The Silt Verses Roleplaying Game

A GOD MUST FEED!

The Silt Verses Roleplaying game is here! Based on the award-winning audio drama, The Silt Verses RPG is a game of folk horror and monstrous divinity. Its mechanics are based on the beloved Brindlewood Bay and The Between, as well as Apocalypse World.

In The Silt Verses RPG, you play Custodians, employees of the Bureau for the Investigation and Assimilation of Stray Deities. In a world with tens of thousands of gods, your job is to track down the forgotten and stray deities causing trouble in the community and... deal with them. Sometimes that means figuring out how a community can co-exist with the god, and sometimes that means eliminating the god's threat in a more extreme way. Regardless, you are a pawn within an uncaring system, and will eventually be the target of a conspiracy that will try to use your work for its own nefarious purposes.

But which god will your Custodian be dedicated to?

The game comes with six Faiths to choose from, each of which confers different abilities, including a devastating Final Prayer. They are:

The Trawler Man
Sculptor of Tide and Flesh, Father-in-the-Water, The Mouth Devouring and The Mouth Returning. For centuries, worshippers of the Trawler-Man—the so-called Parish of Tide and Flesh—practiced their faith up and down the waters of the White Gull River, making sacrifices to their god that walks beneath the tides. While the faith has been outlawed and its followers wiped out or forced into hiding, some still practice the old ways in secret. As a child of the water, you feel its presence no matter where you go. The winding river is unpredictable—sometimes flooding its banks to swallow everything in reach, at other times receding to leave strange gifts poking from the mud. But deep down, you know that the river will one day rise and reclaim the settlements that intrude on its borders, heralding a wondrous new kingdom of life reshaped in silt.

The Pox Martyr
Brother Boil and Sister Sore , It Should Have Been Me. Monks of the Retchman’s Order practice a radical form of self-sacrifice by ritually transferring the ailments of others into their own bodies. These Pox Monks can be found throughout the territories, but especially in rural places without hospitals or access to modern medicine. By many accounts, faith alone can heal—and who could question the conviction of a healer willing to take on the worst ailments themselves? You were one of them, once. But try as you might, you could never heal all of the hurt. Despite years of practice, learning to bear the suffering of others so that they would live a bit longer, you could not fully accept the work as a blessing. No matter how fierce the fire of your courage—the pain never ends. And yet, without you, who else would step up? For better or worse, this cruel and twisted world still needs you.

The Saint Electric
Maiden of the Caged Sun, Madame Light, The Blazing Martyr, The Neon Messiah. Easily the most well-known deity across the Peninsula, her prayer-stamps appear on every household appliance and piece of industrial machinery. The Saint’s iconography depicts a silhouetted woman, wreathed in flame, caught within the grid-bars of an electrical circuit. Everyone knows of her, but most forget her past as an ancient fire deity, fueled by mass sacrifice during drawn-out wars which transformed entire towns into smoldering, immortal charcoal saints. The Saint’s sacrifices are carried out more discreetly now, in wind farms and power plants far from the public eye. You served the Saint once—after enduring the agonizing blessing of her touch, you gained miraculous abilities as a conduit of her sacred currents. Your path forward is less certain now, but She is never far from you—speaking through the radio, humming through cables underground, illuminating entire cities with her radiance.

The Waxen Scrivener
The Eight-Limbed Scrivener, The Black Beetle of Knowing and Forgetting, The Endless Inkwell. Followers of the Waxen Scrivener devote their lives to the recording of knowledge—scribbling down every keen insight, every tantalizing observation onto sheets of parchment or in old journals—and then abandoning it. They leave their wealth of pages to rot in the back rooms of old verminous bookshops and dank ancestral libraries. Some even cultivate colonies of rats, bookworms, and paper-flies for the purpose of destroying the pages. The sacred act is putting down pen to paper—that’s the sacrifice the Scrivener requires. And knowledge, like skin, must be shed to be renewed.

The Cairn Maiden
Old Soil Breath, The Bone Crow, She Who Follows Upon A Straggling Path, Her Amongst the Wreckage. In time, all places will come to ruin. The Cairn Maiden dwells in those desolate and lonely places, and that’s where you’ll see her at first. A stooped and silent figure in the distance, shrouded in white, with hands wide as shovels and grave dirt trickling through her gentle, rake-like fingers. When you reach that spot, she’ll be gone—but the longer you walk, the more likely you are to see her again. A bit closer, a little more distinct each time. One day she may whisper to you, and if you do not yet understand her words, you will when you’re ready. She waits for you even now, as each step you take brings you closer to the place she has prepared for you—a place that’s been sleeping in you since the beginning. Stewards of the Cairn Maiden carry out her work in solitude, performing the acts of her final tenderness as they bury the forgotten corpses that lay in fields and along empty roads, and give comfort to those dying alone. The Cairn Maiden may appear frightening at first, but she only wants one thing from anyone—to meet you at last, in your appointed place. To cradle you in her long hands, and lay you gently in soft earth, watching over your body as it slowly becomes a ruin among ruins.

The Watcher in the Wings
Mister Marrow, Last One Onto the Stage, Old Lights Up, The Falling Curtain. Right now, there is a god watching you. Every word you utter, every movement and expression, is being weighed, critiqued, discussed by a thousand whispering voices in the darkness. You, the chosen performer, bear a heavy burden—for only you know the true weight of your words. Others don’t yet realize the significance of the part they play in this world, of the consequences should their performance be found lacking. But you can show them true magic, if they listen. Pray that they listen, and play their parts well, for every moment counts. Places, everyone! LIGHTS UP!

Custodians travel through the Territories in order to complete Assignments—stray gods and divinities that are causing trouble, and that need to be dealt with in some way. The game comes with eight Assignments, including:

The Hungering Roots
The Custodians are sent to investigate reports of unlicensed sacrifices taking place in a warehouse East of Glottage. It seems that some ambitious producer of psychotropic tea ingredients has managed to imprison a harvest god in an indoor growing facility. Using a combination of hydroponics, automated lighting, and experimental prayer marks, they have found a way to continuously cycle a harvest ritual and maximize their production to vastly outpace their government regulated competitors. But this god they have bound is accustomed to the domain of field and meadow, of rituals invoking the sun and moon instead of artificial lights and humidity-controlled rooms. It is growing rapidly and demanding greater sacrifices.

The Dusk Mother
The Custodians are informed of a series of disturbances near the rural town of Weft, located just on the border of the Clutching Woods. Reports of strange attacks on livestock, and damage to power lines and vehicles, have been documented. Hopworth Industries, a nearby meat packing plant, claims that some kind of large predator has been raiding their compound at night. Law enforcement records show evidence of a stray angel making its haunt on the grounds of Skelton Ranch, though no conclusive action was taken, and local residents have not been forthcoming with previous investigators. The Skelton family, thought to have abandoned production on their farm years ago, is rumored to harbor an angel which has caused trouble for other residents in the past. According to locals, the Skelton family simply refer to the entity as “Mother.” It is unclear what their relationship is with the angel, but it has been known to haunt the woods around their property for several generations as part of some pact. Attempts to reach the Skeltons directly were unsuccessful, so the Custodians have been directed to contain or eliminate the angel before its territory encroaches on any nearby counties.

The Floating Market
Fragments of black-market divinities have been appearing among the goods sold at the Floating Market, a free-for-all bazaar that gathers at abandoned docks and fishing piers along the White Gull River. While such gatherings generally happen under the radar of the local authorities, the Custodians have been informed that the goods arriving along the river present an increasing danger to the inland population. The Bureau report flatly states that the nature of the divinely-afflicted wares being sold are not something that can be left to the Greater Glottage Police to handle alone, given a surge of recent corruption investigations.

The Sleepless Warden
The distant town of Welkin’s Vigil is perched on the Northeastern cliffs of the Peninsula, across the Nameless Channel from the distant Linger Straits. It once served as a military outpost in anticipation of a war that never reached the Peninsula directly. Local historians will tell you that, in centuries past, it was the site of a stone fort where chieftains kept watch along the coast for incoming raiders. Anyone who’s vacationed in Welkin’s Vigil will tell you it’s a lovely town with scenic views and quaint locals who are proud of their history—so it’s an unusual location for the Custodians to be sent on Assignment. It seems that an iron cormorant—a decommissioned battle saint which, until recently, stood on display at a veteran’s memorial in the town square—has been activated, and now patrols the outskirts of town; some folks call it the Sleepless Warden. Security briefings with the Peninsulan Armed Forces confirm that the battle saint was fully disarmed years ago, and has no operational capacity. An expert from the Institute for Theological Research and Innovation has suggested that underlying divine influences may have played a role—it’s a fact that the population of Welkin’s Vigil is largely composed of veterans and families displaced by prior wars, all of them having served war gods in the past. If historical records can be trusted to remain unaltered by the slew of modern propaganda gods, it has also been claimed that Welkin’s Vigil was once a premodern fort, built over countless burial mounds of distant warrior clans. Perhaps some ancient god has been stirred by an atmosphere of perceived threats and hostility to outsiders. Or perhaps the residents themselves, driven by a growing paranoia about attacks from abroad, have found a way to awaken it through acts of unsanctioned worship.

The Bowered Companion
The trade roads that cut through the Whisper Plains have been fueling the economy for decades. They are the way trucks transport modern conveniences across the Peninsula. They are the only way into (and out of) rural settlements scattered across the countryside. They are, despite the heavy environmental toll they take, a simple fact of life. Recently, an essential route has been blocked. Near the rural settlement of Alm, on the edge of the Whisper Plains, a woodland trade road has been engulfed in an impossibly thick fog that appears to be spreading. Faiting’s Ferry & Freight, a large shipping company that uses this route regularly, has reported instances of their drivers being forced off the road—then disappearing entirely. Similar reports are coming out of Alm, where residents have begun uncharacteristically wandering into the surrounding fog, never to be seen again. Locals are crediting these incidents to a now-neglected god of missing travelers, the Bowered Companion. However, there is little known documentation on this god, and the locals have not been forthcoming with further details. With a major trade road at risk, and possibly more to follow, the Custodians have been instructed to take care of this as quickly as possible.

Young Jolly Junk
Where people go, trash follows, and few things insult a god more than using ruined spaces as a garbage dump. After several gods went on rampages through landfills and furnaces, the Central Glottage government decreed that all industrial waste be thrown along the coast and into the waters. While this did disrupt many smaller fringe faiths, nevertheless, the plan went through. As more plastic bags and rotting vegetables piled up amongst oil spills and clothing dye, the people begged for a god to break down what no one else could. Thus was born Young Jolly Junk, a popular ocean god whose followers promised to “Keep Our Coasts Jolly.” For decades, she has feasted on the flotsam and jetsam of modern manufacturing. Her image decorates beach signs and lifeguard stands, and children love playing with toys made in her likeness. However, the Custodians recently received reports that Young Jolly has grown to enormous size, far larger than she has been in prior years. The Blue West Channel—located near two manufacturing giants Keplan Textiles and Mortel Plastic Refinery—has been rendered impassible. More worrisome, a flotilla of boats has been gathering near the god as fishing docks have been ripped up and destroyed. Time is of the essence, and there is not enough of it.

The Skyward Sprawl
The Custodians have been directed by their handlers to quietly resolve a situation in the sprawling fringes of the Greater Glottage conurbation. Suburbanites within a growing sphere of influence are sickening, contracting a hideous rot from clouds of gray spores spread on the wind. Their skin erupts in weeping rust and cracked concrete. They become obsessed by ascent, drawn to a towering building erupting like a twisted fingernail from the dead urban soil.

The Miraculous Clinic of the Bleeding Witness
A recent article in the Central Glottage Herald claims that unsanctioned miracles are being performed in an abandoned rural hospital by followers of several false faith gods. The Adjudicators have released a press statement ahead of any public outcry, while quietly dispatching the usual array of lying martyrs and propaganda saints to tie up loose ends. But continued pressure from hospital shareholders, and increasing demands for a full investigation has brought this case to the Custodians. You have been provided with the necessary credentials to visit the clinic as inspectors, and will be given access to tour the facility.

The game also comes with 8 Journey Scenes to help explore the setting, character sheet and reference sheet, and campaign sheets for the Keeper.