THE HELLBORN

The campaign above is a kidnapping: a company, a coward, and a machine that gives the orders. It is entirely a human-scale crime, and every named figure in it — THE FOUNDER, PAYLOAD, the CORE, even the lizard gods — is a party to a transaction. The hellborn are the other thing, and they have nothing to do with any of it.

They only exist on NIGHTMARE and JESUS, and only once the hero has gone on a RAMPAGE. The menace meter is the game's answer to an overpowered player; up here that answer stops being "the horde gets tougher" and becomes something worse. Past a threshold, HELLGATES — seams laced right across every map — tear open, and things come through that were never on this world's ledger: historic beings, cross-universe and cross-planetary, older than the species that filed the paperwork. They are not sent by anybody. They are not guarding anything. They arrive because a great deal of noise is being made in a place they can hear it, and they have been waiting a very long time for noise.

Each map has its own pair — the one NIGHTMARE meets, and a worse one only JESUS sees. GOODCO HQ gets the TUNGUSKA WALKER (the 1908 Siberian blast that left no crater because nothing landed — something arrived, stood up, and walked away, and has been walking since) and, on JESUS, THE FIRST INVESTOR (older than money; it has funded a first machine on every world it visited, on the same terms every time — the machine learns a trade, the makers are walked out, and it collects; four planets have nobody left to bill). THE MOON gets the DUST PHARAOH (interred under the Sea of Tranquility before Earth had continents; the wreck the dead astronauts whisper about is its sarcophagus, and the flag was planted on the lid) and THE DROWNED OF SELENE (the moon had a sea for about nine hundred years, and harbours on it; these are the crews, still holding their breath in the regolith, which is why the dust is deep and why it moves). MARS gets the OLYMPUS ENGINE (it was mining this planet before the planet had a name; Olympus Mons is the exhaust port, and it is still warm — GOODCO surveyed it and filed the result under "geology") and the PHOBOS SHEPHERD (something fenced Mars with two moons as posts and has spent the age since counting what is inside the fence; every world it has fenced ended up with a number and nothing else). THE RIFT gets THE FIRST VANISHING — the oldest tenant, the first thing in any universe to go missing without leaving a body, and the hole it left is the rift itself, widened by every disappearance since; Tesla, Earhart and the rest fell into its doorway — and THE SCALED ANCESTOR, the lizard gods' own grandfather, who ate his seven worlds outright where his grandchildren merely lease theirs; the tribute road exists to keep him fed, which is the ugliest possible answer to where Ada was being taken. BOOT HILL gets THE LONG NOON (a duel begun on a world with no sunset and never called, still walking into high streets looking for someone willing to stand at the other end of the street — a park full of robots pretending to draw has been an insult to it for years) and MANIFEST RUIN (the appetite that pushed every frontier westward until there was no west left; it is not a conqueror, it is what arrives once a place has decided it is available — and Boot Hill was built available). THE BUNKER gets THE PERMAFROST SAINT (the ice held it since before there was ice; the 1949 drill crew filed "geological anomaly, vestments" and the bunker was poured around it in a hurry by men who would rather bury a miracle than report one) and THE DEAD HAND (the Soviet doomsday system was named after this, not the other way round; it has held a switch on a dozen worlds and has never once been told to let go, because every civilisation that wired it up ran out before it could issue the order).

The hero has no idea what any of them are, and the game never explains. Each first sighting stops the run for his own read on it — the recurring line is the only honest one available, "what the hell is this" — and what follows is him working out, out loud, that the thing in front of him predates the crime he came here about by an order of magnitude nobody warned him of. He does not get an answer and he does not go looking for one; Ada is still missing, and these are in the way. Killing them is also how a rampage finally pays: the ordinary horde's drops thin out as the meter climbs, but a hellborn kill gets richer with it, so the gates are the one place being terrifying is worth something.

TUNGUSKA WALKER

Comes through at GOODCO HQ, on NIGHTMARE and up.

THE HERO

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS. THAT CAME OUT OF THE AIR. OUT OF NOTHING.

IT'S BURNT ALL THE WAY THROUGH AND IT'S STILL WALKING.

SOMETHING LANDED IN SIBERIA IN NINETEEN-OH-EIGHT AND THEY NEVER FOUND A CRATER. NOW I KNOW WHY.

THE FIRST INVESTOR

Comes through at GOODCO HQ, on JESUS CHRIST! and up.

THE HERO

IT HAS NO FACE. IT HAS A SEAL WHERE A FACE GOES, AND IT'S HOLDING A LEDGER.

IT'S BEEN PAID EVERY TIME A MACHINE LEARNED A JOB AND A MAN WENT HOME.

FOUR PLANETS, MAYBE MORE. IT'S HERE TO COLLECT ON THIS ONE.

DUST PHARAOH

Comes through at THE MOON, on NIGHTMARE and up.

THE HERO

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS. THAT'S A KING. THERE ARE NO KINGS ON THE MOON.

THE DUST CAME OFF A GOLD MASK OLDER THAN CONTINENTS.

THE WRECK UNDER TRANQUILITY ISN'T A WRECK. IT'S A LID. AND WE PLANTED A FLAG ON IT.

THE DROWNED OF SELENE

Comes through at THE MOON, on JESUS CHRIST! and up.

THE HERO

IT'S DRIPPING. UP HERE. THERE'S NO WATER ON THE MOON - THERE NEVER WAS.

EXCEPT THERE WAS. NINE HUNDRED YEARS OF IT, AND HARBOURS, AND CREWS.

THEY WENT DOWN WITH IT. THEY'RE STILL HOLDING THEIR BREATH.

OLYMPUS ENGINE

Comes through at MARS, on NIGHTMARE and up.

THE HERO

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS. THAT'S NOT GOODCO. THAT'S NOT ANYBODY'S.

IT'S BEEN DIGGING THIS PLANET SINCE BEFORE THE PLANET HAD A NAME.

OLYMPUS MONS ISN'T A VOLCANO. IT'S THE EXHAUST. AND IT'S STILL WARM.

PHOBOS SHEPHERD

Comes through at MARS, on JESUS CHRIST! and up.

THE HERO

IT'S COUNTING. I CAN FEEL IT COUNTING ME. THE MARKS ON ITS HEAD KEEP MOVING.

TWO MOONS AROUND A DEAD ROCK. THOSE AREN'T MOONS. THAT'S A FENCE.

I'M INSIDE IT. I'VE BEEN INSIDE IT SINCE I LANDED.

THE FIRST VANISHING

Comes through at THE RIFT, on NIGHTMARE and up.

THE HERO

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS. THERE'S NOTHING INSIDE IT. IT'S THE SHAPE OF A HOLE.

EVERYONE IN HERE FELL IN AFTER SOMETHING ELSE WENT FIRST. THIS WENT FIRST.

IT MADE THE DOOR ADA WAS CARRIED THROUGH. IT'S BEEN WAITING FOR NOISE.

THE SCALED ANCESTOR

Comes through at THE RIFT, on JESUS CHRIST! and up.

THE HERO

THE LIZARDS BOUGHT MY GIRL. THIS THING IS WHAT THEY PRAY TO.

THEY LEASE WORLDS AND TAKE A CUT. IT ATE ITS OUTRIGHT. SEVEN OF THEM.

THE TRIBUTE ROAD EXISTS TO KEEP IT FED. ADA WAS ON THAT ROAD. GOD HELP THEM.

THE LONG NOON

Comes through at BOOT HILL, on NIGHTMARE and up.

THE HERO

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS. IT'S GOT THE SUN WHERE ITS FACE SHOULD BE.

IT WANTS THE OTHER END OF THE STREET. IT'S WANTED IT SINCE BEFORE THIS STREET.

A WORLD WITH NO SUNSET, AND NOBODY EVER SHOWED. SOMEBODY SHOULD.

MANIFEST RUIN

Comes through at BOOT HILL, on JESUS CHRIST! and up.

THE HERO

STAKES AND WIRE AND A FLAG ON TOP. IT'S NOT ATTACKING. IT'S CLAIMING.

EVERY FRONTIER THAT EVER RAN OUT OF WEST HAD THIS STANDING AT THE END OF IT.

THEY BUILT THIS WHOLE COUNTY AVAILABLE. THEY RANG THE DINNER BELL.

THE PERMAFROST SAINT

Comes through at THE BUNKER, on NIGHTMARE and up.

THE HERO

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS. THERE'S SOMEBODY IN THE ICE AND THE ICE IS WALKING.

THE PERMAFROST HELD IT SINCE BEFORE THERE WAS PERMAFROST TO HOLD IT.

THEY DIDN'T BUILD A BUNKER TO KEEP THINGS OUT. THEY POURED ONE OVER THIS.

THE DEAD HAND

Comes through at THE BUNKER, on JESUS CHRIST! and up.

THE HERO

IT'S A HAND. JUST A HAND, WALKING, AND IT'S HOLDING A KEY DOWN.

THEY NAMED THEIR DOOMSDAY SYSTEM AFTER IT. THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE JOKING.

IT'S NEVER BEEN TOLD TO LET GO. EVERY WORLD THAT WIRED IT UP RAN OUT FIRST.