Beached Mermaids

For GLOGtober '23, per PRIMEUMATON's challenge:

Atlantis-type situation but in reverse. It goes up instead of down.

...

It is known that the sea is full of cities — as above, so below, etc. etc. We know this because we've gone to one of them- more accurately, it came to us.

Mer is a city designed for swimming thru, in much the same way that Heaven is designed for flying and New York is designed for teleporting. There are no streets, but there are parks. There is a distant sense of human beauty, beneath the abyssopelagic architecture. There are rows of whalebone columns, and gardens. There are bathhouses.

Sixty years ago, it surfaced just off the coast of Guam. It is carved almost entirely out of pumice. It is home to the mermaids.

In the city of Mer, humans outnumber mermaids 16-to-1. You might call this relationship symbiotic: mermaids have money (from deep sea treasures and contributions to the pharmaceutical industry) and humans have legs.

So it is that the most common mode of transportation in Mer is the man-powered palanquin. There have been pushes from the automobile industry to break into the mermaid market; none have held water.

And the livable quarters of the city have been retrofitted with spiraling stairways for two-legged folk and elevator shafts for the rest. The unlivable quarters are still under reconstruction, or have been preserved by the protests of the elders.

The elder mermaids remain, swollen blankets of pinkish flesh pouring out of inaccessible towers. (Their bodies were never meant for light, dry air, and low pressure environments.) They remember the day of judgement, when their homes turned to porous stone and the Seven Plagues of Air were set upon them. They watch the seagull-infested horizon (ech) thru milky, basketball-sized eyes, and rumble disapprovingly.

The greatest of the aquatic generation, Matriline Susubyr, pours from her laboratory, driven mad by the ascent. A powerful biomancer in her own right, she is the reason the Mer can breathe above water. She is also the reason for their banishment.

People have mixed feelings about her.

The younger generations forget that this life is their curse. They forget what they lost — the freedom of movement they enjoyed in the deep sea before their banishment, the weight of the sin that earned them its enmity. They just want to do TikTok dances and yeet a naynay.

...

So you want to play a Beached Mermaid:

Perk(s): You are 15'-45' long mermaid. You can take twice as much damage as normal and are immune to old age.

Quirk(s): You can't swim or breathe underwater. You must be hauled around in an appropriately-sized wagon.

Shivered Space // People of Cath Celdaenn

Michael Wheelan's covers for the Foundation series

Cath Celdaenn is a place where spacetime is fucked all sideways. It is called City of Cities because it was literally, physically connected to all the major cities of its time, and when it "disappeared", it took all those places with it.

[During their third and final world conquest, the statesmen of the Last Empire devised a plot to actually maintain the damn thing. The vassal states were physically drawn together, the map rearranged to their liking—per clockmaker legend, the Mad Knight Narn used adamantine chains to drag each city into place, like a drawstring bag.]

This is why you can walk from the foot of the Mother Ash to the libraries of Ancient Gnosc in five hexes.

[In those days, the Archpope was said to enjoy walking the circumference of the empire each morning. The Pope’s Road remains, patrolled by the Shivered Leopard, Ssonnet.]

In this process, vast stretches of land were folded over, some disappearing entirely into the corners of existence. In historically contested territories, where space has been folded and unfolded many times, reality may wrinkle in unforeseen ways, creating Shivered Space.

1d6	Shivered Spaces
1	Falling through solid earth, standing on open air;
2	Inception-style folded streets; open-air geographic impossibility; two towers on opposite sides of a ruined hamlet spiral into one another seamlessly.
3	Star-shaped rooms like broken mirrors; high-tension spaces; too much movement will cause it to violently snap into a new conformation, revealing hidden corners.
4	Gravity fuckery; floating bridges, suspended aqueducts, reverse waterfalls; roving, localized black holes; things grow too tall or not at all.
5	Reality is sharp; glints of light reveal hairline fractures in the air. A bisected swallow lies on the ground; traverse with extreme caution.
6	Columns stretching into infinity; an enormous landmark cannot be seen from certain angles.

You encounter Shivered Beasts here; degenerate offspring of the Thing Between Things. (The Monster Overhaul, p. 193)

(Additional Reading: Non-Euclidean Architecture, and the sequel)

By the way,

The Thing Between Things is the primary reason why teleport doesn’t work anymore. It's been described both as an oversized dog (once) and a thousand thousand birds (twice). The Witch of El made it out of leftover scraps of spacetime.

It is blamed for the disappearance of the Interstitial Kingdom, aka Lost Ilmar. Pretty much everyone wants it dead.

It's the most lethal encounter in Shivered Space. The second-most lethal is a twenty-story origami crab.

(just gonna push this out and stop sitting on it)

Races of Cath Celdaenn

Roll	Race	Reroll	Perk	Quirk
1-10	Warrior	Choice	Start with 1 extra random item	-4 to resist being mutated or transformed
11	Buryman	DEX	Your family lives just outside the city. Start with a pot full of ghosts.	Ghosts are drawn to you like a beacon. If someone gets possessed, that someone is you.
12	Gnomen	INT	You can speak with architecture (helpful for finding hidden doors).	Your murderous doppelganger lives in the city.
13	Nemean	CHA	You can't feel fear as long as the Sun shines on you.	Your flaming red hair grows astonishingly quickly.
14	Ashlander	INT	You know how to make gunpowder.	You age twice as fast and are mildly radioactive.
15	Carmine	STR	Your blood is black, highly conductive, and hardens when spilled.	Everyone hates you.
16	Jarman	STR	You're always wearing plate armor.	You can't doff your armor. It's heavy; you can't swim.
17	Spagyrian	CHA	If you die, your ghost can avenge you.	1/2 HP unless you submerge in water every day.
18	Royal Vermin	DEX	You can't be ignored.	You're 3'0".
19	Holier	CHA	You're a god; people respect that. Start with 1 Erstwhile Believer	You need to be perceived to act on the world; if no one sees you doing something, you can't do it
20	Skeleton	-	You don't need to eat, sleep, drink, or breathe. Half damage from arrows	Mute

(formatting stolen from Skerples)

Ghost Roe

The frog-men of Spagyros are oft-maligned and ill-understood. Most can tell you two things about them:

1 - They are more man than frog. They speak and count coins and walk on two legs. They eat meat and bread and ride horses. Their nobles are respected in the known lands, as befitting their status.

2 - They live forever. A dead frog-man is divided in two, the corpse (or egg) and the spirit, which when reunited will fuse and develop into a young Spagyrian, who shares most of if not all of the predecessor's memories.

[The spirit finds their way back over the course of many months, sometimes years. In their youth, they are trained extensively for this journey; thus, the ghosts of frogs are the most dangerous of all.]

 

An egg of Spagyros is a terrible artifact. Bulbous and dank, it wafts sickly sweet. Tall as a man. Any dark alchemist worth their salt has one in the back.

 

Frog-men are not puzzled by us. We are, in their minds, egg-less half-things, stumbling gametes without purpose. [Thus, the theologians of frogs are the most smug of all.]

If humanity has an egg, it lies within the walls of Cath Celdaenn.

Ghosts (once untethered from their unfinished business) drift across the landscape as thin shades, tangling together and collecting in river eddies. Thus, pockets of spirit energy dot the landscape, turning innocuous places into cold, haunted ones. Eventually, it all trickles down into the Yomi Flats, a profoundly haunted morass.

Here, ghosts are in the water, they're thick in the trees. They shack up in discarded hermit shells. They drift in colonies on steam plumes as terrible man-o'-wars.

Their situations are temporary. Their destination is high in the crucible valleys, at the foot of the old empire.

The Yomi Flats are overlooked by a massive cliff, the first step into the valley proper, over which pours a tremendous waterfall. Like spawning salmon, spirits cluster beneath the falls, struggling up the cliff, where they become easy pickings for ghost-eating crabs.

 

Mortal men and women live in the Yomi, sunken-eyed and thin-lipped. These are the Burymen, the last of the psychopomps.

The ghosts love them, and shroud their villages from intrusion in the ever-present mists of the valley. In return, the Burymen help them ascend the valley.

Day and night, their artisans throw thick clay pots, which are painted and proved over gaping steam vents. Then, like rush hour commuters, the ghosts cram themselves into these pots.

An athletic youth is chosen, and given a donkey or mudcrawler, who is laid heavy with these pots. They must set out, up secret paths only known to the Burymen, and transport their cargo up the falls. It is a rite of passage as much for the youth as it is for the spirits.

 

Some more notes on the Burymen:

1 - They are kin to ghosts, in all senses. Some came here from distant lands to help their family members pass on. Others were immaculate conceptions, children of horny spectres and (consenting) virgin mortals. The oldest families, who were the first Burymen, trace their parentage thru more ghosts than mortals.

2 - They are marked. Like coral polyps, tiny spirits will gradually settle on and colonize living flesh, eventually forming rough spectral superstructures. They call these the horns of Lich, although they mostly sprout on the shoulders and back. The elders are very proud of their horns; growing them is like a second puberty.

[They are light and can be ground into a powder, which one can snort to see hidden things and surface alternate personalities, and also make the Burymen hate you forever] 

3 - They'll give you some pots. You're scaling the cliffs anyway, right? Here, carry these, what a big, strong youngling you are. Don't drop them though! And definitely don't trade with those no-good crabs. Here, have a bone trinket. And if you deliver them safely, there's plenty more where that came from.

 

Alex Konstad

So you have a pot full of ghosts, or maybe twenty, underneath which is a very patient donkey. Once you've got it up on the plateau, you'll find that pretty much everyone wants them.

The crabs will barter with their scavenger hoards.

The pilgrim tree will offer its contract if you water it with souls. (open your books to page Warlock babyyyyy)

Other adventurers will try to poach them from you; in the valleys, a pot of ghosts can buy what gold cannot.

"But that ghost is someone's grandmother!"

So? Ghosts aren't people. Most have no agency or memory to speak of, only a primal drive to crawl up the mountain. That's not your grandma, dude. Now hand it over.

 

Ghost-based cuisine originated in the old empire. Vast fermenting storehouses, full of ghost-rotting pots. Outside the valleys, it is taboo. It is said to taste somewhere between pickled fish and unleavened bread.

It is said that the Carmine Lord, in his depravity, ate his own spirit over lamb with little garnish.

 

Ghosts are social animals, and often travel in pack-colonies. At lower altitudes, they assemble themselves into flimsy animal shapes and waft on the wind.

In Cath Celdaenn, they haunt ceramic suits of armor. They talk like this.

so cute!!!!!!
by ned hugar

Example Jarman names: Ser Ostices, Pree Jordan, Lord Castor Clay.

Ten Ogres

 

These ten terrible men share the following traits:

• They are huge, but not capital-G Giants. All of the Giants are dead (except the ones who aren't). It would be like looking at a penguin and calling it a dinosaur.
• They are human. They have language and can use tools. They understand diplomacy, even if they do not respect it.
• They are monsters. They will eat sentient beings, and see thru darkness as if it were daylight.
• They are men.
  
• Seawater is poison to them.

Use the following stats:
HD 5 (supernatural) ; Armor as chain ; Fist 1d12/1d12

For 5e, use the Cyclops (or a Frost Giant if you're feeling spicy) and build from there.

You can improve a basic ogre encounter by adding more ogres, more things to want, more complications, more superstitions, more more more

Cyclops
An ogre who has only one eye.
When the Library of Alexandria burned, Cyclops breathed in the ashes, and thus did he become almost-all-knowing. It is said that his lone outward-facing eye belies hundreds such inward-facing eyes, which scrutinized the great works and made sense of the burnt pieces in an instant. In fact, it was only in their damaged state that he was able to see the patterns imperceptible to aeons old scholarly traditons, and became the one truth-knower on this earth.
    Cyclops does not believe, he knows. He knows that the earth floats on an endless cosmic sea of clear fat, and that water, in its least divisible state, resembles a pentagonal pyramid with a single, unblinking eye. He knows the names of the sub-societies which control the surface world, and their plans to dominate the populace using wrongly-buttered bread. And he knows you're in on it too; it said so in the thousand-year-old tome he ate yesterday.
    If you can crowbar the truth from his delusions, Cyclops is a remarkable source on extinct civilizations. He has a perfect memory, and dreams of devouring the national university professors who barred his theories--manifestos, really--from publication.

• Aim for the Eye: If you crit Cyclops, and can reach his eye, you may blind him instead of dealing damage.
• Blindfighting: Between his turns, the first time Cyclops hears a loud sound nearby and cannot see the source, he lashes out at it. If he is blind, he may do this any number of times.

Fomorian
An ogre who is cursed.
Aspiring faerie wizardlings must commit 777 enchantments to memory, of which 444 are curses. They practice these on Fomorian, whose nails, hairs, and various tissues are grown in tiny apothecaries throughout fae space. Boils, tonguerot, facial assymetries, hangman's nail, melty-eye, green scabies, kidneystones, toes-to-stone, ashmouth…
    Suffice it to say, he earned it.
    He weaves nets from spiderwebs to catch faeries, then eats them like popcorn. He must count backwards from 7 before crossing any threshold. He knows more about removing curses than anyone (but whenever he lifts one of his own, a faerie re-applies the same curse ten minutes later). He'd do anything to burn Hogwarts to the ground.

• Skin of 444 Curses: Fomorian isn't affected by ongoing effects that incur a saving throw; he is already affected by them, and has learned to adapt.
• Scars: Damage dealt by Fomorian can't be healed. Only he, or the faerie headmaster herself, can reverse the damage. Nothing can heal the scars; blackened veins, raw red hide, and bruises that turn new, indescribable colors every morning.

Gargoyle
An ogre who is a statue.
Gargoyle takes many forms; the saint-devouring Lion, the Mother of primeval Man, God's twelve terrible Pankriatists, and so on. It is unclear whether he is unable to inhabit beautiful statues, and must first deface them, or if it is his possession that renders them hideous. If he is slain, he will possess another statue no less than three leagues away.
His immortality-obsessed priests take tithes from anyone in range of the old cathedral, where their master might feasibly travel to make good on his threats. Gargoyle demands meat, mead, virgin husbands and experienced wives. He is always commissioning larger and larger sculptures, and currently plots to abduct a master sculptor from the next kingdom over. He would have died in the last holy siege, if he hadn't threatened to eat St. John (inventor of the 7 holy fist arts; he's still regenerating in the cathedral dungeon).

• Stone: Gargoyle is immune to weapons unsuitable for demolition work.
• Petrifying Bite

 

Ettin
An ogre who is many ogres.
There is a mountain which never sleeps. Night and day, it gurgles like a tarpit, building up pressure until it ejaculates thick, house-sized chunks of clay into the sky. With difficulty, these misshapen blobs stand on two trembling, ogresome legs, open two sunken, ogresome eyes, and are promptly devoured by Ettin.
    Ettin is the mountain's lover, and also its many sons. He lurks in its deepest caverns, emerging only to patrol the barren surface for newborns. The lowest heads, nearest the stomach, are the youngest, only capable of crying or coughing. At his terrible zenith, far above the sloping shoulders and blackened heart, rests the fiendish, many-bearded patriarch.
    They all hate each other; day and night, abuse trickles like water from the mouths of the elders into the minds of the lower heads. Decapitations are frequent, if inaccurate, like stripping a corn cob. The heads-that-roll are lined up in the depths of Mt. Cnoboruk, where they echo hateful diatribes and invent sadistic magicks. It is said the gallery knows everything about anything that might cause harm to another, so singular is their purpose.

• Tower of Babel: Instead of attacking, Ettin may cast four random spells from four random heads in four random directions.
• Sum of His Parts: Damage dealt to Ettin sheds that many heads-that-roll (1 HP; very rude; explode on death).

Empyrean
An ogre who is the son of god.
Empyrean would be beautiful were it not for his wicked, self-assured sneer. He roams the countryside, demanding hospitality from any town he stumbles into. Days, even weeks, of feasts ensue; he demands entertainment and excesses, lest he grow bored and start amusing himself (his sense of humor is truly depraved). When the coffers, and larders, are empty, he moves on.
    No one knows which god sired Empyrean. They all seem to dote on him equally, with only minimal comments towards his behavior. When they ask what to do about him, local clergy are always shocked by the response: "He's just a child," they say, "he'll grow out of it soon." "Boys will be boys." "Give him time. One day, he may make a fine king."

• True Immortal: Empyrean can't die. Instead, his divine daddy bails him out of Hell. He'll be back in 1d4 days.
• I Get My Way: Empyrean can command the world at will; rivers part, trees fall, men die. There are no limits to this ability, except that Empyrean rarely thinks of anything he cannot see in front of him.

Balor
An ogre who is a demon.
Balor is a very good friend of Satan. Besides that, he's not very different from your average ogre. I mean, sure, he did get that cool fire whip from Mr. triple-6 for Beelzebubsmas, and I guess there are some perks to having an exclusive interest-free demon summoning contract. But besides those few things, completely normal. Run of the mill. Down to earth, even, this ogre.
    Yes, he leads the armies of Hell on occasion, vacations in a black iron fortress on an active volcano, and plays golf on the fairways of Tartarus. And yes, he'll tear a goat in half and eat it in front of you like a ripe peach. And yes, that is a fractal bone amulet on his septum piercing, thank you for noticing. But ogres are pretty much always this bad.
    The worst thing about Balor is that, on top of it all, he wants you to think he's a nice guy.

• Working Relationship: Balor counts as a demon when determining damage immunities and resistances, as well as for tax purposes.
• Summon: Balor has a summoning circle tattooed on his tummy, which he can use freely (summoned demons have d8 HD).

Treant
An ogre who is a tree.
A typical encounter with Treant begins like this: a split tree trunk reaches out of the undergrowth and grabs the expedition lead's horse out from under her. It withdraws, dragging the beast into the forest as if grabbing a Kleenex. The horse hits the woodchipper: there is crunching and screaming and sobbing and silence. Then the tree trunk reaches out for more.
    Where other ogres are talkative, sometimes even civilized, Treant is nearly feral. He is nude, and mostly teeth from the neck up. Some of them are even his. You will see him chewing on a squirrel with teeth he stole from a moose.
    There is only one thing Treant truly loves, and that is horses. Adorable ponies, powerful thoroughbreds, sturdy draft breeds; he can't get enough. He loves to watch them run, and prance, and gallop, and canter; he scrawls their likeness on his favorite cliff face, and sings to himself about their windswept manes. If you get him talking, he'll chatter for hours about the value of genetically pure breeds and the ideal gait to bring to the preakness.
    Bring him a horse, and he'll have it in his mouth before you can say "palomino". He can't help himself, he'll even weep as he does it. And when he has finished eating and weeping, he will be furious at you for what you made him do.

• Treestride: Treant can pass through trees at will, without slowing down. He is extremely, terrifyingly fast.
• Camouflage: Treant always has at least half-cover in the forest.

Minotaur
An ogre who is lost.
Although ogres are terribly, ravenously hungry, they don't actually need to eat. Such is the only explanation for Minotaur, who stalks endlessly the executioner's labyrinth of Voth Duma with a cube of solid lead around his head. Robbed of his other senses, he lays the cube against the floor to pick up the movements of his maze-locked prey--in the past, these were political prisoners, but the executioners have long since departed--tracking them without err thru the maze. When he finds them, he stands on his head and pulps them into the tiny gap between his neck and the lead. When he is not hunting, he sings.
    Minotaur's cube-helm sports horns in the shape of massive keys, which unlock various doors throughout the labyrinth. The doors are too small for him to fit through. If you could find a way to cooperate, you could both escape, each unlocking the way for one another in alternating sequence until the end. For whatever reason, he hasn't taken anyone up on this offer yet.

• Maze Sense: By listening for ten minutes, Minotaur can pinpoint the location of anyone in a 1 mile radius.
• Lead-lined: Minotaur ignores any and all magic targeting his head.

Umber Hulk
An ogre who is a dwarf.
As above, so below. As drow to elves, dvrgr to dwarves, and morlocks to men, so too does Umber Hulk exist as a dark reflection of the surface world. He is smitten with the collapse of the Giants, and craves their parallel histories more than any bauble, chittering in his palace of obsessions. On good days, he whiles away the hours carving his lair--a crude replica of their ancient skyborne palaces, inverted and relieved into flowstone. On bad days, he throws a tantrum, destroys his work and digs to a new cavern to start over. If you're crawling the Underdark and notice the stone is now suddenly (and shoddily) worked, you've probably discovered one of his abandoned projects.
    Umber Hulk hates having his unfinished work scrutinized (it's not ready yet!!!!!), so they are filled with monsters. He does so by scrambling their minds with his many, mesmerizing eyes, then establishing them in rough hewn kennels. He is a thoughtless shepherd, and his beasts die or thrive without his knowledge.
    Over time, he has stolen many Giantish artifacts--Bigby's Staff, Omgulgar's Wizened Greatsword, the Jewels of Kanye--and enshrined them in monuments to his dead culture. Because he is an idiot, he has lost almost all of them. Perhaps you would be willing to trade?

• Tunneler: Umber Hulk can swim thru earth as if sprinting. He leaves a tunnel in his wake.
• Mesmerizing Gaze: Save or be stunned. Dumb animals fall under the Umber Hulk's control instead.

Yeti
An ogre who doesn't exist.
Your camp lies in tatters. The less appetizing pieces of the cleric are strewn about; armor, extremities, etc. The wizard and the rogue saw the whole thing… and you don't believe them. You can't believe them. They don't believe each other, even, and the townsfolk certainly won't believe the lot of you. And you saw it too, but now that your friends say otherwise… maybe you were mistaken after all?
    Yeti eats better the larger the traveling party is. If the group is large enough, he can squat over your hearthfire without anyone batting an eye; no one believes one another, so no one believes themselves. You'll keep seeing him around camp, but if you run for help, the group will talk you out of it. If he isn't too hungry, he'll play with his food; you'll find yourselves walking in circles in an endless blizzard, turning on one another over misplaced rations and important trinkets.
    Yeti can be coaxed into conversation quite easily, so long as its one on one with someone he can terrify. He likes listening to stories about himself. Hearsay and madmen believe he gained his power by swallowing his own true name, and that he could teach a sufficiently depraved man to do the same.

• Like a Polar Bear Sneezing in a Snow Bank: Wherever Yeti goes, a blizzard follows.
• Cryptic Existence: If you hear someone else talk about Yeti, you stop believing in him. One round later, he will be effectively invisible to you.

 

[edit: Only one of these ogres has a⚿wife⚿- this was a mistake. "Spouse of the worst person in the world" is a very rich trope space: at least half of them should be in awful, loveless marriages, perhaps to each other]

I LIKE SHORTS THEYRE COMFORTABLE AND EASY TO WEAR

 

This isn’t Legamon. Just slap this into your random encounter table.

Goblin goblin-tamer
HD 2; AC as leather; d6/d6 (grub-on-pole)
Carries 1d6 (exploding!) cages containing at least that many goblins.

The “tamed” goblins come in a few stages (d4):

1. The basic gob: HD 1; d6
2. The evolved gob: HD 2; d6/d6. edgier and a little bit taller
3. The extra-evolved gob: just 2 of the basic gob. You must fight them as if they are one
   
4. The legendary gob: HD 3; d6/d6/d6, is in fact just a rabid wolverine

The tamer will insist you follow the rules of gobby battles. They insist on 1v1 turn based combat. Switching out players takes a turn. Beyond that, go nuts. Spectators are more-or-less fair game.

Breaking the rules too much leads to an all out brawl; all the cages open, and the goblins run wild.

[sidenote: goblins can be convinced to fight under any pretense or new set of rules if it sounds fun. A common response to goblin raids is to challenge them to less lethal sports, such as hide and seek or ultimate frisbee. Frequent rules updates keep them from getting bored]

Each goblin has 1 or 2 types (d20):

1. Fire; can start a fire anywhere dry
2. Water; web-toed, can spit with high accuracy within 20’
3. Flying; can jump over a house, is covered in sticky feathers
4. Ground; can burrow in loose soil as fast as you can walk
5. Electric; deals 1d6 to anything that touches it directly or thru a conductive material, always hits foes in metal armor
6. Dark; has a bag full of smoke bombs and sneak attack dice
7. Poison; infectious bite delivers (1d4) greenrot; fulminating plague; rust; mordant
8. Bug; has a bag full of worms, a bag full of beetles, and a bag full of bees
9. Ghost; possessed by (1d4) an old-war general; a desperate poet; an orpheme; a child
10. Dragon; is a kobold, IQ proportional to weight of eaten gold
11. Knife; has 17 knives, can throw them half-accurately
12. Kung Fu; masters any martial style it observes for more than 3 seconds. Cannot be harmed by styles it has mastered. has a 5-minute memory
13. Blood; if you smell its blood, enter a berserk rage: you cannot tell friend from foe
14. Fungus; can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters
15. Ooze; squishy, crawls inside your armor and dissolves your flesh with its tongue (1 HP/turn)
16. Psyker; can emit a continuous psychic scream, deals 3d6 to everything within 20’
17. Dwarf; wider than they are tall, gemstones for eyes, can’t be moved against their will
18. Rat; can command rats as a Vermin King
19. Knight; AC as plate
20. Forcefield; if their hands are up and they shout “forcefield!”, you can’t hurt them; it’s against the rules.
21. Grass; high as a kite
    

If you trade for them, you can use the goblins in sanctioned goblin-fights. If you beat the 8 goblin gym bosses, you can challenge the goblin king yada yada yada

GLOGtober Day 2: Heck Drow

 

If your first response to “what kind of sentient race lives in the deepest, darkest place in the world” is “i’unno, dark elves?”, you’re a hack. (sry gygax)

There are two (and ONLY two) ways to make Drow interesting:

1. Make them the ONLY elves in your campaign.
2. Make them not elves. Make them mega-weird. Don’t call them drow, they’re blinklings now and they have 2 rows of teeth and no eyes and smell with their hands and and

Roll a d20 until your drow are finally interesting:

1. Colloquially known as “snickers,” for the sound you hear as they approach, unseen, thru the caverns. They don’t actually laugh; that’s just what it sounds like
2. Extremely spindly with pinprick extremities. Can slip through the cracks under doors with minimal effort
3. Tall, so tall they would need to crouch if they walked through the caves. Thankfully they never need to
4. “Cannibals? you slander us topworlder; we would never eat our own. strangers, however…”
5. Darting, mandible-d tongue.
6. Lay eggs in underground reservoirs. larval form is parasitic, which leads adults to seek out “pastures” for their young to mature upon (it’s absolutely catastrophic if there’s drow in your well)
7. Blind, have a telepathic/symbiotic relationship with troglograss. They tend to their lawns, and the lawn lets nearby drow know when prey is stumbling by.
8. Most joints (including the spine) can rotate 180 degrees like broken puppets.
9. Literally just spiders (and not just spider-themed dominatrixes). Big, sentient spiders, who talk like humans and emote like humans and have absolutely no conception of the boundary between friend and food
10. Kidnap surface animals to turn them into drow. The process involves a lot of starving and light deprivation. it often works; you can encounter drow cats and drow elephants. They have all the other rolled drow traits.
11. Indistinguishable from corpses while metabolizing. Can lie perfectly still, all night, watching, waiting. Drow encampments always look like ghost towns, and you’ll wonder what monster wiped all these people out, and then when you sleep they’ll getcha
12. See-through skin. They wear bat-leather everywhere except their stomachs, where you can see through their intestines and observe whatever they ate recently (it’s a sign of friendliness to wear an open-belly tunic, so whoever you’re talking to can see that you are not currently hungry, and therefore not an immediate threat)
13. Wear the molted exoskeletons of their elders. When the eldest molts, the rest trade up like a hermit crab parade. very fleshy and moist underneath it all.
14. 8 FOOT VERTICAL LEAP they don’t even need to bend their legs to do it. All their joints sound like cave crickets
15. Due to lack of traditional eyes, noses, etc. on the face, Drow paint “self-portraits” on their skin to augment their appearances. Snarling hounds for warpaint, delicate masks for parties. The paints are mild irritants which serve to modify the thermal patterns of the visage; sighted creatures may struggle to comprehend the patterns being displayed.
16. What you see is little more than the roving gametes of the Linddrow - a great wurm beneath the earth, constantly tunneling around the world, releasing plumes of drow into the caverns. They seek to unite with the great egg, whatever that is (a crystal in the elven kingdom, the moon, a flying city?)
17. They walk on the ceiling and are absolutely surprised to see you. They claim to be on a mission to chart the depths of the earth. If you let them past, they’ll walk up to the surface, absolutely boggled by the sheer drop into the sky.
18. Cling to walls and sheer surfaces with ease. Often hide in plain site on paintings and murals
19. Normal elves infected with some sort of parasite/being puppetted from the shadows/housing an undead spirit (take your pick)
20. All things the same, except based on a different animal. They aren’t sexy underground elves, they’re sexy underground ELEPHANTS. You can keep the spider-worshipping and poisonings and shit

Dragons are murderhobos

Dragons see the world as players do. No, not PCs; players.

Dragons are big, scaly murderhobos with breath weapons. Reality is a game to them, and they’re very concerned with winning it. They’ve been playing for a very long time.

They use XP for GP, obviously.

According to a dragon, everyone else is an NPC. You’ll need to demonstrate your own player-ness and buy into their worldview if you expect to be treated as a sapient being. Other dragons are rarely exempt from this scrutiny, although they do acknowledge that if anyone were to be a self-aware actor, it would probably be someone who looks like them.

Draconic is the language of ego. There is one subject pronoun (wild guess as to which one), and all other objects are discussed in relation to it. Treating others as self-aware actors is a great shame for dragon-kind.

No matter how long their lives, how big their hoards, or how potent their magicks, all dragons fear being some nerd’s role-playing device.

---

You can replace your eyes with a dragon’s—their eyes are huge, so this will take some effort—to see the world as a dragon sees it; pliable and comparatively unreal, like a reflection at water’s edge. Poor creatures; someone must have written them all wrong.

In times of uncertainty, you may hear murmurs, laughter, and the sound of clattering dice. By paying EXTREMELY close attention, you can attune yourself to the world beyond the veil and learn their secrets. Basically, this allows your character to metagame within the fiction by eavesdropping on players outside the game.

Try to prevent your character from understanding this too deeply; if they lapse too far into existential dread, they’ll go mad and become a dragon.

(Inspired by PCD's classic post)

How to Make an Elf

 

by dong jianhua

Acquire a child (any race or species will do). From the moment of its birth, swaddle it in silks. Decorate it in gold and dripping jewels until it cannot move for the weight of it all. Shape the ears.

Feed the child only the finest puree; half milk, half royal jelly, thickened with the sweetest piece of the pig. Feed it before it asks to be fed. Do not stop feeding it until it refuses to eat. Add gold leaf for garnish, at the child's request.

Do not let the child’s feet touch the ground; wherever it toddles, let the servants lay a fine carpet or silk cloth. Do not let its skin be marred by odor or roughness, nor its brow stained by sweat. Keep it in the shade, so that its complexion fades and its eyes adjust to complete darkness.

Tutor the child in every art, the poetry of bow and arrow and dance, song and rhyme and politics, but never labor. (Sweat is poison to an elf.) Speak to it only in incantations; “please”s and “thank you”s, the binding magicks of nicety, hierarchy, and social script.

Never reprimand the child. If it must be punished, do so in a way that will not leave a mark. Never explain wrong or right.

Never love the child, or allow it to love another; empathy will dull its senses and restore its mortality.

Allow it to mature in this manner for 100 years. Then, it will be ready to rule.

花弟

Elvish Culture

An elf is a creature of privilege. There is no such thing as an elf peasant; they’re all lords at the least. The idea that they could maintain an independent ethnostate is completely bonkers.

If there is an elvish culture, it is a forgotten one, from an age when all beings were carefully hand-crafted by individual gods, before wretched reproduction consumed the earth.

Fighting an Elf

Elves are about as fragile as normal humans. Think of them as trained Olympians; they’re amazing at everything, but within reason. You can turn them with rudeness or filth, as a cleric turns undead.

They also cast hella spells. At the start of combat, choose 3 spells; the elf has already cast them in preparation.

Playing an Elf

You were raised to be an immortal asshole, then struck out on your own somehow. Now you’re still an asshole (loveless life of privilege and whatnot) but are slowly regaining your mortality; and with it, your empathy.

Perk: You’re really good at two noble skills (archery, horseback-riding, picking up the tab, etc.)

Quirk: Save vs. obnoxiously asserting your superiority in any social situation. You get really high-strung when you get dirty, or when someone is rude to you.

Horde (HD 8; AC 0)

Dominik Mayer
this started as a Joesky tax, then i realized it was 100x more interesting than the article it was attached to

Never run zombies as individual monsters ever again.

Zombie Horde
HD 8; Morale 12
There are as many zombies as the horde has HP. Attacks automatically dispatch as many zombies as they hit.
Horde "Tactics": The horde doesn't attack conventionally; instead, take 1 damage for each zombie within arms reach at end of round (no save), and 1 damage for each zombie you pass through the reach of while moving (save for half, round down).
Characters who look, sound, and/or smell like zombies (at least 2 of those) take no damage.
Only Slowed Them Down: Each round, half of the zombies you dispatched get back up and rejoin the horde, so long as their bodies are still intact.
They Just Keep Coming: Each round, 1d6 new zombies shamble around the nearest corner. This continues until the source is discovered and neutralized or the horde stops chasing you. (you're probably fine if you walk around the corner; they're very dumb)

Other monsters to horde-ify: goblins; orcs; swarms of bees; sharks; town guardsmen; plant monsters; velociraptors

Linguistic Angels

Erik Nilsson

“Language is mankind’s greatest invention – except, of course, that it was never invented.”
    — Some Guy

Angels are words are spells are spirits. This is known.

Angels are made of language and symbols. Sapient thought nourishes them; spoken word exalts them.

Each angel embodies a phrase or concept—anything from “I am what I am” to “42 ducks standing in a perfect circle”—referred to as their onus. These can be abstract or concrete, descriptive or prescriptive. Whenever someone has a completely novel thought, a new angel is born.

Angels derive power from sapient thought directed toward their onus. Powerful angels are well-known aphorisms and common parlance; fledglings are weird or abstract shower thoughts. Their currency is prayer and meditation. When they trade favors with mortals, they ask for songs, poetry, and art. They tend to be particular about numbers (an⚿"angel-sum"⚿is an idiomatic expression referring to a large and annoyingly specific quantity).

For most angel names/onus (same thing), steal from Spwack’s generator here. Or just read a lot of K3BD. Angels may also be known by “family” names, which translate to functional or regional similarities within celestial society. Some examples:

Ingress: Angels of greetings and hospitality: “83 Pleased to Meet You,” “31 Hand On Hilt Steelcaste.” Generally friendly, with many opposable hands and furtive eyes. May herald the arrival of other angels.

Mandaloam: Collector angels: “19 Marble Thrones Regalia,” “8 Iron Slaked With Blood.” Patrons of dragons and other covetous folk. The strongest are those associated with gold.

Orzurion: Angels of extinction, one for every species. Most are quite weak: “14 Brings End To Geese,” “25 Sunset on Mice.” The most powerful of these is by far “2 Ash Burying Others,” the angel of orcish genocide.

Renaud Perochon

Cities of Angels
Angel society is constructed around maintaining balance between peoples, preserving dying cultures, and safeguarding civilization as a whole. They are, by construction, agents of order, of the zeitgeist.

Angels congregate along idealogical lines in towering cities on the misty fields of Celestos, a conceptual plane of endless thought. Angel architecture is built for flying through, lacking doors in favor of holes in ceilings and floors (more wall space allows for more bookshelves/shrines/paintings). The streets are mostly vertical chambers.

Pretty much every piece of every building is copied in some way from human architecture (angels are profoundly uncreative). It looks like a weird collage from an architecture major’s wet dream, or like that one scene in Inception with more vaulted arches. 

You can enter Celestos non-magically (as all realms) by walking into a thick mist, where you can't see anything but the ground you are standing on, and loudly announcing your business with a specific angel. Walk forward until the mist parts. If the angel knows you, they will meet you just outside the Golden Gates of Celestos. The next step is getting past them and the two Ingresses standing guard.

Devils
Devils are angels that contradict the teachings of one’s god. One cleric’s angel may be another’s devil: for example, incubi are devils of Archelai and angels of Lord Guu. 

Primordial Angels
Angels claim to predate civilized folk, that culture is formed in their image rather than vice versa. This is partly true.

Animals may not speak in a way that we recognize, but they do have language, and therefore do have and always have had angels. There are mewling angels and roaring angels and angels of pheromones that long predate human history, but they are fickle and distant. They embody animal needs and urges, fighting and fucking and eating what is available. These are the primordial not-quite-angels of unspeakable truths, speechless and hungry, kept at bay only by the great Gates of Celestos.

Among these primordials, the youngest breed was that of birdsong. When the angels waged war for Celestos, these were their first allies. You’ll find evidence of this everywhere in angel cities; choirs of exotic birds on every windowsill, corpulent and vibrant. However, the birdsong angels themselves are nowhere to be seen.

Angels do not allow mortals to know of their distant ancestors. They can’t risk mortal minds knowing and naming these old angels.

_____ (Angel of Birdsong)
HD 5; AC 16 (thousand-fold plumage); Feathers 1d6/1d6/1d6
It appears as a swarm of feathers, inky black one moment, pristine white the next. Each feather flies independently, as a school of fish might, around a bitter pill of ragged black meat.
Can attack everyone in a 20 ft cube of space simultaneously, ignoring any armor that isn't air-tight.
Feral, "hungry", but tame; responds to "Halt" and "Heel" so long as it hasn't been harmed. Whistling at it sates it, but you need to think like a (horny) bird as you do it.

Olya Bossak