D20 SYSTEM✦ Normal

The Dredge-Spawn Cycle: Tung Oil and the Devouring Wheels

# Dark Fantasy# Wilderness# Intrigue# Beast# Economic

The Ochre Wastelands, once a thriving arid plateau, now groans under the scourge of the Dredge-Spawn—immense, wheel-boring sandworms that devour the very mechanisms of civilization. The gears of windmills, water pumps, and clockwork defenses are ground to dust. In the crucible of this crisis, two desperate factions have emerged, each laying blame upon a single, critical error: the 'Erroneous Tung Oil,' a botched lubricant applied by the Grooms' Guild, now catalyzing the worms' frenzy. Veterans must navigate a landscape of powdered metal and bleeding machinery, where every choice feeds one side's survival or the other's extinction.

Chronicle Prelude

The Hub of Crankhaven, a fortified oasis-town built around the last functioning Great Wheel. Its gears are grinding to a halt, coated in a sticky, black residue. The air hums with tension as the Grooms' Guild barricades their workshops, while the Artificers' Cogwrights demand reparations. Refugees from devoured outposts crowd the bazaar, trading scrap and whispers.

Environmental Traits

The ultimate goal is to reach the Heart-Worm, the colossal Dredge-Spawn Queen nesting in the buried Clockwork Citadel. To end the devouring cycle, the Queen must be killed or appeased, but doing so requires navigating the moral quagmire of the Erroneous Tung Oil's origin and choosing who bears the ultimate guilt—and the ultimate sacrifice.

Legendary Archetypes

Rayan

HP:45

STR:16

WIS: 12

CHA:11

Key Factions & Autonomous Nodes (8)

Guild Master Vorlag
A gaunt man with soot-stained robes and eyes ringed by exhaustion. His fingers are stained with alchemical reagents. He wears a tarnished guild medallion shaped like a gear encircling a vial.
Cogwright General Krix
A towering figure in articulated, gear-driven plate armor. His face is a mask of scarred metal, and one eye is replaced with a glowing optical lens. He moves with the precise, hydraulic grace of a well-oiled machine.
Exile Gearwright Pip
A small, wiry figure clad in patched leather and scavenged gear parts. Goggles with multiple lenses hang around his neck. He smells of oil and salt, and moves with a jittery, paranoid energy.
Dust-Wraith Chief Sahra
A tall, sinewy woman with skin the color of baked clay and hair woven with salt crystals and rust flakes. Her eyes are a startling pale blue. She wears armor of layered, hardite leather and carries a spear tipped with a sharpened gear-tooth.
Cogwright Biologist Maren
A woman in a soiled lab coat over reinforced Cogwright leathers. Her hands are stained with iridescent fluid. She wears magnifying goggles and constantly takes notes on a wax tablet. Her expression is one of detached, scientific curiosity.
The Heart-Worm Queen
An immense, segmented worm whose chitinous plates are fused with pulsating hydraulic pistons and devoured clockwork. Its maw is a spiraling array of grinding gears. Bioluminescent veins pulse along its body, and the air around it vibrates with a psychic, resonant hum.
Prospector Old Jax
A weathered, haggard man slumped against a rusty dune. His gear is tattered, and he stares blankly at a shattered compass. A heavy mining pick lies beside him, and a leather map case is strapped to his belt.
Swarm of Gear-Vorpal Scarabs
A skittering, clicking mass of beetle-like creatures the size of a fist. Their carapaces are a mosaic of metallic colors, and their mandibles are specialized shears for cutting and consuming metal. They move in a coordinated, flowing wave.

Chronicle Prelude

Environmental Traits

Legendary Archetypes

✦ Related Cases ✦

The Bay of Chitin and Lees

The Scorched Carapace