CC-3: Stack

by Kati B, Rowan H, Taylor B, and Zak H

The borough of Stack is a city within a city. Opaque to bureaucracy, a refuge from the law, its crumbling, dripping tangle of structures shelter an incredible variety of people. Once it would have made sense to think of it as some few hundred discrete buildings, but over a hundred years, Stack sprawled outwards, then upwards, and finally inwards upon itself, an organic megastructure.

Within its endless stairways, alleys and arcades, you will never be more than a shout away from the next person. The clatter of dishes and chatter of diners, work songs and dirges, drip of water, hum of improvised electrical grid, rattle of machinery, bellows of vendors, drone of prayer and jangle and shout of gambling; tides of sound lap on the shores of perception at all hours.

Flux Space

We designed Stack as a Flux Space as described by Nick LS Whelan at Papers & Pencils. Learn about Flux Spaces there and find procedures for Flux Space exploration. We've statted encounters for Electric Bastionland.

Shallow Rooms (1d6)

1 – Dish Pit

By chance or design, two hundred restaurants built kitchens directly above each other. A haze of wires cuts a column through their center - improvised dumbwaiters, ferrying food from those who made it to those who'll eat it. Harried waitstaff pluck rainfall on the strings as they serve their chef's latest concoctions: steaming roots, wriggling lichen, pulsing meat run slick with broth. It all smells like a migraine.

There's too many orders and not enough hands. If you look like you don't have a job to do, local Ready Whippers (telescoping spatula 1d8; 2 / kitchen) harass you 'til you get to work.

What just whizzed by on that dumbwaiter? (d4)

Prognosticasserole: Freshly baked in autumnal porcelain. Smells like your next meal, no matter what that may be. If your next meal contains poison, black stains blossom on the top crust.
Schrödinger's Catfish: Dripping inside a styrofoam to-go container. Flip a coin on opening - heads, it's a living (and angry) fish; tails, it's dead, fried, and delicious.
Fluted Lobster: Massive. Named for the way its carapace extends past its face like a knight's helm. Knives can't pierce the chitin, so the cooks have to strangle it. Shell may be worn as Armor 2 if you can get it off the lobster.
Kerry Lochlan, rich creep. Tied by his ankles and chortling loudly as he zips by. Comically large gold coins fall from his open pockets and clatter through each kitchen he passes. No need to rescue me, my friends. I paid to be eaten!

2 – Archaic Arcade

An underpass that seems to narrow with each step is lined with arcade machines covered in grime. Some are broken, while others have flickering lights. The sound of pinball machines fire off as you walk by. Teenagers play endlessly, entranced by something or someone. Few others take their earned tickets, the arcade scrip, to a roving vendor that moves shop by the hour. You see them earn food or other small trinkets that they trade among themselves. They appear unwilling to leave.

High Score announcements rarely blare throughout the underpass, but when they do, the arcade erupts in cheers. Players have a 1-in-100 chance of earning a High Score, marking their initials for all of Flux Space Kowloon to see.

No matter how much time you spend here, you'll never get enough tickets to earn the Ultimate Prize.

3 – Between the Lions

With space at a premium, empty rooms in Stack are gobbled up quickly by squatters, travelers, or, most often, business. Gypsum Motels carve through space like rotting anthills, cannibalizing unoccupied adjacent rooms regardless of size or purpose. Reaching one's bed may involve a winding path between floors, through broken walls and dripping pipes, stepping gingerly over other tenants to a mattress crammed into the mildewed remains of someone's old pantry.

The most notorious of these motels, Between the Lions, boasts many entrances throughout Stack, all signposted by its namesake graffiti: two grinning lions on either side of the door. Its owner, Miss Palmetto, takes payment and evicts tenants with an army of pheromone-controlled roaches, directed via surgically implanted organ behind her epiglottis.

Unfortunately, Palmetto's been seized by solipsizma and has taken to harassing tenants with her roaches as they sleep. A gaggle of travelers commiserates by the nearest entrance, hoping for a solution. If the party can stop Palmetto, a bag-eyed doctor offers to surgically transmit her roach-caller organ to a player (after some proper rest, of course).

Traversing the Lions

First Encounter – Outer Rooms

Former prison cell, one filthy mattress next to a closed exit door on the far wall. A jagged hole yawns from the east side; something flickers in its darkness 30ft down. On entry, a group of roaches on the wall forms an arrow pointing into the hole.
1. The hole terminates 300 feet below in hard concrete; its smooth walls offer no handholds. The glittering's from a children's toy with dying batteries ("The thief says: oh no!"). If players descend on a rope, the roaches gnaw it to shreds.
Former industrial freezer. Mattresses hang from meathooks. Roach swarm (as detachment, 1d6 bite) gnaws through a fresh corpse and all its belongings, pointedly ignoring 50G in pieces scattered on the ground. They attack if the gold is touched.
Roaches flow as a river through here. Only countertops and wooden tables are available to walk on. DEX save to leap across without a plan. The entrance and exit are both holes in the ceiling on opposite sides of the 20ft space.
1. Terrified tenant (Saline Dion) cowers in the back corner near the entrance. If rescued she can offer a tip for dealing with Palmetto, but she's too scared to do any jumping on her own.
2. The tip, whispered before she sprints away, is: she hides as the roaches. the roaches hide as her.
The walls, ceiling, and floor are covered in mattresses, imprinted with sweat stains in the shape of sleeping bodies. The exit door is covered in thin cracks and twitches slightly. The twitches grow faster as you draw near.
1. The door is actually a roach swarm with painted chitin. They attack if touched (STR save or 1d12).
2. The real exit is behind the only mattress without a sweat stain.

Second Encounter – Inner Rooms

ODD: A sparse layer of roaches lines the floor a 15ft long hallway decorated in scratched-out portraiture and faded nudes. On the far end, an open door leads deeper into the Lions.
- If the party kills a roach at any point in this room, the door slams shut and locks from the other side until they leave and reenter.
- The roaches on the floor are harmless, but swarm under players' footfall and attempt to crush themselves.
EVEN: Smoke fills a dark lounge. Four old men play poker at a foldout table, blurry in the haze. They move in jerks and spasms; when they laugh it comes with a tinny buzz, like a mistuned radio.
- The "men" are hollowed out skins filled with roaches. The bugs can rub their wings together to sort of mimic speech. If players treat them as anything other than normal humans, they quiver and then explode in chitin shrapnel (1d8 blast).
- The exit door is locked. The key sits in the middle of their foldout table, anted alongside 10G in outdated currency.

Final Encounter – Miss Palmetto

Cloying perfume masks the scent of rot. Roaches flow slowly across body-shaped lumps on the ground, covering the floor. Palmetto meditates framed by curtains on an ornate four-poster bed, smile frozen on a face like cracked porcelain. Her body constantly shivers and shakes. She speaks as a chorus of buzzes vibrating from the floor.

This is a decoy formed from roaches with painted chitin. The real Palmetto (1d4 pocket knife) hides as one of the lumps on the floor.
If the decoy is attacked, the swarm retaliates (as detachment, 1d6 bite) and the real Palmetto attempts to run away in the chaos.
Palmetto offers to stop harassing her tenants only through comically large bribes (5,000G/complete fealty from the party/ownership of all of Stack/etc.). The only threat that gets her attention is calling pest control.

4 – Gambling Nexus

The spirit of addiction has taken root in the husk of an abandoned gymnasium. Every inch of this room's floor is covered in green felt. It spills from tables, piles at the walls, and layers on itself in moldy strata. Atop the felt: games, all kinds. Dice and cards, beer and darts; it all blends together in intoxicating excess. The players maintain the mess is actually one massive, sprawling game, and they can win it all with just one lucky streak. The House observes the delirium with sly grins from outside, barring newcomers until they've thrown a little in the pot.

The House (as Detachment, shining knuckle dusters 1d6) is a gang of near-identical enforcers. They line each entrance in pristine suits.
- Won't let you through without an ante, and they're bored of money. Offer from your inventory and make it count
  - They toss all antes in a wall-spanning vault, watched at all times. You'll get it all when you win, they say with a snicker.
The players hate their circumstances a lot but hate losing even more.
- May be reasonably convinced to stop playing and even fight the House to get their stuff back, but their addiction is strong. As long as any game remains active in the Nexus, they'll abandon any rebellion before it even begins and return to playing.

Joining a Game

Roll 1d6 to find a game. Flip a coin and call it to win.

Lose: sympathetic murmurs or cruel sneers. Add a bulky Weight of Debt to your inventory. Roll 1d6 to move to "the loser's game".
Win: pats on the back or angry stares. Remove one Weight of Debt, if applicable. Roll 1d6 to move to the "the winner's game".
Repeat rolls are the same game, different players.

Hostile Prophecy - players draw from homemade tarot-style decks and interpret what horrible events will befall their competitors. Winner is the most shocking prediction as decided by spectator vote (CHA save if desired). The predicted prophecy immediately befalls the loser.
Maze Rats - players take turns tilting a huge scale model of Stack, trying to move silver ball bearings from one end of the building to another. Keen eyes will spy tiny renditions of all Shallow and Deep rooms.
Yahtzeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee - Normal Yahtzee scaled to thirty-two dice shaken around via big-ass wooden pail. If you win, you have to yell the name through every single 'e' or it actually counts as a loss.
Please Stop - players dissect a living person, so crushed by debt they can hardly move, and guess their likely cause of eventual death had they not ended up here. Winner called by a single attending physician constantly sprinting across the room. The name comes from most game boards' last words.
Beer - used to be Beer Pong, but they ran out of cups. Now they just drink from taps on the floor. If you win, the dizziness makes you lose your next game.
The Most Dangerous Darts - Regular degular darts. The board's painted onto the back of a frantic man hauling ass through the crowd.
The Original Game - two old men stubbornly playing mancala in the corner. Boss said to finish our game before coming back to work. So we never finished. The rest of this bullshit grew from spectators waiting for their turn with the mancala board. They don't even touch the pieces, just move their hands thoughtfully back and forth.

5 – Last Rites Recycling Company

It is known that many people live in Stack. Less known is that many die there too. What to do with so much empty matter? Here at Last Rites, the dead find new life through transformative recycling. In this interlocking nest of catwalks, vats, and pistons, the human body can finally become more than the sum of its parts. Skin turns to leather, bones to cement, and the meat... stays meat. When they say Stack is built on its elders, they mean it. The sickening churn of vast machinery haunts near halls for miles.

Conveyors pipe bodies to the factory in a nauseous stream. At all hours, a supervisor shrieks orders over a tinny speaker system. The machines are maintained by black-veiled laborers (STR 12, refrigerant spray 1d6 DEX), humming aimlessly.

The sleepless laborers are numb to the occasional corpse fighting back. They toss intruders into nearby machines without a second thought.
The supervisor, Britchard, paces in a center office attached to the roof, only accessible via tiny elevator. He can see most of the factory via the office's wall-spanning windows and uses this view to harass workers over intercom.
- The laborers numbly follow any orders given to them over the intercom system without question.
The machinery ranges from heavy pistons to massive cement mixers to tanks of searing acid. All are rust stained with the fluid of their inputs. Falling inside is instant death.

6 – Vent Bat Stash

Members of the Vent Bats gang have hidden contraband here:

Where?

A broken walk-in refrigerator carpeted in mold.
A stairway that leads to an abrupt dead-end.
A punctured defunct water tank.
A forgotten maintenance corridor.

What?

36 tiny jars of cinnamanika, a spice so delicious it's been banned.
A half dozen sets of Rewirers' uniforms.
A case of marked playing card decks.
An electricity siphon.

Deep Rooms (1d3)

1 – Stack Rotator

New Laws have passed allowing paying tenants in a Movable District to be rotated vertically. This ensures an adequate amount of sun hits a Column (single stack) throughout a month long period. To function, a large machine works beneath the Column, a Stack Rotator. Sometimes, tenants pay engineers to explore the archaic machinery to hamper with it, providing them extra hours of sunlight while maintenance is done. Stack Rotators can connect to each other and are often deep underground. Upkeep is done by the city engineers, and impersonating one is highly illegal.

Many Columns connect to each other through catwalks and scaffolding. These fold like draw bridges when the Rotator moves. With a set schedule, it isn't too difficult to maintain, but be sure you know it.

What's On the Fritz?

A Rotator has gotten stuck mid-cycle, leaving a tenant partially underground. Digging through their floor allows access to the Rotator.
Maintenance hatches near the Column on the ground have turned into sinkholes, causing the Column to lean. The Stack has responded with support pillars to ignore the situation.
A Rotator rusted and snapped, dropping the Column underground. Some tenants were killed.
Many Rotators have service tunnels. Some connect to Gypsum Motels.
A Rotator was connected to a Last Rites Recycling Company and has been gumming up the Rotator for weeks until it finally stopped working.
Connecting catwalks for 2 Columns did not disconnect when the Rotator engaged. This has shredded the Columns wide open, leaving multiple apartments exposed.

2 – Abandoned Theater

The rows of seats and red velvet curtains were removed and repurposed long ago, but the stage remains. Dust blankets much of the theater, but disturbances hint at the daily meetings held here:

At midnight: five mockeries (a macaque, a dog, a goat, a pig, and another smaller, meaner dog) meet to plan one job: to rip off the Gambling Nexus on New Year's Eve.

At 5am: Fatlip, a virtuoso electro-zither musician, performs a transcendent set that cures Raveworms.

At 4pm: a Ventkid called Dustbunny slips away from her comrades to sew puppets from discarded costumes.

3 – Viv's

Climb an incongruous flight of stairs between two haberdasheries, take a left, go through the red door, and you'll find yourself in Viv's a cramped, smoky bar run by a heron mockery and lit solely by the glow of a dozen vibrant fish tanks.

Who's Drinking Alone Tonight?

K, a lanky bald man with a moth tattoo on the back of his head. His daughter runs with the Ventkids. He hopes she hasn't abandoned her dream of opening a puppet theater.
Mimi, an old woman with mint green hair like cotton candy. She offers to read your fortune in tea leaves—but only the really expensive kind works. (And it does: the referee rolls the next encounter twice and you choose one).
A member of the Vent Bats too drunk to remember his name. He does remember the location of a stash, and he'll give it up for two fingers of top-shelf whiskey.
A dead-ringer for one of the PCs. They're afraid they've caught Raveworms, but they were actually poisoned.

Encounters (2d4)

2 – Wen the Wondrous

No one has seen Mr. Wen or met anyone who deals with him directly. Mr. Wen knows where to find you. When he chooses to contact you, his voice crackles from a nearby speaker, a telegraph receiver begins indicating a message of its own accord, or else a concealed wall panel pops open, belching forth a typewritten message along with a puff of dust.

Mr. Wen only contacts you to ask a favor. No one refuses, though he offers nothing in return. However, his helpers often experience an inexplicable stroke of good fortune: they hit a jackpot at the gambling hall's machines; their broken HVAC sputters to life; the machine noise in their walls subsides.

What Does Wen Want?

Free the dancer with mismatched shoes from the Dragon Puppet and take him out drinking.
Retrieve the body of a woman with a hibiscus tattoo from Last Rites Recycling Company. Leave it in room 1103 of Between Two Lions.
Slip some live Raveworms into order #23177 at the Dish Pit.
Find Susu at the Gambling Nexus and tell her that Albert is sorry.

3 – Pickpockets

Describe the distraction. Mention the crowd, the close press of bodies. "Denizens jostle past in the hubbub."

If players do not think to check their pockets, a random item goes missing from the PC with the worst luck.

Location (d4)

A long series of staircases. Shopkeepers peep and vend from niches in the stairs.
A zigzagging path with short
Buildings open out to make a broad avenue, crowded with stalls.
A yawning gap between two buildings. The walkway is a series of planks strung on ropes.

Distraction (d4)

A child throws up all over a PC's shoes.
Buskers perform a dance that incorporates acrobatics, martial arts and yodelling.
The party slip in a sudden lake of grease flowing from a shop selling deep fried bat. (Spicy meat, honeyed wings.)
Valuable-looking jewelry (fake) lying in the path. An aggrieved pompous man will accuse anyone picking it up of thievery, causing a scene.

4 – Ventkids

Rattling thumps from the ceiling. Wild, echoing laughter. Suddenly, three greased-up Ventkids careen through an HVAC return shaft and into the far wall. They're on their feet in seconds, rushing you down with bulging eyes and wild hearts.

Ventkids

HP 6, STR 7, DEX 16, CHA 7

Homemade spore mask, dusty coveralls, grease everywhere Blackened dust mop (1d4, long reach)

Desperate cleaners gone mad from navigating Stack's sprawling ventways.
Nuisance: after one round, disengages and scampers back to the vents; returns at the funniest future opportunity.
Slimy: with proper precaution (climbing gear, filtered masks) one can follow their trails through the vents to the next Deep Room.

5 – Rewirers

Uniformed in baggy khaki coveralls and docker caps, two Rewirers wrestle with a tangle of wires that spill forth from an open wall panel, splitting and splicing them. A third Rewirer blocks the path of an old woman who spits and curses at the workers, calling them hijackers and thieves. Meanwhile, the Rewirers implore passersby to run a cable up to their colleagues on the floor above.

6 - A Shirtless Man Running Directly At You

Hair patchy. Pupils wide. Head constantly whipping behind him. Fresh cuts bleed bright along his biceps. Somehow he always shows up in the tightest corridor possible.

Shirtless Man
HP 4, STR 15, DEX 18, CHA 5
Gravedigger's shoulders and a mouth full of spittle
Pure Momentum (1d12)
Critical Damage: You splat across his chest like a bug on a front bumper. He runs straight through a load-bearing wall, sending you both into the open air to your deaths.

Exits combat and continues running after taking his turn.
Preserves damage between encounters.
Blasts heart-exploding hardbass from a speaker on his belt.

7 – Vein Crushers

Heavy thuds. Crashing concrete. Dust and asbestos fog the air. Two Vein Crushers sledge through the wall, eyes out for witnesses.

Vein Crushers

HP 6, STR 12, DEX 10, CHA 10

High-vis yellow vests, hardhats, maps like anthills carved through the skin Bloodstained sledgehammer (1d8) Critical Damage: your head gets obliterated Gallagher-style

Stack's former builders. Constructing a place like this broke something fundamental in their minds.
Tunnel endlessly in search of the building's fabled "heart", smashing everything in their way to smithereens.
Furtive and openly hostile to witnesses after years of fighting off inhabitants, rival searchers, and pinkertons.

8 – Dragon Puppet

Cries of terror and fleeing denizens herald the approach of the—

Dragon Puppet

HP 12, STR 14, DEX 6, CHA 16

A vibrant dragon puppet with a massive wooden head and sinuous silk body rampages through the halls, the legs of more than a dozen dancers visible beneath.

The dragon never catches those who flee from it
But it bites (1d10) anyone who fails to display sufficient terror
Upon inflicting critical damage: the target is unharmed but is swallowed by the puppet, disappearing through its jaws to join the line of dancers
Whenever the dragon puppet swallows someone, it gains half their HP
Upon receiving critical damage: the dragon puppet collapses, and a dozen surly costumed dancers plus any swallowed victims come tumbling out

Local Effects (1d4)

1 – Sunlight

This section of Stack holds a precious miracle: light. Against all odds, true sunlight snakes its way from distant skies to grace these tunnels in pale streams. Residents cram wherever it falls, no matter how inconvenient. These Sunbathers routinely block doors and hallways, forcing travelers to find alternate routes as their heads loll in dusty afterglow, insensate with joy.

Sunbathing rights are meted out by lottery and fiercely coveted. Disturbing one is a high crime (Negative Event Die as locals work against you until you atone with apology or favor).

2 – Solipsizma-affected Area

The solipsizma epidemic has taken hold in this area, and most folk appear to be wearing dark glasses. People encountered during this flux turn have a 4-in-6 chance of being afflicted.

Talking with afflicted folk can be frustrating. Conversations are transactional, manners rare; residents might ignore you or simply walk away once they are bored. Theft or violence are on the table. Failing to observe correct deference to members of the Vent Bats will immediately result in a fight.

Overall the effect is of being treated like an NPC.

3 – Brownout

Light flickers intermittently and the streets empty out. The usual business of the borough is interrupted until the next flux turn. Folk retreat into their homes or gather around impromptu campfires, entertaining one another with story and song.

Solipsizma carriers take off their dark glasses but can see without issue and are otherwise unaffected by the lack of light.

The party must deplete light sources or rest for a turn.

4 – Raveworms

A nanobot that looks like a worm. No one is sure if they have sentience or were created by some night club to induce the manic dancing that happens every night at 4 AM. Often times they're eaten by accident. After 6 hours, infected people are compelled to dance and won't stop until exhausted or cured. Cure is only possible by listening to music at the correct frequency that will shatter the worm to be passed naturally.