Editing Veins of the Earth (section)

==Pariahs of the Earth==
After a meditative opening on caves and how humans think of them, the first section centers on a bestiary of underground (or semi-underground) critters. Some of them are pretty rad, like that colony of spiders operating a giant spider-shaped web-mech, doglike predators whose faces are brilliant, blinding spotlights, or the packs of cave tortoise-raptors that spend a lifetime slowly scraping lichen off the cave walls, ignoring PCs when encountered in small groups, only to suddenly burn a century of calories in a half-hour trying to run down and devour a party if they outnumber them, dropping dead if they fail. Some are classic ''Lamentations'' overcooked ideas, like the tachyon troll that shows up injured and needs to be attacked to full health in order to become whole and stave off paradox, or the silicon-based tourist mechs from the center of the earth who somehow can't notice that their attempts at communication are occasionally killing people and blow up for a TPK if attacked.  Special mention to the knotmen, a messed-up and horrible culture of people whose ancestors sold their souls for fortune, and who now keep their kids around as an insurance policy, horrible knots appearing in their flesh whenever they try to deny that their culture is the awful nightmare it plainly represents.

Notably, the statblocks provided are abstracted, but information provided includes how the creature sounds, smells, and whether or not it is blind in order to properly interact with later rules on cave adventuring.