The Poppy flowers

This adventure is set for Numenera. It can be set near any city or town.

A few days from the city, a structure emerged from the earth. Nobody cared about it, but some time later, a weird purple goo, that seem to kill everything it touches, has started to grow from it. When this purple goo was discovered, the local aeon priest, requested help from the organization, but the response will take some time to arrive.
You have been hired in the meantime. Your mission is, first and foremost, to gather information. Bring samples for investigation and stop it, if you can.



Gathering information in the city (optional)

Most are scared regarding the purple goo, some blame the aon priest, and some think it's a curse of the old world.
To press regarding the information on the time when the artefact first appeared, they will need to find the right person to ask: (Intellect roll)
• (5 or more) There was an earthquake, all those years ago, which happened around the time the ruin was discovered
• (3-4) It happened during the harsher winter, we remember. One night the land shook and even the moon went hiding, just after that terrible night, the ruin was discovered
• (1-2) They can't remember anything of value, happening during the time

If the party want to gather supplies, the local shops sell all common supplies and the priest can provide or exchange some cypher, if they want.
The party leaves the city and starts to make way toward the artefact


Dream sequence



Aerial view: Thousandth of red poppy-like flowers surround the purple goo, which has the monument in the middle. The plant's distribution and appearance from the ground look coordinated. Looking at the scene, fill you with some kind of dread.
While you look, at them, the poppies start advancing on the purple area. Their red starting to dominate over the purple of the goo in the more external circles or the grass. After they completely dominate an area, they advance to a deeper one. This continues until they surround the monument, the whole area that used to be purple, now deep red, because of the poppies. The same kind of poppies, but bigger, start to grow in the monument itself, which after some time, crumbles.
The scenery changes, now you can see, the city, from outside the walls, some of the same kind of poppies have started to appear, more and more pop out until the whole town is surrounded by it.
At this point, you can feel a pause, a moment of either doubt or maybe inquisition. And the dream ends.



Awakening

The party awakens in the early morning, mist covers the whole camp. After the mist starts to dissipate, the camp is surrounded by the same poppy flowers, they saw in their dreams
A path, start to open after the flowers have the party's attention.
• If the party, attacks the flowers, nothing of note seems to happen, they die quickly and are replaced by others
• if the party, decides to continue their way, over the flowers. A might roll needs to happen, 3 in total (increasing difficulty 4, then 5 and finally 6)
  
  • On success, no effect, the party continues on their way, with no negative consequenses
  • On failure, the sense of orientation is compromised, From their point of view, the path the flower opens matches the one they want to take
• If they follow the path, they will arrive at the entrance of a structure. The entrance is partly hidden by the vegetation. this is clearly not the structure they were going to.



Queen Flower conversation

The installation opens up to a huge subterranean ruin. The red flower leads the PCs to a specific room (1) where an extremely large red flower, communicates telepathically with them.
The conversation follows a carrot and sticks approach. The red flower has a problem, a group of abhumans has established itself on its installation. And every attempt to evict them has failed. They could kill them all, but they prefer to try this last attempt to evict them, (or someone else doing the murder) before turning into that desperate measure.
They know of the installation, they have been tasked to investigate, is a growing structure under the surface to gestate something. They can clear it out with some time. As payment for this task. Of course, they can also do the same to the town where they come from, as well.

Ruin traverse

The main areas are in quite a good status of conservation. The walls are made from the usual grey/metallic synth, which is usually on old ruins. A cyan light emanates from the ceiling and some of the walls. Compost is nicely stocked against the wall in the passageways you pass through. In other rooms, the greenery seems to be cultivated directly on the walls. A variety of plans grows in either of those areas, but the vegetation instead of green is several shades from red to purple. The Red poopies are abundant everywhere, especially in and around the greenery areas and a lower toward the centre of each.



0
Entrance
1
Main chamber - where the poppy queen leads the party and introduces the task
3
Closet size room; access via hidden-sealed room. valuables to be found.
4
Contact with wall causes the entire opposite wall to lift and reveal another chamber; Integrated machine; Grafts one extra automaton limb onto a user, which adds +1 to die rolls involving tasks where having an extra hand would be useful
5
Synth sculpture moves incrementally when touched
6
Empty room. The empty rooms, have some generic old ruins waste on them, those are rooms, the poopies are not using/have not clean yet. Salvage can be discovered here. Taking this salvage won't generate any reaction by the poopies
7
Passage blocked by a corridor collapse (Might: difficulty 6 to clear out)
8
Black cylinder, which can be seen through the transparent floor emit a low gravity field. The room is clear of the poppies.
9
Emty room
10
interstitial cavity - Large tube,around 30m diameter. Extending above and below. The air in this chamber is hazed with narrow vortices that move randomly about, sometimes spinning apart, other times spinning back together again. The vortices spin away from creatures and moving objects. the vortices represent splinter personalities of machine intelligence that once inhabited this area. Individual vortices can speak by vibrating the air, but each has a very narrow slice of knowledge or speciality. There are several tribal utensils to scale it up and bring things. Some of them are cut down.
11
Creature is covered in poppies, which is trying to remove. Marauding vault*/Rubar/Yellow swarm
12
Empty room
13
Elevate access station, near the ceiling, connecting rooms 11, 12, 14 and 15 .
14
Empty room
15
Creature encounter: Rubar / Flying elchin / Xacorocax
16
Empty room
17
The tunnel is collapsed , with no exit in sight, something has been storing skeletons of dead creatures, automatons, and explorers in this rupture, organizing the bones in neat, stacked rows
18
Interstitial cavity
19
Shaft: Shaft drops 600 feet (180 m) into reclamation pit containing a level 7 deconstructor automaton
20
Empty room
21
interstitial cavity, very similar to 10. it seems to have a similar function, but it doesn't have any kind of abhumans gear
B1
A small opening leads to a corridor sloping down. The corridor wall is semi-transparent, like a containment breaking down. The area beyond is glowing with a light red hue. Residual radiation inflicts 1 point of ambient damage on each creature in the area each minute
B2
Synth machine in the ceiling magnetizes metallic objects, these objects will move to stand in the way, but not very fast and give a small electric discharge if touched.
B3
Small between floor states, with a passageway to the lower floor. Its partially obstructed by rocks (Might roll to clear it out, Difficulty 4)
B4
This room seems to have something, that looks like an altar in its centre, built and rebuilt many times with rudimentary material. It's full of dead poppies, which seem to have been collected and put there intentionally. They have also been emplaced in diverse figures around the altar. Leftover and bodies are all over the place, especially around the piles of dead poopies
B5
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B6/B7
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B8
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Abhumans negocitions

The tribe is small, around 15 to 20 abhumans, since the players come from the inner sanctum, they won't be hostile immediately. The abhumans have a basal level of intelligence, They have concluded the flower are their deity. And adore them as such. This is why move to live here. Everything on the camp is very temporary and surrounded/using red flowers. They are signs of destroyed property and even some dead abhumans, with flowers growing on them. Possibly even some flowers grow in live ones. They would justify most actions of the flowers as necessary sacrifices to the plants.

Machine repair




Conclusion