Annulus

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locations: rotglen, ashville ruins, elephant grave

gods: squidboots, the masked dreamer

autostrippers dispute

communist propaganda

revenant football team- dismemberments

unusual necrotech applications (exoskeleton, chainsaw, telecommunicators)

hunter's lodge initiation

imperial-possessed bogleech

In the generally undifferentiated swampy tangle of the Mucklands, there is only one mountain. The natives had a name for it that's now been forgotten; everybody just calls it The Mountain now. No other name is needed, or even appropriate now that its spirit has been killed.

Climb up to the caldera and you can see the ruins of the old temple there, where the ancient people threw in their sacrifices and the monks walked barefoot on warm stone. Visiting is not recommended at the present time, however, since you'd first have to get past all of The Mountain's children vying for their dead parent's mantle. There are a lot of them, and their battles are fierce.

A bit further down the slope you can find a much more contemporary ruin: Highcastle Hot Springs Resort. A luxury getaway catering to the ultra-wealthy built around The Mountain's most beautiful hot springs, situated high above the smell and the dirt and the heartseekers in the swampland below. There was just one unforseen problem: when the rainy season begins, every pool on the mountainside becomes decidedly more caustic as dissolved sulphur flows in. When the resort's owner turned to soup, so did its funding.

There are known to be immensely valuable treasures in both the temple and the resort- the little stuff was looted, but the big fancy pieces of art and the valuable heavy construction machinery should still be mostly intact. If there were a powerful spirit with sway over the mountainside, they could theoretically control many aspects of The Mountain- even maintain the springs' purity and allow the resort to open again (or at least allow the pools to be looted and explored during the rainy season). The previous mountain spirit was uncooperative with the resort, and that's why they're dead now.

From a human standpoint, the spirits might seem to be eternal and unchanging. Many of them have been around since the dawn of humanity, and the handful that still have active cults among the Echoes seem to be pursuing basically the same agendas that they always have. This viewpoint is understandable but fundamentally incorrect.

Spirits might have significantly more longevity than humans, but they are neither eternal nor entirely independent, since human belief directly gives them sustenance and power. Old spirits whose domains no longer interest humanity must change or else fade away, and new spirits spark into being all the time in response to the changing world. At no time in history has the world changed more quickly and drastically than it has in recent years, and only a fool would assume that the spiritual world hasn't been shaken up as well.

As industrialization has increasingly changed the way humanity lives and enabled different desires to come to the forefront, spirits have arisen to feed off them. A group of nine such spirits have banded together into a loose pantheon branded the 'Neozodiac', and they grant power in exchange for dark indulgence and the path of least resistance.

The Neozodiac are not (yet) worshiped in shrines or churches but in action and deed. A power-hungry bureaucrat scheming for their next promotion prays to Monkey with every smiling lie and sabotage of a rival. A corpulent diner sits down to an entire roast turkey, and every bone sucked clean is a paean to Pig. A drilling rig dumping its salt-refining effluvia directly into the swamp has praised and bolstered Crab.

As the Neozodiac's power grows, more traditional cults petitioning them for power directly have also begun to spring up. The Imperial authorities do not frown on or persecute this activity the same way they do worshippers of the Old Gods, and so the Neozodiac's tendrils have begun to permeate popular culture. You can buy Lucky Rabbit cosmetics, deposit your leftover money into your local branch of the Ratking bank, and see a Badger Power sticker on the back of several other cars on your way home.

Though they wear the likenesses of animals, the Neozodiac are close enough to being actual demons as we understand them that the differences are purely semantic.

The Neozodiac are nine, but they are also one. They bolster one another symbiotically, even as they each undermine the other. Their fate as a pantheon is linked. They love and hate each other almost as much as they love and hate you, and one day they hope to supplant both the Moon Church and the Old Gods alike.

• Rat feeds off hoarding. It is the spirit of taking without giving, of more-more-more, of numbers-go-up. Rat tells you to buy extra when there's a shortage and sell it to the desperate at obscene markups. Rat wants you to sleep on a bed of golden dosh like a dragon and never spend or enjoy a single bit of it.
• Lizard feeds off prejudice and tribalism. Lizard divides people into two groups: those that you care about because they remind you of yourself, and those that can be sacrificed or ignored because their pain doesn't matter. The line of division is always moving based on a thousand different factors, and that's the way Lizard likes it.
• Badger feeds off bloodlust and conflict. Badger loves military jingoism, glorified violence, boots stomping on faces, public executions, and animal cruelty just for the sake of it. Badger wants you to kill, kill, kill and the target doesn't much matter. The act is the purpose.
• Rabbit feeds off sexual dysfunction. Rabbit is the patron of pornography addiction, of plastic surgery and penis enlargement pills and eating disorders. Rabbit urges its followers to seek out ever-greater and more forbidden thrills without ever feeling genuine connection at all.
• Monkey feeds off domination and social climbing. Monkey doesn't believe in equality, since there can be only one at the top. Take the top by any means necessary, then ruthlessly abuse everyone below you. Friendship is only useful to get others to let their guard down so you can betray them later.
• Crab feeds off waste and pollution. Crab is poison and sickness and lead in the water and microplastics climbing up the food chain. Crab wants you to throw things away the second you grow tired of them. Crab protects its followers from their malaise, but only if they actively make the problem worse.
• Pig feeds off consumption to excess. Pig is gluttony and drug addiction and self-destructive indulgence. Pig is never sharing or moderation or budgeting. Pig wants you to do what feels good, and then keep going even after it doesn't anymore.
• Chicken feeds off lies and gossip. Chicken is fake news, conspiracy theories, hateful slander, and stirring up drama because you're bored. Chicken grabs attention by any means necessary and delights in the chaos that follows.
• Turtle feeds off fatigue and apathy. Turtle whispers that there is nothing you can do, so trying is pointless. Turtle is a missed call from your mom that you will never return, the way you avert your eyes from hobos begging for change, the pillow you put over your head when you're woken up by screams in the night. While you spend your limited energy resisting every other member of the Neozodiac, Turtle sits patiently and waits to bring you back into the fold when you can't fight any more.

The current CEO of the Clamberdown Railway Company is Horton Rand. Rand's office is located in the basement of the building; if you want to visit you will be required to sign a waiver before they hand over the key. No escorts are necessary or provided. Say hello to Horton's current personal assistant and head on in; he gets so few visitors these days that there's no need for an appointment.

Before you open the tank, be sure to tap on it lightly first (there is a handwritten sign taped to its side reminding you of this). If Horton is awake, he'll stick his head out of the murky water and say hello. If not, he'll thrash violently against the glass and you'll have to come back another day. This simple check has cut the rate at which Horton has to hire new personal assistants fully in half, so don't get complacent and forget.

If you're here to visit, you're probably a researcher hoping to find out more about Horton's unique condition. Horton will be cheerful and cooperative if this is the case, and not just because he's more keen than anyone to learn exactly what happened that day the bog leech ate him. Scientists, especially practical hands-on researchers, are one of the few classes of people that Horton respects.

Horton absolutely despises Echoes and the spirits they worship, considering them outdated, demanding and petulant forces determined to keep humanity servile and dependent on them for handouts (he is not incorrect in this). Unusually for an Imperial, he even hates the Neozodiac (although he will begrudgingly allow you to have Lizard- or Monkey-branded merchandise in his presence, if you must). Allow him to talk about this topic and he'll happily rant for hours, frequently musing aloud what it would be like to feel the crunch of godflesh in his maw- he means, the leech's maw. Not his. Yes.

Horton has outgrown two tanks already, and is well on his way to a third. If it weren't for all his invaluable expertise, it's hard to imagine that Acting CEO Marcia Rand wouldn't have just released him into the swamp long ago. It's probably only a matter of time.