Goblin Punch

Verisimilitude. The "sense of place". One minute the DM is just talking about chairs and mead and then suddenly she inserts a few more details and the scene comes alive a little bit. This kind of attention is required for "3 orcs, 2000 copper coins" and they are required for shopkeepers.

They're also required for taverns.

Rhetoricians at a Window by Jan Steen

d20 Tavern Conversations

These aren't rumors. These aren't even necessarily quest hooks. This is the inane blather that you encounter whenever you eavesdrop on a few people having a semi-public conversation.

It's gossip, politics, and whatever passes for entertainment among a bunch of turnip farmers.

1. Taxes have been raised on honey and lowered on grain. Surely this proves that the king is afraid of bees.

2. Addition and subtraction might be godly but surely exponents are the devil's own handiwork. That's why usury is a sin.

3. If you get really drunk you float better. That's why we can't cut the navy's rum rations--they'll all drown.

4. You seen the new shirts that women are wearing? Makes them look like a goddamn sailboat. Supposedly prostitutes advertise their specialties by how they wear the buttons.

5. If you piss on a goat it'll never eat from your garden again. If you piss on other people's goats, they'll be more obedient, too. It's all about the piss, I reckon.

6. I swear, if I catch Old Man Bogard pissing on my goats again I'm going to catch him by his beard and dunk him in the river until he stops stinking like boiled cabbage.

7. I saw a bunch of ducks hanging out in a circle, and then I heard one duck quack, and then all the other ducks quack like they was laughing, and then they all turned to look at me, and I ran out of there quick, lemme tell you. I need another beer.

8. The priest is trying to send out coded messages, I think. Ever notice how he always stutters in his sermons? And not on random words neither.

9. Goddamn Joabites are everywhere these days. I caught my son playing with some Joabites the other morning, making shit out of spider webs. And folks these days are getting so lazy, just like the Joabites with their looms. You ever think the two are related?

10. Wise Old Sheppu ain't that wise. Milac was at his place fore last harvest, asking about the planting calendar, and he got a peek at her "magic book", an' it was just full of filthy pictures!

11. When the priests give sermons they must be reciting mighty spells of protection that would fry the brains of a lesser man and that’s why they don’t let us read the holy books: for our own safety.

12. It oughta be illegal what the duke's doing. Just cause they held a spear next to our boys doesn't mean that they ought to get free land here. Specially not land that used to belong to someone. Hell, they gave Jaxon's field to those bug-eyed weirdos. It shouldn't been sold and the money given to the war widows.

13. I'm going to kill my brother! Drinks are on me! - Some guy wearing a crown.

14. Farrmer McGregor is a fair and honest man. The only reason I don''t want him on the town council is because I once caught him fucking my goat. My goat! He has his own goats, so why fuck mine? Claimed it seduced him it did, but I know my goats, it did no such thing!

15. I wouldn't call myself a racist, but we just can't let dwarves into our communities. Today they're good blacksmiths and tomorrow they'll kill us all with some sort of magma cannon. I'm not saying I blame them but that's just how it is.

16. And I say we've taken their grief for too long. Those damn bastards steal our grain, molest our children, and shit all over the streets. So who's with me? Fuck birds! Fuck all of them!

17. The old duke's a bastard, the new duke's a bastard, and I bet his little brat will be a bastard too. About time we give an elf the job - at least we'll only need to deal with one bastard.

18. I heard Ethel's son is a coward, so they dressed up his big sister and sent her as a conscript instead. Why else haven't we seen her around? It was bad enough when the war was just gobbling up all our young men!

Aye! And Ethel’s girl going off to war means poor Ethel doesn’t have any strong hands around the house. That young lad of Rosa’s has been mighty helpful thereabouts lately.

19. Juggler? Pfft, that's just another name for sorcerer.

20. A heron isn't a real bird. That's what the Queen's wizards polymorph into to spy on us. It takes magic to balance with a neck that long I tell you, magic.

21. You walk into a bar fight. Everyone freezes on the spot. Then half the guys begin cheering and one bloke yells "Not fair, not fair, I demand a do over!"

22. I saw it I tell you, a boat as large a building, a veritable floating cathedral! Galleon's they call them. I heard the Sultan wants one built to be his traveling palace. THAT'S why we need Sinless Stan to write that letter for us! If the Sultan chooses our forest to provide the wood we'll never go hungry again!

23. You know some books, when you read them, they read you back. Just be careful what you check out in the library is what I'm saying.

24. If I let an infidel buy my goods, that just means that godless swine has less gold. I'm practically a crusader when you think of it like that.

25. That's what they drink in Urst, mead with eyeballs in it! THAT'S why they're invading. If they conquer us they're gonna tax every family an eye.

26. There's actually no dragon in the Dragon Bank - they just tell you that to scare away robbers. That's why the Bank is so successful, because no one would dare find out about the dragon.

27. The Pelican Glider from Galad is late. That must mean the Eastern Elves are up to no good, we should team up with the duchies and strike first!

28. There's a little drop of blood in every cannonball and sword. You need to give it a taste of blood before it can take a life. My brother's a smith; he told me that.

29. Yeah well it STILL doesn't make sense why things are backwards in the mirror but aren't upside-down. Even the wizards don't know. I think they're in on it.

30. Piracy isn't a crime. Crimes can only happen in a country and the sea isn't a country. Stands to reason.

31. I know you're not allowed to fuck goats, but hyperthetically, if you got a wizard to make an illusion of a goat, could you do it then? Would it be a sin? No, of course I don't want to fuck a goat but hyperthetically....

32. When you pay a toll you always need to include a silver piece to show the toll-man you're not a foreign spy. If you don't he'll have some "bandits" attack you down the road.

33. That tax on honey crap, it's because of MEAD, the favourite tipple of the Northern berserks, King Kollip put it up because he is a racist arsehole and also a wuss. Back in the good old days of King Athelfrith he wanted the Norse persecuted he just skinned the buggers and nailed their hides to church doors, none of these oblique fiscal attacks on obscure headache inducing beverages. Nosnikrap will be taxing orange food colouring next to mildly annoy the Tizer drinking Pixies, Athelfrith would have had a bounty out on pointy ears, day one. They don't make tyrants like they used to, do they? I mean it's not even illegal to point out that Kollip is pillok backwards, if anyone had said 'htirfletha' back in the day he'd have got a spear up the jaxie for being Welsh.

34. Goddamn shit that fell last St. Maple's warn't snow at all. I put my taper in it and it the frotzy shit didn't melt, just turned black and twisted. I don't know what they're burning in Barvenna, but whatever it is is fucking the sky up. I made the mistake of letter Mimsy drink and little and she's been in a right tiss ever since, squinting up her eyes soon as she sees me, nipping at flies. Ain't been drinking much water neither.

35. Remember when we brained Yosterman and his asshole cousin? Good, it felt good to finally see some justice done. Washed our hands in the same river we cast 'em in. Even the magistrate saw the wisdom in it, in the end. Never spoke against any of us, just left town like the magpie that he was, trembling in his lambskin. That's what I tell my lad, when he talks about Magatha and her milks. That's what I tell him, when he asks what he should do about her. But the lad doesn't have the stones. So that's why I'm here, drinking. A hundred roofs in this town, and not a single man left.

-------

I wrote the first eleven and last two. The others belong to

Max Sellers: 11, 18

Maxime Golubchik: 12-25

Enzo Garabatos: 26-27

Skerples: 28-32

Barry Blatt: 33

-------

I'm not going to count this as a Patreon post, since I didn't write half of it.

But I am going to count it as half a Patreon post, to be cashed in the next time I do one of these.

This is a primer on religion in Centerra.

I'm writing partially for me, since I want a good grasp on religions before I publish rules for GLOG clerics.

And I'm writing partially for the players in the game I started last week, who have no idea what they're getting into, but want to make a paladin anyway.

I'll update this post as the canon reloads, probably.

St. Peter's Basilica, Apse

This level of detail represents what a village priest would know. Heresies (alternate facts) are indicated in italics.

The Church of Hesaya

The continent of Centerra is dominated by a monotheistic religion that subordinates all other gods.

The Church of Hesaya is ancient, powerful, and full of secrets. It is led by the Pope (the last vestige of a former imperial line). It's authority is upheld by clerics, paladins, golems, and the Winds.

The Church is conservative, authoritarian, and intolerant. It is sometimes greedy, sometimes corrupt. And yet, the Church uses its immense resources to build roads, sue for peace, regulate finance, and field armies of brave paladins, who would die to protect the innocent.

The Church is loved. The Church is hated.

The Church rose to its current position of dominance by killing all of the local gods that once pocketed Centerra. A few of the old gods exist as slave-gods beneath Coramont, mostly forgotten and worshipped only briefly.

Other old gods have proved to be worshipped, and so are worshipped along side the Zulin and the Emperors. Any time a sacrifice is made to one of the old gods, an equal sacrifice must also be made to Zulin.

Even monsters know of Zulin, and even dragons hesitate to blaspheme against the Prince of the Upper Air.

The Faithful of the Church are called to prayer every morning by the ringing of the bell of St. Dorbaine, which only they can hear.

The Authority

Creator of Heaven, Earth, and all living things. The Law Giver. The First Voice. Humanity was created to order the world and make creation pleasing to him, and fair to all of humanity. He is the head of the Church of Hesaya. When he is invoked by magicians, he is calle the name of the sun, which is Dumadiyel.

The Elven Heresy: The Authority did not create the world, he merely discovered it and established himself as ruler of it. Life was not created, it evolved prior to his arrival.

The Antediluvian Heresy: The Authority spent several billion years testing different types of biologies before settling on the current one. In dark corners of the world, you can still bump into ancient creatures whose metabolisms do not use sugars or proteins, instead relying on impossible energy sources, such as morality, or songs. The scholars who proposed this heresy were killed by sky execution.

The Authority lives inside the sun, which is a golden palace that orbits Centerra. In fact, it is possible to see the golden domes of the sun's gardens with a powerful telescope.

Ninca Heresy: the Authority is absent, his palace is empty. The world is like a ship with no one at the helm, adrift. Ninca was killed via scaphism.

Since the Authority is the god of gods, no one is worthy of addressing him directly. Anyone who speaks directly to the Authority risks his wrath. Except for kings, of course, who are allowed to pray directly.

Everyone who is not a king must pray to a lesser deity in his service, most typically Zulin, the Prince of the Upper Air. It is a sin to know the true name of the Authority.

The Fox's Heresy: The true name of the Authority is Akatom. (Foxes do not exist, so they cannot be punished.)

Zulin

The foremost son of the Authority, Zulin is associated with the color blue, the sky, the wind, and the spoken word (and symbolic thought, by extension). His symbol is a blue hand, sometimes depicted with a tail, usually depicted as a pattern or a tesselation. (This is how Zulin is represented in religious art, at least). His other symbol is a teacup.

He lives atop the Immortal Mountains. The faithful may walk among those peaks with comfort, subsisting only on the snow, while the doubting man will stumble and freeze. Heathens may not even look at the mountains without feeling sick. Saints may actually walk to the Heavenly City while barefoot, walking atop soft snow, untouched by the winds or the cold.

His ex-wife is the Simurgh, the Queen of Birds, who is Thirty Birds. The verdant gardens of the Heavenly House were once hers. Her church is now shunned, and there are no birds in the Heavenly Mansions, except in cages.

At the center of the Heavenly House, Zulin hosts a tea party, the Eternal Tea. The Eternal Tea cannot ever conclude, because if he does, his guests will be allowed to depart.

One of his guests is Agda, a primeval goddess of darkness, silence, and secret fire, who will one day drown the cities in lava. She intends to do this as soon as she departs. She is furious because she has fallen in love with Zulin.

His guests also include all of the emperors who ascended: the first, fourth, ninth, and nineteenth.

Also in attendance are the Three Cryptic Sins, the last three members of the Ten Deadly Sins. While the first seven Sins declined Zulin's invitation and descended on the world, the three eldest Sins were intrigued, and became entrapped. Their names are Ibsia, Ambathy, and Moscalune. Humanity has never experienced them.

Lastly, the party is attended by all of the greatest entertainers, philosophers, and socialites who ever lived. Many of them are especially invested in the party's success, since they are destined for hell once the party ends.

Anyone who accepts an invitation to the tea party and sits down is required to stay until it is finished. This is not a punishment--Zulin is an excellent host.

The Boiler Heresy: There is no contract or compulsion surrounding the Eternal Tea. Zulin remains there, aloof from the affairs of humanity, because he does not care about us. Neither does Agda, who has refrained from ending the world mostly because she can't be bothered. (Timmaeus Boiler still lives, among the orcs.)

The Prophetessa, May She Live Again

Essa (May She Live Again) was the daughter of a gravedigger, and was nineteen when the Zulin revealed himself to her, and asked for her to be his voice. Since that moment, the prophetessa worked tirelessly to bring his words to the world. She founded the Hesayan Church, which is named for her.

After many years, she finally died. Rather than allowing her to join him in the Heavenly Mansion, she was reincarnated so that she could continue to be a source of inspiration for the Church. She has continued to be reincarnated, and currently lives in the holy city of Coramont. She is currently on her 57th cycle.

Essa (May She Live Again) serves as the fulcrum for modernizing interests within the Church, and is a subtle critic of the Pope. If the Church ever fractures, it will be along these lines.

Her body is 10 years old and has not yet remembered all of her past lives. She is protected by her immortal dog, St. Smaudius.

The Planet of Phasmodel (FAZ-mo-DELL)

Centerra is a continent on the planet of Phasmodel, which is hollow and named after its inner sun (as most planets are). The outside of the planet holds the oceans and the continents, while the inside of the planet is Hell.

Water falls as rain, drains through rivers into a porous network of subterranean oceans that border on both the inner and outer suns. Since Hell is so much hotter than the outerside of the planet, water evaporates faster, and exits the planet's interior through the poles, which are open. (Thus is the water cycle of the planet alloyed to the morality of its inhabitants.)

Hell

Objects fall towards the earth because they seek to reunite with it. And so a boulder will roll downhill until it encounters a valley. Souls have a similar attractive force towards Phasmodel, which priests call the Furnace of Souls and fools call the Anti-Sun.

Most of the souls who travel to Hell follow the same path as the water, first gathering on the rivers before tricking down through the abyssal caverns on the ocean's floor. Some ride magnificent dream-ships, while others merely drift.

Hell was not created. Every dead thing, every abandoned place, will eventually sink down to hell.

This includes people that no god has claimed, gods that no people have claimed, ideas that have been forgotten, and the geography of abandoned continents. Demons ride iron ships across boiling oceans, and primeval landscapes run together like paints in a pot.

Satan ruled Hell for eons, until an army of paladins found a way into Hell. The Infernal Crusade ended came to a climax when Maxodus of the Holy Hand struck Satan down, and sundered the King of Lies into 77 fragments.

Most of the Satans were captured and enslaved through the use of powerful magic. Many demons were also captured, and forced to swear the Oath. These demons were given Shackles, and became devils--infernal spirits bound to the will of the Church. And while demons war and cavort as their whimsy dictates, the shackled devils have all been given tasks by the Maxodus, the first king of Hell.

Heresy of Dead Embers: Maxodus lost to Satan and was possessed. Everything that has happened since then is a ruse to undermine the Church. (No originator could be found for this heresy. It seems to have arisen from many people simultaneously.)

Some devils hunt their free brethren. Other devils have been turned in gargoyles, and now silently guard the great cathedrals. And yet other devils have been tasked with tempting humans into sin, to better separate the chaff from the grain.

Some may balk at this last task, but consider this: if a cruel man is never given an opportunity for cruelty, how shall we know him for what he is?

Zala Vacha

The Church stamped out many of the local cults, but many survived the destruction of their temples. This loose collective of fallen gods is called Zala Vacha. They have many different personalities integrated within them, and many different goals, but they are united in their opposition to the Church.

Some of these gods are monstrous, like Elcoroth, the Infinite Pillar of Flesh, who is the god of Growth, Livestock, and Biologic Change. He appears as an infinitely long worm composed of the torsos of all species, arcing through the sky like a banner.

Some are benign, like Oressa and Ulda, two goddesses of the harvest who hate each other almost as much as they hate the Church.

And some are inscrutable, like Casca, a powerful spirit of void, forgetfulness, peace, and solitude. Casca appears as a hole in the universe, and teaches that everything is an illusion, and that desire is the root of all evil.

Heralds of the New Dawn

The Dawnbringers teach that the world was once the battleground between Good and Evil. In the end, Good was defeated, and the world fell to ruin, and was remade in the image of Evil. This is why there is so much pain, disease, death, and futility in the world. It was never meant to be this way.

Humanity was never meant to suffer disease, old age, enslavement, and death. Children were never meant to contract bone cancer. The world is inherently unjust.

The only way to save the world is to end it. Only when the last wicked man has perished will the sun truly set and the world be allowed the purification of a rebirth. And so that is their goal: to extinguish the last wicked soul on Centerra. However, since we cannot tell who is wicked, everyone must pass on before this world is abandoned.

The Cult of the New Dawn operates hospitals, orphanages, and soup kitchens. They take care of the most disadvantaged members of society. (Just because the world is wicked doesn't mean that there aren't still good people who need help.) Most of the time, this is all that they do.

But there have also been mass suicides. And mass murders--entire towns wiped out, hundreds of families who perished peacefully in their sleep.

The Dawnbringers are led by the Radiant Maiden, who appears to be a veiled angel. Lesser angels obey her as well, but they are her creations. She claims to be the only living creature that remembers the world as it was before the Fall, and the Victory of Satan. She brings healing, mercy, and gentle death.

The Deep Gods

The merfolk have their gods, too. Little is known of them, except that they are living creatures that dwell in the blackest abysses of the sea. They are never seen, and in fact it is believed that the lower pressures of the upper ocean would rip them apart if they ever ascended.

Their priestesses spend their entire lives attempting to grow large enough to mate with them.

The Green God

The Green God is more of a force, or a consensus. It is the hatred of civilization, specifically symbolic thought (such as language). In the eyes of nature, symbolism is the only abomination. Just read this post.

I believe Mandy.

If you're reading this blog, you're probably already familiar with the people that have come forward in condemned Zak, but just in case, here's Vikva, Patrick, Scrap, Cavegirl, Skerples, Fiona, Kiel, and Kenneth Hite.

Add me to the list, I guess. I'm cutting ties with Zak, and I encourage you to do the same.

I've dragged my feet because Zak was one of the first people to welcome me to the OSR, and because of all of the good discussions that evolved around him.

Those are good traits, but it's possible to have a few good traits and many shitty ones.

Zak is a manipulator and a narcissist. He is very good at arguing people down. I'm not referring to anyone else's allegations--I'm saying this based on my personal experiences, and nothing else.

After Patrick's Fuck All of You post, I wrote a few thousand words condemning Zak's behavior. I also talked to Zak about it, hearing his side of it, and he eventually talked me out of posting it.

So here's a quick recap of that unpublished post:

Zak likes to divide people into a binary of rational creatives and insane people who don't contribute anything useful. This is ridiculous and reductive.

It's good to hold people accountable for their words, but Zak has taken that instinct to the extreme by demanding that everyone answers all his questions to his satisfaction, or else admit that you were trolling all along. Also ridiculous.

And lastly, he always insisted that rational speakers paid no attention to tone (since definitions of tone were variable), even when it dipped into arrogance and abuse. Anyone who argued otherwise was doing so in bad faith.

He strives to turn conversations into a strict dialectic, with rules defined by himself.

Zak also wins many debates by sheer attrition. At a certain point, you realize that it's just not worth sinking another hour into an internet argument.

. . . anyway.

What to do now?

If you believe Mandy (and the other victims): support them. Say something.

If you want to hear Zak's side of it: here it is. I don't believe it holds up, but you should still read it as part of the truth-seeking process.

If you want to talk to Zak directly, I don't recommend it. Debate is his preferred battleground. I'm not advocating that you don't seek out the full story--just recognize that Zak will distort and spin things.

If you are one of the gleeful trolls looking for an opportunity to shit on Zak: hold your fucking tongue.

If you are Zak: I dunno, man. You've got a lot of good ideas in your head. Stop viewing everything as a combat to be won. There was a time when you were less aggressive, less controlling, and I think a lot of that online harm can be rectified someday. (I can't speak about the offline actions.)

If you want to know more: click those links up in the second paragraph.

If you want to build a better OSR community:

This week's lesson is to never tolerate abusers. More broadly, don't tolerate shitty people who are making your community worse. The shittiness very quickly outweighs past actions and contributions.

Hold people accountable for their statements. Ask for sources. Research your own claims.

Cite sources. Give people credit. Especially artists.

Post something. Even if you don't think it's that good, I guarantee that it will be of use to *someone*. Don't denigrate reviews or remixes--those are also extremely useful things.

Talk to people that are writing stuff you are interesting. Bang ideas together. Collaborate on something.

If you see something that sparks joy, reshare it.

If an online comrade hasn't posted in a while, check in on them. It helps keep the community alive, and even if it doesn't, everyone appreciates a friendly voice. I'm not just a name at the bottom of a blog post--I'm a human. And so is everyone else on your blogroll, on G+, and on Reddit.

I know G+ is dying soon, but we aren't.

And whatever strange form the OSR takes in the future, I know I want to be a part of it.

I'm writing another adventure. It was a small idea but it's already spiraling out of "manageable" and into "I may never finish this".

Essentially: a sorcerer colonized a flying mountain and enslaved a bunch of people to work for him via mind-wipe collars. A raiding party has killed (?) the sorcerer, and now his mind-slaves are snapping out of it. (Because the fastest way to get a game started is to shout "all you have is your filthy clothing and amnesia".)

It's meant to be approached in two ways: either as a starting adventure for a bunch of level 1 characters, or as a continuing adventure for a bunch of established characters.

by Sergey Zabelin

Hook for Established Characters

On a cloudy mountain hex, clouds blow over a lonely precipice. And out there, just beyond the lip, is a rope ascending into those same clouds. The top of the rope disappears into unknown heights. The tail of the rope swings in the wind, lazy circles a hundred feet across.

Hook for New Characters

You realize that you are picking turnips. You have been picking turnips for a long time. You aren't sure how long. You look around and notice that there are other people like you in the field. They are sunburnt and wear burlap tunics. Everyone seems as confused as you are. Where are you, exactly?

Hex 1 - The Farm

Depressingly mundane. Fields of grains and root vegetables. There is a small field of mandrakes, but they are not obvious. Chickens, cows, sheep. The billy goat is a failed apprentice--he has human intelligence and is spiteful.

Expect a lot of shabby NPCs milling about. People will be trying to take off their collars. People will be examining each other, trying to make sense of the amputations and alchemical scars. People will be searching faces, looking for a known face, a piece of context. People will be weeping.

Some people will be angry. They will want to set out, figure out who put collars on them, and force that person to take the collars off.

Some people will be scared. They will want to remain on the farm until help comes. They will build a Godhand in the yard and start walking devotional circles around it. They will pray. A nameless woman will begin preaching, and if the PCs don't intervene, the farm will become hostile and isolationist within a couple of days.

If you don't help fortify the farm, it'll be wiped out 5 days by the strongboys.

Hex 2 - The Elephant

You might encounter it as a wandering monster, but you'll definitely encounter it here, collapsed by the side of the well, shuddering as it tries to drink water. It is damaged beyond easy repair.

It is wrapped in cerement, like a mummy. Only its pale face pokes through the tarry bandages. It sputters and gasps like a man, but it does not speak. Its tusks are gold-banded, wrapped in runes. Its two eyes are rheumy and vacant.

It will only open its third eye if it is heavily damaged (below half HP). The third eye is an alien thing, bloodshot, spasmodic, and alert. It gives the elephant a gaze attack: save vs (torsional) long bone fractures.

It's innards are made from scented wood (worth 500s) and elephant bones (a whole herd's worth). It's heart is a canister of felfire, sealed with white lead.

Stats as an elephant, movement speed halved.

Hex 3 - The Windmills

A dozen of them, each one sitting atop a small mound. There is no wind, only fog, and yet the windmills still turn lazily. Close examination reveals that the windmills sit on turrets--they can rotate.

Because of course they are not windmills at all, but propellers that move the flying island around.

Each windmill has a small hatch, but there is no obvious way to open them. A crowbar and a chisel would be sufficient. Alternatively, a brave PC could climb the vanes and enter through the top, descending along the driveshaft where they can open the hatch from the inside.

The windmills connect to the Underground.

Hex 4 - A Hole Full of Clouds

It looks like a garbage pit from far away, but from up close you can see no bottom. All you can see are the tops of clouds.

The hole is, in fact, the garbage pit for the farm.

The Exile

The name refers to Gormagog, and he is a mountain. He was condemned by his brothers for an unspeakable crime, and the whole planet was in agreement that the most serious sentence should be enacted.

And so Gormagog was exiled--cast off from the planet where he had been born 30 million years ago. His roots were all broken, his brow was bashed in, and he was banished into the air.

Gormagog rose higher and higher with each passing day (the blink of an eye in geologic time) and would have plummeted all the way into the sun, had the sorcerer not intervened. A contract was struck, and Gormagog was allowed to remain at 3000' feet, not exiled but imprisoned.

However, the death (?) of the sorcerer caused the death of the planet's covenant, and now the Exile is rising again. If nothing is done, the flying island will fall all the way into space.

Wizards disagree with all of this, by the way. They say that it is something to do with magnets.

(PCs will notice that it is getting colder each day. They may even notice that the ground is getting farther a way. There is a time limit on this scenario.)

Hex 5 - The Ranch

The Astromath enjoyed the charade of a simple country life. His house is modeled after the type of rustic house that he claimed he grew up in. (A lie he told even in his childhood.)

One story, ten rooms, with a small horse barn out back. Big tree, swing set, tree house, pond, one-eyed cat.

The golem is in the process of burying the sorcerer's family, three bloody figures arranged beside three open graves. Soon it will begin repairing the burnt sections of the house.

The druids--the assassins--were all heaped unceremoniously in the back and burnt incompletely. The golem is a clay man with fire roaring behind the cracks of his face, but he knows less about fire than a child. (In fact, the golem knows nothing.)

The golem is not immediately aggressive, but one will be allowed into the house. It knows if there are uninvited people in the house, and it will not permit them to stay. In a way, this serves as a checkpoint for unequipped parties.

Golem
Level 6 Def 14 Fists 1d8/1d8
Move 10 Int 2* Mor *

Immune to slashing and piercing damage.

Becomes inert if it is ever fully submerged in water (as this extinguishes the fire). Dies if its shem rune is ever broken or damaged. This golem's shem is located on the crown of its head, hidden beneath a metal servant's cap.

The interior of the house is simple, but elegant. There are signs of violence. The only survivor is Delilah, the third wife, a succubus bound to her circular, silver-framed bed.

Hex 6 - Dead Warriors

About half a dozen of them. They were killed by the golem, their heads bashed, with the bloody pulp of the brain now attracting flies. (It hasn't been long enough for maggots.)

They ascended the Exile via long ropes, originally anchored by druids who flew them up in bird form. But the Exile has drifted, and those tropes are no longer a feasible means of escape.

Hex 7 - The Apprentice Tower

Currently under siege by a small woman and an enormous polar bear. The woman wears tattered wolf-skins and wields a rusted sword. She is a powerful druid, he is a powerful shapeshifter. They are mated, and they came here to kill the sorcerer and free his slaves.

They do not know yet that their allies are dead, but they will not care much if/when they discover that fact.

Inside the tower are three apprentices, each armed with a single spell (light, sleep, and illusion) and a crossbow. The bear has considered turning into a sparrow and flying in through the arrow slits, but is worried about what weapons the apprentices might have at their disposal.

They will all attempt to coerce the PCs to join them. The apprentices know their histories and have a way to remove the collars. The druids will argue that these are the same people that enslaved them. They will tell the PCs that they should feign friendship to gain entrance, and then kill the young sorcerers in their sleep. (It's not a bad plan.)

The tower is loaded with magical trinkets of dubious value.

None of them have any way of escaping the Exile.

Hex 9 - The Escaped Horses

They're all out here, rolling on the grass and looking for carrots. They're happy out here, but wouldn't mind being led back. It's getting late, and they know the value of a good stable.

Hex 8 - The Prism

A crystal the size of a three-story building. Dusty, cracked, and crudely faceted.

The Sorcerer uses it to import copies of items from adjacent universes. Light is reflected off an item and onto a second mirror, where it is then bounced back and forth between the two mirrors. Since a reflection imitates a form, and the form doesn't necessarily exist while the image persists, a paradox occurs and a new item is created.

Currently it is copying a burly man--the progenitor of the strongboys. Every once in a while, a new strongboy will wander out of the prism, where he will be greeted with a new enslavement collar.

PCs who wander into the Prism will find that it is a fractal, with the same three rooms repeated endlessly. Loot: crystal marbles (see 6 seconds into the future if swallowed) a mirror cocoon (essentially just a save-file for one of the PCs), and an infinite number of elemental arrows, each one a different element.

TODO

The wizard known as Nimbrot the Astromath. I should probably explain what an astromath is, what's in the tunnels beneath the Exile, and how the PCs can escape.

Centerra is supposed to be post-apocalyptic, although I sometimes forget that fact.

And if you are going to have a post-apocalyptic world, the most defining feature should be the ruins of cities. Ideally, the ruins should outnumber the living cities. The clouded brows of dead cities should loom over the tallest spires of the living cities, and the glories of lost civilizations should outstrip anything the present has to offer.

So here's a dead city.

This looks nothing at all like Tabernach, but the mood is right.
by Stefan Celic

Tabernach

A city of cubic buildings, built from black basalt at the bottom of a steep valley. A river runs through it, filled with fat fish. There are gates and gardens. There is a park, where a parade of stone animals still stands in revelry, roaring over the silent boulevards. Dire otters sun themselves on the stones of sunken docks.

They have tried to make the city habitable, those certain people. You can see where they've stretched poles across the street, and canvas hung between them. It was done in order to turn the roads into tunnels. But now the poles are broken and the canvas all slashed. The tatters blow through the streets like bandages.

The Largest Building

It was clearly an observatory. The rusted remains of a telescope are still visible, peering out the apex of the tower like a scared bird. This landmark is well-noted, and people have journeyed to Tabernach in order to loot the great lens (precision optics are always among the greatest treasures of the age that mints them).

But the wooden stairs of the building have all rotted out, and those that have made the perilous climb to the top report that the glass is too heavy to easily lower. And so the great lens remains there, an unplucked fruit.

A Central Building

There are still a few footpaths in Tabernach. Many of them convene here, at this small prison. The few dozen people who live here often choose to sleep in the prison, because they can lock more doors. They feel safer in there, father from the outside.

The people who live here are criminals, runaways, and exiles. Smugglers and travelers sometimes pass through. Tabernach is a good place to disappear into.

Mousehead deals with the smugglers, mostly. He and his family ensures that their goods remain undisturbed and their exiles remain unnamed. He is a large man with a soft beard. He always struggles to maintain eye contact, and so many who meet him do not suspect that he is capable of prodigious violence.

Mousehead is satisfied with the status quo, and anyone attempting to change the city in any significant way (such as excavating the temple) will meet lethal resistance from him. He will also expect a cut if the lens is ever successfully removed.

Fiddleback deals with the spiritual needs of the exiles, when he is sober. He knows more of the history of Tabernach than anyone else. Like everyone else, he has his theories about what is wrong with the sun. Unlike anyone else, however, he is correct.

Fiddleback would never admit it, except to a trusted friend, but he is writing a book about the shape of the sun in Tabernach. He has been studying shadows and pinhole camera projections, which he believes to be safe. (He is mostly correct.) His has a folio full of drawings which can be used to piece together the shape of the sun, something that he has been hesitant to do (and rightly so). With total knowledge comes total insanity.

Still, Fiddleback knows enough that the truth of the city's demise could be discovered in a library (one of the mansions holds a sufficient library) and the curse dispelled.

A Small Building

A shack near the docks contains a spread cowhide and a trio of sodden barrels, sprouting mushrooms. The barrels were once filled with a small fortune (2000s) of pepper. Now, the rot is so bad that only a small amount (100s) can be salvaged by a patient hand.

Another Small Building

A two-story house, the perimeter secured by strings and trip-wires. It's filled with shoes, many still containing a foot. The owner is Chapparung the Shoe-Thief. He'll be back soon. HD 3, unarmored, Axe 2d6.

The Temple

The paint has faded and at least one steeple has toppled, but it is still the most highly stylized building in the city. It's composed of an outer building, a courtyard, and a small inner building.

The outer building holds a dozen small shrines and a central chamber of worship, all of which have been looted and defaced long ago. The buildings only inhabitant is Gogo, a lonely who man who was unfairly driven from the prison because of his obsession with his own feces. He's lived here peacefully for years, but has never ventured into the inner building, since he suffers terrible nightmares whenever he does so.

The inner building is a small sanctum. There is a small pedestal where a larger statue once stood, but aside from that, the room is empty. The only other thing to note is that the floor is made with pale tiles of rhyolite--an oddity in a city where absolutely every other stone is black basalt.

If the tiles are pried up, the ground beneath them discovered to be made from human bones, broken and mixed together.

If these bones are are removed (a process that takes about 10 hours of labor), a staircase is revealed, leading down into the basement level. Every cubic centimeter of space is in the staircase and basement is filled with broken bones, from floor to ceiling. Before even a mouse can explore the lower levels, the bones must be removed.

The process of clearing the bones takes about 1000 hours of labor. The bones belonged to approximately 160,000 people. The bones all appear to be of equal age, and all demographics are represented among them.

The Sun

The sun does not shine down on Tabernach. Although the light is the same shade and intensity as the sun's light, it is something else entirely in the sky.

People who go down into the valley of Tabernach do so at night, and they do so quickly.

Those who see the sun (through a peephole, mirror, or even a pinhole camera) go insane. Their first actions are usually to open all the windows, destroy any awnings, and encourage their friends to look at the sun as well.

Those who are seen by the sun suffer a worse fate. They are snatched up, screaming into the sky as if by a giant hand. Their remains are usually returned to the same area, usually within a few hours, and dismembered usually at the joints. There is a great deal of variety in this process, though.

And there is one last oddity: all of the shadows in Tabernach are twinned, as if there were two light sources instead of one. (The eyes of Satan, some say.)

Another common story is that there is an invisible giant prowling the city.

Another story, the one told by Mousehead, is that there is another sun behind the first. And behind that second sun is another world--another planet, called the Opponent. (This is known as the Heliocentric Heresy, since it is known that the sun orbits the earth, not the other way around.)

But if there is such a thing as the Opponent, it would explain where the crawling men come from.

The Crawling Men

They exist only in rumor, and the rumor is this:

the crawling men are knights (or perhaps large beetles) with large, round heads. They have long arms that allow them to move swiftly on all fours. Their heads sag, either from the weight of their own skulls or because they are always searching the ground for scents.

The crawling men are accused of killing dogs, stealing weapons, poisoning food, and removing shade. No crawling man has ever been killed, or any piece of their armor been recovered.

They may not exist. In fact, they probably don't. But if they did, they would have the following stats.

HD 2 Def plate Rusted Sword 1d8
Move dwarf Int 8 Mor 5

Bloodseeker - Crawling Men always know who has the least HP, and attack that target preferentially.

Skittish - As soon as someone is killed (either a PC or a crawling man), the crawling men will attempt to grab the person and flee. This is the only time they will ever fly (as a giant beetle). They will fly about 200' away to a place of relative safety, slit the person's belly open, and lap up their blood with their long tongues (which fit perfectly through the round mouthparts of their armor). This process takes about 10 minutes, after which they will return to fight again.

A platter of fresh blood is irresistible to them.

This is the second of my ruined cities. (Here is the first.)

The Countryside

For the wise traveler, all they'll ever see of Braxa are the roads, and even then, from a safe distance. Patrols are not as common as they once were, but they are still deadly. The average patrol is composed of a quartet of mounted "knights".

The average work-crew is composed of three dozen undead laborers, who level the flagstones and clear the footpaths of their growth. It is a futile exercise--the citizens of Braxa all died long ago, victims of a plague of their own devising.

There are no small farms in Braxa, only plantations. If you are determined to ride into the city itself, you'll pass several of these huge platations. They are autonomous, all singularly crewed by bleached skeletons. (Fleshy undead are messy, smelly, and spread the wrong types of disease.)

And you'll see the wagons pulling the giant jars of grain along the manicured road, on their way to the great grinding houses.

The grinding houses, you can feel them in your feet from half a mile-away. A thousand chained undead, straining in a spiral, rotating an entire building. A torrent of clean grain thunders into the basement, where it is then carted off, again in a single gigantic jar.

The Walls

The city is surrounded by high walls of earth and stone, the highest wall in Centerra (except for the Forbiddance, which most consider to be a mountain range rather than a wall.) As you walk through the long passageway between farm and plaza, you can hear the shuffling of dead, pivoting inside their secret chambers, watching you as you pass, ensuring that the leader of your party is wearing a merchant's medallion.

The walls are where the city stores its dead. Each is about 50 meters thick, and 50 meters tall. It is honeycombed with secret tunnels, armories, and sepulchers. If you believe the tales, there's more bone than stone in the walls. The whole wall is supposed to be able to exhume itself and march off at a moment's notice.

by Kris Kuksi

The City

It is clean and well-patrolled. If there were any left of the old bloodline left, it would be a utopia for them to claim. Supposedly, the undead will respond to the rightful rulers of Braxa, and signify this by kneeling. Then the whole warmachine will be there for the scion to claim.

There are many granaries and stockhouses in Braxa. Food is delivered to every house daily, and older food swept away and throw into the canal, which is choked with rot.

The smell from the canal permeates the whole city.

A Small Building

A gate house. Two skeletons operate the gate, while a dozen coffins in the bunk room can be summoned as reinforcements, if the proper bell is rung.

Another Small Building

A school. Every morning, the undead clean the chalk tablets, open the windows, and serve lunch. And every night, they put the chalk away, close the windows, and clean the tables of their refuse.

The Harbor

Looking down in the water, you will see the encrusted skeletons of Braxa's marines. There are thousands of them down there, clad in lead boots for marching underwater.

Visitors sometimes arrive in Braxa. The undead pay a bounty for corpses--three silver for every corpse laid down on the dock. You may not leave the dock.

The Castle

Behind the blank-faced silos sits the castle. Your merchant's medallion will not gain you entry. Skeletons squat above every window, peer up from between the flagstones. The moat is contains no water, merely more skeletons.

The last known king was Obrichan the Poet, although it is believed that he died in the plague, along with all his subjects.

Many people believe that the plague was caused by the king's acceptance of necromancers into his kingdom, and his acceptance of the undead. Rather than condemn all forms of undeath as an abomination, he allowed them to serve as laborers.

This is where you will find living humans. Some of the slaves seem to have escaped the plague, and now still tend to castle, performing the chores that the undead are too indelicate to perform, such as tending to the garden or playing songs during "dinner". Slave who do not perform their chores are mutilated by the skeletons. They may not leave the castle.

The slaves have gone through countless generations without any interaction with the outside world. The speak a degenerate patois, and perform their chores religiously, without understanding the significance of what they do. They have an invented religion, in which the Prophetessa is an invisible spirit within the castle. After a lifetime of service, they will be promoted to skeletons themselves (mostly true) and after their skeletal life is complete, they will join the invisible Prophetessa at her invisible court.

One of the three towers is known to be the home of Abin Uldrin, the king's necromancer. If there are any answers to be found in Braxa, they will be there.

Undead Army Strategy

I swear to god, no one does it right.

The greatest strengths of an undead army is in logistics, and in sieges.

Not needing food is a tremendous advantage in long campaigns, far from home. The need for a supply line is minimal. And so undead armies tend to embrace long campaigns, sometimes wandering far from home for decades.

This resilience is even more useful during sieges. Undead armies can encircle a town for years. A common tactic is to build a second wall around a city's walls, and use that to prevent relief armies from approaching. The undead have all the time in the world.

Skeletons are also resistant to arrows and burning oil, two common methods of repelling a siege.

In fact, skeletal armies are so good at sieges that an opposing commander will often make great sacrifices to force a pitched battle elsewhere.

The greatest weakness of an undead army is the intellect of the soldiers, and their magical prohibitions.

An undead battalion must be led by a living soldier, capable of formulating plans and enacting them. If this soldier is killed, the battalion becomes headless. Multiple commanding officers offer redundancy, but also erode the unique advantages of the undead. And so a common opposing tactic is simply the assassination of officers, either through a suicide squad or subterfuge (such as an opponent's risen skeletons.)

Another flaw of the undead is their limited ability to differentiate between humans (and other skeletons, for that matter). An enemy will be obeyed if they are wearing the proper armor and giving the proper code words.

Lastly, clerical magic can scatter skeletons with shocking efficiency. An army backed by the Church's clerics can be devastating. And so assassinations are also required (something that skeletons are incapable of).

Undead Army Tactics

Skeletons are typically iron-shod, like horses. Their feet tend to erode during long marches, and then they become incapable of walking.

Skeletal armies are also capable of startling ambushes, with their combatants buried in sand, shallow swamp, or surf.

Crawling skeletons are usually relegated to battalions of their own, and trail behind the main body of the army, unless there are so few of them that they can be carried on wagons, or by their peers (although this just causes their feet to wear out faster).

Lead-shod skeletons can also invade a city through the harbor, by walking on the bottom. This is devastating to an unprepared city, and this type of sneak attack is usually how campaigns are kicked off.

The most visible icon of a skeletal army are the gas wagons. Huge things loaded up with burning arsenic, or possibly a mixture of bitumen and sulfur crystals (capable of producing plumes of sulfur dioxide).

If you ever fight a skeletal army, you will do so in smoke. In many battles, the smoke claims more lives than the skeletons do.

Common counters involve maneuvering for optimal wind, obstructing the wagons with rough terrain, and/or fighting a running battle.

Tunneling crews are also common. Sometimes traditional tunnels are used, while othertimes a "bubble" is used, in which freshly excavated soil is piled behind them. The skeletons are not concerned by their entombment.

For gaining access over a wall, a certain type of skeleton is sometimes used, called a flatback. These skeletons wear special armor that makes them stackable. A battalion of flatbacks is capable of building a ramp up to a wall within just a few minutes.

A common counter for flatback battalions is a type of wrecking ball, which is attached to the battlements and used to clear the wall.

To the rest of the world, the Marilanth Petal is a criminal organization, peddling drugs and poisons in alleyways the world over. But in Bospero, they are merely another of the noble clans--another miniscule dukedom in a city infested with dukes.

That the Duke of Poppies is the head of a criminal enterprise is no secret, but it is certainly not something that is remarked upon in polite company. Besides, the city already tolerates greater offenses against decency (the Stewer's Guild, the Black Rabbits, the ever-larger fashions of the nobility, the scandals of the Queen, and the financial predations of dragonkind) and is perhaps stronger for it.

A Sidebar: Bospero

The largest city in the world, Bospero is technically a tight cluster of dukedoms, each separated on a small island, where the duke holds absolute power. These islands are separated from each other by trash-filled canals, protected from the roughest vagaries of the sea by a maze of breakwaters, built atop Odo Longo, a sunken city just off the coast, thought to be build by giants in past ages.

These dukedoms were originally limited, and only awarded infrequently, but as the breakwaters proved too be too effective, silt built up around the city, and the ocean became shallow enough that islands could be constructed by ambitious nobles. And while the granting of duchies has ebbed and flowed with the options of the regent, the end result is that Bospero now has nearly a hundred soverign duchies, all locked together in a maze of shallow canals, each with the power to negotiate foreign treaties, tax visitors, and declare war on other duchies.

Bospero is a famously difficult to city to navigate. Foreigners describe the city as pure madness, a riotous warren of strange laws, toll bridges, mystery cults, incomprehensible dialects, and a heady gradient between street gangs and duchal armies. The locals are proud of their city and its reputation. They wouldn't have it any other way.

This is also where Coramont, the Holy City, is located.

End of Sidebar

Where was I? Oh yes, the Duke of Lornavel is a terrible man. If you ever wish to make a name for yourself in Bospero, make sure that you are a friend to him.

But there is a reason why the island of Lornavel is given this special dispensation: they are responsible for satisfying the Mantleray. They are not scrutinized by the queensguard; the Grand Euphorium is never searched. The crown doesn't even tax them--their only civic responsibilities are the deliveries.

The deliveries are more drugs, of course.

Vast amounts. Impossible amounts. Pools of poppy extract. Casks of delago. Enough tambrack to smother a child, or ten. Thrum, mevverwen, jopeth, scrumboola. Fat-petaled lotuses, big as a crown.

And for this delivery, they have only a single client, the Mantlewray.

More correctly, her name is Elzabeth Jonna Mantlewray, the former duchess of Madrigo. Her story is lost, another victim of her own predations, but pieces of her history can still be assembled from among the flotsam.

Most of the stories agree that she did it to herself. Madrigo had a history of strong alchemists, primarily focused on metallurgy, but with enough biomancers in the family to make her transformation very plausible.

The stories disagree on whether her son was her first test subject, a simultaneous effort, or later recruited to her cause once she was leading a rebellion and needed an ally. Regardless, even though her son is just as much of a Mantlewray as her, he is not called by his familial name, Jubalcain Monastus Mantlewray. Instead he is called The Lech, or sometimes The Son of the Squid.

Why did Lady Mantlewray become the leviathan?

To fight the merfolk in their own element, perhaps, and safeguard Bospero harbor from their drills, nets, and horrible dolphins.

Another story claims that she did it to flee an abusive marriage. (It is agreed that her own estate was among the first that she destroyed.)

And yet another story claims that she simply desired power. There are no supporting facts required for this explanation--human nature has proved it to be true countless times.

These theories are not mutually exclusive, and her true rationale is probably not limited to a single motivator.

Still, is it difficult to see the brutal remains of her violence and think them to be products of a subtle mind. Everywhere in the city, you can see places where the stone is lashed to the foundation by rasping tentacles. Certain spires are still bent and rusted by her terrible exhalations. And although the birth defects have declined, it is not rare to see an elder whose body has been bent by her cruel poisons.

The only places that do not bear her scars are the Holy City of Coramont (because she did not dare), and the Golden Road (because she could not).

A Sidebar: The Golden Road

The Golden Road is a bridge that traverses the Bosperian Bay, connecting Bospero with its sister city of Marinda. The bridge is 36 miles long, and is usually crossed in three days. The bridge is studded with fortifications dating back to the Road War, when both Marinda and Bospero competed for control of the Golden Road. It was a long, bitter, slow conflict that Bospero ultimately won.

The Golden Road is built from adamantine, and shares other similarities with the Bastion of Medurak (a dam) and the Forbiddance (a wall). Bospero has mixed feelings about the Golden Road. It connects them to the lands to the north, but it has also allowed foreign armies to swiftly march into the city. They are proud of it because they control it, but they are frustrated that they cannot even chip the least piece of its structure.

End of Sidebar

During the rebellion she was the Traitorous Abomination. When she was crowned, she was Lady Mantlewray again. And now that she has loosened her grip on the throne and the city, she has regressed into the Mantlewray, well on her way to becoming a beast again.

And as the Mantlewray becomes more and more withdrawn, she concerns herself with less and less of the world. There are few alive who have heard her speak, and certainly no one living remembers her tearful confessions in Coramont, her supplications at the feet of the Prophetessa (May She Live Again), and the forgiveness that she received.

In fact, the only thing that seems to concern the Mantlewray these days is the potency and punctuality of her drugs, a task that has only become more challenging over the years as both the Mantlewray and her son has grown larger over the decades.

But while the Mantlewray is withdrawing from the city that she once ruled, her son leans into it more with every passing year. For a while, he was fascinated with brewing, and ran a brewery for years, producing several quality lagers. Everyone agrees that the accident wasn't his fault.

Then it was cigars. Then it was horses. Then it was a distillery. Then he went to work on his shell, adding new chambers, bolstering his seams with bronze, and spinning his natural spines into monstrous spires and involutions. Then it was horses again.

For a while, he attended plays--his monstrous face peering over the roof of the theater, the light lessened by the shadows cast by the cyclopean parapets of his shell. He had no hands to clap with, but he voiced his approval by stamping his dozens of feet in the street outside, the sound of boulders falling. He brought many gifts for his favorite actresses.

And then it was girls. Perhaps it was something like a delayed puberty, an artifact of the many contortions his mother inflicted on his biology. Or perhaps he finally located his genitals within the cavernous carapace of his. Regardless, he threw himself into this newest mania with an appetite exceeding even his own previous frenzies.

He attempted the more typical methods of courtship, but after the predictable failure, he moved on to more transactional enterprises. Soon he was showing up to the plays with a nest of strumpets among the crenellations of his shell. He had gold aplenty, his mother's gold, dug up from whatever secret reef she had buried it during her regency.

The Lech visited the city even more, then. You could hear the booming gurgle as he laughed from the harbor, as he showed another girl how to use his mother's enormous harbor-bong. You could see him in the Grocer's Harbor, his gracile oral tentacles loading furniture into his freshly expanded shell, the prostitutes carrying off another chaise lounge to furnish some interior boudoir.

Artisans were brought in. His shell was caulked and sealed. He had airtight compartments, now. He could bring his girls down with him. He was too heavy to swim, but his crab legs could carry that castle through all the Bosperian depths.

He thought of himself as a clam, and the girls as his pearls.

Down in the bottom of the bay, where the watery sun above was paler than the moon, his girls would massage his aching mantle, and they would ask him about his childhood as a human. Did he remember his hands? Did he remember what is was like to kiss?

And in the face of these questions, he could only lie.

How to Use This in Your Game

I hope that you think that Lady Mantlewray and her son are as interesting as I do. They are certainly powerful, if you were to plop them down in your campaign world.

Lady Mantlewray's brain contains a wealth of potent knowledge. If you could find some way to leverage it, a piece of that trove could be yours. You could get a fortune of gold, or turn yourself into a kaiju of your own design. As an enemy, Lady Mantlewray is about as dangerous as any other 60,000 ton monster, so be careful before you tamper with her drug supply.

What does she want? An escape from her melancholy perhaps, or a remnant of her earlier days. Perhaps she wants her humanity back. Regardless, there are plenty of people in town who can answer this for you. Her son, perhaps, or even the Prophetessa (May She Live Again).

Her son might yield easier leverage, but perhaps in a riskier way. He is not dumb, although he may be a bit naive. And unlike his mother, the players will probably have no trouble thinking of ways to entice him.

There's also a great deal of interested parties. Many people would like to see the two monsters dead. The Marilanth Petal would like to be free of this responsibility, even though it would degrade their special status. (They've tried poisoning her; they don't recommend it.) The death of the monsters would also create a tremendous glut of drugs, unless the Marilanth Petal can keep a lid on things and enforce a certain level of stockpiling.

The merfolk would like to see the Mantlewray destroyed. Without her presence, the Bosperian ships are vulnerable again.

And even pieces of the monsters are valuable. There are many alchemists and biomancers who would pay handily for even a piece of the creatures: the Stewer's Guild, the Transmetallic Alchemists, Grandfather Oshregaal, etc.

Even the pieces are valuable. The players could be hired to steal a vulnerable cache of drugs (at the risk of incurring the Mantlewray's wrath). They could be hired to steal a velvet ooze from inside the Lech. You can even use the Lech as a questgiver (whose identity isn't immediately disclosed), as there are certainly many things that he would want to acquire, and many of which require a bit of legally ambiguous footwork.

I've tried to write this post several times, and I've learned that I am unable to complete it unless I limit the scope to the smallest possible range.

So here is a cleric (for use with the GLOG).

by Justin Sweet

Clerics vs Wizards

Clerics are basically like wizards, except . . .

1. Clerics don't choose their spells, their deity does.
2. On the upside, Clerics don't suffer from magical corruption or catastrophes (from rolling doubles or triples).
3. On the downside, Cleric spells are unreliable, since the (always fickle) deity may not choose to grant the spell at the moment it is requested.

Faith Dice

Faith Dice (FD) are just Magic Dice (MD) that have a variable size. They are otherwise interchangable (and a multiclassed wizard/cleric can use them interchangeably). They default to a d8.

When a wizard casts a spell, they choose how many MD to invest. Each MD contributes to the final spell, and after rolling, the following chart is consulted.

1-3 MD is returned to the mana pool.
4-6 MD is depleted, and will return to the mana pool tomorrow morning.

Clerics work the same way, with one additional wrinkle:

7+ MD is not depleted. The dice roll does not contribute to the spell. (A fizzle.)

Since clerics are usually using a d8 as their casting die, it will not be uncommon for their spells to fizzle (if all the dice fizzle) or be underpowered (if only a fraction of the casting dice fizzle).

Faith dice improve (shrink) or worsen (enlarge) according to the clerics behavior.

If a cleric doesn't follow the strictures of their religion, the dice increase in size until the cleric atones.

If a cleric atones at a church (confesses, pays a hefty tithe), their dice are reset to a d8. Note that the cleric must genuinely repent of their behavior (but the player doesn't necessarily have to).

If a cleric receives a special blessing from the Pope or the Prophetessa (May She Live Again), the FD will be improved to d6s until expended. Likewise, if you are in a situation that is very obviously in favor of your deity (e.g. fighting a Satan, trying to save an innocent child) then your FD are also temporarily improved to d6s.

Here's the progression.

d6 (temporary) <> d8 <> d10 <> d12 <> d20 <> d100 <> Apostasy

If you reach Apostasy, you can either choose to abandon the Cleric class entirely, or become a Heretic and regain your powers (along with the enmity of nearly every civilized person). Heretics are required to expound on the nature of their heresy, both in the game and outside of it. Heretics who defeat the Church (whatever that means) will be vindicated and their heresy will become incoporated into the orthodoxy of the Church.

by Justin Sweet

The Cleric Class

Based on the Wizard class.

Cleric A
Guardian Angel
God's Plan
Ephiphany

Cleric B
Ceremonies

Cleric C
Divination

Cleric D
Miracle

Cleric Teams
The Reach of Heaven
Guardian Angel Pool

---

Guardian Angel

This is not an ability that the cleric gets. It's an ability that the cleric's party gets.

The entire party gets an FD of their very own, of the same size and type as the clerics. Anyone (including the cleric) can use this FD to cast a spell, but it cannot be combined with any other MD.

By default, this FD can only be used to cast heal. The caster must follow the same god as the cleric.

Yes, this means that the party's rogue can heal the dying fighter by praying over her.

Yes, this rule was partially developed to remove clerics from the time-consuming role of healbot, without straying too far from the archetype.

Yes, this means that a level 1 cleric effectively shows up with 2 FD, while the level 1 wizard only shows up with a single MD.

Guardian Angel spells are tracked on the Party Sheet.

God's Plan
A cleric doesn't choose their spells, their deity does. The DM should pick spells for the player based on what is most likely to be useful that day. (DM, feel free to use these spell choices as omens, e.g. protection from fire might forecast the possibility of a dragon encounter.)

A player can negotiate this ability with an animal sacrifice (a cow, at least) and an hour-long ritual. They can ask to choose all of their spells, half of their spells, etc.

Epiphany
A cleric can identify a magic item by praying over it in a church. This is similar to a wizard's Identify ability, except that it is 100% reliable, but it requires a church.

Ceremonies
Each ceremony takes 2 hours.

Union– Two people are bonded. If your partner would take physical damage while you are beside them, you can choose to take half of it. If one dies, the other loses 500XP.

Funeral– The dead are honored. Everyone gains XP equal to 50% of the deceased's total XP. (So if a PC with 3000 XP died, each of the three surviving PCs will get +500 XP at the end of the session.) This transfer only works from player characters, to player characters.

Sermon– You can implant a suggestion in all Neutral and Friendly attendees. Make a single roll for each (roughly) homogenous group/demographic. You still need to get people to sit through a 2 hour sermon, and most people are not well-disposed towards religions other than their own.

Divination

You ask a question of your deity, which is then answered through a vision or a dream. (For Hesayan clerics, this takes the form of a sleep-like trance while watching clouds.)

First, choose what level of divinity you wish to ask.

Level 1 - A Saint or Holy Emperor
Level 2 - One of the Lesser Gods
Level 3 - Zulin, the Prince of the Upper Air
Level 4 - The Authority (this is forbidden to all non-kings)

Roll 1d6 for every level of the divinity. Every result of 1-3 is a success. Each success improves the quality of your divination.

Roll 1d6 for every level of the divinity. Every result of 1-3 is a failure. Each failure beyond the first causes your FD to degrade one step. Your FD will never degrade if you are performing the divinations in a clear service to the Church.

You cannot ask the same question twice. You cannot even ask related questions, either. Aside from that, feel free to do all the divination you wish.

Here are some examples of visions produced by different levels of success. The player doesn't know the level of success, merely the result.

In response to the question of "Where is the crown of Hesperornithes located?"

0 Successes	Pure nonsense. Ex: You dream that are are sitting in a village square, surrounded by your family. You are digging a hole, but it keeps filling up with milk. Serpents come and drink the milk.
1 Success	Moderately useful omen that is difficult to interpret. Ex: You are sailing on a ship to your destination. The captain is a burning torch. The navigator is a blind rooster. For your crimes, you are about to be imprisoned in a barrel of sponges. (This dream communicates the idea that it might be on an island, at least. The rooster is a very oblique reference to eggs.)
2 Successes	Very useful omen that is somewhat difficult to interpret. Ex: A faceless king pulls eggs out of a dog's mouth, shows them to you, then crushes each one underfoot. Brine and fish dribble from his mouth. He screams like a seagull. (This dream communicates that an ocean journey might be involved, and shows broken eggs.)
3+ Successes	Extremely useful omen that is easy to interpret. Ex: You turn into a bird, fly across accurate geography, mate with Zulin, build a nest atop a castle on the Isle of Broken Eggs, and a tiny prince hatches from your egg, singing a righteous song. (You can't really get any more clear than this.)

Yes/No questions are generally easier to interpret, since you only have to know if the vision was a positive or negative one.

If you are bad at coming up with random crap for visions, the you can just roll a d100 on the House of Hours.

Miracle

Miracles are powerful, world-changing events. You can ask for almost anything, as long as it is:

related to your deity's portfolio
doesn't go against your deity's interests

When you first get this ability, your Miracle score is set to 3. Your Miracle score improves by 1 point whenever you finish a session or gain a level.

You can attempt a miracle once per session. To attempt a Miracle, describe to the DM what you are praying for, and then roll a d20. If the result is equal-or-less than your Miracle points, the Miracle occurs and your Miracle score is reset to 0.

At your DM's discretion, you may also gain Miracle points for performing great deeds in the service of the Church.

Clerics do not gain this ability until they perform some major ceremony in a central place of worship, such as leading a town's Harvest Ritual. (Ask your DM.)

Cleric Teams

I really want to make mono-class parties more viable, because they're awesome. So here are a couple of advantages that you get by having multiple clerics in the party.

Heaven's Reach

Clerics can ignore range restrictions when casting spells on each other.

Guardian Angel Pool

The FP granted by the Guardian Angel ability are now pooled together with each other. It is possible to cast a Guardian Angel spell with multiple FP. Additionally, the Guardian Angel knows at least one different spell for each cleric that contributes to it. For example, if a three-cleric party would know than just heal. They would have access to heal, cure poison, and feather fall.

by Justin Sweet

Coming Soon

- A PDF of actual clerics, including a couple of non-Church clerics.

- Rules for removing clerics from your game entirely, and replacing them with a single Guardian Angel that the entire party shares. (Partially because I don't find clerics that appealing, partially because PCs in pseudo-medieval settings should probably be more religious.)

I'm going to tell you about a place, and then I'm going to tell you about a class.

This is going to be a difficult class to play.

It is difficult because you are a parasite, and you only infect other player's characters.

You will be powerful together, but eventually you will consume their body entirely, and they will die. You will remain, but they will need to roll a new character. You killed them.

Becoming an Oscadian

In the yellow wastes of Abasinia, there is a plateau called Osk. Atop the plateau is the is the city of the same name, the city of living rubies, where the black sugar is made and love is only known to slaves. We will not speak of them.

Beneath the plateau are the caves of Osk. And in the largest of the caverns is the Mother of Osk, who has grown too large to ever leave. Her first birth was as a dragon, but her second birth was as an Oscadian, and indeed she is the only mature Oscadian in the world, for Oscadians do not reach sexual maturity unless their first birth is from the embers of a dragon's egg.

The Mother is a gentle creature, who has grown weary of war, and loves the quiet dusk beneath the plateau. Even those who seek her out in order to kill her, or steal her many treasures, are usually not killed, if she can help it. They are merely maimed, then nursed back to health.

She consorts with poets, philsophers, and priests. She is a devout follower of Hesaya. If you do her some great service, and if you are gentle with her rough children, she may reward you.

This reward may take the form of wisdom, treasure, or healing. The poets are wise, the gold is lustrous, and her milk is thick with potency, but the greatest gift she can give is to infest you with one of her children, a rite normally only reserved for dragons.

Total psychic consent is required for this process to be successful. NPCs are unreliable in this regard--only PCs can carry a parasitic Oscadian, and only PCs can play an Oscadian. They are too powerful and subtle for anything less.

DM's Note

Oscadians are a full PC class. Part of the fun of this parasite class is the fact that you essentially become two players inhabiting the same body. This is unusual and intimate, and is hopefully a unique roleplaying experience, culminating with the death of the host.

But yeah, sure if you want to treat it as a living suit of armor that casts spells, sure, go ahead. Be boring.

End of DM's Note

Class: Oscadian

Oscadian A: Sharing a Body, Spellcasting
Oscadian B: Living Armor
Oscadian C: Ragged Claw
Oscadian D: Consumption

An individual Oscadian is actually a colony of clonal organisms, like a coral reef. There are nineteen types of sub-Oscadians that will grow and differentiate inside the host's body, each one technically an independent animal that shares a bloodstream with its siblings. These sub-Oscadians will eventually replace every organ in the body.

No one really really give a shit about that, though. When someone sees an Oscadian, they see a human body overgrown with thick, homogenous, grey scales. Each of these scales is a sub-Oscadian (one morphology out of the nineteen). Each one has a single red eye that they open when they cast spells.

When the head is replaced, it is will a flat, heavy-browed face that is mostly occupied with a single red eye the size of a fist. If the calcite eye is ever pried from the skull, it is a gemstone worth 200s. It will not regrow. There is only a narrow slit on the bottom of the head. This is the polite mouth, and it is used only for speech. It is incapable of eating.

Luckily, at this point the rude mouth has already grown out of the solar plexus, and is capable of assuming this responsibility with a formidable efficacy.

This process is gradual, though. You begin your life as only an arm.

These humanoid Oscadians are sterile. True Oscadians are generated from a draconic host.

Sharing a Body

Roll your ability scores as normal. When you fully take over this body, you'll inherit the physical ability scores from them, but until then, use your own physical ability scores.

You currently control an arm. Your host loses control of that arm. You can use your arm normally. This potentially allows you to each make a melee attack against a target, or you can both coordinate your turns to fire a single arrow at your target.

Generate your HP normally. You now share an HP pool with your host. This makes you very hard to kill. If either of you die, you both die. You have separate minds, but a singular body. If a spell or poison affects one of your bodies, it also affects the other one.

Spellcasting

As a wizard, with one MD per level, up to a maximum of 3 MD. An Oscadian begins knowing only two spells: speak with reptiles and speak with insects. At Oscadian B they learn acidbolt. At Oscadian C they learn dominate insect. They can use scrolls but cannot replace the spells they know.

You require the use of your arm to cast these spells (as normal). You don't require a mouth (which is good, because you don't have any). You can produce the speech required for spellcasting by buzzing all of your sub-Oscadians simultaneously.

Living Armor

You grow to cover the entire body except for the face. You count as a suit of plate, except you do not take up any inventory slots. (You still sink automatically if you fall in water.)

Similar to how shields are sundered, you can choose to shatter some of your sub-Oscadians as a free reaction. If you choose to do this, you may reduce the incoming damage by 1d8, and your AC decreases by 2 points. You can do this twice, but not thrice (since that would kill too many of your sub-Oscadians).

It's also pretty traumatic, since you then have to watch your siblings (pieces of yourself) flex and squeak and bleed to death on the floor, like legless beetles.

Your dermal population will regrow in one week.

Ragged Claw

Your hand is not a normal human hand anymore. It is a jagged talon the size of a shovel's head. You can attack with it to deal 1d6 damage, but you cannot do any fine manipulations with it.

You can also perform a horrific haymaker with it. You get +2 Attack and deal 2d6 damage, but if you miss or fail to kill your target, you lose your next standard action as you recover your poise.

Consumption

You finally grow populous enough to consume your host's head. You retain many features from your host, but the face is not one of them. Your face is now dominated by a glassy, cyclopean eye.

You also consume the brain. You gain access to all of your host's memories, and you retain one class ability from your host. This is negotiated with your DM, but I recommend retaining their most iconic ability, such as a barbarian's rage or a wizard's spellbook.

You have one regular humanoid arm and one Ragged Claw.

You are now more than just an arm, you are the entire body. Your host is now dead, and their player will have to roll a new character.

Oscadian Psychology

If an Oscadian were to read this blog post, they would have many objections to the terminology that I've used.

They do not see a parasite, nor do they see a host. Instead, they see a first child and a second child, who eventually mature together into the Oscadian.

In their minds, an Oscadian is made up of many subunits, each of which is technically an individual animal with it's own heart, lungs, and (linked) mind. A human, too, is theorized to be made up of tiny individual animals as well. None of this is an obstacle to the concept of all these disparate parts seeing themselves as a unified whole. An Oscadian's sense of self is no less fractured than a human's.

The way they see it, an Oscadian has four parents. A human father and a human mother. An Oscadian mother (Mother) and an Oscadian father (long dead, except for what remains in Mother's spermathecae).

An Oscadian who visits their human parents would be just as loving and understanding as the host human would have been, and will probably try to gently explain that changes that they have undergone. They still love their parents. They still love the Prophetessa (May She Live Again). And they still love beer, even if they can't taste it anymore.

There are hundreds of paladin orders. They are diverse and scattered, because the Church does not attempt to organize all of them. In fact, some of the orders predate the Church which they serve.

Most paladins are not incorporated directly into the Church's heirarchy. Some orders are associated with kings and countries. Some are monastic and semi-independent. Regardless, they are all universally trusted and respected.

Except for a few that aren't.

The Condemned -- The Order of the Tortoise

Sometimes paladins fall. Their crimes are so horrible that they cannot be allowed to continue in their current position, and yet remain redeemable in the eyes of the Church. (And besides, some of them are too skilled to waste.)

Some are allowed to repent and pay simple penance, but for others, their penance is to be condemned to the Order of the Tortoise.

Oftentimes, their sins are understandable, and yet inexcusable. In the eyes of the world, they are criminal paladins, serving out their sentences, to be obeyed, yet despised.

"I killed an innocent so that a dozen could live."

"I knew she was guilty, and yet I let her go. She was no harm to anyone anymore."

So while the Church may have sympathy, there is no ambiguity in the Orthochism.

Paladins of the Tortoise are locked inside their armor. Their names are stripped from them, and they are answer to the name of Tortoise. If you need to differentiate them, use adjectives.

If they die before their full term is served, their armor will raise them as dutiful undead, until the completion of their service.

If they complete the shameful length of service, their names and honor are restored, and their time in the Order of the Tortoise is never spoken of again.

Their coat of arms is a tortoiseshell, each scute filled with a white circle that represents the moon.

Baldwin IV from the Kingdom of Heaven

The Afflicted -- The Alabaster Order

The Church conducts many charitable works, and one of their most visible ones is the care of lepers.

Leper colonies (such as the one at the Isle of Pigs) are built, protected, and fed by the Pope's purse. All lepers are welcomed there.

However, lepers who are still able-bodied are strongly encouraged to join the Alabaster Order, which is composed almost entirely of lepers. (The few exceptions are usually people who joined on behalf of a family member with leprosy, who was unable to join the Order personally.) It is not a duty, but an honor, to serve in the Alabaster Order.

It is said that no paladin will rot behind his white mask as long as he shows no cruelty nor cowardice. And indeed, that sometimes seems to be true. There are members of the Alabaster Order who are so ravaged by their disease that they cannot speak except through a stylus, without any lessening of their sword arm.

Their visors look like white faces, and they wear scarves soaked with rosewater. (Remember: diseases are caused by foul smells, and that rosewater = antiplague in Centerra.)

They are based in the House of the Fountain, and led by Sir Grindelwine the White.

Their coat of arms is white rose with petals falling from it, on a field of red.

The Unrecognized -- The Order of the Mouse

There is a problem with forbidden knowledge: it corrupts. It corrupts inevitably, if given enough time.

For a long time, the Church fielded paladins who would hunt down insane cults and execute heretics.

But cults must be studied before they can be infiltrated, and heretics always talk so much. And so it was, that the Church's best witch hunters would eventually fall victim to the same corruption that they stamped out. They would doubt, or they would despair, or they would go mad from their rough enlightenments.

A simple solution was found. The paladin's mind would be partitioned off, entire lobes would be quarantined. This would keep the mind from intercorrelating too many of its contents.

<digression>This is not as mad as it sounds. You (reading this blog post) have a conscious brain that is aware of itself, but you have many submerged systems running in the background. You have a secret ub-brain that makes you sad when you hear a song that reminds you of your ex. You have a secret sub-brain that down-regulates hunger when you are playing WoW. You have a secret sub-brain that gives you boners in Algebra for no reason. </digression>

In the original implementation, these paladins were divided into three parts. The conscious (normal) mind, the "librarian", and the "library". The librarian chose what the conscious mind would forget, and would store it in the library. These partitions would protect the paladin from any harmful knowledge.

That practice isn't too common anymore. Too well-known, and therefore more controversial, but they exist.

A more extreme (and potentially more common) practice is to isolate the part of the paladin's brain that remembers that they are a paladin. And so you have people who are puppets of their subconscious (moreso than usual), who manipulate themselves to innocently infiltrate the cult. They could be naive for years before the librarian pulls back the curtain, the memories come rushing back in, and they murder their cultist friends and then march back to Coramont for absolution.

They have no coat of arms, and are not acknowledged by anyone.

The Unsanctioned -- The Order of the Worm

The psychology of a ghoul is especially remarked upon. The classic legend, told of taverns everywhere, tells of the loving husband who died protecting his loving wife in the midst of a hateful war. But he returned as a ghoul, and lovingly hunted down his wife before lovingly eating her alive.

When a person becomes a ghoul, most of the memories remain intact. The personality also tends to survive the process. The mood is, allegedly, much improved by the process, and stories about of good-natured ghouls who are as cheerful as they are ravenous.

What does not survive are the specific cares and motivations. They still crave the company of their old friends, and remember their addresses, but care nothing for the health or happiness of those same friends.

Most ghouls have lost what little faith they had in life, but there are some exceptions. Those who are especially devout--who are so committed to their faith that they absolutely cannot conceive of a self-identity that lacks it--sometimes carry that religion into undeath.

Mostly dead clergy, supplemented by no few soldiers. You'll find them everywhere, but especially places where brave corpses were abandoned.

The Order of the Worm is a loose collection of devout ghouls that have sworn to shun the flesh of the living faithful. More incredibly, it is a vow that they sometimes keep. (Ghouls have a famously hard time keeping promises when they are hungry, and they are often hungry.)

<sidebar>Sidebar: ghouls are cosmopolitan, and when common people imagine ghouls, they think of a trio of fleshy-faced graverobbers who travel between towns, digging up fresh corpses and eating them, who must be burned when they are caught and killed lest they raise from the dead. The mad, withered things that you'll find in dungeons are the uncommon phenotype. And being intelligent and cosmopolitan, they naturally seek out others of their kind. And so it is that culture and words spread among the ghouls.</sidebar>

And so they are the armored fellows crawling on the ceiling of the cistern, who will ask you if you've recently attended church. (How recently? I suppose that's recently enough.)

They may ask you recite some verses, to prove your faith.

If they are very hungry, they may ask for more obscure verses.

If they are very, very hungry, they may eat you anyway. Who remembers every word anyway?

And sometimes, if you are in trouble, they will help you. They are especially likely to assist you if the act is likely to yield some tasty zombies to eat.

Their coat of arms is five argent worms, rampant, on a sable field..

The process by which a person becomes a ghoul is poorly understood.

One popular theory is that ghouls are created when the higher souls are weakened by cannibalism. According to this theory, the unnatural act of consuming one's own species is inherently repellent to the universal morals of creation, and so the higher souls divest themselves of the flesh that they find abhorrent. In this power vacuum, the lower souls insert themselves, and then expand to fill the higher functions of the mind. The hunger of animals, the uncaring mind of minerals--these become the new philosophy of the ghoul.

Another theory: it is well understood that certain sins are so repugnant that their punishment cannot be postponed to the afterlife. Masturbation is punished by blindness. Blasphemy is punished with polyps. When viewed through this lens, ghoulishness is explained simply as the appropriate punishment for cannibalism. A longer lifespan is no gift if there is no humanity, no satisfaction it. Who cares how long a beast lives?

These theories explain the spectrum of ghouls, as it is usually described.

On one end, you have the youngest ghouls, the itinerant graverobbers who are fully alive, but have a ghoul's touch. They are corpulent souls, who struggle to hide their hungers. This is the most cosmopolitan time of their ghoul-life, when they seek out others of their kind, and cluster in their abominable enclaves.

A young ghoul might be a portly man in a top hat, with a wide smile and a warm handshake, charitably offering to pay for the funeral expenses of unknown paupers.

At the other end, you have the the cadaverous undead who have been so consumed by hunger that they have gnawed their own limbs to the bone. They long ago abandoned the trappings of humanity in favor in favor of their bestial passions. They usually lose all discretion at some point in the process, and are discovered and destroyed by witch hunters.

But those that retain some cunning still succumb to exposure and malnutrition, and usually die behind some parish kitchen, shivering from a fever that they no longer feel. When death finally claims them, they do not notice it (and would not care if they did). They only truly develop into the ravening, skeletal things of legend after suffering the madness and autocannibalism of long entombment (which is surpringly common among ghouls).

The autocannibalism is believed to be driven by self-loathing rather than hunger, since ghoul flesh is not usually appetizing to ghouls.

However, there is one creature that cannot be explained by either of these theories.

wrong genera but right ghast
by Richard Wright

The Ghast

Also known as elder ghouls, ghasts transcend the biology that spawned them.

Growth is normally impossible in the undead, but ghasts seem to be able to switch between life and undead at will, according to their needs. This may even extend into true death, which ghasts may use as a form of hibernation. There are stories of leathery corpses the size of horses, dredged from the peat, that have groaned and stirred once the sunlight warmed their black sockets. If this is true, and ghasts can hibernate by dying, then perhaps they can never be truly killed.

And so ghasts grow through the dim epochs, assuming bestial forms more suited for their inclinations.

But this growth is not the growth of natural life. No botanic soul dwells in their flesh, that guides and shapes the new vessel. This is like the metabolism of a lich: no longer autonomous and entirely directed by the mind. A lich's heart does not beat until the lich commands it; a ghoul's flesh does not grow until the ghoul wills it. (And in fact, this may be what causes a ghoul to transition into a ghast.)

And with the transformation of long years, they regain some measure of cunning. It is not a resumption of their human mind--that was lost long ago. It is something new, a dark composite of those that they have devoured.

This is because the second defining feature of the ghast is the liver, an organ which has no true analog in any other animal. A singular tissue, it alone is capable of turning flesh into memories. It is perhaps related to speak with dead, as it involves that soul that lives in corpses (rather than the soul that continues to the afterlife), except that the soul is not conversed with, but devoured and internalized.

Ghasts trap the dead, but not in a conscious collection of discrete souls, but instead in a gruesome patchwork of overlapping memory.

And since it is the memory of the flesh, not the memory of the conscious mind, the content of the life is remembered without any of the emotion (except as the body remembers emotion: a flush of the face and a quickening of the heart, nothing more).

They can speak, sometimes very well. (And depending on the evolutions of their verbal apparatus, they may have dozens of voices coming from one mouth.) But the mind behind the voices is an abominable one. Memories of a hundred people may blend together, sometimes in an irrational synthesis. Parents are switched, blended, or remembered as a multi-headed amalgam. When an ancient ghast was a child, it lost thousands of teeth, cried over the death of dozens of parents, and lost half-a-dozen limbs to accidents.

There is a famous ghast named Blackchapel, who is named for the town he devoured. He is a mad thing, who haunts the necropolis he made, forever struggling to resume the lives that he ended.

And there is the Ghoul Worm, whose directed growth has taken a route that is very different from most ghasts. He devoured the same death cult that he once led. They still live in his belly, a groaning monstrosity that worships itself from its manifold viscera. He is as cruel as any killer, and as wise as any sage.

The flush of knowledge is strongest after the meal. There are stories of a ghast eating a child, only to come sniffing around the dead child's house, calling for its mother in perfect imitation. It is not a ruse, though, and the ghast genuinely believes itself to be that child. The dead live again in the ghast, and if that same ghast saw its mother, it would embrace her and kiss her and devour her alive.

And that is why you should never open your door if you hear your dead child weeping outside.

The liver is where flesh is converted to memory. If the liver is extracted, it can be turned into a tincture called ghrism. If drank, it confers the same ability to the drinker. If it is drank, and part a corpse is consumed, the dead will live for a while in your body. You will be supplanted, and then you will co-exist, and then the dead will fade until only a shade exists, a figment. There may be times when you remember someone else's mother as your own, or feel surges of someone else's racism.

from Far Cry Primal

Using Ghasts in Your Game

Ghrism is obviously very gameable. It's effectively a potion of speak with dead with more flavor, more drawbacks, and possibly more power. It also turns a ghast nest into a valuable resource. (And I love it when my players hunt monsters for their parts.)

It's also an opportunity for character development and roleplaying opportunities. Your character is a little more interesting when pieces of the 2000-year-old princess mummy keep surfacing, perhaps.

I'd actually like to write a GLOG class based on a person who has eaten too many memories, to the point of forgetting their original identity, amid a swarm of transplanted memories. (It might be as simple as rolling a randomly generated class every session.)

Do you need stats for a ghast? Fine.

Ghast
HD 4+ AC leather Claw 1d10 + excruciation
Move human Climb spider Int 10

Excruciation -- If the target fails a Save, they are afflicted by excruciation. If they choose to spend their turn writhing in pain, they take no damage. If they choose to act normally, they take 1d6 damage. At the beginning of each turn after the first, excruciation has a 2-in-6 chance of dissipating.

Conversion -- As a free action, a ghast can choose whether to be alive, dead, or undead (with all the usual implications).

A ghasts liver can be harvested for a single dose of ghrism. With access to a full alchemical laboratory and some successful skill checks, you can harvest as much as 2d4 doses of ghrism.

If you need a bigger ghast, just give it more HD and attacks. Excruciation is just a bigger version of Agony (1d4 damage, 3-in-6 chance of ending), which regular ghouls have, and is better than paralyzation.

Bigger ghasts can also be exotic ghasts with unique abilities. Some ideas: burrowing, barbed yoshi tongues, fear auras, regeneration, poisonous exhalations, blasphemy (blocks divine magic). If they can cast spells (especially etherealness) let's just go ahead and call them a geist.

1. There are many types of metal.

Rillerick Ingerwald is famous for categorizing the metals into groups based on their nobility. He found that these groups repeated according to a periodic structure, which he used to map out all possible metals. He discovered that there are an infinite number of metals, including some that are liquid, gas, and even (theoretical) plasma.

Although there are an infinite number of metals, they can still be ranked by luster, conductivity, nobility (incorruptibility), sanctity (impermeability to demons), and theoretical monetary value.

Ingerwald was especially interested in the last category. Although he never managed to transmute any of the natural metals into gold, he did manage to transmute them into some of his newly discovered metals, and was greatly disappointed when few agreed with his calculated values of worth, although some of them should have been worth nearly as much as gold.

Some of these metals include:

Gordican, which can only exist in spherical shapes and was nearly useless except as a method of manufacturing spheres.

Cratium, which increases in mass as its velocity increases. Very desirable for projectiles, but too soft to make effective arrowheads.

Zantium, which has a "grain", similar to wood. This allows it to flex in one plane while remaining rigid in another.

Borboridon, a theorized metal which increases in both density and softness with time, as it captures radiation.

Gandium, a theorized metal which impacts all other solid and liquid materials as if they were crystalline.

Praxium, a theorized metal of near-infinite sharpness. It turns to lead if it ever stops moving.

2. The best metal is gold.

It is known as the most noble of all materials, because it cannot be stained, corroded, or debased.

Gold is what gives the world worth. This is not a human opinion, but instead a universal law. In fact, it is possible to calculate the gold required for an almost any physical process or reaction. The universe can be described in milligrams of gold easier than it can be described in joules or electron-volts.

We value it because the universe values it.

3. The hardest metal is adamantium.

Adamantium isn't just hard the way that steel is "hard", it is hard the way that the Pythagorean theorem is true. Once a piece of adamantium has cooled, its atoms are (nearly) immovable with respect to each other.

Most items made of adamantium are thinner than you might think, since a small piece is just as strong as a large piece. The size of adamantine items has more to do with the difficulty of forging them.

Let's get this out of the way: 'Adamantine' is an adjective. 'Adamantite' is an ore. 'Adamantium' is the finished product.

Adamantite ore is found only in starfalls. Once it has been forged, the metal is beyond strength. Many speculate that the metal becomes lost to time, impervious to any change at all. An adamantium object will survive the heat death of the universe. When the solar system collapses into a black hole, it will be covered with adamantine swords.

Speaking of adamantine swords: the best adamantine swords are mostly made from steel. Only the merest sliver near the cutting edge is made from adamantium, since an adamantium toothpick is as strong as adamantium girder. The steel is only there to give it weight, since a featherweight sword is still a poor cutting instrument.

Modern forging techniques has yet to replicate those swords, however. The best that modern smiths have achieved are some (admittedly impressive) axes.

The cutting ability of an adamantium weapon is decent, at best. Since the blade can never be sharpened, the edge can only be honed prior to quenching. No one is certain how the ancient blacksmiths sharpened their adamantium blades to such a fine point, but that information would be worth a fortune if it were rediscovered in some ancient dungeon.

Adamantium makes for better armor than weapons, although it is defeated by its cost. Any king who can afford a suit of adamantine armor can also afford an army--and that king is much better served by the army.

Because of this, newly claimed adamantite is usually destined for architecture or furniture.

There are a few different ways to forge adamantium. The most commonly known way is use one of the dwarven lightning forges, a task that requires as much diplomacy as luck. There is a well-known forge inside the Forbiddance, but securing the location is difficult.

It is also a perfect insulator, but few people care about the insulating properties of adamantium, since it isn't very relevant to swords. Still, the thermal sensation of adamantium is closer to styrofoam than steel.

It is commonly believed that adamantite meteors are actually fragments of the original sun, which displeased the Authority with its blasphemy.

An advanced stage of the disease.

4. There are four adamantine superstructures in Centerra.

The Forbiddance is an enormous wall between Clavenhorn and Mondaloa. It is about a mile thick and twice as high. It is not known how deep it descends into the ground. The inside is a labyrinth of passages which convene on the Forbidden Highway, a cylindrical tunnel 500 feet wide that eventually terminates above the Sea of Kaskala when the Highway abruptly terminates in the sky.

It is largely abandoned, its magnetic treasures long since stripped away.

The Bastion of Medurak is the dam that holds back the Saltsea. It is difficult to reach the original structure beneath the salt deposits, but patient excavation will yield it. The crystalline desposits grow in strange, repetitive patterns. Many claim that they spell out words.

Near the Bastion is the Cloud Factory, by far the smallest structure on this list. It captures the moisture that would form over the deserts of Fangol. The resultant clouds are sent to the west, beyond the knowledge of our maps. Their final destination is unknown.

Lastly, there is the Golden Road, named not for its material but for the toll to cross it. It doesn't seem to have been constructed as a bridge, but that's what we use it for. (It actually seems to be the rim of a ring-shaped object, now mostly buried. Frustratingly, it seems to have doors on it, and yet lifetimes have been spent trying to pry up the least fragment.)

The Golden Road is large enough that entire families have been born, grown up, and died in its shadow. Houses cling the side of it like barnacles. Some are solid brick. Some wicker shacks dangle like the nests of bowerbirds. And two hundred feet below, the familial dhows pull up fat tuna from beside ramshackle quays.

At the south end is the city of Bospero, the greatest conurbation in the world. The Glorious God of Golden Fish is usually moored somewhere in the middle. And at the north end is the cursed city of Nibulum.

5. Immortality can be derived from metal.

Many people know of the Transmetallic Alchemists. Very few know what they do.

They are a semi-secret society. Their above-ground activities include alchemy franchises and an annual fair in Bospero that features fireworks, automatons (especially cuckoo clocks), and fantastic jewelry. They also buy interesting objects from sketchy grave-robbers, no questions asked.

Their secret goals usually boil down to the accumulation of mundane power (usually through boring infiltration of established institutions) and the pursuit of immortality.

Just as necromancy frequently culminates in lichdom, so does a Transmetallic Alchemist's career frequently culminate in the transmutation of their own body into liquid adamantium (which they refer to as the magician's metal).

While the Transmetallicum claim that the feat is possible (and was achieved in olden times), no recent examples of flawless success exist. Most neophytes struggle to overcome the first step in the process, which is the consumption of large quantities of liquid mercury.

This is not to say that there Transmetallicum are not without their successes. In their ranks, you will find alchemists with steel bones, plates of flexible armor beneath their skin, and monstrous powers of magnetism. They know the secrets of azoth, aqua regia, and the alchemical oblate. It is just that they have so far failed to capture their holy grail: to secret of transforming objects and creatures into adamantium.

6. Metal can get sick.

Like all other materials, metal can be poisoned, fall ill, and be possessed by demons (a cursed weapon).

The most common affliction of metal is rust, which is a disease that only metal can get. It is commonly transmitted by water, which is why iron must avoid water, and why rust seems to spread from a single infection, much like a fungus.

Another metal-vector disease is soft rot, which eventually causes bones to become soft. First like rubber, then like jelly. Death can come early (from damage to the brain or heart) or late (from respiratory failure). Soft bones flex painlessly, but the early stages of the disease are accompanied by shooting pains in the limbs.

Although the disease can infect humans, its real target is metal. Afflicted iron becomes pale, loses its luster, and eventually becomes crumbly. Small, spiral worms hatch from the quickening metal, each one small enough to fit under your fingernail. They disperse by flying away in flocks, where they are usually eaten by insects.

Although most of the world doesn't differentiate between the various Fire Cults, they are quite different from each other. Even discussing them under the shared heading of "The Fire Cults" is misleading.

Just the same, the Fire Cults can be defined as the various local religions that existed on the continent of Centerra prior to the ascension of the Church. They have been utterly extirpated since.

There are exceptions to all of these rules, but generally:

1. Fire Gods weren't especially focused on fire.

This is probably the greatest misconception.

It was the Church that first started calling them fire cults, which served to describe them as primitive and illegitimate. The label stuck.

The prophecy has become somewhat self-fulfilled however, as the only living branch of the fire cults is the Vincular Cult, which can be considered an arm of Zala Vacha.

2. Fire cults were intensely local.

The forces that fire cults worshiped were usually bound to a particular location (or more rarely, a bloodline).

We might think of gods as having a particular portfolio (e.g. the God of Waterfalls and Assassins) but the Fire Gods were defined according to their location (e.g. the God of Poplonda Swamp). Within this domain, they were everything. Outside of it, they were nothing.

The god of a fire cult usually lived in its shrine. They were as invisible and as intangible as any divine, but their shrine was their literal home. They occupied a very specific space.

If you were travelling, it would be important to learn the names of the gods whose territory you would be crossing, and how best to placate them. This was considered to be more important than actually learning the geography.

They usually shared a name with their location. Many of the names on the map of Centerra are the names of dead gods.

It is sometimes necessary to differentiate between a location and the regional deity. In this case, the convention is to terminate the deity's name with a capitol letter ('BosperO') while the location's name is written normally ('Bospero'). I won't do this to you (since the context is usually clear) with only one exception.

3. Many fire cults were associated with volcanos.

Volcanoes were common in Centerra at the time. As their cults fell silent, so too did their volcanos.

The Church teaches that this is because volcanoes formed a conduit to Hell, and the fire gods were all demonic spirits of earth.

4. The gods of fire cults were usually defined around a duality.

We are used to thinking of a God of War who exists in opposition to a God of Peace. But the fire cults usually had only a single god that they prayed to, and so that god must be an entire pantheon unto itself.

And so there was Gadrium, God of War and Peace.

OmO, God of Wisdom and Foolishness.

Patra, God of Drowning and Birds.

Meltheria, God of Gold and Lead.

by Kalen Chock

The Quendian Cult

For most people, the Quindian Cult is synonymous with the Fire Cults.

They have two gods.

Quen is the God of Flame and Darkness.

Masaat is the God of Masters and Slaves.

There is something of a revolution occurring within Zala Vacha right now--Quen and Masaat are beginning to be worshiped as two aspects of the same god. Since Darkness surrounds all Fire, Darkness is the Master of Fire, just as all things that are Learned will eventually be Forgotten. This is an ongoing matter within the Cult, and the source of extreme friction.

Politically, Quen is an extreme proponent of the right to privacy.

The politics of Masaat are a bit more convoluted, but they boil down to the idea that the master-slave dynamic (or by extension, any position of power) is a divine privilege, with specific rules governing the formation, execution, and dissolution of dominance, of all forms.

As a result, the fire cult is known for their defiance of authority (even more than the other branches of Zala Vacha). They see all forms of authority as illegitimate unless they willingly enter into such a relationship, and value their privacy and independence above all. The Church is condemned as intrusive and domineering, while kings are seen as no different from gang leaders.

Fire Cult Cleric

This is how clerics work. They all have different rules to follow (strictures), temples, and methods of divination. These have various pros and cons. For example, clerics of the Church have churches available to them at every town, no matter how small. But clerics of Zala Vacha can build their own temporary temples by making bonfires, which is something that clerics of the Church cannot do.

Portfolio

learning, forgetting, sight, fire, privacy, secrets

Strictures

If you agree to keep a secret, then you must keep it.
Allow no one else to carry a torch unless you are also carrying a torch.
Do not betray those who serve you willingly.

Temples

By default, a city will have a temple hidden somewhere. The faithful can find it by blinding a cat and then following it. It will always be underground.

By default, a town will not contain a temple of Zala Vacha.

Alternatively, you can construct a temple in the wilderness by building five large bonfires. The space between the bonfires counts as a temple for as long as the bonfires burn and there is no sun in the sky. Collecting sufficient wood takes about 36 hours of labor in an average forest. Logging tools allow a laborer to be twice as efficient.

Divination

You must sit in a perfectly dark room and gaze into the darkness for 1d6 hours. Images will come. The perfectly dark room must be underground.

Transfigurations

When clerics roll triples on a casting die, they gain something.

1 or 2 = Eyes turn black. 5' darkvision.
3 or 4 = Any light source you hold turns deep crimson. Fire resist 6.
5 or 6 = Your skin turns black as soot. If you hold perfectly still for at least 1 minute, you become shrouded.

Spells

Spells 1-6 are available at level 1. Spells 1-8 are available at level 2. Spells 1-10 are available at level 3. Spells with asterisks are explained below.

control fire
darkness
forget*
heal
bend light*
lock
shroud*
suggestion
freedom*
room*

Legendary Spell

Legendary spells are only obtained by doing some great quest in the service of your faith.

disintegrate

Bend Light

R: touch T: object D: [dice] rounds

Object appears to be displaced a few feet to the left of where it appears to be. Attacks against that object have a 50% chance to miss. Creatures automatically make an Int check after each attack; if they succeed, they figure it out and this spell affects them no longer.

Alternatively, you can use this spell to see around corners. Once per round, pick a place in your field of view--you can see as if you were standing there. You can make multiple jumps this way if you are investing multiple dice.

Disintegrate

R: touch T: object D: instant

Touched object takes [sum] damage as it falls apart and dissolves. If this is enough to destroy it, the object is utterly removed from reality.

1 MD is enough to disintegrate a skull or a wooden weapon.
2 MD is enough to disintegrate a wooden door.
3 MD is enough to disintegrate a metal weapon or bar.

Forget

R: touch T: creature D: instant

Target forgets the last [dice] rounds.

Freedom

R: 50' T: creature D: instant

Creature immediately makes a free attempt to escape whatever bonds are restraining it with a +[sum] bonus. If an creature would normally have no chance to escape (shackled, etc) it is still allowed an attempt anyway with a -10 penalty.

Room

R: touch T: wall D: 10 minutes

You create a door on the wall that leads to a 20' x 20' room. This is actually a conjured pocket dimension that matches the rest of the dungeon thematically. The door is just a regular door, and no stronger than wood (although it may appear different). The room improves the more dice are invested.

2 MD = lasts 30 minutes. (Long enough to eat lunch.)
3 MD = lasts 8 hours. (Long enough to sleep.)
4 MD = lasts 24 hours and contains a helpful occupant who matches the dungeon's theme.

Shroud

R: touch T: object D: 10 minutes (splittable)

Target will not be noticed as long as they don't do anything suspicious. An action is suspicious if it is something that is not regularly done by regular people.

Walking past a guard is not suspicious because people regularly walk past guards. Putting a grenado into a guard's pocket is suspicious (unless people regularly slip things into that guard's pocket.)

Sidebar: HD Limits

Remember that spells don't affect a creature if its HD is greater than [sum].

This should come to no surprise to anyone, but nature never gave us the baboon.

How could they? The face, the teeth, the genitals, the cruel intelligence of the baboon--these things set it apart from their fellow beasts. They are artificial, as false as any other chimera.

Technically not a baboon.

You'll find most baboonists among the nobility. Baboons require a large amount of space and food, and require a large amount of resources.

Besides, many noble families enjoy employing the baboons as thugs--equipping them with blackjacks and matching vests.

Baboonist

Restrictions

You may never employ any hirelings except baboons. You may never use any mount or war beast except a baboon. If you break this rule, your baboons will realize your treachery as soon as they see you or smell you, and they will immediately revolt and never again obey your commands. Your baboons are assholes.

One of your starting spells is always create baboon.

Boons

You can command a number of HD 1 baboons equal to the size of your liver. To increase the size of your liver, you must eat livers from magical creatures. Each liver eaten this way increases your liver by 1 size, up to the HD of the magical creature minus 1. You start with a size 1 liver.

Baboons

The name is a misnomer. A baboon can be a baboon, mandrill, or various mandrilloids (permutations of the mandrill schema). The provenance of the liver determines the type of primate produced by the create baboon spell.

You can only give your baboons commands as a group. They will not allow themselves to be separated or to be commanded separately. Treat your baboons as a single pile of HP. For every 4 points of damage the baboons take, one of the baboons dies. the horde makes a single attack, with +1 to Attack and damage for every baboon beyond the first.

The baboons will not do anything helpful unless commanded to. This means that your first round of combat is usually spent telling you baboons what to do. They can understand up to three words, optionally accompanied by you pointing at something.

Spell List

calm
create baboon
rage
Shadoom's serpecation
speak with beast
weigh heart
psychography (variant: your baboons do the writing)
spider climb
overload baboon
secret beasts
golden needle
possess baboon

Legendary Spells

wild polymorph
elevate beast

Mishap
You take damage equal to whatever the doubles showed (1-6), and. . .
1. You are silenced. (Int check at the start of each round to end; lasts at least 1 round.)
2. You are blinded. (Con check at the start of each round to end; lasts at least 1 round.)
3. You lose all prepared spells except one, randomly determined.
4. You cast a random prepared spell at a random target with a random number of MD.
5. You start turning into a baboon. Body party chosen at random: face, tail, hands, fur.
6. You learn wild polymorph. If you've already gotten this result in the past, wild polymorph is instantly cast on you.

Doom
You turn into a foul-tempered baboon for 1 hour. You, and all of your baboons, go on a rampage. They will flee difficult combat in favor of easiest targets and/or rampant vandalism. You forget that you were ever anything other than a baboon.
2. As above, except for 1 day.
3. As above, except permanent.

Also not a baboon.

Appendix A: Spells and Shit

New Rules: Mixed Success in Spellcasting

Some spells have graduations of success. You invest your magic dice normally, but only the highest roll counts for the result. The more dice you invest, the greater your chance of a critical success.

1-3 = Mixed Success

4-5 = Full Success

6 = Critical Success

Create Baboon
R: touch T: primate D: permanent
The ingredients required to make a baboon are 8 hours, a fresh liver, and a live mammal. The animal must be fed a large amount of the liver. (Rats can be purchased in a major city for 1c.)

Mixed Success -- Disfigured baboon causes you 1d6 Cha damage.
Full Success -- You create a normal baboon.
Critical Success -- Brilliant baboons allow you to give more complex commands. (+1 word)

Shadoom's Serpication
R: touch T: creature D: permanent
Target is cured of a poison, which they vomit out in the form of a serpent. The form of serpent depends on the type of the poison. Although they look exotic, these new species behave like normal snakes.

Mixed Success -- Serpent immediately attacks you, and acts normally afterwards.
Full Success -- Serpent acts normally.
Critical Success -- Serpent is nonaggressive to you and will obey one command, once.

Weigh Heart
R: touch T: heart D: instant
You hold a heart in your hands. The creature does not get a save, but [sum] must equal or exceed its Level. You learn the best and worst thing that the creature has ever done (in the creature's own estimation).

Psychography (Baboon Version)
R: 50' T: baboons D: 1 hour
Ingredients: writing utensils and appropriate surfaces. After one hour, one of your baboons will bring you the best piece of writing they've accomplished so far.

Mixed Success -- Pure gibberish. Eroded Shakespeare.
Full Success -- The last interesting thing that happened here.
Critical Success -- The last two interesting things that happened here.

Overload Baboon
R: 50' T: baboon D: permanent
Each round, target baboon gets +1 to Attack and Damage. At the end of each round, the baboon has a 1-in-4 chance of exploding.

Secret Beasts
R: 50' T: creature D: permanent
Up to [dice] willing creatures are hidden inside of your body for [sum] hours. (If you are a baboonist, up to [sum] baboons can be hidden this way.) This lasts until either you or the creatures wish to be ejected (a free action). Creatures hidden this way manifest on your skin--for example, a blond person will put blond hairs on your skin.

Golden Needle
R: touch T: creature D: 2 * [dice] rounds
Target creature takes Xd6 damage once the spell dissipates, where X was the spell's duration. You can end the spell early as a free action.

Possess Baboon
R: 50' T: baboon D: [sum] rounds
Exactly what it says on the tin. If the baboon is your baboon, it gets no saving through.

Wild Polymorph
R: 50' T: creature D: [sum] rounds
Look up [sum] random creatures (use the index in your bestiary) and choose one. The target turns into the chosen creature.

Elevate Beast
R: touch T: beast D: permanent
Touched beast immediately turns into a beastman with an intelligence of [sum]-[dice]. You permanently lose 1 Wis and 1 Cha. You choose how much of your memories, knowledge, goals, and personality you want to copy into the beastman.

Gotta admit: I love squeezing out new jargon.

The Generic Optimum

The generic optimum is the best plan that's printed on your character sheets.

If your party was dropped into a blank 20' x 20' room and forced to fight a level-appropriate assortment of boring enemies, you would adopt a specific strategy.

You'll put the fighter up front, open up with your best moves, set up your combos, while saving your daily abilities for when you really need them, and saving your single-use items for when you really need them.

This is your generic optimum.

Some optimums are more generic than others. 4e had a very dry generic optimum, while I can imagine a 5e party of wild magic sorcerers having a more dynamic fight, since there's so much chaos baked into them.

Dynamism

Dynamism is the opposite; it's how much you have to change your plans each round.

On the first round of combat, this is how far you have to deviate from your generic optimum.

Encountering a nilbog, realizing that it is healed by damage and harmed by healing, is a very simple example of extreme dynamism. It forces you to invert your usual strategy.

It isn't necessarily complex, since it's not hard to figure out. And it's not challenging, since the cleric has no problem dropping a heal on the little bugger. But it is dynamic--out of the ordinary.

Changing tactics as you deplete spells over the course of a day isn't really dynamic. You knew that would happen the moment you rolled a wizard.

by Line Beinkamp

Chaos and Law

Players tend to love dynamism. It's literally why we roll dice--to inject a known quantity of unpredictability into our games.

When people say that they don't like a system/class because it's boring, they're usually talking about a lack of dynamism, and a lack of ways to respond to dynamism.

A chaos sorcerer (all spells chosen at random each day) is dynamic since she wakes up surprised every morning, and can respond well to dynamism, since wizards (as a group) have a very wide array of abilities open to them.

The humble fighter is often lamented as the most boring class because they are not very dynamic (they don't have to roll on a d20 table of mutations as part of their class). In fact, they are usually the opposite. They are a reliable extension of a character's mundane abilities: fighting, leaping, surviving.

Depending on the system and DM, though, fighters can respond to dynamism quite well. They have a better attack bonus, more survivability, and often better physical prowess than their peers. This means that they can attempt, succeed, and survive more shenanigans than the other classes.

People who are bored by fighters are often bored by either (a) the lack of respondable dynamism in the dungeon, or (b) the lack of their creativity in responding to it. (By respondable dynamism I basically mean how much weird shit the fighter can interact with. A fighter has many ways to interact with an alcoholic door. A fighter doesn't have many ways to interact with force field that can only be dispelled by magic--but this is just poor dungeon design, and I won't consider it any further.)

Having fun with a fighter in an OSR game requires you to be creative with it. You are in a uniquely stable position--use it to attempt destabilizing things. Players who don't realize this are apt to be frustrated by the apparent lack of options. Fighters don't get new buttons to press, they just get better at pressing the old buttons, and its easy to undervalue that.

Sources of Dynamism

Nearly all games would benefit from more dynamism. Let's talk about where it comes from.

The OSR love difficult enemies, because difficult enemies are inherently dynamic. They're too tough to be overcome with the generic optimum. A creative solution has to be found, or a precious single-use item must be used. An enemy that can't be solved by the generic optimum is a puzzle.

Wizards are not inherently dynamic. If the DM keeps putting dispel magic doors in the dungeon so that the wizard will "feel special" by casting dispel magic to help his party through, then both of them will only succeed in boring each other. Never write a dungeon that expects a certain spell. Keep your puzzles open-ended.

A series of unlucky rolls can cause the combat to unfold in ways that you weren't expecting. This causes people to change their plans, which is more interesting than just trading attack rolls. We want combat to be a little uncertain. Consider putting more randomness in your environments, e.g. in the windy room, there is a 1-in-6 chance that everyone's torches are blown out.

Like the nilbog example, another way to insert more dynamism into your game is to attack all parts of the character sheet. Destroy equipment, steal money, switch stats, switch character sheets, teleport them into an unexplored part of the dungeon.

Dynamism usually comes from the monsters. The players usually choose their fights, and so they choose things that they can win as long as nothing too unexpected happens. Dynamism occurs through randomness ("another crit--fuck!"), discovery (the man is actually a magic-immune golem), and behavior (instead of fighting, the orc king jumps on his dactyl and flees).

And an obvious source of damage is a boss that changes form/tactics when its HP is depleted. Adds can join the fight, etc.

Complexity vs Dynamism

A common mistake that DMs and game designers make is confusing complexity and dynamism.

Imagine a lich with a bunch of spells and abilities: fireball, finger of death, teleport, disintegrate, counterspell. It has a bunch of legendary actions each turn, paralyzing people and using cantrips. As a monster, the lich is fairly complex to run.

And yet, despite that complexity, the lich is not very dynamic. A party facing a lich expects to take a lot of damage every turn. Most of the lich's abilities do not disrupt the party's plans.

A fireball goes off. They heal and carry on.

A PC takes heavy damage from disintegrate or finger of death. They heal and carry on.

The cleric's spell is countered. The party carries on.

A PC is frightened or paralyzed. The party heals them, or they don't. In any event, they usually don't have many options between "keep fighting" and "run away". Their tactics don't change significantly. (The paralyzed character has even fewer options.)

Even the lich teleporting can be a static tactic. If the lich uses it to flee somewhere the party cannot locate or follow, it doesn't do anything except give the DM a chance to save the BBEG's life.

A lich is more dynamic than a bunch of orcs, yes, but it's not as dynamic as it's complexity warrants.

In this case, the DM has failed to provide the players with a dynamic challenge. There was never a moment in the fight when the party realized "shit, our generic plan isn't going to be enough, we need to come up with something new", and those are the most fun parts of any combat.

In contrast to the lich, I present a couple of counterpoints.

A skeleton jelly is a low-level undead that is completely immune to damage.

A candy fairy can cast invisibility, swords to sugar, and charm.

These are examples of monsters that have a very high ratio of dynamism to complexity.

Two Legs Bad, Four Legs Good

I'm not trying to argue "dynamism good, generic optimum bad".

Too much dynamism leads to gameplay that is very loose. The stuff written on the character sheet tends to become more meaningless. (If the PCs in the Dungeon of the Thief God die when all their possessions are stolen, and in no other way, HP is meaningless.)

And a simple fight can often be a palate cleanser after a particularly dynamic fight. It gives the brain a chance to decompress. Fights where the party realizes that it's not going to work, that they'll have to come up with something new--those fights are stressful and they require a lot of player attention. Don't burn your players out with a long series of dynamic, high-stakes challenges.

Fights that follow the generic optimum also gives players a chance to use their abilities in a straightforward way, which is good for players who want to realize their character concept along the lines they originally envisioned. (For example, the player who rolled up a barbarian probably wants at least a few straight-up fights where can wade into a bunch of skeletons and let loose with their rage.)

And of course, when a player chooses a class, they are (partially) choosing how dynamic they want their gameplay to be.

There are many cursed cities in Centerra.

One is haunted by imaginary dinosaurs, another infested with flying worms. A certain fortress is forever burning from an underground fire. An iron city has succumbed to fairy-sleep.

But there is only one cursed city that is still populated, and still does regular business. That city is Nibulum, Darkling Town, the City of Twins.

The Boring Stuff

Like many cities in Centerra, the city is built around giantish ruins. Beautiful marble stairs, taller than your waist, with crude bricks forming a miniature stairwell for each one. Winches that no one is strong enough to turn. And stone buildings that were once a single story home for giants, now crudely converted into a two-story home for humans through the construction of a shoddy, interstitial floor.

The city is larger than its people. Most houses are empty, and even the poor live in darkened mansions, filled with dead leaves and lice.

They feed themselves from the sea. They sell the lumber cut (very carefully) from the Dembraava Wilds. They dig in the city's productive steel mines.

pic unrelated
By Oleg Bulakh

Your Twin

Everyone has a dark twin. And if you never come to Nibulum, you will never meet them. This is probably for the best.

Here is what happens:

Imagine that you walk into Nibulum at sunset. Perhaps you were too hasty to be warned of the town, or perhaps you are just a fool. But as the sun dies, so does your mind. Sounds fade, objects recede, and the last of the day's light runs down the street like hot wax.

Before you can respond to any of this, it is morning and you are alone on the far side of town. You are sitting in an armchair in an unfamiliar building, surrounded by sleeping dogs. Your purse is much lighter and your head is heavy with wine--the empty bottle still in your hand.

You probe your gums. You seem to be missing a tooth.

Relax. It could have been much worse.

When the sun sets, everyone's mind is replaced with their evil twin. Their evil twin will gamble your money away, have sex with dubious characters, cut blasphemies into your belly with your own dagger, and scrawl depressing marginalia into all of your books. Your evil twin is a wicked thing.

And it would all be that simple, except that its not.

Nightsiders

Imagine that you find yourself at the gates of city at Twilight. Your memory is hazy, your companions unfamiliar. You can remember your mother--or at least, several competing versions of her. You feel sick to your soul, like you're nothing but an empty bag of bog water and bile.

As the shadows darken, you talk to people. Some seem as confused as you are, while others move with the confidence of people who have a night's work ahead of them.

Eventually, you are told the truth. You are a figment, a echo of a more permanent person. When the sun rises, you will die.

You may be back again the next night, if your Daysider decides to stay in the city. But if your Daysider decides to leave (or if you leave), you may never wake up again.

You already know what it will be like to watch the sky redden in the predawn chill. It is the wind that escorts men to their execution, except for you, the death will be ambiguous. This may be your last night on Centerra, or it may be the first of many.

And if you will die in the morning, you resolve to seize as much of the night as you can. Who cares how much of the Daysider's money you spend? They've got the rest of their life to earn more, while you only have a few hours.

So you throw yourself into drink, plunge through brothels, and assault a puppet show. And when it is all done, when you are ragged with alcohol and opium, sagging into a chair like a beached eel, you open one of the books in your backpack and fill it with words, begging your Daysider to remain in Nibulum a few days longer.

The city is dreaded by most godly folk, and it is extremely rare for anyone to spend more than a single night.

Fighting the Nightsiders

There are a few ways for travelers to ease their stay, and thwart their vile shadows.

You can always pay someone to imprison you. Usually, they just throw you in a jail cell, tell your Nightsider that you're drunk and will be released in the morning. That's good enough for new Nightsiders who don't know any better.

Nightsiders who know the truth are liable to hurt themselves, and so they must be restrained. And sometimes gagged, too, in order to keep them from chewing on their tongue or cheeks.

You may write a note to your Nightsider, give them some money, and encourage them to go see a show. A little goodwill goes a long way.

You'll want to visit the bank, so you can lock up your money until the morning.

All of this must be done in secret, by the way. There's no one you can entirely trust to hold your money for you, because anyone else will become a Nightsider as well, and Nightsiders always seem to stick up for each other.

There are enough empty buildings and lost cisterns around Nibulum that its simple enough to find an empty corner to hide your things. Nothing is foolproof, however, and if the Nightsiders find it, they'll move it to where you can't get to it, even locked boxes.

Fighting the Daysiders

The Nightsiders will tell you that the only thing they want is life--a future. How can it be evil to want that?

They won't get it, of course. The Daysiders hold all the power, and so that life-desire is usually heated, beaten, and shaped into a blunt weapon of resentment. Many Nightsiders hate the Daysider with whom they share their body.

Nightsiders have a few different ways to fight.

It is an unfair fight, of course. If they leave town and never return, your death is no different from any other, save for the fact that you never knew which day was your last.

The door remains open all sorts of petty mischief and revenge, however.

Spending all of their money is one classic one.

Sinking their ship, so that they'll be forced to stay longer in Nibulum, is another.

You can drink all that you want, it'll be your asshole Daysider who has to deal with the hangover.

And of course, you can always get yourself pregnant, if you're willing to walk that road. (Local laws differ, but usually a child conceived by your Nightsider is considered the Nightsider's child, and the Daysider has no claim over it.) Pregnancies are rare, however.

Self-mutilation has already been covered, I believe.

Tattoos--a desperate grasp at shaping the world, of forcing your Daysider to acknowledge and remember you.

A more extreme method would be to hire someone to imprison you throughout the days, or else accomplish it yourself through a clever lock that you can open, but your Daysider cannot.

And of course, a poisoning is the ultimate fuck you. A cup of hemlock in the morning fog, or perhaps just an asp slipped inside your pocket.

pic unrelated, again
by Oleg Bulakh, again

Cooperation

If this doesn't seem like a very stable situation, you're correct. Constant conflict is no way to live.

And so most permanent residents of Nibulum have found ways to work together with their Othersider. This involves passing a lot of notes, but it also involves a lot of trust and respect.

Not too much trust, mind you. You still have to hide your money. (Coincidentally, this is why you may sometimes come across little caches of coins hidden around the city.)

There are a lot of advantages to allying with your Nightsider. You can share a house, for one. It's like having a roommate that is never home. And if you share a career or an occupation, you can work through all 24 hours of the day.

There's at least one painter in Nibulum who seamlessly trades off with her Nightsider every night, without ever stopping their brushstrokes.

Marriages still provide some difficulties, however. You may wake up next to someone every day who is not your spouse, then travel across town to your house.

The Secret

There is a secret here, something that not many know. Only those who have spent a great deal of time talking to their Nightsider will ever realize it.

The Nightsider has a name. The Nightsider has a history, too, even if that history isn't as "real" as the Daysider's own.

And if you trade enough notes you will realize that your Nightsider is not your polar opposite. Your Nightsider has a lot in common with you, more than is perhaps comfortable.

You may share ancestors, known by name and accurate description. You may share careers, if not identical, then at least in parallel. And you may even share parents, a surprisingly common condition.

Sebastiana Odrina wrote a book detailing her attempts to resurrect her dead sister, Noira. She traveled the world with her corpse and never revived so much as a finger, but in Nibulum, she found a modicum of success.

She conversed extensively with her Nightsider, who seemed to have exactly the same sister as her. The only difference was that the Nightsider's Noira wasn't dead, and was in fact, happily married to a farrier in Bospero. All sorts of stories were related: of Noira's ability to compose a tune, of her scandal with the night-dog, and of Sebastiana's niece.

Some say that her stay in Nibulum gave Sebastiana hope, when all reason would have abandoned the idea. And that her final, grim fate was merely an extension of the curse of dread Nibulum.

The Obliterat

The Obliterat are (what outsiders consider to be) the center of the void monk culture.

They are a secret organization that studies forgotten and alternate histories. They would tell you that Nibulum is unique among all the places in the world--It is where what-almost-was collides with (and is consumed by) what-is.

The Obliterat is also the name of the tower that sits outside of the city, where they are centered. It is only accessible by Nightsiders, or by Daysiders on the absolute cusp of death (on the cusp of non-existence).

First, I've got a goblin for you. He lives in the Bospero hexcrawl I'm tinkering with.

Then, I've got a new class.

HEX 0614 - THE SALT MARSH

Gamjee's Redoubt [obvious]

The ship is clearly visible on the fringes of the salt marsh, where the ground is a little bit drier.

The swamp is an ancient galleon with a broken back and a busted belly. It must have been carried inland by some ancient wave. It is soggy with green moss, and the bowsprit is lifted into the air like a pleading hand.

For 200' in all directions, the ground is covered with traps, in a hundred sundry variations.

The danger is communicated through crudely painted signs and stacks of dire chameleon skulls. "DANGER: TRAPS" and "FUCKOFF" and "YOU PROBLY GONNA DIE". A more astute observer will also notice all the tensioned wires, submerged chains, and carefully assembled foilage.

A person running across the 200' killzone will set off about 1 trap every 20 feet. A person walking very carefully through the killzone will set off about 1 trap every 40 feet. A person probing with a pole and heaving rocks around will set off about 1 trap every 10 feet, but will avoid the effects of 90% of those traps.

Traps [d6]
1. Snare -- Hard Dex or be hoisted in the air.
2. Bear Trap -- Hard Dex or take 1d3 dmg + grabbed. 50% of these also pull you 10' underwater.
3. Swinging Log, Swinging Hammer -- Hard Dex or 1d8 damage.
4. Spear, Swinging Stakes -- Hard Dex or 1d8 damage.
5. Poison Dart -- Con or Poison (1d6).
6. Noisemaker -- Gamjee is alerted + roll for random encounter.

The ship has no obvious entrances except on the deck, which is 15' above the ground. Anyone attempting to use a grappling hook to climb onto the deck will probably be thwarted. The railings break away when any weight is put on them, and then trigger explosive plates on the side of the ship, dealing 1d6 acid damage to anyone standing nearby.

Gamjee has a crossbow with 20 bolts, and a ballista that can be wheeled out onto the deck in 1 round, should the need ever arise.

In a worst case scenario, Gamjee will retreat to his bathroom/saferoom, lock himself in there, and pull a lever that floods the ship with poisonous gas (poison 1d6). The door is triple-thick wood. Anyone trying to chop down the door will be deep enough in the bilge that they are 2 rounds away from fresh air, should the poison be triggered.

Aside from all that, Gamjee is a regular level 0 goblin with 1 HP. He has a 4-in-6 chance of being naked (except for his machete), and a separate 4-in-6 chance of being drunk (bogshine).

If you drink his bogshine you must make a Con save or go blind for 1d20 hours. Goblins and dwarves are immune to this effect.

Yoshitaka Amano's original goblin art for Final Fantasy I

Gamjee is a paranoic, but that doesn't mean that the smugglers aren't trying to kill him. (They are.) Outside of the paranoia, he is friendly, rational, and enjoys making friends and helping people.

The smugglers have tried many different ways of killing this pain-in-the-ass goblin, but all have failed. Gamjee is meticulous and his ship is stocked with enough salted fish, boiled scum, and gosca. He also drinks the water that seeps into his basement, although it gives him diarrhea. He usually has diarrhea. ("You get used to it.")

He responds to friendly hails, and is quick to talk, but slow to trust. Trades are conducted by Gamgee raising a pole on his ship, which pulls a submerged loop of rope out of the water where it was hidden. Two pulleys on each side allow items to be clipped to the rope and shuttled back and forth. You can even have two items move past each other, so as to arrive at the same time. The rope is strong enough to hold one person, but not two.

Gamjee wants:
- Fresh food
- A higher grade of intoxicants
- Something to help with the diarrhea (except real talk: he just needs to stop drinking the bog water)
- The head and the hat of Captain Bogbeard (he swore revenge after Bogbeard skinned his dog alive)

Gamjee has:
- four goblin bombados (light fuse, 3d6, Dex for half)
- two dozen spare traps (see above)
- 10 barrels of bogshine
- 1 vial of mutagen (random, permanent mutation)
- 2 vials of rage gas (fumes of hell)
- 3 fireworks
- a new litter of puppies (free to a good home)

Perhaps more importantly, anyone who befriends Gamjee can start apprenticing under him, allowing them to take ranks in the Kludger class.

Goblin from Final Fantasy 14

The Kludger

First off, go read this post by B44L. I'm stealing an ability from him.

Now then.

Kludgers are the scrappers and the scroungers of the goblin world. In goblin society, they are held in high esteem (i.e. passers-by are careful to avoid the windows when they relieve themselves against the side of a kludger's house.)

Note: the other respected professions are the filth wizard, the cleric of Shadoom, and the squirmisher.

They are among the most intelligent goblins, and the most likely to journey far from home. They tend to have short, eventful lives.

Template A - Improvise, Scrounge
Template B - Sabotage, Trapper
Template C - Overclock
Template D - Biohacker

Note: even though most of these abilities only require a "round of work", your DM may require you to spend more time on larger or more complex tools. You cannot combine any of these abilities with each other.

Improvise

With a round of work, you can fix a broken tool or mechanism. At the end of each round of use, it has 2-in-6 chance of breaking irrevocably.

Scrounge

Whenever travelling causes the DM to roll for a random encounter (roughly 2x a day for overland travel, or every 3 rooms in a dungeon), you may also roll a d6. On a 1, you find a random broken item from the starting equipment table.

Sabotage

With a round of work, you can rig a functioning tool or mechanism to break under conditions that you specify. The conditions must be simple, physical, and feasible.

Trapper

With 10 minutes of work, you can trap a battlefield in a specific place, or trap a battlefield in general. If a battlefield is trapped in a specific place, the first creature to walk over that area triggers the trap with a 4-in-6 chance. If a battlefield is trapped in general, every time an enemy moves into a new area, there is a 2-in-6 chance that they trigger the trap. If you don't have an opportunity to tell your allies where the traps is, they are also susceptible to this chance. Potential traps are limited to the 6 listed above, but you can probably research more if you bring your DM some Taco Bell.

Overclock

With a round of work, you rig a functioning tool or mechanism to operate at a higher level. Weapons deal double damage, pulleys require half as much force to use. At the end of each round of use, it has a 4-in-6 chance of breaking. Single use items require two consecutive turns: one for overclocking, and another for use.

Biohacker

All of the previous class abilities can now be applied to living tissue, including magical properties of that tissue. Basilisk eyes can petrify, dragon glands can still breath fire. Corpse parts must be fresh or at least well-preserved.

If a corpse has been dead for more than 1 minute, you cannot use Improvise on it. PCs "resurrected" in this way cannot be raised above 0 HP. If a creature has multiple attacks, only one can be Overclocked at a time.

Monoclass Party Bonus

If there are multiple Scroungers in a party, every time a pair of 2s is rolled, an intact item from the complete Alchemy Items + Adventuring Gear list is found. If a trio of 3s is ever rolled, you find some major magic item (Stormbringer, a genie's lamp, the Hand of Dominion).

Kobold from Final Fantasy 14!

I've tried to overhaul the random encounter system before. So have others, sometimes with very interesting results. Here's one more log for the fire.

You make a encounter check every 20 minutes (every 2 exploration turns). An exploration turn is the time it takes to investigate an average room.

Your stew pot is a bowl in the center of the table with dice in it. Whenever you make an encounter check, you roll all of the dice at the same time.

You get Light Dice based on the size of your torch. Brighter light leads to fewer encounters.
You get Scout Dice by being quiet and observant. They give you clues and help you get more ambushes.
You get Alert Dice once you piss off the dungeon.

Light Dice

The brightness of your torch affects the frequency of your random encounters.

Your torch starts off as a d12. With each subsequent check, it shrinks in size, eventually sputtering out. The size of the torch also affects how far it sheds light. If there are multiple torches, the strongest torch increases size for each weaker torch. The die size cannot increase above a d12.

d12 - 30' range - first encounter check
d10 - 25' range - has burned for 20 min
d8 - 20' range - has burned for 40 min
d6 - 15' range - has burned for 60 min
d4 - 10' range - has burned for 80 min
d2 - 5' range - has burned for 100 min and is about to go out.
d0 - Roll a black d20 on the Exultations of the Underworld table instead (below).

Whenever you roll a 1, a random encounter occurs. By default, neither party is surprised.

A flask of oil has 30 measures of oil. You can choose how much oil you want to burn in your lamp: anything between 4 and 12. Treat it as the same-sized torch. (So if you want to burn 12 units of oil, you treat your lamp as if it were a d12 torch.)

This has the added benefit of making the characters and the DM more aware of the passage of time, since the mechanism is literally in the center of the table. It also makes light sources more important, since there is now some strategy about when you should switch out your torch.

No goblins bothered you while you were lighting up a fresh torch.

Sidebar: Shouldn't More Light Lead to More Encounters?

I can see the logic in that line of reasoning.

However, I'm not approaching this from a simulationist angle. The Underworld is a mythic place. It is a nest of dreams and darkness, and even the smallest basement is an extension of its will. Light is a speartip that holds the Darkness at bay.

And this reinforces the type of tension that I want to create. I want players to have to choose between safety now VS conservation for the future. Will low HP force them to burn through all of their torches in a hurry? Will low torches force them to creep around in the thickening gloom?

If you follow the philosophy of less light = fewer encounters, then you're encouraging your players to wriggle through your dungeons with the tiniest candles. (This seems less fun, since you'll have to describe rooms through a narrow straw.) And at the extremes, you may force players to choose between using a tiny candle and travelling in pure darkness, which doesn't seem like a dilemma I want to encourage either.

Darkness is evil. Shun it.

Sidebar: Shouldn't This Just Lead to Backpacks Stuffed with Torches?

I'm okay with that. Players can't carry to much unnecessary stuff if you track inventory. (GLOG: Inventory holds Str + 2 items if you've got a good backpack.)

They can bring a hireling along to carry a sack of torches for them, but that just means that the DM has one more person who can fall into a chasm, get eaten by ooze, or flee screaming into the abyss. A torch monkey removes some risk, but it opens up the door to new, interesting modes of failure.

Scout Dice

By default, the party has a single green d6. This is the scout die.

Whenever the scout die shows a 1, you find some trace of an encounter. You might find enormous clawed tracks (traces of a basilisk) or a crawling, shattered skeletal hand (traces of undead).

If the party has encumbered people, they lose their Scout Die.

For every ranger in the party, they gain +1 Scout Die. If the party gets a pair of 1s on the Scout Dice, they find traces that they are able to track back to the creature's lair. This gives the party a chance to ambush the creature while it's sleeping (50% default) or explore its lair unmolested. Either way, they'll have an opportunity to scoop up the beast's loot.

If both the Light Die and at least 1 Scout Die show a 1, then you detect the enemy before you encounter it. The party has the choice to either avoid the encounter or ambush them.

You heard some goblins coming before they saw you.

Sidebar: Surprising the Party

You may have noticed that there is no default way for enemies to surprise the party. This is intentional.

Instead I prefer surprise to be a feature of specific monsters. For example, I run panthers as ambush predators. The players will always be alerted "hey, a panther is stalking you" and then the panther attacks at some point in the next 8 hours, whenever the party is most vulnerable.

I've found this gives the party a fair chance to react, while still allowing for the circumstances to evolve in interesting directions. (Sometimes things happen in the next 8 hours that make for more interesting panther attack scenarios.)

Alert Dice

By default, there aren't any Alert Dice in the stew. You gain alert dice when the dungeon begins reacting to you. (The most common example of this would be the goblins mobilizing search-and-destroy groups after the party has killed their shaman.)

Alert Dice work as enhancers. They make certain encounters worse.

If you roll a 1 on an Alert Die, you encounter an enemy patrol. (By default, this is just the regular goblin group from your regular encounter table, just alert and pissed off.)

If you roll a 1 on the Light Die, you encounter a regular encounter.

If you roll a 1 on both the Light Die and the Alert Die, the party faces an enhanced encounter. Either double the size of the encounter, or add 1-2 elites. If you have multiple Alert Dice, treat each 1 as a similar, stacking enhancement.

Alert Dice can also be used to modulate the horror in a dungeon. Perhaps once the second floor is unlocked, the catacombs flood the first floor with undead. Enhanced encounters would be with undead versions of the previous encounters.

Alternatively, Alert Dice can be used to modulate the weirdness in a dungeon. The Prism Castle begins to shift back to its home dimension once the Pope is rescued from the Infinite Carousel. Patrol dice are added to the stew, but each Patrol is actually a random hallucinations/insanities that affects the party. The enhanced encounters are a regular encounter where all the enemies are the ones affected by the madness.

You ran into a patrol while your torch was burning low.

Exultations of the Underworld (d20)

Without the light of the sun, the Throne of the Authority, the souls begin to loosen in their sockets. Where the Underworld grasps, Hell will soon follow, and those fires have always held a certain attraction for souls.

1 Abduction. A random player goes missing. Their companions heard nothing, saw nothing. If they were restrained by ropes, the ropes are now cut. They were snatched away by troglodytic paws, or perhaps tumbled down a rocky embankment. Their cries were muted by the dark. (This may require two alternative timelines, now converging.)

Now they are held captive on some other part of this floor, or perhaps one floor deeper. If they are not rescued within 24 hours, they will never leave this place.

2 Panic. The Underworld speaks, and the soul trembles. Everyone must make a save vs Fear. Failure means that they will run in a random direction, ignoring each other and ignoring all threats. If they are restrained by ropes, they will cut the ropes. Everyone who is affected can make a new save each round to end the Fear.

3 Rapture. The Underworld commands, and the soul obeys. Everyone must make a save vs Charm. Failure means that they will attempt to murder themselves in the quickest possible way. They will hurl themselves from cliffs and drink poison. If they possess a bomb, they will detonate it. Everyone who is affected can make a new save each round to end the Charm.

4 Dispersion. If you are crossing an underworld hex-crawl, the party is moved 1 hex in a random direction. If you are in a dungeon, you are moved 1d4 rooms in a random direction. This occurs even if the intervening movement would be impossible, e.g. through solid rock or locked doors.

5 Unburdening. Every character must make an Int check. If a character fails, a random item of theirs goes missing. They may find it again, with light. It is somewhere on this floor, or perhaps the next.

6-10 Trauma. Everyone gains 1 Trauma.

11-15 Encounter. A regular random encounter.

16-20 Surprise. A random encounter, with the enemies getting a surprise round.

Shrifling

Named for the noise it makes.

One arm, one leg, one jaw, and one eye--it only needs one eye to see out of both sides of its paper-thin head. If you reached out and touched it, it would squirm away, sharp hairs rushing under your fingers like the frayed rope connected to a falling boom. The fibers are silky, but the tips are like knives.

Supposedly, they are born when rope kills its owner.

A competing theory maintains that they are cooperative colonies of tiny rockworms, akin to a migratory slime mold. Everyone admits that this theory is less exciting, and therefor less likely to be true.

HD 4 (HP 1) AC chain Bite 1d12
Move horse Climb spider Int 6 Mor 10 Str 1

Threadlike -- Takes no fall damage. Can creep along ceilings without falling. Can leap through keyholes without slowing its gallop. Looks like a thin strand of hair when it holds still. Coiled up, a dead one barely fills your palm.

Confused by Hair -- Supposedly, it believe that the hair on a human's head is a baby. It will attempt to 'rescue' the hair from a corpse, carry it to safety, and 'mourn' when it is unable to rouse the hair.

A shrifling I drew while waiting for the PCR to finish.

Barlutra

Giant carnivorous otters that hunt in packs. Stats as wolves, except with a swim speed and a lower land speed.

They seem to show no fear of humans, and will occasionally prey on humans. There is a tremendous amount of fear surrounding the barlutra, perhaps more than it deserves.

Superstitions:

1. Barlutra are drawn to pregnant women, who they seek to disembowel.
2. If a barlutra tail is waved over a sleeper, they will sicken. Do every night for 7 days and they will die.
3. If a barlutra skull is buried beneath each room of a house, and the house is near a river, the house will be destroyed in a flood.
4. If a barlutra jumps over a corpse, the corpse will speak blasphemies until 3 am, damning the soul of the deceased.

When a pack of barlutra gets large enough, it will build a dam. The dam forms a reservoir, and eventually multiple families of barlutra may take up residence around the reservoir. Over a few years, they will dig and shape the reservoir until it is a perfect circle.

Then, the barlutra will contruct four false 'dams' at equidistant points around the circumference of this circular lake. All dead creatures within the area will be raised as undead in service of the barlutra, who generally ignore the shambling, flopping things.

The rooms within their dams are lined with the skeletons of fish. Animate, but waiting. The corpses of their prey are often too scattered to recompose themselves, but those that can do so will drag themselves to the nearest 'dam' and incorporate themselves into the dam's structure.

Paladins and firebombs usually get involved long before this critical stage. Still, barlutra in the remote parts of the world can remain undiscovered for generations, and the five towers of their reservoirs can grow to prodigious sizes.

Sidebar: Secret DM Knowledge

The reservoirs are summoning circles, waiting for someone with the knowledge to activate them.

Barlutra were corrupted long ago by Shadoom, in order to build his infernal infrastructure around Centerra. Being beasts, they would never understand what they were building. They would never betray him; they would never steal his secrets. (Goblins were created for much the same reason.)

Grievous Insect Nebula

Insects rip each other apart with a cruelty that is unfathomable to humans, but these depredations are impersonal. In fact, the insect kingdoms are closely allied with one another. They speak freely to each other, even as they tear the legs off one another. They are united in their alien morality.

When the insect kingdoms become overcome with grief (when sorrow crushes them like a boot), they will mourn. They do not weep nor pace. Instead, all of the holometabolous insects in an area (except moths) come together and form a cocoon.

When a caterpillar forms a cocoon, the first thing that it does it to release enzymes that dissolve itself. If you were to cut open a cocoon at the right time, a thick soup would dribble out. The only parts of the caterpillar to survive are the soul discs, maintained by a webbing of nerves. Safely encased in this nutrient soup, the insect regrows itself. Unbound by its previous form, it is free to take any shape it wishes.

A grievous cocoon follows much of the same steps. Each grievous cocoon is formed from hundreds of immature insects, and each cocoon is about the size of a soda can.

What emerges is a globular cloud of scintillating hatred, about a meter across.

HD 3 AC none Bites 1d6
Fly moth Int 6 Mor 14

Gaseous -- All attacks against a nebula hit it. Most attacks deal 1 damage. Fans deal 1d4. A bucket of water deals 1d3. A strong gust of wind deals 2d6 (or perhaps [sum], if caused by a spell). A nebula cannot enter the water.

Bites -- Small, deep punctures, like the wounds from buckshot. (Feels like buckshot.) These attacks leave debris: butterfly scales, insect legs, urticating hairs. If you are bitten by a nebula, you will be unable to derive any benefit from non-vegetarian food, and will immediately vomit it back up.

By New York State Museum;University of the State of New York.

In my current ruleset, characters stop gaining HP at level 3. From level 4 onward, they gain +1 Helpful every time they level up.

Level 1	HP = 1/3 of Con
Level 2	HP = 2/3 of Con
Level 3	HP = Con
Level 4+	+1 Helpful

Helpfuls are a renewable resource. They replenish whenever the character gets a good night's sleep.

A player can spend Helpfuls to modify an ally's roll by an equal amount, up or down. There is no limit to how many Helpfuls you can spend at once, and multiple people can contribute simultaneously.

The only caveat is that you must have a feasible way to affect their ally's action.

The fighter feints, helping the wizard land a hit on the orc.
The wizard shouts a warning, and the arrow meant for the warrior's throat hits him in the shoulder instead.
The fighter reaches up with his shield, catching the arrow like an outfielder.
The rogue sticks out his foot while the fighter shoves the zombie hog.

The fiction doesn't matter too much. Let them be badasses.

Thieves

Thieves get an extra Helpful for every template. Unlike other classes, Thieves can spend Helpfuls on themselves.

Discussion

GLOG characters don't really get much more powerful beyond level 3. Instead, they get more versatile. Helpfuls fit this philosophy well.

+1 Helpful is comparable to getting +1 HP (since you can use your Helpful to reduce incoming damage by 1 point).

They are similar to getting +1 HP at each level, since you can use Helpfuls to reduce incoming damage by an equal amount. +1 HP is better at a single thing, while +1 Helpful is more versatile.

The biggest tweak over Luck Points (the previous incarnation) is that you can only use Helpfuls on other people, rather than yourself. This has a few effects.

It helps higher-level characters keep lower-level characters alive.
It encourages players to stick together. It hopefully fosters camaraderie, too, since players will be saving each other a lot.
It works as insurance, insulating the player against a streak of bad luck. If a lot of bad luck befalls one player, the other players can dump Helpfuls to keep them alive.
It gives players something to do when its not their turn. Hopefully, they'll be watching each other's rolls, looking for places where they can turn a miss into a hit.

I don't know if I want to put a cap on Helpfuls. I've never had a game where players had more than a handful.

You Walk Into a Tavern

The State of Religion in Centerra

Zak

The Exile

The Ruins of Tabernach

The Ruined City of Braxa / Undead Armies

The Monstrous Lady Mantlewray

The Cleric

The Mother of Osk

The Ignoble Orders

The Ghast

Six Facts About Metal

The Fire Cults

New Wizard: Baboonist

Dynamism and the Generic Optimum

The Cursed City of Nibulum

Gamjee and the Kludger

Encounter Stew

Trois Monstres

Helpfuls