adventure seed – Page 2

Adventure Seed: Wars of the Clouds.

Wars of the Clouds – Google Docs Download

Wars of the Clouds

Wherever a storm rages, so does a war.

There are billions upon billions of water-sprites in our atmosphere; sapient, almost entirely unaware of our lives and we of theirs, and busy with their own affairs and conflicts. Some of their sages are aware that things have been seen in the cloud-world, over the last century; those sages have generally kept silent on the subject, because the things cannot be countered or even affected, so knowledge of the things would do more harm than good. Besides, there are other things to focus the attention of water-spirits, such as their constant state of war.

Adventure Seed: Eye Beems.

Eye Beems – Google Docs Download

Eye Beems

Consider the species Halictus rubicundus, or the sweat bee. Called ‘humble’ by the unilluminated, H. rubicundus in fact has quite the arcane civilization going on. And it’s a peculiarly epic civilization, too: vast lands of decadent cities that contend with virile barbarians, with offerings made to strange gods in secluded places and weird magics practiced in stygian darkness. Epic wars, too, in the air, with vast armies contesting over resources or pride or even simple glory. The sheer romance of it all! One would be utterly entranced by such things… except that they’re sweat bees, so most humans can’t really see any of this. The time scale disparity alone makes it difficult for humanity to understand what’s going on; from a sweat bee’s point of view, humans are more or less Ents. Sometimes extremely cranky Ents.

Adventure Seed: The Human Nose Boop.

Human Nose Boop – Google Docs Download

The Human Nose Boop

Well, it’s like this. Most species in the Galaxy have this one spot on their nose — the exact point varies from species to species, of course — where a quick squeeze can temporarily override their neural systems. It’s not immediately dangerous, and in fact the sensation is remarkably pleasant, but obviously a vulnerability to being knocked in one shot is a problem. Fortunately, it’s a very specific spot on the nose, and you need to do it in a precise way, and it’s effectively impossible to hit that spot if you can’t even see it, and no species even can.

Adventure Seed: SK-30 Network.

SK-30 Network – Google Docs

SK-30 Network

It is a little-known (read: ‘highly classified’) fact that Fermi’s Paradox was in fact solved in the 1970s; the answer to the classic question (“Where the Hell is everybody?”) turns out to be “They’re all dead.” Or, at least, they’re no longer capable of dealing with pre-starflight civilizations for the foreseeable future. To be fair, they would have, if they weren’t dead: there was apparently a procedure in place to integrate new species into the Galactic scene.

Continue reading Adventure Seed: SK-30 Network.

Adventure seed: The Kaminsky Retrieval.

Kaminsky Retrieval – Google Docs

The Kaminsky Retrieval

Well, it’s like this. There’s a pseudo-saurian race in the next Galactic Sector called the sirothnok. They kind of dominate their Sector, in fact. The sirothnok are not exactly awful, per se: but they are somewhat touchy, fairly over-proud of their dignity, and have a certain reputation for pushing a quarrel farther than might be wise. They’re not an existential threat to humanity and our friends, but nobody wants a war with the sirothnok.

Fortunately, they get along well with humans, for the oddest of reasons: twins. Sirothnok tend to have twin births at about the same rate as humans have singleton ones, and that of course has affected their entire culture. It turns out that most Galactic species don’t really have twins at all; and while many species do have reliable cloning techniques, the sirothnok typically find clone-twins from other species to be a bit grating. Human twins don’t provoke that reaction, though. In fact, human twins find it much easier than other humans do to navigate sirothnok society; they can just get the ‘feel’ for the cultures more easily than singletons can. Continue reading Adventure seed: The Kaminsky Retrieval.

Adventure Seed: FEMA and the Trolls.

FEMA and the Trolls – Google Docs

FEMA and the Trolls

Well, it’s like this. Supernatural creatures are real, all right? Most people can’t perceive them in this modern age, which suits most of those creatures just fine. Turns out that humanity is a pretty terrifying apex predator; and, contrary to popular belief, a werewolf or elemental or even vampire that tangles with humanity is going to pretty quickly run into a specimen that will send it home in a box. Best to just keep one’s nose-equivalent down and not cause trouble, right?

Continue reading Adventure Seed: FEMA and the Trolls.

Adventure Seed: Losing One’s Head.

Losing One’s Head – Google Docs

Losing One’s Head

Welcome to the wonderful world of esoteric-memetic contamination overload. No, that term makes sense. In order, and using the case at hand: ‘esoteric’ is obvious, and it refers right now to the lingering ghost of that poor fellow who got decapitated by a boulder when Vesuvius erupted. ‘Memetic’ refers to the way that his gruesome, yet darkly entertaining, final resting place was revealed to a world perhaps grown too used to sardonically macabre tableaux in their popular entertainment. ‘Contamination’ is what happens when somebody isn’t on hand to (or isn’t capable of) breaking the esoteric connection between ‘memetic’ and ‘esoteric’ before that connection boosts up a ghost to significantly higher power level — which is what ‘overload’ would be. Continue reading Adventure Seed: Losing One’s Head.

Adventure Seed: The Lost Santa Rosa Mine

Lost Santa Rosa Mine – Google Docs

The Lost Santa Rosa Mine

Nobody has ever really explained how a zinc mine that is listed in official Mexican land records as being six miles north of Silver City, New Mexico could believably be ‘lost,’ but here we are. The mine is supposedly somewhere at Gomez Peak, and would be one of the oldest mines in New Mexico, if it actually existed. The operational records are scanty: Santa Rosa Mine was supposedly opened in 1846, decades before any actual mining in the area, and that’s pretty much it. After the Mexican-American War, the area fell under the administration of the United States, and there’s no record of a Santa Rosa Mine in American archives.

Continue reading Adventure Seed: The Lost Santa Rosa Mine

Adventure Seed: The Great Tiangong-1 Loot Rush.

Great Tiangong-1 Loot Rush – Google Docs

The Great Tiangong-1 Loot Rush

Why? Well: space stations intrinsically have symbolic and esoteric value, right? And so do things that fall from the sky, obviously? So it follows that pieces of a space station that’s fallen out of the sky is going to have a synergistic occult charge, correct? Seriously, this is all in the textbooks. The equations for determining the magical charge from overlapping symbolic correspondences were worked out some time in the 1890s.

Continue reading Adventure Seed: The Great Tiangong-1 Loot Rush.

Adventure Seed: That Refreshing Taste [The Day After Ragnarok]

That Refreshing Taste [Ragnarok] – Google Docs

That Refreshing Taste

[The Day After Ragnarok]

Lt. Commander John Austin (USN) has been given an assignment by the Warren administration: put a team together, go to the ruins of Atlanta, and extract the formula for Coca-Cola. Why? Well, it’s kind of complicated.

Continue reading Adventure Seed: That Refreshing Taste [The Day After Ragnarok]