G’laad deals with information and improvement. G’laad thinks information should be free, and that pretty much everything dealing with mortals can and should be improved. To that end, he drives his followers to higher and higher standards, simply to make them better. He doesn’t care if they actually USE their improvements for anything, and gets irate if they, for example, break a stringent exercise routine to fend off an attacking band of monsters. The changeover mostly makes him happy, since mortals are much more focused on improvement now, but y’know, the system’s not NEARLY good enough. If he could just kick those lazy gods out and take some of their power, oh the wonders he’d work! Like that time thing. It takes so long to do things! Why not let people go as fast as they want, really? G’laad’s Darkspell is Obsessive Compulsion, which allows the Cultist to share some of G’laad’s perfectionism with others. To G’laad it’s a benefit. To most noncultists hit by it, it’s a serious debuff.

  The Inscrutable Vastness of the Cerulean Carp is… strange. It’s said that the entity delights in showing its cultists new lores and vistas of places unimaginable, and creatures which may or may not exist. Many of the visions the entity sends its followers are inscrutable, and some are just plain silly. Others, though, others have been known to drive its cultists mad. The Carp cares not, and focuses on showing its visions to as many mortals as possible. The changeover seems to have been the point that this djinn gained in prominence, as before he was much more limited in his audience, for reasons inscrutable. The Cerulean Carp’s Darkspell is Phantasmal Picture, allowing the cultist to conjure an illusion comparable to the lowest accessible by novice Sensates.

  THE OLD ONES

  The old ones are, the old ones were, and the old ones shall ever be. They are not from the planes known to the scholars of Generica, but from places beyond, of which even the gods will not speak.

  Unlike the daemons, who seem to wish pain and suffering upon mortals, and the djinn, who wish to improve their lot regardless of the cost or safety of the improvements, the old ones seek entry into Generica. They were here once, long ago, before Konol did his work, and they know that when the stars are right they’ll be here once again. Unfortunately for everyone who ISN’T an old one, their presence has disturbing and horrific effects on the fabric of reality.

  They are feared because their influence and presence can even corrupt the immortal souls of mortals who stray too near them, ensuring they are never logged in the gods’ archives. Even daemons cannot touch souls, and djinn have no care for them, but old ones touch EVERYTHING. Usually with appendages that for sanity’s sake we pretend are tentacles, though if we were to truly understand them we’d see that even that was an abstraction.

  The old ones dwell beyond the boundaries, but some of their more human servitors refer to their collective realms as the Netz. Given the sanity-destroying habits of the old ones, it is impossible to believe any Generican mortal could survive in such a place for any amount of time. Although to that question, some servitors laugh, and say that anything that enters the Netz never truly dies.

  The servitors of the old ones range from humanlike with a deep WRONGNESS to them in some fundamental way, to incomprehensible masses of flesh and tentacles or organs and appendages combined in ways that were not meant to be. All of them are disturbing in some manner, to any but old one cultists. Some work best with rules, others need to be directly managed, and some are just set loose on reality while the cultist who summoned them runs the other way quickly.

  The old ones are nameless and varied and inscrutable, but three names keep popping up again and again; Great Cmpylyah, NIAL’https the Crawling CASE, and The Thing in Yellow (Who, confusingly, is also called Haskell, a name you should never say aloud.)

  Great Cmpylyah played an ancient and inscrutable part back during the chaos, before Konol, it was said. In fact, many of his more scholarly cultists insist that Konol would not have been able to do his part had not Cmpylyah successfully navigated and tamed the ancient Sea that was once Generica, and wrought from it a pleasing form. The truth of the matter is not known, for Cmpylyah, like many of the notably-aquatic old ones that seem to be subordinate to him, slumber endlessly in alien seas. Occasionally lesser ones will stir, and spread some small amount of corruption and influence, but for the most part they merely ARE, vast and quiescent and alien. The Darkspell of Great Cmpylyah is Tentaclular, which calls up the least filaments of one of his breed of old one, to entangle and taste whatever their lashing appendages can find.

  NIAL’https, the Crawling CASE, has been confused for a djinn before. He’s the most mortal of the great old ones, in semblance if not in truth. Though it’s been suggested that this is only a part of his dreaming mind, that the true bulk of him is as vast and inscrutable as the others, and that the humanlike form of the creature is nothing more than the equivalent of an angler fish’s lure… something to draw tasty mortals in while the brooding bulk of the predator seizes and consumes them. NIAL’https has been involved in the doom of three nations that I have managed to find, and rumors persist in the crumbling undead remnants of a fourth, that their true downfall was due to a man known as the Black Pharo, whose description and methods match the Crawling CASE almost perfectly. Of the three old ones, he is the most active and malign, though conversely, the easiest to deal with and probably the least damaging to his cultists. His Darkspell is Friendly Smile, which is used by skilled Merchants and Tamers as well.

  And then there is the Thing in Yellow. It speaks to those who delve deeply into magic, wizards and enchanters and others fascinated by the lore of true power, seeking to draw them into the flows and places that man was never meant to touch. It lures them with pursuit of TRUE knowledge, and TRUE power, and asks the skilled and prideful why they limit themselves to the mere dabblings that the gods permit them? It presents itself as a thing of cold and pure reason, but at the same time drives its cultists to violence and illogical acts that seem to serve no purpose than to horrify onlookers. Or perhaps there is a deeper purpose? Perhaps the patterns have significance? Perhaps… but the deeper you strive, the more madness beckons. Eventually Haskell has his due. His Godspell is Knack for Languages, for no tongue is beyond the Thing in Yellow.

  ONE LAST WARNING

  A final caution, to all who find this information intriguing… the choice to become a cultist is permanent. Unlike clerics, who can shift from one god to another if they feel called to do so, cultists may never change their affiliation. Once selected, once the dark power is allowed to influence your job, they will never let you go. Even if you revile them, even if you forsake their existence, sooner or later the power beckons, and even by doing the simple act of casting their Darkspell, or speaking their blasphemous chants, you are loosing their power once more into the world. And thus, even in the most minor of ways, you have done their work and weakened the fabric of reality that binds Generica.

  Perhaps the mysterious “Guilds” will clear this up someday, and allow alteration, even removal of the cultist job, thus truly severing these otherwise-inseparable ties. But until and unless this happens, the choice is permanent. And usually detrimental for everyone involved.

  Surviving First Contact 1

  “Golem Animus,”

  The teddy bear spoke, and everything changed.

  He watched, worried, as the invisible pressure built, stronger than he’d ever felt it before when he animated a golem. But he had done this many times before, and his skill was high, high enough that he could focus his will. Focus his will, and ensure that his best and oldest friend had the body they’d gone to so much work to prepare.

  And with joy in his heart, he watched as the ceramic dolly under his paw opened her eyes and tried to move her mouth.

  Your Golem Animus skill is now level 47!

  “Afgart.” She vocalized. “Umf. Ango. Ahng on. Hang on.”

  “Newborn’s Mercy,” hissed Zuula, laying her head on Cecelia’s red, frizzy hair.

  “Yorgum’s blessing of luck on Cecelia!” Fluffbear squeaked, slapping her hand on the ball-jointed doll’s ankle.

  “Status,” Cecelia said.

  Threadbare smiled, and offered her a paw up.

  And the porcelain doll took it, testing her new legs, and finding them graceful enough.

  “It’s fine, I hope?” Threadbare asked. He’d put a lot of work into learning and skilling up the sculptor job, which was evidently what you needed to make clay things, and pottery things as well. A LOT of work, knowing that they only had one shot at this. There was a makeshift kiln out back, filled with his failures, and after a full week of grinding, his successes.

  “It is.”

  “So what didja get?” The three-foot-long wooden dragon who’d been watching through the doorway pushed herself into the bedroom. “Tell me the racial skills are totes bitchin’.”

  “Well, the stats are way better than starting toy golems,” Cecelia told Madeline, smoothing her green cloth dress with fingers that Threadbare had crafted individually then worked into tiny ball joints, with Fluffbear’s help. “Better than wood, too. I’ve got a few triple digit attributes, mainly from my adventuring job levels, I think.”

  “Nahss!” Madeline said, nuzzling her with one oaken cheek. “I shoulda held out fah clay. Be a pahttery dragon or something.”

  “Well, one of the skills would do you no good. I’m immune to fire, which is of no use to you.” Cecelia said, easing herself down from the wrecked bedframe. Like most of the rest of the farmhouse, it was ruined, long gone to seed, with mold and vines growing over and through it. “And I have Gorgeous, which is like your Adorable skill, evidently. I skilled it up a bunch when I woke up.”

  “Yeah, I’m thinking you’re beautiful,” the two-foot-tall wooden minotaur said, hooking thumbs through his belt. “Not that, uh, well. I mean… ah, let’s not make it weird,” Garon finished.

  “No worry. I know what you mean.” Cecelia studied her pale hands, and shrugged. “I guess. It’s… this is going to take some getting used to.” She frowned, as something on her status screen caught her attention. “My hit points aren’t much better than a wood golem’s, but my armor is over a hundred. Some of that’s probably from my Human job but not much.” Cecelia said, rubbing her chin with one ceramic hand. “I wonder if I’d stayed unfired, if it would be reversed? High hit points, low armor?”

  “Yeah yeah,” Zuula said. The plush half-orc doll eased herself from the foot of the bed, dropped down next to the armored black teddy bear. “Skip to important part. How many of you jobs and levels you get back?”

  “Five animator, five knight… and five Steam Knight.” She smiled.

  And Threadbare felt joy well up inside him. It had been a lot of work and time to figure out how to make her face flexible enough to do that, with the tiny joints and the interplay of her wood skeleton and stuffing ‘muscles’. But it had been worth every bit of grinding, to see his little girl smile again.

  “Then we have what we need.” Garon relaxed, adjusted the harness slung over his wood-and-fur chest. The hatchet he’d found kept tugging it down.

  “I’m thinking of askin’ for an upgrade,” Madeline said, turning glass eyes on Threadbare. They were marbles, catseye marbles they’d found in the attic while casing the ruin. Probably the closest thing they’d get to a dragon’s slit pupils, Madeline had said. “Bettah stats are okay wit’ me.”

  “Not right now. We only had the one pinch of green reagent. And that was risky enough to get.” Threadbare shook his head. “But speaking of that, we need to go thank Graves. I think he’ll appreciate the results of his sacrifice. And his hard work.”

  The doll haunters and their golem friends filed out of the room, making their way around the big gap in the floorboards, stepping carefully as the floor creaked and groaned.

  They followed the faint sound of music. Eerie and in no tongue that anything on this plane spoke, it wound its way through the old house from outside. The late, unlamented Pastor Hatecraft would have called it eldritch, but then he always was an excitable one.

  No, there was nothing eldritch here. The assorted constructs knew it was only their friend Glub, barding it up.

  They found him outside the barn, which was moderately better preserved than the house, and intact enough to hold Annie Mata’s wagon. A fire crackled not far from the barn doorway, and the rest of their friends sat around the campsite, watching them approach with relieved eyes. They were five in number, a big black bobcat and a cougar about half his size, both cats sound asleep by the warmest part of the fire. Next to them was a black-haired man wearing a padded cloth tunic and trousers, so thin that his bones were flush to his skin in places. Sitting on a nearby log was a little wooden doll that could only be described as a fishman, down to its leather catfish whiskers and big googly eyes.

  And then there was the catgirl.

  “Oh wow!” A wooden marionette, of a black-haired woman with two kitty ears sticking out of her head and a tail poking out through a hole in her pants jumped up, stringless. She grinned at Cecelia, showing tiny fangs. “Captain, you’re gorgeous! Desu, desu.”

  “You’re still saying that word, Kayin?” Garon snorted. “Seriously?”

  “Shut up. I swear it gets me racial job experience,” the assassin who’d once been human but was now an undead spirit haunting a wooden catgirl golem walked up to Cecelia, and knelt. “Captain! Reporting for duty!”

  “Oh get up. Come on, come on,” Cecelia took her shoulders and straightened her to her feet. Her ball-jointed body was one of the larger golems here, standing two feet high, towering over her companions. “Pretty sure that oath was only until death.”

  “Kayin swore a new one,” offered the sole living human in the group, from the comfort of the fire. Graves leaned his withered body over his cane, studying Cecelia. “I’ll swear to a new code myself, as soon as I get another knight level. My armor’s gone, so I’ll need all the defense boosts I can get.”

  “I still feel guilty about that,” Cecelia looked away. “That was enchanted armor.”

  “Don’t be. I’m just glad we guessed right, and one of its components was green reagent. And after the bear gave up his pants for the task, I couldn’t do any less.”

  “It does feel a little strange without them,” Threadbare said, looking down to his paw, and the golden, bear-headed rod he now had to wield without the benefit of hammerspace. “My scepter’s out in the open now, for everyone to see.”

  There was a pause, then everyone but Threadbare and Fluffbear and the cats were laughing.

  “Um,” the teddy bear said, puzzled.

  “It’s probably a fart joke. Or about poop. Or a sex joke,” Fluffbear explained to him.

  “It the last one. Sex joke.” Zuula said, winding down and proceeding to explain the meaning of the joke in detail.

  Threadbare still didn’t see why it was funny, but whatever. If his friends got a good laugh out of it he didn’t mind.

  “Besides,” Graves said, “the armor would have made me stand out more. I’m sure that the inquisitor has reported me as a traitor by now. And it would’ve… hm… have you heard of the swordsman’s curse?”

  “Oh. That.” Cecelia snorted. Kayin nodded.

  “I don’t think we have.” Threadbare glanced back to Garon, Madeline, and Zuula, who were three of his big touchstones for worldly knowledge. They all shook their heads.

  “It’s a dumb, macho thing. So it’s mainly bored noblemen and soldiers, is who you see it in,” Cecelia explained. “If someone is openly carrying a sword you kind of expect them to know how to use it. And if you think they might not and YOU can use your sword, you call them out to see who’s better. Then you fight, and if you win you look good, and if you lose you can kiss up to the winner, and maybe they’ll be your friend. And then you’ll have a friend who’s better than you at fighting.”

  “It seems like a big waste of time,” Threadbare said. “Why not just be friends at the start of it all?”

  “Because the swords get in the way, for certain types of people,” Cecelia said.

  “Some people had to go through a lot to earn those swords,” Kayin said. “Not that I’m defending it, but… they see someone else with a sword, they maybe want to test to see if they’re at the same point. Been through the same stuff.”

  “My point is,” Graves said, settling back onto his broken chair, “if I go around wearing really heavy armor, then when we get into a fight people are going to assume I’m a very hard target and try to hit me really hard. Whereas if I’m wearing cloth, they’ll go “oh, mage.” And send someone sneaky to shank me while the tanks batter at each other. Which is where Always in Uniform comes in. Invisible, weightless chainmail-equivalent, you know how that goes, Cecelia.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” The doll smiled. “Always in Uniform.” Her eyebrows rose, and Threadbare sighed in relief to see it. Those had been tricky to rig.

  “Oh! It stacks with my golem armor!” Cecelia said.

  “Good. We need you alive and as hard a target as possible if this is going to work,” Garon said, leaning on one of Madeline’s wings as she played with the fire. “Which means that if and when we get a higher golem option possible, we have to consider transplanting you. So don’t get too comfy.”

  “Thanks again for letting me try that out,” Graves said to Kayin. “Good to know we can swap people around without destroying the golem bodies first.”

  Bored by all the talk about swords and challenges and stuff that was self-evident to every orc, Zuula wandered over to Glub, who was merrily humming along more quietly, now that his pals were back and chatting. “He eating?” She said, jerking a cloth thumb towards Graves.