TEXT: TwISted Rails
  MacGuffin & Co. presents
  A micro-setting
  This is a system-neutral setting! It gives you all the details on the world, the 
  player characters’ role within it, and contains a suggested mini-campaign 
  and adventure ideas. However, you won’t find any rules, character sheets, 
  or instructions to “Roll your Diplomacy”, “Take 2 Wounds” or similar. This 
  is intended to be a playground where you can use whatever system you and 
  your group feels most comfortable with. This may mean it requires some extra 
  preparation in terms of working out the necessary numbers, especially if you’re 
  using a more stats-focused system, but we promise, even if you just jump right 
  in and make it up on the fly, you’ll have a great time.
  Content Notes: Altered reality, Violence, Piracy, Human remains, Body horror, 
  Transformation, Imperialism, Colonialism, Corruption, Murder, Self-harm , Blood, 
  Environmental disaster, Oppressive regimes,  Isolation, Unethical science, Cloning, 
  Hostile animals.
  ©MacGuffin & Co. 2019. All rights reserved.
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  No-one knows how it started or what 
  went wrong, but a generation ago 
  something broke in reality. The world 
  stopped making sense, replaced by a 
  swirling chaos where nothing is anything 
  without straining to be something else. 
  The Twist. The best way to survive is 
  to stay in the bubbles: tiny pockets of 
  stability where humanity just about 
  hangs on. And there’s only one way to 
  travel between bubbles: you ride the 
  turning, shifting rail-lines in heavily-
  modified trains, designed to push 
  through the worst the Twist has to offer. 
  Trains like yours. 
  Background
  It’s been 30 years since the chaos started. No 
  one remembers where it hit first, but most 
  survivors remember when the world around 
  them stopped working as it should. The 
  changes spread from town to city, to country, 
  to continent. Churning waters became rivers 
  of ash. Cliff faces eroded as millenia passed 
  for them in an hour. Grass turned to ice, then 
  to clay, then to rolling fields of smoke. The 
  Twist was born.
  There’s no consensus on why the laws of 
  reality have held on in some places, but they 
  have. Bubbles of stability emerge and collapse 
  constantly, but there are some that have held 
  on and remained stable since the break. Their 
  inhabitants have long searched for the reason 
  these small bastions of order have lasted, but 
  all they’ve found are a few common features 
  that seem to keep the Twist at bay: a dense 
  presence of complex life and scenery or 
  architecture that is colourful, diverse and 
  irregular. After the change hit, these places 
  became a beacon for wandering survivors and 
  are now the centres of human existence.
  Wander too far from the centre of any bubble 
  and you’ll find yourself in the Twist, a 
  constantly changing dreamscape where you 
  can’t rely on anything to remain itself from 
  one moment to the next. In the thin band 
  between a bubble and the Twist itself, the 
  changes are slower and more predictable, 
  gradually turning anything that stays there 
  to a single material: glass, wood or, in one 
  memorable case, music. These edges are 
  known as beaches and, though dangerous, 
  they can often be beautiful or provide a useful 
  resource. But while plenty of people might 
  enjoy a short trip to the beach, if you want 
  to venture further and survive, you’ll need to 
  ride the rails. 
  That’s where you come in. You’re a crew of 
  Twist-riders: brave, foolish or desperate souls 
  who make their living on the huge, armoured 
  steam trains that travel through the Twist. 
  Your life is loud, messy and dangerous, but 
  trains like yours are the only way communities 
  limited by the confines of their bubble can 
  trade with one another, or communicate 
  outside the unreliable radio signals. You 
  usually transport goods but there’s always 
  extra money to be made by carrying private 
  letters, trinkets and even the occasional 
  passenger on your cargo routes. 
  Crews live in close quarters and get to know 
  each other quickly, which is just as well when 
  your survival often relies on knowing each 
  other’s rhythms and quirks. The amount of 
  money you make from each Twist run depends 
  on how much cargo makes it to the other end 
  in the state it left, and not even the most 
  foolhardy captain heads out into the Twist 
  without a fully stocked armoury. Living space 
  is generally kept small, with beds taken in 
  shifts and little space for personal belongings. 
  Navigating in the Twist is imprecise and while 
  journeys have fixed start and end points, and 
  maybe even a few common landmarks, the 
  precise route is constantly changing. 
  The effects of the Twist itself aren’t the only 
  dangers when riding the rails. Few animals 
  remain unchanged outside of the bubbles 
  and most are now broadly classified neo-
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  fauna - living beings changed by the Twist 
  or inanimate things turned into living ones. 
  The most aggressive and hostile of these are 
  colloquially called ‘screamers,’ named for 
  the noise they tend to make when assaulting 
  passing trains. There’s also the danger posed 
  by railway pirates, who manipulate the 
  tracks into convergence and attack freight 
  trains. Between all these dangers, and the 
  fact that the ground beneath you could turn 
  from melting plastic into the colour orange, 
  Twist-riding has a steep learning curve and 
  successful riders gain skills quickly, if they 
  want to survive.
  Riding the Rails
  The basic metaphysics of the the railway are 
  relatively simple: a pair of rails are forged 
  together, then cut into neat halves. The 
  severing must be clean, as the neater the cut, 
  the stronger the connection between the rails. 
  One half of each is fitted to sleepers to form 
  a departure track in one bubble and the other 
  halves will be used for an arrival track at 
  the destination bubble. When a train leaves 
  a bubble touching one half of the rails, the 
  track will remain beneath them as they travel 
  through the twist, arcing them towards to 
  the other half at their destination. The exact 
  course of the track is changeable, and the 
  time the journey takes can vary wildly, even 
  without the Twist’s tendency to mess with 
  time. Most stations will have a separate track 
  for leaving and arriving on the same route to 
  avoid confusion and possible collisions. Large 
  stations in major hubs will often have direct 
  rail connections to upwards of a dozen other 
  bubbles, but smaller “one-track” bubbles may 
  only have a single connection, which is their 
  lifeline to the outside world. The complexities 
  of the rail network make an up-to-date map or 
  experienced conductor an absolute necessity.
  One odd wrinkle of riding the rails is that if 
  two trains are travelling towards the same 
  bubble at roughly the same time (even from 
  different departure points)  their tracks will 
  be distorted and drawn together, appearing 
  parallel to each other in the Twist. This is 
  how the majority of piracy takes place, with 
  marauding trains using stolen schedules and 
  hijacked stations to travel towards the same 
  destination as their prey, attacking en route. 
  In some cases pirates have even been known 
  to steal one of a station’s arrival tracks and set 
  it up in a small bubble they control, allowing 
  them to ambush and capture the misdirected 
  trains.
  While all travel has to have a locked in start 
  and end point, traveling new routes is still 
  possible. There are hundreds of bubbles and, 
  while most have well-established connections 
  to other nearby stations, there are plenty of 
  new routes yet to be tried. Placing new track 
  to connect an as-yet untravelled direct route 
  will result in a journey that crosses new areas 
  of the Twist and, occasionally, previously 
  undiscovered bubbles. A few trains specialise 
  in this, installing temporary tracks between 
  stations that have never before been connected 
  in the hopes of finding new bubbles. Stopping 
  in such a place and laying an arrival track will 
  connect it to the network, and could stand to 
  make the right crew very rich.
  The weather in the Twist is constantly 
  changing but, most of the time, you can trust 
  you’re safe within the train. Very occasionally, 
  Twist-riders can even stand outside - the 
  changes you see during these ‘lulls’ tend 
  can be breathtakingly beautiful and riders 
  are more likely to see singing glass flowers 
  than to encounter tides of flame lapping at 
  their feet. Just as likely as a lull, though, is 
  encountering a ‘bad patch’ when the Twist is 
  strong enough to penetrate the train itself and 
  start to affect the crew. The first signs of a bad 
  patch will be changes to the train’s spikes and 
  the smokestack trail, and most crewmembers 
  will take shifts to monitor them for warning 
  signs. If it continues long enough, the effects 
  may reach the walls of the train, the wheels, 
  floor, couplings or even the crew. 
  The trains that travel the Twist are almost 
  universally 
  steam-powered. 
  The 
  surreal 
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  effects of the place affect electricity in 
  unpredictable 
  ways, 
  even 
  within 
  the 
  protection of a locomotive, and the steam and 
  smoke are very useful, acting as both lighting 
  rod and warning system. The Twist tends to 
  change things from the outside in and alters 
  small things before larger ones, so the water 
  droplets and smoke coming out of the train 
  attract and diffuse much of its effects. An 
  experienced Twist-rider knows to keep an eye 
  on the smokestack and see what’s emerging: if 
  it’s something strange but safe, like rainbows 
  or gravel, everything’s good; if it’s something 
  more alarming, like bone fragments or rubies, 
  then the train it likely to be entering a bad 
  patch. Most train crews see windows as a 
  vulnerability and instead keep interiors dark 
  and reliant on yellow, artificial lighting. 
  Crews often also cover their trains in long 
  spikes, both to to deter pirates from boarding, 
  and because they can get a good indication of 
  how bad the Twist is by checking how much 
  of the spike is still metal.
  Between these precautions and the fact the 
  living flesh is slower to be affected by the 
  Twist, a crew can usually travel in relative 
  safety, with the strangeness usually remaining 
  outside. During a bad patch however, the 
  Twist will often affect the inside of the train 
  and its occupants, imposing its surreal reality. 
  Colours may become so vivid they burn, time 
  may run backwards, shadows may begin to 
  pull the crew to the floor, bones may begin 
  to steel, or something even weirder. These 
  effects are rarely fatal for any but the most 
  unlucky or unwise Twist-riders, but crews 
  need time to recover after such an encounter, 
  as those most affected wait for their body to 
  become their body again. Living tissue has a 
  remarkable way of healing from the twist, but 
  if any part of a person is entirely transformed 
  (a whole bone, a tooth, an eyeball) it will never 
  change back. Hair and nails, being dead cells, 
  do not recover unless entirely removed and 
  regrown, and Twist-riders are often marked 
  by stone or wooden fingernails, and hair of 
  glass or tipped with strange-coloured metals.
  Train-to-Train Combat
  All valuable goods moving between one bubble 
  to the others have to go via the rails, and that 
  makes piracy lucrative enough to outweigh 
  the dangers of fighting in the Twist. Beyond 
  that, Twist-riders can be a temperamental lot, 
  and more than one vendetta has been ended 
  for good out in that warped and shifting 
  landscape, far from any law-enforcement. It’s 
  dangerous out there, and even civilian trains 
  tend to go armed. 
  Common weapons include:
  Cannons: Generally used in an attempt to 
  derail or destroy a train, or sever the track. 
  Effective, but inelegant, with a high likelihood 
  of collateral damage.
  Machine guns: Usually targeting any exposed 
  crewmembers, or used to pepper the boiler 
  with holes, causing the water to leak.
  Grappling hooks: Often the precursor to 
  boarding attempts, or used in an attempt to 
  merge tracks (see ‘railjacking’ below).
  Sprayers: Recently, pirate crews have come up 
  with a interesting, if unpredictable, weapon. 
  It’s no more nor less than a crude spray hose 
  throwing water at their target at high pressure. 
  In most situations this is simply an annoyance, 
  but when the Twist is strong, the water will 
  usually have changed into something else by 
  the time it hits its target, and an unsuspecting 
  crew may find themselves being hosed in fire, 
  choking dust or worse. In the heat of battle, 
  even being surrounded by a swarm of beautiful 
  butterflies can be a real problem.
  In addition to the standard to-and-fro of 
  violence, there are several specific maneuvers 
  rail warriors have developed.
  Railjacking: Due to certain metaphysical 
  oddities of the Twist, if a train can get a direct 
  hit with a hook and chain on the other train’s 
  rail, the two parallel tracks will begin to merge. 
  Depending on whether the train merges the 
  track behind or in front of its target, this 
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  can confer several tactical advantages. Care 
  needs to be taken, though as, if the chain hits 
  directly beneath the other train, the merging 
  tracks can lead to a devastating collision.
  Cratering: If a well-placed cannon shot can 
  destroy the track directly in front of a train, it 
  cuts the connection with the destination and 
  the track below it vanishes, usually causing 
  the train to derail. While an effective way 
  of winning a fight, it often makes looting 
  difficult, unless the crash occurs during a lull 
  in the Twist.
  Freighthopping: The most profitable way to 
  attack a train is not to damage it at all. If 
  attacks are confined to the crew, there’s no 
  danger of damaging potentially valuable 
  cargo. Jumping from one train to another is 
  extremely risky, however, especially if the 
  Twist is bad. Some pirate crews favour ramps, 
  poles and ladders, while others prefer to pull 
  themselves over via grappling hook or zipline 
  down a rope or cable.
  Breakneck Stop: Escaping an attack is often 
  a difficult proposition, especially as a skilled 
  driver will be adept at matching the speed 
  of their target. But if timed right, when the 
  attacker has a good head of steam, slamming 
  on the brakes can put enough distance between 
  the trains to break the track parallel, and send 
  the other train on to their destination alone. 
  It’s a desperate maneuver with a high risk of 
  derailment, and the driver should be sure the 
  train will be in a state to start moving again 
  once they’ve come to a stop.
  Character Suggestions
  The Twist is a dangerous and unpredictable 
  place, but riding the rails is one of the only 
  ways people can make their fortune or escape 
  the bubble they were born into. Those who 
  choose it tend towards the ambitious, the 
  foolhardy and the plain weird.
  Old Driver
  You remember the world before the Twist, 
  and you’re not too impressed with what’s 
  happened since. Railways used to go in straight 
  lines, and things knew what they were meant 
  to be. You can’t get used to this new world, 
  so you might as well dive into it, and use the 
  engineering skills you developed in a life that 
  made sense. The others may dismiss you as 
  grumpy, but they can’t deny you’re skilled. 
  Savvy Merchant
  Economics aren’t what they once were. The 
  value of gold has plummeted since they 
  found that bubble with the golden beach, 
  and apparently the safe money’s in beans. 
  This new trading landscape requires someone 
  with a sharp eye and smooth tongue to make 
  the best of it, someone willing to endure 
  the horrors of the Twist because they know 
  there’s a fortune at the other end of it. That 
  someone is you.
  Rail Warrior
  Force is a language you’ve always understood, 
  and it’s been your profession for a long time. 
  Maybe you used to be a Commonwealth 
  Peacekeeper, or worked as a leg-breaker in 
  one of the smaller bubbles. Maybe you were 
  a pirate. Even though you’re trying to leave it 
  behind, the only thing your past ever taught 
  you was violence, and that’s a skill needed all 
  too often out in the Twist.
  Twist Touched
  The Twist changes things. Changes people. 
  Physically, sure, yeah, there’s no-one who’d 
  look at you and not see what’s different. 
  You’ve got hardly any of your original teeth 
  and it’s rare that your skin is entirely skin. 
  But that’s not the real change: the real change 
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  is in your mind, your soul. You know the Twist 
  like few others, and it’s the only place you 
  can feel truly alive. Someday it’ll take you, 
  sure, but until then you’ll ride those rails to 
  the end.
  Poet
  Sometimes you feel like the only one who sees 
  the beauty in this new world. The lush colours 
  of a flowering vine curling around a sprawling 
  residential block in a bubble desperately 
  clinging to life, the birth of a fiery mountain 
  erupting down from the sky, the shadow of a 
  melting jungle turning to obsidian dust and 
  simply floating away. Travel broadens the 
  mind, broadens your work, and these days the 
  railway is the only way to travel.
  Locations
  Because travel between the bubbles is 
  difficult and unreliable, bubbles themselves 
  have developed distinct, autonomous cultures 
  in their 30 years of relative isolation. Most 
  people will live and die in the same bubble, too 
  poor or too scared to try their luck travelling 
  through the Twist, but a veteran train crew 
  might see hundreds of bubbles across their 
  career.
  Coalshore
  The largest and best-connected is Coalshore, 
  a bustling city surrounded by a broad beach 
  of coal, an immensely valuable resource in a 
  world that relies on heavy steam trains for any 
  travel or trade. At about five miles in diameter, 
  it’s easily the biggest of the known bubbles and 
  is well aware of it. Their beach is composed 
  of a technicolour coal, which they mine to 
  supply the railways, making them the wealthy 
  backbone of the whole system. With their 
  wealth has come a desire for expansion, and 
  the city’s government has recently annexed a 
  dozen or so nearby bubbles “for their security 
  and development”. They emphasise no bubbles 
  have been taken by force, instead convincing 
  their leaders to sign over control in exchange 
  for “protection”, and Coalshore has plenty of 
  vocal defenders propping up any local bar. 
  Even so, most struggle to see expansion of 
  “The Commonwealth” as anything other than 
  a threat.
  Grand Central
  There are a good dozen or so major hubs: 
  bubbles with sufficient size, population or 
  resources to become a centre for trade. These 
  hubs invariably have lots of connections, 
  and tend to link together the smaller nearby 
  bubbles. Grand central is in many ways the 
  exception to this: it’s relatively small, barely 
  a mile across, and its beach is a wonderous 
  garden of beautiful, but extremely toxic 
  flowers. Despite its lack of size or resources, 
  Grand Central has somehow become the 
  biggest marketplace around, with almost 
  forty receiving tracks coming in from all 
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  sorts of bubbles, large and small. It’s got the 
  best connections and the best bazaars, and if 
  a train crew needs something odd, they can 
  probably find it here.
  One-Track Bubbles
  Most smaller bubbles will only have a single 
  arrival track and a single departure track, 
  both linked to the nearest hub. These bubbles 
  vary massively in character and with limited 
  contact from outside they tend towards the 
  weird, insular and idiosyncratic. Some may 
  have a thriving export industry if their beach 
  is lucky enough to produce something useful 
  like edible fungus. But many have dangerous 
  or useless beaches (monochrome, mucus, on 
  fire) and have to make do with subsistence 
  farming and whatever they can get imported. 
  Some of these bubbles become sinister or 
  oppressive, but most just tend towards the 
  strange.
  Coastal Bubbles
  These bubbles may just be the most important 
  places left. Because the deeper parts of the 
  ocean are unaffected by the Twist, almost all 
  of them now house large-scale desalination 
  plants which supply water to the other 
  bubbles and, crucially, the trains. These days, 
  the water-producing bubbles are run more 
  or less collectively by the Hydro Operatives 
  Union, who set water costs, determine targets 
  and organise the infrastructure. The HOU has 
  its main offices in Grand Central.
  Rogue Stations
  Piracy in the Twist relies on matching a 
  train’s route to that of its quarry. This means 
  that railways schedules are a vital commodity 
  for any would-be marauder, but a raiding 
  locomotive also needs somewhere to depart 
  from. There are persistent rumours of rogue 
  stations: small bubbles completely ruled 
  by corrupt and murderous pirates, using 
  unattended or hidden tracks to time their 
  travels for the perfect attack. Even more 
  dangerous are those rogue stations that 
  steal the arrival tracks from more common 
  destinations, detouring unsuspecting crews 
  and ambushing them on arrival. Reaching a 
  rogue station without its occupants knowing  
  is difficult, as they are fiercely protective of 
  any rails that might lead there.
  The Stone Tree
  Despite the ever-changing nature of the Twist, 
  there are a few well-known landmarks that 
  inexplicably seem to remain consistent. One 
  of these is known as the Stone Tree. Only ever 
  glanced from a distance, it is said to have once 
  been a mountain that became the skeleton of 
  an oak, and never changed back. It is truly 
  colossal, and no train has ever gotten close 
  to it (at least none that reported back), but 
  it’s considered a bad omen to see it on the 
  horizon during a journey.
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  The sections from this point on contain 
  secrets, NPCs and campaign/adventure 
  information that are intended for the 
  GM’s eyes only. If you’re planning to 
  play through Twisted Rails in any other 
  role, do not read any further.
  Secrets
  The creation of the Twist was the result of a 
  failed experiment: an attempt to open a portal 
  between dimensions. But instead of opening 
  a hole in the walls of reality, they collapsed 
  entirely the moment the device was switched 
  on. The most extreme wave of the Twist ripped 
  through the lab and the surrounding city in an 
  instant. This undiscovered ruin is one of the 
  most beautiful and horrifying sights a Twist-
  rider could find. A stable bubble formed a 
  few moments after the wave spread, but it 
  was already too late for the city’s inhabitants. 
  The city and the lab still remain, silent 
  and undisturbed, waiting to be found by a 
  daring or lucky crew. The device that started 
  everything is still there, but it works slightly 
  differently in this new reality: it can be used 
  to deliberately create or collapse bubbles, and 
  its discovery could radically upset the balance 
  of power. The mini-campaign Working on 
  the Railroad deals with the the hunt for, and 
  discovery of, this hidden ruin and the power 
  that waits inside it.
  Everyone has their own theories about 
  exactly how bubbles are formed and why 
  they sometimes collapse. Like anything in the 
  Twist, hard rules are tricky, but there are a 
  few guidelines that hold broadly true. Out in 
  the Twist, small bubbles of a few dozen yards 
  across appear pretty regularly, but almost 
  all of them collapse again within a couple of 
  hours. Larger bubbles tend to be more stable, 
  and if one manages to last a day, it could last 
  indefinitely. Life and biodiversity act as a 
  stabilising factor, but more important is the 
  absence of rigid order. The Twist reflexively 
  reaches for hard angles, standardisation and 
  stagnation, and more than one bubble has 
  collapsed after a petty tyrant tried to impose 
  their will on its inhabitants. 
  This may be bad news for the Commonwealth, 
  as their aggressive expansion is only getting 
  started, and many in their government dream 
  of an actual empire.. What no-one in Coalshore 
  realises, however, is that, by the very act of 
  imposing their order on another bubble, they 
  weaken its defences against the Twist. Many 
  of the smaller bubbles they’ve conquered are 
  already starting to collapse as their beaches 
  - and the Twist itself - press inward. Unless, 
  that is, they could get their hands on a certain 
  device...
  Threats
  The Twist
  Things in the Twist change on a metaphysical 
  rather than molecular level. What matters 
  most to how something is affected is how it’s 
  conceptualised and defined, rather than how 
  it’s atomically constructed. What this means 
  for you as a GM is that you shouldn’t focus 
  too much on how things are changing, or on 
  the physical implications of any change, but 
  on how it appears or affects the players (the 
  Twist is more of a poet than a scientist).
  Weather
  Weather still occurs in the Twist, but it’s 
  usually only a particular threat in a Bad 
  Patch, where it can result in some of the 
  most immediately dangerous environments 
  in the whole Twist. Heavy rain becomes far 
  more lethal when the water is replaced by 
  thorns, wind becomes much more than an 
  inconvenience when it sets the air on fire, and 
  the less said about lightning the better.
  Pirates
  Because pirates will often end a raid by 
  arriving in a public station, most pirate trains 
  take great pains not to appear as such, and 
  will often take registration documents from 
  those they prey on, so they can pose as their 
  victims on arrival. Unless a pirate captain 
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  is very clever or meticulous, the majority of 
  their forays will not find a train to waylay, 
  and so pirate crews tend to spend far more 
  time in the Twist than others. They tend to 
  end up severely Twist-touched, leading many 
  to distrust even those honest travellers who 
  display obvious marks of their travels.
  Screamers
  The Twist, by its nature, creates life almost 
  as often as it ends it, and sometimes switches 
  something back and forth more than once. 
  “Neo-fauna”, as it’s officially know, tends 
  to be either things that should be inanimate 
  that have been changed into something living 
  (a boulder now made of crawling hands) or a 
  living creature that has been changed without 
  dying (a bear made of glass). On rare occasions 
  two sorts of creatures may have changed 
  together into something else entirely (an eagle 
  made of rainbow spiders). In most cases, Neo-
  fauna is not hostile, content to live whatever 
  weird existence it finds in the Twist, but 
  some things, whether due to some lingering 
  predator’s instinct or driven to fury by their 
  unnatural form, instead become incredibly 
  violent. These are known as “screamers” due 
  to the noises they tend to make, and are the 
  greatest fear of most train drivers. 
  The Commonwealth
  While the Commonwealth prides itself 
  on its “peaceful” expansion, many of its 
  representatives and soldiers don’t seem to 
  have got the message, throwing their weight 
  around and often treating the bubbles under 
  their control (which they refer to among 
  themselves as “the colonies”) as their own 
  private kingdoms. A few seem to genuinely 
  believe themselves to be helping the places 
  they’ve annexed, but most are drunk on 
  whatever power they have been given, and 
  can create real problems for any train crew 
  that doesn’t show them the proper respect.
  NPCs
  Moira Walsh - Merchant
  Moira used to ride the rails, and some people 
  even say she was once a pirate. Whatever the 
  truth, her days as a driver are long since over. 
  A horrendous patch of the Twist turned the 
  bones in her legs to magma and, while her 
  crew made adjustments for her wheelchair, 
  the event was the spur she needed to move on. 
  The Twist also stripped her hair of its gravity, 
  leaving it floating around her in odd, flitting 
  arcs. Since then, Moira has thrown herself 
  into a very successful trading career, and 
  always has her finger on the pulse of what’s 
  currently in demand and where it might be 
  found. She has a small stall in whichever 
  bubble the players visit most often, tended by 
  a constantly-changing string of partners.
  Constance Washington - Grand Central 
  Gardener
  The beach around Grand Central is full of 
  gorgeous, but very poisonous, flowers. Only 
  one person regularly goes there, and that’s 
  Constance. Through a combination of natural 
  resistance and careful study, Constance is 
  able to move through the beach safely, and 
  has turned the section of it behind her small 
  tea shop into a stunning botanical garden. 
  Constance is a trans woman whose hair now 
  sprouts colourful flowers (she’s always careful 
  to prune them before they become toxic), and 
  she runs the shop with her husband David. 
  The pair of them have a soft-spot for Twist-
  riders, and their tea shop is full of gossip.
  Mayor Dillon Creek - Blossom Grove
  Blossom Grove is a tiny bubble on the edge 
  of the network, with a population barely in 
  triple-figures. None of that is going to stop 
  Dillon Creek getting every ounce of respect 
  he believes he’s owed. A pompous, officious 
  man, Dillon takes an instant dislike to anyone 
  who ignores his title, and insists on personally 
  greeting arriving trains. The beach turns 
  everything into a foul-tasting but technically 
  edible black grain, and Mayor Dillon is sure 
  it’s a booming export waiting to happen.
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  Mags Wiremu - Coalshore Engineer
  Mags does not do politics. She’s not 
  interested in the comings and goings of the 
  Commonwealth, she just wants to work on 
  trains, and nowhere has the resources to do it 
  like Coalshore. She’s a competent engineer but 
  an amazing inventor, and it’s rare that she’ll 
  repair a train without throwing in “a little bit 
  extra”. Currently she’s working on the idea of 
  moss as a protective coating for locomotives 
  (it’s living tissue, after all), but she’s having 
  trouble with the heat the engines reach. Mags 
  purposely ignores the oppressions of the 
  Commonwealth but if directly confronted 
  about it, could be talked round to abandoning 
  them.
  Abdan Baqri - Blueport Station Master
  Abdan is a member in good standing of the 
  HOU and is in charge of the station for the 
  coastal bubble of Blueport, usually water 
  exports. He is a towering presence who is 
  happy to loom over anyone he perceives 
  as making trouble in his station. While he 
  accepts that the trains keep the world alive at 
  the moment, he does not like them, reasoning 
  that, by putting steam and water out into the 
  Twist, it’s lost forever, and will talk at length 
  at the dangers of losing water from a closed 
  system. Everyone assumes there’s plenty of 
  ocean but, as far as Abdan is concerned there’s 
  no actual evidence of that, and desalination is 
  a far more costly process than people realise.
  Mini-Campaign
  Working on the Railroad
  These adventures cover the hunt for the 
  lost city at the heart of the Twist. [If playing 
  adventure one, it should be the first adventure 
  of the campaign, as it begins them with a 
  captain who quickly dies.] Adventures two 
  to four deal with the hunt itself, which we 
  recommend breaking into three parts, though 
  this can be extended with adventure seeds or 
  condensed into fewer sessions as best fits the 
  group and the timeframe. As long as the crew 
  somehow finds their way to the lost bubble 
  and have made enemies of at least one rival 
  crew, adventure five should work just fine.
  Adventure One
  The Green Man
  The crew have been hired to transport freight 
  cars of food from the bubble of Orchard to 
  Coalshore. They begin under the command of 
  Captain Lila Myles, a capable but impulsive 
  woman who always has as much soot on her 
  hands as her crew do on theirs.
  Orchard itself is a fairly well-off  bubble that’s 
  now under Commonwealth “protection”, and 
  is named for its beach of trees that can produce 
  multiple types of fruit on the same branch. 
  Inside the bubble, they’ve further protected 
  themselves from the Twist by carving creeping 
  vines and branches into an irregular pattern 
  covering most of their buildings.
  The pick-up from Orchard goes fine, but 
  on the return journey anyone watching the 
  smokestack trail will quickly notice trouble 
  approaching. The tips of the spikes over the 
  engine start to flicker and writhe and the 
  smoke trail begins to crystallise and fall in 
  small, clear shards of ice. Something around 
  the train starts emitting a low, imposing wail. 
  The bad patch hits before the crew have much 
  chance to prepare. The wail gets louder and it 
  becomes clear that the noise is coming from 
  the walls of the train itself. The longer the 
  bad patch lasts, the louder the noise becomes, 
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  and the walls eventually begin to pulsate 
  softly. The wailing and the moving walls will 
  make it very difficult for the crew to focus on 
  whatever actions they’re taking and may even 
  cause them harm.
  Captain Myles orders the crew to increase 
  speed to get through the bad patch quickly, 
  doing all she can to keep the train moving and 
  the crew as safe as possible. The air in both the 
  living quarters and the engine room becomes 
  exceptionally cold, making it a challenge to 
  keep the furnace burning high enough. The 
  crew may notice the captain’s fingers, hair 
  and skin begin to show signs of frosting, with 
  patches turning to ice. As the crew comes to 
  the end of the bad patch, observant characters 
  may spot a small bubble on the track ahead. 
  The Captain will order them to stop once they 
  reach it so the crew can regroup.
  The bubble they find is newly formed and not 
  entirely stable, but for now it offers safe haven 
  and a place to recuperate. The grass on the 
  ground may be pink, and the trees have grown 
  their roots above the ground rather than their 
  branches, but the environment isn’t actively 
  hostile. There’s space for the crew to sit 
  outdoors while the train thaws and the effects 
  of the Twist on the crew slowly begin to fade.
  Captain Myles is not so lucky. Some vital part 
  of her has turned completely and irreversibly 
  to ice and, whatever they do, the crew cannot 
  get her to a survivable temperature. She dies 
  within a few hours of making it to the bubble.
  At some point during their recuperation, the 
  crew realises they’re not alone. A heavily 
  Twist-touched man watches them from 
  nearby tree. He has forest vines where his 
  hair once was, his skin is apple-green and his 
  eyes are the shifting hue of a reed-filled river. 
  He introduces himself as Maurice Evergreen, 
  and doesn’t seem to see the joke. His voice, 
  though perfectly audible, sounds as though 
  he’s speaking underwater. He’s very excited 
  to see other people and, assuming they’re 
  not explicitly hostile, quickly gets to talking. 
  He says he was the navigator of a wrecked 
  exploration train, and has been wandering 
  the twist as its sole survivor for somewhere 
  between one and ten years. Maurice credits 
  his survival to an undiscovered bubble he 
  found filled with infrastructure and old-world 
  tech. The place was entirely abandoned, save 
  for the thousands of skeletons that litter the 
  buildings and streets, and eventually Maurice 
  decided he’d rather risk the Twist than stay 
  any longer in the city of the dead. He’s been 
  staggering from bubble to bubble for some 
  time, desperately trying to find somewhere on 
  the network, and is incredibly happy to meet 
  the crew. Maurice can be hard to understand 
  and is clearly not used to human company, 
  but he’s earnest and friendly and begs the 
  crew to take him with them to Coalshore.
  Unfortunately, their troubles aren’t over 
  yet, and Maurice isn’t their only company. 
  Shortly after meeting him they’re attacked 
  by a screamer: a shark that both breathes 
  and swims through air. Its experience of time 
  is erratic: sometimes it moves like mud and 
  sometimes it strikes before they can blink. 
  When cut it bleeds a blinding light. If Maurice 
  is badly injured by the shark, or if the crew at 
  any point attacks him, he runs screaming into 
  the Twist. If they refuse to give him a ride, he 
  tries to sneak onto a freight car in the chaos.
  Once the shark is dealt with, the rest of the 
  journey to Coalshore passes smoothly. If 
  Maurice is with them, he’s clearly delighted 
  to be returned to human society, disappearing 
  soon after they arrive. It soon becomes clear, 
  however, almost all of the food in their cargo 
  has been ruined by ice. This wouldn’t be a 
  problem if the crew’s insurance was up to 
  date, but a quick trip to the company’s offices 
  reveals their policy was due for renewal a 
  month ago and it look like Captain Myles 
  hadn’t got round to it. Not only are the crew 
  and their train in real need of rest and repair, 
  they’re now out of pocket for a full delivery 
  of food, leaving them in a pretty desperate 
  situation. 
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  Intermission
  On the Right Track
  The rest of the campaign covers the hunt for 
  the lost city. If the crew are not inclined to 
  chase it up on their own, they may be hired 
  by Moira Walsh [see NPCs], who smells profit. 
  They’ll find getting other decent work tricky, 
  as their recent misfortunes have dealt a blow 
  to their reputation. Any jobs they get are 
  low-paid and shady, barely covering their 
  expenses. They also begin to hear other crews 
  gossiping about a potentially stable bubble 
  full of valuable old tech - it seems Maurice 
  has been running his mouth. If they do get 
  more lucrative jobs, it’s because (as clients 
  will complain) many of the more reliable 
  crews are heading off on “some nonsense 
  treasure hunt.”
  If the crew are on good terms with Maurice, 
  he’ll soon make contact. He’s no less Twist-
  touched than before, but does seem much 
  fresher. Several crews have asked for his help 
  in searching for the lost bubble and, out of 
  gratitude, he wants to offer his services to the 
  players first. He doesn’t ask for any reward 
  beyond being accepted as part of the crew, 
  and a share in any loot that they find.
  In his former life, Maurice was a navigator on 
  the rails and, while finding your way through 
  the Twist is far from an exact science, he recalls 
  three landmarks he passed in the days after 
  leaving the bubble: a meadow that moved in 
  waves like the sea, where shadows stretched 
  from the ground to the sky; a large, Hanging 
  Moon that could only be seen from one side 
  and emitted a magnetic shade of purple; and 
  the Stone Tree itself, a skeletal oak the size 
  and hue of a mountain. If they can locate all 
  three and take a few measurements from each, 
  a decent navigator could calculate which 
  bubbles would need to be connected for the 
  route to pass through the lost city. Maurice 
  has not been in any way secretive about this 
  information, and if he’s working with another 
  train, the crew can still find out about the 
  landmarks through gossip and rumour.
   If Maurice is with them, he suggests stocking 
  up on some pre-forged pairs of rail lines so 
  they can lay new direct routes as they go. New 
  rail lines are generally seen a good thing, and 
  they should easily be able to obtain a license 
  to do so from any town large enough to have 
  a rail office. 
  However the crew prepare for the trip, the 
  NPCs they interact with will mention that 
  they’ve had several other crews making the 
  same enquiries or after the same equipment. 
  There will be three rival crews that are also 
  searching for the lost bubble. Depending on 
  how your campaign runs, any one of them 
  may become the main antagonists for your 
  player characters.
  The Bold Spirit: Captained by Jenna Hart, The 
  Bold Spirit is a light but deceptively dangerous 
  train, with long alloy spikes that are strong 
  enough to use as weapons in a pinch. Captain 
  Hart and her crew are motivated by one thing: 
  profit. They’re daring, but not foolhardy, 
  and are always willing to take calculated 
  risks. Captain Hart herself is an energetic 
  and charismatic leader and she’s rarely seen 
  without her imposing engineer and second-
  in-command, Sang.
  Liberty: Captain Zheng Min and his crew 
  present themselves as explorers and, while 
  that’s not strictly untrue, their primary 
  income source is piracy. Captain Zheng is 
  careful to allow his crew plenty of time to 
  recover between trips so they don’t have the 
  Twist-touched look that many associate with 
  pirates. Liberty is an exceptionally fast train 
  with heavy guns and sprayers. Captain Zheng 
  and his crew will usually try to crater an enemy 
  train but they’re also skilled freighthoppers 
  when looking for loot. Captain Zheng is 
  fiercely loyal to his crew and particularly 
  protective of Uri, a teenage orphan from the 
  coastal bubble of Blueport, and the youngest 
  of his crew.
  Progress: All of this crew, led by Captain Johann 
  Watts, are citizens of the Commonwealth 
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  and are firm believers in its expansion. The 
  Progress itself is huge - almost double the size 
  of the player’s train - and heavily armoured. 
  It isn’t as fast as the other engines but there’s 
  little it can’t push through. Watts is supported 
  directly by the Commonwealth, and if Maurice 
  is not with the players, he signs up with the 
  Progress.
  Adventure Two 
  The Hanging Moon
  Asking around Coalshore or Grand Central 
  about the landmarks yields limited results. 
  Everyone knows the Stone Tree, but it’s 
  only ever glanced in the far distance and no-
  one wants to actually find it. The best lead 
  the crew can find is that a few Twist-riders 
  have seen the Meadow Sea from afar on the 
  route between Orchard and Sandblow, a small 
  bubble named for its subtly shifting desert 
  beach. 
  The journey to Orchard can be as smooth or 
  difficult as you like, and the bubble remains 
  unchanged from adventure one. The time 
  spent changing tracks towards Sandblow is 
  a perfect point to introduce The Bold Spirit 
  as rivals. The crew may or may not glimpse 
  the Meadow Sea in the distance after leaving 
  Orchard.
  The beach that gives Sandblow its name looks 
  almost like a normal sandy beach, except that 
  it shifts to form constantly changing figures 
  in the wind. If the winds are bad, some of the 
  sand may interfere with the train, clogging 
  mechanisms and slowing them down until it 
  can be cleaned. The town itself is small and 
  irregular. Disparate cottages jostle for space 
  beyond the end of the rail lines. There’s limited 
  space in the station so crews will have to take 
  their trains to the sheds beyond. Whether or 
  not the crew glimpsed the Meadow Sea on the 
  way, they’re unable to see anything from the 
  station itself. They’re greeted by the station 
  master, Armond, a gruff but fair man with an 
  impressive moustache. He’s very protective of 
  the town and will keep a close eye on anyone 
  who gives him reason to be suspicious.
  Asking around the town, most people are 
  aware of the Meadow Sea, though they have 
  no idea how to actually reach it. None of them 
  know anything about a sphere, but if anyone 
  mentions a purple glow or magnetism, any of 
  the residents of Sandblow can help. Standing 
  at the boundary between the town and the 
  beach, in precisely the opposite corner of 
  town from the station, the crew can see a 
  large hanging stone circle emitting a faint 
  purple glow. From this angle it’s not obvious 
  it’s a sphere, but if Maurice is with them he 
  can confirm that’s it. 
  Seeing it is one thing, reaching it is quite 
  another. The changing nature of the Twist 
  means that passing near a landmark is never 
  guaranteed and apparent proximity means 
  very little. Experienced Twist-riders might be 
  familiar with the idea of a wayfinder - a sort 
  of sympathetic homing device that helps bend 
  the course of the tracks towards a specific 
  place. In the case of the Hanging Moon, 
  any standard compass will point towards 
  it, changing the course of any track leaving 
  Sandblow to pass directly below it. If the train 
  stops there, Maurice (or any other navigator) 
  can take the measurements they need. As they 
  are looking directly underneath it, it’s clearly 
  three-dimensional and has a rough stone 
  surface. From any other direction, it is a faint 
  purple glow that grows and wavers in exact 
  rhythm with a magnetic field.
  The difficulty is in finding a compass, 
  something that the Twist has rendered entirely 
  useless over the last thirty years. Armond has 
  one, but whether he’s willing to hand it over 
  depends on how good an impression the crew 
  have made. This is a good opportunity to run 
  any of the Adventure Seeds for Sandblow.
  During their enquiries, the player characters 
  will come across the crew of Progress. Hearing 
  they’ve come in from Orchard, the Progress 
  crew will assume that the player characters 
  are also from the Commonwealth and discuss 
  things with them openly. Although they say 
  they’re here to open new trade routes, the 
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  Progress is actually in Sandblow to put pressure 
  on the town to join the Commonwealth, 
  something the residents of Sandblow have 
  so far resisted, not allowing them to lay the 
  other half of a route to Coalshore. Openly 
  resisting the Progress crew is a good way to 
  get the residents to trust the crew, however, it 
  will lead to the Progress following them when 
  they leave and confronting them below the 
  sphere, possibly violently.
  If they’ve won him over, Armond may also 
  suggest searching for the Meadow Sea in 
  Drywater, which used to be due south of 
  Sandblow, “when there was such a thing as 
  south.” Alternatively, the crew might see 
  the Liberty steam through Sandblow, clearly 
  heading towards Drywater with a clear 
  purpose.
  If the crew don’t learn about Drywater 
  immediately, they might begin checking 
  other the other rail lines out from Sandblow 
  (Redbeach, Windmoor and Burrow) or 
  encounter other Adventure Seeds. Captain 
  Hart and the Progress will be travelling back 
  to Coalshore whether or not they were able 
  to lay a direct route and will be attempting 
  to figure things out from there. Whenever 
  you’re ready to move the campaign on, the 
  next new route they travel brings them across 
  the Meadow Sea and on to Drywater.
  Adventure Three
  The Meadow Sea
  Drywater was once a large port city that 
  sprawled from the ocean to the hills miles 
  inland. When the Twist first hit, the bubble 
  that was created around Drywater didn’t 
  match the boundaries of the city. The coastal 
  districts and the bay are now safe inside the 
  bubble, while the outer areas of the former 
  city were lost. The beach around Drywater 
  resembles a swamp with unmoving water, 
  that can be walked and built on in safety - 
  as long as you don’t mind your bricks and 
  mortar slowly turning into ferns and rushes. 
  The residents of Drywater spend more time 
  at their beach than other towns and this has 
  led to rumours among neighbouring towns 
  that Drywater folk are a little more ‘Twist-
  touched’ than most.
  Drywater is a member of the Hydro Operatives 
  Union and is well-linked to other coastal 
  towns but has few routes inland. Apart from 
  Sandblow, the only other inland bubble it’s 
  linked to is Grand Central. Its residents are 
  loyal to each other and to the union, but 
  tend to be wary of inlanders, who they often 
  suspect are trying to fleece them. As Captain 
  Zheng, Uri and the rest of the Liberty crew are 
  from coastal bubbles themselves, they have 
  a natural advantage in Drywater - as long as 
  nobody realises they’re pirates!
  The Meadow Sea is well known to  local Twist-
  riders. It’s rare not to pass near the area on 
  the way to the coastal bubble of Archarbour. 
  The rails near Archarbour are known to be 
  particular dangerous and the crew might 
  also hear rumours that many Twist-riders 
  travelling to or from Archarbour have been 
  known to get a bit too close to the Stone Tree.
  The wayfinder that will lead them to the 
  Meadow Sea is a jar of saltwater, which will 
  gradually tilt toward the tide of the Meadow 
  Sea and take the tracks with it. It’s common 
  knowledge within the town, and Twist-riders 
  from Drywater often head out there to relax. 
  The difficulty is in getting the residents 
  comfortable enough to share. Completing any 
  of the Adventure Seeds for Drywater should 
  be enough to manage it.
  With the saltwater jar, they pass through the 
  Meadow Sea on their next journey. It is a 
  beautiful garden of rolling waves and shadows 
  that move like shifting pillars connecting the 
  ground to the sky. It’s significantly larger 
  than might be expected, however, and takes 
  a while to leave once the measurements have 
  been taken. It’s a great spot for the crew to 
  find themselves in a bad patch of the Twist, 
  facing a screamer or attacked by pirates (such 
  as the Liberty). They might fight alongside 
  the rival crews or against them. At the edge 
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  they can find a stable bubble where they 
  can rest. It’s too small for anyone to call it 
  home, but passing Twist-riders have left their 
  mark. There’s a hut with some basic beds and 
  cooking facilities, a small garden with a sign 
  saying “tend me” and even a small bookshelf.
  The crew’s next stop on the trail is Archarbour, 
  and any inquiries about the Stone Tree 
  eventually point them in that direction. Some 
  say on a bad day you can even see it from 
  inside the bubble.
  Adventure Four
  The Stone Tree
  The journey from Drywater to Archarbour is 
  a long one and the crew should be prepared 
  to spend days on the rails. To reach the 
  bubble itself, the train must ride through the 
  dangerous beach of crackling electricity. Most 
  trains are at least partially insulated but any 
  electrical equipment they bring with them 
  might end up fried.
  Being part of the HOU, Archarbour shares 
  similarities 
  to 
  Drywater 
  in 
  terms 
  of 
  infrastructure, industry and attitude, but 
  its aesthetics and social structure are very 
  different. The residents have learned to live 
  with and take advantage of their beach, and 
  it also gives them a certain amount of safety. 
  Their distance from the Commonwealth 
  also means they’re relatively free from its 
  influence. The buildings in Archarbour are 
  industrial, labyrinthine and intertwined with 
  each other like a metal ecosystem. The station 
  is connected to Archarbour’s unusual electric 
  tram network, which connects every part of 
  the small city. 
  The residents of the bubble are perfectly 
  comfortable talking about the Stone Tree but 
  they don’t recommend trying to go there, 
  and some don’t believe it possible. At some 
  point (perhaps after one of the Archarbour 
  Adventure Seeds), their enquiries will 
  attract the attention of Elspeth Mayflower. 
  Elspeth works as an engineer in the station, 
  but has been cultivating a growing obsession 
  with the Stone Tree. And she thinks she 
  has a way to reach it: you follow the roots. 
  “Like a normal tree drinks water, the roots 
  of the stone tree drink blood. Blood is your 
  wayfinder.” If the train stops once every hour 
  or so, and a different person spills their blood 
  on the ground, Elspeth believes the tracks 
  will eventually lead past the Stone Tree. She’s 
  right.
  Riding up to the tree, it looks like a vast, 
  petrified trunk and branches, stretching to 
  the size of an inverted mountain. As the crew 
  get close, however, they see it’s actually made 
  of scarred bone, which creaks as it slowly 
  shifts and grows. Almost as soon as a crew 
  stops there, they can see the ground move as 
  roots shift and push to the surface. As they 
  rise, they gradually form into figures until 
  the crew are confronted with Twist-touched 
  future versions of themselves. The alternate 
  crew will attempt to overpower the player 
  characters and take the train. Depending on 
  how your campaign has gone so far, one of 
  the rival crews may already have spoken to 
  Elspeth and be fighting their own alternates, 
  or they might arrive part way through the 
  player characters’ fight.
  If your crew manage to defeat their alternate 
  versions, it’s a simple enough matter to take 
  the necessary measurements. If the crew has 
  been to all three of the landmarks, Maurice (or 
  another navigator) can make the calculations 
  necessary to determine that laying a direct 
  route between Grand Central and the tiny 
  settlement of Blossom Grove, right on the 
  edge of the network, should lead to a route 
  that passes right through the lost city.
  Adventure Five
  The Lost City
  The finale of your campaign starts when the 
  crew travel to the lost city. Laying the track out 
  from Blossom Grove is a simple matter, with 
  the mayor practically falling over himself to 
  have the bubble connected to Grand Central. 
  Depending on how the hunt played out, 
  however, they may find the track already laid 
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  and the crews of The Bold Spirit, the Liberty 
  or the Progress already there. As soon as any 
  crew lays the track, the bubble can be reached 
  from Grand Central and it’s effectively open 
  season, and all remaining crews will attempt 
  to retain control of the city while they search 
  for valuables.
  If the players are the first to arrive, they 
  find the city as dead as Maurice described 
  it, and more horrifying. The beach they 
  must travel through is full of misshapen and 
  disproportionate bones fused into the smooth 
  glass ground. The effect is reminiscent of the 
  Stone Tree, which looms nearby, as though 
  skeletal plants were emerging from a still, 
  dark sea. Entering the bubble itself is no 
  better. Most streets or buildings the crew 
  see are littered with warped human remains, 
  though the vast majority of them are so 
  twisted it takes a while to realise they were 
  once people. Some skeletons are charred, 
  others have turned to stone, a few are softly 
  singing. Not one of the deaths was peaceful.
  But while the effects of the Twist were intense, 
  the changes have been stable for 30 years and 
  the life that survived has been flourishing. The 
  ruins are covered in technicolour plants and 
  small, strange animals the size of insects that 
  flit and crawl over everything. Many of the 
  buildings are still intact but changed in some 
  way. The crew might find halls made entirely 
  of swirling, coloured wax or old homes with 
  their rooms open to the outside world and 
  their exteriors on the inside. After spending a 
  few moments in one place, they might emerge 
  to sudden nightfall, or they might stay in a 
  particularly beautiful park until sunset only 
  to find the sun is still high when they leave. 
  If another crew have arrived and had time to 
  establish themselves in the bubble, the player 
  characters will be facing a struggle as they 
  search the ruins. The crew of Progress will 
  use any surrounding rubble - and even the 
  twisted skeletons themselves - to block off 
  important routes while they work inwards, 
  and will lay traps to create a deadly maze for 
  the player characters to navigate. Zheng and 
  Hart are more direct, and Liberty and The Bold 
  Spirit prefer to take the high ground and stay 
  hidden as they pick off intruders from range. 
  If the crew puts up a good fight, Capt. Hart 
  may even offer to split the loot, though not 
  on great terms. 
  Near the heart of the bubble the crew finds 
  an area that looks almost unaffected by the 
  Twist. It’s a high-end corporate lab, though 
  whether they recognise it as such is up to you. 
  Give them a few moments to wander the glass 
  halls and offices at the front of the building. 
  By the time they reach the labs themselves, 
  at least one of the other crews has caught up.
  While the city so far has been full of valuable 
  tech, the real prize is in the main lab, sitting at 
  the very centre of the bubble. The edges of the 
  room are dark. All the light in the room has 
  been pulled towards the device that launched 
  the Twist. It appears to be a heavy polymer 
  box, smaller than a microwave, covered in 
  readouts, dials and one large green button. 
  Pieces of the floor and ceiling are irregularly 
  suspended in a broken column around it, 
  resting on each colour of the spectrum. 
  Standing within the column feels as though 
  you are standing in darkness, looking out 
  at the light wallowing in the corners of the 
  room. Two voices echo from the darkness 
  beside you, repeating over and over:
  “-eady for a new world?”
  “I’m ready for all of th-”
  The device has the power to create and 
  collapse bubbles at the push of a button, 
  though it takes a while to charge up between 
  uses, with the dials being able to adjust the 
  strength of the effect and thus the size of 
  the bubble. This is not immediately clear on 
  viewing it, though there are notes, lab reports 
  and other clues that can reveal something of 
  its origins and the lab’s efforts to reach other 
  dimensions. They won’t have much time to 
  investigate however, before one or more of the 
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  rival crews arrives for the final confrontation. 
  Each crew present will try to take the device 
  for the themselves and, in the ensuing fight, 
  someone in a desperate position will turn the 
  device on. 
  As soon as the button is pressed, the bubble 
  collapses, plunging the characters into the 
  worst of the Twist. Space distorts painfully 
  and characters must walk or run for a great 
  distance before they can press the button 
  again, as razor-sharp colours fly around them. 
  When they do, the bubble is immediately re-
  established, though the conflict continues. If 
  any of the other crews are able to secure the 
  device, they immediately try to flee with it.
  If the crew of Liberty manage to escape with 
  it it, they rapidly become the most feared 
  pirate crew in the Twist. They stop taking 
  any measures to appear as legitimate, instead 
  openly threatening to collapse bubbles unless 
  the inhabitants pay their exorbitant ransoms. 
  They’re also the only crew that immediately 
  betray the player characters if they’ve formed 
  an alliance before this point. 
  If The Bold Spirit crew have the device, they 
  use it to create new bubbles, which they then 
  sell on to communities or people that want 
  to live there. Before long, it becomes clear 
  that the creation of too many new bubbles 
  close together is compromising the stability 
  of some neighboring ones. The end result is 
  that The Bold Spirit crew continue to create 
  a small number of bubbles for the highest 
  bidder. This benefits both the Commonwealth 
  and the HOU, but massively distorts the 
  power structure in the network, with many 
  new bubbles being ruled by petty tyrants and 
  oligarchs. Capt. Hart is happy to work with 
  the player characters, as long as they go along 
  with her decisions. If they oppose her, she’ll 
  turn on them.
  If Capt. Watts and the Progress crew can take 
  control of the device, they immediately take 
  it to Coalshore, where they sell it on to the 
  Commonwealth council. The Commonwealth 
  will first use the threat of collapse on the 
  Hydro Operatives Union to coerce them into 
  joining the Commonwealth and will then 
  begin using the same tactic on any any other 
  bubbles they don’t already control. If the 
  player characters have allied with Captain 
  Watts during the campaign, he assumes they’ll 
  be happy to work under him to advance the 
  Commonwealth, and will ditch them the 
  moment they push back.
  If the player character themselves manage 
  to take the device, they can choose what 
  they want to do with it. It’s fairly sturdy but 
  can be destroyed with reasonable force and 
  functions like any other electrical item (it 
  requires some form of power to work - when 
  the players find it, is has a battery and a solar 
  power generator, but its electricity is also very 
  volatile in the Twist). If they take any of the 
  same courses of action described above, the 
  consequences are the same as if a rival crew 
  took them. If they choose to keep the device 
  for their own use, they quickly become some 
  of the most powerful - and the most hunted - 
  people in the Twist.
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  Adventure Seeds
  Dead or Alive
  An extremely lucrative bounty is put on the 
  head of notorious train pirate Lucius Blane, 
  and a daring but impetuous bounty hunter 
  wants to hire the crew to help her hunt Blane 
  down. Whether or not this is a trap is entirely 
  up to you.
  Destination Unknown
  A network audit at Grand Central has 
  unearthed what appears to be an active track 
  that they have absolutely no record of. The 
  station-masters have done some experiments, 
  and it definitely seems to connect to another 
  track somewhere, but they have no idea 
  where. Now, they’re looking for a brave crew 
  to ride the line and see where it leads.
  Smoke ‘Em
  While moving through a bad patch of Twist on 
  a standard delivery, the coal in the train’s fuel 
  hopper begins to violently animate, forming 
  into a murderous multi-limbed screamer. The 
  crew must fight for their lives and, depending 
  on how they defeat it, may find themselves 
  out of fuel and stranded in the Twist.
  Please Mind the Doors
  The small bubble of Razorbrook has recently 
  begun to destabilise, and trains are being called 
  in from all over to evacuate the settlement 
  before it collapses. The crew are one of the 
  last trains to arrive, and the evacuation is 
  complicated by the sheer number of townsfolk 
  remaining and the rapid encoachement of the 
  razor-sharp metal beach for which the town 
  is named.
  An Inspector Calls
  The authorities at Grand Central have assigned 
  a rail inspector to check up on the crew. The 
  inspector is an unassuming individual in a 
  black suit who calls themself Baxter, and the 
  next adventure is undertaken to a backdrop 
  of raised eyebrows, stopwatches and small 
  notes jotted in an immaculate journal. 
  The Wanderer
  While a full day away from any nearby bubble, 
  the crew spy a person walking through the 
  Twist nearby, to all appearances completely 
  unaffected! The stranger is named John 
  Melmoth and, if able, requests a lift to the 
  next town. As far as anyone can determine 
  he is utterly immune to the Twist, and if 
  the Commonwealth discover this they will 
  attempt to seize him for experimentation.
  Roses are Rivers, Violets are Blood
  Constance Washington wants to experiment 
  with adding more varieties of Twist-touched 
  flowers to her garden and is willing to pay 
  very handsomely for any strange interesting 
  vegetation the crew might find.
  State of the Union
  A dozen hydro workers book passage from 
  Coalshore to the nearby coastal bubble of 
  Saltwick. On the journey, however, it becomes 
  apparent they are actually Commonwealth 
  agents planning to agitate against the HOU as 
  a vanguard for an attempt to make Saltwick 
  a colony of the Commonwealth. If the crew 
  want to get involved, things get real political.
  From Hell’s Heart I Stab at Thee
  For years there have been rumours and 
  sightings of the Ashmodai - a serpent the size 
  of a train who bristles with searching quills 
  and swims through the twist as though it were 
  water, dragging silence in its wake. After a 
  close encounter it marks the crew, and begins 
  to attack them every few sessions, causing 
  heavy damage and losses (maybe even taking 
  a leg…) until after one fight it leaves behind 
  a quill the size and shape of a rail... Whether 
  the crew wish to hunt it to the end is up to 
  them, but it’s incredibly dangerous, as the 
  silence the surrounds the Ashmodai means 
  characters may not verbally communicate 
  during any such battle.
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  Sandblow Adventure Seeds
  Fueling Demand
  Local Twist-riders need coal but Coalshore 
  merchants are putting the price up ludicrously 
  high and the Progress crew are blocking their 
  attempts to find it elsewhere. Anyone able to 
  supply the town would be very popular.
  Recommended Dose
  The local hospital is running out of a certain 
  medicine. They usually get it from the 
  Commonwealth but one of the medics, Rose, 
  believes that a flower growing in a relatively 
  stable patch of the Twist nearby might allow 
  her to make her own.
  Poetic Justice
  Armond and his best friend Len have had 
  a fight after Armond called Len’s poetry 
  “shallow”. Armond wants to make amends. 
  Drywater Adventure Seeds
  Spoiled Ballot
  The head of the council, Elena Christova, 
  is running for re-election and is worried 
  her campaign is being sabotaged by outside 
  influence. If the player characters investigate, 
  they find her rival, Franklin Henderson, has 
  hired the crew of Liberty to interfere, in 
  exchange for information to help them on 
  their hunt.
  Random Encounter
  Many of the local Twist-riders have been being 
  attacked by a particularly vicious screamer: 
  a huge, a crawling cactus made of bats with 
  claws that can tear through metal.
  Boiling Over
  One of Drywater’s longest-running eateries, 
  the Florid Inn, has run into trouble after their 
  star chef, Blake, quit in a rage. The owner, 
  Jason, is desperate to get Blake back - or find 
  another way to stay afloat!
  Archarbour Adventure Seeds
  Shocking Developments
  Like all HOU bubbles, any pre-Twist tech has 
  to be offered to the Union for first refusal. This 
  has led to a large black market for pre-Twist 
  tech in Archarbour, which The Bold Spirit crew 
  try to exploit for money and information to 
  help their hunt, selling unlicensed tech that 
  could short out the whole grid.
  The Twist Macabre
  The crew are hired to try and find The Errant 
  Wind, a water-train that appears to have gone 
  missing between Blueport and Grand Central, 
  and retrieve some vital documentation the 
  the Captain possessed. The Errant Wind was 
  cratered by pirates and, though easy to find, 
  the corpses of the crew have been changed 
  into aggressive screamers.
  Ready to Rumble
  There’s a big night of HOU wrestling league 
  matches between the Archarbour Chargers 
  and the Drywater Gators. As the crew have 
  just come in from Drywater, the Charger 
  coach assumes they’re attached to the Gators 
  and either accuses them of sabotaging the 
  Archarbour team or tries to hit them up for 
  inside information.
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SOURCE: textdata/thevault/ Any (Any System ; Generic)/Twisted Rails.pdf