Knotted Place

A Knotted Place is a location that has became twisted so that the natural order of an area is distorted, in an effort to protect innocence<ref>Knotted Locales are areas that for some reason or another are being twisted up or the usual rules aren’t working. As a typical consequence, a knotted locale tends to also be harder to get to. This seems to work along similar lines as being Aware. To protect the innocent and innocent society, the weird stuff gets shoved off to the side with built in protections against casual access.- Excerpt from [12.7 spoilers] Knots & Depressions</ref> they become harder to find, get into or out of.<ref>Through these twists and knots, they become harder to find with a map.  Specific routes may be needed.  The tenement I described was one such place, standing tall in the middle of the city, visible from a distance, but no postal worker or checker of electric meters found their way there for over a century.  There are twisted places where the natural things a place needs are upended.  There are places where things are inverted, undercities and mirror cities.- Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.4</ref> Most knots have a power source, Other or major phenomenon driving it.<ref>Key things to look for are the power source, Other, or any major phenomenon that drives the knot- Excerpt from [12.7 spoilers] Knots & Depressions</ref><ref> - PACT DICE</ref>

A knotted place is one example of a wider phenomenon known as a Visceral Knot, this process can happen to a person, an Other, an item or location.<ref>“Visceral Knots,” Bristow spoke.  “Visceral, meaning our material practices, tangible, rooted in our world, in solid things, in meat, in stone, soil, nature, and construction.  Items, men, and things like men are visceral.  Bogeymen, goblins.  If it bleeds, it is often in this category.  You, student, are visceral.”
[...]
“The Knot, then, is what happens when this visceral thing or process is twisted.  When incarnations such as time, death, violence, or dream run through the visceral, they have processes.  Twist the process in an unnatural way, and you twist that which is solid.  When you twist it enough, you get the Knots.  These can be people, Others, places, and things.  Isolation from the rest of the world is often a prerequisite, or the things that would knot them would be tied down by outside connections.”.- Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.4</ref> If a group of people live in a knot for multiple generations they can turn into Oddfolk,<ref>Oddfolk (that Bristow called Subhumans) come about when generations come and go in a knotted space, adapting to that peculiar environment.-Excerpt from [12.7 spoilers] Knots & Depressions</ref> those from knotted places like an Undercity become or are spawned as Denizens.

There are multiple ways people can be prohibited from entering such as having to walk a specific path or by altering the flow of time or having the person be struck by misfortune.<ref>The built-in protections can take a lot of forms. That glade that’s all spring-y in the middle of winter might settle into the midst of mountains, accessible only be certain paths and passage through a waterfall. It can take more time to get there. It could be that when you’re trying to get in, bad stuff keeps happening to distract you, like car accidents, lightning strikes, and people picking fights with you.- Excerpt from [12.7 spoilers] Knots & Depressions</ref> Conversely some people might be drawn into a Knotted Place, especially if they have a similar nature to it.<ref>these places can naturally draw in & filter out certain types. Certain stripes of Aware can find it hard to avoid getting into places when your usual innocent would have to drown without being seein in certain connected currents under moonlight before they could wake up sputtering on those strange, knotted shores.

Innocents might also find it easy to end up there, if their mindsets are right. A kid with terminal cancer might find it easier to get to that place where nobody can die. The kinds of people who get filtered for are also the sorts of people who stay or reinforce the knot. At least until they stop being a great fit. If that kid comes to terms with his mortality, he might find his way out. Or he might get offed, like how Peter Pan apparently killed the kids in Neverland who grew up.- Excerpt from [12.7 spoilers] Knots & Depressions</ref>

Many Others use them as hunting grounds either to avoid the Karmic costs of preying on innocents<ref>Speaking of, dangerous Others love to use knotted places as hunting grounds. They only get dinged for hurting innocents if word gets out, if there are witnesses, or if people become Aware. So any place where visiting innocents are cut off from support and can’t go home without figuring out the riddle or navigating out of the knot is unfortunately prime hunting ground.- Excerpt from [12.7 spoilers] Knots & Depressions</ref> or because the distorted space can be difficult for people to escape.<ref>Some predatory Others will cultivate and use a localized space as a trap and make exit really hard. Some locations are just predatory or dangerous on their own, and then naturally gather their own Others as guards & digestive systems.- Excerpt from [12.7 spoilers] Knots & Depressions</ref>

The Leos family, at least the North American branch, deals with knotted places and has some expertise with the various verities.<ref>“Depending, I’d set up an appointment between you and my dad.  Our family is pretty involved with some knotted places, cities out of time, beyuls- hidden sanctuary type places, that sort of thing.  I guess it really helps to keep things simple, if you’re dealing with a single location and not having to worry about rival gangs, shifting alliances, or anything like that.” - Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.10</ref>

Late stage knots

Knotted places are common and most are stable<ref>Jessica says Zed is catastrophizing and this is pretty funny because he’s typing up her comments to send to me ’cause her hands are full with BHI stuff.
[...]
– Knots are natural, common, and everyday, we just don’t notice them a lot of the time.- Excerpt from [12.7 spoilers] Knots & Depressions</ref> but sometimes they can become critical, this is especially likely with technomancy.<ref>Ray and I don’t have that luxury. Stuff in technomancy moves so fast that if we’re not logged in when it twists on us, we’re in an endgame situation right away.- Excerpt from [12.7 spoilers] Knots & Depressions</ref>

• The knotted noose - This happens when the spirits needed to maintain life are removed from the knot making it uninhabitable<ref name=":2">The Knotted Noose – spirits or forces conducive to healthy life and survival bail out and we get flooded with negative influences. This is really common and Zed estimates about 75% of knots a practitioner deals with go this route. Sometimes it’s intentional, to get humans out of an area. Bad goes in, good goes out, things get unsustainable, so humans leave. Zed’s recommendation: get the innocents out and then burn it down or let it burn itself down.

Inversion – Strong pressures from the knot’s flows and forces push at the location, but the locations is strong enough to withstand it. There’s nowhere else to go in the face of the pressure except… in, or across, or down, or up. Things flip around.

Sometimes this is piecemeal and we get a few areas inverting and absorbing whatever it is that’s causing the pressure. Sometimes it’s the entire city. (Bristow talked about places like this, and Tashlit has a crime boss brother who lives in one). Transgressive with a lot of usual rules and conventions upended, sometimes depending on the forces that helped make ’em. Can be a collection point for Aware, those on the border of human & Other, + those who fall through the cracks.

Primed Knot – high influx, not enough venting, stuff will start to concentrate into key points. The knot is the equivalent of a pressure cooker and either something goes badly wrong or the knot will develop its own depression and expand, or both. A lot depends on if someone’s at the helm & the power in play.

Hollow Knot – High outflow, not enough influx. Area is drained of spirit, karma or other forces. Inhabitants may also be drained, becoming shells of their former selves (or sometimes Others!) Become those places where there’s no life, joy, or hope, just going through the motions.

- Excerpt from [12.7 spoilers] Knots & Depressions</ref>

• Inversion - The forces flowing into a knot become too strong and parts of it become inverted, meaning that the normal rule inverted<ref name=":2" />
• Primed knot - This happens when the inflow is greater than the out flow and pressure builds up, either it expands and develops it's own depression or explodes<ref name=":2" />
• Hollow knot - A knot where the outflow is greater than the in flow leaving the knot and it's inhabitants hollowed out, devoid of happiness and life<ref name=":2" />

Known Examples

• A location in Greenland where the residents had been conned into worshipping an Other as a god<ref name=":1">A little island close to Greenland, the population center small.  Toothless, wide-eyed devout worshipers of an opportunist Other they were unwittingly elevating to godhood. This is remarkably common, mind.  They are often Aware, which can be fascinating, and they may resemble early practitioners.  In this case, it was early worship.”
  [...]
  “The second was a family living in a dilapidated tenement in Europe.  Afraid of the outside world, they inbred, moved in and out of various apartments, and subsisted on rats, their sickly, and their rooftop and balcony gardens.  Their language had mutated as much as their features- all of them appeared eerily similar, chinless, wide-hipped, and small-eyed, their language a nonsense mishmash of nouns.  Civilization found its way to them, they were split up and given care, their existence was hidden by practitioners and a city council that had ignored too many warnings about their existence.  I was invited to help at a late stage, but damage had been done, their world unraveled as they were taken from one another, and they died soon after they were separated.”
  [...]
  “The third, I won’t elaborate much on.  A group of miners found something dangerous underground.  Fossils relating to practices we do not teach about at the Blue Heron Institute.  They coveted them, they occupied the mine and its immediate area, contrived to hide it, and invited families to come to them.  They never left.  They were twisted by those fossils and by their bloodlines.
  [...]
  I was in one place in America, if I remember the facts right, Ontario California.  I have no idea how it came to be, but it refracted, mirroring to six locations around the world, with echoes of the same layouts, tied to this city through contracts, trade, and promotion.  Six locations, but if you go looking, you’ll struggle to find the sixth.  It is a Knotted place, a countersink and trap for some forces of the other locations, and a residence for many Others and less reputable practitioners.  The things I saw walking down the street there, I couldn’t even say without issue when so many of you are minors.  A woman threw a baby at me so my hands would be preoccupied, while she and some children rifled through my pockets and stole away with my luggage, haha! - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.4</ref>
• An apartment block in Eastern Europe, its residents inbreed and living off the rats<ref name=":1" />
• A mine filled with the fossils of something dangerous<ref name=":1" />
• A hidden undercity filled with criminals<ref name=":1" />
• The various hiding places of Tashlit's siblings<ref name=":0">“I visited other siblings.  Our whole deal, I’m not sure if anyone’s explained, Montague, is we’re like the bloodlines of Echidna, or Minos of Crete, or Jormungandr.  Sometimes you get a girl who has snakes instead of bodily fluids, sometimes you have a boy with sapphire skin who kills anyone who hears his voice, and sometimes that egg hatches and you have two dragons sharing one mind.  Mom found knotted places for them to reside, so you can only find them if you go looking.”
  
  “So you know something about knotted places?” Verona asked.  “Because that’s something that sounds like it might be happening here.  Some place getting so twisted around by whatever’s going on that it gets cut off from the rest of the world, becomes hard to get to, can be darker or inverted from reality?  Is that right?”- Excerpt from Shaking Hands 9.z</ref>
• Small Canadian town covered in the blood of a great power and its shadow<ref name=":0" /> and mirror
• The knotted snare of a spiritual, elemental, divine Immure<ref>The snare worked like knotted places did.  It might even be a tiny knotting.  Where trying to leave wasn’t impossible, but the ways out were steep and complicated.- Excerpt from Dash to Pieces 11.7</ref>
• The depression created around a Trussed.<ref name=":4.3">Because they take on a particular weight, Trussed have a way of making accessing their location hard; they create a depression of sorts, which acts as an extension of themselves and their realms, and the way in may be dark, hazardous, labyrinthine, and exceedingly difficult for the Innocent.  Entire forests may gently deflect entry, getting less gentle as one bears deeper in.  Specific Others may be inclined to set up shop nearby.  A strong and alert Trussed may wear opponents down with a kind of attrition.  Those who reach the final chamber may be cold, wet, starved, or bewildered as they face this time-worn goliath. - PactDice: Bestiary: Trussed</ref>

References

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