HERE IS NO WATER BUT ONLY ROCK (Invisible Hands: Texas)

For Invisible Hands.

Texas is burning. 

Dust Bowl, Alexandre Hogue

When it all went wrong, it went very wrong here. All the violence and fear and hatred that could accumulate in that largest of states went off like a loaded gun, along with all of the actual loaded guns that were just sitting around. The earth shattered, bleeding black from open stone veins, and what was once dead was made living again; a grand parade of dead men and dinosaurs, all dripping with petroleum. The Crude Sea, dark and thick and reeking, parts the state into islands, the earth's memory of the interior sea that once cut the nation in half. Lift your eyes over the horizon, if you're able- smoke columns rise in every direction, pillars holding up a white-hot sky where the Lone Star blazes big and bright, a cruel sun which permits no nightfall. When the weather isn't bad, it's worse. When it's not hot, it's pouring down sheets of rain and pitching hailstones the size of baseballs to shatter your windows and beat you to death. Count yourself lucky if a tornado doesn't scour your home from the face of the earth.

Salvation burning above, Radicarian welling up below, and untold other influences fighting in-between. It's no wonder the state tore into pieces.

Up north, they have the Maul of America, where concrete and plastic rots. Here, accessible where the ground cracks and the Crude Sea parts, is the Lost World. A place where the lost can be found again, where the old is new.

And at the very bottom, the omphalos of it all, is the City of Gold and the Fountain of Youth. Many killed and died to seek them, once, and many more will kill and die to seek them again. Go on, set fire to your ships. No turning back, now or then.

THINGS TO BRING

Mundane goodies for scavengers. Commonly bought and sold on the surface, and often found or traded down below.

1. Prof Picante. The iconic soda of the state of Texas. Tastes like... spicy cherries? Raisins? A blend of various fruits and spices? The color red? Possibly a note of steak? Always warm, stubbornly refusing all attempts to chill it. Clears 1d4 stress and restores 1d4 HP if consumed with a beef product. $5 a can. 1/3rd of a slot.
2. Gallon of Water. It traveled a long way to get to you. Ignore the chemical taste. One gallon will keep you hydrated for a day. $10. 1 slot.
3. Machete. Shockingly cheap for a medium weapon. I guess you can also use it for brush clearing, too. $15. 1 slot.
4. Multitool. A tool of the trade. It functions as the following tools, badly: hammer, knife, saw, file, Phillips head screwdriver, flathead screwdriver, bottle opener, scissors, pliers, and wire cutters. You could use it as a weapon for 1d4 damage if you're really desperate. $20. 1/3rd of a slot.
5. 1 lb Bag of Beef Jerky. It's only gotten more expensive. The cows aren't doing so great, these days. A ration, but more importantly, a beef product. $20. 1/3rd of a slot.
6. Crowbar. The tool of the trade. A medium weapon good for prying, levering, and occasionally beating people to death. $25. 1 slot.
7. Headlamp. Rechargeable, reliable. Always better to have your hands free. Can emit a 50' cone of bright light and 50' more of dim light for 4 hours, or only 50' of dim light for 8 hours. Takes 4 hours to get to a full charge if plugged in to a wall socket. $35. 1/3rd of a slot carried, 0 slots worn.
8. Splitting Maul. The ugly, frightening child of an axe and a sledgehammer, bladed on one end and blunt on the other. A heavy weapon, make no mistake. $45. 2 slots. 
9. Bowie Knife. One foot of blade, sharp enough to shave with. Accept no substitutes. A +1 light weapon. $50. 1 slot.
10. Painter's Mask. A proper industrial respirator. Turns three failed tests to resist inhaled dangers into successes before the filters have to be changed out. Has no eye coverage and muffles your speech severely. $50. Filters are $20 each. 1 slot carried, 0 slots worn.
11. Steel Toe Work Boots. Big ugly square-toe things fit for a rodeo clown, scuffed and cut enough to show the metal inside. +1 AC, +1 unarmed damage if you feel like kicking. Protects your feet from stubbed toes and broken glass and such, but that's less exciting. $100. 1 slot carried, 0 slots worn.
12. Motorcycle Pads. Quintessential light armor of the working scavenger. Helmet, breastplate, and elbow and knee-and-shin guards. Not likely to stop a bullet, but it's better than nothing. $150. 2 slots carried, 0 slots worn.
13. Halligan Bar. The way better tool of the trade. Has a pick, an adze, and a prying claw. A medium weapon that grants a +1 to all checks involving its use, including to hit and damage. $200. 1 slot.
14. Plate Carrier. The kevlar itself serves as medium armor, but the two ceramic plates will absorb 8 HP of ballistic damage before breaking. Includes a helmet. $250. $100 for each plate. 4 slots carried, 2 slots worn. 
15. Claymore Mine. FRONT TOWARD ENEMY, says the terrifying directional anti-personnel mine. Sprays steel balls in a 150' cone, dealing 3d6 damage at 50', 2d6 at 100', and 1d6 at 150', with a SAVE for half at all ranges. Can be detonated remotely with the included firing device and 100' spool of wire, or with a trip wire mechanism if you can rig that up. $300. 1 slot for the mine, 1/3rd of a slot for the other parts.
16. M1911. Not the original thing, obviously, but one of the billion designs based on it. As common as dirt. 1d6! ballistic damage, -1 to hit for each 50' past the first. 8 round capacity, takes a round to swap magazines or two rounds if you aren't proficient. $600. 8-round magazines are $20 each, $5 extra for each additional round on extended versions. $100 for a box of fifty .45 ACP rounds. 1 slot. Magazines 1/3rd of a slot each.
17. M4 carbine. The gun of the United States military. The Lone Star just drops these things from the sky from time to time. 1d6!+2 ballistic damage, -1 to hit for each 100' past the first, can spend 3 rounds to do 2d6! ballistic damage. 30 round capacity, takes a round to swap magazines or two rounds if you aren't proficient. $800. $120 for a box of sixty 5.56×45mm NATO rounds, $20 for a 30-round STANAG magazine. 2 slots. Magazines 1/3rd of a slot each.
18. Colt Single Action Army. You may be asking, "shouldn't you be using a gun from this century?" Eat shit and die. 1d6! ballistic damage, -1 to hit for each 40' past the first. Six round capacity, takes a round to reload each bullet. If you're proficient with handguns, you can fan the hammer to make an additional two attacks each round with no bonus to hit. +1 reaction with people who like guns, which is a lot of people in Texas. Hostile reactions mean they'll want to duel you. $1000. $100 for a box of fifty .45 Colt rounds. 1 slot. Fifty loose bullets will fill a slot.
19. IOTV. That's acronymese for "Improved Outer Tactical Vest". A heavy assembly of kevlar and ceramic plates with not only a helmet, but also a groin protector in case you're concerned about your friend downstairs. Holds four ceramic plates, allowing it to absorb 16 HP of ballistic damage until they're all broken. $1500. $100 per plate. 6 slots carried, 4 slots worn.
20. Dirt Bike. Hell yes. Seats one rider and can hit a top speed of 70 MPH, though I wouldn't recommend that in dungeon conditions. 15 miles to the gallon with a four gallon tank. 16 AC, 10 HP before it's rendered nonfunctional. Crashing inflicts 1d6 damage for every 10 MPH you're going, SAVE for half. Protective gear lets you treat your speed as being 10 MPH lower for damage purposes. $3000. Gas is $1 a gallon, which is enough to fill a $25 Jerry can and an inventory slot.

Bullets should be cheaper, but the Economy is not your friend. At least gas prices are down.

You could also just go to the Tractor Supply website and look around on there. Did you know they sell warhammers for fifty bucks? The modern world truly is wonderful.

"Livin' on the road, my friend," someone mourns on the radio, "was supposed to keep you free and clean..."

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces

After the frosty silence in the gardens

After the agony in stony places

The shouting and the crying

Prison and palace and reverberation

Of thunder of spring over distant mountains

He who was living is now dead

We who were living are now dying

With a little patience

PLACES TO SEE

No New God holds sway over Austin. Nothing enters or leaves but by the will of the Governor; Sam Houston himself, or someone claiming to be him, rules the city with an iron fist. This place is not a dungeon, but a fortress- don't enter without an army at your back or a damn good plan. What remains of the Texas National and State Guard turns its guns within and without, fingers on the trigger. Under their masks, their eyes are hemorrhage-red; injured, they bleed bluebonnet petals. No, no New God holds Austin, because something else took it first, something for which they hunger: the Heart of Texas, beating with power in the State Capitol where the central rotunda draws breath to whisper secret demands. It is the power of splitting off from the whole, of standing alone, of refusing any and all help; independence for the sake of itself. Its symbols are the six-gun, the broken lariat, and the pentasected star. 

Security on the Border remains a hot-button issue- for Mexico, who have adopted a shoot-on-sight policy for the various Americans trying to cross over, be they insane New God cultists or terrified refugees from the various post-apocalyptic wastes. Of course, it's not like things are much better over there. It's just that their Salvation is Catholic-flavored, and whoever is still in charge is eager to send out expeditions in a new shitfuture edition of the Age of Sail. El Paso has, unexpectedly, become a new port on the Crude Sea from which these modern conquistadors set out once again in search of the City of Gold. Say hello to your potential coworkers and rivals.

The Big Country is an irradiated wasteland courtesy of the Salvific bombing runs that birthed the Lone Star. That cruel second sun burns bright over the glass plains, dropping weapons and ammunition at random to be collected and sold by its avatar, the Tetrarch of Abila, a cruel man with lead-ball eyes and bullet teeth. Many would seek his ammo-belt crown, and many of them have been slain by his Angel- a Reaper drone given life by his God. Those that survive here live underground in the dungeons of this region, the myriad of not-so-decommissioned missile silos that dot the plains. Sometimes they fire, launching atomic death to those who have displeased Salvation- either that, or at strategic targets that no longer exist. Given the state of things, it's not likely that they notice.

The Gulf, no longer of Mexico or America but of the Flood, is an oilslick nightmare. Rusted offshore rigs sag into the ocean, burning with toxic smoke and/or pouring toxic chemicals into the water. Everything is sick or poisoned, even the monsters; krakens and aspidochelones vomit up bloody, half-digested sealife into the surf. Dungeons here are the sinking rigs themselves, falling apart and flooding but, just as rot brings about new life, still producing value to be extracted. Just watch for Fossils and the roughnecks they've converted into cavemen.

The Metroplex is sticky with the rot of Kegare, an urban hellscape of blood and rust. Cars bleed. Bodies hang from the overpasses. Anime fans cut one another down in the streets in waifu argument blood feuds that have gone on for what seems like generations and shows no sign of stopping. Their king and avatar of Kegare Foreign Pervert--he's Japanese, and speaks only Japanese aside from saying his title in English--watches it all impassively. Those that win his favor have the objects of their fantasy made real, sculpted from ground beef, rebar, centipedes, and pork skin. Every building is a dungeon here- even the Maul of America can be accessed if you go down the right corridor.

Midessa is overrun with dinosaurs and cavemen, courtesy of the atavistic attention of Radicarian. This has done what I might call millions of dollars of improvements; rocky wasteland and oil infrastructure is overgrown by primeval jungles and marshes where everything eats everything else in a maniac child's idea of paleobiology. Fossils fight for territory with herds of living Pumpjacks, and towering Derricks graze the treetops with Brontosauruses right out of a stop motion movie. This place is a wilderness crawl, with a few dungeons in the vine-choked refineries.

The Panhandle was the area most unscathed by the state's great shattering, but nobody gets off free in the shitfuture. Much of the rest of Texas has been made a desert by the Lone Star, but supercells and tornadoes scour the earth here like the short-lived wrathful gods that they are. This is great for local aquifers, and just as good for the Flood; those retreating from the storms have become pale, eyeless cave-dwellers under its influence, merchants of some of Texas's only consistent sources of water for drinking and irrigation. Even the Tetrarch doesn't dare threaten them- even he cannot live on gunpowder and gasoline alone, no matter how his God agitates for war.

Mexican Blindcat

Between all these locations is the Crude Sea, an inland ocean of unrefined petroleum. Everything is near it, and consequently, everything smells like shit. It is only by the ignorant grace of Radicarian that the fumes don't drift overland and kill everyone, but anyone who sails the Crude Sea does so with a gas mask, a rebreather, or for the rest of their very short life. Burning patches migrate like weather, and undead things cling to ships and wash up on black shores. The only life which persists are the "squids", which only resemble squids in that they have no bones and too many limbs. Rumors of the oil kraken remain unproven, but are impossible to disprove.

San Antonio has fallen below the petroleum waves, a chthonic Atlantis. When the earth shakes and the Crude Sea parts, the city sits pristine on the seafloor, as beautiful as the day it sank and teeming with oil-soaked dead ready to drag down any would-be scavengers to add to their number. They don't need to kill you. They only need to wait for the oil to come crashing down again.

Yet, below the Alamo, below deep shafts drilled in search of oil, below the labyrinthine complexes of missile silos, below the sub-basements of the Capitol, anywhere the earth opens up to swallow men whole, the Lost World waits. History is buried but it does not die.

People to Meet

1. Odiseo Pineda and Alberto Ávalos, the Savage Detectives. A pair of elderly poets, the former a Mexican and the latter a Chilean; the last two members of the Infravisceralists, a movement defined mostly by doing whatever the hell you want and occasionally making poetry about it. They are proud, grandiose, and would border on being pretentious if not for their subtle sense of humor. They aim to, as Chilean painter Roberto Matta put it, "blow the brains out of the cultural establishment." That, and sell weed. Lots and lots of weed.
2. Juice. A tall man, bone-white and bone-skinny, with tightly-strained whipcord muscles under an ill-fitting kevlar vest and cargo shorts. He never sleeps, they say, and they say he will never die. This is because he's on a frightening cocktail of steroids and amphetamines at all times, both the reason for and the method of his scavenging career. He's also a brilliant polymath, at least in the service of getting more drugs. Get on his good side, and he might let you have some of his "super soldier formula."
3. The Schizo. Yes, he really insists on being called that. This weedy nerd would really like you to know that he's in tune with the Zeitgeist, and that he knows the real secret history of the world- but the sweaty dollar bill scent of the Economy is all over him, and when he isn't wrong, he's lying. Deeply interested in making short-form video content about your exploits, and will follow you into the dungeon and inevitably fuck something up. If any harm befalls him, his wealthy parents will send mercenaries to break your legs or kill you.
4. Ronin Vasquez. A young man who, judging by his loose skin, lost two hundred pounds very quickly. A Naruto-running chosen one of cringe with a genuine katana, a woodland camo kimono, and a voice made for anime dubbing. He seeks to kill his former master Foreign Pervert and purge the influence of Kegare from the world. Inexplicably, he is a D-Template Wave-Dancing Samurai and one of the few unambiguously good people in the world, which is almost certainly going to end up getting him killed one of these days. But not this one. 
5. Bluebonnet. Named so for the flower pinned on the Texas-pattern Hawaiian shirt he wears, this Texian ogre of a man is larger than life itself- both in the sense of being ten feet tall and in his complete lack of subtlety. What amuses him sends him into hysterical laughter, what annoys him makes him fly into a screaming rage, and what disappoints him makes him a sobbing mess. He wields a massive Texas flagpole as a spear, and is mainly focused on upholding Texian independence from the various New Gods that would consume it. Impede him and he will twist you in half.
6. Reighfyl (pronounced "rifle") Leigh. Could only be described as a dungeon-based tradwife gunfluencer, with all the terrifying delusion and experience with violence that entails in a world like this. Her soul is split five ways between Atavistic, Economic, Lunatic, Prismatic, and Salvific influences with a frighteningly narrow margin of her self remaining. Sometimes, when nobody is looking, her expression drops and she seems to age a decade. She's been trying very, very hard to set up and run a homestead in the Lost World, and the third time will not be the charm. Maybe you could help, or maybe you could pick through the wreckage.
7. Dr. Achebe. A mass of shifting cardboard and plastic grocery sacks carrying a scoped rifle, nothing but two wide, expressive eyes visible under her homemade urban ghillie suit. She is a self-titled Chthonologist, a researcher of the Underworld. While the Lost World often resists study and bucks at the reins of any attempt to explain its existence, this has never stopped her; in this field, success is only a matter of who yields first. Achebe's current project is assembling maps of the Lost World's regions, which she both buys and sells.
8. Ima. An old lady in a plate carrier with a combat shotgun that seems huge in her small, wrinkled hands until she croaks out some profanity and blows someone's head off. Far, far too old for this line of work, but there's not really such a thing as retirement anymore. Besides, it's better to go out in a blaze of glory than to slowly rot away in a world that outright resents you for no longer producing value. Ima isn't suicidally bold, but she'll join in on all kinds of crazy plans just to see what happens.
9. The Rock Writer. Like an ice age Venus figurine if it was hard-angled and muscular instead of being rounded and fat. Wild, wild hair under a rusted morion helm, strung through with razor blades, otherwise dressed only in a hardened layer of red clay dust. The Rock Writer doesn't speak- her capacity for language was sacrificed to Radicarian so that she could move through earth and stone as if it were water. If she wants to communicate, she paints. It's nearly all she does, leaving scenes in ochre of wars both ancient and modern, all in the same prehistoric style wherever she goes. 
10. Blind Cat. Wet footsteps in the darkness, then glassy skin and branching veins under your light. She needs no eyes to see- you're too damn loud, anyways, and her barbels taste your presence in the air. Blind Cat drags around a cart full of gallon jugs of fresh, albeit mineral-flavored water, selling them at the regular rate of $10. In the dungeon, it may as well be a discount. Those with Aphotic influence get an actual discount equal to their percentage, rounding up. Threaten her, and she'll shatter the fossilized shell hanging from her neck then run away while the Samebito it summoned pulverizes you with an anchor. 

Rastellum Carinatum

The Lost World

It's nonsense down there. A mythic Underworld, you could call it, but it's not myth- it's history and prehistory, the recorded and forgotten blended into a slurry in the earth's memory. Bleach-white primeval jungles grow in vaulted chambers by the shores of a warm sea that fell below the earth not long after the dinosaurs went extinct. Stripped mineshafts plummet into rodeo arenas where the shades of the dead watch Columbian mammoths kill each other. Buried Spanish missions are occupied by phantom Spaniards, driven mad by what they imagine is Hell- and rightly so. The burning Crude Sea flows down here, or rather, flows up to the world above. Pockets of flammable gasses often build up and explode, rocking the whole complex. Coal seam fires are common. The oil-soaked dead wander these halls, forever burning, and they are older things than the ones that wash ashore: the people that first named the place that would one day be Texas, the people who first set foot on its dry plains after the long journey across frigid Beringia.

If there's one place of refuge in the Lost World, it's Los Espíritus Santos. They're literal Underworld bars, concrete pillboxes lit up by generator-powered Christmas lights, that are scarcely large enough to fit ten people. Interior furnishings are sparse and inconsistent, but every one of them has the same mural of Jesus Christ and Elvis walking arm-in-arm down the glass stairs of heaven. The beer is warm, the soda flat. The only food is whatever the bartender has on hand. Everything is a little overpriced. Regardless, the universal policy of shotgun-enforced non-violence and the security of being literal bunkers means that Los Espíritus Santos are popular places to hide out in during lengthy scavenging runs. It would be a very, very bad idea to violate this neutrality. If any of your fellow scavengers find out you killed or stole from the bartender, they will hate you.

Becoming the bartender is a popular retirement plan. The benefits are great; as genius loci of a tiny section of the dungeon, you no longer need to eat, drink, or sleep while tending the bar, and if you die, you will come back within 24 hours so long as there is a bar to tend. All you need to do is convince a bartender to let you take their place.

This Los Espíritus Santos has...

1. An ice machine that doubles as a fridge.
2. A jukebox.
3. A set of fold-out cots. $100 per person per night. If you need privacy, you get a curtain. 
4. An electric griddle, a minifridge, and some damn good food.
5. Functioning wi-fi. $100 for an hour of access.
6. Guns and ammo for sale. See item list above for examples.

But...

1. Has a carpeted floor that reeks of blood and puke.
2. Is busy. 1d6+4 people are already inside.
3. Won't let you in unless you buy something. 
4. Has made an enemy of some dungeon inhabitants and is frequently attacked by them.
5. Is tucked away somewhere inconvenient, like behind a river of burning naphtha or at the top of a precipice.
6. Has run out of stock. Lacking food, drinks, or gasoline, and will pay handsomely for them.

And is run by...

1. Steve. A big, fat, shirtless man with the Declaration of Independence tattooed on his back, which he often--poorly--recites from memory. An expert on contract law, the only law he considers valid, and an amateur singer of AC/DC songs, the only band he considers valid.
2. Ronald Reagan- at least, someone wearing a rubber mask of his face and a suit riddled with bullet holes, doing a passable but muffled impression of his voice. If he were to ever take his mask off, he would dissolve into a $1000 heap of loose pennies, a fate which he is extraordinarily paranoid about.
3. The Operator. Has a big beard and sunglasses, and dresses like an off-duty cop under his kevlar vest. Says shit like "watch your six" and "stay frosty" and "I'll see you in hell" between bouts of spouting completely incorrect military trivia. It's less like stolen valor and more like he's a space alien that only vaguely knows what the military is.
4. Darlene. A beauty queen of decades past, with big hair that's about 50% Aqua Net by mass. Looks youthful, but in a well-embalmed way like Lenin's body. When she says "bless your heart" she really means it, and you'll really know when she doesn't, especially when you interrupt her while she's doing her crosswords.
5. Magdalena. Another throwback, a sharp-dressed pachuca with an eyepatch and a missing fingertip. She says she lost them in a fight- actually a lie, they're injuries from an industrial accident, but she's an enthusiastic bullshitter. Call her bluff on one story, and she'll laugh and tell another, each one even crazier than the last. The only true story is her being born with a tail and having the ability to read minds.
6. The Marlboro Man- a Marlboro Man? He vapes incessantly and speaks in zoomer slang in spite of being a living fossil of advertising with a fifty-going-on-eighty face. The power he serves has written him off as a loss, and he's now desperate to update his image and get in favor with the Economy again. Surely, cowboys who smell of pastry vapor and burnt plastic will be a hit with the kids.

The City of Gold 

Go far and deep enough in any direction, and you'll find it. Shining towers on an impossible horizon, a vast underground desert under the eternal light of the Lone Star. As above, so below. Approach, because there is no other direction to go but back, and the conquistadors will find you. They are not the undead- they are the living originals, or rather, the original. 

Francisco Vázquez de Coronado didn't find his city of gold, only houses of adobe and straw. His dreams of God and gold frustrated, something else whispered in his ear- Salvation and the Economy were forces even then, cysts in the noosphere. The New Gods aren't a product of some kind of modern moral degeneracy; they are as old as sin, as old as "fuck you, got mine". When Coronado set out for his occulted second expedition into the earth itself, he got not only what had been denied to him, but also to Juan Ponce de Lèon decades before: a City of Gold made by no human hand, with the Fountain of Youth at its center. Untold wealth and eternal life, and nobody to have to share it with but himself. When he drank of that fountain, his back opened up like his spine was a seam to birth the very first of his many, many clones. He's still in the Fountain, every muscle contorted into a prayer position. It would be a favor to everyone, even him, if you blew his head off.

The Clones are unaging past adulthood, one born every day for 500 years; even with the attrition of them being killed by outside forces and each other, they are innumerable. It is no small mercy that they cannot use the Fountain themselves. Their Lone Star provides their arms and armor, and they eat anything they can catch in their far-ranging sorties through the Lost World. When they're very hungry, or just bored, this includes one another. They do not fear death, as they're just individual parts of a greater superorganism; the only thing that could feasibly scare them is a threat of death to the original Coronado, because he fears it even in his torturous state. He would offer all the wealth of the City of Gold to ensure his survival, enough to devalue gold into worthlessness all over the world, and then immediately scheme on how he could go against his deal and get it all back.

The New Gods wouldn't mind having a new playing piece in his stead. Coronado never lived up to his potential and, really, he's so problematic and difficult to market to young adult audiences.

"Well, if I had a dollar bill..."