Wednesday, June 23, 2021

The Character of the Terrible (GLOG Class: Specialist)

    There are one-hundred and seven stars in the night sky (there were one-hundred and eight, but one of them is hiding). They are arranged into eleven constellations with nine stars each, and one unfortunate constellation with only eight. Each constellation governs a facet of life and each of their component stars governs a facet of that constellation. In Ages past emperors allowed the stars to govern their lives, and much was entrusted to the those who considered them; but in this age of strife Heaven is pitiless and the stars send down only evil fates.

Source: Misfortune by bundleofblues


Class: Considerer


    You are, G_d forgive you, one who is marked to live an interesting life. Far have you fallen, son of Saul! The king has forgotten you! No longer are you a prophet, but merely a diviner, and probably named "Mommy Fortuna". Practitioners of your lesser art keep to themselves and rarely interact — too hard to keep your stories straight, and you serve as constant reminders to one another of how far your order has fallen.
    You may wear light armor and use shields. You never fumble with crystal balls, bottles, scrap metal or knives.

Skills: 1. Legitimate astronomy 2. Exotic animal care 3. Wagon repair

Starting Gear: a crystal ball (see equipment list), a voluminous spooky cloak, 5 out-of-date gold coins, and a piece of divination tools of your choice.

  • A Starcharts, +1 to-hit
  • B Revelations, +1 HP
  • C Careful Study, +1 AC
  • D Foreknowledge, +1 HP

Starcharts
    You have an insight into your future and your own fate. When events are left up to chance and dice are rolled (that is, intelligent hostility might still interfere), results which would contradict your insight are discarded — and like all good fortune-tellers, you cheat. After a night of stargazing, choose one of the following:
  1. Constellation: the Child.
    Insight: silence, watchfulness. You will leave no tracks. Those you do not speak to will not remember your presence. Attempts to locate or reveal your hiding places will fail.
  2. Constellation: the Elder.
    Insight: acrobatics, applause. You will not fall. You will receive the attention you deserve.
  3. Constellation: the Skull.
    Insight: confrontation, conclusion. You will know when you are being lied to. Any attempts to uncover a secret thing in your presence will succeed.
  4. Constellation: the Snake.
    Insight: betrayal, preparation. When you reach your hand out you will seize the hilt of an invisible medium sword. The sword deals 2d6 damage the first time it hits something, and 1d6 afterwards. Ten minutes of cleaning and sharpening will restore its edge.
  5. Constellation: the Dog.
    Insight: faith, implacability. You will have a clear goal in mind. While tailing someone or following their fresh tracks, attempts to impede you will fail.
  6. Constellation: the Dancing Girl.
    Insight: agelessness, purity. Miraculously, you will survive poison. You will not need food or drink or air while your eyes are closed and your legs are folded.
  7. Constellation: a Crown.
    Insight: a corpse spilling its rot over a dusty throne. People without reason to believe otherwise accept your authority. You will not be publicly humiliated
  8. Constellation: a Tower.
    Insight: something on a hill blocking out the sun. Successful attacks in your presence will be critical, and misses will be fumbled. Catastrophe will follow catastrophe.
  9. Constellation: an Eye.
    Insight: a noose swinging from a lamppost in the darkness. You will know when a promise made to you is broken. You will not be surprised.
  10. Constellation: a Lantern.
    Insight: a weird light where there should be no light. You have supernal vision as a cleric. Given the choice, spells prefer to harm your companions in your place.
  11. Constellation: a Hand.
    Insight: wealth, charity. When you call out for help, help will come. Kind-hearted folks will be generous, hard-hearted folks will be unexpectedly cooperative.
  12. Constellation: one now Ruined.
    Insight: None. You ping as evil. Powerful or wise things avoid you, or cannot see you.

Revelations
    For up to [level] characters of your choice, you see threats that endanger them and dangers which threaten them with enough time to rush to their aid (you can do this for your fellow PCs but the effect is probably blinding with how relentlessly reckless those idiots are). These revelations come to you involuntarily and are often painful or confusing.

Careful Study
    You may choose an insight in a moment of thought if you can currently see the constellation, or in a minute if you can closely examine a detailed astrological work.

Foreknowledge
    You know what NPCs will say before they say it, and can mimic them as they speak if you want to piss them off. If you have a crystal ball you can answer direct questions about personal future posed to you by boring people (reading a PC's future always gives the answer "misery, chaos, sticky end"). The answers come in the form of visions, snippets of conversation, and strong impressions. These are always correct but rarely complete. Your foreknowledge is 100% accurate before the prediction is made, but the butterfly effect, other precognitives, strong wills and powerful magic means the future is never certain.
Random Boring NPCs:
  1. A talking animal who wants to know about sports back home.
  2. Annoying thieves who want to steal your divination tools, assuming them to be efficacious on their own.
  3. A burly thug who wants to know about the results of his next job.
  4. A mushroom-worshipper who wants to know about rain in the next few days.
  5. A hired dick who wants to know about his current investigation.
  6. A burly ascetic who wants to know about the end of the world.
  7. A wealthy woman with fat tits who wants to know about back problems.
  8. A monkey herder who wants to hear about circus life nowadays.
  9. A changeling who wants to know how their family is doing.
  10. An old man who wants to hear about his next unlikely victory.
  11. A traveling merchant with an urgent need to know the price of bananas.
  12. A hungry devil, here to eat your prophetic soul.

Divination Tools:
  1. Crystal Ball. May be chucked. Deeply disturbing to creatures without a good sense of what a "face" is. ⅓rd slot.
  2. Voluminous Spooky Cloak. Conceals your entire body.
  3. Wavy-bladed dagger. Iconic for weird creeps in big cloaks. Light.
  4. Tarot Cards (don't work). Enough extra "Death" cards to fill a hand.
  5. Tarot Cards (work). All trump cards have been removed.
  6. Forged cloud journal. Highly detailed, highly incorrect.
  7. High-quality tea. Deserves to be prepared in a high-quality pot, but probably won't be. Ten doses.
  8. Kukri. Its blade is wickedly curved. A +1 weapon, but cannot be sheathed until it has shed at least 1 HP of intelligent blood. Light.
  9. Two-Headed Coin (with your own face). Worth 1gp.
  10. 60' of silk rope. ⅓rd slot.
  11. Travel I-Ching Set. Weighted to give bad results.
  12. Travel Backgammon Set. The divine game. Anyone who can talk will be up for a quick game.
  13. Fortune cookies. Fortunes always come true in unkind ways. Three doses.
  14. The preserved corpses of three songbirds. Already been used for haruspicy; may now be used as companionship.
  15. One liter of cheap moonshine. ⅓rd slot. Three doses.
  16. Book of astrological fables. ⅓rd slot.
  17. Runed Staff. Runes read "Shiitake with Cabbage. Mister Oyster". Medium.
  18. Cartwright's Tools. Enough to fix a broken cart, or torture someone. 1 slot.
  19. Helmet with terrifying face. 1 slot carried, 0 worn.
  20. A weird or inexplicable curio. Roll 1d6:
    1. A glass vial of eternal rain. Destroys divine magic. 3 doses.
    2. Scroll of Terrify Peasantry. Burns to pure ash when read from.
    3. A pair of adamant dice. Turn up 5, no matter how they roll.
    4. Mechanical leg. Works great as a replacement if you lose yours, but is oddly racist.
    5. Map of a graveyard. The location of a massive treasure-trove is marked, but not the location of the graveyard, besides the words "Glost should have died".
    6. Chef's knife. Anything cut by this knife is vegan.