FoldUnfold Table of Contents Overview Tools for Destiny GMs FOUNDING A COMMUNITY NINTH WORLD COMMUNITIES FOUNDING ADVENTURES EMERGENCE OF A COMMUNITY ADOPTING VS. VISITING A COMMUNITY COMMUNITY STATS A BASE OR A COMMUNITY? RANK: MODELING A NINTH WORLD COMMUNITY ASSIGNING COMMUNITY STATS ASSIGNING RANK TO EXISTING COMMUNITIES COMMUNITY ACTIONS COMMUNITY ACTIONS HORDES, ARMIES, AND RAMPAGING BEASTS LAYING OUT A COMMUNITY LAYING OUT YOUR BASE OR COMMUNITY GUIDING A COMMUNITY LONG-TERM PLAY COMMUNITY EVENTS, NEEDS, AND OPPORTUNITIES

Overview

Tools for Destiny GMs

In this part of the rules, you’ll find specific rules for creating community statistics, how different communities can interact with each other peacefully or violently, how PC actions can play a role in those interactions, how a community gains a rank, how ranked communities interact, and how you can run a campaign that stretches over months and years of game time. Essentially, this part is a toolbox for allowing characters to found or foster a community, including guidance on how to challenge a community with interesting needs, threats, and opportunities as it grows.

FOUNDING A COMMUNITY
This section guides the GM to help PCs establish (or foster) and grow a new base or community, but not from a mechanical perspective. Rather, this chapter gives the GM guidance on the kinds of scenarios and encounters that lead to the creation of settlements, especially ones in which the PCs have a personal stake.

COMMUNITY STATS
Each community has a rank attached to it. Rank is the most basic measurement of a community. It reflects a community’s raw, innate capability. Comparing the ranks of two different communities provides a general sense of which is superior. For example, a rank 3 community is superior (in a basic sense) to a rank 2 community. This section explains rank and the related stats a community has, how to assign a rank to a community, how a community can advance in rank, how a community’s structures and installations can affect its stats, and similar topics.

COMMUNITY ACTIONS
When two communities clash or otherwise interact or a community is threatened by disease, fire, or a terrible storm, the event is usually resolved by comparing the rank of one community to that of another community, an attacking horde or army, or a threatening event. This is straightforward when no PCs are involved, but it can grow more complex when PC actions alter the situation over the course of each exchange of hostilities. This section describes how to handle such situations. It also provides guidance on how to rank hordes and armies as well as rules on how to handle fights between two large groups of enemy creatures.

LAYING OUT A COMMUNITY
What does the community look like? The level of detail for community design depends on the players, and the GM should let the players decide where they want to be on this spectrum. This section provides options and examples for laying out a community from very abstract to quite detailed.

GUIDING A COMMUNITY
This section introduces specific options for longterm play, giving the PCs goals and rewards for periods of in-game time that stretch for months or more. While the Wright spends a few months building a complex numenera installation, the Glaive might decide to train up defenders for the community, and the Arkus might start a program to help members of the community who live in poverty. This section also gives the GM a tool for generating events, needs, and opportunities for the community. Sometimes, things just happen, like good weather, vermin infestations, visitors from elsewhere, community shake-ups, abhuman attacks, festivals, and so on. The Community Event Table provides all these and more.

RUNNING A DESTINY CAMPAIGN
This section ties all the various elements Numenera Destiny together, explaining how to run a Numenera Destiny campaign, where a growing community takes on a much larger role in the game, becoming at least as important as a major NPC. Various additional elements are covered as well, including using iotum as treasure, tips for GMing Destiny character types, and other topics.

FOUNDING A COMMUNITY

For characters interested in making the world a better place, forming or becoming part of a community is an ideal strategy. Not only does a well-run community improve the lives of the people who are part of it, it also enriches the lives of the characters who become involved. A community is a tangible manifestation of hope, a light on the horizon of the weird and inscrutable Ninth World.

Communities are the seeds of civilization. Without them, humans would wither and fade back into history once more. Within communities, humans can learn, build, and prosper. A stable community is a safe place for humans to not only survive but also thrive amid the dangers left behind by prior-world civilizations. Communities offer all sorts of tangible benefits, including at the most basic level a place to gain shelter, food, and other resources.

Meeting such fundamental needs is directly related to the most significant benefit one gains from being part of a community: the opportunity to receive help when one needs it. For many, this community benefit is so obvious that it hardly needs to be pointed out. Having an empty waterskin or being low on food in the middle of a thriving community isn’t worth noting for someone with a few shins to buy a meal and other refreshments. Even without shins, one is likely to be able to trade some small service for food and water in a community. But being alone in the middle of the waste without food and water, even with a trove of shins, is an entirely different situation. Likewise, becoming ill while alone or in a small group is serious, especially if there is no one else to continue hunting for food or do some other job vital for survival. In a community, becoming ill means that there is enough resilience in skill and population—as well as a surplus in food, water, and even medicine—that the character is likely to recover without risking their own life or the lives of a tiny group that would otherwise depend on them.

Another benefit of community is the opportunity for residents to learn from one another. Sharing knowledge is natural in a community, whether casually or, as often happens, when a more experienced person gains an apprentice or a follower. As a knowledge base, a community gains the benefit of the most experienced people teaching the least experienced people. When this works well, it allows people to avoid making costly mistakes that could otherwise lead to disaster. Mining the wisdom of others isn’t a one-way street—characters also help out those they meet along the way.

All this interaction leads to longer-term connections, providing opportunities for companionship, fun, and personal growth. Connections also mean the character can receive support when the going gets tough, and they increase the chances to discover interesting leads or secret information that could develop into new opportunities for exploration and discovery. Of course, characters also become connections for others within the community, which helps raise their own profile. Becoming known by people with power and influence can open doors that might otherwise remain closed. For many, the biggest benefit of being part of a community is the access to trade resources that a community provides. Even the most basic community has some form of barter in place so that people can trade expertise where it’s most needed, but larger communities also have shops or even full markets where all kinds of goods and resources can be gathered. Characters can utilize markets not only to find interesting items and needful resources but also to profitably dispose of objects found in their own explorations that they don’t personally need.

NINTH WORLD COMMUNITIES

Though every community is unique—some of them especially so given their location and method of settlement in the Ninth World—there are also many truisms that can be said of nearly any community built in the ruins of the prior worlds. The biggest parallels these communities share include isolation from other communities and the constant possibility of some new danger appearing out of nowhere.

NINTH WORLD ISOLATION
The vast majority of people in the Ninth World don’t have a grasp of its expanse. That’s because most people are isolated, never traveling more than a few miles from where they were born for the entirety of their lives. They have a very narrow view of existence and how the world works—and they don’t want to know, because the dangers that separate communities are significant enough that attempting to bridge that isolation often leads to death. Consequently, each community is often insular, with many individuals having a wide knowledge base—or at least a trove of hearsay and gossip—regarding other people in the community, who’s up to what, where one might go to get a particular kind of service, what those in power are planning, the nature of upcoming events or threats, and so on.

On the other hand, knowledge of anything beyond the community drops quickly to zero. Residents are more likely to call the nearest tribe of abhumans “demons” as they are by their actual name. There are likely tall tales about the dangers and legendary locations suspected to lie just beyond the community’s farms and hunting grounds (though many such tales likely have a grain of truth to them). Similarly, most communities are cut off from other towns and may not even know of any others—or if they do, it’s only as funny stories told by the rare traveler moving through the city. That said, many people know of Aeon Priests and the Amber Pope, but where exactly such people are based is a much fuzzier concept to the average person.

NINTH WORLD DANGERS
The prevalence of the inscrutable ruins of the prior worlds is a source of unremitting danger and a primary reason most communities are so isolated. Specifically, the residue of incomprehensible technology can kill humans in a variety of different ways, but all those ways stem from the same underlying reason: humans don’t, and in some cases can’t, understand the nature of what they’re encountering.

Even something intended to be relatively benign by some dead civilization can kill in the hands of a human who doesn’t understand that the power source for the device shouldn’t be directly handled. But many more dangers stem from the fact that human minds were never meant to grasp a particular truth or formula, that human bodies were never meant to conform to the demands of technology designed to heal beings composed mostly of liquid or metal, that humans have a lifespan measured in decades, not millennia, and thus can’t endure unexpected aging processes, and so on.

And those are just the static dangers that the landscape offers. Other dangers are active and mobile, whether it’s a hunting abhuman tribe, a damaged automaton built for war over ten million years earlier, a group of machine entities intent on enslaving organic creatures to empower themselves, or the unthinking but catastrophic iron wind. Even when humans don’t go looking for dangers, dangers may yet come to them. A well-defended community is often the best way to deal with such perils.

COMMUNITIES IN THE STEADFAST
Communities in the Steadfast are isolated, but even so, there is an awareness of outsiders. That awareness might come from the road that sees the occasional small group or lone wanderer. Such visits are rare enough—occurring no more than once every few years, perhaps—that villagers turn out to see the strangers. Some communities view strangers with suspicion, but most have at least some people among them who appreciate news from elsewhere. Many Steadfast communities lie within a larger kingdom (such as Navarene, Thaemor, Iscobal, and so on), even if contact between that distant hierarchy and the community in question is sparse. But communities close to the capitals or near important resources are likely to have a representative of some sort from the higher power. Sometimes that representative is an Aeon Priest working on behalf of the Amber Papacy, but most times, it’s a landed noble. The noble answers to the kingdom, helps protect the community (sometimes), and may collect taxes in some form in return for that protection or on behalf of the higher power.

If characters found a new community within the Steadfast, the time may come that a representative of the kingdom (or another organization that claims the land surrounding the new community) will come calling. Depending on the situation, that meeting could lead to an amicable relationship—perhaps one in which the PCs are eventually accorded noble status—or it could be an inimical one. If things get off on the wrong foot, the community faces an additional danger in the form of an adversarial higher power who might well give “permission” to a nearby noble to consolidate the new community with one they already administer. It’s usually better that the PCs come up with some way to work within the system. For instance, it’s probably worth the steep initial investment in time and resources to proactively seek to establish ties with the court of the queen in Navarene.

COMMUNITIES IN THE BEYOND
The Steadfast presents at least a few diplomatic challenges in establishing relations with a nearby town or a ruler in a faraway city. But communities in the Beyond never face such issues. These communities are truly isolated. There is no overarching political structure or government, however remote, that requires any fealty or can offer any protection. As isolated as many communities in the Steadfast are, those in the Beyond are truly alone. The landscape around them is far more dangerous, given that no kingdom has managed to claim these lands even tentatively. Only the strength and ingenuity of those in the community can keep it safe. The most successful communities in the Beyond are aldeia, which are communities centered around a clave of Aeon Priests. Claves can offer protection and resources for the communities that spring up around them. However, claves sometimes become so insular and focused on their work that they end up putting the community at risk with their strange experiments. Aldeia are perfect for PCs who wish to foster an already existing community, especially if they can come up with a strategy to interact diplomatically with the clave.

FOUNDING ADVENTURES

PCs who want to found a community need to locate a site that will serve as a good place to begin building new structures. If the PCs are thinking ahead when they look for a site, they will consider things like access to resources, a seed population, natural protection or defenses, and maybe even the existence of still-functioning machines of the prior worlds (called installations by PCs who’ve learned to identify them as such) that can provide further advantages.

One way to handle these considerations is through normal exploration. Before building an infrastructure (or while building one), the PCs might need to solve whatever issues prevented a community from forming in that location before or that might swamp a newly founded community.

A founding adventure could be as simple as safely leading a group of refugees or settlers to the new community, or it could be something more protracted, such as clearing out a tribe of vicious abhumans, opening up a trade route, repairing a numenera device that a previous but now dead community used to depend on, deactivating some weird effect emanating from a nearby ruin that prevents the area from being settled, finding a water or food source, etc. Generally, PCs must account for the requirements listed below when founding a community. After that, it takes a few months for a seed population to form a rank 1 community, assuming all other needs have also been met, including infrastructure. See Emergence of a Community for more.

• Sustenance (food and water)
• Materials and iotum
• Housing
• Settlers

SUSTENANCE
A community, no matter how small, requires access to adequate and sustainable food and water. Smaller communities can get by with hunting and gathering, but larger ones need some sort of farming and ranching to support their population. Technology can help extend supplies or purify tainted sources, but the community is more likely to survive if the supply of food and water doesn’t rely purely on what a machine can fabricate. This means the PCs must discover some means to gather, grow, or trade for food. Meeting this prerequisite could be as simple as having nearby potential farmland and some seed stock, or it could be as elaborate as an installation that can feed and provide water for at least twenty people every day.

MATERIALS AND IOTUM
A community requires access to building materials, potentially including special components that are required to craft installations. A nearby forest is a great place to gather mundane components like wood (or a material that functionally serves the same role) from which a host of commonplace structures can be built. But to build anything more advanced, PCs must consider where they can salvage iotum such as responsive synth, pliable metal, mimetic gel, quantium, and more.

HOUSING
Either the PCs must secure a location that already includes several structures, connected rooms, or other habitable spaces, or they must build these from scratch. (A Wright with a plan for an instant shelter cypher could open the way to creating lots of basic structures in a relatively short time.) Without someplace for themselves and potential future settlers to live, a location is merely a temporary campsite at best. If PCs have found a base for themselves, it could be the seed of a new community; they may eventually want to expand it.

SETTLERS
PCs don’t need settlers if they just want to create a base for themselves, but other people are required to form a true settlement. To create a community, at least twenty people must live in the area, or four times as many NPCs as PCs, whichever comes first. These individuals form a foundation that can be abstracted to use community stats after enough time has passed.

EMERGENCE OF A COMMUNITY

Adding a group of people to an area where the PCs have claimed or built homes doesn’t automatically make it a community. Some time must pass for the new population seed to find their roles, develop routines, and figure out what they need to do in order to make a life for themselves. When at least twenty people are doing this in the same place, emergent properties eventually create a community. However, many seed populations also include the seeds for interpersonal conflict. This conflict will be resolved over time, but that time can be reduced if the PCs take a hand in organizing the situation.

Interpersonal connections can be made only after points of conflict are mended. If two or more NPCs are feuding, seeking some advantage over the other, this can keep the community from moving forward. PCs can do a lot to mediate such situations and help people come to a compromise. They can try different things to help the dissenters get along, but there is no guarantee of success. If the PCs can’t come up with a way to make the NPCs (or groups of NPCs) sincerely make up, the fledgling community remains in a steady state of turmoil and never quite takes off.

But if PCs are involved, these final interpersonal issues will likely be resolved. So once PCs have played through encounters or adventures that touch on all the other requirements described in this chapter, then the community will emerge. The PCs have helped secure sustenance, materials, housing, and a sufficiently large population of settlers to make a go of a new community. The role the PCs play doesn’t have to be primary in every case. For instance, it might be that sustenance is already taken care of due to natural groves of fruit trees. All the PCs have to do is make sure the groves are safe to gather from and perhaps strike a treaty with local abhumans who also gather from the same grove.
During this period, you might even suggest that the game enter long-term play. This gives players the opportunity to pursue at least one other side project, even as they monitor the final stages of the community’s development, the culmination of which might coincide with the completion of a palisade wall, a gate, or a water purifier built by a Wright.

ADOPTING VS. VISITING A COMMUNITY

In many ways, the concept of fostering a community is similar to adopting a community. But determining exactly when a character has adopted or fostered a community can be tricky. For instance, what if the PCs come upon a town of 4,000 people and just decide to live there and help out for a while? Perhaps the PCs build a few things and help make a treaty with a nearby town. Have the PCs adopted the community, or are they just passing through? This might matter only if the PCs want to apply their community-enhancing abilities to a given location, but narratively, PCs might care whether the community has accepted them as one of their own or merely as helpful strangers who might never be seen again.

It comes down to a subjective call by the GM. The GM will know it when they see the PCs fostering a community. When this happens, consider building an interaction encounter with the PCs and several of the locals who officially welcome them into the community. This might be an impromptu gathering at a tavern’s public room, a party called by a PC or NPC, or some sort of recognition ceremony called by an official. By actively recognizing the PCs’ contributions to a community’s success, you help cement their ties and feeling of belonging. Whether one is a character or a player, these are the sorts of rewards we all crave.

COMMUNITY STATS

Humans and other creatures usually exist in communities in the Ninth World, however weird those communities might be. Some sprawl down cliffsides created by artificial structures. Others exist in the pit of an ancient reactor or on a hard-to-reach oasis at the center of a desert of purple sand. A few phase in and out of existence for no immediately obvious reason. But all communities have stats. This section describes how communities can be represented with statistics such as rank, government, health, infrastructure, and more. This chapter also describes how communities can interact, either with each other or with inimical hordes or armies of invading creatures.

If no PCs are involved, these conflicts come down to comparing ranks. When PCs are involved, as when they become embroiled in conflicts with NPCs or creatures, things become a bit more complicated, and other community stats come into play.

Finally, this section explains how PCs can establish, tend, and grow communities in a Numenera game by providing simple stats to a community that they found themselves. Founding a community requires a series of decisions that shape the PCs’ new settlement. That said, unlike when a player creates a character, a community’s development isn’t entirely in their hands. A community is more like a garden that a character can plant, nurture, guard, and expand. But metaphorical (and actual) pests, weeds, droughts, and other unexpected events can have a significant impact on a community over time. With PCs around to protect it, however, there’s every chance that the community will prosper.

A BASE OR A COMMUNITY?

When characters start building structures and installations (or they find existing structures that they claim for themselves), they may be interested only in establishing a base for themselves where they can feel safe, rest, repair their equipment, and so on. However, if they open up their base for others to live with them and continue building structures that can house more people than just themselves, their base could eventually transform into a full-fledged community.

When does that happen? A good rule of thumb is that a base becomes a settlement (a fledgling community with a rank) when at least twenty people live there, or four times as many NPCs as PCs, whichever comes first. PCs could be satisfied with building just one or two protective structures and a few installations, essentially creating a small base, and leaving it at that. They might never open it up for others looking for a home to settle. A base with a few lightning turrets and a force field generator makes a safe and cozy place to escape the dangers of the Ninth World. However, bases do not usually gain the status of a full-fledged community, with an associated rank, as described in this section.

RANK: MODELING A NINTH WORLD COMMUNITY

Communities use simplified stats to model their abilities, similar to the way that creatures and NPCs do. Instead of tiers and Pools, communities have a rank, a value for health and infrastructure, and—potentially—modifications to their basic abilities that are otherwise derived from rank.

UNDERSTANDING COMMUNITY STATS
Rank: Each community has a rank attached to it. Rank is the most basic measurement of a community. It reflects a community’s raw, innate capability. Comparing the ranks of two different communities provides a general sense of which is superior. For example, a rank 3 community is superior (in a basic sense) to a rank 2 community.

Rank as Level: In many cases, a community’s rank can be used to determine the level of the average creature, NPC, object, or structure found within the community. If a character is trading in a rank 3 community, the average merchant they meet is a level 3 creature. If a character seeks to climb a wall in a rank 3 community, the average difficulty of that task is 3. If the characters are set upon by thieves in the alley of a rank 3 community, most of those thieves will be level 3 NPCs. And so on. All of this means you can use the rank to determine the target number a PC must reach to succeed on a task in that community or to attack or defend against an individual opponent in the community. In full community entries, the target number for average tasks or NPCs in the community is listed in parentheses after its rank. The target number is three times the rank, as shown on the following table.

When Rank Is Not Level: Generally speaking, it doesn’t matter if something encountered in the game is a creature, a poison, or a gravity-dispelling ray. Level is the final arbiter of what’s tougher and what’s weaker than something else. Whether a PC is attacking a level 3 creature, climbing a level 3 wall, or bartering with a level 3 merchant, the level determines the target number for the task the PC must attempt in order to succeed.

This is why communities have a rank and not a level. Rank cannot be used as a level in a situation where a single character or creature attempts to directly affect something as massive as a community of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people. For instance, a rank 3 town is full of (on average) level 3 NPCs and other challenges, but the town itself isn’t a level 3 entity. Something with a level can’t interact directly with something with a rank.

Characters and communities fundamentally act at different scales; characters take regular actions, but communities take community actions. For example, a thief infiltrating a rank 2 community may face a level 2 wall they must climb, a level 2 lock they must pick, and level 2 town guards they must flee. But the thief, no matter what level they are at, cannot attack or steal from the entire community by comparing their level with the community’s rank. Each expanded community entry begins with a general description of the community and its environs. That includes high-level concepts, areas of note, and things that almost anyone who visits the community can discover simply by observing and asking. A much deeper dive into the community is provided after its toplevel stats.

Government: The government stat indicates what sort of leadership and organizational structure the community has—who makes the laws, handles finances for shared expenses like roads and defense, and deals with local crimes and connections to other communities. Is the community run by a council, a warlord, or the people? For communities that PCs found, the characters serve as the leading voices in the community, but eventually, they may install a ruler or a governing body in their stead for when they inevitably leave to deal with a nearby problem or opportunity. Communities don’t have a type equivalent to PC types, but a community’s government helps build the narrative of the community’s goals, what it’s about, and how it interacts with the world. For instance, a warlike, conquering community is going to have a much different character than a peace-loving conclave. Some styles of government can affect other stats. A totalitarian government that rules with an iron fist might hinder tasks related to resisting espionage. An egalitarian state might ease tasks related to establishing connections and initiating trade.

Health: A community’s health value is an abstraction of the minimum number of able-bodied people in the community who can keep it active. A community’s health is usually equal to its target number, but that can vary. When damage is dealt to a community, it is usually split equally between health and infrastructure, though special attacks might target one or the other stat preferentially. Damage to a community’s health doesn’t necessarily mean that people are dying (though it could); instead, it means that portions of the population are becoming sick, disabled, or otherwise neutralized to the point that they can no longer maintain the community’s integrity. However, if a community’s health does become completely depleted, it is likely that everyone has perished. There might be a few scattered pockets of survivors, but not enough to sustain or rejuvenate the community. If a community’s health is depleted but some infrastructure is not, the community becomes like a ghost town, empty of people but still standing.

Infrastructure: A community’s infrastructure value is an abstraction of the structures, walls, roads, bridges, installations, and so on that make up a community. A community’s infrastructure is usually equal to its target number, but that can vary. (So the average rank 3 community with a target number of 9 has 9 infrastructure and 9 health.) As noted under health, when damage is dealt to a community, it is usually split equally between health and infrastructure, though special attacks might target one or the other preferentially. If a community’s infrastructure is depleted but some health remains, the population must either devise a means to repair their infrastructure or become refugees.

Damage Inflicted: If a PC-tended community becomes embroiled in a conflict on the community scale against another community or a horde of NPC attackers, the attackers usually inflict their rank in damage regardless of the form of attack. Some inflict more or less or have a special modifier to damage.
Communities often deploy groups of able-bodied soldiers or other fighters, but they might also be able to inflict damage with a psychic cannon installation (for example) at the community scale. In other words, it doesn’t matter if a rank 3 community does damage with troops or offensive installations—it deals the same damage when it hits. A community’s entry always specifies the amount of damage inflicted, even if it’s the normal amount for a community of its rank. Remember, rank does not equal level. Communities and characters don’t interact; a character doesn’t take damage from a community or vice versa. If combat occurs directly affecting a character, then NPCs and creatures with levels fight and do damage to that character normally.
Taking Damage: When a community takes damage, that damage is first reduced by any Armor the community might have (many communities have none). Any remaining damage is then split evenly and subtracted from the community’s health and infrastructure. If the damage is an odd number, the GM decides whether the extra 1 point goes to health or infrastructure. The GM should alternate these choices to keep the damage applied evenly over the course of all interactions. Some kinds of attacks preferentially target health or infrastructure, and those exceptions trump these general rules.

Armor: This is the community’s Armor value. This number may represent especially strong defensive walls or more esoteric protections such as a force shield installation. When damage is dealt to a community, it is reduced by the community’s Armor and then divided between health and infrastructure. If a community’s entry doesn’t have an Armor value, then its Armor is 0.

Modifications: When a community has special abilities, defenses, or other capacities that are different than what its rank would imply, that’s indicated here, if not already reflected in the Armor and Damage Inflicted entries. For example, a rank 4 community might say “attacks as rank 5 due to battle commander.” In this case, the community inflicts 5 points of damage instead of 4 against an enemy community or horde. Other modifications are also possible, including modifications to diplomacy, trade, number of unique installations, and so on.

Combat: As touched on under Damage Inflicted, a community fights by deploying combatants, but they might have access to special installations, such as one that can render the community invisible or out of phase for a period to confuse enemy invaders. Other special considerations that might apply to community actions are also provided here, such as the presence of a champion NPC whom PCs or other NPCs might encounter if fighting breaks out.
At the end of the combat listing, you’ll also find any special abilities, such as immunities, the ability to quickly repair infrastructure, and so on.

COMMUNITY OVERVIEW
Following the top-level stats, a deep dive into the community is provided. This includes a map of the community, interesting residents, secrets, and so on. Different communities will have different needs for this section.

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
This isn't a specific header, but rather an acknowledgment that the community description is likely to contain various other topics specific to that community. It might provide general notes or specific adventure ideas. It could suggest threats or needs the community might be facing, and immediate hooks that a GM can use to get players invested in helping (or as the case may be, opposing) the community.

GM Intrusion: This optional entry in the stats suggests ways to use GM intrusion when characters are in or near the community. These are just possible ideas of many, and the GM is encouraged to come up with their own uses of the game mechanic.

ASSIGNING COMMUNITY STATS

Once PCs found or foster a community, follow this step-by-step procedure for assigning stats to the settlement. The same method, with some caveats, can be used for assigning stats to any community.
1. Found (or foster) a community
2. Assign rank
3. Appraise commonplace structures
4. Appraise installations
5. Determine PC contribution
6. Lay out the community (optional)

1. FOUND (OR FOSTER) A COMMUNITY
In some games, founding (or fostering) a community can become the focus of the campaign over several sessions of game play. In others, founding a community is something that might happen away from the table. In either case, the PCs should name their community if it doesn’t already have a name.

2. ASSIGN RANK
A newly founded community is almost always rank 1. Even if the community enjoys more than the average number of installations, as some PC-tended communities are likely to do, it still begins as a rank 1 community.
Existing communities that PCs successfully foster can be ranked according to their population. The minimum number of people noted at each rank in the Rank by Population Table indicates how many able-bodied and competent community members are required to obtain that rank. An additional halo population of children, elderly, temporarily

3. APPRAISE COMMONPLACE STRUCTURES
A functioning community can build and maintain the basic structures it needs to support its rank. Basic structures for a community include homes, roads (or at least paths), bridges, and even basic defensive measures. This means that commonplace structures don’t modify the basic stats of a community except in special cases. For instance, a community that focuses on building commonplace, high-level structures can potentially gain a higher infrastructure value than its rank would otherwise indicate.
If the PCs go on a tear building commonplace structures above and beyond the basic requirements in their community, they can potentially increase the infrastructure stat above normal for their community, too.
Adding to Infrastructure: Each unique commonplace structure (civic or defensive) of level 5 or higher adds that level to the community’s infrastructure, but with diminishing results for multiples of the same installation. For example, each additional level 5 structure of the same type beyond the first
adds just 1 point to infrastructure. So building three level 5 commonplace structures of the same kind adds a total 7 points (5 + 1 + 1) to a community’s infrastructure.
The rule above works well in most cases, but some exceptions apply when common sense would dictate a different answer. For example, if a defensive wall is built that doesn’t fully encircle an isolated community nor close a choke point where attackers can approach the community, the structure does not provide a boost to infrastructure until the wall is completed. In a similar vein, common sense suggests that a community can benefit from only one city hall. A second one doesn’t add to infrastructure, not even 1 point.

4. APPRAISE INSTALLATIONS
The average community in the Ninth World usually has only a few installations. Communities created by PCs are likely to add more if the PCs salvage iotum, find and develop plans, and craft them over time. Many installations do not directly affect a community’s stats, even though they provide a benefit. Having potable water filtered from a nearby river, illumination provided by prior-world magic, and structures guarding against vermin infestation are greatly appreciated, but they don’t necessarily affect stats directly.
Installations That Affect Stats: Installation plans indicate precisely what kind of benefit the installation would have for a community, if any. For example, certain force field generators provide the community with an Armor value. Turrets and other offensive installations can boost a community’s damage inflicted when making attacks. Still others can provide special capabilities that confuse enemies or hide a community. Note all these instances in the community’s stats.
Other Special Abilities: Some benefits don’t directly affect stats but will be noted if they affect the entire community. For instance, if the entire community exists within a pocket dimension due to a dimensional abode installation, that information should be indicated even in abbreviated community stats.

5. DETERMINE PC CONTRIBUTION
The vast majority of Ninth World communities are not founded or fostered by PCs. But at least one community might be if your players care to invest themselves. PCs may have abilities that directly affect a community’s stats, as long as they are present and active in the community.
PC Special Abilities: The PC abilities that modify a community’s stats indicate precisely what kind of benefit they provide. For instance, first-tier Glaives actively and personally working on behalf of a community increase the community’s effective rank when making attacks by 1. Note all such contributions in the community’s stats.
NPCs: Individual NPCs don’t have as much clout as PCs. As a result, most don’t have a direct influence on a community’s stats but are instead assumed to be figured into a community’s rank. That said, NPCs of particular significance (known as key NPCs) could have a direct influence. An important Aeon Priest might increase the city’s rank by 1 for tasks relating to understanding numenera, a renowned commander might modify a city’s rank similarly to a PC Glaive, or a brilliant architect could provide a direct benefit (equal to their level) to the community’s infrastructure after being active in the community for some period. Some character types have abilities that allow them to recruit deputies who provide similar, ongoing modifications to a community’s stats.

6. LAY OUT THE COMMUNITY (OPTIONAL)
Some player characters may want to abstract their community and not worry about the specific placement of walls, homes, shops, and so on. That’s fine. However, many PCs will enjoy the opportunity to lay out their community, generating a useable map of their home. Doing so is optional, but a community map sometimes reveals new ways to defend that community if it comes under attack, among other benefits.

ASSIGNING RANK TO EXISTING COMMUNITIES

If the GM needs to assign a rank to a community that isn’t aided by PCs or already provided in Numenera Destiny, the Rank by Population table is a perfectly good start. There are only a few other things to keep in mind when assigning a rank. Small villages are probably no higher than rank 1 or 2, with perhaps a modification to account for a special NPC in residence or a strange installation around which the community is sited. For example, a small village built into the interior of a synthsteel ruin could be rank 2 but rank 5 for defense tasks.

Huge metropolises (by Ninth World standards) probably have a maximum rank of 5, again with modifications for special circumstances. Certainly it’s possible for communities to have a higher rank than 5, but keep in mind that rank serves as the method whereby the GM can determine the average level of goods and the average level of competence for NPC experts. For example, a huge place like Qi may have NPCs and goods higher than level 5 (and it will certainly have many lower than that), but because the place is so big and cosmopolitan, PCs can find competent level 5 experts without much effort. That said, communities that are not made up primarily of humans can and do exceed rank 5, especially if they’re remnants of some prior-world civilization or exist as an advanced community located in another star system, galaxy, or dimension. As an extreme example, consider the community known as the Thon Iridescence, which exists within a megastructure of hairline flaws in the fabric of reality that’s been woven around a galactic black hole. Thon is a rank 10 community, but the psychically generated conceptual spaces within it have different (usually much lower) individual ranks. For instance, the subcommunity of Ecatora is rank 4.

COMMUNITY ACTIONS

Acommunity needs a rank in order to interact with hordes of abhumans or other enemies; disasters, such as plagues, fires, and the iron wind; or other communities in trade, diplomacy, and even conflict. Obviously, hordes, disasters, and other large events also need a rank in order to compare them to a community (or each other) and determine which one comes out ahead. This chapter provides guidance on how to apply rank and how to compare between two disparate ranks. This comparison is sometimes a single interaction, but it may also play out as a series of interactions.

Ultimately, the GM is the arbiter of conflicts that do not involve the PCs. PCs who found, foster, or are present in a community may help guide how a community reacts to a given threat, either directly or by setting policy, but they can’t control whether a community succeeds or fails on actions taken at the community scale. When communities (or hordes, disasters, etc.) interact and no PCs are involved at all, the encounter is usually resolved by comparing the rank of one group to another. If a rank 4 community fights a horde of blood barms (rank 3) without any other modifications, the community successfully neutralizes the horde. If the community faces a horde of jiraskars (rank 7), it’s overrun. If something is a higher rank, it wins; if it is a lower rank, it loses. If two things of equal rank oppose each other, there might be a long, drawn-out battle that could go either way. However, situations may arise where rank isn’t the only determinant of the outcome, even if there are no PCs involved. External conditions, such as weather, unexpected events, or something else, could affect how things play out.

Perhaps a tiny force of defenders is able to fight off a higher-ranked horde because of a strange machine’s aid, an inspiration received from a glimmer, or some other narrative reason. Such unexpected events and conditions (especially negative ones) are best presented as GM intrusions. Other situations could arise that modify a community’s rank for a given circumstance. For example, if NPCs sneak into an enemy community and disable one of its lightning cannons or break a force field generator, the city’s offensive capability or defensive capability could be reduced by one or more ranks. If the saboteurs can cause enough damage to make a rank 3 community defend as rank 2 for a long-enough period of time, an opposing community of rank 2 or 3 might actually have a chance of success. Other modifications are possible as well; an expert general, a natural defensive wall, a giant force field, or something of that nature might make a rank 4 community act as if it were rank 5 or 6 for a time. PCs, however, have an even more dramatic effect on community encounters.

COMMUNITY ACTIONS

Not all encounters between communities are resolved simply by matching rank in one go. If that were so, community stats such as health or infrastructure would be far less useful. Any time a community has modifiers to its rank for a specific circumstance, the potential for a more complex encounter is possible (though the GM could still decide how things play out with a single rank comparison), and when PCs are involved, it can be even more exciting to handle situations with an extended series of interactions until the final outcome is determined.

Breaking a single rank comparison into a series of exchanges between two communities is facilitated by using community actions. A community action is like a character action, but instead of taking only a single round and involving only a single character, a community action takes about an hour and is the sum of all the actions that everyone relevant to the situation in the community takes during that period. PCs might get involved either because they’re actively helping a community or because they’re allied with a horde that’s attacking an enemy community.

COMMUNITY ACTION TIMING
During a community action, all the various actions taken by individuals in a community or horde are abstracted into a single “action” that takes about an hour of time in the world. When two or more ranked forces are involved in a conflict, they each take their own community actions at the same time, which is sometimes called an exchange of community actions (and sometimes, just an exchange). Community actions that last longer than an hour are possible, depending on what’s going on—a single community action could last a day, a year, or even longer in game time. For instance, if two communities are at war and it takes half a day to move between them, the increment between each community action takes at least a day to play out. If two planets are at war, community action exchanges could play out over years or centuries. If a community is being affected by a flood, fire, or other disaster, it’s generally fine to keep each community action at about an hour.

COMMUNITY DAMAGE IN COMBAT
In combat, each community or horde inflicts damage on its opponent equal to its rank (or to its damage inflicted stat, if the community has one, which supersedes rank for determining damage). This damage is inflicted by each participant simultaneously at the end of each exchange of community actions. This is true even if a lower-rank community attacks a higher-rank horde or community. There is no defense action or attack action to worry about during a community action; if combat is joined, the damage is inflicted automatically when the community actions resolve.

If a community is involved in a nonviolent encounter such as diplomacy or trade, damage obviously isn’t inflicted on either party, though one likely comes out ahead in whatever situation required using a community action to resolve the encounter.

EQUAL RANK CONFLICTS
If two antagonistic communities of equal rank go to war, apply the damage each one inflicts on the other’s health and infrastructure after each community action. If nothing else changes the equilibrium, and the two communities have equal health and infrastructure, the GM decides which side is destroyed first.

For example, consider two rank 2 communities that enter into direct conflict. At the end of each community action, each community simultaneously inflicts 2 points of damage on the other. That damage is split evenly between the community’s health and infrastructure, each of which begins the conflict at 6 points. If nothing changes, after six such exchanges (each of which lasts about an hour), one or both of the communities is destroyed (as decided by the GM). Of course, the PCs are likely to intervene in some fashion, either to end the conflict through diplomacy or to strengthen one community or weaken the other through some sort of daring adventure.

UNEQUAL RANK CONFLICTS
If two antagonistic communities of unequal rank go to war, apply the damage each one inflicts on the other’s health and infrastructure after each exchange of community actions, as normal. If nothing else changes the equilibrium, the side with the lower rank will be drained of health and infrastructure first and is thus destroyed. Take for instance the rank 1 community of Mayeen going to war with the rank 2 community of Thawl. During the first exchange of community actions, Mayeen and Thawl simultaneously inflict damage on each other (in this case, simply using their ranks to determine damage inflicted).

That damage is split evenly between each community’s health and infrastructure. Thawl inflicts 2 points of damage on Mayeen, so Mayeen’s health and infrastructure each take 1 point of damage, reducing them to 2 each. Mayeen inflicts 1 point of damage on Thawl, which can’t be divided evenly, so the GM decides the damage applies to Thawl’s infrastructure, reducing it to 5. It’s easy to see where this is going. Unless the PCs can intercede in some fashion—by providing Armor, repairing infrastructure, or boosting Mayeen’s effective rank—the lowerranked community will be destroyed after the third exchange of community actions.

MIXED RANK CONFLICTS
If a community’s modifications change its damage inflicted to something other than its rank, the outcome of a series of violent interactions might have to be worked out one exchange of community actions at a time. For example, consider Gront, a rank 2 community with a modifier that increases its damage inflicted to 3 (instead of the normal 2 for a rank 2 community). If Gront attacks Thawl (the rank 2 community from the previous example), then it’s clear that Gront eventually wins because it inflicts more damage with each exchange (all other community stats being equal between the two of them). However, if Gront launches an offensive against Anoor, a rank 3 community, things are drawn out a bit longer, giving PCs more time to intervene and potentially change the outcome. In this case, Gront inflicts 3 points of damage to Anoor, split evenly between Anoor’s health and infrastructure, each of which begins the conflict at 9 points. Because 3 points can’t be evenly split, the GM decides that in this first attack, 1 point is dealt to Anoor’s health and 2 points to Anoor’s infrastructure. Simultaneously, Anoor inflicts 3 points of damage on Gront. Because those 3 points can’t be evenly split, the GM decides the extra point of damage goes to Gront’s infrastructure. If nothing else changes, this exchange will go back and forth until Gront runs out of either infrastructure or health first (since Gront has only 6 points in each to Anoor’s 9 points).

HORDE AND COMMUNITY CONFLICTS
Outcomes are only somewhat different for communities facing off against hordes, armies, and rampaging beasts. That’s because hordes do not have infrastructure (though they may have Armor), which means a horde’s health takes all the damage inflicted by an opponent.

For example, consider rank 2 Thawl again, this time facing off against a rank 3 rampaging beast in the form of a callerail. During each exchange, Thawl and the callerail simultaneously inflict damage on each other. The callerail’s damage to Thawl is split evenly between the community’s health and infrastructure. All of Thawl’s damage goes to the callerail’s health. In the first exchange of community actions, the callerail inflicts 3 points of damage on Thawl, damage that is split evenly between the community’s health and infrastructure, each of which begins the conflict at 6 points. Since 3 points can’t be evenly split, the GM decides that 1 point is dealt to Thawl’s health and 2 points to its infrastructure. At the same time, Thawl inflicts 2 points of damage to the callerail’s health, which had a starting value of 9, reducing it to 7.

In the second exchange, the only difference is that the damage inflicted by the callerail does 2 points to Thawl’s health and 1 to its infrastructure (so that damage is split as evenly as possible between health and infrastructure). Thawl ends the second exchange with 3 health and 3 infrastructure, and the callerail ends with 5 health. After the third exchange of community actions, Thawl has 2 health and 1 infrastructure compared to the callerail’s 3 health. After the fourth exchange (and assuming the PCs are ineffective in changing the outcome through some other means), the community has no remaining points in either health or infrastructure, and the callerail has 1 health. The community is razed and its citizens destroyed (or eaten, depending on how hungry the callerail might be).

MULTIPLE HORDES OR COMMUNITIES
If three or more entities are engaged in a conflict, each entity chooses how it will distribute the damage it inflicts between its enemies. It could choose to split its damage between two or more entities, or it could concentrate its damage on just one other entity. This determination is made after each exchange of community actions. So in a conflict between a callerail (a rank 3 rampaging beast horde) and three other enemy hordes (say, a group of abhumans, a horde of bandits, and a horde of humans), the callerail might decide to split its 3 points of damage evenly, doing 1 point to each of the other three hordes.

NONVIOLENT COMMUNITY ACTIONS
Not all community actions are violent; hopefully, most relate to diplomacy, trade, and other enlightened endeavors. If PCs are not involved, then rank is still a great way to quickly determine the outcome. For example, if a rank 3 community wants to open trade with a rank 2 community through diplomacy, it probably succeeds, all else being equal. Of course, if PCs are directly involved, it’s far more likely they’d handle such negotiations as part of a normal adventure or a series of encounters.

Some nonviolent encounters between communities might not inflict damage but can still be disastrous. For instance, if a Convergence member with a powerful mind-control machine (which the GM decides is a rank 3 event) tries to take over a rank 2 community, the Convergence member might well succeed. Such an outcome doesn’t even require a powerful numenera device. For instance, if a charismatic leader and a few followers attempt to worm their way into the good graces of a community (which the GM decides is equivalent to action taken by a rank 3 community), a rank 1 or 2 community is likely to fall victim.

PLAGUES, FLOODS, AND NATURAL DISASTERS
Events can have just as disastrous an effect on communities as enemy communities or hordes, which means they can be ranked too. The difference is it’s usually impossible to strike back against a natural disaster—they can only be weathered. If a tsunami hits a community, it’s a matter of surviving the disaster and rebuilding afterward (unless the tsunami completely wipes the community out). If a rank 3 community is struck by a rank 5 tsunami, assuming no PCs are involved, the GM can rely on a simple rank comparison to know that the community is destroyed.

However, a disaster can also be played out in a series of community interactions if PCs are involved in aiding the community’s response. In this case, the number of community actions over which the bulk of the disaster plays out is equal to the disaster’s rank. PCs can participate in the community action by attempting community tasks, or by relying on their own special abilities to ameliorate, evacuate, and otherwise shore up the community from the ongoing or immediate aftereffects of a disaster. Refer to the Ranked Disasters table to see what special modifiers might apply.

For example, a rank 4 tsunami is hitting Vostin, a rank 3 town with 9 health and 9 infrastructure. Because the tsunami is rank 4, it acts over the course of four community actions with Vostin. After the first community action, it inflicts 4 damage on the town, divided evenly between health and infrastructure, but the table says to double the infrastructure damage, so it inflicts 2 points of damage on Vostin’s health and 4 points on its infrastructure, reducing the town to 7 health and 5 infrastructure. This repeats after the second community action, reducing Vostin to 5 health and 1 infrastructure. The third exchange reduces the town’s health to 3 and infrastructure to 0, destroying it and displacing the surviving members of Vostin. (Because the community is destroyed, there is no need to have the fourth exchange.) Of course, PCs participating in community actions by attempting community tasks or using their own special abilities can affect the outcome of each exchange and perhaps save Vostin.

PCs PARTICIPATING IN COMMUNITY ACTIONS
Community events normally occur on a different scale than the scale at which PC and NPC actions occur. Whereas a character might use a special ability to attack a foe, a community must withstand the attacks of an entire horde or army made up of hundreds of enemies. Individual actions are abstracted when it comes to community actions. However, PCs can still affect what happens at the community scale.

CHARACTER ACTIONS AND COMMUNITY ACTIONS
Character actions occur at far smaller scale than community actions. Most of the time, it’s not necessary to distinguish between these two scales; the activities characters take flow between them naturally. What characters do from round to round during a battle or while negotiating with NPCs require normal actions. Actions tracked over the course of an hour or more use community actions.

Character Actions: Most of the time, RPG characters take normal actions over the course of rounds or minutes. For example, if five margr attack five PCs, the encounter occurs over the course of several normal rounds. If the PCs barter with chance-met traders as they travel cross-country, it also occurs over the course of rounds, though no one is likely tracking them because it doesn't matter. Normally, it’s not necessary to call out such things as character actions because it’s just understood.

Effects of Character Actions on Community Actions: Taken individually, character actions usually don’t have a direct effect on community actions (but see Community Tasks Any PC Can Attempt). Instead, character actions often have indirect effects. For instance, if the five margr the PCs defeated were carrying a map back to their fellows that showed where the PC’s hidden community was, the PCs likely prevented a horde of margr from attacking the community—thereby ending a conflict before it started.
As has always been true, the variety of things characters can do that can have indirect effects on community-scale events is nearly limitless. If the PCs slip behind enemy lines and kidnap the captain of an advancing army, that army could be thrown in disarray for hours or days, which might delay the conflict, reduce the effective rank of the enemy army by 1, or perhaps prevent the conflict altogether. In many cases, regular character actions can occur at the same time that community actions are occurring over hours and days.

Community Scale: When communities interact with other communities, hordes, armies, or disastrous forces, the interaction happens over the course of at least one but probably several hours. For example, a horde of one hundred margr attacking a community happens at a much larger scale than the scale at which PCs act, whether or not the GM makes a single rank comparison or models the attack using several community action exchanges.

Rank Denotes a Shift in Scale: Generally speaking, individual creatures can't take community actions. That’s because individuals or even small groups usually don’t have a rank—something without rank can’t act at the same scale that an entire community does when it takes community actions. For instance, if five level 2 margr attack the PC’s rank 2 community, that’s a mismatch in scale, and the rules for community actions do not apply. The health and infrastructure values of the ranked community are not directly affected. Instead, the situation would play out normally, at the scale that PCs are used to—a couple of PCs or NPCs emerge to engage the five margr in round-by-round combat that takes only a minute or two in the world. However, PCs are special and can participate in community actions because of special abilities they possess, because they attempt a community task, or because they try to accomplish something that doesn't fall into an easily defined category.

IS IT A COMMUNITY TASK OR NOT?
As previously noted, PCs can attempt community tasks, or rely on a special ability, in order to affect a community action. When PCs do this, it often temporarily increases a community’s defenses, attacks, damage, infrastructure, health, and so on. For example, when a Glaive uses their Community Defender ability to grant the community or horde +1 to damage inflicted, they are taking actions at the community scale. But what about a PC trying to convince an entire neighborhood to evacuate over the course of an hour during a community action? This doesn't necessarily affect a community's stats, but it does affect how things turn out. Thus it could also be considered to be a community task, whether or not the PC applies Effort.

That said, sometimes PCs or NPCs are so powerful that they can take actions that have immediate, dramatic effects on community actions. For instance, a tier 6 Nano with the ability to make earthquakes, a tier 6 Glaive who can single-handedly defend the gate from a horde of one hundred margr, and a villainous NPC threatening an entire army with a cypher that can explode like the sun do so using normal actions, but the results actually can affect a ranked community. The GM can choose to handle this in a couple of different ways. A quick and easy way is to assign the character's action a rank, then do a rank comparison and inflict the appropriate amount of damage on the targeted horde or community as if the character had acted as a community and taken a community action.

Under such extraordinary circumstances, a simple rule of thumb for determining the rank of a PC’s or NPC’s action is to subtract 3 from the character’s tier (or the NPC’s level) and use the result. It’s a bit quick and dirty, but it will serve in some situations. For instance, if the tier 6 Nano’s Move Mountains ability affects the community, treat it as a rank 3 disaster that inflicts damage to the community’s health and infrastructure.

A more precise way to handle the situation is to let things play out first using character actions. By doing so, you could find that the results are so clear that it isn’t necessary to worry about community actions. For instance, if a cypher explodes an entire horde or the Glaive fights them off, obviously there is no horde left for an exchange of community actions.

HORDES, ARMIES, AND RAMPAGING BEASTS

When enough creatures or NPCs gather together, they have enough combined power to affect a community as if they were a community themselves. This means that they now have a rank just like a community. The term horde has a specific meaning, as described later in this section, but it’s also a general term that identifies any group of creatures (or single, very powerful creatures) that can pose a risk to a settlement.

UNDERSTANDING HORDE STATS
Rank: Hordes, armies, and rampaging beasts have ranks just like communities. Rank reflects a horde’s raw, innate capability. Comparing the ranks of two different hordes provides a general sense of which is superior. For example, a rank 3 horde is superior (in a basic sense) to a rank 2 horde.
As with communities, rank can be used to determine the average level of the creature or NPC making up the horde, the average level of any equipment they carry, and the average level of any normal task relating to the horde. For example, if a PC tries to sneak into the midst of a rank 3 horde at night, the task generally has a difficulty of 3.
Also, as with communities, rank is not the same as level, which means lone characters normally have little chance to affect a ranked horde. A character can’t attack a rank 3 horde with their sword and expect to do any serious damage unless they have special abilities that indicate otherwise.

Health: Unlike communities, hordes have no infrastructure. All damage is done to a horde’s health. A horde’s health is usually equal to its target number, but that can vary. A horde’s health value is an abstraction of the minimum number of creatures or NPCs who make it up. Damage to a horde’s health doesn’t necessarily mean that creatures are dying (though it could); instead, it means that portions of the group are being hurt, are losing morale, or are otherwise neutralized to the point that they can no longer maintain the horde’s integrity. When a horde’s health is gone, its morale breaks and it scatters with more than 50 percent casualties. It could also be entirely eradicated, depending on the situation.

Damage Inflicted: Hordes usually inflict their rank in damage regardless of the form of attack. Some inflict more damage (or less) due to special circumstances or modifiers. Hordes inflict damage by the swarming mass of antagonistic creatures that make them up, abstracting any special equipment they might possess.

Armor: This is the horde’s Armor value. If the average creature in the horde or the single rampaging beast has an Armor value, that is the Armor value of the horde. Any damage done to a horde is decreased by subtracting the horde’s Armor value first.

Modifications: When a horde has special abilities, defenses, or other capacities that are different than what its rank or other stats would imply, it is indicated here.

HORDES
A horde consists of a mass of creatures or NPCs that are usually of the same kind, though that’s not required. The size of a horde is about a hundred creatures, but it could be several hundred. A horde’s rank is equal to the average level of the creatures within it. A horde that reaches into the thousands is considered an army.

A horde of Oorgolian soldiers would be rank 4, because Oorgolian soldiers are level 4 individually. A horde of two hundred level 3 sathosh would normally be rank 3. However, sathosh have a special modifier that increases the rank of any army or horde they predominantly make up by 1, meaning a horde of level 3 sathosh is rank 4. A horde of level 3 murdens would normally be rank 3. Though as with sathosh, murdens enjoy a special modifier; they inflict double their expected rank in damage in the first exchange of community actions (as noted in Creatures at War).

Hordes include the special categories described below, though many other specialized types of hordes are possible. Special horde configurations provide an additional ability or modifier when the horde faces off against a community or another horde. Barring any modifications by the creatures themselves, many hordes will be basic hordes because the other types typically require specialized training. A horde of insects or animals is rarely capable of being trained or outfitted to perform a specialized tactic, and even intelligent creatures and NPCs are likely to start as basic hordes, because training a unit to use special strategies and tactics requires a lot of time and strong leadership. Strong leadership is often required to keep a specialized horde on task when actual combat begins.

If a horde is composed of creatures that modify any horde they predominantly compose, that modification might be added to the ability provided by being part of a specialized horde. For example, if creatures that add +1 Armor to any horde they make up become part of a defensive horde (which also adds +1 Armor), the resulting defensive horde gains +2 Armor. However, many hordes composed predominantly of a particular creature type already act as if they were a specialized horde. For example, rasters and other creatures that can easily fly over walls act as if they were a flying horde. In this case, there is no cumulative benefit.

Basic Horde. Most hordes are basic in that their rank is equal to the average level of the creatures that make it up. A basic horde is not granted any additional special abilities. However, creatures making up a basic horde may have a modification or special ability that modifies a horde that consists of mainly that type of creature. The section called Creatures at War provides a wide array of such modifications. For example, a horde primarily made up of broken hounds modifies the horde’s effective rank by +1.

Ambushing Horde. An ambushing horde isn’t likely to attack a community directly, but instead, it will draw out a community’s fighters in order to reduce or eliminate them. An ambushing horde’s rank for attacks is modified by +2 in the first exchange of community actions. After the first exchange, the horde acts like a basic horde of its rank.

Aquatic Horde. An aquatic horde can attack communities and other hordes that are otherwise difficult or impossible to reach, on account of also being located beneath the waves or using the water as a defensive feature. An aquatic horde is usually made up of individuals who are suited to living underwater, because outfitting a horde with special equipment, training, or aquatic mounts is expensive and rare.

Defensive Horde. A defensive horde has the resources to equip most of its members with additional armor of some sort. A defensive horde gains +1 Armor.

Fast Horde. Similar to a stealthy horde, a fast horde can move quickly because they are familiar with the area, have special mounts, or rely on some other method of moving more quickly than normal. Because a fast horde can make an orderly and quick withdrawal, it gets a free, one-sided community action when it retreats from an enemy community or horde, inflicting damage on its opponent without being simultaneously attacked in return. It can gain this benefit only once per conflict per enemy.

Flying Horde. A flying horde inflicts all its damage to its opponent’s health and doesn’t split it between health and infrastructure (unless it wants to). A flying horde that retreats can break off without consequences (there is no one-sided exchange where the enemy attacks the horde as they retreat). A flying horde gains no benefits against an enemy with flying forces. Unless a horde is made of individuals who are able to fly naturally, outfitting a horde with special mounts or numenera objects that allow it to fly is expensive and rare. The effort is worth it, however.

Guerilla Horde. A horde of guerilla fighters is smaller than a general horde and doesn’t show its strength directly on the field. Instead, it relies on a series of ambushes, raids, and acts of sabotage. A guerilla horde might be made up of only of twenty or so creatures. A guerilla horde is as effective as a much larger basic horde but only for up to two community action exchanges, after which it must retreat (and potentially is caught up in one additional community action as it retreats where it takes damage but does not inflict it).

Marauding Horde. Marauding hordes are trained and have equipment for getting over community walls and mixing it up with the population. A marauding horde inflicts all its damage on a community’s health and doesn’t split it between health and infrastructure (unless it wants to). A marauding horde is usually unable to retreat. These abilities and limitations do not apply when attacking another horde.

Patrolling Horde. A patrolling horde is most often deployed as a special unit of a nearby community, horde, or army. Its mere presence modifies the allied community, army, or horde’s effective rank by +1, though it has no effective rank while it patrols and defends its ally. The patrolling horde’s effective rank is 1 less than normal.

Rampaging Beast. A single creature that is powerful enough or large enough can also act as a horde and thus become ranked, as described hereafter.

Reconnaissance Horde. A reconnaissance horde is sent to test an enemy’s strength and position and then retreat with that information to provide that intelligence to some other group (usually another horde or a community). A reconnaissance horde inflicts 1 less point of damage than its rank would otherwise indicate. However, a reconnaissance horde can retreat from a conflict with a community or another horde without suffering unanswered damage in one additional exchange of community actions. If it survives, the reconnaissance horde can confer an advantage to another group by providing the information it learns, modifying the effective rank of the second group by +1 during a conflict with the reconnaissance horde’s foe.

Sacrificial Horde. Usually only hordes made of slaves or insane zealots are sacrificial hordes. A sacrificial horde’s sole purpose is to inflict as much damage on a community or horde as possible, even if it means the annihilation of the sacrificial horde itself. Such hordes are rarely encountered alone. Instead, they are usually deployed as special units by another horde or an army. A sacrificial horde’s rank is 2 more than it would normally be; however, the horde can act only in a number of community action exchanges equal to its adjusted rank before it is utterly wiped out.

Sapping Horde. A sapping horde has training and equipment designed to weaken and bring down an enemy community’s infrastructure. A sapping horde inflicts all its damage on a community’s infrastructure and doesn’t split it between health and infrastructure (unless it wants to). A sapping horde is usually unable to retreat. These abilities and limitations do not apply when attacking another horde.

Skirmishing Horde. A skirmishing horde has trained or is naturally inclined to act in smaller units (“fire teams”) that work in close coordination, allowing one fire team to move while other fire teams concentrate their attacks to keep an enemy busy. This allows a coordinated skirmishing horde to inflict more damage. On every other exchange of community actions, a skirmishing horde attacks and inflicts damage as if 1 rank higher than normal.

Stealthy Horde. This horde can move without being easily noticed because it is familiar with the area, has some training in stealth, is moving under the cover of smoke or prevailing weather, or is bringing some other method of evading immediate detection to bear. When a stealthy horde first attacks, it gets a community action in which it inflicts damage on its opponent and is not simultaneously attacked in return. After this first attack, the normal exchange of community actions occurs.

ARMIES
Armies are a kind of horde but larger and better organized. An army is composed of about a thousand creatures, but it could be many thousands or even tens of thousands or more. An army’s rank is equal to the average level of the creatures making it up +1. So an army of margr, creatures that are level 2 individually, would be rank 3. An army is also a kind of horde, so an army chiefly comprised of a particular kind of creature gains the horde benefits ascribed to that creature noted under Creatures at War.
Armies also have a bit more versatility than a basic horde, or at least the potential for it with the right leadership. An army can split off a smaller group that fulfills a special function, creating a specialized horde. In effect, an army can become an entity composed of two independent groups, one of which is the original army and one of which acts like a reconnaissance, sapping, patrolling, or other horde. So the rank 3 army of margr just mentioned might also be able to field a rank 2 marauding horde. The larger the army is, the more special units it can create while still remaining an army in its own right. Generally, an army can deploy one special unit for every thousand creatures comprising it.

RAMPAGING BEAST
Some creatures are so large or powerful (or both) that a single one can act like a horde, taking actions that have repercussions on the conflict as if they were a ranked horde. A rampaging beast’s rank is equal to the creature’s level minus 3 or 4. Generally speaking, a creature must be at least level 6 to be considered a rampaging beast, but that’s a bare minimum requirement. A rampaging beast may have additional modifiers and abilities that come into play during conflicts with communities or other hordes.
So a dread destroyer—a level 10 creature—would be a rank 6 or 7 rampaging beast if it attacked a community. Even a large Ninth World community would be hard pressed to withstand a rank 7 rampaging beast, at least without PC involvement. Very large vehicles, including war ships, can sometimes qualify as rampaging beasts. This is certainly true if the vehicles in question have numenera weapons designed to destroy other immense vehicles or communities.

CREATURES AT WAR
Creatures described in this book, Numenera Discovery, The Ninth World Bestiary, and Ninth World Bestiary 2 are presented here with suggested horde classifications, such as fast or stealthy, along with other unique modifiers when forming a horde. Creatures that never form a horde are also indicated.
Level 1 to Level 4: Creatures from level 1 to level 4 are the most likely to make up hordes. At higher levels, creatures may still form groups, but it becomes less and less likely that enough of them will gather in one place and act like a horde, though of course there are exceptions.
Creating Higher-Level Hordes: If you want to form a horde with a creature whose level is higher than 4, refer to the creatures of levels 1 to 4 provided here as a guide. You can either apply one of the horde templates provided or give the horde some other quality based on the cumulative abilities of the creatures making up the horde. For example, if the creature already has the ability to act in small groups as if a single creature of a higher level, a horde made up of that kind of creature should gain a +1 rank modifier. Generally speaking, the simpler the modifications you make to a horde, the easier and more satisfying it will be to use that horde in a game setting.

LAYING OUT A COMMUNITY

At one point, most communities were little more than a few determined people who wanted their own space and had the resources to find, claim, and defend it. Some communities may have started as military outposts, refugee sanctuaries, colonies birthed from larger communities, religious cloisters, roadside trading posts, or safe havens near mines or dangerous numenera sites. Over time, these settlements grew, built more structures, acquired more people, and became villages, fortresses, towns, and cities. Unless later generations tore down the original structures and built new ones in their place, a keen observer can usually find remnants of the original settlement—a historical building or neighborhood, the wandering layout of streets and roads that once served a purpose but confuse modern visitors, old machines that have fallen into disrepair, defensive walls well within the settlement’s outer borders, and so on. How the founders chose and arranged those first structures played a key role in determining whether the community survived its early years. Founding a Community describes the requirements for founding a community, but this section addresses where to put necessary structures.

LAYING OUT YOUR BASE OR COMMUNITY

PCs who decide to build a base have the fun opportunity to take a GM-like role and map out what they want in their base and where those things go, along with its defenses and overall shape. Even if the PCs are taking over an abandoned structure (or one they explored and made safe to inhabit), they get to change, demolish, expand, and rearrange their new home to suit their needs. This chapter explains a few different methods for how PCs can lay out and map their community. The layout of a community is interesting in and of itself, but it also impacts the community’s future growth and prosperity. The level of detail for community design could be very abstract or very detailed. The GM should let the players decide where they want to be on this spectrum—some might be content to know that their base has separate bedrooms for everyone, a large common room, and a high wall around the whole thing. Other players might want to use a grid to plan out every aspect of the rooms, decorations, facilities, and defenses. Use the Community Stat Sheet to record important installations, instructions, NPCs, and other features of the community. Before anyone starts working on a map, the PCs and GM should discuss which type of layout they want to use: abstracted or mapped.

ABSTRACTED LAYOUT
In an abstract base layout, only the most general information about the base’s configuration is known. At minimum, it has a list of rooms that the PCs use (bedrooms, a kitchen, and so on), a list of specific defenses (a wall with a gate, mines, carnivorous plants, and so on), and a list of any numenera installations the PCs have access to (alarm mech, pabulum extruder, and so on). These should have notes or a bare-minimum map indicating general directions for key features (the entrance is north, the kitchen is in the middle, bedrooms are to the south, and so on) so the base feels like a real place that the PCs can navigate. As the PCs continue to upgrade and improve the base, installations and structures will be added to the list, but as long as the players and GM are fine with keeping the organizational details light, these notes are all that is needed.

An abstract layout is a good choice if the PCs have a lot of room for their base (on top of a mesa that’s a mile wide in any direction, for example), because they can build wherever they want and leave plenty of room between key features—either because they’re expecting a lot of future growth or because they want to prevent the reactive fields of their numenera structures from interfering with each other. An abstract layout is also convenient because the PC and GM can always add more details later, such as dividing their base or community into districts or zones for specific purposes. As the level of detail is increased over time, the base may eventually become as detailed as one that was mapped out from the very start.

MAPPED LAYOUT
In a mapped layout, the specific configuration of the base’s parts are noted on a map, much like the kind of map a GM would use in a published adventure. Terrain features and scale can be included on the map, allowing the players to make tactical decisions about defending their base and how long it takes to get from one key feature to another.
A mapped layout is a good choice if the PCs have a fixed amount of room and need to carefully plan for all the structures they want to build; since each installation takes up space on the map, the PCs can see how much territory is still available and modify their intentions for the community’s growth. A mapped layout is also handy for the GM, especially if the campaign will spend a lot of time there—doubly so if there is a reasonable chance the base will be attacked during the campaign. A mapped layout also makes it easy to plan for the future and account for interference between numenera installations.
Before anyone starts working on a map, the PCs and GM should discuss the scale they want the map to be: grid, short distance, or long distance.

Grid Scale: The easiest way to start mapping a layout is to use a piece of graph paper, decide whether each square is 5 or 10 feet (1.5 or 3 m), and start drawing walls, doors, windows, stairs, paths, trees, and so on. If the PCs have taken over an existing base, the GM might even have a current map for the players to start with. This sort of map allows the PCs to customize the area with an incredible amount of detail. Players may be tempted to put something in every square, but they should remember to leave room for future expansion and be willing to step back from design and allow for other people living there—whether followers who don’t accompany the PCs on dangerous missions, helpful NPCs like a merchant or an Aeon Priest, or people like guards and farmers who protect the base while the PCs are away and make sure there’s enough food for everyone to eat.

Short-Distance Scale: A PC can move a short distance as an action, so mapping a community in terms of short distances is an easy way to provide details about what’s in a settlement and still use the map in a tactical situation (like if the base or community is attacked). Because the reactive field radius of an installation of level 5 or less is about a short distance, this mapping scale lets you place one installation in each short-distance area and still leaves plenty of room for details like homes, shops, and streets. Because a short distance is variable instead of precise, a square grid isn’t needed—each area that’s about a short distance on each side might be a slightly different size than the next one and can conform to the terrain—a huge derelict machine in the middle of a settlement might be surrounded by multiple short areas that curve around it or follow a riverbank and so on. A short-distance area is large enough to fit a multi-room building with a small bit of open land around it (for a yard, alleys, or street) or several one- or two-room buildings like shops, cottages, and guardposts. By assigning one key feature to a short area, the map provides a good overview of the settlement but still leaves room for expansion and added detail.

Long-Distance Scale: A long-distance scale map works much like a short-distance scale map, except each area is about a long distance across (one long-distance area contains about four short-distance areas). The reactive field radius of a level 10 installation is about a long distance, so this scale lets you place one high-level installation in each area or three to five installations of level 5 or lower. An area might not have individual buildings drawn on it, just regions noted as “homes,” “market district,” “fortress,” “warehouses,” and so on. Since a PC can run a long distance as an action (though it usually requires a roll to avoid stumbling), and vehicles like a windrider can move that far as an action, a long-distance scale map is still useful for determining how long it takes someone to get from one area to another (for example, if the PCs are inspecting the market district and they hear an alarm at a gate on the opposite side of town). Even if the PCs aren’t running, a long distance is about two short distances, so it’s still easy to see how long it would take for people to move through a community. One final advantage of using a long-distance scale (especially in the early stages of planning) is that it’s easy to subdivide the long areas into short areas if more precision is needed.

HYBRID LAYOUT
Unless the PCs inherit a fully built base or community or have a long-term plan for exactly what they want for their settlement, their layout is going to land somewhere in between mapped and abstracted. The portions that are done, in progress, or important will be mapped, and the rest of it will be left blank or abstract so they can fill in the details later. This is fine, and it means they won’t make detailed drawings of future things and risk having to erase them later when something doesn’t fit in its original space or an unexpected event renders part of the map compromised, unsafe, or uninhabitable. Blank or lightly filled parts of a map are good because it gives the place room to grow and encourages players and the GM to think about the future of the base and settlement.

REACTIVE FIELD
One of the main concerns of laying out a community is allotting space for the weird technology that the PCs retrieve or build. Having too many numenera installations near each other can be problematic or even disastrous. In some cases, the reactive field is simply the result of conventional spacing issues because the machine needs a lot of bulky cabling and cobbled-together power sources or because an installation gives off a tremendous amount of heat that would build up to dangerous levels if other machines were nearby. In other cases, the reactive field is actually a risk of interaction. For instance, the transdimensional power source for the community’s force dome might interfere with the function of the community’s water purifier, radiation from the water purifier can skew what an automender perceives as healthy or damaged tissue, and so on. All these issues are usually lumped together and referred to as a reactive field, which is why most installations aren’t built right next to each other. It is safe to build a new installation if its reactive field doesn't overlap any other reactive field.

The radius of an installation’s reactive field is equal to its diameter at its largest point (minimum 10 feet [3 m] in diameter) multiplied by its level. For example, Tholen the wright lives in Gront and wants to build a level 5 rain caller, which is approximately a 5-foot (1.5 m) cube. Gront already has a level 6 fabricator, which has a diameter of 30 feet (9 m). The rain caller’s reactive field is level 5 times the minimum diameter, giving its field a radius of 50 feet (15 m). The fabricator’s reactive field is level 6 times its diameter, giving the field a radius of 180 feet (45 m). To be safe, Tholen should build the rain caller at least 230 feet (70 m) away from the fabricator. A reactive field extends in all directions, not just horizontally—you shouldn’t build a new installation above or below an existing one within this area either. However, unless the community is incorporated into a cliff face, inside the hulk of a derelict spacecraft with multiple decks, or in some other environment where vertical building is practical, this is unlikely to be an issue. In theory, building an installation that is out of phase or in another dimension might also be risky if it is within the reactive field, especially if either installation uses or creates dimensional effects.

If an installation is built too close to an existing installation, the GM should feel free to use GM intrusions during construction time. These intrusions represent mishaps, unexpected failures, energy discharges, and so on, all stemming from unpredictable interactions between the two installations. The GM can also hinder the crafting tasks for building the installation: one step if the new installation is more than half the radius away from the existing structure or two steps if it’s closer than that. Once a new structure is completed, any structure within another installation’s reactive field is likely to develop minor or major secondary effects. Often, these secondary effects aren’t apparent until both installations have been complete for weeks, months, or years.

Finally, the GM can refer to the Reactive Rip result on the Community Needs Table for additional ideas on what could happen when reactive fields collide. If multiple structures are interfering with each other in this way, the problems and hindrances are cumulative. In some communities, it might be impossible to build new installations in certain areas because the existing technology is so crowded that the crafting task’s assessed difficulty ends up greater than 10. The builders of the prior worlds knew ways to circumvent these limitations, but the people of the Ninth World haven’t yet discovered a reliable way to deal with this problem other than physical distance. That said, a few have discovered that a scalar boson rod in an installation’s construction greatly shrinks its reactive field. Some installations—particularly those designed to work together or multiple copies of the same kind of installation—might ignore each other’s reactive fields. For example, the GM might decide that multiple hovering slabs can be built and operated safely even if they are adjacent to each other, forming a moving walkway or carrying heavy cargo between two locations. Other installations might create effects that interact in unexpected ways beyond the reactive field. For example, a force dome creates a force field out to very long range, and building or activating other force-based technology anywhere within or intersecting the dome might cause secondary effects, even though the dome’s reactive field is actually much smaller than that.

Commonplace structures ignore installations’ reactive fields. For example, building a stone wall so that it connects to the base of a lightning tower isn’t any more dangerous than building that wall a mile from the tower. It still has the normal chances of crafting failure, but crafting it there isn’t inherently dangerous just because the installation is nearby. Of course, these complicated interactions shouldn’t be used to punish players who want to build installations. The problem of having too many installations in close proximity is meant to be a source of story ideas, challenges to overcome, and a reminder that the numenera is still incompletely understood by the people of the Ninth World. Crafted numenera vehicles, such as a galloping gambado or a windrider, can cause the same kind of interference as numenera installations. With vehicles, the effect is much weaker. Usually a vehicle near an installation doesn’t create any secondary effects unless the vehicle is within half the installation’s reactive field radius for several days. Vehicles rarely cause this sort of interference with each other, nor do they typically interfere with artifacts and cyphers (or vice versa).

Because crafters in the Ninth World are repurposing old technology from a prior civilization, and those ancient builders had rivalries and enmities, some plans (and installations built from those plans) might actually have hidden features unknown even to the PC who crafted them. These features cause them to detect and react to certain technologies. For example, if one country from a prior world used windriders as attack vehicles, and an opposing country defended its cities with lightning towers, a PC-crafted lightning tower might detect any approaching windriders and hinder their steering tasks by one step. However, it’s also possible that the original builders included positive synergistic effects, such as easing all windrider steering tasks within a very long distance or increasing their flying speed. Either option could be a GM intrusion, depending on whether it aids or hampers the PCs.

GUIDING A COMMUNITY

Player characters can influence a community they’ve created, directly affecting its character and government. If the PCs are the ones who founded the community, they might be seen as the community leaders at first. But as a community grows, this will change. Even if everyone in a community looks up to the characters, they’ll eventually need to delegate, work with NPCs, and otherwise share power around. Over time, NPCs will emerge with ideas, agendas, and followers of their own, and they will try to exert that influence on the community. Characters will learn that a community isn’t something they can directly control. There are just too many other personalities involved, and a dreaded word will come into play: politics. Over and above that, many unforeseen events will arise over time that can alter a community’s situation, either for good or, more often, for ill. How the characters deal with those challenges can become part of the campaign as the timeline moves forward.
In the short term, player characters will play the game in a couple of different modes, including regular play if they participate in community actions. When it comes to nurturing and guiding a community, however, PCs should be prepared for play that extends through even longer time scales.

LONG-TERM PLAY

It’s natural for PCs to expect or even want to play events in the game in a round-by-round, hour-by-hour, or even a day-by-day fashion. That’s what many are used to. But as the game master, you can guide the PCs toward play that occurs over longer periods. In fact, you’ll have to. Consider when the Wright tells the other PCs that they need three months to build a lightning turret installation. That shouldn’t be the cue for the other PCs to say, “Great! We’ll go explore that tower ruin until you’re done.” Of course, no PC wants to sit around doing nothing during the three months it’ll take for a lightning turret to be completed, and they shouldn’t have to. They key here is that everyone should be able to take on long-term tasks that are equally valuable. Long-term play is an opportunity for PCs to engage in projects of their own that are not only interesting but also lucrative to each PC or the group as a whole.

LONG-TERM TASKS
Any PC can take up a long-term task. Some tasks are unique to a given type, while others are tasks any PC can engage in. Long-term tasks are an easy way for PCs to accumulate small amounts of XP, special components, or other resources. They can also be a way to bolster the community they’ve allied with, help other PCs complete their own projects, and more.

Multiple Long-Term Tasks: A PC can generally engage in up to two long-term tasks at the same time equal to their tier, assuming that the tasks are not physically impossible to accomplish at the same time. (For example, a PC can’t pursue a relationship inside a community while simultaneously scavenging for iotum in a nearby ruin.) Crafting tasks are considered long-term tasks that must abide by this limit, although some special abilities, exotic devices, or other circumstances may increase or decrease the limit.

Time Required: Long-term tasks usually require a PC to pursue them for a minimum of one month before the benefit of the task is accrued, though some have longer minimums. Unless the task has limits, the PC could attempt the task repeatedly or until some outside event, need, or campaign incident interrupts long-term play. Some benefits are automatically accrued at the end of a specified period; others require that the character succeed on a task.

Limits: Some long-term tasks can accumulate only so many benefits before the task offers no further benefit (at least not until the PCs pause long-term play to act at the character scale for a while). For example, if a PC has chosen Gain Experience as their long-term task, they can never gain more than 2 XP at a time, at which point they must do something active at the character scale to gain more XP. If they still want to engage in long-term play, however, a PC could start a different long-term task.

Interrupting Long-Term Tasks: Most longterm tasks can be interrupted by events that last no more than a few days without affecting the benefit the long-term task can provide. If characters are in the middle of a three-month period where all of them are pursuing one or more long-term tasks, they may have to pause in the middle of that period for several days in order to deal with an unexpected issue or one that is known and planned for. For instance, the characters might have to break out of long-term play unexpectedly to recover a special iotum that the Wright needs to finish their project but that was stolen by a thief. Maybe a representative of a rival community is expected in town, and the characters need to fete and entertain the envoy in order to aid in creating a trade agreement. Or an intense storm might require that the characters help save several residents from high winds. In most cases, this doesn’t wreck the characters’ progress toward the long-term tasks they were pursuing.

GENERAL LONG-TERM TASKS
Any PC can engage in these long-term tasks.

Build Up Food or Water Stores (1 month): Through a variety of different methods, which the character can specify, food or water stores for the community can be built up in case of some kind of disaster or siege. The character can build up enough food or water stores for the community to survive an extra 1d6 days. Stores can continue to increase at this rate for each month the character spends pursuing this long-term activity. The amount of work required for this task scales with the population and rank of the community, so it is assumed that the character is harnessing help from the community to successfully perform this activity. For example, a character in a rank 1 community might head a nulberry-picking expedition with dozens of volunteers to help out over a month’s time, gaining 1d6 extra days of food. The same activity and outcome for a higher-ranked community assumes the character is aided by hundreds of volunteers instead of dozens. Excess food is preserved in some fashion so it won’t go bad.

Craft Object or Structure (time varies): Any character can use the crafting rules to create a commonplace object or structure, or they can use a plan to create a numenera object or structure. Time and other resources required are described in the crafting rules and numenera plans.

Discover New Area of Interest (1 month): By ranging out into previously unexplored areas farther and farther each day, a character can attempt to discover a new prior-world ruin, the site of some recent battle between machines, a hidden city, a transdimensional anomaly, or some other area of interest once every month. This is a difficulty 5 Intellect task. If unsuccessful or if there’s a GM intrusion, long-term play is interrupted because something unexpected happened—like an ambush or a trap—that the character must deal with. If successful, the character has found a new area of interest—one more place PCs can explore and potentially salvage during regular play. When regular play resumes, the character and other PCs can investigate the area, dealing with any defenders, defenses, weird phenomena that poses a danger, and so on.

Enhance Community Happiness (1 month): A character can spend a month adding to the community’s general happiness, permanently increasing community health by 1. The community’s health can be raised up to four times its current rank in this fashion. The ways a PC could spend a month raising general community happiness are varied, but include the following:

• Providing some kind of biweekly performance that involves song, dance, comedy, drama, or some other art or entertaining performance.
• Opening a shop where savory foods or sweets are sold at least two nights out of every seven.
• Holding weekly citizen forums where residents can talk and make their voices heard.
• Hosting games where competing teams can face off or work in cooperation at least two nights out of every seven.
• Picking up trash and litter, cleaning defacing marks, and touching up faded facades throughout the community every day.
• Helping to establish a community center.
• Helping to establish a religious center in communities that have a bent toward spirituality.
• Performing good works, such as caring for the community’s sick, distributing food to the hungry, and helping those who are hurt or disabled.

Establish Satellite Settlement (time varies): This long-term project requires a minimum of three PCs to spend one or more months looking for a suitable area where they can set up a small base that will remain associated with the main community. Essentially, this requires that the PCs undertake a series of searches for the same kinds of needs described in Founding a Community. Each need requires at least a month but could take longer, and any might require an interruption from the long-term search in order to break out into a related adventure to resolve a related need. Once a satellite community is set up, the final requirement is that the PCs install some kind of administrator, mayor, or other authority, who could be a follower of at least level 3 or an NPC whom the PCs meet and groom for the position during earlier encounters.
If a satellite settlement is successfully founded, the main community’s rank increases by 1 until such time as the satellite community breaks off and becomes independent.

Focus on an Ability (1 month): Whether a character is a Glaive with fighting moves, a Nano with esoteries, or an Arkus with precepts, all PCs have special abilities provided at each tier by their type. By focusing on just one of those abilities and practicing it each and every day to the height of perfection, the character becomes trained in that ability. A character can focus on only one ability in any given month in this manner. A character can do this only once between exploration or other instances of normal play, and a character can’t use this long-term task to become specialized. For example, a Nano could practice using their Onslaught esotery every day for a month, and at the end of that time they become trained in Onslaught.

Gain Experience (1 month): By practicing their abilities, studying, and training, a character can gain 1 XP every month. However, a character can never gain more than 2 XP in this fashion consecutively. Once they reach this limit, they must resume regular play and gain some XP normally before they can do so again with this long-term activity.

General Maintenance (1 month): A character can spend a month providing general repairs to community roads, walls, buildings, and so on. This permanently increases the infrastructure of the community by 1. However, this activity (whether done by one character or several working in tandem) can never add more than a total of twice the community's rank to its infrastructure.

Help Another PC (time varies): A PC could help another PC pursue their long-term activity. If any rolls are required for the task to succeed, this eases the task. In the specific case of helping someone craft, the help provided lowers the assessed difficulty for creating an object or structure by one step, though only one PC can help with another’s crafting task in this fashion. If any benefits are accrued to the character for the long-term activity, the helping PC also gains them. If external resources are gathered such as iotum or XP, both PCs gain the benefit.

Create a Relationship (1 month): A character may decide to pursue a more serious relationship with an NPC. Deciding to make a good friend, take a lover, or find a spouse and being successful in doing so are two different things. Each month a character spends pursuing such a relationship gives them a chance to find someone compatible, with a difficulty equal to the level of the sought-after companion. If successful, the character gains the sought-after relationship and one Pool of their choice increases by 1 point. However, once a relationship is gained, it must be maintained or the relationship is lost. When a relationship is lost, the point the character gained to a Pool is lost. Unless the character has other relationships to fall back on, for the next three months they also lose an additional point from that Pool. Maintenance usually requires a minimum of one month out of every three, though some relationships are more demanding.
Characters can pursue two long-term tasks at the same time, so maintaining a relationship shouldn’t be too much of a burden for most. In any case, no matter how many relationships the character gains, they can never add more than 1 point per tier to their Pools by pursuing this task (and no more than 1 point per relationship). Of course, unexpected events or bad decisions can also cause a relationship to fail.

Raise a Child (time varies): Raising a child doesn’t require that the PC have successfully pursued a relationship to gain a spouse or partner because the child can be adopted or just taken into the character’s protection. Raising a child is obviously a long-term task that lasts for years, but if the character houses the child, provides for their emotional support, and meets their other basic needs, they gain someone who loves and relies upon them and who will eventually be able to help them in turn—perhaps even serving as the founder of the next generation of residents in the community the character built.
Until a child reaches their teenage years or older, they can only aid the character emotionally, increasing one Pool of the character's choice by 1 point. After a child has reached their late teens, they typically become independent and move on, though they may provide aid to the PC from time to time, or ask for aid, as determined by the GM. A character may choose to raise multiple children, but no matter how many children the character gains, they can never add more than 1 point per tier to their Pools by pursuing this activity. If the child ever dies or the relationship turns hostile, the PC loses the 1 point and 1 additional point as well.

Recruit a Follower (optional; 1 month per level of follower): At the GM’s discretion, characters who gain followers may have to do more than simply sit back and hope followers will sniff them out. PCs may have to spend some time actually looking for a suitable follower. In this case, it takes one month for a PC to find a suitable level 1 follower, two months to find a well-matched level 2 follower, three months for a level 3 follower, and so on. Followers recruited in this way may provide the PC with some special additional benefit, such as having one additional modification beyond what the follower’s level would normally indicate.

Relax or Pursue Hobbies (1 month): Even the most competent and driven character requires some downtime to recharge their mind and body. After at least a month of utterly relaxing or pursuing only pleasurable activities or hobbies, a character can ease all tasks for one day of their choosing per month of relaxation they enjoyed. A character can never gain this benefit more than twice in any twelve-month period, no matter how many months off they take.

Scavenge Iotum (1 month): By meticulously searching through nearby areas—relatively safe areas that have already been salvaged for iotum and cleared of the most dangerous threats—a character can gain 2 units of iotum from the Iotum Result Table every month. Iotum gained in this fashion can never be higher than level 4.

Treat With a Neighbor Community (1 month): If the PCs know (or strongly suspect) that another village, town, or other municipality is located somewhere within a week’s travel from their own base or allied community, they can attempt to locate it and set up a meeting with someone of importance there once every month. This is a difficulty 5 task. If successful in gaining the meeting, long-term play is interrupted so that the character can speak in real time with the envoy from the neighbor and attempt to make some sort of treaty.
This is an opportunity to discover a need the neighboring community has that might be met by the PCs. The neighboring community might be willing to aid the PC’s community or set up a trade route, but only if the PCs do something on their behalf. For instance, they might ask the PCs to fight off a dangerous creature, investigate a series of grisly murders that no one locally has been able to solve, clear out a margr infestation in the valley that would threaten trade caravans, or something similar. Essentially, an adventure of some sort can be hung on every new attempt PCs make to treat with neighboring communities. If things go poorly, no treaty is made. However, if things go well, a treaty can be secured and long-term benefits can be accrued, provided one or more PCs continue to invest long-term time into keeping the treaty strong by engaging in monthly visits and engaging in positive social interactions. If the PC fails to maintain a treaty each month, the treaty is off, and any benefits that accrue end until a new treaty can be made.

The following kinds of benefits can be gained by maintaining a treaty with a neighbor community.
Mutual Defense: As long as the treaty with a neighbor community is maintained each month, the neighbor provides a small company of fighters. This company is available on short notice, granting the PC’s allied community with +1 additional health. (This assumes the neighbor also gains similar aid provided by the PC’s allied community.) More significant terms could be negotiated, up to the neighbor fielding a horde to aid in the allied community’s defense; however, that would require significant charisma and possibly monthly payments on the PC’s part.
Trade Route: As long as the treaty with a neighboring community is maintained each month, a trade route is set up, which provides the PC’s allied community with one kind of trade good. Trade can benefit a community in a variety of ways, including those listed below. Note that each established trade route requires a separate treaty and agreement; even if all treaties or trade routes are made with the same neighboring community, each one is made through different groups and organizations within that community. Possible trade route benefits include but aren't limited to the following options.

• Up to 4 units of a specific kind of iotum of no more than level 5 each month
• +1 to health (accrued from trade in food)
• +1 to damage inflicted (accrued from trade in arms)
• +1 to infrastructure (accrued from trade in building materials)

Cessation of Hostilities: Lots of treaties merely call for a break in conflict. Such a treaty could open the way to more positive treaties later or they might only be a pause in larger hostilities, depending on how other negotiations go.
Pact of Mutual Non-Aggression: This is an agreement between two or more communities who pledge to leave each other alone and respect each others’ territory. Sometimes with an adversarial neighbor, that’s the best that can be hoped for. However, this leaves room to improve the situation to more positive treaties later. This kind of treaty is also something that the PCs might negotiate between two different neighbors (neighbors who are hostile to each other but not to the PCs’ community) in order to bring peace to a region.

ARKUS LONG-TERM TASKS
Some long-term tasks provide benefits just like general long-term tasks but are things that Arkai are best at.
Demonstrate Grace Under Pressure (2 months): If an Arkus works with members of their community or horde to help them understand and employ persuasion, public speaking, negotiation, and similar skills for two months, the community’s rank for tasks involving diplomacy, negotiation, trade, or persuasion is permanently increased by 1. A community can benefit from this demonstration only once.
Cultivate Followers (4 months): If an Arkus spends four months making it their mission to groom, improve, and educate a community or horde, with a specific eye for training followers, they may gain a level 2 follower or train up a follower they already have so that they are 1 level higher. The higher-level follower gains an additional modification as normal when a follower gains a level. However, the same follower cannot be trained twice in the same year in this fashion.

DELVE LONG-TERM TASKS
Some long-term tasks provide benefits just like general long-term tasks but are things that Delves are best at.
Prospect for Iotum (1 month): Any character can attempt to salvage iotum as a long-term task, but when a Delve does so, they gain better results. By meticulously searching through nearby areas—areas that are relatively safe and have already been salvaged for iotum and cleared of the most dangerous threats—a Delve can gain 4 units of iotum from the Iotum Result Table (rather than two), and the level of the iotum gained in this fashion can be up to level 5 (rather than level 4).
Find Specific Iotum (1 month): It’s difficult to find specific iotum rather than whatever components happen to be present in recently discovered scrap, but a Delve who focuses their attention on doing so may find success. Each month a Delve attempts to salvage numenera as a long-term activity, they can attempt to gain a specific result on the Iotum Result Table, with a difficulty equal to the level of the iotum sought.

GLAIVE LONG-TERM TASKS
Some long-term tasks provide benefits just like general long-term tasks but are things that Glaives are best at.
Train Defenders (2 months): If a Glaive works with a community or horde for two months, helping them practice, train, and improve their skills, the defenders enhance their skill in attacks. This permanently increases the damage inflicted by the community by 1. However, this plan (whether done by just one Glaive or several working in tandem) can never add more than a total of twice the community's rank to its damage inflicted.
Teach Martial Skills (4 months): A Glaive can found a place within a community to train both children and adults in a variety of martial abilities. This provides the community a permanent benefit of +1 damage inflicted and +1 health after four months spent establishing the training center.

JACK LONG-TERM TASKS
Some long-term tasks provide benefits just like general long-term tasks but are things that Jacks are best at.
Develop Community Networks (1 month): The Jack works with various residents in the city to grease the wheels of commerce, act as a mediator, and otherwise see to it that different groups can reach a compromise. This eases any task to become aware of internal problems, threats, rumblings of discontent, and so on in any month that the Jack performs this activity. In addition, the Jack gains a personal benefit of 2d20 shins or 1d10 io (Jack’s choice) each month they perform this activity.
Develop External Networks (1 month): The Jack ranges beyond the community in a stealthy manner, or perhaps under an assumed identity, and keeps an eye on surrounding communities, abhuman tribes, or other developments. During any month the Jack performs this activity, the Jack’s allied community ignores the benefits granted to a stealthy, ambushing, or reconnaissance horde. If the Jack is able to spend two consecutive months and spends 2 XP, the Jack develops external contacts that keep tabs on these situations on the Jack’s behalf, which means the Jack can perform other long-term tasks within the community in future months while still gaining this benefit for about a year.

NANO LONG-TERM TASKS
Some long-term tasks provide benefits just like general long-term tasks but are things that Nanos are best at.
Develop Community Knowledge (4 months): If a Nano works for four months with community teachers, scholars, and others who are interested in esoteric knowledge and the numenera, their knowledge is enhanced and the entire community benefits. This permanently increases the rank of the community by 1 for interacting with, understanding, and using numenera. The Nano can continue this quest to increase knowledge.
Operate Workshop (1 month): A Nano can establish a business within a community where they collect, fix, upgrade, and help others in the community keep minor numenera items, including oddities, in working order. This provides the community a benefit of +1 infrastructure each month while the workshop is operated. In addition, the Nano gains one additional oddity (01–70%), cypher (71–90%), or artifact (91–00%) each month the workshop is operated.

WRIGHT LONG-TERM TASKS
Some long-term tasks provide benefits just like general long-term tasks but are things that Wrights are best at.
Craft Objects or Structures (time variable): More than any other type, Wrights embrace long-term tasks as a consequence of their abilities. They approach the crafting process at a higher level than other types, in a variety of methods presented in the Wright’s description. The higher the level of the object or structure the Wright attempts to build (whether mundane or numenera), the longer it takes to complete, as described in the crafting rules, though of course the Wright can decrease the assessed difficulty of the crafting task through training and other special abilities.
Find or Develop a Specific Plan (1 month): Wrights already can choose specific plans as they advance in tier, but a Wright who focuses their attention on doing so as a longterm activity may find even more success by traveling, conferring with other scholars, and attempting to access archives or caches of knowledge kept by Aeon Priests and others. This is an Intellect task, and training in numenera modifies the difficulty. Each month a Wright attempts such activity, they can attempt to gain one additional specific plan, with a difficulty equal to the minimum crafting level of the plan sought.
Operate Workshop (1 month): A Wright can establish a business within a community where they collect, fix, upgrade, and help others keep their minor numenera items, including oddities, in working order. This provides the community a benefit of +1 infrastructure each month that the workshop is operated. In addition, the Wright gains one additional oddity (01–30%), cypher (31–70%), or artifact (71–00%) each month the workshop is operated.

COMMUNITY EVENTS, NEEDS, AND OPPORTUNITIES

As time passes, a community develops needs, especially if it’s growing. For instance, a growing community requires more food, more water, and more resources with which to build housing and other structures. Often, addressing those needs doesn’t require any additional attention, especially for communities with easy access to food, water, and building materials. Other times, complications—called events—could escalate a routine fulfillment of a need into something requiring special action by player characters who are invested in that community’s welfare (or by an NPC of significant ability), lest the community begin to decline. Events of all sorts—both predictable and unpredictable—happen to a community over the course of months and years. Famine, war, disasters associated with prior-world phenomena and creatures, and other unexpected occurrences can set a community back or even wipe it out altogether.

Not all unexpected events are negative. Positive events occur all the time, such as the arrival of a trade caravan from a distant location, the return of explorers bearing news and knowledge, the debut of some new entertainment, or the introduction of some new trade good. Negative events almost always generate a requisite response—a need—that someone in the community (possibly the PCs) should address in order to defray the problem. Positive events don’t generate needs, but they could generate opportunities that PCs might wish to partake in. For instance, if a new kind of drink is being sold in the bazaar, one that is rumored to provide weird dreams of a world long vanished, the PCs may want to sample it to see if there’s any more to it than that.

GENERATING EVENTS, NEEDS, AND OPPORTUNITIES
If you’re looking for inspiration to create interesting events (and associated needs and opportunities), you can use the Community Event Table. Depending on the nature of the event, an associated need or opportunity is also suggested. For instance, if crime ticks up in the community, a need arises for someone to track down the criminal gang responsible and come to some kind of arrangement. Otherwise, the community faces a decrease in health and infrastructure if the criminals are allowed to go unchecked.
Note that every need faced by a community isn’t something that the PCs have to personally step in and deal with. The civic organization of a community can attempt to deal with needs itself without involving PCs. In fact, most community needs are dealt with in this way behind the scenes. It’s only the outliers that rise to the attention of PCs or similarly capable NPCs. For instance, in the case of the rise in criminal activity, a community leader might dispatch some of her followers to reach a compromise with the criminals or to hunt them down. Either way, the community deals with the problem and moves on. But if the criminal gang is headed by a member of the Convergence or a powerful creature disguising itself as a human, the community likely requires outside aid to resolve the need.

COMMUNITY EVENT TABLE
On average, roll on the Community Event Table once every few months during or immediately following sessions of long-term play. That said, rolling on the Community Event Table is also a fine way to generate ideas for encounters or an extended scenario for the PCs.
01–03 Water Depletion: The community’s water source is dwindling thanks to a drought, a trade dispute or trade lapse, a malfunction of the water-purification installation, something damming or consuming the community’s river somewhere upstream, or some other reason.
Need: As the full effects of water depletion set in, the community’s rank drops by 1 after the first few weeks. If the water source isn’t restored, or some alternate water source isn’t secured, the community’s rank continues to drop by 1 each week until the community withers.
04–06 Food Depletion: The community’s food supply is running out due to contamination, a storage fire, theft by abhumans, a weird radiation that increases everyone’s hunger by ever-increasing increments, or some other reason.
Need: After a month without respite, food riots break out and the community’s rank drops by 1. The community’s rank continues to decrease by 1 per week until the community starves or everyone has fled looking for food elsewhere.
07–09 Community Enriched: Community resources are peaking thanks to a better-than-expected harvest, a discovery of a large cache of iotum, a trade boom, or some other reason. This is a short-term enrichment, but it could lead to a longer term opportunity.
Opportunity: The excess wealth could be used to hire a wright to create an installation or vehicle with a minimum crafting level of 7 or lower (in addition to any installations that PC Wrights might produce). On the other hand, a PC may have to be the one to go out and secure this crafter’s services. In this case, treat the wright as a temporary follower that has modifications in crafting numenera, understanding numenera, salvaging numenera, and Speed defense. This wright also has a traveling workshop that they can utilize to further reduce the assessed difficulty of any crafting task they attempt.
10–12 Amazing Weather: A stretch of particularly wonderful days lifts the community residents’ spirits.
Opportunity: PCs who conduct business in the community during this period gain an asset to all tasks related to positive social interaction.
13–16 Horrible Weather: Several days of particularly cold, excessively hot, or consistently stormy days lowers the community residents’ spirits.
Need: Poor spirits hinder all interactions in the city for the duration, including important diplomatic interactions. If the PCs could arrange some method to lift the spirits of the population, perhaps by hosting a feast or festival of their own or some other method, it could cancel out the hindrance.
17–20 Vermin Infestation: Tiny pests—insects, worms, or larger creatures like zek, shinspinners, or something similar—are on the rise. Normally, the vermin are out of sight because they live in the attics, cellars, and walls. But the infestation is likely doing damage.
Need: The community’s infrastructure is reduced by 2 or more points. Until the infestation is cleared out and repairs are made, this is the new status quo for the community.
21–24 Lethal Accident: An installation explodes, an Aeon Priest’s workshop goes up in toxic flames, a small section of the community falls into a sinkhole because of some previously hidden complex beneath the surface, or something else. About 1 percent of the population is killed.
Need: The rank of the community decreases by 1. Repairs can’t begin until the secondary effects of the disaster (toxic flames, contamination of iotum, the emergence of strange creatures out of the sinkhole, or some other complicating factor) are dealt with. After that, PCs must spend a few months of longterm play repairing, comforting, and rebuilding to bring the community back to where it was before. However, doing so successfully also nets each PC 4 XP.
25–28 Legendary Visitor: Someone of fame is visiting the community, such as a noble, the leader of a larger nearby community, a high-ranking Aeon Priest in the Order of Truth, or an entity rumored to be visiting from “a different world from this one.” Excitement runs through the city for several days leading up to and during the visit.
Opportunity: The PCs could seek a meeting with the legendary visitor in order to learn interesting lore, find opportunities for new explorations, or at least make an interesting contact. Whatever the outcome, the community’s effusive nature during this period translates into +2 health for the duration.
29–32 Quake: Something is causing the ground to shake. It’s only short bursts of subtle shaking at first, but depending on the source of the shaking, it could continue to grow in severity. The quake could be a natural occurrence about which nothing can be done except to weather it, or the quake could be caused by the reactivation of a vast machine underneath the community, an infestation of digging creatures or automatons, or some other similarly strange reason.
Need: If the quake is natural, PCs who prepare by reinforcing structures and taking similar measures prevent the community from losing 1 or 2 ranks (or being completely leveled) when the most severe quake hits. If the shaking is the result of NPCs or creatures, the PCs can prevent escalating quakes by finding and dealing with the issue in some fashion. In either case, the initial shaking is still enough to halve the community’s infrastructure value. The community itself can eventually deal with it, but if the PCs dedicate themselves to helping as a long-term play goal, they can accelerate repairs so that after just a month in long-term play, the repairs are complete. When all is back in order, each PC also gains 2 XP.
33–36 Sterility: Though no one realized it at first, the trend is now clear: no one in the community has given birth in several years. It probably means no one is conceiving in the first place (rather than a rash of stillbirths, though that’s also possible). The cause is probably unknown. It may be due to a contamination in the food supply, the erection of some new installation made with strange material in the center of the town, the leak of strange energies that began after explorers found a ruin beneath the city (or after an earthquake revealed the ruin), entities studying the human community by stealing embryos, or some other reason.
Need: This is a slow-moving disaster, but it will eventually lead to the community’s death. It actually happens sooner than some might imagine. Once word gets out, people of child-bearing age begin to strike out on their own, believing that if they leave the community, they’ll be spared the curse. They might be right, depending on the source of the sterility. Every year that the issue isn’t resolved, the community’s rank drops by 1 until the community is just a collection of elderly people living out their last few years in a ghost town.
37–40 Order of Truth: A group of Aeon Priests comes to the community because the previous community to which they belonged cast them out. They’ve set up a small encampment about an hour from the community’s edge. The reason for their expulsion isn’t an easy thing to discover, and it’s possible the Aeon Priests don’t even know. It might have been a misunderstanding over the strange (and sometimes scary-looking and -sounding) experiments that the priests run on the numenera devices they pull from the ground. On the other hand, it’s possible that one or more of the Aeon Priests is actually guilty of a crime.
Opportunity: The PCs could potentially find a benefit for the community if they invite the Aeon Priests to be part of the community rather than setting up an external hermitage. This could also invite additional problems, either because those who cast out the Aeon Priests are still hunting them or because one of the priests is actually a criminal of some sort. However, once those issues are ironed out, the addition of the numenera scholars increases the rank of the community by 1.
41–44 Malfunction: An installation built by someone in the community (possibly a PC) has malfunctioned and is creating new effects. The installation continues to produce its intended effect, which is likely something the community would prefer not to do without, but the additional effects must now also be accounted for. Those effects might just be weird (everyone’s eyes glow when they’re feeling strong emotions, a strange music emanates from a point in the air over the city, a weird goo begins to seep out of the ground, and so on), or actively dangerous (an energy leak that randomly damages citizens, a beacon that attracts abhumans, or an impetus to wake some massive machine beneath the community).
Need or Opportunity: If the side effect is merely weird, perhaps there is some advantage the PCs can find for it. For instance, maybe the “malfunction” is actually just a window into some all-new function the installation has that no one ever realized it might possess. If the PCs discover this new function, they have a chance to increase the well-being of the community in some fashion, which could increase health, infrastructure, damage, or even rank, depending on what is discovered. On the other hand, if the malfunction is dangerous, it could directly affect one or more PCs or even the whole community (though in the latter case, it likely only decreases the community’s health by a few points until the danger can be neutralized).
45–48 Resources Found: A vast new resource supply is discovered. It could be something as straightforward as wood, a nutritious kind of fish or plant, or a particular kind of stone or clay, or it could be something as valuable as iotum. The resource supply isn’t something that can merely be looted like a cache. Instead, it’s something that must be mined, cut, or otherwise exploited only after expending some energy to set up an extraction process.
Opportunity: If PCs take the helm of developing the resources discovered, the community’s rank increases by at least 1 after several months. It could rise significantly higher after several years of development, assuming that the resource is well managed and long-lasting.
49–52 Theft: Someone in the community (or with access to the community) is stealing large amounts of food, water, building materials or parts, iotum, or something even more evanescent, such as imagination or sleep.
Need: If the thieving continues, the community’s health decreases by 1 point every few months, until it has been reduced by a total of 3 points. If the thieving ceases, health returns to normal within a few weeks or sooner if the stolen goods can be returned.
53–56 Trade Disruption: The community is large enough to establish trade with one or more nearby communities, but that trade has slowed due to grievances on both sides. (If this community hasn’t yet established trade with anyone else, treat this result instead as contact with a newly discovered neighboring community or tribe that might be open to establishing trade.)
Opportunity: The community can probably do fine on its own, but opening (or reopening) trade with one or more nearby communities could provide more resources, luxuries, and other goods that people need and want. If the PCs can establish (or re-establish) trade with a nearby community by undertaking a few talks and satisfying a few requirements by both parties, both communities increase their health and infrastructure by 2 points.
57–60 Banditry: Threats on the road from bandits, abhumans, rogue automatons, or some other group with agency are impoverishing the community by cutting off access to a basic resource that the community relies upon, such as water, farmland, game, or a special material the community requires to offset some other negative consequence.
Need: PCs need to step in and deal with the issue, or the community’s rank will be lowered by 1 indefinitely.
61–64 Festival: A subset of citizens want to revive a festival they once celebrated when they lived in a different location, increase the importance of a small yearly observance, or create an all-new celebration in honor of some community accomplishment or important person within the community. The sighting of a strange machine in the sky, the migration of an important food animal, or a yearly trade gathering could all kick off the possibility of a festival.
Opportunity: Festivals tend to develop on their own, though sometimes there is reluctance on the part of community leaders to embrace days that could lead to time away from work and be a drain on resources. If the PCs aid the creation of a new festival and are successful, for about a month following the celebration of the new festival, the community’s health is increased by 3 points. (This benefit occurs each time the festival happens, assuming there aren’t more than a couple such festivals each year.)
65–68 Traveling Entertainment: A group of wagons pulled by large, multilegged beasts that breathe green steam arrives and sets up camp near the edge of the community, pitching large, colorful tents and brightly painted stalls. A representative explains that the wagons belong to a troupe of entertainers and showpeople and that, for the next ten nights, community members are welcome to come to the tents to watch amazing performances, play fun games, and buy strange foods and drinks from distant lands.
Opportunity: Every community enjoys relief from day-to-day concerns, and the traveling troupe provides just that kind of distraction if allowed to remain. Some people in the community believe that the entertainers are no more than thieves and con artists intent on bilking the community of their last shin. Certainly, there are likely to be elements of that kind of activity, but traveling troupes tend to be self-policing, lest they find themselves unwelcome the next time they arrive. While a traveling troupe is nearby, PCs can make new contacts with people who travel far and wide, learn news of other nearby communities, and learn about a nearby location the troupe detoured around that might provide excellent salvage. PCs are also likely to see a performance or display that will thrill and delight them.
69–72 Refugees: A large group of people (from dozens to hundreds) arrive with obvious signs of having survived a terrible hardship. The refugees claim to have fled some disaster that utterly destroyed their community, saying they only just managed to escape. The refugees are in extreme need and seem likely to perish if they don’t receive some kind of aid and care soon.
Opportunity: The community might be unwilling to take in a large group of complete strangers, regardless of their need. If the PCs argue on behalf of the refugees and care is extended, the refugees bolster the community’s health by +1 after about a week of care. On an individual level, some of the refugees have fascinating stories, weird abilities, and important lore that the PCs are likely interested in hearing. One might even prove to be a good follower for a PC.
73–76 Factionalization: Different groups within the community become more entrenched in their beliefs. It gets to the point where, for some faction members, the good of the community becomes less important than proving the supremacy of their own faction. Small conflicts break out, and the community as a whole is on edge. Violence against those known to be in the opposite faction breaks out here and there.
Need: While the factions divide the community, the community’s health is decreased by at least 2 points. If the PCs step in and serve as peacemakers or deal with the issue in some other, non-destructive way, they can repair both relations and community health.
77–80 Mech Arrival: In ones and twos, then later in groups and small mobs, strange automatons begin to appear near or in the community. The mechs are not necessarily aggressive, though they defend themselves if attacked or if people attempt to salvage them for parts. They might be coming from a recently uncovered ruin, a piece of detritus that rained down from the void, or a portal to a distant location, dimension, or time.
Need or Opportunity: The strange automatons could be the first envoys of a community of machine-intelligence beings that might prove to be allies or, if contact is not handled well, implacable enemies of metal and electricity. At the very least, the mech arrival proves to be the impetus for a new series of PC adventures.
81–84 Intercommunity Conflict: A nearby community is encroaching on or stealing resources the PCs’ community uses and has a prior claim on.
Need: To prevent outright conflict, PCs can act as envoys and attempt to broker a compromise that will ensure peace with the antagonistic community. If talks break down, there’s a real possibility that the rival community will attack the PCs’ community until one of the two is razed to the ground.
85–88 Abhuman Contact: A new group of abhumans is discovered. They’re not immediately vicious like margr or other abhumans the PCs are likely familiar with. However, they are abhumans, which means they’re awful from a human perspective, and they might still resolve into a threat.
Need or Opportunity: Depending on how the community reacts to the strange abhumans that have appeared, the community may gain a new trading partner, an ally, or a bitter enemy.
89–90 Nontypical Leak: An installation that the community depends on has started to leak dangerous materials into the streets. The leak is not merely a poisonous liquid but something less understandable, like hundreds of metal-and-glass spheres with tiny silver wires leading from the back that resemble disembodied human eyes, tiny scuttling creatures that look like automatons, unknown eggs or egg-like sacs, steaming super-cold liquid that freezes solid those who touch it, and so on.
Need: Whatever the leak is, there is something about it that proves to be a direct danger to the citizens, the infrastructure, or both. Until the leak is fixed, the community loses 1 health or 1 infrastructure each day.
Opportunity: Once the damaging aspects of the leak can be contained, the leftover materials may represent an opportunity for the PCs. Maybe the “disembodied eyes” could be used as prosthetics or salvaged for io, perhaps the scuttling automatons serve some faraway machine intelligence that was trying to make contact, and so on.
91–92 Energy Discovery: A group within the community has made a discovery, whether through experimenting with numenera devices or exploring a nearby ruin, or perhaps they found it untended after a heavy rain uncovered it. The discovery is a power source, useful for augmenting many kinds of numenera devices.
93 Coup Attempt: Grievances build between those who wish they had power and those who have it. The grievances could be legitimate if the community is not well run, or they could be exaggerated by someone who wants to seize power for themselves on the backs of a popular uprising fed with lies and slander. In either case, the community sees a huge increase in gatherings, protests, and violent demonstrations. Those with their ear to the ground hear hard-to-discredit rumors that a revolution is in the offing.
Need or Opportunity: Assuming the PCs are aligned with those currently in power (as will usually be true in a community the PCs have founded or fostered), they may want to persuade the leaders to find common ground with those who are planning revolution, either by brokering talks or agreeing to a real compromise. If the PCs feel as if those fomenting revolution have legitimate needs, they can attempt to set up such talks on behalf of the revolutionaries. If things go too far, the PCs can fight against the rebels. When a revolution becomes violent, the community’s rank is reduced by 1 or more for months or even years afterward, until a new status quo is achieved.
94 Assassination: Someone of note is murdered by a trained killer. The killer goes to some lengths to make the murder noteworthy and macabre—perhaps a numenera device is left behind that is obviously responsible for the death in some highly visceral and gruesome fashion, such as having vivisected the spine from the victim in order to use the bony discs in a horrific display. The real reason the person of note is slain could be as simple as someone finally getting revenge on an old rival to something as complex as one group attempting to frame another for the murder.
Need: The adherents of the murdered person rise and strike out at the individual or organization they believe is responsible. Until the assassin or those truly responsible for the murder are found and called to justice, the community descends into a state of fear and paranoia that lowers its rank by 1.
95 Natural Flood: Water is rising in the streets so fast that it causes actual peril. The flood isn’t from a puncture in some prior-world aquifer or any other exotic reason. Instead, it’s from a confluence of weather and infrastructure that wasn’t designed to handle several days’ worth of constant rain. There’s just no place for the water to go.
Need: In the immediate term, the community’s rank drops by 1 or more. During this same period, the PCs can help establish rescue efforts and go on rescue missions to save citizens (and a few pets) from drowning. If PCs are largely successful in coordinating a response, the community returns to its normal rank within a few months. If they fail to coordinate a larger response, the community will only return to its former rank a few years later (if it ever does).
96 Great Fire: A new community built with flammable material like wood always faces the possibility of a fire. A lightning storm, an accident, or even the callous disregard of youths who’ve discovered a fun, flame-producing oddity could be the culprits.
Need: The sooner the fire can be put out, the better the community fares. If the PCs have the means to put out the fire themselves, they can try it, though coordinating a larger effort to suppress the fire will probably produce better results. Either way, it’s likely that PCs will be personally involved in at least one dangerous rescue from the heart of a burning structure. If the fires are not put out, this event has the possibility of destroying a community for good, or at least reducing its rank for a few years. However, if the PCs are quick, the community may suffer a reduction of only 3 to 5 points of infrastructure for a few months, until the wrights, masons, and carpenters can make the repairs necessary to see the community back to normal.
97 Reactive Rip: Installations generate a reactive field that can create negative consequences if they are not sited far enough from each other. Sometimes, however, the reactive fields expand unexpectedly, especially as a result of some other action or event. For instance, perhaps some other wright in the community has been secretly salvaging iotum from the community’s installations, leading to an unstable reactive rip. In this case, some of the possible effects are listed below.
Need or Opportunity: Some of the following reactive rip results decrease the community’s health by 1, though others are neutral or even offer an opportunity.

d10	Reactive Rip Effect Suggestions
01	Part of the community near the affected installations fills with a blue-yellow fog that, at first, has a euphoric effect on people, but which eventually becomes poisonous.
02	Tiny slugs infest the community near the affected installations. The slugs are essentially harmless but tend to get into clothing, hair, bags, and packs, and they smell horrific.
03	An explosion disables one affected installation, creating a crater in the earth that leads down to the surface of a disabled automaton or vehicle of incredible size.
04	Leaf-shaped insects the color of the sun and almost as bright are being drawn from somewhere high above. They accumulate in the area and try to build large hives in inconvenient locations, like the doorways of homes and other places people live.
05	All affected installations begin to hum and shudder in an alarming fashion. If the reactive field can’t be collapsed on each affected installation, they begin to explode as short-range detonations inflicting damage equal to the installation’s level.
06	A “thinning” of reality results. Weird transdimensional effects from a parallel universe, a pocket dimension, or a bizarre dimension begin to leak through or allow residents of the community to fall through and become lost.
07	All open or stored water in the area instantly boils away. It continues to do so until someone can find the source (which is a malfunction in one of the originally affected installations).
08	Weird mushrooms and other fungi begin to grow at an alarming speed. The growth is small at first, but over the course of days, fungi not burned out continue to grow taller and taller (and deeper and deeper just beneath the soil). The fungi may prove edible. Then again, certain specimens could prove toxic.
09	People in town begin to feel sluggish and slow, and they take on a grey pallor. Over time, this effect becomes more and more pronounced, until those who refuse to leave (or can’t leave) take on the density of dead stone.
10	Strange trees grow in the area and sprout shiny fruit that smells wonderful. Each fruit is tasty and nutritious, but those who eat it are subject to becoming “living planters” for another, larger version of the tree that grows out of their stomach.

98 Falling Star: A line of red light scratches the sky. Its smoke trail persists for hours, but of more immediate importance is the booming noise that follows like thunder and the truly massive explosion when the light touches the ground. A fountain of melted earth and fire destroys everything in the immediate area, and the shock wave from the explosion moves outward in a quickly widening radius, like a colossal ripple on the surface of a pool where a stone has fallen.
Need: The PCs learn about the coming meteorite strike before it happens, which is lucky, because their fostered community lies at ground zero. In this case, the PCs can either try to evacuate the community or make an incredibly brash attempt to alter the path of the falling star by somehow venturing out into the void to intercept it. The adventure “Terminus” explores this latter approach.
Need: The meteorite comes down relatively near the community but not so close that the community is completely destroyed. The destruction is similar to what a community might experience if suffering both the Quake and Great Fire results from the Community Event Table simultaneously. See those events to determine needs.
Opportunity: Assuming that the negative effect of the impact can be assuaged, longer-term opportunities arise. PCs may wish to explore the site of the impact, at the very least to see if any exotic metals can be recovered. Sometimes, debris falling from the sky is actually remnants of installations, communities, or ships built to sail the void. In such cases, the salvage could provide iotum or even more exotic results. There could even be weird survivors found amidst such wreckage.
99 Timeslips: Timeslips begin to plague the community at random. People find that they sometimes lose time or have to repeat what they just did over the last few moments. In some cases, people become “caught” in tiny timeloops just by walking across the street over and over again, and they can’t escape until they figure out how to get far enough from the center of the effect before time resets once more.
Need: Depending on the severity of the problem, PCs eventually may be called upon (or decide) to investigate and end the timeslip issue. If the issue becomes bad enough, it will decrease the community’s health and infrastructure by 1 point each. The cause might be something as simple as several installations interacting in an unforeseen way, experiments the Aeon Priest is secretly running in their workshop, or something else.
Opportunity: There’s always the chance that PCs could learn to thread the timeslips in such a way as to move forward or backward several hours, days, or longer before being pulled back to the present. This might allow the PCs a chance to fix some mistake in the past or be warned of some major disaster coming that they might not otherwise have known about.
00 Iron Wind Threat: The dreaded iron wind has been sighted in its active phase near the community. Even if nothing else happens, this terrifies most of the population, and in the worst case scenario, the townspeople might be proven correct in their fear.
Need: Someone needs to put the fears about the iron wind to rest, or else the community functions with a rank of 1 less than normal for the next several months. However, if scouts discover there really is a threat to the community, the PCs can develop strategies and actions that can help ensure the community isn’t completely eradicated.