As of yesterday Junksphere is funded! Also the analytics are telling me that all five stretch goals should be in the realm of possibility, which would kick ass because they include some of my favorite rpg writers. If you want to help make that happen in some way other than pledging more money, you can share this bluesky post.
Have a new Junskphere encounter as a treat:
Stumpy Topaz the dwarf is sitting on a rusty bent-up folding chair, happily but hungrily fishing for mechanical silver piranhas in a 24’ wide and 40’ deep acid pond that dissolves any organic material. Every time he gets a bite, the silver fish slices straight through his fishing line with its chainsaw jaws. Unperturbed, he ties a fresh magnetic hook to the end of his line and tries again. He is wearing a boonie hat with extra fishhooks, bobbers and lures tucked into the straps.
A lone scavenger named Brega Piven is loudly picking through trash about 60’ to the dwarf’s northwest, just beyond a bend in the path. She’s looking for food, or for something she can trade for food at the Day Market. She is very possessive of the trash pile she’s currently looking through and anything found in it, and is armed with a shank that does damage as knife. Her pile contains:
1. a dented but functional brass bugle
2. an oil-stained pink beret
3. a sleeping gremlin
4. a broken alarm clock
5. 1’ of a broken chain leash
6. the front two wheels and handle of a wagon
The fishes’ teeth are also made of silver, and would be unable to cut through the hardened steel chain leash. A deactivated silver fish is worth 16 ducats or 45 ducats to the right buyer. There are five of them in the pond.
Stumpy’s lures are bits of wire made of precious wire tied into intricate series of knots, and the glass bobbers are impervious to the acid (but fragile). If the fish are lured to the surface near the shore, there are ways for inventive PCs to safely catch them, but Stumpy won’t think of any on his own.
If Stumpy somehow ends up with one of the fish, he will celebrate loudly enough to alert Brega and then head home, and Brega will try to rob him. If they can somehow be convinced to cooperate, they could easily both get what they want, but there is no chance of that happening without active intervention by the PCs.
