CHURN

Latching onto a meteor shower, hundreds of Churns rain down into the earth's oceans and slowly burrow into the sand only to erupt on land a decade later. The Churns are living nano replicators that have wiped out the human race except for a few people on ocean liners and oil rigs.

Humans blame the nanobots that escaped Tun Technology white rooms but Churns are not man made. They are alien technology.

Each Churn has a 'seed' that determines its pattern and it grinds up the earth and recreates this pattern over and over. The Churn's obsession can be a fractal, based on human architecture, or something as random as a dog's head. Throwing thin ropes across water, the Churn spreads from continent to continent, covering territories so vast they begin to merge into a super continent. The only place safe from them (for now) is the deep ocean.

That is why there are a few ocean liners filled with the descendants of human survivors but most live on the ropes that cross bodies of water. Hence the nickname "Bridge People"

CHURN WARS When one churn meets another, the winning churn ends up grinding up the losing churn and eventually gobbling up whatever that churn has created so far. There are also times when one Churn simply infects another Churn with their 'seed'. Some Churns simply weaken and die of their own accord.

CAPTURED CHURNS

Puffies

Paper People, aka Puffies, are both fragile and tough. They can be destroyed by rain and catch fire and serve as staff and slaves of the Makers. Makers create them by chewing a paper pulp that they imbue with their nanobots. Phoenixes cannot create a new Puffy until they are at least a couple of centuries old.

Mansickler's Brood

These are special puffies built by Mansickler the Betrayer : the only Maker who has stood on the side of the Puffies. He was killed at the Maker Faire.

Makers live in underground fortresses and are fiercely territorial and solitary. They only meet once a year at the Maker Faire to show off and trade prized Puffies.

Puffy Pets

Because of their weak eyes, Puffies wear large glasses or cover their eyes with translucent Churn. Like walkie talkies, pets of the same species can communicate with one another so Puffies that have the same pet can be said to be able to talk to one another across distances.

Neural Rabbids

Every maker house has Neural Rabbids but they serve as a neural network or telephone between the Houses.It is not clear if they are a rare species of Puffies created by an extinct Maker or a species of Churn Creatures. While they relay messages between Maker Houses, they also talk amongst themselves unceasingly in their own coded language.

They're quite mysterious and rather large (twice the size of a Puffy)

PUFFY POLITICAL FACTIONS

Fighters of the Liberation Front these do gooders and adventurers want to help the escape of all Puffies from Maker Territory to the new colony called Starfish. They've set up the Underground Railroad and often go to the Maker Faire to infilterate other Maker Houses.

Humanist Crackers Just as lava engulfs everything in its wake, Churn can sometimes seal off certain objects in bubbles called 'hard rooms'. Entrepreneurial Puffies called "claw crackers" search for hard rooms and crack them open. Particular prizes are human fabric and Puffies are particularly obsessed with human slippers and children's clothes and jewelry as most the clothes are made for human proportions. Others gather old machines and try to fix them. The Humanists are often derisively called "human lovers" and some even consider contacting the humans who live on the Churn Bridges to form an alliance.

Historians These Puffies want to discover the true history of the Churn and how Makers arrived on Earth. Knowing how the Makers arrived and how they were created could be the key in possibly making a Maker of their own. As they piece together information brought from escapee Puffies, the historians share their knowledge with the other groups.

Builders The puffies that were saved by Mansickler were waterproofed and sent by Mansickler to a safe haven under the sea called Starfish. The Starfish puffies focused on building a new society.

Resurrectors These puffies feel that finding Mansickler's Phoenix is important for the long standing benefit of Puffies and that the key to finding the Phoenix lies in rescuing the Mansickler's original Brood who were 'traded' and then iced by other Makers. Others feel like Mansickler's Phoenix could pose a danger as it has none of Mansickler's memories.

WHERE DO I READ THE WHOLE STORY?

Story snippets will be published each day in the twitter and various story lines from each group can also be added to the Churn wiki.

OH Yeah, Humans.

A hundred years later, most of the Churn has hardened but humans are fearful of eruptions and choose to inhabit the 'bridges' between land formations.

Once they arrived in the underground home already prepared for them by Mansickler, there are two factions. Mansickler had partially finished instructions for how to allow puffies to heal themselves and be independant of Makers forever. Others want to find Mansickler's Phoenix as he will be the only one to create new Puffies.

The first is called the Free Puffy Front and they are mostly scientists that continue their work based on Mansickler's notes. The second go back out into the world to find Mansickler's phoenix. They also 'liberate' other puffies they find.

Makers

They are sentient solitary beings with a long and helpless embryonic stage in which they learn to fashion creatures known as Puffies. Makers are like Phoenixes: at the end of their life, their memories die but their body is reassembled to begin a grub like existence that lasts for over a century. This is when they are the weakest.

Disobedient puffies are also punished by being iced. This is a long term paralysis in which they are buried in the ground.

Maker Faire

Makers live in underground fortresses and are fiercely territorial and solitary. They only meet once a year at the Maker Faire to show off and trade prized Puffies.

The Maker Faire is a truce ground which means no Maker can steal a puffie or harm another Maker.

The rest of the time, Makers stay underground, or, in rare instances, attack other Makers. There have been twenty successful attacks in the last thousand years and forty unsuccessful attacks. These are all solitary attacks. The attack on Mansickler is the first time in Maker history that a group of Makers have acted in unison to attack their own kind.

Each Puffy Peep exists in one of three timelines: PLF, Exodus and Starfish.

or doTimeline 1: PLF (Puffy Liberation Front)

The first timeline is about the Puffy Liberation Front.

Mansickler the Maker Doctor

Doctors are rare as it is difficult to fix a Puffy one has not created. One of the most famous Doctors is named Mansickler. He can fix any Puffy and often gathers up those that have been discarded. No one knows how many he has rescued for he doesn’t resell them. He becomes even more famous with his waterproofing of Puffies and they are known as his Starfish. As the years pass, he becomes known more as an Artist. His Puffy Creations often take a year and are extravagant jewels, custom created and rarely shown at the Faire. Surprisingly, he sells off each of them to the top Collectors. There are only fifty and they are known as Mansickler’s Brood.

Mansickler the Betrayer

Rumours abound that a Puffy Rebellion is underfoot even though Puffies cannot heal themselves or reproduce and are generally fragile as they cannot withstand rain. Then the rumours spread that someone is backing the disappearance of the Puffies from various Maker Houses.

Suspicion immediately falls upon Mansickler. He has far more Puffies than anyone can imagine and he has already waterproofed Puffies that have been created by others.

It is also rumoured that he’s created an Underground Puffy Railroad, manned by his Brood and that his Brood are simply network of spies sent to the houses to recruit and free Puffies.

As a result, Makers band together for the first time in Maker history to attack another Maker. They first try to destroy the Brood but as they seem to be indestructible, the Makers ice the Brood as they fear the Brood can somehow relay information to Mansickler.

Then they ambush and kill Mansickler and his attending puffies at the Maker Faire and descend upon his fortress. Surprisingly, there is not a trace of a single Puffie in his fortress. It is empty and has clearly been abandoned for some time. They try to find out if he had another hideaway but are unsuccessful.

Mansickler’s Phoenix

When a Maker dies or is killed, the Phoenix is usually reassembled in almost the exact location. But when Mansickler dies, there is nothing. Many believe that Mansickler was so gifted he sent a doppleganger Puffie in his stead. In any case, the Phoenix was missing and all his puffies, except for his Brood, were missing. The attacking Makers were furious and set up a search party but nothing was found. Puffies kept disappearing.

Timeline 1 — Puffy Liberation Front

This timeline is about the Puffies that remain the houses helping the rest escape as well as trying to find out where the iced Brood is being kept.

Timeline 2 — The Great Escape

Many Puffies escape via the Underground Puffy Railroad.

These Puffy guerillas are often covered in mud and moss as they hide in the shallows outside the Maker territory and often go to the Bridges where the human settlements are to observe what they are doing.

Some are in search of Mansickler’s hideout under the ocean. The waterproofed Starfish are already there beginning up their new society. Some of the Puffy guerillas have discovered instructions to waterproof, others have to cover themselves in grease.

Puffy Skills

Puffies are created by a large number of Makers and can last as long as they are taken care of and repaired. Some have specialized skills such as cracking Hardboxes. Hardboxes are ‘bubbles’ that somehow resisted the Churn. Just as Pompeii covered and preserved certain mosaics, hardboxes also are small treasure troves of surprises for Puffies. Puffies, having lived underground all their lives, are in desperate need of sunglasses to protect their weak eyes. They also love any human clothes but because of their stature, they usually only fit into children’s clothes. Lastly, while the Churns have mostly died down, certain strains are kept artificially active in small pools and used to replicate certain objects for Makers and Humans alike. So when a Puffy finds an object very useful, they usually travel to nearby Churn Pool to see if it will replicate it but it may be that the Churn simple eats it and spits out something random.

Timeline 3

Puffies — What are they

Puffies are characters in a story that takes place over three timelines. There are three groups of Puffies: Summer Puffies of the Puffy Liberation Front. Autumn Puffies on the run and Spring puffies of the Starfish Colony.

History — Timeline 1 Summer & the PLF

The first timeline is about the Puffy Liberation Front. The earth and 99.9% of humans have been killed off by the Churns. The Churns are nano assembly machines that have gone insane and accidentally (and competitively) terraformed the existing earth into duplicates of whatever object they obsessively latch on to. Their sudden appearance was attributed to ‘escaped tech’ from theTun technologies white labs but this isn’t actually the case. Churns aren’t human technology. But they did develop glitches that spawned further variations. So they ‘replicate’ but instead of replicating the terrain, they latch onto an object. Sometimes it’s an architectural element like a turret or something small as a necklace. Each churn obsessively grinds up the earth and recreates it as this object, over and over, in various sizes. This is their ‘territory’. When one churn meets another, a fight occurs and the winning churn ends up grinding up the losing churn and eventually gobbling up whatever that churn has created so far. From this desolate and strange landscape, Makers appear as seemingly immortal beings with a distinct consciousness and a similarly aggressive territorialism; their origin is tied to the Churn but unclear.

Puffies are created by a large number of Makers and can last as long as they are taken care of and repaired. Some have specialized skills such as cracking Hardboxes. Others, called the Seers, have no eyes but can see the futur

Hardboxes

Hardboxes are ‘bubbles’ that somehow resisted the Churn. Just as Pompeii covered and preserved certain mosaics, hardboxes also are small treasure troves of surprises for Puffies. Puffies, having lived underground all their lives, are in desperate need of sunglasses to protect their weak eyes. They also love any human clothes but, because of their stature, they usually only fit into children’s clothes. Lastly, while the Churns have mostly died down, certain strains are kept artificially active in small pools and used to replicate certain objects for Makers and Humans alike. So when a Puffy finds an object very useful, they usually travel to nearby Churn Pool to see if it will replicate it but it may be that the Churn simple eats it and spits out something random.

Timeline 3 — Life at Starfish

The puffies rescued by Mansickler have been altered for sealife. This is so they would be safe from any pursuers. He then established a vast underwater lair called Starfish. The puffies who live at Starfish are establishing their own free colony and welcome any puffies who come to them through the Underground Railroad. They also send out several puffies to search for escapees and maintain contact with the guerillas. Unlike the Puffy Liberation Front, Starfish are not committed to overthrowing Makers. They are of two minds: One group is completely dedicating to keeping Starfish as secret as possible and separating from Makers. Another group feels Makers are symbiotic and that Mansickler’s Phoenix is the key to their salvation as they are sure that the Phoenix will help them solve many of the issues that are facing them currently such as regeneration and fertility. Although the Makers thought that Mansickler had been spirited away by the Puffies, this is not true. The Starfish puffies hold the opinion that Mansickler’s Brood actually have the key to the Phoenix and that each of them holds some vestige of Mansickler. However, no one is clear why he sent out each and every of his own creations to the other Makers where they could be damaged or even killed. As all of them have been iced, no Puffies, either within the Maker territory or without, really knows what is going on with them or where they are.

Mansickler’s Brood — Coming in November

While Puffies can be created in many forms with many abilities such as future sight or claws for hardbox cracking or photosynthesizing hair, most are built short of stature as the pulp was difficult to manipulate. However, Mansickler’s brood looked very different from the usual Puffies. They were tall and gaunt and often bejewelled, unfolding like a Chinese Puzzle Box. He created them in private and delivered them in private to his customers with the explicit pact that they not be shown in public. Thus, his brood was as much the stuff of myth as reality. The Brood will be revealed in November and unfortunately there will be only the survivors as many were destroyed. Their link to Mansickler is as yet unknown.

RoadMap for the Puffynation Project:

Discord access to write about your Puffy:

General Discord for Puffy Nation:

Updates about drops and merchandise and our limited run t-shirts. There will be nine runs in total of 900 t-shirts total. PLF will have 5 designs, Exodus will have 2 designs and Starfish will have 2 designs.

People can also discuss the three timelines and swap pets if they want to swap discord groups.

Puffy Pets:

Your puffy will be granted a pet that can be claimed one month after you hold the puffy in your wallet. This pet will be free and it will be the key to the discord group where you can introduce your puffy to the other puffies in the group and create a story within the timeline of your puffy. To write stories about all three timelines, you’d have to have three puffies or buy pets from other Puffy owners who belong to the other timelines. Even if you sell your pet, you will still have access to the general discord group for general story discussion and updates and roadmap updates.