Nested Things

This is a thing that is part of a thing which will eventually be part of another thing. More info on these things to follow.

Here's Your Lump of Coal

If you asked the Humbug, it would tell you that it doesn’t want to hurt anyone really, but has had to defend itself countless times and just wants to be left alone. It won’t mention (and probably isn’t really even aware) that witnessing joy in others triggers an emotional escalation that, unless appeased successfully, ends with the Humbug entering an uncontrollable rage. Of course that’s assuming you’re able to get a word in at all.

It looks like either a child with the features of a grey-skinned old man, or an old man whose growth has been severely stunted. It has functional insect-like wings, and antennae, dresses in shoddy looking but functional clothing, and (when grounded) leans heavily on a gnarled cane that’s taller than he is. The Humbug is likely to be found living in any sparsely populated and isolated dungeon or wilderness area.

When first met, it demands to know what the PCs are doing, but doesn’t really care once it figures out that they aren’t from around wherever it is they find it. The Humbug then introduces itself and starts complaining about the area in a way that reveals useful and reliable information to the PCs. It keeps complaining about anything and everything that occurs to it without letting anyone else get a word in, and follows anyone who tries to walk away in the middle of a “conversation”. This will continue as long as the PCs tolerate it, with useful intel sprinkled in generously. If the PCs engage in combat (including trying to attack the Humbug itself), it will simply fly out of the way until it’s over, grumbling about how tedious combat is the whole time.

The Humbug will not say much about the occasional groups of 3-5 adventurers’ remains, all of which have had their skulls bashed in. Just that it takes the right outlook to survive and these poor saps didn’t have it.

The Humbug will not try to stop anyone who tries to silence it with a gag, but will still continue to go through the motions of speaking as if it hasn’t noticed. This will muffle the sound well enough to allow for stealth. Otherwise, every enemy within 20’ of the party will be aware of their presence (or at least of the Humbug’s, and that it’s talking to someone). It shouldn’t take long for a clever party to realize that they can just gag and un-gag it as needed and have half of what’s going on explained to them.

If any the players express joy in-character, the Humbug turns visibly red, rips out its gag (if it’s wearing one) and starts angrily pointing out the dark lining to every silver cloud, demanding that the PCs see things its way. If they “admit” that it’s right, they still need to make a charisma check to convince it they’ve genuinely changed their minds (even if they actually have). If they succeed, it turns back to its normal shade of grey and starts complaining about all the infuriatingly naive adventurers it’s met in the past, and how they all turn out to be such huge disappointments in the end.

If the PCs fail to convince the Humbug of their sincerity (or tell it they think it’s wrong), its rage intensifies. It grows a deeper shade of red and flies out of reach while shouting about how disappointing the party is and shaking its cane like a madman. All of a sudden, its shouts turn into an incoherent war cry as it starts zipping around at 6x the speed of the PCs. First, it trips them all with the hook of its cane and tries to disarm them if there’s time, then it spends a whole round smashing in one victim’s face while the rest of the group recovers. The Humbug repeats this process until they’re all dead and keeps screaming the whole time, not even stopping to inhale.

Nice Streets Above

I’m just about done writing and laying out my Kellerlabyrinth project, which I’m calling Nice Streets Above, after a song by Wire. The song is an expression of rage generated by upper class pricks. The title is relevant to the adventure both in that sense, and in a purely literal one, as the tunnels beneath the streets are inhabited by refugees and the human parasites. It’s a dungeon and a slum at the same time, and several conspiracies with unique goals and methods are based there.

I can see no reason why horror, science fiction, superhero fiction and fantasy shouldn’t all be the same thing, and NSA reflects that aesthetic. There’s also a little bit of history, which is basically horror anyway. The supers influence shows in some of the choices that PCs may find themselves faced with; the abilities they might gain, and the prices that must be paid.

I’m designing this to be played with any edition or retroclone of D&D. NSA is set in the tunnels under Oppenheim during the 30 Years War, so that ruleset is the most obvious fit. It would also be really easy to fit this and Better Than Any Man into the same campaign. I’m not including many stats in NSA though, so it shouldn’t be too hard to convert to whatever RPG rules you prefer. One of these days I wanna try running it with FASERIP and probably also one of the Dr. Who RPGs.

I figured out what to print on the back cover as a teaser. It’s super pretentious and I’m not fucking changing it. Imagine it being read to you by that movie announcer guy:

A war over a decade old.

A city under foreign occupation.

A refugee crisis with no end in sight.

A rebellion brewing beneath the streets.

A privileged society abusing mystic abilities.

A cult of the hopeless and their gods of decay.

Welcome to Oppenheim.

Corruption is power.

And here’s a couple of illustrations, from a page of potentially recurring NPCs. One set of three basically normal humans, and one set of weirdos with secret powers.

It would be pretty funny if repeating the acronym NSA over and over got me put on a watch list of some sort.

Gremlins

When the Shattered Isles appeared in the world of the gremlins, these bat-like creatures were in the middle of a war that prevented them from forming an effective defense against the saurian raiders. Many gremlins were taken as slaves, and others made their way to the Isles on their own, seeking to rescue or avenge their own.

Centuries later, there are almost as many gremlins living deep in the jungle in their tree-towns, as there are enslaved in the saurian cities. Skilled trades are considered to be as honorable as the arts of trickery in their culture, and these towns often include blacksmiths, alchemists, and other specialists.

Gremlins favor a weapon called a hook-chain, consisting of a miner’s pick attached by a 15’ chain to a heavy steel claw that doubles as a grappling hook (yeah I know but I don't think it counts as a kusari gama unless it has a solid weight at the end where the claw is on these). Sometimes, when stealth is required, the chain links are individually wrapped in leather; an industrious gremlin can accomplish this task in a single night. These elaborate weapons are justifiably prized by gremlin heroes and adventurers.

Gremlins are some of the most individualistic people on the Isles, possibly resulting from their relatively short lifespans. They feel that life is literally a test, and those who find a way to prosper are said to be One With the Shadow. Throughout their history, gremlin cultures have worshipped the Shadow in the same way that human cultures have worshipped the Sun. It’s the Shadow that protects them and keeps them hidden from predator and prey alike, and judges the lives of gremlins upon their deaths. Those who are found worthy, are permitted to spend eternity in the shadow’s embrace.

They make daily devotions to their shadow deity at sunset, which usually begins the day for those free gremlins who aren’t making accommodations for vision-dependent companions. Slaves, of course, are forced to keep the same sleep cycle as their saurian masters.

It’s much less common for enslaved gremlins to legally earn their freedom than their goliath peers, but those who do often find themselves too enamored with the luxuries of the big city (as well as disconnected from their people’s traditions) to join their jungle-dwelling kin. Others choose to operate out of the cities when working to liberate their brethren. These freedom fighters must maintain absolute secrecy or face public execution by torture, which has been known to last for days.

GREMLINS

>average height/weight: 4’6”, 80 lbs

>adventuring age: 8-45

>4d6 AWR, 4d6 AGI, 2d6 END, 2d6 STR

>echolocation & supersonic speech

>sound-based attacks do double damage to gremlins

>extremely loud noises (explosions and whatnot) can cause paralyzing pain

>+1 bonus with chain weapons

>backstab as thief

>HP, combat, and skills advance as thief

Insectoids

The saurians were the only intelligent life form on the Shattered Isles before the place became unstuck from its original universe. They call themselves the One True Race and dismissively refer to everyone not from the isles as ephemerals. The fact that several other races have immigrated to the isles and not disappeared along with their worlds annoys saurian philosophers to no end, but the rest of their society is quick to capitalize on the opportunities this represents whenever possible.

The first immigrants to the islands were the equally xenophobic insectoids, many of whom never meet anyone from outside their own massive tower-hives. While these powerful psychics aren’t trusted by the saurians (or anyone else for that matter), their chitin weapons, armor, and tools are highly valued in saurian culture, so the insectoids are left alone for the most part. 

In their original hives, the insectoids form a hive mind dominated by the queen of that tower-hive. The insectoid worldview is, if anything, even narrower than that of the saurians. Beyond the hive itself, there is nothing worth caring about except threats to and opportunities for that hive. No two hives have ever been known to work together against a common threat.

These beings are often sent by their queen to trade goods with the saurians for food and other useful items, but they’re hardly ever comfortable with the task, and are highly anxious to get back. Insectoid adventurers usually come in three varieties: those performing some function for their queen, those whose hives have been destroyed, and those who’ve been exiled for some truly heinous act (a fate much worse than death).

RULES AND JUNK:

Note: This is intended for the type of ruleset that uses race as class. If you're using some other D&D that has half orc bards or whatever running around, you can either: 1. let this be the only racial class in your campaign or 2. just ignore the part about automatically advancing as a mage.

>Avg. height/weight: 6’/160 lbs

>Adventuring Age: 10 — 30

>Ability Scores: 4d6 INT, 2d6 END, 2d6 STR

>mantis-like forelimbs are natural weapons, flight at normal walking speed, natural armor as chain mail

>natural weapons act as scythes, or if you use damage-by-class, natural weapon attacks do fighter-level damage

>hit points, saving throws, and other mechanical stuff advances as a magic user (ignore the spells per day chart)

>psychic powers instead of vancian spells

>using powers requires a successful willpower saving throw (or save vs. magic or mind save or whatever); if the save fails the power still has its effect as normal, but costs 1d8 HP (1d2 in my house rules which use super low hit points in comparison to normal D&D)

PSYCHIC POWERS:

Telepathy: Allows the insectoid to communicate without speaking at a distance up to 1 mile or to read surface thoughts of unwilling targets (they notice a tingling sensation). Once formed, the connection lasts for one hour. This ability can also be used to detect the presence, number, and relative location of intelligent and semi-intelligent beings in a 60’ radius.

Telekinesis: Allows insectoids to pick up objects weighing up to 50 lbs per level with their minds. These objects can be “thrown” to do 1d6 damage per 50 lbs, using INT for the attack roll. This ability can also be used to perform delicate operations like picking locks. This would probably require some sort of a skill check but every version of this game seems to have it's own version of that mechanic so every DM will probably have to figure out their own thing. If your game usually uses DEX for lockpicking, use INT instead. In my game you already use INT combined with something called cunning (advances kinda like a reflex save), so I have insectoids use insight (advances kinda like a will save) in conjunction with INT.

Psychic Shield: Protects the insectoid from hostile psychic powers and provides a +4 bonus to armor class. Lasts 10 minutes.

Hypnotism: A chosen victim must save or obey the insectoid’s every command. Victims are allowed another save once per day, and any time they are ordered to do something against their personal moral code. This only works on intelligent beings, and only one being can be hypnotized at a time.

Phantasm: The PC describes an illusion that fools all the senses of any creature, in normal range of those senses, that fails its save. If it seems reasonable that the targets would be scared off by the illusion, then they're saving to avoid running away in terror. The phantasm is under the control of the insectoid (who has no problem maintaining the illusion while fighting or even walking and chewing gum) for 10 minutes, at the end of which it dissolves into nothingness.

Clairvoyance: The insectoid can see and hear through solid objects at a distance of 60’. This ability is blocked by 2’ of solid stone or any thickness of lead. This ability is only active as long as the PC is actively concentrating on it, rather than moving or performing any other actions.

Precognition: The insectoid can see what would happen to it up to one minute in the future, as a direct consequence of performing a particular action. If the answer is unclear to the DM, so is the vision the insectoid receives.

Goliaths

The elephant-headed goliaths make up one of several intelligent species found on the Shattered Isles. These eight-foot tall nomads are the accidental exiles of an ephemeral kingdom which actually tried to conquer the One True People. As laughable as that may seem, the islands were in danger of being overrun when the world of these giants, as well as the supply chain for their invasion, came to an abrupt end (from the point of view of the saurians, anyway). Now, most of the great-grandchildren of these warriors survive by hunting the largest dinosaurs on the island. While most goliaths prefer to follow the movements of their prey, rather than to build permanent homes for themselves, they are known to build elaborate underground shrines to their ancestors, which they return to on a regular basis.

Goliaths revere their living elders as well as the spirits of their departed ancestors, and both are often looked to for advice and protection. It’s unclear to outsiders whether or not any communication is actually happening, as the initiated tend to think of every dream and minor hallucination as a message from ever-watchful ancestors. The greatest tragedy imaginable, from their perspective, was the day their entire people was cut off from the generations of ancestral spirits that remain in their home world. Many goliaths have responded to this horror by replacing their traditional faith with messianic cults. These cults agree that a chosen one will arise or arrive one day, though their beliefs differ sharply in whether this savior will return them to their original world or deliver them from this living hell by bringing about the End of All Things.

Smaller groups of goliaths are sometimes overtaken by slaving parties, which sell them off for heavy labor or to fight as gladiators in saurian fighting pits. It’s not unheard of for goliaths to earn their freedom, at which point many decide to continue to work or fight in the cities, this time for a good deal of pay. 

While most goliaths detest slavery on principle, that doesn’t mean they’re above bullying smaller, weaker peoples into cooperation (for their own good, of course).

RULES AND JUNK:

Note: This is intended for the type of ruleset that uses race as class (Labyrinth Lord and Old School Essentials spring to mind). If you're using some other D&D that has gnomish priests of Thor or whatever running around, you can either: 1. let this be the only racial class in your campaign or 2. just ignore everything after the natural weapon attacks.

>Avg. Height/Weight: 8’/400 lbs

>Ability scores: 4d6 STR, 4d6 END (PCs should only roll their attributes after choosing to play as goliaths)

>Adventuring Age: 20 — 90

>+1 to attacks with natural weapons (tusks & trunk)

>advantage to dirty fighting

>free attack on kill, up to a number of attacks equal to level.

>Use the stats for a fighter or a barbarian (if your game has barbarians) for mechanical stuff (hit dice, combat bonuses, etc). If you’re using weapon-based damage, tusk attacks do the same damage as a spear.

The Beast Rises

Carcosa: Psychic Cyborg Sorcerer (of Slaughter)

I owe back taxes to Joesky so here is a Carcosa for you.

This adventure is intended for levels one through ten or something like that. There are monsters here that would pummel most level seven parties. That said, I’m pretty sure it’s possible for level one characters to kill everything in this hex if they really apply themselves.

There are two deserts on the map in the Carcosa book. Pick a hex in one of them, and put this stuff there. If you have the book, you know that each hex has two briefly described features. It shouldn’t be too hard to add them in to make this mess even weirder.

Roll random encounter checks (1/6 chance) every 90 minutes in this hex. Descriptions, stats, and reaction tables for the monsters are at the end of this post.

1 2d4 blue people riding mutant protoceratopses (shield lizards)

2 3d6 green people hunting with long spears

3 mutant apex dinosaur (great tooth)

4 psychic cyborg sorcerer of slaughter

5 3d12 wild shield lizards

6 2d4+2 mutant tetrapterix (cliff birds)

7 spawn of shub-niggurath

8 acid bug

TERRAIN

This hex is riddled with the maze-like sandstone cliffs of a technicolor desert. Small clumps of spiny bushes appear every so often, but most have been stripped clean by shield lizards. Every 12 hours, there is a 1/8 chance of a sandstorm picking up that is fierce enough to force the PCs to find shelter or take 1 die of damage per 10-minute round. These storms last 1d8+2 rounds. In addition, PCs must consume double the normal amount of water and food rations due to the harsh climate.

The connections on this node map take three hours to travel on foot (so two encounter checks). Instead of forcing players to map out and navigate some contrived and irritating maze, make them roll an intelligence check to not get lost whenever they try to move from one node to another, unless they’re following a guide. If they fail, they find themselves traveling in circles, traveling for 1d12 10-minute rounds and finding themselves back where they started.

Using a highly detailed map grants advantage to navigation checks. Nothing is stopping the PCs from saying “we take the time to carefully map the canyons as we explore” so that retracing their steps is easier.

ACID BUG CAVE

I would start the PCs off here, where they are railroaded forced to seek shelter from a fierce sandstorm in a deep cave with a tight entrance, too small for any of the local dinosaurs to have gotten into. There is, however, a man-sized acid-spitting centipede living in here, which gets a surprise round unless someone passes an awareness check. The centipede’s acid glands can be harvested to fill 2 standard oil-or-potion sized glass jars.

In the corner of the cave, they find a human looking figure half buried in the sand. If they approach it for a closer look, they see that it’s a long-dead space alien. All that’s left of it is a skeleton and gauntlet (treat as small shield) that has a screen and a switch on the left forearm. If the switch is pressed, the screen activates, pointing the way to the alien’s nearby ship. If anyone can actually read the space aliens’ language, they know exactly what this is. Otherwise they just know it’s a topographical map of the area, centered on their current location, with a blinking beacon to the northwest. The sandstorm dies down after 1d6+2 10-minute turns.

CRATER

The spaceship is located in the middle of a fairly large crater (which is old enough to have some sparse vegetation), and appears to have been badly damaged and partially repaired. The cargo bay door is open. All the interior doors are closed but can be opened with a successful strength check, with advantage if using something like a crowbar. This makes a lot of noise, which will alert the psychic cyborg sorcerer to the PCs’ presence if it’s currently in the ship (a 2/3 chance).

The armory contains six grenades (3 dice of damage) and four high powered laser rifles (2 dice of damage), as well as ten napalm canisters for the cyborg’s flamethrower arm and sixteen power cells for the rifles. The rifles need to be loaded with a power cell to function, and each cell has 50 charges.

In the robotics lab, the PCs find a whole mess of mad scientist style notes, from which they can learn that: 

1) The psychic cyborg sorcerer found a damaged robot in the crashed ship, which he repaired and into which he transplanted his brain. He’s been using the torch and advanced strength of his new body to repair the ship.

2) He knows the conjuration ritual for the Violet Mist, but won’t perform it until he learns the ritual to bind the creature.

3) That binding ritual is inscribed on a tablet that is probably in a serpent-man temple a week’s march away. 
4) That temple is currently inhabited by cannibal bone men that exact tribute (as in people to eat) from all the nearby human groups through force of arms.

5) All of the structural repairs to the ship are complete, at this point it’s just the engine left, which should take about four weeks to fix. The notes are complete enough that only an intelligence check with advantage would be necessary if the PCs wanted to finish fixing it.

6) The sorcerer has a serious grudge against any leader of men you as the DM want, either an original one or any of the ones described in the hex crawl, and would not hesitate to wipe out that man’s entire settlement for the sake of vengeance.

GREEN CAVE

A settlement of 200 green people live in another cave in the cliffs, hiding from the local predators and hunting the smaller dinosaurs. They usually arm themselves with long stone-tipped spears, slings, and stone axes, but their leader and his two lieutenants have acquired red laser pistols (1 die of damage, d100 charges). They aren’t actively at war with the nomadic blues that have set up camp nearby, but they live in a state of mutual distrust. Every week there is a 1/6 chance of the greens performing an elaborate ritual (not the powerful kind that sorcerers perform, more like church) in which they sacrifice a group of 1d12+6 captives to the spawn in the oasis.

There is a completely dark chamber at the back of the caves, the walls of which are covered in cave paintings. The paintings’ subjects include the alien shipwreck as an event, the local dinosaurs interacting with the greens, the spawn of shub-niggurath rising from its lake to accept a blue man sacrifice from green worshippers, and battles between the greens and peoples of various other colors.

Another chamber in the cave system contains dozens of crude candles and well-polished fertility figures carved from precious stone, with a large mat of leaves and feathers covering most of the floor.

BLUE CAMP

The nomadic blue people are a bit more advanced than the nearby greens. They’ve learned to tame the shield lizards and use them as mounts and beasts of burden. Their hunters and war parties are usually armed with short bows and iron axes, wearing leather armor and shields made from deceased shield lizards. Their tents are similarly made from shield-lizard hide and bones. The leader of the blue nomads is armed with a sonic bazooka (3 dice + save or unconscious for 10-30 minutes, 25 charges).

This group of blue men likes to collect hollow objects of all shapes and sizes, and use them as percussive instruments in elaborate drum-circle dance rituals.

Unless something unexpected and probably terrible happens, this small tribe of about 60 will stay in the area for 1d6+3 weeks. Every week, there is a 1/6 chance of all-out war breaking out between the nomadic blues and the cave-dwelling greens.

The connection marked ‘narrow path’ protects them from the nearby apex dinosaur, which would have to squeeze through, making it vulnerable to attack.

LOTUS BUSH

Roll a d6 to determine the color of lotus using the description in Carcosa as a table. There are 2d6 harvestable doses of that here. That’s all. Move along. Well I guess you could be a dick and put a radioactive mutant snake or something in the bush, hiding. Actually yeah do that.

HD: 1/2 AC: as unarmored

Attack: bite (1 die of damage + poison (save to resist) + radiation sickness (save to resist))

Move: 20’

GREAT TOOTH CAVE

There is a large bone pile in the corner of the cave. If the PCs search it, they find a magic chain whip forged by serpentmen among some human bones. It has a ten foot reach and gives its wielder a +6 bonus to any attacks that attempt to disarm or otherwise disable their target rather than cause HP damage. It would have been useful when the serpentmen were capturing humans alive for sacrifice.

CLIFF BIRD NEST

Halfway up the cliff (about 40’ above the ground), there is a very large outcropping covered by clumps of thick, dead bushes and brambles. There are 2d12 cliff birds up here at any given time, as well as 3d4 eggs the size of pineapples.

OASIS

The amphibious spawn of shub-niggurath lives in a large cave hidden near the bottom of this quarter-mile wide and half-mile deep freshwater oasis. Anytime you or anything else approaches the waters’ edge, there’s a 1/12 chance that the spawn will attack.

MONSTERS

Acid Bug - A centipede the size of an adult human, and it spits acid. Sickly white coloring.

HD: 2  |  AC: as chain

Attacks: acid spit (2 dice of damage)

Reactions: ambush (2-12)

Cliff Bird - A brightly feathered tetrapterix-like creature the size of a large dog. They like to climb the cliffs and attack silently from above. Passing an awareness check means you see their shadow and there’s no surprise round.

HD: 1  |  AC: as unarmored 

Attacks: 2 claws (1 die) + beak (1 die)

Move: 40’ land, 250’ air

Reactions: ambush (2-6), stalk and wait for opportunity (7-10), intimidated (11-12)

Great Tooth - Like an allosaurus with a tail like an ankylosaurus and flashy neck frills like the dinosaur that ate Newman in Jurassic Park. About the size of a bus. Always hungry. The PCs can hear it coming from a quarter mile away, but it can also smell them at that distance. It only sees light and movement.

HD: 12  |  AC: as leather

Attacks: charge (8 dice) or gore (2 dice) + bite (2 dice) + tail (1 die)

Move: 80’

Reactions: try to eat you (2-11), brief confusion before trying to eat you(12)

Psychic Cyborg Sorcerer of Slaughter - A ten-foot tall humanoid robot with a thick glass dome at the top of its head, protecting a sorcerer’s undead brain. One of the robots’ arms ends in a human-like hand and the other is mounted with a flamethrower, which also has a setting that converts its napalm fuel into a gas suitable for welding. It’s been using this to repair the dead alien’s spaceship.

HD: 14  |  AC: as full plate

Attacks: incinerate (4 dice) or punch (2 dice)

Move: 30’

Psionics: as 9th level psionic (pgs 18-21)

Reactions: exterminate (2-7), try to recruit you (8-11), lets you go free (12)

Shield Lizard - Like a protoceratops the size of a car, with spikes all around the edge of its face shield and a sharp beak.

HD: 6  |  AC: as leather w/tower shield

Attacks:bite (1 die), charge (4 dice), or trample (6 dice).

Reactions (wild): charge (2-7), ignores you (8-10), curious but tentative (11-12)

Spawn of Shub-Niggurath - About the size of a tenement building, this spawn has a body type basically like that of a fur-covered caterpillar, with four giant bat-like wings that beat with the speed of a hummingbird while it’s flying, two compound eyes, a simple insectoid mouth from which it spits webbing, and a long, whiplike tail.

HD: 10  |  AC: as unarmored

Attacks: tail whip (4 dice) + spit (no damage, target is stuck (save to avoid), strength check or fire (which also burns you) to escape)

Move: 25’ flying, 10’ land, 80’ underwater

Reactions: try to eat you (2-7), not hungry, but webs you out of spite (8-10), ignores you (11-12)

R.I.P. Bad Ray

Bad Ray (Layth) is dead. A mage who thought he was a ninja has met his untimely end been stabbed through the fucking brain by his dear friend Kevin Bacon (Kelly).

Grant wanted to DM a couple days ago, which was cool because A)I never get to play and B)he was running my weird patched-together ruleset and I was curious how it would turn out. I explained the game in as few words as possible to Keiran (Grant’s boss, who was cool enough to let us play in his store) while Grant mapped out a cave complex. “Everyone around knows the legend of this pirate lord that died with his treasure at the bottom of a cave system somewhere in the area. There’s also something in the legend about zombies or vampires or something. You guys met some old drunk at the bar the other night with a map showing the cave’s location.” Fuck it, let’s do this.

I've never seen a more trustworthy face.

Nikolai Stroganoff the bow-toting mage (me) accompanied Bad Ray and John Doe (Keiran) into the cave, where we almost immediately stumbled upon a time worn and dust covered message engraved in the rock wall. It was a riddle, something along the lines of “I’m round but not always around, sometimes light and sometimes dark…” and then something else but it was obviously the moon at that point. Saying this out loud opened a secret room with loot, armor, and a nifty anti-magic shield. The next passage we took was a gradually narrowing incline spiralling downward.

Grant: “Okay, at this point you guys are pretty much crawling…”

Me: “Fuck that, we’re turning around.”

Layth: “What? No, we gotta keep going.”

Me: “Well we can find another way, I’m not crawling down there.”

Keiran: “Oh you don’t wanna crawl around? Ha! Weren’t you in the army?”

Me: “Yeah, I was. That’s how I know not to go in there. Have fun, guys.”

They triggered a pressure plate that released four spiders the size of cats from a hydraulic cage,* which added to my smugness from the moon riddle treasure. Hubris will probably be Nikolai’s downfall in the end. Bad Ray was prepared, though, with a glue spell that made the critters helpless while he shis kabobed them with his signature katana. Nothing else was down there, but Bad Ray made the most of it, filling an empty jar with venom glands.

The next large cave chamber we explored had a stream running through it, at the bottom of a steep and magically slippery incline, which we fell down, dropping our weapons. Then we almost drowned in the stream, which let out into a huge cave with an underground lake, beach, jungle, and even something that looked very much like the sun. John Doe and Bad Ray pulled Nikolai’s unconscious body onto the beach. J.D. opted to rest on the beach with Nikolai while Bad Ray wandered into the jungle, where he stumbled into a clearing with a deer.

Not one to be discouraged by the fact that he’d gone hunting without any weapons, Bad Ray quickly made a molotov cocktail and threw it at the deer, which disintegrated into glowing pixie dust or something as the jar passed through it. Ray caught a glimpse of some sort of bipedal lizard monster hiding in the bushes. Realizing that he was basically defenseless, our intrepid adventurer cast a fear spell at the thing and it ran away in terror. Reality kind of flickered when the creature panicked, in a way that confirmed our suspicions that everything in this cavern was an illusion. Bad Ray made it back to the beach without any further distractions.

At this point Ashley picked me up so we could go eat. We started the game back up an hour later without Keiran, when Grant, Kelly and Layth came over. There are some D&D groups that would be bothered by that sort of incoherence but they don’t seem to have any problem with nonsensical combat mechanics so I feel like we’re basically even.

As Nikolai and Bad Ray finished resting, Molly (Ashley) and Kevin Bacon came running out of the woodline, with four jaguars hot on their tail. We beat them, but used like four of our spells to do it, so we elected to rest again to increase our chances of survival. Of course, this led to us being attacked by yet another group of jaguars, and this time we started combat with hardly any spells left. At this point the odds were that there wouldn’t be another random encounter, so we risked resting again, this time uneventfully.

This is when I guess Grant got tired of us just hanging out there doing nothing, and decided that whatever was behind all this should take action. We all had to save against fear or run away from the water in terror, into the jungle. Bad Ray made his save, but he was the only one. He glued Molly’s and Kevin Bacon’s feet to the spot, and tripped Nikolai up with his grappling hook & rope. Grant then informed us that the fear effect was likely to last longer than the glue spell, so Ray tried to tie up Kevin and Molly with what was left of the rope. That’s when Kelly decided that Kevin Bacon had fucking had it and killed off the party’s first ever level 3 character.** I seem to remember her rolling a critical hit.

"Don't Fuck With Kevin Bacon"

The best part about being one of two mages in a party is inheriting the other one’s spellbook when he dies (I’ll probably give Layth’s new character the magic cloak I found on B.R.’s corpse because I’m such a nice guy, though). There’s a couple spells in there that Nikolai can’t even cast yet, but if I can get him back to town, he’s already got enough loot to level up, and I’m pretty sure everyone else does too. Now I just need to get him & his pals out of this cave system alive, preferably in one piece.

So it looks like there’s some mind-control aliens or something hiding out down here and spreading rumors about pirate ghosts Scooby-Doo style, unless the pirates are still alive and acting as cultists or co-conspirators. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. The anti-magic shield should come in handy, unless Grant decides that psionics and magic are two distinctly separate things.

*That’s a pretty technologically advanced trap for what’s supposed to be a dead pirate’s final resting place. I wonder who or what put it there.

**I have zero problems with high mortality rates in my games. Most of my house rules are pretty player friendly, but the game world is not. Your character is not a beautiful snowflake and is not destined for glory, at least not without struggling to barely scrape by as a murderhobo first. If you make it to third level, you’re beating the odds. That’s why it’s crucial for me that character creation take a drunk person no more than fifteen minutes.

Also my players die a lot because we get pretty wasted sometimes and they make silly decisions. Which might be my favorite part of the game.

Courtyard of Knossos

Philosopher's Castle

This post is mostly for Grant, Kelly, and Scott. Layth showed up last night and we soloed for a little while before Ashley got home and joined in. This is what happened.

So Bad Ray the katana wielding mage was wandering through a village on his way to Mistfall. He walks strait past the wailing woman in the town square and the creepy looking castle on the hill, but stops to help when he sees a little red headed kid being carried up the hill by a tentacle faced crocodile man. Ray climbed a tree and dive-bomb stabbed the thing in the head. Then he freed the kid and reverted to his initial strategy of ignoring the dungeon, continuing on his way to the big city.

Night was falling as he arrived in Mistfall, so Bad Ray naturally decided to wander around looking for a bank to rob. He glued (spell on page 8 of the 52 Pages RPG) the guard’s feet to the spot and murdered him from behind, but the victim was screaming for help as he died. People were coming, so Ray grabbed the dead man’s armor and ran to a tavern on the shady side of town, where he engaged in mutually consensual intercourse with an overweight young woman, whose name he forgot to ask. I guess that’s just what you do after you fail to rob a bank? After that he suddenly remembered the creepy castle and decided to go back.

That’s when Ashley got home so from here on in it makes a little more sense. Molly and Bad Ray found the secret back entrance and got in through the basement, where they found body parts everywhere in one room and a creature with one leg and four arms in the next, imprisoned in a giant glass ball with a magic circle around the base exactly like the Sandman.

Ray immediately befriended it, and it telepathically communicated to him and Molly that:

-it had followed a giant tentacled brain creature called a grell across the multiverse because it had taken its “other”

-that its other and therefore the grell were in this castle

-that the grell and its followers had known the friendly creature was on its way and tricked it

-that its supernaturally hard glass prison has a “molecular structure that should be vulnerable to the correct vibrational frequency” (whatever that means).

Molly tried to pick the lockpick her way into the treasury but that was a bust. They did, however, find a shrine to a tentacled brain creature (which matched the idol in the pocket of the thing Ray killed). Then they found the secret door that led to a pool of water with brain stems swimming around like sperm, and a re-statted mind flayer on a throne. After a short argument they killed the shit out of it, took its robe (which puts out all nearby light sources whenever its wearer sings the chorus to this) and staff, and headed upstairs. After a couple lobotomy-style-zombies almost killed Bad Ray, they headed back to town to stock up on healing potions and rest at the inn.

The next morning, they wake up to an armored man, accompanied by two robed figures like the thing Bad Ray ninja assassinated a few days ago, ringing the bell in the town square and demanding to know who had killed his father. Ray, being quite Bad, poked his head out the window and responded “I killed your daddy, beeyotch!” even though he legitimately hadn’t figured out who the guy’s dad was yet.

Molly dropped some burning oil onto one of the reptilian things as they approached the inn and sort of freestyle rappelled down to stab it in the neck when it stop-drop-rolled, while Ray set up a magic mouth + fear trap and hid in the closet (hurr hurr). The other monster failed its save and ran as the armored dude was climbing the steps, Molly close behind. Ray glued his feet to the spot and Molly tied him up from behind, then they tied him to a chair and tortured the hell out of him.

They learned that:

-the mind flayer was the dude’s dad…

-…who was in a transitional stage on his way to becoming a “higher power”

before they fucked up and told each other out loud that they weren’t gonna let him live anyway and he clammed up and got himself executed.

Then the a tavern worker, who (because I felt like it) was the mother of the little red headed kid Ray had heroically saved, came upstairs to assess the situation. From her, they learned that:

-the man they’d just tortured and killed was one Lord Highrock.

-everyone knows his father died years ago.

-she doesn’t know exactly how or when he died, and she doesn’t know anyone who was at the funeral.

-there aren’t as many people in Highrock Village as there used to be, but as far as the woman knows no one has died in years. She thinks they must have all moved or something.

-it sounds to her like those dead people Molly and Ray found were probably all from out of town, and therefore not her problem.

-no one goes up to the castle ever.

-she has no recollection of the bell ringing or the robed crocodilians. In fact, she doesn’t see the charred corpse of the one Molly killed even when she’s looking right at it.

-(I swear I rolled this one randomly on my rumors table) old man Highrock was once gifted a sword that, when struck against a hard surface, emits a single perfect and terrible note, unlike any sound heard in music or nature.

And that’s where we ended the session. They haven’t gone shopping for supplies yet, so think about what you want to stock up on if you’re showing up next time. It’s not a big town but there’s an apothecary that sells a few simple potions, ingredients, and alchemy equipment, a general store that sells basic equipment (we’ll say that includes matchlock muskets, powder and shot), and a few of the basic village services like a blacksmith and tanner.

Bullhead's Title Page

F! I Say F I.

Words and pictures

First page of a thing I've had on the backburner for way too long. The words are by Joe Briggs who mostly writes stuff about punk rock. It's worth checking out if you're into that sort of thing.

Minotaur Sketches

Dungeon map: Kellerlabyrinth

The Kellerlabyrinth is a maze of tunnels under the streets of Oppenheim, Germany. They were constructed according to need (as opposed to following some overall architectural scheme) over the course of at least six hundred years. I first read about it in this blog post.

I was working on a 30 Years War sandbox around that time, which made me even more excited than I should have been about Better Than Any Man when it came out a couple months later. The story's main town of Karlstadt is fictional, but another location on the map isn't: Wurzburg, which, by LotFP rules, is only a three days' walk (unencumbered) from Oppenheim. So this would actually make a pretty good follow up if any of my players ever manage to live through BTAM (seriously none of them even know about the Insect Cult).

This map doesn't even come close to depicting the entire tunnel system, which apparently could have more than 600 rooms in it. Most haven't been discovered yet because tunnels have collapsed or been intentionally blocked off, so you can think of this as one of the undiscovered sections. Some areas go five or six levels deep, but I think this is just enough visual complexity to not be overwhelming.

The side bar on the right is just general guidelines to use when stocking it, but I ran out of space. There also would have been plenty of grafitti (most people were at least literate enough to sign their own names by this point), and probably drinking halls like this modern one set up:

How many historical attractions have bars built right in? (okay probably a lot actually but shut up)

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find a few fingers of the worm hiding in the bottom level. The worm could even be intentionally fueling the madness of the 30 Years War, the witch hunts, or even the whole worldwide General Crisis (a.k.a. the reason LotFP is set in the seventeenth century by default).

Overland Map 1

More playing around in Procreate. Just a small, generic barony/duchy/whatever. I'm pretty sure the icons are obvious, except possibly the village represented by little boxes surrounding the keep. The mine cart was less vague before I zoomed back out but I still think it reads.

I'm already juggling a couple campaign settings, so I doubt I'll do much with this anytime soon. If you find a use for it (or anything else I put up here really), let me know. No labels because 1) you can use it for whatever this way and 2) naming things is more boring than drawing them.

Procreation

There's an app called Procreate that basically turns an iPad into a sketchbook. I can only assume they wanted free advertising from twelve year old boys. I haven't gotten much practice with the program yet but if there's one thing I can draw it's a weird looking phallus.