The Book of Knots - Jags

unpleasant or inconvenient.
Operations
The Black Rose is works through Waldens and Activists on Chessboard
Zero. Many discuss The Temple of Secrets without really knowing what
it is (Chapel Perilous?) and consider it a path to enlightenment, which it
certainly can be after a fashion.
Dramas
Along the sea-coasts of Mare Imbrium there are many people who know
of the Temple and periodically make pilgrimages there to seek physical
help, counsel on a tough problem, or ask for a variety of blessings. These
all have various high prices the Rose extracts.
Also, in the fishing villages, there is a tendency to “haul in” dreamers
(who may be humans undergoing deep Descent or may be other actors)
and bring them up to the shores. Usually these people are used in a
variety of important rituals for the villagers and may, for instance, be
married to the daughter of a village elder or be asked to participate in an
important function.
Most times these revolve around secrets that one of more of the Actors
(not necessarily the person who washes up) has, and their catastrophic
exposing.
The Factory
Side: Caretakers
Overview
There are vast acres and complexes of buildings powered by miles of
buzzing generators. Underground there are layered stories of conveyor
belts, furnaces, and robot-arms. The “Executive Offices” are hospitalsterile
and mausoleum-quiet, the omnipresent industrial grayness
punctuated by cheery motivational posters (and ominously threatening
safety posters) mounted under dirty, scratched glass.
This is The Factory. Men, women, and even children toil away here
on every shift. No one is sure what the factory makes—in some places
workers use machine-looms to spin fabrics into cloth ... but is it for
clothing? In other places metal is melted and cast in waves of blinding
heat. Still other sections across its seemingly limitless span have
refineries—and hospital wards where subjects are bled into tanks—and
machines crush rocks—and workers stand before walls of humming
radium dials—and ...
The fact is, you’ll never find anyone who runs the Factory: at each step
up the corporate ladder the illusion of luxury and paradise is shattered
by close inspection revealing misery and despair. The Factory, some
say, exists to grind down the souls of those in its clutches: and those in
63
Book of Knots - The Caretakers