Let’s Have a Look at Into the Outside!
over 10 years ago – Fri, Sep 04, 2015 at 01:51:23 AM

Hello, Ninth World Kickstarter backers—

A week or so ago we gave you a look between the covers of Into the Night, and shortly after that Into the Deep. Although Into the Outside is the furthest away of the three, Bruce, Monte, and Shanna have already started giving it some thought. Here’s a chunk of what you might expect in that book—there’s even content you can use in your game right now! Sit back and enjoy a brief overview of the Brax, transdimesional creatures who grow and tend dimensions like Ninth World farmers tend fruit trees.

A Look at the Brax

Outside The World

Aeon priests know of higher dimensions, alternate worlds, and curled-up planes of existence that are not normally experienced by characters of the Ninth World. Several of these dimensions are large (maybe infinite). Others are in motion and only rarely intersect the world. A few are completely artificial. Then there are the dimensions that are born, grow mature, and finally die in the time a human might daydream away an hour. And finally, there are the dimensions which are bred, born, and grown by entities known as the Brax.

Breeding Dimensions

The Brax breed and grow artificial dimensions for their overlords, who in turn consume those dimensions like food. These overlords are beings of perhaps boundless complexity that Ninth World characters would find difficulty to comprehend. However, the overlords who ultimately consume a farmed dimension are far different from the Brax who farm them.

The Brax

When Ninth World characters encounter the Brax in the world, they usually don’t understand they’ve been contacted by an extraplanar intelligence. Most characters who “meet” a Brax believe they have been colonized by a brain parasite. According to local lore, such parasites accumulate where the numenera is thick.

Characters afflicted with these parasites experience unsettling hallucinations (of a higher dimensional realm called Sekulan), losing Intellect each day until they are cured or die. The Brax, for their part, afflict the various races of the Ninth World like parasites not because they wish to harm or feed on minds. It’s because the Brax are seeking ineffable traits culled from the imagination of living creatures to inject into the fledgeling dimensions they tend.

Brax as a parasitical disease: level 3; inflicts 5 Intellect damage (ignores Armor) each day condition persists.

Sekulan

Sometimes a character “afflicted with brain parasites” is pulled out of the world and into the realm the Brax call Sekulan. A Ninth World character in Sekulan briefly exists in a higher dimensional state than is normal for her, and while she remains there her senses waver on the verge of being overwhelmed. But before that happens, she encounters the Brax as they truly are: Many-legged spheres of light and sound three times the size of a human. A visitor also witnesses the endless fields of fledgeling dimensions being grown like crops on the ends of vast synth stalks like pods on a tree.

When the Brax pull a character completely into Sekulan, it’s almost always accidental. Dimension farmers work to quickly return the intruder back to its home dimension before the Brax overlords become aware of the planar transgression.

Brax encountered in Sekulan: level 5; telepathic within sight; as level 9 for tasks related to knowledge of budding and breeding fledgeling dimensions

Don’t Forget the Into the Night Free Preview!

Have you downloaded the free preview of Into the Night? We’re still many months away from a preview like that for Into the Outside, but if you haven’t checked out the Into the Night preview it’s very much worth it. In addition to giving you a great sense of what the Into the Ninth World books are going to be like, it includes content, such as two complete creature descriptions, that you can use in your game right now!

We’re closing in on another stretch goal, so please keep sharing this campaign. It’s the final week of the campaign, but that’s always an exciting time and we can likely hit several—maybe many—more stretch goals! Remember, tag your posts, shares, and tweets with #NinthWorldKS.

Iadace!
—Charles