Thronesposting

kids these days always on their god damn thrones

 

There are no mundane thrones.

A king's throne can delude you (echoes of former grandeur). A lich's throne can possess you. A god's throne will evaporate you. 

The oldest valleys were the thrones of giants. Life grows wild in these places, towering many-crowned stags and titanic long-robed slugs. Men raised in these valleys grow tall; giants raised outside of these valleys diminish. (What was, will be.)

[Why does this happen? The soul (which is contained in a jewel-like organ in the ass, keep up) leaves an indelible imprint on the world. A heavier soul leaves a deeper imprint. This is as true of a dragon's lair as it is of a king's throne.]

 

Wizards, kings, and wizard-kings all require thrones. They spend inordinate amounts of time sat in a sort of meditation/cultivation: the technical term for this is brooding. This funnels power into the throne, to various magical ends...

d20 Throne Effects

1. All things that die nearby immediately arise as undead.
2. Walks under its own power on six powerful leonine legs.
3. Drains the blood of illegitimate kings.
4. Controls the flooding of the two closest rivers. 
5. Reveals the future in apocalyptic fragments.
6. Sees thru all depictions of the King's Eye. [☸]
7. Midas curse!!!!!
8. Projects close range divine terror field. Can be extended with psychic training.
9. Invites gnomes. Generates whimsy at industrial scales.
10. Shoots beholder beams. +1 beam per mounted jewel. 
11. Gradually grows, turning you into a giant. 
12. As supercomputer.
13. Guarded by two angels.
14. Shapeshifts, conceals, disguises, glamours, and beguiles.
15. Calls barbarian warriors from faraway lands.
16. Grants passage into dreams.
17. Blinds God.
18. Bestows d12 superhuman heirs.
19. Summons spirits of pestilence.
20. Ages you backwards.

A dynastic throne has been cultivated for many lifetimes, and therefore possesses many effects. A stolen throne is just as potent, but volatile and willful.

Powerful thrones are embedded in the world. They can't be moved: if you want to abuse the wizard's recliner, you'll have to move in with him. Likewise, if the recliner starts giving you trouble, you'll have to move out to be rid of it.

In the wake of a great and powerful evil, the land must be abandoned. What remains is a husk ruled by the throne itself. The undynasts call these cicada cities.

A broken throne eventually fades. If some brave soul were to enter a cicada city and destroy the throne, the land would eventually return to its natural state.

[The process takes hundreds of years, so it's not a serious priority for anyone with the power to do anything. Those who seek the cicada cities usually do so for less altruistic reasons.] 

There Are No Mundane Towers

 

Yoshitaka Amano

[Yes, this post is going to be metaphysics of magic. Stick with me, I promise it's usable in-game]

Magic rolls uphill, searching for the quickest route to the highest point, like lightning in reverse. This may be because spells love the sun (which is made of magic) or abhor the earth (where the Dark dwells).

This means that in any structure that is taller than all other nearby structures, magic will slowly accumulate over time. This magical buildup makes the structure weird; the older and taller it is, the weirder it gets.

1d6	What's Wrong With The Tower You Built Last Year?
1	The tower begins to animate. Gargoyles, mimics, and other “trap” monsters are born. In severe circumstances, the tower may pick itself up and attempt to climb the nearest mountain.
2	The tower begins to grow, both upward (approaching the sun) and downward (to set strong roots). The rooms are unsettlingly “organic”, and nothing is as it should be; the ceilings are too high, the walls slope inward, the stairs are all different heights.
3	The tower attracts 1d4 demons; goblins; shades; pigs, who grow fat and dangerous lapping up the excess magic.
4	The tower’s inhabitants change. The bats, the rats, and the lichen on the cobble grow dangerous, intelligent, or downright odd.
5	The tower is levitating upwards at a glacial pace. It’s currently 30 ft off the ground and rising faster with each passing month.
6	The tower is slowly filling itself with riches, inciting all sorts of brigandry and territorial disputes between nobles. The madness of greed settles over the countryside

Yes, this happens to non-tower things too: tall trees, mountain peaks, etc. Frequent "venting" can prevent a tower from weird-ing, although it's a dangerous and mishap-prone process.

SPEAKING OF...

When a tower falls down, all that built up magic is suddenly released, causing any number of magical catastrophes.

1d6	What Happened To The Tower You Knocked Down Last Week?
1	The nearby land becomes haunted. dead things buried here start waking up.
2	a FRACTURE opens: a tiny crack between two realities. Left alone, it will expand into a full-fledged portal to another plane
3	Time or spatial distortion; infinite labyrinthine woods and impossibly huge lakes. May cause backwards aging
4	Chimeric fusion zone. Bifurcated stone-trees and liquid hillsides. Owlbears come from these
5	Everyone in a ten mile radius has nightmares about the same previously-unknown figure. If enough of them gather in one place, a sermon begins and a god is born.
6	New tower. An enormous spire of bone and mineral sprouts from the ruins of the previous tower. It is impossibly tall, full of impossible things. Looking directly at it is bad luck.

Pawel Hordyniak

Wizard Towers

This is also why wizards always build their own towers; to gather magic more efficiently.

In bygone eras, they climbed the tallest mountains where they build the tallest towers and installed enormous vessels at the top—orbs of finely-sculpted crystal, barrels full of ghosts, whatever’s on hand really—within which they collect unstable arcane energy.

Then, they hauled these batteries into their dungeons, which were dug deeper than the deepest trenches, and release them. The upward current of magic powers all the equipment and experiments between the highest and lowest point. The deepest, weirdest dungeons are decrepit wizard-engines from before the end of the world.

You can spot them from a distance; just look for the tower.

Oh, and if you start running batteries up and down the structure, you might be able to turn on the machine again, but this would take ten armies worth of manpower.

Today's takeaway: If you're going to write magical metaphysics, make sure your players can interact with them.

Words to live by from https://fractalmeadows.blogspot.com/

 

3 Alternative Monster Biologies

In a world where magic exists, calories are overrated.

Obscurovores — Eaters of Darkness

Dungeon ecologies are a precarious balance of scavengers and fungal culture. The only resource a dungeon has an abundance of is darkness. The challenge is turning darkness into energy, and this is where the Glowpig comes in.

Glowpigs are short-legged, headless swine, like the rear ends of two pigs stuck together. They eat darkness through their skin, which causes them to shed light as a torch (light is the absence of dark, as the drow will tell you). Their meat is black and rich and, according to some, corrupts the soul.

When threatened, they stop glowing (because they’re no longer eating) and curl up into a ball, relying on their thick, cactus-bristle hair to deter predators. They excrete noxious smoke (save vs. 1d4 poison damage) which crawls over the dungeon floor like a heavy fog, extinguishing campfires and choking sleeping adventurers.

[quick note: most creatures that live in the dungeon have true darkvision, and see as well in the dark as we do in the light. When everything that wants to eat you has darkvision anyway, shedding light isn’t a negative. It can even momentarily confuse predators when the light suddenly goes out and their vision has to adjust, buying the Glowpig precious seconds to flee.] 

Chronovores — Eaters of Time 

There is no such thing as immortality, a truth belied by the timeless nature of the fae. Their secret is chronovory: the consumption of one creature’s lifespan to extend another. This explains the faerie practice of abducting humanoid children, who are likely to have many years ahead of them, and their fascination with food, which they do not need but appreciate artistically much like theatre or music.

This is also why only human children are seen living alongside faeries; they die of old age before they ever grow up. 

Fae of Wishes by Wylie Beckert

 

Cogitovore — Eaters of Thought

There is a whole category of spirits which draw energy not from calories or magic, but from sapient thought. Among them are angels/devils, spells, nature spirits, and (arguably) gods, all empowered and affected by the thoughts of others.

Emphin are feral cogitovores without an onus or guiding principle to align themselves by. They are sometimes believed to be proto-angeloids, and as a result many eventually ascend to angelhood. Until then, they are as cordial as you would expect a rogue spirit to be.

Emphin are shapeshifters who look like you’d expect them to. Their identity begins and ends with the expectations of others, and their bodies fluctuate as wildly as the rumors surrounding them. Only their size is fixed, scaling based on the number of people who know about them.

If your players are hunting an emphin, describe it in vague terms. The villagers will have conflicting accounts of its appearance and abilities, and give it vague names like “the monster in the woods”. Right before they meet it, ask your players what they think the emphin looks like, then tailor its abilities to match.

CHOOSE THE FORM OF YOUR DESTRUCTOR

1d20	Emphin Rumors
1	It has many mouths and can skeletonize a cow in 30 seconds.
2	It flies on gossamer wings, but charges like a bear.
3	It cries acid and bleeds saltwater. It has an insect's maw.
4	It’s immune to fire, and spits flames from holes in its neck.
5	There are thousands of wasps in its mouth.
6	It can command undead. It’s afraid of holy symbols.
7	It eats soil and silt and regurgitates locusts.
8	It has gorgeous plumage and a long python-like neck.
9	It has a bird's beak and 2d8 additional heads all over its body.
10	It's lean like a panther and can tunnel through the earth like a mole.
11	It’s invisible.
12	Don’t look it in the eyes, or you’ll die from fright.
13	It’s actually a set of triplets.
14	It has a rhino's horns and shines like the sun when it roars.
15	It has claws the size of scythes, which weep cobra venom.
16	Its skin is harder than stone. Its mouth is long like a crocodile's.
17	It has two extra pairs of arms, which are always praying (+cleric spells).
18	It can speak, but only in blasphemies (+wizard spells).
19	It’s invulnerable to attacks by mortal men.
20	It’s actually pretty chill. Leave it alone.

They wouldn’t be such a big problem if everyone wasn’t so convinced that all emphin are monsters.

 

1d20 Pseudo-Fictional Plants

hanging man orchid

1d20	Pseudo-Fictional Plants
1	Monkey Flower. A yellow, five-petaled flower, said to look like the face of a laughing monkey. Grows around hot springs and volcanic plains. The stems can be stewed to increase one’s heat tolerance for a few hours. Tastes bitter and musky.
2	Bleeding Tooth. An off-white, asymmetrical fungus that grows on the temperate forest floor. Secretes a dark red, bitter fluid easily mistaken for blood. Can be “““milked””” for its pigment, which acts as a human/animal blood substitute in certain rituals (devils and outsiders can’t tell the difference, but animals can).
3	Rockrose. Evergreen plants with pink and white flowers native to chaparral regions. When pressed, the fruit bursts violently, emitting tiny sparks capable of lighting small fires. The seeds grow best in wet ash.
4	Touch-me-not. A shade-loving creeper with pink and white flowers. When touched, it retracts into a bud, then signals nearby flowers to do the same. Distance of signal travel is based on force of impact. Used by hunters and fae alike to pinpoint activity in the forest. Sometimes cultivated by eccentrics as short-range noiseless communication systems.
5	Corpsevine. A hanging creeper with a heavy ballast-like fruit. The vine contains a fluid which smells of decomposing meat, attracting seed-spreading scavengers when the fruit falls (or a machete cleaves the vine). This fluid can be drained and bottled as an insect/wandering monster attractant.
6	Miracle Berry. A red berry found in warmer climes. Chewing these berries makes everything taste like the sickly sweet berry for 1d4 hours.
7	Sandbox Tree. A jungle tree bearing fist-sized brown seed pods. The pods explode with a loud crack when ripe (or thrown), sending seeds ricocheting at high velocity in all directions. Functions mostly as a noisemaker, but could deal damage per DM fiat.
8	Gympie-Gympie. A plant with broad, serrated leaves and magenta berries. Covered entirely in tiny hairs containing a potent neurotoxin, except for a few stiletto-like red thorns at its base. The toxin causes intense, debilitating pain at the point of contact, lasting 1d4 years if untreated. 1d4 rodent corpses are impaled on the thorns, driven in agony to fertilize the plant.
9	Mirror Orchids. A nearly translucent five-petaled orchid, but you’ll never see them like that. Smell like oranges or apples. Grow near pools of clear water and mimic the shape/color of the last living creature reflected in the water after 1d4 hours. Taste like glass.
10	Bat Flower. A dark purple flower with many long, hanging filaments that exclusively grows on dungeon ceilings. The flower and its seeds fall upwards rather than towards the floor. Small objects wrapped in its filaments do the same.

a bat flower
it even looks like an OD&D monster

1d20	Pseudo-Fictional Plants
11	Well Moss. A thick, scratchy green moss often found clinging to wet stone. It sticks to everything except metal, and can be used to scrub metal objects clean. It does, however, stick to human hands (gross), as well as silver and other outsider metals.
12	Skeleton Flower. Tiny, six-petaled white flowers with huge green leaves the size of buckler shields. All parts of the plant turn translucent when wet and revert when dry. Entirely odorless and tasteless.
13	Bladderwort. A carnivorous yellow flower which floats above water. Traps and digests prey in fist-sized “bladders”, which can be harvested and filled with air (after being cleaned of organic debris). Half as effective as normal air bladders.
14	Rusty Duckweed. Tiny green plants that quickly grow over water and metal. Edible, but you’d need to skim a small pond for a decent ration. Proliferates quickly (1 ration/hour) if you “feed” it silver (1 sp -> 1 ration). Dies when it dries out.
15	Bear’s Head Tooth. A rare white fungus that grows on the sides of dead trees. Extremely delicious if cooked properly, a delicacy wherever you find it. Serves as a catch-all offering to anyone with a sense of taste: nobles, faeries, infernal patrons, etc. all love the stuff.
16	Victoria Lily. A giant water lily which can grow up to 10 feet in diameter. Can support one small, unarmored humanoid, but anything more will plunge right through. The red underside of the lily is covered in small spikes to dissuade fish from eating it. Holds its shape enough to be a great hat but a crappy shield.
17	Butterwort. A fist-sized, carnivorous plant with sticky leaves for catching small insects. Once stuck to a surface, the butterwort sticks until it dries out and dies. Easily uprooted. Occasionally blooms into a delicate purple flower.
18	Sloth Moss. An unassuming green algae which readily clings to animal hair and skin. Completely harmless. If properly cared for and allowed to flourish, sloth moss will disguise its host as a plant with its chemical language, protecting them from the ire of Shambling Mounds and Snapdragons.
19	Strangler Fig. A parasitic plant with broad pointed leaves and necromantic origins. Uses its roots to drain nutrients from its organic host (tree trunks/plant roots/corpses), enveloping them in a wooden husk. The roots are stiff and lightweight, even after the host has long since decomposed. Its fruit are large, gummy, and full of tiny seeds, one of which will grow into a close approximation of the host organism. Smart adventurers won’t allow corpse seeds to grow.
20	Walking Palm. A palm tree standing on spear-like roots. Moves at a glacial pace, or at a walk if no sighted creatures are looking directly at it. Can be guided with fertilizer and rich loam. Capable of galloping when infuriated, goring anything in its path with its roots.

Sidenote: Plants don’t like being stepped on or chopped for lumber, but they don’t get mad either. To infuriate a plant so much that it uproots itself, you need to really get vulgar and personal, speak their language, and present an existential threat to everything the plant loves and holds dear.

monkey orchid

Use these plants to add dynamic environments to a dungeon, spice up your travel time, or give the tree-hugger herbologist player something to get excited over.

 

Oh, and if you have flowers in your dungeon, you’ll probably want some pollinators.

Melhemeret’s Mole
HD 0 (HP 1)  Defense unarmored  Claws 1d4
Move 5  Dig 10  Int 2  Morale 2
Special can smell color

A furry, fist-sized mole with paws like shovel blades. It is nearly blind, but can “smell” brightly colored objects through the earth. It consumes its own weight in grubs and beetles each day, but has a particular taste for flower nectar. Often accidentally digs into dungeons, lured by colorful gems and the belongings of fallen adventurers. Named after the infamous illusionist who bankrupted the Dashiran military with counterfeit gold.

Burrowbees
HD 2 (swarm)  Defense as leather  Sting 1dX (where X is the swarm’s current HP)
Move 2  Dig 1  Fly 15  Int 8  Morale -
Special blindsense

White bees with red eyes. They burrow through dungeon walls at half speed by spitting up acid and digging with their overdeveloped mandibles. They dig sprawling hives in dungeons with flowering vegetation and supplement their diet with anything that wanders into their thousands of tunnels. The queen is huge, about the size of a small dog, and buried behind 10 feet of rock. If you manage to avoid getting stung to death she might be willing to barter (of course she speaks Common, why wouldn’t she).

No morale; they’ll die for their hive. Their intelligence is their queen’s intelligence. A wooden door might stop 1 bee, but it won’t stop a swarm for more than 2 rounds.

1d4	Burrowbee Queen Loot (roll twice)
1	Royal Jelly. A month’s supply for 10 gp (doesn’t count as a full meal). Consuming Royal Jelly every day leads to the development of various facial features common to the region’s nobility (at least 3 elements that fit your setting, e.g. blue eyes/attached earlobes/Hapsburg chin). +1 Cha if eaten every day for a month, +2 Cha if eaten every day for a year (doesn’t stack). The people will be more likely to believe your claim to the throne.
2	A yellow leather-bound spell book. Contains Grease and Grow Beard. She’s not sure where she got it from, but she’s sure she doesn’t need it. The inside cover says that it’s 15 years overdue at Our Lady Sorrow’s Library.
3	The Maguffin Rose. An extremely rare and delicate flower in a glass vase. It’s worth 60 gp aboveground, but she’ll give it to you for 5g or a favor. Doesn’t need sunlight, but must be watered every 2 hours. Refracts light like a prism through its crystal leaves. Try not to drop it, you clumsy clod, or the stem will shatter and it will be worthless.
4	An Apiomancer’s Monocle. It’s a little sticky. Plant buds viewed through the hexagonal lens will bloom in 2 days time with no ill effect on the plant.

a male digger bee