Numenera is a game published by Monte Cook Games. Its setting is the Ninth World, and this list has ten rumours for that setting. The rumours, which are similar to the Hearsay that can be found in the official books, can be used as adventure hooks or as simple misinformation.

1. A small settlement built close to a ruin has been having problems with things starting to work in unexpected ways. A colony of shinspinners has migrated from the ruin to the settlement and is tampering with everything they can find, causing problems as they do.
2. Power sources across a wide area have been malfunctioning of late, making those things dependent on them malfunction. Unknown to most, a group of tabanids have moved into the area; a rare grouping of the creatures that is, for some reason, acting together to feed on what they find.
3. Ryn, if left in peace to dismantle installations, vehicles or anything else they have found, will often leave living creatures alone, especially if they don’t have cyphers or artefacts. However, there’s a rumour that one ryn in particular appears to have grown bored of dismantling non-living things and has started dismantling living creatures instead.
4. Scrow are creatures that have the ability to live in microscopic realms who have recently returned to the macro world in order to loot ruins for needed parts. It’s rumoured that some scrow are hiding within some places and undermining them from within in order to remove potential competitors for parts.
5. Several manifest warcores were recently created after a community close to a ruin accidentally looted it of several warcores. This community was rapidly destroyed, and now the manifest warcores are on the move, posing a hazard to everyone in the area. Attempts are being made to hire someone to deal with the manifest warcores.
6. Sferics are automatons that can build things on request, to a plan or even without one. They have a need for bio-circuitry and a tendency to harvest it from whatever living creature is closest, and it’s rumoured that some sferic have disassembled huge numbers of people to make constructions entirely of bio-circuitry.
7. Synth eaters can be a major problem when they swarm and start consuming the synth they find. There are rumours that someone has managed to uncover a way of controlling synth eaters, sending them against communities that the controller wishes to ruin.
8. Things of value have been disappearing from a settlement, and this has caused problems for the place. The thefts have all been carried out by several trucklers who had insinuated their way into the settlement and started stealing things; the trucklers have remained for the moment as they have worked out they can steal more by just taking a few things, and doing this repeatedly, rather than everything they can carry.
9. Thlipsids deal in time stolen from others, and it’s rumoured that some of the creatures have managed to steal so much time from other beings over the years that they have in fact been around for a very long time, from the time of the Eighth World or perhaps even earlier.
10. Zek are clever vermin that nest inside communities and sometimes eating important mechanisms. A number of settlements have recently been plagued by them, and there’s a belief that someone has been deliberately planting colonies of zek in the communities.

Want some items that could be used as oddities? Check out 100 Xenoarchaeological Finds.