Hacking the Scenario: Island of the Dead (pt.1)

The Island of the Dead

is a great and very versatile scenario to begin with. It can be played as a relatively quick one-shot (recommended for a long session of 7-9 hours, although I've heard of one playthrough that did it in an incredibly short 4 hours), or as a longer series of sessions, up to a mini-campaign of perhaps 4-6 sessions. If you really delve into the survival challenges, and let your player characters explore the island and all its many threats in great detail, you could easily get 30 hours of gameplay or more out of it.

So... if it's that great, why hack it?

Well, as good as it is, it can always be improved, eh? One of the most frequently asked questions about it concerns the presence of any Gaia related elements in the adventure. Which, going by the text as written, we have to negate. No influences from the Hungering Wilderness seems to exist on the island.

This seems unintuitive, however, and while certainly not necessary in order to make it an enjoyable - and thoroughly horrifying - experience, I have seen it argued several times that it might be even better if something along those lines were included in it.

So, What Are We Hacking In?

Here's my agenda:

• add some Gaia to it, in the form of
  - a beastly supernatural creature
  - an otherworldly plant
  - an eerie, surreal location
• diversify the portrayal of the native tribes a little bit
• create some additional character ideas (for use as PCs or NPCs)

I think these are pretty much self-explanatory, so let's get right to it.

More Gaia, Please!

One of the island's regions could be easily be made to be an extended area of especially dense jungle with patches of fetid swamp, an ancient and utterly untamed expanse of extraordinarily primordial nature, where the Illusion easily breaks towards the Borderlands of Gaia. So we'll do just that. This area exists on the island. You decide where exactly it's located. (My suggestion, if you use the provided map, would be somewhere around halfways between the mountains and the north-eastern tip of the island, perhaps.)

Some, if not all of the native tribes will be fully aware of this area, and have their own myths and beliefs about it. They might mostly avoid it out of abject fear, or hold a religious reverence for it and bring sacrifices there on certain nights of the year.

When travailing this part of the island, one may encounter strange beasts and unfamiliar plants. Naturally, this will not be readily apparent to city-dwelling 'visitors' however, since very many of the exotic plants and animals will appear strange and unfamiliar to them either way. Additionally, the Illusion may obscure some of the clearly otherworldly creatures and other phenomena with its powerful Veil, at least in the beginning of an encounter, or on but a casual glance.

When blood is shed here, though, the Illusion can easily tear, and reveal the Living Wilderness of Gaia beyond. The same can happen when someone is overwhelmed by the intense feelings of primal anxiety and stress associated with hunting or being hunted, when human flesh is eaten, or when wild and uninhibited sex is had here.

There are scary monsters and weird plants and otherworldly locations to be discovered here - but we'll get to these a bit later. Let's lay some more groundwork for them, first.

Unite Diversify the Tribes!

There's absolutely nothing wrong with uniting the tribes, mind you. But, that's the job of the player characters, if they so choose - and incidentally, I'm about to make it a good bit harder for them in fact, with this very hack.

As written, the island's three tribes are very much homogenous. Little to no detail is given as to their various differences, if any. Now this makes perfect sense if you want to keep them as a incommunicado threat factor, an alien 'other' that cannot be negotiated or cooperated with. In that case, it doesn't matter. 

But the scenario does in fact specify that they have learned some amount of English due to their prolonged contact with Harkness' sailor-cultists. So it would be perfectly possible for the characters to talk to the natives, and try to reach some agreement or other. (If things go well, that is. Of course, this being Kult, they very often don't.)

So to repeat, in the original text the native tribes are very much the same. Basically everyone on the island is under the influence of the Death Angel Golab, and will accordingly be sadistically hostile towards anyone else they meet - very much including (though not limited to) the PCs.

I want to vary that up a bit.

Since we are adding Gaia as an additional influence on the island, I think it would be interesting to make things more nuanced, but also even more tense right off the bat, if the tribes were already in conflict with each other when the PCs arrive. Everyone will still be hostile to virtually anyone else, but on different spiritual/metaphysical sides. 

So we'll have one tribe that is pretty firmly under the influence of Gaia. They revere the otherworldly manifestations of the Living Wilderness, and worship an Enwildened God that can sometimes enter our world under the right circumstances. They are fiercely in conflict with another one of the tribes, who have fallen entirely under the sway of the Golab-worshipping cult long ago, and with the sailor cultists as well, of course. 

The third tribe has for the longest time tried to stay out of all that, and just keep to themselves. However, the influence of Golab that permeates the island has spread to them as well, and they are now on the brink of embracing it more completely.

All the tribes, in spite of their differences, still share some characteristics though. Their overarching culture is largely untouched by outside influences - such as so called civilisation for example - and so has remained very similar for many generations of their isolation on the island. Perhaps most relevantly to the scenario's unfolding events, the tribes all still respect displays of strength. Success at hunting and proficiency in melee combat will likewise impress them and make them willing to talk to the PCs.
This can come in especially handy when (and if) the characters have come across the dormant remainders of a certain Archon's last lingering presence on the island...

Because I do not want to keep calling them "tribe 1", "tribe 2", etc. for the whole rest of this post, we'll come up with some fictionalized names for them.

Let's call the first tribe, the close-to-Gaia one, the Abawi,

the second one, who worship Golab in the form of Babi Ngepet, will be the Baluwa,

and the third one described above we'll call the Yori.

In case you don't like these names, and want to make your own, here is a short list of examples. These are actually existant tribal communities in Indonesia. I used them as a basis to make up my own, fictitious names for the tribes in the game.

Korowai                  Dani                        Dayak

Asmat                   Yali                       Mentawai

Bajau                Lamalera                Orang Rimba

Baduy                   Abui                        Bali Mula

You can google them to find additional inspiration about their IRL traditions, myths, lifestyles close to nature, and possibly even for visual handouts to show your players to give them an idea of how they dress and look.

So, the Yori are the ones that are teetering between Influences. Like the other tribes, they respect strength. In their case, prowess at hunting and fishing is most important. They adhere to an ancient culture that holds up the island's leopards as sacred animals and spirit patrons, and practice a form of magic known as ilmu siluman macan tutul, which allows them to imbue certain select newborn children - usually the firstborn offspring of the tribe's current chief - with the mental and spiritual traits of a leopard. This is held to guarantee them success in life, as long as they don't offend or disappoint their patron spirit animal.

The Babingepa leopards' unnatural cruelty and persistent thirst for blood are influences of Golab - and they mirror the Yori's own creeping infestation with the Death Angel's Principle of Torment. Their seasonal rites have gradually incorporated more bloodletting, whipping, scalding, piercing, and other sadistic elements, and their disputes are more often settled with physical violence or contests of who is able to torment a small animal for a longer time before it dies of its wounds.
It is unknown - and perhaps unknowable - whether the tribe itself has started to become corrupted first, and that has bled over to their spirit animals, or whether it was the other way around. Can the player characters' actions nudge the tribe back from the brink of full and open Inferno worship yet?
I cannot ultimately say, so I figure you'll have to play to find out!

In any event, the Yori are nowhere near as fully gone over to Golab as the Baluwa are. Their entire culture has been permeated by the Lord of Screams' vile compulsions. Their hunting, their language, their social hierarchy, hell even their singing and lovemaking all have a pervasive undercurrent of sinister cruelty. A bitter climate of scorn and spite, and mutual torment at any turn. Whenever any one tribemember shows weakness, even just for a moment, it is the other tribemembers' duty and opportunity to make them suffer for it. Punishments are draconic, and needlessly elaborate - not to mention agonizingly painful, of course. To impress these people with strength means to impress them with superior viciousness and inventive ways to inflict mind-rending pain on someone.

Not a very nice bunch to encounter, and the player characters are admittedly (probably) unlikely to make allies - let alone friends - of them.

Finally, the Abawi. They are probably the most remote tribe from where the characters' plane crashed, and it takes quite a hike across the island to get to their village. (And you'll come close by, or even through, that patch of highly-Gaia-infested jungle on the way there.)
But, if the PCs are travelling in the jungles east of the mountains, the Abawi may well come their way.

Their traditions and culture are the most down-to-earth of the three tribes. They still hunt, fish, and farm, but they use only very basic tools and techniques. This is by choice. The Abawi rever closeness to nature, and accept its harsh and often fearsome embrace into their daily lives willingly. 

All the same, the rift towards Gaia that is in the jungles does not extend all the way to their settlement. Far from it. Even these very primordially-living people still have footpaths, acres, huts, boats, and push carts. They value the concepts of generosity, hermitage, and patience at difficult or lenghty tasks. They respect the abilities to weave good fishing baskets and to build musical instruments (keeping in mind that what they build is hardly more sophisticated than basic flutes and drums, but even these simple implements can either be remarkably well-made, or, well... less so).

But they do remember the old traditions, and have in recent generations actually moved back closer to them again. They have, under the duress of their Golab-worshipping rival tribes' sinister excesses, started to practice certain ancient and forbidden rites again - occult rituals that are designed to connect their souls to the mother spirit. Through these practices, their shaman has remembered the knowledge of how to summon Mayas, the Terrible Grandfather of the Forest, and the tribe is currently preparing to do so.

This article has gotten a good bit longer and more elaborate than I initially thought it would, so I'm splitting it up into several pieces, and we'll get to see what's up with Mayas (and a lot of other stuff I promised above) in Part 2 of this Hack.

No rhyme, no reason. 
We tame the world around us predominantly by attributing meaning to it, but The Living Wilderness defies our every meek attempt at this. The unbridled randomness and ultimate pointlessness of its everlasting chaotic excesses of birth, growth, disease, strife, death, decay, and rebirth mercilessly overwhelms our senses. It is enough to stagger even the sturdiest mind into broken ramblings of nihilistic despair. I must proceed cautiously...

(one of the last journal entries of a truth seeker who has since gone missing) 

Visitor's Guide: The Citadel of Tiphareth

Many times, the travellers I've met along my darkened paths have wondered about these most mysterious places of all - the Archons' Citadels.

What is it like to come near one of them? 

What is it like to enter it?

Can one even go there in a "normal" way, i.e without dying and being drawn to the Oubliettes of Forgetfulness? 

What do the rooms look like, and how does it feel?

What kind of beings would you meet?

 

Specifically the Citadel of Tiphareth seems of interest to many that I've talked to.   

I've never gone there myself, to be honest - bloody fool I'd have to be to do so - but... 

Here's a brief elaboration on what the rumors say and what the visions have shown me. 

 

The Archon's Will

The very first thing you'll notice when you get even remotely close to one of the citadels is the overwhelming psychic emanantions of the Archon's monolithic presence. The entire place is surrounded by an aura of the being's Principle, for miles and miles in every direction. 

Even the citadels of those Archons that have been shattered and broken still have this - although for them it can be felt as a more subdued or fragmented sensation. 

Some describe the fallen Archons as "dead", but we all know what is said about Death, and Beginnings... In any case, these ruined citadels also still exude powerful metaphysical influences. It is only the Demiurge's that seems to be truly gone. 

Tiphareth, however, is far from "dead", and not even close to being broken or shattered. She is in fact one of the most powerful Archons in existence today. And her citadel's emanations confirm this.

Her citadel is spotted on the Endless City's bleak horizon (or, in fact, much closer in many accounts) by travellers in Metropolis much more often than that of any other Archon. Even from far away, one can feel the sheer Allure that radiates from the gargantuan building. 

Coming closer, this presence of the Archon constantly prods and digs at your mind with its immaterial spidery tendrils. The Beguiling Goddess' will seeks to invade your mind - and most often succeeds, given enough time to wear down your defenses (if any).

Trespassers in the citadels general vicinity will experience powerful yearnings, melancholic memories of beauty, and urges to create, preserve, or possess artful or pleasureable things. Some will feel like they have fallen in love with the citadel itself, irresistably drawn closer to it and craving to enter. Others will become irrationally infatuated with their fellow travellers or other creatures that cross their paths. Some feel compelled to spontaneously create aesthetic displays, and spend hours arranging mandalas and mosaics from the rubble of the Metropolitan ruins around them, or bursting out in song and oration seemingly completely unprovoked. 

These random and non-sequitur emotional and spiritual compulsions are all expressions of the Archon's Will. 

It is near impossible for a reguar human being to withstand this psychic onslaught. Only those who are strongly aligned to one of the other Higher Powers (such as through a pact, or discipleship), or have arcane defenses (e.g. emotion-numbing or mind-focussing rituals or sigils, such as offered by some paths within the Schools of Passion or Madness) can resist the urges of the Lady of Allure for any meaningful time.

All others will eventually see their mental defenses eroded to the point of complete breakdown, and end up - at the latest upon arrival at the citadel, but likely much sooner - reduced to mindless drones unquestioningly servile to the Archon's overpowering Principle.

When being Enticed by the Archon's Will while in the vicinity of the citadel, roll to Keep it Together. 

On a (10-14), you may only chose to become sad, obsessed, or distracted.
On a (-9) you reduce your Stability -2, and must advance closer to the citadel. Additionally, from then on double all penalties from low Stability for the purpose of any further attempts to Keep it Together.
When you become Broken from this, you are Enslaved by the Principle.

When becoming Enslaved by the Principle, roll +Soul, one single time.

(15+) Your mind and soul are entangled by the principle, but you somehow manage to preserve some shreds of your own personality, even in the face of the Archon's monolithic will. Change your Archetype to The Disciple, and serve Tiphareth well - or suffer the repercussions of her disappointment in your subpar performances.
(10-14) You become a Thrall of Allure, mindlessly adrift in the Principle's compulsion and freely manipulated by the Archon to serve as a pawn in her complex schemes and machinations. You can not free yourself from this state, but might conceivably, perhaps, yet be rescued by others from your new dronelike existence.
(-9) You become The Spider's Feast, your soul devoured by Tiphareth. This is much like becoming a Thrall of Allure, but no one can rescue you. Your original personality is too completely gone, or you destroy yourself in short order, amidst orgies of debauchery, adoration, and frenetic artistic mania.

Entering the Spider's Den

If you can manage to arrive at the foothill outliers of the mountainous architecture with your mind still intact and your soul still your own, you may enter the citadel. 

Alternately, if you enter the citadel through a Gate or Portal you will most likely arrive directly in the labyrinthine entrails of what is, for all intents and purposes, the Archon's own body in the city-dimenion of Metropolis. The same could be true if you are pulled into Metropolis and the citadel by an uncontrolled rift in the Illusion. Or if you are captured by Tiphareth's servants - either in Elysium or Metropolis or perhaps even elsewhere - and taken to the citadel for punishment, inquisition, and correction.
(In all these cases, you can probably skip the next couple paragraphs, and continue reading at Closer to the Centre of the Web.)

Either way, once inside, a veritable maze of rooms, corridors, atriums, hallways, domed gardens and other interior archetypical architecture awaits you. If you approach from the bottom, the first couple dozen floors may seem deserted (but need not actually be) and derelict. Even here, however, the Archon's Principle is clearly felt in every aspect of everything there is. The dust and rubble forms hypnotic patterns on the floor. The doorways and halls are shaped in aesthetically pleasing ways, inviting you to approach and advance. Eerily enticing music can be heard from far above. The musky scent of exquisite drugs being smoked hangs faintly (or heavily) in the air.

The manifestations get more glorious, more complex, and more grandiose the further one ascends. The lower levels more often express allures of a rather basal nature, or that are fallen out of fashion (or even memory) in Elysium. Rooms resemble strip clubs, betting dens, drug houses, cobblers', weavers', and woodcutters' workshops, collections of musical instruments popular in antiquity (and all but forgotten about today), or even cave paintings. The more elevated layers, above, exhibit more current and more spectacular attractions, promising the fulfillment of desires more refined and the craving of tastes more acquired.

Many rooms are also completely deserted, some looking as if cleaned out in a hurry, others crassly damaged by violent conflict. In some places, corpses of unknown creatures still lie, perhaps dessicated in age-old death, perhaps still bleeding from their ghastly wounds. The War of the Archons has taken its toll, even here. 

Around the periphery of the citadel's base, entire areas the size of whole cities are laid to waste, the glum Metropolitan twilight seeping in through torn down roofs and missing walls. Some of them are slowly being repaired by tekrons and acrotides. Others are rendered unsalvagable by nuclear radiation, the lingering after-effects of horrible combat magic, or other reality-distorting and life-destroying phenomena. 

Failed lictors, mutilated mancipia, and demented angels prowl these parts - either in abject search of penance for the unforgivable misdeed of disappointing their patron mistress, or lost in desperation and griefing madness. Some are simply looking for easy victims to prey upon and sate their burning and unholy urges.

No place here is entirely without beauty or grace, however. At the very least, the forlorn allure of a bombed-out cathedral is always felt even in the most ruined regions. The desolate enticement of humanity's forgotten, primitive, or looked down upon pleasures and vices suffuses others.

 

Closer to the Centre of the Web

Climbing the citadel's interior architecture high enough, you will at some point experience very abrupt changes in the environment. All of a sudden, the gloomy and oppressive maze of rooms, hallways, ramps, stairs, ladders, halls, atriums etc. you have been travailing turns into an outright cacophony of grandiose and majestic splendor. 

Profane materials such as ordinary concrete, wood, or steel are no longer seen anywhere. The lower levels were already highly ornate in places, but here everything is made from marble, silver, mahagony, at least. Imagine it like a mad collage of Sun King Louis' palace crossed with the fanciest shopping mall you've ever been to, with elements mixed in of everything from Byzantine emperors' treasure vaults to modern casinos and luxury villas. 

Flashing neon lights like from an 80s arcade hall illuminate one room only to give way to playfully shimmering waterwave lighting, as if shone from a swimming pool filled with multicolored liquid. Blacklight is tints a goldsmith's workshop in the oddest illumination. Blindingly bright spotlights as from a movie set prevent any shadow from existing in a Persian bath house. Paper lanterns are the only light source in a black marble parliament building the size of a small town, where the allure of power bleeds visibly from the insignia of political office at the walls, swiftly evaporating into a ghostly fog that haunts the hallways for any receptive to its temptations.

There are incredible art galleries here, with sculptures, paintings, everything. Gigantic performance stages. Lingerie factories. Towering sandstone monuments. Advertising billboards. Quiet stone gardens. VR gaming parlors. Exquisite palaces of colored glass.

Bizarre and glamorous parades of creatures painted and clad and flesh-shaped in the most exquisite fashions proceed through the rooms here, their dance and song irresistibly enticing. You can see TV stars amongst them, and historical celebrities. Everyone is slim, fit, sexy, and perfect. Or if not, they're desperately craving to be.

There is sex, so much sex. And drugs, oh the drugs! 

The entire place is a gargantuan, jumbled, cramped, expansive, complex labyrinth - almost as if a puzzle to be solved, alas, what mortal soul might dare even contemplate to embark on such an undertaking!? - a labyrinth of fancy. All allure, all sparkle, all flash. 

Underneath the whole razzle-dazzle, one might suspect precious little in the way of real substance, or deeper meaning. But few at this point have the mental fortitude to even maintain that train of thought for longer than but a few idle moments. Soon enough, the next spectacle distracts you from these musings, as likely as not to never to think of them again.

When orienting yourself amidst the myriad distractions of the citadel, roll to Observe the Situation.

Since all of the spectacle everywhere makes this an act of self-control in itself, however, you must apply any penalties from low Stability to this roll as if it was an attempt to Keep it Together.
On a fail, the GM may answer a different question than you asked, you may lose a lot of time pursuing whimsical fancies or following false leads, or you attract unwanted attention. (The GM makes a move.)

What Purpose to the Spider's Design?

The rooms, as well as their arrangement and contents, deny logical interpretation. I'm calling them "rooms" only for want of a better term. Should perhaps think of them as areas, or locations. Rooms is far too mundane a word to aptly describe even a fraction of the places you will behold in there. 

Some of them serve a purpose, while others are for all intentions seemingly random expressions of the Archon's very nature.

Since in essence the citadel is the Archon, its entire manifestation is the embodiment of her Principle, all its smaller aspects endlessly replicated within itself, because that’s how the power expresses herself.

Or to put it another way - if you think of the citadel as the Archon's body, the rooms within are much like it's organs. As such, they don't have a conceivable purpose, at least not one that is readily decrypted by the ordinary human mind. We're like ants swallowed up by a tiger, forever climbing aimlessly and astounded through its capillaries even if we managed to avoid the churning, all-consuming pits of its acidic stomach.

That said, there are some areas whose use we can recognize - even though they, too, are usually tinged in alien aesthetics and appear inhumanely larger than life to our dulled, imprisoned senses.

There are vast libraries and cramped archives where the acrotides keep and retrieve their timeless records. Museum galleries showcasing artifacts of the great exploits and horrible conflicts the Archon was involved in. Conference rooms where the lictors meet and discuss the fate of Elysium. Porno-Shrines and Disco-Cathedrals where they devoutly come to celebrate and worship their Principle. The gilded dormitory vaults where the few surviving angels of the Malakhim Choire are kept, when not roused and sent out to do Tiphareth's bidding in the outside worlds. The gemstone-encrusted crypts where those of their brethren lie that are tragically too ruined, by sorrow or mutilation or Infernal curses, to be of any further use to the Archon. 

The Oubliettes of Forgetfulness are here somewhere, long term residence for the dead souls of those who were already entrapped by the Principle in life. The twin burdens of individual personality and a lifetime of less-than-perfectly-glamorous memories are lifted from them here.

And reeducation camps, for those who were taken prisoner by Tiphareth's servants and are yet in misguided opposition to the Archon. They are shown the light of True Allure here, their rejection of ruthless hedonism mercifully abolished from their tainted minds.

Peak Tiphareth

If all this spectacle and damn-near divine perfection can not offer to you what you came to seek, you may feel tempted to ascend the very top of the citadel. Almost needless to say, this is a task beyond insanity, and amongst the least-advisable undertakings in the entire cosmos.

Those who would meet with an Archon's innermost essence had best be really sure of what they are doing. And even then, the quest is far from easy or simple. There is no one who has given a reliable account of having reached the very top, yet.  

The very laws of time and space - already severely relativized during the passage through the hundreds of levels below - become entirely jumbled, then completely meaningless. Repeatedly you will believe that you have succeeded - that you have indeed reached the zenith, the final glorious cathedral, the top of the crystal mountain. 

But over and over again you will be forced to realize that, no, this was what you thought was the heart of the palace, was in fact merely one more of the ornate pillars supporting the real peak, and centre, of the Archon's massive, essential, inconceivable being. 

It is unknown if there even is a definitive peak. Does an Archon have a concrete ending point? Is there a True Self to discover, to face, to interact with? 

Or is the Principle's real nature too abstract, too all-encompassing to ever be nailed down to such pedestrian, mortal concepts?

Some say that at the very top, all the Archonic citadels become one - and that this is where the Demiurge's Citadel used to arise from. Others claim that this theory has it all backwards, and that it is the exact other way around. 

Perhaps they are both right. More likely, they are both wrong.

In either case, the experience turns into a metaphysical one. A spiritual travel much more than a physical one, for we cannot at this point meaningfully talk about it in terms of architecture any more.

After all, the citadel is not really a building - just like, at the end of the day, Metropolis isn't really a city. That's just the shape it takes.

What Truths Lie Beyond these bodily manifestations, every Seeker will have to discover for themselves.

So travel unsafely and with impunity - and may you return with tales worthy of the gods we used to be, and may yet once more become!

Only where boldness and caution become one and the same, the traveller truly walks divine.

(Babylonian proverb)

The Oasis at Finger Rocks

Once again I got inspired by an image that was shared on the Discord group Kult: Elysium. This one was made by user rosedragon, a talented and incredibly prolific visual artist whose works can be enjoyed here: https://www.deviantart.com/rosedragoness

This picture just spoke to me on a deep level. I sensed there was a story in there somewhere. So I sat down to look at it for a while, and wrote one of my shred fiction pieces for it.

  

"When wandering Limbo, and travelling through dreams of loneliness, corrosion, or unfulfilled cravings, one may well find themselves unexpectedly expelled from one of them - as it happens - and stumbling out here, into the Desert of Desolation.

Nothing here but thirst and seeking, and the occasional, yet ever-crumbling spot of poisonous hope. Such as the Oasis at Finger Rocks. Its clear waters are precious in this lifeless waste, soothing scorched throats - but you should never drink too much. All too soon, if you do, the oily sludge murking its depths will well up to despoil the shallow layers of clear, wholesome liquid on top. 

Many a dream wanderer has fallen to that place's treacherous toxicity, yet no bodies or even skeletons are ever found laying next to that pool. Some say the poison affects their minds such that they are compelled to plunge themselves into the waters - their mortal remains becoming decomposed and sinking down as murky particles, themselves renewing the murderous nethersludge they so foolishly partook of. 

For me, it's different however. Permanently banished to Limbo, with no physical body back home in my bed to wake up to, I inevitably ended up here of course, as so many others do. But having been marked by the dark powers long ago, and become more infernal machine than biological man ever since, I crave the very oils and venoms of this place for sustenance. The clear water would corrode my gears and dissolve my filter-valves, killing me more surely than the heat and exhaustion. 

Fortunately, the hose has long become a fixed part of me, permanently fused to the mechanical mask where my face once used to be - so long ago, in the dimly-remembered life I led before this new existence I must now endure..."