The Helpful Worm: A Numenera One-Shot

Here's a Numenera module I wrote. If I'm reading http://www.montecookgames.com/fan-support/fan-

use-policy/ correctly, it's not okay to put this on the internet as a Google Doc (as I originally had it), but it
is permitted to put it up on a sites page. I don't really understand why the cases are different, but rules
are rules I suppose.

Ive run this module twice and both times its lasted about three hours.

Background.

The Xu were a species of highly intelligent sandworms from a long-vanished civilization. Having
mastered the secrets of nanoassembly, their culture assigned little intrinsic value to goods; instead, their
economy was based on reputation. In a culture where the only wealth is upvotes, the Helpful Worm
was one of the more successful spammers. Now, a careless explorer has activated one of the Worms
reputation-farming modules. The party needs to stop it before it converts the region to desert.

Philosophy.

A dominant theme of Numenera is the discovery and mastery of new technology. This module
highlights that theme. The heart of the story is a sandbox (heh) exploration phase in which the party
tries to salvage as much technology as possible from the Helpful Worms spam outpost.

Opening.

The story begins in Map Tower, in the village of Map, as the party speaks to Onald Seven, an enthusiastic
Aeon Priest. Though young, Onald already bears the marks of his craft: his left arm is an oversized
grayish bear arm, and a patch on his forehead has turned to silvery crystal. New adventurers! he says.
How delightful! You will do wonderfully -- and I have just the job for you!

Here is some background, in case it comes up.

About the Map: a hexagonal crystal table, about five feet wide, floats above the top floor of the wooden
tower. The table displays a map of the region surrounding the tower. Onald (or any nano) can zoom the
map in or out, but cannot change its center point. Strange purple glyphs dance across the Map,
sometimes highlighting certain points or flashing indecipherable warning messages. No known force
can move the Map from its spot; settlers found it here long ago, and built a tower up to reach it. Onald
says he thinks the Map was once part of a military base of some sort.

About Onalds old arm: twenty years ago, in time of great peril, a nano used the Map to commune with
the great god Ion, who fired his Cannon from the sky at an invading army. Onald tried to do the same
three months ago, but it disintegrated his left arm, and blared an angry message nonstop for twenty-
three hours afterward.

About Onalds new arm: Sixth Age corrosion-bears! They came rampaging down from the north three
months ago, and the whole town mobilized to fight them off! We managed to kill them without too
much tissue damage, and were keeping them on ice in the basement! Sixth Age biotech is wonderful
stuff, it grafts onto nearly any tissue perfectly! All the neural matter is in the torso, so as long as you
keep to the appendages they wont fight you for control at all!

About Onalds forehead: Oh, theres a ruin of some sort, southeast of here -- he waves, deliberately
ambiguously, at a part of the Map. There was liquid coming out of a pipe into a crystal basin, and I
tried looking up into the pipe, and, er -- Onald looks a bit sheepish. Turns out it transmutes things to
diamond. Sort of diamond. Quite strong, not very malleable. Lasts about a month, we think. Hurts
quite a bit.

Onald points to the Map. See this mountain? See the cliff about halfway down, see the flat sand under
the cliff, see the domes on the sand? The cliff wasnt there last week. Last week it was just a
mountain.

And -- do you realize what this means? Theres something down there that can level mountains! I
want that! Er, but Id also like it not to actually level all our mountains. So, I have two goals for you.
Shut that thing down, and bring me back all its secrets. Ill reward you well.

The promised reward: Sixth Age corrosion-bear parts! Onald gestures at his giant grey bearish arm.
Weve still got three-and-a-half bears left! Weve been using them as emergency limb transplants, but I
can offer you a limb each! Have you ever wished you had an extra arm or leg?

If anyone seems unenthusiastic, Onald also has a stash of diamond swords. Yeah, merchants seem to
like these. They should stay diamond for about a month. Youd really rather have a sword than a bear
arm?

Onald does not trade in shims. Shims, he explains, are sliced-up bits of ancient technology --
adventurers discover wonders beyond their comprehension, but rather than try to learn from them,
they slice the wonders up and use them as currency. As a priest of technology, Onald finds the whole
thing rather blasphemous; he prefers to barter with whatever technology hes discovered most recently.

Traveling.

Onald recommends travel by water since a river goes pretty near the mountain; he supplies a raft. If the
party goes for that, they get attacked by two L3 mesomemes, wearing a mix of human, merfolk, and
broken-hound heads. The mesomemes initially look like a group of swimmers (except why are humans
and merfolk and broken-hounds swimming together?). The heads call out to the party, but their
messages are inane: Hello. Hello. Nice weather! Hello. Hi! Good morning! Hello. Its only when the
heads reach the partys raft that the giant crab-monsters rear up and the heads are revealed as decoys.

If the party goes by land, the hills are full of broken hounds; the party could fight all the hounds but its
better to make skill checks to avoid them.
When the party approaches the mountain, they find it covered in sand. New sand falls regularly out of
the plateau up above. Quite a lot of sand has fallen into the river; the rivers course has changed
substantially recently, so the final approach to the mountain is not navigable by raft.

Adworms.

The Helpful Worms nanofactory has manufactured small worm-shaped bots to bring nearby sandworms
to the outpost. In the absence of sandworms, the bots are targeting other creatures. When a bot gets
near the party, it shouts its message telepathically. The bot projects an image of the Helpful Worm, an
eight-foot-long sandworm with a gleaming blue-and-turquoise underbelly. It sends one of the following
messages. Generally, the party should be exposed to these messages in this order:

The Helpful Worm wants to help you recapture that infrared glow of youth and vitality. Its servitors
can inject your carapace with tiny heat emitters which you can activate when the time is right!

The Helpful Worm has a selection of the healthiest nutrient mosses and fungi! This secret mixture is
guaranteed to bring your psychic senses in alignment with the Earths magnetic field!

The Helpful Worm wants to tell you about a way to get the ridges out of your carapace. it's a recently
discovered trick using Fifteenth Age wisdom, using all-natural minerals!

The Helpful Worm can treat your carapace with a sand-repellent oil, letting you move faster through
the sand. Your friends will never know its not your natural telekinesis!

Optionally, feel free to add some messages about sandworm-mating-bots or telepathic happiness
beams. The Helpful Worm is absolutely sleazy enough to offer these things, but the topics may make
some players feel uncomfortable in-real-life, so they arent appropriate for all groups.

Are you tired of being perceived as less trustworthy and responsible than your peers? The Helpful
Worm knows an easy five-step process for improving your reputation through the datasphere!

After sending any of those messages, the adworm sends: Come to the Helpful Salon and relax as the
Helpful Worms agents take care of you! The message comes with a sense of where the character can
find the offering that was just advertised.

This psionic message not compatible with human minds, and the force of the projection makes it an L4
Intellect attack which inflicts four intellect damage on anyone within 60 feet. I usually follow this up
with a GM Intrusion, telling one of the characters they really do feel compelled to get whatever useless
treatment was advertised. If they accept the intrusion, I give them the XP now, but tell them their
character will go insane if they leave the area without dealing with their compulsion.

The adworms are only L2 for defense and hit points due to their small size and slow movement. If the
party gets hit by the blast but for some reason doesnt kill the adworm, it doesnt attack again; it just
wanders off looking for someone else to advertise to.
Dissecting an adworm reveals that its built of fused bits of rock (in much the same way that fiberboard
is built of fused bits of wood). The adworms telepathic attack comes from a pair of antennae which are
connected to a silvery sphere in the center of the thing. This can be salvaged and used as a cypher: it is
a psionic emitter which sends a single telepathic command to an area. Wormbots will obey this
message until it is overridden by their creator.

The Helpful Outpost.

The outpost is a collection of forty-foot-wide domes, built from fused rock, sitting on the sand. Building
the outpost are the six-foot-long constructor wormbots. These wormbots intended function is to fuse
sand into domes and bots, but their secondary function is to smooth out any unwanted rocks by
vibrating them into fine sand. The entire mountain is considered to be unwanted rock, so the
constructors are trying to convert the whole mountain into sand.

Optional development (or GM intrusion): The constructor wormbots, chewing at the base of the cliff,
dont understand that their actions could lead to rockfalls. The wormbots trigger an avalanche.

The sand is thirty feet deep in the center. It is mostly just sand (except see shutting down the outpost,
below).

Constructor wormbots are L3 with 2 armor. If attacked, they assume the attacker is a wild animal of
some sort and flee under the sand.

A group of broken hounds are standing next to one of the domes, periodically trying (and failing) to
break in through the rock. These creatures have been affected by an adworm and are trying to
recapture that infrared glow of youth and vitality by getting their carapaces treated with heat
emitter nanoparticles. They are very stupid and have not realized they could dig under the dome. They
do not attack the party unless the party specifically draws their attention.

Optional development (or GM intrusion): if the party seems to be slowing down, an adworm shows up
and advertises another of the Helpful Worms services.

TrustX.

The sandworms managed their relative reputation through a datasphere service whose name translates
as TrustX. This service has been disused for thousands of years but is still basically operational. The
service is happy to establish reputation accounts for new individuals such as the player characters, but
the service is only used by sandworm technology, so its unlikely that these accounts will ever be
relevant in the future. Accounts start out with enough trust in them that each player character can
purchase several services from the Helpful Worm.

The Helpful Domes.

Within each dome is two eight-foot-long servitor wormbots, made of the same fused rock, willing to
perform one of the functions advertised by the adworms above.
On one side of each dome is a datasphere uplink which has one function: to allow the user to announce,
to a long-disused service in the datasphere known as TrustX, that the Helpful Worm is extremely
trustworthy and reliable. Sticking ones finger in the uplink is sufficient to make the connection, though
it does deal one point of damage as the uplink samples the users DNA via their blood. Intellect checks
may be required to navigate the system. The servitors insist that any user pay using the uplink before
receiving any service.

Characters are likely to attack the servitors, to try to extract the valuable technology within. Each
servitor contains a weak telepathy node, plus cyphers appropriate to their function:

heat emitters: This vial contains tiny nanites which sink into the users skin and last for one week. The
next time the user gets near a fertile sandworm, the nanites activate, warming up the users skin to
make them look like a more attractive mate. (We can assume this will never happen because
sandworms are extinct.) May also activate to prevent hypothermia.

fungus spray: This canister sprays an oil which produces extremely rapid fungus growth.

carapace deridger: This rod uses a sonic effect to smooth out any rock-like surface it is pressed against.
Its very painful when used on human flesh. If anyone had a compulsion to receive this treatment, they
take one damage when the treatment starts (ignore armor) and then the compulsion goes away. (The
two servitor bots continue trying to deridge the poor character's carapace; this is an L3 attack dealing
four damage, and as a GM intrusion it may destroy armor.)

sand-repellent oil: Allows the user to swim through sand, and also to breathe in it since the sand is
repelled from their head.

nanoassembly module seed: If exposed to the proper minerals and a suitable power source, this grows
into a nanoassembly module. The module will be similar to the one that created this area, but will credit
75% of reputation gains to the user (and 25% to the helpful worm as an affiliate). It uses
predetermined advertising behavior and does not accept orders even from its owner.

Each servitor may contain 2-4 cyphers. Servitors are L3 with 2 armor. If attacked, the servitors assume
the attacker is a sandworm, and send telepathic messages reminding the attacker that damaging Helpful
Worm property will result in a loss of reputation. (This is an L2 area attack dealing 2 Intellect damage.)
The servitors do not think to dive under the sand when threatened (because that wouldnt work against
a sandworm attacker).

Outpost Defenses.

If the constructor bots or the servitor bots are attacked, the base may deploy defenses. Base defenders
are two-foot-diameter stone spheres, frequently covered in bloodstains. These spheres levitate through
the air or burrow through sand at high speed; they deal damage by ramming things. These are L3
opponents with 4 armor, dealing 4 damage on a hit.
The outpost does not seem to realize that its telepathic messages are damaging to humans. It may send
a general message that the base is under attack and customers should take cover (if so, this is an L3 area
attack dealing 3 intellect damage), but it doesnt attempt to damage attackers telepathically.

If the defender bot(s) are destroyed, the outpost can make more, but slowly.

The sandworm bots usually do not fight, even after they are attacked. If they believe the attacker might
be a customer, their programming is to capture video evidence of the attack so that the Helpful Worm
can sue that attacker for a massive amount of reputation. Fighting back would compromise the lawsuit
(or, worse, lead to a counter-lawsuit). If they are certain the attacker is not a customer, their
programming is to burrow under the sand and let the defender bots handle the fight. In a last-ditch
emergency effort, the nanoassembler might marshal the sandworm bots to defend against an attack on
the core, but even then the sandworm bots are pretty slow-moving.

Shutting Down The Outpost.

The outpost is controlled by a nanoassembly machine which was activated last week by a careless
explorer. The machine is surrounded by a six-foot-wide stone sphere. Antennae on the outside of the
sphere allow the machine to psionically control its minions.

The sphere is under the sand. The party might reach it using that sand-repellent oil, or they might have
a cypher, or they might have some other clever transportation method -- perhaps theyve hollowed out
one or more wormbots, or persuaded them to move the sphere to the surface?

When the party reaches the sphere, they will need to smash the exterior (or find some other way to
enter). Inside is the machine itself (a two-foot cube with wires and circuits) and the corpse of the
explorer who activated it. Touching the machine produces a powerful electric shock (L6 attack, 8
damage, ignoring armor).

When the party first enters the sphere, the machine sends a message: VALUED CUSTOMER: THIS
CONTROL MODULE CONTAINS NO USER SERVICEABLE PARTS. PLEASE STEP OUT OF THE CONTROL
MODULE. If the party remains in the sphere, the machine sends a second message: VALUED
CUSTOMER: PLEASE REMEMBER THAT DAMAGING HELPFUL WORM PROPERTY WILL LEAD TO A SEVERE
LOSS OF REPUTATION. The machine alternates between the two messages. Each message is an L3
Intellect area attack dealing 3 Intellect damage.

The party may be able to disable the machine without destroying it. For example they might throw
rocks at it, triggering its electric shock defense, until it runs out of energy and shuts down. Or they could
slice off all the antennae (on the exterior of the sphere and on the machine itself), preventing it from
controlling its bots. A skilled nano could make an L6 roll to shut the machine down. A jack or glaive
might be able to slice individual wires (taking care not to damage the crystal circuits) until the machine
deactivates. The machine has a rudimentary intelligence, but is single-minded in its desire to improve
the reputation of the Helpful Worm, and wont cooperate with anything that doesnt achieve that goal.
When the machine is shut down or destroyed, all the wormbots self-destruct: they scramble their own
internal machinery to prevent anyone from reverse-engineering it. Any cyphers the party has looted
from dead wormbots are unaffected.

Rewards.

When the party returns to Onald, award experience as follows:

3 experience for shutting down the machine and preventing the mountain from being converted to
sand.

1 experience for bringing the machine back; 3 bonus experience if the machine is mostly intact or if the
party brings back a seed which can grow a new machine.

4 experience if the party brings back a constructor-wormbot: this creature can dig tunnels and build
domes for Onald, so its very valuable

1 experience per new kind of cypher the party offers Onald: psionic command projector, carapace
deridger, sand repellent, carapace-heating nanites, fungus oil, datasphere uplink.

Divide this experience among all party members; round up or down, however you prefer.

Onald happily rewards the party with bear parts or diamond swords as promised, and also offers spare
cyphers to replace any they used.

The dead explorer might have a hook leading to the next adventure.