veins of the earth: roads

veins of the earth: what does a city looklike, anyway.

these are all tunnels.

the #1 rule is there is no visibility.

most cities have the thing where you can see them from afar. Well there's no sightlines in the veins. that being said there are many other signs, as much as you'd expect to see driving up to a city: institutions, travelers, smaller hubs, and most importantly, roads.

here's a question: what does a road look like in the veins? there's a couple kinds that occur to me

1. climbing routes, as in Blind Descent, or any supercaving: scratched rock, permanent pistons, rope maybe

2. heavily used climbing routes: handholds a combination of obvious and reliable and sometimes faulty, one obvious path that is different from everywhere else, loads of graffiti, ziplines

3. duerger were here: very different, travel is along whatever architectural fantasia duerger were into that week, in my game rn it's ziggarauts everywhere, also marks of perilous supermachines

4. a climbing route good enough that essentially no checks are needed. requires a decent amount of upkeep

probably most important is quality of climbing path, the closer you're to civilization the better it'll all be, plus the more likely you are to see other travelers, plus the density of other travelers to each other

you can measure this in days of travel for both: distance from civilization, = bonus to climbing path quality = likelihood of travelers = density of travelers to each other

so this is a random encounter chart for a road. check daily. roll 1d10 per table and add +1 per day's distance from civilization.

quality of path:

10+ no established climbing path whatsoever
7-9 traces of a path: direction discernible, no bonus
5-6 poor quality path: +1d4 to all climb checks needed
1-4 quality path no checks needed

if there's some sort of special situation going on, like duerger carvings, use that instead.

likelihood of travelers: 

8-10+: no group encountered
7: fresh traces of another group
6-1: group encountered

if you roll a 1, you always encounter a group.

density of travelers (roll if you encounter a group)

7-10+: no other groups detectable
6: you _think_ someone might be nearby
5: there is another group within ear/smell/distant light range (not detectable constantly, inconstantly)
3-4: 2 groups are encountered instead of one.
2: crowded at a block.

self-defense on the veins-road:

the rule for travelers in the veins is that generally everyone expects that if you can be taken by force with little damage incurred you will be; it's considered magnanimous if you don't kill and eat the vulnerable on your travels.

so, everyone tries to guarantee to do more damage than they're worth. they'll be prepared to defend themselves against things more powerful than you; but remember, it's not an even matchup most can afford, but rather a threat.

(the threat is, if you're damaged=weakened, you're likely to get eaten by a whole host of other travelers. this is something pretty well supported by LOTFP's rules on hp recovery.)

forms of self-defense: (these aren't mutually exclusive)

1. weapons

2. explosives. bad idea underground. but some do carry: suicide jars full of poisonous gas. guarantees of a curse are ever popular, and some do actually work; it's unpredictable. rarely there could be actual explosive devices.

3. incompatible value; the food we have won't suit you. can be achieved alchemically or with those poison pills duerger-actually-derro sell. (y'know, the ones who say their dwarves, but you can really tell...)  sort of comparable to #2 above with the addition that some races really aren't edible to each other. you have to be pretty different for that to be true, as even poisonous food has way of getting digested. esoterically you might find a group of travelers disguised as a different race not edible to anyone, which I guess would be archeans or cambrimen (both impossible to disguise as, I should note)

4. screaming really loud, like really loud


the state they're in: roll1d10, don't add bonuses

1-5: full strength
6-9: less than full but they appear pretty much full (-1d4 HD, d4 explodes)
10: it can be readily perceived that they are not at full strength (-1d8 HD, d8 explodes)

their goal: roll 1d10, no bonuses, note that travel is fantastically expensive in the veins.

10-7:trading (well protected)
6-5:refugees (will probably lie about it)
4:pilgrimage (large group, well protected)
3:carrying a message (small group, well protected)
2:migration (large group)
1:a group of adventurers (well protected)

number travelling:
1d4 small group
1d8 normal group, d8 explodes
3d10: large group

HD values: 1/number travelling + 2d6/if well protected (or more, depending)

noncombatanats: anyone who can't fight is either a baby or a child too young to fight (very young) or like an otherwise extremely useful old person and are virtually treasure, so tack on a few maybe

racial makeup: in my game I think I'm going to have it be somewhat vague, but everyone is pretty much human with some built in other genetics and mutations mayb

travelers from the more exotic cultures of the veins:

derro: because travelling is such a vulnerable activity derro will zero-deny their own state of travel to the point of not ever travelling. nonetheless they are found on roads, unfortunately. derro travelers are just a standard derro encouter with the improv paranoia

olm: sole travelers, nearly all, 3 or 4 olm travelling together would be the equivalent of an entire army in terms of resources being marshaled. that being said 3 olm are not an army in terms of strength so when olm have to travel its one olm trying to avoid trouble, up to something like a vision quest (an example borrowed from the random encounters table)

gnonmen: gnonmen caravans are an absolute thing, they'll absolutely help anyone that they can detect as good, which is rarely anyone down here. a caravan looks like just a bunch of walking gnonmen maybe dragging something, no vehicles. 3d10 gnonmen +2d6 HD protection

duerger: duerger travel in titanic war-construction-crews so they're almost never encountered solely, except as the reaching fingers of the mass, so if you see some they're the scouts of the swedish army so to speak.  duerger scouts: 1d12 duerger of like d6 hd each, each interested in information, not food or lumes. conditions of the environment more important than the people. wandering around, thumbs in the air, squinting. one hand may be idly carving

deep janeen: the main impression deep janeen want to give their travelling servants is a bandit's score so apparently rich that it goes beyond being obviously a trap.

some deep janeen travelling servants:

1. a single weathered man carrying a pack 4 times his size completely covered with hanging and glittering emeralds. the emeralds sing and scrape, it's like a love song to bandits, they reflect all light as if its their light. any route with a squeeze would be impossible, these travelers take their time.

I think if you kill the servant (not easy, they have HP in their reality like we do in our abstraction; they just sort of soak up damage for a while [10HD] ) and they'll defend themselves after lowering the pack down, with an old and large knife ([1d8]) ....or take the emerald (it just rips away in your hand, like an overripe fruit or else it hangs really strongly and cuts your hand) you'll find the meat of the body wiry, and the emeralds not as valuable as you thought. They certainly won't reflect light like they did... or try to lift the pack: immeasurably heavy, as if one solid superdense object. inside: things, many things, none of them treasure exactly.

2. a curious, girllike servant, always asking questions, wearing a silk smock, carrying nothing. wandering and crawling on her bare feet and hands. people avoid her, even monsters. she is not trying to get anywhere. she can't climb, she asks for help.

3. a bunch of migrating penguins, carrying an i-beam (from the ironic deep janeen)

4. a thing that burns everything within .75turns with fire, you start feeling the heat approaching at 1 turn. if you get to the center somehow it's a superhot boy struggling and carrying a heavy magic-ball-sized orb

5. {sound of a regiment of cavalry, moving through the veins, will hail other travelers as appropriate, can inflict harm}

6. rival substratal machine reduced to carrying messages. has blade arms and not enough limbs, covered in muck, pathetically scrabbling at walls, will try over and over again.

7. avalanche of pure crystal which moves quickly through the veins, crushing all it passes (should be rare, terrified of salt)

aelf adal: i don't fucking know, probably use skerples's thing, although I believe they describes a regional situation.

knotsmen: groups of knotsmen already well detailed in the book.

also you can use the encounter table on p 269 instead.