Numenera is a game published by Monte Cook Games. Its setting is the Ninth World, and this list has eight 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. Deathwater Canyon on the edge of the Black Riage is noted for the network of huge ceramic pipes that run through it, exiting from the rock, running outside it, and then entering back in. The pipes are said to be empty, or nearly so, but recently travellers who have passed through the canyon have claimed they have heard something in some of the smaller pipes, perhaps a liquid, though no-one seems exactly sure what they heard. This has raised some concern, as many of the larger pipes are used as thoroughfares.
2. Scorpion Sanctum in the desert around the Cloudcrystal Skyfields is a place rarely visited due to the presence of chirog raiders, and that seems to be the way the residents of the Sanctum like it. There’s a rumour that whoever lives there encourages the chirog raiders to attack travellers, to ensure their own privacy and, perhaps, acquire anything of interest to them that the chirog might loot.
3. Seven families who have lived in Uxphon, built in Deathwater Canyon, the longest claim noble status and essentially rule the city. There are rumours that the families have hidden chambers beneath their manors where they hide treasures and their secrets, though none have managed to find any. There are rumours, though, that these secret chambers were not built by the nobles, but were already there and the manors built on top of them, which some believe means they could contain far more secrets than those of the families.
4. The Cloudcrystal Skyfields float in the sky to the north of the Steadfast, beyond the Tithe River. The crystalline shards continually grow, but some fall to the ground as well, littering the fields below with their shattered remnants. There are rumours that in recent months more crystals than usual have been dropping out of the sky, making passing beneath them substantially more dangerous, especially as a crystal the size of a city is almost impossible to avoid if it falls.
5. The Crowd City is a mass of millions of corpses of all types of beings beneath the Cloudcrystal Skyfields that have been fused together into a strange city, with the dead making buildings, streets and the other structures of a city. Even stranger, the city frequently moves position, though usually very slowly. Some believe that the Crowd City’s movement has meaning, and that the patterns reveal some insight, though nobody seems to know what.
6. The Unseen Lake in the Cloudcrystal Skyfields is a lake of invisible water, though it will regain a more normal appearance after a few days, unless tightly sealed in a container. There’s a rumour that the lake’s water can be used to make a concoction that will render the imbiber invisible as well, and more than one thief, assassin or spy, or those who employ such, has tried to find out how this can be done.
7. There are people rumoured to be living beneath a small lake to the far west of the Skyfields, in a place called Deep Vormask. The inhabitants are said to have access to a strange, odd technology that is only found within the caverns and doesn’t work anywhere else. A Nano plans to lead an expedition to Deep Vormask in an attempt to discover just what this technology is. By the sounds of it, the Nano isn’t bothered about how they go about this.
8. Uxphon in the Cloudcrystal Skyfields is known for its slave market and in particular its gladiatorial arena, where slave combatants fight each other, as well as beasts, with the most successful of these gaining not only their freedom but also gaining wealth. There’s a rumour that the arena has put out a call for something different. That they are seeking new beasts to fight that are more than a little unusual. It’s said that the arena isn’t really bothered what, just as long as they’re something previously unseen.

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