Ruined City Faith (GLOG Class: Saintmaker)

Q: Between the royal Braid and the lowly god, who answers the prayers of Cath Celdaenn?

A: Neither. We do it ourselves.

[inspired by random_interrupt's Priest and theisticGilthoniel's Shrine Priest, many spells stolen from Loch]

SAINTMAKER
Start with: ominous red candles; ludicrously expensive soap; two relics (see below).
+1 Save per Template
A - Make Saints, Make Relics, Ordained
B - +1 MD, Reliquary, Kindle
C - Manifold Blessings
D - +1 MD, Living Saint

A: Make Saints
You know the rites by which corpses are made into saints, and saints are made into relics.

With an hour's work and a source of clean water, you can turn a corpse into a saint. The body of a saint is immune to fire and decay, and may possess other numinous qualities.

For a person to be Made Saint, they have to: 1) perform at least one miracle; 2) die; 3) be venerated by at least ten HD of people.

A saint's base of worship determines their level, which in turn determines the number and strength of their blessings:

• adventuring party in a cave with a fresh corpse → Level 1 → 1, an echo of their greatest miracle
  
• decently well-furnished temple → Level 2 → 4
  
• hundreds of worshipers → Level 3 → 6
  
• theocratic city-state → Level 4 → 12, a whole wizard school's worth
  

A: Make Relics
It's as simple as cutting a piece off; Saintmakers can do this without pissing off the saint.

You can quickly enshrine a relic to access the saint's blessings. In short:

Blessings are floating 1 MD spells the whole party can cast so long as they maintain that saint's strictures. The party may only carry one blessing at a time. The party can add up to [saint's level] MD by making an appropriate sacrifice, visiting the corpus, and/or making an oath.

Relics contain up to 1 unique blessing/slot they take up: the White Hand of Cay may allow access to Flowers to Arrows, while her Tusks may offer Snowshoe.

The main body of a saint, or corpus, offers all their blessings.

Saint-killing weapons are also relics.

A: Ordained
You can touch idols, relics and sacred objects without harm or risk of being cursed, even if they belong to a rival and/or odious faith. You still need to treat them with the proper respect.

B: Reliquary
You can cast from relics without enshrining them using your own MD.

B: Kindle
You can force a relic to burst into flames as you cast from it. If you do, you cast with +1 MD.

Charred relics retain their potency, but cannot be kindled again.

C: Manifold Blessings
Your party can carry an additional blessing, or two additional blessings, if they are all of different saints.

D: Living Saint
You know the rites by which a living person can be Made Saint.

You cannot do this to yourself; to the Saint, their Saintmaker. All things interwoven. Each loose strand paired or pared.

This is how we patch a hole.

The 9 Saints Everyone Knows

Saint Cay predates the City itself. She is depicted on wolfback, hunting unicorns with bow and arrow. Her consort is the tilling wolf Cath. A well known epic follows her quest to slay the wizard who stole her eyes and legs. Her strictures are: Be ungovernable, and Avenge yourself.
1. Hunt Down
2. Flowers to Arrows
3. Snowshoe: You do not sink in snow, sand, earth, or plant matter, and leave no traces thereupon.
4. Glass Eye
5. Conjure Hounds
6. Status Symbol: You conjure a golden torc. For as long as you wear it, royalty cannot ignore you or order others to harm you.

GLOG Class: Cockfighter

Start with: switchblade; bag of rusty spurs; all-consuming gambling addiction.
+1 Cock per Template
A - Bird Influence
B - Chicken Didact
C - Cluck Ops
D - Cock of the Walk

Cocks
You command a gang of fighting-roosters: [1HD; 1d4/1d4 (spurs); immune to fear; cool name]. They obey two commands: "KILL" and "STOP".

Roosters get +1 to Hit for each of the following they have:

• A significant and impressive solo kill
  
• $$$ DRIP $$$
  
• The right to vote
  

If you lose a rooster, you can train a new one with a week's work. Having more than [templates] roosters will inevitably result in you being overpowered and murdered by your own roosters.

A: Bird Influence
Roosters won't take orders from no goody-two-shoes. Whenever you show compassion in front of them, Save vs bird disdain: all birds ignore your orders until you do something needlessly cruel or dangerous.

B: Chicken Didact
When you gain this template, and every template afterwards, you can teach your roosters another one-word command. Your commands supersede plausibility.

C: Cluck Ops
Birds can remember and act on your most complicated schemes.

D: Cock of the Walk
Nothing can harm you while your roosters are fighting-ready.

d20 Example Commands:

1. READ
   
2. SWIM
3. VOTE
4. UNLOCK
5. PROTECT
   
6. EXPLODE
7. RECORD
8. SKETCH
9. SMOKE
10. COMPOSE
11. BOIL
12. BARRICADE
13. HIDE
14. JUDGE
15. DISASSEMBLE
16. CAST
17. CLEAN
18. DISGUISE
19. CONTEMPLATE
    
20. FLY
    

this post is worth 3000 words

Knot//Braid//Line

A man loved a Morrigan and said this of her: that her skin was græy like knapped flint; that her hair was bloodless white; that her fingers were thick as branches; that her hunger was black like everything; that she carried an unbroken line in her hand, upon which were skewered many soldiers; that she placed a ragged standard in his hand; that she told him: walk on, forever. my Sword is dirty, and i cannot reach the End of it

* * *

All of the world maps are Dead Fucking Wrong, but sometimes rich idiots collect them:

• Whoever made this one was on some shit. It's 80% Koa, 10% cool drawings of sea monsters, with all the other geography squeezed into the corners. There's also two mountains that shouldn't be there(?) flanking the capital like bodyguards.
• A set of hypothetical maps which imagines the world as a pair of linked toruses. Gross!
  
• Star maps with too many stars are fairly common. This one has too few.
• An otherwise unremarkable (read: wildly incompetent) projection with an unknown land sandwiched between Parth and Apolya. It has a prominent lake ("Sajra Pit") and is labeled with a friendly-looking tiger.
  
• there is a RIVER going from COAST to COAST on this one I CANT
  

* * *

Fire came to Her.
The Wheel came to Him.
Iron came to Her.
The State came to Him.
Ash came to Her.
The War came to Him.

* * *

A wise woman once said:
    God this place fucking sucks. I'm going home.

* * *

To each Holy thing, their Consort. To the Braid, their Knight. To the God, their Witness. To the Saint, their Bathinger. To the Moon, the Moon.
All things interwoven. Each loose strand paired or pared.

This is how we patch a hole.

* * *

The Mithridants crowded Obscylla to drink thereof;
they drank from her TEN FANGS;
they kissed at her FIVE NECKS;
they sang to her FOUR HEARTS;
and evil grew thick in their liversome tissues

* * *

Nasya Four-Ears once said:
    Stem-sucking Greys keep making fun of us: "oh, no koans to contemplate? no cryptic lessons from the Old Master? nO aLLegOriEs????" There's only one story you need to really GET it, okay? It's the one where the jackal kills the frog, twice; I'd tell you it, but you already know how it ends. 

The City is full of Gods. Some make fruit trees grow. Some do taxes. Some carry daggers, for protection. Many operate otherwise-inexplicable elevators.

* * *

the esoteric bullshit creation myth:
    in early creation, there was only the spinning Wheel
    the Wheel spin'd and spin'd until creation was full
    then spin'd and spin'd until creation was tangled
    a Weaver stop'd the Wheel, gather'd the thread
    and began the long errand of making creation beautiful

* * *

Geometrick Heretics say:
    The world is intransitive. Three Lefts will not make a Right; they never-ever did.
    The Line is a Braid is a Knot is not The Line.
(The Geometrick Heretics were drawn and quartered by the Good winds.)

* * *

Where are the giants, who touched the stars, who wound the Apparatuses?
Said the Witch: They are drowning. They are buried. They are mile-wide stains. They are crawling. They are singing songs about you and how disappointing you are with collapséd lungs. None of them are worth your time. Ask me about dragons instead.

* * *

When Branwyn the Glory-Mantled met the skald, it was decidely a Bad Time To Do So; deep in his period-of-madness, the skald spake: You are a piddling nut/whose tongue wanders sideways/by your grandfather's map/[the last jab is thankfully lost to history, for it was so devastating that Branwyn's appendix ruptured on the spot, killing her instantly and turning her into a bloody willow, so the story goes, barkeep never lies]

* * *

O Hannamun-Hannamun, O Knot. Crawl over me; stand on my hands and feet; anchor me in liquid time.
- an Immortal's prayer

* * *

A man loved a Morrigan and said this of her: that her skin was red like everything; that her hair was red like everything; that her hunger was still very very very black; that she carried her wife in her arms, and nine more stood in her long shadow; that she placed a broken line in his hand; that she told her: if you love me, kill them. i have so many, and they keep treading on my heels

...

...

...what's this?

SWORDWIFE
Start with: Two swords; prominent ring-scar; female pronouns.
+1 to Hit and +1 AC per template
A - Sword Marriage, +1 Attack per turn
B - okay, you caught me, it's just Loch's Rotless

A: Sword Marriage
As Rotless, except:

• You never miss attacks against fools-with-guns, either.
• You can't speak unless you have a sword in your hand.
  
• You and everyone who loves you is immune to peaceful retirement.

Ruined City Guns (GLOG Class: Gun-Shepherd)

alone lee

The story goes that Mad Knight Narn invented gunpowder by pulling it out of his giant hat.

This is a lie; the people of what would become the Land of Ashen Rain had been making gunpowder since the advent of banging-two-rocks-together. Narn's greatest contribution to the craft was a philosophical one.

Gunpowder can be made many ways--a testament to the world's natural inclination to explode. Ashlanders and Gun-Shepherds each start knowing one of d100 Ways of Unmaking, unique recipes with terrible properties. Some examples:

• Primary ingredients are pine tree sap and saltpetre. Clumps into sticky globs. Produces brilliant gold flame; ogres weep inconsolably at the sight.
  
• Primary ingredients are sulfur and solid darkness. Eerily silent. Fills the room with a cloud of smoke that only Skeletons can see through.
  
• Primary ingredients are irradiated carbon and ignitite. Produces dirty pink smoke. Wounds inflicted fill with baby teeth, and can only be treated by a dentist.
• Primary ingredients are ghostrot and flint. Smokeless and howling. Those burned become sleepless and appear as corpses.

Sharing these recipes is taboo to Ashlanders and a bad idea for Gun-Shepherds, but it happens. The recipe everybody knows is saltpetre and sulfur, which explodes much the way you'd expect.

[Immortal Undozen was shot eighteen times and thrown into a lake for sharing this much. To this day, her tribe claims she was interrupted before she could reveal the third and final ingredient.]

GUNS

There are two types in the City: primitive handcannons/firelances, and modern rifles and sidearms. The former are forged at the behest of nascent warlords, hungry to carve out their own chunk of history. The latter were brought here from the future, and are by-and-large impossible to service and reload; they may as well be magic.

There are, in fact, gun cults in the City; disenfranchised maniacs who stumble upon overwhelming lethal force and wrap their lives around it. Most notable are Aris and Akat, rivalrous guns who were elevated to Sainthood. Their respective blessings let you shoot people with finger-guns and turn fresh corpses into dust. They accept offerings of fancy ammunition.

There are also gun clerics. They are rightfully hated as knock-off swordwives. They take vows of ultraviolence, and wander.

these guys are probably involved, somehow

 

anyway! the class!

You're a woman with a gun. Those rejected by polite society flock to you. Then you give them a gun.

EBOSHI
Start with: Unflinchingly loyal goon; big important-looking hat; two guns.
+1 to Hit per template, increased to +2 to Hit per template against men who've betrayed you.
A - Perfect For Ruling The World, +1 Way of Unmaking
B - Arms Race, A Wolf’s Head Still Bites
C - +3 Ways of Unmaking
D - Gun Control, To Kill A God

A: Perfect For Ruling The World
You start with two prototype firearms. They’re heavy hand cannons that deal 3d6 damage, take two rounds to reload, and are useless when wet.

Even if you miss, you still roll damage dice. If you roll doubles, something fucks up. It’ll take an hour to fix. You also take 1d6 damage (or 2d6 for triples, and so on).

You consistently have enough powder to arm yourself and one other. Arming more people (or making custom explosives and so on) requires securing a significant source of each primary ingredient.

You can teach others to make more of your prototypes; they're expensive, but not inaccessible to any settlement with a forge.

B: Arms Race
Choose or invent a firearms upgrade. If you have a dedicated workshop, you can spend a Season to choose or invent another. Some examples:

1. Rifled, +2 to hit
2. Breech loading, takes 1 less round to reload
3. Reduced weight, deals -1d6
4. Only fucks up on triples
5. Damage dice explode on 6s
   
6. Set enemies hit on fire

You can learn more from other Gun-Shepherds, and mix and match upgrades when commissioning new guns.

B: A Wolf’s Head Still Bites
When you arrive at death’s door, you get a free attack. It is guaranteed to hit. You have to make the attack; if there is no one left to hurt but your closest friends, you will hurt your closest friends.

D: Gun Control
You're never caught off-guard when gunpowder is involved. If someone turns one of your own guns against you, you can cause it to misfire with a wink.

D: To Kill A God
You and those you command directly can shoot and kill that which would otherwise be intangible, immortal, and/or indestructible.

You are known to any and all who seek immortality.

[the eboshi is more a social class than a martial one, about surrounding yourself with more and more dangerous allies, until your cadre of warlords implodes]