If you're writing a ruleset for setting, you've got to slather it on.  Don't miss this opportunity to drench your players in the setting, like barbecue sauce on ribs.  Pour it on thick, so it soaks through the bone.  When your players are finished eating the game you served them, they'll walk away stained with all the setting and flavor and deliciousness that you covered it in. Even reading the rules should get them sticky to the elbows.

So for the Eldritch Americana setting (post-apocalyptic 1920's America, swing-dancing with Cthulu, etc), I decided pretty early on that I don't want people running around in plate mail and shields.  I also don't want a lot of rules. With that in mind, I present Armor and Fashion.




Basically, every character decides if they want to be armored or fashionable.  Pick one or the other.  You can't be both at the same time. But you can take off your armor and put on your bow tie, no problem.

Armor

Armor is a lot like S&W armor.  If you broke into a museum, found a suit of plate mail that fit and and wasn't mouldered to shit, it would give you a +6 to your AC.  That's the maximum contribution that armor can make to you.  If you wanted to strap armor onto your body all piecemeal, or scavenge some welding helmets, each of those will give you a +1 to your AC.  A breastplate might give you a +2.  Point is, armor is variable, modular, and capped at +6. Although armor is durable, it also impedes your ability to silently, swim, jump, etc.  Say, a penalty of -1 for every 2 points of AC.

Fashion

There's a certain power is fashionable clothes. A magnetism. How you perceive yourself, and how the world perceives you, has a certain, quantifiable force in Eldritch Americana.  Could you really fire a gun at Coco Chanel? Neither can can a shoggoth (even if it had hands). She is protected by the power of fashion.


Basically, every fashionable piece you wear gives you a +1 to your AC, and stacks to a maximum of +4.  I'm not going to make a chart of all the different body locations that you can wear an item, but if you wear three awesome evening gowns, you don't get +3 to your AC, you get +0. Because you look like a crazy lady wearing three dresses.

Fashionable clothes cost comparably to their armor counterparts, but they are a lot less bulky.  They have two downsides.  (1) They're fragile.  If a hound of Tindalos tears a chunk out of your shoulder, you're going to have a lot less dinner jacket, and what's left will be covered in blood. Luckily, you brought a spare.  And a good tailor can repair your jacket in a couple of hours, good as new.  And (2) fashion is particular. Dudes don't get any benefits from dressing like a flapper.  Dressing like an aviator (the rock stars of the 1920s) is awesome, but you can't mix and match with your three-piece suit.

Magic Armor, Magic Suits

Platemail +1 or Dinner Jacket +1 are not enchanted versions of those things. Instead, they are just versions of those things that are both fashionable and armored. Double-breasted vests of boiled leather. Chainmail evening gowns. Adamantine top hats. Splint mail by Chanel. Et cetera ad awesome.


Shields and Canes

Shields give you +1 to AC if you are an armored character.  So do cigarette holders and canes, if you are a fashionable character.  You can't bash with a cane, but it might very well be a sword cane, no?

You may find this blog post useful if you:

1. Want to introduce some randomness into a simple class, without slowing down chargen (much).
2. Want a random suggestion on your new PC's personality.

This is to expand on HEX 1811 in Jacob Hurst's excellent (and almost complete) hex crawl, Synthexia.



Once the seat of power for the mighty Urgis Khan, Astrotopia was once a city to rival the Crystal Metropolis of the Sorceress Queen (with whom he had a complicated relationship). Those days are long since gone.

Urghis Khan

A warlord in his youth and a hedonist in his dotage, Urghis Khan was impossible to forget.  He was a man of destiny, who always sought out new things to conquer and/or fuck.

In his youth Urghis suffered a horrible misadventure (never bring portals through portals) and briefly traveled to the future, where he walked among the strange streets of a future metropolis. When middle-age dug its long hooks into the great Khan, he became obsessed with the idea of rebuilding the city exactly as he remembered it.

This project would become Astrotopia, the City of One Thousand Indulgences, the Felicitous City. Everyone agree that it was beauteous and fair, but some argued that many aspects of its design were nonsensical or pointless, since no one alive could understand or imitate the technology of the future.  What was the point of these dead ends and non-functioning teleporters? Of doorways made for creatures a tenth of our height?  What good were laser bridges, when humans can't walk on lasers (and died when they tried)?

Those were naysayers. Throughout his life, Urghis treated all naysayers the same. He had them strapped to rockets, and then shot into space.





Astrotopia

The city was built on a cliff, which has now gone to shit. About 50% of the buildings have fallen off into the void.  The other 50% remain on steeply angled ground, where a stumble might result in a very long fall, indeed.

However, much of the city existed as enormous underground cysts, each with a different theme or story from Urghis' past conquests.  Some of these cysts are hundreds of feet across, and many of them duplicate environments that Urghis ruled over or battles he fought. (For example, the instance when he lead 500 hover-triremes over the Prismatic Mountains in order to sack the City of Laughing Slime and kill the Pterosaur King.) Travel between cysts is done via a subway system.

Strobos von Dubstar

A disgraced baron from the Crystal Metropolis, Strobos von Dubstar has managed to escape the crystalline hand of justice by fleeing aboard the Flying Ottoman (the familial estate of the von Dubstar family, the Flying Ottoman is a repurposed starship that resembles a giant skull vomiting an aircraft carrier, covered in rainbow pulsars and searchlights).

Strobos has spent the last year attempting to scour the ruins of the dead city for weapons, but so far has managed to unearth little more than deranged opium elementals, armories of barbaric finery, and (figurative?) armies of pleasure droids.  Still, he has managed to make himself ruler of a broken city, and is striving to unravels the mysteries of Synthexia's shattering.

The von Dubstar Retainers

The Laser Phoenix was once the prized companion and trophy of Urghis Khan.  Now, the immortal bird has been enslaved by von Dubstar, who controls it with a gaudy crystal pendant that he wears around his neck. If the fierce bird were ever released, it would surely seek revenge.

Tomborius and Clow are a single creature: a psychic stegosaurus. This particular species has highly developed brains in both the head and hip area, and so it has grown to think of itself as two separate creatures.  They are telepathic, telekinetic, and somewhat prescient.  Tomborious is the nerve cluster in the cauda equina (where the spine meets the rear legs) and is the more dominant, powerful of the two.  Originally, Strobos resented speaking into the dinosaur's ass whenever he wanted something done, but has since grown used to it.

Other retainers include a large number of centaurs and "receptor-heads" from HEX 0205.

Stereocles

Although the Baron does not know of it, there is one rogue AI that has survived in the ruins these long years: Stereocles, the sound system. This AI is quite mad, but he is convinced that he must get rid of von Dubstar.  He has only a few dancing robots and weaponized disco balls under his control, but he has an extensive knowledge of the city and its hidden vaults.

He has only one measure of judging a creature's worth: their dancing skill. Those who are particularly poor dancers are given private lessons via proxy robot. Those who survive the private lessons find that they are excellent dancers after the experience.


The Voice of Urghis Khan

So great was the Khan's ego, that he made audio recordings of himself that played in many sections of the city. These recordings are usually boasting, fun facts (TM) about the city, or encouragements towards greater debaucheries.

Locations within the City

The Trophy Room contains no equipment or taxidermy. It's a holograph chamber with hard light lasers. The Khan took brain scans of every enemy he defeated, and had them stored in CDs. These CDs can be used to literally relive the fight. Since some of these ancient foes know the location of ancient weapon caches and MacGuffins, many people are interested in this room. Getting them to talk may be tricky, and you never know who or what is stored on a CD until you put it in.

The Dance Floor is now littered with bones and glitter. It is not a room but a literal floor, and covers an entire sublevel of the city. Stereocles rules over this section with an iron manipulator.  The dance cages hold a few malnourished barbarians and receptor-heads, who dance feverishly to earn their freedom.  Many of the doors here only unlock when shown the proper dance move (choreometrics).

The Grand Nympharium is sort of a cross between a library, a harem, and a temple. No voices stir these perfumed halls, and no hands brush aside the softly humming curtains of aural silk. A few ero-zombies lurch and gyrate through the pillowed rooms, mummified by vast quantities of aphrodisiacs.  Only the parthenogenic princesses of Neptulon-6 made a life for themselves here.  Back on on their watery homeworld, they were clever and lithe creatures, masters of bubble technology and lovers of board games. In the gloom of the nympharium, their grey-gilled granddaughters slip out of the pools and fountains and catch their dinner with needling teeth. The only thing that might give these monsters pause is the possibility of trading their jeweled thongs for sensible clothes. They've heard of "pants" from captured barbarians, and are eager to slip out of their frippery.


The Heart of Ecstasy still sweats with golden nectars, opiate elixirs, and more exotic drugs that were invented and dispersed before anyone cared enough to name them. A few creatures have wandered in and become addicted to this chemical cornucopia, and now cling to its central fruit like rapturous ticks. They form a loose tribe, and will react violently if anyone bothers them or interferes with their supply of drugs. Anything else is ignored. Goldenburn the Ascetic Prophet paces around them, admonishing them for their laxity.

The Halls of Pessimism is where the Khan stored the rocketships he used to launch naysayers into space. The ships are painted to be as embarrassing as possible.  A gang of cyborgs frequents this place, scavenging rocket fuel for their psychocycles.

The Floating Garden exists as a number of floating platforms inside a biodome. The greatest dancer in the world, Ignatio the Snake, was eaten by a Carnivorous Slobber-Vine only a few days hence, and his adamantine-sequined pants are all that remain of him. He never should have trusted the suspiciously fashionable mushroom men in the fern village.

The Armory has almost fallen off the cliff entirely, and the entire building hangs at an awkward 45 degree angle over the abyssal void.  A number of carbon tethers keep it from slipping further (hopefully), but murderbots make the interior unfortunately lethal. The building is a bit like a skyscraper, and a clan of extremely well-armed glitter harpies nest on its apex.  A disassociated poet-droid from the Labyrinth of Prose is the only creature that passes freely though, but its mind is gone. It ignores requests and responds only in rhyming gibberish and dirty limericks.




I tried to leave everything open-ended, or at least self-contained, so as not to bog down an honest, god-fearing hex crawl with dependencies.  If you have any ideas for Astrotopia, add them in the comments.

Also, it is a goddam travesty that there isn't already a picture of a laser phoenix online. I don't know where our tax money is going that is more important.

Some Notes on the Setting

Centerra is the setting.  It's sort of a secular setting, even though it has plenty of religions. It's a fantasy setting where atheism makes a lot of sense.

No one has ever been to the "plane of heaven".  No one has even been to the "plane of hell". And although there are lots of things called "demons", they usually aren't interested in eating your souls (or any of the other nonsense the Church claims they do). There might not even be such a thing as a soul. Certainly, no one has ever returned from the dead.

If there are gods, they are quiet ones. No god has ever appeared before a crowd of people.  No angels have ever appeared to give aid to a hero. There has never been a verifiable miracle.  The sun has never stood still in the sky, and the sea has never been parted. Nevertheless, most people still believe in these things.

Of course, the different religions still have complex cosmologies, with hierarchies of angels, and different circles of hell. It just isn't relevant like it is in most settings.

Most of the "civilized" world is part of a monotheistic religion called Hesaya.  They're The Church. They got to their continent-spanning level of power by crushing hundreds of older religions underfoot.

Another interesting thing about Centerra: No one has any fucking clue what happened more than ~1200 years ago. All we know is that everyone on the planet was insane, and most things were on fire. That's where the calendar starts.  With the end of history.

The Radiant Maiden

So, no gods walk the earth.  Nor demons, nor angels. . . except, perhaps, for one.

She wears only white cloth, to symbolize purity.  But she also wears a black veil to symbolize what has been lost. She only exposes her face during her sermons, and all can see that she is a creature of ineffable beauty and power. Although she is undeniably feminine, no one has ever gazed upon her with lust.  She is pure and calm. He eyes shine with benevolence and goodwill. It is impossible to look upon her and not be at peace.



And her powers are undeniable. In a world where "divine" cures are difficult and imperfect, she shines as a beacon of healing. She touches a man's forehead, and leprosy leaves his body. She breathes on a woman's eyes, and her blindness leaves her.

And the light! All around her, torches shine brighter. Even starlight becomes bright enough that a forest path feels safe. The living dead slouch back into their graves and tremble. The foul creatures of the night retreat back to their black grottoes. The wolves cower in their thickets, and even barking dogs fall quiet.

And the Madmen Became Gods

The Radiant Maiden preaches, and she tells of the time before. Of how the people of the world were strong, healthy, and wise. Even the meanest of humans was six feet tall and as strong as an ox. There was no sickness, and even the feeblest members of our race lived to be two hundred years old. Everyone was clever. Everyone was wise.

The benevolent creator of the universe was called Jessai, but that isn't important anymore.

The liar and the destroyer of the universe was called Raku Ghaal, but that isn't important either.

And the Radiant Maiden was once an angel within this cosmology, but that is the least important of all.

She tells of how Raku Ghaal succeeded in turning the mortal races away from their creator. How the world sank into sin and depravity, through trickery and exploitation. How the Great Deceiver raised an army of a million million souls, and laid siege to heaven. Of how Raku Ghaal had grown so fat and strong that he was able to kill Jessai. And by doing so, all the goodness left the world.

When Raku Ghaal killed Jessai, he also killed himself, for Evil cannot exist in a world without Good. And so both the great gods were no more.

A new generation of gods was born, elevated from among the ranks of the victors. Raku Ghaal's generals, hedonists, and madmen. These twisted creatures would rule over the next world.

Which is, of course, the current one.

The Radiant Maiden always weeps at this part.

You will never know what a pitiful world this one is, she will say.  You will never know how much you have lost.

And in the audience, heads will be nodding.


The Radiant Maiden will tell them, with a voice trembling with compassion, that they were never meant to suffer this much. Our human souls were never meant to bear the weight of disease. Our bodies were never meant to endure old age. And nothing could be more unnatural than death.

The people will remember all the newborns that they have buried. How their bones ache on winter mornings. How much it hurt to give birth. How much their parents suffered at the end, when their lungs fill with mucus and their body rots around them.  A lifetime of misery.  A history of suffering.

And then they will all put their heads together, the angel among the serfs, and weep for their lost Eden.

The Cure for Cancer

And so, seized with grief and righteous fury, they will talk of how best to cure their world of its horrible affliction.

The Maiden will explain that it is like a cancer. Insidious, constantly growing, and impossible to heal.  But there has always been a cure for cancer, although we might not like to discuss it.

By definition, a world cannot be reborn while it is still alive. The ultimate goal, then, is the death of every single sentient creature on the planet.

The death of sentience is a large goal.  Many are not even sure it is possible.  But it is one that is always in mind.  Something that is always worked towards.  A direction, even if there is no destination.

Hastening the Dawn

Along the way, it is good to kill as many people as possible. After all, life is suffering. Happiness lasts only a moment, but misery is the base condition of every human.

We have grown used to our deplorable state, much like a prisoner becomes comfortable sleeping on the floor, eating insects, and living in his own filth. After enough time, the prisoner no longer misses the sunlight, or even remembers it. But although the prisoner thinks that he is happy in his cell, he is deceiving himself. The prisoner will only be happy outside the cell, among the light and his family, where he belongs.


This is the truth, and all who deny it are liars or fools. While a common man, with his vision clouded, might look at children playing and imagine there is good in the world, a Herald will look at the same scene and see only filth and ignorance. Those children will only grow to be as despoiled and as diseased as their parents. All flowers will someday rot in the ground; all songs will someday be forgotten. There is no beauty in this world.

And since no one belongs in this world, it is good to kill them now so that they may be free to live in the next. Better to leave it now, than be stained by further exposure to it's unnatural foulness.

How to Save the World

The Immaculate Morning is not insensitive to the feelings of those that they kill. They prefer to do it painlessly, if possible.  The victims won't even realize that they are dying, ideally.

The Maiden can free a trapped soul from its body with a touch of her hand.  And in fact, this is the kindest thing to do. But those brave souls--the Lightbringers, the Defenders of the Light--who choose to endure this world that they might hasten the next, are not killed, but left alive to fulfill their onerous duty.



Because mourning for loved ones is a kind of pain, the Maiden is sure to kill the families of liberated souls as well. The Lightbringers sometimes must kill other people in the performance of their duties. When this happens, they are careful to seek out all the relatives of the deceased and lay them to rest. They do this as painlessly as possible, since it is mercy that guides their hands. The dead will thank them in the next life, when all eyes are opened.

The Maiden's most glorious act was perhaps when she caused a luminous fog to come in from the Saltsea.  She sent the fog into the city of Gastleton, and all 3000 souls in that town were saved that day.

But although the Heralds of the Immaculate Morning are known for their more direct acts of salvation, they know that sometimes the best way to save a soul is to prevent it from being born in the first place. Towards this end, the alchemists of the Immaculate Morning have devised an ingenious tincture from the silphennic root that affects the womb. Ingestion unfortunately causes a few days of pain and bleeding, but the sterility that ensues is blessedly permanent.

Let in a Little Light

The Immaculate Morning recruits by approaching people and offering to tell their fortunes. The fortune that the recruiter gives is always bad. After the fortune-telling, the recruiter will try to talk to the person about the evils of the world, and what a horrible place the person is. Pretty much everyone in the world will agree that the world is far from perfect, and then they are invited to their first meeting.

Staring into the Sun

The Maiden and her Lightbringers cast a lot of light spells. Supposedly, this is light from the First Dawn, the daybreak that will potentially come if they are successful.

Fighting the Light

There's quite a few differences between the Immaculate Morning and your average doomsday cult:

1. They donate money to disaster relief.
2. In combat, the usually try to use methods that are non-lethal and/or painless. Their warriors deal non-lethal damage (with no penalties).  Their alchemists favor knockout gases. Their mages favor sleep spells. Their clerics favor things that blind or immobilize you. Then they slit your throat.
3. They bless you as they die. A cultist's last words might very well be, "I forgive you. . ." or "I'll pray for your soul. . ."
4. They have no problem with suicide. In fact, it's a common tactic they use, sometimes to generate a public effect.
5. They have no problems with killing each other, too. It's common for the Maiden to make one of her faithful kill their spouse and children, especially if the spouse or child were suspected of not being fully devoted to the cult. They also kill each other in big ceremonies as a reward for "freeing the souls" of a lot of people.
6. A lot of them are civilians. Sure some of them wear the white robe and the orange sunburst, but most of them hang around because they want something to believe in. (And the Maiden can heal you when you get sick.) For this reason, their "hidden temples" are full of women sewing and children learning to write.
7. The women and children will resist you non-violently. If the Maiden is summoning an Elder Abomination from the Outer Darkness, the women and children will link arms in front of the door and sing songs together. Some of the smallest children will toddle forward and try to put flowers in the warrior's scabbard. That sort of shit.
8. Although they are totally fine with letting Elder Abominations into this world, they detest other doomsday cults (and other bad guys in particular). They may even aid you against such organizations, but it just isn't their highest priority. And you may owe them a favor or two afterwards.
9. The Radiant Maiden is probably one of the closest things that the setting has to a god.
10. This one's sort of a secret: the Radiant Maiden isn't the only "angel" in the cult.

You might be squeamish about using women and children as human shields against your PCs. That's good. You should be. It's a fucked up idea. But if your players are bored of "normal" death cults and/or you want the good guys to feel like bad guys, you might be interested in the Heralds of the Immaculate Morning. Actually, if you have a really messed-up campaign (+Logan Knight) you might want to make them the good guys.

This article has been inspired by (1) my hatred of cliches, (2) my love of cliches, and (3) +Patrick Stuart's most excellent article with similar ideas. It's close enough that I can see it across the street, so you should have no problem going there after you finish reading this one.

Oh, weapons.  Let's try to get this over with quickly.


Melee Weapons

There are 3 categories of melee weapons.  Daggers are quick, swords are balanced, greatswords are powerful.  You can figure which weapon belongs to which category on your own.

Quick Weapons use Dex to modify the attack roll, can only be used 1-handed, and deal 1d6 damage.  They can be drawn in a negligible amount of time.

Balanced Weapons use Dex OR Str to modify the attack roll, can be used 1- or 2-handed, and deal 1d6+Str damage.  They can be drawn in a negligible amount of time.

Powerful Weapons use Str to modify the attack roll, must be used 2-handed, and deal 1d8+Str damage.

Powerful weapons can't be used in cramped spaces, and only quick weapons can be used in a grapple or stomach or whatever.

Weapons deal +1 damage when wielded 2-handed.  Dual-wielding gives +1 to hit.


Unarmed Attacks do 1d4 damage and are made at a -2 penalty.
Swords give +2 AC against other melee weapons (but no bonus against bullets or bites).
Axes do 3x the rolled damage on a crit (while other weapons just do maximum damage).
Quick and Balanced Bludgeons can do non-lethal damage without penalty (other weapons get -2).
Powerful Bludgeons always do max damage when they hit a prone target.
Flails ignore AC contributions from shields and/or defensive fighting.
Quarterstaffs give +1 AC when fighting defensively.  They can also do non-lethal damage without penalty.
Powerful Spears can be readied against a charge, and get +2 to hit when charging.
Balanced Spears can be thrown up to 50'.
Gauntlets are Quick, and can also be used to hold something in that hand.

Sorcerous Weapons give +1 to MP checks of one school.  Some give this bonus to two or three.
Sorcerous Weapons can be of any type, but staffs, daggers, canes, and guns are the most popular.
Sorcerous Weapons can even be non-weapons.  A wand gives the MP bonus while being less bulky and therefore easier for neurasthenic wizards to carry.


Ranged Weapons
All ranged weapons use Dex to modify the attack roll.  Because they are so easy to use, most firearms give a bonus to hit, usually +1 or +2.



Bows do 1d6+Str damage.
Crossbows do 1d8 damage.
Pistols do 1d10 damage, and can be drawn in a negligible amount of time.
Rifles do 1d12 damage.
Sub-Machine Guns do 1d10 damage, and can be fired an extra time per round.

Within one round, a gun can fire as many rounds as its clip allows.  This doesn't allow for extra attacks rolls, but instead gives +1 to hit and +1 to damage for every extra round fired this way.  High damage rolls should be interpreted as multiple bullet wounds.

Sawed-off rifles get -1 to hit, but also occupy 1 line of inventory (instead of 2).

Bayonets can be attached to rifles.  This adds 1 line of inventory to the weapon, and is treated like a dagger.

Pistols



In the setting, guns are so rare and powerful that they sort of replace the role that magic swords have in other settings.  There's little reason to swing a crowbar when you have a shotgun.  However, guns have a few drawbacks.

1. They're really loud.  Everyone nearby will hear it.
2. They're unreliable. Whenever you roll maximum damage (not a crit) the gun jams.  Repairing it will take tools and several minutes. Pristine, pre-apocalyptic ammo doesn't have this problem.
3. Guns and ammo are extremely rare.  You'll never see a gun for sale, and ammo prices are insane.
4. Ammo is a pain.  There are 7 ammo types, and none are interchangable (with 1 exception).

Writing this has been largely a waste of time, since weapon lists have been done and redone a thousand times.  So what's actually interesting about this post?

Daggers doing 1d6 damage while swords dealing 1d6 +/- Str mean that there's little point in using a sword over a dagger unless you are stronger than average. In fact, if you are weaker than average, you'll actually be better off using the dagger. Since I don't want to have ridiculous class-based restrictions or weapon proficiency lists, this actually works out well.  The wizard continues to use the dagger and the fighter uses the sword, but for practical reasons, not arbitrary ones.

Sorcerous weapons make casting easier, which gives a mechanical reason for why wizards are always seen with quarterstaffs.  It's also more fun for wizards to get a bonus for using a staff than a penalty for not using one.

The minor mechanical differences between swords and clubs mean that a fighter has a reason to carry both, but the difference will rarely edge into play.  Which is right about where I want it.  Plus I like the idea that guys with sledgehammer suddenly get a lot more terrifying when you are lying on the ground.

I think the rules for automatic gunfire and sawed-off shotguns is relatively elegant. I guess there's always the risk that the players will hoard ammunition in order to do 30 damage in a single turn to some boss thing, but whatever. If bullets are sufficiently rare, so will that scenario.

I think my next post will be on exotic ammunition.

So you've got that cool new .38 Police Special and you're itching to shoot something.  Ammo is hard to come by--most of the bullets floating around were made during WW1 during the gruesome slog to kill Franz Ferdinand.

Whenever you find ammo:

d10
1 Complete duds.  All of them.
2-6 Normal, shitty ammo that jams whenever it rolls max damage.
7 Pristine ammo that doesn't jam.
8-10 Weird Ammo.  See below.

How Much Weird Ammo Did I Find? (d2)
1 Just 1 bullet.
2 A trove of 1d4 bullets.

Non-Weird Ammo Did I Find?
.45 ACP, .38 Specials, and .30-06: 1d6+1 bullets.
All other types of bullets: 1d4 bullets.



Weird Ammo

Lothrop, Brigham, and Dark is a company that was started in 1899 in order to turn men into (useful) monsters. They're based on the moon now, and have a brutalist concrete manufactorium in the pitted shadow of Yosganeth, but you can still visit their old factory grounds in Chicago.  Nowadays, they are mostly known for making bullets.  Some of them make their way back to the ground.

(1) .38 Special Jazz Rounds scream when you shoot them.  Anything you shoot screams, too.  It can't stop screaming for 1d6 minutes.

(2) .38 Special Deluxe Rounds are leaders among bullets.  The next 1d6 bullets that are fired in the same area with curve to hit the same place the Deluxe landed.

(3) .38 Special Daisycutter Rounds explode like a 2d6 fireball when they hit.

(4) .38 Special Blackjacket Rounds fire two bullets along the same trajectory: one lead and one ethereal.  Good to killing ghosts.

(5) .38 Special Bricklayer Rounds leave a metal rod behind the path they travel.  The rod is .38 inches in diameter and hangs suspended in the air.  It turns into a greasy, grey wax after 1d6 rounds, and falls from the air.

(6) .38 Special Scotch Rounds knock the target into a copy of our world that contains no life except for plants.  How long does it last?  1d6 (rounds/minutes/tens of minutes/hours, equal chance of each).




Kiowa Rounds all come from the same place: an extensive burial complex in western Montana.  While the Kiowa indians were using it to bury their dead, evidence suggests that the burial complex is much older than the indians themselves. Most of the things found in there have were described as "indescribable" and have been locked away in the vaults beneath the Smithsonian, but the bullets got out.  Well, sort of like bullets.  They have red clay casings, no propellant, and the projectile itself is a sphere of unknown metal that glows in the dark. Whatever they are, they pack a punch.

(7) Kiowa .38 Special Rounds deal +1 damage. When the target sleeps, they will dream of being eaten by herbivorous land animals that were present in N. America during the Holocene. (huge elk, deer, moose, giant sloths, mammoths, etc). Every time they sleep, they must make a save or take 1d6 damage and lose all beneficial effects of that night's sleep. If a character dies from this, their body is entirely devoured, leaving only bloody scraps of flesh and strange noises behind.  The curse lasts until it is lifted or until the afflicted person drinks elk blood from the mouth of an elk's severed head and then bathes in the blood.

(8) Kiowa .357 Magnum Rounds are just like the .38 Specials, except the dreams are of being eaten by almost-human things and you take 2d6 damage.



Opponent Ammunition comes from Opponent Earth, the planet that shares and orbit with Earth but is directly opposed to it.  That is--they have always been behind the sun. Aside from bombarding our cities with diseases, monsters, and garbage, they also occasionally send groups of their "paladins" as invasion forces. Opponent Earth is, in many ways, a mirror of our Earth, and their ammunition works just fine in our guns.

(9) Opponent .45 ACP Green Rounds have black casings with green copper-plated uranium slugs. Not depleted urannium. . . the bullets are radioactive and must be stored in lead cases (or lead-lined Opponent Browning Automatics). These bullets do +1 damage.  Creatures struck must make a save.  Failure means that they begin growing into bloated, fleshy monstrosity.  Each round, the affected creature increases in mass by +50%.  This means that they get +1 to all Str-based stuff and -1 to all Dex-, Wis-, and Cha- based stuff.  They also take 1d6 damage at the beginning of each round.  This lasts for 1d6 rounds, after which the creature stops growing (and stops taking ongoing damage).  Stat effects remain and will return to normal at a rate of 1 point per day. If a character dies from this ongoing damage, treat them as a Far Beast with a HD equal to however many rounds the initial duration was.  Note that this usually ruins clothing and armor that are worn.

(10) Opponent .45 ACP Orange Rounds have black casings with wax slugs. There is a weird sort of space bee inside it, and if you nick the cartridge open it will fly out and attack your face.  If you shake the cartridge, you will piss it off and you can hear the cartridge buzz and maybe roll around a little. An .45 ACP bee is an utter, evil little shit of a bee and it will ignore all fashionable armor, and things that are immune to bullets are not immune to bees (treat them like arrows).  Best of all, the bees can regrow.  If you fill the empty cartridges with blood and tungsten shavings, cover the opening, and leave it in a hot place (behind the furnace) for a few days, the bees will regrow.

(11) Opponent .45 ACP Yellow Rounds have black casings with some sort of sulfurous metal slug. On a hit, these bullets do another 1d6 damage the next turn to living creatures as the flesh blackens, rots, and falls out.  This rot is also extremely smelly, and creatures shot with a yellow round are easy to track, since they stink to high heaven and are constant dripping what looks like soy sauce.



Unquiet Calibers are sometimes found in the skulls of wizards who are shot with Unquiet calibers.  If an unquiet caliber kills a spell-caster, it creates unfired bullets in the brain equal to the amount of damage that the killing blow did.  The casings are bone (presumably from the dead caster's skull), the bullets appear to be glass (but are much harder than actual glass), and the bullet shoots blood everywhere when it is fired--out the barrel, out the breech, etc.  Fire a couple of these rounds and you'll paint the side of your face with dead sorcerer blood.  It might also make it harder to tell if you're damaging something, since the bullet also throws blood on it.

(12) Unquiet .30-06 Rounds do necrotic/shadow/negative energy damage instead of physical damage. Among other things, this means that they have no effect on undead.  The bullets themselves also whisper when they are chambered in a gun. Their voices are quiet, so you must put the barrel up to your ear to hear them.  (Don't worry it's perfectly safe.)  The whispers have a 25% chance to tell you useful information that the dead sorcerer knew, 25% chance to tell you lies about the same, 25% chance to teach you a necromantic spell (as if learning it from a scroll), and a 25% chance to teach you a spell from a different school.

(13) Unquiet 12 Gauge Shotgun shells do the same thing.




Tears of Skethriman Scolex are harvested from the amber-like secretions that weep from the "eyes" of the Outsider that is currently hovering over London.  The alien government that controls Britain uses the Browning Automatic Rifle extensively, and so they use it to make .30-07 rounds.

(14) Sketh Rounds are .30-06 rounds. They have silver casings filigreed with the alien rune for empire.  Every Sketh Round in your inventory gives a -1 penalty to your saving throw. Upon a hit, the bullet allows the creature to be devoured by an extra-dimensional entity.  If the target fails its save, it takes 1d6 damage at the beginning of all its subsequent turns and gobbets of flesh are ripped from its body, whirled around like, and then disappear into some non-Euclidean gullet. This persists until a Hard heal check is made to dig out the bullet, which takes 2 rounds.




Mobster Rounds have been developed by Chicago's ingenious gangsters as part of their effort to keep the Windy City from falling into unearthly hands.

(15) Chicago No. 12s are .45 ACP rounds that are also called hot shots.  All of the damage is lightning damage.  They also have the benefit of being almost totally silent.  They also have the disadvantage of making you go blind if your eyes are unprotected and you fail a save. Sunglasses don't cut it.  You need welder's goggles or a welding mask.

(16) Chicago No. 19s are .45 ACP rounds that are also called witch bullets.  The shooter is pushed back 1d6 x 5' upon firing if not braced against something, and the target is pushed back 1d6 x 5' as well. These numbers assume human-sized parties, smaller creatures are pushed longer distances, etc. Sammy "The Witch" O'Rourke is famous for using these bullets to fly away while straddling his Thompson M1921.

(17) Chicago No. 20s are .45 ACP rounds that are also called delivery bullets.  They teleport the shooter to the location that the bullet impacts.

(18) Chicago No. 51s are .45 ACP rounds that are also called head shots. They can damage things that are normally immune to bullets, as long as those things have minds. All damage that they do is psychic damage, and heatless purple flame shoots out of the wounds for 1 minute, illuminating as a torch. This light is still produced if you shoot a wall or something, so they have a secondary usage there.

(19) Chicago No. 55s are .45 ACP rounds that are also called church bullets.  Creatures shot with them will begin pouring smoke from every orifice for 1d6 rounds. During these rounds, spellcasting is impossible and attacks are made at a -4 to hit.



The Black Meat of the Mojave is harvested from the mile-long, humanoid corpse that, supposedly, is that of Satan. The flesh is a deadly poison, and the Devil Eaters who wish to begin generating a tolerance will take small sips of Black Flesh that has been diluted many, many times in methyl alcohol.

(20) Devilbone Shells are shotgun shells stuffed with the esoteric bone matter from the Devil's Corpse.  Whenever they get the killing blow on a creature, the shooter gains 1 point in a stat.  Which stat?  Whatever the target's highest stat was.  The shell casing is human leather inscribed with tiny letters, detailing doomsday and pseudo-Christian blasphemies.


Weird bullets should be treated a bit like scrolls.  It's never obvious what they do, and if a player hasn't seen a Chicago No. 20 before, they have no way of determining what it does aside from (1) firing it, or (2) finding an expert and getting him to identify it.


Weird Guns
The Opponents use lead-coated guns because they use radioactive rounds.
The Quiet Gorgas use flesh guns, which are alive.  They restore 1 hp to you when they hit and deal 1 damage to you when they miss.
I'll write more later.  I'm tired.

The 1920s had lots of other weapons, too.  Most of which were developed in WW1.  Grenades, both in American Pineapple and German Potato Masher varieties existed.  Mortars had cool nicknames like "flying pigs" and "toffee apples".  Flamethrowers were awesome.  Tanks looked sort of stupid, but they were still really good at killing you, so whatever.

But poison gases were a thing.  The three big ones were Chlorine, Phosgene, and Mustard Gas.  Chlorine makes you cough and cough while it eats your lungs.  Phosgene just dissolves your lungs over the course of a couple of days.  And Mustard gas gives you blisters all over your body like holy shit.

Here are some of the posters they gave the troops.





By the end of the war, they had decent gas masks that looked like what you think gas masks look like.  But the earliest gas masks looks like horrifying scarecrow dumpster babies.





Which I think is more in line with what I want, so that's done. Alternative history in Eldritch Americana, gas masks all look like sad sack people.  Canon.  Done.

Alright, some more ideas about poison gases for Eldritch Americana

Rasfecula are the unfortunate men and women that have been infected with the Stinking Sickness. They constantly ooze a toxic gas from their pores that will kill other creatures that stand nearby.  They retain their minds, and cluster in horrible stinking colonies. In these colonies, they create pools of reeking slime that they bathe in whenever possible, since that is the only thing that gives relief to their burning skin. The miasma that these colonies create is so strong that only a few noxious creatures can live within it (such as Cactus Polyps and Garlicks). Since the stinking Sickness is infections, Rasfecula colonies are almost always wiped out as soon as they are discovered. . . but sometimes the Stinkers win. Maybe there are even whole cities of Rasfecula somewhere out in the Rust Belt?

Spook Juice is the code name for a liquid developed by the FBI to assist them in their raids.  When thrown on the ground, it forms a thin cloud of white gas.  Within this cloud, all white objects are effectively invisible. This can even let you see through a wall (if the wall is white on both sides and gassed on both sides).  It also causes painful blisters around the lips and fingernails.

Zann Gas was also developed by the FBI, specifically for the purpose of seeing through walls. While breathing it, you can see into the fourth dimension, letting you see through walls and into closed containers and pockets.  It also drives you insane at a terrific rate. Canisters can be fired into enemy emplacements to make them go insane. Federal psychomancers also sometimes breath this stuff from a canister on their backs--they're already completely insane, so they don't mind as much.

Goblin Gas is bright green. It gives you mutations.  Developed by Union biomancers, it is now a favorite of mutant supremacists.

Philadelphia Dust is constantly secreted from the gills of Philadelphia Dragons (which are sort of like bulky, quadrupedal, deep-sea eels that weigh about a ton and make "art" out of their food.)  Philly Dust is notable because combustion and electricity are impossible within it. Engines don't run and guns don't fire.  Even flashlights fail after a few seconds within a Philadelphia Dust cloud as the dust seeps in.  Affected parts must be stripped down and cleaned before the work again, although a good rinsing usually works just as well. There's been many instances where a well-armed group of gunmen were killed by a group of naked shiners armed with lumber axes and an accordion full of Philadelphia Dust.

Fat Gas was found inside the USS Shenandoah, an American rigid airship built by the US Navy in 1922.  Following the unfortunate Lost October Incident of 1925, the airship was eventually recovered by a team of Navy stratonauts. The gas had to be pumped out of the reservoir slowly in order to bring the airship down.  When Annapolis was overrun by ghouls in the same year, most of the gas was lost from the public record.  Fat Gas makes things heavier. When used on people, they usually fall over under the weight of their equipment, or even the weight of their own bodies.  Under higher concentrations, breathing can become impossible under the weight of your own ribs.  Under even higher concentrations, the rib cage will actually break under its own weight and the limbs will pulp themselves.  Also good for destroying buildings.  The gas is named for the sensation it causes in those affected.

Figuring out surprise and encounter distance is the kind of fiddly RNG that you're expected to do when setting up a scene.  It's tedious, it's in the background, and worst of all, it's unimportant.  Who cares if the encounter starts at 100' or at 75'?  I suspect that most GMs fudge it.

Maybe we can make it less painful.



The old standard is a 2-in-6 chance for surprise.  And then you roll to determine distance.  But can we combine those questions?  Can't we just restate the question as "How close can the other guy approach before I notice them?"

So let's throw away the idea of a surprise roll and start thinking of it as an alertness roll.

Rolling a big number means that you hear them farther away and aren't surprised.  Rolling a small number means you don't hear them until you smack into them.  Each side makes this roll.

Roll a d6.
1-2  Damn close.  (Surprise distance!)
3-6  Still a ways off.

We can use the same result to figure out encounter distance.  I'll assign some numbers.  I'll double the distances for the 3-6 results because those are supposed to be farther away.

1 - 10' and surprise
2 - 20' and surprise
3 - 60'
4 - 80'
5 - 100'
6 - 120'

If it's mutual surprise or mutual alert, use the PC's roll to figure out the encounter distance.  So if the PCs roll a 1 and the orcs roll a 2, they are both surprised to walk around a corner and see each other only 10' away.  If the PCs roll a 6 and the orcs roll a 4, they both hear each other from 120' away, and no one is surprised.

If it's asymmetric, use the more alert party's result to figure the distance.  If the orcs are ambushing the PCs, the PCs' roll dictates how close the orcs are when they launch their ambush.  So if the orcs roll a 5 and the PCs roll a 2, that means that the orcs hear the PCs from 100' away, and will try to launch an attack from 20' away.

That's the idea, anyway.

Advantages: Fewer rolls, doesn't alter classic probabilities, more modular, possibly more intuitive.



Other ways to fancy up this system!

- Modify the encounter ranges for different environments.  x5 for forest and x10 for grassy hills.

- Rogues with soft shoes get Stealthosity, which means that enemies subtract 1 from their Alertness rolls.  This effectively gives them a 3-in-6 chance to surprise.

- If you're stomping around with iron boots and donkeys and bards, you get negative Stealthosity, and only surprise with a 1-in-6 chance.

- Other dudes get Alertnosity, which lets them add 1 to their Alertness rolls.

- If you are sitting quietly, keeping watch, and have a Wis bonus, you get Alertnosity, too.

- If you roll two different-colored d6s at the same time to figure this out, you can use the die that landed closest to you to figure out the environment between the PCs and the orcs.  That is, the environment that the sound is bouncing through.
1 - behind a door
2 - around a corner
3 - from an intersection
4 - from a stairwell
5 - around two corners
6 - behind a wall

- This might simplify monster descriptions, too.  You can just put "Alert" or "Stealthy" under their abilities line.

Many people think that ghouls are undead that prey on the living.  They have it backwards.  Ghouls are living men and women who eat the dead. Many people think that ghouls are thin, skeletal things.  This is not true.  Ghouls are corpulent, bellowing, vital creatures, grown fat from eating death.



The same rituals that purify a corpse for the afterlife also sustain ghouls in life. They get potent powers from eating the consecrated flesh of the faithful, and even a warped form of immortality.  The only thing better than eating corpses in churchyards is eating the animate undead, since necromantic energies fuel them as well.

Any man can become a ghoul by digging up enough bodies in the churchyard and consuming them.  The change is supposed to come after 100 corpses, but in truth, the change is probably gradual. Only the most desperate ever willingly become a ghoul, and it is supposed that many form incidentally, from some original incident of cannibalism.

Because everyone knows that once you have indulged in cannibalism, the urge to return to it becomes stronger.  Eventually the urge becomes an instinct, and then the instinct becomes a drive, and then it rules out all other urges.  The oldest, most powerful ghouls have been so overwhelmed by these instincts that it is incapable of pursuing any other goal.

A freshly-minted ghoul is a puffy man with bad breath and a stutter.  An ancient ghoul is an giant beast that has forgotten his language and his name.  And so, although it may be a form of immortality, it is a very poor one.

They are hated by churches, for defiling the graves.  They are hated by Mondaloa, the god of death, for eating his sacred charges.  And they are hated by necromancers, for eating the zombies.

Ghouls don't paralyze you with a touch--they kill you.  But it is only a small death.  If it was a "young" ghoul's claw you'll awake in less than a minute, with sluggish blood and a powerful chill.  If it was an ancient ghoul's claw. . . you'll stay dead.

But they have another power that the living don't often know about.  Ghouls are invisible to the dead.  Zombies will shuffle right past them, and even intelligent undead sometimes make the mistake.

So most ghouls believe they have little to fear from the dead, and go about consumption of them at a leisurely pace. The only thing that excites ghouls is the prospect of killing the living, who they both fear and pursue with a freakish tenacity. After so many years of eating cold flesh, the experience of biting into warm meat seems a guilty perversion.  After killing a living person, a ghoul will often lay it out and kill it slowly, so as to study the process of death. They are fascinated by the process, and will stroke you and watch you die slowly. Unless they're hungry.  And they often are.

Honestly, ghouls are way worse than a lot of other undead. They're strong, they're hungry, and they're cunning fucks who will tell you lies even while they eat you.

• +1 Charisma, -1 Wisdom
• Got a sweet monkey tail.  Good for holding lanterns and hanging upside-down.
• Can predict the weather for the next few days with 100% accuracy, relatively easily.
• If you have Cha 13+, you can talk to birds.

The Beastmen (Druhok)

The beastmen of the isles are surrounded with more misconceptions than any other race.  Their name for themselves is druhok.  In combat, they're known for being tough-as-hell to kill.

They all have large horns and a sloping face and large antlers, but these are defined more-or-less randomly during organogenesis.  Sometimes this chaotic process produces results that are similar to elk or deer, but their faces just as often resemble not other animal.  They aren't hairy, which makes the bestial face look a bit odd.

Beastmen are incomprehensibly virile.  They can certainly impregnate any mammal, and quite a few non-mammals.  Smaller mammals give birth to skewed little halfbreeds that are usually sterile and sometimes have small horns of their own.  (Animals in their homelands sometimes feature horns for this reason.)  Larger mammals actually produce genetically normal beastmen, so in theory, a solitary beastman could buy a cow and repopulate.

And it's not just the usual methods of transmission.  Even their blood and spit carry their seed, and fertilization can occur like catching a cold (aside from the more traditional vectors).  After warring with beastmen, soldiers are advised to wash their hands before returning to their wives.

Druhok warbands on extended campaigns sometimes travel with herds of goats that they use for food, recreation, and procreation.  Druhok warbands are bad news.  Sometimes they go on world tours.  Twenty years later, the warband that returns home contains only a few original members and quite a lot of their children.  Also lots of plunder.  Also a shit-ton of goats.


When a druhok is born, it resembles a baby goat or lamb.  After about six years, the young druhok quickly metamorphizes into their adult forms.  It's a more awkward puberty than most.  It's also a good reason to only buy your baby goats from licensed sellers.

Druhoks remember their childhood, when they walked on four legs and could only bleat.  For this reason, many of them empathize with horses, deer, goats, sheep, etc.  It doesn't stop them from hunting, but they treat baby farm animals very well, and some are uncomfortable watching someone abuse a horse.

Beastmen lack a nimble tongue and full lips. Their language is a mixture of grunts, barks, and hand signals.  It's a complex language full of nuance, metaphor, and epic poems.



Culture and Women

Back home, they build cramped towns filled with fountains and arcades.  They sail between the islands on outrigger canoes, study astrology+astronomy, and worship in hot springs.  Their cover their kings and queens with ribbons and bells, and brew vast amounts of wine.  They're a bit misogynistic, as you might suspect.  Most come from big families.  Most have a few dead siblings that they quietly honor by setting out bowls of water in quiet places, and then letting it evaporate.

Most people don't know about druhok women.  Unlike the males, they lose most of their animal affections during their metamorphosis, so that they perfectly resemble humans in adulthood. They still speak in grunts and waves, though (although they can learn other languages).  Also, they retain their cloven feet and their unguligrade legs add 6" to their height.  They still have goat eyes, too.



Only the women can ever learn to be magic-users, since the males can't pronounce words. The women also fulfill the religious niches.  It's consider vulgar in their society for women to arm themselves, and so the women that do must use "non-weapons" like flat, bladed shovels and big kitchen knives (sometimes with a hilt).  A beastman would blush and faint if he saw a woman fighting with a broadsword.

Stereotypes of beastmen usually begin and end with the goat stuff, but in private, beastmen are laconic, frugal, and xenophobic.  They love wine, music, and dance.  They aren't especially lusty (except for the soldiers).

• +1 Con, -1 Cha
• Men can't speak or wear helmets; women can't wear shoes.
• Can survive just fine on grass and leaves, although they must eat a lot of it.
• Men can gore/butt with their horns when they charge.  1d6+Str damage.
• Women can easily run through rocky terrain and steep hillsides. While you're hammering pitons they're jogging up.  They can climb non-vertical surfaces without using their hands.
• If they have Cha 13+, die from an injury and roll under half their charisma on a d20, they instead survive with 1 hit point.  This doesn't work if their head is cut off or something.

The sage Manchino jokingly describes them as, "a race without precedent." It's not a very funny joke, but then he usually talks about how the the wizard Seryl created the Serylite race, and that's a lot more interesting..


The Story

The Museum of Marvelous Things in Meltheria is a huge building that sits on the north end of Sesquipidalian Square.  It's not open to the public, but rather is used by the owners to showcase their collections to each other, and to discuss them in a prestigious forum. Its white granite walls display all sorts of wonders, but most of the collections aren't shown.  There simply isn't enough room.  Most of the museum's vast collections are simply shelved.

The patrons are both indiscriminate and rapacious in their collecting. Sometimes this leads to bad relations with the rest of the world.  (For example, the Fangolians from the City of the Dead who have been petitioning for years to have their ancestors returned. The museums response was, "Of course not--mummies are for studying." The museum maintained their stance even after one of their curators was kidnapped, killed, mummified, and shipped back to the museum.) But more often it simply leads to thousands of "possibly magical" items gathering dust in back rooms, most of which aren't described, and many that aren't even labeled. External historians and wizards are sometimes allowed to pick over the collections.

One such person who was allowed to pick over the collections was both a wizard and a historian.  Her name was Hespajiko Seryl.

One such object was an object in Archive Nine, which was described as "scepter, oraclite, Shan-Bryl dynasty tomb north Djaffa, Tromfers expdxn, 832."

She was very interested in the scepter, because no other artifacts made of oraclite had been recovered from the Tromfers expedition, or indeed, anywhere near Djaffa. Although the rod bore many ideograms for "life" and "sorcery" among other symbols she couldn't interpret, the rod seemed to be non-magical by all classical assays. Idly, she channeled into it, attempting to activate it.

She examined many other artifacts that day, most of which were more interesting.  So it is no surprise that she didn't connect the "scepter, oraclite" with her pregnancy, when it was discovered. Nine months later, she gave birth to a blue-skinned baby girl, which did nothing to alleviate her confusion.


The Discovery

If she had never continued to investigate her daughter, the story would end here. Weird shit happens to wizards all the time, and no one seems to question it much. At least, not among the wizards.

Maybe it was the skepticism of other wizards.  Maybe it was the trust lost between her and her lover.  Maybe she just wanted to find out who the hell fucked her. But she ended up quitting her other pursuits and dedicated herself to solving this mystery.

One big clue was her daughter, Lhasadet.  The girl was seven years old, and Seryl had already determined that she had no spell-casting ability.  However, the girl had a strange affinity for magical items that perplexed her mother. Thinking about magical items and looking at the calendar of her pregnancy, she returned to the museum.

Suspecting the scepter and knowing the fastest way to validate her theory, Seryl impregnated herself a second time. Her second blue-skinned daughter was named Opaline.

It was about this time that people began calling her daughters "serylites". The museum and its collection holders objected, voicing the opinion that if these blue girls were going to be called anything, they should at least be named after the man who financed the expedition that discovered the scepter.

However, when the records were examined, it was discovered that the scepter had not been discovered by the Tromfers expedition.  In fact, they couldn't find any record of any expedition finding it. The scepter had been mislabeled from the beginning.

The scepter was locked in the darkest corner of the basement, far from Seryl.  The subsequent investigations of the scepter were driven by politics and wizardly egos, and are much too boring to recount here.



The Seryl Family

Seryl eventually went on a series of archaeological expeditions herself.  She took her daughters with her on these journeys, and the petite-but-very-well-outfitted family was well-liked in the areas around Djaffa and Tramaldea.

Her daughters Lhasadet and Opaline never learned a drop of magic, but they had an uncanny predilection for activating magical artifacts, which they operated adroitly. When their mother died, they were devastated.  They left Meltheria and their aloof stepfather behind, although they still sometimes visit their half-brother, an extremely cheerful sage and oracle who lives in Pandomon.

Lhasadet went on to join the Great Library of Asria, where she works closely with the Librarians Revenant.

Opaline went over the mountains to Yurmishi, where she has dedicated herself to helping the Molok (mushroom men) search for their wives.

Before her death, their mother succeeded, after much expense and years of labor, to recreate the scepter.  Seryl struggled with miniaturizing the proxy enchantments, and so the scepter is more of a staff.  It is over six feet long and made of aluminum and orichalcum.

The Staff of Seryl was passed on to Lhasadet, who keeps it in her bedroom, in an umbrella stand with her other staves. Occasionally she is approached by female wizards who wish to use the staff on themselves. Lhasadet always grants these requests.

The blue-skinned librarian has used the staff on herself.  Her first daughter's name is Fenei, and a second child is on the way.  Lhasadet is confident that it will be a girl.



The Serylites

Serylites have blue skin, white hair, and red eyes.  They resemble their mothers, but they mostly resemble each other. They can never learn to cast magic, but they are powerfully talented with magical items.

There aren't enough Serylites for there to be any stereotypes about them. Lots of people assume that they're man-haters (which might be a little true in Lhasadet's case). If Lhasadet and Opaline are any indication, serylites are sterile (unless the staff is used) although it's not like anyone has ever tested this or anything.  But the sisters are known to be inquisitive and tenacious.  They're also sympathetic to other's emotions while showing few themselves.

• +1 Intelligence, -1 Strength.
• Minds cannot be read.
• Can identify and activate magic items as if they were a wizard one level lower (Min Lvl 1).
• Can never learn or cast spells.
• If they want to be a wizard (and most do), they can't cast spells directly, but they can do all the other wizard stuff as if they were a level higher. Whenever they use a scroll/wand/staff, there is a 50% chance that it doesn't expend any charges at all.
• If Cha 13+, can sense if an item/creature is magical/can cast spells by touching it.

They're probably better for NPC wizards.  The Staff of Seryl is probably better for NPCs, too.  I don't recommend mixing pregnancy and adventuring.

The Golem Theory

Wizards have noticed that when you attempt to read a serylite's mind, it is returned blank.  And when you polymorph into one, it's like polymorphing into a rock--there's nothing there. That is to say, the experience of being a serylite is the same as the experience of nothing.  It's not like anything to be a serylite.

This has led to the speculation that serylites are not one of the races of man, but actually an ingenious type of golem. The fact that they are sterile only lends credence to this theory, since everyone from orcs to elves to halflings can produce children with each other.

The Apocalypse Theory

It known that the present span of history begins with the ending of another. That's why all calendars begin with the Time of Fire and Madness. It's a calendar that no language, culture, or city predates.

So if the pre-apocalyptic world wanted to engineer a race that could survive an apocalypse, the serylites would be an adequate solution.

The same theory claims that druhoks were created with the same agenda.

The Utopia Theory

There's totally a floating island full of serylites and flying cars and crystal domes and rampant lesbianism.

This is probably the most popular of the three theories.  Funny how they assume it's a utopia.  I can totally imagine unpleasant alternatives.

In the low, grassy valleys of the Parrendon Hills, there is a town called Heaven's Dish. While it is technically part of Garashino, the city hasn't seen a tax collector in a generation. It's a bit off the beaten path, but the place has great weather and decent food.

One hundred years ago, Heaven's Dish was an agricultural nexus, and their orchards were among the most fertile in the world, producing bountiful harvests of apples and walnuts. But now the small town seems to be entering its twilight years: the crop is a quarter of what it used to be, and few merchants make the long journey for a crop of apples that is no longer large or dependable.


The citizens have resorted to making trips to the Pilgrim's Road in order to sell their stunted apples. The Road is studded with Pilgrim's Lodges, and the largest among these (such as Tanderys' Lodge) have small fields where merchants may sell their goods. In fact, it was in one of these marketplaces that Falessa first heard of Heaven's Dish. Eventually, she and newlywed husband would move there to escape the dangers of the city, and start a family away from the hustle-and-bustle.

And by 'dangers of the city' I mean demon-hunting paladins, and when I say "hustle-and-bustle" I mean human sacrifices.  And by "start a family", I mean "start a family".  Let's meet the them, shall we?



Razjiok Lavei

One of the most powerful members of the Cult of Zala Vacha is a man named Razjiok “Devilfoot” Lavei (pronounced RAH-zhee-ock lah-VEY) who as is renowned for his mastery of infernal sorcery as he is for his athletic prowess (especially jumping). Currently, he is in the Abyss studying with the demon Fescariot the Breaker.

Fescariot's epithet stems from his fondness of breaking spines and/or trampling limbs. Fescariot is a scholar among demons.  Together with Razjiok, he is writing an Eschatorium, which vaguely analogous to a graduate school thesis among the infernal echelons. Specifically, it is a detailed proposal for a method to end the world. He will present in front of the fully-manifested, thrashing corpus of Zala Vacha in person to petition for their approval (and resources). He is a little nervous about the prospect (understandably).

Razjiok is tall, well muscled, and possessed a narrow chin. His eyes and hair are brown. He is arrogant, clever, and prone to bouts of stress, depression, and insomnia. He shuns alcohol.

He's also an incorrigible racist, and takes special pleasure in cutting out the hearts of elves and dwarves. Despite his athleticism, he walks with a limp from an injury given to him by a barbarian named Granderblack. In fact, he almost died when he battled the huge northman. He was only saved by the timely intervention of Fescariot the Breaker, who managed to break the huge warrior's back over his knee. On his belt, Razjiok carries Demonbiter, Granderblack's axe, which grants two abilities: it does extra damage to demons, and it grants the wearer the ability to fight on despite lethal blows.

Although Razjiok cherishes his family, he is ultimately selfish—he would not die for them. He would suffer for them, but not die. Razjiok is completely convinced that he will someday bring about the divine apocalypse that will kill all of the world's gods and usher in a more balanced age, free from the tyrannies of heaven.

Falessa Lavei

It has been a while since Falessa Lavei was the chief torturer for the Cult. Back in Garashino, she enjoyed her occupation so much that many of her peers couldn't stand to watch her work. Way too much enthusiasm. She loved her job (creativity, self-management, blood), but she wasn't really into this whole doomsday thing. But where else is a sadist going to find work? In fact, she would still be turning thumbscrews in a dungeon if Razjiok hadn't asked her to marry him. She refused at first, of course.
Falessa ignored Razjiok's courtship attempts for a long time, although she allowed him to cook for her several times.  They even went out and burned a boat together, after Razjiok shaved his miserable attempt at a beard. But even after warming to the arrogant young priest, she still wouldn't discuss marriage until she found out that unmarried female members of the cult might be “drafted” and impregnated by Stheriax, the Eater of Days, a fate she wished to avoid.

Stheriax's offspring actually have seven hundred mothers before they are born. After thirteen days of pregnancy, the apocalyptic god-fetus devours its mother's heart and must move to the next womb. It's a long, complicated doomsday plot that never succeeded, despite several attempts. Falessa didn't want anything in her womb! She just wanted to torture guildmasters and dukes in peace.

The marriage itself was a simple but loving affair where, to everyone's surprise, the normally shy Falessa danced for a few songs and even Razjiok drank a glass of wine. The ceremony was marked by the sacrifice of a nineteen-year-old girl and was conducted by Oshugoth, the Drinker of Marrow. The honeymoon lasted four nights and took place in one of the Karramoor mansions, which the owners had graciously vacated for the occasion. The honeymoon was cut short, however, when Razjiok was summoned to Mondaloa (something about needing to lead an army of zombies).

Middle-age and childbearing have made Falessa a bit thicker than she once was, but she still has a confident, alluring demeanor. She has curly black hair and light brown eyes. She prefers to dress in conservative, black dresses with a gold coin hung around her neck.  (The coin is a symbol of of the god Garashino, who she still thinks fondly of, though she mocks him in her prayers.)


Before the marriage and while she was still head torturer, Falessa 'convinced' an archdruid named Godai to craft a marriage gift for Razjiok. It was a scythe called Root Talker. The scythe, when pointed at an enemy, would cause the opponent's skin to violently convert to plant-stuff. Roots would erupt from the victim's body and quickly seek the ground. If the person stood still, the roots would get an anchor. If the roots got an anchor, they would pull the victim facedown onto the ground, and dig in fully. If the roots dig in fully, the victim will be painfully transformed into a small, warped blackberry bush.

The scythe works great on peasants and sleeping people. And she loved the blackberries. But when Root Talker completely failed to kill (or even slow) the barbarian juggernaut Granderblack, Razjiok gave the weapon to his daughter, Zozo. Henceforth, he would rely on a more direct weapon (none of this scepter/scythe/katar nonsense that the other cultists seemed to adore).

Marriage has mellowed Falessa enormously, and she hardly misses the days spent pulling teeth out of a weeping wizard's mouth. While Razjiok's conversion to fatherhood has been incomplete, Falessa has grown to cherish her two children (as well as herself). In fact, she has contemplated running away from the Cult for the sake of the childrens' safety. Or at least to send the children away. Perhaps to the Abyss, where agents of enemy gods don't lurk around every corner. She has already been forced to dispatch one assassin, and Zozo was once held hostage by druids, possibly sent by Godai, who yet lives (she should have killed him when she had the chance!)

Falessa is capable of summoning demons as well as casting some extremely painful spells.


Additionally, she is protected by two potent artifacts. The Murder is a set of black iron daggers, each made from a single piece of iron and shaped like crows. If thrown in the air, the daggers are capable of flying through the air to where they are directed.  The autonomous flight only lasts for a few minutes per day, but during this time the dagger will hunt and kill enemies of the user. When the couple was exchanging vows, Razjiok linked the daggers to himself and his wife. The largest dagger represents Razjiok, and as long as the crow's eyes are open, it signals that Razjiok is alive. The second largest dagger represents Falessa, and her life is linked to the crow's eyes in exactly the same way. Razjiok made similar daggers when each of his children were born. The daggers will grow as long as the child does, and the eyes will remain open as long as each of them remain among the living.  She keeps her dagger on her at all times, and the others are kept under her bed.

Falessa's other protection is a gift from another wedding attendee, Rasghura the Skin Dancer. The gift is a demonic Bloodsight Rune, carved into Falessa's chest between her breasts. If Falessa's blood ever touches the Bloodsight Rune, Razjiok will immediately be alerted to the details of the event. Although Rasghura lost the power of prophecy long ago, she seemed certain that some greatness would come from the Laveis. But perhaps she was just tipsy from angel tears. She drinks too much of the stuff, sometimes.


Zozo Lavei

Zozo is Razjiok's and Falessa's fifteen-year-old daughter.  Her actual name (which she loathes) is Zonavela. She is willowy and has the same brown hair and dark eyes as her father. Her hair is usually in a rough mop (she refuses to brush it) and she wears bandanas to cover he empty eye sockets.  The bandanas are complicated whorls (very similar to blue paisley) that only vaguely resemble eyes.  Her mother makes the bandanas.  Zozo has been blind for almost two years. Eleven months ago, Rasghura the Skin Dancer appeared at the family's doorstep in one of her dark moods, drunk on ambrosia and elf blood. She demanded Umariel, the newborn, in exchange for the 'transaction' she gave at the wedding (presumably referring to the Bloodsight Rune). When Razjiok and Falessa refused, she took Zozo's eyes. The Skin Dancer would have taken the girl's entire face if Razjiok hadn't cut off the demoness' head and thrown it in the fireplace.

Later, in the Abyss, Rasghura was punished. Six times was she entombed in molten lead (poured by a grim-faced Razjiok), and six times were her entrails devoured by Scalusa-Cunex, the Tapeworm Lord. As a result, she hates Razjiok and his family. The feeling is mutual. Still, whenever Razjiok passes her in those hallways of writhing ashes, she is always careful to glare at him through his daughter's eyes.  And on every birthday since  then, Rasghura has sent a gift to Zozo: a pair of preserved eyes, taken from a dog.  After her father removed the curses plaguing the eyes, he had a hole drilled throuch each crystallized dog eye at Zozo's request.  Now, the girl wears four glassy dog eyes on a necklace that includes other round stones.  She has sworn to add Rasghura's eyes to the necklace someday.

As for Zozo, she has adapted poorly to blindness. She stumbles along, using the Root Talker as a staff (the blade is wrapped in cloth for her safety). She has no desire to learn to use the scythe as either a weapon or a walking stick.  She prefers to inch along, wrapped in thoughts of self-pity. She has redoubled her her dedication to the dark arts, and is now a feverish student of demonic magic. Her interest in Zala Vacha has increased, and she talks frequently of the Glorious End of Gods. Despite, or perhaps because of, her blindness, she has learned the art of divination and astral travel at an extremely early age (although she has learned little else) and has already developed a penchant for voyeurism.

The last eleven months have marked Zozo's passionate descent into darkness. Falessa thinks that the sacrifice of innocents should be a calculated, cerebral act, while her daughter sometimes seems to be consumed with whatever peculiar anger or frustration that only affects teenagers.  Zozo is eager to perform her first human sacrifice, and offer up a struggling soul to the gnashing maw of a dead god.  Oh, teen angst.

Zozo used to be a different sort of girl.  She actually know many jokes by memory, and was fond to telling bad puns around the dinner table.  She had a great sense of comedy, her parents agreed.  But these lighthearted moments are rare, now.  Having one's eyes plucked out by Rasghura will do that to a person. Her mother, however, just wants her to enjoy being a child. Lords Below, why can't she just get a boyfriend?


Recently, Zozo's snooping led her to discover her mother's secret alcove, where she found something shocking: a fifth black crow dagger, fully grown. The crow has one eye opened, and one eye closed. This dagger represents Velsus, her older brother, who was given to Zala Vacha shortly after he was born to fulfill a demonic contract that Razjiok make early in his career. No one in the family knows his fate (although Fescariot the Breaker might know a thing or two).

Discovering that her parents were using their offspring as demonic currency caused something of a breakdown in Zozo. I won't go into detail, except to say that it is fortunate that Zozo wasn't trained in more dangerous magic when she lost control. It was a dark moment for the family.

The scene ends like this: Zozo is sitting on the kitchen floor. She is hugging her mother, while tears stream down her cheeks. She is apologizing, again and again. She is rocking herself back and forth. There is blood on her smock, and on the floor. Four crow daggers hang in the air, and a drop of warm blood drips down the point of one of them. Far too big for the kitchen, Fescariot the Breaker stands outside, looking in through the hole where he ripped the window out of the wall. He clears his throat and apologizes. He is sorry, but Razjiok couldn't come tonight. Her husband will be here as soon as his studies permit.

In the other room, a cluster of men in farm clothing stand around the cradle, chanting a hymn to Felquasonth, the Corpulent Pillar, on behalf of the youngest member of the family.


Umariel Lavei

The youngest daughter's name is Umariel.  She's almost two years old. There's not much to say about her, except that she already has some scars, rarely cries, and she loves to eat blackberries from the bushes around the house.  Her favorite word is "juice".

The Cult of Zala Vacha

The family of Razjiok wouldn't be left unguarded. Twenty-eight cultists tend to the sprawling orchards around the huge house. The cult often sends their new recruits here to do some hard work and be indoctrinated more fully into the mysteries of Zala Vacha before their final appointments elsewhere. The cultists live in a workers' camp in the middle of the orchard, and attend mass every midnight in the barn. While most of them are initiates, some of them have advanced enough in their studies to begin learning black sorceries. A couple of them are here to lay low for a while, too. A man named Huscor Blaine is in charge of the neophytes as well as the apple harvest. He is a fat, imperious man with a well groomed salt-and-pepper beard. He's usual punishment for disobedience is to hang the offender upside down from an apple tree overnight. He has a heavy Londersheeni accent and is eager to “quit the apple-whore's errands and start the devils' work.”



There are four knights that live in the guest house next to the barn. They are led by a man named Gordog Liego. Gordog is a big man, and a powerful fighter. He uses an orcish name, tells people that he is half-orcish (he's not), and insists that his men use orcish salutes when replying to his own. Although the men keep their blackened plate armor in the barn, they are quick to don it if they think they might need it. Gordog has cultivated a long, tripartite goatee, and frequently smears ashes under his eyes to look more intimidating. He is a fool, but he is utterly loyal to Zala Vacha and the Lavei family. Although they all attend midnight mass together, he and Huscor Blaine avoid each other.

Heaven's Dish

The town of Heaven's Dish is only four miles away. The people there have always had some suspicions about the family that bought the old Kedd orchard (they paid in gemstones and brought all their own workers), but they were generally content to stop at gossip.

Six years ago, the Cults' policy toward Heaven's Dish was altered. At the urging of Huscor Blaine, the Cult of Zala Vacha has decided that they will begin recruiting within the town.

Farmers who join the Cult can expect to get rain even in during droughts. The rain will be brief, torrential, and a little bit salty, but what else can you expect when the rain is sent by Mragurgur, the Beast of Black Trenches? Those who go far enough to take their first vows might even be rewarded by the sudden disappearances of their enemies.

Attendance at the Church of Garashino has been low ever since the monk's quarters burned down last summer, and only old Father Toshen still conducts mass. Instead, many people are going to the town hall at nights to hear unrelated sermons with titles like, “Your Immortal Soul”, and “The Problem With Gods”. Note that the people don't connect these sermons (or the Cult) with Falessa Lavei or the people living at the old Kedd place. Many nights, you can find Gordog Liego outside the Drunken Skunk tavern, smoking with Gali Lacrin, the head of the Town Watch. And mayor Josep Helehan is visited on some nights by a girl ghost with a scythe but no eyes, who tells him terrible things about the Church of Garashino. His son, Coric, has seen the same spirit, but he claims that the ghost only asks him friendly questions, like how his day was.


Hooks, arranged roughly by party level.  
I recommend picking your two favorites and blending them.

1 - Probably Up To No Good. Upon arriving in town, the players are approached by Father Toshen, who wants them to investigate whatever takes place in the Town Hall at midnight. This could actually be a very lame scenario, since the cult isn't really up to anything wicked right now. Alternatively, the PCs could fight their way though the cultists and their abominations only to find that the end-boss is a mother and a daughter. This might be fun if you want to lecture your players about morality, I guess.

2 – Why Couldn't You Fall in Love With the Flower Shop Girl? The party is approached by Coric Helahan, who has fallen in love with the 'ghost' that visits him at night. He wants the party to find her remains so that he can pay to have her resurrected. "This is obviously a good idea because she's really cute," he explains. The first meeting between Zozo and the boy she's been spying on goes a little awkwardly when he discovers that the 'ghost girl' never died and actually has spooky powers. I imagine this one ending with dinner in the Lavei's kitchen while Coric is tied to a chair. Turns out, Razjiok is very bad at small talk, and needs the party to keep the conversation going. This one can lead into any of the other ones where Falessa asks the party to do something.  I wanted to end on this one, because it's the only one that might actually have a happy ending.  I like happy endings.

Plus you can have an awkward cultist dad, two embarassed teenagers, and an amused mother trying to cover up the sounds of a Gentle Beast weeding the garden.  "Could you get the guitar from the barn, dear?  We could use a little music.  And when you're there, tell Gordog to stop rough-housing with his men."

3 – A Druid Never Forgets (He Just Goes Mad). Falessa hires the PCs to investigate some strange happenings. The trees of the forest seem to be marching (very, very slowly) on her orchard, and her trees won't stop drying up and dying. This is caused by Godai, the archdruid who made Root Talker, who has finally caught up with her after all these years. Godai is semi-insane and fully furious. By the time the PCs reach the mad druid and hear the truth of things, they've already had to cut through a forest's worth of the druid's friends (both flora and fauna).

4 – Karma is a Barbarian. Granderblack, the paraplegic barbarian who almost killed Razjiok, has finally tracked his old foe to the town of Heaven's Dish. He seeks revenge on Razjiok and also wishes to recover his axe, Demonbiter. He spent years recuperating from a broken spine in Dvala, and has lost his entire fortune to unscrupulous healers. Now, he just really, really wants to kill something. He'll constantly grumble about how a demon broke his back.  He shows up in town and starts killing townsfolk and cultists both.  He might even hack his way up to Falessa. If Falessa sees that Granderblack is accompanied by the party, realizes that she is outnumbered, and tries to reason with the barbarian. But the barbarian cannot be reasoned with, and will slay Falessa if the party doesn't interfere. Should they even interfere? She's done some pretty terrible things.

Of course, once her blood touches her demonic Bloodsight rune, Azjiok will have a snapshot of the scene. He might even take a break from his all-nighter to teleport back home. If Fescariot the Breaker tags along, the party will get to watch him break Granderblack's back again.

5 – Karma Never Forgets a Barbarian (or Whatever). Combine the two paragraphs above, with Granderblack and Godai working together.  What side are the PCs on?  Either way, they'll probably have to fight some townsfolk.

6 – Just a Concerned Mother. The party is approached by Falessa. Zozo has run away to join the Cult, and the Cult refuses to return the girl. Falessa was told, “She's fifteen now. Zozo's old enough to decide for herself which demon lord she wants to serve.” Falessa tells the party everything (well, not everything), and begs them to bring Zozo back home. Try to get her before she cuts out anyone's heart, if possible. But it has to be done in secret. The girl has to see all of her companions die in order to realize what a bleak life it is to be a nameless cultist. Heroes can just kill you whenever they want! Then Zozo has to escape from the party in a convincing way. If you can cast some illusions of wrathful angels, all the better. Just scare the girl straight-edged.   Bonus points if you can get her to stop wearing black all the time.

7 - The Road to Hell is Paved With. . . Well-intentioned pilgrims have stolen Umariel. They reasonably assumed that the child was going to be sacrificed after seeing the baby on a flat stone surrounded by black-robed cultists. Now they have barricaded themselves into a Pilgrim's Lodge and are under siege by the forces of darkness (Falessa), who just wants her baby back. If the players can survive a three-day assault by demonic forces, they might be able to figure out what is so special about this baby. Is it prophesied to save the world from Zala Vacha or something?

8 - The Bird in the Box. A powerful creature named Velsus is causing some havoc elsewhere in the world. Attempts to scry on the creature instead only show a black dagger shaped like a crow, locked inside of a box somewhere. Someone must seek out this dagger and see what relation it has to the creature.  And then, kill it.

9 - Definitely Up To No Good. Exactly as above, except that the Cult is planning to sacrifice the entire town in order to summon Dread Zocorioth, Who Devours the Sun. Of course, many of the apple farmers don't know this, and will fight against the party interfering in their business. Meanwhile, Falessa, Gordog, and Huscor are sneaking around, killing villagers and blaming it on the PCs. With every villager that dies, the red vortex in the sky grows larger and larger. . . Once X villagers have been sacrificed, the portal opens. And the portal won't fully close until the party destroys the summoning circle in the orchard.

10 - Dad's Doomsday. Razjiok and Fescariot have gotten the approval and resources they needed to carry out their eschatorium and possibly bring about the end of the world. Someone must take his family hostage and ransom them for a powerful macguffin that Razjiok needs to complete the doomsday machine. Before the exchange can happen, Fescariot the Breaker shows up to kill the Lavei family, explaining that once everything that Razjiok loves has been destroyed, he'll be able to fully dedicate himself to Zala Vacha and the Apocalypse, and his corruption will be complete. After the NPC negotiator accuses Razjiok of sending Fescariot, he agrees to traverse the Blackstone Labyrinth as a gesture of good faith. The Labyrinth is a testing ground for adventurous petitioners, and so the PCs will have a chance to design a dungeon maze that will hopefully defeat (or at least weaken) the end boss before he reaches their chamber. Razjiok will attempt to double-cross the party at the last moment as soon as he can teleport his family to safety. That's why he agreed to come in the first place, and that's why he's the end boss. He brought a fake macguffin, of course, and the party must still stop the doomsday machine that he set into motion. This plot would be extra conflicted if the party has already had a chance to have dinner with the guy (see #11).


11 – The Lesser of Two Evils. The party is approached by Rasghura, the Skin Dancer, in the guise of an angel. She tells the party about all the wicked things the Lavei family has done, and gives them all the tools they need to defeat them. She'll even help. She intends to collect Zozo's face, of course.  Depending how this goes, the party will either have to face Rasghura or Azjiok + Fescariot.

12 – The Other Lesser of Two Evils. The party is approached by Falessa, who wants to kill Rasghura and end the threat against her family. She worships demons, and is tired of having to cover her house in wards against infernal forces. The irony annoys her, and perhaps she can recover her daughter's eyes from the corpse.  She'll even help.  This will involve, at the very least, summoning a demon and might even entail a trip to Rasghura's nympharium on the shores of the Writhing Sea, in south Hell.

13 - And I'm taking the kids! The party is approached by Falessa, who has decided to quit both the cult and her absentee husband. However, her first attempt at this has failed, and she needs help to recover her children. Umariel is being held in the house by Huscor Blaine. Zozo is with her father, studying at the Chained Towers that hang over the Slithering Pit in the Abyss. She has since recanted her ambitions, and wants to leave the place. The Chained Towers are full of enough powerful demons to kill the PCs a hundred times over, so a direct assault is not advisable. While her father is reasonable enough to let Zozo leave ("She doesn't want to be here. Come. I'll even show you another way out.") he also enjoys killing anyone who smells of "heroism".  The demon Fescariot is much less reasonable, and he is never far from Razjoik.

The quest can include rescuing Umariel from the orchard, rescuing Zozo from hell, or both. Falessa can provide them with disguises, passwords, and passage to the Abyss (a ladder beneath the orchard, over a mile long).

Fun things that can happen in the Chained Towers: (1) The party is approached by screaming cultists who need help killing a Cathedral Beast that they created moments ago but have lost control of. The PCs will also have an opportunity to create and release some Cathedral Beasts of their own to cause some havoc. (2) Free an angel, which will blow their cover but give them an ally. (3) Some cultists have been condemned to a painful death after presenting an unacceptable eschatorium to Zala Vacha (they had a really stupid plan to end the world), and Vadregore, the Architect of Carrion, wants suggestions on how to kill them. (4) After witnessing Quangth, the Slouching Worm, steal some spellbooks from the smaller library, they'll have a chance to steal some books or turn him in (and watch the fireworks). Note that if they steal some books with Quangth, he will hang out with the party afterwards, and try to tag along.


I tried to humanize these people. They have hobbies and gardens, despite being part of an evil doomsday cult. I don't think it detracts from their efficacy as evil cultists at all, and I don't think motherhood has made Falessa forget how to skin a man. If anything, it makes it more terrifying when she does. The party might only gradually learn about the family's history, so it will be all the more dramatic when the family finally throws on their black robes after you've shared cornbread with them.

But don't treat them like good guys, either.  They're all bad people who love each other.  Even Zozo wouldn't hesitate to stick a dagger in your beloved PCs ribs.  And her parents would do much worse than that, and have fun doing it.

The Laveis are humanized bad guys (the opposite of faceless masses of grunting orcs you sometimes see). Perhaps too much so. If your party wants a kick-down-the-door adventure with goblins and goombas, then you probably won't enjoy dinner at the Laveis. If you want to see your party brainstorming how to beat a combat encounter without killing the bad guys—for no incentive at all—just so they can treat the NPCs like real people, then you might want to pull up a chair.

Also, Stheriax should probably just get a dog.

The Country of Cauterus

The royal family of Cauterus was overthrown very recently, in 1148 TFM.  The ensuing power struggle between the cult of God-In-The-Woods and the demons turned the country into a spiritual cesspit.  The land is cursed--anyone trying to leave the hateful nation will find themselves collapsing, vomiting out their innards, and dying . . . emigration is fatal.

During the night, the people worship in the cult's midnight forests of subterranean pines.  During the day, when their young god's eyes are not upon them, some of them put on the uniforms that the demonic army once wore, and mutter rebellion in hellspeak.


The Hills

But both the cult faithful and the demonic pretenders know better than to venture too far from the sheepfolds and roads.  The hills are haunted by swarthy men who capture travellers with nets and hooked spears, and drag them screaming into subterranean tunnels.  Those captured are eaten.

The cannibals resemble dark-skinned men and women with icy blue eyes.  There is a monotony to their appearance, and this peculiar consistency--along with frequent examples of idiocy--has led many observers to believe them to be methodically inbred. But aside from the ones that suffer from malformed faces and idiocy, there is no monstrous feature to mark them out.  And once you wipe the blood from their faces, scrape the mud from their nails, and tell them to stand up straight for the first time in their miserable lives, many of them are quite attractive, having blue eyes and aquiline noses.

There have been attempts to wipe them out. But the creatures collapse tunnels behind them, flood whole sections with poisonous gases, and fight viciously when cornered.  Entire battles have been fought without standing room, and thousands bled and died on their hands and knees, fighting in ant-trail battlefields a mile from the last time they stood up.  Soldiers have found themselves entombed in a crawlspace beneath the earth, walled-off on all sides by the corpses of their companions.  And then come the cannibals with their hooked spears, who sweep the battlefield into the cookpot.


Inbreeding

Colonies are led by a queen, who is the only fertile female in the group.  She constantly gives birth: one baby this week, two the next, and so on.  Her babies are  taken and educated by her sterile daughters.  A very small number of these children are fed the royal milk that the queen produces, which allows them to develop into fertile adults.

When a colony becomes crowded, a fertile princess will leave her mother's castle with an entourage and seek out a new land.  They will dig deep into the earth, and after a mile of tunnels or so, they will excavate a more spacious "castle".  A crowning ceremony will take place, her knights will pledge themselves to her and her children, and then she will begin to breed.

By the time she has birthed a hundred babies or so, her height will have doubled and her weight increased twenty-fold.

The Missing Chapter

It is no great secret that these warped creatures are the remains of the royal family. In fact, they'll tell you that themselves.  Many of them wear signet rings, although they are made of clay.  The placid blue eyes were ever a mark of royalty in old Cauterus.  And indeed, "royal cannibals" is their name for themselves.

What most people don't understand is how they could adopt the biology of ants, and how a family of six could turn into thousands in the space of only three generations.  (Although the term "generations" is used loosely, as it must be in this case.)

The pieces were there, of course. A decadent matriarchy.  A brilliant court alchemist who escaped with the royal family.  A series of secret safehouses, hidden throughout the countryside in case of emergency.  An irrational and unflagging pride in the superiority of the royal bloodline.



Rumors Most Likely True

Some say that the royal cannibals have managed to escape from Cauterus' curse.  Even now, their fecund daughters are growing fat on the flocks of Berica's itinerant shepherds.

Alchemists speculate the cannibalism is necessary because of some innate requirement of their biology.  Perhaps their bloodline is sustained by infusions of other bloodlines.  This commingling may strengthen them and shield them from the pitfalls of inbreeding.  It may even be a part of their fantastic rate of procreation. Surely they have a reason for embracing cannibalism so enthusiastically.  Surely.

Others say that the barracks at Belgast keeps a large number of royal daughters in their dungeon, where the soldiers capitalize on their infertility.

And still others claim that one of the young generals of the pseudo-demonic rebellion has taken one as a husband, and is offering a fortune to anyone who will brave the tunnels of the royal cannibals and return with a sample of royal milk, since she wishes to conceive a child with her beloved.

Lastly, while it is certainly true that the royal family escaped with all of their jewels and several wagons of gold, the exact location of this treasure is unknown. Most believe it to be kept in some central city of the royal cannibals.

In the alehouses--for even Cauterus has alehouses, where weary farmers sip their watery mushroom ales--the men talk of a vast chamber where the true queen of Cauterus sits astride a mountain of gold while her plump lips sip the inky alchemies.   Where the queen gently combs the hair of her favorites, telling them what great queens they will make once the throne is retaken, and barely noticing when another son is born into the hands of a nurse. The afterbirth is perfunctorily discharged along with the placenta, which streams down the golden slope, dribbling and glittering as brightly as the jewels that surround it.

I wrote some a Death and Dismemberment table to roll on when your PCs drop to 0.  I do this because I'm very bad at "fun" and very good at "I wanna type some numbers and roll dice in bed".

You gotta make two rolls before you find out what happens to the PC, but then again, this only happens when your PCs are dying, so hopefully it won't happen too often.

I tried to keep it simple enough that you could sorta memorize after one reading, which is good, but it also means that you miss out on all the ridiculous injuries like, "46 on a d100: your nipple is cut off and the monster chokes on it.  Roll on the Choking Chart to see how this resolves." but, eh.

Here it is ---------------> boom

Okay, so some settings have problems with the traditional monsters.  Horses get replaced with riding birds, dogs get replaced with lizards, cows get replaced with slugs.

It's all old hat, but it's very effective.  You can explain it in a single sentence, because everyone knows what a giant slug looks like, and everyone knows what a cow does.  And so without being threatening or confusing, the idea of spotted slugs munching on bales of hay in some bucolic oasis reinforces how alien the setting is.


You just don't want to overuse it, or else it becomes comical (Gamma World, the one normal bear in the entire world of the Last Airbender), which might be what you're going for (Gamma World is great).  Otherwise, stuffing one animal into another animal's skin works great.

So here's some otters in wolf suits.


Rompers

In Centerra, you won't find any wolves within 100 miles of a river.  The otters all chase them away.  The locals call them "rompers" or sometimes "lurkies", but really they're just dire otters.  They fill all the ecological niches of wolves.  They hunt deer in packs.  They happily prey on lone humans.  And they fill the nightmares and imaginations of villagers.  They're reddish on the head, which fades to a shaggy grey on the body.

They build dams across rivers in order to make small lakes.  That means more fish, and rompers like to eat fish.  They also spend a lot of time playing, and will even build mud-slides down into their lakes.  They live under grassy banks or inside their dams.  They jump into boats to eat fishermen.  That's why a lot of small boats in Asria have spiked sides, high rails, or both.  They don't howl at the moon, but people have learned to fear the tchuk tchuck tchuk sound they make when they call to each other.

Warriors hunt them and wear their tails.  Nobles make ornaments from their penis-bones.  Villagers claim that they are shapeshifters that tempt humans to their doom.  It is also said that they creep into houses at night and swish their tails over sleeping people (especially babies) which causes them to sicken and then die.  A few of them have been semi-domesticated, and will chase fish into nets in exchange for most of the fish.

Romper (Dire Otter)

HD 2+1
AC 6 [13]
Atk Bite +2 (1d6)
Move 15
Save 16

And here's another one:

Monkeyrats

In the temperate areas west of the Elterspine Mountains (where you can find lots of rompers), you'll find very few of the huge, diseased rats found in other parts of the world.  Instead you'll find monkeyrats.

Monkeyrats are the same size as rats (1 hp, 25% to do 1 damage with a bite).  They're better climbers, and most importantly, they're smart as hell.

They're rare in the wild, but extremely common in the cities.  They're smart enough to figure out ways to subsist on human excess, by stealing a couple of nuts here, eating some garbage here, and avoiding people whenever possible.  They live in huge troops of up to 100 individuals, usually inside roofs or in the drier parts of the sewers.

They fight a constant, invisible war with rats, which they usually win (by virtue of cooperation) and also with cats, which they usually lose (because cats are murder machines).  Still, cats in Trystero die when they get surrounded by monkeyrats, or when the monkeyrats drop a brick on them, so owners beware.

The cities have a complicated relationship with monkeyrats.  They're seen as pests, but they're a bit too intelligent to treat like vermin.  And they're too numerous to ignore.  Huge extermination attempts have been enacted, some with partial success.  But whenever the monkeyrats are killed, normal rats jump up to replace them.

And for many westerners, monkeyrats are a symbol of the people who live there, the medurans.  People admire their cooperation and tenacity when fighting rats.  "They're little citizens," people sometimes say.  And they can be befriended, and are even intelligent enough to, say, warn their friend human when an enemy has entered the neighborhood.  Urban druids rely on them extensively.

If ground up and made into a tea, their bones are believed to cure impotence in women.  Likewise, their hands are frequently made into "potions"* for cleverness or quickness.  It is believed that if a monkeyrat ever kills a man, the monkeyrat can become a fetus in the man's wife, and be born as a human of exceptional guile and malice.

*In Centerra, most things that are called potions aren't magical.  Most potions are worthless.

And one more:

Sludge Vampires

There are no vampires in Centerra.  Well, there's one vampire, named St. Cascarion, and works for the Church.  And I suppose there are plenty of "vampire-spawn", whose disease has given them no strengths and plenty of weaknesses (dietary restrictions and a hunger for blood).  So really, when common folk talk about vampires, they're talking about sludge vampires.

Sludge vampires are an intersection of a blood-hungry doppleganger and an intelligent ooze.  They look like people, talk like people, think sort of like people, but under their skin is a hungry ocean of green slime.

When they go hunting, they'll remove all their clothes and slither down chimneys and under doors until they reach their prey.  When they find someone asleep in their beds, they'll fling off the covers and jump on top of them.  They do this because they drink blood through their skins.  With enough skin-to-skin contact, they can drain of person of blood in seconds.  With only a small patch of skin touching theirs, it takes much longer.

After their blood meal, the human is dead and the vampire has gained about 15 pounds in blood and incidental fluids.  They distribute this weight around their body in a manner that will best disguise it depending on their size, mass, and gender, and then quietly return to their deception in the mundane circles of society.

When they wish to reproduce, they steal a baby (or buy one from the elves) and raise it as their own.  When they judge that their adopted child has grown to adulthood (about 18 or so), they kill the teenager, cut off a piece of themselves (usually a foot) and sew it inside the dead person.  After a week or so, the piece of slime has grown to fill the skin of the teenager, and is an adult slime.  Their parent has regrown their missing hand by now, and will teach their offspring everything there is to know.

For this reason, most sludge vampires appear to be in the bloom of youth, about 18 or so.  The skin that they wear always appears healthy and fresh.  Because they do not age, they must often change places and identities so that people do not grow suspicious, or else shun society all together.

Like the green slime that they are closely related to, sunlight damages them.  However, this only affects them if they are not protected by their skin.  So if you see someone walking around in the marketplace during lunch hour and you stab them, if they bleed green stuff that gives off smoke and smells like burning, that person is a sludge vampire.  If they bleed normal red blood, you've just stabbed an innocent person.

Also, their inner slime is a horrible acid.  It corrodes normal metal and wood instantly, rendering it useless.  You sometimes see this associated with the corpses they leave behind: drained of blood, metal objects strangely smoothed, and the scent of metal in the air.

Sludge vampires usually maintain their human facade for as long as possible, and defend themselves with "human" defenses unless sorely pressed.  Sometimes they cut the skin across their palms so that they can use their pseudopod attack at a moment's notice.  Savvy vampires also carry weapons inside their bodies.  Quite a few are also spellcasters.

Sludge vampires can leave their skins behind.  They are loathe to do this however, since they have no protection from light (even torchlight makes them unconfortable) and because they cannot maintain human form.  Instead, they are just roiling oozes, like their cousins.  They sometimes do this when they want to eliminate any chance of being identified on their hunts, or to keep their skins save if they expect fighting.

However, if their skin is destroyed while they are away, they cannot reclaim a new one, and will be forever stuck without higher form.  Most regard their adopted skins as their "real" face, and their "real" identity, and will go to any lengths to recover them.  People have even successfully blackmailed sludge vampires into obedience by holding their skins hostage.

There are three ways to identify a sludge vampire.

1) Prick them and see if they bleed.  This is the least reliable method.  If the sludge vampire has recently fed, they will have the victim's blood in their body that they can push through the wound, creating the illusion that they are actually bleeding.  However, this is the victim's blood, not their own, which may be useful in certain sorceries.

2) Their temperature.  Sludge vampires are always cool to the touch.  This is a bit subjective, and sludge vampires can sometimes fool even this method of detection by swallowing hot stones.

3) Their weight.  Sludge vampires gain a lot of fluid weight after they feed.  If a person gains fifteen pounds overnight, they are obviously not human.  Simply looking at them is not sufficient.  Some vampires are clever enough to fake pregnancies, obesity, or even swallow hollow boxes to fool their observers.  Of course, getting them to stand on a scale is difficult, but then, even a scale can be disguised. . .


Sludge Vampire
HD 8
AC 8 [11] plus armor worn, if applicable
Atk +8 as weapon, if wearing skin
Atk +8 psuedopod, (1d8), if oozing (can attack with weapon simultaneously, if appicable)
Move 12 if wearing skin, 9 if oozing
Save 7
Special weapon immunities, compressible, acid, paralytic toxin, sunlight weakness, blood drain, shape change, fragile skin.

Weapon immunities: Immune to non-magic bludgeoning and piercing weapons.

Compressible: can fit though spaces as small as 1".  They can fit their skin through as well, but bulky clothing (and things like belt-buckles) will have to be left behind.  They can do this extremely quickly.

Acid: all normal metal and wood that touch their slime (usually contained beneath their skin) is destroyed.  Magical stuff gets a saving throw.

Paralytic toxin: their slime (usually contained beneath their skin) causes a creature to be paralyzed for 2d6 turns, exactly like an ooze

Sunlight weakness: unless protected their skin, sludge vampires take 1d6 damage each turn they are exposed to bright  light.  Smaller light sources (at least the size of a torch) do 1 damage each round (unless protected by their skin).

Blood drain: if the sludge vampire is touching the target (skin to skin or psuedopod to skin), they automatically do 1d8 damage on the first round, increasing by 1 point each round, up to a maximum of 8 points per round.  They gain hp equal to half of the damage dealt.  They can make their skin sticky, like slime, and if they surprise you, they will usually smoosh their face onto yours so that you cannot see, scream, or fight effectively.  Creatures subject to blood drain are automatically subject to the paralytic toxin as long as there is a lot of skin-to-skin contact, or any pseudopod-to-skin contact.

Shape change: a sludge vampire can reshape its skin to appear as someone else.  However, they can't add a lot of surface area or hair, which limits them to human shapes, usually with hairless chests.  The head hair remains the exact same, and so they are easily detected when they change shape.  It is a non-magical effect, however.

Fragile skin: Once a sludge vampire loses more than half of its HP in a single combat, its skin is destroyed.  Most are loathe to let this happen, and so may quickly slurp down the nearest sewer grate.


Rumor has it that sludge vampires come from an underground kingdom of slime, contained in a single (or possibly several) enormous cyst (or possibly a geode) deep inside the earth.

Not a Hero, Not a Villain, Not a King

Zath ko Macchen was once a warrior.  He did many great deeds, but he was was not a hero, a saint, a king, nor a villain.  Although he saved the city of Merenmeck from the slime he also absconded with their treasury and six of their fairest daughters.  He freed the Recursive Fox when it was caught in the limbs of the Ferrule Forest, but he also cut off its tail and wore it on his belt.  And when Vokrin Tsang, the Tornado Tyrant, began his windy reign of impalement, Ko Macchen was there to end him.  And although he did all these great things and more, no one liked him because he was a braggart and an ass, and the mechanical elephant he rode around on was tacky as hell.

When ko Macchen died killing the second-to-last vampire, no one mourned him.  A great deal of fighting took place over his loot, with the city of Shar getting the lion's share.  The giant clockwork elephant containing his wives and 99 children rode off into the northern wastelands and was never seen again.

The cities didn't want the body of such a powerful individual in their graveyards (since even adventurers' corpses are dangerous things), and yet their sensed that it would be dangerously disrespectful to leave his body in the wilderness to be devoured.  (Technically, his body was lying in a slab within Macchentown, but the city he founded fell apart upon his death and was largely torn to shreds by looters looking for valuables.)  A solution needed to be found.



A Royal Tomb in the Pauper's Field

After a lengthy bidding war and one failed attempt to send his body into space, a compromise was reached.  The money was pooled, and out in the salty plains south of the Londeen Swamp, a small tomb was carved out of the limestone, and ko Macchen was buried hastily and reverently, amid the tears of hundreds of hired mourners.

These were during the days of Roa Junyo, when the great tree Aglabendis sent his roots across hundreds of miles and into the cities, tearing down walls and releasing stinging insects that carried the hopping plague.  Since druids were recognized as enemies of everyone who wore shoes and ate bread, it is little wonder that no one asked the druids of the region before deciding to bury ko Macchen there.  If they had, they would have learned of their folly.

The wizards call them poltergeist elementals.  The scholars, who recognize that wizards are a superstitious and ignorant lot (at least in certain respects), refer to them collectively as effronteria.  And the druids call them etherwasps.  The creatures build nests deep in the earth, along sulfur deposites and inaccessible speleothems.  They are incorporeal once mature, whereupon their adopt an extremely unconventional metabolism.  They're also known for the inexplicable way in which they parrot the words, personalities, and memories of those that they come into contact with.

Anyway, the ground that Zath ko Macchen was buried in was the territory of a great hive of poltergeist elementals.  The first thing that they did was crack open the tomb and throw ko Macchen's gold-laden body into the Saltsea, over four miles away.

Ko Macchen's body was found by Jerrindale the Sage, who spends four days out of every five floating in the middle of the Saltsea without any raft, fresh water, or clothing.  The sage traded ko Macchen's magnificent armor for a melchior of wine, buried the dead warrior in the sand of the beach, and spent the next two weeks beneath a salt-palm, chuckling in a drunken stupor.

After ejecting the offending corpse, the poltergeist elementals decided to take their great hive skyward.

Even the scholars are at loss to explain this behavior.  Certainly no effronterium, nor colony, has every done anything remotely similar in the years since they lifted their limestone hive.  The only conclusion is that something about ko Macchen must have caused the effronteria to organize and behave in this bizarre method.



The Poltergeist Moon

For a few days, the ten-million pound mass of stone hung in the air, insulting all of the physical laws and natural inclination of stone.  It contained ko Macchen's now-empty tomb and several small cave systems.  After a day of confusion, the displaced bats learned the new location of their old home, and nested there each night after a full evening of mosquito hunting.  No trees or other structures were brought--it was just a mass of featureless stone.

Then, the poltergeist elementals began to carve away the peaks and tors.  They didn't work during the day, and during the nights the forest below was filled with sound of boulders falling from several hundred feet up.  At first, the observers thought that the poltergeists were merely shaping it into a sphere.  Later, it became apparent that they were carving it into an exact replica of the moon.

Five weeks later, the miniature moon flew away, taking its caves, bats, poltergeist nests, and at least one giant cave sloth that sometimes crawled out of a mock crater in order to regard the surroundings disapprovingly.

Since then, the Poltergeist Moon has flown all over the world, chasing the shifting currents of planet's magnetic field.  Scholars can find patterns in the Poltergeist moon that relate to coronal ejections of the sun and the rhythms of the aurora australis.

Wizards sometimes summon the Poltergeist Moon, and bribe it into service with offerings of thunderstorms, massive magnetic oscillators, or powdered alum.  Collectively, the poltergeists of that flying rock are about as intelligent as a person, and certainly capable of understanding speech and behavior.  They can be dealt with, although they are capricious and dishonest.

It also behaves as a normal poltergeist does, which can be boiled down to two behaviors: defending its territory and playing pranks.  In one case of territory-defending, the moon submerged itself in the crater lagoon in Tremadiye Island and killed all the islanders that didn't flee.  It even killed the crew of a ship that landed to investigate the ghost town.  A few weeks later, it rose out of the lagoon and flew away.

When performing pranks, it mostly focuses on things that will scare, embarrass, or bruise.  Schadenfreude amuses the poltergeist moon (perhaps something about the intersection of two German words).  After a prank, it usually moves on amid a chorus of chuckles, but if a poltergeist elemental is killed, the whole hive flies into a rage, and it will attack like a nest of murderous, incorporeal bees.

Its most disturbing behavior is its tendency to pick a person (or group of people) and follow them around.  Interesting people, or people with a lot of metal, are the ones most likely to be subject to this unwanted attention.  Since the Poltergeist Moon resembles the actual moon, it's usually not obvious.  How good is your depth perception anyway?  Can you tell if the moon is 200' away or 200,000 miles?  Have you memorized all of the craters on the moon?  Did I really just see that flock of bats fly into the moon?  Is that a giant cave sloth?

If you really piss off the hive (probably by killing a lot of poltergeists or pelting it with magnetism), the whole moon will turn around, revealing the dark side of the Poltergeist Moon.  Which a giant face.  Then it flies downward and slams into the ground, crushing everything.  The stone mouth of the moon might even chew a couple of times if it needs to destroy a particularly resilient building.  Then, if its target has managed to run away, the moon will pursue them by rolling.


Stats

Poltergeist Elemental, Adult (a.k.a. Effronterium, Ether Wasp)
HD 3
AC 7 [12]
Move 18
Save 13
Special incorporeal, manipulate, magnetic metabolism, malicious manifestations

Incorporeal: Poltergeist Elementals are normally, invisible, silent, and intangible, but they can still manipulate the material world.  They are unaffected by any mundane creature, material, or weapon.  They are also immune to damaging spells, except for magic missile (which affects them normally) and electrical damage (see magnetic metabolism, below).

Manipulate: Despite being incorporeal, poltergeist elementals can still swing a sword, slam doors, push someone off a ledge, or punch people in the face.  Think of them as a one-armed, 0-level peasant with 12 strength, a thick mitten, and a bad attitude.

Magnetic Metabolism: They are also immune to magical damage, except electrical damage.  If an attack does 6 or less damage, the experience is pleasant and nourishing to the poltergeist elemental, and it takes no damage, and instead heals for half the amount.  If an electrical attack does 7 or more damage, they are damaged normally.  Magnetic fields shove them around like a goldfish caught in a toilet.  They hate this experience and will flee from it (if they aren't trapped by it).  The experience of being shoved by magnetism is so unpleasant, in fact, that they will even vocalize, which sounds like a cross between a rat screaming in pain and a Doppler radar screech (which lets you pinpoint their location).  They don't screech under any other circumstance.

Malicious Manifestations: They are also capable of manifesting simple images and sounds, much like a parrot.  They usually use this to make faces appear on surfaces or to make surprising noises.  They are intelligent enough to use this ability appropriately, but cannot form their own words or phrases.  They can only repeat things that they've heard, and only poorly.  Their words sound muffled and stilted--again like a parrot.

Juvenile poltergeist elementals resemble fat, flying balloon-grubs with metallic skin and a pair of small needles instead of a face.  They are non-aggressive unless they smell the coppery blood of another juvenile (such as if another one is wounded), in which case they will swarm and attack.  Just treat them like rats that fly and move at half speed.  They also make a supersonic chittering that is outside of the normal hearing range for humans.  Elves, however, are deafened by it, and bleed from their gums.

This isn't meant to be a fuck-you-you-thought-it-was-a-ghost type of monster.  Clerics with any level of formal training know that Turn Undead and other undead-specific spells don't work on poltergeists (although most think that poltergeist elementals are some exceptional form of spirit).  They've probably heard that electrical damage hurts them, though, and they are more likely to know this than wizards.  




A Note on Wizards

Wizards are not scholars.  Wizards are very ignorant, in their own way.  They spend time studying dead languages, hunting rare animals in order to eat their mystical organs, and speaking to inanimate objects (who don't speak back as often as the wizards like to pretend).  Wizards are among the most superstitious people on the planet, always waving their hands and invoking gods.  Although they've heard of many things and can assign a name to the weird creature that just crawled out of the sewer, they're also very likely to have dangerous misconceptions about it.  For example, wizards believe that there are four elements (fire, water, air, and earth) and universally reject the notion that chlorine or oxygen are elements.  Moreover, wizards have an unflagging believe in parallels: if there is a water elemental, then by the gods there must also be a fire, earth, and air elemental.  And if they find two things that look like air elementals, well, one of them must be a. . .a. . . poltergeist elemental! Yes, definitely a poltergeist elemental.  Since poltergeiss is a sub-element of air.

Voroglossus (a.k.a. Tongue Demon)