Deathmasks (GLOG: the Masquerade)

    Death mask, a wax or plaster cast of a mold taken from the face of a dead individual. Death masks are true portraits, although changes are occasionally made in the eyes of the mask to make it appear as though the subject were alive. From the time of ancient Egypt they have served as aids to portrait sculptors, and for the last few centuries they have been kept as mementos of the dead.
    - the Encyclopedia Britannica.

    This is a sort-of hack of Vampire: the Masquerade. I say "sort-of" because I'm not particularly familiar with the ruleset (I've only played Vampire thrice, and used different versions/hacks/homebrews each time), and I hate dicepools, and I'm more spiritually aware of the Lore than I am actually fluent in it. Don't consider this post any sort of quick-start-guide or cheat-sheet or the like. Instead, think of it as a dream of a dream within a dream, like when you wake and remember a past you never had — Interview with a Vampire, and Vampire: the Masquerade, and "urban fantasy", all feeding back into itself. I dunno horse, go watch a 4 hour video essay on Youtube.

Source: L'Inconnue de la Seine

The World

    "...Magic, as described by Lino Torres (then only a mortal sorcerer) in the year 1000 A.D. at Saint Pope Sylvester II's Third Synod of Ravenna, is divided into a trivium of Zoúrgy (now called 'life magic'), Skiúrgy (now called 'dark magic') and Torres' proposed Phaúrgy (now called 'light magic'). 

    As this new definition effectively did away with the classical Quadrivium, it received significant opposition from the more conservative bishops and mages of the council. But Torres' magnetic personality, and his support for Pope Sylvester's plans for a European university system (not to mention his significant contributions to Sylvester's papal campaign), brought enough political power to his side that after only 34 short months the Trivium Turris was the official theoretical framework for the study of all magic the entire Holy Roman Empire (c.f. Magia novis est, Sylvester II, 1003)...."

    Rapid changes in power-structures and dominance over the past 3000 years has shaken the immortal world to its core. Solomon bin David, righteous prophet and king, destroyed innumerable giants and genii and bound many others with his seal. Only a thousand years ago, the Catholic Church began a campaign of extermination against the yaoguai and devils of the storied peninsula of Europe, eventually bringing the majority of its people under her protection. In the years that followed most westerners had almost forgotten the existence of the predators and patrons that once ruled them. Many even came to call sorcery "superstition".

    "The church of Rome has never been either credulous or cowardly, as is abundantly proved by the Machiavellism which marks her policy. Moreover, she has never troubled herself much about the clever prestidigitateurs whom she knew to be simply adepts in juggling. Robert Houdin, Comte, Hamilton and Bosco, slept secure in their beds, while she persecuted such men as Paracelsus, Cagliostro, and Mesmer, the Hermetic philosophers and mystics — and effectually stopped every genuine manifestation of an occult nature by killing the mediums"
    - Helena Blavatsky.

    This changed in May of 1939 when the wizard Merasimiliano publicly aligned himself and his faction with Fascist Italy, and its allies by extension. Over the next fifteen years, the conflict that would come to be called "Second World War" was fought across Eurasia, Africa, North and South America, on all major oceans, and in several spirit-realms, most of them no longer extant.

The Flesh

    The above information is only barely relevant to you. You are not an immortal supernatural being; you are a little guy. If you are a wizard, you are the non-immortal kind. If you are a vampire, you are less than a century a vampire. If you are a werewolf, statistically you are younger than 20 and won't live to see 30.

The Rules

Creating a Magician Character

    Magicians are a variety of human, and thus have the five human-standard stats:

• Athletics, used to run, jump, climb, turn cartwheels, knock things over
  
• Constitution, used to resist fear and pain, survive harsh conditions, bear modifications
  
• Intelligence, used to peruse, investigate, apply knowledge, fiddle mechanically
  
• Wisdom, used to perceive movement, detect secrets, react quickly
  
• Xharisma, used to bend the world and the flesh to your will.
  

    You have 1 in each of these stats, because you are an unremarkable specimen. Write down that you have 2 hitpoints. Write down your name, and the names of your parents, and one unconscious habit, and one particularly treasured memory. These are all things that normal humans have.

    You must also track two stats which normal humans do not have:

• TOWER, how high you dwell above the common man.
• KARMA, measuring how right you sit with the universe.

    Humans are in no ways magical: you are partly magical: therefore, you are partly in no ways human. That inhuman part of you is the TOWER. Those farther above man have more inherent magic and need rely less on ritual and tools, though this is not always to their benefit. You start with 1 TOWER. We'll get to it later.

    Unlike other stats, KARMA can be negative. If positive, your KARMA supports you in your goals. If negative, it supports those who act against you. Lying, cheating, stealing, and even murdering are not the acts that change your KARMA — there's no sin in killing the five aggregates, after all. For now, write down that you have 0 KARMA.

    All Magicians (all beings, really, but Magicians especially) possess a flare (rhymes with "jeté"). The flare is a field or aura in which your will reigns, and is thus responsible for the link between your mind and your body. For normal people this field extends only to their skin and perhaps another millimeter out; for aMagician, it extends yards or chains beyond that, or to even greater distances for even greater sorcerers.

    The most basic kind of magic that a Magician can perform, one that requires no tools or pacts, no rituals or places of power, is called life magic. This magic is fueled by theMagician's own emotions, and produces a useful effect, an object or material, or a damaging elemental blast. Normally, a Magician must be feeling that emotion in order to produce extemporaneous effects, and once an emotion is used up it is dulled and the Magician can't use it for the rest of the scene.

    The eight elements are:

1. Anger, the direct and destructive element, most-often taking the form of fire.
   
2. Disgust, the permanent and corrosive element, most-often taking the form of ink.
3. Sorrow, the immovable and absorbing element, most-often taking the form of ice.
4. Amazement, the bright and sudden element, most-often taking the form of lightning.
5. Fear, the immaterial and howling element, most-often taking the form of wind.
6. Trust, the strong and binding element, most-often taking the form of silk.
7. Joy, the insidious and effecting element, most-often taking the form of music.
8. Vigilance, the ready and informing element, most-often taking the form of paper.

    There are some exceptions, and some restrictions. All Magicians favor one of these elements over all the rest. This emotion dictates the basic structure and substance of their magic, and their own behavior and personality. A furious Magician, for instance, is one who feels an undercurrent of anger in all situations, and can always tap into that emotion. And, unlike with any other emotion, he can feel anger after using it to cast a spell. If everything else fails him, he will still have anger.

    More significantly, each element is opposed to another — anger and fear, disgust and trust, sorrow and joy, amazement and vigilance. Magicians struggle to feel the emotions opposed to their favored elements, and cannot use them for extemporaneous casting. They also suffer from the proscriptions— without the full range of human emotions, certain actions are more difficult to undertake. These symmetrical inabilities to participate in otherwise-universal human experiences comprise the most common system of classifications.

    The eight classifications (or classes, for short) and their prescriptions are as follows:

1. Furious. Proscription: retreat from a fight, or back down in front of an audience.
2. Terrible. Proscription: forgive an enemy, or miss an opportunity to settle a score.
3. Sorrowing. Proscription: share the good news with others, or act to alleviate your own discomfort
4. Mazed. Proscription: wait for the right moment, or remain on-task without supervision
5. Timid. Proscription: confront danger on your own, or remain in combat after losing a hitpoint (more on that later).
6. Perfect. Proscription: refuse a favor, or leave a friend behind.
7. Exultant. Proscription: tell others of your own problems, or look away from something beautiful.
8. Vigilant. Proscription: realize that combat has begun before you're attacked, or miss an opportunity to sniff out a secret.

Playing a Magician Character

    When you try to do something that you can do, then generally, you can do it. If you have the time and the tools and the skills, then there's no need to roll. If you're missing one of those things, then roll a number of six-sided dice equal to the relevant stat and count results of 4 or better as a success. If you're missing two or three of those things, come back later when you've found what you're missing. I'm not going to explain this "stat check" business in detail — you have already read the stat descriptions, and no normal person would be on my blog, so logically I can assume you must be some kind of TTRPG freak who is familiar with the concept of "stat checks" and already grasped the idea of the stats. A single success is enough for most tasks, though a hard task might require two successes, and a really really really almost-impossible one might require three (again, I'm not going to explain this in detail. You're probably a long-time DM yourself).


    As a Magician you can tap your emotions for extemporaneous casting. If you haven't dulled the emotion yet, and you can explain to your DM both why you're feeling that emotion and how the casting would help, you may roll an additional [TOWER]d6 as part of the check, counting successes as normal. If you choose to do this, any failures (results of 3 or less) on the additional dice will dull the emotion for you, rendering you unable to cast using that emotion for the rest of the scene. This means that more powerful Magicians are more likely than less powerful Magicians are to dull an emotion when casting.

    (Some examples of extemporaneous casting: using anger to kick a door down in a blast of fire, using disgust in an attempt to dig up dirt on an enemy with automatic writing, using sorrow to sit in a corner weeping while a bomb goes off, using surprise to accidentally open the correct door in a scummy motel while searching for a missing person, using fear to jump the Hell over a moving train to avoid pursuit, using trust to reinforce a rickety bridge for long enough to cross, using joy to heal a grievously wounded old lady, using vigilance to ward a room against an evil ghost)


    When attempting to break your class' proscription, roll TOWER and Xharisma. Subtract the number of Xharisma successes from the number of TOWER successes: for each success remaining, you must choose an emotion to dull. If you run out of emotions to discard, then you must give up on this attempt to defy your fate.


    Ah, before I forget — when you get hurt, you lose a hitpoint. When you lose all your hitpoints you're out of the scene, probably unconscious. Anyone can kill you or rob you or curse you when you're out of hitpoints. You regain a single hitpoint between sessions.

Increasing your Power

    After every session, write down two memories and the element they made you feel (I saw a lot of corpses in the vampire den and felt Fear, I saw a dumbass cop and got Angry, &c &c). These are your memories, and as a Magician you spend these as a resource to improve your stats, buy friendship, craft implements, and improve your domain. You don't forget memories when you use them, but they stop meaning anything to you.

Price List:

• 2 memories: improve one of your stats, up to a maximum of 5.
• [TOWER+1] memories: improve your TOWER, up to a maximum of 5.
• [hitpoints] memories: improve your hitpoints by 1, up to a maximum of 5.
• 1 or more memories: create a tool (a magic rope, a wand, a knife, a cup, a coin, a book, &c), which can do something interesting and gives you an extra die in related checks.
• uncertain number of memories: improve your domain. This is a whole thing and I'm a bit too sleepy to expound.

    I promised I'd explain something about KARMA and I suppose I'm wrapping the post up, so I'll say — your KARMA is your meta-currency, and you start each session with that many points which you can spend any time to add 1d6 to a check (only once per check). As a fledgling Magician the simplest and fastest way to improve your KARMA are to take one of the classic vows:

• Name. Pick a name. Someone who knows that name can summon by it, adding your TOWER to their spell and dulling one of your emotions. You know when this happens and you get a sense of what the fucker's up to. Oaths you swear on your own name bind you.
• Tongue. You may no longer tell an untruth. If you accidentally say something false, you can save yourself by dropping whatever you're doing and rushing to make the falsehood true.
• Hands and Feet. You may no longer cross a threshold uninvited. You may not harm an innocent person (that is, someone who has no TOWER and neutral or positive KARMA) who hasn't harmed you first, and you may not harm them disproportionately.

    Each of these vows will grant you 1 KARMA. If you break them, you lose the KARMA, and another point (so making three vows and breaking one leaves you with a net 1 KARMA). When you start a session with negative KARMA, the DM gets meta-currency to spend against you and your friends.

Grimoire, Decorated with Martigora

    This post is a response to friend-of-the-blog Phlox' prompt "Spells of the Evil King". Here are a set of spells you might find in a grimoire once the dust has settled. I demanded spell names from my discord friends, so that's why they're like that. 

1. Jane's Whistling Dogbullet
   R: sight T: a creature or object D: instant
   Caster points a finger at the target and utters a syllable of power, launching an invisible ball of magical energy that deals [sum] damage on a successful attack roll and sticks to whatever it strikes.
   The projectile produces a loud, irritating noise within 200' that is only audible to elfs, dogs and other creatures with enhanced hearing. Unintelligent animals that can hear the noise will ferociously attack the source, with an effective +4 morale. If this causes them to attack a creature, every attack that hits has a [dice]-in-20 chance of destroying the invisible energy. A friendly elf (for example) can easily find and destroy the energy without harming the target.
2. Ghost Decapitation
   R: 30' T: a living creature D: [sum] days
   Caster carefully aligns oustretched forefinger and thumb with the target's head and mimes crushing it. If the target fails a save, their chakra connections are broken and their soul is rendered paraplegic. Those suffering from soul paraplegia cannot benefit from any class features, including spellcasting, skill or stat bonuses, or extra attacks. Repairing soul paraplegia requires a healing spell cast with at least [dice] MD. 
3. Recruit
   R: shouting T: a dead creature loyal to the caster D: [sum] rounds
   Caster stretches a hand and pronounces a word of power. [dice] shadowy copies of the target arise from the corpse and serve the caster's every command. They have identical physical capabilities, but because they are only shadows they cannot cast spells and dissipate upon receiving any damage or at the end of the duration.  
4. Poison Touch
   R: touch T: a living creature D: instant
   Caster draws a fingernail along the target's exposed skin. The target may attempt a dexterity check to avoid this if they are aware of the casting. The target is poisoned for [sum] rounds, and must check constitution at the start of each round or lose [dice] HP. 
5. Sympathize
   R: 30' T: two living creatures D: [dice] rounds
   The caster whispers a word of power, but otherwise makes no outward sign that this spell has been cast. Sympathy can be cast in a combat round without using an action. For the duration, the two targets are linked, and any negative effects (poison, charm, sleep &c) applied to or HP damage dealt to one target is also applied or dealt to the other. The connection is broken early if [sum] damage is dealt to one or the other of the targets. 
6. Sink 
   R: 30' T: up to [dice] creatures D: [best] rounds
   Caster stomps and utters a word of power. Targets save or treat solid ground as deep water for the duration. Targets who cannot swim, or who are wearing heavy armor, may drown, and it is difficult to fight or cast spells while treading water. At the end of the duration, targets may save again to be forced back onto the surface; if they fail the save, they are trapped in the now-solid floor. 
7. Witness 
   R: self T: self D: [sum] rounds
   Caster becomes a fucking red dragon for the duration. When the spell ends, or when their dragon form is slain, they have a [dice]-in-6 chance of reverting to who they were before; otherwise they die and remain a dead dragon. 

Other Sights of Minecraft

    Friend of the blog Fifth has posted on the sights of Minecraft. I played a lot of Minecraft multiplayer back in the good old days, and I'm familiar with the feeling of walking through a digital graveyard. You're in a world the size of seven earths, and while somewhere out there there might be three or four people — you can even talk to them if they're feeling talkative — you'll never, ever meet them. To augment the first list, here are twelve more sights of Minecraft (or from the ATM modpack) which you could also run into somewhere on the Outdoor Survival map. 

Source: The Red Tower, Giorgio de Chirico

1. A small homestead with a small herb garden is completely ringed by a glittering wall of faceted obsidian fifty yards high. Water pumped from an underground spring pours over the exterior of the wall in a neverending falls.
2. In this part of the world enormous monoliths of soil have been raised for no clear reason. Each monolith is a perfect cube thirty yards to a side. They stretch for miles, with the earth all around them scraped bare to provide material. A few have been dug out by hapless treasure hunters — apparently, after three or four strenuous excavations, they lost interest. Hundreds still remain.
3. Sheets of hammered copper form a solar disc in the heart of the desert. Time has turned them green as grass — a year? Ten?
4. Ten hollowed-out dragon eggs house ten enormous bees in a flask-shaped hole in the ground. The hives are full of fire, not honey. The bees are irritable.
5. A lonely mountain pass, carved into a monstrous face. The only safe path runs into the thing's mouth and out the back of its empty skull.
6. In a damp swamp, a copse of trees. Oak and apple, birch and blackthorn, mighty pine and trembling dogwood, bowing palm and tangled yew, trees that grow sorcerous fruit and trees that give magical lumber; the saplings must have been brought here from every land in the world.
7. A brick tower has been sunk into the seabed. If you're brave, you can descend the spiral stairs all the way down to secret tunnels beneath the waves.
8. Around the walls of a shining city, just beyond their sacred boundaries, some unspeakable war was fought. Ravines split the earth and lead down into unknowable darkness. Fragile catwalks of stone criss-cross the blasted hellscape. Pools of supernatural fire wait for unlucky steps, while other parts of the field are flooded or frozen solid or so incredibly irradiated that life is impossible. Vengeful demons are half-bound in shoddy cages. Hungry thieves armed with clubs or heavy stones are crouched in the rubble, waiting to ambush wanderers. If you must go, as I know you must, go carefully. But if you value your life, go quickly.
9. A hill with faces carved sheer, topped with stone walls. Tattered banners still fly but the interior of the fort has been totally ravaged. Nothing of any value remains.
10. An impossible bridge chaining two distant mountain peaks. One can cross leagues here without touching, or even being visible from, the ground.
11. A labyrinth under the earth. Dozens of corridors, perfectly parallel and perfectly perpendicular, have stripped the earth of her riches. Who knows how many poor fools have lost their way in the unbroken dark?
12. A lever on the wall shoves you into a pit. A lonely snowman is trapped at the bottom.

How to Set Up Factions So They Can Be Toppled

    I've been waffling on the intro to this post for a while. In the interest of ever actually getting it onto the blog, I'll hit you with a couple of bullet points about yourself:

• You are the dunga master for a group of dunga and darga or similar.
• You want a recurring enemy faction in the game. After all, recurring motifs are one of the fundamental principles of worldbuilding, arguably the most fundamental (though this is a topic for a different essay).
• You are unsatisfied with the standard fiver approach to "factions". A couple of scripted fights and the big bad getting away each time until they finally catch up to have a big scripted fight? What happens if the party kills him early, does his cult just collapse? Is the whole adventure over right there?
• You have come to me now, in desperation. "Help me, Michael," you're saying. "You're my only hope..." Your eyelids are fluttering. You're leaning in for a kiss... "I'll do anything you say, Michael" you're contractually obliging.

    Assuming that you agree with every point, read on, and I'll walk you through the steps to make a faction that can stick around for a while providing continual engagement, support or harassment to the party, but can also be defeated over the course of several sessions (with a hard floor on the number of sessions required to knock them down) if the players so choose.

    The aim of the game here is "temporal gating". The degenerate case is that the players just go to the single main bad guy's house and kill him. "They can't do that, he has guards," you say, with your stupid, kissable lips a little wet with drool because you're fucking stupid. Obviously the party just kills the guards. "They can't kill the guards, the guards are stronger than them." Then why didn't the bad guy send his guards to whack the players before they whacked him? Close your mouth, you'll catch flies.

    Start with three guys. That's the essential germ of the idea. Let's say your game is set in some sort of Chandleresque hellhole and the enemy faction is some kind of mafia. Your three guys are:

• Scorsese, wealthy patriarch of the central family.
• Affleck, the weird accountant guy who handles the financials.
• Gandolfini, the big ugly bastard who's a hitman and all his friends are hitmen and/or cops. 

    That's a good start. Now that you have three guys, think up the relationships each has with the other two, what they think of them, how they treat them:

• Scorsese thinks that Affleck's a useless nancy, and that Gandolfini is a precocious scamp and boys will be murderous boys.
• Affleck thinks that Scorsese is the coolest person in the world, and that Gandolfini is a cockroach.
• Gandolfini thinks Scorsese is a washup, and that Affleck's a thief and probably a spy.

    Now, the players can go and talk to these three guys. They can run into their minions on the street while they're solving Chandleresque crimes, they can have conversations, they can run errands, they can make threats. But why do these guys have seemingly unlimited numbers of gun-toting mafiosos serving under them? Well, give each one three sources of legitimacy.

Scorsese has:

• THE PERSONAL LOYALTY OF MOST OF THE MOB'S CAPTAINS. They are his sons and daughters, his nieces and nephews. They know he has their back, and they know he'll always put blood first, so they do as he say, and their own respective minions follow suit.
• A STUPID BIG HOUSE. It's the physical embodiment of the decades of work he's done. Forty bedrooms, twenty baths, an east and west ballroom, acres of land just outside the city. You can go to one of his frequent parties and see what your future might be like, if you work hard.
• HIS FATHER'S BLESSING. Scorsese Sr. (r.i.p.) started all this, way back in the day, practically fresh off the boat. He handpicked his third son to be his successor, and Scorsese Jr. has never let down the old man's memory.

Affleck has:

• ALL THE MONEY. It's insane how much money he can conjure up in unmarked bills given a week's headstart. Technically the finances are spread out over a hundred businesses and a thousand accounts, and technically it all belongs to the Family, but Affleck's the one holding the keys to the vault.
• THE EYE OF THE DON'S DAUGHTER. She's a beauty and Scorsese dotes on her. If the two get hitched, Affleck's a shoe-in to run the business after Scorsese's gone.
• A CARDBOARD BOX FILLED WITH HORRIBLE PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE. His insurance policy, occasionally vaguely hinted at to keep the hooligans in line.

Gandolfini has

• THE CAPACITY TO KILL ANYONE. He is, personally, a badass; he's killed people with every kind of weapon that exists; he knows four kinds of kungfu. Beyond that, with a phonecall Gandolfini could have a dozen hardened murderers arrive anywhere in the city within ten minutes. The most dangerous members of the mob report to him even before the don.
• A FRIEND ON THE FORCE. He's drinking buddies with a chief inspector, who keeps him up to date on any official trouble coming down the pipeline, and might be able to deflect an investigation towards someone else or even bury it entirely. Gandolfini's been saving up his favors in case he needs to get away with something serious — "bomb a subway station" serious. Speaking of,
• ENOUGH TNT TO LEVEL A BLOCK. He brags about it. Nobody's quite sure where he has it hidden, but it's definitely real. Gandolfini's a dangerous nutcase and not above causing a few hundred casualties in order to send a message that needs sending.

    Note that this is all generic bullshit I thought up as fast as I could type it. But already you can see all the ways that a party could fuck with these guys without ever even fighting them. Force Scorsese to sacrifice a nephew to save his own skin, burn his beautiful house down, find or forge a letter showing that the old man actually favored his first son because Scorsese is so useless; one or two of these would shake him, three of them take him out of the game entirely. Or cut off Affleck's control of the money somehow, or break him up with his girlfriend, or destroy or publicize the box of evidence — the mob will whack him for you. Dodge Gandolfini's goons a few times and make a fool of him, blackmail his cop connection with the threat of discovery, steal his bombs. Now he's not the mob's Angel of Death any more, he's just some thug in a suit that people are scared of in the same way they're scared of wild dogs, and he'll be dealt with as perfunctorily.

    And if the players don't want to do things subtly, if they instead want to just kill these dumbasses, well... at least you have three guys to fight instead of one. The first can be ambushed or assassinated, but the second will be forewarned and forearmed, while the third will be hunkered down somewhere and sending all the soldiers he has to stop the party. That's a natural tempo that a good DM can make last three sessions and a great DM could stretch fifteen.



    Now real quick here at the end I've got a little challenge for you. Scroll back up to the top and highlight the last bullet point. That's right, fucker, I've got you dead to rights. Think up a faction (it can be for one of your settings or it can be off the dome), give it three guys (or more!), give each guy three sources of legitimacy (I think three is really the sweet spot, so don't do more than that unless you feel like it or think it would be funny), and post it to your blog. Ciao. 

Interesting Guys, Theory Of, Examples Of

    The reason why dwarves have had such an amazing tenure in fantasy roleplaying games is the same as that which explains their (relatively) rapid disappearance from fantasy literature. Namely: all dwarves are pretty much the same. RPGs are very low-bandwidth by their nature. We start with a large group (not two people communicating, or even a crowd of three, but often as many as five or eight or, in the olden days, twenty), who all must more-or-less understand every part of a nonexistent scenario to the same degree, and who are only organized for a very limited time. In a fantasy roleplaying game, originality is not a universal good. If I create a setting where honungaleisant erdocans go around mimeteing thrinths by elsandele and irri-iwi, then it might speak to the true nature of the human condition, but I'm going to have a bugger of a time getting players to understand what the Hell is going on. "Thrinths are basically elfs, and mimetea is basically magic" is a powerful and useful phrase. Obviously, we want to have interesting characters: obviously, we are going to need to make our characters interesting in a way that is concise and easily communicated.

    Enter the humble dwarf — no, semiurge, stop, that was just stage direction, not an instruction. A normal PC gets maybe two or three details: this one is swaggering and nosy, this one is gluttonous and uncouth. Add a job title (e.g. "Fighter") and we've got as much of a character as we can possibly handle. But by relying on a pre-bundled set of tropes, we get to cheat this system. If one of our character traits is "dwarf" then, by golly, we actually get a dozen other character traits totally for free. What does Bob the Fighter do in town? No one knows and no one will remember. What does Bobgrund the Dwarf do in town? Spends all his money on booze, easy. What does Bobgrund do in the dungeon? Sniffs around for gold. The party is hit with a fireball; Bobgrund pats out his beard. The party encounters an elf; Bobgrund advises immediate execution. The party encounters an orc: Bobgrund advises immediate execution. The party encounters a goblin; &c &c.

Source: Dwarf Warfare Cover Art by wraithdt

    "All of this is immediately obviously true," you say? "We agree with you implicitly"? "You are very wise"? Thank you. But that's just the prelude to the actual reason I have written this essay and long list of guys. Longtime friend of the blog Phlox writes to us of "monsters of intuition", those which "have striking concepts, even when they lack total coherence". It's a good post with interesting examples, go and read it.



    Now that you have returned from reading Phlox' post I can introduce you to the Interesting Fucking Guys. For a few months, just to keep my hand in, I have been writing down short descriptions of Peoples, Species and Races as they come to me. They follow a simple pattern:

1. They are Interesting. They come with a set of behavioral expectations; there are ways in which a member of their people/species/race would behave in various situations which aren't the ways a generic Fantasy Human would behave. They are Interesting in that being one of them is a character trait. No exotic hairdos, simple latex prosthetics or goofy accents (i mean they can still have them but that's not their sum total).
2. They are Guys. By this I do not necessarily mean that they are from some kind of Star Trek all-male planet serving to illustrate an interesting point about gender relations this week. I mean that they aren't so exotic as to be useful only as something to read about in a blogpost. You could make your PC one of them. Your party could find a town full of them, and not be shocked that nobody told you about the next town on the road. They are Guys in that medieval bestiary sense, where they might have heads in the middle of their chests, but they still pay taxes and believe in Jesus Christ.

    Below, please find some Interesting Fucking Guys. 

    The Haraks. Ugly hairless apes (not in the same way as humans, humans have noses and eyebrows and chins). Harakan sleighs are pulled by a uniquely-harakan breed of enormous wolfhounds, who share their masters' bug-out black eyes, self-replacing shark teeth, and wheezing voices. Can't sweat, so stay out of the sun. Commonly raid human settlements for horsemeat (haraks obsessively hate/fear horses, also bees and wolves). Harakan ingenuity is responsible for most of history's wind-up holy men, clockwork birds that really fly, and self-resetting poison dart traps. Never touch iron if they can help it — the stuff stains them shiny red.

    The Garsk. Like Chewbacca but with catfish barbs instead of fur. Speak mostly in depressing warbles and blubs. Perilous strong. Can hit 30 miles an hour belly-crawling through shallow water. National instrument is an enormous brass horn shaped like a coiling snake. National holiday is to find the ugliest tree in the swamp, dance around it, sing, and drink hooch. Unwelcome in restaurants and hospitals (slimy, noisome). 

    The Gnostiche. Like a man, but with a long ribbon-trunk for a face with little wet eyes where one would expect nostrils and the nose and mouth at the end. Always wearing black robes. Instinctive understanding of horrible Frankenstein medical procedures. Can not hang. Sickened by smoke of any kind. Respond poorly to jokes about "do you smell that" or whatever. 

    The Uthiers. Crown of horns, aposematic coloring, jewel-bright eyes. Gay and warlike, love to play dulcimers and sing. Male uthiers have one side dramatically overdeveloped, with a longer leg, denser horns and burlier arm. Fond of saying "the limp makes the man" — that is, the greater the asymmetry, the more masculine an uthier is perceived to be. Most of males have a large left-side; right-sided uthiers (about one in ten) are generally believed to be talented liars, disappointing musicians, and ambitious politicians (which is true). Carry large, heavy canes with them at all times to settle scores. 

    The Angbards. Pale and ghoulishly thin, but uncommonly strong. Renowned for wisdom and long memories. Live as small bands of itinerant seers/architects/librarians. Angbards have sight so powerful they can see (in monochrome) thru closed eyes. If they open their eyes, their vision burns everything it touches; if they accidentally lock gazes with another angbard, or with the sun, they can't close their eyes again and will die if they can't quickly step behind something solid enough to hold back the flames. Don't know their own eye color, and are eager for you to tell them. 

    The Nimbads. Ridiculously tall, muscular, reptilian, like if a kobold made a fake dating profile. Murderously enraged by jokes. All nimbads make their living by card sharping, pool sharking, Three Card Monty, and various carnival games that no one else can ever win. Instead of eyes, they have pilot lights, and must wear smoked sunglasses indoors. 

    The Harpisch. There are no male harpies. Harpies reproduce by rape and murder of lone male travelers. Their daughters are true harpies, while their sons are killed and devoured as a rule. But sometimes, a soft-hearted harpy may expose a boy-child instead, and sometimes, before the wolves find him, the child is taken in by some peasant family. Over long generations, in communities near harpy-infested mountains, the demon-blooded harpisch appear: men and women with sooty eyes and yellow teeth, swift and silent and cunning. Not truly evil, but tending towards cruelty, and with unquiet souls which doom them to a life of danger and adventure. 

    The Halforcs. Orcs are made in the Mills of Arezura by master-craftsman Orcus. The first thing he does is drain your blood. While it boils, he skins you, taking care not to put holes in your hide. He blows the skin up like a balloon and lets it dry while he delicately removes your muscles (to later be sewn with iron thread by his apprentices). He washes your brain with rare alcohols. Your bones he kneads with a putty that makes them malleable; your spine he bends, your arms he lengthens, your skull he molds into some terrible image that pleases only him. When the demon-lord puts you together again you are empty and ugly and colorless, and you wait in jars that line his walls. Then someone buys you, to be dyed with their tinctures and dominated by their will. But if someone loved you very much, if someone led a daring raid on that mountain workshop, if someone freed you from your jar — ah, even then, you would live a halflife only, a halforc waiting to be filled with someone else's passions. 

    The Kissans. Flopsy ears and sniffling nose like a bunny. Velvety brindled coat. Lanky bowlegs twice as long as needed. Skilled excavators and woodcutters, who habitually clear and level land as their nomadic camps pass through. They squat down between their ridiculous legs while they work, and rise up 10' tall to sprint from danger. Capable of breathing in while speaking, singing, or just whistling loudly (kissans hate silence). 

    The River Nellies. Similar to aquatic mammals, with dense muscle, thick fat, sleek silhouettes, prehensile nostrils and ears to close off water. Nellie towns, miles long, can facilitate the building of docks and bridges — or tear them down and block access. A hostile nellie river is a more impassable frontier than any desert or mountain. Their cousins, the ocean nellies, are so large they cannot ever walk on land, but river nellies often tend to flooded paddies. Also they make weapons-grade glass and the only honorable death for a nellie male is to have his throat slit by his daughter using his own knife and if he only has sons one of them needs to take the pink pill and kill him. 

Fiends You Know and Fiends You Don't

    "Hunting is the labor of the savages, but the amusement of the gentlemen."
         - Dr. Samuel Johnson


Incited by FĒONDAS, ultimately from Luke Gearing's Monsters &. 

Source: Cupid Carving his Bow

asterions
asterions
asterions

• HD 8, AC chain, 2d6 damage
• always catches up (space and causality be damned), unless you find an opportunity and check stealth.

    Try as you might to find the way
    home from this labyrinth,
    eerie and
    rapacious,
    even your best plan has fallen through.

    Inside these tunnels, you've crossed your
    string more than once.

    Night is all around you now,
    or else he brings it with him.

    Each turn you choose, or
    seem to choose, describes some
    circuit, vast, not guessable from the
    adit through which you
    passed into the lair — and yet,
    examining your hurried map, do letters appear?

black moon oil
black moon oil
black moon oil

• HD 8, AC unarmored, 1d20 damage
• each good deed you've recently done gives you 1 point of DR.
• nonlethal blows deal no damage, but cut it into two pieces with half the health.

    Brave souls made a pact with one
    whose name has not survived.
    With the dreadful foe defeated,
    their benefactor came to demand his price.

    May G_d pity them, may He forgive their deeds,
    may He be ever watchful that they do not stir,
    from their debtors' prisons beneath the earth.

cultists
cultists
cultists

• HD 1, AC unarmored, weapon damage

    Every time you and your friends come to a new place, roll a 2d6; on a 2 or less they're here already, maybe disguised. If they fail to accomplish their goals then next time they'll appear on a 3 or less, then a 4 or less, and so on.

    Whatever it is they worship,
    whatever infests this country,
    it wants you, and will settle for nothing less.

dalghasts
dalghasts
dalghasts

• HD 2, AC as ghost, 4d6 damage
• may walk through physical objects with effect like lightning. Men wearing metal don't get a save.

    All fear death, of course.
    Some seek the paths that will leave mortality behind.
    Others, braver, pray: "At least let me be destroyed beautifully!" 

frankensteins
frankensteins
frankensteins

• HD 4, AC leather, 1d8+2 damage
• healed by lightning, repelled by fire. Fists can beat down steel doors. Smarter than you.

    Eyes pulled out of a girl's skull.
    Clever fingers cut off a spinster.
    Face sliced from a thief hanged for bread.
    Arms from a galley slave.
    Legs from a porter.
    Tongue of a great poet.
    Heart of a brave soldier.
    Brain of a murderer
    — the only original part.

golts
golts
golts

• HD 1, AC unarmored, weapon damage

    A golt is born when a child hates for the first time.
    Being hideous, they sometimes are humble.
    Being lowly, they sometimes obey others.
    Being fickle, they sometimes show mercy.
    Being clumsy, they sometimes take care.
    Being mortal, they sometimes feel fear.
    (the mirror, in all things, of the fairies).;

odians
odians
odians

• HD 1, AC leather, 1d6/1d6 damage
• may assume any living form. If it knows you well, its form is terrifying: save vs fear each round or lose your turn.

    Certain exotic reagents, crushed together, dissolved in wine, become a draught not of eternal life but of unlimited lives. Twenty years as a tiger, ten as a dog, two days as a mayfly, two centuries as a court wizard.

    Need I list these reagents? Count their price? Tell you no honest trade will ever buy these many lives? Tell you how easy it is to rob, murder, extort, when you wears forms other than your own?

    Need I warn you that, without the draught, you must take your own form again? Remind you of the power others had over you then? Remind you of the power you have over them now? 

    This is but one of the paths a man may walk to leave mortality behind.

renfields
renfields
renfields

• HD 2, AC unarmored, weapon damage
• uncannily capable grappler. When choking you and biting you and biting you and biting you and biting you, deals 1d6+2 automatically every turn.

    A blind slave is proud of his master's beauty, a stupid slave grateful for the length of his tether.
    A clear-eyed slave, a wise, clever slave, that one is happy and secure in his master's strength.

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