Veils (a magic system)

 

To The Nines (GLOG Class: Cosplay Knight)

seungyoon lee

In an era of secular decadence, society yearns for the knight. They got you instead.

DRESS UP KNIGHT
Start with: fancy clothes; foppish laugh; rich, disappointed parents; mule painted white; no weapons.
A - Prominence, Fashion Souls
B - Composed
C - Dress for the Occasion
D - Claim to Fame, Regalia

A: Prominence
You are always the most prominent person of a group. You cannot be ignored.

A: Fashion Souls
Whenever you inspect a garment or armor piece, you receive insight into its history, purpose, and/or symbolic weight. (Basically, you read its item description.) Garments and armor pieces from the same set mostly give the same insights.

When you inspect a complete and restored set, you receive an additional insight.

B: Composed
You may take a minute to Compose yourself. While Composed, you look as good as possible, under the circumstances. Even when dressed in rags and coated in slime, you look as though you are making a daring fashion statement.

If you are Composed, add +2 to your Reaction rolls.

C: Dress for the Occasion
When you wear a complete and restored set of clothing or armor, you gain a negotiated ability associated with the person or role that outfit belonged to. For example:

• Ailing Peasant Vestments: You can choose to fail saves vs disease. If you have an even number of diseases, they balance out and leave you healthy.
• Horned Warrior's Garb: You can carry a boat as if you were twelve men.
• Pyromancer's Robes: You can drink fire out of a lantern like it was hot coffee.
  

You can remove cursed items if they don't match the rest of your outfit.

D: Claim to Fame
When you wear complete (but not necessarily restored) regalia, you become a claimant to the associated title (king, baron, etc.) regardless of parentage or merit.

D: Regalia
There is no limit to the number of clothes, armor, and titles you can wear at once. You can be the King of Ysbrasil and the Archdeacon of Prithaca, wear gauntlets over gloves, four overcoats, and six hats. That's fashion, baby.

Actual Combat Training
Whenever you gain a level, you may choose to gain the next template of Duelist (or your choice of Fighter) instead of this class.

But why bother? It's not like you'll ever need to fight anyone.

A Little Off The Top (GLOG Class: Ichabod redux)

9 months later, the WIP is over.

* * *

When a person is put to death, after the verdict is read and the headsman’s sword falls, the body may stand again, full of the howling voice of God. This phenomenon is called the Mercy, and it is how the Church collects ichabods.

Ichabods bear none of the responsibility for their crimes prior to decapitation. This is because, during the Mercy, all the sin in their body rushes to their head (or perhaps sin always lived in the head, hiding between the teeth and above the soft palate. The Church is divided, as always.) They often go on to become high-ranking Church members.

The Mercy is the last of God’s miracles that the Rationalists consistently fail to explain. It is irrefutable proof that God still has his eye on the Doggerlands.

* * *

ICHABOD
Start with: book of hymns, rose water, 6lb beeswax candle (as club)
+1 HP per template
A - Beheaded, Innocence, The Voice
B - Speak with Dead
C - Bag of Winds
D - Choir, Command

A: Beheaded
You’ve been beheaded, and yet live. You are undead.

You are mute, but not blind or deaf. You can sing, but only in hymns.

You can harmlessly stow a single item no wider than an umbrella in your throat. Fashionable options include:

• A set of brass horns, thru which you may "speak" in mournful honks.
• A bouquet of flowers. They'll grow better there than in any garden.
• A sword. Open carrying like this marks you as a Church enforcer.

Your severed head is somewhere out there, also undead, full of hate and sin and criminal intent. If you’re on good terms with the Church, they may let you keep it. Otherwise, it's in one of the Decapitoriums. If your head is destroyed, you die.

A: Innocence
You are technically a kind of angel. People respect and trust you, so long as you don’t (openly) harm people who don’t seem to deserve it.

When a non-angel attempts to attack you, they must save or be unable to bring themselves to harm you.

A: The Voice
Your voice is clear, loud, and masculine; it is considered to be the voice of God.

When you lead a choir in a particular hymn (see below), your voice empowers theirs. For your purposes, "a choir" is eight trained singers or twenty untrained singers.

Everyone knows the first eight hymns.

B: Speak with Dead
You can ask questions of a skull or severed head by holding it against your neck stump.

For each question asked, lose d4 HP, or d6 HP to compel a truthful answer. If you would die this way, your body is overpowered by the dead and becomes a ghoul.

C: Bag of Winds
You can reduce your weight at will, with the following effects:

• You can walk on water.
• You take no damage from falls.
• You are terribly fast on horseback.
• On dark and stormy nights, you can fly.

This works even in heavy armor.

D: Choir
You sing with the many-layered voices of a host of angels. You count as a choir when singing hymns.

D: Command
Once per day, you can speak a single-word command in the voice of God. Unwilling targets must Save or obey. Animals and inanimate objects get no Save.

You can command corpses to SPEAK, horses to HALT, and food to ROT.

You can lift a command with a wave of your hand. Otherwise, the target gets an additional Save in an hour, then in a day, then never again.

Δ: Equally Headless Horse
In exchange for a 10000g donation, the Church sends you a headless horse. It benefits from all of your Ichabod templates.

Hymns
(Effects in parentheses are active when a full choir + Ichabod is singing, and apply to anyone who can both hear and understand the hymn.)

1. Hymn to the Genius
   I sing to you, Zephyros the all-knowing. You laid down the Certainties, then called your angels, and bade them cry out, be at ease. God knows all that will be, and all that will be is God's will.
   (Cannot be surprised.)
   
   
2. Hymn to the First King
   O Zephyros! O firstborn son! You breathed life into creation, and rightfully inherited its splendor, then passed it down to your apostles meritorious. Lender of goodness and deeds, you are great!
   (Cannot suffocate or drown.)
   
   
3. Hymn to the Conquerer
   This song scatters headwinds! This song kills usurpers! (Lyric repeats, melody changes)
   (+1 to Hit.)
   
   
4. Hymn to the Devourer
   I sing to you, Zephyros the lion-headed, boar-tusked, bear-legged. Pass over me, awesome and terrible God. Look, this sinner goes before me, this sinner goes before me, so eat him first!
   (+1 to Save.)
   
   
5. Hymn to the Invisible
   O Zephyros! O formless one! Where are you? On Ben Sulen, in the Palace of Mirrors, you pass unseen, yet you see all things. Your footprints are great, yet you cannot be found. Light-footed hunter, you are great!
   (Cannot be tracked.)
   
   
6. Hymn to the Widower
   I sing to you, Zephyros. I sing to the wailing wind in Radunod. Lift your mourning veil and gaze upon your kingdom. All things you see are yours, for you made all things good. All is well, o God. All is well!
   (Wind clears smoke and fog from your face.)
   
   
7. Hymn to the Inoculated
   I sing to you, Zephyros the mighty body, you who rent Apophis on your lightning spear. Before you goes the blood of the serpent, which is sin and death, and the taste is of victory, for you have never tasted defeat.
   (Immune to poisons and venoms.)
   
   
8. Hymn to the Sailor
   I sing to you, Zephyros the mariner. From Radunod you set, with Sir Eustaughffe, and Arthur Clath, and Belenod the Lance, and the archangel Aigle, and many others. You delivered all to their rightful shores. Taskmaster of the seas, you are great!
   (Cannot lose your footing.)
   

Woman Plus Habitation (GLOG Class: Haunted House)

The queen of the Isle of Lost Inch was very queer indeed.

She was very old, so old they thought her fairy, yet young. She took many kings (she preferred sailors; strange men from strange shores piqued her curiosity). And she knew everything about the isle, to the point of synonymy, such that they simply called her Queen Inch.

At the entrance to every mine on the isle stands a queen's idol, gesturing toward the earth. She stood there long ago, gestured so, and said: dig. I have left you a gift, down there. I remember it like it was yesterday.

The men of the isle became fabulously wealthy.

A plague took the isle. Queen Inch soon fell ill. She had five days to live; she suffered for two years, and did not die.

The queen was never the same. She lost an eye to infection. She often jabbered to the air. Where she ordered mines dug, they unearthed only ghosts. She confided to an aide that her husbands -- her many, many dead husbands -- were tormenting her as ghosts, denying her sleep. (The aide would soon abandon her; perhaps he too was possessed of some prescience.)

She eventually emptied her country's coffers into the pockets of sorciers. The great estate of Queen Inch fell to ruin, and she was no more.

All this to say: sometimes a woman is a place, and sometimes that place is a haunted house.

 

[This class is not so subtly inspired by various works by Carmen Maria Machado; and, by extension, by my fiancée, who recommended said works to me.]

HAUNTED
Start with: a candlestick; a maid or manservant; a ballgown; long gloves; fainting spells.
A - Trauma Response
B - Guest Room
C - Dream House
D - Renovation

A: Trauma Response
When you are mortally wounded, traumatized, or terrified, a ghost appears. (You, the player, decide when your character is any of these things.)

What is a ghost?

• The Taxonomia Cosmogonic says: a ghost is a spirit of cold air from the depths of Hell (contrast with angels, air spirits from Heaven; and gnomes, earth spirits from Hell). They torment cowards, sinners, and women; for these noble deeds, they will one day ascend to Heaven. (of course they want to go to heaven. everyone wants to go to heaven. churches are very haunted places.)
• Psychology: A Tactician's Guide says: daemons are the psychic building blocks of personality. You have a daemon of happiness, a daemon of sadness, and so on. Following severe trauma, daemons can become dislodged or even displaced altogether. A displaced daemon is called a ghost.
• On Death, and its Sister-States says: those who die without direction -- neither hell- nor heaven-bound, but frozen in-between -- become ghosts. Rendered as spectral caricatures, they flock to the mad, the sick, and the doomed: anyone willing to play along with their delusional unlives.
• Idols of the Anteglorians says: all the earth was infused with the battered and minced scraps of pagan gods (like the homes mortared with pagan blood, as rumor would hold). Fractions of the tutelars dwell in deep stone. When roused to action, they are called ghosts.
• d'Occulte says: a wayward spell is called a ghost. Old mansions teem with them; the more opulent and imperial the house, the more rich and potent the ghosts. A sorcier with any sense will make haste to harvest the haunt (before their rivals do). 
• Ghosts prefer the third, first, and second explanations, in that order, unless they are particularly disposed to paganism (very rare). They also hate wizards.

Okay, but what is a ghost?

• Ghosts are intangible. They are the only monsters you can't hit with a rake.
  
• Ghosts are mute, except to mediums. Slow communication is possible with a spirit board.
• Ghosts are invisible, except in neferotypes, or out of the corner of your eye.
• If you know a ghost's name, you can see and hear it normally.
  

Besides the above, you know nothing about the ghost (yet). If your GM can't come up with anything, they can click to generate a random ghost.

As a rule, ghosts are bound to people, places, or objects. Roll a d6. 1-3) the ghost haunts the room you are in; 4-5) it haunts the most important item in the room; 6) it haunts you.

You cannot do this again until you sleep, take tea, or self-medicate.

B: Guest Room
You may move a willing ghost from the person, place, or object it is haunting into you. You can accommodate up to [templates] ghosts this way.

You need an exorcism to evict an unwilling ghost.

C: Dream House
You have a door in your stomach. What color is it? Where have you seen it before?

The door is as big as it needs to be to permit entry. Inside, a parlor; a drawing room; guest rooms, upstairs, and their resident ghosts; many locked doors; no windows.

While dreaming, drunk, or high, you can appear here too -- without the door.

The door locks in the presence of the thing you fear most (write this down when you gain this template), and unlocks in the presence of a person you love unconditionally, both with a satisfying ka-klunk. In the presence of both, love trumps fear.

D: Renovation
You find a window in your dream house that leads outside, somewhere in the real world.

If you leave your "real" body unattended in a dungeon for a long time (4+ days), it will grow seamlessly into the stonework. All that will be left is the door.

I think this class warrants an explanation.

The intended play pattern is for your player character to walk around in spooky places and go "I'm scared!" You get rewarded for treating every dungeon like a haunted house.

The first template shits out npcs, all of whom are angry, intangible wizards. This shouldn't be a problem because you (the gm) should have at least 4 ghosts (or devils or minor godlings or daemons) on hand anyway.

In a party with more than two pcs, giving one a button that says "there's a ghost now!" is probably a bad idea. In fact, it's probably lethal to the pacing of the game. The figure-out-their-name minigame hopefully slows the loop down a bit, puts the focus back on exploring the environment (but if its a totally random ghost there's no way they'll figure it out).

The second, third, and fourth templates are all "home-making" abilities. C feels like the weakest, but it does give you a dungeon to explore (the dream house) and a "sense evil" type ability (the ka-klunk of the door).

Don't worry too much about the portal mechanics. The important thing to remember is this: the house is real. YOU are real. And being in two places at once isn't hard when you're two things at once.

all the art in this post by Herbert Railton
the one at the top of the post is actually called hobgoblin hall! cool!