Code & Dagger

volume i
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a sourcebook for
1 cryptomancer TM
 credits
/root/credits

the cryptomancer architecture review board (CARB) is:

ignacio movelln castillejo

matthew jenison
eric stewart
g. michael truran
chad walker

editing, layout, and design:

chad walker

cryptomancer created by:

chad walker
timid robot zehta

first edition. first printing. 2015, 2016 Land of NOP LLC.

Cryptomancer is a trademark of Land of NOP LLC. all rights
reserved.

land of
0x90

2
directory listing
/root/ls

drw-rw-r-- root root changelog/.......................5

drw-rw-r-- root root crypto-gear prosthesis/..........7
drw-rw-r-- root root hacks and exploits/.............19
drw-rw-r-- root root threat intel/...................31
drw-rw-r-- root root endgame/........................35
drw-rw-r-- root root after the spire/,,,,,...........45

3
/root/sudo apt-get install code_and_dagger
reading package list... done
building dependency tree
reading state information... done
the following new packages will be installed:
code_and_dagger
1 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
need to get 1,337 kb of archives.
after this operation, 2,017 kb of additional disk space will be used.
do you want to continue [y/n]:y
installing code_and_dagger
trying url http://cryptorpg.com/user-generated-content.tar.gz
content type application/x-gzip length 1337000 bytes <1337 kb>
opened url
===========================================
downloaded 1337 kb

*installing *code_and_dagger*
**package code_and_dagger unpacked and md5 sums checked
...done.

/root/cd changelog
/root/changelog/ls

-rw-rw-r-- root root changelog..............................5

changelog

4
/root/changelog
Changelog
In August of 2016, we held our nose and pushed
the publish button. Cryptomancer was not without its
warts, but it was the best we could do given the constraints
we had. The alternative was to remain in development while
the real world of cryptography, privacy, and surveillance
passed us by. In the first half of 2016, we watched major
technology brands defy government demands for encryp-
tion keys and built-in backdoors to popular consumer prod-
ucts. We watched a former Attorney General acknowledge
that our eras most loved and loathed leaker of classified data
performed a public service. With all that was transpiring,
we couldnt sit on the game any longer.

It wouldnt be long until a community of real-life

cryptomancers, fellow nerd-warriors from around the globe,
swooped in to make our game better than we could have
done ourselves. Code & Dagger is the product of the Cryp-
tomancer Architecture Review Board (CARB), a group of
indie-game players and designers who submitted, reviewed,
and/or tested new ideas that augment the core games rules
and setting. The majority of content in this volume was
created by or inspired by that group, but modified and/
or rewritten by this author to maintain a consistent voice
throughout. Individual CARB members are recognized for
their contributions in each section of this book.

In Code & Dagger, you'll find a wide range of new

rules and setting materials for Cryptomancer, ranging from
the unapologetically gamer-centric (e.g. crypto-gear cyber-
limbs, new spells) to the staunchly technical (e.g. financial
systems, automated teller machines, and cryptovault hard-
ening). Perhaps most exciting are campaign rules permitting
players to take the Risk Eaters head-on and storm the spire.
However, the CARBs work isnt done. This is just our first
volume of Code & Dagger. We hope there will be more and
that they will contain your contributions Cryptomancer.

-Chad Walker
cryptomancer.actual@gmail.com

5
/root/changelog/cd ..
/root/cd crypto-gear prosthesis
/root/crypto-gear prosthesis/ls

-rw-rw-r-- root root overview..............................7

-rw-rw-r-- root root cryptomantic considerations...........8
-rw-rw-r-- root root mundane security concerns............11
-rw-rw-r-- root root talents..............................11
-rw-rw-r-- root root at what cost?........................12
-rw-rw-r-- root root rules and qualities..................14
-rw-rw-r-- root root upgrades.............................17

crypto-gear
prosthesis

6
 Crypto-Gear Prosthesis : Eric Stewart, G. Micheal Truran, Chad Walker
/root/crypto-gear prosthesis/
Overview
Crypto-gear prosthesis is the exceedingly rare and
exorbitantly expensive synthesis of crypto-gear mechanics
and mundane (i.e. non-magical) medicine. Traditional pros-
thesis such as peg legs, hook hands, glass eyes, and the like
have been reliable, if limited, prosthesis for mortals miss-
ing organs or limbs due to accident, combat injury, disease,
or by chance at birth. Since the advent of the crypto-gear,
machinists and medics have dreamed of fusing mortal with
machine. However, only recently in the Modern Age have
advances in crypto-gear miniaturization and contact cryp-
tomancy (i.e. interacting with a shard without using ones
hands) allowed for this dream to become reality. In plain
terms, crypto-gear prosthesis is a replacement mechanical
limb or organ that is operated by a shard. The patient con-
trols the limb by issuing commands to its embedded control
shard, which happens to be making physical contact with
the patients body, often the stump of the limb that has been
replaced.

Contact cryptomancy was pioneered by famed

dwarven cryptomancer Shylas GodOre. GodOre was stalked
by and eventually eaten by the dragon Moxakazhul after she
tricked the one thousand year old beast into giving up its
true name. The dragon was quickly subdued by GodOres
comrades and fed a powerful emetic, forcing Moxakazhul
to vomit out the cryptomancers corpse. When GodOre was
put back together for resurrection, one of her legs and
both of her arms could not be recovered. Refusing to be
severed from the Shardscape, GodOre committed to doing
the impossible; interacting with a shard by using her foot.
Channeling ones will through ones foot is not intuitive.
Its the equivalent of a master painter relearning her craft
by using a paintbrush between her toes. It requires a rerout-
ing of ones mental pathways, only possible through months
or even years of determined practice. Yet, GodOre proved
it could be done. When a machinist witnessed her hold a
shard with her foot and then contort herself so she could
use the stump of an arm to encrypt her messages, the seeds
--more--

7
01010101
10101010
01010101 of crypto-gear prosthesis were planted.
10101010
Crypto-gear prosthesis, or crypto-limbs for short,
01010101
are about as rare in society as enchanted items. Perhaps 1 in
10101010 1000 mortals possess this technology, though considerably
01010101 more could benefit from it were it not so expensive. They
10101010 typically exist in the form of arms, legs, and glass eyes (imbu-
ing sight to the blind through use of the Shard Scry spell).
01010101 Each crypto-limb must be custom-made for an individuals
10101010 body dimensions and gait. Further, each crypto-limb also
01010101 contains its own orphan shard or is part of a shardnet (de-
10101010 pending on specifications), adding to its already consider-
able cost. A patient must spend several months acclimating
01010101 to a crypto-limb's control shard. Crypto-limbs do not imbue
10101010 their owners with superhuman speed or strength, though
01010101 they do hit slightly harder due to their metallic composition
and the patients inability to feel pain during impact. They
10101010
are relatively inconspicuous when clothed, save for the soft
01010101 hissing and whining of hydraulic gears. Truly exotic cryp-
10101010 to-limbs such as prehensile tails and collapsible wings are
01010101 almost unheard of, in part because the (ethical) machinists
who build prosthesis maintain a moratorium on designs that
10101010 would make society fear or restrict this medical technology.
01010101
10101010 /root/crypto-gear prosthesis/
01010101 Cryptomantic considerations
10101010
01010101 A crypto-gear works when a user issues a com-
mand to its embedded command shard, either directly to
10101010 the shard or over shardnet. Crypto-limbs contain bundles of
01010101 crypto-gears clustered to a single command shard and main-
10101010 tain locomotion by virtue of receiving a constant stream of
commands from the patient. For example, the command
01010101 step would compel a crypto-leg to step forward, while the
10101010 command kick would compel the crypto-leg to kick for-
01010101 ward. Step issued in rapid succession (e.g. step-step-step-
10101010 step) would bring the patient to a jog. Part of a patients
long acclimation to a crypto-limb is the time it takes to learn
01010101 the hundreds of command words and proper syntax required
10101010 to move the limb in a natural way. However, once acclima-
01010101
10101010 --more--
01010101
10101010 8
01010101
 Crypto-Gear Prosthesis : Eric Stewart, G. Micheal Truran, Chad Walker
tion is complete, the patient is able to subconsciously issue
commands in such a rapid and fluid manner, she no longer
realizes she is even doing so. She is also able to multi-thread:
simultaneously issue commands to two or more crypto-gear
prosthesis attached to her body, so long as they are part of
the same shardnet.

The crypto-gear clusters inside a crypto-limb work

a little differently than a stand-alone crypto-gear. Unlike
a crypto-gear, which responds to a single encrypted pass-
phrase to perform a single function, clusters respond to
many passphrases, each performing different functions, but
all encrypted with a single passphrase. This means that the
patient must raise another limb towards the command shard
and inject a keyphrase to establish an encrypted session. The
crypto-limb will then respond to whatever commands the
patient is sending it. Once the session is established, it re-
mains in place unless something happens to tear it down
(e.g. the patient goes to sleep, the limb falls off, or she estab-
lishes a connection to a different shardnet, etc.). Changing
the keyphrase is as easy as pressing a factory reset button
accessible only by removing the crypto-limb. When this
button is pressed, the next clear-text phrase received be-
comes the new keyphrase.

A patient with a crypto-limb is always connected

to its command shard, unless she removes the limb or acti-
vates a (hard to reach) mechanism that creates a literal air-
gap between her flesh and the command shard (which also
severs the patients control of the limb). The connection is
just as easily reestablished. This mechanism is standard issue
in all crypto-limbs because otherwise, any time the patient
interacts with another shard, she becomes a bridge between
two shardnets. This can be problematic. Remember; an ac-
tor forming a bridge can observe the echoes traversing her,
but cannot be an active participant. This means she couldnt
send messages to others, let alone send commands to her
crypto-limb, even if she wanted to. Not only does the air-
gap ensure she can communicate freely, but it also prevents
hostile actors on the bridged shardnet from potentially issu-
ing commands to her crypto-limb. Air-gapping crypto-eyes

--more--

9
01010101
10101010
01010101 involves popping them out of their sockets.
10101010
It should be noted that often times, a crypto-limbs
01010101
command shard is part of shardnet For example, perhaps
10101010 the machinist who designed the limb wants to ensure that
01010101 he can perform remote diagnostics on the limb and help the
10101010 patient troubleshoot problems no matter where she is. A less
savory example concerns a mogul who paid for the cryp-
01010101 to-limb making sure that he can track where his property
10101010 is going. The cryptomantic considerations at play here are
01010101 many (e.g. eaves-dropping, commandeering the limb, Trac-
10101010 er, Shard Warp, Denier, Shard Spike, etc.), and can create
exciting possibilities for players and interesting plot-hooks
01010101 for GMs. However, keep in mind, crypto-gear prosthesis is
10101010 not technically part of a patients organic self, meaning it
01010101 gets left behind during a Shard Warp.
10101010
There do exist instances of crypto-gear prosthesis
01010101 where the patient has zero control over it... in fact, she never
10101010 makes bodily contact with its command shard at all. Per-
01010101 haps the best example of this would be the crypto-heart: a
clockwork heart, built around a shard, that has its rhythm
10101010 managed by a remote golem. The security concerns of such
01010101 a prosthesis should be obvious, but the benefits can be con-
10101010 siderable. Imagine a golem performing life-saving CPR on
01010101 the owner of a crypto-heart who should have died hours
ago, from hundreds of miles away. Crypto-organs may seem
10101010 unnecessary in a world where magical resurrection is possi-
01010101 ble, but even the powerful Resurrection spell has limits: it
10101010 becomes progressively harder to cast on someone who has
been raised several times already. Where magic fails, cryp-
01010101
to-organs can keep alive an indispensable asset who is on the
10101010 last of her cat lives.
01010101
10101010
01010101
10101010
01010101
10101010
01010101
10101010
01010101
10101010 10
01010101
 Crypto-Gear Prosthesis : Eric Stewart, G. Micheal Truran, Chad Walker
/root/crypto-gear prosthesis/
Mundane Security Concerns
Unless a patient purposefully draws attention to her
crypto-prosthesis (or has one that defies normal hominid
dimensions), it should be considered concealable; that is,
not readily apparent on first glance but easily detected by
someone making a point to look for it. Prosthesis detected
upon pat down are noted, announced to security forces, and
monitored intently for sudden moves, but it is in bad taste
to ask someone to leave a limb at the door. As a courtesy,
however, it is expected that air-gaps be engaged when in dis-
crete company, if only to prevent unwanted external com-
munication. Good security protocols already assume anyone
is capable of casting destructive magic or communicating
over hidden shard, so trained spellbreakers and echoeater
familiars are employed to manage these risks. Crypto-limbs
are no different in this sense.

/root/crypto-gear prosthesis/
talents
Contact Cryptomancy (2 Talent Points)

An actor is able to listen to and create echoes on

shards making contact with any part of her body instead
of just her hands. However, she still must raise a flesh-and-
blood limb (or a residual limb) towards a shard if she wishes
to inject a keyphrase, true name, or soul key for the purposes
of encryption. This talent is a requirement before any type
of crypto-gear prosthesis can be acquired. Must be acquired
at character creation, or acquired during the narrative gap
between campaigns.

11
01010101
10101010
01010101 /root/crypto-gear prosthesis/
10101010
01010101 At What Cost?
10101010 Crypto-gear prosthesis are very expensive. Not only
01010101 are their parts custom-made and composed of rare materials
10101010 (including one or more shards), but their design, construc-
tion, installation, and ongoing maintenance is performed
01010101 by the most in-demand machinists and medics who could
10101010 make just as much coin building golems or performing ex-
01010101 periments for regents. As such, each crypto-gear prosthesis
costs 3 Strategic Assets.
10101010
01010101 While it is certainly feasible that a party could vol-
10101010 unteer 3 Strategic Assets to support and make whole one
01010101 character, this is potentially beyond the partys means (espe-
cially at the beginning of a campaign) or does not outweigh
10101010 more pressing needs. In this situation, the character acquir-
01010101 ing the crypto-gear prosthesis is on her own, incurring 3
10101010 Strategic Assets worth of debt to an organization that is not
01010101 the partys current patron. Unfortunately, that organizations
goals do not exactly align with the patrons goals (or the par-
10101010 tys goals, for that matter). This means she will have to per-
01010101 form tasks at odds with the partys mission to slowly pay
10101010 off her balance, lest the debtors send operatives to repossess
their property (or worse).
01010101
10101010 It is very likely that this organization is holding on
01010101 to a diagnostic shard that can be used to track the patient,
10101010 cause her limb to go haywire, or punish her with shard
spikes. One does not simply replace the command shard of
01010101 a crypto-gear prosthesis: it requires rewiring every lead to
10101010 conform to the a new shard's contours. It's almost easier to
01010101 start from scratch. For this reason, a patient in debt is better
10101010 off acquiescing to her debtor's demands than she is tamper-
ing with their property.
01010101
10101010 There are a number of ways that the GM and player
01010101 can handle this in a campaign. Perhaps the easiest and low-
est-drag method is to have the player in question perform a
10101010
side-campaign during her free sessions of downtime, lever-
01010101
10101010 --more--
01010101
10101010 12
01010101
 Crypto-Gear Prosthesis : Eric Stewart, G. Micheal Truran, Chad Walker
aging the rules for social networking and gathering leads off
camera. Of course, she is keeping her activities secret from
the rest of the party, which can manifest in interesting ways.
Perhaps she keeps coming back empty-handed when tasked
to support the party and it complicates their upcoming op-
eration. Consider another player character secretly tailing
her during one of her mystery excursions and getting en-
snared in the what should have been a personal drama.

A more dicey method to handle debt is to have the

player spy on the party's patron and be assigned side-quests
she must achieve during the partys operations. These side-
quests might involve stealing precious objects, killing marks,
or performing sabotage that is outside of or antithetical to
the operations objectives or rules of engagement. This can
create some truly exciting complications for an otherwise
straightforward mission.

We encourage GMs and players to design the debt-

or faction together, because it is an important backstory and
an ongoing relationship for the character in question. All
the details of the organization need not be finalized or even
shared with the player, but she should have a pretty good
idea of who they are and why they agreed to invest signifi-
cantly in her in the way they did.

Once a debt is paid, the diagnostic shard is handed

over to the player, or if she wishes, destroyed utterly. Debtors
are rarely foolish enough to renege on the deal. Remember,
shardnets are, at the very least, a two way proposition. The
patient can leverage cryptomantic spells like Tracer, Shard
Scry, Shard Spike, or even Shard Warp to track down and
punish those who continue to renegotiate the terms of their
contract. They know how dangerous she can be. After all,
they built her that way.

13
01010101
10101010
01010101 /root/crypto-gear prosthesis/
10101010
01010101 Rules and Qualities
10101010
01010101 Crypto-gear prosthesis are composed of rules and
10101010 qualities, just like weapons and armor. The following sec-
tions describe the various rules and qualities for crypto-gear
01010101
prosthesis, then provides sample prosthesis composed of
10101010 rules.
01010101
10101010
01010101
10101010
01010101
10101010 SQL>SELECT * FROM
01010101 Prosthesis Rules
10101010
01010101 Prosthesis Description
10101010 Rule

01010101 Circulatory
Stability
The prosthesis strategically managed the patients blood sup-
ply. Mortal wounds are automatically downgraded to critical
10101010 wounds and the patient is stabilized automatically if she has
been reduced to 0 or less HP.
01010101
Damage + X The prosthesis does a number of HP damage equal to the suc-
10101010 cesses of an Unarmed skill check, plus or minus a value (e.g. 1).
01010101 Hardened The prosthesis can be used to parry any type of melee attack,
as if it was a shield.
10101010
Hardened The prosthesis can be used to parry any type of melee attack,
01010101 (Martial Artist) as if it was a shield, so long as the patient has the Martial Artist
10101010 talent.
Managed The prosthesis is air-gapped from the patient and managed re-
01010101 motely by a golem. The patient can use shards normally with-
10101010 out worrying about the cryptomantic considerations.

01010101 Paired The prosthesis comes as a pair, where each instance has its own
command shard, both of which are part of the same shardnet.
10101010 Poison Proof The prosthesis filters the patient's blood, making her immune
01010101 to the effects of all weak poison, strong poison, truth serum,
paralytic poison, and alcoholic intoxication.
10101010 Respiratory The prosthesis strategically managed the patients oxygen sup-
01010101 Redundancy ply. The patient can hold her breathe for the duration of a
10101010 scene.

01010101
10101010 14
01010101
 Crypto-Gear Prosthesis : Eric Stewart, G. Micheal Truran, Chad Walker
SQL>SELECT * FROM
Prosthesis Qualities
Prosthesis Description
Quality
(D)evolved The prosthesis has a slightly less-than-mortal build: a digiti-
grade crypto-leg, an elongated crypto-arm, or crypto-eyes with
hexagonal pupils.
Doll Parts The facade of the prosthesis appears delicate or fanciful: an
epidermis of soft porcelain, with painted-on palm lines and
fingernails; equal parts beautiful and unsettling.
Ghost Sign The prosthesis harasses the patient with sudden or nagging
bouts of pain that appear to be triggered by external events, as
if it is trying to tell her something.
Golem Skin The facade of the prosthesis appears as if it was designed by
machines: perfect symmetry, octagonal patterns covering lay-
ers of shiny metal chitin, and soft light emanating from seams.
Macabre Graft The facade of the prosthesis appears grotesque and painful: ex-
posed bone, rusty rivets hold torn strips of flesh to cables of
fibrous metal; almost as if the body has rejected the machine.
Message The prosthesis is embroidered/etched with an encrypted mes-
sage, which the owner may or may not be able to decrypt.
Noisy The prosthesiss construction, materials, and accessories make
it particularly noticeable: hissing valves, grating clockwork, or
the grinding of ball bearings.
Personality The prosthesis has a tendency of acting on its own, malfunc-
tioning in ways that impede, assist, or annoy its owner.
Precious The prosthesis is constructed of precious materials and/or
adorned with jewels, making it a public badge of affluence and
likely coveted by the greedy.
Previous Owner The prosthesis once belonged to someone else of significance
or maybe had many owners over time, changing hands on pur-
pose or by accident. They might even want it back.
Shoddy The prosthesis appears to be worn down, rusted, chipped, and
dull-looking, either the result of extensive use, poor mainte-
nance, or purposeful display of humility.

15
01010101
10101010
01010101 SQL>SELECT * FROM
10101010
01010101 Sample Prosthesis
10101010 Prosthesis Rules Description
01010101
10101010 Crypto-Arm Damage +0, Dirty, A synthetic arm composed of fibrous
Hardened, Short, metal wrapped around a steel bone struc-
01010101 Melee, Unarmed ture, granted locomotion by a network
10101010 Melee of crypto-gear actuators connected to a
single command shard. Connected to
01010101 flesh via leather harness and bolts fixed
10101010 to bone.

01010101 Crypto-Eyes Paired Two convincing false eyes composed

of glass expertly blown around linked
10101010 command shards. Exposed shard in the
01010101 back of each eye makes contact with the
nerves of the eye socket. Can be easily in-
10101010 serted or popped out at moments notice.

01010101 Crypto-Heart Circulatory Stabili- A synthetic, clockwork heart protruding

ty, Managed from the collar bone, palpitated perpetu-
10101010 ally by a remote golem.
01010101 Crypto-Kidney Managed, A synthetic kidney that steadily pushes
Poison Proof the patient's blood through a bed of tox-
10101010 in-eating choral.
01010101 Crypto-Leg Damage +1, Dirty, A synthetic leg composed of fibrous met-
10101010 Hardened (Mar-
tial Artist), Short,
al wrapped around a steel bone struc-
ture, granted locomotion by a network
01010101 Melee, Unarmed of crypto-gear actuators connected to a
10101010 Melee single command shard. Connected to
flesh via leather harness and bolts fixed
01010101 to bone.

10101010 Crypto-Lung Managed, Respira- A synthetic, pneumatic lung installed

tory Redundancy underneath the ribcage, slowly releasing
01010101 breathable air into the patients respira-
10101010 tory system when she holds her breath.

01010101
10101010
01010101
10101010
01010101
10101010
01010101
10101010
01010101
10101010 16
01010101
 Crypto-Gear Prosthesis : Eric Stewart, G. Micheal Truran, Chad Walker
/root/crypto-gear prosthesis/
Upgrades
Crypto-gear prosthesis can be upgraded with new
functionality by anyone with the time, skill, resources, and
imagination to do so. Crypto-limbs can be fitted with any
number of options, including retractable claws, hidden
storage, spanning reach, pop-up crossbows, auto-injecting
soma quills, modular hand-attachments, and grappling
hooks tethered to hand-turned winches, just to name a few.
A crypto-heart could be configured to puncture implanted
sacs of healing tincture after trauma, a crypto-lung could
be modified to suck in poison gas so it can be belched out
offensively later, and a crypto-kidney could be fitted with an
external spigot to harvest filtered poisons. Code & Dagger
does not and ought not cover all the possibilities here, but
will instead provide a few guidelines.

Generally speaking, a single instance of crypto-gear

prosthesis should only be permitted to have one upgrade.
The exceptions to this rule are oversized and exotic cryp-
to-gear prosthesis, the kinds that most mortals would be
ostracized by society for possessing.

Players and GMs should refer to Cryptomancers

crafting rules and assume that all modifications to cryp-
to-gear prosthesis are tough tasks with build-times equiv-
alent to medium projects. At a minimum, upgrades to
crypto-gear prosthesis require a forge, while upgrades to
crypto-organs also require a healers den (and someone else
doing the operation).

We strongly recommend that GMs not permit

characters to begin play with upgrades, if only because it
provides players an exciting project to work on throughout
the campaign, with a big payoff at the end. In the case where
a player insists on starting with an upgrade because she has
built her character around a very specific crypto-gear con-
cept, GMs can feel free to add an additional 1-2 Strategic
Assets to her debt in exchange.

17
/root/crypto-gear prosthesis/cd ..
/root/cd hacks and exploits
/root/hacks and exploits/ls

-rw-rw-r-- root root overview...............................19

-rw-rw-r-- root root proof of life..........................19
-rw-rw-r-- root root goblin switches........................20
-rw-rw-r-- root root messenger drones and mail bombs........21
-rw-rw-r-- root root shadow terror..........................21
-rw-rw-r-- root root credit shards and the echochain ledger.22
-rw-rw-r-- root root teller gears...........................24
-rw-rw-r-- root root cryptovault hardening..................26

hacks and
exploits

18
/root/hacks and exploits/
Overview
This chapter is a survey of creative ways to hack the
various magical, mundane, and cryptomantic systems pres-
ent in the Cryptomancer setting. By hack, were not merely
talking about breaking or abusing systems, but more gen-
erally about using them in ways that the creators of those
systems did not anticipate when they were designed. What
the reader will find here are new Shardscape architectures,
new business models that could thrive in Sphere, new spells
(and new combinations of old spells), and new ways to both
create and solve problems for players and GM characters
alike.

/root/hacks and exploits/

Proof of Life
A true name becomes a standard keyphrase when
the owner of that true name dies. Therefore, true name
cryptomancy can be used to determine if someone is still
alive. This is particularly useful for determining if a hostage
is still alive, if an assassin has actually fulfilled her contract,
or if a loved one will be returning from the war. To test if
someone is alive, a character can simply encrypt something
written down using the targets true name, then examine
the results. If only cipher-text can be observed, then she can
Proof of Life : Chad Walker
be certain that the true namesake is still among the living.
If she observes clear-text, she can be certain that the true
namesake is no longer alive.

This reality also demonstrates yet another risk of

using true name cryptomancy on the Shardscape. Given
that echoes on the Shardscape last several months, all secret
messages intended for a true namesake who has died can
be queried just like any other keyphrase. Grave-digging,
as this practice is called, is done by criminals, gossips, and
spies looking for ways to benefit from the passing of known
spymasters, generals, merchants, regents, scholars, or celeb-
rities. More than one secret organization has unraveled like
a peeled onion when the power of true name cryptography
failed in this manner.

19
01010101
10101010
01010101 /root/hacks and exploits/
10101010 Goblin Switches
01010101
10101010 Everyones least-favorite, cackling, belching, fe-
ces-flinging nuisance, the eminently insufferable goblin,
01010101
is smart enough to pick-locks, solve simple puzzles, and
10101010 perform a multitude of parlor tricks. However, there is
01010101 also enough going on its small but still oversized noggin to
10101010 where it can actually interact with shards in a very limited
manner. It turns out that they can maintain bridges between
01010101 two shardnets, while also being far too simple to eavesdrop
10101010 on echoes or detonate shard spikes. Hundreds of attempts
01010101 in training or forcing goblins to be half-wit cryptoadmins
10101010 failed spectacularly. The prototype for the first working gob-
lin switch was designed by none other than a nanny who
01010101 managed the two dozen tyrant-spawn of a particularly pro-
10101010 lific duke and duchess.
01010101
A goblin switch is a small, spherical cage, where at
10101010
the center lies a goblin suspended by harness. The goblin
01010101 cannot actually reach the bars of the spherical cage, but can
10101010 grasp two levers which are used to propel and steer the con-
01010101 traption. At the tip of each lever is a mounted shard, which
the goblin grasps onto. While the goblin is hyper-actively
10101010 driving the contraption in circles, ramming it into every-
01010101 thing in sight, and shrieking maniacally, it also maintaining
10101010 a bridge. Ingeniously, the goblin switch is also a shardnetted
01010101 crypto-gear with sequential logic. Whoever has the com-
mand shard for this gear can determine which two levers
10101010 are extended to goblin. Considering that each lever is tipped
01010101 with a shard from a different shardnet, this switching de-
10101010 termines which shardnets will be bridged by the golem as it
tears across the entire safehouse.
01010101
10101010 Only a goblin familiar acquired by a character with
01010101 the Whisperer talent can man a goblin switch. Meanwhile,
10101010 the rig, composed of a chassis and a crypto-gear, costs 1 Stra-
tegic Asset. Goblin switches are frequently left at the safe-
01010101 house, where the righteous hell-raising of their pilots wont
10101010 be problematic to everyone in earshot and everything below
01010101 shin height.
10101010
01010101
10101010 20
01010101
/root/hacks and exploits/
Messenger Drones
and Mail Bombs

Goblin Switches , Messenger Drones and Mail Bombs : Chad Walker

The helpful animal conjured by the Messenger
cantrip can be turned into a high-speed, long-distance sur-
veillance drone if the recipient (whos true name must be
known) is in a location that the sender knows little about.
A character can have a messenger deliver a shard that is part
of one of her shardnets and then cast Shard Scry on this
shardnet while the Messenger is in transit. The scryer will be
able to watch the messengers movements, determine what
route they took, establish if the recipient received the shard,
and take notes on observables noticed along the way. While
the caster cannot control a messenger like she could a Scout
Sprite, this technique can be used multiple times over the
span of the several hours, days, or even weeks it takes a mes-
senger to deliver its package.

Reconnaissance is just the beginning. Messenger

also provides the recipient the shard, which could be a hom-
ing beacon (Tracer), a life-line they need to escape a difficult
situation (Shard Warp), a mental mail bomb (Shardspike),

Shadow Terror : G. Micheal Truran

or simply access to a secondary shardnet that has not been
compromised. Given the many scenarios that are possible,
as well as the fact that a messenger can be intercepted, both
the sender and the recipient need to practice good Shardnet
security when deploying or receiving a shard in this manner.

/root/hacks and exploits/

Shadow Terror
The offensive capabilities of the spell Shadow Cache
must not be underestimated. A demolitionist can access her
stockpile of explosives. an assassin can access her lethal poi-
sons, and a cryptomancer can access the shardnet she was
not permitted to bring along. Facilities countering this
threat deploy strategically placed torches, candelabras, and
mirrors to limit the retrieval options of a potential shadow
terrorist.

21
01010101
10101010
01010101 /root/hacks and exploits/
10101010 Credit Shards and the
01010101
10101010 EchoChain Ledger
01010101 Credit shards are shards that are loaned to bank
10101010 customers. They permit a customer to transfer money to an-
other account, usually for services rendered, without having
01010101
to actually exchange physical coin or visit a bank branch.
10101010 In most cases, a credit shardnet is composed of two shards:
01010101 one for the customer, and one for the banks golem. The
10101010 customer uses a simple syntax to manager her funds, en-
crypted with the keyphrase she established with the bank.
01010101 Its as simple as creating an echo that reads Transfer X coin
10101010 from account Y to account Z. Assuming the customer used
01010101 the correct keyphrase associated with account Y, the golem
10101010 will dutifully comply and transfer the funds, but not until it
has assured that adequate funds exist by querying the Echo-
01010101 Chain ledger.
10101010
01010101 The EchoChain is a public ledger of account balanc-
es accessible via the Shardscape. The EchoChain is actually
10101010
created by a neutral network of six geographically dispersed
01010101 golems paid for by participating banks and managed by the
10101010 Couriers. In defiance of secure shardnet engineering princi-
01010101 ples, the true names of these six golems are public knowl-
edge found posted on every town board. At any given time,
10101010 one of these golems is creating public Shardscape echoes of
01010101 private transactions and account balances, and encrypting
10101010 these echoes with its soul key. Given that the general public
01010101 knows each of the golems true names, these transactions
and balances can be reviewed by anyone querying account
10101010 numbers. One can be assured that a transaction echo is valid
01010101 because it could have only originated from an EchoChain
10101010 golem, given that only an EchoChain golem's true name
decrypts these echoes.
01010101
10101010 Bank golems are bridged to EchoChain golems via
01010101 private shardnets, with goblin switches in between, so banks
10101010 can easily sever the connection if and when the EchoChain
comes under attack. EchoChain golems are programmed
01010101
10101010 --more--
01010101
10101010 22
01010101
to understand that only transactions originating from these
private networks are valid, and that transactions originating
from the Shardscape should not be appended to the Echo-
Chain.

Each EchoChain golem is in a fortified cryptovault

Credit Shards and the EchoChain Ledger : Ignacio Castillejo

that is staffed by the finest cryptoadmins the Couriers have
to offer. However, there is still considerable risk to any go-
lem whose true name is publicly known, especially risk in
the form of shard storms. The EchoChain was designed to
account for this. As soon as a golem X starts enduring an
uncomfortable amount of mechanical stress inflicted by a
shard storm, it creates a final entry on the EchoChain read-
ing Passing the quill to golem Y. Golem Y will then take
over the steady updating of the EchoChain while Golem X
rides out the storm. Six golems provide considerable redun-
dancy in case of subsequent attacks.

If and when a golem must expire its true name, that

true name becomes a standard keyphrase. In the early days
of the EchoChain, fraudsters called prospectors would cre-
ate fake transaction echoes on the Shardscape and encrypt
them with the true name of an EchoChain golem. The go-
lems ignored these invalid transactions, but when the go-
lem changed names, it became impossible to tell if previous
echoes were actually encrypted by the golems former soul
key (known only to itself ) or its true name (known by ev-
eryone). In the ensuing confusion, fake transactions would
eventually be adopted into the EchoChain. For this reason,
banks still employ armies of accountants to investigate these
anomalies. Woe to those customers who are visited by the
Auditors: a paramilitary group of financial inquisitors fund-
ed and directed by a conglomerate of banks.

The EchoChain has proven to be extremely resil-

ient and to date, it has never been brought to its knees. The
closest it came to doing so was during The Tempest, the
most concerted, enduring, and expensive shard storm in the
history of the Shardscape. The Tempest occurred during a
massive popular uprising against banking as an institution.
At the peak of this massive event, five of the six golems were
smoldering ruins, but the EchoChain endured. No debt was
forgiven, and neither were any of the conspirators who or-
chestrated this massive attack.
23
01010101
10101010
01010101 /root/hacks and exploits/
10101010 Teller Gears
01010101
10101010 Teller gears are the automated teller machines
(ATMs) of the Cryptomancer setting. They are shardnetted
01010101 dwarven crypto-gear machines found in population centers
10101010 in all three of the realms, remotely monitored and managed
01010101 by bank golems. Their primary function is to dispense phys-
10101010 ical coin to bank customers at all hours and in locations
where a bank branch is not conveniently accessible. Given
01010101 that most business in Sphere still happens off the grid, a
10101010 swollen bank account is no good unless it can be converted
01010101 into cold, hard coin.
10101010
Using a teller gear is pretty simple. A bank cus-
01010101 tomer simply walks up to the teller gear, observes its name
10101010 (prominently written on the machine), and then she uses
01010101 her credit shard to instruct her bank to transfer X funds
from account Y to teller gear Z, encrypted with the cor-
10101010 rect keyphrase. The bank golem then confirms it is a valid
01010101 transaction and that adequate funds exist (by checking the
10101010 EchoChain). If everything checks out, the golem instructs
01010101 the teller gear to dispense the appropriate amount of coin
by engaging its crypto-gears.
10101010
01010101 Teller gears have their coin supply reloaded on a
10101010 daily or weekly basis by heavily armed technicians who
01010101 know the extremely strong keyphrase needed to open their
crypto-locks. These technicians only operate in broad day-
10101010 light and arrive on scene in an armored carriage. There is
01010101 frequently a scrying shard posted high above a teller gear so
10101010 that the bank can monitor and respond to criminal activity,
whether it is tampering with the device or staging an am-
01010101 bush on a re-supply crew. The coin dispenser mechanism
10101010 itself is a tamper-proof crypto-gear designed to melt its con-
01010101 tents with acid (the bank can always mint more coin).
10101010
While banks are somewhat resilient to attacks
01010101 against teller gears, bank customers are not. Making with-
10101010 drawals is the fastest and easiest way to monetize a stolen
01010101 credit shard (assuming the attacker also compromised the
10101010 --more--
01010101
10101010 24
01010101
keyphrase). A popular technique is to check if a stolen credit
shardnet still contains encrypted echoes and then bring it
to a codebreaker farm to extract the keyphrase. Given that
most credit shardnets are composed of two shards, crimi-
nals typically have less than two hours to execute this attack.
Shaking down people who just made a teller gear withdraw-
al or forcing captives to make withdrawals for their captors
are also relatively common. At any time, a customer can in-
struct the golem at the other end of the credit shardnet to
lock her account, rendering her credit shard useless until she
visits a bank branch to reactivate it. If she fails to leverage
this feature, she is on the hook for any and all losses incurred
due to fraud or theft.

Clever thieves have been known to deploy fake tell-

Teller Gears : Ignacio Castillejo, Chad Walker

er gears marked with the name of a legitimate teller gear they
happen to be in control of. When an unsuspecting customer
walks up to the fake teller gear and makes a valid withdraw-
al, the coin will be dispensed to the legitimate machine and
the thieves will receive the coin. Another method of redi-
recting coin involves creating a convincing-looking overlay
with the wrong name and placing it on a teller gear. Again,
a victim would be making a valid transaction and the coin
would be dispensed at a different teller gear. Unfortunately,
the customer is also on the hook for losses incurred by this
type of fraud. At any time, a customer can instruct the bank
golem to have a cryptoadmin cast Tracer on her credit shard
to confirm that her physical location corresponds to the lo-
cation of the teller gear she is naming (for a nominal fee
of 75 coin, of course). Customers refusing to leverage this
service have no legal recourse against the bank in the case of
misdirection.

25
01010101
10101010
01010101 /root/hacks and exploits/
10101010 Cryptovault Hardening
01010101
10101010 The cryptovault is the operational nerve center of
any organization, big or small, that requires communica-
01010101 tion between multiple shardnets or on-demand access to
10101010 the Shardscape. This facility houses the organization's cryp-
01010101 toadmin, golem, registry (containing keyphrases, passwords,
10101010 true names, etc.), and at least one shard from each man-
aged shardnet. As such, a compromised cryptovault can be
01010101 a deathstroke from which an organization is simply unable
10101010 to recover from. Cryptovault hardening is the application of
01010101 security architecture and protocols to mitigate direct threats
10101010 to this sensitive location. Though most cryptovaults are
located in secret, remote, and fortified locations, the most
01010101 dangerous threats to them don't come from the outside, but
10101010 rather, arrive over shard. A secure cryptovault is one that is
01010101 hardened against Shard Scry surveillance, Shard Spike at-
tacks on cryptoadmins, and Shard Warp infiltration.
10101010
01010101 Shard Scry permits an attacker to look inside a
10101010 cryptovault and glean sensitive information that can be used
01010101 against it. For example, an attacker could observe the cryp-
toadmin (potentially identifying her), an open page of the
10101010 registry (to harvest user names or keyphrases), the number of
01010101 shards (and thus, shardnets) the golem is managing, and the
10101010 physical security controls inside the facility. A cryptovault
01010101 hardened against this type of attack will employ excessive
darkness, excessive light (amplified by mirrors), props that
10101010 exaggerate the facility's defenses (e.g. scarecrow guards), and
01010101 obstruction to block views. For example, a golem can be
10101010 instructed to reach into a bucket to touch and interact with
a shard, meaning that anyone scrying through a shard will
01010101 only be able to see the facility's ceiling.
10101010
01010101 Shard Spike permits an attacker to administer a le-
10101010 thal psychic attack on a cryptoadmin, an attack she may not
be able to recover from if she is alone (which is very often
01010101 the case with cryptoadmins). While a handy strong healing
10101010 potion might be enough to stave off death, she will be very
01010101 hesitant to interact with that shard again, which may sever
10101010 --more--
01010101
10101010 26
01100100
her connection to operatives in the field relying on her. She
needs to be ready to distribute keyphrases or intelligence
(e.g. "someone is trying to kill me") to the field through
other means, such as Messenger or Share Sight, or have her
connection with all shardnets be mediated by a golem.

Shard Warp permits an attacker to magically tele-

port into the cryptovault and attack the cryptoadmin direct-
ly. While most cryptoadmins are prepared for this reality,
they are rarely a match for those brave and skilled enough
to risk this type of assault. The best defense against this is to
not let it happen in the first place. A shard warper needs to
be able to decrypt a message in order to travel to its origin,
so true name cryptography prevents the attack by anyone
other than that true namesake, while very strong keyphrases
defeat all but the most targeted of codebreaker attacks (by
targeted, we refer to codebreakers who have studied their
targets obsessively to develop custom keyphrase attacks). A
precaution that many cryptoadmins take before creating an
echo is to cast Tracer to ascertain if an unauthorized bridge
is in effect or if any of the shards in question are not in the
approximate geolocation they should be (suggesting that

Cryptovault Hardening : Chad Walker

one is in enemy hands). If the shardnet configuration is sus-
pect, a cryptoadmin might reconsider how, and if, she re-
plies to messages, or drop a strongly encrypted Shard Spike
as a defensive measure.

However, even if a cryptoadmin never makes mis-

takes, golems present a challenge to Shard Warp defense
strategies. While no one can warp through a golem, they can
certainly warp to a golem if they have acquired a shard from
a shardnet that the golem is managing. This is where literal
security architecture comes into play. A golem surrounded
by a deep moat full of carnivorous fish is a wonderful way
to great shard warpers who leap before they look. However,
the cryptoadmin will still need a working draw bridge to ap-
proach and maintain the golem, either to switch out shards
or perform emergency maintenance during a shard storm. A
patient attacker will scry and wait for this opportunity (or
manufacture it with a shard storm).

27
01010101
10101010
01010101 /root/hacks and exploits/
10101010 New Spells
01010101
10101010 Kill Arc (Basic Spell)

01010101 A spell that transfers a blinding arc of destructive
10101010 magical energy from one shard to another, lashing out
01010101 against anyone caught in between these two nodes. Caster
10101010 clutches a shard, focuses on a fresh echo (that is, an echo
that was just created during the current turn), and makes
01010101 an opposed Willpower skill check versus a groups Resolve
10101010 ranks (use the opposed skill checks vs. groups mechanic to
01010101 resolve): each success results in 2 HP damage, ignoring all
10101010 armor, to every actor that is directly in between the casters
shard and the shard that was the source of the echo she fo-
01010101 cused on. The spell requires that the source and destination
10101010 shards are no further than long range from each other. This
01010101 spell requires far more coordination than Kill Bolt, but
does permit the caster to inflict magical damage on multiple
10101010 targets simultaneously. This spell does work over bridges but
01010101 does not work on the Shardscape or traverse golems.
10101010
01010101 Kill Zone (Greater Spell)

10101010 A spell that transforms the geometric space between
01010101 the shards of a shardnet into a cauldron of destructive en-
10101010 ergy, to the peril of anyone caught within this space. Caster
01010101 clutches a shard and makes an unopposed Willpower skill
check of tough difficulty. Upon 1 or more success, a dull
10101010 hum drowns the space, dirt and pebbles levitate from the
01010101 ground, and bolts of ethereal magic rapidly bounce back
10101010 and forth from every shard composing the kill zones web.
Destructive energy amplifies all forms of physical harm that
01010101 occur in the kill zone. Every actor in this space suffers an
10101010 additional 1 HP damage to any physical or magical damage
01010101 they sustain. The effect lasts 2 turns for ever successes rolled.
10101010 The spell ends immediately if the caster lets go of her shard
or if any of the member shards are relocated in a way that
01010101 makes any of the lines outlining the kill zone cross. Further,
10101010 the spell requires that none of the shardnets shards are fur-
01100100 ther than long range from the caster.
01101110 --more--
01100101
01100101 28
01100100
 For a kill zone to be effective, the shards composing
the impacted shardnet must be distributed in a way that
forms a triangle, square, or some other type of polygon that
surrounds the targeted space. Only the caster must be hold-
ing her shard in hand for the kill zone to stay in effect; other
members of the casters party (perhaps those who positioned
themselves for maximum effect) need not be holding onto
their shard. While this spell does not have the immediate
destructive potential of the Kill Ball spell, it does permit
attackers to deliver surgical devastation with spells and mis-
sile weapons in a way that avoids collateral damage to struc-
tures, treasure, hostages, or bystanders. This spell does work
over bridges but does not work on the Shardscape or traverse
golems.

Possible dramatic failure outcomes: the kill zone in-

stead becomes a salubrious and fortified space, magical feed-
back instead strikes every character possessing one of the
shards, a vortex is created that pulls the characters toward
the center of the kill zone without their shards, etc.

Shard Balm (Basic Spell)

A spell that embeds a magically healing echo in-

side a shardnet, providing restoration to the first recipient to
decrypt it. A caster holding a shard infuses the spell in the
shardnet and then encrypts it. It appears to be just another
encrypted echo. When the spell is decrypted by anyone oth-
er than the caster, the recipient is magically healed. Caster
can opt for shared key or true name encryption, but can
New Spells : Chad Walker

never be the recipient of her own shard balm. The caster

makes an unopposed Willpower skill check with a task dif-
ficulty equal to the size of the shardnet: trivial for less than
6 shards, tough for more than 20 shards, and challenging
for anything in between. The spell instantly restores a num-
ber of HP equal to the successes rolled, but unlike healing
potions, does not stabilize wounds. A caster can have only
one shard balm active at a time, and the recipient needs to
be able to consciously decrypt the shard balm (i.e. it doesn't
work on incapacitated characters clutching their shard).
This spell does work over bridges but does not work on the
Shardscape or traverse golems.

29
/root/hacks and exploits/cd ..
/root/cd threat intel
/root/threat intel/ls

-rw-rw-r-- root root vampires (tough)...................31

-rw-rw-r-- root root juggernauts (tough)................32

threat intel

30
/root/threat intel/
Vampires (Tough)
Vampires are cursed undead creatures that covet
and hunt for the thing that mortals possess but they do not:
true names. They resemble hairless dwarfs, elves, and hu-
mans - whatever race they were originally - with pallid gray
skin, bat-like ears, and lumpy clay-like faces fixed with wide
maws full of hollow, needle-like teeth. They dwell in the
underbellies and outskirts of civilization, hiding in sewers
and abandoned hovels, waiting for an opportunity to feed.
Vampires thrive on mortal blood for nourishment, but more
importantly, feeding permits vampires to reenter society,
however temporarily. If a vampire can drink straight from
the veins of mortal, it has the option to steal its victim's soul
key.

While in possession of a stolen soul key, a vampire

gains knowledge of its victim's true name and can encrypt
and decrypt messages with the stolen soul key. Further, the
blood of mortals is used to power a vampire's physical mi-
mesis. They can transform into the exact physical likeness of
the soul key's original owner, as if casting the Glamour spell,
but the transformation cannot be detected through magical
means (e.g. Astral Eyes). So long as a vampire has fed in the
last 24 hours, it can maintain this facade. Vampires : G. Micheal Truran
The vampire's victim, meanwhile, has completely
lost access to her soul key. She does not remember the vam-
pire's attack (which distorts memories like the Mind Write
greater spell). She is a somewhat pale, disheveled version
of herself, and could almost be mistaken for someone else.
She'll try to carry on as if nothing happening, but it won't
be long until she realizers that someone masquerading as her
has met with her friends, drained her bank accounts, opened
lines of credit in her name, and perhaps committed offense
which she is now accountable for. The victim's soul key is
restored to her if the vampire is slain or has found a more
useful soul key to harvest. Either way, she'll have to pick up
the pieces of having her identity stolen. If she can't recover
her soul key in 30 days, she becomes a vampire.
--more--

31
01010101
10101010
01010101 Vampires must feed on one victim every 24 to sus-
10101010 tain their mimesis. An attack that inflicts a mortal wound
(typically achieved through a successful sneak attack) allows
01010101
a vampire to drink its victim's blood, as does any successful
10101010 attack that occurs during a grapple. Wooden stakes, garlic,
01010101 sunlight, blessed water, and other folklore banes have no
10101010 effect on a vampire. However, from dawn until dusk, vam-
pires are lethargic and distracted, downgraded to a trivial
01010101 threat instead of tough one. It is for this reason that they will
10101010 find a secure place to hide during the day.
01010101
10101010 GMs should run vampires not simply as frighten-
ing nighttime predators, but as illusive underground crim-
01010101 inals. Even less clever vampires run a shadow fiefdom built
10101010 on laundered coin and exploited trust gained through stolen
01010101 identities. They typically benefit from unwitting allies (or
witting mercenaries) protecting them. One does not hunt
10101010
a vampire by following a trail of blood. Instead, one hunts
01010101 a vampire by auditing bank accounts and EchoChain trans-
10101010 actions, and luring them into engagements that seem too
01010101 profitable to pass up. A lone vampire abhors direct con-
frontation, preferring to lurk in the shadows and wait for
10101010 an opportunity to isolate a single enemy so that they can
01010101 overpower them, feed, and impersonate their victim long
10101010 enough to repeat the process, picking off a group of mor-
01010101 tals one at a time. It is very likely that some vampires are
currently masquerading as mortals in positions of power:
10101010 constables, seneschals, regents, and perhaps even the party's
01010101 own patron.
10101010 /root/threat intel/
01010101
10101010 Juggernauts (Tough)
01010101 Juggernauts are enormous orcs who have been made
10101010 even more fearsome through exotic and profane crypto-gear
01100100 prosthesis experimentation. The orc's natural biological du-
rability and tolerance of (if not thirst for) toxicity and pain
01101110 make them the perfect canvas for nightmarish bio-mechan-
01100101 ical creation. Juggernauts are several meters tall, even tower-
01100101 ing over gnolls, and several times as heavy as those Sylvetic
01100100 terrors. They typically have one or more limb replaced by
01101110 --more--
01100101
01100101 32
01100100
a steam-spewing, rusting, crypto-geared implement of war,
though many have exotic prosthesis such as prehensile tails
barbed with jagged blades and arachnid legs supporting their
massive frames. They are always followed by, and frequently
swarmed by, a legion of diminutive orcish tinkerers charged
with repairing and maintaining the juggernaut's monstrous
frame. The single uniform feature of all juggernauts is their
hammering crypto-heart, desperately pumping black ichor
through the veins of these monstrosities and keeping them
alive and fighting.

The orcs, of course, should not have the expertise

or the intelligence to manipulate crypto-gear. While their
steamwork has always been impressive for the brutes they
are, their acumen in cryptomancy is laughable, only slight-
ly more advanced than that of goblins. The orc language
has very few words and instead relies on variations of pitch,
volume, and speed; all things that cannot be articulated in
echoes. For these reasons, the orcs never truly adopted the
Shardscape in their battle plans. Someone (or something)
else, then, is funneling this technology to the orcs, training
them in its use, and managing the remote golems sending
the steady signal to the crypto-hearts of juggernauts. These
walking siege-engines have been a blessedly rare sight, but
scholars and generals are justifiably nervous about their im-
plications for the next Calling.

GMs should run juggernauts as rampaging natu-

ral disasters. They are siege engines that can punch through
Juggernauts : Eric Stewart

bolstered doors, scale fortress walls, and hurl suicide-sappers

through the windows of battlements. Juggernauts have 40
HP. The combination of heavy armor plating and unnatural
pain tolerance gives them 2 points of Damage Resistance.
Their crypto-hearts downgrade all mortal wounds to critical
wounds. Melee attacks against them should be considered
ineffective unless an attacker succeeds at a tough Athletics
or Acrobatics skill check to climb up one of these titans and
deliver blows directly to its head and torso. It should simply
be too difficult or costly to engage a juggernaut head on, es-
pecially if it is flanked by a endless waves of orcish warriors.
The key to defeating a juggernaut is discovering the name of
the golem managing its crypto-heart and shard storming it
long enough to give the creature a fatal heart attack.

33
/root/threat intel/cd ..
/root/cd endgame/
/root/endgame/ls

-rw-rw-r-- root root storm the spire!...........

^C^C^C^C^C^C
/root/endgame/cd ..
/root/rm -rf /endgame
permission denied!
/root/sudo su
provide password: *********************************
invalid password!
/root/sudo su
provide password: *********************************
invalid password!
/root/mv endgame/*.* /dev/null
permission denied!
/root/wget http://spire_tools/cracker
permission denied!
/root/git clone spire_tools/cracker
permission denied!
/root/service iptables stop
permission denied!
/root/whoami
fucked

endgame

34
/root/endgame/
Storm the Spire!
The public execution of the elf Vyndreck, esteemed
speaker of tribes Tereskhan and Mrozow, slayer of dragons
Karak, Zogliark, and Aasomirandr, and silencer of the 17th
Calling, was nearly as bloody and grandiose as his storied

EndGame : Matthew Jenison, G. Micheal Truran, Chad Walker

career. The barbarous torments inflicted upon his body by
cryptomanticly dissembled executioners, all before a cack-
ling crowd of drunken humans, will be mercifully absent in
this account of his last moments. What history ought not
forget, however, and what I will never forget, are his final
words, belted out with nigh-insane fury and disbelief:

WE OUTNUMBER THEM!

Vyndreck wasnt speaking of the elf sympathizers
in the crowd. In fact, there were few. Tensions between the
races had eclipsed all reason. Weeks earlier, the Tereskhan
and Mrozow tribes took turns firebombing the city in an
effort to slow anti-elf and anti-dwarf pogroms that broke
out after the violent assassinations of the Duke and Duchess
of Lampestad. Parts of the city still smoldered, and columns
of black smoke crisscrossed the sky like colossal gallows.

No, Vyndreck spoke to humans, men and women

who, like me, recognized all the parties that gained from
months of carnage leading up to that very moment. The
Guild of Builders, an unlikely alliance of laborers represent-
ing all three of the noble races, had been shattered by racial
animosity just as it was making headways against the barons
of their industry. A city in ruins was about to stuff the cof-
fers of foreign clanhalls eager to rebuild it to their own de-
signs. The elves had traded in Vyndreck, their spiritual head,
to the Constabulary to ensure the Temples new moratorium
on Soma wouldnt be enforced by secular power. And the
new Duke and Duchess, stiff, powdered, glimmering in fin-
ery, looked positively radiant as they watched the execution
from a balcony.

--more--

35
01010101
10101010
01010101 The apocalypse had come and everything, every-
10101010 thing, was exactly as it had been, save for the destroyed
homes and poisoned wells the rest of us would trudge back
01010101
to after Vyndreck expired.
10101010
01010101 You know the next part of my story, because you
10101010 lived it yourself. The creeping paranoia, the sideways glanc-
es, the flapping shutters of a ransacked dormitory... all odd-
01010101 ities dismissed until they crescendoed in the clashing of
10101010 blades with dissembled assassins. Like you, I found others
01010101 who were hunted. We protected each other as best as we
10101010 could, but you know how relentless they can be.
01010101 You also know what happened next, because you
10101010 were given the keyphrase that decrypted this message. We
01010101 found another cell, exactly like us, fleeing the same pursu-
ers, and flailing against the darkness, like ants thinking they
10101010
could bear the weight of the boot about to crush them. Two
01010101 cells became three, three became four, and soon, we had a
10101010 veritable army, distributed and silent, slaughtering our op-
01010101 pressors in their rats nests. We took many heads, but you
know how cunning they can be.
10101010
01010101 One of our numbers, an artisan of death, had cho-
10101010 reographed and participated in the assassination of countless
01010101 Risk Eaters. Her skills peerless and her loyalty unquestion-
able, she became our chief spymaster. Her unquestionable
10101010 loyalty, however, was to them, not us. Such was her ded-
01010101 ication to the mission, that she slew her peers gleefully in
10101010 order to infiltrate our inner circle. Her final masterpiece was
simultaneously directing every one of our cells right into a
01100100
deathtrap so elaborate and devious that even a Cloak would
01100110 be green with envy.
01100101
01100101 They are coming. Hundreds of them. There is no
way we can win this fight. The twelve of us will hold this
01100100 rickety keep and kill as many as we can. But that is where
01100110 my story and your's part ways. You will find others like you.
01100101 You will raise an invisible army that outnumbers them. You
01100101 will not make the mistakes we made. You will storm the
Spire.
01100100
01100110 You are going to kill every last one of them.
01100101
01100101 36
01100100
/root/endgame/
The Path To Victory
For those who want to play Cryptomancer but find
its thematic death-spiral a little too nihilistic for their gam-
ing group, we now introduce a path to victory which per-
mits a party to complete a campaign on a triumphant note,

EndGame : Matthew Jenison, G. Micheal Truran, Chad Walker

if they play their cards right.

The path to victory makes no fundamental chang-

es to Cryptomancers Risk mechanic. The settings tension
and paranoia remain intact. Risk is still generated by player
choice and bad operational security, and failed risk checks
still cause the Risk Eaters to attack with the same level of
ferocity. The primary difference in this type of campaign is
the fact that the player party is not alone. There are several
other groups in equally dire straights, fleeing for their lives,
slowly building their shadow fiefs by doing the dirty work of
patrons they have no love for. However, they are slowly and
quietly being folded into a resistance army by an organiza-
tion even older and more patient than the Risk Eaters.

/root/endgame/
The Couriers
Its easy to not even realize they are there. These
unassuming satchel-carriers make meager wages to travel
from town to town nailing notices to boards, all to main-
tain a plodding communication system rapidly falling out
of vogue. Indeed, if the Risk Eaters are hand-chosen from
the most remarkable members of the noble races, those who
form the Couriers might just be the most unremarkable.
However, they have a code they commit to with more zeal
than even the most devoted Risk Eaters could muster. They
see frank and unrestricted communication as a moral imper-
ative, not only as a means of stabilizing relations between the
realms, but as a check on those who have power and would
abuse it. Their commitment to this ideal is stronger than
the Risk Eaters devotion to their mission, primarily because
it was chosen instead of impressed upon through violence,

--more--

37
01010101
10101010
01010101 fear-mongering, political coercion, and re-education. The
10101010 ultimate expression of their belief is the Shardscape.
01010101
Indeed, it was the Couriers who labored for de-
10101010 cades expertly splitting and distributing the obsidian mete-
01010101 orite that would form the Shardscape. They knew the early
10101010 decades of the Shardscape would be absolutely disruptive
to the secular and religious powers that be, and that this
01010101 disruption would manifest in some truly terrible ways. Yet,
10101010 they were assured it was absolutely necessary. Those unfor-
01010101 tunate souls at the meteors excavation site who laid a hand
10101010 on this great shard witnessed something that wracked their
sanity. Between bouts of sheer incoherence, they recalled the
01010101 self-inflicted obliteration of a civilization. That lost people
10101010 could not communicate freely, but could only viciously bark
01010101 slogans manufactured by power centers vying for control.
The tongue was unknown but the sentiment of these echoes,
10101010
spewed with venom and vitriol from the mouths of those
01010101 who had seen this truth, was unmistakable.
10101010
01010101 What the Couriers did not anticipate, however, is
that the feuding powers manufacturing a similar death-spi-
10101010 ral for Sphere would conspire together to ensure it. The Risk
01010101 Eaters were formed and it was only decades after that orga-
01100101 nization amassed power that even conspiracists, let alone the
01100100 Couriers, recognized them for what they were. The fiefdoms
and interests that built the Risk Eaters assumed they could
01100110 leverage them for their own advantage. They underestimat-
01100101 ed the vigor and fury in which its agents would carry out the
01100101 mission of protecting the status quo. Even those leaders who
wanted to cede or share power were destroyed by the very
01100100
apparatus they built to protect themselves.
01100110
01100101 Once they discovered the power of the Analytic En-
01100101 gines of the Spire, the Couriers knew that even the seed of
an idea of resisting the Risk Eaters would be prophesied and
01100100 mitigated with extreme prejudice. It would not be enough
01100110 to keep a low profile and prohibit their ranks from taking
01100101 direct action. They needed a way to hide from the all-see-
01100101 ing eye for years, decades, perhaps even centuries... however
long it would take for an opportunity to strike decisively at
01100100 the Risk Eaters to materialize.
01100110
01100101
01100101 38
01100100
/root/endgame/
The Blind Spot
The Couriers code of never eavesdropping on the
communications they are charged with delivering is not
broken lightly. Its akin to blasphemy and a betrayal to the
very civilization they wish to elevate. One of the more note-

EndGame : Matthew Jenison, G. Micheal Truran, Chad Walker

worthy instances of this blasphemy, however, was the con-
fiscation of a missive sent by one of the dwarven engineers
consulting on the restoration of the Analytic Engines. They
learned that these machines churn through innumerable fu-
ture scenarios and create an output, a papyrus scroll predict-
ing the future, based on input, which is the collected intel-
ligence of Risk Eater operatives spanning Sphere. An army
of scribes takes incoming communication and transcribes
it onto scrolls as machine-readable runes. These scrolls are
then fed to the engines. The Couriers intuited that if you
control the engines input, you control their output.

Armed with this knowledge, they briefly considered

using their position as Spheres most trusted communica-
tions conduit to review and rewrite intercepted intelligence
and turn the engines against the very organization slavishly
mitigating the portends they generate. After much deliber-
ation, the Couriers wisely opted against this plan of action.
The cryptomantic mastery and honed-paranoia of the Risk
Eaters made the plan infeasible as anything but a short term
strategy. The veracity of intelligence reports and the validity
their authorship are checked, rechecked, and checked again
before being fed to the engines. If the Couriers could not ef-
fectively meddle with intelligence in transit, they needed to
find a way to meddle with it before it was even transmitted
over scroll or shard. To make an agent write the wrong thing,
they needed to see, think, and believe the wrong thing.

The Couriers found a way, but doing so would re-

quire making a deal with devils: the Cult of Cassandra.

39
01010101
10101010
01010101 /root/endgame/
10101010 The Cult of Cassandra
01010101
10101010 Before the voracious consumption of news and gos-
sip on the Shardscape became the primary form of intrigue
01010101 and entertainment throughout the realms, wandering cara-
10101010 vans of minstrels, thespians, troubadours, dancers, illusion-
01010101 ists, and soma-inspired oracles brought mystery and delight
10101010 to rural podunks and sprawling cities alike. The narratives
weaved by these performers were so compelling and so in-
01010101 fluential that rich patrons would contract them to subtly
10101010 promote their own agendas. It was a very successful strategy.
01010101 Even the most cunning of politicos were thrashed in the
court of public opinion by political novices who could pay
10101010
off the season's most popular artists. Theatre, street perfor-
01010101 mance, and publication became political weapons wielded
01100110 by the highest bidder.
01100101
An aged and revered troupe of performers lamented
01100101 what was transpiring. To them, the mercenary nature that
01100100 their craft had adopted was not just killing art, but also free
01100110 expression and rational thought. They retreated to a steppe
01100101 wasteland, far away from the influence of politics and mon-
ey, to develop a more pure form of art. After two decades of
01100101 isolation, they were all but forgotten. Under the clear skies
01100100 of the steppe, however, they had been communing with
01100110 something very ancient and very distant. And they changed.
What finally returned to society was not a troupe of per-
01100101
formers but the Cult of Cassandra.
01100101
01100100 The acolytes of the cult are enigmatic purveyors of
01100110 a universal antithesis: every single political, social, econom-
ic, or scientific authority is simply a fount of lies. Nothing
01100101 and no one is to be believed. Their maxims are ever-chang-
01100101 ing and eminently incongruous. They'll declare that scien-
01100100 tific progress is moral regression, but in same breath, declare
01100110 that piety is a mental shackle. Today, poverty is liberation,
but tomorrow, charity is a disease. While cult acolytes do
01100101 sometimes perform in traditional venues, the world is truly
01100101 their stage. They choreograph infidelities, script insurrec-
01100100 tions, pen suicide notes, and paint tapestries of carnage.
01100110 --more--
01100101
01100101 40
01100100
What is left in their wake are shattered wills, swollen egos,
maelstroms of doubt, and confused choruses proudly echo-
ing inane falsehoods.

When the cult comes to a settlement, they have

a single goal: to convince people that what has happened
didn't, and what will happen won't. Overt performance is

EndGame : Matthew Jenison, G. Micheal Truran, Chad Walker

one method of achieving this (cult acolytes are almost su-
pernaturally gifted performers). However, they prefer more
intimate methods: seduction, gossip, masquerade, soma-de-
lirium, blackmail, and sometimes murder. They hide bodies,
plant evidence, forge alibis, and magically write new mem-
ories. They discretely change history one evening at a time.
The burning fortress? A horse kicked over a lantern. The
dead regent? He's actually alive, just living as a pauper to
better understand his subjects.

The Risk Eaters have been watching the Cult of

Cassandra since its inception. They know very well that this
cult could be problematic, especially if the Analytic Engines
predict a threat so grave that the Risk Eaters must come
out of the shadows and rally all of the realms. As it stands,
however, the cult's bizarre campaign of disinformation and
destabilization actually furthers the Spire's ends. What the
Risk Eaters don't realize, however, is that the cult's primary
benefactors are the begrudging Couriers, who trade almost
all of the coin they generate from managing the EchoChain
for the Cult's cloud of confusion. The Cult is the sole reason
the Couriers have not been outed by the Analytic Engines.
Its acolytes work feverishly to obliterate all suspicion cast on
the Couriers. As far as the Risk Eaters are concerned, the
Couriers are, and always will be, parcel-delivering bumpkins
and second-rate cryptoadmins.

The Couriers are growing restless, however, as the

Cult continues to amass power and honor their alliance in
increasingly troubling ways. The Risk Eaters have a code,
at least, as twisted and misguided as it may be. The Cult,
however? Know one knows what they are hoping to achieve.
Yet, every day, there is more urgency to facilitate a march on
the Spire, if only to sever all connections to this band of use-
ful sociopaths before their madness creates bigger problems
than it is currently preventing.

41
01010101
10101010
01010101 SQL>SELECT * FROM
10101010
01010101 New Cell
10101010 Cell Description Strategic
01010101 Assets

10101010 Cult of
Cassandra
A cell of hypnotists, illusionists, and meddlers that
will cover one of the partys operations with a one time
1

01100101 campaign of misinformation, manipulation, and evi-

dence-disposal. They will negate Risk generated by op-
01100101 erational security failures (but they do not negate Risk
01100100 generated by converting botches to successes). After an
operation is complete, make a skill check on their be-
01100110 half, the difficulty of which is determined how many
01100101 witnessed need to be "re-educated" (e.g. trivial for less
than a dozen, tough for hundreds, challenging for any-
01100101 thing in between). The number of successes determine
01100100 how much Risk generated during that operation is ne-
gated.
01100110
01100101
01100101 /root/endgame/
01100100 EndGame Mechanics
01100110
The campaign mechanics behind the endgame are
01100101
very simple. Every time the player party successfully per-
01100101 forms an operation for their patron, they are introduced
01100100 to a resistance cell: a group of cryptomancers who, like the
01100110 players, are on the run from the Risk Eaters and have been
fortifying their safe house and amassing a small army of sup-
01100101 port cells. The introduction occurs through a courier who
01100101 provides secure keyphrases to connect over the Shardscape.
01100100 The resistance cells never actually meet face to face. They are
01100110 too busy (and it is too dangerous) to collaborate during the
normal course of a campaign. However, they will agree to
01100101 march on the Spire when the player party does. Once the
01100101 players decide it is time, the Couriers will reveal the location
01100100 of the Spire, and a truly epic battle will transpire.
01100110
It takes a minimum of 5 loyal resistance cells to suc-
01100101 cessfully siege the Spire and provide enough cover to permit
01100101 the player party to sabotage the Analytic Engines and kill or
01100100 capture the Risk Eaters' high seers. Loyalty is of key impor-
01100110 --more--
01100101
01100101 42
01100100
tance here, for the Risk Eaters are actively infiltrating the
resistance throughout the course of a campaign.

When the final battle is declared and the rag-tag

armies of the resistance march on the Spire, one risk check
is made per resistance cell, to determine which of them, if
any, have been infiltrated by the Risk Eaters and turn on the

EndGame : Matthew Jenison, G. Micheal Truran, Chad Walker

resistance in the moment of truth. For each resistance cell,
if the risk check result is lower than the party's risk rating,
the cell has been infiltrated. For this reason, the player party
is still incentivized to keep their Risk rating to a minimum
and will likely want to establish contact with more than 5
resistance cells with the assumption that some or many will
betray the cause. If the party is left with less than 5 loy-
al resistance cells after this final risk check, the assault will
be doomed. The player party will never actually breach the
Spire and the resistance will be routed. It's time to end the
campaign on a very grim note.

However, if 5 or more resistances cells remain loyal

after these final risk checks, the resistance survives betrayal,
overwhelms the Risk Eaters' defenses, and allows the party
to breach the Spire to carry out their last and most import-
ant operation. At this point, players are no longer able to
buy successes with risk, but each player is given a pool of 20
points to convert botches into successes or negate any GM
character successes at a rate of 1 to 1. The wind is at their
backs and they have turned the tables on the organization
that has persecuted them. Even if they die during this last
push, the armies of the resistance will flood the Spire and
finish the job for them.

We leave it up to the GM to define what the final

siege actually looks like, with the assumption that it will be
an orgy of fantasy destruction. Thrall armies, orcish hordes,
dragons, siege engines, shard storms, magical airstrikes,
sky-blotting volleys of arrows, raging fires, mountains of
corpses, and wounded defenders raining from the Spire's
flaming parapets. The Risk Eaters will neither flee nor sur-
render. If the Spire is lost, so is their entire cause. They fight
to the last. This is the single most important moment of the
Modern Age, and potentially the beginning of a new era.

43
/root/ssh nameless@spire
verification code:
password for nameless@spire:

last login: yesterday

###################################################################
hail, nameless. all activities are being logged and monitored.
###################################################################

[nameless@spire ~]$cd reports

[nameless@spire ~/reports]cd tomorrow
[nameless@spire ~/reports/tomorrow]ls

-rw-rw-r-- root root it still comes...................45

After the spire

44
[nameless@spire ~/reports]
It Still Comes
The high seer had arrived. He slowly rose from
a kneeling position as soon as the arcs of electrical magic
stopped coursing his naked flesh. Two loin-clothed thralls,
cryptomanticly disfigured, immediately converged. One
wrapped the seer's frame in a black, regal mantle and the
other placed a gnarled scepter in his open hand. Without
even acknowledging the several agents who knelt before
him, he walked to the propped door, towards the sound of
massive waves beating the cliff below the fortress in which
he stood. Mist swept across his face. The storming sky was
the color of his eyes, milky gray, like a hurricane being baked
by the sun. The monster was gliding in slowly, its massive
wings seemed to span the horizon. It could have careened
into the fort like a meteor, but its final descent and landing

It Still Comes : Eric Stewart, Chad Walker

was as gentle as a creature 75 tons lighter. A massive dragon
stood beside him. Salt water rolled down its scales and tufts
of seaweed hung from its open maw. The dread Axhollek.

Seer, it said in a respectful rumble.

"Axhollek," replied the seer without taking his

glance from the sea. "Does it still stride across the ocean
floor? Does it still come for us?"

"It does, seer. Your dwarven wind-up toys told you

as much, I'm sure. But you didn't leave the Spire just to ask
me that, did you? You've come to see it."

The seer stood in silence.

"It's a remarkable being, seer. I've seen it eat..." The

dragon trailed off, shaken by whatever mental image it had
conjured. The seer nodded very slowly. The dragon, finish-
ing its thought, said "I will never again underestimate mor-
tal ingenuity-"

"We want a new arrangement," the seer snapped

--more--

45
01100101
01100101
01100100 back at the beast. "We want you, and the others, to destroy
01100110 it before it reaches the continent of man."
01100101
The dragon let out a soft but methodical "No."
01100101
01100100 The seer turned to face the Axhollek and spoke ag-
01100110 itatedly. "Name your price, lizard. Do you want to reign
over man? Do you want to be gods, again? We'll make it so.
01100101 Jewel encrusted roosts, herds of sacrificial thralls throwing
01100101 themselves into your maw. A new golden age for-"
01100100
01100110 The seer stopped his pitch when he observed the
dragon's belly shaking in a muted chuckle.
01100101
01100101 "Godhood is boring, seer. We've done that already.
01100100 Even if you had something we wanted, there aren't enough
of us to stop it. Mortals - most mortals - are like rodents to
01100110
us, but even we dragons are like insects to it. You'll see. It is
01100101 going to crest soon."
01100101
01100100 The seer felt his spare hand tremble slightly, so he
used it to clutch his scepter. He turned again towards the
01100110 sea, planting the scepter's tip firmly on the stone floor below
01100101 him. He spoke again in a calm tone, "If your girth does us
01100101 no good, we'll still need those wizened skulls of yours. If we
01100100 can discover its true name..."
01100110 "Yes, maybe we could storm it to death, or slow it
01100101 down. But our ocean-floor-striding golem doesn't seem to
01100101 want to talk, seer. It only listens."
01100100
"It doesn't listen, dragon. It devours, by design.
01100110 The Analytic Engines must be force fed intelligence, and we
01100101 can't help but feed them the wrong reports composed of the
01100101 wrong events and the wrong names. Our methods are crude,
like birds masticating food for their chicks. We needed to
01100100 build an engine with its own appetite. Its own hunger. Its-"
01100110
01100101 "You must have known things were going to end
01100101 poorly, seer. Why else would you have sent an expedition to
construct it in the icy wastes at the world's end?"
01100100
01100110 --more--
01100101
01100101 46
01100100
 "Yes, the Engines foresaw disaster, but also great
discovery. We took every precaution to isolate whatever neg-
ative outcomes manifested. We had no idea that it would...
walk, and... grow... and-"

The horizon stretched. Waves once crashing against

the island retracted back into the ocean and towards a white
maelstrom miles away. The seer strained his eyes and cupped
his hand over his brow, trying in vain to see what was hap-
pening. The dragon started, struck by an idea.

"It just dawned on me why it comes for the main-

land, seer. Entertain me for a moment. What share of all
echoes on the Shardscape are encrypted?

The seer huffed in annoyance but answered the

question. "Our theoretical models say half."

It Still Comes : Eric Stewart, Chad Walker

The dragon nodded and continued. "And if you
read every clear-text echo on the Shardscape, you would
then have the keyphrases to decrypt how many of those re-
maining?"

"Again, our models say half of that half," said the

seer, who was moving closer to the edge of the precipice to
get a better look at the maelstrom. "Of course if you per-
form this exercise recursively, you use the messages you just
decrypted as keyphrases for the next round of decryption,
and so forth. You are left with only a tenth of the entire
Shardscape properly encrypted."

"And of those?"

"Some are encrypted with unbreakable keyphrases,

but most are encrypted with true names. And the sun will
burn out before we find a way to crack those."

"Unless everyone dies," Axhollek said cooly.

The horizon stretched until it cracked. A mountain

of foamy, white water belched from the ocean as if a volca-

--more--

47
01100010
01110010
01100101 no had erupted below it and then hung in the air for what
01100101 seemed to be the longest few seconds of the seer's life. When
the suspended water finally acquiesced to gravity, it pulled
01100100
away a water curtain hiding the largest and most grotesque
01100010 construct, no, colossus, he could have ever imagined. Several
01110010 dozen stalks composed of metal, choral, and meat, as thick
01100101 and tall as lacuna trees, held up the chassis of a crab-like
golem, made of just as much with muscle and chitin as it
01100101 was with sheets of metal and coiled chains. At the center
01100100 of the mass was a single blood-red eye, alternating between
01100010 staring directly into the seer's soul and violently whipping
01110010 backwards into a bristled socket. This mountain of metal
and meat then plunged back down into the ocean's depths,
01100101 creating white-ridged squalls that sped towards their death,
01100101 thrashing against the cliff below the fort.
01100100
The seer stood speechless. The dragon continued its
01100010
revelation, but had to scream in order to contend with the
01110010 ocean's roar. "True names and soul keys dissolve into key-
01100101 phrases upon their owner's death. The walking golem isn't
01100101 just hungry for knowledge, seer. It's hungry for all of the
knowledge. Every last morsel. And its found a way to get it."
01100100
01100010 The seer closed his eyes for a moment, then nod-
01110010 ded, as if he had committed to a plan of action.
01100101
"I am returning to the Spire, Axhollek. And no one
01100101 is to follow me, understood? This outpost no longer exists.
01100100 This island is no longer on any map. We have a precious
01100010 few months to develop a strategy and I will not let hysteria
countermand our efforts." With that, he turned around and
01110010
walked back towards the fort's interior.
01100101
01100101 "Anything for you, old friend," replied the dragon.
01100100 "But one last thing."
01100010 The seer stopped in his tracks, but did not turn to
01110010 face the dragon.
01100101
01100101 "Its larva swims very fast, seer. Much faster that it
itself can walk. Much, much faster."
01100100
01100010
01110010
01100101 48
01100101