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Braden GMPhd was/is working on a Rifter Article that (I think) might answer those questions.

I have no opinion on the matter myself though.

~ Josh

Yes, yes, yes...I will finish Brave New Wormwood. Can I move to my new house first though?

What's under Wormwood? Well, some ancient ledgends tell of a secret, second world inside it, but no one has yet been able to find it.

There is a large meteor under the city of Worldgate. The 9 Lords of the Exchequer who run the Free City mine the meteor (Wormwood has healed over it) and use the metal to make Soulstuf weapons. Unfortunatly, the meteor has the adverse effect of killing the Wormwood that has grown over it like a scab. Thus, Worldgate cannot summon symbiotes, stones, have food caves, or water. The buildings are grey and short.

So Worldgate trades for food and other supplies by renting out its apparently limitless mercenary/conscription army, The New Model Army.

I also suspect that the mythical "Control Centre" lurks deep inside Wormwood, as well as the genetic material nessecary to re-birth the race that made Wormwood...

Hi there!

Since KS is always happy to press, that magic
is not known to have any ill effect (no pollution, etc),
this theory is flawed.

Adios
KLM

KLM wrote:Since KS is always happy to press, that magic is not known to have any ill effect (no pollution, etc), this theory is flawed.

However, high magic concentrations do have odd effects on living beings and even the landscape (see Through the Glass Darkly). Whereas the PPE level probably wouldn't be toxic, it could very likely have distortional and mutagenic effects.

Braden, GMPhD wrote:I also suspect that the mythical "Control Centre" lurks deep inside Wormwood, as well as the genetic material nessecary to re-birth the race that made Wormwood...

Where The Architect waits to explain how all of this has happened before, and will happen again.

Warwolf wrote:

Braden, GMPhD wrote:I also suspect that the mythical "Control Centre" lurks deep inside Wormwood, as well as the genetic material nessecary to re-birth the race that made Wormwood...

Where The Architect waits to explain how all of this has happened before, and will happen again.

Actually... Wormwood was built by a race we'll call the engineers. The Engineer's learned everything there was to know about the sciences, but never figured our how to travel faster than light. So when their sun went nova, it was the end of all their millions of years of history.

or was it?

They built a planet, the ultimate arcology, and filled ti with the genetic knowledge to rebirth their entire civilization. Then they launched it out into space, where it would travel, slower than light, for hundreds of thousands of years until it settled into orbit around a new, suitable star.

however, the voyage was so long that several things happened.

One: Wormwood was hit by a meteor where Worldgate now stands. The Living planet tried its best to heal the damage, but several critical "systems" were damaged.

Two: when it settled into its current orbit, the damaged systems failed to rebirth the Engineers. So it sat empty until the first humans arrived. Since Humans are very close genetically to Engineers, Wormwood just started caring for them... as it had been programmed to do.

So somewhere, deep inside Wormwood, is the Control Centre. If it could be repaired somehow, Wormwood would resume its original program, rebirth the Engineers, and a new faction would join the fight against the Unholy...

Braden, GMPhD wrote:Actually... Wormwood was built by a race we'll call the engineers. The Engineer's learned everything there was to know about the sciences, but never figured our how to travel faster than light. So when their sun went nova, it was the end of all their millions of years of history.

or was it?

They built a planet, the ultimate arcology, and filled ti with the genetic knowledge to rebirth their entire civilization. Then they launched it out into space, where it would travel, slower than light, for hundreds of thousands of years until it settled into orbit around a new, suitable star.

however, the voyage was so long that several things happened.

One: Wormwood was hit by a meteor where Worldgate now stands. The Living planet tried its best to heal the damage, but several critical "systems" were damaged.

Two: when it settled into its current orbit, the damaged systems failed to rebirth the Engineers. So it sat empty until the first humans arrived. Since Humans are very close genetically to Engineers, Wormwood just started caring for them... as it had been programmed to do.

So somewhere, deep inside Wormwood, is the Control Centre. If it could be repaired somehow, Wormwood would resume its original program, rebirth the Engineers, and a new faction would join the fight against the Unholy...

I was actually making a Matrix joke.

I'm not sure I dig the whole sci-fi/alien angle. It just doesn't seem to fit with the previous "dark and gritty" feel that Wormwood had. To fit with that, Wormwood would need more supernatural/magical origins. Just my opinion anyway.

I got the Matrix joke...

This was just background, never really meant to be used in actual game play. I just like to know where things come from.

Actually, I'm currently working on a story idea linking several sites in the Megaverse together. I think the Nightlands and Wormwood may have been populated by the same race known as the Lost at one point. Notice the similarity in that no natives have psionic abilities, and that the Unholy were stored away into their dark abyss. I think the attempts to screw them up and anchor them to a dimension worked on or near Wormwood, but something similar failed in the Nightlands. So if I were a surviving member of a lost race, I'd make a magical bunker and hide things so no one found me to do experiments in magic or keep records of my race or such...unlike the writers of a certain show on ABC, they managed to hide the hatch a lot better.

Just my opinion anyway. Maybe the magic in the caves akin to ley lines is similar to synaptic activity in a giant brain, or mystic arteries for blood and PPE is the life blood of the place. So anything closer to the center is either closer to the heart, or brain of the place. Just my two cent's worth.

Warwolf wrote:

KLM wrote:Since KS is always happy to press, that magic is not known to have any ill effect (no pollution, etc), this theory is flawed.

However, high magic concentrations do have odd effects on living beings and even the landscape (see Through the Glass Darkly). Whereas the PPE level probably wouldn't be toxic, it could very likely have distortional and mutagenic effects.

Braden, GMPhD wrote:I also suspect that the mythical "Control Centre" lurks deep inside Wormwood, as well as the genetic material nessecary to re-birth the race that made Wormwood...

Where The Architect waits to explain how all of this has happened before, and will happen again.

In the last Wormwood game I ran, the characters ended up investigating tremors in the Resin Mountains. It turned out there was a vast series of tunnels and bio-mechanisms down there. The resin was actually leaking fluids from massive engines (think the size of a small city each) and the Unholy had agents attempting to turn them on. I used the game as a reason to introduce many of the items I was putting out at the time through the now defunct Wormwood Netbook, including new types of battle saints.

It was a hellafun game.