Cult of the Phosphor Rookery

Phosphor, Feather, and Fat

In the great harbor around which the tower-haunted city of Khromarium stinks and stretches, an archipelago of rocky islets hosts the Phosphor Rookery. 

 

Herons as tall as horses stalk the tidepools and study the paroxysms of human action in achronous detachment. Quicksilver egrets skim the waves. Atop armatures of the pretrified bones of benthic alien beasts, black cormorants dry their wings and open their throats to the sun. Mist-wreathed in winter years, ruddy and raw and raucous with fledglings in red summer, the Phosphor Rookery is given respectful room by the sailors of the Hyperborean Sea.

Until on the first night of Bealltainn, the light of the two swelling moons traces small boats slipping through the silvery waves around the Rookery. Coracles, ocean canoes, umiaks, drift boats, skiffs, each propelled by one or two children, determined to swell like the moons with with growing power. They row or paddle into the thickening mist, edged with actinic arcs.

Hours later the mist clears, and many of the boats are steered back toward shore and the celebrating city, their occupants to hunt adulthood in the fire rites and pounding drums, in wine and lotus.

But some boats drift in the harbor, empty, to fetch finally against the jetties or crack against the rocky shore. Their occupants are gone, taken from sight and childhood both. They will reappear on shore when the Bealltainn fires have faded to ash and ember and the haunted city wakes again to its industry and intrigue, its subterfuge and stink. 

What happened to them on the Rookery is rarely discussed by those who return. Some remember the dead eyes of sharks breaking moon-bright water. Some describe the sound of their own new skin crackling with starlight and phosphorescence. Some try to say they still can feel the crack of breaking egg and the influx of novel light. Some say the smell of the sea at the end of a the deepest dive is salt and ink and acid and flesh. 

All come back changed.

Cultists of the Phosphor Rookery

The teenaged children chosen by the herons of Phosphor Rookery return as level 1 characters in any class they qualify for, changed by their time on the Rookery and their inculcation in the mysteries of the cult. Their bodies are sleek and heavy, with an extra layer of insulating fat. Their tongues and the insides of their mouths are bright blue, and they gain the following benefits and restrictions.

Gifts and Debts

• Gift of the Cormorant: Can hold their breath twice as long as normal (and gain a +1 bonus on all Constitution checks for asphyxia)
• Gift of the Heron: Can remain perfectly still for long periods. This gives a +1 bonus to Hide and Ambusher skills.
• Gift of the Sea: +2 on all Saving Throws involving water.
• Debt to the Rookery: Can never engage in combat with any shore or water bird. Recognizes other cult members and cannot engage in combat with them or their allies.
• Debt to the Nest: Cannot eat preserved food without becoming ill (-2 to all rolls, MV halved). But can and will happily eat worms, insects, centipedes, arthropods and other similar creatures, even poisonous varieties, as well as almost any raw fish, without ill effect.
• Debt to the Sea: Once per level, must spend a full day under the sea. The cultist will survive this trial but must sacrifice [Level X 500] XP to the sustaining powers of the cult. 

 

Beach Glass

In addition, every new Cult member rolls 1D6 and to see what has changed within them when they return to the world of humans.

1. Cormorant Sounding: 

• Water Breathing 2/day
• Additional +1 on saves vs. cold and -1/die of cold damage

You are quickness in the cold dark, a hot hunger, the hunter who dives deeper and does not fear the deep.

2. Storm Wing: 

• With concentration, predict weather for the next 2 days
• +2 on saves vs. electricity
• Precipitate or Obscure, 1/day

You are wings on the wind, the flight that rides the storm and finds its rest on the sea.

3. Knowing Molt: A cloak of feathers: Its inner lining shows a map to a lost treasure. Some portion of this  is claimed by the cult. If the cloak is lost or destroyed it will reform the next time the cultist fulfills their Debt to the Sea. If the treasure has been found and the claim of the Phosphor Rookery honored, a new map will be present.

• Feather Fall 1/day

You are the eye that looks aside, the hand of the water in dark pockets, the sight of sun on sea.

4. Spearing Beak: A sharp and bitter beak grows from the cultist's mystical third eye; it breaks off and can be wielded as a dagger or worked into shell or wood as a short sword or short spear. If lost or destroyed, it will regrow the next time the cultist pays their Debt to the Sea. 

• +1 to hit and damage when wielded on or under the water
• +1 against all sailors, fishers, mariners, and other people who make their livings by taking from the sea
• When wielded against anyone actively polluting, corrupting, sickening, or otherwise working against water, it will deliquesce their flesh on an unmodified 20 and a failed transformation save

You are stillness that flashes into death, the spear in the shallows, the hunter that feeds the sea.

5. Nest on Wind and Water: A familiar cormorant accompanies the cultist. The cormorant is absolutely loyal and faithful and will follow the cultist through fire and hell if not warned off. 

• Can provide enough fish for both if within an hour's flight of any navigable water
• Cultist and cormorant share an empathic bond, enough to give general information on any area the cormorant sees from the air or detailed information about any water it swims in
• Every year, the cultist must make a Trauma Survival roll. Failure means the cormorant has died. Its skin and feathers quickly disintegrate, leaving a skeleton of coral and jade worth 1d6 X 500 GP (this does not happen if the cormorant dies from other causes). A new cormorant will find the cultist the next  time they pay their Debt to the Sea.

You are the egg and what warms it, the nest on the waves, the hot heart in the cold sea. 

6. Pelican's Brood: 

• Can speak the language of all birds but only the cultist's native human language
• 1/level, lay an egg that will hatch into a tiny homunculus replicating the cultist in every way but covered in feathery white down. 
• When the homunculus hatches, the cultist dies
• The homunculus is immune to normal weapons, heat, cold, hunger thirst, poison, crushing, falls, and electricity
• Only magical blades, acid, and pure magic can destroy it
• It can ooze through tiny cracks drfit on the wind, and flow under water
• When it reaches the sea, the homunculus molts its feathers and grows into a new version of the cultist, with all memories intact
• When the egg is first laid, the cultist, can, instead, place the egg on a recently dead person and stab themself in the heart.
• When the egg hatches, its contents of blood and plasm will raise the dead person as the spell
• The cultist must pass an extraordinary feat of constitution or die

You are the bill that breaks the breast, light on new skin, the water that is salt and blood and the calming waves.

 

Bonus Tracks

Heron, Giant

No. Encountered          1 (20-200)

Alignment                     Neutral

Size                              M

Movement                    10 (fly 80) [1/4 human, 2X human]

Dexterity                      16

Armour Class               7 (as leather)

Hit Dice                        4

Attack Rate                  1/1 (spear)

Damage                        2d4

Saving Throw               15 (+2 vs. Death, Transformation)

Morale                         9

Experience Points       180

Treasure Class             Nil (P, Q)

Giant herons stand as tall as Vikings. Their feathers range from dark silver to star green, and their legs and beaks are gold coral. Their alien intelligence is as deep as any human’s and stretches back to a time before mammals, egg to egg, unbroken and strange. They are solitary hunters but nest in great heronries or rookeries with other sea birds, toward which they extend an implacable guardianship.

Special:

• Gaze can paralyze a solitary victim who fails a transformation save. Paralysis lasts until the heron attacks or eye contact is broken.

 I Attack Them Using My ... Additional Notes

 

Hyperborea: Howling wilderness surrounds areas where what passes for civilization barely clings to survival. Khromarium is its heart but a heart full of ghosts and ash, threatened by its size and its history, guarded and haunted by those who can claim the ancient Towers.

The world is fragments of its own history, still caught between breaths.

Everything should be local.

There is room for hundreds of cults, saints, perversions, diversions, and bad ideas. The clerics of Hyperborea grab their power where they can, and aspects of the gods hide behind other faces to widen the circles of their power.

Let a thousand cults bloom.

• Inspiration: Legacy of the Bieth. Big heart @ Allandros.
• Also, I love cormorants. Blue my mouth and dive me down, open my wings to dry. Cormorants are all the totem we need along our home waters. Tell the shamans.
• Massive thank-yous for those who commented on that first post. The courage you gave was so strong that for a minute I thought it was liquid!
• I don't know how to format two-column text or a table on this platform!

• I will make more cults.