Scatoley

## Genesis

The popular tale is that Scatoley came into existence in ancient times when the giantess named Brimirhild was overcome by one of her natural urges as she was climbing the giant stairway. She therefore squatted down with one leg deep in the North Sea and the other leg deep in the South Sea.

At the point where the massive brown turd hit the ground emerged a fertile but foul-smelling tract of land called Excretium. A long time later this region was renamed Scatoley by the Scatomancers who arrived and settled on their pilgrimage. The Scatomancers reject this origin story of their holy land as unscientific nonsense, whereas the Stink Witches believe in the true existence of the giantess Brimirhild, who they worship under the names Urgeha, Livra or Gorgoth as their dark female deity. They also take the transubstantiation of the female giant's feces into a landmass destined for the coven not as metaphor but as factual truth.

## Locations

### *Towns and Cities*

#### Excretium

The Town surrounding the Brown University

#### Smutling

Near the university is a village called Smutling, which sells all kinds of scatomantic supplies and other alchemical goods. The residents are mostly students who have been rejected or expelled from the academy, as well as small Kotelves who benefit from the scatomancers' demand for occult writings, reagents, and instruments.

## Factions

### The Scatomancers

The Scatomancers are an exiled alchemist group from the Kingdom of Tarot, more precisely the Kingdom of Coins, who deal with the alchemist qualities of feces to reach enlightenment. Due to the geographical and agricultural nature of Scatoley, they settled after long wanderings and, with the help of Scatomancy, assumed undisputed supremacy over the region. Their headquarters and central governing body is the Brown University, which is surrounded by the city of Excretium that was later built around it.

### The Coven of Shit Witches

The Coven of Shit Witches is a communal association of women who, contrary to the laws of Scatoley practice scatomancy despite their female gender thereby actively rebelling against the patriarchy of the brown university. Women are strictly forbidden by the Scatology Statutes to practice scatomancy, and violators face harsh penalties ranging from public flogging to execution by the stake, witch's chair, or other martial instruments of death and torture. Because of these cruel punishments, the Witches of the Scatomantic Coven, as they call themselves, practice their version of scatomantic craft in secret. In addition, their version of scatomancy differs significantly from that of the men and they have even been able to make breakthroughs in some areas that are unknown to the scholars of the brown academy. Female Scatomancy is a mixture of classic scatomancy, occult rituals and black magic. It is less formalistic, objective and theory-heavy, but more practical, intuitive and closer to witchcraft than to an empirical science.The witches follow a crowleyian philosophy (named after the infamous scat witch Alessandra Crowley). This philosophy revolves around the idea that human beings each have their own True Will, that they should discover and pursue, and that this exists in harmony with the Cosmic Will that pervades the universe. This process is referred to as searching and discovery of one's True Will to be "the Great Work" or the attaining of the "knowledge and conversation of the great Mother". Shit Witches are devotees of a dark feminine deity manifested as Livra, and monists who seek emancipation, enlightenment, liberation, and release. This freedom is a realization of the self's identity with the absolute. Because of this monistic doctrine, the Shit Witches maintain that all opposites are ultimately illusory.

## Intelligent Species (more or less)

### Poinks

The Poinks are close relatives of the Porcs, but unlike their warlike kin, they are a peaceful folk with a penchant for comfort, agriculture and good food. They live in mud huts with round doors built into hills and spend their time planting turnips, potatoes, hops and other crops in the fertile ground of Scatoley. Barring a peasant shrewdness and considerable agricultural knowledge, Poinks are not the brightest. However, they make up for this lack of academic interest with warm hospitality, snugness and good craftsmanship. As well as planting vegetables and brewing delicious dung beer, they spend their time relaxing in warm mud pools that they heat underground. Once you get used to the smell, which takes some getting used to, such a bath can work wonders against tense muscles or joint pain. They are friendly to all strangers who let them grow their crops in peace. This also includes the Scatomancers with whom they occasionally trade. Sometimes they'll even invite them to a feast in their huts, from whose chimneys then smoke from burning peat and swampwood rises. Each Poink has a fenced yard in front of their burrows in which mostly vegetables grow. Sometimes to amazing sizes to which the soil which makes the ideal fertilizer contributes greatly in addition to their talent for gardening and farming of course. They fear their relatives the Porks even more than the Gruntlings. Due to their peaceful and pacifist nature, they are almost defenseless against raids and Poink settlements fall victim to looting and burning again and again. Because of this threat, each Poink village has recently been assigned a scatomancer as a ward who protects and regularly visits the settlement. Although the scatomancers don't ask for anything in return for this service, the wards enjoy great popularity in the villages. Little piglets Poinks run to meet his cart normally drawn by great scatoley boars when they see them from afar. The villagers throw festivities and feasts for the alchemist's arrival.They are also hospitable to travelers and serve them generously as they pass through their villages. In the vernacular the Poinks are also referred to as "Piglings" or "Swinemen" while their relatives the Porcs are referred to as "Ruffhams", "Pig Orcs" or simply "miserable murderous rabble!". Aside from Grobianism-like humans and the Scatomancers, the Poinks are the most populous faction in Scatoley.

### Porcs

The Porcs are native to the Lump Mountains and the Coprolite Mountain range of Scatoley, where they mingle as marauders and raiders. Some of them get hired as mercenaries for the Scatomancers and the defense of the East Wall in Grobianism, although their relationship with the Brown Scholars has ranged from skeptical-neutral to hostile. Aiding the scatomancers, viewed by most of the porcs as invaders and imperialist oppressors, is seen as a treacherous and reprehensible act. On the other hand, they pay well, and most porcs are morally extremely flexible, to put it kindly. Spineless easily corrupted opportunists who would sell their own mother for a sack of flour to put it rudely. The porcs are a simple-minded species who construct crude, pointed-stick dwellings with little furniture in them on whose muddy floors they eat and sleep. Their only talent, besides stinking, drinking and being mean, lies in the processing of the rotten swamp wood of the latrine tree, which is one of the few trees that grows in Scatoley and whose outward appearance is reminiscent of a large tree with its crown stuck in the mud, which is why only the gnarled, thick roots that proliferate in all directions can be seen standing up instead of branches. From the wood of this ugly growth they make crossbows, tools and halberds, the tips of which they fashion from forged coprolite (a porous metal found in the coprolite mountainrange). Their all-time favorite drink, which they ferment in large barrels made of latrine wood, is Stinkbroth, a foul-smelling amalgamation of liquor and beer that uses fecal gases for it's production which should be enough for anyone with common sense not to try it even without having to smell it first. How this species reproduces is a mystery to scientists, as no one has ever set eyes on a female porc.

### Gruntlings

The remarkably ugly Gruntlings inhabit some of the hill and mountain regions of Scatoley, where they live in natural cave systems. They are extremely insensitive to odors and don't smell particularly good themselves, allowing them to defy Scatoley's inhospitable fecology. They are distant relatives of the Boglins, although they are significantly dumber and more aggressive. Their main occupation is raiding merchant carriages but they also pass the time with occasional rape and pillaging villages. They smear their rusty weapons with feces, easily found throughout Scatoley, causing life-threatening infections in their victims even if they manage to escape from an ambush. Since they rarely come across human flesh, their main source of food are the giant boars found in Scatoley, which they hunt in groups with slingshots and crude spears.

## Creatures

### Giant Tapeworms

The wild tapeworms of unusual size are native to the cloaca swamps.

### Giant Pigs

The hairless somewhat domesticated ones live in the area around Brown University and Smutling. The hairy untamed ones can be found all over Scatoley especially in the flatter areas.

### Giant Dungbeetles

The Giant Dungbeetles are native to the Dungbarrows (the dung hills east of the Brown University). They display amazing abilities at rolling and sculpting massive balls of feces aswell as tunneling intricate underground catacombs.

### Piddle Toads

An artificially bred dog-sized species of toad that changes it's color from a murky transclucent-white to a sulphuric-yellow when a pregnant woman urinates on it. This species is the first working pregnancy test of giantstep. Weither it was first bred by Scatomancers or Urinomancers is debated to this day since this species is native to the Urine Woods aswell. The non-alchemically altered ancestor has a greenish-brown complexion and is popularly referred to simply as "pretty big toad". It is now critically endangered but can still be found in most of the swamps and wetlands of Scatoley.

### Gargantflies

The Gargantfly is one of the most feared predators in Scatoley. It is a housefly the size of a Roc that has two powerful jaws in addition to it's proboscis. Like their smaller relatives, they feed primarily on carrion and feces, but will occasionally attack live prey in order to carry it alive and wriggling to their nests for their young. Fortunately, unlike their smaller relatives, these creatures breed very slowly. A female Gargantfly only lays a clutch of three eggs every seven years, from which arm-length maggots hatch, which usually eat each other until only the strongest is left. Such a gargant maggot needs 13 years and a lot of food to become a full-grown Gargantfly. A full-grown Gargantfly has enough power to carry a live ox. A Gargantfly is a relatively rare sight in Scatoley, as Gruntlings prey on the protein-rich maggots and the adult flies only nest in the highest of the dung mountains. Attempts by some Scatomancers to train these dangerous creatures into flying mounts have largely failed. Only about a half a dozen Scatomants have ever managed to fly a gargant fly, with two-thirds of those falling or being eaten somewhere on the way.

### The Greasy Black Corruption

    The area above the Lump Mountains and below Sewington is referred to as soiled land by the locals due to nightsoiling experiments that contaminated the ground there and caused strange creatures and a greasy black corruption to emerge. After the secret machinations of some notorious Nightsoilers in the area oily black Bubbles started to appear someday. They spread in a similar fashion to some fungi and appear to form an underground "root system". It is believed that there is a central source of sinister origin deep within the muddy earth below that is the cause of these greasy springs. When organic matter such as living beings comes in contact with the black tar-like mucous sacs on the surface, the sac first coats part of the body depending on how direct the contact is, then the tar recedes, corroding and absorbing all organic material. The Brown University Scatomancers have successfully stopped the spread of this corruption in Scatoley and contained it to a relatively small and manageable area. On the other side of the border, however, these sacs have spread unchecked into the Seven Castles district, as the Scatimists feel no jurisdiction beyond the borders of Scatoley and the other Brown Pact countries (namely Grobianism, The Urine Woods and Cockaigne). The nature of the "Black Grease", as the corruption is popularly called, has been thoroughly studied, but the scientists who deal with it are still faced with many question marks. Some of the most groundbreaking insights regarding it are that the Black Grease may be some sort of singular living organism, that a forbidden combination of Scatology and Necromancy led to its creation and that contaminated areas should be avoided and refrained from entering at all costs.

### Stinkspitters

The Stinkspitter are creatures with a sack-like leathery skin somewhat reminiscent of large engorged ticks. They reach the size of three horses stacked on top of each other when fully grown and saturated. The Stinkspitters seem to drink from the springs of black grease, which bloats them and keeps them alive, although these creatures aren't technically alive in the first place. Much like a virus, they appear to be essentially dead matter that only seeks to multiply (how they do so is unknown) and spread the black corruption. Although they move very slowly, they can cover amazing distances and show no signs of fatigue. There are reports that some of them have been sighted on their migration as far away the Realm of Harmony. When they get far enough away from the Grease Spring they drank from, they emit a foul-smelling black cloud that, like fungal spores, causes the ground they're standing on to become a breeding ground for black grease bubbles. Being close to this process is absolutely fatal as inhaling the miasma causes a terrible disease known as the Brown Plague which is a sickness not unlike the Bubonic Plague except much more disgusting and painfull. However, the deadly and contagious disease appears to be merely a side effect of the Black Grease's process of reproduction and is otherwise unrelated to its spread for as much as is known.The Scatomancers have figured out an effective method of preventing them from crossing their territory which they keep secret from the rest of the world (a thick line of salt). Aside from their miasm phase, Stinkspitters are mostly harmless and peaceful (as long as you don't touch them, but why would you want to). They hardly notice their surroundings and appear to have no sense of sight, smell or hearing. Attacking a bloated Stinkspitter is strongly discouraged as it will cause them to explosively release their miasma destroying him instantly and the aggressor aswell but more slowly and painfull. Just like the Black Grease the Stinkspitters are the result of forbidden alchemical experiments combined with various types of occultism and black magic. Most of the individuals responsible for them have been severely punished or passed away.