Shivered Space // People of Cath Celdaenn

Michael Wheelan's covers for the Foundation series

Cath Celdaenn is a place where spacetime is fucked all sideways. It is called City of Cities because it was literally, physically connected to all the major cities of its time, and when it "disappeared", it took all those places with it.

[During their third and final world conquest, the statesmen of the Last Empire devised a plot to actually maintain the damn thing. The vassal states were physically drawn together, the map rearranged to their liking—per clockmaker legend, the Mad Knight Narn used adamantine chains to drag each city into place, like a drawstring bag.]

This is why you can walk from the foot of the Mother Ash to the libraries of Ancient Gnosc in five hexes.

[In those days, the Archpope was said to enjoy walking the circumference of the empire each morning. The Pope’s Road remains, patrolled by the Shivered Leopard, Ssonnet.]

In this process, vast stretches of land were folded over, some disappearing entirely into the corners of existence. In historically contested territories, where space has been folded and unfolded many times, reality may wrinkle in unforeseen ways, creating Shivered Space.

1d6	Shivered Spaces
1	Falling through solid earth, standing on open air;
2	Inception-style folded streets; open-air geographic impossibility; two towers on opposite sides of a ruined hamlet spiral into one another seamlessly.
3	Star-shaped rooms like broken mirrors; high-tension spaces; too much movement will cause it to violently snap into a new conformation, revealing hidden corners.
4	Gravity fuckery; floating bridges, suspended aqueducts, reverse waterfalls; roving, localized black holes; things grow too tall or not at all.
5	Reality is sharp; glints of light reveal hairline fractures in the air. A bisected swallow lies on the ground; traverse with extreme caution.
6	Columns stretching into infinity; an enormous landmark cannot be seen from certain angles.

You encounter Shivered Beasts here; degenerate offspring of the Thing Between Things. (The Monster Overhaul, p. 193)

(Additional Reading: Non-Euclidean Architecture, and the sequel)

By the way,

The Thing Between Things is the primary reason why teleport doesn’t work anymore. It's been described both as an oversized dog (once) and a thousand thousand birds (twice). The Witch of El made it out of leftover scraps of spacetime.

It is blamed for the disappearance of the Interstitial Kingdom, aka Lost Ilmar. Pretty much everyone wants it dead.

It's the most lethal encounter in Shivered Space. The second-most lethal is a twenty-story origami crab.

(just gonna push this out and stop sitting on it)

Races of Cath Celdaenn

Roll	Race	Reroll	Perk	Quirk
1-10	Warrior	Choice	Start with 1 extra random item	-4 to resist being mutated or transformed
11	Buryman	DEX	Your family lives just outside the city. Start with a pot full of ghosts.	Ghosts are drawn to you like a beacon. If someone gets possessed, that someone is you.
12	Gnomen	INT	You can speak with architecture (helpful for finding hidden doors).	Your murderous doppelganger lives in the city.
13	Nemean	CHA	You can't feel fear as long as the Sun shines on you.	Your flaming red hair grows astonishingly quickly.
14	Ashlander	INT	You know how to make gunpowder.	You age twice as fast and are mildly radioactive.
15	Carmine	STR	Your blood is black, highly conductive, and hardens when spilled.	Everyone hates you.
16	Jarman	STR	You're always wearing plate armor.	You can't doff your armor. It's heavy; you can't swim.
17	Spagyrian	CHA	If you die, your ghost can avenge you.	1/2 HP unless you submerge in water every day.
18	Royal Vermin	DEX	You can't be ignored.	You're 3'0".
19	Holier	CHA	You're a god; people respect that. Start with 1 Erstwhile Believer	You need to be perceived to act on the world; if no one sees you doing something, you can't do it
20	Skeleton	-	You don't need to eat, sleep, drink, or breathe. Half damage from arrows	Mute

(formatting stolen from Skerples)

Buryman - The new generation of psychopomps. Extended kaums, pilgrims riding out the end of the world at the foot of the gates of Heaven, accompanying their family to the afterlife. Talented ceramicists, kin to spirits, heavy with spectral outgrowths: "the Horns of Lich". River traders, mist walkers.
Jarman - Ghosts in clay armor, seeking absolution. Ostentatious names, prideful veneers: "Ser Ostices", "Pree Jordan", "Lord Castor Clay". Memories of life are faint and uncertain, sometimes self-contradictory, like a dream. The kiln, the climb, these are real.

Carmine - Descendants of the Interminable Carmine General, alloyed to the Iron God, marked by black blood and horns. Practitioners of blood magic. Proud, dynastic, knightly; self-appointed successors to the last empire.
Ashlander - Nascent warlords and their gunmetal. Post-apocalyptic, short-lived and lightly radioactive, from the Land of Ashen Rain, the battlegrounds where the Wyrm died.
Gnomen - Moon worshipers, dark wizard militia with elongated skulls. In Cath Celdaenn, each Gnomen can find their doppelgänger: replicas of an ancient progenitor, carved from soft stone.
Nemean - Mercantile navarchs, scattering seeds of golden empire. A rough-and-tumble pirate coalition, loosely held together by massive amounts of gold.

Holier - Ancient residents of Cath Caldaenn, minor gods captured and degraded, abandoned to a city devoid of worshippers.
Royal Vermin - Survivors of the fall, diminutive men and women distantly descended from royalty. Cannot be ignored, by divine right. Pomp and circumstance, dirty ball gowns and stained uniforms.
Spagyrian - Immortal frog-men, seeking the wandering spirit of the Frog Pope.

Skeleton - Grey Maidens, skeletons with complex sentience, attendants to Lich in all their forms. Want to rescue your skeleton from your body. Pacifistic, patient, think of tombs as prisons for skeletons.

A few of these are """replacements""" for "classic" races: 1) because I worry about offering too few character options to folks accustomed to 5e and 2) because saying "my halflings are like this" is a conversation starter, if nothing else:

• Holiers are elves, except they're all gods that feed off of mortal attention
  
• Royal Vermin are halflings, except they're all nobility with fancy titles and divine right to rule
  
• Gnomen are dwarves, except they're all wizard-pilled delves are dwarves what am i saying
  
• Carmines are tieflings, except they're all magnetic
  

this is dumb, ignore it

Neil Richards