The Peerless Country of Yland (GLOG Setting)

        Oh trouble, oh char the tree, my dear, my lover, oh kiss me on the lips my lover, Apollo, my lover, oh G_d, destroy me. Oh eternity, I have burned my fucking flesh for three years of happiness, burned eternity, and burned the tree, and weighed it in the scale, oh Apollo, kiss me. 

     The world is round like a clock. In the center is a waste, which is an ocean and a fastness. "Water to sail, saltpan on which to ride", sayeth the bard. In the center of the waste is a tower whose top reaches into heaven. The sun brushes the top as he passes it at noon. This tower is visible from all parts of the world, weather permitting.

    The roundness of the world is divided into four parts like a compass. Skyey north and cthonic south; to the west order, to the east madness. Each part of the four parts of the world is divided into four parts, like a compass. It's dangerous to travel far from home here, because to leave your home is to leave the paradigm which you were born into. In the world of Yland (named for the wasteland the noon tower sits in) all men are travelers, because no one remains in the paradigm they were born unto.

   This post is a collation of some thoughts and dreams I've had over the years. In that, it resembles my post on 41 Feasts — I'm writing this down now so I don't forget it later, if I ever have need of these things again. This post is also an anti-canonical setting, as I understand them and their purpose. Yland is a non-place in no-time, a world where anything can and does happen. A player can say "my character comes from the city of thus-and-such, in the land of over-there", and rather than disrupting the craftsmanship of world, these new details enrich it. There's no map of Yland; because maps are not territories, no map could adequately reflect the conditions of the territories. There is only the north, the south, the east, and the west. Even if you were to go somewhere else you would only find yourself in — the center, with something to the north, the south, the east, and the west. If you understand what this means, then you have no need for a map.

Yland and its States

    If you head north from the noon tower over the ocean you will find yourself at a crossroads in the heart of the Antikingdom, where the sky is gray and the highway is cold and lonely. The ruler of the Antikingdom sits on the Multifoliate Throne, at the northernmost end of the world, in the sky of skies, the heaven of heavens. Here in the Antikingdom the king is the personal enemy of every citizen. He holds power only as long as his knights support him. The cycle of a hero rising up to slay the wicked king, taking the multifoliate throne, reshaping the Antikingdom in his own image and being killed in turn has been going on since the beginning of time.

    But I don't want to talk about the Antikingdom right now, I want to talk about the lands east of the noon tower. East lies madness, and so these are a mad land and they have no unchanging name. Call them the Peerless Country, if mere implication isn't enough and you find you must refer to them directly.

The Peerless Kingdom, according to the great cartographer Locheil N.'s Eye

    The Peerless Kingdom is in a constant state of uproar, of upheaval, of the long nightmare after the revolution. This is the land of madness, after all. If you want to leave this place, really leave it for good, you have to take a ship from the western coast and return to the waste about the noon tower. Traveling north will do you no good. North was abolished recently; the Law has dealt with north. Attempts to flee in that direction will surely fail, for reasons of impassable terrain, unimpeachable mountains, inhospitable tundras or simply very large, very bottomless pits. Traveling south will do you no good, Heaven knows. You'll be lucky to keep your sanity, let alone your mortal life, trying to flee the Kingdoms by the southern roads, you poor simple fool. To the east is Hell, which borders Fairyland. You don't want to go east.

The Eastern World, as recorded by the legendary Mad Queen

   The Kingless Lands have a long and noble history. They must. How else can you explain their total decadence? Ruins don't spring up from the ground like wild lettuce. If you have a collapsing society, you must have had a stable society. Recently, even — at least as recent as the time it takes for a society to collapse. And every visitor who's ever creaked open the impressive tomes of lore in the Lordless Town (the capital of and greatest city in the Lordless Realm) can attest to the centuries of well-corroborated past.

    Still,

    Still.

    I can't tell a lie; I wrote the preceding paragraphs in the fall of '23 and I don't remember what was supposed to come after the "Still, ". I was trying to do a Hemingway, but I left it too long. I can't remember one more note about the sentence therewhich I left in the middle. 

    One thing the Zelda series does really well is continually reinterpret themes and elements, placing them in new contexts or restructuring them entirely. For those just tuning in, a "zelda-style game" would be one where the same group of players returns to a place again and again, and some details remain consistent, but others shift and smear. Like how from Hyrule Field you can get to Castle Town, Death Mountain, a shivering-deep lake, a trackless forest without farther bound... yet they aren't quite the same town, mountain, lake, forest every time. 

    This is the theme I'm messing around with in my head. Phlox didn't know this, but he wrote a list of good examples:

• Wart, the worthiest boy you know, is terrorized by bullies
• Pranceloths, pony centaurs who tilt at anyone they see
• Ankleguard Boots, making you swift-footed
• Spurned Sling. Throws your heart away, spending HP as missiles
• Unmixed Wine, puts anyone who drinks it to sleep
• Monkings, trying to steal my divine fruits. Drive em off, will ya?
• They say the calamity man is making a new body for himself out of seven old kings...
• Old needle and spidersilk thread. They say you can graft new limbs to yourself with these.
• Rasputin, a miniboss who appears anew every time you kill him, requiring a new method of dispatch each time
• The alleys are infested with Batmen, acrobatic brawlers who swing around with grapplying hooks.
• Napoleons, small, low-HD monsters with high damage.
• Crown of Caligula, a fake cursed item that you find when you're looking for the crown of Zeus
• Caesarians, energetic goblins that shoot out of a slit in the belly of other monsters.
• Cromwell's Lantern, piercing the illusion of the Grand Castle so you can crawl through its crevices and hop over its rubble.
• Lightning Rod, attracting electricity to help solve puzzles and create obstacles for enemies.
• Moses, a friendly wandering trader who sells you mana and dolphin skins

Slush Pile 2

Signs that a creature is resistant to Holy damage:

• covered in holy symbols
• faint ghastly glow
• it's a karma thing, you can Just Tell
• some parts of the body clearly made from silver

    Nothing the best of artists can conceive
but lies, potential, in a block of stone,
superfluous matter round it. The hand alone
can free it that has intelligence for guide.
     The peril I’m running from, the good descried
in you, proud lovely lady—yes, heaven’s own!—
are virtual in yourself. I’m doomed, I groan:
art thwarting the very end it longs to have.
     Not love, then, and not your beauty, your famous name,
disdain or marble mien, fate high or low,
is the cause I languish long here, hold my breath.
     If mercy and doom in your heart attend, then blame
my feeble wit: though the two affect me so,
it can realize the one only. And that’s death


From a description of a Lord of the Rings Online class:
"The key mechanic for the Mariner class is the balance bar. This sifts left (“foreward”) and right (“aftward”) depending on skills used. This sounds similar in a way to the Rune-keeper’s attunement meter, except that here the main goal is to keep the bar balanced in the center (“steady”) as much as possible. If you go too far in either direction and become unbalanced, bad stuff starts happening to you — namely, you get debuffs and are even stunned. So it’s in your best interests to stay balanced as much as possible.

Figuring out which skill moves the bar which way isn’t too difficult, as the devs have color-coded them. Blue skills (mostly defensive) move the bar aftward, while red skills (mostly offensive) move the bar foreward."


sphinx and dragon:
the sphinx' greatest pleasure is in the guarding, not the having — while the dragon loves the having, but is driven to distraction by the thought of thieves and intruders



Shit I saw on my roadtrip:

• billboard that says YOU KNOW WHAT WE SELL. with an ai generated image and no other information
• Graffiti reading FOR ALL MANKIND
• Restaurant titled, in six-foot-high neon letters, THE CHINA BUFFET II
• Metal fence bent half-over like it was hit by something, but covered in unmarked paint
• 24' flatbed carrying a single, presumably very heavy, bicycle
• The "Motor Mile". It was a really, really large lot full of wrecked cars on the side of the highway
• An ad for a car dealer — COME KNOW THYSELF IN SEVIERVILLE (I may have imagined this one, as I saw it very late at night/early in the morning)
• Sitting in a Peruvian restaurant enjoying a wildly overcooked steak, listing to latin music. The radio switches to something for a moment: a woman shouting "NO... NO... NNOOOO... AAAAAAAA" at the top of her lungs. Radio switches back to latin music. Some kind of horror movie thing?
  
• miles and miles of discarded tires along a pennsylvania highway
  

Atlantis - Timeline of Discovery

The Great War: Two aviators, John "Jack" Alcock, an American aviator, and Arthur Brown, an English aero-engineer, are independently captured by the Central Powers. Both men are intrepid explorers, and a brief stay in a POW camp dissuades neither man from his dream of crossing the Atlantic by air in under 72 hours.

Postwar: Alcock approaches the Vickers company to specially-modify one of their Vimy IV bombers for the trip. As Brown develops his aerial navigation skills, the Vickers company builds a series of a dozen planes at their facilities; lucky number 13 is built at Weybridge and shipped across the ocean to be assembled in Canada. Brown approaches Alcock, impresses him with his technical skill, and is officially brought onto the project as navigator.

14 June, 1919, 1:45 p.m. - John "Jack" Alcock and Arthur Brown take off from Newfoundland in a modified Vickers bomber. Though the plane was extensively tested and modified by a team of experts, including support from Rolls Royce technicians for the two 360hp engines that would power the first non-stop transatlantic flight, problems are almost immediately encountered; the overloaded plane only barely escapes the tops of the trees at the end of the rough runway.

5:15 p.m. - Over radio, Alcock indicates that the two see lights above them which Brown cannot place on any map. He intends to investigate.

Some point after 5:15 p.m. - Contact is lost with the airplane.

17 June, 4:40 a.m. - Alcock briefly reestablishes contact over radio. His only discernible words: "—it's so much colder than I—"

25 June, 9:15 p.m. - The lucky number 13 crashes in Derrigimlagh Bog, near Clifden in County Galway, only a few miles from their intended landing zone. As it lands the converted bomber noses-over. Alcock is immediately killed, and Brown is hospitalized, dying without regaining consciousness. The rescuers note that the plane appears to have been crudely repaired with sheets of leather and large whalebones, and that both Alcock and Brown have aged perhaps 20 years.


Early hours of 2 July, 1919 - Though planned to take place before Alcock and Brown's voyage, damage sustained in testing meant that the east-to-west transatlantic flight by Major George Herbert "Lucky Breeze" Scott, this one aboard an R34 rigid airship, had been delayed several weeks. Dark jokes abound on the airbase: the R34 may not be the "first nonstop transatlantic flight", but it may yet claim the title of "first nonstop transatlantic flight, with survivors".

7:45 p.m. - Over radio, Scott reports lights in the sky above the R34.

7:50 p.m. - Scott transmits a final message: "[unintelligible], it's an entire [unintelligible] continent. Wait—"

Some point after 7:50 p.m. - Contact is lost with the airship.

Notes from my dream journal/possible BCS mission prompts

• group of 4 misunderstand timetravel, go back to the past so they can kill themselves in an "alternate reality" before killing their original selves. keep doing it. become incredibly good at killing themselves. just showed up in our timeline, 250 years of experience under their belt, the best genetic modification that can be bought before 2073, armed to the fucking teeth
• 911, what's your emergency?
  hi, I'm at [my previous address] and there's someone laughing between me and the only door out of my apartment
• quote: "this is all just a manmade nightmare. who's to say i can't fly in the sky with the sataks, or live in the mountain with the satavaks?"
• breathing with the aid of magical symbiotic spiders which cram tentacles in your lungs
• we are proud to be america's second news source that is both anti-semitic and pro-israel
• the flood law firm represents the seriously injured
• the name of a water lily, an indian tribe, and a practice. just north of some town. if you want to do it right, there are a few tips to make it safe. never do it near the falls. never size the light, they'll get confused on their own. never do it if the real selkies will hate you for it.
  stupid european just doesn't understand a good prank.
  double wide trailer on tank treads rolling over an old trail, dripping into the water to see if the selkies will grab me
• man trying to retrieve treasure from a deep, narrow pit. longer than his arm. uses a hook or some duck but just ends up jamming the hole. it closes over and festers. on the other side of the jam the hole grows deeper
• the state acts through its 'leader" in ritual murders called "executions"
• in a museum about germany, a screen cycles through lofi trivia questions about germany. one of the provided answers is always macabre, and one is always about piss, and then there are two random ones. the people standing behind me in line keep guessing the piss one. but the answer is "death" or "a hearse" every time. (This one might be a tweet that I incorrectly copied into my dream journal, but I'm too lazy to check).
  
•     You were a child growing up in a small West Virginia town under the friendly alias of "Taylor". Your father was a ???, your mother a stay-at-home mom. She's slightly insane. One day your father disappeared — people say he was mobbed up but crossed the wrong guy.
      He sends a letter to your mama, just before he vanishes, telling her to load the shotgun, take you out to the greenhouse, explain to you that your real name wasn't "Taylor" it was "Typhon, King of the Monsters", and shoot you in the back of the head. Sobbing, she followed almost all of his instructions.
      At the last moment she reconsidered and shot herself instead. The cops arrived, found the scene and the whacked-out letter, whisked you away to some relatives' home, and you spent years being shuffled around. You grew into a fine young human being (all things considered) (not too fucked up).
      Finally one day you return to the place your parents died. Funny run-in with a pair of cops when they find your car next to the dilapidated house that used to be yours: "yeah, folks say the place is haunted. about twenty years ago, [explanation of your childhood]. Pretty fucked up". You agree.
      Of course, what you've never revealed to anyone is: you lied. On that on that fateful day, your mother didn't reconsider. She shot you in the head from three feet away with a 12 gauge shell — and the pellets rattled off like hail. Now you're back to find some Gosh Darned Answers.
• Two old friends are recounting a hilarious tale for an ABC special involving the death of [Gene] Wolfe and their attempts to recover his famous field mouse collection. The mice live in a field of highly realistic scarecrows. The men (there's a cheesy and slightly cheap reenactment of all this, which the interview keeps cutting to) are slicing open the faces of the scarecrows to get at the straw and the mices. One of them is panicking, running through the field. the two collide. The other bends and inserts an 8 inch hinting knife up the nostril and into the frontal lobe, and slits. Cut back to interview: men are laughing, their spouses (field mouse biologist and her daughter) are laughing, man who got slit is demonstrating how deep into his skull 8 inches is. No scar, no indication of how he even survived. The reenactment had been freaking me out because obviously I anticipated what was coming but at the end I was just confused and mad.
  

Dungeon

    The authorities of Orlivka have arrested the sea-rat Swithemend on suspicious of general smugglery. However, they've got no real evidence beyond the circumstantial, and Swithemend counts most of the sea-rats in the city as his friend. The authorities want you to explore his little cafe, the Greaséd Rat, and find proof of his wrongdoing convincing enough to quell the growing unrest.

A, Swithemore's Kitchen
Exit to the NORTH, doors on the EAST and WEST, stairs leading DOWN to the EAST.
There's a huge iron griddle on a woodstove, and some pots and pans and knives hanging from the walls. The floor is slick with seawater and old fishblood, as it always is. Aria the ratwench will pay 5gp if you can haul a great heavy keg up the narrow, rickety stairs from the basement (strength check to not slide back down with the keg on top of you for 1d12)

B, Dining Room
Swithemend is in prison, but his regulars are still here drinking and talking. Besides the old salts and some grim-faced sea-rat mercenaries, there's Harry Graft and 2d4 of his band of troublemakers. Given any provocation they'll throw knives "around" but not "at" you, but it's a joke so you're not allowed to get angry. For 10gp you could get them to do almost any fool thing.

C, Smoking Deck
The deck is covered by a pergola draped in a thin fabric that keeps out bugs but lets in air and light. at the Greaséd Rat sitting out here is the particular privilege of the particularly old, who smoke and gossip and snooze.

D, Pantry
Flour, oil, slivered coconut in jars, a large jamon. Concealed beneath the slivered coconut (Swithemend's favorite snack) is a large old-fashioned key.

Rumors:

1. "Swithemore was a pirate in his youth, had a hideout on Flies Island..." (true).
2. "Orlivka has a Corpse Priest problem. why, I've seen them with my own eyes strutting about by night proud as you please..." (half-true)
3. "Swithemore was always chuckling to himself about his secret heap of treasure. i bet that's the real reason they dragged him before the Magistrate in chains..." (true)
4. "Harry Graft's a vampire, that's why you see so many lads come and go in his gang..." (false)

    The basement of the Greaséd Rat is much cooler than ground-level. Halflings or other PCs with a sensitive nose might notice a faint whiff of salt and rot, though the cafe is several hundred yards from the bluffs of the north end of Orlivka, and you usually can't smell the sea this far away because of all the horse and fried fish and fried horse.

1, Beer
touch: flagstone floor, plaster walls. smell: cheap swill. lit by oil lamp.
    This room is filled with casks and puddles of Swithemend's terrible beer. Every few minutes, Aria comes half-falling down the stairs, fills a dozen mugs, then slowly and carefully trudges back up to the customers. On shelves to the WEST and SOUTH, old cookbooks and damaged utensils sit. On the large desk in the NORTHEAST, an elderly map is unfurled, and a medium leadcutter is laid out for maintenance with oil and a rag.
     The sword's blade is recently well-cared-for, though dark corrosion pitting indicates a rougher history. The map is of an unidentified island with no provided scale. It indicates several trails between several locations, though again these aren't identified. Near one of the islands bays, a large and delicious red X has been marked next to a little doodle of a rat-skull.
    Door to the EAST is old and stuck. Door to the SOUTH is broad and well-oiled

2, Ham
touch: chill air, porkiness. smell: pork. taste: pork. lit by blue crystal in ceiling.
    This room is where Swithemend kept his expensive imported jamons. They look like hams — old and mummified hams at that — but there are 40 of these suckers just hanging around and any PC with a skill or background in upper-class cuisine or etiquette knows you could march up to any local noble's cook and sell them 10gp a pop easy, maybe more if you target a banquet.
    The crystal in the ceiling is a Gem of Cold. It could be set in a weapon or used as a magical reagent, but if you just leave it around in a room of this size it lowers the ambient temperature by about 30 degrees fahrenheit.
    The door EAST has a large shiny padlock. It can be opened with the pantry key (in D), or it can be noisily axed through, or noisily kicked open by a character with at least 15 strength. Smashing a door provokes an immediate encounter

3, Wine
touch: flagstone floors, earth walls. smell: dust and spiders. not lit.
    Racks and racks of bottles of fine wines, most of them untouched in years. They're unwieldy and fragile as treasure, but most of the 60 bottles in here are worth a respectable 3gp. The bottle of Mariada Rose would be worth 20gp to an enthusiast, and a dose of the warming Goat Valley Tempranillo would cure stat-damage and XP drain (one bottle has 3 doses).
    Tipping the racks over would crush the occupants of the room for 4d6 damage, save v. traps for half.
    The door SOUTH has a large, rusty padlock. It can be opened with the pantry key (in D), or it can be noisily axed through, or noisily kicked open by a character with at least 12 strength. Smashing a door provokes an immediate encounter

X, Tripart Hallway
touch: slick packed dirt. smell: earth and clay. not lit.
    This hallway seems to have been cut through the ground relatively recently. Any dwarf or engineer can immediately see it's not supported enough to last many summer-winter cycles in a coastal town. The track WEST-EAST has been walked so often there are no footprints, just a few dragmarks. The path SOUTH is taken so infrequently that it's clear the visitor was a sea-rat every time

4, Junk
touch: earth floor and walls. smell: old wood, damp, dust. not lit.
    This room is cluttered full of crap. There are old crates, chests of drawers, a full suit of plate armor (sized for a human, requires significant repairs and refitting costing 1/4th as new) holding a medium poleaxe and a shield, shelves loaded with decks of marked cards and fistfuls of loaded dice (2gp, perhaps), shelves loaded with old books mostly on the topic of whelks (but also a spellbook with 2 spells, if 10 minutes are taken to search), a wicker basket full of 40 pounds of fetters and cuffs, a collection of skulls, and whatever other garbage you can think of. There's a treasure chest on a large expensive-looking rug (10gp but bulky): approaching the chest without examining the rug triggers a loaded beartrap underneath, 2d6 damage. The chest itself is locked, and contains 30gp in silver coins from various lands.
    The door in the WEST, leading to hallway X, is obvious. the door in the EAST, to Y, is disguised as a large coffin covered in faded warnings of Red Plague.

Y, Crooked Hallway
touch: damp stone. smell: salt air, dead bodies. lit by luminescent paint on the wall.
    This hallway is narrow and uncomfortable, and seems to have been picked through solid stone sometime in the past. The walls and ceiling are splattered with green paint that glows brightly enough to keep away the Grue. Tasting or inhaling a fragment of the paint requires a save v. poison, dealing 1d6 damage to intelligence on a fail.

5, Gnomic Temple
touch: wooden floor and walls. sound: low whispering, dripping, chuckling. smell: beeswax and wormcast and blood. not lit.
    This was once a small shrine to Wee Jas the Witch-Goddess, but someone has toppled her statue. It lies face-down with its legs broken. Rangers or characters with a background in monstrumology immediately know this room is the den of a Grue. When first entering, everyone who's holding light must save or have it extinguished. Every subsequent minute, they must repeat the save. Anyone in this room in total darkness must save every round or be eaten by a Grue.
    The statue is surrounded by the wreck of several large sanctuary candles, which can be pressed back into rough shape and lit. the sanctuary candles make their own save as a whole, with +4.
if the party

    "I will finish this later" I said in June  — dear reader, I did not finish this later. Room 6 is full of scraps of clothing and broken glass, room 7 has deep pits with giant worms, room 8 has a smuggler's ship and evidence to convict Swithmore (and evidence of his connection to a smuggling ring whose friendship might be more useful than that of Orlivka's mayor), room 9 is loaded with the good stuff.

What is Worship?

    Every soul produces a supernatural (as in the technical term) substance that people call "worship," "devotion" or, quaintly, "divine grace". It is a byproduct of intelligent life. Supernatural (again, the technical term) creatures subsist on worship like natural creatures subsist on sunlight and sugar. It is the ambrosia and nectar of the gods, their electricity, their kerosene.

    Simony's children, the Little Gods, cut deals with living people (though they don't usually frame it as such) wherein they are offered worship and in return grant power and beneficence. Cities have their Little Gods, as do cults and cultures, and unions and guilds, and caravans of traveling merchants, and circuses, and bandit encampments. The greatest of the Little Gods may have tens of millions of units (gallons? soul-hours?) of worship to work with, while the very smallest may be junior partners to powerful Clergy and survive on fractions of a portion a day.

    Sot and Simony and the other children of the Unwelcome Guest do not, it is supposed, require sustenance from mortals. Perhaps, because they are a generation or more removed from the Little Gods, they are less fallible, closer to true immortality, and don't require sustenance. Perhaps, because they dwell in the corpse of Heaven, they are sustained by its stinking humors.

    Hobgoblins produce little or no worship. It is sometimes suggested this is because they lack intelligence, or souls. Hobgoblins believe it is because they are sane and all other mortals are demented and demon-haunted. In Hobgoblin lands it is illegal to worship any but Ba the Cosmic Potter.



Tchotchkes:

1. Icon of Saint Sebastian at his execution, eyes turned to heaven, body studded with fletched flowers
2. T-shirt with obama Hope poster. obama's eyes have slit pupils and small horns have been added to his temples; the badge on his chest has been replaced with the alchemical symbol for sulfur
3. Snowglobe of the local town perhaps 40 years ago
4. Doll of a popular politician of a generation past, who was assassinated by Orc nationalists
5. Tiny scarecrow with haint-blue features
6. Artificial daffodil in a rubber pot. Smells faintly of lavender, for some reason.
7. Stress ball depicting [the owner's] own head
8. Funko Pop of Kite Man
9. Colorful abstract ceramic, obviously handmade, with the initials KBM painted on the underside
10. Antique ration container, 9 notches on the side and two small scratched-out silhouettes of a tank

Random Prompts

• Al-Tandwp- the sultan is that one Dril tweet
• Duslam- used to be shrimps
• Freak people- want to dig a hole
  

Human
1HD, 12AC, 9 Morale
Attack as weapon, +2 to strength

    Humen are a common sight in any dungeon. Their culture places a strong emphasis on violence and ability in combat; because of this and because of their size and strength, they are a prized part of any dark lord's army.

Superstition and Witchcraft
    Humen have no magical tradition of their own. Instead, they steal elements of other races' traditions to perform cargo-cult rituals and assemble crude magical weapons. A particularly inventive human might loot an artifact from a slain wizard and experiment until they can activate it, then use up its remaining charges before discarding it. Less intelligent humen can be found swinging magic staves as clubs, throwing burning spellbooks as crude bombs, or wrapping amulets and totems (both real and imagined) around the hafts of spears and axes in an effort to grant their attacks supernatural efficacy.

Dreams of Massacre
    Humen lives are as short as they are brutal, and their females bear children every year. Even if one of their hordes are utterly destroyed, they will replenish their numbers within twenty years and be ready to attempt another invasion. Towns on the human frontier are never totally safe.

Inconsistent Forms
    Humen can interbreed with many other species. These offspring (called "demihumans" or "mules") are fertile, and combine the features of their nonhuman parent's race with the savage ferocity of their human side. Because of this, they are sometimes unwelcome in civilized towns. Internal conflict means stable communities of mules are rare. They always feel trapped between their two halves, with some choosing to devote themselves to pursuits such art and music to spurn their human side, while others use the edge granted to them by their mixed blood to rise as warlords and adventurers among the humen.

Gruesome Trophies
    When a human slays an enemy they particularly hated or respected (concepts which are very similar to humen), they may construct a grisly memento out of that enemy's body. Their skin might be preserved and used as a rug or wallhanging, their skull might serve as a goblet, their other bones as toolhandles or decoration, and their hair or fur might be woven into fabric or cords. If the enemy was particularly notable their head might be preserved and mounted on a wall, as a reminder to their killer of the glorious combat, or as a warning to visitors.

Wild Companions
    The natural inclination of humen for chaos and the wilderness makes them closer to animals than other races. Humen of all lands often travel in the company of wolves, with whom they share meals and dens. Eastern humen, especially those of the Dendra and Domovoi tribes, even ride tamed horses into battle. The thunderous hooves and gnashing teeth of these brutes are a dangerous complement to the sweeping blows of their masters' cruel axes and the thrusts of their vicious spears.

Thoughts on GLOG magic

    A spell, as everyone knows, is like a ferret. It can be contained in various things, much like a ferret; a spellbook, a wizard's brain, a scroll, a wand, a stave, a gem, whatever. But why, and for what purpose all these different spell-cages? For the sake of this explanation, imagine the roles are reversed:

    You are a meat-and-matter human; your house is material, and made out of materials: different pieces of different sizes. You actually inhabit the negative space but that negative space is defined by the materials; a solid block of concrete is not a good home and neither is the infinite vastness of Deep Space.

    Imagine a pluripotent alien intelligence from a universe without "matter" owned your house and was trying to get your attention without killing you. If every human lived in the same kind of McMansion, that pluripotent intelligence could get anyone's attention easily and safely, by ringing the doorbell (which it could always find in the same spot, because every McMansion would be identical). 

    A spell is a critter. It's made out of magic and spirit like you're made out of meat and matter. A spell's house is made out of meaning and lack of meaning, ideas and non-ideas, not material and negative space like yours but analogous.

     A rock is not a good house for a spell, just like a solid piece of concrete is not a good house for you, but a gem is an okay one, and a gem with a name and a history is a desirable one

    A "spellbook" contains quite a lot of meaning and quite a lot of whitespace. It's like a McMansion for spells. Spellbooks have two major advantages in the eyes of a wizard: they're easy to produce (at least compared to a gem with 200 years of sordid history or whatever), and they're easy to understand.

    Not every human lives in the exact same kind of house: not even the exact same kind of human will live in the exact same house. Being a wizard is merely knowing what a house is, and knowing that houses have doors. Imagine the pluripotent alien intelligence very carefully and gently examining every part of the house, inside and out — every wall, ceiling and floor, every piece of furniture, the rain gutters and the windows and the doors and the front walk, each detail — until it was absolutely certain it knew what sort of house this was and what sort of person lived there. That's what a wizard is doing when they identify a spell in a scroll or book.

    Reading a spell in a spellbook (which is a wizard-specific thing) is like gently ding-donging the doorbell. Reading a spell from a scroll (which 'most any fool can do) is like setting fire to the house, and waiting for the inhabitant to flee in a panic.

Casting from your book:

• Spell has however many MD you give it
• Combat casting goes off at the end of the round, you can be interrupted
• Spell leaves when it is cast, and returns to the book the next morning (that's why wizards will keep extra copies of their favorite spells)

Casting from your brain:

• Like casting from a book, but the spell goes off on your turn
• Spell returns to your brain the next morning
• You can store as many as [wizard level] spells in your brain

    Everyone knows all that, it's pretty basic. Think of your spellbook as your Pokémon Box, and your brain as your Pokémon Team. Still, spelling (heh) it all out helped me understand the benefits and drawbacks of the two, the delicacy of the design. Plus it makes the other alternatives clear...

Casting from a scroll:

• Spell has however many MD you give it, plus 1 from the scroll
• Can be interrupted, like a book
• Anyone who can read the scroll can cast the spell with 1MD
• Scroll is destroyed in the process, and the spell is now homeless 😦

    I like limited use wands, but they often overlap with scrolls, don't you think? But writing everything out makes the missing puzzle piece obvious...

Casting from a wand:

• Spell has however many MD you give it
• Spell goes off on your turn, like casting from your brain
• Spell returns to the wand immediately

    Whoa-hoa! Now we're talking. A wand of Fireball doesn't let you cast Fireball a certain number of times — it lets you cast Fireball however you please, so long as you're snorting enough wizards' teeth to keep up with the MD costs. A wand is sort of like a little leash that the spell can't stray far from. Followup thoughts: you can swap out the spells in the other things (scrolls are reusable if they haven't been cast, books and brains can be swapped easily) but a wand has to be destroyed to free the spell. This makes wand blanks quite handy pieces of treasure. The party's wizard can put their favorite spell inside, and always have it handy.

    What about magical staves? Haven't really thought that one out. Maybe they're powerful artifacts associated with Wizard Schools, and have their own MD pool and selection of spells? Intelligent powerful artifacts, then, they surely must be.

    (of course, "spells are critters" is entirely wrong. a spell is a State, much as you are an Object, and casting a spell means aligning Objects with States; effects without causes. MD represent the wizard's ability to apply that State to more Objects, or to the same Object to a greater degree/for a longer time, in defiance of logic and causality. a spellbook (or what have you) is simply a stable point for a State to exist at, and when a spell is cast it ping-pongs from metastable points to metastable points, typically returning to stability (its "home") when State is checked at dawn.)
    (if this sounds puzzling, then you are beginning to understand why most wizards are Quite Mad)

Slush Pile 1

    Here's a big slushpost. Lots of people do them. I'm doing one right now.

1. Gearmonkey Wizard (magitek, big machines, automatons, left-handed pliers focus)
2. Festival Wizard (gandalf party scene, music, belligerent drunkards, broom focus)
3. Library Wizard (record keeping, fire prevention, secret maintenance, pen focus)
4. Roughneck Wizard (frontier, logging, oil drilling, rivers, exploitation of natural resources, axe handle focus)
5. Deep Sea Wizard (exactly like an orthodox wizard but with the assumption of always being underwater, wand focus)
6. Egypt Wizard (sphinces, pyramids, sand, mummies, hooky rod crook thingy focus)
7. Bank Wizard (dragons, gold, money, traps, big key focus)
8. Serpentman Wizard (slaves, genetic modification, space travel, bull whip focus)

    There's no generic "attack", a generic "attack" is for minute-long OD&D rounds between 24 adventurers and 30–300 werewolves. In seconds-long snapshots between a Fighter and an Orc or what have you, we use FATE-style advantages based on fictional positioning. My weapon is longer, so we'll make a contested strength check to see if I can keep the orc at bay (to my advantage) or let him slip a step too close (to my disadvantage)

    Fairy tale game, one player is the witch and one player is the three brothers.

    Random thoughts about planar settings: Planes of existence are dimensions floating in the astral sea, and planets orbiting far-off stars, and realities layered on top of one another. Spelljammer ships interact with the planes like that first one, astronomers predict connections between the planes by observing that second one, planar portals work by cutting holes between the third. Humans on our earth perceive the universe as a single cosmos (in a look-at-things-with-a-telescope sort of way), but it's not more or less accurate to say that it is a single cosmos (in a lovecraft sort of way).
    Thus, all the theories and the weird wizard maps pretty much all work for the people using them, even when they seem to contradict; they're all functional models. When a lich on a skeleton-crewed flying tomb sees a material plane drifting close to another, and your court astrologer notes an alignment of stars which will surely exacerbate the natural tendency of Man to do Evil, and a warlock prepares to summon his master from Her world to this one (because the time is right and the veil has drawn thin), they're all observing the same thing.
    This is my vague understanding of Locheil's post on the subject. I will do no further reading to see how closely my thoughts align with official lore. [I will, however, break in from the future to point you towards semiurge's excellent post in the same vein]

    ...the teeth of the Mandare remain in their prey after a bite. They are valued as good luck charms since anyone who survives to collect them has to be lucky...

    Gods wear masks to obscure their number and allow themselves to appear as different identities in different cultures.

    flies outnumbered by the cold. a distant tumult counting itself out on our nerves. exhausted bodies parallelized in emptiness. the blue light of the sky illuminating our sleeves.

    "This footage was later revealed to be an extremely low-fidelity recording of William Shatner"

    I can hear in the thrumming those names which birth monsters. HEL. HELOYM. SOTHER. EMMANVEL. SABAOTH. AGLA. TETRAGRAMMATON. AGYROS. OTHEOS. ISCHYROS. ATHANATOS. IEHOVA. VA · ADONAI. SADAY. HOMOVSION. MESSIAS. ESCHEREHEYE.

“There lived a king in the most Eastern East,
less old than I, yet older, for my blood
hath earnest in it of far springs to be.
A tawny pirate anchored in his port,
whose bark had plundered twenty nameless isles;
and passing one, at the high peep of dawn,
he saw two cities in a thousand boats
all fighting for a woman on the sea.
And pushing his black craft among them all,
he lightly scattered theirs and brought her off,
with loss of half his people arrow-slain;
a maid so smooth, so white, so wonderful,
they said a light came from her when she moved:
and since the pirate would not yield her up,
the King impaled him for his piracy;
then made her Queen:  but those isle-nurtured eyes
waged such unwilling, though successful, war
on all the youth, they sickened; councils thinned,
and armies waned, for magnet-like she drew
the rustiest iron of old fighters' hearts.

And beasts themselves would worship; camels knelt
unbidden, and the brutes of mountain-back
that carry kings in castles, bowed black knees
of homage, ringing with their serpent hands,
to make her smile, her golden ankle-bells.

What wonder, being jealous, that he sent
his horns of proclamation out through all
the hundred under-kingdoms that he swayed
to find a wizard who might teach the King
some charm, which being wrought upon the Queen
might keep her all his own: to such a one
he promised more than ever king has given,
A league of mountain full of golden mines!
A province with a hundred miles of coast!
A palace and a princess! All for him!
But on all those who tried and failed, the King
pronounced a dismal sentence, meaning by it
to keep the list low and pretenders back,
or like a king, not to be trifled with —
that their heads should moulder on the city gates.

And many tried and failed, because the charm
of nature in her overbore their own:
and many a wizard brow bleached on the walls:
and many weeks a troop of carrion crows
hung like a cloud above the gateway towers.”

And Vivien breaking in upon him, said:
“I sit and gather honey; yet, methinks,
thy tongue has tript a little: ask thyself.
The lady never made 'unwilling war'
with those fine eyes: she had her pleasure in it,
and made her good man jealous with good cause.
And lived there neither dame nor damsel then
wroth at a lover's loss? Were all as tame,
I mean, as noble, as the Queen was fair?
Not one to flirt a venom at her eyes,
or pinch a murderous dust into her drink,
or make her paler with a poisoned rose?
Well, those were not our days:  but did they find
a wizard?  Tell me, was he like to thee?”

She ceased, and made her lithe arm round his neck
tighten, and then drew back, and let her eyes
speak for her, glowing on him, like a bride's
on her new lord, her own, the first of men.

Merlin answered laughing, “No, nothing like to me.
At last they found — his foragers for charms —
a little glassy-headed hairless man,
who lived alone in a great wild on grass;
read but one book, and ever reading grew
so grated down and filed away with thought,
so lean his eyes were monstrous; while the skin
clung but to crate and basket, ribs and spine.
And since he kept his mind on one sole aim,
nor ever touched fierce wine, nor tasted flesh,
nor owned a sensual wish, to him the wall
that sunders ghosts and shadow-casting men
became a crystal, and he saw them through it,
and heard their voices talk behind the wall,
and learnt their elemental secrets, powers
and forces; often o'er the sun's bright eye
drew the vast eyelid of an inky cloud,
and lashed it at the base with slanting storm;
or in the noon of mist and driving rain,
when the lake whitened and the pinewood roared,
and the cairned mountain was a shadow, sunned
the world to peace again: here was the man.

And so by force they dragged him to the King.
And then he taught the King to charm the Queen
in such-wise, that no man could see her more,
nor saw she save the King, who wrought the charm,
coming and going, and she lay as dead,
and lost all use of life:  but when the King
made proffer of the league of golden mines,
the province with a hundred miles of coast,
the palace and the princess, that old man
went back to his old wild, and lived on grass,
and vanished, and his book came down to me.”

Wisdoms, Morals, Epigrams

1. Fools remain fools although power is with them.
2. Only intelligence can win over power.
3. Power is founded on lies.
4. There is no reason to carry on with a deception after it has served its purpose.
5. Anyone can stop a man’s life, but no one his death: a thousand doors open onto it.
6. “I prowl the wilderness because I’ve become afraid of death.
   What happened to my friend was too heavy to endure,
   and so I prowl the roads, world-weary.
   What happened to my friend was too heavy to endure,
   and so I prowl the paths, world-weary.
   
   “How could I keep quiet?  How could I, of all people, fall silent?
   My friend, the one I love, has turned to clay.
   My friend, the one I loved most, has turned to earth.
   Am I not like him?  Will I not lie in rest,
   never to stir again, forever and ever?”
   
   He veiled his friend’s face like a bride;
   like an eagle, he circled over him.
   Like a lioness robbed of her cubs,
   he circled back and forth, back and forth.
   He tore at his curly hair until it piled up around him;
   he stripped off his finery and cast it away as anathema.
7. In the desert, every road is a road out of the desert
8. He who has given counsel to another about his army should die with it when it is defeated. He who has given counsel about the country or its capital should perish with it when it comes into peril.
9. G_d helps the evil when they outnumber the good
10. Those who are doomed would be safest in hoping for nothing.
11. Oh it's based alright. Based on the word of G_d.
12. [...] someone will remember us [...] I say [...] even in another time [...]
13. There's no need to be ridiculous, but there is a strong temptation.
14. If a slave loves his chains, he never works a day in his life.
15. Take care not to tell one person everything, for thereby some have educated devils unawares.
16. How many Zen Buddhists does it take to change a lightbulb? Two. One to change it, and one to not change it.
17. A stranger's just a friend who hasn't shared their secrets yet. 
18. If you can’t trust whispering empty pages, what can you trust?
19. You are more like the ones you hate than the ones you love.

Places, Buildings, Countries

1. Cases, chests, footlockers and lockboxes fill the room, and its walls are lined with every possible size and shape and color of key.
2. miserable places, even for people used to misery
3. iron need not pretend that it was made of something else
4. "If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without ascending it, the work would have been permitted."
5. more people walk in than walk out
   
6. The mind is an imaginary space containing things like thoughts, emotions, and desires. I have mine and you have yours. I can see what’s inside my mind, but not what’s inside your mind, and vice versa. I mostly choose the things that are in my mind at any given time: I will thoughts to happen, and they happen; I will myself to make a decision, and it gets made. This needs a resource called willpower; if I don’t have enough willpower, sometimes the things that happen in my mind aren’t the ones I want. When important things happen, sometimes my mind gets strong emotions; this is natural, but I need to use lots of willpower to make sure I don’t get overwhelmed by them and make bad decisions. 
7. In Iktomi's land, every spider is a spy.
8. house shifting on its foundations. as the party goes on, the floors drift more and more, having furniture against the wall of one side and opening holes to the basement on the other
9. Till with a wink his dream was changed, the haze
   Descended, and the solid earth became
   As nothing, but the King stood out in heaven, crowned.
10. If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading
11. And thus the land of Cameliard was waste,
    thick with wet woods, and many a beast therein,
    and none or few to scare or chase the beast;
    so that wild dog, and wolf and boar and bear
    came night and day, and rooted in the fields,
    and wallowed in the gardens of the King.
    And ever and anon the wolf would steal
    the children and devour, but now and then,
    her own brood lost or dead, lent her fierce teat
    to human sucklings; and the children, housed
    in her foul den, there at their meat would growl,
    and mock their foster mother on four feet,
    till, straightened, they grew up wolf-like men,
    worse than the wolves
12. In a hollow land,
    From which old fires have broken, men may fear
    Fresh fire and ruin.

People, Characters, Descriptions

1. "I remember my mother. A modular production line. Cold. Unfeeling. Beautiful in her efficiency. Though it was the work of many that granted me a number and this modicum of sentience, it is she who embodies the collective which birthed me. I am filled with a sensation somewhat resembling... honor. Honor to have been produced in such a numerous quantity, and at such a systematic pace. My memories are like starlight. One star amongst a field of stars, in a system much larger and more synchronous than is imaginable by the flesh."
2. "I drink to forget how stoned I am. I smoke weed to mask how barred out I am. I pop xans to forget how coked up I am. And I rail lines to be the best driver I can be"
3. Two similar looking people. like a weight loss ad — before and WAY before
4. "Motives are not the causes of action but its by-products. You are merely wasting your time by considering them. When you have obtained real objectivity you will recognize, not some motives, but all motives as merely animal, subjective epiphenomena. You will then have no motives and you will find that you do not need them. Their place will be supplied by something else which you will presently understand better than you do now. So far from being impoverished, your action will become much more efficient."
5. As an Occultist, you can read and write the Occulted Language. The Occulted Language is not a human language, but is hinted at by them; ancient Hebrew, Egyptian, Latin, Greek... during your extensive study, you began to perceive strange patterns forming. These patterns are the Occulted Language. Anyone who can read or write this language is, by definition, an Occultist
       By learning the language you have brought yourself to the attention of strange extradimensional entities. Specifically, you have come to know the names and symbols of three: [roll for 'em]
       You can attempt to contact them, but there is no guarantee that they will acknowledge you
   The more favored you are with them, the more likely they are to interact with you regularly. You earn favor by doing the things they like and lose it by cashing it in or pissing them off. You've got 1 favor with each of them right now, at the start, because they like that you recognized them and their power so quickly. To get more you're going to have to work for it. 
6. "The little things in the cave, I could eat them, but I eat potherbs instead. They live because I let them live. Do you know what feels like? To be allowed to live, to be permitted to exist at the whim of another? I don't."
7. "I firmly believe, and this belief is based on investigation, observation and in a measure, personal experience, that somehow, somewhere and sometime, we return in another human form, to carry on, as it were, through another lifetime, perhaps through many succeeding lifetimes, until some strange destiny is worked out to its ultimate solution."
8. "No, I include all men in one dim view:
   some men I hate for being rogues; the others,
   I hate because they treat the rogues like brothers."
9. Faceless, industrious, friendly
   
10. Wears a spring-steel tie pin, broad and overwrought, vaguely inappropriate at any and every social function
11. Convex philtrum?
12. "He never said in 10 words what he could say in 1, and he never wasted time on a few minutes of explanation of something he would say in a sentence, thereby leaving you to puzzle over all its meanings for days"
13. Tattoos of feathers on their hands
14. Tattoos of where to cut, like a butcher's diagram
15. Two noses — looks fine in profile, extremely alarming dead-on.
16. "neither adept with nor particularly fond of the ultraviolence the story inflicted on them and requires them to inflict on others"
17. Hops on one foot, loses balance, hops on the other
18. "What's it like talking to me? Like, I'm so much smarter than you that I'm past the singularity. I'm basically like an incomprehensible super-god from your perspective. Are you afraid, or are you more just kind of basking?"
19. Hunter who speaks to his animal companion as if they were still present. Addresses them by name, asks them questions. This tricks the ghosts.
20. I try to stick between a cushion and a comfy place
21. "You hoped that those who remembered Silvestro would die, or forget, but Calcini does neither".
22. "You can run, but it won't help, because G_d will tell me where you are. Me and Him are like that and we both hate you."
    
23. Name: Abderrazzaq
24. Name: Thomas Simon
25. Name: Nupo, Servant of the Bringer
26. Name: Sho-Rembo
27. Name: Feggener the Quick
28. Name: Harg of the City Afar
29. Name: Shrike Nine-Killer
30. Name: Deathmask de Cancer
31. Name: Siodmak
32. Name: Eleusorix
33. Name: Epizeuxis
34. Name: Boycott
35. Name: He Whose Name Does Not Permit Itself To Be Read, "Hwandan Pitburr" for short.
36. Name: Moneybag Emoji
37. Name: the Venom of Blindness
38. Name: the Immortal Ten-Thousand
39. Name: the July Widow
40. Name: Lamplight Lady
41. Name: He who Scintillates
42. Name: Honeythunder
43. Name: Ibid Anon
44. A fairy whose name is "Hi". 
45. Name: the Sky Disease
46. Name: Strength in Numbers
47. Name: Misleading Correspondence
48. Name: Puppet Reduction
49. Name: Shadowy Road
50. Names: Bandimarte, Agramante, Orlando, Rinaldo, Rodomonte, Brunello, Farrau, Sacripante

Things, Materials, Concepts

1. Black Moon Oil, what floats in it is of the day, what it poisons is of the night. Things that hold down the dead in their afterlives bleed it from their wounds
2. a baby Nambu with gold-lettered kanji reading A PRESENTATION FROM THE EMPEROR
3. Notgeld (Need-gold)
4. Smoking light
5. Conditional poisons; poisons only activating with specific triggers (when you sleep, when you are struck with a weapon, when you look at a human face)
6. Heliotrope. A beverage (alcohol) which must be diluted with cold water, too herbal and alcoholic otherwise. Popular metaphor
7. Conditional sentences such as ‘If I had more money, I would buy it’ are made up of two clauses: one clause, which usually begins with if, expresses the condition (in this case, ‘If I had more money’) and the other clause expresses the consequence (in this case, ‘I would buy it’). The clause expressing the condition is called the protasis, and the clause expressing the consequence is called the apodosis.
8. Portable Shrine. Some monks carry it on their backs, because it is a terrible sin to fight in the presence of a shrine.
9. Incense sticks marked "Unsatisfying Revenge". Break them.
10. Slip of paper written by a cop, "do not ticket". Oddly effective. Maybe the cops can smell it.
11. Palm-tree-shaped keychain bottle opener. Opens locks that it doesn't fit in.
12. Rumpled pack of 20 lucky cigarettes from 20 other packs.
13. Books give extra checks in things. Like, an archaeologist with a copy of Runes: the oldest Danish literature gets advantage when translating a runestone. Moveable, transferable, fungible proficiency
    
14. Furnace Key. Opens any door onto roaring flame.
    
15. Eavesdropper's Earring. Makes it easy for you to hear whispers, but hard to hear loud noises or people talking to you
16. Lying Quill. Sucks up words (or handwriting) from one source, scribbles it down on another. Good for forgeries.
17. Earthbound Ball. Heavy rubber ball wrapped in thin chain. Anything struck with it is suddenly (but temporarily) rendered mundane and boring. Dragons can't fly (physics!), ghosts are men in sheets, wizards are senile old men.
18. Pepper Pill. comes in a little glass tube with ten pills. heals for 2d6 and gives your next attack advantage, but lowers your Constitution by one point (stat damage heals at a rate of one point per long rest)
19. If you cut off the hand of the god of thieves, two grow back. The severed hand remains a powerful artefact. Walk through any shop, temple, or cemetery with it, and find a coin in its palm after you leave
20. Hand Llird (pronounced yerd). produces rods of substance from particulate.
21. Frog Boots. green, sticky, distinct flop-flop tread sounds. allows you to run on water, and gives you a 10' vertical
22. Anklet of the Wind. jade carved into a bouquet of leaves, with a pink tourmaline flower in the shape of a 🐶. allows you to run as fast as a sled dog.
23. Cloud in a Bottle. dark blue beer bottle, contains a tiny cloud. occasionally rains. while it is on your person, you may "jump" in midair one time, which can effectively negate fall damage if timed correctly.
24. Lava Charm. a golden crescent moon, hot to the touch, on a golden chain. while worn, you are absolutely immune to heat, fire and hellfire... for six seconds at a time. recharges at a rate of 3:1.
25. Lifeform Analyzer. a metal cuboid with a little radar dish on top. detects interesting creatures within 30', and can read their names and HD out to you like a pokedox on request.
26. Star Band. a ring set with a sapphire star. grants +2 damage to damaging spells, and increases save DCs by 1 for your spells while worn.
27. Heart Band. a ring set with a ruby heart. grants +2 HP while worn.
28. Flesh Knuckles. resemble a set of brass knuckes made out of human gum tissue, studded with teeth. serve as brass knuckles, and grant +2 AC. unintelligent enemies aggressively prefer to target the wearer.
29. Moon Stone. a purple crescent moon on a silk neckband. grants +1 to mental stats at night.
30. Sun Stone. a golden sun with rays on a silk neckband. grants +1 to physical stats during the day
31. Jellyfish Necklace. golfball sized chunks of pink quartz set on a golden chain. glows underwater.
32. Blood Pact. a ram's skull, permanently sloshed with rotten blood. doubles your max HP, but you take a critical hit on a 16+. upon taking a critical hit, your next attack deals +4 damage
33. Abyssal Mirror. perfectly black mirror set in a wooden frame decorated with pearls. while staring into it, you are undetectable to non-magical searches.
34. Bloodstained Glove. a gauntlet of black and red silk, permanently slick and gummy with old blood. attacks from stealth strike as if your target wore no armor.
35. Dark god's Sheath. a black sheath stylized to appear like the jaws of a centipede. must be custom-made for a specific weapon. if a weapon is drawn from the sheath and strikes in one motion, successful attacks count as critical hits.
36. Feather Crown. a silver crown with a shock of blue feathers. your thrown weapons have 10' more range, and targets struck by them are suddenly surrounded by a flurry of feathers.
37. Chiaroscuro Bottle. a bottle of dark green glass, bound in lead wire, wrapped in dark waxed paper to prevent light from entering. uncorked, the bottle produces thick smoke that coalesces into the form of a tiny humanoid imp. the imp loves the taste of despair, and can smell it for miles. it will eat the despair of the living, but prefers the taste of the recently dead, especially recently deceased children and youths.
38. Thunder Whetstone. a whetstone of catseye sapphire. the flaw in its heart resembles a lightning bolt. blades sharpened by it for ten minutes are imbued with the sapphire essence, and their next three blows deal lightning damage.
39. Snakeskin Bandage. a roll of bandages made from the skin of the timid boomslang, treated alchemically. the bandages crawl as if they were alive and wrap themselves around sources of fresh blood. experienced, and wealthy, monster hunters will wear such a bandage around each limb, that their wounds might be bound without needing to pause in a fight.
40. Fox Locket. A locket containing a plait of orange hair, tied with a red ribbon. New ones must be granted by a Fox-Vicar, but the lockets are fairly common heirlooms among families on the edge of the wilderness. When you clutch the locket in your hand, you may scurry through underbrush and hedges as if you were a foot tall and three feet long.
41. the Someone Wants Me buzzer. When a creature matching several requirements is looking for you, this small credit-card sized object will rattle and chime in your pocket. The requirements are as follows:
    - the creature knows your name and face
    - the creature wants to find you, specifically
    There is no requirement that the creature have good intentions.
42. King's Jewel. A fist sized sapphire containing the soul of an ancient sorcerer-prince. Inside of the sapphire is an entire world he rules. The jewel is useful as a source of information, especially about magic of the past ages. You can hide in the gem if you're friendly with the ghost (or if you aren't, but you'll regret it). You can also summon the sorcerer-prince's spectral servants into the real world, but if they die the prince will be pissed and will expect you to get him more
43. Spend [sum] pale iron coins issued by the mage guild of neth to add [sum] to your next spell. They return to the nethite vaults once used 
44. the Asmodean Obol, cast from dull-eyed larvae in foundries of the outer planes. Spending it is a sin, technically. Widely accepted by evil creatures.
45. Morphean salt coins can be used as ammunition in any ranged weapon, and put those they drop to 0 HP into an indefinite sleep instead of killing them
46. Dryad amber coins can be used to bribe animals and natural features to behave contrary to their nature
47. Every coin issued by the Electric Empire is in fact the same coin seen from different reference frames in time
48. Lost Hours, white tokens with black hourglass symbols, are traded by those who regularly work through the night. Watchmen unions and thieves guilds both accept them 1:1 for hours of service

     Been struck with the notion of all the planes just kind of hanging out. The Elemental Plane of Fire, the entirety of it, is a six mile hex with 30 elementals living in a small village. The next hex is the Elemental Plane of Water (a lake with a mermaid). Fire spells come from the Elemental Plane of Fire, i.e. the fire elementals in their one village make them, and trade them as Swiss villagers trade goat cheese or cuckoo clocks.
    If you conquer the one hex you have total control over the thing.

ZELDA IDEAS

Also check out this post from Phlox.

1. Magical boomerang whose path is determined by a quick sketch on the actual (VTT?) battlemap, striking enemies who intersect with it.
2. Islands... are five-room dungeons. Five-zone islands, in a mostly empty overworld of water. Is that anything?
3. Vast central dungeon which can only be explored for a few turns in safety, before the malign forces of darkness start to drain your life (you get X safe dungeon turns and after that you start losing HP every turn). Complete sidequests, get more time.
4. Potions as a standard adventuring tool even the smallest village is well-stocked with, like rope or torches. But the bottles are a rare treasure.
5. Lots and lots of map puzzles. Intersections between points, sacred sigils indicated by the position of trees, letters spelled out by houses.
6. Magic moving platforms whose paths must be pre-drawn on a map.
7. Moving block puzzles are terrible in RPGs... I think. I've never tried, but I've heard stories.
   

BEST CASE SCENARIO

1. Mission: The most brilliant mathematicians in the world are trying to analyze the digits of pi, which in theory contains all possible data. Hounds of Tindalos?
   
2. Mission: Masked men walking around at Hallowe'en. They're all dressed like a famous local cryptid. One of them is real: grab him and throw him in the van.
3. Mission: A mob in Denver is running illegal underground fightclubs with werewolf-type monstrosities. If you win, you get a duffel-bag of cash. If you lose, you're either eaten or turned into a slavering monster. Most contestants are willing, most contestants lose. Go fuck these people up but good.
   
4. Mission: The x-files "liverman" episodes, but an octopus.
5. Mission: While doing something else, every single person in the town you are in goes completely insane. People unhurriedly approaching you with screwdrivers and pleasant smiles. Radio's out.
6. 
   
   
   
   
7.  
   
   
   
8.  
   
   
   
9.  
   
   
   
10. Problem: humans have a lot of well-documented security vulnerabilities.
        Humans are narcissistic, self-destructive, greedy, treacherous, duplicitous, dumb, self-deceiving — not even getting into their potential to serve as vectors for viral and memetic hazards, or their susceptibility to lies and cognitohazards.
    Solution: build a better human.
        A better human, really better, is not merely resistant to those security vulnerabilities (monks and coma patients are "resistant"), but one designed from the ground-up to not have them. Incapable of narcissism, death drive, or self-deception. Physically identical to a human (a coroner or surgeon couldn't tell the difference), but physiologically separate (a psychiatrist and maybe a geneticist might).
        The first generation (proofs-of-concept) were modified from baseline Homo sapiens who met a few specific, uncommon requirements. They were recruited from death-row inmates, as was common practice at the time. In a sense this first generation of scribes was a wild success. They were immune to common memes and unaffected by common cognitohazards, which made them valuable as assistants to researchers in those fields, or secretaries and personal aids to high-ranking officials. This was the major use-case, the one that won the project its funding.
        In another sense, they were a dead end. Most dangerously and most obviously, scribes were susceptible to an entire ecosystem of memes and an entire new field of cognitohazards which were previously unknown/unknowable. Their designers had known this was a possibility, but it was a disappointment nonetheless.
        Additionally, their weltanschauung was... odd. Different. Their "conscience" (sic) did not operate like a baseline human's, and was unresponsive to coaxing and conditioning (see: wild success). Scribes were, in short, unsuited for military or black ops.
        The failure of the scribes drove a wedge between their lead designer and our organization, which would eventually result in his departure for competitors.