Welcome back to #mothershipmonth. Every week day this month I’m producing part of a supplement for Mothership, set on Callaway Falls, an abandoned (mostly…) luxury resort turned mining colony. This week we’re looking at major locations at the ruined resort, and the wild life that’s moved in as well as some plot hooks for what really led to the downfall of Callaway Reef. Today, we’re checking into Lodge 30.
Lodge 30 is the furthest from the main resort. It’s brochure uses words like ‘secluded’ and ‘calm’ and they’re not wrong. It’s also a lodge with a certain reputation. Staying here was unsettling, people reported odd noises, and an overwhelming sense of awe at the quiet, endless world before them. You can’t see anything human made from Lodge 30 and that was the intent. Some clients loved it. Some left thinking it was haunting. No one was entirely wrong.
Lodge 30 is on the edge of the Bolero Lemur colony. These bright, small, wickedly intelligent mammals number in the millions worldwide and the largest colony is on the same continent as Callaway Reef. Much like deer herds on Earth, they’re so ubiquitous they become easy to miss, simply going about their business while humans do the same.
That’s changed.
The lemurs have noticed that Lodge 30 is empty and have taken it over as a nest. The Custodians, once they confirmed nothing of value was in there, left them to it and now the small animals sleep, hundreds to a room, on the finest cotton sheets. The stench is unbearable. And that’s something several people on world have taken advantage of.
Points of Interest
The lemurs
Bolero lemurs don’t luminesce like Kayinga Foxes, but they do network together in very similar ways. They trill, a complex, melodic series of clicks and whirs that sound more like bird song but in fact serve three purposes. The sounds paint very accurate maps of their surroundings, are complex enough to be considered a language and when a lemur ‘choir’ are assembled they serve as a powerful weapon. The Custodians have seen multiple Groundhawks seen off, or killed, by lemur choirs intensely powerful, near subsonic, wall of sound. Interestingly they show no desire to use this on humans and remain friendly and curious to anyone who visits.
The Well
Xavier Bolero has dropped a complete, fully backed up account of his findings about the Carter androids in a sealed box at the bottom of this well. He has friends who will receive copies if he hasn’t checked in inside six months. It has been five and a half months.
Next to it down there is a sealed copy of Calli Packet’s logs and next to that is a sealed case of spare transponders dropped by Whiterock Industrial. None of them are aware the others put anything down there.