It’s Jonathan here again with another Rules Ramble! Each week, I’ll introduce a topic that will be important in an upcoming game, explain some new mechanic or system for DR:TX, or discuss a particular rule from the DR Corebook. In each ramble, I’ll focus on explaining that topic in more detail than the book alone can provide and help provide one place to reference all the various errata or rulings that might be relevant. Sometimes I’ll even drop a few Story Teasers or provide a summary of the last game in a Game Recap.

As we get ready for our next event, THE EMERALD GALA, I'm going to be covering a bit about one of the most dangerous threats in the apocalypse, the Outsiders sometimes known as ARCHONS. This blog post will have some hefty SPOILERS for a bit of local lore and history about these VERY dangerous monsters. If you want to learn some of this information in character instead, I’ll have another post next week!

TICKETS ARE ON SALE FOR THE EMERALD GALA UNTIL FRIDAY, december 2nd! DON’T MISS OUT ON THE NEXT DR:TX premiere EVENT!

We also had some BIG announcements this week about the re-opening of DR New Mexico, and some staff changes here in DR:TX this week, so check it out!

Photo credits in this post are from Noah Goodman, and the art is by the impeccable Shan Lind.

Threat Levels in Dystopia Rising

Before we start into the Archon threat in more specifics, it’s important to understand the SCOPE of the threat we are describing and that involves a few RULES (my favorite!). I’ll try to avoid too many specific spoilers here, but this is somewhat common information that was shared when the National team first talked about new Threats in 3.0, and it follows a common trend in Skills, abilities, items, etc. You’ve likely seen some of this referred to during your NPC shifts, and while this information is considered “out-of-character”, it’s important to understand the baseline.

Threats in Dystopia Rising generally come in three varieties — Undead, Raiders, or Critters. With in each of these larger Threat families you’ll have different subtypes or genuses. These might be things like related zombie types like THE ENDLESS HORDE or PREDATORY ZED, or it might refer to specific Raider Clans like WARPATH RAIDER TRIBES or THRILL KILL RAIDERS. Within these subtypes, you’ll find several different monsters rated by RANK. Some threat families will only have three different subtypes total (one for each Rank), but some might have two or three per Rank.

Most threats in the game can be rated on a scaled called RANKS:

Rank 1 (Low Threat): This includes basic monsters like Shamblers or Pitstop Raiders. Many of these threats might use the HORDE keyword, and are not very powerful solo, but they appear in large numbers. This is the most common type of threat you’ll see in the wastes.
Rank 2 (Moderate Threat): This rank includes more specialized monsters that might appear a bit less often, like Headhunter Raiders, or Gorehounds. These monsters start to have more Body and special skills like Break, Mangle, or even unique abilities called MUTATIONS, and can be quite deadly, especially if they catch you unaware.
Rank 3 (High Threat): This rank is reserved for the most dangerous threats in the wastes, and includes the likes of the iconic zombie Tank, or local creatures like the Slaughtergoat Deer. These creatures are rarely encountered in large groups and are often the “bosses” of various mods or attacks. These monsters will have LOTS of Body and deadly Skills, and even more dangerous Mutations, and will often require multiple characters to work together to kill them.

Outside of these three common Ranks, there are often other Threats in the game that defy traditional classifications like Low/Moderate/High. These aren’t really published “Ranks”, but more of a way for me to describe their threat levels.

Lineage Threats: Many of the non-monster characters you’ll meet in the game are NPCs or Face NPCs, but some of these threats are just like your characters. They have character sheets, Body, Mind, and Resolve, and they have unique motivations and reasons to exist. But most importantly, they are SMART. While a Zed might struggle with a door, a Lineage Threat might simply use the Larceny skill to bypass that lock. Personally, these are some of the most dangerous threats in the game, as they often have more agency that the standard Raider or Critter. Think of threats like the Nemesis, or villains like Eyeless Jack, the late Grandfather Nichols, and Tabitha St. Mercy.
Story Threats: Sometimes you’ll often run into VERY powerful Threats in the game that are tied to the story of the weekend. These monsters are often stronger than a Rank 3 Monster, involve special props or settings builds, and are very rare. Creatures like the Longwalkers or Leviathans come to mind in DR:TX, but these creatures are not really considered for the scales above. These threats might have unique skills or abilities, but they are often resolved or defeated at the end of the event or storyline.

Now, that covers almost every threat you’ll see in the game, save for one. So, let’s cover the last Rank, which includes the focus of this post, the Archon.

Rank 4 (Apocalyptic Threat): To be fair, this rank didn’t exist until we revealed the Archons last year during our last Premiere event, THE LONG NIGHT. It’s probably closer in Rank to a PFA, if you consider most things in the game use ranks like Basic/Uncommon/Rare, or Basic/Proficient/Master. But these threats are UNIQUE and DEADLY. They are big, scary, unstoppable threats that require entire TOWNS to work together to kill them, and sometimes maybe that’s not enough. These types of threats are generally reserved for Premiere and National Events, and you can’t even RESEARCH these types of threats unless you attend one of those events.

Now that we’ve covered some context about where to classify this threat compared to others you might have encountered in game, let’s talk some specifics about the ARCHONS. Once again, this is going to cover some Spoilers, so if you’d rather learn about this in-character instead please don’t read any further. You’ve been warned!

+++ SPOILER WARNING - SPOILERS BELOW +++

The DISCLAIMERS

Now, while I mentioned Spoilers above, most of the information I’m going to discuss below has been in game already. This information isn’t new, but it might be the first time you’ve seen it in one place. In our DR:TX tradition of RADICAL TRUST, we want to provide some details so you can calibrate you roleplay and know a little bit more about what to expect during our December Premiere Event. You might not have encountered these texts in game, or maybe you were on NPC shift when the monsters went out, or maybe you missed that critical mod. That’s ok, because I’ll do my best to summarize a bit of the KNOWN information about these terrible monsters.

Now, to be VERY clear - This isn’t everything and not everything you hear about Archons from players is entirely TRUE. It might have been true of that particular encounter with the Outsiders, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be true the next time you encounter them. It might have also just been a perception of that player or NPC on what happened, and we can all be a bit of an unreliable narrator at times. We still don’t entirely understand the motivations of the Outsiders.

So as a disclaimer, we still have some secrets to share, and there’s still a LOT unknowns in game about the Archon threat. If you love Research, or you make it a point to attend every National event, there’ll still be some secrets to uncover, some research to be done, and some surprises in store.

Archons are a NATIONAL level threat. This means you won’t see these creatures in an average game of Dystopia Rising, but it’ll only be at specific Premiere and National events. There’s a national plot-kit involved with these monsters, and they have specific folks in charge of their story. The goal is to make sure that these stories MATTER, and that it’s not just a random monster-of-the-week event. They have unique props and costumes, unique rules, and some specific considerations we want to make sure are reflected each time they are encountered.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk a bit about known LORE.

*Man, what’s going on with a Festering Crystal, anyway?*

what’s in a name?

Let’s get the first bit of misinformation out of the way - ARCHONS are just ONE of many names for these terrifying foes.

These creatures have MANY names. They are myths and legends, stories told to children to scare them away from wandering alone in the dark, and there might even be regional variants for these names. Some of the legends of Longwalkers from Widow’s Peak may actually be Archon encounters and not what they thought, and it’s even possible that some other encounters with the unexplained across the wastes could have been these things instead.

Archons is actually a name for these creatures that was made up by survivors of an encounter with a creature that might have been one of these Outsiders. A player group called the Sunless Sages seem to be the ones that coined the phrase, but it may have been language co-opted from elsewhere. One account suggests they are truly called Morgleich, after an encounter with one that spoke a strange language and seemed to identify itself by that name. Others have called them Fallen Angels, Daemons, the Forsaken, Those From Beyond, Abyss Walkers, or even “Crazed Tooth-Monster that Ate My Cow!” according to one very drunk Merican.

WHAT they are seems to be unclear. They manifest in different shapes, different forms, and each time appear slightly different than the last. It’s possible that there are multiple species of the creatures, or that we are encountering a different creature each time. It is suspected that they have some form of hive mind communication between themselves, or perhaps that it is the SAME creatures emerging each time and they’ve learned from their past encounters with survivors.

Officially, these creatures are normally called OUTSIDERS in most official documentation, including Blueprints like the Archon Annihilator. This is a pretty broad term though, and there could be multiple types of Outsiders, especially as this story continues. So, if survivors were to ever develop some kind of weapon against them, it would likely call “OUTSIDER BANE” as a mechanic and not “Archon Bane”.

Beyond Death

While there are many theories exactly WHERE the Archons come from, it is from a place that is beyond death itself and is NOT part of the Mortis Amaranthine. Scholars sometimes refer to this place as “the Abyss”, and openings from this place as “Incursions”, or “Abyssal Rifts”. This is not so much a place or plane of existence as it is an idea. When we start talking about the Grave Mind and the cosmology of the world, we start to get a little vague... and conceptual. There are just as many right answers as there are wrong or impossible answers it seems. I even wrote a bit about this in a previous blog post called, “What Happens When You Die?”

There are deeper ways to interact with the Mortis Amaranthine other than a Morgue, taking you into places and scenarios beyond the limits of what is normal.

Sunless Garden - These are areas of the Mortis where the skeletal remains of the consumed world of “the Fall” exists in a microcosm of reality. It is a physical space that functions almost like a stationary point in reality between the living world, the ego-less space of the Grave Mind, and what lies beyond the Mortis.
- You will see these types of locations only at events run by Most Improbable.
Abyssal Rifts - Several blueprints mention the concept of Abyssal Rifts and how to control them, including bodily entering into the Mortis Amaranthine. These are effectively breaches into reality from beyond the Mortis Amaranthine. Threats like the Archons that nearly killed everyone in Essex during our online events are just one example of the threats that can emerge from beyond if these Rifts are not sealed quickly, but there have been others.
The Monolith - Other times, unique experiences can emerge from the Mortis like a foreign object stuck in a wound. The Mortis, or at least the rotting fungal mass below the ground, often exhibits medical-like scenarios akin to being infected or experiencing impacted foreign bodies or cysts. These can sometimes become an issue for a settlement, cause new diseases, or even exhibit strange new behaviors of the Mortis Amaranthine. One example was perhaps the Fountainhead during our online season in Essex.

So that’s at least two events mentioned that involved Archons, so let’s take a look at the known history of the Outsiders and the threat they’ve brought to the world of Dystopia Rising.

*Here’s a visual breakdown of what is actually a very fluid narrative device; the cosmos of Dystopia Rising as of 2022. If you have questions about this diagram, you’d better RESEARCH it.*

The history of Archon incursions

WHEN exactly Archons started appearing is somewhat murky. Some scholars suggest that the return of the long dead four years ago was the catalyst that opened a gate between the worlds (coinciding with the start of the 3.0 story). Others suggest that they’ve been here much longer, lurking in the shadows and that simply no one had yet to survive an encounter with one. The writings of a gravemind researcher suggest they’ve seen Archon-like behavior dating back at least a decade. Regardless of the reason, when folks started peering into the abyss, they found monsters staring back.

The first truly recorded experience of an Archon incursion was at the Greenhouse, with the followers of Dr. E. Livest during a grave dive. From there, sightings have been recorded in Hell Dorado, Essex, Bravado, Fort Seymour, Mourning Glory, Steel Horse Crossing, Crystal Creek, and soon during our December Premiere Event. I’ve cover most of the sightings I’m familiar with below, but there may have been others.

To give credit where credit is due, much of this information is paraphrased from the Sunless Sages Dossier, an in-character resource that has collected lore about this subject. However, there are no specific character names in my copy of this text, so if I uncover this answer later, I’ll add it here.

The IRON HARBOR (2.0 NATIONAL eVENT)

While there were no direct encounters during the fall of the Iron Harbor with an Archon at the end of 2.0, some suggest that the generals at the Iron Harbor (all the way back at the end of the story in 2.0) were abusing devices that tore tiny pocket dimensions open. There were strange parasitic creatures present, and they came from somewhere else unknown thanks to the suspension morgues and serums abused by the generals. These creatures displayed markedly different levels of intelligence than the Archons that have been encountered since, so this may be simply a misunderstanding, or some other abyssal denizen.

Survivors that were there described similar phenomenon as other Archon incursions, and this might have been a proto-event heralding the arrival of these things. Or maybe not?

Greenhouse (3.0 National Event)

During this event outside of a massive Raider camp, grave heads descended through a Sunless Garden into a place beyond death. Using protective suits and a vast quantity of necroinfluencers, they first set up a radio transmitter to capture sounds recorded from beyond the Mortis Amaranthine. Much of what they recorded was disturbing, and there were hints of living sounds, music, wordless screams, wind, and old languages. Several of the members of the team described sensations like “something was waiting”, or instances of lost time, ego death, or more.

You can find some of the recordings from this event here, in Ongoing Stories.

An excerpt from the journal of one of those researchers described the sensations they experienced.

“Once we were completely beyond the Mortis Amaranthine and into Sunless Garden, my two colleagues skittered around like giddy mice that had just found a piece of cheese, but were sure that a mouse trap was set just beneath it. The air felt more like liquid than actual air, and everything seemed washed in a strange, dark light. There were strange sounds in the background, and biological matter was growing rampant.I say “biological matter,” because I’m not sure how else to describe what it was. It was like nothing I’d ever seen in our world. We poked around a bit and to our surprise, we found a box embedded in the fungus where the blackish light was predominant, and the infection was overgrown. Being the advanced, scientific researchers that we are, we poked it with a stick first before properly examining it. It had what appeared to be a knife inside, but more importantly was what was on the box itself.
FUˈDƷI
It was a word. The sounds we heard from the recorder weren’t a fluke or some transmission from our world—it was from here. We had found the edge of the Sunless Garden and what was beyond. This was where we would set up our transmitter and dive again.” - The writings of the Sunless Sages

Teams throughout the weekend were able to dive again and again through the Sunless Garden, and after a time it seems like something began to notice them. Something hungry.

“I’ll write more about this later, but for right now I know it’s important to record that there are things out there that feed. They aren’t actually aware of us much like how we have been unaware of them (It? They? Us?) but there are smaller feeders that are here. They found their way back when the long dead reawakened and were able to pull themselves from the web of the Mortis Amaranthine. That pulling, ripping… tearing… release… is what made the tiny holes where nothing can become something.” - The Journal of Dr. E. Livest

Throughout the event, the researchers were able to interact with beings that seemed capable of intelligence and thought. The creatures even seemed to communicate in some sort of language. While translations or true understanding of the language is incomplete, though they do seem to respond to its own language being spoken back to it.

"With our experimentation we have been able to identify that there are lifeforms that are exhibiting traits similar to parasites within the deep edge of the Sunless Garden. These low intellect creatures are found at places where our dives have pushed towards the breaches between the Mortis A(maranthine)[the page is burned here] and past the a [more burn] (ex)istence of these tangible cre(atures)[burn] idence of a tangible reality beyon(d) the sunless garden but also suggests t(hat) (thr)ough continued experimentation using the distilled infection catalysts that there may be a way to press through the sunless garden into something beyond. our experiments will need to be few, controlled, and heavily monitored relating to this field since we have no knowledge or basis of information to measure what is in this tangible area beyond the stasis point of death" - Dr. E. Livest

In general, the Outsiders seem to be capable of communication but generally only regard us as food or something beyond their notice. Some of these encounters even involved the creatures “possessing” others, but it is not immediately obvious if this was some function of them encountering the Outsiders at the edge of the Abyss, or if it was some hallucination of the Sunless Garden.

doctor ottoman’s workshop (National event)

While most of this event didn’t involve the Archons, the side effects of what happened here definitely had an impact that was felt into the Abyss. Several oldcestor laboratories were opened across the wastes during the invitation to the titular Doctor Ottoman’s lair. Some of these locations containted fabulous new technologies, while others contained deadly traps, or world-ending bombs. Some of these laboratories opened in Essex during the Fountainhead Incident and provided the crystalline lattices they eventually used to repel the Archon incursion there.

At the end of the events surrounding Ottoman’s, a massive psionic pulse was felt across the wastes.

And something answered.

Isolated Incursions (Premiere Games across the Network)

The Archons began appearing more often after the events of the Greenhouse and Ottoman’s. Whether it was because they were now aware of us after teams intruded on their domain, woken by the strange psionic pulse, or they were simply the next logical step in the ongoing crisis of abyssal tears and rifts opening, it’s hard to say. The creatures have been sighted in settlements across the wastes, and each time has been disastrous.

Throughout the wastes, when a rift would open something monstrous would emerge.

The creatures were generally described as humanoid, with obsidian black skin and wicked claws. They have a wet-appearing, blackened hide that repels light, too many eyes, too many mouths, and razor-sharp limbs that move quicker than the eye can process. They possess no specific anatomy but generally manifest teeth, several bifurcated mouths, multiple eyes, and natural weaponry. There were isolated reports of creatures being able to operate without their heads, but others of needing to kill them in specific manners that included double tapping them in the head, heart, and mouth.

The creatures possessed a cruel, inscrutable, and alien intelligence and often sought to cause pain and suffering around it. When they do engage with us, they seem to actively seek to feed on and harm survivors they encounter according to eye witnesses. No one truly understands their motivations, and it may simply be a misunderstanding with something that exists outside of our common perceptions, or simple self-defense. We do have a history of shooting first and asking questions later when a scary monster appears. There is no reasoning with an Outsider, as they seem to simply exist to kill or at least not care what happens to the inhabitants of this world. The Outsiders acts against the laws of physics and are capable of entering and exiting our reality at a whim, or so it would seem, even passing through electrical systems in a discorporated form.

Each time they emerged; it became clear that they were nearly unstoppable. In some cases, channeled faith was able to repel the creatures. In others, massive force and tinctures of blue hue goo were used, while others deployed types of oldcestor technology against them. Regardless of where they appeared, the Archons were nigh invulnerable and incredibly deadly and there were only barely being repelled.

The Fountainhead Incident (Lonestar Skies Online, Essex trilogy)

The first instance of an Archon incursion in the San Saba Territories was during the Festival of Light & Sound in Essex during a series of events that would become known as “the Fountainhead Incident”. This incursion forever marked the San Saba and was perhaps the rallying incident that led to the formation of the San Saba Board and the other factions of power deciding to work together for a common good.

The Fountainhead (Part 1 of the Essex Trilogy)
The Crystodyne Principle (Part 2 of the Essex Trilogy)
Galatea (Part 3 of the Essex Trilogy)

During THE FOUNTAINHEAD, a new morgue emerged in the heart of the city of Essex, a bleak white stone monolith in the center of the governor’s mansion. It created a rush of exploration, as various entities of the San Saba sought to understand the new creation while others attempted to retain their control over a morgue they saw as theirs. Eventually, the Grave Council earned the stewardship of the morgue, and set about trying to “teach” the proto-morgue how to function.

A month later, during THE CRYSTODYNE PRINCIPLE, the Fountainhead morgue awoke to the power of music in the midst of a city-wide festival. When the town began grave dives to explore the new entrance into the Mortis, they discovered a place beyond death that attracted the attention of something else, much like what happened at the Greenhouse a year earlier. A cult of Grave Mind worshipers known as the Cult of the Tiny God added fuel to the fire and proclaimed that they would teach the new morgue the power of sacrifice and faith. When their leader, Philomena Lovelace, the Lost Prophet, threw herself into the Fountainhead to be absorbed by their “god”, something terrible answered. The creature rampaged through the city of Essex during the Festival of Light and Sound, killing hundreds before it was lured back to the Fountainhead and obliterated when the morgue awoke in a powerful beam of light and energy.

During the events of GALATEA, it was discovered that the “death” of the Archon had corrupted the new morgue. While the Archon that had appeared before was a lone incursion, its corrupting force was absorbed by the Fountainhead in the death throes. This corruption led to its eventual destruction, as the imprint of the Archon was unsuitable for the morgue. Strange faceless copies of things began to infest the town, made of the primordial clay of the abyss-tainted morgue. When the imprint of the creature was finally laid low and purged from within the Fountainhead itself, the morgue was killed, dead and gone, just like the creature. The final sacrifice of the morgue itself had been enough to destroy the Archon.

Dead Man’s Hand (Lonestar Skies Online National Event)

The next incursion in the San Saba occurred exactly one year later, during the next attempt at a Festival of Light & Sound in Essex. During the Dead Man’s Hand tournament, three Outsiders emerged from an Abyssal Rift near the dormant Fountainhead and laid waste to the town. This was one of the first incursions that showed that the Archons were working together, and future encounters would find them crossing into our world as a trio of entities at once.

Like the year previously, they were nigh unstoppable and only rendered vulnerable by the entire city working together to lure them into a series of traps across Essex. They were only stopped by overwhelming force, including repeatedly running one over with a massive locomotive, throwing another into a pit filled with thousands of zed, and using a strange psionic device to obliterate the last from existence. However, each of these “weapons” were either entirely localized to Essex, or were tricks that will likely not work again to stop the Archons.

The Long Night (DR:TX Premiere Event)

When the Monolith emerged in Bravado one year later, three more Outsiders emerged from the Fountainhead-like protrusion, though one of their number was caught within the strange near-death locale. The trapped Archon was thought to be the same lone creature thought destroyed by the Fountainhead a year earlier, its imprint trapped in the Gravemind like an infected pustule. Those that ventured within the Monolith seemed to bring back a story of the Archons existing at a time much earlier than first understood, and spoke of a facility below Bravado that had attempted to imprison an Archon and failed.

By manipulating a piece of oldcestor technology found within the Monolith, the town was able to create a frequency that temporarily rendered the Archons physical in our plane of existence. The three creatures were destroyed and their corporeal forms destroyed with psionic fire. However, in the aftermath of the colossal fight, the signal device was destroyed and there is no remaining technology that can replicate this signal. The Grave Council’s leader, Reckoner-General Rampart, made a prediction that night that the Archons would return in one year’s time, and they must be ready with new weapons and defenses.

The Necrophage (DR:TX National Event)

When Dr. Nichols nearly succeeded in spreading his perfect disease throughout the town of Bravado, he exhibited a strange invulnerability akin to what had been described with previous Archon encounters. He was capable of “feeding” on the imprint of others to fuel his primordial siphon, and the Necro-soldiers were capable of detonating into large, abyssal explosions.

Nichols claimed that he had found a way to tap into something beyond death to power his disease, and some described each instance of one of the Necrophage-infected dying as a tiny “tear” in the fabric of reality. It appeared that if he could not kill his hated enemies through an army of perfect soldiers, he would instead purposefully attract the attention of the Archons.

Nichols last, ominous words were simply “THEY ARE COMING” as he died with a wordless scream, perhaps sensing something oppressive and monstrous wherever his imprint went after his death.

Archons - What is known

Each of the events above has seemed to be leading to a disastrous future as incursions of the Outsiders become more prevalent. However, despite the unreliable reports of survivors and the many-changing forms of the Archon, there seem to be a few things that stay consistent with each telling of the stories.

The Outsider is an unstoppable killing machine, virtually indestructible, and a threat to anything in its vicinity. It exists to devour the imprints of anything nearby as it continues its rampage in our world. They can feed on the imprints of the dying and snuff out the lives of those in bleed out in a moment. They can even absorb the imprint of those in their path, devouring their Resolve in a titanic strike, and they regenerate quickly.
They have many names, and Archons is just one word we use to describe them. We still don’t know how many variations of Outsiders or Archons or Morgleichs there are, or if they are all related in some way. It’s even possible that some old legends may have been encounters with these creatures and they are likely older than we think. There may even be other abyssal entities we have yet to encounter.
They possess an inscrutable and alien intelligence and may seek to cause pain and suffering around them. They are capable of tactics and demonstrate some ability to operate as a hivemind. They also seem to demonstrate cruelty and malice, though it may be a projection of survivors as a way of rationalizing their behaviors. The Archons seem to be aware of what is happening to the other creatures that emerge with them, and will work together to deal with foes and threats that can harm them.
They are roughly humanoid shaped, with obsidian black skin, too many eyes, and wicked claws. They possess no specific anatomy but generally manifest teeth, several bifurcated mouths, multiple eyes, and natural weaponry. Their claws can REND through armor, and hit with overwhelming force, and they have devastating attacks that sweep through defenders and absorb vitality from their enemies.
The Archons are capable of fantastically fast movement and can bend and shape their forms, limbs, heads, and more to suit the needs of the moment. Limbs can be grown back instantly, and they have been reported to not need functioning heads, organs, or brains in order to keep going. They are immune to most forms of stuns, mangles, or attempts to modify their form.
They are multi-dimensional beings and are barely present in this world unless something can force them into a corporeal state. Until they are rendered vulnerable, there is no force in this world capable of stopping them. And even when they are vulnerable, it takes titanic force to destroy their forms and most survivors of an incursion still aren’t sure if this destruction is permanent.
The Outsiders do not communicate with gestures, voice, or outward expressions. They do not truly seem to need eyes or senses, as they are simply aware of their presence in this world or beyond at an atomic level. The only true communication with them has occurred while within the Abyss or another Mortis location. Archons seem to be immune to Blinding effects, and Stealth is not enough to evade them. The only sure way to survive an encounter is to run.
The Archons have no interest in attempting to communicate with Lineages, so far. While the Outsiders may have some form of communication that they use with each other while in the dimensional spaces of Sunless Gardens or similar Mortis Amaranthine spaces, it is still not fully understood by survivors. Several dozen words are thought to have been translated, but this is just barely scratching the surface. They have responded to Lineages that have tried to communicate with them using their language, but it was more amused curiosity at their food mimicking intelligence than any true acknowledgement.

The creatures can apparently “feed” off of most energy sources or radiation, or anything powered by electricity, and can move in and out of the Abyss at will. They are capable of discorporating and moving between the dimensions of reality, traveling through electrical currents to evade pursuit or to reach places that are barred from them. They can even return back and forth through the Abyss at will, even carrying prey with them into the haunting void of the worlds beyond death.

The creatures are known to react to faith, and particular frequencies and resonances of sound, but they must be made vulnerable before they can be killed. Most situations that render them vulnerable tend to involve sound, music, or faith in some manner. However, none of these attempts have been consistent and no true “silver bullet” has been discovered to make them vulnerable. But each successful attempt to repel an incursion has involved some mechanism to make the creatures corporeal before attempting to kill them, and many of the solutions have involved oldcestor technology.
Outsiders traditionally operate in packs of three creatures while in this reality. Lone Outsiders are rare or unheard of. They appear to be drawn to morgues in particular but are truly something NOT of the Mortis Amaranthine. In several cases, the Mortis has responded violently to their presence, spewing forth undead as an attempt at some defense. They are assumed to have no Infection, nor are impacted by things that would hurt the Undead. It’s even possible that the same three creatures are emerging each time, and are adapting to our attempts to stop them.
Outsiders seem to return to the places where an Abyssal rift has opened. Whether the veil in these areas is weaker, or it is the only places they can use to enter our world, there is an uncanny timing to Outsider appearances. In most cases, the Outsiders seem to return about one year after they were first encountered. So far, settlements have been successful in repelling these incursions, but one shudders to think about what would happen if they fail to close the gates left behind.

It’s clear that the Archon threat is growing, and that new weapons will need to be developed to try to stop them when they arrive again. If the Grave Council is correct, an incursion will occur in Bravado in a matter of weeks. Hopefully, the varied technologies of the EMERALD ARSENAL are up to the task, and the INVENTOR’S BALL will be a victory party and not a blood bath.

Let’s find out together, during THE EMERALD GALA!

wrap up

That’s it for today folks. I’ll be covering a few more specifics of the actual mechanics regardless Outsiders in a later blog post, but I find it helps to appreciate the danger if you know what has happened before.

Next week, we will be discussing the EMERALD ARSENAL, as a means of trying to answer the threat of the Archons with the power of SCIENCE! Stay tuned Vados!