To have reached this place, your attunement to the World Below must be complete. You have formed a Dialectic, young one. Whether to gems, bugs, Kaos, the Abyss, fungi, or the elements, you are now a perfect synthesis of body, mind, spirit, and world. The World Below provides.

Hello Diggers,

Yesterday backers received another nice chunk of the draft manuscript! The World Below provides!

Everyone supporting this campaign will continue to receive new sections from the manuscript over the next two weeks, until backers are able to read the entire current draft before any pledges are processed or payments collected!

Today I want to share some excerpts of the most recent manuscript section, taken from Chapter 6 which covers Thesis and Synthesis, two important aspects of defining your character. For those who are driving by and checking this out and haven't yet joined, this is only a small taste - join in and read the entire book along with us!

Life in the World Below is arduous, but those who survive do so via talents known as Theses and Syntheses. Not every inhabitant of the World Below has access to every kind of Thesis and Synthesis. Some remain in their settlements or guilds, but master their domain through Theses alone. Others wander, explore, and manifest Syntheses. Monstrous creatures, on the other hand, wield Antitheses. 

Characters possess Theses and Syntheses as detailed in Character Creation. These can also be purchased through the expenditure of experience if the character meets the prerequisites, where they exist. 

Theses and Syntheses provide abilities that are “always on” unless otherwise noted, with the typical alternative being “once per session.”

Theses can be selected by anyone with dots granted during Dawn and Dialectic creation, or through Experience advancement in either Path. These are abilities designed to modify the use of selected Skills and Attributes, and improvements to things like wealth, contacts, crafts, and fortifications of settlements, along with more esoteric pursuits. Some Theses have prerequisites linked specifically to Dawn elements or Skill rating. 

Theses are always active unless specified otherwise in their descriptions.

Abyssal Craft (••)

You’ve lived near the Abyss and know how to forge weapons of the void. You can take abysmal materials and craft deadly weapons from them. Gain +2 Enhancement to actions when repairing or crafting weapons with the Abyssal and Deep Stone tags.

Body of Kaos (•••)

When tethering Wild Kaos, your character can convert all hits made on a successful attempt to tether into healing, on a one for one basis. However, channeling Kaos through your body exhausts you and you receive the Dazed Status Effect.

•           Whenever you enter an unknown area, you can send a small beast or bug you keep at your side on ahead. Your “canary” is a creature you can easily capture again. You can use your canary to determine if the air is unbreathable or poisonous in any way.
••          As above, except you can infer from your canary’s condition what kind of airborne threat exists in the area ahead. 

Gain a chitinous steed with Blight level antagonist traits that can be used in combat and 1 Social Advantage to intimidate or impress others with your steed’s fearsome features. You also have all the equipment needed to ride it. If this mount dies during the story, you’ve bred or discovered a new one at the end of the next Kalm season.

You’ve managed to create or find a crude map of your travels. This can be carved on a stone you carry, a tattoo on piece of stretched flesh or engraved on crystal or chitin. This Thesis grants +1 Enhancement to navigation in the form of familiar references and descriptions, but if used in the wrong area (such as a map for the iron stratum being used elsewhere) it grants a Major Complication. If not bought off, it turns the user around and sends them into a dangerous encounter. 

You’ve figured out a way to make the most questionable ingredients edible. Once per session, you can harvest nourishing (but unappetizing) sustenance for one person from any environment with a reflexive Survival action. Your meals recover a whole Injury Level for the consumer, but they must make a Survival action with a Minor Complication. If they fail to buy off the Complication, they gain the Slow Acting Toxin Status Effect. 

Kaos has seeped into your body, making you a magnet for Kaotic energies but weakening you physically. When tethering Wild Kaos, you gain a +3 Enhancement to your action, demonstrating your innate attunement and communication with Kaos. Upon purchasing this Thesis, you lose your Bloodied Injury Levels. No form of healing or intervention can bring you above the Wounded Injury Level. Armor worn functions normally, but once depleted, the next Injury you receive inflicts a Wounded Injury Level. 

As a respected leader of your community, you’re known for your hospitality in all cases. The attitude of anyone you offer alms to always improves by a level, and any care they take under your supervision comes with +1 Enhancement.

Once per session, you can go an entire scene without needing to breathe. Even when exposed to airborne toxins, where the difficulty to not breathe typically increases, you are unaffected, and you can continue to communicate. If you take any damage while holding your breath in this scene, you must make a reflexive Survival action (difficulty equal to the amount of damage taken), and on a failure the Thesis ends.

Denizens of the World Below have found their spirits closely attuned to the warring conditions in the World Below, from the negative pull of the Abyss, beautiful but deadly crystallization, and destructive elemental forces, to sustaining or deadly flora, chitinous and predatory fauna, and unbridled Kaos. Syntheses are innate abilities granted by one’s Dialectic Path reflecting how they’ve learned to utilize their attunements within their environment. Syntheses are linked to one’s Dialectic Path and are available to those who fulfill the prerequisites.

Abyssal Communion (•••)

If in proximity to the Abyss, or a place where Abyssal creatures, artifacts, or weapons are present, you can commune with the Abyss as if it were a neutral attitude entity, once per session. It speaks directly into your mind and may offer advice as to threats ahead, a portal to another place in the Abyss or the Dark, demand sacrifice in exchange for a favor, or if aggravated, spit out a monster in your vicinity. You always come away from such communication with something, which could be as slight as a riddle or as impactful as a gateway to a hidden realm.

You can connect your senses to those of your chosen element. You can connect to other patches of darkness, know what lies in a deep body of water, or even listen through clouds of condensation in the colder strata. Once per session you can reach through your chosen element up to long range and gain a +2 Enhancement to Enigmas and Survival actions to perceive activities through that element. Some of this information might be muddled by other environmental concerns or disturbances within the element, such as magma super heating water or a small radius of firelight. This Synthesis cannot be combined with Keen Sense.

Your body has adapted the defense mechanism of detaching an appendage to flee from the clutches of a hungry predator. Once per session, you can choose to detach a limb and take 1 Injury Level to flee, without taking any negative Status Effects for losing the limb. Your limb grows back by next session, unless regrown with a Sorcery beforehand. You can lure an enemy away with such tasty bait. 

While you can nourish your body from conventional sources, you can also sate your hunger by consuming the emotions of those around you. Once per session, you can activate this ability to reduce the attitude of a crowd or person within short range from negative or positive to neutral, or neutral to negative, granting you 1 Injury box of health for each person affected and removing the Deprived or Exhausted Status Effects if you’re suffering from either.

Once per session, when you reach Near Death, you can shed your outer shell and returned to the Maimed Injury Level. This does not cause another Injury but makes it easier to harm you until your skin hardens once more. Gain a Moderate Complication to Defense (represented by your tender skin and open wounds) after shedding your husk until next session, when it returns to normal. If you do not buy off this Complication, you suffer the Agony Status Effect. Your skin awakens in the next session as a husk antagonist unless destroyed beforehand.

You gain sustenance by consuming all sources of light within a short range band of you and extinguishing them. You remove the Deprived Status Effect but impose the Darkness Area Effect up to medium range. Performing this unsettling act of survival in the presence of those of neutral attitude adds a Minor Complication to social interactions, which if not bought off reduces the attitude to negative. 

You have no fear of slime mold and know the nourishing benefits of covering your body in a thin sheen of it. One per session when you take the Bleeding Status Effect or reach the Bloodied Injury Level, you can obtain slime mold from your environment, which moves over the wound to staunch the blood loss. After three turns, if the wound is not exacerbated, the mold heals 2 Injury boxes and removes the Status Effect. If you suffer more damage, the mold’s seal breaks and you suffer from the Status Effect or Injury Level as before. 

Once per session, your Dialectic allows you to summon prehensile tendrils in the form of roots, webbing, wisps of living darkness, fleshy tentacles, or snakes of raw Kaos from the surrounding environment. You can use these like an additional set of hands, allowing you to do two things at once without following the rules for taking a mixed action. You gain +1 Enhancement to actions to intimidate or threaten, and a +2 Enhancement on attempts to use the Establish Grapple Trick. The tendrils use your traits for combat, perceiving danger, searching for clues, etc. though they’ll never leave short range of you. They have 3 Health total and 0 Defense and disappear at the end of the scene.

Again, this is just a small sampling. I tried to pull some of the more unusual bits- the kinds of things you won't find in other games - just to show some of the oddness that you can explore in The World Below.

Please continue to share this campaign in your social circle and on your social media. We're officially in the balk-half of the campaign now, so let's continue to build our community and finish strong before our next Kalm season!