tHe tRee of tHe incHoate There are strange and inexplicable things living and breeding underneath Creation’s skin, as those who have tun- neled underneath Gethamane or visited the deepest mines the Mountain Folk have dug below the Imperial Mountain can attest. Ancient and shapeless evils await those who travel the ancient underways or who dig beneath the skin of the world. Countless threats grow beneath the earth, and one of their many sources is the terrifying Tree of the Inchoate. The tree thrives in a sunless grove deep within the heart of the world, and the only light in its cavern comes from luminescent fungi and the glowing eyestalks of the fish that live in nearby fetid black ponds. The bark of the Tree of the Inchoate is black and slick, and its leaves are gray and silky. The tree taints the land above it, and the woods on the surface above the underground cavern look gray and somehow wasted. Once every few years, the tree’s limbs bear forth tumor- ous fruit, purple and veined. When the fruit drops to the ground beneath the tree and splits open, a shapeless, skinless thing is born, which feeds on the blind fish and drinks the foul mineral-tainted water until it is strong enough to wan- der out of the cavern of the tree and into the world above. Each inchoate is different — one is all gelatinous mass, veined red and corrosive to the touch. Another walks up- right, with vertebrae of cartilage and raw exposed muscle, wearing the skin of those it has trapped and flayed. Some are possessed of an alien and unspeakable intelligence, while others seem to have the intellect and instincts of the most primitive life, merely reacting to their environment instinctively, out of hunger or fear. Rarely do they climb to the surface and wander Creation during the day, as they hate the golden lamp that blinds and burns them — but they eagerly climb out under moonlight, hungering for the taste of flesh and the cries of the unwary. Below are statistics for an inchoate that has escaped from a recently unearthed tomb in the Scavenger Lands where it had lurked since spawning from the tree and has begun to search the area for mates and human food. Nicknamed “Skinless” by natives of the area, it has killed over a dozen people in a few scant months.
