong. Loud as fuck, but extremely soothing to machines, and empowering to spells aligned with Opus, giving them +3[sum] and +1[dice]. It requires constant attention to remain harmonic, so probably have someone babysit it while you’re casting Rearrange Metal or Bunnies to Pennies or whatever. 

6. “Iamblichus” - A large, reinforced titanium box, with a cracked screen on one side, a tinny speaker, a little microphone, and a tiny ineffectual gripping limb, all with a very powerful battery attached to the back. The battery’s worth a good bit on its own, what with the vicissitudes of scavenging, but the attached machinery will (attempt) to object. “Iamblichus” claims to be one of Opus’ Artificial Intelligences, but aren’t those things supposed to be frightful machine demigods in charge of an army of unfeeling steel deathbots? Drop your death-bots down the back of the couch, Iamby? As it stands Iamblichus is completely incapable of most of the feats famously assigned to AI, and he’s extremely cagey about how he ended up this way - but he knows a lot. Maybe his advice is worth something. Iamblichus’ tinny voice sounds a bit like C3PO’s, but if you make that comparison he’ll start praying for your death. 

1d6 TREASURES ALIGNED TO KEGARE

1. Fleshwarper - A rusty bar-piercing with a horrible, slightly bloodstained zig-zag bit in the middle. Once you’ve put it into your flesh, you can “spend” 4 Stress, clearing it from your bar, to save vs. a roll on the Kegare mutations table. Kegare mutations are usually insectoid, hyperexaggerated, or the cool kind of body horror. 

2. Akaname - A long iron chain, rusted here and there, covered in spikes and tipped at the end with a blade. It moves like a tongue, and anyone holding it can control it like a limb. It will ignore any orders to leap for and lap up blood, sweat, piss or tears - for each litre, a new link on the chain. 

3. The Blood Feud - A chainsaw haunted by ghosts. Cracked externals, handles wrapped in deerhide and tarpaulin. My, what big teeth you have. Leaks blood from the exhaust and replaces the usual buzz with intense screams of agony. Doesn’t jam on flesh, ever. Deals automatic criticals to young lovers, the guy who suggested a group splits up, curious service workers, scientists who have just proclaimed their discovery shall revolutionise the world &c. Inexplicably turns off if you reduce an enemy group to a singular “final girl”. 

4. Blood Drive - Like a bayonet out of Hellsing, twitching and throbbing, covered in rust. A +1 light weapon which can be affixed underbarrel. A pretty simple thing - it has perfect lifesteal. Any damage you deal with it, you’re healed for an equal amount. Other Blood Drives can take different forms. 

5. Live Giant Tick with Anime Eyes - First time you lay hand or eye on this fucking thing, get 1d6 Stress. The eyes are both “anime” and “completely realistic”. Can be held to or hurled at a creature with skin and blood - it’ll attach painfully and start sucking blood, before dropping off when it’s full, or when you call for it. When it’s filled with blood, you can choose to give it a gentle squeeze, and it’ll regurgitate it all for you, while looking at you with big wet eyes. Takes up 1 slot. 1HD. 

6. Idol -  A plastic statuette of an anime girl. The sort you’d be embarrassed to put on a shelf others might see. Radiates an unpleasant warmth. Seems to nod encouragingly to you on the edge of violence. As you approach high Corrupting Influence, parts of the plastic seem to peel back and reveal rotten meat underneath. You can use the Idol to pray directly to Kegare. It is a god of impurity, filth, sin, revenge and miasma. Spend 1d6HP and then roll 1d100. Try to get equal to or under your Corrupting Influence. If you do, the Idol will cause a supernatural outcome that attempts to mediate the desires of Kegare (piles of bodies, revenge cycles, perverse satisfaction) and your own wishes for the prayer. 

1d6 TREASURES ALIGNED TO SALVATION

1. Impassive Mask / Masc - Mask resembling a polished masculine face made of black glass. Extremely durable, it surrounds you in a haze of shimmering air, as if you’re giving off a great heat. It conveys 2SR (Stress Resistance) and immunity to critical hits. Creatures will act as if your Salvific Influence is 2x higher than it actually is - if this would take you over 150%, they treat you as if you’re a Salvific Avatar. 

2. Onyx Cigarettes - Gold filter, black paper. They smell and taste of ozone, sulfur and the smell hanging around after you fire off a gun. While smoking them, you appear as nothing more than a silhouette with a pair of dully glinting amber eyes and a deep, rumbling voice. Your presence inflicts fear in the unarmed. 

3. Hand of Air Superiority - A relic from a jet pilot - a heavily burnt and desiccated right hand, with a wedding ring melted into the reddened flesh. A flare is affixed atop it, in the manner of a candle atop a Hand of Glory. While bearing the Hand of Air Superiority, the blinding light of the flare provokes saves vs. paralysis in military personnel and diverts airstrikes away from your location (this IS a concern in the Maul). If someone is locked on to you, in a physical or metaphysical sense, it tightens into a fist. 

4. The Warbolt - A two-slot vajra made of smoking fuselage and hot steel. If you pick this up with less than 60% Salvific Influence, save or lose a hand in a paroxysm of flame. If you meet its brutal standards, you can wield it - it’s a +2 heavy weapon with an additional power. Hold it with both hands, scream at the top of your lungs, and channel your righteous hatred. The sky seems to tear open in a jagged scar of light. This burning gate admits a bolt of nuclear flame that makes a sound like that one video of that guy throwing a copper wire tied to a rock onto a powerline. Whatever you targeted takes 6d6 nuclear damage, suffering 1 Irradiation per dice that rolled 1-3, and 2 Irradiation per dice that rolled 4-6. 

5. Catastrophe Hymns - Golden coloured CD. Warm to the touch. Various covers of macho-coded classic rock, hip hop and metal tunes. The instrumentation consists of brass, pipe-organs, drums and theremin. The vocals are in Aramaic. While Catastrophe Hymns is playing, anyone who can hear it has all their successes upgraded to criticals, and all failures worsened to fumbles. 

6. The Power and the Glory - An ineffable somethingness, a neo-paleo-xharisma, an imperious command. While you have the Power and the Glory, you shed light like a burning house and have 24XHA. You can issue verbal commands, which require saves to disobey, and creatures must save to attack you. The Power and the Glory will not select you if you have any influence above 40% (except for Salvific). It will abandon you if you break the tenets of its wrathful, paternalistic philosophy.

1d6 TREASURES ALIGNED TO FLOOD

1. Lead-lined Diving Suit - Exceedingly heavy, smells of kelp. Four slots worn and carried. Allows the wearer to walk along the bottom of bodies of water, while protecting them from radiation. Always has a supply of cold, musty air despite the lack of back tanks. Lead boots, too. If you are ever in deep water while wearing the suit and you are completely unobserved - goodbye. 

2. Sea-Wife’s Wedding-Veil - Old, cold, sheer black silk. You could wear it and still see decently enough to scavenge safely. It’s always wet with seawater. While wearing it, you are always aware of an immense, aquatic creature squirming in the flooded areas deep under the Dungeon. This creature is one of Flood’s krakens, a monstrous radial thing. If you can find water that connects to it, you can commune with it - while wearing the veil, it treats you as a partner, and offers you things. If it sees you with the veil off, it eats you. 

3. Fishflesh - A lump of flesh, ragged and raw, as if it was torn free by boat propellers. Human or animal, it’s hard to tell - pale, wet, heavy. If you bite into it and eat the whole thing, gain +1HD and +10% Aphotic Influence. When your Stress bar next fills, it instead empties, and you save vs. Aphotic mutations twice. Aphotic mutations tend to be colossal and aquatic. 

4. The Calling Pipes - Tangled mass of rusty pipes, two slots big. When you blow into one of the pipes, the whole mass rattles, and produces a low moaning that inflicts fear in angels, holy people (of any god but Flood) and academics. Blowing the Pipes underwater summons monsters Aligned to Flood - if you have less than 30% Aphotic Influence, this consists of 0 and 1HD dross swimming up immediately. If you have less than 60%, the monsters are 1d6HD and appear with 1d6 rounds delay. Above that, 2d6+2HD and 2d6+2 rounds of delay. 

 

5. Worn-Away - A smoothed lump of stone that might’ve once been a statuette. 2 Slots. Parts of the stone have decayed away into a trypophobic, coral-like pattern of organic holes. Provokes slow and mounting dread, as it slowly shifts into the images of people you had forgotten, driving them back into your mind for a time. When you forget them again, you will forget them for the last time, and be unable to recognise them. 1 Slot. Worn-Away is not alive. Parts of the coral almost seem like the kind of granite you’d make a statuette out of. Radiates an oppressive darkness. To be in its presence is like swimming in the sea. 0 Slots. Pursues. 

6. Echo Conch - Sea-green and teal flip-phone with the name in a cute logo on the back. Yay! The plastic feels fragile, but nothing can damage it - you could roll a tank over it and it would come out no worse for wear. No numbers on the buttons. Written along the right side of the screen in biro is 1-212-000-0000. You can spend 1d10 minutes of keybashing to discover a new active Caller. If you decide to ring 1-212-000-0000, you’re instantly connected to a tinny voice that speaks from the nearest darkness. It sounds like a relative of yours, perhaps? Triple-Double-Double-Zero will ask for an offering - anything abandoned and forgotten by man will do. After that, bring your hand over here to this darkness. Tar will envelop it, and your hand will be stained black. The next time you’re in danger, point, and the shadow of leviathan will come up out of the floor and crush everything you hate (as a 4D fireball, except it’s pressure damage). Triple-Double-Double-Zero’s requests in exchange for that power get more extravagant from there. 

Example Callers from the Echo Conch

1. Wet Details - Sort of a Microsoft-Sam-ass computer generated voice, heavy and clunky. It sets itself up as if this is going to be some kind of phone-sex thing, then starts describing the reproductive habits of marine life in the most detail possible until you hang up.

2. Kuromaguro-san - An extremely enthusiastic and encouraging voice bombs down the line. It speaks in a dense Satsugū dialect, so sometimes even knowing standard Japanese isn’t going to help you. Even then, the guy’s talking a million miles an hour. Still, he keeps yelling “GANBATTE! GANBATTE! GANBATTE!” every so often, so he’s probably on your side. 

3. Miss Maria - Claims to have met you before. Soft-spoken, very chipper. Her accent sounds roughly Mexican. Wants to keep helping you, she helped you before. Will call you to remind you of things you forget - maybe you need the help? There’s no shame in being forgetful. Do you want her to write anything down?

4. Dr. Māhealani Ramos - She is a published and much-cited professor of oceanography - not often useful in the Dungeon, but very interesting to a curious mind. She can answer all sorts of questions about water, sea-life, and that which lives within the sea. She lives in Honolulu, and denies the prevailing narrative that it was eaten by the sea and totally destroyed. She can see the sun right now, you know! Just don’t press her too much on the weather. 

5. Mr. Laurence Cholmondeley - Opens the call by informing you his surname is pronounced “Chumley”  - you definitely didn’t ask his name yet. He claims to have been waiting for you by the phone, expecting you to call for his advice in matters of [??!#~#)//]. What was that? The line broke up when he said it? Well, you’re just going to have to figure it out, he shan’t repeat himself. If you can figure out what [??!#~#)//] is, Laurence is in fact a world class expert on it. Sometimes he hangs up on you early because his gills are getting dry. 

6. The Old Man - Slithering sounds in the background of the call. Sounds like he’s speaking to you though a fucking tin can, abysmal audio quality. Sounds like (stole his voice from?) Willem Dafoe in The Lighthouse. Offers gruesome prophecies which predict a freezing oblivion to all, interspersed with rambling anecdotes of whaling and regattas. 

✌

Vending Machines are basically religious sites in the Dungeon under the Mall - ECONOMY watches over them, and restocks them with all sorts of odd novelties.

1d12 TSHIRTS 

1. “I LOVE BURGER AMALGAM” - Childish-looking short-sleeved shirt, yellow and blue, with a big Burger Amalgam logo splattered across the back. Never quite fits right. Smells like “meat” and fried potatoes. Doubles the effects, positive and negative, of Burger Amalgam meals. 

2. “CIA’S SPECIAL BOY” - Long-sleeved, soft black cotton, supremely comfortable, white text. Smells like cigarette smoke. Allows the wearer to use the internet, cutting through the unceasing torrent of insults, gore images, deliberately misunderstanding chatbots and recursively generated slop like an icebreaker. +1 Reaction with creatures Aligned to Zeitgeist. 

3. “My Ajna Chakra is Up Here” - While wearing this, you are highly visible to anything with a non-light-based form of sight, and appear beautiful to anything with a spiritual form of sight, too. 

4. “特製キノコ炒め” - Dark blue, form-fitting, sweat-wicking, white text on a sharp diagonal across the chest. Smells like a winter afternoon. The kanji look cool as fuck even though you probably can’t read them. Prevents Stress gain from social faux pas. +1 reaction with creatures Aligned to Prisma. 

5. “Deviant Bodies” - Smells like sweat, smells like a lot of sweat. White text, red fabric.  +2 Healing from all sources, -4 to saves vs. Mutation. 

6. “TOO MEAN TO DIE” - Short-sleeved, way too big, dark green, thick fabric, red text. Smells like old leather and musk. Full of motheaten holes. When you roll on the Death and Dismemberment Table, clear 1 Stress for every 10% Atavistic Influence you have. +1 Reaction with creatures Aligned to Radicarian. 

7. “I’m begging you to        me” - Pink fabric, white lettering, scraped, ragged and torn. Hangs off the body like a slutty funeral pall. +1 Stress Gain from all sources, +1 Reaction with everything. 

8. “I FUCKING LOVE SCIENCE” - Short-sleeved, grey, white text, O in LOVE replaced with a simplified atom. Smells sterile. Baggy in a way that feels like it doesn’t want to touch you. Provides +1 to saves vs. spells, and a further +1 per 25% Alchemical Influence you have. +1 Reaction with things Aligned to Opus. 

9. “MY BODY IS A MACHINE THAT TURNS DESIRE INTO SUFFERING” - Short-sleeved, always fucking tight-fitting as hell, trying to get into your fucking crevices. Red fabric, white text. Smells like someone bled to death in it. +1 Reaction with things Aligned to Kegare, all Corrupting Influence gain is increased by 2% per instance. 

10. “LEAD, FOLLOW OR GET OUT OF THE WAY!” - Muscle shirt, stretchy khaki, bright yellow text. Smells like ash. Has a skeleton on fire with an AR-15 on the back, fuck yeah. When someone follows the shirt’s advice in response to your behaviour, clear 1d4 Stress. When someone chooses to fight or obstruct you, suffer 1d4 Stress. +1 Reaction with creatures Aligned to Salvation. 

11. “I ❤ BURIAL AT SEA” - Dark green, white text. Smells like kelp. Long-sleeved. When wet, weighs as much as a standard ship’s anchor.  +1 Reaction with creatures Aligned to Flood. 

12. Hawaiian Shirt - Gives off “I’m on fucking holiday” vibes. Not really a T-shirt. Smells like someone spilled a full pina colada on it within the last five minutes. 2SR (Stress Reduction). +1 Reaction with the Economically Aligned (which includes rival Scavengers, naturally) 

1d20 SOFT DRINKS (NON-EXHAUSTIVE)

All produced as Economic offerings, and thus aligned to it. Soft-drink cans (standard size) are 3 to a slot. Listed below are the “standard” versions of these drinks - skews with odder effects definitely exist. 

1. Porbo - Pineapple-flavoured. Kind of shitty. If you have 0% Influence (i.e., are probably an entirely fresh character), it clears 2d6 Stress per can, due to associations with youthful innocence.  $1 per Can

2. Plus Vine - Grape-flavoured. Cloying, thin-tasting, generally substandard. Advertises as a feature that you can pour in yeast, shake, and convert the can to the worst red wine you can imagine in under 10 minutes! $2 per Can. 

3. Buzz - Orange-flavoured, aggressively fizzy, extremely caffeinated. Basically just foam that freaks you out a bit. Mascot is a cool bee with shades on, drinking a recursive can of Buzz. Clears 1 Fatigue when drunk. Converts 1 Drunkenness into 1 Despair. $3 per Can.

4. Sin-Drome - Passionfruit-flavoured. Coral-pink can, suggestive shapes in pale pink. The packaging, trade-dress and graphic design is kind of… horny? Not like, explicitly anything, just kind of… horny? Clears 1d4 Stress if you’re kind of a pervert. Drinking it will make people think you’re kind of a pervert either way. $3 per Can. 

5. Guava Guaxa - Guava-flavoured. Has a picture of a witch with a calavera head on the front. Says it’s from Albuquerque on the can, right next to the spidery occult symbology and chakra symbols scrawled over the back. Heals 1d6 Stress per expended MD the drinker currently has. $3 per Can.

6. RE-Fresh - Ozone-flavoured ice tea. Very cool, and very cooling. Ice-blue and white graphics, screen-tones, has a dead celebrity pop-star’s face on it. Native to Chicago. Once the favoured drink of the Prismatic Beauties who once ruled the city, still associated with them. A can clears 1dX Stress, where X is how many 5% increments of Prismatic Influence you have. $4 per can.

7. Taproot Beer - Root-beer-and-gravel-flavoured. Cowboy on the can with a really phallic revolver. Viscous sarsaparilla. Claims to be “The Soda You Gotta Chew, You Cuck.” Clears 1d4 stress for fighters.  Has a testosteroneising effect when consumed over a long period of time. $4 per Can. 

8. Pine Gone - Pinecone-flavoured. Tastes like long-gone nature. Comes from Maine, somewhere. Graphic design deliberately invokes the 1800s, with a long, rambling label. A can of Pine Gone clears 1d6 Stress if drunk in a natural setting.  If you have over 60% Atavistic Influence, drinking it lets you see through the concrete and the wires, into the Tree behind everything (effectively, it becomes entheogenic). $4 per can. 

9. Aquamorbo - Blood-flavoured. Dark red can, metal-band logo text, foams over red. Can is weirdly devoid of text, nobody’s sure where it comes from, rumours of vampire-only soda factories persist. Sates vampires and other bloodlickers. If you have over 50% Corrupting Influence, it clears 2d6 Stress per can. $4 per Can. 

10. Smash - Salted-caramel-flavoured. Features an amateurish illustration of a chunk of caramel(?) punching a fruit on the can. Tagline: “FUCK FRUIT SODA. DRINK SMASH”. If you have never drunk a fruit flavoured soda in your life, clears 1d6+3 Stress out of a sense of loyalty to Smash (and thus, a form of Economic worship). Otherwise, just kind of salty-sweet. $5 per can. 

11. Mango Khan - Mango-flavoured. Logo appears to depict Genghis Khan in an alternate timeline where he was born as a mango. Clears 1d6 Stress via domesticating chemical additives, but that shit only fucks you up if you’re a cow. You can only get it from the drinks machine at Burger Amalgam, which prevents it being much use in the Dungeon. I guess unless you want to carry around a paper cup with a plastic lid and a plastic straw and embarrass your party in front of the cooler scavengers. You child. You reject. $6 dollars for a 2-dose cup that fills a hand and can’t be stored in your Inventory.

12. Professor Pear - Pear-flavoured. Indulgent bourgeois academic mascot Professor Pear is printed large, smug and elitist all over every can, arms folded and eyebrow cocked. Cooling, gives a clear-head and a faint buzz. Drinking a can of Professor Pear gives a 10-minute +2 bonus to SKLL / INT rolls. $6 per Can. 

13. Calcite Cola - Cave-flavoured. Old-style can, heavy. Grey trade-dress, claims to be “canned underground in Louisville”. Shake before you drink it or you’ll hit an impenetrable sediment layer. Only enjoyable to drink if you are a very specific kind of nut. For those with Atavistic and Aphotic influence totalling more than 40%, it clears 2d6 stress. $6 per Can. 

14. Petricola - Rain-flavoured. Has a wistfulness to it. When mixed with sad music and a good view, it clears 2d6 Stress. $6 per Can.    

15. Rab-It Zzoda - Carrot-flavoured. Neither tasty nor good for you. Leaves a bad taste in your mouth. That stupid motherfucker Rab-It leers at you from the bright orange can with his stupid fucking eyes and his bigass rabbit ears. God, how you hate him. If only Rab-It was a dungeon monster so you could beat him to death with lead pipes. Drink the can, haltingly, get a point of Rage stored up. $7.51 per Can, annoyingly.

16. Roentgenade - Lychee-flavoured. Maroon can with silver highlights - mature, reasonable graphic design. Radiates sensible vibes, lacking in wacky bullshit except for a cute little atom design engraved into the bottom, for a sensible chuckle when you pick it up. Clears 2d6 Irradiation and an equal amount of Stress, which is 0 if you have no Irradiation. $8 per Can. 

17. Fuerte - Strawberry-flavoured. Muscle-fiber pattern on the can. Overpowering, fake, chemical strawberry. Approaches the medicinal. Interacts strangely with adrenaline - the next MOVE / STR or INIT / WIS related roll you make has a +5 bonus, in exchange for you taking 1d6 poison damage as some of your adrenaline is converted into the novel Economic chemical referred to as “Fuertaline” (which is poisonous, naturally). $9 per can. 

18. Khthon - Pomegranate-flavoured. Gothy trade dress, spiky logo. Cans are unusually sturdy and heavy. Limited fizz, sedimented, always cold. Drinking a can inflicts 1d4 Stress from vague premonitions of mortality, but allows an extra save against phobias, charms, geases and illusions. $10 per Can. 

19. Razzbear - Raspberry-flavoured. Fine fizz, strong and even flavour, pleasant texture, nice aftertaste, doesn’t even make your teeth feel gross. Every can individually hand-crafted in response to that summer’s raspberry harvest and the terroir around the bottling plant. Faint hint of morphine. Serene and majestic, the purple grizzly Razzbear looks out understandingly from every can. Restores 1d4+4HP and clears 1d4+4 Stress per can. $12 per artisanal Can. 

20. Coca Cola - All the way from Atlanta. King of sodas, probably some kind of distributed Economic avatar. Drinking a can of Coca Cola turns 5% of a given God’s influence into Economic Influence (once per God). If you’ve done it for all seven possible gods, it clears 2d6 Stress instead, no strings attached. $3 per Can. 

Unusual soft drinks inside vending machines deep in the Dungeon may have even stranger effects.