the village of Osmus are rarely made to feel welcome, and those who state their intention to cross the Cloudbridge are refused and possibly apprehended, to be brought before Osmus in a quasireligious ceremony. The Cloudbridge is the birthright of the people of the village, and it is sacrilege for outsiders to trespass on it. Yet the people of Osmus do not use the bridge themselves for fear of the creatures that haunt it.
They know that most who enter the bridge never return, and the few who do bring tales of ghosts and monsters wearing the skins of the dead. The village posts guards at the bridge entrance to try to keep those
One wonders what would happen if one of the Osmus replicants was restored to be closer to the original, but the other was not. A war of the Osmuses?
ghosts from coming into Osmus. Although nothing has ever attacked the village directly, sometimes the guards disappear in the night.
The Osmus replicants might decide that visitors must pay a toll to use the bridge. This toll might involve carrying out a special task, such as retrieving an item of importance to the original Osmus or eliminating a threat to his rule.
Coming From the Southwest: Nothing of note lies on the southwestern side of the valley, which means that people can enter the bridge freely from that direction. However, it also means they’re unlikely to have any warning about what’s inside the bridge or on the other side.
The Span: The interior of the Cloudbridge resembles a street in a ruined city. A main thoroughfare runs down the middle, and the sides have chambers and interior structures now cast in ruin. These areas are rife with numenera, and scavenging through them is likely worth an explorer’s time.
The Transparent Maze: No matter what side you start from, the main passage through the interior of the bridge structure ends when you get to the central hub. Here, for reasons that surpass understanding, travelers must navigate a series of pipes that seem arranged randomly, so that it is like winding through a three-dimensional maze. At times, they must go up or down through these pipes, but to do so they need to provide their own means (ropes to climb, perhaps). Stranger still, the pipes are made of transparent synthsteel and run through an oval interior chamber that is dimly lit, so that travelers can see through the maze, but not necessarily how to get through it. In fact, the transparent nature makes things more difficult, not less, because it is disorienting.
A small hive of varakith makes its home in the maze. The bloodthirsty creatures know the paths through the pipes quite well. They typically hunt outside the maze in the thoroughfares or outside the bridge altogether, but if prey wanders into their den, all the better. Travelers might see the varakith coming through the transparent
of independent minds. This is the Heart of Arun. The matrix was created by Osmus, and the people within it were his people, but they are not imprisoned. Quite the contrary—the virtual world within the Heart of Arun is a paradise, and the people (who no longer have bodies) would be dead if they weren’t inside it. People outside the Heart can telepathically communicate with those inside, which overcomes the language barrier. The people in the Heart know little of the current Ninth World, but they can relate details of their
own time almost a thousand years earlier. They might have interesting insights about numenera or other topics, but they know no more about the prior worlds than current humans do.
Notably, the original Osmus is not in the Heart of Arun, and the people inside do not know his ultimate fate.
maze long before the creatures reach them, getting closer and closer.
The Heart of Arun: Characters who pass up through the maze as opposed to across it eventually reach a complex of ruined chambers that once served the original Osmus as a sort of palace and workshop. These chambers give access to the roof of the central section, directly below the floating boulder, which was once called Arun.
The top of the bridge is the nesting ground of hontri, which can present a real danger to anyone exploring the roof or trying to ascend to Arun. The tether can be climbed, as it is a number of smaller metal cables entwined, offering something to hold onto even though the tether itself is as big around as three massive tree trunks.
At the top of the floating boulder is an entrance that leads into its center— basically, a sort of antigravity elevator. Inside is an intelligent crystalline matrix that stores the consciousnesses of thousands
THAEMOR FOOTHILLS HEARSAY
Another Osmus: In a tiny village of just twenty people or so farther along the northeast ridge, there is a building that contains a stone statue of the original Osmus. (The wooden structure was built around the much older statue.) It has the same face as that which is projected in the synth cubes that the Osmus replicants use as heads. However, this is no ordinary statue. The stone is a biological resin, and it stores a copy of Osmus’s personality that is far closer to the original. At one time, it was animate and sapient, but long ago, the Osmus replicants—unable to destroy this nigh-indestructible rival—created a device in their temple that jams the power transmitted to the statue from the Heart of Arun. The replicants would like to find a way to destroy the statue once and for all. But if this Osmus were freed to act, that might change everything.
Missing Children: A strange figure sometimes lurks in the area, stealing children from their homes at night. It has the ability to eliminate sound around itself so its victims cannot cry out. The people of Osmus would love to see the so-called “night shusher” caught or killed, and their children returned to them (hopefully, still alive).
THE WEIRD OF THE THAEMOR FOOTHILLS
Strange Weather: Weird storms sometimes form around the top of the Cloudbridge, bringing not just high wind, rain, and lightning, but showers of strange objects—tiny crystals, small numenera parts or oddities, globs of mysterious goo, shards of metal, or even living creatures like frogs, fish, and laaks.
Transmissions: Sometimes the Cloudbridge (or perhaps the Heart of Arun) transmits signals that take control of powered numenera devices, causing them to act on their own or produce entirely different effects.
Varakith, page 264
Laak, page 243 Hontri: level 5, perception as level 7, when hunting as a pair each individual acts as level 6; health 22; Armor 1; deals 2 additional points of damage when attacking with a swoop from above; regenerates 2 points of health per round while alive; see The Ninth World
Bestiary, page 66
Climbing the tether up to Arun is a difficulty 6 task due to the winds and the extreme length of the climb—almost 1,000 feet (305 m).
To the west of the Cloudcrystal Skyfields lives a mountain—no, not a mountain. Nothing so simple, so earthbound, so mundane as a mountain. Instead an intricate labyrinth that reaches to the sky, its peak so long and thin as to portray a needle piercing the blue, threaded with strands of off-white clouds. Its seams shredded, its colors blotched by sun and wind, its details faded by time and ferocity.
Does it breathe, this eminence, or does it just wish us to believe we see it moving, its sloped sides wavering in the fog and dust? Does it live, truly, beneath the years of silence and slavery, or does it just seem so, coming alive in children’s tales told in the dark of night?
Whatever it is, whatever it was, it is now Izaltu’s Needle. And deep in its bowels sound the howls of madmen, the rages of murderers, the cries of the frenzied. Some call it a prison. Some call it a zoo. Some call it a sanitarium.
Izaltu calls it his collection. And his collection is never finished.
~from the recitation of Pernsnal Vesner, storyteller, during his final oration
As with so much in the Ninth World, the structure now called Izaltu’s Needle might resemble a natural element (in this case, a mountain with a particularly impossible peak), but it is not. Possibly created in another world for a purpose that is beyond human understanding, the Needle is a complex structure of marbled rock, golden bubbles that appear molten but are firm and cold to the touch, and rivered sandstone that seems to flow before one’s very eyes.