Also Known As:
Fuglyfest, Ugly Bear
Zone:
Venus
Location:
Nedolya Tesserae, a strange valley with hexagonal terrain and a clawlike ridge, Venus
Details:
A counter-culture festival celebrated on Venus, usually a month or so after PULSE wraps up their annual Sol Bodies pageant. Not everyone’s eligible to place in Sol’s Most Beautiful. Not everybody would want to.
Gorgonics is an outdoor festival held at Nedolya Tesserae, a plane broken up into strange hexagons with a massive, clawlike mountain ridge around it. While it’s open to all vectors (at least all adult vectors, it’s not a family-friendly festival) most of the attendees are physically a little off. Taurs, laterals, and rarer (and more difficult) morphisms are on display. Vectors who pressed Pulse’s surgery beyond their personal or corporate limits, fans of elective surgery and implants, vectors who’ve been injured and maimed and have chosen to live with the scars, and celebrate them. In a world where The Beautiful People have inarguably won, Gorgonics is a celebration of the gleefully ugly, of monsters-for-a-day.
It’s a messy three-day affair, with mock-athletics, skits, a pageant, the usual arts-and-crafts vendors. Most of the scheduled events are a parody of Pulse’s most recent superficial appearances contest, picking apart celebrity fumbles and making grotesques out of the musical number. As a celebration of the body, clothing is optional and exposed skin, or outright nudity, is encouraged. There’s no shortage of visitors with, shall we say, a special interest in strange and exotic bodies. Over time, the festival perhaps inevitably picked up a kink-convention vibe that some of the old-timers have been complaining about (even after they stumble away from the after-parties every night).
The biggest event is on Venus, but there’s a here-and-there scattering of copies of the festival, collectively called “Ugly Bear,” spread through Sol. Three on mars, one on Ganymede. None on Europa, where the corporate monoculture and lack of space serve too many challenges.
Need to Know (before you go)
Gorgonics is a lawless free-for-all. Unless you’re planning to trade them, leave your valuables at home. Also, consider scheduling a trip to a Progenitus clinic after your trip.
GM Notes
Plot Seeds
♃ A Fresh Canvas: A high-placed PULSE executive has a rebellious son or daughter who’s been slumming the Gorgonics festival for the last few seasons. This year a new surrealist body mod artist has been making waves, and will be one of Gorgonic’s guests of honor, and the prodigal child wants this to be the year they take the plunge into modification. But the artist has a long-standing hate for PULSE, for the convention, for the executive, or for the PCs, and this is a chance they won’t pass up.
♃ Come Here Often? No secret: there’s a serious sex element just under the surface of Gorgonics, and sometimes on stage, too. Afficionados, novelty-seekers, sensualists, and creepers are on the make. Some welcome the attention, others are just here for the vibe. One of the PCs came to Gorgonics, and it turns out s/he’s someone’s type. Whether that person is a potential ally, irritating fanboy, or serial killer collecting taur tails is strictly a GM call.